Self-improvement has exploded in popularity over the last few years. More young men are taking an interest in improving their daily habits to set them up for a fulfilling and prosperous life in the future.

Holistic self-improvement is a life-long and full-time commitment. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t supposed to be. But what it promises in return is worth the cost, and so much more.

Many people begin to see the beauty that this new life promises as soon as they start. For others, it isn’t till a few years later that the benefits start to become obvious.

I was part of the former group.

But the changes were subtle. I didn’t see an improvement in my physique. I didn’t start making more money. And I definitely didn’t get more attention from girls.

Instead, what I noticed was an improvement in my mood and motivation. These changes were not visible, but they were certainly noticeable.

But to begin with, the mindset changes felt very insignificant. A mindset shift yields little real-world feedback in the beginning. It’s only after years that you, and the people around you, will be able to see the impact that this new trajectory of life has had.

Self-improvement is not a linear progression. It is exponential. The more days, weeks, and years that you are eating clean, going to the gym, and working on your business, the more your results will compound.

In the beginning, it can become very demotivating. Progress comes slowly for disproportional amounts of work.

It feels like you are working much harder and for much longer, than those around you. Yet your results are not much better than those who still have degenerate habits.

See, we judge our progress, and therefore our self-worth, by comparing ourselves to those around us. We rarely determine our self-worth by comparing ourselves to our previous versions. After all, humans are a species driven by a desire for status, and status, by definition, requires competition with those around you.

This means, when we don’t seem to be progressing at the same rate as others, it can feel like we are doing something wrong. This is what results in many men giving up on their self-improvement journey. After all, what is the point of so much work if you have nothing to show for it?

But what a lot of young men fail to see is that self-improvement never promised fast results. It is a lifestyle because it requires a lifetime for you to see the full benefits. That doesn’t mean you have to wait a lifetime to see results, but the results will not come quickly in the beginning.

Yet this concept which I heard from a YouTuber called ‘1st Man’ gives great hope for men in this situation. It is called ‘The Great Male Filter’.

This concept tells us that when men are young, genetics and how they were raised are the dominant components in determining status. In other words, no matter how much better your habits and lifestyle is, when you are young, you will find it extremely hard to compete with the genetically gifted.

When you are young, even if you start going to the gym 6 times a week, your physique still may pale in comparison to someone who has never touched a weight in their life — all because their genetics and how they were raised are superior to yours.

The same can apply to social skills. No matter how many books you read or YouTube videos you watch, there might be someone who is effortlessly able to make you look stupid without ever learning a thing about social interaction.

Many men see this reality and crumble due to the harshness of it. While you can argue that it’s not fair, there is an (arguably even bigger) upside to this same concept.

Most of these genetically gifted guys, or the guys who seem to be ‘blessed’, never really feel the need to adopt good habits. They never feel the need to work hard.

Who can blame them? They already have everything they want.

So they succumb to the pleasures of modern existence. They indulge in their desires.

Parties, Sex, Drugs, Alcohol.

While good habits compound as I mentioned before, so too do bad habits.

So although, you may currently be lower in the status hierarchy than these types of men, your life trajectories suddenly look very different. Your life is an upward-sloping exponential curve, while theirs is a downward-sloping exponential curve.

Your life quickly gets better, while their life quickly gets worse.

This is just the reality of male life

Eventually, and undoubtedly, the curves will meet and you will overtake these men in the status hierarchy. This point where the curves of degenerates meet and the curves of men on self-improvement meet is known as the ‘male filter’.

And as the difference between the two types of men begins to increase, the gap between the curves is known as ‘the divide’.

Generally for a man who starts his self-improvement journey in his late teens or very early twenties can expect to experience this male filter effect around the age of 25 to 30.

This is because, at this point, you will have built enough momentum in your life to be able to see physical results in terms of dating, money and fitness, while the rest of the men will have had enough time to become crippled by their addictions.

And trust me, life on the other side of the male filter — for those of us who are climbing — is a very exciting existence.

The purpose of this post was to give you a reason to keep pushing through the difficult times. Everyone always tells you to do so, but no one tells you why. The thing is, life might be difficult and self-improvement may seem pointless now, but life on the other side is beautiful beyond imagination and it would truly be tragic for you to never witness it.