Wanted to touch on a couple of different topics today, hence the title. We’ve talked about struggle here before on the site. How struggle is essential to becoming a man and developing masculinity itself. It’s by fighting and striving against “problems” or challenges that you become stronger, wiser, and more of a man.
Masculinity is not something that can be made in a safe padded environment where consequences are separated from actions. Where someone comes in and saved you from the harshness of the world. With the modern world more and more becoming a sort of overprotective mother its no wonder that masculinity is suffering and all the associated effects that come from that.
As Jack Donovan has said masculinity is not needed in the modern world like it was in the old, but just because something isn’t “needed” for survival or even what passes for “success” in the modern world does not mean that it’s not wanted or desired or that in another way it’s still not needed.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
Is Masculinity “Needed”?
You could technically survive without your arms and legs. There are ways that you could continue your life and have someone take care of you into old age. Technically for “life” your arms and legs are not “needed”. However just because they’re not “needed” doesn’t mean that they’re not wanted or highly desired. I’d say it’s the same with masculinity. Though you don’t need masculinity to necessarily make money or survive in the modern world, your life’s still a lot better when it’s there.
I think when we break it down and we look at many of the problems facing modern males whether it’s lack of masculinity, depression, nihilism, and a sense of apathy there’s not going to one cure for all of it. There are too many different societal, cultural, hormonal, and other factors to say that any one single thing is going to be the answer.
As a matter of fact most of the 1,300+ articles written on this site are geared to answering those problems and giving men a better life. However if I had to boil it down to one single thing that would help males solve these problems and live lives that are worth living, lives that they want to live I’d say that struggle and pursuing a worthy goal is the number one thing there. Two things that go hand in hand as if any goal is worthy then you’ll have to struggle from it.
Is Struggle The Secret To Happiness?
Maybe not entirely but it’s something and it depends on your definition of struggle. By struggle I mean facing and overcoming opposition. That doesn’t mean winning every time but rather, as cheesy as it sounds, doing your best. Striving with all that you have and all that you are and becoming more through the process of struggling towards a worthy goal. Earl Nightingale said something similar, I think it was his definition of success but works here too.
Find something worth struggling for. If you don’t know anything I’d say you’re wrong. Are you yourself not worth struggling for? Not worth fighting for? Not worth building yourself into something better? Find a goal and work towards it. Understand that the achieving of a worthy goal is something that is made up of daily actions. Don’t worry about long term/short term goals so much and worry about the big goal that you have.
And the daily habits that you need to cultivate to accomplish it. What do you have to do day by day, week by week, to reach that goal you have. Success is made up of daily habits. That’s where your focus should be. You should have struggles of one sort of another each and every day.
You’ll go insane without.
Struggle…
Is more important than I think anyone gives it credit for. As humans we were made to struggle in some form. To work towards things day in and day out until we bring it about. Without struggle man doesn’t work right, like a car without gas. Find worthy struggle and bring it into your life each and every day. Of course there’s good struggle and bad struggle, struggle that leads you where you want and struggle that does not.
Arguing with your wife everyday and working overtime on salary pay for your boss are both examples of bad struggle. Having a tough workout and solving a problem in your own business or finishing the planting of a crop those are all examples of good struggle.
This is already running long so don’t have the time to point out everything about good and bad struggle but I think you can understand the gist of it. And that’s all you need. Court good struggle and have it be part of your life day in and day out. Not saying you have to slay a dragon everyday but you do have to put in struggle of one sort or another.
It’s the best thing for you.
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
