People have asked me about my thoughts on Steve Pavlina’s How To Be A Man – in particular, his views on how a man should relate to his family in relation to his personal goals. While I am pretty sure he didn’t mean to make the ideal man sound like a Dead-Beat Dad, that is how it came across to me and, apparently, many others. Steve’s text is in italics below, with my thoughts afterwards.
1. Make real decisions.
A man understands and respects the power of choice. He lives a life of his own creation. He knows that life stagnates when he fails to decide and flourishes when he chooses a clear path.
When a man makes a decision, he opens the door he wants and closes the doors he doesn’t want. He locks onto his target like a guided missile. There’s no guarantee he’ll reach his target, and he knows this, but he doesn’t need such guarantees. He simply enjoys the sense of inevitability that comes from pushing the launch button.
A man doesn’t require the approval of others. He’s willing to follow his heart wherever it leads him. When a man is following his heart-centered path, it’s of little consequence if the entire world is against him.
I agree that making decisions in an extremely important step for individuals to live full lives. However, the way it was written on Steve’s blog could easily describe a typical absent father, who just runs out on his family because the door he wants to go through doesn’t involve them.
Life should flow, much like water does. Feel the most natural direction and go with it, unafraid of conditions ahead. Too much worry over choices will leave your life nothing more than a stagnant pond. But, just as a healthy stream carries life, a man will carry his family, nourishing them and introducing them to new adventures along the way.
2. Put your relationships second.
A man who claims his #1 commitment in life is his relationship partner (or his family) is either too dishonest or too weak to be trusted. His loyalties are misplaced. A man who values individuals above his own integrity is a wretch, not a free thinker.
A man knows he must commit to something greater than satisfying the needs of a few people. He’s not willing to be domesticated, but he is willing to accept the responsibility that comes with greater challenges. He knows that when he shirks that duty, he becomes something less than a man. When others observe that the man is unyieldingly committed to his values and ideals, he gains their trust and respect, even when he cannot gain their direct support. The surest way for a man to lose the respect of others (as well as his self-respect) is to violate his own values.
Life will test the man to see if he’s willing to put loyalty to others ahead of loyalty to his principles. The man will be offered many temptations to expose his true loyalties. A man’s greatest reward is to live with integrity, and his greatest punishment is what he inflicts upon himself for placing anything above his integrity. Whenever the man sacrifices his integrity, he loses his freedom… and himself as well. He becomes an object of pity.
Put your relationships second?? If a man is in a relationship that isn’t going to allow him to stick to what he believes, he needs to find a different partner. A strong, loving partnership will only add to his integrity, and a loving spouse who knows that she comes first in his life will only add her strength to his, rather than create weaknesses with her insecurity over their relationship.
This doesn’t just go for men, either. A healthy partnership will work together for a mutual goal in a complimentary fashion. I am truly surprised by his answer here, as it seems to me that Steve and his wife have a very supportive partnership, and that without her support, he wouldn’t have achieved what he has. The man he is describing is a very lonely one, who, at the end of his life, has a large fortune but no one to organize his funeral.
