Top 75 Best Life Lessons For Men – What

Your Father Forgot To Teach You

The young man may know the rules, yet, the wise old man knows the life
lessons behind each of them. Breaking rules isn’t painful, but discovering
the consequences the hard way, often can be.

Any man who wants to become successful in life must understand one universal
truth:

In order grow, a man must first have a willingness to learn from his own mistakes.

Yet, ego and fear are perhaps the two biggest road blocks of doing so.

The two lead many men today into lives of suffering, lack of happiness and despair.
For some without a male role model, understanding this concept is near impossible,
because nobody is there to teach them in the first place.

In reality, we all learn the basic as children; things like right vs wrong, taking
responsibility, etc. come naturally. Most of those ideas are hardwired into your
brains from birth or taught so repetitively that we can fully grasp them.

Yet, what separates successful men from unsuccessful men in this world is how well
they transition from children to young men and beyond. The truth is, most of life’s
most important and brutal lessons appear later on in adulthood. It’s the exposed
moments where we are put in survival mode and forced to make our own decisions,
and deal with each and every outcome that we finally begin to learn. As we
encounter our mistakes, eventually we must realize we cannot escape them, but
rather only embrace them.

For some men, it can take an entire lifetime to understand that concept.

With that said, I’d like to share with you the top 75 best life lessons for men below.
You’ll won’t find a list of broad rules to follow, instead you’ll find concepts that have
been discovered by generations of men. If you want to know how the world works,
and how it can work in your favor as you grow as a man, then these are meant for
you.

1. They’ve limited their thinking and would feel much more comfortable
if you’d limit yours too.

You are the result of the five people you spend the most time with. You need to be
careful of who you allow yourself to be exposed to. As you continue to climb
upwards and reach your goals, those around who attempt do the same will become
fewer and fewer.

They’d rather stay in easy mode, and seeing your success become a reality, makes
them uncomfortable. Risk scares them to death, because it is out of their comfort
zone and requires real effort. If they can drag you back to their level, you better
believe they will do by any means possible.
2. Distraction is what ultimately kills dreams.

Vacations, holidays, new toys, hobbies, entertainment, etc. all lend a hand at
distraction you away from your goals. It’s easy to get lost spending five minutes on
Facebook or forums, yet, when you do it over and over again it adds up! Even if it’s
just two hours playing a round of golf, or an hour dinner out on the town before you
know it, your entire day is gone. In other words, wasted away! Focus on things that
matter and are relevant towards reaching your goals.

If your dream is to build a house, watching Netflix every night for 2 hours isn’t going
to help you get there! Putting in real work will. You can either succumb to
distractions or accept the sacrifices and avoid the temptation.
3. There are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, so long as
you really want to go.

Make your own luck. You can’t wait around wishing all your life or you’ll end up a
broke, miserable fool who’s all alone. If you truly want to acquire an item, achieve a
goal, or turn a dream into a reality, you must put in the work and pay the price of
action. So long as you keep pulling the trigger, regardless of how well your aim is,
eventually you will hit the bullseye.
4. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

5. Thinking it over is for people who can’t take action.

Everyone has ideas. All of them are worthless until you put them into action.

6. Your most valuable natural asset is your own gut instinct, trust it.

When your girlfriend cheats on you and you highly suspect it but have no immediate
proof: You’ve been cheated on. When your gut is screaming SOS, listen to it. It’s far
too easy to let the thought of love overtake the reasoning of logic. When you know
the answer and trust it dearly, but fear being ridiculed because it may be so out of
the box or wrong, speak up.
7. Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.

You can’t do this. You can! You can’t do that. You can!

It’s impossible to do it that way; no one’s ever done it before. You must do it this
way. They say you really shouldn’t do that. On and on, they will proclaim. The truth
is, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.

If you stick with something long enough, you will shatter every belief of
conventional wisdom.
8. The only difference between champ and chump is “U”.

When Gates met Buffet for the first time for dinner, Gate’s mother turned to the two
and asked: “What is the single most important factor of success?” The two yelled
out, “Focus!”

How focused you are determines when and if you ultimately succeed. Focus is
something that comes from you, no one else. Take for example Floyd Mayweather,
for all of his life he has focused on one thing and one thing only: Boxing. If his nearly
one billion dollars in career earnings don’t declare him the champ, certainly his wins
in the ring do.

Floyd could have easily chosen to be a chump all of his life. The truth is, his father
sold drugs and his mother heavily used them. During interviews, Mayweather
claimed that he basically raised himself. Yet, Floyd pushed forward with the idea
who he wanted to become, and maintained a level of focus that most cannot even
imagine being possible.
9. A man who dwells on his past robs his future.

The only way to rise out of poverty, abuse, low self-esteem, etc. and turn yourself
into a successful man, is by allowing yourself to overcome your past.

Ultimately you are responsible for all of your mistakes alongside every excuse you
dish out. The world isn’t perfect place, and nature is a cruel beast that could care
less about you. If you don’t believe me, then walk out into the wilderness and see
how well you survive. Most of you won’t last more than a week.

As a man, you are responsible for your success in life. No one else! Others may give
you guidance, share wisdom, and inspire you along the way. Yet, what you do with
those experience is entirely your own choice to make.
Just because you were born into poverty, doesn’t mean you must die in poverty. Just
because you were rejected by one woman, does not mean you must analyze the
entire event. Don’t get trapped in the dark pit of overthinking.

10. Don’t waste time on things you cannot change.

11. Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.

This too shall pass.

The pain and sorrow of losing a loved one will eventually pass. The disappointment
and grief and being let go at a job will eventually fade away. The anger and
frustration of addiction will turn to triumph and joy once your chains are finally
broken. Rejection, break ups, the list goes on and on.

Take quitting cigarettes for instance. The first few days are terrible; the next month
is agony and often at times, torture. Yet, within a few months, you heal. You might
start researching the benefits of quitting. You might start to understand just how
bad you smelled, how yellow your teeth were becoming, how much money you were
wasting, and so on. Perhaps you may ultimately start to realize how important your
health is, and begin working out, start cycling or running marathons. Suddenly
you’re channeling your negative view of quitting into a positive as one of the
greatest things to ever happen in your life.

12. Man plans, God laughs.

Life is full of problems, most of which we don’t even expect. When we solve smaller
ones, even bigger ones appear right out of nowhere.
You may be hitting it off perfectly with a woman, yet upon asking her out, you
discover she has a boyfriend. You may grow your business tenfold by signing on a
new client. Yet, finding employees with a specialized skill set to handle the workload
proves to be near impossible.

Even the Notorious B.I.G. knew the deal, “Mo Money Mo Problems.”

13. You can’t have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work
ethic.

14. Build your dream or someone else will hire you to build theirs.
Start a business or start accepting the reality of working for another man. Many men
dream of being their own boss, yet, very few pick up the call and accept the
challenge.

Being your own boss isn’t just about the money, it’s about the freedom. The freedom
to do whatever what you, whenever you want. That’s priceless.

The ability to grow your income based on the amount of work you put in is simply
said: Seductive.

15. Fear of rejection is worse than rejection.

Fear is simply false expectations appearing real.

16. It’s not what you want to do, it’s who you want to be.
17. Pay no attention to what the critics say for no one has ever erected a
statue in honor of them.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have
thrown at him.

Haters are losers. They will say anything to bring you down.
18. Take pride in everything that you do. Respect everything you own.

Discover the art of craftsmanship. Have enthusiasm, passion and so on. Take care of
all your investments, large and small. Buy shoe trees for your dress shoes. Hang
your tailored suit up an actual suit hanger.

19. Insanity is doing the same thing, the same way, and expecting
different results.

Albert Einstein didn’t fail one-thousand times while trying to master the invention
of the lightbulb. In reality, he discovered there were one-thousand steps involved in
order to create it. From another perspective, you could easily say that he proved
one-thousand ways which would not work.
20. A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public
opinion.

The media isn’t always about being honest or offering real solutions to problems. It’s
about promoting fear and profiting through the capture of mass attention. Almost all
of which is done while being one-sided. Unfortunately, public opinion often follows
the opinion of the media to heart.

Don’t be a sheep. Far too many men in this world are misled simply because they
choose to believe in what’s easiest to accept. Many reject evidence and reasoning in
favor of comfort and avoidance of fear from being proven wrong.

Do you own research; don’t be spoon fed a web of lies.

21. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and
you feed him for a lifetime.

My personal view on this is to teach your son and other younger males you
encounter all the ways of life. If your son has a flat tire, do not change it for him.
Instead, show him how to change it by making him perform the repair himself under
your guidance. He will remember how to complete the repair for the rest of his life
and eventually pass on the lesson to next generation.

Had you just done the repair without him present, he may have never how to fix a
flat tire. But more importantly, he may have never learned the independence nor
pride that comes along with being self-reliant.
22. It’s not the boulder in your path that will stop you, but the pebble in
your shoe.

Treat your problems in life like a boulder; move around them. Handle them at once.
Don’t let your problems become small pains like a pebble in your shoe that plague
you around for your entire life.
23. Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish
they are after.

A boy has a goal of catching the most fish. A young man has the goal of catching the
biggest fish. When one becomes a man, he simply just wants to go fishing.

24. The fool is always certain of himself, while the wise man is full of self-
doubt.

25. Put your money where your mouth is.

Don’t talk sh-t if you can’t back up your words with actions.
26. Not my monkey, not my circus.

Don’t get involved in the drama of others, unless it is a problem that you can directly
resolve.
27. A man can love as many times as is heart is willing to be broken.

Heartbreaks happen. Dogs don’t live forever, though we all wish they did.
28. No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and
he’s not the same man.

You will never step in the same river twice as the water is constantly flowing and
changing. All of the people you encounter in life are never the same from one
moment to the next.
29. He who angers you controls you.

Be in control of your emotions. Do not allow others to be the puppeteer of your life.
Learn to soothe your temper and understand that you have nothing to prove to
anyone other than yourself.

30. A man cannot build a reputation on what he is going to do.

As they say, talk is cheap.

31. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast
and endless sea.

Great men don’t lead other men by telling them what to do. They lead by example,
selling them on dream of a worthy idea or goal. They inspire them to desire
something which is only obtainable through hard work. By doing so, they not only
boost productivity but also earn respect.

32. Confidence is quiet. Insecurities are loud.

The loudest of men have something to prove. They need attention in order to feel
validated, wanted or accepted. Confident men believe in both their words and
actions, they seek no one’s approval other than their own.
33. A ship is safe in a harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

Life is not about sitting on the couch all day. Without risk, there can be no reward.

34. Years of love have been forgotten in the hatred of a minute.

35. Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you
deserve peace.
36. The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried.

37. There is no such things as a free lunch.

38. Good, fast or cheap. You can only pick two.

39. Mind over matter.

The body can be pushed much farther than imaginable.

If I put a plank of wood fifty stories up across two buildings, and I asked you to cross
it for a thousand dollars you’d decline, or at least most would. You’d say it’s
impossible, too dangerous to even attempt, and so on. If your mother, wife or
children were at the other end of the plank and it was life or death based upon if you
could cross it, you can bet you’d cross it without any hesitation.

Just when we think the body will fail it continues to give and give. You may be
exhausted after running one mile, but your body may be truly capable of running
five, ten or even more miles.

40. Be all that you can be. You cannot dream yourself into character; you
must hammer and forge yourself one.

Socrates said it best, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of
physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and
strength of which his body is capable.”

The same can be said of everything in your life: Your finances, your relationships,
your personal goals. Master them all and fulfill your true potential.

41. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

42. Don’t set time limits for achieving goals. They should transcend time.

43. Set goals you cannot achieve in your lifetime.

Better yet, set goals you cannot achieve in two or three lifetimes. The higher you set
your goals, the more you will ultimately accomplish in the end. Your goals should be
beyond your wildest dreams.
44. It’s what you do now, today, that determines how your mind and
body operate ten, twenty and thirty years from now.

45. You’re a millionaire even if you don’t already know it.

If I offered you a quarter of a million dollars for your leg would you take it? How
about a hundred thousand for your arm? How about another hundred thousand for
an eye. And another for your finger, and so on.

When you add it all up, you are a millionaire even if you don’t already realize it.
Treat your body like it’s worth a million bucks. Treat it like a million dollar Ferrari.
Put in the best fuel (food) possible. Take care of it.
46. Don’t work for money all your life. Put your money to work for you.

Either you can control your money or it can control you. Living paycheck to
paycheck is no way to live. Being strapped down by a lifetime of debt is nothing
more than slavery with a few good moments of pleasure. Not all debt is bad, but
when you’re drowning in it you may find yourself working to pay off things you
never really wanted nor needed in the first place.

Learn how to invest and save your money wisely. Pay yourself first!
47. Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

Time is the true luxury of this world; a man only has so much of it. Don’t waste it on
things that don’t matter! You cannot buy more of it when it starts to run out.

In another light, don’t waste the time of others. If you’re going to be there at five
o’clock, then be there at five o’clock. It doesn’t matter if you have diarrhea or aren’t
feeling up for it, you show up! The only time you don’t, is if you’re dead or in a coma.
Your word is everything, keep it!

48. Perfection equals paralysis; it is the gateway to insanity.

Sometimes “good enough” is the right answer if it gets the job done.
49. Measure twice, cut once.

Avoid making mistakes in the first place because it can result in work that’s two to
ten times longer to correct and complete.
50. Money isn’t the only thing in life, but it’s the only thing people keep
track of.

If you don’t think money can buy happiness or pleasure you don’t know where to
shop.
51. Courage is nothing but doing the right thing when the wrong thing is
far easier.
52. Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
53. The world owes you absolutely nothing.

And no one is going to feel sorry for you. Your rich friends don’t owe you a dime
either.
54. A true friend will help you move.

No one likes moving, but a true friend won’t say “No.” They won’t ask for payment
either. Pizza and beer are bonuses. In return, if you’re a true friend, then you better
be there when your buddy needs help moving.

Remember, most people don’t move all that often, but they sure do remember who
did and didn’t help them move.
55. Seek the uncomfortable and you will comfortable.

Step out of your comfort zone. Do something that scares the living hell out of you
daily. If you’re not doing that daily, then you’re not growing as a man.

56. Embrace the awkwardness.

No one is a professional starting out. No one ever has the perfect thing to say to a
woman the very moment they see her. Rather than dread the moment, embrace it
and just focus on being present. If life were to be serious all the time, it would be
insanely boring and dull.
57. Don’t stick your d-ck in crazy and don’t sh-t where you eat.

In other words, don’t dip your pen in the company inkwell. If you’re going to, at least
know, understated be fully prepared to deal with the consequences.

58. Everything worth doing takes time.

And lots of sacrifice along the way! In order to get, you must first give.

59. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day of your life.

Find something you can’t live without, then go after it.

The truth is, you can’t follow your dreams and expect to always be paid. Not all
dreams have a market that’s ready to spend cash or a job waiting at the finish line.
Though you can tailor your skill set, knowledge or experience into other relevant
fields. Work doesn’t always have to be enjoyable or feel like a true vacation; it’s
work! There are ups and downs even to dream jobs.

60. Just fu-king do it!

Stop making excuses. Those four words are the answer to almost every question you
will ever have.

61. Don’t judge a man by the mistakes he makes, judge him by the actions
he takes to correct them.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when
you make it again.

62. It’s easy to be good at something; it’s extremely difficult to be great at

something.

If it were easy everyone would do it.

63. If it has to be, it starts with me.

64. It’s lonely at the top.

Eagles fly alone. The more successful you are, the fewer friends you have.

65. Burn your ships.

Back up plans, ripcords, and fail-safes are ways to mentally tell yourself that it’s
okay to fail; I have already failed. Avoid them if you wish to be successful!

66. Smell the leather.

We make changes in life for two reasons: Desperation or inspiration.

67. When someone says “No”, you have failed to present enough
information.

68. Human beings are like rivers; they travel to the path of least
resistance.

When searching for a mentor, the easiest route is to choose an uncle or brother or
family member. Yet, the majority have never accomplished what you wish to
accomplish. You wouldn’t take advice on how to build a spaceship from a gardener,
would you?

69. Focus on the few, not the many.

70. Choose your battles wisely.
71. Kiss a lot of frogs.

Who you know matters. There’s someone out there who will believe or invest in
whatever idea you have. No matter how insane or idiotic it may be. In order to find
that person, you must kiss a lot of frogs first!

72. Pay yourself first.

73. Treat others how you wish to be treated.

Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down. Our
attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us.
74. All you need is the plan, the roadmap, and the courage to press on to
your destination.

Men with goals succeed because they know where they are going.
75. There is no such thing as job security.

The mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else.
Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual.
Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!