Value and success and happiness aren’t found in ease. They aren’t created in rest. We can only live the life we want to live through hard work and action and persistence. You’re far more powerful than you realize simply because you control your thoughts and your response to your emotions. You control how much you work and how often you quit. Your value as a man won’t be determined, though, by good intentions or well-laid plans. You need to act. You need to work. You need to fight and hustle if you want happiness.

Actions trump dreams. They are all that matters in this life, yet so many fix their eyes on the prize rather that on what it takes to acquire the price.

Without persistence and discipline and hard work, you can’t become a success, no matter how you define it.

You can do whatever you want with the money you make, but you can’t do much with no money.

So many of us dream about a job where work isn’t in the description, yet it’s in working hard and persisting that we improve and become better.

Forget about your dream job and find a job that will help you develop skills that will benefit you well in life while paying you to work. Hard work isn’t glamorous, but who cares? Who wants glamour when you can have value? (Read this: Forget Finding Your Passion. Just Work.)

Spend more time with books than your TV. Train your body when you’d rather rest. Work hard when you’d prefer to sleep.

You may not “feel” like hustling or working or persisting, you may rather quit or relax or vacation, but for the greater good you need to keep hustling, you need to keep working and improve, training and saving.

Don’t look back on your life and have nothing of value to show for your days.

We dream, we have boards that remind us of our dreams everyday. We tell others about our dreams and we feel that satisfaction of reaching those dreams simply by putting what they are out into the world.

We’re satisfied with intent rather than action. (Read this: Time is Limited. Take Action)

Dreams are great, but only if you act upon them for a given period of time, never quitting, always working just a little bit harder than the rest.

Work hard. Stay humble.

A workout isn’t a physical battle, it’s a mental one.

With every rep you want to quit but you know that you can’t, for if you do you’ll be relegated to having the body you have now – or worse – for the remainder of your life.

Go into the gym as if you’re going to war against that weak voice that we all have within us, and do your best to shut it up and shut it out!

Money isn’t evil, it can’t be, it’s a thing. Only the human who has it can control it, or let it control them.

The pursuit of money isn’t evil, either, it’s just short-sighted.

Capitalism is set up so as to provide those who provide a valuable service with equally valuable compensation.

If you want to make a lot of money and do a lot of good with a lot of money, provide a service that people want and use and that in some way makes their lives better.

A realistic outlook on life is a very subjective thing, and it changes with effort.

Sure, it’s unrealistic for a David to beat a Goliath, but after years of practice with the sling, it becomes very realistic for a small man to defeat a giant.

The more work you do, the higher quality of work you do, the more realistic your goals become.

It’s enthusiasm that makes this work not only possible, but more effective.

Don’t lose that enthusiasm you once had and replace it with the misguided cynicism that so many hold in their hearts today. One will lead you to happiness, the other to depression.

Both are a choice.

Cynicism is a cowardly outlook on life. It’s based on a weak perception of how the world is and an unwillingness to do anything about it.

Why work if the system is set up for you to fail?

Why help if all people are evil and selfish?

See the good and see the world as it is, through the eyes of a warrior, as a series of challenges, not through the eyes of a coward, as a series of curses. (Read this: The Tale of the Warrior and the Coward)

Our society is set up so that we praise the celebrity, not the man of value. Fame is nothing, it’s praise, often un-warranted in relation to those who receive no praise but provide much more value.

Your goal in life shouldn’t be praise or glamor or ease, but to be of value to your fellow man, your family, your community.

I used to believe that you should speak about your goals and dreams as a way of ‘getting them out into the world’ so you then feel the push to go achieve them.

It’s worked for me in the past, but studies are showing that it has the opposite effect, that by stating our dreams we then feel a sense of accomplishment and don’t work as hard to achieve them.

Keep your goals to yourself. Write them down then work at achieving them with an obsession that will have them in your possession some day down the road.

If you DO talk about your goals, talk more about what you need to do to achieve them than the actual end goal.

More Man Up Monday: You’ve Got to Stand for Something