"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."-Dr. Albert Ellis
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."-Henry David Thoreau
"When you adopt ultimate personal responsibility you give yourself a tremendous amount of power which you previously didn't have. Blaming others is especially pernicious because doing so blinds you to the actions you could take to better your circumstances. You go from a victim with no control or recourse (other than to accuse others of your misfortune), to a hero with the power to create his own destiny."-Conscious Lifestyle Design Part I
Personal Responsibility
If you're deficient in areas critical to basic functioning, then you've probably thought a lot about who or what is to blame for your failings. Why can't I stop procrastinating? Why can't I stop eating? Why can't I stop being so lazy?
From the perspective of self mastery, you'll only ever find it useful to blame four things for your shortcomings: thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and willpower. What about family, society, industry, and the government? Aren't they to blame? In a word, no. Let me explain.
I could easily write a whole series of blog post on all the ways that these entities have failed young men, but that wouldn't do anyone much good. That would only give you an excuse not to do as much as you could to improve yourself. Blaming external factors is a crutch used by the weak and chronically victimized--thus it is not fit for men.
To improve your behavior (the end goal of any rational self improvement plan), you have to look at the immediate factors that are within your control, and figure out how to start manipulating those in your favor. The great exhortation of the ancient Stoic philosophers was to begin life by distinguishing that which is within your power and that which is without.
"What then should a man have in readiness in such circumstances [hardship]? What else than this? What is mine and what is not mine; and what is permitted, and what is not permitted to me." Epictetus
To begin improving, you must believe (or at least act as if you believe) that you're fully in control. The basic message of modern, science based psychotherapy is simple: You are solely responsible for your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and the more conscious control you exert over your own lifestyle, the stronger your position will become.
Through mindlessness you've allowed self defeating behavioral patterns to become deeply entrenched, and these entrenched patterns form the basis of your current weakness. Therefore, the project of behavior modification has as it end goal a new lifestyle more congruent with your identity as a man.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."-Aristotle
Thoughts, feelings, and willpower are three of the most important inputs that lead to behavior. We will examine each of these inputs (in separate posts) to see how you can modify them in your favor.
The Way We Are
"When you think a thought it structures your world." Dr. Steven C. Hayes
Reflect for a moment on how many sources of maladaptive beliefs indoctrinate you on a daily basis--television, the internet, video games, movies, and the news media all feed narratives and ideologies everyday--most of which are detrimental to development of a strong character. Why? Because they all reinforce a hedonistic lifestyle, and they're all sources of immediate gratification and escape.
Through the impact of all of these sources of misinformation you have unwittingly indoctrinated yourself into a defective belief system. The following is a quote from David Wong, editor of Cracked.com, from an article titled How the Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World:
"The world demands more. So, so much more. How have we gotten to adulthood and failed to realize this? Why would our expectations of the world be so off? I blame the montages. Five breezy minutes, from sucking at karate to being great at karate, from morbid obesity to trim, from geeky girl to prom queen, from terrible garage band to awesome rock band.
In the real world, the winners of the All Valley Karate Championship in The Karate Kid would be the kids who had been at it since they were in elementary school. The kids who act like douchebags because their parents made them skip video games and days out with their friends and birthday parties so they could practice, practice, practice." David Wong
How many of you have actively gone out and searched for new and better beliefs? Even those of you that have been failing for years how many of you have seriously tried to change your mindset? I would venture to say that not very many of you have. Why? Because of entitlement. You feel like you shouldn't have to. You feel like rewards should magically come down from heaven just because of who you are.
If lesson number one was that you're responsible for your failings, then lesson number two is that nobody owes you a thing. You must be willing to submit yourself to the painful process of improvement to increase the odds in your favor. Because increasing the odds in their favor is all anyone can do.
The Way Forward
Now is the time to change all that. Now is that the time to search out and adopt beliefs that will strengthen you and give you the power and motivation you need to do what a man needs to do in the world. I'm not writing about repeating fluffy self affirming phrases to yourself such as I'm okay, I'm worthwhile, I'm lovable--that isn't going to do you any good. There is no rational basis for you to believe those positive self-affirmations when everything in your life shows that you are deficient.
I'm writing about the core beliefs that actively shape your worldview. These beliefs are the ones that you should target for change.You need to engage in a project of belief realignment. That is, the process of introducing new a whole new mindset to take place of the older maladaptive one. The current belief structure you have in your mind has failed you, and its time for a new one--one that empowers you and compels you forward toward action.
You've already begun that process by reading the first post in this series. The fundamental tenets of the philosophy you should seek to find and adopt are as follows:
- It empowers you as an individual, and helps you focus on ways that you could be improving right now.
- It takes into account your identity as a man and as a human being
- It gives you a rational way to deal with the inevitable pain and discomfort of change
- If focuses your mind on productive endeavors that benefit yourself and others
The process of changing strong underlying beliefs, and the habits of mind that they generate begins by saturating your mind with new, useful beliefs. Right now, your mind is chock full of the wrong stuff--stuff that's been reinforced by years failure. The heart of the issue is that you have taken the wrong thoughts to be literally true.
What you need to do then is very simple. Disrupt your beliefs! How? By picking up everything on becoming a better person that fits with the criteria outlined above, reading it, taking notes on it, and integrating it into how you behave every day. By degrees you will begin to notice an enormous change in the way you see the world.
The key is to fire off the right neurons over and over again so that they form the basis of your new beliefs. Rather than the weak and pathetic beliefs that currently haunt your mind, your new automatic thoughts will reflect correct principles of action.
How do people learn any Martial Art such as Boxing, Wrestling, or Jiu-Jitsu? They practice the movements involved in their art over and over again until the moves become second nature. The same is true with beliefs, you must practice them over and over again (by reading about them, writing about them, and contemplating them) before they begin to take root.
Short Recommended reading (articles and speeches):
6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person
Self Made Men by Frederick Douglass
The Common Denominator of Success
Short Recommended Reading (books):
A New Guide to Rational Living
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Discourses and Selected Writing
Meditations