Knowledge For Men Archives

Dr. Tracy Thomas is a licensed psychologist and a certified coach who works with executives, leaders, and celebrities who helps them go from the life they are living the life that they are leading.

"It's one thing to realize the self, but it's something else altogether to truly embody that realization, to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and it's outer expression" Adayashanti

1. Turn Your Existence into Your Career

You know the old saying that if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life?

Well imagine if the work that you did was in such alignment with who you are as a person and what you value in life that you felt that you were being paid simply to exist? That you were paid to just be you!

It is entirely possible, and more than that, entirely necessary.

Life is too damn short to live a life that is incongruent with who you are. If you are doing things that you love with people you love, you will wake up every day with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. You will have a deep sense of fulfillment and joy in each moment and will be able to show up in life more present and on purpose than you ever thought possible.

It is not an easy road, and it will require you to make changes, but it will be worth it.

2. Get out of the Negative Narratives in Your Life

It is so easy to get caught up in negative narratives in your day to day life that you may not even realize how much they are affecting you. You are in negative work environments, negative relationships, patterns of self talk, or ways of being that your health and well being is affected.

If you are able to remove the negative narratives from your life and surround yourself with positivity that is congruent with you and your mission, your life will improve, your health will improve, and your sense of peace and joy will shoot through the roof.

3. Get Real with Yourself

Success in life requires that you are honest with yourself, you cannot live a life of joy and peace if you are constantly lying to yourself.

You tell yourself that it is not that bad, that you will make a change, that things are worse for others without ever realizing that by lying to yourself you are blocking yourself from achieving the things you desire.

You have to be brutally honest with yourself and call it like it is in life before you can truly live a congruent and passionate life.

4. Take it Easy on Yourself

Especially as a man, it is easy to beat yourself up. Society puts so much pressure on you to achieve, to succeed, to figure out who the hell you are (not to mention to figure out how the hell to handle women) that it's easy to see yourself as a failure if you are not a millionaire, casanova by age 21!

Take a deep breath and take it easy on yourself, you are doing better than you think you are. You don't have a responsibility to conform to society's expectations and the sooner you can realize this, the happier and more fulfilled you will be.

Steven DeSalvo's first book 'Relationship Dynamics' in the EVOLVE series helps to answer the question: 'How can we change our world and the course of human evolution with positive outcomes for this planet and all of its inhabitants? This first book in this series has helped many to change and navigate to healthier relationship dynamics.

As a certified Permaculturist, his goal is to serve others in the attaining their highest evolutionary potential through writings and personal appearances to increase awareness and personal responsibility.

He moved to northern California in 2011 where he now resides and works as an independent writer, publisher, speaker and life coach. Often called a Renaissance man, Steven DeSalvo has a diverse background of creative, artistic, business and personal interests including writing and blogging on his web site www.BecomeAnAdult.com.

"Live your true authentic self"~Steven DeSalvo

1. Introspection is the First Step to Better Relationships

You will never succeed in relationships with others until you are in a great relationship with yourself. And creating a great relationship with yourself requires that you spend time in introspection, truly learning who you are and falling deeply in love with yourself.

If you want to develop healthy relationships with others, start by spending time by yourself and investing in the man that you want to be, the rest will follow.

2. You Have to Create Systems for Conflict Resolution

In all relationships, no matter how "perfect" they may seem, you will face conflicts. It is inevitable. But what separates relationships that last from those that crash and burn is. There is such a thing as an elegant argument, but you have to be willing to let go of your need to be right.

Put yourself in your partner's shoes, truly listen to them and what they are saying, not just the words that are coming out of their mouths, but the underlying message behind everything that they say. If you do this, your relationships will be happier, you will be happier, and life will be far more fulfilling.

3. A Healthy Relationship is Two People Setting Each Other Free

A healthy relationship is two people setting each other free, it is not one person completing another person, or one individual trying to fix another individual, it is two whole individuals who both have something unique to offer each other, coming together and sharing their gifts, talents, and love with one another.

If you get into relationships looking for someone to complete you, you will always be disappointed, but if you go into relationships looking for someone who is already complete whom you can join with and create an amazing life together, you will live a life of fulfilling and happy relationship.

Dennis Meyers was a normal everyday man until he suffered from a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. After years of struggling to find joy and fulfillment in his new life, he discovered a way to make peace with his accident and has written about it in his book "You Have not a Leg to Stand On".

"You've just got to go on"

1. You Have Just got to Go On

Life will knock you down, it will throw punches that put you on your knees, it will shatter you and batter you and try and keep you on the ground, but you have just got to go on.

Everyone will suffer in life, especially if you ever intend to do something great with yourself, the key is not if you suffer, but how you suffer. You must accept the hardships and move on with your life, grin and bear it, be willing to laugh in the face of pain.

There is little else that you can do, and allowing life to knock you down is a surefire recipe, not just for failure in business, but failure in life.

2. Learn to Take Life as it Is

Just as life will knock you down and you must learn to keep moving, so will life present you with situations and circumstances that aren't ideal. While many people will moan and gripe about how unfair life is, the wiser man realizes that if there is nothing he can do to change the situation, he must simply take life as it is.

Make peace with the pain, because sometimes it's all you can do.

3. Put Yourself Second

While life may be difficult at times, and may present massive challenges to many people, life is much more challenging if you are operating from a selfish perspective. You have to be willing to put yourself second, to live for something bigger than just you, to truly live a life of service, if you want to find peace in this life.

Serving others is the quickest way to remind yourself of all that you have to be grateful for and all the amazing blessings you have in your life.

Gary Szenderski is a writer, teacher, lover of life and proponent for positive change. He is a branding specialist, internationally acclaimed as an expert on the subject. He specializes in helping people and organizations navigate change and frequently speaks and writes on the topic of emerging brands and companies in transition.

In addition, Gary is an award-winning copywriter and an instructor at the University of California in Irvine. He resides in Southern California and welcomes your comments. [email protected]

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."~Michelangelo

1. Always Be Willing to Aim Big and Miss Instead of Aiming Small and Winning

It's incredibly easy in life to aim for small goals. To shoot for the realistic, the things that we know we can achieve, the goals that don't scare us, than it is to dare audacious goals that are actually worthy of the men we are.

If you want to live a fulfilling life, you have to be willing to shoot for the stars and miss. If your goals don't make you break into a cold sweat because you are scared you cannot achieve them, they are not big enough.

2. Become a Lifelong Student

Whenever a man achieves a certain level of success, it's easy to drink your own kool aid and believe that you are this high and mighty guru who can do no wrong. But the truth is, the most successful people are always the most humble.

They are the ones asking for advice, sitting quietly and listening, and being a student of life. If you want to be successful, you have to approach life with an attitude of constant and never ending learning.

3. Replace Your Past with a More Empowering Future

If you are living in the past, there is no way to create an empowering future. You have to be willing to let go of the past to create the future that you want. Appreciate the past for the lessons that it taught you and the skills that it gave you, but let it go and embrace the future that you want to be living.

4. Life Exists in the Present Moment

This moment, right now, is all that you have. The past no longer exists, the future is an illusion, all you have is now. Live in the present moment and be willing to give your full in each and every second. That is the way to live a successful and positive life.

Josh Rivedal (founder, executive director of The i'Mpossible Project) is an author, actor, playwright, and international public speaker. He has spoken about suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and diversity in more than ninety locations across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.

He has served on the board of directors for the New York City chapter of The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He wrote and developed the one-man play, "Kicking My Blue Genes in The Butt" (KMBB), which has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. His memoir The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah, based on KMBB and published by Skookum Hill in 2013, is on The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's recommended reading list.

His book "How to Live Mentally Well and Crush it in College," is being implemented by colleges and universities across the U.S. He writes for the Huffington Post. Coming soon in conjunction with The i'Mpossible Project: Winning the War on Depression and Living Mentally Well.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts"~Winston Churchill

1. Connect with Positive People, Things, and Places

Life is so full of negatives. Of negative people, negative messages, and a general negativity that permeates our whole society.

If you want to remain and become as healthy, mentally, physically, and emotionally as you can, you have to learn how to connect with positive people, things, and places.

Spend more time with the people who lift you up, listen to some upbeat music instead of that crazy screamo stuff, and maybe even move to a new town with more sunshine and better views.

2. You Have to be Willing to Get Help

As men, we are so stubborn when it comes to seeking help. But life is a team sport, you cannot do it alone, nor should you want to. You must be willing to seek out the help and counsel of others who are wiser and more experienced than you.

Be willing to confide in a friend about your struggles, tell your family that you are not ok, and that you are actually struggling like hell, be willing to open up and be vulnerable and your life will change for the better.

3. Relationships Are What We Need as Humans

At the end of the day, life is about relationships, it's about having a healthy relationship with yourself so that you can go forth and have a healthy relationship with others.

There is no juice in life if you do not have people to share it with, people to laugh with, to cry with, and go through the ups and downs of life with. We have nothing if we don't have relationships and this is something that you must remember no matter what your goals or ambitions are.

Neil Strauss is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Game, Rules of the Game, Emergency, and Everyone Loves You When You're Dead and The Truth, An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

He is also the co-author of three other New York Times bestsellers – Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Mötley Crüe's The Dirt and Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road out of Hell. A writer for Rolling Stone, Strauss lives in Los Angeles.

"The underlying cause of most unfulfilled lives, is simply that we are too close to ourselves to see clearly enough to get out of our own way"~Neil Strauss

1. Understand how to Gauge Feedback

Life will often give you feedback about how you are doing across various areas. You may find yourself repeating the same patterns, getting into the same type of relationships, or making the same mistakes. Whatever the case, if you want to make a change you have to gauge feedback.

You have to look at the patterns in your life and discover what lesson they are trying to teach you. What does it say about you and your life that you are constantly dating the same type of girl and falling into the traps of "project dating"? What can you learn from the fact that you are constantly losing jobs after a few months?

Take a cold hard, honest look at your life and look at what the feedback is telling you and then change accordingly.

2. Your Level of Self Esteem will Equal the Level of Your Relationships

Have you ever heard the phrase opposites attract?

Well that's bull shit. Like attracts like, and if you are finding yourself getting into relationships with women where you are both in an unhealthy emotional relationship, odds are, your own self esteem is lacking.

If you want to attract better women, first become better yourself and change what you accept from others and from yourself. If you have low self esteem you will never be able to attract a woman with high self esteem, and if you have high self esteem, you will never get sucked into a toxic relationships with a woman who has low self esteem.

3. Finding Your Passion is Simple

If you want to find your purpose, and passion, do stuff you love.

That's it. If you love doing something, then keep doing it, don't worry about whether it's your real purpose or whether you should change careers to follow the money, simply do things that you love doing and you will never fail.

Jack Donovan moonlights as an advocate for men, tribalism, and paleo-masculinity. He has contributed popular essays and reviews to The Spearhead, Alternative Right, Counter Currents, The Hall of Manly Excellence, Amerika and other sites. He lives and works near Portland, Oregon.

1. It's Not About Survival But Thriving

Being a "real man" or being good at being a man is not necessary in todays world. We pretty much have everything that we need in life, and living life as a supplicating, scared, cowardly man will allow us to survive.

But its not about that…

Life isn't about survival, its about thriving, its about living to your fullest and giving your gifts to the world, and you can't do that if you suck at being a man. You can't do that if you are always looking to others for permission and to tell you what to do with your life. At some point you have to man up and take responsibility for your life.

Period.

2. You Have to Challenge Yourself

Life is too easy, men aren't challenged the way they used to be, and it shows.

We are a generation of men who are soft, unable to do even the most basic tasks without calling a mechanic, plumber, or some other sort of assistance to help them with their incompetence.

If you want to be good at being a man, you have to challenge yourself, you have to get out of your comfort zone, and you have to do things that scare the hell out of you.

There is no path to growth without struggle, embrace this, challenge yourself, and grow into the man you were born to be.

3. Learn to Trust Yourself

Too often, men go looking to others to tell them how to live, instead of looking to other men to help guide them through life, they look for men who will live their lives for them and prevent them from having to make real decisions.

You have to learn to trust yourself and your intuition. Trust your gut, and trust yourself to know which path you need to take.

You may fail, in fact you may fail miserably, but it will be your failure.

4. Create Yourself, Don't Just be yourself

The concept of being yourself is bullshit.

If you just be yourself, you will never grow or change into a man that is is worth a damn. You have to create yourself.

Decide who you want to be and start taking massive action to get yourself there, continue challenging yourself and growing into the man you were born to be.

The Havalmal mic

What is a Rune by Collin Cleary

jack-donovan.com

Want to become the strongest version of yourself?

Then click here to get a free trial to my elite community of 800+ high-performing men, The Secrets of the Top 1% of Men. Not only will you get tapped into your own "band of brothers", but you'll also have access to some of my best content and training as well as bi-weekly group calls with my team of coaches.

If you're ready to push the boundaries of what's possible in your life and become the man you've always wanted to be. This is the fastest way to do it.

Craig Ballantyne has been the Editor of Early to Rise since 2011. He's also a Strength & Conditioning coach in Toronto, author of Turbulence Training, a contributing author to Men's Health magazine, and a member of the Training Advisory Board for Maximum Fitness and Oxygen magazines.

"Success is simple"

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do"~Epictietus

1. The First Mistake You Make in the Morning is Reacting vs. Responding

In the mornings, it is so easy to sleep through your alarm, start your morning in a frenzy and get put into a mode of reaction vs. responding.

When you start your day this way, the day is already lost, you have already fallen into the trap of reacting to your environment instead of responding to circumstances that you had already planned and prepared for.

To beat this, wake up 15 minutes before you have to and focus on your goals.

Not one hours, not two hours, just 15 minutes. 15 minutes to allow yourself to focus your intentions for the day and get into peak state. Consider it a gift to yourself, and after a few weeks of this your results and productivity will sky rocket.

2. Do a Brain Dump at the End of the Day

As we go on through our days, our brains become cluttered with all sorts of stuff from work, family, personal struggles, past failures, and future worries. At the end of each day, do what is referred to as a brain dump, where you sit and write out everything that is on your mind so that you are no longer mulling over it while you should be present.

Doing this will allow you to clear your head and show up fully whenever you are with your family, relaxing at the end of the day, hanging out with friends, or anything else that you decide to do.

3. Create a Vision Statement

One of the most important things that you can do is to decide where you are going and who you want to be and condense this into a mission statement that will remind you of your goals and keep you on track when decision making becomes difficult.

By having a vision that you are moving towards, you will stay focused on where you are headed instead of the pain of sacrificing pleasure in the moment for gain in the future.

4. Its not what you can do but what you can avoid doing

A significant portion of success is not just knowing what to do, but knowing what to avoid doing.

If you can understand your stumbling blocks, the things that cause you to fail and fall, and the distractions that prevent you from achieving at the level that you want to be, then you have won half of the battle.

By finding ways to use accountability and leverage to eliminate these distractions entirely, you will boost your productivity, happiness, and success 10 fold over.

5. Create Personal Commandments

In adittion to your vision statement, one of the best ways to add structure and simplicity into your life is to create personal commandments, rules that you follow no matter what that can guide you and make decisions easy.

Some examples of personal commandments could be

• I will not watch porn
• I will limit alcohol consumption to 3x a week, and never more than 2 drinks a night
• I will stay faithful to my wife no matter the temptation
• I will always give 10% of my income to a noble charity

I can't tell you what your commandments should be, but having a list of rules and guidelines that you follow is absolutely essential to becoming the man you want to be.

6. Structure Creates Freedom

Throughout much of the interview Craig discusses creating rules and guidelines for your life, and many of you may be turned off by the concept. But what you may not realize is that structure creates freedom.

By having rules in place you are free making difficult decisions based solely off of emotion, by having structure in your life, you will increase your success and free time and have more freedom to pursue the things you love and spend time with people that you love.

7. Follow the Law of Action Attraction

While many peopele may ascribe to the "Secret's" law of attraction, Craig suggests the law of action attraction.

Basically focus on what you want, create the vision board, write the goals out, say your affirmations, and then take MASSIVE ACTION to achieve those goals.

Surround yourself with A+ players, create a mastermind, enlist the help of smarter people to aid you in achieving your goals, and take massive action.

Not only will you attract what you want into your life, but you will have taken the proper proportion of action required to ensure that you are ready for it.

8. Before You Start on the Journey Ask If It's Worth It

Before you start down any journey, you must decide if it's worth it. You have to have a strong enough reason for doing anything, or you will fail,. Plain and simple.

Whether the journey is a new instrument, sport, business, or relationship, ask if it is worth it before you begin and compare the opportunity to your vision statement and personal commandments

Want to learn how to be an alpha male? How to be more masculine? How to be the man you've always wanted to be?

Then you're in the right place.

In this episode, I'm going to unveil the 15 habits of alpha males that you must develop to unlock your full potential as a man and live the life you've always wanted to live.

But let me be clear…

This article is not about becoming 'better' than other men, developing an ego complex, or learning how to be the alpha of a specific clique or social circle.

It's about learning how to be an alpha male in your life. Taking full responsibility for your life, and living every day fully alive, present, and excited for the future that you are creating.

By the time you're done, you'll have a step-by-step guide to becoming the man you always knew you could be.

It won't be easy. But I promise you, it will be worth it.

What does it mean to be an alpha male? What are the alpha male traits that separate them from the beta males? How can you develop your alpha personality and eradicate the toxic beta male traits from your life?

In this episode, I'm going to set the record straight and break the false narratives of what an alpha male really is.

I'm going to teach you exactly what it means to be an alpha male by dissecting the 9 alpha male traits required to become the strongest version of yourself and live your best life.

By the time you're done, you'll understand the difference between alpha vs beta males and have a clear, path to becoming the alpha of your own life.

Let's get started…