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.
Some men resent the birth of their children, as it reduces the amount of sex they get in marriage. Some men resent their families, since they are the reason he has to grind away at the 9-5 that is eating his soul. Many men resent the church, more than they would care to admit. Worship is an inconvenience to them. It takes away their Sunday, one of their only off-days from work and forces them to exist around people that annoy them more than any other people.
Contempt is a deadly disease closely related to holding a grudge for an extended period of time. Because both exist within the individual and can live for years without him even knowing they are there. You might feel the slight gnawing feeling every time your alarm clock goes off on a Sunday and you have to get dressed to be around people who claim to wear the name of Christ but in reality take no action for their faith.
Chronic contempt eventually leads man to forsake the church.
Eventually, the weight of the monotony, boredom and restriction disintegrates the mind until man can take no more. He resents the church for robbing him of his freedom. Everything they want to do in life has been taken away by God with the promise of something better, some future reward, if only they can learn to wait and restrain themselves.
This restriction is the breeding ground for contempt. The feeling that we are missing out on the few things in life that are actually enjoyable: Sex, alcohol, drugs, freedom are what the God appears to take away from man. Man believes he has a hope for salvation, but in his heart of hearts he knows that he has no idea what will happen on judgement day. He knows the God who destroys without mercy, and assumes that he himself will also be destroyed without mercy. Man rejects the church because of these thoughts. He rejects the church because of contempt.
Men don’t just get up and leave the church because of some huge argument, a church split or personal problem. They leave because of the slow decay of contempt that has been rotting their faith for years. The resentment for the church and its people grows daily, until one day the man can take no more and he leaves the church. This was not an overnight transformation. Very few great trees fall because they are split by a lightning strike, most fall because of the slow decay of insects feeding on them until one day they no longer have the structural support to stand. Such is the way of the contemptful man and his faith. We must avoid this poison of contemptuousness at all costs.
Mantra
Contempt is a slow death that must be eliminated.
Application
Take a good look in the mirror, into your soul and search out the contempt you may have within yourself. If you are not self-aware, you may not notice the damage that contempt is doing to you over time. Awareness, again, is key. Vigilance is the only way to take note of the disease of contempt and attempt to purge it from the soul.
In many cases, the awareness alone will cure the contempt, in other cases you must trace your resentment to the root.
Why are you resentful? Possibly because God has placed massive regulation on the way you can live, and it seems like your freedom is taken from you. This is a source of contempt for many a man. But remember, anything worth gaining requires restriction. A tremendous physiques requires dietary restriction. To become a doctor requires restrictions on time and enjoyable activities to make time for work. Nothing great is ever built without restrictions in other areas of life.
You must master this and rearrange the thoughts in your mind. Change the routine of thought into something else. Hotwire those thoughts before they follow their set pattern into death. Be a Man.
Identify the source of your personal contempt (Having to go to church/restrictions on sex etc.).
Trace the source of contempt to the root by asking and answering questions in your mind (why do these restrictions make me feel contemptful? Am I mad about the restrictions on sex or am I simply embarrassed because of my chastity? Maybe the problem is my embarrassment).
Begin undoing these thoughts in your mind. Cut them off from the source and do not allow the thoughts to even start. If they do start, short circuit them by running through your questions from #2 and recognizing the irrationality of those thoughts.
Religious people make more excuses for being physically inactive than anyone else. They use the age old excuse of “not worrying about the shell of the body” or calling physical exercise “selfish”. These are the same people who want to call the body a “Temple of the Spirit” whenever it suits their particular narrative.
The lethargy in the religious world is insane.
A portion of the church is obese. You might even call many of them “gluttons”. While it is true that they are not participating in 13 course feasts complete with vomiting out the food just so you can make room in the stomach for more food, it is also true eating until it is painful to move is not a great thing to do to the body, and that is something many religious people do on a daily basis.
People avoid exercise in general because it has the immediate punishment of pain and discomfort combined with a delayed reward: i.e. the results. This cycle is a recipe for a behavior that is unlikely to be repeated. We as humans hate to do things that cause pain in the present and only reward us in the future, this is why we enjoy immediate gratification.
Eating has precisely the opposite effect: Instant gratification of the pleasure of eating and the delayed punishment of fat gain. This is the formula for a behavior that is continued as a mindless habit, and people do not even notice the negative effects of it until it is too late. All the deadliest habits are this way: Smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, sexual promiscuity, television and most drug types.
Christian people need to get up and take better care of their bodies. Scripture speaks of our body being a temple of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) and of the body being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). There are too many people in the church preaching about living the Christian lifestyle and avoiding the fact that we must take care of the body as good stewards of it. They do not include this principle because most of them are quite fat, this is not rude, it is fact. This is also why you almost never hear any sermons preached on the topic of gluttony: because the majority of Christians would be guilty of that sin!
KEY TO HUMAN NATURE: You will notice that even the most hardcore religious person will water down certain commandments if he/she chronically violates them. You do not hear about gluttony because most Christians are gluttonous on a regular basis. You may hear a sermon that suggests it is okay to worry, because the teacher wants to justify the fact that the crime of worry is simply accepted in modern society. The list can go on for miles.
Some of these Christians like to say “I would rather have brains that brawn”. In 99% of cases, people who use that phrase have neither brains nor brawn. KEY: “brains and brawn” are not mutually exclusive. What they also don’t know is that there is almost nothing better for the mind than to train the body. The scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience reports in a 2018 study Exercise-Mediated Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus via BDNF a confirmation that exercise has “numerous neuro-protective and cognitive benefits, especially pertaining to memory and learning related processes. One potential link connecting them is exercise-mediated hippocampal neurogenesis, in which new neurons are generated and incorporated into hippocampal circuits”.
New research shows that exercise can generate new brain cells, casting serious doubt on the age-old theory that brain cells cannot be regenerated once lost (which was just a trick parents used to get their kids to watch less television). Based on this research, exercise also protects the few brain cells that people have left.
If you want to live a long life, you need to train your body. Being a couch potato is not helping you extend your lifespan.
The man who trains the body, you will develop a mental resilience that is unlike any other. He can program his mind to endure pain, thereby raising his pain tolerance through intense exercise. Why not take advantage of the mental training that exercise provides?
“Why not be a smart guy and have a huge deadlift” – Jocko Willink, Former US Navy SEAL – From Jocko Podcast 28
Mantra
To train the body is to train the mind.
Application
You have to get to a gym and train your body. If you can’t afford a gym, you need to get to work on body weight exercises and cardio every single day. We live in an age where there is no excuse to be ignorant on any subject. The internet has the answer to every question you could possibly have, so lack of knowledge is no excuse for being fat.
Choose a desired exercise type (Strength training/calisthenics/cardio) (I urge you to stay away from moderate intensity exercise like jogging or circuit training unless you are having a rest day or just starting to train for the first time. If you are going to train the body, you need to have intensity and train like a man. A few intense 20 second sprints would be better than a mile jog).
Start with the smallest possible step (If you are just beginning to train, be intense in your training but do not go all out until you have conditioned your body to handle that type of effort. Leave a few repetitions in the tank on each exercise for at least the first 2 weeks).
Add more work slowly over time (Once your current exercise starts to feel comfortable, you must add intensity back to it. You can add intensity by: Decreasing the rest periods between sets, increasing the weight lifted or increasing the total sets and reps completed).
Every single day you must make progress on yourself.
Do not focus on how fast you can get to your goal but focus on making exercise a habit every day. Exercise is a non-negotiable item. There are no high-performing couch potatoes in the world. You have to make sure that no matter what comes up, you are doing at least something to promote physical well being.
Get up.
Train.
Progress.
Be a Man.
Sample No Equipment Beginner Full body Workout: Research exercises online if you have not heard of them. Perform full body work Every other day
Complete as many sets as it takes to meet repetition requirements (AMAT). Break up the sets if you are concerned about injury.
Character is the internal code of an individual. Integrity is sticking to that code of conduct regardless of who is watching. There could be no one watching, but you still practice everything you preach.
You pick up the straw wrapper you dropped.
You take the shopping cart back.
On all your jobs you use your best effort and complete tasks to the best of your ability, even the ones you impose on yourself.
Even the small tasks around your home.
Do you clean the whole kitchen, or just the visible parts of it?
Do you dust around the picture frame or do you pick it up and clean the entire dresser?
Are all of your jobs done right?
These are the basic questions that give you a direct view into who you are as an individual. Are you the kind of person who takes shortcuts to avoid doing that little bit of extra work? Are you the type of person to use the phrase “good enough”? If you are that weak man, then today is the day you begin to cast off that old man of sloth and sluggishness. The Church has enough weak men already, you do not need to add yourself to their numbers.
You are the kind of man who does everything to the best of your ability.
It doesn’t matter who is watching. It does not matter if you have an audience of 50,000 people or if you are completely isolated. Integrity ensures that you are the same man in both situations. Integrity guarantees that you have consistent character over time, that your word has value, that you always follow through and do what you say you will do.
These philosophies are embedded within you. Like anything else, once you begin to apply these actions and disciplines consistently over time, they eventually become habit, and require no more willpower.
You take back that shopping cart without even thinking about it, it’s programmed into your character. Once programmed into character, it is there forever. That is the beauty of discipline and habits. You work hard to build them over long periods of life, then they are fit to stand the test of time for years to come. Don’t be discouraged by how long it takes to build the habit, because eventually you will be profiting from the compound interest of life.
Character takes a shopping cart back to the store. Integrity takes the cart back at night when it’s dark, no one can see you, and you were the only shopper.
Character picks up the trash it drops. Integrity picks up the trash even when no one saw who dropped it in the first place.
Have Character. Get Integrity. Be a Man.
Mantra
Even if no one sees me, I do what is right.
Application
The application is simple. Keep to your character even if you are alone. This is the way of men. There are few principles more foundational for building yourself as a man than these of integrity and character.
Time may take your health, your mind, your sight, your hearing and your wealth, but your character will last forever. Your character will continue to impact other people long after you are dead if you build it correctly. Start building integrity today, reap the benefits tomorrow.
Generosity is not what many people in religion have made it out to be.
“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
“One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.”
“Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Generosity is a hard concept for many men. The idea of just giving away money to other people is difficult to understand. Why do we struggle with this? Usually because we think other people are unworthy of our help because they are lazy. We assume we are enabling a lazy attitude and lifestyle. Men don’t want to give away the money they worked incredibly hard to acquire to some bum who walks around asking for it. We justify our attitudes by assuming these individuals are manipulating people to fund their alcohol or heroin addiction. While speculatory, this is still a topic for debate. There certainly are “career beggars” and they can do very well for themselves financially.
Men should be generous, but they should also be wise.
We should help others, but we should also be good stewards of what we are in charge of while on earth. To do this we need strategic stewardship. We must maneuver ourselves and our resources so that others use our generosity in the way we want them to, rather than the way they want to.
We have to be realistic, many career beggars are manipulating people out of their money to buy alcohol and drugs. This is a fact of life. But there are also many people who are in legitimate need of help, and now doubt is cast on their sincerity because of manipulating career beggars. We must strategize. We must be generous and wise at the same time. This can easily be done by a Man who thinks.
We must also reject the notion of “Blind Generosity”, which suggests that we should just give money to anyone who asks because that is right. No, that is not right. Blind giving simply eliminates your responsibility to make a character judgement on another individual. The individual who blindly gives away money is mentally lazy, not morally superior.
Mantra
Good stewardship is using wisdom in generosity.
Application
How do we mitigate the risk of generosity? This is simple for our modern lives: make it impossible for people we help to use the resources we give them or anything other than what we want them to have.
Man asks for money for food in the parking lot? Don’t give him money and buy him food or give him a gift card for a restaurant. With a gift card, you have taken money that could be used for drugs or alcohol and made it so that only food can be purchased. This is most easily done by providing gift cards to fast food restaurants that do not serve alcohol.
Another option is to have premade care packages with food and toiletries already made in the car that you can hand out at any given time. This ensures that you are generous while at the same time being wise with your resources.
It really is that simple. Strategic generosity is the way to win. You are no longer a stingy curmudgeon, and you are wise and a good steward. Everyone wins. Be Generous. Be a Man.
