People have mentioned that some of us add our blog links in the comments but here we go https://brajeshwar.com/2024/11-simple-rules-of-all-self-help...
It really seems quite difficult for straight men to succeed at this.
Think for yourself my friend. Don't just parrot what you hear.
I'm not sure I like the framing of this
The fuck is this about?
OTOH I can remember being a 16 year old sex crazed sociopath, maybe adolescence is what op refers to? I definitely participated is some extremely questionable decisions at that age, and sometimes I wonder if others were significantly affected by my ignorance and selfishness. Probably not, as they were also sex crazed sociopaths at the time, but still. Such a cringefest.
Being ashamed of your past actions is how you know you are growing.
But it doesn't transcend as men are usually way stronger and just brush it off.
Hint: It's so prevalent it's even considered "funny".
Leaving aside the "If you're a man ..." condescending crap, that "cause harm to others" bit reveals a lot about the author.
Sorry pal, you're alone on that hill.
I believe that far too many men are messed up and have desires of sexual harm and struggle to contain these desires – way more men than people think. I was attempting to call it out, but I may have done so clumsily, writing it as if every man struggles with it, or that it's a struggle I've had (when I haven't).
And it isn't simply a matter of sociopathy, but a model of masculine behavior and culture that trains men to view women as a currency and an entitlement, and doesn't allow them healthy emotional expression and identity separate from sexual and material conquests. A bear is just operating by instinct. Men choose their abusive behaviors and society often enables them.
This happened when I was 20. I don't know what else to say other than, it fucking sucks.
Those who ignore it will be overweight, unfit, and on daily meds. Those who change their lifestyle will not.
The fix is:
> Leading a healthy life is simple: sleep well, exercise three times a week, have an active social life, eat a variety of vegetables and whole foods, avoid sugar, processed foods, alcohol and drugs. That's 90%. Everything else is optimisation.
This was a revelation to me in my early-thirties.
Have you considered that this had less to do with how you acted but more with your marked value increasing and there's decreasing?
The harm of that is that women feel shame for enjoying it and men feel shame for wanting it.
The social norms are garbage, at some point in life you figure it out by experience...
Carnivorous animals, are they immoral?
Alternately, one might argue the difference is that they have no alternative to inflicting suffering, and that having the option to reduce suffering and choosing to inflict it anyways is the moral problem, not just inflicting it.
Rape culture among ducks?
Or crows that attack a member of the flock that misbehaved to a minor of the flock? (this is one of the animals that seem to have their own morals).
Anyway: humans should not project our sense of moral to animals.
And humans are no carnivores. Most likely we're omnivores (like our close animal relatives the primates: and they prefer fruit over meat any day, just like human babies).
This applies to humans too, and not just in the context of eating meat.
2) Carnivores do not have a choice of food, humans have great alternatives, being omnivores not carnivores.
What the ...
There's this one guy that used to be a regular of tech events where I live. He was building some sort of crappy luma clone.
Anyway, one day out of nowhere he posts on LinkedIn "PSA to girls, when at a conference, we are not reading your name tag, we are looking at your breasts[1]", and then some bizarre argumentation of how if we all used his app this would stop.
He was trying to sound like an "ally". I'm not a girl and it even made me feel uncomfortable, yikes.
1: He used that exact word, mega cringe.
I consider rape and sexual assault to be one of the worst things one human can do to another – just behind murder and torture. And yet society is littered with it. Ask any woman (and some men), she'll more than likely have a story. And it should be obvious: don't sexually hurt people! I _shouldn't_ need to include this in a simple list of rules for life. But sadly, I feel I do.
I've noticed advice articles, personal development books, and "self-help" podcasts aimed largely at men never seem to address this simple fact: far too many men commit or have thoughts of sexual violence. This was true hundreds of years ago and it's still true now. These men are out there, amongst us. They're "good" in every other way – they're kind to strangers, they love their mother, they're great fathers to their kids (how many of the world's great men have an "allegations" section on their Wikipedia page for goodness sake?). And yet they give in to this disgusting, horrific lust that ends up ruining someone's life (and often their own).
I purposefully included it in my list, because others don't. Because it appears to be something that more men struggle with than people realise.
I don't care if it's taboo. If my post stops just one man acting on his evil desires and harming a woman, man, or child, it was worth it as far as I'm concerned, despite the controversy I've stirred up.
Having said that, if what I wrote was clumsy, inconsiderate or implies I have similar desires – as you and theblazehen suggests – then I do apologise. I am NOT on the side of rapists.
Edit: I probably should have mentioned that my advice was meant to also cover cheating on your partner as a form of "harm", as well as sexual assault. But maybe I was too vague.
The issue is that is neither common nor a natural thing for men to "struggle not to rape someone" as much as you think it is. While your intentions might be good, and I do believe that, it reads like some sort of freudian slip.
Imagine if someone wrote "hey guys, let's be honest, I don't really like this thing of urinating on your food before eating, can we just agree to stop doing that :)".
You wouldn't think "oh what a sensible comment, finally someone has the balls to talk about it", no, you would just :O and think the guy is crazy ...
"Men who don't rape really do want to rape and just exert enormous self control over their intense desire to rape" is not the conclusion to draw from this. The fact that you seem to think that this is fairly universal to men tells us something about you that is worrying to many readers.
I can assure you that it takes me zero self control to not rape or sexually abuse women and zero self control to not cheat on my wife.
Secondly, nobody is going to read that and decide not to rape someone. Zero people are ever having their mind changed by what you wrote.
Thirdly, and it's even more taboo but you really need to hear it: women lie. A lot. Claiming sexual assault is (wrongly) believed by many to be a complete escape from all accountability for whatever choices and behaviours they voluntarily engaged in. It's not. I know you're not a fool, please know that you have no moral obligation to believe such claims or enable their behaviour.
The gendered language probably didn't help. You would have really riled up the crowd if you had specifically admonished women for infidelity, divorce, emotional abuse, financial deception, paternity fraud, etc.
- The lazy person works twice as hard. Often I found you can save a lot of time just trying to the minimal possible and gain a lot of insights of why something is minimal vs not
-The opinion of the person who rarely offers it is listened to more closely. I found the opposite to be true, those who don't offer their thoughts frequently are often dismissed when they do want to share something
Anyway, many of the points are great.. I would also add to keep a journal and write down what was meaningful throughout the day.. you will find time passing by with more quality since you know what the take and what to avoid
lol
> Adults make a lot more sense when you realise they're just children in big bodies.
That one, I absolutely agree with.
I'm 55. I would have a hard time limiting myself to 55 things I wish I knew when I was 34. When I'm 105, I still will have too many for now. :)
The funny thing I find about criticism is that you actually don’t have a choice about whether or not it affects your future actions. Criticism that I have dismissed has persistently come back to haunt me, perhaps via my subconscious.
I like this. I’ll take it a step further:
curiosity plus follow-through is a superpower. Lots of people I know are curious… they just never really follow through on it, so they end up average, wasting that superpower. They’re curious in their head, but it stays in their head.
I’m thinking about curiosity in a work sense (“could I build a better widget?”) and in a personal interest sense (“I wonder if taking a dance class / volunteering at a soup kitchen would be fulfilling”).
I’ve learned that the people who tend to excel are the ones who follow that curiosity to completion for something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_a_true_word_is_spoken_in_...
adzm•1h ago