Finding The Will to Be a Better Man
Very few men do well across the board. Some acquire wealth at the expense of love. Some acquire love at the expense of ambitions. Some earn the respect of others while privately hating themselves. Some find contentment only to fade from the annals of history in short order after their lives are over. Most are mediocre.
The list of things the man who wants to be a great man must do well is long. The more things a man tries to do well, the harder he must work, and if he works too hard on any one thing, he risks not working hard enough on other things.
What does it mean to be a great man? To me, it means to do well in more areas of life than most men. Many men held up as great men in history have been great only in one or a few aspects of their lives. They’ve been great leaders, or shrewd dealmakers; they’ve possessed towering intellects or unrivaled ambition. They’ve been calm in the face of great adversity, or captains of industrial innovation. But at the same time, some of these men have been poor husbands, friends, or fathers. They’ve used and abused those who they saw as tools to be leveraged in the pursuit of goals. Some of those deemed great men by history and society were deemed assholes by those who knew them best.
I’d like to think it’s possible to excel on all fronts. To be a success, and to be kind, friendly, and a loving father and family man; to positively influence the course of human history; and to be content in one’s own mind. The one resource a man must exquisitely utilize in order do so is his own energy, and the reservoir of energy present in all men is sheer force of will. Most men spend too much energy on some aspects of their lives and too little on others. The result is the imbalanced man who fails to use his will to its maximum capacity. The imbalanced man is almost certain to lead a mediocre life.
My definition of a great man may not align with yours, and that’s okay. Regardless, I think many men will relate to my story. It’s the story of an imbalanced man striving to become a better man.
I don’t sleep very well. It’s been that way for a while, but it’s worse now that my time is spread so thin. When I should be asleep, I think. Mostly about the many things I feel compelled to accomplish.
Before I say any more, I need to acknowledge that most of the expectations I’m going to talk about struggling with are self-imposed. What I mean is that no one’s forcing me to work toward specific ends. But I’ve always been a sucker for driving myself right to the edge. That’s not a good habit, and it’s a symptom of my imbalanced application of will.
Financial success has been a central pillar of my self-image for a long time. I’ve convinced myself that I won’t really be able to be myself until I’m financially independent. I am under the impression that I’ll be much more productive when I don’t have to work because I’ll have enough capital working for me that my choices are my own and not determined by economic constraints. So I worry about whether I’m doing enough to achieve financial independence in time to pursue other goals. I spend far too much time focused on this end, to the detriment of my mental health and my relationships and my contributions to humanity.
When my family imposes on my time — as is to be expected — it often annoys me, and I react as you might expect: in an imbalanced and unloving way. I have certainly been rightly accused of being an asshole by those closest to me. And that is imbalanced.
Making time for children is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I have two now, and they place more inflexible demands on my time than anything else. I’m frequently frustrated because I have to tend to my kids, rather than doing whatever else I think is more important. And that is imbalanced.
I often let necessary sacrifices frustrate me. If I pursue some financial gain rather than read a book I think may contain an important lesson, I chastise myself for not being efficient and for failing to expand my perspective and knowledge. And, reciprocally, I often get distracted while reading a book by the notion that I should be doing something more productive.
What I am trying to say is that there are a lot of things I want to do well, but not enough time to do them all well every day. That’s life, as they say, and I ought to anticipate sacrifices. But sacrifices are annoying. Part of my journey toward becoming a better man centers on accepting the need for sacrifices and figuring out a way to excel on multiple fronts. It’s like a juggling act but instead of bowling pins it’s fundamental parts of life I’m trying to keep in the air.
One of my biggest faults is impatience. I have been told by lots of people older and much smarter than me that things will work out in time, and that there will be plenty of opportunities to do all the things I want to do. But I find that concept scary rather than reassuring. I worry that if I embrace the idea that things will come together if I just give them time, I will die waiting. That’s definitely an imbalanced perspective, but changing a personality is hard.
What I cannot stand is the feeling that I am wasting time, and the older I get, the more I see mundane aspects of daily life as wastes of time. Although some people who supposedly know tell me that relaxation is important, things lots of people seem to consider relaxing give me anxiety. For instance, sitting on the couch after work and watching random television shows makes me uncomfortable because I feel there’s surely a more productive way to spend my time. So I don’t do it, despite the fact that it might be a good way to let my mind recuperate.
I know some people in leadership positions who, at first glance, might seem like great men. But underneath the superficial masks of success their marriage has failed and they’re miserable and drinking themselves to sleep every night. I know men who preach about the importance of taking care of others while being themselves dependent on handouts from family or agencies. The point is that most men quick to offer up advice haven’t got it all figured out — many aspects of their lives are imbalanced, so their advice is bound to be imbalanced, too.
The key is to carve away the worthwhile takeaway from all the advice men are willing to give. Most of it is mediocre, but many men do offer insightful tidbits that, if applied in a balanced manner, are productive. But I’m wary of modeling my life after the experiences and expectations of others, so I always consider how the advice I get can help me forge the path I want, not how I may need to change my desired path in accord with the advice of other men, no matter how great they are. I don’t know if that’s how I should do things or not.
The greatest barrier most men face in becoming great men is themselves. I’ve come to understand that I fall into this trap on several fronts. I have had a hard time accepting that focusing on things that aren’t necessarily going to push my financial success or my influence on humanity forward is worthwhile if those things affect other realms of my life. Helping my wife clean the house is just as important as working extra hours to bring some vision I have to fruition. Being patient with my children is just as important as pursuing my ambitions without distraction. I’ll never be a great man unless I master balance.
One of my goals is to be remembered. That may sound vain, but I cannot deny that I want my name to mean something after I’m gone. I want to be remembered by society as well as by those closest to me. I want to leave a footprint others will want to walk in. But it’s going to very hard to do that unless I can find a way to balance my efforts toward being a better man.
But time is the enemy of ambition. I regularly run out of hours in the day without having finished what I feel I need to. I often go to bed feeling I could have done better at something that day. I could have been more attentive to my children. I could have written something meaningful. I could have studied the writing of great men. I could have helped someone. I could have promoted my business. I could have learned something new. I could have resolved to take some specific action.
I despise the often-espoused mantra that focus is key to great success. Not because I think the notion is wrong entirely — it’s not. But because too many men take the focus too far. They interpret the need to focus as a permit to neglect other aspects of their lives. Steve Jobs was focused. But he was also a dick a lot of the time. I’ll leave it to you to determine whether he was a great man.
Focus is a tactic that must be applied evenly across all the important aspects of a man’s life. When it’s time to be a husband, focus on that. When it’s time to be a dad, focus on that. When it’s time to be a leader and change the world, focus on that. But if a man ever gets to the point where he loses his ability to shift his focus among all of these equally important challenges, he has become imbalanced.
I’ve done well up to this point in my life focusing on my economic success. I have not done well focusing on ensuring my social and familial relationships flourish. I have not done well focusing on my mental wellbeing. I have not done well supporting my community. I have not done well empathizing with, sympathizing with, and supporting the people closest to me.
In other words, I have a lot of improvements to make. But I am aware of those opportunities, and that’s the first and usually the hardest step. All the rest is application of will and efficient direction of energy. The journey isn’t going to be easy, but when I’m much older I hope I can sleep better. And I hope I can look back at my 2019 self and be proud of the efforts I undertook then to be a better man. Who knows, maybe by then I will be a great man.
Finding The Will to Be a Better Man
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