If you are reading this, there’s a good chance your life sucks. That’s the demographic posts like this tend to attract. I’m not trying to insult you but it’s most likely true.

I wrote this post because It’s becoming evident of the sheer amount of guys who hate their lives. The 21st century is probably the most harsh period ever for the average guy due to the presence of social media and the internet. As a result, most men are leading shallow, purposeless lives.

As someone who has lived their life the same way, I wanted to uncover the root behind this pandemic.

Preface

You might expect me to give you the standard advice for becoming a top 1% man: hit the gym, build a business etc. But even still, some people at the top of the human hierarchy are still deeply unsatisfied with their lives.

How come? As men, we have heard that climbing through the social hierarchy and elevating our lives will lead us to fulfilment. While doing that is important and will ensure we keep ourselves healthy, competent and busy, if you don’t go about it in the right way, you risk never feeling content with what you have achieved. A lack of contentment is the antithesis of fulfilment.

The truth to living a fulfilled life, being truly happy, and curing depression is a simple concept. I call it: ‘living honestly’.

Making An Honest Living

I’m not talking about being honest to other people or ensuring you make money legally and fairly. I’m talking about being honest with yourself. Honest about your true desires, honest about how you want to live your life.

It’s mind-boggling how many people refuse to reflect inward and identify what they want out of life – what their true identity is.

Talking about ‘true identity’ might seem like some new-age stuff. But don’t worry, I’m not here to convert you into some LGBTQ vegan feminist. These movements are part of the problem themselves.

They have ceased to become a noble pursuit towards helping groups of people. Instead, they have mutated into trends where people mindlessly follow the bullshit that’s popular without actually thinking about whether it makes sense

See, the issue is, that most people live their life influenced by the people around them and what they deem to be culturally appropriate.

95% of your daily actions are probably motivated by external factors. Not an honest desire and genuine enjoyment towards acting in that way. When you live the majority of your waking hours in a way that doesn’t conform to your identity, how do you expect your life to not suck?

How people are subconsciously coerced into behaving a certain way – Behaving in a way that they don’t want to:

Your parents have told you since you were born that being a doctor is the only way to be successful. So when you don’t become a doctor, how couldn’t you feel unsuccessful? Or you were bullied when you were 6 and now the trauma means you are scared to be different. So you don’t go to the gym, meditate or read because no one else does. Or that social media marketing agency you started where you ‘help’ dentists – because some guy on YouTube said it was a good idea. Yet you couldn’t care less about helping dentists.

This is on a macro scale, but the conditioning acts even more profoundly on a micro-scale – influencing your daily actions:

Your favourite influencer wore that T-shirt on his most recent TikTok. So you wear it aswell even though it looks atrocious on you. Or you go play football because all your friends are playing it even though you hate football and would much rather practice badminton. Or you go to that party because otherwise your ‘friends’ would call you a nerd for staying home to work on your business.

The reason why this is such a big issue – and is so widespread, is because these external beliefs and motivations are propelled onto you, from every angle, at every moment of every day.

My point is that you are not in control of what you are exposed to. But it will still dictate how you view the world and how you choose to behave. The problem is that this will cloud the innate beliefs which define your identity and refusing to prioritise your identity will crush the value that you can extract from life.

Technology and social media

Technology and social media have exacerbated this issue exponentially. In my opinion, the introduction of these platforms is the reason there has been an explosion in the rates of depression in suicide in the last few decades.

To begin with, social media is the best place to go if you are trying to adopt a messed-up perception of reality. The algorithm works by bombarding you with an endless feed of ultra-successful, genetically gifted phenoms because they get the most likes and attention. The trouble is, this is a gross misrepresentation of reality.

Of course you would have no self-esteem if your comparison point is billionaires with eight packs.

On top of that, technology provides so many gateways for distraction that rarely anyone takes the time to reflect inward and drill through the mountain of superficial thoughts which bury our purpose. Let’s be honest, scrolling on Instagram sounds far more interesting.

Call it trauma, call it conditioning, call it culture. The fact is, that a minority of people live in a way that aligns with their internal beliefs.

It’s difficult…

You might be thinking right now: ‘What I truly want out of life is to relax on the beach with a glass of champagne and no responsibilities’. Or maybe you think your deepest desire is to sit in front of the television eating pizza and drinking coke. But even these desires have most likely been impressed onto you by society.

If you did those things for the rest of your life, I wager my upper limbs that you would spiral into depression – because these activities aren’t aligned with your purpose.

And this is where the process becomes difficult. Most of what you think you want out of your life is probably incorrect. Some people know this deep down but some people are completely oblivious. As a consequence, they keep chasing one desire after the other. Yet chasing these desires never brings fulfilment since none of the desires were deeply rooted in their identity.

Therefore living honestly isn’t as simple as it sounds. Most of the time, we don’t even know where to be honest with ourselves.

Feel Fulfilled

The first step to fulfilment is to understand who you truly are. You must untangle your desires and determine what is a result of external manipulation and what touches your core so deeply that a life spent on just that would have been a life well lived.

This is why I call it living ‘honestly’. Because to deny these innate beliefs is to lie to ourselves about what we truly want. And when we lie to ourselves we suppress our identity. This is what leads to depression.

Honesty with yourself about what you truly desire out of life, and out of the current moment, will allow you to accept who you are. Even if you are afraid of expressing that due to fear of judgment from those around you, understanding what you want is the first stepping stone to making that a reality.

And you know what’s beautiful about discovering what you truly value in life? What you truly value is rarely a shiny new Rolex or a 4 story mansion. Instead, it’s usually more like a sense of security, genuine connections with people you care about, and purpose. And guess what? Businesses find it much more difficult to sell you this stuff compared to the watch or the house.

Purpose

I’ve mentioned ‘purpose’ in this post. This idea of living in a way congruent to your identity has a lot of parallels to finding your purpose. You might have heard people talk about ‘finding their purpose’ or ‘Men should always be on their purpose’.

The problem is that people often describe ‘purpose’ poorly. A lot of people don’t actually know what it means.

A good way to think about purpose is that: your purpose is the contribution you can give to the planet. Your purpose should be the unique ‘gift’ or value that only you can provide to the world.

Everything that you do, and every action that you take should aligned to fulfilling this purpose.

Now, 99% of men have no clue what their purpose is in life. That’s why they drift around aimlessly, waking up each day with no goal. This is how depression begins – a lack of purpose.

The reason why I think ‘living honestly’ and ‘purpose’ go hand in hand is because, if you are not honest with yourself, how do you expect to find what is purposeful to you in life?

Without being honest and taking responsibility for the way you act, you will continue living your life dictated by other people – by other people’s purpose, and therefore never finding your own.