Pursuit of The Ideal Man

No, this is not a post about women pursuing men.

Instead, this is a post on men pursuing The Man. Rather, about Men pursuing the idealized version of ourselves.

 

The Ideal Man

We all have images in our heads of who we want to be. They vary from person to person. We want to be a physically fit, physically attractive man. We want to be a good partner dancer. We want to master a martial art. We want to write. To Draw. To be an artist. To be a voice of reason for change. To own a business. To learn a language. To give ourselves a self taught education of the classics and philosophy. To be well dressed. To Lead. To travel. To be charismatic. To be financially stable. To be self sustaining in power, food, water.

Some people might want to be this guy:

Or this one:

Or this one:

There are many other options for what you can want to hold within yourself as your own ideal self.

There are just as many reasons for why we might choose the ideals we desire to see in ourselves. And even the different parts of that image might be drawn from different desires. Shits and giggles. Desire to achieve a goal. A career. Happiness. Family. Stability. Safety. Health. A desire for long term relationships/marriage. A simple, masculine desire for competition. Because society told you so. Because religion told you so. Because a woman told you so. Because a role model inspired you to do so.

Some of these are healthy. Some are unhealthy. Some are one or the other depending on the situation, or both at once.

Many people chose who they want to be almost on a whim, or simply because one of the above told them to. Here in the manosphere, we put more thought into it. We look at life, our own individual abilities, our environment, and we make a choice for what we want to achieve of the options available to us. We look at men who have the kind of life we want, and we imitate the parts we think are relevant to their success, or the parts of their success we want to achieve.

 

So We Create Programs

Which is natural. Others may delude themselves that they can just wake up a changed man. We know better here. We know that fitness, education, leadership, charisma – really any self improvement – is a life long commitment. We create short term goals, that lead to mid term successes, that will set us up to achieve life achievements and improvements of our quality of life. Roosh put it great in his description of campaigns. We set goals, we dedicate ourselves to that goal by making willing sacrifices in other parts of our lives (sometimes temporary, sometimes not), and then we reach it. We either make sustaining it part of our routines or we smile, bask in a short sense of satisfaction, and move to the next chapter.

Yet sometimes we fall off the horse. We fail because we’re human. Because of circumstances outside of our control involving health, career, finances, legal issues. Because we’re too reckless, too wild, or too overconfident in our abilities. Sometimes we self sabotage.

 

Enter Self Shame and Getting Stuck

I’ve already posted a great deal of my new knowledge and viewpoints on shame vs guilt and how it has affected the hindsight view of my road to alpha. However there was something else I wanted to explore, and I think it is immensely important to those of us within the manosphere focusing on self improvement. That is how our ideals and goals can hurt us irrecoverably if we come from a place of shame. I didn’t expect to find the answer where I did, but when I wrote the original Shame Vs Guilt article I emailed Ricky Raw. The email exchange gave me the answer I was looking for:

Me

Hey Ricky,

I just read your articles on NLU about shame and guilt. I’ve been around the manosphere and blogging for over a year now; but while I’ve read some of your posts and your articles I never really dug into your writing before.

 

Now I think I know why.

 

Those articles filled in a piece of the puzzle on how I’ve lived my life and about my personality that I wasn’t aware of before – with the knowledge it makes a great deal more sense. I was operating on a shame based mindset for entire swaths of my life, interrupted by blinding and burning periods of great productivity when I would get so frustrated with myself that I said “screw it”. I never knew why that was before, so eventually it would slip out of my fingers after a period of success where I got to a comfortable place again and revert to my old habits.

 

As such, it makes sense now why I avoided your articles – they simply would have required too much inward driven thought. I would have found it painful to see the image of myself I had built up as the illusion it is. It would have required me to destroy that image I’d invested in to build the reality of the man which I had neglected.

 

I’m writing this both as a thank you and to check with you on if this is indeed how the shame vs guilt mindset works. I want to make sure the foundation I’ve now found is solid, so that I can tear the bad parts of old one down to build the new one. I also wrote a more in depth blog post about it and my life at http://stagedreality.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/ditch-the-shame-find-the-guilt-find-the-alpha/

 

If you have time for a response with your thoughts to this email or the blog post, I’d be grateful.

Thanks,

- Chad

Ricky Raw

I think you’re headed to the right track except for one thing. You still seem to put a premium on hitting the “ideal man” status, whether that entails being an alpha or some other ideal identity. The idea that your value is dependent on you achieving some specific ideal identity is still related to shame. You have value as a worthwhile person whether you’re a beta, alpha, omega, whatever. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be whatever, it’s just that I think people need to exercise some self-compassion for themselves even when they don’t hit these goals. 

Me

Hmmmm….

 

That makes sense. Without self compassion it becomes about oneself instead of about your actions and correcting them. Especially if your mental process ties in the action you should be doing to the shame. Go to the gym, stay on your diet, etc. If your mind ties shame together with the action or inaction it would self perpetuate until you showed yourself that compassion, forgave yourself, and moved on.

 

Thanks man,

- Chad

Ricky Raw

Yes exactly. 

 

The simple and short email exchange showed how if we hold up an image of our Ideal Self we can be blinded by the perfection of the image to the dangers and realities around us or begin unknowingly using the image to put ourselves down. Sometimes our ideals are simply too perfect for a human to achieve. To say so at the start is a cope out for haters, under achievers, for those too scared to dream. To continue believing when evidence is overwhelming that you won’t be able to achieve your ideal – for any reason outside of your control – is delusional. To continue believing and hurting yourself is coming from a place of shame.

Additionally, feeling like you are a horrible, shitty, lazy, etc. person for not going to the gym, going to the bars, reading a book – whatever, can be unhealthy. Becoming obsessed over your short comings will lead to a mindset of shame instead of one of guilt. Plan out your day to overcome the issue. Think of a way or method that can help you do what is needed and fill in for those short comings.

Don’t obsess over your short comings

If you let your mind tie in a feeling of shame with not doing an action the simple thought of correcting your mistakes becomes painful. This is unhealthy and will never let you correct the mistake

Don’t feel shitty that who you are isn’t who you want to be, nor that you can’t instantly become an idealized version of self. Life is a journey and a process, you will fail, fall, hurt, and overcome. Just as with lifting at the gym, if you never feel pain you’re doing something wrong. The only reason someone would never fail is because they set themselves mediocrity as a goal, not because they’re amazingly talented. Same for game, charisma, leadership – any goal.

Dust yourself off, adjust, and keep hustling.

 

Today’s Lesson

Don’t be Icarus – a complete wreck and loss of life in pursuit of a blind, out of reach, unrealistic ideal.

Don’t be a slug satisfied with whatever damp moldy hole you find yourself in until a boot comes along.

Find your life as a man.

And own it.