Man Up Monday: You’ve Got to Stand For Something

As the Aaron Tippin song goes, You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. A man must stand for something in his life, even in the run of a day, and that something has to guide him to be a better man and a man of value. In this week’s Man Up series we’ll go through what your idea of success should be, how you should look at relationships and even women. (Read this: Truth About Success and Confidence)

Your values are you, they’re what you will depend on when the world turns their back and you’re left alone to climb out of whatever you’ve gotten yourself into. Stand for something. Live for something. Be Legendary.

If your definition of success is dependent on the validation of others, your success can’t be YOUR success, it also won’t involve happiness.

Your notion of what success is must be internal. It must involve who you are and not just what you accomplish, and if it does involve what you accomplish (and it should) these accomplishments can’t be in comparison to those of another, not a friend nor a foe. (Read this: Why You’re Comparing Yourself to The Wrong Person)

This is your life, your journey, make it your masterpiece.

We waste so much time. We spend so much time watching TV or gossiping or bickering. We spend very little time reading or working or practicing or thinking.

If we’d only cut the proverbial fat from our lives we’d become the great men we admire so dearly.

Success and freedom and happiness and meaning, they all require of us persistence. They each take time. They each ask of us that we improve and work a little harder and take many, many steps toward our goal.

Most people stop, they feel that they can’t go on any longer when they easily and clearly could have.

Have a firm understanding that what you want in life, I mean what you REALLY want in life, takes effort and time. Be in this journey for the long run. True gratification isn’t instant, it’s always at the end of an arduous journey.

Practice self-control in the small things and it will be there with you in the big things.

We reward ourselves for doing things that required little effort failing to see that self-control will bring us more happiness than meaningless reward or instant gratification.

Few humans are in it for the long haul. We want our gratification to be instant, our glory to be in the present. It’s all about now and not all about the greater good. (Try this: The 4 Steps to Glory and Manhood)

… And no, you can’t have both.

Our existence is opinion, it’s our take on our reality. We, then, have the power to shape our world to fit what we want. Most of us secretly want to feel sorry for ourselves. We like feeling as though the world is against us, it gives us an excuse to not work, to relax if there’s no point or benefit to our work.

You can find the good in your world and you can find the challenge. Finding both will give you purpose and a reason to improve.

When are we ever truly alone in today’s world? We have our phones or our music, our computers, our TV’s, what we don’t have is clarity.

We’re bombarded by noise, by the opinions of sheep, of envious energy suckers and we fall right into their games.

Stop.

Get out of it. Unplug and get into nature. Vacations are, indeed, important, but not the kind where you’re snapping pictures of your feet by the pool every 5 minutes, I mean REAL vacations. Vacations from the rat race, from technology, from the energy suckers that need to be removed from our lives. (Read this: 6 Ways to Travel Like Hemingway)

If you want to be a loser, hang out with people who think they have no control over their lives. If you want to be a loser, hang out with humans who bicker and gossip. If you want to be a loser hang out with people who value money more than anything. If you want to be a loser befriend people who are always comparing what they have to what you have. (Check this out: The Complaining Generation?)

Who you spend time with is a reflection of who you are.

Spend time with creators, innovators, hustlers and workers. Spend time with people who are going somewhere, and you’d best not be the one not pulling your weight.

At birth you’re given a clean slate, we’re ALL given a clean slate. Some get to work on making the most of their lives, others sit on their asses waiting for life and happiness and success to come to them.

One man is a winner, a good man who’s used his talents and strengthened them, the other is a loser, a waste of space, a man who was given an opportunity and passed it off in lieu of ease and laziness and selfishness.

You can have your definition of success, be it a great body, happiness, meaning, money, value, a house in the hills with a horse in the barn and a dog at your lap (that last one sounds lovely).

You just have to give a lot of yourself to get it. And success is internal, it’s not determined by others or something that’s judged upon. Success is yours and only yours, it can be shared, but it cannot be given. If it’s given, it can just as soon be taken away.

To envy is to wish you had what someone else has or has earned. It removes that possibility for happiness and meaning from your life, it eats away at your soul while the one you envy continues to work and live life on their terms.

Think before you covet. Think about the futility in it.

Focus on your own shit and have no concern for anything else.

You’re dying, I’m dying, we’re all dying. Our time here really isn’t very long, yet as we lie down and take our final breath, many of us will come to the realization that much of our time was wasted. (Read this: If You Die Tomorrow)

Rather than living a life in the pursuit of something good or great, we watched TV or we slept or we talked about things that have no value.

Be in your deathbed now, feel the pain of realizing that you’ve wasted this wonderful gift and vow to never do it again.

Humans in today’s world actually want fame. They want the admiration of others simply because they want popularity. They don’t care for courage or grit or value, they just want fame.

It’s a foolhardy goal in life because your success is in the hands of others, the masses, the mob.

Don’t want for fame or popularity, desire to be a man of value to your fellow man.

Chivalry is dying because good men are few, but also because insecure women who deep down see women as inferior don’t have the pride nor the self-respect to be treated with respect, with honor, and with love.

They don’t want to be treated to dinner because they feel that it’s sexist for a man to in any way treat or help or care for a woman or downgrade her ability to care for herself. They’re so insecure that they can’t accept admiration or a helping hand out of kindness.

They miss the point by as wide a mark as possible. They don’t see how men who open car doors or pay for dinner do it out of honor for the woman. (Check this out: How to Talk to Women)

It’s Valentine’s day soon. Treat your lady to a wonderful night mainly because you love the gal and who she is, but also as a big middle finger to the misguided feminists (many of whom are men) that ignore that men and women are different, and fail to appreciate and praise our differences.

I get a ton of emails from guys who are wrapped around a woman’s finger. They’re caught in a bad relationship or chasing a girl than growing themselves. That’s neither here nor there…

If you’ve got your shit together and you’ve found a good lady, a lady you love, don’t spend a moment on your ass or in ease, be at your best not only for yourself but because you’ve seen that she deserves you at your best, not a shell of the man you can be.

A great woman at your arm should not be a distraction, but added motivation. Treat that gal like a princess and love her to death, but don’t you dare stop improving and growing and evolving on your own terms.

Be the best man you can be because it’s your duty, and her reward for being such a lovely lady.

More Man Up Monday: To Reach Your Potential Is an Expectation