There was a time when you were great. It was when you were a little kid.
You had all the qualities listed below. Your current greatness is the reflection of how many of these qualities you managed to retain as you grow up.
When you were a kid:
1. You didn’t care what others thought of you.
Next time you are out, check what kids are doing. They scream, they run around like crazy, they play games, and when they go to the beach they can go nude. They don’t care if they look stupid. They do whatever they want to do at any moment, without an ounce of shame.
Most of us lose this quality when we grow up. We stop doing the things we want to do in fear of getting judged by others. We become ashamed of our wants and desires. We care more about what others think than we care about ourselves.
If you want to get ahead in life, it’s a great asset to be like when you were a kid and stop caring what others think of you.
2. You were assertive.
You didn’t hesitate to ask for your needs to be met. When you wanted something, you asked for it from your parents, other adults, or peers. You didn’t fear rejection.
When we grow up, we stop asking other people to meet our needs. No man is self-sufficient. We need to get sex from women. We need male companionship. We need help from other people when we are stuck. Most men become too shy to ask for help when they grow up. Hence their needs go unnoticed or ignored.
3. Failures didn’t stop you. You tried until you succeeded.
When you were learning to walk, you fell flat on your face or ass again and again until you finally succeeded. When you were learning to talk, you misspelled the words, butchered the grammar, failed to communicate, until you got it right.
Success follows the same path when you are an adult. You keep failing and making mistakes until you finally succeed. But when we grow up, trivial failures start to get under our skin. We become self-conscious and try to master everything without making a single mistake. Failures and mistakes are necessary for success. But they frustrate us and we give up before we succeed.
4. You valued your freedom.
The school is a prison. It gives you little in return for what you put in. You hated school because it stole your freedom. If it was up to you, you wouldn’t step foot in the school. But you were just a powerless kid. Your elders forced you to go to school and you did so, involuntarily.
When we become adults, most of us work in corporate prisons, voluntarily. We even apply for jobs by ourselves. We wear our finest clothing for the interviews. We sheepishly accept that we have no other options to survive. We hand our freedom to strangers in exchange for bare survival.
5. You believed in yourself.
You didn’t hesitate to ask your parents to buy you a guitar because you believed that you can play it. You believed you can buy your parents a big house when you grow up. You believed you can be anything you want. The only thing stopping you was being a kid. You would do all you want when you grow up.
When we grow up we stop believing in ourselves when there’s no evidence otherwise. We start believing our elders about what we can’t do, instead of believing in ourselves that we can do whatever we want.
6. You thought big.
Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and he will come up with something big. When I was a kid, astronauts were popular so every kid wanted to be an astronaut. Maybe you wanted to be famous, maybe you wanted to be rich. But you thought big. Small things didn’t interest you.
When we grow up we learn to think small. We settle. We quietly accept an average existence even when we are merely in our early 20’s and there’s no evidence yet we can’t become as big as we want.
7. You didn’t want to stay the same. You wanted to grow.
Every little boy wants to grow up as soon as possible. There’s a sense of urgency. Little boys think as if their time on earth is limited so they want everything as soon as possible. And they are right. Our time on earth is limited. They can’t wait to become adults to achieve their dreams. They are curious. They are hungry for knowledge.
When we become adults, we stop growing. Our desire to learn is killed by the school, which frames learning as a boring experience rather than an exciting one. We think we don’t need to learn any longer after we graduate. We lose the sense of urgency. We start acting like our time on earth is unlimited.
8. You were selfish.
There’s no doubt that kids are extremely selfish. They put their needs above anyone else’s. You put yourself first too when you were a little boy. As alpha literally means first, you were an alpha male as a kid.
As we grow up, we learn to put other people’s needs before ours. We take it so far that we put even complete strangers’ needs before ours. However, we need that selfishness to get ahead in life. How can you help your loved ones without helping yourself first? You can’t.
9. You were competitive.
Unlike girls’ games, the games boys play are based on competitiveness and creativeness. Girls can be happy dressing up a doll but boys either build something from scratch or compete with other boys. Competitiveness and creativeness are masculine qualities.
10. You were confident.
Kids hate it when you tell them they can’t do something. They don’t want to be told what they can’t do. They refuse to believe that they can’t do what they want to do. They are confident. You were like that too.
When we grow up we allow other people to tell us what we can’t do, and we sheepishly accept it without verifying. Hell, we even convince ourselves why we can’t do what we want to do.
Conclusion
When you were a kid, you were great but you were powerless. Now you are an adult and you have all the power you need. The qualities you need are already there, suppressed and hidden somewhere inside your brain.
Unleash all these qualities you already have, be like when you were a kid in the above 10 ways, and you’ll be a great man.