Knowledge For Men Archives

John Vespasian is the author of seven books about rational living, including "When Everything Fails, Try This", "Rationality Is the Way to Happiness", and "The 10 Principles of Rational Living."

"A small dose of rationality is worth a large amount of positive thinking"

1. Rationality, not Positivity is the Way to Success

We live in an era of positive thinking, where people value a good attitude over rational thought.

If you want to be successful, you have to approach all of your endeavors with a rational mind. Base your assumptions off of history and practice, not off of positive psychology.

2. Be an Entrepreneur Not a Crusader

One of the biggest mistakes many would-be prolific entrepreneurs and business owners made is that they allowed their mission to become a crusade.

Instead of simply working on growing their business and their profit, they focused on forcing their message down other people's throats instead of allowing their success to speak for itself.

3. Focus on Achieving Success Not Converting Haters

If you do anything big in the world of business (or the world in general) you are going to have haters. This is simply a fact of life.

But instead of focusing on converting your haters into fans through debate and argument, ignore them and allow your success to speak for itself.

4. You Have to Test Everything

No matter how good an idea works in one niche or market, there is no guarantee that you will have repeat success when you try again in a new market or environment.

You have to learn to test everything.

For example, if you have a sales letter that made you $10,000 in a day with one of your email lists, there is no guarantee that the same letter will work with a list targeted at a different demographic.

Test first before you invest time and money into something that may or may not work in the new environment.

5. Accept the Inevitable Hassles in Life

Life can be a hassle, there is no way around it.

There are things that you will have to do that will suck, there are things you are going to experience that will not be fun and will not be enjoyable.

Instead of pretending that positive thinking can make these problems disappear, accept them as a part of life with a rational mind and simply grin and bear it.

Mike Fitch is an innovative fitness educator focused on bodyweight training, skills-based practices, and multi-planar, fluid movement. As the president of Global Bodyweight Training, he has developed multiple programs (including Animal Flow) that celebrate movement.

All of his work embraces the philosophy that anybody can excel at bodyweight training and advanced skills building with practice and proper progressions. With 18 years' experience in the fitness industry, Mike has used and taught a range of styles from Olympic lifts and kettle bells to sports-specific and Speed-Agility-Quickness training.

"You must suffer through the structure in order to conquer the chaos"

1. You Have to Put in the Time

No matter what you want to accomplish in life, you have to put in the time.

Mastery takes time, it takes patience, and it takes an intentional practice that pushes your limits each day. You cannot expect to see world class results unless you are putting in world class time and effort.

2. When You Hit a Plateau Take a Step Back

So often, on our paths to mastery, we get stuck in a rut. Maybe, for you, your business has made the same amount for 6 months straight, your dating life has been mundane, or you have been doing the same workout for weeks without seeing any strength or muscle gains.

When this happens… Just take a step back.

While there are a number of things you can do to improve your practice to help break through plateaus, the first thing you need to realize is that there is no rush.

You have the rest of your life ahead of you and there is no reason to get impatient with your goals. Take the plateaus as the come and keep moving forward.

3. You Have to Learn to Move

We live such sedentary and immobile lifestyles that most of us have forgotten how to move. We are riddled with aches and pains, joint problems and inflamed discs and such a long laundry list of other health issues that we could write an entire encyclopedia.

The solution to almost all of this, as counterintuitive as it may seem, is to start moving.

Not just lifting weights or running, but reconnecting with your primal side and moving like an animal, down on the ground, with all of your joints firing.

Whether this is through animal flow or yoga, getting back into your body and re-learning how to move will improve your overall health in ways that you could not imagine.

4. The Goal is to Develop a Balanced Body

The purpose of all physical training, whether it is with weights or just your bodyweight, should be to develop a balanced athletic body.

Who cares if you can deadlift 600 lbs. if you cannot touch your toes? Who cares how flexible you are if you cannot move weight around without snapping like a stick?

You have to build a balanced physique that will allow you to take full advantage of this wonderful gift called life.

5. Take Your Rest as Seriously as You Take Your Training

If you really want to succeed with your training, start taking your rest as seriously as you take your time in the gym.

Get on a sleep schedule, cut out the electronics, don't eat more than three hours before bed, turn the temperature down, and black out your room.

The better your sleep is, the better you will perform in the gym and in life.

Sarah Centrella is the author of the book Hustle Believe Receive which is based on her 8 step #HBRMethod; the guide to changing your life and living your dream!

She is a master coach and the founder of #HBRUniversity a life coaching program that trains people from around the world to become #HBRCoaches. Sarah also teaches her method in the

Sarah also teaches her method in the 10-week #HBRBootcamp. Sarah is a single mom of three and lives in Portland Oregon.

"Hustle, believe, receive"

1. You Have to Start with a Dream and Believe It

Before you can achieve anything in this life of real substance or value, you have to start with a dream.

If you have achieved success today, even if you do not realize it, it's because you started with a dream.

You started with the dream that you would be able to support your family while still making time to be with them, you started with a dream of owning your own company, or marrying the girl of your dreams.

If you want something, you have to first dream it, write it down as a goal, visualize it, and believe that it can happen.

2. The Hustle Will be Hard

Look, becoming successful sucks.

There is no way around it, if you want to be successful you will have to make sacrifices, you will have to work through vacations, skip dates with girlfriends, cut out friendships that are not serving you, miss a few episodes of the Walking Dead.

Success is not easy, but if you expect the worst up front, then whenever you are actually in the trenches and the shit hits the fan, you will be able to stay calm and collected because you were already prepared.

3. You Have to Have Positive Pessimism and Patience

The two things that will help you on your journey to success almost more than anything else are a sense of positive pessimism and patience.

If you hope that things will work out, but realistically expect them to flop, then you will not be disappointed when a deal doesn't go your way. And if you have patience, you will be able to realize that this was merely the first of many deals and you will have many more chances to achieve your dreams.

4. Change Your Crew

Want to know the quickest way to change your income, body, relationships, or spiritual life?

Change who you spend time with. If you spend time around winners and hustlers, you will become a winner and a hustler.

If you spend time around athletes and casanovas, you will become an athlete and a casanova.

Likewise, if you spend your time around a bunch of lazy, goalless, slobs…

Well… that is what you will become.

Change your crew, change your life.

5. Don't Allow Age to Affect Your Dreams

No matter whether you are young or old, you are never too young or too old to start pursuing your dreams. Most successful entrepreneurs did not have their big home run until well after thirty, many of them as late as 40 and 50.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are many young entrepreneurs who are probably younger than your little brother making millions of dollars a year.

Age is not a factor to success. Success is blind to your age, gender, color, sexuality, socioeconomic status, background, and damn near anything else that you believe is holding you back.

Don't allow anything to affect your dreams.

At twenty-one-years-old, Jake Ducey is the world's youngest published inspirational author and is the Director of Self Reliance Institute, where he has built both a school and an orphanage in San Marcos, Guatemala. Since 2012 Jake has traveled to Guatemala, Australia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

His experiences in such countries, after quitting a basketball scholarship and leaving a drug-filled life at 19 years old to wander the world without a map, have become his first full book, "Into the Wind; My Six-Month Journey Wandering the World for Life's Purpose.

"Your income is directly proportional to the need for what you do and your ability to do it" ~Jim Rohn

1. Circumstances do not Dictate Your Fulfillment

We live in a world where when people are unhappy, they often make rash decisions that can put them in a financial sink hole. And while it should always be your goal to live a life that is full of fulfillment and joy and to love the work that you do, sometimes you need to wait.

But just because you are not where you want to be, does not mean that you cannot have fulfillment and joy in the present moment.

Learn to reframe your current situation and find meaning within it.

If you are at a job you hate, then see the job as a means to earn the money you need to start your dream business, take that year abroad, or provide for the people you love.

When you are able to reframe things and find the positivity within them, like Victor Frankl in the Nazi death camps, you will be able to find meaning in any situation.

2. Learn to Develop Inspiration through Dissatisfaction

If you are unhappy with where you are, and you really are ready to make a change. If things still suck even though you have changed the situation in your head, then you have to learn to draw inspiration from dissatisfaction.

If you are unhappy, use your pain to fuel you towards the pleasure of something new.

If you are single, use that pain to get you off your butt and out into the world meeting women. If you are broke, use that pain to earn and keep more income.

3. You Don't Have to Pick Happiness or Profit

So often in our modern world, people are lead to believe that you have to sacrifice all of the joy from your life now, for profit later.

This simply isn't true.

You can have both, you just have to want it bad enough.

You can make a living, while traveling, and doing work that you love! You can have it all, but you have to make the definite decision and pursue it with all of your soul.

4. Figure Out Where Your Money Is Going and What Possible Sources of Income You Have

If you are struggling with finances, one of the best things that you can do is to take an honest stock of your spending habits. Where is your money going, where should it be going, and where do you want it to go?

Cutting out a few dollars here and there on things that aren't truly important to you can be the funding you need for your new business or that trip to Thailand with your friends.

Once you know where your money is going, it is time to figure out what possible sources of income you have? Could you do some freelance writing? Uber driving? Air BnB rentals?

What options do you have and which ones will bring the most satisfaction and income?

5. You Have to Reprogram Your Brain

Your subconscious mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

If you can learn to reprogram it to eliminate all of the crap you were indoctrinated with from society, you will be able to live a life that you never thought possible.

It will require work and some deep digging that may be painful for some of you..

But it will be worth it.

Jessica Ly is a life coach, meditative breathing teacher, and devout poet. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Exercise Science. Jessica has taken her own personal journey to meditate with Buddhist monks in the Himalayas and loves

Jessica has taken her own personal journey to meditate with Buddhist monks in the Himalayas and loves traveling to enrich her own connection to communities around the world. She believes it is not so much about gaining knowledge, but living it that leads to infinite peace and joy and the empowerment of leadership and great change.

Jessica is also the Author of The ABCs of Authentic Me.

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are" ~Anais Nin

1. Authenticity is Knowing Who You Are and Accepting It

We live in a day and age where people will do anything except be themselves.

People often don't like what they see in the mirror and instead of working to change it, they look for ways that they can cover it up and pretend to be something that they are not.

Authenticity is knowing who you are, the good, bad, and ugly, and accepting it. Embracing what you can't change and working on the things that you can.

True authenticity will set you free and allow you to attract the right things into your life in business and relationships.

2. Inauthenticity Ruins Relationships

The quickest way to ruin a relationship is to be unauthentic.

Tell your significant other that you don't care about something when you do,or bend over backwards for them because it is what they want instead of telling them what is on your mind and you will be in for a miserable and short-lived relationship that brings more pain to your life than joy.

3. Intention is Everything

At KFM, we are all about destroying the nice guy and embracing your inner warrior, however, the reason we want to kill the nice guy is that this is rarely an authentic representation of who you are.

Most "nice guys" offer love with expectation, not because they are a genuine and loving person.

However, for some of you, you genuinely are a giving person who expects nothing in return. You compliment the girl because you like her shoes, not because you expect her to sleep with you.

You compliment the girl because you like her shoes, not because you expect her to sleep with you. You tell someone you love them because you do, not because you need something. You give of yourself because it makes you feel alive, not because you need anything in return.

If that is genuinely you, then embrace it and love that about yourself, because it is a rare gift.

4. Take Baby Steps to Success

If you are looking to achieve success in business, relationships, or health, learn the power of baby steps.

To become the man you need to be will require massive amounts of action, however, if you eat the elephant one bite at a time you will be able to become who you want to be quicker than you ever thought possible.

5. The Key to Authenticity is Calming the Mind

The best way to start embracing authenticity is through some form of meditation or other practice that stills your mind. Whenever you are in your head you are thinking about other's opinions and if you are doing things "right"

However, when your mind is still, you are able to disassociate with yourself and see things for what they truly are, and that is where your true authentic power will come from.

Alex Charfen has dedicated his life to answering the question, How do you make business grow? As a personal consultant to billionaires, the Fortune 500 and some of the most successful individuals in the world, Alex's pursuit evolved into a larger calling to understand How do you help people grow? For the past two decades, Alex has created and curated proven business philosophies, models and strategies geared specifically to entrepreneurs.

An internationally recognized speaker and business consultant, Alex has helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs grow and scale their business.

"There is nothing wrong with you and you are not alone"

1. Your Biggest Weakness is Your Biggest Strength

Anyone who was great, past or present, has always had some weakness that others thought was crippling, yet they somehow learned to turn them into one of their greatest assets.

Einstein was told he would never amount to anything because he did poorly in school due to the way that he processed and understood information, and now we have quantum physics.

Richard Branson was told that because of his dyslexia he would never be successful, and yet because of his unique way of understanding the world, we have hundreds of industry-changing companies under the Virgin umbrella.

Anyone who tells you that you cannot succeed because of x, needs a swift kick in the ass, because odds are, the very reason that they told you you couldn't succeed, will be the reason that you can.

2. Success Leaves Clues but Most of the Clues You Hear About are Bullshit

There is a simplicity to success, yet we tend to complicate it. You have hundreds if not thousands of unsuccessful people speaking on stage telling you that the way to achieve what you want is to create unrealistic goals and recite them 12 times a day.

Bullshit.

Success is simple, it is about eliminating the toxic things from your life and replacing them with the habits of champions. It is about waking up early, working hard, staying focused, and developing your skill set. Anything else is icing on the cake.

3. Don't Focus on Being Busy Focus on Outcomes

So often in business, we wear busyness like a badge of honor, but this is a backwards way of approaching it. The longer you are in business, the more outcomes you should be creating, the more revenue you should be producing, and the less busy you should be.

Focus on creating outcomes each day instead of a menial to do list.

4. Daily Habits are Everything

Success boils down to your positive habits outweighing your negative ones, plain and simple.

One of the best habits you can cultivate is to wake up early and spend an hour planning in solitude, starting by asking yourself these two questions…

"What is my intention for the day"

And

"Where was I uncomfortable yesterday"

Knowing what you intention is for the day, meaning the outcomes you want to create and knowing what made you uncomfortable in the days past will allow you to have an accurate view of what is necessary to your day and the changes that you need to make.

5. Start Taking Care of Your Health

You have nothing if you do not have your health.

If you learn to take care of your body through hyper hydration, and properly fueling yourself, you will have far more success, you will perform better in life and business, and of course, you will have more sex

"Anything that does not bring me alive is too small for me" ~David Whyte

1. Personal Growth Requires Giving to the World

On your path to ultimate personal development, you will reach a place where you realize that you can no longer focus solely on yourself and you have to begin giving back to truly impact the world.

To grow into the best version of yourself, you have to give back to others, you have to be a servant to the world, and you have to be willing to occasionally put the needs of those less fortunate than you above your own.

2. You Need to Know What You Really Want

If you do not know where you want to go, then it doesn't much matter what you are doing on a day to day basis.

You have to have a vision for your life and for who you want to be. You have to have goals and a plan to achieve them, based off of your desires and your dreams, not society's, your parent's or your friend's desires and dreams.

3. You Have to Take Care of Yourself First

While we have already said that personal development requires that you give to the world, you cannot fully give to the world until you have given to yourself. Until you are taking care of yourself in mind, body, and spirit, until you are a little bit selfish and prioritize your needs, you will not have enough to truly give to the world.

4. Focus on What You Want, not What You Don't

What you focus on expands.

If you want to achieve your dream you have to focus on the things that you want in your life, not the things that you don't want. Instead of focusing on how you are out of shape and overweight, focus on how you can't wait until you are a shredded, athletic beast.

Instead of focusing on how you are broke, focus on how you can't wait until you have more than enough money to live life on your terms.

It's just like riding a bike, look where you want to go, not at the tree nearby.

5.Your Language Creates Your Reality

If you are constantly telling yourself that you are a worthless piece of shit…. Odds are, that's how you will feel.

If you are constantly telling yourself that you are not where you want to be however you are going to put in the work to achieve your dreams, that is what will start to happen.

What you tell yourself, you believe. Be sure you are telling yourself an empowering story.

Kim Coates is a Canadian-American actor who has worked in both Canadian and American films and television series. He has worked on Broadway portraying Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and in the lead role of Macbeth performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He also starred as Alexander "Tig" Trager in the FX series Sons of Anarchy.

1. Follow Your Bliss

Life is too short to live every day doing things that you dislike. If you love something, do it, end of story.

If you want to be an actor, act. If you want to be a musician, play music. If you want to start a business, do it! Don't let anyone or anything hold you back from pursuing what you love.

Follow your bliss, and the rest will fall into place.

2. Be Willing to Wait Until You Are Ready

Once you have committed to a path, whether it is business, acting, athletics etc. be willing to wait until you are ready to take the big leap.

For Kim, he continued to master his craft of acting on stage for 8 years before he took the leap into television.

For you, it may mean working an apprenticeship for a few years before you start your business, it may mean playing local gigs with your band for a few years before you quit your job and try touring.

Don't rush things. Excellence takes time.

3. Failure is Not an Option

Success is simple, you simply have to remove the possibility of failure from your mind. When failure is no longer an option, success is inevitable. Once you have started following your bliss and prepared yourself for the leap, it is time to burn your boats and leave yourself no choice but to succeed.

Whether that is moving to a new city, quitting your job, or investing all of your dispensable cash into a business, when you give yourself no way out, you will succeed.

4. Keep Your Head on Straight

Once you start to see success, it is easy to let it go to your head. You have to be diligent in making sure that you keep your head on straight. Stay away from the masses living the rock star lifestyle who will end up ruining their career within a few short years.

If you want longevity in whatever path you select, you have to continually grow and avoid things that are detrimental to your public image and success.

5. A Real Man Listens More and Talks Less

You were given two ears and one mouth for a reason, use them in that proportion.

Charles Hanna is the Chairman, CEO, and founder of Brains II a third-party technology provider that he began in a basement in 1979 and built into Canada's largest independent service consolidation company with offices in all of the major cities in the country.

A devoted father of three children, Hanna is involved with a range of charities including organizations that help with cancer treatment, artists, and displaced or handicapped people. He has a particularly soft spot for children and animals and contributes his personal time in various ways to the YMCA and animal shelter groups. He divides his time between Toronto and Los Angeles

"Happiness is a way of thinking"

1. Your Life is Not Yours

A mistake that many of us make when we think about our lives is to believe that our lives are truly ours. We did nothing to earn this life, we did not take out a loan that we are forced to repay, we were simply given the gift of life and the responsibility to make the most of it.

You have to realize that your life does not belong to you, it belongs to the world and to the people around you. It belongs to the people that you serve and the people you love.

2. You Must Take Care of Yourself Physically

Before you can truly serve anyone else, you have to take care of yourself, and this begins with your body.

Taking care of yourself physically is imperative, and rather straightforward. If you can get 8 hours of high-quality sleep a night, eat a diet of 80% whole foods, eliminate drugs, limit alcohol, get regular exercise, and swallow your pride when you are feeling sick and go see a doctor, then you are well on your way to the healthiest version of you ever.

3. Realize Your Insignificance in the Universe

Whenever people take something personally, they fail to understand one of the most important facts about life: You don't matter that much.

You are one of 7 billion, on one of God knows how many planets. You are a tiny speck in the universe.

This is not to say that you are not important to the people around you, but rather to say that you truly hold little significance in this universe. Your flight was not late because the world is out to get you, that cute girl didn't give you her number because the stars are aligning for you and you alone.

Life simply happens and you get to take part in it. Realize this, realize your insignificance, and learn to live with a sense of humility and gratitude for where you are.

4. Taking Care of Your Body and Spirit Will Create Success in the Rest of Your Life

Whenever you decide to become successful and start pursuing success at the expense of your health and spiritual well being, you are setting yourself up for failure.

You have to take care of yourself first before you can truly achieve success. If you are physically and spiritually healthy, your performance will sky rocket, your happiness will increase, and you will be able to accomplish more than you had ever dreamed.

5. Nothing is Good or Bad

All things in life are simply our perception of them. Nothing is inherently good or bad, it is just the story that we tell ourselves about things. With that knowledge, what would happen if you started to reframe everything in life as a blessing? To start to see the good in all things no matter how difficult they may be.

I dare you to try it for a week and see what happens. You might just be amazed.

David de las Morenas is a Boston-based personal trainer, strength coach, bestselling author, and the founder of www.HowToBeast.com – a popular fitness and self-improvement website for men.

"You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength." ~Marcus Aurelius

1. Don't Let Growth become a Drug

Whenever we embark on our personal growth journies, it is easy to allow growth to become a drug. It is easy to get addicted to the surges of growth without ever stopping to appreciate them or stopping to realize that they are becoming a crutch.

While constant and never ending growth is a wonderful thing, it can also become how we deal with issues in our lives.

Struggling at work? Just go to the gym!

Relationships suck? Just build your business and ignore it.

Growth is good, just make sure that you focus on making small changes overtime and don't allow it to consume you.

2. Presence Destroys Anxiety

If you are suffering from anxiety, you are really suffering from lack of presence. Take a few deep breaths, pause, reflect, smile, you will be amazed at how much a little active meditation can change the way you feel about things.

3. Balance is Key

Life is a juggling act, and you have to learn to balance things out to succeed.

It doesn't matter if you have millions if your health is in the shitter. It doesn't matter if you are shredded as hell if you can't get and keep a girlfriend, and it really doesn't matter if you are sleeping with beautiful women if you have no money and no future outside of meaningless one night stands.

You need to learn to balance all areas of your life, starting with health and relationships. If you can master those two, the money will eventually come, and it's a lot easier to be broke whenever you have good health and great people around you to help, then it is to be rich and have poor health and bad friends.

4. Share Your Struggles

You must learn to share the struggles you are facing. You have to confide in people that you trust who can asses things honestly for you, help you when you fall down, and admit that they have probably faced the same thing.

Burderns are easier to carry when they are shared, and learning to speak honestly with people you trust will take a huge weight off of your shoulders.

5. The Key to Success is Self-reliance

No matter what you are doing in life, you have to cultivate self realiance. If you cannot be happy with yourself whenever you have nothing, you will not be fulfilled when you have everything.

Learn to love being you, to pursue things yourself, and not to base your validation off of the number of 0's in your bank account or the girlfriend you have, or the business you are runing.

All those things can be taken away from you, but short of a terrible disease, your identity cannot.

1. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

2. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

3. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant

http://www.howtobeast.com/

Next Steps

We're on a mission to impact a million men with powerful life changing content. If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends on your preferred social network on the left. I spent a ridiculous amount of time creating this article for you and with your support, we can impact the world together.

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.