Should Men Chase Money, Girls, or Fitness First?

Introduction

If you were actually going to do all of those things that you know are good for you as a man, you would be doing pushups at your grandma’s funeral.

Start a business. Workout. Invest your money. Meet girls. Eat clean. Meditate. Read. Side hustle.

The list goes on and on.

If you fool yourself and try to improve every area of your life at the same time, you’ll find yourself scatting around the place achieving nothing significant. You need priorities.

So what should be the main focus? Money, girls, or fitness?

This article will answer that question for good.

Make no mistake: men have it hard

There’s an accepted narrative, that women are oppressed and men are oppressors. 

Sometimes, of course, this is exactly what happens. Some women are oppressed by some men in certain circumstances. Some men are paid more than some women in the same businesses, sometimes.

But this men/women notion is taken to be some sort of hard and fast rule, and this is extremely dangerous.

Here are some of the ways that this “men oppress women” narrative makes life very difficult for honest men.

Men are assumed to be privileged and have it easy all the time. It’s like when a billionaire’s son tells people he’s depressed and everyone tells him to STFU. 

It’s not like he won’t struggle with anything because he was born with money. And it’s not like he chose to be born with all that money. And how many of us are really struggling to survive, financially?

He would have many of the problems that we all have, but none of the sympathy.

Men also experience double standards when it comes to dating and marriage. If a woman divorces a man she ‘fell out of love’, but if a man divorces a woman he ‘left her’.

Finally, men get absolutely zero chance in a divorce settlement. If she wants the house and kids, she’ll get them. End of story.

Men put pressure on themselves

We can’t blame all of our problems on this oppression narrative, though. A lot of the pressure comes from standards that we men impose on ourselves.

Here’s what most men have to do, to be able to sleep at night without feeling like a failure:

Make more money than their woman. Times have changed to an extent, but no man wants to be provided for financially. It feels pathetic.

Know how to fight. Even though few people ever actually find themselves in a fight these days, there’s something ingrained in our brains. No one wants to be slapped around if the situation ever arose.

Have a lot of options sexually. If girls don’t validate you, you feel weak. Winners get girls, and so not getting girls makes you feel like a loser.

Not struggle with girls at all. You’re supposed to get girls, but you’re not supposed to want to get girls too much. It feels needy and gross.

Be there for their whole family. You’re the man. You should be a rock.

Not rely on anyone at all. You should bring the solutions, not the problems.

It’s hard for everybody – Men are not victims

Just because I’ve spent all this time laying out how hard men have it these days, you might think that I’m some sort of alpha male red pill f*ck.

That is not my stance. I know about the bullsh*t of being a man firsthand, but it’s not like women don’t have their own problems.

Childbirth, periods, rape, all that stuff.

I don’t wanna go into all of that right now but you get what I’m saying.

Everybody has privileges, Everybody has adversity. We all struggle.

Another point that needs to be made, is that complaining about how hard the world is for you doesn’t actually do anything.

It’s not like there’s anybody coming to make your life less difficult.

Part of being a man is figuring it out. Taking responsibility for your own outcomes.

You’re never going to find the strength that you will need to make something of yourself if you keep thinking like a passive-ass victim. It’s just not a winning strategy, as brutal as that sounds.

You’re going to have to figure out what you want in life, and then figure out how best to prioritize.

Here is a case for some of the aims that you might pursue.

The case for making money a priority

Without money, you will always be a slave.

When you first get out of school, you think thank f*ck. 

I am free. 

I can do whatever I want.

Except you can’t, can you?

Firstly, you need to live somewhere. So you need to pay rent. So you have to work 5 days a week for another man’s business, just to not be homeless.

You cant go anywhere you want, either.

There are flights to every country in the world today. But you can’t just get on one. You don’t have the money. You got bills to pay. You need to check if it’s ok with your boss.

Then there’s the tax. Of course, we need to be taxed to keep our economy working.

But the rich get taxed by a different set of rules.

In 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans paid 3.4% tax on average.

Men who make over 100 million dollars per year pay 3.4% tax, and you’ll pay more like 34% of your income.

And if you try to pay the same amount of tax as the super-rich, you’ll go to jail.

How is that not slavery?

The chains are on you from the minute you turn 18.

In the book Financial Freedom, Grant Sabatier identifies 7 distinct stages of wealth.

Stage 1	CLARITY	Knowing where you are, tracking income and outgoings
Stage 2	SELF SUFFICIENCY	Free of urgent debt, able to pay for your lifestyle and cover all expenses
Stage 3	BREATHING ROOM	6 months worth of expenses saved, able to cover unexpected fees
Stage 4	STABILITY	1 year worth of expenses saved, relatively secure
Stage 5	FLEXIBILITY	2 years worth of expenses saved, offers more freedom to live on your terms
Stage 6	FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE	Enough money to not have to work for the rest of your life. Ether through a lump sum, or wealth-generating assets
Stage 7	ABUNDANT WEALTH	Able to give large amounts to good causes and build a positive legacy.

Ultimately, the chains fall off when you reach financial independence. 

At level 6 it’s no longer about doing what you have to do- it becomes about doing what you want to do.

That is really something worth striving for.

The case for making fitness a priority

Maybe you think of going to the gym as some vanity project.

We’ve all seen those guys. Not exactly Vikings, are they?

In my opinion, though, every man should be training his body.

The science is pretty clear, for a start. 

Training with weights consistently slows down the rate at which your brain degenerates.

Training with weights regularly reduces the chances of obesity by 20-30%.

People who trained with weights also showed improvements in memory, attention, and cognition.

The power of physical training goes far beyond these measurable health benefits, though. The full impact of a strong body is difficult to explain and hard to deny.

A strong man is a capable man, who can protect and provide and act courageously. A capable man can really change society for the better, and the world is crying out for more men like that.

Physical discipline leads to broader excellence

When Theodore Roosevelt was a boy, he was weak. 

He had asthma attacks and diarrhea frequently. He was always suffering in some way, from fever to toothaches to abdominal pain. His parents were worried he might not survive his childhood, and he was home-schooled as a result.

Roosevelt loved to read, and was fascinated with the wild. He dreamt of exploring the outdoors, but he was far too fragile to really venture outside.

One day, his father pulled him aside.

“Theodore you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. I am giving you the tools, but it is up to you to make your body.”

“I will make my body!”

As we all know, Roosevelt went on to lead a heroic life full of courageous political action. But it was the adversity he overcame in private, that set the man up for such victory.

Besides reading voraciously, young Roosevelt would lift weights. He would swim in icy rivers and climb mountains. He boxed, he wrestled, and he rowed 25 miles at a time. He learned to navigate the wilderness, and once hunted for 36 hours in the winter without a blanket or a tent. 

All of Roosevelt’s later achievements start to make sense in this context. 

Who could compete against a man like that?

The case for making relationships a priority

It’s already difficult to navigate making something of yourself as a man, without the added pressure of a relationship/active dating life.

This is why if you ask your boys for advice, they will often tell you to chase the cash. Monk mode. Mindset grind set. 

All that sh*t.

Whilst I’m not saying that’s bad advice, it’s also not like men have always thought that way. In the 50s and 60s, the median age of a man getting married for the first time was 22. Today the number is 31, and it’s still climbing.

My take from these statistics is that in times past, men switched the order. Rather than achieving money and status before getting married, they married very early and figured the rest out afterward. They used their marriage as a foundation for their adult life.

We all know that half of all marriages end in divorce. We all know the dangers of dating a psychopath, and how relationships can distract a man from pursuing his purpose.

But to argue a side that’s less often heard, here are 3 reasons why you might want to make your dating life/relationships a priority as a man starting out.

The highest-quality marriages often come from couples hitched between 22 and 25, according to this study.

Don’t get me wrong, the divorce rate is higher for young couples. But being not divorced is very different from being happily married. If a happy marriage is what you’re after, getting married young doesn’t seem like a bad shout.

Socializing helps you be a better man.

Dating different girls isn’t really about the sex. It helps you become confident and masculine and interesting to talk to. 

It teaches you how to handle rejection, what you like about people, and what people like about you. 

It is pure character building.

If you completely neglect dating and relationships in order to make a lot of money, you might end up a lonely middle-aged man unaware of just how boring you are.

A good relationship beats pretty much everything else.

Dating is fun. Money is fun. But a good relationship, a real relationship, might be the most important thing in life.

I know. Sorry. 

Gross.

I know most relationships are pretty trash. Everyone is miserable and jealous and quietly desperate. But a few people have figured it out. Maybe you’ve met one of these people.

You could be a bitter divorced man with a hundred million dollars and an 8 pack. You would be jealous of a man with a genuinely amazing relationship, who works at Burger King.

It just seems like a different level of achievement, somehow. It’s deeper.

How to figure out what to pursue first

This is not about listening to a guy on the internet tell you why he thinks you should do XYZ. 

What the f-ck do I know about what you should do?

The thing is, it’s not like you look at everything completely objectively. 

You are emotional. 

You have desires and ambitions and are drawn to certain things. 

You know what you want, or at least, you can know what you want.

When I read through the money section of this article, I can feel a strong emotional response. Sure fitness is important, relationships are cool.

But I need money. It keeps me awake at night.

If you are seriously inexperienced with dating and relationships, maybe the common advice to young men is to focus on your purpose. Start a business. Make enough money and the women will all start chasing you.

But you feel a lack, and the lack is your sex life.

It might be “pathetic” to chase girls over money, but what is really pathetic is letting another man decide what’s important for you. 

Like they know you. 

Spend some time with yourself. Write down what you want out of life, and figure out what is keeping you awake at night. What you really feel like you lack.

Chase that. That is what you need. Whatever it is.