Knowledge For Men

Aaron Lamont Curry is the author of “This is Why You’re Single” a relationship and personal growth book that focuses on helping individuals to examine themselves and their beliefs about dating and relationships so that they can better understand the reasons they are struggling to find love. Aaron is currently traveling the country, speaking on relationships, and writing his next book in the “why you’re single” series.

Favorite Success Quote

“Don’t give your heart to anyone just to have someone.” – Anonymous

Key Points

1. Don’t settle for less than you deserve

It is so easy to settle for sub par relationships (both romantic and otherwise) because you do not want to face the discomfort of loneliness. It’s easy to justify staying with someone despite low class behaviors, just because you don’t want to go through the pain of singleness.

If you want to achieve great things in your life, in your business, and in your relationships, you must realize that you cannot settle for less than you deserve. You are the average of the people with whom you associate most, and this applies doubly to romantic relationships.

If you are dating someone with no drive, ambition or common values, you are setting yourself up for failure. Make the decision to raise your standards, only allow relationships that are edifying, that add value to your life, and that move your dreams forward. .

2. The simple actions make all the difference

The majority of men today have lost the art of chivalry. Simple things that show you love and respect a woman are no longer practiced, or if they are, they are done in a manipulative way to try and achieve a desired outcome (typically sex). If you want to be a man who stands out in the crowd, do the simple actions to show women that you care.

Open doors, walk on the side closest to the street, offer her your coat if she is cold, be a gentleman. This doesn’t just apply to women you are dating either, display this type of respect and humility whether the woman is a Victoria’s Secret model or an elderly lady crossing the street. Women will notice, and you will be a better man because of it.

3. Take the appropriate steps in relationships

It is all too easy to rush a relationship just for the sake of a relationship. However, if you want lasting love, take your time. Don’t decide you want to marry the girl before you even meet her. Date for a while before you start moving things along, hold off on the sex until you decide whether this is the kind of girl that you want to be with for more than a night, take it slow.

Women will respect this, and it will save you a ton of pain and heartache in the long run.

4. Don’t get into a relationship for sex

Simple but profound, as the old saying goes, “Don’t buy a ring for what you can buy on the street.” Sex is never a good reason to date or marry someone.

5. Ask the right question to find the right answer

When we examine our lives, especially the lack of certain things in our lives, we often ask the wrong questions. We ask “why” we are single instead of asking “what” we are doing that has kept us single, we ask questions that allow us to answer with cop outs and justifications instead of getting to the root of the issue. Start improving the quality of your questions and your life will improve with them.

6. You miss 100% of the shots you do not take

Life is too short to always live in fear. Do not allow the fear of failure to hold you back from becoming the man you want to become, because the truth is, inaction is the greatest failure of all. You will never achieve anything if you do not first try, even if you only succeed by 1% that is still 1% more than you could have achieved without taking action. Feel the fear, and do it anyways.

Direct download: Aaron_Curry.mp3
Category:Dating and Relationship Advice -- posted at: 3:30am EST

Brian has always had an itch for adventure. He served in the U.S. Navy as an Air Rescue Swimmer, he has summited 6 of the 7 major peaks in the world including Mount Everest, which, after a solo ascent, he was forced to descend blind due to faulty goggles causing snow blindness. Brian wrote the book “Blind Descent” based off of the events and lessons learned from his time at Everest and is currently training to summit the last of the seven peaks

Favorite Success Quote

“Get busy living or get busy dying” – Shawshank Redemption

Key Points

1. Live as a Doer, Not a Sayer

Life is full of sayers. People who say they will lose weight, say they will start saving more than they spend or say they will start that business they have been talking about for years. But they never follow through. They are relegated to lives of menial existences, filled with mediocre intentions and non existent actions.

As men who want to be more than average, as men who want to create a life worth living, we must become doers. Don’t say you’re going to start a business, do it. Don’t say you’re going to start working out, do it. Let your actions speak so loud that you don’t need to say a thing.

2. Evaluate Every Situation

As men (especially younger men) we are often prone to haste, because quite frankly, waiting sucks. As guys, if we’re going to do something, we don’t want to wait, we don’t want to weigh different courses of action and examine the possible consequences. And this is when we get into trouble.

This is how businesses fail, how sexual mistakes are made, and how dreams are broken. We must learn to pause before taking action and evaluate. Ask ourselves what the consequences of our actions will be and determine the best possible way to proceed.

3. Don’t Over-think Things

Often just as easy as not thinking at all is over-thinking situations to the point of insanity. If we go out and get a cute girl’s number, we will sit for hours trying to think of the perfect line to text her, stewing over every single word instead of sending a simple “hey.” We often obsess over minutiae instead of focusing on the big picture.

As Einstein once said “Make things simpler, but not simpler than they need to be.” Don’t over-analyze, pause, take stock and execute.

4. Take Life One Step at a Time

As men who are driven and ambitious, it is easy to live in the future, focusing on steps that are light years away. We think about the color of the flowers we will have at our wedding, before we even say hello to the girl. We think about how we will invest our income from our next venture, before we even know what that venture will be.

We think about pretty much anything, except the thing right in front of us. Like Brian did while descending Everest blind, we need to slow down and take things one step at a time. Face each challenge as it presents itself and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

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

A few years ago, Joel Runyon got tired of having an average life, working at UPS and waiting for things to happen to me, so he decided to do something about it. He made a list of all the things he used to think were impossible and then I set out to do them. Now Joel works on his own terms and does his best to live a life of adventure and meaning while doing the impossible.

Favorite Success Quote

“It’s always impossible till its done” – Nelson Mandela

Key Points

1. You have to at least try

Chances are, you will fail (at least in the beginning) at everything you try. Despite what many gurus may tell you, success is never guaranteed. However, you will never know how far you can go, never know how much of a difference you can make, and never know what you could have accomplished without trying.

No matter what the venture, give it a shot, try it out. Don’t expect immediate success, or success at all, simply try. Once you take that first step, you may be surprised where the path takes you.

2. You can’t wait for things to happen to you

The world will never hand you success, or hand you opportunities. You must make them. Make a decision to take action and create your own path, as James Altucher says in his phenomenal book, “You must Choose Yourself.” No one else will. No one else has your best interest at heart, if you want anything, you must take responsibility and make it happen.

3. Be entrepreneurial in your career

With the online entrepreneur buzz that is so prevalent in modern society, it is often tempting to hand in your resignation and start building your own gig without first establishing a runway. A far wiser approach is to use your current career as a training ground for your future endeavors.

Seek to make the most impact and value in your current position rather than seeking to create a new one. And most importantly, learn all you can. Working in a corporate job can teach you how to effectively manage your time as you try to build your own gig on the side.

It can teach you how to effectively and maturely deal with all levels of foolishness that you will inevitably encounter within a 9-5. And it will teach you how to grind it out, how to keep going even when things are not going your way.

4. Start small

After listening to inspiring stories about tri-athletes and multimillionaire businessmen, it is often tempting to only look at the end result without contemplating the steps taken to achieve it. The key to seeing results in your own life it to create a snowball effect of “impossible” actions.

Want to lose 30 lbs. and get shredded? Focus on the first 5 lbs. Want to become a millionaire blogger? Focus on making your first $1,000. Start small and let the actions compound for bigger and bigger results. Take it one step at a time and before you know it, you will be miles from where you started.

5. Just keep going

The simplest, yet most challenging piece of advice. Just keep going. As Winston Churchill so famously put it “If you are going through hell, keep going.” Do not stop, even when everything is caving around you, do not give others the satisfaction of seeing you quit. Keep going no matter what.

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

David Waknine is a former professional boxer who reached the Golden Gloves tournament under the training of his mentor Eddie Tyler. After losing the Golden Gloves competition, David turned his back on boxing and set down a road of unhealthy lifestyle choices that resulted in obesity and depression.

In 2011, Eddie Tyler passed away after a battle with cancer, and the loss caused David to do some serious soul searching. David has decided to reenter the ring, and is now training and making a documentary of his journey back into boxing called “One More Round.”

Favorite Success Quote

“Say what you mean, and mean what you say.”

Key Points

1. Integrity Above All

It is often all too easy to become complacent with your word. More often than not, there is no malicious intent, we simply do not follow through with what we say. We say we will meet someone at 5, and show up at 5:15. We say we will lose 20 lbs. in the new year, but quit the gym after the first week.

We promise our family a vacation or weekend trip, but get caught up in work and go back on our promise. If you say you will do something, you do it, period. A man is only as good as his word, ensure that yours is impeccable.

2. Accept Your Demons

We all have demons. For some men it’s alcohol, for some it’s adult content, and for others it’s a traumatic childhood event we never truly overcame. No matter who we are, we all have those deep dark struggles that we are scared to bring into the light for fear of what it would do.

Whatever your particular demons, we must be men enough to accept and defeat them. If we don’t, we are at the mercy of the things which we hate most in our lives. Face your fears and conquer them courageously.

3. You Will Face Dark Days on Any Journey, You Must Learn to Face Them with Pride

No one in history lived a life without trials. Everyone will face both internal and external struggles during our time on earth, and it is the character that we show during these struggles that will define us as men. In every challenging and dark day we face, we have a choice.

The choice to accept things as they are and face them no matter the cost, or the choice to cower in fear, and let circumstances dictate our lives. It is the choices you make during the darkest of times that you will be remembered for.

4. Take the First Step, the Rest Will Follow

As the old saying goes “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” In life, we all have dreams and desires that often seem out of reach. The career path we wish we could have, the relationships we want, the lifestyle of freedom.

Instead of taking action to achieve our goals, we allow our fear to paralyze us from making that first step, the hardest step. However, once we take the first step, the rest are easy.By taking the first step and following it with small consistent action, we begin to hardwire ourselves for success.

Once we talk to that first beautiful woman, the others are easy. Once we make our first dollar online, the next hundred comes naturally. Once we go on that first adventure, the others all fall into place. If we want to live lives of excellence, lives worth writing about, then we must take that first step no matter how scared we may be.

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

As a young man, Dan Peña turned less than $1,000 investment into nearly half a billion. This lead him to create what is now the Quantum Leap Advantage. Dan Peña is the world’s leading high-performance coach, having created over $50 billion in equity through his coaching. He is also the author of the book “Your First $100 Million.” Dan now runs high-performance seminars at his castle in Scotland.

Favorite Success Quote

“Just freaking do it.” – Dan Peña

Key Points

1. Stop thinking and pull the trigger.

We live in an age of abundant information. With the click of a button, one can download the ideas and thoughts of millions of individuals straight to their computer. Any issue you face can be solved by a quick Google search, and any history test can be aced with a glance at wikipedia.

However, this information has come at a cost. Now more than ever, individuals are in states of permanent planning, the gung-ho, ready, fire, aim mentality of past generations has vanished, replaced instead by an attitude of sparse action taken only after extensive research.

To achieve success, we must realize that experience is the best teacher of all, we must feel the fear of failure and take action anyways. No more sitting and waiting to have all the information, to have the perfect plan laid out. You must take action now!

2. You are the average of the 5 people with whom you spend the most time.

“Show me your friends and I will show you your future.” The words of John Kubleur ring true now more than ever, you cannot be a high achiever while associating with low performers. It is key that you seek out high quality relationships to fill your life with people who will push you, convict you, and challenge you to rise above mediocrity.

If you cannot find people in your area, then, as Charlie Munger put it, “make friends with the eminent dead.” Read classic works, fill your brain with the words of the wisest individuals past and present, because who you associate with will be the key to your future.

3. Schooling and money is not necessary for success.

The lack of a college degree is no excuse for poor performance. Some of the greatest businessmen and talents of our time deferred college in favor of pursuing their goals. You must realize that the keys to success are never external, but internal.

You can have every degree and accolade in the world, but without passion, without fire for what you are doing, you will never be a success. It is far better to be a high-school dropout willing to work 20 hour days to accomplish his dreams, than a Harvard graduate dreading every task before him.

4. Mentors Are Essential.

Mentors are the force multiplier on your path to success, they can direct you to where you want to go, and help you avoid the missteps that are so commonly made. When searching for a mentor, you must realize that it is there time, not their money that is the most valuable asset they have to offer.

You must also realize that you bring very little to the table for high caliber mentors that they do not already have, so you must make up for this lack of financial and business resources with a burning passion to succeed.

5. Focus on your passions.

All the money in the world isn’t worth a damn if you are forced to do things you hate to earn it. If you truly want to be a success in life, you must heed the old cliche and follow your passions. Find something that excites you so that you tap dance to work in the morning.

Find something you are so pumped for that you don’t need an alarm to get up, because you couldn’t even sleep knowing that there were missing out on time that you could have been pouring into your life’s dreams.

6. If an idea doesn’t work, pivot, don’t quit.

Many times over the course of your journey, you will fail. That is a simple fact of the game.

However, when something you have invested heavily in fails, don’t waste precious resources trying to salvage a lost cause, and don’t quit unnecessarily. Simply pivot. Tweak your business plan, your product, or your approach until you are able to achieve the success you’ve been working towards

7. Focus on the Few Not the Many.

With the excess of information and opportunities nowadays, it is quite easy to get sucked into the trap of multi-focus. You must learn to have single focus on your one important goal, business, task etx. if you hope to succeed. You only have 100% to give each day, so why not give all of it to the one thing that will change your life the most?

Focus on the 20% of tasks, that will get you the 80% of results and leave the rest to the dogs

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

Paul Huljich was the Chairman CEO of Best Corporation a pioneering organic food company with a valuation of over $100 million during its lifetime. After working for decades to build the life of his dreams, Paul’s unchecked stress caught up with him and he suffered a severe mental breakdown. Losing his rights as a citizen and being made a ward of the state, Paul lost everything he had worked so hard to achieve.

After being told that his chronic stress was incurable by the top doctors in the field, Paul decided to take matters into his own hands, becoming a self described guinea pig in his quest to eliminate his stress. After years of research and testing, Paul conquered his stress and has been free from all stress medications for nearly 15 years. From these experiences, Paul wrote the book “Stress Pandemic” an Amazon bestseller that teaches people how to mitigate the stress in their life to live more fully and perform more optimally.

Favorite Quote

“Take control of your stress before it takes control of you” – Paul Hulijich

Key Points

1. Optimum Health Is a Prerequisite.

The first key to managing stress is to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Luckily, living in such a way that eliminates stress is fairly simple and does not require radical alterations to your lifestyle. This simple morning routine will reduce stress levels by optimizing neurochemicals and hormone levels.

~Wake early (before 7 am)
~Drink 1 liter of room temperature water after waking up
~ Take a brisk walk early shortly after rising
~Juice after your walk

2. Do your heavy lifting in the morning.

Another cornerstone habit to managing stress is to have a healthy sleep schedule. One of the habits that many high performers become sucked into is the past midnight work day. However, by working late at night, you reduce the quality of your sleep and increase the release of cortisol in your body.

3. Remove C.R.A.P. from your diet, replacing them with good mood foods.

Crap or: Caffeine, refined sugar, alcohol, and processed foods, not only contributes to stress and obesity, but also releases chemicals in your body that can increase cortisol, estrogen and several other hormones that raise stress and prevent optimal performance. Exchanging CRAP for “good mood foods” such as all natural and organic meats, vegetables, and fruits will enhance your bodies hormonal balance, neurological function and aid in fat loss and muscle gain.

4. You Must Remain Aware of your actions and your state.

One of the greatest keys to success in all areas of your life is awareness and honest self evaluation. You must be aware of your environment and your responses to it and how they affect your stress levels to operate at levels of peak performance. An awareness of your own physiology and neurology will allow you to head off stress and other issues in your life before their effects become detrimental. The consequences of failing to develop self awareness can be as mild as poor performance or as severe as a mental breakdown similar to Paul’s.

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

Mark Lee Greenblatt is an attorney based in Washington D.C. having worked several high profile senate corruption cases. Mark spent 5 years and hundreds of hours investigating to gain the information for his book “Valor” which tells the stories of the unsung heroes of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Favorite Success Quote

“Your either part of the solution or you are part of the problem.” – Eldridge Cleaver

Key Points

1. Grace Under Pressure

In his book Valor, Mark shares a story about Chris Choay, who, while trying to lead his squad in a flanking maneuver, found himself completely alone and exposed only meters away from the enemies position.

Instead of retreating, Chris calmly raised his rifle and fired…only to find his gun had jammed. He now stood like a fish in a barrel; if any of the insurgents looked over and saw him, he was dead. Calmly lowering his weapon, Chris cleared the chamber, reloaded a new magazine, and engaged the threat, eliminating the remaining hostiles.

Through his actions, Chris demonstrated extreme courage and performance under incredible pressure. It is this grace under pressure, this resiliency to the surrounding environment that we can demonstrate in our own lives when our first world problems causing undue stress and frustration.

Simply take a deep breath and think about Chris and make the decision to face adversity with grace

2. Change your frame of reference

You are not at war, you don’t have enemies firing bullets and rockets over your head, and odds are you never will. In the western society, we often find it so easy to get angry at the smallest things.

When the wifi in our house isn’t as fast as we want it to be, we throw a fit, screaming and swearing at the lifeless modem. When the wait time at our favorite restaurant is longer than we want, we complain and whine about how terrible life is and how we don’t have the time for this (ignoring the four hours we wasted on netflix that afternoon).

However, as 1st world citizens, very few of us have ever experienced true adversity. Few of us will ever know true hunger, few of us will ever know true fear, and few of us will ever face anything in our entire lives that compares to a typical day in the office for guys like Chris Choay.

We need to remember this and see our issues for what they truly are.

3. Show humility

For his book, Mark interviewed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle for several hours. Chris is the most lethal sniper in U.S. history having over 150 confirmed kills (and reportedly as many as 240 total), several bronze and silver stars, and being nicknamed “The Legend” by the SEAL community.

However in all of his interview, Kyle never once mentioned any of these things. In the day of twitter and instagram, we struggle to cook a good steak without bragging about it to our entire social circle, however men of true character are humble in accomplishment and it is the exploits of men like Chris Kyle that remind us of this.

4. Push yourself beyond what you think you are capable of

The Navy SEALs are famous for what they call “hell week” which is 5 and a half days of nonstop mental and physical pain. During hell week, recruits are kept awake for nearly the entire week, receiving a maximum of four hours of sleep, they are forced to run over 200 miles, and sit in the freezing surf of the pacific ocean.

As a society, we have become used to soft living and mundane existences, therefore, whenever a challenge does present itself, we cower away from it, fearing the pain of growth.

As men, we must begin to seek challenge realizing that we are capable of far more than we could ever imagine, and that it is by doing the perceived impossible that we grow.

Direct download: Mark_Greenblatt.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EST

Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior Training®. In 1999, just after leading a bicycling trip for nine teenagers across the United States, Sam was in a car accident caused by a drunk driver which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Rather than becoming the victim of his circumstances, Sam learned and created a system of attitude training that brought him more vitality and clarity than he ever had before his injury.

In addition to coaching private clients and businesses in Zen Warrior Training®, Sam hosts biweekly classes in Santa Monica, CA and leads community talks and workshops throughout the country.

Favorite Success Quote

Self-consciousness is a lack of consciousness of the self

Key Points

1. Expand Your Relationship with Yourself Beyond Your Mind 

So often we get stuck in a place where our relationship with ourselves is limited only to our mind and the incessant mental chatter happening within it. 

From this place, it becomes difficult to understand who you truly are, what you want, and what you must do to achieve the range of experiences that you desire in this lifetime.

Your breaths are shallow, your thoughts are cluttered with the opinions and expectations of others, and your truth is being clouded by noise, the ego, and your lack of presence. 

But when you expand your relationship with yourself beyond your mind, everything changes. 

When you get into your body and begin experiencing more frequent states of flow and presence, your reality changes. 

You no longer worry about what you said yesterday or fret about what you must do tomorrow. You are able to simply "Be" in this moment without judgment or criticism. 

And when you're in this place of presence and freedom from judgment, you can be 100% you.

I challenge you to make a conscious effort to get into your body this week. 

Go surfing, pick up an instrument, train parkour, lift heavy weights, do something that jolts you out of your head and into your body. Because when you are in your body and focused on your movements you are present, and when you are present, life opens up in ways that you can't imagine. 

2. Presence Frees You From Your Baggage  

When you are living in the past or the future, it's easy to get stuck in your baggage. 

Think about it... 

If you're living in the past, you are thinking about what you did wrong, or how you could have done something better, or how you said this or didn't say that. You are stuck in an endless loop, experiencing the same "negative" event over and over again in your head. 

This lack of presence eeks its way into your present moment and you begin to doubt yourself during conversations and constantly overanalyze yourself and your actions because you are so hung up on yesterday's mistakes. 

Living in the future is no different. 

If you're constantly focused on what you want to achieve tomorrow and the life you will have someday, then you aren't focused on the amazing life you are living right now. 

And if you have the ability to read this article, you do have an amazing life. 

By getting present, you are able to be free from the bullshit. With presence, you cannot dwell on past mistakes and personal criticisms. You cannot get caught up in projecting a future that makes you dissatisfied with your current reality. 

When you are present, you are free. 

3. Presence Accelerates the Human Experience 

Everything that you do is amplified by the power of presence. 

Everything...

All of the greatest human experiences from creation to sex to friendship to adversity are all amplified by getting present. 

When you are present with a woman, your anxiety dissapears and you are able to reveal yourself to her in a way that is completely and totally authentic. 

When you are present at work, you can tap into flow states and execute your craft masterfully in half the time that it would take if you were distracted. 

When you are present with yourself, you are in tune with your body and emotions and all the lessons to be learned from them (more on that later). 

Presence amplifies existence. 

Get present. 

4. Success without a Strong Internal Identity is Inevitable Failure 

One of the greatest mistakes a man can make is to tie his identity to something other than himself. 

When a man's identity is contingent on his relationship with his woman, his work, his possessions, or anything outside of himself, his identity is inherently fragile and ripe for disruption. 

No one is impervious to the harsh realities of unexpected change. 

From a lay off to a divorce to an unexpected death, there are thousands of things that can disrupt your life and completely wreck all of the things that you now hold dear. 

And if your identity is wrapped up in these things, when they go, so too does your sense of self. 

If your identity is outside of yourself then it doesn't take much to raze your identity and leave you feeling lost and uncertain about who you are. 

By cultivating a strong internal identity, you allow yourself to experience the storms of life with all of the pain and joy that comes with them. 

You experience everything but can be beaten by nothing. 

You are who you are. 

And that's more than enough. 

5. Feelings Are Teachers 

Human emotions are the greatest teachers we've ever met. 

Whether positive or negative, any emotion that you feel is there to teach you something. 

It could be there to confirm that you are doing well, such as the bliss that you feel when you look at your partner, or the satisfaction that comes from a full day's work. 

It could be to inform you that how you are acting is not working, such as the tension in your gut when it comes time to pay the bills or the apprehension you feel about getting your yearly physical. 

Or they could be there to tell you that the path you are on ultimately will not serve you such as the inexplicable "Gut feelings" so many of us receive whenever we are unknowingly out of alignment with our highest calling. 

If you are going to live this life to the fullest and truly embrace this existence, you must learn to feel your emotions, embody them, learn from them... Don't flee from them. 

Never allow your emotions to scare or control you, but always notice them and give them the attention and intention that they deserve. 

Your emotions are your mentors and your guides on this crazy journey. 

Follow them and you will learn more than you ever imagined. 

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

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