When I was younger, I used to think that my life would be boring and uneventful after 40.
Now I am 42 years old and my life is better than ever.
It wasn’t always like this. Conventional life advice for men leads to misery and I wasn’t immune.
I had to leave behind conventional life advice and adopt unconventional methods to first change my mind and then change my life.
Most men waste their 20s thinking that their 20s are their best years. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your 20s are only preparation. If you make up your mind and adjust your attitude, you will live a great life after 40.
1. Life is not over at 40
Life expectancy is pushing 90 years in the modern world.
When you are 40, you’ve got about 50 more years of your life to enjoy.
If you are prepared, you will live a fabulous 50 years. If not, you still have ample time to set your life straight.
I hated my life when I was 37 years old. I got my life together and turned it around. Now at 42, I’m very optimistic about my future.
2. Don’t buy into shaming language aimed to exploit you
- “Old men dating younger women are creepy”
- “You bought a sports car at 45? What are you, a man-child?”
- “Why don’t you dress your age? You must be going through a middle-age crisis”
and many more…
The purpose of shaming is to extract resources out of you. Men are usually richer and more solvent in their 40s than they were in their 20s. Men over 40 have massive value to be exploited by sharks who smell blood (a.k.a hard-earned wealth you earned by years of backbreaking labor).
Most men are gullible enough to fall for shaming language. Don’t buy into it.
Let’s analyze some shaming statements to clear the fog around them and expose their malevolence.
Statement: “Old men dating younger women are creepy”
Translation: “As older women, we wasted our youths by partying and banging bad boys. Everything was awesome when we were young and our value was high in the sky.
Now we aged and lost our youthful appeal. Our days of glory are gone. We meant nothing more than a pump and dump for the bad boys but at least we had our youth and attractiveness. Now, the men we desire don’t even consider us for a pump and dump. We were once the center of attention but now we suddenly found ourselves invisible to attractive men.
Not only that but we also wasted our younger years working paper-pushing, dead-end jobs. Now we understand that it was a bad decision but there’s no going back. We are women so we can’t be held responsible for the mistakes we made. Somebody has to pick up the tab!
We need some simps to pay attention and money to us so that we don’t have to deal with the consequences of our bad decisions. Older and solvent men are of high value now but they will prefer younger women if they are left to their own devices. We can’t allow this to happen because that will be our demise.
Thankfully we have a genius idea. Let’s shame them out of dating younger women. Let’s call them creepy for their desire to date younger women. Let’s create social pressure on them so that they don’t dare to act on their preferences. This way, they will agree to share their hard-earned money with us.”
As you can clearly see, they don’t care a bit about you. All they want is to extract value from you. Don’t fall for it.
When you were 18, girls of your age were living the good life because a woman’s value is strictly dependent on her youth and beauty. Unless you were a popular athlete or popular in another way, your value as a man was minuscule. That’s the game nature plays on humans.
But, as you age and keep on accumulating resources and experience, your value goes up. After you pass the age of 30, the tables start to turn. The value of the females of your age starts to nosedive and your value goes up proportionately to the resources, experience, and the body you build.
At 40, the women of your age should be invisible to you, and rightly so.
Remember, when you were 18, you were also mostly invisible to the girls of your age. The tables have turned. It’s your time to get even.
If you want to date younger women, go ahead and do it. Don’t let yourself get tricked by the shaming language. Shame is a trap.
Statement: “You bought a sports car at 45? What are you, a man-child?”
Translation: “Similar logic as above. How dare you spend your hard-earned money for your own interests? You should give your money to older women!”
If you have the cash and you want to buy your dream sports car, go ahead and buy it. You deserved it. Nobody cares about men so you probably worked your ass off to make that money and nobody helped you with that. Now, you don’t need to explain to anybody how you spend your own money.
3. Take good care of your health
Aging is real. When you were younger, you were able to get away with unhealthy habits but after 40, things are different.
You must take utmost care of your health because when you *gasp* lose your health, nothing else matters.
Like the great Schopenhauer once said, “90% of happiness is health. A healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king.”
The unconventional part of this advice is about how you take care of your health. Conventional diet advice sucks. Read my articles in the diet category to learn in better detail how to go about your diet.
Conventional exercise advice is also wrong, which brings us to:
4. Build muscle
Building muscle isn’t optional. It’s a must. Benefits of building muscle greatly outweigh the effort you put into doing it. Building muscle happens fast if you know what you are doing. 2 years of strength training can set you up for life.
Men start losing muscle mass after the age of 30 unless they engage in some form of strength training.
The estimated muscle loss for an average man is 0.2 pounds a year after the age of 30 and 1 pound a year after the age of 50.
Muscles are responsible for the speed of your metabolism so it’s no surprise that the average man gains five pounds every decade after 35.
Muscle loss is the real reason why older men look frail and small. Older men who get to keep their muscles look great well into their 80s.
Building muscle prevents the majority of age-related diseases including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and diabetes.
Strength training is the only way to prevent age-related muscle loss. I am 42 years old now and I regularly train for strength. I am way more muscular than I was in my twenties.
If I could do it, you can do it too. If you have never trained for strength, bodyweight training is the best and the fastest way to start building muscle.
Related: 7 Reasons Why Strength Training is a Must for Every Man Over 40
5. Keep building wealth
The role of money in a man’s life is often misunderstood.
Money is associated with buying ephemeral status symbols such as nice cars, houses, yachts and all that. There’s nothing wrong with buying those things as long as you are rich enough not to care about the money you spend on them.
If you can buy a Lamborghini and not think about the money you spent more than the money you spend on buying a pack of chewing gum, then go ahead and buy a Lambo.
But, if you have to buy it on credit, then that’s a big no-no.
Having money after the age of 40 is important for a number of crucial reasons such as:
- Peace of mind. Worrying about your future finances takes away the joy out of life.
- Mobility. When you have ample money in the bank, you are not tied up to a location you hate.
- Time. Having money in the bank will allow you to spend your time on the activities you enjoy.
- Options. Rich men have better options to choose how to live their lives.
- Better health care. Good health care is not cheap. Even when you are perfectly healthy, you’ll still need regular check-ups.
If you are not already retired with a boatload of money in the bank that will support you for a lifetime, you should keep building wealth in your 40s.
6. Western culture is anti-male, brace yourself
All institutions of the current establishment (the government, the mainstream media, academia, megacorporations, and non-governmental organizations) are all openly anti-male. They are not even trying to hide it.
I don’t live in a western country so I will not be able to give you advice on how to deal with the anti-male culture, which brings us to:
7. You can move to another country
2 years ago, I was living in the Philippines. My neighbor was a 55-year-old retired American man.
He told me that his retirement salary is $1400 a month, which doesn’t go a long way in America.
While $1400 is not big money, it goes a longer way in the Philippines than it would go in America.
I can’t say that the man was exactly living like a king, but he had a young Filipina girlfriend and he lived an OK life as far as I am concerned.
Now, I am not saying that life is better in the Philippines than it is in America. Living in the Philippines has its disadvantages. But, be aware of the option of geographical arbitrage.
The world is a big place. There are many other places to travel to or live in. Every man should at least travel abroad to observe the different ways to live their life. It’s highly possible that you will find a better place in the world to settle down and live a better life than you do in a western country. The west isn’t going to go back to its glory days so it’s best to consider leaving before it’s too late.
Related: 7 Reasons Why You Should Be Prepared To Leave The West
8. Women in third-world countries are better than Western women
The overwhelming majority of Western women are overcoddled snowflakes who have every comfort in the world and they still keep asking for more.
Since they have everything already and it’s impossible to get more of something that doesn’t exist, they literally lost their minds.
It was only after living in Asia and dating Asian girls that I began to appreciate femininity. If you do a good job of choosing the right girlfriend, you will see that Asian women bring a variety of pleasant feminine qualities to the table such as sweetness, caretaking, nurturing, and submissiveness, which Western women fail to do.
After having Asian girlfriends, there’s no way I am going back to dating a woman whose mind is infested with feminist thoughts. Their attitude will drive me crazy. Men who visit Eastern European and South American countries say similar things.
One of the saddest sights in Asia is an older Western male who came to visit Asia with his Western wife. It must hurt the man to see other older Western men walking hand in hand with young, thin, and sweet Asian women.
9. Avoid getting sucked into politics
I noticed that people get sucked more and more into politics as they age.
I suppose this happens because they have nothing else to do and politics provides an illusion that they are doing something for their life.
News flash: Politicians don’t care about you. They are only in it for themselves.
If you don’t agree with me, ask yourself how many times politicians declared wars and sent their people to die. Would you send a person you care about to a war?
Politicians can do that because it’s human nature to not care about the people you don’t know.
Since politicians don’t care about you, it’s utterly dumb to care about politicians.
Your precious time should be spent on achieving your goals. No one can come and achieve them for you.
As I said, I believe that older people get caught up in politics out of boredom.
They don’t believe that they have a future, which brings us to our next point:
10. You have a future, make a 5-year future plan
When people don’t have a purpose, they lose direction just like a rudderless ship.
The game is on until you go to the grave. If you are 40 years old, you have 50 more years waiting for you to live fully.
Most people wouldn’t mind sitting 5 hours in front of a TV but they don’t sit down and write a 5-year future plan.
Writing down your future goals accomplishes 2 things:
- You have a clear purpose to live
- You get to visualize your future. Visualization will help you to achieve your goals.
Related: How to Be a Superior Man, Chapter 2: Take Control of the Direction of Your Life
11. Don’t sell yourself short
Most middle-aged men have an inferiority complex, partly because of their upbringing and partly because Western culture constantly bashes middle-aged men.
As a result, they just give up on themselves. This is apparent in their way of presenting themselves to the world.
People often have a hard time believing that I am over 40 because they are not used to seeing a man who is over 40 and in excellent shape, both physically and mentally.
As I said before, I’ve lived in the Philippines and I’ve had many women.
It pains me to say that the typical western middle-aged or older man is trying to lure young girls into a relationship with him by showing off his western wealth. Of course, this only attracts the gold diggers who are guaranteed to take him to the cleaners.
Always keep in mind that you have (or you can have) tremendous value. Never reduce yourself to a wallet.
Even when you have low confidence for valid reasons, you can always build up your value and realize your potential.
Any situation can be turned around as long as you have your health intact, so never give up.
Same goes for accepting inferior job offers. Never think that your services are less worthy just because of your age.
12. Keep an eye on your testosterone levels
Testosterone is the male hormone. It’s what makes a man different than a woman.
Testosterone is responsible for your muscular mass, cognitive functioning, sex drive, cardiovascular health, bone strength, confidence, and overall well-being.
Testosterone levels decline with age. There’s also a global decline in testosterone levels of all men.
Low testosterone levels are associated with low sex drive, fatigue, insulin resistance, muscle loss, and depression.
Get your testosterone levels checked.
If low, take the necessary measures which include strength training and a better diet.
13. Don’t trust doctors
I’ve been dealing with the health problems of the elder members of my family and I’ve seen firsthand that most doctors are not to be trusted.
They are too quick to prescribe drugs and surgery.
The best strategy is to focus on prevention rather than the cure so you don’t have to deal with doctors.
If you still have to see a doctor, don’t settle for the diagnosis of only one doctor. Beware of the drugs they prescribe. Beware especially of surgery diagnosis. Doctors working in private hospitals have surgery quotas. It’s horrible to go through a surgery that you don’t need, just to fill in a daily quota at your expense.
It helps to have doctor friends who you can trust. You can ask your friend what’s really going on and get a more truthful opinion.
14. Avoid the mainstream media
The mainstream media is not only filled with liars but it’s also severely anti-male. When you follow the mainstream media, you are literally paying (directly or indirectly) your enemies to lie to you and attack you.
Case in point: Look at this piece of crap that appears on a mainstream publication disguised (well, not so much) as advice for 40-year-old men. Notice how they tried every angle to belittle 40-year-old men. And of course, they had to call 40-year-old men creeps for their interest in younger women. Imagine the outrage if they had published a piece like this for 40-year-old women.
Related: How Following The News Sets You Up For Failure In Life
15. You can live a better life than the kings of the past
What do you envy about the kings of the past? Yes, they had power but that power often came with a huge responsibility.
The kings of the past didn’t have the modern comforts we get to enjoy. They did have harems but you can build a harem too.
Technology can be both good and bad but if you are smart, you can benefit from the good parts and avoid the bad parts.
The world is changing at a head-spinning pace. Human genetics will catch up with modern times but you don’t have to wait for evolution to do its job. That job is going to be done by weeding out the ones who fail to adapt, so it’s best to adapt by making conscious choices.
16. Most of your limiting beliefs are imaginary
Our beliefs come from our parents, teachers, the media, and culture.
If you are a good observer, traveling abroad and observing other cultures can prove to you that most of your beliefs about life are simply made up by people who are not better than you. You can clearly see that many other cultures do OK without believing what your culture believes to be the stone-cold truth.
I hear a lot of 40+ men that talk about “I am too old for this, too old for that” etc.
True, you no longer stand a chance to be a professional athlete but that was equally true when you were 20 years old too.
You can get rich, build a harem, build a great body, travel the world, and accomplish almost any other goal you have, provided that you take good care of your health and persevere.
Related: 21 Ways to Stop Being an Effeminate Modern Man and Be More Masculine
17. Having a 9 to 5 job is dangerous to your health. Build your own business
Humans operate on primitive codes of dominance hierarchy which nature installed in our nervous systems and didn’t bother to change for 350 million years because it works so well.
The higher up your status in the dominance hierarchy, the better you feel. The lower down status in the dominance hierarchy, the more stressed out you are.
Watch this documentary about the role of stress in your life, especially the part about the life of 9 to 5 workers:
By taking a 9 to 5 job, you voluntarily put yourself in a made-up hierarchy but in this case, there are no winners other than the boss. There may be tens of thousands of employees in a company and there’s only one winner, who is the owner of the company.
All other people who work for the company are under stress including the CEO and the high-level managers. The stress levels go higher as you go down the hierarchy. It’s impossible to be a winner and an employee at the same time.
It doesn’t matter if you have a tiny business that earns you half of the money you would make working in a corporation because you are still the boss. You are the top dog in the dominance hierarchy. You are a winner although you make less money because money is only a part of the equation. The human brain isn’t evolved to handle a lower place in a dominance hierarchy. Your status will unconsciously affect your well-being regardless of how much money you make.
Imagine you are the CEO of Microsoft. Bill Gates can still summon you to his office and chew you out, and you can do nothing about it.
Owning your business automatically puts you at the top of the dominance hierarchy.
Besides, there’s no limit to the money you can make with your own business. Your income rises in direct proportion to your success and productivity.
Related: 20 Reasons Why a 9 to 5 Job Sucks
18. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses
This might be a cliché but it’s true. It’s a human weakness to want to appear better than others but this desire is detrimental to you, simply because of the fact that there will always be someone richer than you unless you are the richest man on earth.
Now, I’m not saying that money isn’t important. It is. But, as we have seen in the previous item, money is only a part of the equation.
Keeping up with the Joneses leads to people buying luxuries that they can’t afford. If you buy a nicer car than your neighbor on 5-year credit, you essentially put yourself in a financial prison. Your neighbors’ opinions don’t matter anyway so it’s pointless to show off to them even when you buy everything cash.
As I said before, if you want to buy a luxury car and you can easily afford it, go ahead and do so but never do it to impress the Joneses.
The role of money in your life goes a lot further than buying power. See item #5 again to remember the purpose of making money.
Related: How to Be a Superior Man, Chapter 6: Develop Airtight Financial Discipline
19. Avoid social media
Social media is a cesspool where people pretend to live great lives and women build fake self-esteem by attracting undeserved attention.
If you are an avid user of social media, I want to ask you when was the last time you felt good after consuming it? I bet the answer is not a positive one because social media is guaranteed to fill your mind with negative thoughts.
I fail to see how social media benefits you other than promoting your business.
20. Always dress well
This should go without saying but I’ve seen so many 40+ westerners in South East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Aegean region who dress horribly so it needs to be said again.
Traveling is not an excuse to dress lousy. Wearing at least an ironed shirt, a pair of nice jeans and a pair of polished/clean shoes should not be that difficult but apparently, it’s a very difficult thing to achieve given how rare it is to see a well-dressed western tourist.
When you look at it from another angle, by the simple act of dressing well, you can put yourself apart from most men of your age. Standing out has never been easier.
21. Age-appropriate dating is a trap
As we have seen in item #2, age-appropriate dating is a scam to extract resources out of you.
If you are attracted to younger women (of legal age), that’s perfectly in line with your nature. Never apologize for your nature.
After the age of 40, you have 50 more years to live, so it doesn’t make sense to spend your remaining time on earth with a wrinkly old harpy.
Related: How Men Over 40 Can Attract and Date Younger Women
22. Erectile dysfunction isn’t real
Men are consistently shamed for their low sex drive as they age.
I recently heard about a 50-year-old man (don’t ask me how) who hasn’t banged his wife for the last 6 years. After the word got out, people were talking about the man as “he could no longer get it up due to his age”. Well, I’ve seen that man’s wife. I can have sex 3 times on a bad day but I wouldn’t be able to get it up for that woman either.
Does that mean I have erectile dysfunction? No. It only means that I have a perfectly functioning natural selection mechanism. It makes no sense to want to bang an infertile, ugly, old woman.
Give that man a young and pretty girl and let’s see if he still has erectile dysfunction.
If you are higher up in the status hierarchy (read: no stress), healthy with proper testosterone levels and you have pretty women to bang, you will never have erectile dysfunction.
23. Don’t count on the welfare system
Previous generations had it better in terms of retirement salary but you can’t count on that in a western nation as the population is aging and the welfare state as we know of is bound to collapse under the weight of its obligations.
Self-reliance is always the way to go if you want eternal peace of mind and security.
24. Don’t expect to be respected due to your age
In the past, only wise people made it to old age, so older people got respect solely by the virtue of old age because they were thought to have cracked the code of life. People respected their wisdom, not necessarily their age.
Now, any dumbass can make it to the old ages without any wisdom whatsoever so it makes no sense to respect a person just because of his age.
Respect is earned, not granted. Earn it and people will respect you regardless of your age.
25. Don’t listen to your average peers’ advice
2 years ago when I was 40 years old, a younger German man in my gym commented that I look nothing like 40-year-old men he knows in Germany. He said that the average 40-year-old in Germany looked like a train wreck. I observe the same thing.
The average 40-year-old man is a failure, mostly because he bought the conventional life advice.
Giving advice must be a powerful human desire because most people in the world seem to be dying to provide unsolicited advice.
The only people who are qualified to provide advice are exceptional people. Heeding the advice of the average people is a surefire road to mediocrity.
Related: 10 Types of People Who Are Unqualified To Give Advice
26. It’s OK to not be married at 40
When you are 40+ years old and not married, people will ask you endless questions about why you have never been married.
The correct answer is “it’s none of your business” but be polite and just say it’s a private matter.
Modern western marriage is anti-male and it’s perfectly normal to choose not to get sucked into that scam.
Society will always pressure men to get married because a man shouldn’t dare to keep his hard-earned resources to himself. He should hand it out to older women who spent their most fertile years hopping on bad boy dicks. The only purpose of getting married is to have kids. If you want to have kids, try to do it without the involvement of the government.
27. A divorce is not the end of the world
Lots of men find themselves unwillingly divorced because their wives decided so.
No-fault divorce ruins millions of men but any situation can be turned around. You may be financially ruined but you can build your wealth back (easier said than done, I know).
You can attract better women when you take care of your body and finances.
Note that this is not an encouragement to divorce your wife. If you made a mistake and got married, you should try to make your marriage work, especially if you have kids. An intact family is crucial for the development of a child. Even if you can’t stand your wife, you should persevere until your kids become adults.
28. Limit alcohol consumption (if you have to)
Alcohol is a dangerous drug but it’s so much a part of western culture that it seems perfectly normal to consume it.
Now, I am not for solving problems that don’t exist so if you are not a hard drinker, you probably don’t have to quit drinking.
But, if you feel that alcohol is holding you back or harming your health, consider cutting down or quitting.
The idea of quitting drinking forever often seems incomprehensible to the human mind.
Instead, I tried a 1 year without alcohol challenge a few years ago with resounding success. If you have a problem with your alcohol consumption, you can give it a shot.
Related: I Stopped Drinking for a Year; Here’s What Happened
29. Always be self-reliant
Self-reliance is the ultimate power for a man. You should strive to be self-reliant no matter your age.
30. Andropause isn’t real
Andropause is a term invented to comfort women who are going through menopause.
There’s no male counterpart for menopause. Men are fertile until the day they die.
31. There’s always a solution
When we have problems in life, we tend to think that such problems are unique to us.
Make this a rule of thumb: When you encounter a problem, there have been millions of other men with the same problem you have.
Do your research and pick the brains of men who took their time and found a solution.
32. Never stop improving
Done right, self-improvement is one of the most important pillars of masculinity.
As a man, you are naturally blessed with a desire to be competent. Use that drive to further your success no matter what your age is.
Remember, you are in the game until you die.
Related: 3 Practical Self-Improvement Tips That You Can Start Implementing Today
33. Never stop learning
Most people stop learning at the moment they graduate from their latest school.
It’s a big mistake.
You will never learn everything and that’s a good thing because it means there’s always room for improvement. If you need to learn something, you can go ahead and learn regardless of your age.
People claim that it gets harder to learn things as you age. They say kids learn better.
I disagree. Kids learn better despite the fact that they don’t have a fully grown brain because they are not afraid to make mistakes.
Don’t fear making the inevitable mistakes as you learn something new and you will learn anything regardless of your age.
Related: Make Yourself Great Again
34. Repetition is the essence of life
You become what you repeatedly do. So, correct the course of your life just for one day and your life will correct itself with repeated action.
Changing your life is as easy as changing a day of your life. When you repeat your actions for a long enough time (which is not too long when you consider that habits start to take hold after just 20 days), they will become habits and your good habits will automatically lead to your success.
Related: The Importance of Repetition
35. Be a rational optimist
Positive thinking has become a buzzword for self-help charlatans but of course, they market it as if it is the magic that leads to results rather than the other way round. Winners don’t become winners because they think positively. They think positively because they expect to win as they are rational optimists who are accustomed to winning.
Optimism is a by-product of disciplined effort. If you are putting in the work in a disciplined fashion, day in day out, you’ll know that you’re building a better future for yourself.
You don’t necessarily need to accomplish all of your goals before you can be happy. Knowing that you’re building a better future is enough to feel good about yourself and enjoy your day-to-day life.
36. Underestimate yourself in the short run and overestimate yourself in the long run
Humans tend to overestimate themselves in the short run, get frustrated when they underachieve, and quit long before they succeed.
Humans also tend to underestimate themselves in the long run and don’t even attempt at goals that seem impossible to achieve.
Do the opposite. You will always struggle when you attempt at something but seemingly impossible things will start to be believable as you progress and push through the initial frustration.
Related: Are You Overestimating or Underestimating Your Abilities?
37. The past doesn’t exist
The only purpose of remembering your past is to prepare for the future. If the memories of your past are hurting your future, it makes no sense to dwell on them.
Your past doesn’t determine your future. If your past is full of failures, all you need is a mindset shift and a determination to make your future great.
38. Always keep your promises
“A man of his word” is one of the most important reputations you will build which will benefit you in all aspects of your life from business to personal relationships.
39. Always be ready to catch a break
An old definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Even the men in prison keep themselves ready to catch a break. You have no excuse not to do so.
40. Start today
Just one day in your life is the ultimate predictor of how the rest of your life will be.
Start changing your life today. You have all the potential to live a great life.
Related: How to Be a Superior Man Program