I live a much better life at the age of 42 than I lived when I was 18.
Looking back, I can clearly see that I was lied to about anything that actually matters, be it money, girls, fitness, health, and so on.
Luckily, I turned my life around after discarding the worthless life advice I received when I was young. If I knew what I know now, my life would be even better than it is now.
There’s no way I can go back to being 18 but as the saying goes “A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Here are 18 things I wish I knew when I was 18:
1. Start building muscle
Men are meant to be strong. Strength training is the only way to build a muscular, lean, and strong body.
Building a strong body will make you more attractive to girls, boost your confidence, make you healthier, prevent fat gain as you age, and benefit you in countless other ways along the way.
Start with bodyweight training. Ripped With Bodyweight is how you get insanely strong and you will get strong fast. It will build you a brutally strong body and an excellent muscular foundation. After you build your muscular foundation with bodyweight training, proceed to lift weights. Lifting heavy weights will add slabs of muscle on top of the excellent foundation you built with bodyweight training.
Within 2 years, you will build a body that will set you up for a lifetime.
As a bonus, you will see first-hand results of what self-discipline can do for you.
2. Understand early that laziness isn’t an option for men
Girls can get away with being lazy because there will be an army of thirsty men willing to give her everything she wants. This is doubly true if she happens to be attractive.
Men don’t have that option. There is no free lunch for a man. If you want something, you have to go and get it. Nothing will be handed to you on a gold platter. Your well-being is your responsibility.
You should learn how to fend for yourself or you will suffer for a lifetime. The earlier you adopt a self-discipline mindset, the better. You depend on yourself. Stop being lazy and start getting things done.
3. School education is worthless (apart from STEM)
Schools aren’t there to educate you. They are prisons that teach you to obey. What you learned at school is not only worthless but also downright harmful.
Schools utterly and completely fail to teach men any useful life skills. Worse, they alienate the young men and coddle the girls.
If you heard any of these words during your school education, then you weren’t being educated, you were being brainwashed: White male privilege, hate speech, racism, diversity, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and equality. These words always come out of the mouths of mentally ill social justice warriors who hate everything about men and masculinity.
You must forget about your pseudo-education at school, educate yourself and develop life skills on your own.
The right kind of knowledge is incredibly powerful. Always be willing to pick the brains of wise men who had the same problems you have, came up with a solution by years of hard work, and put their solution on paper for you to skip their mistakes and solve your problems faster and easier.
4. Don’t be frustrated with girls
Unfortunately, 18 is the worst age for your love life. Girls love older men. Most girls of your age are attracted to men who are older than 18. At the same time, most girls who are attracted to you are at an illegal age for having sex.
Always keep in mind that your options are going to get better and better as you age, especially when you keep building your value up. Don’t fall into the trap of falling in love with a plain Jane. If you fell in love, it’s probably because of your lack of options. Be patient. Your time will come.
I know that your hormones are raging and every single cell in your body is craving for sex, which brings us to:
5. Embrace rejection
Rejection is an indispensable part of a successful man‘s life. If you are not getting rejected, it doesn’t mean that you are awesome. It means that you are not taking risks, you are playing it safe.
Girls can’t handle rejection. That must tell you something. If you can’t handle rejection, you are a girl. Not a man.
Girls are passive by nature. Even when a girl is dying to meet you, she will not approach you. Risk-taking is a male quality. Take the risk of rejection and approach the girls you want to meet. Just go and say hi. If she welcomes your approach then you are good to go. If she rejects you, that’s fine too. You should be proud of yourself that you took full responsibility for your sex life, got real-world feedback, and developed social skills that will benefit you in the long term. You win either you are rejected or not.
Instead of waiting to be thrown a bone like a dog, hunt like a lion and get the lion’s share.
If you are able to get girls via cold approach at the age of 18, then it’s going to be downhill from that point on. As you get older and build your value up, it’s going to get easier and easier to get the girls you want.
6. Despise being average
Your life script is written before you were born. Be born-go to school-get a job-get married-have kids-retire at an old age-die.
That scripted life is a surefire path to mediocrity. Being average may work for girls but it’s horrible for men. The life of an average man sucks. Only the top men live fabulous lives. The rest of the 80-90% of men settle for the scraps.
If you are not in at least the top 20% of men, you will only make enough money to get by and you will only get ugly girls, and that’s if you get any.
7. Working a corporate job will not make you rich
Corporate jobs suck. You may temporarily get a job to make ends meet but your focus should always be on building your own business.
8. Men are made, women are born
Girls are the most fertile and the most attractive when they are between the ages of 18-25. After the age of 25, their fertility rapidly declines. So, it would be unfair to them if they had to spend their most fertile ages by building up their value. This is why it feels like the girls of your age are so lucky that they don’t have to lift a finger to be in demand.
But men are different. A man is fertile until he dies. A man’s value isn’t dependent on his age, it’s dependent on his status.
Your youth should be spent on building up your status. A man’s status is elevated by building muscle, making money, acquiring social skills, his travel experience, his body of knowledge, courage, confidence and social skills.
All these status markers require time and dedication to build. If you don’t waste your youth and keep building up your value, the tables will turn in your favor later in life.
You should constantly be looking for ways to improve yourself.
As Scott Adams said, every skill you acquire will double your odds of success.
9. Everyone is hoping that you’ll fail
People will always try to make you doubt your self-worth, abilities, and potential. They want to keep you down because your success will remind them of their failure.
You are on your own. Develop a can-do mindset and never let anybody convince you otherwise.
10. Don’t go in debt
Whether it’s student loans for a worthless degree, a house, a car, or a wedding, never go into debt.
When you are indebted to a person or an institution they get you by the balls. It severely restricts your mobility and mortgages your future.
Make money, live below your means, and buy anything you want after you get rich.
11. Life doesn’t end at 30
You have the short-sighted worldview that life is bound to get boring after 30. You are inclined to squander your 20s with partying, living without a care, bouncing from one job to another. Don’t make these mistakes.
When you turn 30, you will still want everything that you wanted (and more) when you were 18. Your 20s should be spent making money and setting yourself up for an awesome life after 30.
12. There are other countries and cities in the world
You don’t have to spend your life in the place you were born as your father and grandfather did.
Traveling the world is not only possible but also it will open your eyes to new ways of living your life. Don’t settle for the place you were born. The chances that you were born in the best place in the world is pretty slim. Even when it’s a great place, you will probably find better places to live which is more suited to your personality.
13. Don’t try to save the world before saving yourself first
Believe it or not, mastering yourself is more difficult than conquering the world.
At 18, you have an idealistic world in your mind. You think that most things shouldn’t be the way they are now. You may be right in some of your views and wrong in others. It doesn’t matter.
You should help yourself first and foremost before you even think about helping others. You can’t help others if you don’t help yourself first.
14. Embrace your masculinity
At this time and age, you live in a world that is against heterosexual men.
You want to bang hot girls, make a lot of money and live rich, be free to do whatever the fuck you want to do, conquer the world, buy muscle cars, dress well, lift weights, earn the respect of other men, and so on.
These are all masculine qualities that are not only completely within your reach, but also completely natural.
Masculinity isn’t toxic. Masculinity is what built civilization. Don’t let anybody make you feel ashamed of your masculinity. Be proud of your masculinity and get ready to make the world your oyster.
15. Early retirement is possible
Imagine that you have 10 million USD in the bank. Would you need to work another day in your life? You probably don’t even need that much money to retire early.
Retiring early doesn’t happen by getting a job. It happens by building your own business. Read The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. That book will open your eyes to the kinds of businesses that allow you to retire at a young age and live a life of freedom.
16. Write down your goals
If your goals are not clear in your mind, you will wander around like a rudderless ship that doesn’t have a destination.
Imagine you go to a train station to buy a ticket but you don’t exactly know where you are going. How in the world are you going to buy a ticket and go anywhere?
Write down your goals for the next five years. If need be, you can change or update your goals, or introduce new goals along the way.
Most people know their favorite athletes or movie stars by heart but never take time to sit down and write their goals for the next 5 years. Don’t be most people.
17. Don’t rush to get married
In your father’s time, marriage and building a family were worthy goals. There weren’t today’s malevolent people around, telling your mother to file a divorce in the slightest bump on the road.
Feminism completely and utterly destroyed the family unit. When you get married and build a family, it’s you against the world. Even the family laws are on her side, not yours. You can’t fight with all of that at such a young age.
Moreover, the world is chock full of wonderful girls. The chances are slim that you will find the woman of your life before you even turn 30.
Have fun until you are completely sure that you want to settle.
18. Ignore the mainstream media
The mainstream media is filled with man-hating liars. You don’t get life advice from your enemy, do you?
They will steer you wrong about anything you can imagine. Stop paying attention and money to people who are constantly working to poison your well.
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