masculinity explained:
How To become A man
In the following let’s take a look at what it means to be a man and what objectives and principles should guide you towards becoming a great man in your daily life.
Need for life guidance
Nowadays, when you watch news or read your way through the internet, you might discover a lot of either useful or confusing information about the day to day global and local events and also find out about certain correlations and contexts of world affairs. However, what I think is missing from all that flood of contemporary data is a basic understanding of human nature and behaviour. What a regular person needs is a common orientation in life which is based on values and generic wisdom. It’s important to distinguish between what is essential, and what is just detailed knowledge for experts that is irrelevant for the vast majority of people. Generic wisdom is the essential thing here.
That’s why I came up with the concept of a life guide that can give especially younger people a broad outline of what comes along the way as you grow and age. People are different, and yet the problems, goals, struggles and dramas that we experience have all similarities. We all want peace, happiness, prosperity, friends and family. That’s why what is essential is a common understanding of each other as human beings outside of any ideological, political or religious frame. Such a life guide would provide a generic insight into the stages of life, what matters at each stage and what the personal goals should be. You can check my life guide which I’ll be extending and updating as I gain more insights over time.
This guide applies to everyone. However, there might obviously be differences depending on your individual situation and gender. As the topic of gender and sex has unnecessarily become polarizing in public discourse nowadays, I decided to dedicate two articles to the overall life guidance for each gender. In the following let’s take a look at what it means to be a man and what objectives and principles should guide you towards becoming a great man in your daily life.
About maleness
Being a man is part of reality. Masculinity truly exists on the molecular level encoded in the genes of the cell nucleus which group themselves into shapes that are called chromosomes. It’s basically coiled-up strings of genes in a XY form. If a developing life has those chromosomes, it will become a biological boy and later a man if nature takes its typical course.
Based on those genes the anatomy of a male body is shaped which tends to be rather big and angular. Penis and testicles are male genitals. Testicles secrete testosterone, which is a male hormone which will absolutely have an impact on how you feel in your body and consequently the way you behave, at least in part. Of course it’s not the only factor that regulates behaviour, but it plays a big role, nevertheless. Men have on average 7-8 times more testosterone than females.
Nature of masculinity
Testosterone makes men ready for action. It makes them fidgety. A male wants to perform, to prove himself, to influence and act. That’s why boys usually want to play and crack jokes. They are not made for sitting around in safe environments all the time. The more masculine a boy or man is, the more he likes to get his hands dirty, explore, take risks and understand the world around him through practice.
The male brain is more connected from back to the front. That means male are very good at spatial orientation and imagination. It’s no wonder that it’s rather boys who like to play computer games and watch erotic or pornographic material. Such content stimulates their visual and visionary circuits. As adults, men become oriented towards problem solving and strict logical thinking due to their brain’s wiring in favour of imagination and abstraction. A good man is a good hands-on problem solver and women usually find this very attractive.
The male instincts are that of a hunter and protector. The hunter side manifests itself in his pursuit of a female partner and his pro-active manner of establishing a relationship. His protective side manifests itself in his action to create a safe environment for his family and friends and by acting chivalrously, which is what a gentleman does.
The men’s way of thinking is compartmentalised. In their mind they can keep things separate from each other, which is a reason why many men can have casual sex devoid of any emotional attachment. It’s not an optimal situation, but it explains a lot.
What a man wants
There is a phrase that men are easy to please and quick to forgive. There’s much truth in it. Although men aren’t simple, what they want in life is pretty straightforward. They don’t have that many needs as women do and they can get along in life with much less than women. A man wants his female partner or wife to be happy. His woman becomes the centre of his life and he’s happy when she’s happy. A man doesn’t want to fight with a woman, and if he does, he gets into a conflict with himself, because his protective nature wants to maintain and nurture, not to destroy.
Also, men usually don’t know how to fight with a woman, as the conflict becomes a linguistic war of words, and men usually don’t need such navel-gazing, verbal analyses of who said what. Men like to focus on problems and solve them. That’s what their brain does. A man wants to solve the problem for his woman, so that she’s happy, without realising that she might just want to talk and have an emotional deep talk exchange. That’s definitely something a man needs to learn in his life, namely that to maintain a relationship you need not just to solve problems and be logical, but also to have a nice, emotional time together through talking and laughing.
What a man wants is love and respect, both from his female partner and his environment. A good man will sacrifice himself for the wellbeing of his people, he will work a lot, be gentle and protective, or even be pushed to the margins of his community. But what he expects in return is a healthy dose of respect for his sacrifice, and admiration of his competence. There is a certain type of pride and confidence in a man that he gains through his struggles, learning and experience.
Ideals For A Man
GET IN SHAPE
As a man you should work on your fitness. Obviously, it’s not important that you get a beach body. In fact, women don’t care that much about six pack and the visuals as men do. However, it will be good for you to be fit, because having a fit body changes the way you behave. A trained body secretes more testosterone and that will make you behave and look more manly and also contribute to your overall confidence in posture and behaviour.
SELF-DISCIPLINE
It lies in the nature of a man to perform. A man establishes his identity through the skills, work and activities he can do. In order to learn all that and also be fit with your body, you should develop a strong sense of self-discipline. A man’s life is about building a way of living, and for that you will need motivation and strength. That’s why do whatever it takes to achieve personal discipline in small as well as in big things.
EMOTIONAL SELF-CONTROL
In combination with self-discipline it’s important to be able to control your emotions. You want to become an anchor of stability, not a pushover. You will need to live a life by your rules without getting too emotional when occasional failure and conflict arrives. See yourself as the hero of your personal story. Develop an inner motivation. Become aware of your true goals, when you feel that your will power is leaving you. Understand that emotions come and go and change like weather. Build your character on durable qualities and virtues.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Becoming a man also means taking on responsibility. This might mean taking a leadership role, founding a family, taking care of others etc. Do not shun responsibility. You will find personal fulfilment in it as a man. Ultimately, what you do for the people you love is the point of living. Just acting selfishly out of egoism becomes incredibly boring and dull with growing age. Realise that taking more responsibility as you grow as the way to make you happy, even if it might not seem like this at first sight. Trust the process
ROLE AS PROTECTOR
The better side of the man is that of a protector. It’s an instinct that makes men defend their family and friends and it has an evolutionary explanation from the time when people were hunters and gatherers living in caves. Men still have that quality of going out into the world and putting themselves in danger, just to benefit or protect their society. As a consequence of that, men can also be quite competitive and physically aggressive. However, you don’t want the worse part of you to dictate your life. Focus rather on the noble quality as protector and make sure that your women and the people around you feel safe and happy with you.
ADVICE FOR ACTION
LEARN A SKILLSET
For you as a boy or maturing young man the priority in life should be to learn a skill or a set of skills as early as possible that would enable you to become useful to society. A man derives a big chunk of his identity through the work or job he does. You won’t respect yourself unless you feel that you can carry a certain weight or become hands-on with something. Obviously, the skill set doesn’t have to be purely physical.
INVEST IN YOURSELF & YOUR FINANCES
Based on this notion of knowing your skills, a good man should invest in his health and financial stability. As a man you won’t become happy later in life by just making all the money and prosperity to enjoy it in loneliness. You will want to share it with your woman, your kids, friends and family or society at large. That’s why you must become an attractive anchor of personal stability. You have to pull yourself together and achieve a certain degree of personal and material foundation. It doesn’t have to be perfect - it will never be. Just work on yourself, so that you can look at yourself in the mirror without feeling disenchanted, unmotivated and lazy.
INDEPENDENCE & SELF-DETERMINATION
With growing age, most likely in your thirties and forties, you should become your own master in emotional and mental respect. Know your skills and purpose in life. This will give you an intellectual foundation for your action. Also, control your emotional impulses. Of course we all should communicate clearly and talk about our emotions and feelings when it’s appropriate and the situation requires it. But it’s absolutely not necessary for you as a man to indulge in every little feeling, every little inconvenience, every little emotion or notion that crosses your mind. Become an unshakable anchor for your people. That means that embracing a stoic and calm attitude will definitely make you incredibly useful, empowering and attractive in the face of crises, both for women as well as your peers and colleagues.
BE HONORABLE WITH WOMEN
No matter how successful or unsuccessful you are with women, you have to treat them with utmost respect. If you constantly chase different women, objectify them in casual talk in their presence, make them feel insecure with you - that’s not manly. What’s manly is a strict code of honour that you give to yourself, guarded by rules set by yourself, to which you will stick, because they make sense to you, not because someone tries to control you.
Romantic relationships are difficult, and many young men aren’t successful in this game of allure and enchantment. Still, even if you feel you’re not making any experiences and you don’t find the woman of your life that you think you deserve, this doesn’t give you the permission to project your frustrations and disappointment on other women. Be the hero of your story. Endure your pain in peace and dignity. Channel your negative emotion into a constructive work or pursuit that actually benefits people. Continue working on yourself. When you’re ready and the right time comes, you will have your experiences and you will find the women of your life. But don’t lose your honour and dignity on the long way towards that goal.
Important disclaimer
From an article like this a false impression might arise that all men are the way I described and that all women are the exact opposite of it. This wouldn’t be accurate. Therefore, it must be stated that we all have male and female features and qualities in our minds and bodies. We are all mixed beings, and nobody is fully only one thing. Reality is complicated. Every man has some female hormones and features, and every female has some male hormones and features too. And most of us have mixed brains, not just pure male or female ones. It’s a matter of tendencies and amounts which makes a difference in behaviour and personal interests.
What I described are the primal drives and impulses that come from nature, from biology. But of course biology intermingles with our intellectual, mental side which opens up room for adaptations and further possibilities. The way you behave will ultimately be the result of a complex mix of your life story, decisions, social and cultural environments and yes, also your biology. Therefore, we should view each other as individual human beings first, with our own dreams, goals, hopes, capabilities and experiences, and perhaps stop reducing anyone to only their biology, or only their environment, or only their culture. See people for what they really are in their wholeness in the here and now, and do not overexpose only their single metric or characteristic that forms only a small fraction of their greater being.
I hope you found this article informative and helpful. Now go and do the right thing.
BLOGGER: HUBI
