Life isn’t won in the easy chair. It’s not won in bed, nor by winning the lottery. Life is won where all battles are won, in the trenches, it’s fought for and taken, it isn’t handed over or bestowed upon.
To Man Up is to understand that life is a struggle, it just is, there isn’t anything you can do to change this, but you can embrace it.
Too many think that they’ll find happiness, even momentarily, by being lazy, by avoiding work, when it leads to only one place: self-loathing.
It leads to shame and it leads to weakness.
Laziness has no benefit; literally not a single good comes from laziness, yet it’s the choice so many people claim as their “right”.
Every person I meet really does know more than me in some area. They hold on to some greater wisdom in an area in life where I am relatively ignorant.
There isn’t a person on this planet that doesn’t have something to teach me.
I’m not saying this as a “we”, but as a “me”. In accepting this as truth I can speak to people inquisitively, but also with a healthy dose of humility.
Humility allows growth. Arrogance blunts it.
You are not too good to do what needs to be done. You, nor I, are not too good for any job on this earth if it will allow us to pay our bills and put food in our mouths and the mouths of our families.
We ARE too good to do it poorly. We ARE too good to not learn while we’re working. We ARE too good to think we’re above a position or above a person, they are both our teachers, as is everything in life.
Live with a humble heart and an open mind and you’ll live a great and wonderful life. (Read this: 13 Rules for Living a Flourishing Life)
It doesn’t take much to change your life, you can start by changing your perception of you, then acting as you’d like to act. Forget the timid human that you’ve been up to this point, be the badass that you were put here to become.
Start by facing small fears, or just knock the biggest one down right now. Get your mind right, then act.
The truly great performers are humble enough to know that their success is dependent on hard work.
They’re also confidence enough to know that if they work harder than anyone, they’ll be better than anyone.
Success is always earned, it cannot be given.
There are those who see kindness as making excuses for others. They give reasons for a group’s lack of success or excuse others from being productive members of society.
These are not your leaders nor your friends, they are your enemies.
Even though some call you out, call you to action, call you to take responsibility over your life may sound harsh and mean, they do you far more good than those who excuse you from life, pity you, confine you to mediocrity, or below it.
Work is its own reward. The act of putting effort into something, forgetting the return on the investment, is its own reward. It’s what we’re here to do.
We’re here to, in some capacity, work, because to NOT do so is to throw away the blessing that is life, the sacrifices others have made to see us where we are right now. (Read this: Are You Wasting Their Sacrifice?)
Work because it’s what you’re made for. Take pride in your work because others have sacrificed much to make your life how it is.
It’s through pain that we grow. It’s a necessary ally in the fight to reach our potential.
Don’t avoid it like the masses do. Let them wallow in an inferior existence. Be more. Become better by learning to appreciate and love pain. With it in your life you can become great. Without it you are relegated to be as you currently are, no better.
Stress is a necessity. We need some stress, a healthy stress, it’s having something important to do and wanting to do a great job.
Without stress, without any pressure, we’re essentially just taking up space. (Check this out: Find Trouble)
We’re DEFINITELY not making the best of our abilities.
Don’t build a better body merely to impress girls, nor make more money in the same vain.
Do all things in your life to the best of your ability because you have the fundamental understanding that to do anything less is to waste your life, your talent, and the sacrifices that many have made to give you the life and the opportunity you now live.
You’re going to fail. You’re even going to look stupid. You’re going to put everything you have into something, and then you’ll come up just short.
But will you rise?
That’s the question, and fortunately only you can answer it.
You have the power to answer this all important question in your life. Therefore, YOU and only you can determine how happy and how successful you will be in this life.
Be very careful as to who you follow (and make no mistake, we all follow someone, if not a number of people, they’re our mentors, our models).
Some people will call you out, they’ll call you to action, tell you to man up, offer you no excuse but to take action and take control of your life.
Others, they’ll gives “reasons” for where you are in life. They’ll tell you that it’s your government’s fault, a corporation’s fault, they’ll tell you that you were born with a handicap because of the color of your skin or because of where you were born.
Be weary of anyone offering you an easy way out, a person or an entity to blame. They don’t actually want to help you. They want to benefit off of your plight by pushing an agenda that aids them first and foremost.
It’s a tough thing to decipher, one seems ruthless, the other seems kind. The reality is, one is true and honest and good, the other is cunning.
Don’t get caught following the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
More Man Up Monday: How to Win at Life
