Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Many men struggle with building better habits and dumping old ones. They do things intensely for a couple of weeks, and then abandon their self-development attempts to go back to normalcy. Why does this happen so often, and how can young men build habits with less struggle and more results?

In this article, I want to teach you mistakes guys often make when they start, give you 5 strategies and tips to help you overcome the cycle of self-improvement depression, and assist you in developing consistency to change your life.

The Most Common Mistake Guys Make

First, let’s start with identifying the primary reason men fail to change their habits. There are various factors that make men keep going back to their old lifestyles of comfort after trying out self-development. The most obvious one is that they don’t understand the true value of discomfort and purpose, and how embracing them can improve wellbeing and results.

They overindulge in common instant gratification activities, like videogames, TV shows, TikTok scrolling, watching porn, going out for drinks, smoking stuff, and having casual sex. Most of these things don’t have any actual value whatsoever, but many men don’t want to let go of them simply because they help them feel pleasure. More correctly saying, though, they help them temporarily escape their own misery of dissatisfaction with life and its meaninglessness.

The main reason people fail to change themselves is that they are addicted to comfort, and the safety from harsh realities of life it provides. While such approach may help numb and soothe the pain, it won’t make it go away completely.

If you keep indulging in instant gratification like everyone you see around, you won’t be able to fix the underlying issue – lack of purpose, ambition, drive, dreams, aliveness. It is the lack of these things that causes men to keep living degenerate lifestyles. The antidote?

Find your cause, and commit your life to it.

1: Find Your Life Mission

For a few minutes, shut off technology. Shut off the outside world manifesting itself in your mobile phone, PC, laptop, or whatever else you may have. Sit down and ask yourself:

• What do I want from life? Not what society wants, not what my parents want, not what my friends want. What do I and I only want?
• What problems in this world do I want to solve?
• How can I make Earth better, while earning tons of money?
• If I had a year left to live, what would I spend it on?

I know, these questions are uncomfortable, even scary to ask. But it is necessary to change your habits.

When your life has a meaning, a reason to be, you realise how little time on this planet you truly have. For this reason, you will not want to waste hours indulging in old degenerate stuff, but work hard to fulfill your purpose, live your life authentically.

After you find your cause and meaning of life, things will change dramatically. You will have much less anxiety, fear, depression, and other mental problems that most of your peers struggle with. Why will they go away?

Anxiety appears when one is uncertain of how their life will look like a few years from now. Depression appears when one makes no progress and sees no happy future ahead. How can you be depressed or anxious, when you have a bright star in the sky to follow, and have a specific mission that will validate you and bring enjoyment just from the mere act of working to complete it?

To build new habits and live a better life in general, find your purpose, and stary taking baby steps to fulfill it. Speaking about baby steps…

2: Start With Small Changes

How many times have you tried to, for example, change your diet, and went back to consuming junk food with sweets? Probably a lot.

Another possible reason you fail at building new habits is that you ty to implement new changes too intensely. Many people gain great motivation to quit their current job, start a consulting business, start weightlifting, eating much protein, run 2 km a day, meditate for 30 minutes daily, and learn Japanese at the same time. That’s not how it works.

Initial motivation may indeed help you produce decent results at the start. However, if you want to change your lifestyle entirely and make great results, you’ll have to build discipline to do the right things, especially when you don’t feel like it.

The best way to build discipline is to start doing little but uncomfortable things on a regular basis. Wash dishes, clean up your house, meditate a little after waking up, work on your job/business for an hour more than usual, go out for a run or a calisthenics session.

Do these activities in very small amounts when you get started – you have to slowly but surely get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

How Small Stuff Builds Great Habits

Meditate for 3 minutes, do 10 pushups, read 5 pages of a book, write 3 gratitude sentences, make that additional sales call. This is how you slowly, but surely build an empire.

Your ego may tell you that it’s pointless, and that it’s too easy for you. Don’t listen to your mind. Start good habits and changes in small amounts, and once you get comfortable, escalate. From 3-minute meditations to 10-minute ones. From 10 pushups to regular weighlifting workouts. Learning Japanese for 5 minutes a day transforms into 20 minutes a day.

Despite starting small, you’ll be able to consistently increase your efforts in a more effective way. And just before you know it, you have now built good habits every man should have: meditation, exercise, reading, deep working, being in nature, learning, and gratitude journaling!

Even though you start from measely amounts that even a mentally disabled person can do, you slowly increase your daily efforts to the level that other people only dream of reaching.

If you do learn something from this article, please, let it be this insight of starting small. It is the key to building good habits and dumping old degenerate ones.

3: Change the Triggers

Factors in the environment heavily influence the process of forming new habits. They either uplift the individual and help him become the best version of himself, or they limit his potential and keep him stuck in the bucket of mediocrity.

These factors are so-called triggers – objects and people that signal an individual that a certain action should be done. They change his perception of what lifestyle is normal, and this perception in turn influences the habits that the individual will develop.

In simpler words, the more stuff reminds you about bad habits, the more urges you’ll have to do them. It’s much harder to quit drinking and eating fast food when you live near bars and McDonald’s, and have tons of that stuff at your place. What can we do about it?

Change the triggers. Throw away stuff that reminds you of unwanted bad habits, and replace them with reminders of activities that will help you in life.

For example, you can put away your PlayStation in the attic (or sell it if you want to quit gaming for good), and put dumbbels and posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger in your room to remind you of your fitness goals.

Believe it or not, but if you change your room this way, you’ll be several times more likely to quit gaming and lift weights on a regular basis. Your new environment will shift your perception of what actions are good for you, and help you make the right choices when you face them.

Oh, I have mentioned people but haven’t elaborated on them. People in your life heavily influence your habits too, so make sure your social circle consists of ambitious people on self-development. Click here for a guide on building your masculine tribe.

4: Make Good Habits Enjoyable

It’s no secret that humans are more likely to do stuff that they like compared to things that they dislike. If you want to build better habits, you must utilize this simple principle on practice.

Find ways to make good habits more enjoyable and satisfying, so that instead of forcing yourself to do them, you go do them with big anticipation.

For example, if you want to exercise regularly, play your favorite playlists during workouts, and reward yourself with tasty protein shakes after you finish them. Not only exercise itself is enjoyable, but you also get to listen to great music and drink healthy shakes!

Or, instead of meditating in a room with complete quietness, being extremely uncomfortable with your own thoughts, you can download a special meditation app that has great audios, valuable courses, and narrators with soothing voices. I personally recommend you use Medito for this – it is a great and functional meditation app that is completely free.

If you want to practice deep work more, reward yourself with a cup of tea for every successful session, and connect your work with your newfound purpose. Work is rarely enjoyable for most, but it does become desirable once you understand how exactly it will benefit your mission.

If you want to learn foreign languages, download apps with gamification, such as Duolingo, and practice Spanish with fun features and characters.

Whatever habit you want to build, find ways to make it enjoyable, whether it’s through downloading some app, implementing rewards, or making your own adjustments depening on your personal preferences.

5: Plan Your Average Day

It’s hard to do good habits all day long, I understand. When I started out on my self-improvement journey, I would get all the good habits done early in the day, get confused about how I should spend the rest of my time, and end up wasting tons of it on browsing YouTube, and eventually, jacking off to some hentai in Chrome’s Incognito tab.

If you relate to my story, a good solution would be scheduling your average day. Divide your time into 30-60 minue long chunks, and commit yourself to follow the schedule for as many days as possible.

For example, you can wake up at 6 AM, meditate for 3 minutes, do a small gratitude journaling session, do a few pushups, hop into a quick cold shower, and prepare your breakfast. The, dress up, go to your school or 9-5, come back home, and spend the evening working on an online business, reading, and watching content from valuable mentors.

Is it hard? No, but many people aren’t willing to sacrifice their old comfortable habits for the sake of having a better life later. Are you willing to shut up for 6 months, and work hard to become a free man everyone respects and admires?

Good achievements don’t come easily. If you don’t show up daily and execute, you’ll be just another number in the annual statistics. Just another consumer who lives a meaningless life.

Either suffer now and build good habits, or suffer later. The choice is yours, reader.

Summary

The most common reason men fail at improving their lifestyles is that they are addicted to comfort and the safety from nihilism it provides. This approach is ineffective when it comes to living better, and may eventually lead to depression.

To build new habits, dump degenerate ones, and cease depression with anxiety, find your cause. Find a mission that you can dedicate the rest of your life to, and work hard to make progress towards it daily. Start small and do good habits in small amounts, and after you get comfortable, increase your efforts.

Change the triggers in your environment, so that they remind of good activities more than bad ones. Make desired habits enjoyable, so that your brain associates pleasure with productive efforts. And finally, plan your day out, leave no space for old degenerate activities, and take day-offs as rarely as possible.

Now you have all the information needed to stop being lazy and build new habits more efficiently. Remember brother: a better life and the things you desire are behind the wall of discomfort, fear, and struggle. Take action and go after them every day. That’s how you become a masculine man.

If you have any questions about the article, or want to leave your opinion about the topic, feel free to write your thoughts down in the comments below. See you next time.