The weak think that life is a series of events that happen to them. The strong understand that life, success, happiness, and everything else we want in our lives and of life are things we have to earn, win, and warrant.

Winning at life is a choice you make that then must be backed up by actions you take.

If you’d like to win, if you want happiness and joy and meaning in your life, you must make the decision, now, to control what you can control, and roll with what you can’t.

Win your mornings and you’ll win your life.

We say it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish that matters, which is true. It’s not WHERE you start that matters either, but where you end up. (Read this: Morning Routine)

The funny thing is, that by starting your day optimally and effectively, you’re going to be much more likely to finish your life as you’d like to.

Win those first 3-4 hours of your day. Make sure they’re started early, and you’ll win at life.

If you have no rules that guide your values, you have no foundation.

Ben Franklin’s rules for life guided him not only to accomplish great things, but to remain true to who he was and what he believed.

When you have rules like, “I will not complain”, and they aren’t merely suggestions, but set in stone laws that you don’t dare break, you’re able to guide yourself through the trials and tribulations and temptations of life and remain true to who you are.

Many see rules as confining, but don’t mistake rules for regulations. Regulations inhibit, they suppress, rules can liberate if used properly.

Know, firmly, the man you want to become before you set out to become him.

Write down who you want to be. Take examples from your “models”, characteristics they may hold, like being adventurous and virtuous, and craft you x100. (Check this out: The 12 Characteristics of Real Men)

How would you carry yourself? What would you accomplish? Most importantly, what habits would you hold and which would you remove?

Create your own model and work towards it.

100 Years From Now

100 years from now you’ll be in the dirt and you’ll no longer matter, so why WOULDN’T you set the highest goals you possibly can or work as hard as humanly possible? Why WOULD you worry and stress and fear things that may happen to you?

You know what WILL happen to you? Death. Live your ass off before that bastard comes knocking at your door.

Greatness is measured on what you do, not what you intend to do.

We proclaim our intentions and we feel as though we’ve, in part, accomplished what we set out to do.

Few have the discipline to talk less and do more, we like telling everyone what we’ve got going on, but rarely is it completed before we’ve begun our song.

Be one of the few who acts simply because he enjoys what he’s doing and he wants to improve. Don’t be among the masses who tell the world their intentions yet have little accomplished by the time they kick the bucket.

Confidence is won. Pride, happiness, success, they’re all won. You may not want to compete, but that’s what living is.

Every moment of every day we compete, IF we’re improving, that is. We compete against our laziness, like I’m actually doing right now. We compete against who we were yesterday. We compete against others vying for a job or a spot in the marketplace.

Competition involves no hate, that’s a misconception. Competition is what brings the best out of all of us.

Raise your expectations just a little bit in every area of your life and you become better for it.

Start expecting more from yourself.

Don’t expect to take it easy every afternoon or to miss at least one workout a week. Expect yourself to get up early, to work hard daily, to carry yourself with pride in every aspect of your life and you won’t be able to avoid becoming a better version of the wonderful human you currently are.

Sometimes life sucks. But it only affects you if you allow it to. Choose how you react to the bad stuff wisely.

Wisdom, in this case, is choosing to control what you can and accept what you cannot. You can control how you react to even the worst horrors. (Read this: The Event Doesn’t Matter. Your Reaction to it Does.)

You can choose how you react to the unwarranted things that happen to you. You can face them as a challenge, or wallow in self-pity and see them as a curse.

Self-pity removes the possibility for both happiness and effectiveness. It renders the host utterly useless.

If you pity yourself you cannot develop or improve yourself. If you feel sorry for who you are, where you are, or what’s happened to you, you won’t see the abundance of good in your life, nor will you be able to see what you control in your life.

Self-pity, like laziness, is evil. It benefits no one, least so the Self.

Not fighting when the innocent are attacked and slaughtered isn’t peaceful, it’s cowardice.

We can reason ourselves into being cowards instead of men of action or warriors by using peace, not as something to fight for, but something to avoid fighting for.

Peace doesn’t just happen, it must be earned.

It’s not a nice feeling to add pressure and stress to your life, but it is often necessary for growth.

Stress can suck, it can be crippling, it can also be the fire under your arse that’s necessary for growth.

Swim out to the deeper waters of life, it’s there you’ll be tested, it’s there that you’ll see what you’re truly made of.

More Man Up Monday: Do What Must be Done