Taking responsibility is essentially what it means to man up! The cowards blame everyone else in the world but themselves for their problems. They refuse to take control of their thoughts, actions, and lives, and expect the rest of the world to pay for them.
To man up is to do the opposite. It’s to look at the log in your own eye before you see the sliver on someone else’s. It’s to blame yourself before you blame others, or to not blame at all and just shut up and work!
To call yourself a man you cannot live in the cowardly manner previously described. You must see the futility in blaming others, and the power in accepting responsibility over everything you control in your life, which is a hell of a lot.
Happiness is a choice. Much of that choice is made in what we give our time to. Too many of us give our time to the non-essential things that take away from our purpose.
Determine the few things that are essential in your life, your business, to your family’s happiness, and give all of your time and effort to those things and happiness and meaning will be yours.
If you’re of value to others, there can be no shortage of meaning in your life. No shortage of purpose.
Serve others. Provide a service to others. Be a man of value and you will have purpose.
Most people wish. Few have the combination of audacious dreams and insatiable work ethic.
You cannot have one without the other and live life on your terms. You need both.
There is a healthy fear. Fear of not giving your best or wasting time or a fear of death that brings life into the present. Most people live with an unhealthy fear. One that keeps them from doing the things their soul begs them to do.
Ambition is acting out those desires. Every one of us needs more of it.
Show thyself a man…
What does this mean?
To show courage, honor, grit? To show thyself a man is an honorable call to action that we need to be called to far more often. (Read This: Where Have men With Honor Gone?)
It’s okay to be nice, actually it’s a very good thing to be. But we get caught up in being nice and forget about being good. To be a man you must defend what it means to be good.
That sometimes means standing against the masses, against popularity and the changing of times. It means sticking to your values and fighting for them.
Goodness is action aligned with your values. Niceness is smiling and being courteous. One takes strength, the other can end up with you being a doormat.
More Man Up Monday: Start Acting On Those Dreams
