Most men do not achieve their goals.
Most men don’t become happy, don’t succeed at the things that are most important to them, and do not thrive in this world.
In reality, only a few men (as few as 8%) are truly “successful” in their own eyes.
Sure, you can contort the definition of success and happiness so that you can fit into your own definition of “successful,” but let’s cut the crap.
It’s not enough to be successful in your own eyes. I know most people will tell you I’m lying, but I can’t think of anything more true.
Being successful requires other people. Your personal definition of success is likely going to be incomplete.
I want to teach you how to be truly successful, happy and have a vision for your future. Let’s talk about how you can do it.
What Is Success and How Does It Make You Happy?
Put simply, success is the accomplishment of a goal or aim.
If you decide to go for a walk and then do it, you are successful.
However, that doesn’t make you a successful person. Being a successful person requires you to be successful at small activities, over and over again. It also requires you to set worthwhile goals.
If your goal is to walk your dog every day and you do, you’ll have a happy dog, but your life won’t change very much.
This is why as a man, you must set goals that are centered around your magnum opus in this life.
Below are eight activities that you can do to improve your vision for success, happiness, and a better future.
1. Allow Yourself to Dream
Daydreaming gets a bad rap.
It’s not that bad to daydream. If anything, daydreaming is good for you.
According to research, daydreaming helps you build a vision, it helps relieve anxiety, and it just feels good. As long as you’re not addicted to daydreaming, it can be a powerful habit.
And, the truth is that when it comes to creating a vision, there is a lot of physical work that needs to be done.
We’re going to talk a lot in this article about habits that you can adopt, mindset tips and tricks, and much more.
However, you need an element of joy and creativity. You need to have some fun.
You need to allow yourself to dream and have some fun with the process of becoming more successful.
See, it should be pretty obvious that there is a lot of hard work that you need to do to have a strong vision for success, but there is also a great deal of fun work that needs to be done. You need to learn to visualize – to imagine yourself achieving things that you never would have thought possible.
Does this mean you’re guaranteed to achieve them? No. However, you can’t achieve things you don’t dream about.
2. Pull Out Your Journal
After you dream, it’s time to document the next steps.
Truth be told, all of the highly successful men that I know keep a journal.
And I know you may think that keeping a journal or a “diary” is not the most masculine of habits or activities, but this is essential for defining your goals.
It’s great to meditate, think, ponder, and manifest, but you cannot create a vision in this world if you don’t see it in front of you. The journal is the best initial habit that you can use to accomplish greater things.
There is also a lot of evidence backing the benefits of journaling.
Here are a few ways that I like to journal:
- The 10 thoughts. This is easy, and it only takes a few minutes. I just write down 10 of the things that I’m thinking about during my journaling time. At first, the thoughts are shallow and brief, perhaps about my mood or the plan for the day, but by the end, I’m very focused on big goals and ideas.
- The 4 key questions. When I do this, I just try to elaborate 50 or so words on these four questions: What am I doing today? What am I grateful for? What is going well? What needs to be improved? If you can answer these 4 questions every day, your life will change faster than you can imagine.
The thing is, when you start journaling, you won’t notice anything right away. If anything, the habit will be tedious… at first.
After months and years of journaling, the practice will become essential to your personal development and success.’
In time, it will become like the gym: you won’t want to skip a day.
3. Learn How to Navigate Failure and Success
On your journey, you’re going to experience hundreds of successes and failures.
You’ll have big wins, catastrophic losses, and everything in between.
The difference between amateurs and pros is that pros allow emotions to come between them and their work. They let failure impact their mood, and they become overly elated when they experience success.
You’re allowed to have these feelings, but you cannot allow them to impact your relationship with yourself, other people, and your craft.
When you fail, learn how to build yourself back up so that you can keep trying.
When you succeed, learn how to not become overly cocky.
What makes a man strong is his ability to persist, regardless of circumstances.
What separates men from children is the ability to negate their emotions from their day-to-day behavior. They work with the same diligence when they’re killing it as they do when they’re in agony.
Having the ability to navigate through your highest highs and lowest lows is what gives you the ability to find a clear vision for your future.
4. Stop Hiding Your Truth From the World
I already mentioned journaling, but this goes a bit deeper than that.
I don’t just want you to write down and manifest a better future for yourself, I also want you to get to know yourself.
I want you to stop holding back and stop trying to please everyone around you.
Start living your life, not the version of your life that other people want you to live. Stop letting resistance, anxiety, and other people tell you what to do and how to live.
How do you do this?
You build a strong enough magnum opus and self-image so that no matter what you experience, you have the strength to keep going.
Learn to live unapologetically and authentically. As you do, you’ll develop a vision for the future that you can truly take advantage of.
Success and happiness start when you stop lying to yourself.
Most men never make it that far.
5. Create a Vision Board
My vision board completely changed my life.
I guess it sounds kind of corny, but I like to think of the vision board as “journaling on steroids”. There’s just something powerful about being able to see your goals right in front of you.
Plus, having a board with your goals and plans can help you see exactly what you have to do to achieve them.
Whenever I’m going through a period where I’m struggling to make progress or just feeling lost, I use my old trusty whiteboard (it’s really nothing fancy) and I just write down all of my goals and the things that I want to accomplish.
Then, I make a checklist of the different steps for achieving those goals.
Have I achieved every goal I’ve ever set my mind to? No.
However, using my board to break down my goals and stay focused has allowed me to achieve far more than I ever thought was possible.
6. Become More Mindful
You don’t need to become a Buddhist monk, but the amount of men in this world who walk around with massive egos and a complete lack of mindfulness is absolutely stunning to me.
Most men care more about what other people think of them than they do about what they think of themselves. These people will never be successful and they will never be happy.
It’s a tragic tale, but unfortunately, it’s one that’s as old as the pursuit of happiness itself.
Most men who want to achieve great things never do because they don’t have the ability to control their own minds.
This is why you need mindfulness. The positive benefits of being more mindful are countless, but perhaps the most important is that you will no longer be a slave to your anxiety, your fears, and the countless “what ifs” that keep you up at night.
This leads me to the next point, which is perhaps the most important.
7. Learn to Navigate Your Past Traumas
If you are to become a successful man, you need to adopt a lot of good habits.
You need to become more disciplined, you need to learn how to focus better, and you need to work very hard. These are givens – you don’t need an article to tell the basics of how to become “successful”.
However, what you do need is to drop your bad habits.
See, most men live in fear of their truth. Most men hold back.
Usually, this is because they are living in a world that their anxieties have created. Their reality is fear-based, as opposed to aspiration based.
For me, the most important thing I ever learned was that I learned that my fears and my doubts are not actually based on reality. Your fears and doubts exist independently of what you are actually capable of doing.
When you learn how to live independently of your anxiety and doubt, your ability to construct an accurate vision for your successful future will change forever.
8. Spend Time With Men That You Admire
This is a transformational habit that is actually a lot easier nowadays than ever before.
See, thanks to the internet and social media, spending time with and learning from people that you look up to is more possible than it ever has been before. The best mentors in the world are available on your phone, computer, or tablet.
The caveat is that you have to sift through some nonsense to build good connections, and so do the people you want to talk to.
I wouldn’t recommend getting addicted to Twitter or spending all your time in Facebook comment threads, but there’s a lot of value that you can get from interacting with the people on the internet that you admire.
You can also get the same value of this from interacting with your friends and family members who you look up to.
Spending time with people who inspire you is one of the best ways to build a better vision and future for yourself.
Takeaways
Most people go through their lives without thinking carefully about the things that they do, say, and think.
This is an asinine way to live your life, and it will only make you miserable. The control that you have over your future will slowly fade into oblivion, and you probably won’t even realize it’s gone until it’s too late.
You need to become self-aware. You need to become more mindful. You need to get faster, stronger, and smarter.
You need to create a clear vision for your success.
Then, you need to chase that vision as if your life depends on it because I promise you this: it does.
You also are going to want a group of like-minded men who are hellbent on seeing you succeed.
That’s why I want to tell you about my exclusive coaching program, led by me and my team of experienced men’s coaches.
See, this program isn’t only going to help you break free from nice guy behaviors, build quality romantic relationships, and become a stronger Grounded Man. It’s also going to provide you with support from both myself and my elite community of men. Our coaches provide informed professional advice on how to play hard to get, among other important relationship principles.
We’re going to help you learn how to get to know people without being desperate, clingy, or weak.
No drama, no games, just growth. This will be the last self-development group you’ll ever need.
With this program, you’ll be tapped into your own “band of brothers” and you’ll also have access to the best training course for men in existence today, as well as weekly calls with my team of inspiring and determined coaches. There are no boys, no complainers, or dabblers, this program is for serious men only.
