Thought

I’ve been meditating on the essence of manliness.

What is at the absolute foundation of being a man? What is the first requirement?

I’ll tell you what I’ve come to:

A man is nothing without courage.

Courage is what empowers a man to move boldly into the world.

To take risks. To face hardship. To overcome adversity. To make an impact.

To live a meaningful and worthwhile life, a man must have a courageous heart.

When a man has courage, what do we say about him? We say, “He has balls.”

Think about it.

The enemy of courage isn’t fear, it’s comfort.

The man of valor feels fear just like the coward, but he’s willing to leave the known and enter into the realm of the unknown in spite of the fear.

The world of today is awash in unrelenting comfort.

Many men have been stunted through coddling by their mother, but today suckling at mommy’s metaphorical teat continues in the form of vapid escapism, gluttony and sloth.

The great men of the past didn’t have the option to sit on the couch, smoke weed and stare at screens all day, every day.

The world was hard and so were they.

Somewhere along the way, our society started to prioritize feelings over duty and honor.

Some men today are too anxious to talk to a 5-foot-something woman who offers no real threat other than the possibility of rejection.

This must be fixed, but how?

As I was saying, the enemy is comfort. A problem well-defined is half-solved.

Free yourself from the prison of comfort and you’ll be well on your way to reigniting your courage.

I challenge you to identify one vice in your life: a thing that you are enslaved to.

Identify it and start slipping out of its chains, for no man of valor ever remained a slave for long.

We’ll cover how to start your escape in the Tactic section.

Read on.

Tactic

As Aristotle famously said, excellence is a habit. What he didn’t say, but can be inferred, is that so is mediocrity.

A bad habit can steal your entire life, but fortunately, a collection of good habits will set you up to win.

The psychology behind habit formation is well understood. It comes down to certain levers that you have to pull to get the right habits.

For example, you can use the lever of friction.

To build a good habit, you want to reduce the friction between you and the action that forms the habit.

For example, say you want to get a consistent exercise regimen, you could hire a personal trainer to schedule and lead you through your workouts. You don’t have to do anything but get yourself there.

To destroy a bad habit, increase the friction.

Say you eat junk food at night. The easiest way to decrease the probability of doing so is to stop keeping said evil food in your home. When 9 o’clock rolls around, you’re much less likely to drive all the way to the store than you are to walk to your cupboard.

Learn the levers from this weeks Tome linked below.

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Tome

If you found this week’s edition valuable, forward it to a man who will benefit from this message.

Hint: every man will benefit.

In Victory,

Alexander