When I was a youngster I was into punk and screamo and I continue to have a soft spot for those genres today. Often the music we were into when we were teenagers can seem a bit silly and childish when we get older, but for sentimental fucks like me at least, I still like to dust off what I like to think of as the high school soundtrack from time to time.

There's a particular tune I stumbled across somewhere around age 16 that had a message that resonates with me just as strongly nowadays as it did back then: "Can't Change Everything" by 1905.

Just because I can't change everything, doesn't mean I can't change anything.

Whenever I run this song through iTunes I refresh a lesson we've all heard before, even if it takes a long time to sink in, as it did for me. Anyone reading this post is on a subreddit that values change and appreciates that even the most obvious changes we need to make in our lives can at times demand a colossal effort of will. They can seem like a mountain that's simply too high.

To envision a world without chains but recognize that we as individuals, can only chip away at the links.

A trap I've fallen into at times and one I'm sure a lot of you here have experienced as well is the flawed rationale that if you can't change everything, why bother changing anything? When changing yourself doesn't look to you like a steady march towards a visible goal but step after step in circles it can all feel so utterly pointless you feel defeated. Some of us feel defeated for far too long. There are some men, the kind of men who will probably never read this, that will never feel victorious again. Men that have punked out and admitted defeat.

To have the ability to wage quiet wars in our everyday lives, and recognize the subtle victories when they happen.

I've always been an all or nothing kind of man. I'd rather have nothing than have a bit of something I sorta want. It's just how I am and the way I feel about a lot of things. But I learned mercifully early in my life that this is a terrible way to perceive the prospect of changing yourself. All or nothing is a bitch move. It's saying "I don't think I've got the balls to be a great man, and I'd rather be a nobody than half the man I want to be and put in the hours day after day".

There is a solid self-help book written by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog! The premise of the book essentially is that imagine every day there are a couple of squishy, nasty, gross, dirty old frogs for you to eat. For some reason. To be clear, the frogs represent changes you need to make, whether it's simple shit like cleaning your house or personal changes that require a serious investment of your time and attention.

Of course, you don't have to eat the frogs: the option to be a defeated man is there for anyone sufficiently broken down in his formative years that he considers this an acceptable way to live. But you are going to eat those frogs.

So which to eat first? You could nibble at the smallest, least-disgusting one, but then where are you? You've still got half a fucking pound of frog left to eat that day. But if you find the biggest frog around and gobble that motherfucker down straight away, you're getting waved home and rounding third before the sun's even come up. Guess what happens tomorrow? The first frog doesn't look so big. Three frogs don't look like an insurmountable obstacle like they did yesterday.

Maybe you can't eat all the frogs all the time. But you can eat some. You can eat the biggest one there. Perhaps a bite a day is all you can manage, but as long as you're coming back to the table day after day, you're winning. You're ahead of 99% of men on this planet just by recognizing what you have to do and showing up to put in the hours.

Maybe you can't finally get some muscles, find five plates to start your harem, put in promotion-worthy work at your job and nail every final at uni all at the same time. Not everyone can. But you can sure as fuck do one of those, probably two and possibly three. Six months from now when you have that promotion in the bag, you'll have the time and energy to get swole. Six months from now when your diploma is framed on your bedroom wall and all that work you invested has come back to you, you'll have a pretty good ice breaker when you get one of your girls back to your place and into your bedroom.

Just because you can't change everything, doesn't mean you can't change anything. One brick today is one less for tomorrow.