Every morning you rise to an opportunity. That opportunity is simple, you either do your work and make something of the day or you complain and avoid those things you have to do to make your life as you’d like it to be, to matter, to have a good and grand effect on this planet.

Your opportunity is the choice of weakness or strength. Most choose weakness, ignorance, and laziness, but that’s not you. You wouldn’t be reading this badass site if it were. Thus the focus of Man Up Mondays’, to help you to stand on your own two, to enlighten you to the power you have and the power you relinquish daily.

You, my friend, need to man up in the same manner I need to man up if you have any hopes of reaching your potential, that potentially badass fella you have the capacity to become is close, but bring him closer. Man Up!

The men and women who sign up for service, sign up in the name of their country, not in the name of a political party or to protect only a few, but to serve and to protect everyone.

You may disagree with a war or an administration, but as long as you live in one of these fine nations in the western world that stand for freedom and democracy, and you live the relatively cushy life we all live, it is your duty to support and honour and respect those fine men and women that fight for your country, a country that you should feel is the greatest nation in the world. (Read this: 7 Steps to Freedom)

When you’re working, work. When you’re partying, party. When you’re training, train. Don’t have your mind in two places at once, like where you were or where you wish you were.

Be where you are, to do anything else is useless.

You are wild at heart and courageous by instinct. Act like it. Act like as though every obstacle is a challenge, setback, an enemy. Take what life throws at you like a man, on your feet, heels dug in, and every inch of your soul too busy fighting to worry about complaining or wishing things were different.

When you complain all you’re doing is highlighting one part of a story; the part that you have no control over.

If you want to live your life as a loser, a person affected rather than a man that affects, get in the habit of complaining enjoy wallowing in your own self-pity. (Read this: 10 Steps to Becoming a Loser)

Why we choose laziness or even a lack of effort over giving our FULL effort makes no sense. It shows a lack of pride in who we are are and what we do, and yes, what you do IS who you are because how you do it shows so much about the man you are and the values you hold.

If you spend your life doing half-assed work you’re going to live a half-assed life.

Help me understand this, the choice in being lazy over the choice of working hard. I choose laziness all too often, and yet it makes no sense, it holds no logical value.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be lazy over working hard and yet most people do just that?

I have learned over the years that it’s not the hours of work one puts into perfecting their craft that truly matter, it’s the quality of said hours.

Try structuring your work or your hobbies into smaller, timed “practice” windows, then reward yourself by getting up and moving.

I like the 90-minute work window, she seems to work well for me. (Try this: Forget Finding Your Passion. Just Work.)

There are people that take advantage of kindness, or even of the system, but there are far more people in this world who need help, genuine help, and those that are looking to pull one over can’t ever hold you back from helping those who aren’t.

The reality is that you’re going to be taken advantage of at some point, but when you lead your life with kindness, with wanting to help those who aren’t as fortunate as you or I, you matter, you help, you do something to improve other’s lives.

Do your best with what you have. It’s all you can do, and what you’ll find is that you can do so much more with what you have than you ever cared to realize.

Set one goal everyday, then work on achieving it. By week’s end you’ll have achieved 7 things. By year’s end, 365. And a man who makes the habit of achieving things will one day find he’s habitually created a life of value, success, and action.

There is no stopping the man who does while others claim, who works while others dream.

Peace comes in inches, not miles. Your destination isn’t a lottery ticket. If you’re setting the right goals, the most audacious goals you can accomplish, you’re in for a long, arduous road, and I highly recommend that you come to grips with this fact and remove all illusions that your road to success will be a meteoric rise.

There are special people who you have hopefully come across in your life thus far, that understand the value of working and the lack of value in saying. They’re the kind of people that quietly rise to success. You think they’ve disappeared for years and then they show up with everything you want in life.

Be quiet, work hard, and don’t gloat. Quietly work away knowing that the opinions of others matter little in YOUR LIFE.

We take pictures of our vacations to show others where we are and what we’re doing. I get why we do it, on some level, but it still sounds like a weird exercise, to be in a wonderful place and to worry about what others think about where you are or that they can see where you are.

We buy things to impress people that we really shouldn’t care to impress. Our motivations are, rather than living a fulfilling life, centered around showing OTHERS the wonderful life we’re living.

To be at your best you must be as a lion is. Don’t lose yourself worrying about what others think. Don’t let your view of the views of others shape the decisions you make in life.

Be true and honest to who you are, what your values are, and what you want to accomplish in life, not what you think they will respect you more for accomplishing in life. (Read this: The Missing Ingredient in Modern Men: Character)

I love history. I love reading about the accomplishments of men far better and more disciplined and audacious than I. It motivates, it inspires, it educates us to what we can truly accomplish.

There is, however, one constant with all great men, and that’s while many of them loved history, they set out to MAKE HISTORY, not to re-create it.

Know what lights a fire under your ass, what ignites your soul, and use the tactics and the disciplines of men in the past to walk your own path.

Men are bred to hunt. That’s what we did in our tribes and that’s what we are made to do. What, then, are you hunting?

Times have changed, but this internal desire to expand and not only survive, but thrive, is still strong the in the hearts of men and it should be fed.

What are you trying to conquer and claim?

We are not all created equal. Some are more talented in areas than others. That’s just common sense and it’s how it is. Your job is to use your talents, to strengthen them, to hone them and perfect them.

Use what you have to the best of your ability and reap the rewards for being awesome.

There is no shame in poverty, there’s no shame in not being able to stand on your own two feet.

There’s no shame in accepting help. There’s no shame in being different.

No one should ever feel ashamed. The only shame resides in giving up. Shame can only be found in selfishness and greed. It can only be created in complaint or envy.

If you’re working, no matter the job. If you’re improving, no matter in what sense. You should hold your head high because no matter how small the step, no matter how insignificant it may be, it’s still a step forward and that’s far more than most can say for themselves.

Fairness, in the truest sense of the word, is having the same, flat tax rate amongst every human within a society. That’s fairness.

If everyone pays 10% tax, the guy who makes a million dollars a year will pay $100,000 in taxes, and the guy who makes $10,000 a year will pay $1000 in taxes. The guy who makes more still pays more, but he’s not absurdly forced to increase the percentage he pays simply because he’s found more success.

As a guy who spent 3 years building a business all the while paying taxes even though they were tough to afford, knowing how volatile owning your own business can be and that one year of success may not equal two years of success, you understand the unfairness in a progressive tax system, where, when you earn more money, you’re not only taxed a greater AMOUNT, but a greater percentage.

You see how this holds you back from hiring employees more freely.

You see how it can lead you to give less to charity.

You see how unfair this “fairness” really is.

You see how it stops growth, bringing no one “up”, but rather just pushing more “down”.

It’s not just about economics, it’s about psychology. When you know you’re going to be punished a greater percentage as your business grows, you’re going to look for ways to cut costs, ways that may also cut growth, and in the big picture, as more and more business owners look to cut costs and hire fewer employees, you see how this negatively effects an economy.

Business owners should be rewarded for their risk. They should be encouraged to risk more, employ more, and they shouldn’t feel guilty for earning more when they’ve provided the market with a service that it benefits from.

When you look to tax the big corporations that people seem to hate, yet all love their products and services, you can’t avoid hurting both the consumer and the smaller, individually owned or family owned corporations that make countries like America and Canada thrive.

You don’t want fairness, you want benefits that someone else paid for. You want safety that someone else risked their livelihoods for. You don’t want to have to do what they did to earn what they earned.

Think about it this way, you actually hold the power over your actions, your thoughts, and your emotions. You control each of them. That’s incredible.

You can choose what your mood is, how much effort you put forth, and what path you take in life.

Even if you’re currently in the depths, no one can take this power away from you. Wield it. Use it to begin the long, arduous journey to where you ought to be, to who you ought to be. (Try this: 5 Steps to Gain Real Power)

It’s the badasses who have this life thing figured out while the rest of us do what we’re told even when we don’t know we’re being told to do it.

The woman shouldn’t stay in the kitchen, that’s not the road I’m traveling down, but to say that, within the nucleus of a family, the man and woman have different strengths and therefore they may play different roles doesn’t degrade one group or another, it simply highlights what they’re good at and allows them to flourish.

Recently there have been a few famous women who say that they relish their “traditional” role within the home. They like “taking care of their man”, and they’ve been blasted by ignorant feminists for saying so.

Women and men aren’t equal. Men and men aren’t equal. Women and women aren’t equal. We each have our own individual strengths, and to not praise them or identify them is to be something that we are not, it’s to turn our backs on what would ideally make us happy.

Learn the skills that will help you survive and thrive when you find yourself with no one but yourself to depend on.

True self-reliance may be a myth, we may always have people to depend on or things to depend on, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue this ability to stand on your own two because some day you may be forced to do so. It would be advisable to develop the skills necessary to not only stand, but to rise.

More Man Up Monday: You’re Made to Be a Badass