9 Things Every Man MUST DO (not nonsensical clickbait).
When I thought about writing this list I did a little digging about other lists like this online. They’re clickbait.
No time nor thought is put into them. They’re littered with non-essential things like ‘having a threesome’ or ‘buying a luxury watch’. They’re filled with stuff, not experiences that men actually need to experience but are either lost or taken for granted in our society.
In this list you’ll only find things that men should actually do. These are things you need to do to be good at being a man or feel as though you’re actually fulfilling your role as a man.
This has nothing to do with ‘success’, as society defines it, but in feeling the value of fulfilling a role that is as old as time.
1. Hunt.
For thousands upon thousands of years, men have been hunters. We’ve went out into the wilderness, found animals, killed them, brought them back to our cave or camp and provided our tribe with sustenance.
Hunting is about more than taking a life, it’s what we have done for millennia, it’s the act of doing something yourself. Hunting is hiking on steroids. It brings you to places where the average man just doesn’t venture.
Use a bow or rifle or shotgun. Find food that’s better for you than anything you’ll find in a grocery store or at a butcher, and bring it home for your family.
On a moral level, hunters are conservationists. They maintain the balance in nature that’s been thrown off by human expansion. I’ve never been around people that love wildlife and wilderness more than hunters.
2. Procreate.
Protect, provide, procreate. At our base, that’s what we’re here for. We’re also here to create something, to give the world something of benefit, by all means, have that ‘something’ be the child you raise and teach.
As a culture, we need more fathers who stick around to raise their seeds. Be one such man. The ultimate measure of a man is the family he provides for and protects. The simple act of having a family is a vital aspect of fulfilling your role as a man. (Read This:10 Lessons Every Father Should Teach His Son)
3. Travel to a place you’re scared of.
Go to places that make you uneasy. You’ll find that, often, the uneasy was just the unknown, the unfamiliar, and once it became familiar it became enjoyable.
Theodore Roosevelt is a great example of this. He was scared of the west. So he headed to North Dakota, bought a ranch, and became a cowboy.
How did he deal with his fear? He acted as if he wasn’t afraid at all.
“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”
Act as if you’re not afraid and you shall cease to be afraid. Facing fears makes you stronger. Living a life of safety and ease makes you weaker.
It can be argued that staying safe for your entire life, never venturing beyond your zones of comfort, isn’t actually life. It’s merely existing, waiting for death in a purgatorial state.
Living, the verb, demands that you act and improve. What now brings you fear should, in time, cease to make you afraid.
4. Fix your own vehicle.
Before Youtube existed, my old man relied on the ‘For Dummies’ books. He must have had all of them.
He isn’t naturally a handy fella, but he taught himself to fix things around the house. Such has been the way of men for every generation in existence except for our most recent few.
We want everything now. When we do work around the house or on our vehicle there’s a sense of accomplishment that’s tough to replicate at work, which is, by-in-large, in an office today and devoid of the sense of accomplishment that comes with fixing something or building something with your hands.
Repairing things that belong to you teach you things that we’re seeing less and less today.
It teaches you to be patient, and to not freak out when you can’t find the solution to a problem right away. It teaches you to solve your own problems rather than pawning them off onto someone else. It gives you pride that cannot be found in much of the work we do today.
5. Build something, anything.
This goes, again, to actually doing things with your hands.
I’m as useless as they come with fixing things. So if I can do a few things, anyone can.
This summer I’m going to build the fences on either side of my house. It’s something that should last a couple decades. Having someone build them for me is an option, but the satisfaction that comes from building them myself cannot be measured.
It will take a ton of time, time that I will have to create. This is where priorities come in. I genuinely see the importance of building said fences as far greater than the money saved instead of having someone else do them. It’s not about money. Not everything is about money.
I’ll have to create the time to build the fences by working longer than normal hours and going without a day off a week for a few weeks.
The things on this list are inconvenient, which is why so few of us will actually do them. Be one of the few. (Read This:9 Ways You Can Become More Manly)
6. Get in peak physical shape.
Every man should know what it feels like to be elite. Being in truly great shape, where you combine strength, power, and endurance, enables you to do things that others cannot do.
You can go places where people can’t go. You can climb mountains, hunt animals, explore nature, and live life dangerously while everyone else is held captive by their weakness.
In life you’re essentially trying to break down barriers. The less standing between you and the life you want to lead, the better, more exciting your life is going to be, and the more successful it will be.
At least once in your life, feel what it’s like to get in impeccable shape.
7. Gallop on horseback.
One of the things I love to do when visiting a new place is to explore the countryside on horseback. I didn’t grow up on a farm and I wasn’t raised around horses, so getting on them is still something that’s new to me, but men have hunted and explored on horseback for thousands of years.
The purpose of the actual gallop as it pertains to this list, is to do something thrilling.
Going full speed on horseback on the countryside or in the foothills of the Andes like I did in Argentina, is thrilling. There’s something awesome about hopping on the back of these majestic and powerful animals. The rider has control, but not 100%, complete control, which adds to the thrill. If something pops out from the bushes, the horse is going to get spooked.
Think of something thrilling that you’d like to do, and do it. Don’t wait. It’s these little thrills that make us feel alive, whether it’s cliff diving or scuba diving or hunting in grizzly country with a bow, living isn’t meant to be boring.
When people say they feel ‘alive’ it’s usually because they’ve done something thrilling. Danger is a good thing. It should be a compass, not a deterrent.
8. Get in a fight.
Our greatest fear is death, and the cousin of that fear is bodily harm.
People who think that getting into a fight isn’t a necessary aspect of a man’s life are stupid and afraid. And yes, this is a rare instance where we can paint an entire lot with a broad stroke.
Men have been warriors far longer than we’ve been this soft, sedated, safety-obsessed lot that we’ve become.
For one, if you’ve never been in a situation that demands you fight, then you’ve never thrown yourself into daring enough situations. You also don’t truly stand for what you believe.
Fighting is barbaric, sure. It’s archaic. It’s seen as something we no longer need to do by people who call names but would never put themselves in harm’s way.
Men need to fight. You need to fight. Join a boxing gym and spar, do something that will bring you back to one of our major purposes, which is to protect and defend those we’re charged with caring for.
Please, don’t brush this one off as being Neanderthalic. When you get over this fear you’re going to be a better man for it, and not just for you, but for those around you.
9. Accomplish one massive goal.
There are massive goals that most of us treat like dreams. It may be to own a mansion or make a million dollars in a single year. Maybe it’s to travel to every country on the planet.
Who knows what it is, but we all have one that means a lot to us and our image of what accomplishment and success is. Meaning and purpose are closely linked to accomplishment. If you want to live a fulfilled life, get married, have kids, do things for others, lead others, and win.
Win at what you think is important.
This takes decades. It isn’t won by luck or chance, but persistence. In the end, it’s worth the long hours and the grit that the long journey required of us.
Acting As If
Define who you want to become, and then act as if you are him.
That’s the ‘secret’ to getting what you want in life. It isn’t easy. The guy you want to become is likely accomplished, thus, he’s a worker, he’s disciplined, he’s frugal, he knows what to invest his time and money into and what to avoid.
He’s also likely daring. He’s not obsessed with safety, like most people are. He wants adventure. He wants to feel alive.
This means you’re going to have to face your fears, which isn’t something we naturally do.
You’re going to have to take risks and train your body to be able to withstand said risks.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
Determine who you want to become, what you want to accomplish, and what your idea of truly living is; then, everything that goes against that narrative, isn’t done.
This list is about those things that you shouldn’t do if you want to become great at anything, even if that ‘great’ is becoming excellent at living well. Each of the things on this list have become commonplace, but in the life of a man who wants to be something, they shouldn’t be found.
Go through the list, determine what you can remove from your life and simply remove it. Don’t spend any more time wasted on something that holds you back from becoming the man that your dreams, goals, and passions in life demand you become.
Heck, spend not a second more thinking like the man who you’d deem a failure if we could fast forward a few decades.
Time is everything. You don’t get any more of it. Thus, having a clear cut idea of what deserves your time and attention is necessary if you want to live a flourishing life.
1. Worrying about what other people think of them, what they’re doing, what they’re pursuing.
The opinions of others shouldn’t matter in the slightest. Often times it’s another person’s weakness that makes them comment negatively on what you’re doing or what you should do.
This avoidance of the influence of others if their ideas for you oppose your own, should include advice giving as well. Be careful about asking for advice. If you genuinely want another perspective, good; however, if you’re looking for an excuse not to do what you know you have to do, don’t seek another opinion.
Deep down you know what you have to do and why you have to do it. Don’t let weak minds get in the way of who you’re trying to become and what you’re attempting to accomplish.
If you’re searching for something to talk about and something someone else is doing comes to mind, just shut up. If you feel a need to fill the void that you feel when silence is around you, keep quiet. Silence is better than gossip. Men don’t gossip.
You have too much to do to be focused on what others are doing.
Don’t be one of the people you want to avoid. Those that talk behind your back and try to tear you down. It’s a waste of your time and energy. It in no way makes you a better man, so don’t do it.
3. Envying other people.
Do not envy. Envy isn’t something that men do. We don’t look at our neighbour and wish we were them. We don’t envy what others have gotten.
You have to understand that where you are is where you deserve to be. For good or for bad you’re where you are with what you have for a reason. It’s a warranted reason.
If you want things to change, change them, don’t envy what others have done.
To take this further, understand what you have! Appreciate everything that’s good in your life. The grass is never as green as it seems on the other side of the fence. Start focusing on your life and stop worrying yourself with the things others are doing, have done, or have bought.
4. Wishing things were different.
Things are as they are. Accept them. If you cannot accept your reality, you have no hope in hell of taking the actions necessary to improve it.
To wish things were different is an utterly stupid waste of time. It puts you in the victim mentality. It makes you pity your situation. Have you ever met a man who’s doing great things, or even a guy that you respect, who pity’s himself?
Have you ever met a man you look up to who wishes his life was different?
Hell no!
Don’t be that guy. Instead, accept your reality and start working toward making it a better one. Being in a position of control is strong, to give that control over to fait, to dreams, wishes, is weak.
5. Watching filth.
You are what you watch, what you put into your brain. The crap we put into our minds is astonishing. Take porn, for example. It changes how you think about sex, what you expect from sex, and often times it takes away your desire for real sex. It’s a weird thing to watch. It shouldn’t be watched; it should be done (sex, that is). (Read This:Does Porn Have a Place in a Man’s Life?)
Be careful and purposeful about what you watch. TV or internet videos shouldn’t take up very much of your time at all. For the most part they’re a complete waste.
That being said it’s nice to relax, sit back, and laugh. Be discerning about what you watch, though. Don’t frivolously watch whatever’s on. It’s a much better use of your time to pick up a good book.
6. Spending money to impress people, anyone, especially women.
I get daily emails from guys asking about impressing women, or how to get women.
It actually has nothing to do with the lady, and everything to do with who you are, not what you’re wearing or the smooth lines you can spew. Be a man who’s going somewhere, doing something, and making something of himself and use of his time.
That is a far better way to nab your ideal lady, by becoming worthy of a great gal.
Don’t spend your time or money trying to be what you think they want you to be. It isn’t genuine. It isn’t who you are and it’s a waste of time, money, and energy in doing so.
Too many in our society today – myself included – depend on others to survive. We have butchers that trim our animals, ranchers that raise and kill our beef, farmers that provide our veggies, mechanics that fix our cars, roofers that fix our roofs, and so forth.
We’re less self-reliant than ever before. Life is pretty damn easy if you’re in the west. The point is to make it less easy. Ease creates weakness and more dependence.
It’s an odd one on the list, but it’s often a waste of your time to get others to do things for you.
In business it’s a great thing. You want to delegate the things within your business that you’re not good at. It’s better for you to become great at something, than mediocre at a lot of things. However, being a man is being independent. You have to be able to take care of your own.
8. Complaining.
Whining and complaining shouldn’t take up even a second of your day.
Change your perspective of who you are. It takes a second, but it’s something you have to do if you want to become what you want to be.
We all have an ideal, a vision of the guy we can be if only…
Well, be, don’t wish.
Become the guy you want to become by doing what he does. That means becoming more disciplined, spending more time thinking and acting and doing and less time whining and wishing and complaining.
A lot of this stuff has to do with self-awareness and then the courage to take the right action.
Be in tune with how you think. If you catch yourself being negative, if you even hear yourself thinking about complaining, stop right there and do something to change your thought process.
9. Hating.
Hate does nothing to the focus of the hate. If you hate someone or something, that hate eats away at you, it’s a cancer.
With that said, there are things that shouldn’t be tolerated. As a man, you’re often the weapon to take away the evil that should be taken away, rooted out and disposed of like any cancer.
Don’t hate, but don’t accept things as they are if they don’t fit your ideals and values, do something to change them.
10. Avoiding.
Avoidance is a waste of time.
Too many people live their life in avoidance of who they can become by ignoring what must be done.
Determine what it is you want to do, and who it is you want to become. From there, identify that massive actions that must be taken for this goal to be your reality. Do not live a life of avoidance of the hard work, the risk, the dangers that have to be faced. (Read This:4 Fears Every Guy’s Gotta Face)
The bigger your goals are, the more fears you’re going to have to face, the more work you’re going to have to do, the more risk you’re going to have to take on.
This avoidance has to be brought to a micro level as well. Don’t avoid things that need to be done, period. Don’t avoid chores. Don’t avoid fixing things in your house. Don’t avoid anything.
Just do what you’ve got to do. It’s simple. It’s something that’s becoming less frequent.
Do The Right Thing. Don’t Do The Wrong Thing.
Some things deserve your attention and effort, others don’t.
It’s simple.
You don’t need advice on what you should avoid, you just need to spend time thinking about what demands your attention. You know what you want to be, and who you want to become. Deep down you also know when you’re wasting your time.
Have the courage not to waste time.
Always be engaged in improvement, even if that improvement is recovery.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
Negative Thoughts Eat Away At the Host. They’re a Cancer.
Negative thoughts do you no good. They put you in the victim position. Not only that, they do no harm at all to the external focus of your negative thought.
If you hate someone, that hate hurts you, not them. If you’re bummed out about a situation, the situation doesn’t change, only when you change the situation or react to it in a different way will it be altered to your liking.
When you’re in the company of older generations (and studies have shown this), they tend to know what to worry about, what deserves their negative attitude, and what doesn’t. The thing is, most of the time they don’t even pay attention to things that would put them in a bad mood. There’s no time for such stupidity. If you understand that your life is inching closer to finishing, why would you think about or focus on things that make you pissed off?
This isn’t a hairy-fairy or flaky way of thinking. You don’t turn into some hippie, on the contrary, you’re not angry at anyone who disagrees with you, you’re simply too busy to focus on anything that brings you down.
We Don’t Need to Improve Upon Manliness, Nor Do We Need Its Definition to Evolve.
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One of the issues we’re having today is that we think men should evolve, well, not ‘we’, but society. They, let’s call them, think that masculinity is archaic, and that men should act more feminine. (Read This: Toxic Masculinity Isn’t Actually A Thing)
I really don’t think this is a majority, but a vocal minority of elites and academics who’ve labeled themselves as the moral authorities for our culture. Most women want a man. Most men want a real lady. We don’t want an in-betweener, something balancing a fine line between the true masculine and the feminine.
This vocal minority, however, feels that men need to be less manly, ignoring the necessity not only for a society to have the barbaric virtues that build a free society, but also the necessity for the individual to do things like work with his hands, fix things, fight good battles and act in a manful way.
The individual is our focus, it’s my focus, because if we as individuals live better, stronger, more manly lives, the society can’t help but benefit.
If more men took stronger stances on what is real and what isn’t, on what our values are and what they should be, we wouldn’t have this outpouring of political correctness, nor would we have a society that aims to raise our sons to be more feminine.
Battle, be it roughhousing with pals or competing in a competitive environment, are necessary for men to find their place in this world, and to prove themselves in the process.
We do not need manliness to evolve, not in the slightest. What we need is a bringing back of the basic values and virtues that is manliness.
Don’t forget, the Romans didn’t call it manliness, but virtus.
Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carries connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths (from Latin vir, “man”). It was thus a frequently stated virtue of Roman emperors, and was personified as a deity—Virtus.
What about that do we not need? What about being excellent, courageous, of worth and filled with character do we not currently need in our society?
Manliness isn’t something we need to change, but something we need to teach.
It is simply living a life trying to excel in a virtuous manner in all areas of life!
We don’t need to re-define manliness, what we need to do is to go back a thousand years and regain what it meant to the Romans, and still means to certain sub-cultures, like those who live in small towns or raise their own cattle.
Those who claim they have a moral authority shape their views in classrooms. They tend to hold more modern liberal views (true liberalism bore America, it is liberty and freedom, not social justice or political correctness). We need to take back the morality from this self-proclaimed authority that teaches things that produce no real morality at all.
Morality from a place of weakness isn’t of any real value.
How is strength and honor wrong?
How is having character a bad thing?
How is striving for excellence, true excellence, not the most important pursuit for any human walking this planet?
To degrade such a thing is to deny that life is a gift and that it’s your duty to use every waking minute in pursuit of giving your best back to the gift of life by becoming the best human you can become. That has to mean that, in some way, you benefit others around you, those who depend on you, and those who can benefit from your excellence.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
I heard the term ‘toxic masculinity’ for the first time only a few weeks ago.
It’s a term that didn’t make sense then, and now I know it isn’t actually a thing.
It’s a way for the weak to blame the strong, when anyone who holds a characteristic that one of these weak people blame on a devious form of masculinity to add the masculine to the problem.
Masculinity is not and can not be a problem. It is who we are.
Masculinity, and the virtues and values and even the barbaric characteristics of masculinity, built nations, it defended towns, tribes, and ways of life from other men trying to conquer new lands.
Masculinity is barbaric. That isn’t wrong. What’s wrong is blaming an evil on an entire gender, and a gender that has done a lot for this species.
I also heard the term ‘toxic masculinity’ applied to the Orlando terrorist attack, where a Muslim Extremist, who you can’t really call a Muslim, who was both gay and man at gays killed 49 innocent people in one night.
To ignore what he was – an extremely bad person – and instead blame the masculine, is weak and stupid. In trying to somehow make men feel bad for being men, you’re degrading what our boys need to become…
We need ultra masculine men. We need strong men. We need warriors, thinkers, and men who will kill when it needs to happen, not men who will cower and cry and run.
I know, most people don’t think in these terms.
Most people are level-headed and good. They see the value of the feminine and the masculine. They see the differences in the two sexes and they praise them as uniquely necessary.
Toxic Masculinity isn’t a thing. It doesn’t exist.
There are pricks, ass holes, and bad people. It has nothing to do with their gender, because the gender, the feminine or the masculine that determines a lot about who they are, is a good thing.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
For thousands upon thousands of years, men have been hunters. We’ve went out into the wilderness, found animals, killed them, brought them back to our cave or camp and provided our tribe with sustenance.
He isn’t naturally a handy fella, but he taught himself to fix things around the house. Such has been the way of men for every generation in existence except for our most recent few.
One of the things I love to do when visiting a new place is to explore the countryside on horseback. I didn’t grow up on a farm and I wasn’t raised around horses, so getting on them is still something that’s new to me, but men have hunted and explored on horseback for thousands of years.
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
Do not envy. Envy isn’t something that men do. We don’t look at our neighbour and wish we were them. We don’t envy what others have gotten.
I get daily emails from guys asking about impressing women, or how to get women.
Don’t forget, the Romans didn’t call it manliness, but virtus.
