Stop trying to be someone else.

“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” –Heraclitus

Everyone thinks they’re the man who will bring others back, even though most shouldn’t even be on the battle field.

Why the dissonance?

Artful Man is a subject matter expert on personality types, that’s his calling and he’s damn good at it. We all have our personalities, but more and more people are trying to claim a personality which isn’t their’s and the consequences are becoming more and more disastrous.

This piece was 100% inspired by a discussion between Mark Baxter and The Artful Man which has since been deleted. I listened to their Podcast on the ride into work and was absolutely blown away.

With the credit for the inspiration out of the way, let’s get to the meat.

Trying to be everything you’re not.

We are living in an age where you can be anything you want to be. You can be a pilot, an astronaut, a Navy SEAL, a bodybuilder, and you can do it all from the comfort of your basement; thank you internet.

If you have ever amplified your story to make it sound cooler than it really was or if you claim to have achieved feats which you never have in your real life, it has to stop now.

In the Podcast Artful Man talks about those who put on that mask and try to be people who they aren’t and in doing so they, “create a self-parody & stream of consciousness which will erode them over time” and he is dead on with this assessment.

When I heard this I had to hit pause because it perfectly describes something I’ve discussed time and time again.

If you make yourself out to be a hero online, then when you close the screen and look into the mirror, you’re going to hate the face looking back more than you did before.

Why?

Because you realize that in your real life

• you aren’t that great
• you haven’t achieved those accomplishments
• you aren’t an authority on the subject which you claim to be.

Your self-loathing grows once the rush of online attention fades and whether you believe it or not, eventually you have to look way from the screen and return to the “real world”.

In this world, you’re nothing and instead of working to make yourself something, you just rage away for being nothing until you have to return to the screen and plug back into the forums or twitter where you rule supreme, but this isn’t real living and a part of you knows that.

When you aren’t living your message, your message will absolutely destroy you. Too many are sharing a message which lacks authenticity and it is going to burn them.

Everything on The Family Alpha comes from a position of genuine living.

I live what I write and I share my failures as well as success to show that I’m not some superman with a family; I’m a guy who busts his ass and sometimes I hit the mark but more often I fall flat on my face. Through it all, I’m honest and this is why I can look myself in the mirror and smile.

I’m not eroding because there are no lies eating away inside my heart.

But those who lie and spread a false message, they’re afraid of being exposed. They’re always covering their tracks and are forced to keep up with the lies which compound upon themselves. The web which they must navigate to remember who they are and what they’ve done takes a toll on their mental health.

Take pride in who you are and the life you’ve lived up to this point.

If you want to reach greater heights, then write about how you’re working to reach greater heights. People will connect with a pure message of working for more much more strongly than they would to a fake who claims to have obtained it all.

This brings me all the way back to the original quote of this post by Heraclitus.

You can only become the man who brings other men back, when you stop trying to be that man and you start being your own man.

You can easily pick out the accounts on twitter who are trying to emulate Victor Pride, Illimitable Man, or even Artful Man. Yet, their account receives no attention, their message is mostly ignored, and overall they are just filling space in between the accounts who are writing from a genuine perspective.

You can’t copy greatness; that comes from within and if you were to be able to remove the desire to live the way other men are living and instead live your life and share your message you’d find that many more people would connect with your words.

We live in a day and age where there are generics everywhere and in the sea of conformity authenticity reigns king.

From this point it’s simple supply and demand, when you’ve got generics all over the internet, media, television, etc. it’s authenticity and genuine personalities that people crave as they’re far and few between.

If you want to give the people what they need, then give them the raw you. They don’t need another Hunter Drew or Craig James, they don’t need another Victor Pride or WallStreet Playboy they need you and your real & raw message which can only be told by you as you’re the only one to have lived your life and experienced your experiences.

Your perspective is unique, embrace that.

If you know that you’ve been putting on a persona or playing a character online, it’s time to delete it.

Delete the accounts whether they be troll, ‘joke accounts’, or fabricated in any way and take some time away from the internet. Get away from the notifications, the rush of ‘being liked’, and the rapid response high speed internet provides.

Remove it all and take some time to find out who you really are as a man.

Once you know you and once you know what it is you stand for and what your mission is, only then can you be the man who brings other men back. Only then can you write from an authentic perspective.

Life isn’t about being the most liked, re-tweeted, or shared person online it’s about living in the real world and making the breathes you are taking count towards something.

When you can look in the mirror and smile, then you can start writing and I promise you, that’s when people are going to pay attention.

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