Six years ago I hated my life. I was working a corporate job that I hated, I was fat and out of shape. I smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day. My evenings were spent drinking beer and watching porn. I was tired of dating sub-par women. I was stuck in an ugly city with unbearable traffic.
Fast forward to today, my life has completely changed. I quit my job. I own 2 businesses. I’m lean, muscular and strong. I long quit smoking. I no longer drink alcohol regularly. I quit watching porn. I only date women who meet my high standards. I am no longer stuck in a city I hate. I traveled to many countries. Most important of all, I did it all by myself. Now, I have high hopes for an even brighter future. I’ve seen what self-improvement can do for me and I have no intention to stop. I am constantly looking for ways to improve myself.
When I am talking about self-improvement, I mean real self-improvement. Not some feel-good bullshit that promises you improvement by sitting on your ass doing nothing.
I believe that no matter his position in life, every man should always be looking for ways to improve himself.
Here are 7 reasons why:
1. There’s no one else that you can rely on
Everything that’s going wrong in your life is your fault. Your station in life is rarely the result of a single event. Life is repetition. You are what you repeatedly do. Making a single mistake will almost never destroy your life. Similarly, success is not achieved by singular events. It’s repeated action that makes your life better or worse. You are responsible for everything that happens to you, good or bad.
It’s easy to declare yourself a victim and blame others for your station in life. That’s easy. But, nobody cares about a man. White knights are there to save women and children, not men. If a man doesn’t help himself, no one else will.
School is not there to educate you. It’s there to brainwash you into an obedient slave. Even your family will -knowingly or unknowingly- participate in this con to render you a cog in the machine. It’s up to you to unlearn conventional wisdom and educate yourself. It’s up to you to find the truth.
Unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, nobody will build a business for you and appoint you as the boss. It’s up to you to build a business and declare your financial independence.
Nobody can sort your diet out for you. It’s up to you to eat properly and be fit.
Nobody can do your workout for you. You can’t inherit, buy, borrow or steal a great physique. It’s up to you to do the reps and build a body you can be proud of.
Nobody can travel the world for you. It’s up to you to find the time and money to travel.
Nobody can get girls for you. It’s up to you to become attractive and get the women you desire.
Nobody can instill self-confidence in you. It’s up to you to sort your inner game out.
Self-improvement is the only way to take your destiny into your own hands.
2. Self-improvement is the genuine male privilege
Male privilege is a code word for “let’s take advantage of men and give them nothing in return.”
There’s no such thing as male privilege, at least in the meaning that is intended for the phrase to communicate. Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses. No gender is better or worse than the other. They are just different.
The average man is a loser, whereas an average woman is a winner. It’s great to be a man but only when you are at the top.
Women have a shorter time to reproduce. Their fertility starts to decline rapidly after the age of 25 and vanishes completely after 40. They can’t afford years of trial and error to build themselves up. A 20-year-old pretty college girl will always be demanded more by men than a 50-year-old successful businesswoman.
Men are fertile until death. A man’s status is dependant on a wider variety of qualities. A high-status man at the age of 50 will be demanded more by women than a 20-year-old low-status man.
The genuine male privilege is the variety of ways for a man to elevate his status.
For example, if a woman is genetically ugly, there’s little that she can do to be attractive to men. This is why you see no men tearing his clothes for an ugly woman like Adele, no matter how successful, wealthy, and high status she is. On the other hand, girls will cry, scream and drop their panties in a heartbeat for an ugly man like Mick Jagger.
Men are born with the innate desire to compete and win. Winning is done by repeated bold actions which often take years of concentrated effort. Self-improvement is the only way to achieve that.
3. Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success
Most of you know about Scott Adams, the creator of the world-famous comic strip Dilbert.
What are the odds to become a world-famous cartoonist?
Here’s an interview with him where he explains his success formula of “every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”
According to him, his success is not the result of extraordinary skill. He’s got a bunch of average skills, the sum of which makes them valuable.
None of the skills he talks about is unlearnable. Even if you start from scratch, you can build yourself a talent stack that will eventually lead you to success. That’s only possible with self-improvement.
4. You will always have a purpose
7 years ago, I was fed up with drinking beer every night. I thought drinking alcohol was the root cause of all my problems. If only I could stop drinking, my life would be awesome, I thought.
So, I quit drinking cold turkey. After coming back home from work, I had all the evening to myself. When I didn’t drink, I had nothing else to do. I was bored. I started playing video games to kill time. After a few months of no drinking, the only benefit I received was a small reduction in my waist. My life continued to suck.
It was at that time the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Alcohol wasn’t my primary problem. My actual problem was a lack of purpose. I wasn’t living a life. I was just getting by. Quitting to drink was still a valuable goal but without a purpose in life, it meant nothing. The end result of teetotaling wasn’t worth the effort for me as long as my life continued to suck.
The next time I attempted to quit drinking was totally different. I wanted to get six pack abs and build another business from scratch. This time, it made perfect sense not to drink anymore for 2 immediate reasons:
- A beer belly is the last thing I needed if I wanted to have six-pack abs.
- I needed a clear mind to build a new business from scratch. Hangovers would sabotage my work schedule.
When I had a clear purpose, quitting alcohol made a world of difference because it was helping me to accomplish my goals.
Self-improvement eventually leads to success provided that you are persistent. Success breeds more success. It’s addictive. Since there’s always room for self-improvement, you will never wander around without a purpose.
5. Self-improvement unlocks your potential
Unlike in the times of our ancestors, it’s almost impossible to die an early death due to famine, an epidemic, or a natural disaster. We don’t need to worry about whether we will be able to eat dinner or not. The average life expectancy has gone up to almost 90 years.
With no real-life threat around, our minds have gone soft.
Most of us don’t bother to test our limits. We became too comfortable.
Self-improvement is a rebellion against mediocrity. It’s rejecting to settle for an average existence.
Standing up to the challenges of life is not easy. That’s why most men settle for an average, miserable existence.
Constantly improving yourself and overcoming the challenges of life will build character and mental strength.
It’s a cliché that you miss all the shots you didn’t take yet it’s a fact. Take the shots whether you miss them or not. The more you improve yourself, the fewer shots you will miss. There’s no other way to push your limits. Only then you will see what you are made of.
6. There’s always room for self-improvement
Most people stop learning after college because they think they know it all.
Filthy rich NBA players go bankrupt after retirement because they didn’t master the financial discipline.
Hollywood stars get divorce raped because they didn’t take time to study the family laws and female nature.
Many healthy and rich people live miserable lives because they didn’t take their time to develop refined tastes.
Many people are stuck in a lousy city or a country because they didn’t develop the necessary skills to navigate the world.
Examples are endless.
The time you think you made it is the time you become vulnerable. Self-improvement never ends for the wise man.
7. Self-improvement prevents you from worshipping leaders
When you put in a genuine effort to gain a valuable skill, you start to appreciate the masters of any skill set because you see with your own eyeballs how tough it is to master anything of value.
For example, it takes years to master playing the guitar. When you look at it from a wider perspective, playing the guitar is one tiny achievement compared to the vast variety of possibilities that exist within the universe.
Even if you dedicate your life to mastering everything you can in your lifetime, you can only achieve a tiny percentage of everything that can be mastered.
This perspective is tough to gain but it’s invaluable.
Millions of lives are lost following a leader, believing that he or she is the ultimate master of everything who knows the best for everybody.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s impossible for one person to be good at everything. In fact, a person can only be good at a few things, if that.
Most people are lazy and gullible. It’s easy to outsource your happiness to one person while you sit on your ass and do nothing. But, the problem is, that strategy is bound to fail.
The more you improve yourself, the less likely you are to go after a cause, an ideology, or a leader.
Your cause is YOU. I know that you want to help your loved ones but that’s still only possible if you help yourself first.
Be sure to read:
- How to Be a Superior Man, the ultimate self-improvement program for men who want more out of life.
- 24 Ways to Get Rid of the Victim Mentality and Adopt a Victor Mentality
- What Does It Mean to Be a Man?
- 21 Ways to Stop Being an Effeminate Modern Man and Be More Masculine
- How to Stop Being Needy
- 10 Ways to Keep Going When You Feel Like Giving Up