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.