Knowledge For Men

This is David’s second appearance on the show, he’s back and better than before.

For those of you who are not familiar with David Wygant, he is an internationally-renowned dating and relationship coach, author and speaker. Through his boot camps, personal coaching and his website, his advice has transformed the dating lives and relationships of hundreds of thousands of people from every corner of the globe. His funny — yet always direct — approach to dating, sex and relationships has revolutionized how people meet and interact with the opposite sex.

Over the last thirteen years, David has become one of the most frequently-quoted dating experts in the media. He offers his advice as a lead writer for Yahoo! Personals, AskMen, Huffington Post and across television segments, newspapers and magazines, including MTV, The New York Times, MSNBC, Fox News, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health and E! Entertainment Television — as well as on over 2,000 radio shows.

Key Points

1. Get Off Social Media and CONNECT

People have lost their ability to connect. We spend our days on social media, constantly swiping and liking our lives away while the real juice of life passes us by.

If you want to live a life that is full, full of love, passion, and joy, you have to put down the phone and learn to connect with people, get excited about who you will meet and what you will learn each day and turn your damn phone off!

No man will ever go to his grave regretting that he didn’t have enough facebook followers, but many men die void of true love and connection because they were never willing to put down their devices and connect.

2. You Are Good Enough 

Society, our family, and our friends have sold us a lie that we are not good enough. We have been taught that because we are not like someone else that we are somehow inferior and less worthy of love and success than others.

This is b.s.

You are who you are for a reason, embrace it! If you are a nerd, be a nerd, a gym rat, then be a gym rat, if you are a hopeless romantic, then embrace it and be who you are!

Don’t let anyone or anything tell you that you are not good enough.

3. Give Love Freely

All that matters in life is our ability to love. If you want to be happy and fulfilled, then give love freely. Love other people, love the world you live in, love your family, your friends, and don’t expect anything in return.

As soon as you do this, the universe will open up doors and your life will be a roller coaster ride of joy, love, and connection.

4. Be Totally Present 

Stop worrying about tomorrow. Quit spending your precious time focused on things that don’t matter. Unplug and learn to love, to be totally present and there with everyone you meet.

Life is too short to live in the future. Give love and presence and your life will be more joyful and amazing than you can imagine.

Direct download: David_Wygant.mp3
Category:Dating and Relationship Advice -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

Dennis Meyers was a normal everyday man until he suffered from a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. After years of struggling to find joy and fulfillment in his new life, he discovered a way to make peace with his accident and has written about it in his book “You Have not a Leg to Stand On”.

Favorite Success Quote

“You’ve just got to go on”

Key Points

1. You Have Just got to Go On

Life will knock you down, it will throw punches that put you on your knees, it will shatter you and batter you and try and keep you on the ground, but you have just got to go on.

Everyone will suffer in life, especially if you ever intend to do something great with yourself, the key is not if you suffer, but how you suffer. You must accept the hardships and move on with your life, grin and bear it, be willing to laugh in the face of pain.

There is little else that you can do, and allowing life to knock you down is a surefire recipe, not just for failure in business, but failure in life.

2. Learn to Take Life as it Is

Just as life will knock you down and you must learn to keep moving, so will life present you with situations and circumstances that aren’t ideal. While many people will moan and gripe about how unfair life is, the wiser man realizes that if there is nothing he can do to change the situation, he must simply take life as it is.

Make peace with the pain, because sometimes it’s all you can do.

3. Put Yourself Second 

While life may be difficult at times, and may present massive challenges to many people, life is much more challenging if you are operating from a selfish perspective. You have to be willing to put yourself second, to live for something bigger than just you, to truly live a life of service, if you want to find peace in this life.

Serving others is the quickest way to remind yourself of all that you have to be grateful for and all the amazing blessings you have in your life.

Direct download: Dennis_Mayer.mp3
Category:Success and Life Advice -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

Craig Ballantyne has been the Editor of Early to Rise since 2011. He’s also a Strength & Conditioning coach in Toronto, author of Turbulence Training, a contributing author to Men’s Health magazine, and a member of the Training Advisory Board for Maximum Fitness and Oxygen magazines.

Favorite Quote

“Success is simple”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do”~Epictietus

Key Points

1. The First Mistake You Make in the Morning is Reacting vs. Responding

In the mornings, it is so easy to sleep through your alarm, start your morning in a frenzy and get put into a mode of reaction vs. responding.

When you start your day this way, the day is already lost, you have already fallen into the trap of reacting to your environment instead of responding to circumstances that you had already planned and prepared for.

To beat this, wake up 15 minutes before you have to and focus on your goals.

Not one hours, not two hours, just 15 minutes. 15 minutes to allow yourself to focus your intentions for the day and get into peak state. Consider it a gift to yourself, and after a few weeks of this your results and productivity will sky rocket.

2. Do a Brain Dump at the End of the Day

As we go on through our days, our brains become cluttered with all sorts of stuff from work, family, personal struggles, past failures, and future worries. At the end of each day, do what is referred to as a brain dump, where you sit and write out everything that is on your mind so that you are no longer mulling over it while you should be present.

Doing this will allow you to clear your head and show up fully whenever you are with your family, relaxing at the end of the day, hanging out with friends, or anything else that you decide to do.

3. Create a Vision Statement 

One of the most important things that you can do is to decide where you are going and who you want to be and condense this into a mission statement that will remind you of your goals and keep you on track when decision making becomes difficult.

By having a vision that you are moving towards, you will stay focused on where you are headed instead of the pain of sacrificing pleasure in the moment for gain in the future.

4. Its not what you can do but what you can avoid doing

A significant portion of success is not just knowing what to do, but knowing what to avoid doing.

If you can understand your stumbling blocks, the things that cause you to fail and fall, and the distractions that prevent you from achieving at the level that you want to be, then you have won half of the battle.

By finding ways to use accountability and leverage to eliminate these distractions entirely, you will boost your productivity, happiness, and success 10 fold over.

5. Create Personal Commandments 

In adittion to your vision statement, one of the best ways to add structure and simplicity into your life is to create personal commandments, rules that you follow no matter what that can guide you and make decisions easy.

Some examples of personal commandments could be

  • I will not watch adult content
  • I will limit alcohol consumption to 3x a week, and never more than 2 drinks a night
  • I will stay faithful to my wife no matter the temptation
  • I will always give 10% of my income to a noble charity

I can’t tell you what your commandments should be, but having a list of rules and guidelines that you follow is absolutely essential to becoming the man you want to be.

6. Structure Creates Freedom

Throughout much of the interview Craig discusses creating rules and guidelines for your life, and many of you may be turned off by the concept. But what you may not realize is that structure creates freedom.

By having rules in place you are free making difficult decisions based solely off of emotion, by having structure in your life, you will increase your success and free time and have more freedom to pursue the things you love and spend time with people that you love.

7. Follow the Law of Action Attraction

While many peopele may ascribe to the “Secret’s” law of attraction, Craig suggests the law of action attraction.

Basically focus on what you want, create the vision board, write the goals out, say your affirmations, and then take MASSIVE ACTION to achieve those goals.

Surround yourself with A+ players, create a mastermind, enlist the help of smarter people to aid you in achieving your goals, and take massive action.

Not only will you attract what you want into your life, but you will have taken the proper proportion of action required to ensure that you are ready for it.

8. Before You Start on the Journey Ask If It’s Worth It 

Before you start down any journey, you must decide if it’s worth it. You have to have a strong enough reason for doing anything, or you will fail,. Plain and simple.

Whether the journey is a new instrument, sport, business, or relationship, ask if it is worth it before you begin and  compare the opportunity to your vision statement and personal commandments

Direct download: Craig_Ballantyne.mp3
Category:Success and Life Advice -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

Neil Strauss is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Game, Rules of the Game, Emergency, and Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead and The Truth, An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

He is also the co-author of three other New York Times bestsellers – Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt and Marilyn Manson’s The Long Hard Road out of Hell. A writer for Rolling Stone, Strauss lives in Los Angeles.

Favorite Quote

“The underlying cause of most unfulfilled lives, is simply that we are too close to ourselves to see clearly enough to get out of our own way”~Neil Strauss

Key Points

1. Understand how to Gauge Feedback

Life will often give you feedback about how you are doing across various areas. You may find yourself repeating the same patterns, getting into the same type of relationships, or making the same mistakes. Whatever the case, if you want to make a change you have to gauge feedback.

You have to look at the patterns in your life and discover what lesson they are trying to teach you. What does it say about you and your life that you are constantly dating the same type of girl and falling into the traps of “project dating”? What can you learn from the fact that you are constantly losing jobs after a few months?

Take a cold hard, honest look at your life and look at what the feedback is telling you and then change accordingly.

2. Your Level of Self Esteem will Equal the Level of Your Relationships

Have you ever heard the phrase opposites attract?

Well that’s bull shit. Like attracts like, and if you are finding yourself getting into relationships with women where you are both in an unhealthy emotional relationship, odds are, your own self esteem is lacking.

If you want to attract better women, first become better yourself and change what you accept from others and from yourself. If you have low self esteem you will never be able to attract a woman with high self esteem, and if you have high self esteem, you will never get sucked into a toxic relationships with a woman who has low self esteem.

3. Finding Your Passion is Simple

If you want to find your purpose, and passion, do stuff you love.

That’s it. If you love doing something, then keep doing it, don’t worry about whether it’s your real purpose or whether you should change careers to follow the money, simply do things that you love doing and you will never fail.

Direct download: Neil_Strauss.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

Ryan Michler is the founder of the Order of Man blog and podcast which helps men to master the 8 core areas of their life. He is also the founder of his own financial planning firm and a veteran of the Iraqi war.

Favorite Success Quote

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, and most of them never happened”~Mark Twain

Key Points

1. Most of Your Fears Will Never Be Realized 

Something that most men never realize until it is too late, is that most of the things that they fear will never come to fruition, and lead lives of quiet desperation, paralyzed by fear, and unable to take action.

Odds are, if you start that business you won’t go bankrupt, if you take that trip you won’t get kidnapped and murdered, if you ask that girl out you won’t get wine splashed on your face and cursed out.

Most of your fears are completely irrational and will never actually happen. Realize this, take the steps necessary to mitigate risks, and GET ON LIVING!

2. Who Are You Not to Start?

One of the questions that inevitably comes up for most men whenever they look to start a business, improve their body, or their dating lives is

“Who am I to do this?”

Let me ask you a better question

“Who are you not to do this?”

Are you really so selfish that you would rob the world of your gifts, talents, and abilities out of fear? Are you really so selfish that you would rob your family, your friends, and your country of the amazing changes and difference that you can bring about simply because you don’t feel worthy?

How dare you even consider keeping your gifts inside of you! You have a responsibility to share yourself and your gifts with the world, in fact, you cannot be a “real” man until you do so.

3. Take Small Steps to Get Where You Want 

Whenever you have a big goal, it’s easy to get frustrated and overwhelmed with how far you are from your goal. But the simple way to get around this frustration is to take small daily action.

If you want to start a business, begin by simply writing on your blog every night for an hour after work, if you want to get in better shape, start by doing 10 pushups every morning and adding one each day, if you want to get better with women, start by just casually talking to girls in line at the grocery store.

Your goals don’t have to be big and scary. Start small and keep taking daily actions and you will get there.

5. Self Mastery is About Virtue 

Often times, people wonder what the meaning of self master is, and simply put, it’s about mastering virtue.

It’s about integrity and doing the right thing even when it’s hard. It’s about saying no to watching adult websites even though you want to, about saying no to having another drink despite the jeers of your social circle, it’s about staying faithful to your spouse, and it’s about doing what you said you would do no matter what.

Direct download: Ryan_Michler.mp3
Category:Success and Life Advice -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

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