Why Young Men?

This advice is targeted at young men for a reason; as we get older we CAN change, but it is extremely hard to do so; the habits we ingrain in ourselves reinforce themselves over time, making change, either positive or negative change, hard to accomplish. Since I am a man. I write from a man's perspective, however, some of the basic concepts I will discuss, especially in the three types of strength, apply to women as well.

So it is BETTER to build your habits and your being from the ground up, and towards a goal, at the beginning of your life rather than to try and change course when your rudder has been barnacled into a steady course.

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

That doesn't mean we senile old bastards CAN'T benefit from this advice, only that it is going to be harder to generate the changes in thinking and doing than had we put ourselves on this path while we were building who we were.

The Three Kinds of Strength

• Physical Strength
• Mental Strength
• Emotional Strength
• Social Strength will be discussed as an aspect of the other three Strengths in combination.

Life is hard. Buddha was right in one thing. Suffering comes from desire (start here to learn about Dukkha, then read this). But rather than trying to avoid desire, we need to have the strength to withstand suffering when we don't achieve or desire and to sustain ourselves in the quest to obtain our desires. Creating "safe spaces" to avoid pain just doesn't cut it if you want to succeed in life. Success means not hiding from life by shutting it out, or building elaborate "philosophies" to rationalize hiding from life (as do nihilists or Satanists).

There are many other kinds of success in life; but success is going to be defined by YOU, and whether you are happy within yourself.

So let's look at the three kinds of strength, and how they work with each other. Physical strength, mental strength, and emotional strength support each other. Being strong in one area but weak in another will not sustain you when you need to endure and win.

And let's face it, life is competition. Whether it's for a job, a contract, a woman, or social position, you need to be able to compete to win. Sometime, you are only competing against yourself. SOME people don't need to win a lot to be happy; that is something you will know for yourself. You will also know if you are rationalizing away losing to pretend to be happy. The way to win is to be BETTER than any potential opposition regardless of the situation...and yes, sometimes the opposition is nothing more than the situation itself. Being BETTER means being STRONGER.

This means you need to understand strength and learn to build it in yourself with good habits.

Physical Strength

By Lekegian, G. [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Physical strength is the most obvious form of strength, and people easily confuse it for the only kind. Yet there are many well muscled men who are willful idiots or moral cowards. Those men never win.

Even so, being in the best shape you can be is necessary. You feel better, women are easily more attracted to you, and you can do MORE.

It is very important to know that you don't need to be bulkier or faster than other men...unless your desire is to win boxing matches or foot races. You DO need to feel good and do more.

Physical strength is going to help you fight illness, fatigue, and stress.

So HOW do you build the physical part of your strength? YOU need to research this for yourself, as your own body type and specific situation is not mine. Google is your friend (as long as you're not researching anything politically related). One of the facets of Mental Strength is the ability to research, and this is a good opportunity for you to understand how the Strengths complement each other...in this case, you use your Mental Strength to help you build your Physical Strength.

Since I am such a great guy ;>, I'll give you a link to get started:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/

Components of Physical Strength

• Exercise
• Diet
• Sleep
• Biochemical balance (i.e, vitamins etc)

Mental Strength

By Pictofigo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

You don't have to be a genius to be smart. What you DO have to do is to be able to think things out for yourself. If not, if you let other people give you THEIR versions of information and interpretation, you are a slave, not a man. Even if...hell, ESPECIALLY if they are doing that for "your own good". Let's face it, as life is competition, it is much easier to tell your opponent that losing is good for him than to just kick his ass (rhetorically or realistically speaking). Look at all the suckers that turn to leftist messiahs rather than seek to better their own situations.

Secondly, when you are in a position where you must fend for yourself, it is the ability to think that will direct your Physical Strength in the right direction.

The underlying base of Mental Strength is the ability to think. See my series on critical thinking for an overview on critical thinking processes. Although that series is directed at government, the processes are the same for your own life.

Components of Mental Strength

• Knowledge - the more the better
• Critical Thinking
• Pattern Recognition
• Logic
• Research Ability

Emotional Strength

That Stoic sumbitch Marcus Aurelius
By Luis García, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1131163

It isn't necessary to be a Stoic, or even to learn about Stoicism, to understand Emotional Strength. The point of Emotional Strength is that you direct the use your Physical Strength and Mental Strength in the way that is best for YOU, AND that you STAY on that course.

There are three main components of Emotional Strength:

• Know Thyself
• Personal Morality
• Emotional Control (self-discipline)

If you don't know what YOU want, you will never succeed as you constantly change course or "experiment"
If you fumble through life never knowing what is right or wrong, you will lurch from bad situation to bad situation.
If you panic or get triggered, you will not be able to direct your Physical Strength and Mental Strength to achieve your goals.

Let's concentrate these ideas into one realization:
if you let other people change your course, either though domination of you, controlling your information, or in throwing you off your game, YOU WILL LOSE

Stoicism and mediation are just two ways of developing Emotional Strength, you can build your Mental Strength by researching which methods work best for YOU.

Social Strength and other Implications of cross-Strength interplay

Humans are social animals. While this greatly annoys me as an anti-social kind of guy, it would be weak of me in terms of both Mental Strength (in not collecting or analyzing this data) and Emotional Strength (by not admitting the fact and adjusting my own behavior to adjust to that fact).

Your Social Strength is very important to you; it provides you with a job (try getting a job when you insult the interviewer over and over again during the job application - trust me, it doesn't work!), with long term relations with women, and can provide you with support to your Emotional Strength.

Now realize that your Social Strength is a result of your other levels of Strength. If you are a strong and knowledgeable person that does not shit over everybody else, people WILL like you and want you to be around. Build yourself and they will come.

It is of utmost importance that you know that sociopaths are very capable of building Socuial Strength while having the antithesis of Personal Morality because their Emotional Self Control is very high - they can manipulate folks w/o it affecting their own behavior via guilt...DON'T BE A SOCIOPATH

Let's move on...

The interplay between Strengths builds on combinations of Strengths.

• Knowing how to fight requires a great deal of Mental Strength and Physical Strength. In recognizing that you can fight (and not just with fists but with ALL methods of possible warfare) gives you confidence and adds to your Emotional Strength. With the proper Emotional Strength, you can back out of unnecessary fights and not be ashamed or or guilty about being a "coward". While engaging in unnecessary fights might be fun, it can risk you life and livelihood.

• The "Red Pill" is a quasi-philosophy about man's relationship with woman. If you are sitting her saying that the Red Pill is sexist,without having studied it yourself. then you have engaged in willful Mental Weakness. A healthy sex life contributes to a winning life, and healthy relations with women is key to that healthy sex life. Attracting women requires that you be the best man you can be in terms of the Strengths. See https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/ to study the "philosophy" in terms of what the folks doing it say, instead of ONLY listening to what it's critics claim. Critical thinking is the KEY component of Mental Strength

Conclusion

Life is hard. It is harder when you are weak, stupid, and wishy-washy. Don't be a whiner, be a winner...or at least learn to understand WHY you lose while you correct those failures and continue to build your Strength. Each form of Strength supports and contributes to the building of the other Strengths.

Rome wasn't build in a day, and if you're sitting in the campus safe room playing with crayons and counting micro-aggression, you are a damn loser. If you start by working on yourself, you stop being a loser in absolute terms. Continue to build, and one day will will be happy with who you are and what you have accomplished.

If you build the habits and tendencies of success early in life, they will become part of you.