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Christians Prefer Weakness over Strength

Something that turns off a lot of young men from Christianity is the fact that most Christians prefer weakness to strength. It is as if for some reason they actually prefer being weak. Whenever there is a choice between weakness and strength, they will choose weakness. Not only will they choose weakness, but they will think they are being righteous for being weak!

Just like many Christians have equated virtue with poverty and wealth with materialism, so also many Christians have equated weakness with righteousness. For some reason, it is righteous to suspend punishment, worship softness, and be emotional. Men default to weakness by choosing to wallow in emotionalism and vulnerability and call it “spirituality”. It is difficult to say where we have gone wrong, but it is easy to see we have a lot of work to do on this front.

Occasionally I mention what I call a “Viking Faith”. Vikings had gods and religious practices as most humans have had for thousands of years. They made sacrifices, had worship, and prayed to the gods. Yet for some reason, Vikings were able to be highly religious and still be considered masculine warriors and men to be held in high esteem. Yet Christians are often considered to be weak, soft, and powerless. What is the difference? I think there are many differences between the Viking faith and the Christian faith, of course, and that is a topic for another article. Some of them are requirements of scripture but other differences have come because men have chosen to be weak. Not only to be weak but to boast about weakness and glorify effeminacy.

Besides worshipping weakness, many Christians also prefer defensive versus offensive positions of war. They gravitate towards commands and scripture that tell us to give a defense or resist some power. Weak Christian men are always playing defense, never going on the offensive. It is a shame that so many men simply default to weakness and yet think they are doing something great.

When faced with a dichotomy both of spirituality, scripture, or masculinity, men will default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness. This must be corrected.

Here are a few of the instances in which men will choose what appears to be weaker.

I – Give Defense Vs. Cast Down Arguments
II – Lamb of God Vs. Lion of the Tribe of Judah
III – God of Love Vs. Man of War
IV – Forgiveness vs. Judgement
V – Mercy Vs. Punishment
VI – OT vs. NT

Let’s go through these one at a time.

Have your own ideas? Leave a comment below!

I – Giving a Defense Vs. Casing Down Arguments

Men in religion love to quote 1 Peter 3:15.

“But in your hearts revere Christ as LORD. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

It is a great passage, and I am not at all trying to pit Bible verses against each other in this article. However, when do you hear a verse explaining the other side of the story? One of my personal favorites is 2 Corinthians 10:5-6.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.”

What is the difference between these two verses?

The first one puts Christians in a defensive position and the second puts them in an offensive position. I have mentioned before that it is extremely important for us to go on the offensive instead of constantly playing defense. When all we do is answer questions and defend ourselves, we make little progress in evangelism and we build little respect for our names. However, when we go on the offensive and attack another’s ideas, we put them on the defensive. The only way to cast down arguments is to attack. This is not a defensive maneuver it is an attacking maneuver. Though the best strategists can seamlessly blend offense and defense, we as Christian men need to work on being offensive.

I believe that men default to the 1 Peter passage because they twist it to give themselves license to be weak. I will remind you of our core statement of this section. When faced with a dichotomy of action, Christian men will almost always default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness.

Neither passage is weak nor is about weakness, but weak men have twisted 1 Peter to justify their cowardly behavior.

They are too scared to go on the attack, so they live their entire lives just defending themselves.

Correct this by forcing others to defend themselves. To crush an idea, you need to demonstrate that it is faulty. This cannot be done from a defensive position unless that defense has been carefully crafted to lead a voracious opponent into a trap. Tactfully use defense to lure out your enemy them ambush their philosophy from all sides. Make their defeat so devastating that they never challenge you again. If possible, you must crush them in front of as many witnesses as possible. Put them to shame.

1 Peter 3:16 ~ “Keeping a clear conscience, so that those who slander you may be put to shame by your good behavior in Christ.”

II – Lamb of God Vs. Lion of The Tribe of Judah

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 1:29

“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Revelation 5:5

How many times have you heard the phrase “The Lamb of God”? Likely you have heard this quite often. Sure, it is important to hear this because it symbolizes the fact that Christ traded his life for our sin.

But how many times have you heard about “The Lion of The Tribe of Judah”.

I would venture to say that you hear about this far less than you hear about the lamb. Why? Because Christian men love when their Savior is soft and loving. If he is a lion, the deadly warrior animal, it does not give us the same “warm and fuzzies” that we got with the lamb analogy.

Weak men do not want our savior to be a lion, they would rather Him be a lamb. This is another instance where men default to weakness. And this does us no favors with the secular world. Can you imagine trying to share the gospel with someone and talking about the Lamb of God? It does not make our God sound very powerful.

I understand that the gospel is going to be “foolishness to the world” (1 Corinthians 1:18), but that does not mean we have to contribute to that perception by our actions. Christianity is a hard sell as it is, let us not make it harder for ourselves.

The perception of the lamb of God also makes us a laughingstock among masculine men.

I have seen a Viking-type shirt that says, “I would rather be a wolf of Odin than a Lamb of God”. If men were not busy floundering in their emotions and vulnerability, they would have presented the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. But because they prefer weakness, because they worship the feminine and praise it above all else, because any time they are faced with a dichotomy they default to weakness we now have negative PR from shirt companies.

https://myfrogtee.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/wolf-odin-v-neck-t-shirt.jpg

You can correct this by choosing to focus on the Lion that is God. For a period of time, remove from your mind the analogy of Christ as a lamb. Remember that is only meant to symbolize the sacrificial nature of His life. It is not meant to reflect who He is personally. This is the key point of these passages.

When John the Baptizer called Christ the Lamb of God it was because everyone knew what that meant. People were constantly sacrificing animals to cover their sins. It was the perfect analogy. There would not be one single soul confused and thinking, “Oh it is because he is weak or has the personality of a lamb”. Absolutely not! That type of modern thinking is disgraceful. While most Christian men prefer weakness, you must prefer strength.

Remember that you worship the Lion.

III – God of Love vs. Man of War

One of my favorite descriptors of God comes from the Old Testament. Right after the Red Sea collapses on the Egyptian army Moses and the people sing a song. In that song comes one of my favorite verses in all of scripture.

“The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name”.
Exodus 15:3

When was the last time you heard that one quoted from the pulpit? You may not have even known about the existence of that verse. Because it is a bit too aggressive for the hordes of feminized men that pack out the mega-churches week after week. It is a little bit on the aggressive side. You might expect to hear something like this in the lyrics of a heavy metal song, which as every good mother explains to her son, is “devil music”.

(Here is a good example of why that is bogus.)

However, you hear the contrasting statement nearly every time you talk to other Christians or attend church. “My God is a God of love”.

“And the God of love and peace will be with you.”
1 Corinthians 13:11

Again, this is completely true, God is a God of love. But we focus so intently on His love without first understanding what love truly is and also without understanding the necessity of His discipline.

If you had a decent father growing up, one of his tasks would have been to administer discipline to you. This was usually in the form of corporal punishment and was authorized by scripture.

“Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell.”
Proverbs 23:13-14

The fewer beatings you earned, the more feminized you likely became. And if you did not receive much discipline then you probably also do not view God as handing out much discipline. This is because our view of God is shaped by our view of our earthly father. If your father was a disciplinarian, this is how you view God. If your father was lax and let you get away with everything, this is how you view God.

What we can clearly see today is the result of the majority of fathers refusing to discipline their children.

Now, most Christian men do not see God in light of his requirement to discipline us. It is bound within His very nature to correct us and keep us focused. The Bible teaches that if we are not disciplined by God then we are illegitimate, bastards.

“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”
Hebrews 12:8

We have a generation of young men who view God as their buddy. They have no respect for Him just like they have no respect for their own father. This is what a lack of discipline leads to. Discipline leads to self-discipline which leads to success, both spiritually and physically.

Correct this weakness by viewing God as a man of war. Perhaps it is just my personality, but I would much rather follow a man of war into the battles of life than follow the false image of what Christians have made God into. He is not soft or weak, but many religious people have made Him that way to suit their personal tastes and needs.

Call out any who would reduce God and equate Him to the weak, pathetic men of today. This is another example where Christians prefer weakness over strength.

IV – Forgiveness Vs. Judgement

Another example of a modern weakness is displayed when we talk about forgiveness and punishment. Somewhat a continuation of the last point, Christians want to focus so much on forgiveness to the extent that they neglect God’s Judgement and Discipline.

They do this because they know they are making no attempt to truly live correctly. They need God to be a God of forgiveness so that they do not have to take His commands too seriously. I mean it is only our eternal destiny at stake, why take it too seriously anyway?

The forgiveness-focused attitude is a favorite among Catholics, who have no affiliation with the church of the Bible. If you have the resources, you can even pay for your sins with money. Or you can buy someone else out of purgatory – imagine that!

If God is nothing but forgiveness, then I have no need to put effort towards being disciplined. Because at the end of the day all my sins will be forgiven anyway. If this is true, why even try? Why work so hard to stay sexually disciplined or to avoid drugs if I can erase my criminal record through the forgiveness of God?

Again, I need to make the point that I am not minimizing the importance of forgiveness or trying to pit passages of Scripture against each other.

The purpose of this piece is to show how our standards have decayed because Christians prefer weakness. When Christians prefer weakness over strength, they fail. They contract the disease of socialism of the mind. By convincing themselves that they have to do no work but can still have a piece of the collective “salvation pie”, they become soft and entitled.

Correct this by embracing the judgmental side of God. This is not meant to be negative, but to be a reminder to hold yourself to a very high standard and actually work to do what is right. Do not have a lackadaisical attitude when it comes to your faith. There is no place for weakness in any part of your life. You must prefer strength and have that firmly in your mind. Attack any philosophy that promotes weakness over strength.

And you may say “But forgiveness is the true strength”. Very modern and progressive of you. But something can be “True strength” and feminine or weak at the same time. It depends on how you are contorting the scripture to suit your needs. Do not use forgiveness to cover up the weakness.

V – Mercy Vs. Punishment

Another permutation of the previous point but important enough to state. In the church, we have concentrated so much on the forgiveness and mercy of God that we have forgotten all the instances in which He punishes those who disobey Him. You need to never forget this. While modern religion paints God as 100% merciful, you know the truth. Hold yourself to a high standard. Limit your need for mercy. Of course, we all will still need mercy, but we should not use it as a credit card for sin.

VI – Old Testament vs. New Testament

When was the last time you heard a lesson from the Old Testament not rooted in the Psalms or some positive prophetic verse taken completely out of context? I would venture to say almost never. Christians prefer the New Testament because it seems “more reasonable” than the OT. The OT has an “angry God” but the NT has Jesus who people love to latch on to. Not because they love all His words, but because they love the ones they choose to love and forget everything else.

In the OT there was a lot of war, conquering, violence, death, and punishment. We do not need to forget this. All of that was important. It laid the groundwork for the Christianity we have today and also gives us a portrait of God. Goes does not change, He is still that man of war that we read about in the OT. We do not need to forget this.

But because the NT has a lot more to say about love and other emotions, people prefer it over the OT. We, humans, love having warm and fuzzy feelings stirred up within us. But we do so at the expense of maintaining any semblance of strength and personal power. We have done the same in our preference of the NT over the OT though both are important.

Correct this by increasing your study and discussion of the OT. Do not let people marinate in the NT at the expense of gaining a complete view of the portrait of God.

Conclusion

All these points are meant to illustrate how we as Christians prefer weakness over strength. Perhaps not all of us, but many in the modern churches today. People want to make their church a social club and hang around doing nothing all day, learning nothing but still feeling good about themselves. No one wants to do work anymore.

You can be the first of a new generation if you want. You can strengthen your own mind, gain power, and become masculine. Even though most Christians prefer weakness, you must learn to prefer strength over weakness and you will be head and shoulders above everyone around you.

Split From the Pack

High-value men do not run in packs. In a pack of wolves, there is one alpha who has access to all the females and calls all the shots. Only the alpha has the right to reproduce. The beta wolf is the second in command and takes the place of the alpha once he dies. Below the beta wolf are subordinates. These are the middle-class wolves who are one step above the lowest ranks. And lastly, there is the omega wolf, the lowest rank, often dominated by the others. This wolf tries to solve conflict through non-violent means. He can fight to gain rank but tends to stay in his position because all the other wolves bully him.

In a wolf pack, being the beta is not bad.

It means you are the second in command, soon to be the alpha. It does not carry the same connotation that the term “beta male” carries today. If groups of men were packs of wolves, most of them would fall into the subordinate class; the class that spends time fighting amongst itself to maintain or gain rank. They simply spend their lives bickering and warring with one another, trying to gain ranks. They do this even though they will likely never be the alpha wolf.

Human beings act the same way. They engage in social warfare and try to climb the status ladder. The problem is that they spend the majority of their time on petty matters instead of important matters.

I am encouraging you to split from the pack and work alone until you can find a pack with high aspirations. There is no point in limiting yourself to a weak group of men. If you cannot spend time around excellent men, do not spend time around any men.

Their lethargy and laziness will pull you down to their level.

Even if you were the alpha of the pack, what value would it be? What value is there to be the leader of low-value, low-performance men? Unless you can demonstrate that the pack is improving under your leadership, you are sacrificing your own potential in order to be one of the gang.

A pack of wolves can work together and take down an elk. But if most men today were wolves, they would not be able to take down a rabbit. If you sit down and think about it, is there any reason you want to spend time with these low-value men?

What tends to happen is that young men feel a strong need to fit in and to be part of a pack. This is natural and should be encouraged, but only if the pack is noble. Many young men will compromise their values or aspirations just to “be one of the gang”. This man will soon find himself behind the 8-ball of life just because he chose to associate with losers.

You become who you spend the most time with, so do not spend too much time with low-performance men if it can be helped.

The time you spend with others should lift you up and push you to be better. This is only possible if you are around men of high aspiration and work ethic.

You may ask yourself, “Why would a high-performance man take time with me? I am not high-performance currently; I am not successful or at the level I want to be at. Why would this man waste his valuable time with me”? I will tell you why. If you demonstrate work ethic and high aspiration, you set yourself apart from the rest of the men in this world. You split from the pack.

8 out of every 10 young men you hang out with in college will lack work ethic and goals for their future. Make goals, have high aspiration, and work ethic then demonstrate to a high-performance man that you have these traits, and he will take you under his wing.

He will be so encouraged that he is not the last of his breed that he will gladly spend time with you, though he will not tell you this directly. You can then take advantage of his influence and work ethic and excel in your field. You will experience exponential growth that places you so far above your peers that it will blow your mind.

I – Split from the Pack – Preparing to leave

If you have spent a lot of time in a pack, you have probably grown attached to them. You first need to mentally prepare to detach from them before you physically detach from them. Start by visualizing yourself leaving. Picture yourself being happy to leave and not bothered at all to be alone.

II – Splitting Off

Each time I split from the pack in my life, I did so silently. Call it what you will, but it is the method that works for me. I simply split rapidly without explanation or apology. There is no need to explain yourself, no need to apologize. I did not waste time preparing any explanation or apology for this, I simply split from them. One moment I was one of the gang, the next I stopped “hanging out” with them.

I did not feel the need to remain part of the pack, in fact, I felt liberated from their negative influence. If you have self-awareness and can see how being part of a low-performance group is affecting you, you will have a much easier time separating yourself from them. Why would you want to spend time around a group that brings you down and keeps you from reaching success? Is the urge to fit in that strong for you?

A masculine man has no need to fit in until he is around a group of high-performance, masculine men.

The only time you should feel pressured to be part of a group is if they are collectively better than you. Do not feel pressured to waste time with a pack of losers. There is no honor in this.

Many of you may feel bad after you split from a pack. You will feel regret because you may have hurt the feelings of others. Hurting feelings is a part of life. You cannot tailor your every action just to accommodate every low-performance male who wears his heart on his sleeve. If you do this, you will always limit your performance. All the energy you could be directing towards pursuing excellence is now directed into making sure no one has their precious little feelings hurt. You need to lose this mentality as fast as possible; it will keep you from success 9 times out of 10.

III – Handling the Protests

If the pack enjoyed having you as a part of it, they will likely be sad to see you go and try to persuade you to stay or come back. Especially if you gradually back out from the group. You will have to choose between giving them an excuse and giving them the truth. You could always tell them you are too busy; you have a lot going on at work or school and simply cannot take the time that you could in the past. That is not the noble path, but it is an option you have. The other is to simply explain what you are doing. You are removing yourself from the limiting influence of low-performance men to pursue excellence in your life.

Like crabs in a bucket, they will try to pull you back in, but you need to resist this. Get over the need to be a part of a group. Start viewing groups as supplemental to your life, not the main focus of it. You need to be able to be alone until you can find a suitable tribe to be a part of. One that prioritizes masculine virtue and seeks excellence in every pursuit. It could take years to find a pack like this, and you need to be content with that period of waiting.

I went without a pack for three years of college.

After I discovered during the first semester that no one wanted to work hard, discipline themselves or be more than their current self, I saw no reason to continue spending time with them. What purpose would there have been to that? Why sacrifice myself for men who accomplish nothing and then boasted about it?

The people I saw in college did very little beyond complain about professors, laugh about their 2.5 GPA as a psychology major and stay up all night playing intermural sports. Do they sound like good influences? Does it seem like they are the kind of people who would push each other to become their best selves and achieve in life? No. They boast about being low-performance men and then complain or gossip when high-performance men reach success.

When people protested or asked me to waste time with them, I simply had to refuse. I know that sounds conceited, arrogant, and a selfish way to spend time, but it was absolutely necessary. I am not encouraging you to be an arrogant man who turns his nose up at others below him. Rather, I am encouraging you to avoid spending time with people who are going to tear you down and be a negative influence on you.

IV – Enjoy the Winter

We will call the period of time between splitting from the old pack and finding a new one “The Winter”. Not because it is difficult, cold, and deadly, but because winter is a solitary season. Many animals are spending time alone hibernating. They are spending time with no other animals unless they are a herd animal. It is a season of calm and quiet, a good time for reflection. So this is how you spend your time.

Spend time alone training and improving yourself. Train your body and your mind. Learn everything you can from audiobooks or other online materials. If you spend time working on yourself and your weaknesses, you will qualify for higher-level packs.

Do not rush this period, it is critical for you to parse out who you are, what you want to become, and the type of men you want to spend time around. Write out the characteristics of the ideal man on paper and work every day to become that man. Then write out the characteristics of the pack you want to spend time with and identify what you would need to become to fit in with that pack.

V – Enter the New Pack or Start Your Own

You can either find an already existing pack or create your own. You may find it difficult to find these packs as they are rare, and even more so in the religious world. There are plenty of biker gangs, but very few religious packs.

Religion finds a way to demonize anything it does not like even if it cannot support that attitude through scripture. Be sure to bring up this fact if anyone should protest too much about your desire to create or join a pack. Ignore every person who cannot support their position with logic or scripture. If they cannot support their position, you have identified a person who will never be allowed to enter your pack until he cures his mental disease.

I would encourage you to start a new pack. It does not have to be formal, though it can help. Just look around for the manliest men you can find and invite them to do manly things. Shoot guns, throw axes, kill and eat animals, do martial arts, and discuss philosophy over the campfire. It is as simple as that. The difficult part is keeping the other, weaker men out.

Every group has entrance standards including the church.

Therefore, men should be able to understand that if they do not meet the masculinity requirements then they are not allowed to participate.

Though this is not meant to attack them personally, it is a statement that addresses their fundamental lack of character. There is nothing wrong with refusing to spend time with low-value men. If you spend time in a leper camp, you might contract leprosy; if you spend time with low-performance losers, you might contract their diseases of the mind.

By keeping low-value men out and keeping high-value men in, you create a circle of influence, unlike anything you have ever experienced. Instead of being pushed towards low-value actions, you are pushed towards being more of a man and exhibiting strength and power. This is only possible because you have multiple men pursuing the same goal of strength and masculinity. Positive influence can only work if you are surrounded by many men who are on the same path. It is your responsibility to find, recruit and learn from them. This is how you become a man.

Resilience – How to Recover Rapidly

Resilience is the ability to adapt to situations or recover quickly from a failure. The great value of resilience is that the faster you can recover, the faster you can give another attempt. The skill comes in learning how to think correctly so you maximize your recovery and ability to withstand discomfort.

It is also the ability to be flexible in the face of ever-changing circumstances. If you encounter difficulty on the job, you want to go see the person who is not fazed by this. You want to talk to the person who can laugh in the face of difficulty and begin to generate solutions faster than you can even tell him the problem. The goal we should have as men is to become that person. You must be the person who produces solutions. You are the one who is flexible in the face of chaos and disorder.

Let us look at a few of the key attributes of resilience.

I – Mental Recovery

The essence of resilience is the ability to recover quickly from any event. Whether minor setback, outright failure, or during mental training, the ability to recover fast is key. This is the mental equivalent of resting between sets of physical exercise you want your body to be able to recover in the time allotted to that your performance on the next set will not be reduced.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to simply subject yourself to more events that will tax you. This is a difficult path, but it is very beneficial as well. The more times you can fail, the faster you will be able to recover from failure. You will condition your mind to realize that no failure is permanent. There is no single mistake that can cripple you for life (outside of a felony or something like that).

In the modern world, the majority of our failures or setbacks do not really harm us at all. Our very survival is not at stake when we take an exam or go for a job interview. Nearly every society has some form of a social safety net that can catch us if we faceplant. Therefore, there is no excuse for us to avoid trying many new things. We should race towards failure, knowing that in it is the growth of character and resilience we are looking for.

Mental recovery is also the bottleneck for all other recoveries. We have to be able to recover in our minds before we can get our body to attempt something again. How fast the brain can recover is the rate-limiting step for our total recovery.

II – Physical Training

We can simulate adversity and failure with our physical training. Just like we can train to recover faster in the gym, we can use those principles and learn how to recover faster in our mental training.

If you want to recover faster in the gym, you have to look at the root of recovery and see where you need to improve. Do you need to work on your heart, lungs, nervous system, or muscular system? Which one of those is limiting your recovery? Once you figure that out, you can begin to train it. You can research new training ideas to isolate the system you want to train. You can track your results and see how well you improve over time. There are a number of ways you can train your body and recover faster.

You can do the same thing with your mind. Find the bottlenecks for your mental recovery. Is it the inability to get over failure? Perhaps a low tolerance for work volume. Maybe you are burnt out and need to figure out how to recover while still moving forwards. Whatever it is, you cannot fix it without first identifying it.

Once identified, you can start experimenting with different recovery tactics and see which one works for you. If you are burned out, research how people recover from burnout and what the causes of it are. Learn how to increase your work tolerance and complete more tasks with the same working hours and energy.

The key to rapid growth is to fix whatever problem is the main limiting factor. Once you fix that, you improve in every other facet of your performance. Learn from mentors and people who have been in your shoes before. There is no need to figure out everything through trial and error. Learn from the experiences of others, this will allow you to learn rapidly. If you learn rapidly, you recover rapidly. Pursue knowledge so you can first know yourself so that you can recover and build resilience.

III – Reframing Experiences

To mentally recover, we often have to reframe the experience. This also applies to the anticipation of events that may lead to recovery. Where we choose to focus our minds will be what determines our resilience. If we choose to focus on the negatives, the consequences, or the dangers, we will train our minds to fear and be anxious. But if we focus our minds on the positives, the benefits, and our capabilities, we train our minds to be resilient.

When facing a new event that is causing you fear, shift the focus in your mind. You change your focus by changing your questions. Instead of asking, “What am I going to do when I fail?”, ask, “How am I going to succeed?” Your brain will give you an answer for any question you ask. So, make sure your questions build you up instead of tearing your strength down.

Even if the event is frightening and you are afraid of negative results, write down all the positives that would result from a seemingly negative failure. Write down your problem on paper. Write down what would be the worst that could happen if you failed. Then write about how you would recover from the failure. What action would you take to immediately get back on your feet and start recovering and moving towards a new goal? If we choose to stay still and wallow in our failure, we will only become depressed. But if we begin moving towards a new goal, that movement will fill us with energy, and we will recover.

The worst thing you can do for an injury is to give it pure bedrest. The best thing you can do is get the joint moving as much as you can tolerate and begin to recover. You must do the same thing with your mind.

When it comes to previous failures, you must learn to look back on the lessons you learned while leaving behind the pain associated with the mistake. This can be very difficult, but it is very beneficial to us. No man wants to relive the pain of failure over and over again, yet we do this on a regular basis! Instead of leaving the mistake behind, we choose to play the event again and again in our minds. We reopen those old wounds, experience the worst parts of the failure, and restart the mourning process again. This is no way to succeed as a man.

When we look back on our mistakes, we need to be able to pull out everything we learned and turn a blind eye to everything that is painful. You can do this by learning to first laugh at the failure. If you can laugh at it, your brain will not take it as seriously as before. It must not have been a big deal if you can laugh about it.

Second, look at all the benefits of that mistake. Intentionally look for ways that the mistake led to future opportunities or successes. When you first try this exercise, do not be surprised if you cannot think of anything. Your brain is stilled scarred from the experience. It wants to say, “there is not one single good thing that resulted from that mistake! Don’t ask me that again!” But you must continue to ask it, eventually, it will find an answer just to get you to stop bothering it.

Third, be grateful for the successes and for the lessons. It is difficult to experience negative emotions while also experiencing gratitude. In fact, it is impossible. So, look for all the benefits that have come into your life since your failure and appreciate them. Be grateful for what you have earned or the opportunities you have.

Even if you fail, you likely still have all your basic needs met. You still have food, water, and a place to live in the majority of cases. What then do you have to worry about? Even if the worst should happen at any time and you “fail beyond repair”, you can still come back here. You can reach out to your friends, family, and church for help and they will lend you a hand. Our social structure is built so that we can support one another.

Other Source: Recover from failure – Resilience

The Pursuit of Excellence

A man’s first responsibility is to his life mission(s). A major problem is that the majority of men do not know what their mission is. This is understandable as men are encouraged not to pursue their own mission, but to cram themselves into whatever mold society deems fit at the time. In the modern-day that mold is the standard, generalized college education. The good news is that the lack of a mission is not a permanent state for men.

An even bigger problem for men is the fact that not only are they lacking their own mission, but they do not have any mission at all! It is perfectly normal to not know what you want to do in life especially during the first few decades, but to use that as a justification for doing nothing or for blindly following societal trends is not the way of men. You do not need to have your purpose in life figured out, but you do need to be moving towards some goal.

You must be in the pursuit of excellence

Therefore, set your course and aim for a goal. Make it something you have some degree of interest in, but do not worry if you are not bursting with joy at the idea of pursuing it. Many times, if we simply begin to move, if we start working towards a goal, a better more fitting goal will become visible to us. Thus, we begin to pursue that new goal, and yet again another even better goal is revealed to us until we finally can hone in on the goal and accompanying few bits of work that matter most to us.

It is not about waiting around until you find your purpose to start working. It is about starting to work knowing that your purpose will be revealed as you work.

That being said, your first priority should be the pursuit of excellence in whatever you decide to do, no matter if it is your life mission or not. If you commit yourself to excellence, your purpose will be revealed much faster.

Being excellent at your work is a great way to separate yourself from the pack of men whose favorite pastime is bathing in the mediocrity that they are awarded for by society. The middle ground, their comfort zone is exactly where society wants the vast majority of men. The men addicted to comfort are easy to control by women and the state. On the other hand, men who pursue excellence, improve themselves, and are not content to wallow in mediocrity are a danger to the state. Not because they might overthrow the establishment, but because they are not easily subdued by mindless authoritarian rule. This is one of the many traits of a man of excellence.

Qualities of a Man Pursuing Excellence

I – The Ability to Take Action

Men know that excellence is not equal to perfection. Any attempt to achieve perfection results not only in low-quality work but low quantity work. Without action, there are no results. Without results, there can be no excellence.

As a man who pursues excellence in your life, you must be committed to taking action, improving your life and immediate environment instead of merely planning, studying, and analyzing.

Acting, showing up, moving in the direction of your goal is often half the battle. Very few men are willing to simply show up. They never even give themselves the chance that comes with simply putting yourself out there and attempting. While that is sad for them, it thins out the competition for you.

II – Focus

In a society where humans are trained from an early age to be distracted by anything from sounds to people to technology, the ability to focus is one of the most valuable skills in the world. With focus, a small degree of effort can be amplified into an intense ray of power. You do not have to be able to focus for extremely long periods of time, in fact, this may not be possible. You do need to be able to concentrate, keep your awareness on one task at a time and generate some results.

III – Intensity: The 3 out of 10 Rule

Intensity is the work ethic you need as a man. There are hundreds of thousands of people giving a lackluster effort in every area of their lives. There are people in the gym giving 3/10 effort in their training. At work, they are giving 3/10 effort and working less than one-half of the word day. In their relationships, they are giving a 3/10 effort. The list could go on and on, look at any human endeavor and you will find that the majority of people are giving a 3/10 effort in it.

What makes this so insidious is the fact that these people are actually rewarded for this level of effort. They work just hard enough to see a slight difference in their body from their efforts at the gym. They put in just the right amount of work at the job to keep the boss off their back. Or they invest just enough time in their relationships to keep them from dissolving. The world rewards mediocrity just enough to keep people doing what they are currently doing.

As sad as that is, it gives you a two-fold advantage.

First, if you are willing to increase your day-to-day intensity, you will automatically see more results than the majority of people. And secondly, you do not have to work that much harder than the average person to be better than 75% of workers out there. While this is not an admonition to be lazy and improve only insomuch as you need to get ahead of the competition, it is to say that you do not have to learn how to generate 10/10 effort today. You can start by working up to 5/10, then 5.1/10, and so on. Make small, incremental improvements that can be maintained over time and you will soon find that you have passed the majority of your competition.

From the perspective of the boss or leader, you will instantly stand out from the crowd. There is so much mediocrity in the world that if someone is even slightly above average in their work ethic, attitude, or skill it becomes readily apparent.

Be warned, not as many people will be inspired by your work ethic as you think, in fact, the majority of people may start to dislike, even hate you.

That is because your success reflects their failures back to them. You are succeeding while they are content to give average effort in exchange for average results. But now they are beginning to see the fruits of your labor and will become jealous. They can see the difference in how the boss respects you versus them. They are aware that you are out-earning them, out-training them, and out-living them. This only inspires people who possess a growth mindset; the common man will hate you unless you give him gifts (Proverbs 19:5).

Always conceal your success from others. If you are still in the middle levels of a career or are in a social setting, do not talk or boast about any success or the improvements you are making to your life. Only talk about it if you are directly asked, and even then, always say less than necessary. If one person admires you, four others will be indignant.

IV – Persistence

If you grew up in the last 50 years, then you saw the rise of the “Everyone gets a trophy” philosophy of sports and other group activities. What this means is that everyone is rewarded for artificial success and there is no such thing as failure. Without failure, resilience cannot be developed early. This is a tragedy because, like any other injury, kids recover much faster from failure than adults.

The lack of failure in early life makes failure down the line significantly more painful. As soon as most men get their first taste of a significant failure, they never want to experience it again and will avoid the situation that caused it, which tends to be trying something hard or new.

The issue is that no great success comes without failure and now men are unwilling to risk faceplanting because they want the comfort of steady, low-hanging fruit successes.

“We must dare to be great, and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage” ~
Theodore Roosevelt.

Therefore, a way to separate yourself from the mediocre masses is to pursue failure. Chase it as if it were a limit removing for your life. While you accumulate failures, learn to view them as “feedback” instead of “setbacks”. It is a tool to help you adjust your efforts and shift your focus to a different area or change your preparation strategies. This mindset will allow you to experience repeated failure without becoming depressed. There are essentially no failures that are so devastating that they cripple your life. You can always recover. And the ability to recover faster and give another attempt faster is the root of persistence.

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm” ~
Winston Churchill.

V – Rational Optimism

Learn to change your perspective about your life events so that everything is a positive event. If you are in college and you are scared about failing out of the program, reframe your mindset so that both outcomes are positive. This is not so you can take your ease, prop your feet up on your desk and give no effort, but rather so you can reduce the incessant fear in your own mind that is damaging your ability to generate maximum performance.

Instead of thinking, “If I fail out of college my life is over”, immediately write down what you would do after failing. You could write, “I would have to get some kind of job and pay back these extortionate loans”. Now that you have already established that your life is not over, you already have a plan to rapidly get back on your feet and begin working towards another goal. Then add to this plan by figuring out how you will add value to society or yourself. Maybe then you would finally have the freedom to work on your business, book or whatever career goal you have on the side of your new job.

Whatever you do, you need to develop the habit of quickly outlining every future event in your life so that the positives outweigh the negatives. This can only be done if you think through the situation and convert some or all of those negatives into positives. This must be done on paper, doing it only in your mind will not work. Optimism makes it easier to be persistent, which makes it very valuable.

VI – All Work Is Done Ahead of Schedule

Not only do men finish their work with excellence, but they do so before it is even required to be finished. If you are working a corporate job and want to separate yourself from the pack, slap a finished project on your boss’s table two days before the deadline. You will demonstrate that you are an effective worker who is capable of handling more responsibility and as a result are worthy of more compensation.

If you are still in school or college, finish every assignment at least two days before it is due. Never wait until the last moment to start and complete your tasks. Not only will this cure your stress, but it will build your confidence. You will begin to see yourself as a professional, as one who is ahead of the pack. You then have the free time to look around at your peers and watch them scramble and panic to complete assignments at the last minute.

VII – Consistency

For the man pursuing excellence, consistency may be the determining factor of his success. It does not matter if he takes some grand action if he only does so once per month. It is nobler, and more beneficial to take smaller actions but do some consistently. Writing 500 words per day is better than writing 5000 words one day per month.

Taking small actions on a daily basis is going to lead to much greater success down the road than massive but occasional efforts.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” ~
Attributed to Aristotle, true origin disputed.

VIII – Make Progress

All of the aforementioned qualities are good, but if you are not producing results, then there is a problem. This is not a problem for most people. They are making progress, but they usually do not know if it is in the direction of their goals or not.

Make yourself aware of the progress you are making by first knowing where you currently are. If your goal is to lose weight, you need to know what you weigh today so you can measure your progress in a week or a month. The problem is that it can be painful to measure where we are today. It seems that we are so far away from our goal, or so far behind that we would rather just put blinders on and start working. That is a recipe for success, just not the success you were hoping for.

If you are going to drive to a certain destination, you need to know your current location and the goal location if you are going to successfully use a map or GPS. There is no need to moralize the issue. There is nothing moral about being in Waco, Chicago, or Paris, it is just where you are.

Measure yourself today.

Where is your character, work ethic, or financial report card? If you clearly define where you are and where you want to go, you are ahead of 90% of the population. Most people paddle their canoes in circles, or they follow all the other boats. Very few people know what they want and where they are. Figuring out how to get there is easy.

At times it may appear like you are not making any progress whatsoever. In these moments you need to look around you. How are your college peers performing in their lives? How are the results they are getting in life? If they are giving a 3/10 effort, you will find that you are miles ahead of them in every facet of life. There is rarely a need to compare yourself to others, but occasionally a progress check is acceptable as long as you do not get carried away.

Another sign that will show you are making progress is when others assume your success is the result of talent or innate characteristics. In fact, most people do this with any and every good result someone earns. If someone has straight A’s in school, they are “smart”. When someone is muscular, they “have it easy” or “have time for that”. If a man is successful in the marketplace, others say he is “lucky” or “must be nice”. What if that same person was actually average in every one of those facets, but he just so happens to give an above-average effort in them all? What if he is not smart, but disciplined? Or perhaps he is not muscular, but dedicated and focused. Maybe he is not lucky, but wise and hard working.

Everyone around you will try to minimize your accomplishments by reducing it to natural talents.

They do this because if you are not naturally skilled, smart, or have good genetics, then what is their excuse? To them, you have to be smart, otherwise, they have an excuse for being lazy in their studies. In their eyes, you must have the natural abilities, genetics, and gifts otherwise they cannot make excuses for why they themselves are not experiencing the same success.

Whenever you hear others reducing your successes or trying to say you have natural ability, do not be angry at them. In fact, this should excite you, because anyone who makes those statements identifies themselves as a person who is unwilling to do what it takes to get results and success. If they think success comes through natural ability, they will never be successful. And that is one less person you have to worry about in the marketplace.

Conclusion

One of our roles as men is to work and pursue excellence. After God made man, He gave him work and purpose. The same applies to you. Find your purpose using some of the notes written above. It may take time but do not worry. Work towards a goal, give slightly more effort than your peers until you condition yourself to outwork them, then increase your work ethic even more.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Dress with Self-Respect

You can tell in two seconds the amount of self-respect a person has based on what they are wearing. Now, this does not apply to what they wear around their house. what people wear in the comfort of the home does not matter. It is all about what they go outside the home looking like.

You must dress with self-respect.

Do not go out of the house looking like a bum. This is not that difficult. Have some self-respect and dress like it.

The modern world wants men to go around dressed as women. You see men wearing pink shorts, short shorts, and feminine sunglasses. Dressing with self-respect does not include dressing like a homosexual. It would be better to wear a bear pelt than to dress like the majority of men today.

This is not a long, detailed description of what you should wear, but you should have a few basic rules for how you dress.

If you are going outside the home, never wear less than jeans.
Graphic tees are for the gym, all other public places are off-limits.
Church is for your best dress. If you don’t bring your best someone may punch you in the jugular.
Slacks are ideal in most situations.
Boots are imperative and work with everything.
Shirts should be solid colors. Button downs are ideal.
Wear a belt, no one wants to see your wonder-woman underpants hanging out.
Put on deodorants so others don’t think you just walked out of the forest (not that there is anything wrong with that, but it is not good for the rest of society)

Dress as if you are already successful. I dare you to walk into Walmart in your best Sunday clothes on a day other than Sunday. You will be one in a million.

Dress with self-respect. I cannot say it enough.

Deuteronomy 22:5 – A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women‘s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

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