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Men love to subscribe to the lone wolf principle - live alone, die alone. We love the idea of living alone in the woods, living off the fat of the land, hunting for our food, and building a cabin. We think this is the textbook definition of an alpha male. While there is nothing wrong with being able to survive in the wild and be resourceful, men are not biologically designed to live in isolation. We are social beings. We need accountability because we are so distracted. Talk is cheap and execution is in short supply these days. We, humans, seem to be taking procrastination to new levels. We are so overwhelmed by all the distractions. I am not immune to these. While writing this blog, I am looking at new trucks I want to buy, checking on the price of Bitcoin, and checking the message my girlfriend sent me. This blog should have been written and published, but here I am still typing away. It is Sunday evening at 6.30 pm. If I had promised a friend that this blog will be published by 7 pm, the dynamic of procrastination gets turned on its head. Instead of fucking around with the myriad of distractions, I would be attacking this blog like a master. Accountability is powerful. It creates a bond between men - it creates responsibilities and generates action. Here are 3 benefits of being part of a tribe. 1) It Kills Anxiety What happens when you feel anxious? You feel small and passive. Your self-preservation instinct kicks in as you do everything to protect your vulnerability. The only way to get you out of this funk is through action, but this is where it gets a little tricky. Every bone in your body is telling you to retreat - you need to find a way to go against your instincts and your caveman's brain. In my experience, the best way is through accountability. You need to commit to action and ask a brother to hold you accountable for that action. The solution could be as simple as getting out of bed and going for a walk. Send him a Strava of your walk, do a video call with him while you are out on the walk - do whatever is necessary to force yourself into compliance with the action you have committed yourself to do. The first thing you will notice is that your anxiety will subside, and you will start to think clearly. Anxiety is all in your mind. It is that negative little voice inside your head saying you are a piece of shit and that you deserve bad things happening to you. The best form of action is getting out the front door - putting some physical space between yourself and the scene of the crime. That physical action will gag your inner devil, throw him in the trunk of the car, allow your inner god to jump over the seat and ride shotgun with you, and remind you of your sovereignty and mastery over your emotions. 2) It Helps us Battle Loneliness Men are lonelier than ever, and there are many reasons for that. The first is the curse of working from home. Sure you can now work in your jocks, and fix the toilet while on a conference call (struth, you can even be on the toilet during your Monday morning meeting). Have we ever taken the time to think of the mental toll of working in isolation? Men are social creatures - we were not designed to jump from one Zoom call to the next. We are designed to hunt in groups. Working from home had made us more isolated than ever. The second factor is the increase in divorce. We all know how marriage and divorce play out for male friendships. Wives always control the social agenda - and the majority of social interaction is with their friends. When the marriage ruptures, husbands realize that most of their friends were the husbands of their ex-wife's friends - and these men are forced to have no contact with you. Men do not maintain friendships as skillfully as women. Women need no reason to get together. Men need a reason, and our lone-wolf mentality leads us to increased loneliness. How do we respond to this? Do we go out and look for new friendships? Hell no, that would take us back to grade school when we would walk up the cool kid and ask if he wanted to be friends. What do men do the second after a romantic relationship ends - they look for new romantic relationships. After divorce, men jump on Tinder like dogs onto a piece of meat. We are terrified of being alone, and we interpret the need for company with the need to get laid and shack up with someone. We attach our loneliness to the wagon of new girlfriends who have spent a lifetime building lasting friendships. We build a new set of friends - again the husbands and boyfriends of the girlfriends of the new lover. This is a fucked up strategy because when that relationship does not work out we find ourselves in the same dilemma. So not only does our fear of loneliness force us into hasty relationships, it also postpones the inherent need we have of being part of a masculine tribe. 3) Keeps us out of Toxic Relationships Men's inability to be alone means we are less than selective when looking for someone to fill the void left by a broken relationship. We would rather be in a relationship with someone (anyone) than be alone. Middle-aged men make the biggest fuck ups because they throw themselves into the tempestuous seas of single mothers. There is even a term for these women - MILFS - mothers I would like to fuck, and boy, can these mothers fuck. Most of them have won healthy settlements from their ex-husbands which gives them the luxury of hitting the gym in the morning and in the office of their plastic surgeons in the afternoon. The finished product is amazing. Although they know they are in good shape, they understand that with a couple of kids in tow, their sexual market value is waning, so what they lack in sexual market value they more than make up with sexual performance in the bedroom, and the kitchen, and the lounge - anywhere in the house and if you are lucky, also in public places. Men have trouble thinking clearly when in the throes of fantastic MILF sex. Their feelings of loneliness evaporate and they become oblivious to the red flags that are being waved in plain sight. He does not realize that this episode is temporary- single moms are experts in the exit strategy. As soon as she finds someone better than you (either with more money, bigger biceps, or more charm), the delivery of that Dear John letter will run you over like a freight train, and you will find yourself back at square one. Disney has done mankind a great disservice. It has told men that there is one special person out there that will complete their life, and like idiots, we spend our lives chasing a fake dream. What is the solution? Find a band of brothers that can ease these pangs of loneliness. They will not remove the loneliness altogether, but at the very least they will prevent you from being so desperate as to jump into a relationship that will later torment you. For 99% of human existence, we lived in communities. These were groups of twenty to thirty people who lived together, worked together, and died together. Then we started living in apartments, condominiums, and suburbs. We started working with people with whom we did not share the same values. We started eating alone. In 1954, Swanson invented the TV dinner. Millions of lonely people set up their folding tables in front of their TVs. Urbanization and urban densification officially put an end to our tribal existence, and we are now paying the psychological price. So what happens to life outside of this tightly knit community? The first thing that happens is that we become acutely aware of being lonely, and therefore become very concerned about finding that special something/someone that will complete our lives and make us eternally happy. Our need for connection can morph into a strong desire for success, fame, and recognition when maybe all we need is some good friends. Million Man is a tribe – it is a place where we can regroup, lick our wounds, bitch and moan about the women in our lives, and then work on a collective plan to get ourselves out of this hole we are all in. The trick is to unteach ourselves from all the lies we have learned about being a man. Million Man is built on 4 uncompromising foundations: 1) Kindness – high-value men are friendly, generous, and considerate. 2) Shared vulnerability – a tribe is a place where we can be open about our worries and anxieties, and the problems that throw us off balance. 3) Understanding – everyone has their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. We embrace and learn from our differences. 4) Reassurance - we believe that everyone (man, woman, and child) has a special superpower. We have the ability to give something to other people that these people crave, and that is reassurance. We are all haunted by doubts about our value. We are all concerned about the future. We are haunted by things we have done – they cause guilt and embarrassment. Everyone you meet, regardless of who they are, is being plagued by varying degrees of insecurity. Can you believe that even supermodels are insecure of their appearances? These people are desperately waiting for someone to say something to them. Million Man believes in the power of reassurance. Members need to hear they have a right to exist, and that we are on their side. Words like: “I think you are going to be fine”, “everyone goes through this”, “there is nothing to be ashamed of”. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

I am a huge Disney fan. I went to Disney World in Orlando Florida for the first time at the age of 40 – and it truly is the happiest place on earth. I think I had more fun than my 8-year-old daughter, but let me explain the beef I have against Disney. One common thread that runs through the Disney classics is the romantic notion of the woman being saved by the prince of her dreams, then riding off into the sunset and living happily ever after. Most kids grow up with this shit and quickly come to the conclusion that the only way in which people can be whole is if they are in a relationship. The corollary is also true – if you are not in a relationship, there must be something fucked up with you. This all goes back to the romanticism movement that started in the 1750s. For the first time, people started to believe in soulmates and the idea that one person could complete you and make you blissfully happy. The romantics focused on four pillars - marriage, the end of loneliness, the importance of feelings, and the unification of love and sex. Prior to this, love and sex were not necessarily obtained from the same person. You could love someone, but not have sex with them. It was also common to have sex with someone you did not love. Romanticism put its foot down and said NO - sex and love MUST go hand in hand, Romanticism elevated sex to the supreme expression of love. Good sex was seen as a sign of a healthy relationship. Infrequent sex and adultery were seen as a catastrophe. They said love meant the end of all loneliness, and you should be guided by your feelings rather than by practical considerations. You know you are in love when you are overwhelmed with that special feeling. The Beatles said it best with "All You Need is Love". They then followed it up with "Elanor Rigby", and the lyrics "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?" They turned loneliness into the evidence of pathology. Modern society makes it mandatory to have a partner and a large cohort of friends, and an empty diary has become an emblem of social deformity. Romantic love is a dangerous illusion. You meet someone – they are great. You are obsessed and all consumed. You love everything about them – you feel complete. They see you and make you feel great about yourself. You believe these feelings of bliss are going to last forever. You have no secrets from your partner and spend constant time together. You raise a family without any loss in sexual emotion or intensity. Your lover is your best friend, co-parent, co-chofer, spiritual guide, chef, home economist, etc. The reality of love is slightly different. No one thinks their partner is terrific after some time. They start to piss you off and irritate you with their annoying little habits. Expectations slip. Things are done for the other begrudgingly and resentment raises its ugly head. The sex is no longer mind-blowing. The day-to-day domestic routine dulls the excitement. You get into fights that can only be described as hostile. Being single is not unromantic. In fact, you could argue that single people are the most romantic because they do not want to find themselves in mediocre relationships. Relationships are best suited for those that have no or extremely low expectations. Being alone means not inflicting yourself on innocent third parties. Relationships spoil love – it is not nice being in a relationship and denied sex. You would rather be alone and filled with the expectation of future sexual encounters. I am not saying that being alone is easy. That lack of intimate human contact can be brutal, but you need to consider the alternative. In a relationship, there is suffocation, frustration, and anxiety. We are not good at being happy, regardless of our relationship status. But maybe we should rethink the merits of friendship, and not treat it as love's ugly cousin. #lifecoach #motivation #lifecoaching #coaching #love #mindset #coach #inspiration #selflove #life #success #selfcare #lifestyle #mentalhealth #mindfulness #personaldevelopment #entrepreneur #goals #happiness #meditation #loveyourself #healing #motivationalquotes #lifequotes #positivevibes #fitness #businesscoach #motivationalspeaker #business

You are an aggregate of the five people you spend the most time with. To fully understand this equation, you need to understand the meaning of "spend time". If you are a religious follower of someone on social media, the mere consumption of their content qualifies as time spent. So, this definition does not limit you to people with whom you have physical and direct contact. The people who do the most damage to you are toxic. They are narcissistic, they are aggressive (both actively and passively), they feel a lot of envy and they tend to have deep insecurities. You need to develop the ability to detect them before getting involved with them. Toxic people have spent their lives mastering the skills of how to get power, embroil you in their dramas, and get into your emotions. They are masters at entangling themselves in your life. On the surface, toxic people are quite pleasant. They are often charismatic, they appear to be interested in you. When they have their roots deeply embedded in you, it can be difficult to get out of the relationship especially if it is a romantic one. The best course of action with toxic people is to develop a radar so as to detect them before you get involved with them. It requires a change in the way you perceive people. Here are 5 warning signs that a person is toxic. 1) Always the victim. They commonly use phrases like "he makes me so angry.....". They believe that all their problems can be blamed on others and the world is out to get them. 2) They view everything through the lens of how it will affect them. For example, friend A cancels on friend B to go on a hike. Friend B expresses sadness and concern, not due to genuine concern about friend A, but because he was looking forward to the hike and now needs to make alternate arrangements. 3) Emotionally exhausting. You feel drained emotionally after spending time with that person. Also, the anticipation of spending time with that person leaves you slightly apprehensive. 4) Emotionally abusive. This manifest in the form of intimidation, manipulation, insults, sarcasm, blame-shifting, projection, and the silent treatment. The most common weapon of attack is guilt-tripping. A wife-on-husband example: my parents have done so much for you, the least you could do was be nice to me. 5) Cannot laugh at themselves. They use their friends as the butt of their jokes, but as soon as they become the butt, they get upset. The biggest danger of getting involved with toxic people is that you start to adopt their traits. They drag you down to their level of misery and manipulation. You, therefore, want to extricate yourself from their toxic influence. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

It is a well-known fact that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were mates - they lived in the same neighbourhood, were friends on Facebook, and would exchange lavish gifts. Before that, Henry’s first serious job was as an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit in 1891. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Henry was not always a petrolhead - in fact in the early years, he was more into electricity than he was internal combustion engines. Ford looked up to Edison, 16 years his senior, and often referred to him as the greatest man in the world. Ford and Edison formed half of a group named the Vagabonds (the other half being Harvey Firestone - one of the first global manufacturers of automobile tires, and naturalist John Burroughs) who were known to head out into the woods every year on glamping excursions. In 1899, Edison began working to develop an alkaline storage battery that could better support the electrical needs of a motor vehicle. Unsurprisingly, Edison was no fan of the internal combustion engine, saying: “Electricity is the thing. There are no whirring and grinding gears with their numerous levers to confuse. There is not that almost terrifying uncertain throb and whirr of the powerful combustion engine. There is no water circulating system to get out of order – no dangerous and evil-smelling gasoline and no noise”. He soon started to convince Henry Ford that electricity was the way to go (although it has to be said, that Henry had already started to develop the Model T). In early 1914, word had gotten around that work had started on a low-priced electric car. Reports appeared in the Wall Street Journal, in trade magazines, and in other newspapers as far away as New Zealand regarding Ford's foray into electric cars. Ford himself even confirmed the rumors in the January 11, 1914 issue of the New York Times: "Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile. I don't like to talk about things that are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something about my plans. The fact is that Mr. Edison and I have been working for some years on an electric automobile that would be cheap and practicable. Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now that the way is clear to success. The problem so far has been to build a storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances without recharging. Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time". Henry may have been stretching the truth a little by saying there were several prototypes that had been built, it is known that at least one came into existence in 1913 known as the Edison-Ford. As the year wore on, the rumor mill pegged the release of the electric car for 1915, then 1916. Details on the car varied: It would cost somewhere between $500 and $750, and it would range somewhere between 50 miles and 100 miles on a charge. Edison himself, in an interview with Automobile Topics in May 1914, divulged no details and made his best "It's coming, just be patient" speech and added, "Mr. Henry Ford is making plans for the tools, special machinery, factory buildings and equipment for the production of this new electric. There is so much special work to be done that no date can be fixed now as to when the new electric can be put on the market. But Mr. Ford is working steadily on the details, and he knows his business so it will not be long". "I believe that ultimately the electric motor will be universally used for trucking in all large cities and that the electric automobile will be the family carriage of the future. All trucking must come to electricity. I am convinced that it will not be long before all the trucking in New York City will be electric." The project then mysteriously died which begs the question, what happened? There are numerous theories, but allow me to regale you with my favorite. Enter John D Rockefeller, the world's first billionaire. Yes, he was the first oil barron, and he initially made his fortune in the kerosene market. There were no automobiles at the time, so he focused exclusively on the illumination of households. In 1885, Rockefeller wrote to one of his partners, “Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.” Or as he put it to another partner: “Hope we can continue to hold out with the best illuminator in the world at the lowest price.” His well-groomed horses delivered blue barrels of oil throughout America’s cities and were already symbols of excellence and efficiency. Consumers were not only choosing Standard Oil over that of its competitors; they were also preferring it to coal oil, whale oil, and electricity. Millions of Americans illuminated their homes with Standard Oil for one cent per hour; in doing so, they made Rockefeller the wealthiest man in American history. In the production of kerosene, one of the by-products is gasoline, for which there was no use at the time. It would either be burned or pumped down the river. Imagine, therefore, how Rockefeller’s ears pricked up when he heard that Ford was developing a gasoline-powered engine and an electric-powered one. It does not take a genius to realize that Rockefeller and Edison were not good friends - it was unlikely that the former would receive an invitation to the annual glamping event. They were sworn rivals. Edison wanted to illuminate homes with electricity while Rockefeller wanted to keep pumping his foul kerosene into the maps of the middle to lower class. Then Edison comes along and wants to build an EV with Ford! There is every reason to believe that Rockefeller, the world’s wealthiest man, was able to convince Ford to scrap his plans for an electric vehicle and double down on his plans to build the world’s largest motor company fueled by the by-product of his kerosene business. With this, the EV was killed and the internal combustion engine dominated the roads for the next 100 years. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

We live in a world of meritocracy where anything is possible. A reality TV star can become president of the most powerful country in the world, an Austrian immigrant can become a movie star and the governor of California, and a socially awkward kid from South Africa can become the wealthiest man in the world. That puts us under a lot of fucking pressure. Everyone is connected. The world is your market. You can self-publish a book and it can potentially be bought by anyone with access to the internet and $8 in their bank account. You can see more beautiful women in 5 minutes surfing the internet than your grandfather saw in his entire lifetime. You can carry more than half the music ever composed in your pocket. We live in a world of endless possibilities, yet the majority of us feel like failures. How is this possible? You need to understand that equality of opportunity does not equate to equality of outcome. The fact that everyone has an equal opportunity to be successful does not mean that everyone will be successful. Both history and nature paint a very different picture. If you have ever gone on a safari, you will notice that with most species, a dominant male is fucking all the females and a large group of beta males spends their days together dreaming of a life that could have been. On dating apps, a small percentage of men get the majority of the right swipes. In sports, a handful of men score all the points. In business, the wealthiest three American billionaires control more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans. On the internet, 20 percent of all websites attract 80 percent of all traffic. As of February 2023, almost 94 percent of all search queries are done through Google. We live in a world where there is no equality of outcomes - in fact, the distribution of outcomes is very unequal. So what does that mean for us? We live in a world in which we are told anything is possible. You can meet a girl who is a genius, a concert pianist, a stand-up comedian, and a part-time underwear model. She will be kind, and cook for you every night. You can start a YouTube channel, you will get ten million subscribers and this will afford you a life in which you can travel the world vlogging about exotic destinations. You will be comped first class airtime tickets on Emirates for you and your model girlfriend. You will post videos of you boarding with her and your Louis Vuitton luggage. This is all bullshit. These success stories are outliers. Mr. Beast is one in seven billion. Elon Musk is one in a billion. In the face of these overwhelming odds we still hold onto the belief that if we only nail our morning routines, if we post ten pieces of content on socials, if we outwork everyone else, and if we are prepared to suffer like no one else on the planet, we too will be like Elon Musk. I hate to be the one to tell you this it will take more than a killer routine and a Spartan work ethic to replicate the success of these androids. If you look at highly successful people they all share a number of common traits. They all went against the consensus to develop something that would change the lives of hundreds of millions. They all came to the edge of the abyss in the process, yet they never lost faith. Steve Jobs was fired from his own company. Musk's first rockets launched at Space X were nothing short of a disaster. Tesla nearly had to be rescued by Google. These men were also subject to brutal public ridicule. Musk was rejected by his heroes (the men who landed on the moon). They were told they were idiots and they would fail. Most of us would cede to the doubters, but the truly successful have the vision to block out this noise and power through. This does not mean that we should all be content with a life of mediocrity. We should have lives of fulfillment and purpose. We should seek out responsibility and find actualization in serving others. We should seek to be the best versions of ourselves, but at the same time, maybe we need to redefine success. Maybe the person who owns that weekend house on the beach is also the person least likely to enjoy that house. When he is there over the weekends, he is so busy thinking about his next business trip, his next deal, his next merger that he does not enjoy the cool sea breeze blowing through the sunroom or the beautiful blood-red sunset that only his house on the peninsula gets to enjoy. Maybe he cannot sleep well at night because he is worrying about how the regulators might clamp down on his business dominance, or he is concerned that his senior vice president is planning to leave for a competitor and take his major clients with him. Maybe he has a stomach ulcer and has been restricted to a bland diet for the past five years. Maybe he is overweight with early onset diabetes because the only exercise he gets is getting in and out of his golf cart. Maybe the last time he made love to his wife, who may be fucking the pool boy, was last year. You get the picture. My point is that we often don't see the price paid by these extraordinarily successful people. It is said that Jeff Bezos literally works all the time. He works 18-hour days and on weekends. Are you prepared for such a one-dimensional life, or do you have other priorities? How about your family and friends? Can we not place a high value on a balanced lifestyle that also includes quality time with people we love, time to pursue a passion like surfing or learning the guitar, donating your time to a charity so you can get some perspective in your life and making a positive impact in the lives of others. Maybe there is more to success than money in the bank, the number of subscribers on YouTube, and positive comments on your Instagram reel. Maybe we need to ratchet down our expectations and set our goals more in line with what is reasonably achievable. Again, I am not proposing you sell yourself to a life of mediocrity - I am talking about setting demanding goals in a range of areas where only one metric is money and professional success. Maybe another metric should be how much you love and how much you are loved. Maybe you want to work on the number of people that would be in attendance at your funeral. Think about that for a second. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

In the 1900s, the average life expectancy for males in the U.S. was 46.3 years and 48.3 years for women. By 2018, the average had almost doubled to 80 and 84 respectively. While living longer may sound awesome, consider the financial implications of longevity. To do so, we need to delve into the dark, murky, and often misunderstood world of the actuary.  After the dot.com bubble burst in 2000, I had the pleasure of leading a team of twenty actuaries in the financial engineering department of a life insurance company. It was not as much fun as it sounds.  Actuaries build powerful mathematical models to predict mortality rates. Pension and healthcare companies use these rates to calculate how long they will need to support their customers financially. The longer people live, the greater the financial strain brought to bear on these companies.  The longer you live, the more likely you will outlive your money. Pensions became popular in World War II as a means to "pay" workers more due to salary freezes.  Today, pensions are a multi-trillion-dollar industry. There are public pension funds and there are private pension funds. Public pension funds are regulated under public sector law while private pension funds are regulated under private sector law. In some countries, the difference is clear. In other countries, it is more nuanced in that private pensions are also regulated by public regulators.  As of 2021, the largest pension fund was the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund (collectively, the Social Security Trust Fund or Trust Funds) managing $2.9 trillion. That is the nominal gross domestic product of the United Kingdom, the world's fifth-largest economy. The largest pension funds in the world collectively managed $18 trillion which is one trillion shy of U.S. gross domestic product. Pensions are financial monsters. Up until the 1980s, most pensions were defined benefit schemes.  They guaranteed a fixed payment to the participant on retirement.  This was back in the day when doctors were endorsing cigarette brands, sunscreens were an item of furniture and we lived under the constant threat of the nuclear mushroom cloud. Also, interest rates were in double digits and pension fund managers did not need to be singularly talented to match their assets and liabilities. In 1987 and 2000, the markets taught us the painful lesson that crashes were no longer a once-in-a-generation occurrence. Financial engineering, derivatives, and technology injected new levels of volatility into markets which triggered red flags in actuarial models.  Pension funds realized that it was dangerous to continue guaranteeing benefits in this volatile world and moved away from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes.  This meant that retirement benefits were no longer defined by the pension fund's ability to generate returns. Benefits were now based on contributions.  Pension funds waved the white flag and retreated like frightened hyenas with their tails between their legs. How often have you come across the following advertising message from pension companies: “Most people will not have enough money for retirement - you need to start saving more and earlier? You need to live below your means and save more”. This is genius marketing. Fear is a powerful motivator. In fairness to the pension companies, this is not a ruse. Most people will outlive their pensions because the formal pension system is no longer capable of looking after the interests of their clients. Many blindly believe that the people managing their retirement savings know what they are doing. I spent 25 years in the finance industry, working in and with banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. Pension managers are underwhelming at best.  The smart ones typically leave the mainstream organizations to start their own hedge funds and family offices. The mediocre ones stay and are looking after your money. Here is a list of reasons your retirement savings are not in the right hands and you need to make radical changes now. Reason 1: Pension Fund Returns are in a Long Term Systematic Decline and are Heading toward ZERO Investment management is a relative game. Performance is measured against a benchmark. If you do better than the benchmark you are rewarded. If you do worse, you are subject to a public lashing. An African parable tells the story of two men walking through the bush. They come across a hungry lion. One man leans over and starts to tie his shoelaces. The other says there is no way he will be able to outrun the lion. The man tying his laces looks up at his companion and says: "there is no need for me to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you". In the modern pension world, consultants and regulators benchmark and compare the living crap out of fund performances. They publicly rank returns for all to see. It is a constant beauty pageant – the swimsuit competition where everything is laid bare. To maintain their sanity, managers adopt a simple strategy: if they take too much risk, they are ranked top one month and bottom the next month. No one likes volatility. Investors want Goldilocks returns - not too hot and not too cold.  The internal dialogue of a pension fund manager is as follows: "I will follow my peers and aim to be just above the middle of the pack. I will reduce my exposure to risky assets like equities and increase my exposure to less risky assets like bonds". Bonds are also known as fixed-income instruments and are less risky than equities. Pension funds are the world's biggest buyers of bonds. Bond returns are linked to interest rates. In 1981, if you bought a freshly minted 10-year United States Treasury bond and held it until maturity, you would have earned 16 percent without any risk. The United States Treasury bond is considered to be the safest financial instrument known to man. By December 2022, this yield had plummeted to 3.6 percent. This return is as exciting as a doctoral thesis on the lavatory habits of the Lithuanian pygmy gnat. You now need to understand the financial theory of the "least dirty shirt". Finance is a relative game – you do not need to be smart or fast, you just need to be smarter or faster than your competitor. A return of 3.6 percent is low, but how does that compare with the rest of the world? In December 2022, most developed markets were paying less than 3.6 percent on their 10-year government bonds. Japan was the worst of the worse with a return of 0.25 percent according to Reuters. Japan was not the only country paying a yield below that of the US Treasury bond. There were several more including Switzerland, Germany, and France. And here was the joker that will kick you in the ribs. Greece, not known as the bedrock of financial stability, paid a return of 4.1 percent which was only 50 basis points above the United States Treasury. The financial world was more distorted and disfigured than in a Picasso painting.  If we continue down this rabbit hole, pension returns will approach zero and will dip into negative territory. Your pension is going to get smaller and you will outlive your savings. You, therefore, need to rebel now. Reason 2: Everyone believes Wall Street will Find a Solution After law school, I was faced with two options:  become a lawyer and make the world a better place, or become a banker and make the world a perfect location. My philanthropic subconscious caused me to choose the latter. For me, the northern star was the trading and investment side of banking which is referred to as “Wall Street”. This world idolizes Gordon Gekko, in his suspenders, smoking Cuban cigars, swigging single malt, and living by the credo that greed is good. I thought Wall Street was a collection of super-smart and successful individuals who shape and move world markets. I thought Wall Street was the "smartest" money in town. I wanted in on the action. Then came the financial crisis in 2008 which almost led to the extinction of urbanized humanity. This may sound extreme but consider the facts: when Lehman Brothers collapsed, the global banking system almost froze. If an A-rated bank in the world's most regulated market could fail, what is the probability of smaller banks in less regulated markets going the same way? When banks do not function, bread companies cannot buy wheat, and farmers cannot buy silage to feed their cows. Payments are made through banks. No banks mean no payments and no food. Urban humanity ends. What will New Yorkers do – go to the Central Park Zoo, shoot a grizzly bear, skin it, and then fire up the barbeque? I don't think so. This fragility of urban survival built on credit cards and Whole Foods is the reason why cryptocurrencies exist.  Santoshi Nakamoto – a person or group of people more camera-shy than the Loch-Ness monster - invented bitcoin and the blockchain. Santoshi was terrified by the prospect of living in a world where life depended on dim-witted and greedy bankers who were not wired to make decisions for the greater good.  Santoshi, therefore, created a currency that could operate outside of the formal banking system. Here is the Reader’s Digest version of what the financial crisis taught us about the people who have their filthy hands all over your money. Lesson 1: Wall Street is Not the Smart Money Do not be fooled by the fancy Swiss watches, Italian sports cars, and Hermes ties. Most bankers are untalented. Most Wall Street banks were on the wrong side of the 2008 financial crisis. They lost trillions of dollars and required governmental CPR. Howard Hubler (Howie to his friends) was the biggest loser. Howie was a bond trader at Morgan Stanley. He racked up losses of $9 billion – that is 9 with 9 zeros.  That is a staggering amount of money for one individual. Given that finance is a zero-sum game (if Howie is losing 9 billion, somebody must be making 9 billion), where was the smart money amidst all this turmoil? The winners were eclectic hedge funds working under the radar in dark offices poring over CDO prospectuses, and Goldman Sachs – the one Wall Street bank that always comes out on top. Howie landed on his feet. After being fired from Morgan Stanley, he set up his own advisory firm into which investors with short memories invested more than $1 billion. A track record of success is not required for a career of raping and pillaging on Wall Street. Lesson 2: Wall Street is Dishonest The planet's most important financial index is LIBOR – the London Interbank Offered Rate. This index has nothing to do with London. It is the interest rate at which high-quality banks lend to each other in U.S. dollars. In 2020, hundreds of trillions of dollars in bonds and swaps were linked to LIBOR. Every day they were valued based on the LIBOR fixing. Prepare for your minds to be blown. Market prices are set by market forces – supply and demand. Most interbank interest rates around the globe are set in this way, but not LIBOR. It is fixed daily based on a survey of 17 banks. Anyone with two fingers and a smartphone can set up a WhatsApp group chat with 17 people. Dishonest bankers got together on WhatsApp and conspired to manipulate this LIBOR fixing. When the survey arrived, each bank knew exactly what the other 16 banks would say.  This allowed them to set the fixings in their favor. Regulators reacted quicker than bolts of lightning to address the situation. In 2021, 14 years after these nuggets of truth were revealed, LIBOR will be assassinated and replaced with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR). Having the word "Secured" upfront means it will be impossible for Wall Street to manipulate. Lesson 3: Wall Street is Infested with Conflicts of Interest Wall Street specifically, and the financial community in general, is rotten to the core with conflicts of interest. When I was a trader, we had an ongoing joke about how the interests of the bank were always put before the client.  If the client ever happened to get a good deal, it was purely coincidental and forgivable. These conflicts of interest are particularly acute in the research that banks publish – the research on which many investors rely when making investment decisions.  When a bank analyst recommends you buy a stock, the objectivity of the recommendation is always in question. The bank may be doing corporate finance work for the company. This may cloud the judgment of the analyst. If a bank is underwriting the initial public offering of Uber, what are the chances of the analyst publishing a negative report on the company? There is a better chance of winning the lottery, having a threesome, and being struck by lightning in the same afternoon. Conflicts of interest also live in the financial advice banks give to their clients. I sold a derivative hedge charging a 100 percent markup on the premium. The hedge cost 250,000 and I charged 500,000. I did this after hearing the client could not value the true value of the hedge.  The client was the Catholic Church. There is a special place in hell for derivatives traders, next to Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. A client once said to me: "Ralph, you are a nice guy, it is always good to meet up with you, but going forward, I have decided to change my trading strategy. Every time your bank recommends to buy, I am going to sell". That client is now a multi-millionaire with a house in Monte Carlo. He recently got married to a Colombian supermodel and Beyoncé sang at their wedding. You might say your pension is not run by a private pension firm, but by the government. The line between public and private pensions is sometimes vague. Generous employers contribute towards both a private pension and a public pension. Most public and many private pension funds are facing large unfunded liabilities because they are Ponzi schemes. In the world of Ponzi, new money is used to pay existing investors. Bernie Madoff was the emperor of Ponzi - and is now spooning with a 400-pound felon in a prison cell. This is how the Principle of Ponzi is applied to a public pension fund. Assume that there are 1,000 participants in a pension scheme. Of these 1,000, 700 are economically active (i.e. they are working) and are contributing to the scheme and 300 are retired in Florida wearing socks and sandals and playing poker next to the pool. Money enters the pot every month from the 700 workers.  Some of that money is used to pay the 300 to help them settle their gambling debts and guarantee a fresh supply of socks and sandals. The remaining cash is used to run the scheme - administration, rent, salaries, telephone, high-speed internet for their Netflix streaming, and sundries. The money not spent on these essentials is invested in stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and alternative investments and makes up the assets of the fund. For this scheme to keep working,  more money must come in than goes out. This is where the wheels start to wobble. As population growth declines - as young couples prefer to backpack around the world and hug the trees in Bali instead of procreating - fewer new people enter the scheme. Sometimes population growth slows down not because of tree-hugging but because of the government. The one-child policy in China comes to mind. The Chinese population will stop growing in 2024. In Japan, the undisputed leader in the inverted population pyramid, the market for adult diapers is larger than the market for infant diapers. After a decade, only 100 newbies have joined the 700 swelling the number of contributors to 800. However, shortly after, 350 retired and head down to Del Boca Vista in Florida. We now have 650 in Florida and 450 contributing to the scheme. More money is flowing out than flowing in. The fund administrators need to draw on those reserves and government support to cover their unfunded liabilities. And who is better than the government to fill the gaps? Governments have access to limitless resources. They control the printing press – Johannes Gutenberg is the patron saint of all central banks. They can print money - a power made exponentially more potent by the Nixon Shock. From a financial perspective, the Nixon Shock makes Watergate look like a game of hide and seek. In 1944, the Bretton Woods system of monetary management pegged the major world currencies to gold. In 1971, Nixon unilaterally decided to move the United States dollar off the gold standard in the face of mounting inflation. By 1973, the Bretton Woods system was replaced de facto by the current regime based on freely floating fiat currencies. Before 1971, you could take your paper money to the Federal Reserve and exchange it for gold. After 1971, you could take your money and replace it for the same money of the same value - just on cleaner paper.  This is the Nixon Shock and marked the end of financial coherence. Between 1971 to 2021, the United States M1 money supply (physical currency and coin, demand deposits, traveler's checks, other checkable deposits) grew from $400 billion to $19 trillion – an increase of 4,650 percent according to data from Trading Economics. This ability to print money represents a substantial disincentive to save.  Savers are holding their wealth in pieces of paper that are continuously devaluing. Governments cannot keep printing money indefinitely to plug these pension gaps. A point of inflection will be reached, and this house of cards will come tumbling down. You do not want to entrust your retirement savings into this precarious paper system. You need to step up and take charge of your financial future now. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

How many close friends do you have, and by close, I mean someone you can call at 3 am in an emergency? I am talking about someone to whom you can reveal your deepest and darkest secrets without fear of judgment. Data indicates that friendlessness is becoming more common, and this trend was exacerbated during the pandemic. COVID taught us many things. One of the most important was that it tested the quality of our relationships. It highlighted weak relationships and consolidated strong relationships, and left a huge void in the middle. Pre-COVID, it is possible the majority of your social interaction was at work on a superficial level. When we were forced to work from home, the majority of our “meaningful” social interaction terminated. We also saw a spike in divorce which has been a major driver of male friendlessness. Wives arrange social interactions, and most gatherings are with their friends, and men spend lots of time making friends with the spouses of their wife's friends. When marriages rupture, those friends are no longer in play because their wives force these friends to side with the ex-wife. Friendlessness is not only the plight of middle-aged men - it is also affecting younger men. Traditional bonding grounds are no longer inhabited by these men. They are not going to university, they are unemployed, they do not go to church, and they are not playing team sports. Instead, they withdraw into the online world of gaming, which gives them a sense of community, but no meaningful friendships. Now that we understand the problem, we need to understand the wrong solution. To address the issue of male friendlessness, the common mistake is assuming that men and women make and manage friendships in the same way. Women seek each other out. They go on weekends away where they sip on chilled rose and tell each other how much they love them and how important they are in their lives. Men do not and will not ever do that. It is not part of our evolutionary biology. Women were then the ones who stayed behind in the villages and raised the kids. They relied on other women in their daily chores and duties. Men on the other hand went out on hunting parties to ensure the village was fed and nourished physically. So what does this mean in the 21st century? The ancient rule of hunting and fighting wars no longer exists, but the feminine role of childbearing and raising children remains (although feminists would encourage women to shun them like the plague). Now that we no longer live in villages, traditional bonds men used to share no longer exist. Men and women connect in friendships in different ways. Women don't need a reason to get together with their friends. They can agree amongst themselves to go for a weekend away to the wine region. Implicit in this invitation is that they will share, confide, complain, and drink. Men need a reason to get together. They need a common purpose - like watching a football game or going fishing. Australia, in an effort to address the issue of men's mental health and wellness, started to set up meet groups but no one arrived. Someone then came up with the idea of men's sheds. This is what these guys get up to according to their website: Men’s sheds may do a variety of activities from manual crafts to gardening to beekeeping. Some may undertake community projects such as making toys for local childcare groups. Men’s sheds may provide an opportunity to learn new skills such as first aid. They may hold health and well-being events and provide contacts for men to follow up on their health needs. Men’s sheds can also provide company or an opportunity to make friends. If you decide to set up a men's support group, it is important to attach an activity to the event. The activity does not need to be noble and meaningful, like building homes in marginal communities. It can simply be to meet up at a pub to watch a sports game, go hiking or collect garbage on the beach. Around this, the most important thing to do is build trust. It’s about creating a space where someone feels safe enough to risk telling the truth about themselves and know they won’t be judged or shamed. Your group will be much stronger for this and will grow into something more than a pure support group. #bitcoinusa#cryptocurrencies#binary#bitcoinminning#forexlifestyle#investing#binaryoptions#bitcoincash#crypto#cryptotrading#bitcoin

We all know the old joke that men have two brains – one between their ears and one in their boxer shorts. Scientists are now saying we could have a third brain – just above our dicks in our stomachs. I will not get into the detailed science, but what we eat can affect how we think and how we feel. How do you feel after a huge meal? Heavy and lethargic. How do you feel after devouring the entire chocolate cake your girlfriend left in the fridge for her book club? Like a pear-shaped loser. You are what you eat, and I would like to propose that junk food reduces your value as a man. Million Man is a tribe of high-value men – it teaches you to rebuild your masculinity and make a dent in the universe. If Ronald McDonald is your favorite clown, then you are following him down the rabbit hole into a distorted world of broken dreams and unfulfilled manly ambitions. This is what junk food is doing to you. 1) It Gets You High and Fat Dopamine is our very own natural feel-good chemical. We have a reward center in our brains. When it produces dopamine in response to what we do, we feel good and want to do more of whatever it is that’s making us feel so mentally healthy. That, in turn, leads to even more dopamine production. Junk food is fucking delicious and it floods our brains with dopamine when we stuff it into our faces. This creates a high. As we eat more Big Macs, the brain adapts and makes more receptors for dopamine. To get that same virgin high, we need more burgers. This is classic addiction. The more burgers we eat, the fatter we get, the less exercise we do, the more our testosterone levels drop, and the less masculine energy we have to master our lives and become high-value men. 2) It Makes us Do Stupid Shit Junk food is like porn – it is delicious and grabs our attention. To resist this temptation, we need a set of brakes in our brains. This is the prefrontal cortex which only matures in our early 20s. This explains why teenagers often do stupid shit – they have no brakes. Research has shown that excessive consumption of sugary drinks negatively affects the development of these brakes. This lack of self-control makes you a slave to your impulses. You crave instant gratification. It is this inability to master your urges that is a defining trait of low-value, weak and depressed men. 3) It Fucks Up Your Ability to Learn Learning is the accumulation of memories in the memory center of the brain known as the hippocampus (think of it as a campus full of hippos!) Have you ever noticed that you learn things easier when you experience them in real life instead of reading them in a book? Those are your neurons firing and wiring together in a process called neuroplasticity. High-value men are continually learning – finding new ways to make money, solving complex problems, understanding client needs, interacting with a dynamic and vibrant world, and being exposed to new and potentially life-changing experiences. If your brain is not firing on all cylinders, you are missing opportunities and living below your potential. Junk food fucks up with your neuroplasticity. In simple terms, it makes you stooopid! This is what you need to do today. Eat fresh fruits and veggies because they flush all the shit out of your third brain. Oily fish and avocados boost the generation of new healthy neurons. Also, you need to exercise, because that also boosts activity in your first brain. When all is working well together, performance in your second brain is optimized! #lifecoach #motivation #lifecoaching #coaching #love #mindset #coach #inspiration #selflove #life #success #selfcare #lifestyle #mentalhealth #mindfulness #personaldevelopment #entrepreneur #goals #happiness #meditation #loveyourself #healing #motivationalquotes #lifequotes #positivevibes #fitness #businesscoach #motivationalspeaker #business

The dating marketplace has never been more challenging for men. I heard the story of a young man who worked as a bomb disposal expert. He is the guy in the movies sweating bullets working out whether to cut the blue or the red wire. It is difficult to find a more dangerous job - it makes working on a deep sea oil rig look like a walk in the park. This man was terrified of approaching women. It was a fear that rendered him immobile. For me, this is a deafening cry for help from our fellow men and an indication that men are facing a dating crisis. In this blog, we look at three of the biggest male challenges in the dating marketplace, and how to overcome them. Challenge 1: Fear of Rejection It is our lack of confidence and fear of rejection that affects the way we approach women. It can be in the form of going up to a woman in the grocery store, or the first offline date after matching on a dating app. We believe that appearance is all important, and we feel that if we are not endowed with a chiseled jawline, are not tall and athletic, and are not charismatic, we are going to be rejected. This affects the first impression we leave on a woman, it affects our tone of voice, posture, and body language, and forces them off on the wrong foot. Solution 1: Numb the Fear In the words of Pink Floyd, we need to become comfortably numb to our fear of rejection, and the only way is to get rejected a bunch of times. The first rejection is painful, the second a lot less - and by the time we get to the fifth or sixth, we should find ourselves in an “I don't give a fuck anymore” state of mind. We are taking a foul-tasting medicine and this is helping us turn the volume down on our approach anxiety. Let me clue you in on something - life and rejection go hand in hand. Your friends, colleagues, girlfriends, wives, and acquaintances are going to let you down all the time. The quicker you come to terms with the fact that rejection is more the rule than the exception, the happier your life will be. It is also important you learn from the rejection. This exercise of rejection numbing is also an opportunity to hone your skills. Remember that the objective is not to get rejected. The objective is to get the woman's number and a follow-up encounter - the rejection comes as a byproduct because not everyone you meet will see you are being part of their immediate plans. After every rejection, you need to analyze your approach and make small tweaks as you work towards a more complete and rounded product. Challenge 2: Lack of Conversation Skills Our conversation strategy ties back into our inherent fear of rejection. When speaking to women, we tend to adopt a defensive approach. We are playing not to lose instead of playing to win. We irrationally believe this encounter is our best, and potentially only shot, and we have to make it work at all costs. Men who are successful with women play to win - they take the risk. They will ask edgy and potentially controversial questions and they have no fear of losing because they know rejection is often not a reflection on them. They know that if they get rejected, it does not mean that they are objectively undesirable - they understand that at the time of rejection, you did not fit into their immediate plans. The rejection was because of her situation and not yours. Men who adopt a defensive strategy tend to make similar generic statements which is a losing strategy for two reasons - firstly women can see they are generic and unoriginal, and secondly, men are not projecting their true selves and women can sense that too. Solution 2: Make an Impact When talking to a woman for the first time, you need to be impactful and work hard at making a connection. You need to read her communication cues and develop a strategy that will optimize the chances of building attraction. You have five to ten minutes to make this connection, so you are under a little pressure because if you don't maximize that window, she could lose interest and it may be impossible to bring her back. You also need to work on your "interesting". High-value men are interesting, and if you ask any woman, they will tell you that interesting is sexy. What does it mean to be interesting? Interesting people tell incredible stories and lead unusual lives. The source of their magnetism is their curiosity. They are always excited to explore the world, and this curious energy radiates outward. This will give you an edge in the conversation game. Challenge 3: No Escalation Most of us do not escalate and build on the date. On every date, we need to engage in playful teasing, flirting, and building sexual tension. There is a risk of keeping the conversation platonic - it creates some confusion in her. It leaves her with doubts as to whether or not we like her. It is not a good idea to be playing poker on this first date and keeping our cards close to our chests -we need to give her a glimpse of at least one of our cards because that will keep her interested in seeing our hand and strategy. We need to get both her emotional and mental attention. Successful flirting speaks to her primal side, a side that most men do not know about and make no effort to understand. Solution 3: Tricks to Building Sexual Tension We need to understand the questions that women are asking themselves when they first come into contact with us on a date: are we high value, do we have other options and are we good in bed? We need to drop clues that will enable her to reach her own conclusions, but we need to be careful how we drop those clues. Telling her that we have millions in the bank, have fucked 100 women, and have a large cock is not going to work for her, because it is not how women build attraction. Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more copies than Ernest Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. It is adult erotica written specifically for women. It is not sex from start to end - it builds up slowly and powerfully. It is subtle, complex, intriguing, and arousing. That is what you need to know in building this sexual tension. But you need to be smart about this. It is like a game of chess. You make a small move and see how she reacts. If she leaves the door open, then take the opening. If you say, not many people know this about me, but I have Scottish ancestry and own a kilt. If she says that she loves a man in a kilt, you can take the opening and say, do you know that real Scotsmen don't wear anything under the kilt? If she replies, oh really, how about you? - then you are making progress and you can now start to move for her queen. If she doesn't pick up on the cue, no problem, you need to make another move. It might take three or four moves before you find an opening, but you need to keep looking. If after ten attempts nothing is sticking, you may need to cut your losses and move on to the next one, and yes, women are like London busses, when one pulls away, another will pull up in a few minutes! #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

The algebra of getting rich is not complicated. You need to earn more than you spend, and you need to invest that surplus into high-quality assets that are able to deliver a reliable stream of returns over the long term. So if it is so simple to get rich, why are the majority of people battling to pay the bills and living paycheck to paycheck? The answer is simple - the lack of financial education. You were never taught how to work with money at school. In this blog, you will take your first step to financial education with the building blocks of how to get rich. 1) Luck Plays a Role Rich people have no room for arrogance. If you were born into a functional and supporting family, in a country with easy access to high-quality education, you have won half the battle. It is easier for a person born in the 1970s in the US to become financially free than for someone born in the same decade in Zimbabwe. So, I am not going to lie to you that everyone should be rich - that is not economically possible. What I am saying is that there is a disproportionately large number of people in this world that are living far below their financial and economic potential. 2) The Richest Person is not the Person with the Most Money Making money is easy, the hardest part is saving money. Who would you say is the richer person? The person who earns a million every year and spends a million, or the person that earns 100k and spends 50k? Let me tell you the story of Theodore Johnson who worked his way up the newly formed UPS company in 1924. He was no prodigy nor an executive. Theodore worked in the personnel department, and he never earned more than $14,000 a year. But he later ended up with a net worth of over $70 million. The biggest advantage he had was that he understood the power of compound interest at an early age and took advantage of that. Theodore had bills to pay, a family to support, and monthly expenses, however, he understood that there was no bill in his mailbox which was more important than his freedom fund. He made sure that his financial priority was to set aside 20% of every paycheck he received (including Christmas bonuses) and he put it into his company’s stock. The value of the UPS stock he owned soared to over $70 million by the time he was 90 years old. The richest person is not the person who makes the most money - it is the person who saves and invests the most money. 3) Patience is the Secret Weapon We live in a world of instant gratification. In a world where you can order a taxi on your phone, and get same-day delivery on millions of products, it is not surprising everyone is so impatient. When your internet goes down for a couple of minutes, you feel your world is imploding. That is why people are drawn into get-rich-quick schemes. If you have Googled anything about money and finance in the last month, the algorithm would be sending you adverts for forex trading lessons. There is a reason why casinos make so much money, and national lotteries are swimming in cash. The lure of the easy buck is obvious - human beings love the idea of getting something for nothing. The problem is that making money takes time and patience. When you start a business, you need to toil day and night to get it up and running. You then need to nurture it and grow it until it realizes some potential, and even then it requires your constant attention. You make money through compounding over the long term. Albert Einstein said that “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it … he who doesn't … pays it.” When you invest over the long term and reinvest your profits, not only do you earn a return on your initial investment but you also earn a return on your profits. This snowballing of returns leads to some exceptional non-linear results. Let's say you invest 1,000 bucks (insert your currency here) into the stock market every month. Let's assume the stock market delivers a return of 10 percent per year (which is the long-term average). After 10 years, you will have 204,845 bucks. If you double the term to 20 years, your return goes to 759,368. If you double the term again to 40 years, the total return goes to 6.3 million. Notice the maths. Doubling the term from 10 to 20 years (2x) gives you a 3.7x return. Doubling the term from 20 years to 40 years (again 2x) gives you an 8.3x return. The relationship between time and return is not linear, it is exponential. 4) Boring is Better We are all drawn to what is sexy, exciting, and interesting. This is true for our careers and social lives. If someone had to make a toast to you, and wish you a boring and simple career and life, you may be taken aback. But let's drill down into the world of boring and assess whether it really is the kiss of death. Tech is the hottest sector right now. Everyone wants to learn how to code, start a tech company with a killer app, and hire an army of whiz kids in hoodies to work out of a modern industrial-styled office with free catering and unlimited vacation time. Careers are like asset classes. When everyone wants to invest in real estate, prices get inflated and returns get diluted. The industries that everyone wants to work in have the lowest return on your efforts because everyone wants to be in them. They attract the best talent and if you want to stand out and be super successful, you need to be a genius. Twenty years ago it was cool to have a job. Now it is cool to start your own business. We now romanticize entrepreneurship, but the truth is that it is not as rewarding as everyone thinks because it is starting to get crowded with many people chasing after the same market. If you are in the business of web design, you are competing with millions of people around the globe that are probably better and cheaper than you are. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to go against the flow - offer a simple product or service that is so boring and mundane that no one is prepared to do it. It is also so boring that people are dying to outsource it to a third party (you). 5) Learn from the Stoics A stoic is a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. They are able to control their emotions and they are able to distinguish between what they can and cannot control. The biggest weakness of humans when it comes to investing is their emotions. When it comes to money, the two biggest emotions are fear and greed. The fear of losing money is greater than the thrill of making money. Investments tend to be volatile so there is a way to eliminate emotions from the equation and be as stoic as possible. This is the trick. Firstly, you take a long-term view, which means you are not allowed to check your investment account every day, every week, or even every month. You can check once a year. If you check every day, the short-term volatility is going to drive you nuts. Investments, while highly volatile and unpredictable over the short term, are more benign and predictable over the long term. Secondly, you need to dollar cost average. You need to make frequent small monthly investments. By averaging your investments over time, you eliminate the need to time the market and you maximize the amount of time in the market. You cannot control or predict the market in the short term - no one can. You need to let the market do its thing, and you need to focus on your thing - making emotion-free, stoic, and consistent investments for the long term. #lifecoach #motivation #lifecoaching #coaching #love #mindset #coach #inspiration #selflove #life #success #selfcare #lifestyle #mentalhealth #mindfulness #personaldevelopment #entrepreneur #goals #happiness #meditation #loveyourself #healing #motivationalquotes #lifequotes #positivevibes #fitness #businesscoach #motivationalspeaker #business

I grew up in an age when masculine role models were James Bond and Dirty Harry. These were men who perspired confidence, could get any woman they wanted, were good with their hands and no one ever fucked with them. These role models existed before dating apps in a time when men had to be brave enough to approach strange women and master the art of flirting and seduction. The brave men that stormed the beaches of Normandy did so in the face of overwhelming odds because it was their duty. Today, men spend more time on their couches than in the gym, and more time scrolling through potential matches on Tinder than meeting women in bars and restaurants. Five things are happening to men today that are a source of concern. 1) They are Growing Up Fatherless The rise of feminism has had some unintended consequences. The empowerment of women has given them more options in their careers and in their relationships. Gone are the days of having to rely on a man for their survival. After having children, they are no longer tied to the father. Family law in most countries favours the woman. Divorce courts will look after the mother (for obvious reasons) and this has increased the number of single mothers and uninvolved fathers. Boys have lost their male role models in the home, and given the majority of teachers are women, neither can they find these role models at school. Their formative years have become feminine. You can see this in the proliferation of participation trophies. Kids are being awarded trophies for mediocre performance. They are being taught that there is nothing wrong with being mediocre and this is killing any competitive spirit that leads to growth, fulfillment, and purpose. 2) Testosterone Levels are Falling Studies indicate that male testosterone levels have been declining by one percent per annum since the 1980s. This means that a 25 year today has the same t-levels as a 50-year-old man had in the 1990s. There are numerous reasons for this. One is a less active lifestyle. Kids in the 80s used to spend their days outdoors climbing trees, riding bikes and wrestling on the playground. Today they are addicted to their cell phones and video games - they don't want to go outside because the graphics aren't good enough. Secondly, man's role in society has changed. In the 1980s, boys had a clever roadmap for their lives - they would get educated, get a job, get married, have kids, and provide for their families. Today’s roadmap is less clear. More women are pursuing their careers into their 40s and are less likely to get married in their twenties. They are also more successful, and therefore see fewer men as attractive mates. Women are hypergamous - they look for men on the same socioeconomic level and above. As their level goes up, more men are relegated to the ranks of being “undatable”. This lowers their confidence and increases their resentment, which in turn reduces t-levels. Finally, as men become more marginalized, their lifestyles change. They are less likely to go out, more inclined to eat junk food, do drugs, and withdraw into the world of online porn which enhances their feeling of inadequacy and kills more testosterone. Lower testosterone leads to depression, anxiety, fatigue, increased body fat, affected memory, and low blood counts. The bottom line is that affects a man's ability to function optimally. 3) Suicide Rates are Rising Men in their twenties are four times more likely to commit suicide than women. There are several reasons for this. The first is that men have always been taught their lives are dispensable. Whenever there is a war, who gets sent off to the front lines? Who cleans the sewers, works on the deep sea oil rigs, and builds the high-rise buildings? The majority are men. Secondly, men are not adept at expressing their emotions. They tend to keep their emotions bottled up and buy into the modern paradigms that men don't cry. This bottling up of emotions leads to a higher probability of a man putting a gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger. Finally, men are facing a crisis of relevance. As robots take over many traditional blue-collar jobs, and the labour market pivots more to feminine-dominated white-collar jobs in services, more men are being displaced from the workforce. Self driving trucks is going to put millions of men out of work in the next ten years. 4) Men are Having Less Sex Young men between the ages of 18 and 30 in the US are abstaining from sex. Ten years ago, the percentage of men in this demographic that had not had sex in the past year was 10%. Today, this number has spiked to almost 30%. There are several reasons for this sex drought. Young men are withdrawing into the online world and are consuming more pornography. They are also living longer with their parents, which is a real boner killer. But possibly the strongest reason is that women are becoming more selective about who they drop their panties for. They are focusing more on their careers, and delaying marriage plans or canceling them altogether. As women progress in their careers and start to unlock their economic potential, they also see how their sexual market value increases. Women are hypergamous by nature – they only want to hook up with people on the same socio-economic level or higher. Given that men are in a throes of a crisis, this pool of dateable/fuckable men is declining. This means that a smaller number of alpha-type men are having more sex. The Pareto principle of 80/20 is very much in play – 20% of men are having 80% of the sex. 5) Men are Getting Less Educated Young men now account for only about 40% of recent university graduates. Likewise, boys drop out of high school at nearly double the rate of girls. Traditional boyhood pursuits have been curtailed in schools, with a significant decline in activities such as physical education, sports, woodwork, metalwork, and break times. This prevents boys from letting off steam and expending natural energy, leading to inattention in the classroom. In addition, the vast majority of teachers in high school are women, again creating an environment void of male role models. As men get less educated, so to does their market value in the workplace decline. They are less likely to find well-paying jobs, and the velocity of their downward spiral accelerates. So what is the solution to all this mayhem? The first step is admitting there is a crisis. The second step is building a community that is obsessed with finding solutions, and not with wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction. The Million Man Project aims to create a million high-value men. We want to reverse this trend of masculine decay, and through coaching, mentorship, and community help young men lead meaningful and valuable lives. #lifecoach#motivation#lifecoaching#coaching#love#mindset#coach#inspiration#selflove#life#success#selfcare#lifestyle#mentalhealth#mindfulness#personaldevelopment#entrepreneur#goals#happiness#meditation#loveyourself#healing#motivationalquotes#lifequotes#positivevibes#fitness#businesscoach#motivationalspeaker#business

Men have always been considered the privileged sex – we get the best jobs, we get paid more, and we are spared the pains of childbirth. The tables, however, are turning and the balance of power is starting to shift away from men toward women. Most men aren’t even aware of what is happening under their noses because they are too busy playing video games and jerking off to online porn. Here are TEN reasons it has never been worse being a man than it is today! 1) We are Expendable Men are taught that their lives are expendable. When there is a war, who is sent out onto the front lines? When terrorist planes plowed into the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001, who hurled themselves into the collapsing building? More than 90% of deaths in the workplace are suffered by men. Men put themselves in harm's way in law enforcement, in the building of high-rise buildings, and on the oil rigs in the middle of the ocean. In the face of this harsh reality, it is easy to come to the conclusion that as a man, your life is cheap, and that sacrifice is a natural part of existence. This affects us emotionally and mentally. It strips away our value and makes us question our purpose. These factors are powerfully negative and lead to the horrifying statistic in the next point. 2) We are More Suicidal Between the age of 9 and 11, boys and girls are equally likely to take their own lives. By the time boys have passed through puberty, and adolescence, and are young men above the age of 25, men are almost 6 times more likely to put a pistol in their mouths and pull the trigger. According to stats from the World Health Organization, almost 1 million people commit suicide every year in the world – the vast majority of which are men. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45. A big contributor to the gap in suicide rates between the sexes is the propensity of men to bottle up their emotions and ignore the causes of depression and anxiety. We like to keep all our shit inside! We are taught that boys don’t cry, and this inability to communicate is leading to disastrous consequences. 3) We are Told Our Masculinity is Toxic Feminism has moved past the fight for equality. It is now focused on power. So, when did they cross the line? The moment they labeled masculinity as toxic. They took the gloves off and started playing dirty. Women no longer wanted to be the "same" as men – they now wanted to inflict as much pain on masculinity as possible. They are attacking the essence of our being by saying that certain “traditional” masculine traits are linked to aggression, misogyny, and negative health outcomes. Toxic masculinity is what keeps the lights on in our cities and is what gets the crops harvested on our farms, but we are being forced to be ashamed of it. Inherent male qualities, such as strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness, are not toxic. We need to embrace and nurture them. 4) We are Told the Future is Feminine Boys want to go out and wrestle with their friends, climb trees, strip their bikes, and get their hands dirty, but they are taught that the future is female. When these boys grow into young men, they are told to get in touch with their feminine side, to be sensitive, to be agreeable, and not to take risks. This softness flies in the face of their natural male instincts. Men are supposed to be men and women are supposed to be women. The problem is that men are being told to be more like women. We are breeding a generation of pussy men who are losing touch with their masculine strengths. 5) We are Battling with the Transition from Muscle to Microchip and Mental Robots and automation are eliminating blue-collar jobs. For example, over the next 10 years, 1.7 million truck drivers will be replaced globally by self-driving trucks. We are having trouble making this technology transition. Good honest blue-collar labor is being displaced by robots and technology and men are being left out in the cold. The global economy is also tilting towards services where the mental side is more important than the muscle. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now 109,000 more women working than men. It is believed by experts that this trend will continue and gain more momentum as the number of working women increases, while the number of men in the workforce declines. The continued growth in employment for women parallels the economic shift away from so-called traditional male-dominated jobs, in sectors such as manufacturing, toward a service-based business model. Sectors that employ more women are growing, whereas jobs historically associated with men are in a decline. 6) We are Facing a Crisis of Sexuality Young men between the ages of 18 and 30 in the US are abstaining from sex. Ten years ago, the percentage of men in this demographic that had not had sex in the past year was 10%. Today, this number has spiked to almost 30%. There are several reasons for this sex drought. Young men are withdrawing into the online world and are consuming more pornography. They are also living longer with their parents, which is a real boner killer. But possibly the strongest reason is that women are becoming more selective about who they drop their panties for. They are focusing more on their careers, and delaying marriage plans or canceling them altogether. As women progress in their careers and start to unlock their economic potential, they also see how their sexual market value increases. Women are hypergamous by nature – they only want to hook up with people on the same socio-economic level or higher. Given that men are in a throes of a crisis, this pool of dateable/fuckable men is declining. This means that a smaller number of alpha-type men are having more sex. The Pareto principle of 80/20 is very much in play – 20% of men are having 80% of the sex. 7) We Have less Testosterone A study has shown that men’s testosterone levels (T levels) have been falling by 1% per year since the 1980s. This means that a 25 year today has the same T levels as a 50-year-old man had in 1997. That is a terrifying statistic, especially given that low T levels can lead to mood swings, irritability, stress, anxiety, and depression. There are numerous reasons for declining T levels – more sedentary lifestyles, the lack of strong father figures for young boys, tight underwear, and even an increase in climatic temperatures. Obesity is also driving T levels into the ground. Men these days are less likely to follow their caveman-like instincts (being outside and wrestling saber-toothed tigers and terrifying the local villagers) and more likely to be indoors playing video games and jerking off. 8) Boys are Growing up Fatherless It is becoming more common for boys to grow up without fathers. Divorce rates have been on the increase for decades as the stigma of divorce disappears. The global COVID pandemic has also done its bit to increase traffic through the divorce courts. Family law almost always favors the mothers. Many boys are now being raised with minimal or no father involvement. Boys with less-involved fathers are more likely to drop out of school, drink, do drugs, become delinquent, and end up in prison. 9) We are Facing a Crisis of Purpose In the old days, men had a clear sense of purpose: being a warrior, a leader, or a sole breadwinner. These purposes are fading. Many young men these days are experiencing a "purpose void," feeling alienated, withdrawn, and addicted to immediate gratification. Compounding this issue are addicting video games that lead to distraction and ADHD. 10) We are Getting Less Educated Young men now account for only about 40% of recent university graduates. Likewise, boys drop out of high school at nearly double the rate of girls. Traditional boyhood pursuits have been curtailed in schools, with a significant decline in activities such as physical education, sports, woodwork, metalwork, and break times. This prevents boys from letting off steam and expending natural energy, leading to inattention in the classroom. In addition, the vast majority of teachers in high school are women, again creating an environment void of male role models. As men get less educated, so to does their market value in the workplace decline. They are less likely to find well-paying jobs, and the velocity of their downward spiral accelerates. So what is the solution to all this mayhem? The first step is admitting there is a crisis. The second step is building a community that is obsessed with finding solutions, and not with wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction. The Million Man Project aims to create a million high-value men. We want to reverse this trend of masculine decay, and through coaching, mentorship, and community help young men lead meaningful and valuable lives.