8 Steps to Stop Being a Little Bitch
The best quote about manliness that applies to our current situation:
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
– C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”
We have a choice to make, it’s either victimhood or victory.
You can see yourself as a victim, by all means. You can pity your situation, feel bad for yourself, and live under that woe-is-me trap if you like, but you cannot be a victim and a victor, and it really doesn’t matter what’s happened to you.
In fact, there’s someone going through something far worse than what you’re going through right now or have been through in the past, and they’re getting after it. They’re choosing to control what they can and release what they cannot.
History books are filled with men who’ve overcome great tragedy to do great things.
One of the best books I’ve ever read is Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.
Frankl developed logotherapy, the theory is founded on the belief that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose; logotherapy is the pursuit of that meaning for one’s life.
He developed it while in a Nazi Consentration Camp. He discovered that those who found meaning in their suffering not only survived such a horrific period, but often found joy in moments of their days, while others died because of sorrow.
James Stockdale was shot down and captured at the beginning of the Vietnam War, then kept and tortured for seven and a half years, actually leading men and helping them survive such horrific circumstances through the practice of Stoicism.
From Wikipedia:
In a business book by James C. Collins called Good to Great, Collins writes about a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.[20]
I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.[21]
When Collins asked who didn’t make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.[21]
Stockdale then added:
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
It really doesn’t matter what you’re going through, you can endure it, break free from it, and in the cases of both aforementioned men, learn from it.
So, how do you go from victim to victor and remove that ‘little bitch’ that can reside in all of us?
1. Serve.
It’s difficult to focus on yourself and your problems if you’re serving others. Humans are designed to live in small tribes, communities of 100 max, where we all serve a purpose. If you do not serve a purpose to the tribe, you won’t have a good time within that tribe.
Service takes your mind off your own perceived issues – and that’s what they typically are, perceived – and free’s you from the trap of constantly focusing on yourself.
2. Lift heavy things.
The act of enduring pain and actually asking for more is the antithesis of being victimhood. Being a pussy means you run from pain at all cost. You hide from it. You do everything you can to avoid it, even lying and cheating and fleeing from it.
Lifting heavy weights is painful. It goes against our nature to want to remain safe and live an easy life. This desire for safety and ease, however, will leave you without meaning, purpose, and it prevents you from acquiring one of the most important attributes a man can have in life, toughness.
This may seem Neanderthalic or Barbaric, but we are barbaric. We love to fight. We like to hunt. There’s a calling within all of us to do what society doesn’t want us to do no matter how archaic it may be. We want to be wild. Training our bodies to be able to endure such desires is a must.
3. Explore.
Exploration is such a masculine trait. We, as a species and as a sex, have always longed to see what’s beyond our borders. We have a gnawing at our soul to explore the unknown.
We also all have an excuse as to why we can’t do it.
We have work, family responsibilities, and most of all, we have fear. Fear is what keeps us small. Fear is what makes the man a little bitch. It blinds our aspirations and suffocates our ambitions. Taking that first step into the unknown is crucial to your quest to stop being a pussy.
If there’s something you’re hesitant about, that makes you nervous, do it.
You can’t live any semblance of a flourishing life bound by your fears, a victim to them. It makes life, the adventurous act of exploring and going beyond what you’re certain you can do, an impossibility.
4. Stay in your lane.
You have to have a goal, a big one. Whatever that goal may be, its pursuit should take your mind off of what others are doing.
We don’t get depressed when we’re fighting something or for something. Depression is lower in lower income nations, and higher in those nations where even the poor have iphones. We compare too much. We waste too much damn time. We hold too much envy in our hearts to ever come close to our potential.
Staying in your lane is powerful. Most look outside of themselves, what they don’t have, who they are not, where they are not, and fail to accept responsibility for their own thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
You are not a victim. You are not a little bitch. You may be acting like both, but that’s a choice, the opposite choice can also be made but you have to get down to business, get down to work, and stop wishing.
Wishing opposes winning.
5. Do what you don’t feel like doing.
The essence of being a victim or a little bitch or a pussy, whatever name you want to give it, is that you don’t do what you have to do because you don’t feel like doing it.
This is what kids do.
I do this sometimes, thus, the barometer for what I should do and do, is the thing I set out to do but don’t feel like doing. We have to train ourselves to act on what should be done rather than allowing what should not be done to simply “happen”.
Too many lives just happen. Your life cannot just happen. It needs to be won.
6. Take EXTREME ownership.
This is possibly the most important action you can take on this list.
A man who takes ownership of his life and each event within it is a man.
You cannot be a victim if you’re taking ownership. It’s impossible. Few, however, take it. Most look to others to blame. They look for scapegoats and reasons for their position in life.
It doesn’t mean accepting blame either, it means finding ways in which you were responsible and accepting responsibility for the solution.
This is incredibly difficult to do, especially when there are valid reasons to blame someone or something else. An earthquake demolishes your house? You can sit and complain or take ownership about rebuilding it. The market contributes to the collapse of your company? Take ownership on its downfall and find a way to rebuild.
Your wife starts a fight about who-knows-what? Breathe, and take ownership about finding a solution.
Taking ownership of each and every area of your life is putting yourself in a position of power even while placing the blame on you. It takes guts to do this. Few will. But it is the antithesis of being a bitch.
If you actually want to stop whining and complaining and being a victim, own everything, every aspect, decision, event in your life. You can’t be a victim, oddly enough, if you’re accepting responsibility for everything.
Own your thoughts. Root out the negative ones, the ones that put you or your life down. Own your actions and your outcomes. Own your life!
Far too many have lives that are own by outside forces and are in comparison to the lives others lead. Take ownership.
7. Fight.
Yes, it’s barbaric, but that’s a good thing. We need some barbarism, some grit, some brutality in our daily lives because, gents, we are getting SOFT.
If you’ve never been punched in the face, get on that.
Our greatest fear is death, and it’s cousins, injury, pain, bodily harm, are right there with it. Often times we fear them more, and it’s so destructive to our ability to live and be men and be effective, yet it’s accepted by society, this fear of pain and brutality, as civilized.
You cannot be good at being a man and lose that wild soul that led great men to conquer and protect and provide.
Getting in the ring and going a few rounds will do a few things.
- It’ll show you that getting punched in the face isn’t the worst thing in the world and even if you get your ass kicked, you can handle it.
- Fighting isn’t an emotional thing. You don’t do it because you’re in a rage, it’s a chess game, it’s calculative. Learning to fight takes the emotion out of combat, it makes you a far more calm human, ready for whatever comes your way without having the crippling fear that usually accompanies it.
8. Practice gratitude daily.
To round the list off, gratitude takes work. For an ambitious fella like myself who takes a sadistic pleasure in thinking about where I am not in comparison to where I would like to be, I have to work at gratitude, but doing so is powerful.
Every day I take Teddy out for a walk in the morning and I thank the good Lord for things that are going on in my life. I do it verbally, so I look like a lunatic talking to myself as I walk my pup, but I need to voice that gratitude, I can’t just think it or even write it down.
I need to hear it to feel it. And man, it’s powerful. You can’t be a victim if you’re grateful for your life, even for the opportunity at living a life.
Being a little bitch, a victim, is no way to live. In fact, it’s not living, it’s being subjected to existence.
Snap out of it quickly if you ever start pitying yourself or your life or a situation.
Life happens. Stuff happens. Good and bad stuff happens to good and bad people. Own it. Do what you can and learn from it.
Get after it.
