Any progress is good progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can’t edit a blank page etc. Don’t expect to go from a lazy, unstructured layabout to Mr efficient marathon running supersoldier overnight, over a week, over a month, hell even over a year – this is setting (often deliberately) unrealistic expectations for yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment.
Life Advice
The Daily Man-Up
If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the way it is.
Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.
The irony is that if you choose the healthy route, the pain will soon turn into pleasure. The pain is the signal!
The Daily Man-Up
Positively reframe situations. Instead of looking at the gym as a place of sweat and pain, look at it as a place for strengthening the body and mind.
Instead of looking at a job interview as a torturous exercise in awkward silences, humble bragging, and sycophantism, look at is as an opportunity to improve the way you project yourself, fortify mental resilience, and potentially enter a fulfilling career.
The Daily Man-Up
Never stop growing. Never rest on your laurels. Be proud of past accomplishments, but understand that you’re forever a work in progress, and always be eager to continue refining yourself.
The Daily Man-Up
If you want to make working out a habit, have minimum days.
If you’re like me, you go through phases where you want to get back into shape and try really hard at it, only to lose motivation after a few weeks or months. The only time it stuck was when I planned out what would be my “minimum day”. A minimum day is just the bare minimum of what you have to do to stay on track, but is much faster and isn’t too daunting.
The Daily Man-Up
I struggled waking up on-time my whole life. I was always envious of early-bird personalities but as hard as I tried I never was able to be one. If my alarm is by my bed (whether it is my phone or a traditional alarm) I will almost certainly hit snooze and sleep in even on important days. The best I was ever able to accomplish was setting multiple alarms on the other side of the room, but even then it was a 50/50 chance that I would actually get up. If I had an important test or appointment I had to get up for I would have to psych myself up the night before, set multiple alarms, and drink a bunch of water to ensure I would get up on time.
The Daily Man-Up
(photo: @gregoryallen)
I know the other reason you avoid meeting women is because you’re scared of bothering them. You’re ashamed that you’re going to upset them or creep them out by saying hello.
This makes you feel like approaching women is somehow fundamentally “wrong”.
That’s bullshit, though. That assumes all women are going to have a miserable time talking to you.
The Daily Man-Up
The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.
To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart.
The Daily Man-Up
“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.”
— Gaius Musonius Rufus, Fragment 51
The Daily Man-Up
Q: My IQ is at around 151 (Mensa). What can I expect to achieve in life?
You can expect to achieve absolutely nothing!
This is like saying, “I have a race car engine. How fast can I go?”
Well, buddy, you need the rest of the car, and unfortunately nature will not always match your engine with all the rest of the mechanical parts in your car. All the parts are randomly chosen and then forced to fit together.