Self-Improvement

The Daily Man-Up

August 7, 2020 Leave a Comment

No porn.

The programming: Indulge your hedonistic desires to your heart’s content. It’s normal, healthy and free.

Except… It’s not normal. The monkey brain wasn’t made for the world of on-demand, high-def, infinite-variety porn that can be delivered straight into the eye sockets of anybody with a working internet connection.

Porn, like compulsive gambling and spree shopping, is an extreme example of the brain’s reward system being highjacked by an exaggerated version of a naturally healthy stimulus. Just as the gambler needs to keep pulling that lever to get their dopamine fix, so do porn addicts learn to blunt themselves into docile submissiveness with their habit.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 6, 2020 Leave a Comment

Stop multitasking.

The programming: Rapidly flick from one screen to the next. Notifications popping up to tell you about everything, all the time. Answer emails while walking to the coffee shop. Check your social media during the lecture. It all feels super-productive, but multi-tasking crushes productivity, increases frustrating, and saps your energies. A day spent multitasking is a day wasted. A life spent multitasking is fractious and ineffectual.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 5, 2020 Leave a Comment

(photo: @jens_johnsson)

Displace digital from its central role in your life.

The programming: Look at your phone. Look at your TV. Look at your computer. Answer this message. Respond to this prompt. Look here. Look here. Look here.

In the attention economy, your time and headspace are more valuable than ever — which has spawned a massive ecosystem of profit-driven companies who compete for it. Unguarded, you’ll find yourself doing their bidding — clicking, tapping and swiping as life goes by.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

Be purposeful about digital

The programming: Turn to a screen whenever you need something. Anxious? Upset? Lonely? Bored? The screen has what you need. Paw at the screen like it’s a slot machine. Trigger those hits of dopamine. Relish your superiority. It’s fine to take a spin on the hamster wheel of impulse gratification every once in a while. Where it kills you is when it becomes a way of life. When your every waking moment is filled with Instagram binges, and little tappy games, and refreshing your news apps, and texting friends, then — that’s where your dreams die.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 3, 2020 Leave a Comment

start small

Start Small

I’ve noticed on the internet that people literally want to change their lives overnight. That’s not the way things work.

It’s like being able to bench 100lbs and expecting to bench 1000lbs the next day. It takes time.

Don’t have an all or nothing mentality.

A few years ago I started meditating. I told myself, “I’m going to meditate 30 minutes a day!”

That’s challenge.

For the next six months I’d only hit my goal maybe 5 times a month, and I’d keep beating myself up.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 29, 2020 Leave a Comment

theodore roosevelt

Decades ago, Theodore Roosevelt called his fellow Americans to embrace the strenuous life. He called for them to seek struggle and to avoid ease. He saw that life, not only success, is found in a strenuous life, and that death and a life wasted is found and created in an easy life.

To truly live a successful life, one filled with action, purpose and growth, we have to gravitate toward, and embrace, pain and struggle. We have to push ourselves beyond what we can currently accomplish, so we can accomplish greater things tomorrow.

To avoid the struggle is to be ignorant of not only the battle being waged by an unseen enemy in our lives, but to avoid life.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 17, 2020 Leave a Comment

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.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 16, 2020 Leave a Comment

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!

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The Daily Man-Up

July 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

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.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 7, 2020 Leave a Comment

minimum days

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.

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