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?

ArtfulMan 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 theirs and the consequences are becoming more and more disastrous.

This post was inspired by the discussion between Mark Baxter and The Artful Man which can be found here.

Before reading the post, I recommend you give Mark’s channel a listen and hear what he and Artful Man had to say. I also recommend you follow the Podcast as it’s absolute gold. Mark is bringing brilliant masculine minds to the table for a chat and they’re dropping knowledge bombs left and right.

With the credit for the inspiration out of the way…

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.

Only you know who hides behind the keyboard.

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, and you aren’t an authority on the subject which you claim to be. You’re 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 at yourself 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 and sometimes 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 read the full post here: https://thefamilyalpha.com/2017/04/25/stop-trying-to-be-someone-else/

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