By far, the most common question I get is what should I work on first? As men, we’re consumed with efficiency and the most bang for the buck right?
Here’s the seven most important things that you have to get a handle on. I know that if you get these seven things in order you’re going to feel the highest degree of freedom and the most powerful than you ever have before.
One important thing to remember as you go through this list is that, at any point in time, you’re not going to be at the highest level on all of these. So don’t feel discouraged or hard on yourself if several of these or most of these are all out of whack. Unfortunately, that’s very normal in this day in age. In fact, once you start working on this, if you have half of these under control or functioning at a high level you’re doing better than 90% of men.
But for now, most of us are a mess, and that’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re reading this—To Make Your Life Powerful and so that you can feel powerful in all that you do.
Remember, life is a journey and you’re getting on your way. Every day, you’re going to grind away at everything that’s been holding you back. That’s the work. That’s the journey.
So let’s get to it. Keep in mind, this list is fluid and dynamic. It ebbs and flows with the tide depending on what’s going on with your life.
Having said that, I’ve ordered them in what I think is the priority that you should address them because each one of these will support everything below it. It doesn’t mean that you have to have each one of these as a prerequisite for the other but I think things do come easier if you address them in this order.
Who you are – Values, Boundaries, Likes, Dislikes
All powerful men know exactly who they are. What they stand for, what they allow in their lives, and what they won’t stand for.
Who you are is going to be the most important thing that you will ever investigate in your life. That’s why it’s the only thing we address in my “Find Your Balls” live workshop. We spend two full 12 hour days digging in deep into who you are so you can let it all hang out.
Your values, boundaries, likes, and dislikes are at the very core and foundation of who you are as a man. It is the most important thing that you will ever spend time on in personal development. Everything else in your life will revolve around this. Without this piece, which is why so many men fail at personal development and relationships, men have no sense of who they are. In fact, most men, don’t even know where to begin when it comes to who they are so let me give you a quick list of questions to get you started. This is a very small sample of questions you need to know the answers to.
- What type of life do you want? What type of environment do you want to live in (city, country, mountains, ocean, etc.)
- What’s your work-life balance? What type of work environment do you want to work in? What type of vacations do you like?
- What type of woman do you want to meet?
- What do you want your relationship/marriage to look like? (Yes, this is different than the type of woman you want to date.)
- What does your ideal family look like? Kids? How many? Who’s bringing in the income? What type of father do you want to be? What type of husband do you want to be?
Did you get stuck or did it all come easy for you? If your brain doesn’t hurt a little, you’re probably not doing it right. Just kidding, but these are big questions and just the beginning of discovering who you are. Leave a comment and let me know what you discovered!
Who are your five closest guy friends?
- I’m sure you’ve heard this before in a number of different areas, but your five closest friends are either going to act as an anchor and hold you down in life or act as a hot air balloon and lift you up.
Ideally, these men are live close to you so you can interact with each other, but the reality of the situation is that quality man are rare and can be difficult to find. More than likely, if you have them, you made them early in life and you’re all scattered around the globe or country. Mine happen to be all over North America, but they’re top notch guys and I haven’t found any better.
So what do you look for in the five closest friends that you have?
These are guys that will call you on your shit. Lift you up when you’re down. Tease you when you’re strong. And most importantly, men who you love and respect.
Don’t confuse the five with the guys that you play sports with, your drinking buddies, or your club and bar buddies. These are men who are deeply invested in you and you’re deeply invested in them. You just happen to drink, hang out, play sports, or play video games together too.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t have five quality friends. Heck, don’t feel bad if you don’t have one yet. That’s okay, now it’s time to pay attention to who you hang around. Pay attention to who you listen to. Pay attention to who you watch because their influence is more powerful than you can ever imagine.
Game on.
- Harnessing your feelings and emotions. Like fire, your feelings and emotions can destroy and they can fuel life. It’s all in your hands.
This is a difficult one for most men. Most men haven’t had any training or been given tools or techniques to manage their emotions, their anger, and their despair.
We’ve never been taught what to do when we’re disrespected. Am I supposed to punch the guy when I’m angry or walk away?
What to do when a girl rejects us. Am I supposed to ignore it? Or go home depressed and jerk off to porn?
This is one of the most important ones. Your feelings and emotions, even If you deny that you have them, constantly and consistently control your behavior. Most men use substances and activities to ignore and deflect their feelings and emotions. Whether it’s pornography, alcohol, weed, or video games. We find some way to cope.
Avoidance also also shows up in the form of fear, no self-confidence, no self-respect, and no self-esteem. We often confuse the lack of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem as an internal psychological issue, but in reality it’s a relationship to your feelings, thoughts, and emotions. You’re afraid of being judged. You’re afraid of being ridiculed. You feel ashamed. You feel guilty. You feel angry. And you’re terrified of what it means if someone “rejects” you.
Master your feelings and emotions and all of that crap washes away to reveal the Powerful Man that was always inside you.
- Your body
- This one should be obvious. Your body is your temple. I’m not the best at taking care of myself. I know how difficult it is to wake up super early and have to go to the gym. But as a man, if you’re not taking care of your body, everything else is going to fall apart. This isn’t just about working out. It’s about eating properly. It’s about getting sleep. It’s about getting enough sex. These are all things you’re going to have to evaluate for yourself to know what’s enough. How long you can go without any of those things being at an optimal level. Because you’re never going to be able to maintain a high level of everything especially if you’re working on the business or involved in anything else that you’re committing your life too.
There will be times where you don’t get enough sleep, where you don’t eat healthy, where you’re not having enough sex, and where you don’t work out.
As men, we hold so much tension in our bodies and if we don’t take care of it, it will absolutely fall apart taking everything down around it. As Under Armor says, “We must protect this house!”
I’ll do a separate post later on the healthy habits that I use but there are blogs upon blogs dedicate to maintaining a healthy body. It is essential for you to dedicate yourself to researching what works for you.
- Your purpose
- First of all, don’t freak out if you don’t know your purpose and also recognize that your purpose can change in different stages of your life. But oftentimes, our purpose will be connected to something you’re avoiding. What binds us will set us free.
David Deida talks about purpose as The Guiding Light of a man’s existence. Beyond his woman, beyond his kids… his Purpose will be why he’s on the planet at any given moment and these purposes can change from year to year, decade to decade, life transition to life transition. You know you’ve found your purpose whenever you feel energized and fueled to be working on it no matter what. And when you’re not working on it, your thoughts are consumed by it.
The easiest way to find your purpose is to just start trying stuff. You’ll know if you like it or not. You’ll know if it kindles the fire inside you. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. If you don’t know your current purpose, then that’s your purpose. Find it. We’ll dedicate a post to this shortly.
- Your finances
- This is always been a sore spot for me. I’ve never been great with my finances. I got myself into a lot of debt, a lot of credit card trouble especially whenever I was in my nice guy mode. I used to spend a lot of money trying to make my women “feel loved” and I used to spend a lot of money trying to help my friends “feel loved” by buying things that I couldn’t afford for them. That was back in my college years. It took me several years to dig out of that debt hole.
Your finances are going to be a huge source of all your frustration, stress, and turmoil. That’s why you have to get a handle on this and practice great financial habits. Learn how to use a budget. Learn how to manage your money. Learn how your limiting thoughts, beliefs, and strategies can often show up in your financial area and that they’re symptoms of larger issues.
Maybe you spend money to manage your emotions. Maybe you hoard money because you grew up really poor, or spend money because your parents were irrational tight wads.
All of us grew up with a financial thermostat that we get built into us from our parents and from our surroundings. Basically, when your finances hit that thermostat line, your mental financial thermostat will try to keep you at that same financial level.
It doesn’t care about anything else besides maintaining that line. So unconsciously, you may piss away your money on dumb stuff. You may do this by making bad financial decisions. Whatever the case, you’ve got a nip it in the bud. This is a good area where most people need to spend some time and resources to invest in good powerful coaching to get beyond their money limitations.
What’s your financial picture look like? How would you like it to look?
- Women – And here’s the big Yahtzee of them all. Women. If you have one, you know you have your hands full. If you don’t have one, you know you waste so much time, effort, and mental energy trying to get one.
Unfortunately, no one teaches us how to get a woman, how to date, or how to maintain an awesome relationship. So we scramble on our own trying to figure it out. Happy relationships escape us, and most examples we see are how not to be in relationship and how terrible relationships are. In fact, most people think marriages are terrible because they practice terrible marriage habits. Very few realize that if you practice great marriage habits, then you’ll have a great marriage. Great marriage habits aren’t easy though, and that’s why most people have crappy marriages and why most marriages end in divorce, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s get back on track. If you’re single, then more than likely, you’re struggling to find a woman and its consuming your thoughts and time.
Remember when I said finding out who you are was the most important thing you could do for youself? This is why. When you know who you are, you no longer have to chase after women. The right high quality woman will want to chase you.
For most men the idea of them being the prize is so foreign to them you’ll get the confused puppy dog look from them when I mentioned it. So let me say it again, you could be The prize that women chase.
Once you get that point, I’ll show you how to tell if she’s worth your time all on the first date, but first, you’ve got to know who you are.
So if you’re someone in a relationship already, are you happy and fulfilled? Does your relationship energize you or does it deplete and drain you?
One of my most common questions I get asked is, “Should I stay with her?” and more often than not if you’re asking this question, I always tell them “No” you need to leave her.
1) It’s because you haven’t figured out who you are and so you’re wasting her time and yours. And you probably see her frustrated with this too because you have no sense of who you are and she feels that, and deep down it’s driving her mad and she doesn’t know why.
2) If you’re asking that question and you do have a sense of who you are, then it’s usually because you’re being weak, whiny, and spineless since you can’t make a decision because you’re afraid to hurt her, but you’re not afraid to waste her time. Or you’re more than willing to get what’s great for you like great sex even though you know deep in your deepest heart that she’s not the one. So do the manly thing and break up with her and set her free.
This is where they usually start defending her or arguing about why he should stay with her and I can truly find out what type of man he is.
Man, I kind of got side tracked didn’t I? Women will do that. Even just talking about them in our lives does it. We’ll revisit this another time.
For now, it boils down to the questions: Does the thought of women bring about fear, anxiety, frustration, or does thinking about your woman bring you ecstasy, happiness, and joy?
So that’s it, that’s the seven things you’ve got to right your ship.
Take a look at each of these and give it a current rating and what would it take to move the rating up just a notch or two.
Tracking it is the only way for you to improve in logical steps and make sure to not overwhelm yourself. Just pick one or two areas that you want to work on and stay focused on them. Pay attention to them.
We’ll spend more time talking about each one of these as well because they’re all exceptionally important and things that you definitely have to have a handle on. And remember, with each one of these, you could spend an entire lifetime working on just that one.
Your goal is to be the best that you can so be realistic about yourself. You’re going to need a lot of patience, one foot forward. One at a time and you’ve started your journey.
Drop a comment and let me know what you discovered about yourself or what areas you’re ready to work. I’ll see you out on the trial my brother.