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Morning

The morning hours are the most valuable of the day. Don’t waste them.

“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first-fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.”
Proverbs 3:9-10

“All the best of the oil and all the best of the wine and of the grain, the first-fruits of what they give to the Lord, I give to you”
Numbers 18:12

Every morning of a new day is the beginning of the time we will receive for the day. If we live through the day, we receive 24 hours to do everything we need to do. Whether or not we are good stewards of that time is up to us. Many people plop in front of the television first thing in the morning. They watch the news and fill their mind with garbage. The news is not even a proper reflection of reality, yet people watch it anyways.

You waste your morning self-medicating with mindless shows. You hate your job, hate most of your life, so you choose to distract yourself with television. How is this man better than a drug addict? Both waste time, money, health and life pursuing a moment of medication induced pleasure. Is your life so horrible that you must distract yourself from it constantly?

Or you can be among the 99th percentile of men who reject this waste of the prime morning hours.

You can be the man who uses the morning to get work done, to get ahead on disciplines, to become better. This can be done regardless of whether you are a “morning” or an “evening” person. Discipline supersedes personality. Use the morning to get ahead on reading your Bible, whatever your allotted reading length is. I always recommend starting with anywhere from 10 verses to one chapter. No, it is not a lot, but it beats everyone who is reading zero chapters or verses a day.

Stop wasting your morning. The morning hour is a chance to get ahead of the competition. While they are in their warm beds, all snuggled up, you are improving. You are working and focusing on the things that matter in life.

Spirit.

Discipline.

You start making every morning effective and you start winning.

Yes, the first mornings are difficult. It is hard to change from instant comfort and self-medication in the morning to discipline and work right out of the gate. However, the power you gain from the continued discipline, and the satisfaction you feel from taking action outweigh that difficulty ten to one.

After the first few days, it becomes easier to string days together, it becomes easier to get out of bed, the discipline takes over your mind. Eventually, you string together enough effective days to notice that you are changing in small ways.

Your general Bible knowledge is a tiny bit better.

Your attitude is a tiny bit better.

That cornerstone of success, your mental state is a tiny bit better.

Ignore every individual who reports massive change in life and attitude, that is hyperbole and emotionalism. Improvement always comes one infinitesimally small brick at a time. Add up enough of those bricks over a long enough time, and you have built a structure of character that is impressive to behold. Everyone will think it was “one moment” or that you were an “overnight success”, but you know the truth. You are the cumulative result of every action you have taken up to this point in your life.

As hertical as it is to say, just reading the Bible won’t “change your life”. This isn’t some mom-blog built on a foundation of emotionalism. God gave you all the tools to change your life in His word, but YOU still have to do the work. Nothing changes that. So make it happen first thing in the morning, every morning, and become better. Become a man.

Mantra

The first hour of the day does not belong to me.

Application

Give the morning to the Lord every day, this is simple. You don’t have to feel like doing it, you don’t have to want to do it, you just have to do it.

Read a chapter of the Old Testament, and Chapter of the new testament, and repeat a Verse ten times for memory. Do this every single day. Is it a ton of reading? No. Is it doable? Yes. And it is infinitely more than the “Christians” who are doing no reading, which turns out to be about 80% of them³. You must do this every day. No one is asking you to move a mountain. Wake up a little earlier and give those first fruits to God.

If you cannot manage that much reading, aim for 10 verses from each old and new testaments, and repeat a verse for 10 repetitions. Once you become comfortable with that habit, then add more reading. That is how you win.

Study The Aggressive Verses at spartanchristianity.com

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Make The Most of Your Time

We have only so many hours to exist in physical form, so we need to budget them effectively. We need to arrange all the tasks we need to accomplish so our life isn’t a complete and utter waste like it is for most betas in the Church.

Time ticks away constantly, you can sit and watch it happen.

“Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom”.
Proverbs 90:12

Every day we are approaching our death, and this gives everyday value. Man would accomplish very little if he could live forever, because he would have no reason to accomplish anything. The stone age would have been extended several thousand years without the constant approach of death.

You have the choice to either be sad that life is quickly coming to an end, or you can distract yourself every day with work and progress.

Is work really a distraction? Absolutely. Because unless you have developed the fortitude of mind to be able to stomach the fact of the inevitability of your death, you need to distract yourself. This is why very few men can sit down and be alone with their thoughts.

While it is true that we believe that we will go to heaven upon death, that makes death no less scary. Death is still unknown, dark and lonely. Time is the only barrier between us and death. For this reason we must make the best use of time every single day.

Pathetic boys waste time, men make the most of every day.

Boys burn time away with frivolous activities while men build disciplines and better the lives of others with their work.

Time is slipping away, my friend, what exactly are you doing with your time? Watching football for six hours on Saturday? Do explain how that is benefiting you in your life.

Are you more intimate with your sports and video games than you are with your wife? Probably. Change now. Stop being the beta, the loser and be a man. Budget your time, spend it on things that matter. Focus and do something with your pathetic and meaningless existence.

Mantra

Time is all that is between me and death, so I make this day one of value.

Application

Stop blowing away time. Install Rescue Time on your computer. It will keep track of how you spend your time and give you statistics based on how much time you waste.

Outside of that, write down how you spend your time every day for a week. Don’t live differently than you normally do and lie to yourself for the week, do what you normally do and write it all down in 15 minute or half hour blocks. I guarantee that you are wasting your life, and you will know this after examining your time budget after a week.

Have you had bad breaks in your life? Is life unfair? Are some people overnight successes? No. Absolutely not. Have some ownership because your life is exactly how you created it by all the choices you made. Wasting every day and complaining is how you built your life, and today is the day that stops.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Work Ethic of Man

Work ethic is built daily. As with anything else in life, you have to acquire the correct mindset before you start the process of change.

Work Ethic is the capacity and ability to perform intense or large volumes of work without complaining and while maintaining enthusiasm.

“He who has a slack hand becomes poor, But the hand of the diligent makes rich”.
Proverbs 10:4

“The hand of the diligent will rule, But the lazy man will be put to forced labor.”
Proverbs 12:24

Work ethic will forever be a predominant differential between masculine men and beta males.

It may not be the differential in success itself, because someone can always ride the wave of their natural talent to moderate success. However, this does not make them masculine, it makes them lucky. To put your hand to the grindstone makes you masculine. To use that work ethic to build the strengths and correct the weaknesses of character is where the spirit of man rests.

Each generation wants to blame the following generation for being lazy and having no work ethic. The first problem with this accusation is that the people who are complaining about the next generation are the same people who raised the next generation. The second problem is that every generation is riddled with the lazy no matter where you look in history. No generation is special, and none misses out on their fair share of scobblelotchers.

A weak generation complains about another generation instead of doing something about it or at the very least taking ownership of the fact that they produced that generation. They complain about the very children they created. It would be the same as a carpenter finishing putting together a nice table, examining it and then complaining, “Wow, they just don’t make things how they used to. Look how this piece of garbage turned out”.

Work ethic is built daily.

As with anything else in life, you have to acquire the correct mindset before you start the process of change. You must decide to have a great work ethic before you can start making one. Just as you must decide to build a great physique before you start training to create it.

Work ethic extends beyond your 9-5 job. The weak have a work ethic only at work. Anyone can generate a work ethic from the ether if someone is paying them to do so, but that is not what a man does. A man comes home after his work and immediately begins to work on things that will improve him personally. A man cranks out his habits and disciplines when he gets home at night or early in the morning before he works. He does this work like a machine. He reads, writes, builds, trains or does whatever he sees fit. A man does not plop in front of the television for a four hour “decompression” session.

Weak boys try to take the edge off, men try to get the edge.

Work on yourself in your off hours, it will increase your value to everyone around you, from the company you work for to your family at home. Do your work to the highest possible level, it is in this work that you build confidence in yourself and in your character as a man.

Mantra

All work I do is done to the highest possible standard of work.

Application

Work ethic truly manifests in the small details of your work and life. Work ethic determines if you do a whole job or whether you skip out on the small details you think no one will notice. Even if no one notices, you notice. You recognize your own lack of character and integrity. If you are just starting to build work ethic, this is where you start, in the things no one will notice. If you can discipline yourself to work on things no one will see, then when the time comes for others to see your work, you will be mentally equipped to do a full job.

Go the extra mile when no one is looking. Pick up the trash on the ground near your work area even if you think you are “above it”. Do the jobs that seem below your pay grade. Do the extra repetition in your training. Write the extra sentence in your book. Most importantly, do not clock out of work ethic when you get home. You need to work at home too. Have projects or books to train your work ethic at home because only betas come home, turn off their work ethic and turn on the television. Be a man, do the work. Be Successful.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Learn Lessons From Secular Men

Christians think we should only model ourselves after other Christians, and never after secular men. That would be to our detriment if we were trying to learn how to be successful in the world.

“Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.”
1 Corinthians 10:11

“If you know the way broadly, you see it in all things”
Miyamoto Musashi

Most people in the Church would shriek in horror if you so much as mentioned the idea that you have men who inspire you who are not Christians.

You are inspired by a non-religious war hero? “How dare you!”

A secular athlete inspires you to take better care of your body? “Heretic!”

A successful man of the world provides a good model for material success? “You materialistic fiend!”

The thinking in the Church is often so dogmatic and narrow minded in many facets that it handicaps the faith socially. No one wants to be around those “weird, religious people”. Who wants to spend time around people who constantly demonize the world instead of improving it.

I think there absolutely is something to be said about being a “peculiar people” as a result of behaving righteously, but we take it to a whole other level when we go out of our way to be peculiar.

It’s the difference between someone who studies to get a good grade and someone who studies to understand a subject.

In going out of our way to be peculiar we have placed the peculiarity itself above the Christian disciplines and practices that cause us to be peculiar in the first place. We make peculiarity the goal instead of making righteous the goal. Our focus should be on being Christians first and foremost, and a by-product of this lifestyle just so happens to be peculiarity.

All of this to say, it does not rob us of our peculiarity when we learn lessons from secular men, either historically or ones who still live. It is not wrong to learn from secular men, we do it all the time. It is not wrong to be inspired by secular men, because often secular men are more successful than religious men. This is a result primarily of statistics, because there are far more secular men than Christian men. It just so happens that successful people are more likely to be worldly. This does not mean we cannot still be inspired by them.

The second reason for worldly men being more successful than Christian men is the fact that the majority of 21st century Christians lack the work ethic of our Christian forerunners in earlier centuries.

People use the Bible’s command to avoid worldliness, greed, and materialism as an excuse to justify their slothfulness.

We should also remember that lessons come in two primary parts: Learning what to do, and learning what not to do. We can learn both kinds from men both inside and outside the church. Every man is a walking lesson, regardless of his spirituality. Just because someone does not have salvation does not mean we cannot learn from them. Why do you think we study history? Be a man by learning from all men.

Mantra

Every moment has a lifetime of lessons.

Application

First you have to rid yourself of prejudice. You think you are better than others because you possess salvation. Wrong. You are just as much of a loser as them. What are you without salvation? Nothing? Then your worth has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the gift of salvation that has been given to you. Rid yourself of ego; embrace humility.

Find some role models who inspire you. You may have a hard time finding great role models in the Church.

Every Christian wants to tell you to have good role models, yet none of them want to be role models themselves.

List out men who inspire you. Write them down as a list and then to the side of each name write out the characteristics you find inspiring. No single man can be a role model of everything. Take all the traits you find most admirable and then think about what that would look like if one man possessed them all. You are now visualizing the ideal man. Try to imitate this Ideal Man every day, and you will find that you improve.

Every interaction with your fellow man is a learning opportunity. You will either learn how to be or you will learn how not to be. Both are equally valuable because they catalyze action. Learning is rooted in awareness and vigilance. You cannot capitalize on learning opportunities if you are not aware of their existence. Once you notice the lesson, you must apply it. Without these two foundational principles, growth will be limited. Be a man, learn always.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

The Work of Man

You have to work every day. You must put effort into your craft. You must pound the stone every day. Visible progress towards a desirable end-state goal must be visible every single day, otherwise you have wasted the day.

“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”
2 Thessalonians 3:10

“Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me.” – 24 “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God”.
Ecclesiastes 2:18

Man must work. Any male who does not work is not a man. Also, do not deceive yourself, just because you clock in to a 9-5 every day does not mean you work. Just because you punch the clock and sit in a pew every Sunday (and even every Wednesday if you are “Super Righteous”) does not make you a Christian. You aren’t doing the work. You are merely radiating heat from your buttocks into the pew you inhabit, and heaven help the person who takes your assigned seat.

You don’t have to like what you do, you just have to do it. And if it is true that you hate your work, take a good look in the mirror at who is responsible for creating the life you are living. Who you are is the sum total of all the actions you have taken up until this moment. Your job is the result of your career preparation, if you do not like it then fix it.

Most men hate their job because they were lazy in preparing themselves for a good job.

Take some ownership.

If you don’t like your work, then DO something about it. The problem of hating your work can be overcome with additional work directed towards a new career. Hammer the nail. Do the work. Satisfy your soul.

Mantra

Hammer the Nail

Application

Make progress with at least one task of your day. If you are accustomed to being a sloth for the entire day, scrolling through social media when you should be working, then take a good look at your life, because the odds that it is improving are low. If this is you, stop complaining about how the “little guy can’t get ahead”. If the “little guy” would stop stealing from his employer by spending his hours playing on his phone then the little guy would get ahead. Make one task effective. Do one task better than you have ever done anything in your life and see how you feel. Develop marketable skills. Act in a way that allows you to add value to who you are, because at the end of the day all you have is your name. What is your name worth?

Conduct yourselves like men.

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