I’ve always thought about that question…

It’s always, at least partially, been on my mind. But, for the most part, I’ve always thought about it in the wrong way.

I’ve always thought in terms of ‘what’.

That is, what I want to accomplish, achieve, what I want my legacy to be, what I want to have in my life, and so on.

I’ve been destination focused, but that’s not really who I want to be, is it?

Who I want to be is how I act, what I do, who I am, how I think.

We have to have​ an aspirational image of who we want to be. After all, what we want is dependent on who we are.

And while we may not completely control what we want, we most surely control who we are and all that that entails.

And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Who you are is not dependent on how you were raised, who you were raised by, the religion of philosophy you grew up following, your race, age, anything, really.

Sure, they influence who you are, but who you are is who you decide to be, both overall, and in the moment, by the thoughts you choose to think, the actions you choose to take, and the desires you choose to pursue.

Individual interests aside (and these are important, we’ll come back to them in a bit), there are universal laws that govern who we should be.

Sure, we’ve become a society that prizes our own individual ‘truth’ rather than the truth.

We’ve pitched desires as truths when they’re mostly distractions.

We’ve turned away from these universal truths because, in part, they’re difficult to follow, yet following them leads to a good life and avoiding them leads to a bad life filled with waste and regret.

What are these universal laws?

Find them anywhere, in any ancient philosophy or religion.

They’re the Ten Commandments, the tenets of Stoicism or Confucius. They’re found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

They’re the ‘don’t steal, work hard, don’t covet thy neighbor’s anything’ rules that, we’ve been told, are restrictive, oppressive, and unnatural.

I’d argue that they’re completely natural.

That is, they help us live in accordance with our higher nature.

Your nature isn’t sleeping in and avoiding work. Your nature isn’t thinking small and getting in petty arguments.

Your nature is being good, good to yourself, your soul, and other people.

Wisdom that’s less than 1,000 years old isn’t old enough to know whether it works or not, and the major religions and philosophies have commonalities in how we should live…

Why?

Because it’s how we should live!

Who you want to be is found in these rules, laws, and philosophies.

You work hard, you become stronger, you take care of your body, you aren’t lazy, resentful, or envious.

From there, you apply this right behavior to your interests, and there you achieve what you want to achieve by being your best in whatever is it you do, and wherever you find yourself.

Your life should be judged, and judged by you.

Every single human on this planet is trying to figure out how to live, and to not judge whether or not you’re living correctly is to live passively, it’s to not learn.

We use the ancients as a guide, because their wisdom – like the Golden Rule – has been proven to work, not just for you, but for societies and cultures that follow these rules.

So what do you get if you don’t sleep in…

If you’re not lazy. If you work hard, if you don’t watch porn, if you don’t eat crap food, if you don’t complain and envy?

Two things: Confidence and Peace.

You cannot be confident if you undermine your higher self – who you can be if you live correctly and dare mightily.

You know what I’m talking about…

That first bite of the doughnut tastes great, but after three or four you feel like crap.

The same goes with porn, with watching TV all day, with quitting early to go have beers.

These seemingly little things wedge themselves into your life and before you know it you’re too far gone to be that man you once aspired to be.

Somehow it’s unpopular to say you should be good, you should work hard, you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps today.

It’s also no wonder we have so many problems, and people are looking to their government to solve what the community and the household once took care of.

As a man, this is a duty.

Life is short.

It’s your duty to squeeze every ounce of life you can from it.

This means working hard, getting stronger, getting tougher, and winning.

So, ‘how’ do you live rightly?

Read the Stoics, read the Bible, read Proverbs, read Confucius, Machiavelli, Aristotle, anything that helps you take control of your life and live it as best you possibly can.