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. gary@bookofszen.com
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
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 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…