The Crowd's Rules

Hey All - I'm back!

Since childhood, we are conditioned to follow a crowd.  Go where the crowd goes, don't go where it doesn't.  Don't stand out.  Don't think differently.    Don't do what the crowd doesn't want you to do.  Don't be who the crowd doesn't want you to be.  Don't break the rules. 

Don't be fresh.  Don't speak out of turn.  Don't be different.

In adulthood, matters are different.  Once you've completed, or withdrawn from, an undergraduate curriculum, you no longer have to answer to anyone.  It's your life now, and its direction is yours and yours alone.

However, some people would rather you not be that way.  Sometimes there are unwritten rules that people apply to themselves, and then mistakenly apply to you.  There are standards that people impose on themselves, with the assumption that everyone else should follow them too.

With all due respect, they're wrong.

When we're younger, there are reasons to follow rules that are imposed on us, even if we do not agree with them.  Reason being, we're young.  We don't know everything.  We're underdeveloped.  We need to grow, we need to learn, and we need to mature.  Until we're able to do them, the rules stay.

But once we have grown, learned, and matured, those same rules can only hold us back.  They infantilize us when we need to be adults.  They cause us to stagnate and plateau.  They restrict us to the painless demise of a comfort zone.  They erode away at our individual identity until we're just faceless drones like everyone else.

Beta males sometimes live lives that are based on following the rules to the letter of the law.  While this usually makes for a childhood and adolescence that is risk-free, commendable, and respected by elder generations, it can also sow the seeds for an adulthood that is uneventful, bland, dull, predictable, and tragically anonymous.  It sets you up for a life experience that merely involves changing one set of rules for another, and never actually making your own rules.

When you become Bold and Bulletproof, that won't happen.  When you embrace your own strength and arm yourself against criticism, rejection, and disrespect, you can, and will, make your own rules.  When you live by the Four Pillars, those rules won't keep you pinned down or rendered useless. 

DISCLAIMER:  This does NOT mean you break the law, or make a spectacle of yourself at a government office or courthouse.  It DOES mean that you don't pretend that someone else's rules were delivered from Mount Sinai to your doorstep on stone tablets, and that you don't spend your whole life limited from reaching your full potential because of rules that were once imposed on you in childhood.  We're not robots.  We're not servants.  We're not meant to be sidekicks, wing men, or nobodies.

To be a leader, one must first be a follower.  But we eventually must stop being followers.

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.  I AM ME.
 

Nothing Can Stop Self-Love

Hey All - Another Sunday night is upon us.

We're living in extreme times, yet again.  Israel, our only ally in the Middle East, is demonstrating that the best, and sometimes only, defense is a strong offense.  And as the liberal media has always done, it has taken Israel to task for the very thought of defending itself.  

This is not unlike the response school administrators traditionally give to bullying incidents.  The bully rarely, if ever, reveives consequences for their actions, but if a bullying victim retaliates, they are condemned, they are disarmed, they are showered with hearts and flowers and rainbows and told to be good little angels while the bully laughs as their enablement continues.

Applying this way of thinking to a sovereign nation makes no sense to me. As even Secretary Kerry stated today, no country should be expected to just sit there when it is attacked.  

My thought tells me that the world is trying to use Israel's status against it.  Israel is also known as the Holy Land, since it is home to most of the events in the Bible.  It appears that this designation leads to the assumption that Israel must be so charitable and generous as to turn the other cheek whenever threatened.  In a way, they are being mocked for being the Holy Land, and for not being like every other country.

We live in a world where people criticize much more quickly than they compliment.  It would be a much nicer world if the opposite were true, but it isn't. 

The only way to deal with this fact, other than preparing ourselves with our own snappy comebacks, is to truly love ourselves.  To know that our strengths are what put us on the map, and not what leave us exposed.  To know that we must never apologize for who we are.  To know that nobody's opinion of us is more important than that of the one person you see in the mirror.  

If Israel was so touchy, apologetic, and dependent on the world's approval that it stopped its defenses, it would have been conquered and renamed a long time ago.  If every bullying victim obeyed the directives of school administrators, and allowed their bullies to have their way with them, the suicide rate and the mental hospital occupancy would both skyrocket.  If we all did away with our goals, dreams, and identity because someone else just has to run their mouths, there would be no point to life itself.

Beta males are sometimes too willing to appease critics and apologize for being themselves.  Someone recently pointed out to me that the notion of not being ruled by criticism, and refusing to apologize for oneself, is the way of the alpha male, and not the beta male.  This may be true, but I believe that if betas become self-actualized, and make themselves bold and bulletproof, this changes.  I encourage beta males to look to Israel's example.  Nobody wants them to defend themselves, because they are expected to be more righteous than other countries, but they defend themselves no matter what.  Nobody wants beta males to be assertive, brave, or courageous because we are expected to be more compassionate and sensitive than other men.  By the same token, we can make this compassion and sensitivity our strengths by choosing to love ourselves more than we can hate anyone.  When we believe in ourselves that much, and are willing to protect ourselves the way Israel protects its citizens, we win.  And we win by a landslide.

By the same token, I hope Israel wins this conflict by a landslide.  I also hope the moderate Palestinians that do not view Hamas as martyrs or heroes have the courage to speak out and are safe from harm.  I also hope that those of us who crumble at criticism and suffer from exposure are able to set up out very own Iron Domes and shoot thoss rockets out of the sky.  

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.  I AM BETA.

PS - Facebook offers all of us our very own Iron Dome mechanisms.  I've had to use a few of them, and I encourage you to do the same.

Chinks In The Armor

Hey All!

Had the kind of Saturday afternoon where I really needed to focus on something good to post.  Yes, the cleaning lady was over, relieving me of an otherwise unfortunate menial household task.  Still, had to stay here to "supervise," rendering me immobile.  Hey, that's the price of having someone else keep your place presentable.  :)

The reason why many of us, beta or otherwise, encounter so many obstacles in life is that we have a weakness.  We have an Achilles' heel, we have a kill switch, we have a virus that freezes up the hard drive known as our brain, and sets us back.

This could be many different things to many different people, but rest assured it's something that happened in the past.  My dearly beloved adversaries in the "we don't care, we're too cool" crowd will instantly pooh-pooh this fact because they've always "gotten over it," so they think nothing from their past weighs them down, and if anyone else does, there's something wrong with them.  I'll let them say whatever they feel, with the knowledge that everyone has something from the past weighing them down, no matter how much they deny it.

Your past is a part of you, that's unavoidable.  History cannot be altered.  You can't do what George Lucas did to the original Star Wars trilogy and change what already happened.  Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's the way it was.

Notice I emphasize . . . was.

Here in the present, there are number of ways you can handle the past.  You can suppress it, ignore it, and pretend it never happened, like the "cool kids" say they do.  If you're able to do that, that's nice, but you may face bigger problems.  As my father loves to say, "He who does not learn the lessons of history is forever condemned to repeat them."

You can also allow it to rule you.  Because someone yelled at you really loudly as a child, you could become a sweet, docile, non-assertive people-pleaser, because you'll do anything to avoid having anyone angry at you.  Because someone hurt you in your younger years, you could become guarded, snippy, suspicious, defensive, and cold-hearted to anyone who crosses your path, because you just can't trust anyone not to hurt you.  Because somebody rejected you, you'll just reject everyone else to protect yourself.

Or . . . you can make peace with it.

You can accept that what happened, happened, but is not happening now.  You can realize that those events cannot affect the here and now.  You can become emotionally detached from it.

You can accept it as a part of history memorialized only in old books and photos.  You can reduce it to dry references and footnotes, instead of allowing it to define you.  You can keep it for informational purposes, but not as a reflection of current values.

How you do it is up to you.  You should know how your own mind works better than I do, or anyone else does.  But if you want to fill in the chinks in your armor, and really be a bold and bulletproof beta, then you need to take these lessons of the past, scan them into some kind of psychological zip drive, and save them somewhere other than your active thoughts.  If they are somehow manifesting themselves subconsciously in your present thoughts and actions, then engage in some redirection.

You cannot afford to let your past affect your present to your detriment.  If you let it, it will ruin you.  It will sap your strength.  It will stunt your growth.  It will leave you stranded on a psychological plateau, leaving you incapable of advancing or improving yourself for the rest of your life.

This blog is about the Advancement of beta males.  As long as you stay in a state of arrested development, forever fighting with ghosts and memories, seeking vengeance on those who got away with it, and mourning over unfinished business, you will not be successful.

It's also about the Redemption of beta males.  Not just from outside sources who've held you down, but from holding yourself down.  You must free yourself from anything that holds you back, especially yourself!

And it's also about the Self-Actualization of beta males.  And part of that means that you can only live in the here and now.

Whatever happened is done.  The past will always be a part of who you are, but it should not, and cannot, be the strongest part of you.  Your passions and drive should only be centered on the present, or on preparation for the immediate future, and not on things that have already transpired and cannot be rearranged.

Once the past is filed away where it belongs, you will become bold and bulletproof.

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.  I AM BETA.

Have a great weekend, all!