Introduction:This post is aimed towards the younger crowd, and it is a message I wish someone had told me.

First, a little background on myself. I’m fairly young at 23, a fresh graduate from college, and living on my own in a major city. I found TRP half a year ago and am currently in the midst of LIFTING, upping my SMV, and investing in myself. Before I get into my topic, I want to stress how important it is to take the first steps towards realizing the man you want to be. I don’t think the journey will ever be easy, but my quality of life has skyrocketed since this summer. Achieving personal goals (like finally seeing my own abs) is just the best.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s story time: When I was in high school I was a cocky and rambunctious kid. I displayed a lot of alpha traits like confidence and rejection of flawed authority and political correctness. I remember one day I was in physics class and my teacher (a women) pulled me out in the middle of class and to a separate storage room.

This isn’t going where you think it is.

Turns out she wanted to have a talk about my “general behavior” and told me that I was disrespectful, rude, and a detriment to the class as a whole. It was a short conversation, and afterwards she had a smug smile on her face that I’ll probably never forget. She thought she had done me a service by correcting my deviant behavior. In reality, I was crushed. I was already in a low point after getting dumped by my girlfriend, and an authority figure telling me that my self-confidence was bad really shook me up. In the spirit of full disclosure, I cried like a bitch about it. This interaction marked the beginning of the end of my natural red qualities and led to a ton of issues of self-doubt, blue pill bull shit, and oneitis.

The reason that my teacher’s words had such a big impact on me can probably be attributed to a lack of a proper male role model, but in a world where men are condemned for “toxic masculinity”, real men are more scarce and less open with the younger generation. So many mistakes and time wasted could have been avoided if I had had someone in my life to tell me that it is ok to be a boy, so I am writing this post in the hope that any of you who are struggling or lost don’t go down the same path I did. It is ok to be a cocky, asshole teenager. Be confident even if it’s to a fault. Do not reject your own values because someone tells you you’re a deviant. Of course, do not think that being a cocky brat is a permanent solution. You will have to grow up at some point, but when you’re young don’t fight your masculine urges. It’s puberty, it’s testosterone, and it’s healthy.

TL;DR: "Be yourself" is a lie that people will tell you which really means be the you that society labels as correct. Instead, listen to the testosterone coursing through your body.

Edit: Formatting