We Are The Sum Of Our Actions

“We are the sum of our actions, and therefore our habits make all the difference.”

— Aristotle

The things we do everyday compound over time. Who we are today, is the result of our habits tracing back years ago. The idea of change can be very daunting when looked at over a time span of years. But those years are broken up into months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Each little tick on that clock every single second, will turn into years. What we need to focus on, are those seemingly insignificant ticks. Life can be found in the details. Our entire lives are made up from those details. Sure, eating chips and soda once isn't going to make you fat and ruin your health. But if you ate that every day for a year, your health would suffer extremely. The reverse is true too. If you ate clean, followed a diet, and worked out for 30 mins every day. The compounding effect of that over the span of a year would change your physique drastically. Depositing that 50 bucks into your savings account every two weeks doesn't seem like much. However, if you set it up on a recurring basis and forgot about it for two years? $2600 in two years that you didn't even notice was accumulating. This is the power of the details.

I know I spent a good portion of my life looking for what I call the “Big Sexy”. The one thing that if I did it, it would change my life. And guess what? I never found it. I kept looking for the magic bullet. I didn't want to work at anything. I just wanted something easy I could do that would change my life for me. This just isn't realistic thinking. I didn't start understanding this concept until I started looking at people who had accumulated some sort of success in their lives. What were they all saying? They were saying to pay attention to your habits. Change the bad ones and replace them with good ones. Ones that will compound good things in your life over time. 

Now, I’m just like you. I still struggle with this. In fact, I'm still on the very first legs of my journey. That's what I'm doing here, writing / talking about this stuff. It's more for me than anything. Everyday I try to write about this stuff. Because it keeps me accountable. This daily habit of writing and working on articles and podcasts is one of the insignificant ticks on the clock that will compound good things in my life down the road. There’s days that I absolutely fail. That I don't write anything. That doesn't mean I quit. That means I try and get back on track. I write the next day. Because again, that habit of getting back on the wagon every time I fall off is another compounding habit that will serve me in the future.

Developing habits isn't a complicated thing. It's hard, but it isn't complicated. Breaking habits is the same. Getting rid of one habit necessitates that you replace it with another one. Or else, you will more than likely end up back in that last habit very easily. We only have so much will power. If we spend it all breaking a habit we will have none left to replace it with something good. Once that willpower is all used up it will be easier than ever to slip up and fall back into our old ways. Also, changing our entire life in one go won't work either. Same principle applies, we only have so much willpower and time. Start small and work your way up. Instead of committing to reading a book a week, just start with reading daily. Instead of trying to workout like a savage 7 times a week, start with 3. Not saying that you shouldn't workout a lot or read a lot, I’m just saying that you will not be able to maintain an aggressive pace for long if you are not used to exercising daily discipline. It's like a muscle, gotta build up to the big numbers. That consistency will pay dividends over the guy who stops and starts. You will continually be progressing while he has to start from square one every single time. Plus, once that habit is built, and you have gotten used to using discipline, you will be able to ramp it up and completely demolish your goals.

Creating true change requires a major paradigm shift in how you view life. When you look at those social media influencers who have yielded great results ( if they even did, lots of those people are posting their highlight reel and putting up a facade) and think they have it so much better than you. Just remember, any true success, even a seemingly overnight success, was years of hard work in the making. it will never stop there either. Now there is that possibility that you or someone had a pure stroke of luck and had their entire life changed by outside circumstance. How often does that really happen? Do you really want to spend your life waiting for that one small minuscule chance to improve your circumstance? I don’t. I see people at the gas station buying stacks of lottery tickets. they are in there every day doing it. You have to wonder what the rest of their life looks like. Maybe they just buy them cause its something fun to do. However, I don’t think that is always the case. They are looking for that magic bullet. if only they could just win then their life would be changed. They would have no more struggles. Rather than figuring out their finances and changing it themselves. They are content to wait for something that may never happen. Our time is better invested in changing our habits. The new paradigm should be one about making small steps. Breaking down our goals into bite sized chunks and acting on them. Get the notion out of your head that there will be just one magic thing that will change your life. “If only I could do ____, if only I was born ____ then i could _____, If I had _____ then i could do ____, If my circumstance was different then I could _____, these are all LIES. comforting ones that you tell yourself to remove that dreaded feeling of responsibility. Within this new paradigm lies exactly that. RESPONSIBILITY.

Taking responsibility for your life will allow you to create habits that serve you and destroy old ones that do not. I believed that I couldn't write, That I didn't have enough education and I wasn't smart enough to. These were comforting lies that removed the responsibility of the daily unmitigated discipline required of myself to become GOOD AT WRITING. You can do the same. For whatever you wish to do. It will not be easy. Know that.

Now, how does this relate to us as men, if we are to find meaning in our lives? Action is a masculine trait. It is one we can help define our lives by. If our life is the sum of our actions, then we as men must take action. I believe that at the baseline our status as men is defined by our ability to act. If we are being realistic, we define the value of a man based on his ability to act upon his surroundings. We look at the lazy man with disgust. Have you ever dealt with someone who could not  make good on his word? Did you trust that person? Would you like that person to be your partner in anything? The respect we receive is grounded in this philosophy too. I know I feel better about myself when I know I'm taking action. This is because I don’t feel the need to lie about anything that’s going on in my life. We know when we are bullshitting ourselves. When we go out and spin tales about how great we are doing and the projects that we are working on. Only to go home, feeling good about having talked about it, and not working on a damn thing. I wake up the next day, after having bullshitted my way through that last 24 hours, feeling like a fraud. Because I know I am not acting in integrity with myself. I know I can’t respect myself, therefore how can others? 

Make keeping your word a habit. Do you feel as though no one gives what you say any thought? They don't take it seriously? When you speak up, does anyone listen? As men, we are defined by our actions. Nothing else. Our capacity to accomplish things in our lives, and our ability to control our surroundings is exactly what makes the difference between boys and men. Verbalizing our intent is all fine and dandy, but it's the action behind it that makes it real. Just talking about it doesn’t actually mean anything. If you have made it a habit to not follow up with what you say, then no wonder no one pays attention to all that talk you spout. If none of it is backed up then it is essentially meaningless. 

Make discipline a habit. This doesn't have to be a grand undertaking. It can be as simple as waking up on time every single day. Practicing discipline can also go hand in hand in with the other things you are working on. As long as it is daily, and unmitigated. Every other habit you work on requires discipline, so you will be continually building this skill. I tried 75 hard. I failed it. I want to try it again. But here's why I failed: I didn't take the discipline aspect seriously enough. One task to be accomplished daily was to take a progress picture in the mirror daily. Easy right? Apparently not. Cause I fucked that one up consistently and had to keep restarting because of it. The point of that task was not to have a collection of pictures detailing my progress. The point was that it was a small task that can be completed daily. Just the act of taking a picture daily is practicing discipline. Pick something and do it. If you struggle with discipline, meaning you can never finish what you start. Pick something small. Brush your teeth daily, check off your calendar daily. Do it until you have mastered it and it has become a part of your routine. I’M SPEAKING TO MYSELF HERE CAUSE I SUCK AT THIS.

Make reading a habit. One thing I've noticed among the young men and my peers, is that barely anyone reads anymore. I hear people say all the time that they don't “like” reading. Well no shit, it actually takes a bit of effort. We have these smartphones that inundate us with entertainment daily. Very little of it is intellectually stimulating. It's usually all in the form of video or audio. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those mediums of communication. But we are using it for things that do not matter. Essentially pointless things are taking our attention when it could be used to improve ourselves. It requires focus (cough discipline cough). You need to spend brain power on comprehension of the written information you are taking in. We as men would be missing out on a significant learning opportunity if we didn't read. We can learn from other mens mistakes. We can be inspired by great men. We can learn new skills and expand our breadth of knowledge on any subject we wish. Not to mention how much better you feel after reading for an hour vs scrolling through the Gram looking at funny videos. Sure it was entertaining, but like I said before, we can't bullshit our inner selves. How can we have high self esteem and be happy with ourselves when we know we are WASTING TIME. We can try and lie to ourselves, but we know, deep down the real truth.

Make exercise a habit. Our body is made to move. It will wither away and die otherwise. Our muscles need to be challenged to grow. When they grow, we grow. One of the main attributes of being male is being physical. One of the main attributes of being a MAN respecting that. Taking action to grow ourselves physically will grow ourselves in every other aspect of life. Think about the discipline required to maintain physical activity. It hurts, it’s uncomfortable, it makes us sore. If we can push through that, it will make us stronger, mentally and physically. What an incredible way to build confidence as a man too. You get to see yourself progress daily. You have a tangible way of seeing improvement in yourself. You get stronger, you can lift more weight or do more reps. You see it in the physical changes in your body. Every time you walk by a mirror you can see the man you are becoming. Consistency here is key. You don't have to be a savage to see results. Although being a savage is fucking awesome. Start with 3 workouts a week and work your way up from there. If you can manage to reliably hit 3 times a week then you can do 4, then 5 and so on. No joke, I know its working for me, this will change our lives. Cause the way you show up in one area is the way you show up in all areas. The discipline from exercise will bleed over into other aspects of life. 

Make struggle a habit. Our daily lives are so inundated with convenience. We rarely have to struggle to do anything. This lack of struggle makes us weak. When something challenging does finally come along we fold cause we are not used to taking care of business regardless of how we feel about it. Stop prioritizing feeling good and taking the easy route. You want to go get some snacks from the store? Great, but you aren’t ordering them or driving to get them. Walk or run. Oh, your work has an elevator, guess what? You're taking the stairs. Man wouldn't it be easier to just pay someone to fix this thing in the house? Wrong. Try and fix it yourself first. Deliberately make things harder for yourself for your own benefit. This may seem counterintuitive. But in small ways we can train ourselves to be more resilient. So when the chips are actually down on the table we can perform better. When the thing you have to do actually does matter then making it easier isn't a bad thing. When I'm at work I don’t deliberately do things that are harder and take longer to get a job done. Because that's when the chips are on the table. I need to get that done fast and efficiently. But when I can afford to make something harder for the sake of training myself. I will try and do it.

Start paying attention to the things you do on a daily basis. Especially if you think you don’t have time for any new habits in your life. You can figure out where you are wasting time by tracking it daily. I know one major sticking point for me is the use of my phone. I can go down a social media black hole and get lost down there. Before I knew it I've wasted several hours that could have been put to good use. Or I neglected what I was supposed to do at that time. All because that video of some dude getting KO-ed followed up by a cute cat was sucking all my attention. I struggle with that daily. I literally have to delete all social media off my phone to combat this. That's not the only thing I do however, I replace it with something else. Reading an ebook. When I get that urge to flip open Facebook or the gram I just go to kindle and start reading a book that I can learn something from. Trust me, those actions will compound over time. You will be reading and finishing a ton more books than you used to. Get a notebook and start writing down all the things you do in a day and how long you do them for. You only have to do this for a couple of days before you realize where your time sinks are. It’s like doing a budget but for your time. Then get ruthless about replacing those time sinks with things that will help and improve you.

In closing I want to say that this has got to be one of the more important tools you can use to turn your life around. Habits are extremely powerful. Remember, we only have so much time on this earth before we are gone and turned to dust. Use that time wisely. Create habits and systems that will serve you and create a life that you truly wish to live. I know this sounds really fluffy and maybe a bit scammy, but it’s true. Take a look at the habits that got you to where you are today. Once you make those connections your view of your life and the world will change slightly. I know it did for me. I was stuck in that victim trap of thinking my circumstance was what was holding me back. My genetics, I wasn't born with a work ethic. WHATEVER. Now my eyes are open, and I’m crawling out of that victim pit. Slowly. One habit at a time. You can do it too.