Knowledge For Men

Brandon Carter has been one of the top personal trainers and nutritionists in North America for over 10 years. He has worked as a fitness model for Nike, Puma, Adidas, Men’s Health, and many others. Brandon has trained a number of professional athletes and models. Brandon is the author of the #1 best-selling ebook “Ultimate Cuts: 7 Secrets To Burn Fast As Hell” among several others. Favorite Success Quote “Your approval or disapproval means nothing to me” ~Jesus Key Points 1. Consistency is the Key to All Success Most successful people are not successful because of genetics, luck, or inheritance. They are successful because they just didn’t give up. No matter how hard it got, no matter what challenges arose, they never gave up, never surrendered, and kept pushing forward to achieve the life of their dreams. Tony Robbins has an old saying that “You overestimate what you can do in a year but underestimate what you can do in two or three decades.” And the simple truth is that most people die unsuccessful and unfulfilled because they were not willing to power through the decades of struggle to become successful. If you want to succeed, then don’t quit. Plain and simple. 2. There is No Failure Simply Data In life, there is no failure, there is just input and data. Imagine that you go up to a beautiful woman to try and get her number. In your approach, you lack confidence, your voice cracks, you can’t hold eye contact, and after mumbling inaudibly for about two minutes, she curtly tells you that she is not interested. Is this a failure? No, it is simply data about what doesn’t work. Now, you know that the next time you go to approach a beautiful girl, you need to stand with confidence, project your voice, hold eye contact, and portray the fact that you are a strong grounded man. The same is true in business and in health. Even if you lose millions of dollars, it’s not a failure, it’s simply data that will inform your decisions in the future. If you waste two years with the same low-level exercise program without seeing results, you have not failed, you have simply gathered data about what doesn’t work. 3.  Master Your Craft  If you want to be remembered as one of the greats, then you must become a master of your craft, not just a dabbler. True masters are the people who are willing to devote their lives to mastering one or two specific crafts. According to Malcolm Gladwell it takes 10,000 hours to become a true master of any craft. This means that if you want to truly master a craft it will take you at least a decade of committed work to truly become one of the greats. But this should not be something that is discouraging. Because of the high barrier to entry the competition that you will face on your path to mastery will be nominal. There are so few people who are actually willing to pay the price for mastery, that the rewards for becoming a master are so incredible. 4. You Will Have to Bleed for What You Want If you want to succeed, you are going to have to bleed. End of story. Whenever you are setting new goals for yourself, do not ask yourself what you want to achieve, ask yourself what you are willing to suffer for. Almost everyone wants a million dollars, the house in the hills, the fast cars, and the beautiful woman. But how many people are actually willing to bleed for what they want? How many people are willing to sacrifice and suffer to achieve their goals? If you want to achieve great things you will need to sacrifice greatly. So before you set out to achieve your goals ask yourself if you are truly willing to pay the price required to achieve your goals. 5. You Need to be Relentless  Greatness requires sacrifice, we have already said as much. But to become the best you must be relentless. This is a whole new level of sacrifice. Fighting your way to the top means that you are going to have to give up time with friends and family, it means that you are going to have to leave relationships, it means that you are going to have to give up sleep, give up partying, and give up damn near everything except for your pursuit of greatness. You have to be relentless. You have to be like Jordan and Kobe. You have to show up early, leave late, and shut everything out except for your purpose. Becoming the best in the world is not a path for the faint of heart, but if you decide to embark upon it, then you need to realize what it is going to cost.

Kamal Ravikant is one of the world’s most interesting entrepreneurs, whose initial success was found in the Silicon Valley. In addition to his entrepreneurial success, Kamal has also trekked the Himalayas, meditated with Tibetan monks in the Dalai Lama’s monastery, served in the US Army Infantry, and walked 550 miles across Spain. He is also the author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, Live Your Truth, andRebirth. Favorite Success Quote “Destiny favors the committed.” “Hater’s gonna hate!” ~Taylor Swift Key Points 1. Commit To Yourself  Making and keeping a commitment to oneself is the ultimate measure of a man’s success. We live in a society full of liars and fakes. And I do not mean that people are maliciously seeking to manipulate their way to the top or intentionally putting on a facade of success and gravitas. We live in a society where the greatest lies that are told are the ones that we tell ourself. “This time it will be different.” “This is the year that I will quit smoking/doing drugs/watching porn/standing on the sidelines” “This is the year where I will take control of my life and start my own business.” We live in a society that lies to itself to sedate the pain of staying the same. But what if things could be different? What if we were able to make commitments and follow through on them? What if we valued ourselves and our own word so much that the very thought of backing out of a commitment that we made to ourselves was unthinkable? It is possible. But it starts by learning to value yourself and the commitments that you are making. And more importantly, as we will discuss in a minute, it starts by loving yourself. 2. Execution, not Ideation is the Key to Success Everyone has a great idea. Everyone has an idea that could make them a billionaire (or at least much wealthier than they already are). So why are there so many broke and impoverished people? Especially in a country like the U.S. where there are so many opportunities? Because ideas  are not worth a damn thing. Only execution is. The greatest investors in the world never bet on the idea, just the team behind it. If you want to succeed, stop worrying about what you are going to do, and start worrying about how you are going to do it and who you are going to become so that you can achieve your goals. Forget all of your ideas. Instead, worry about transforming yourself into the kind of person who can execute and bring ideas to life. 3. Loving Yourself is Selfless So often people read the titles of books like “Love Yourself” and “Choose Yourself” and they think “Wow! What selfless a-holes these people are” But what they never stop to realize is that the greatest narcissists in the world are the people who loathe themselves. If you love yourself and take care of #1, then you enter into the world from a place of peace, joy, and love and therefore you are able to pour out into others and be the light that others can follow. If you do not love yourself, then you enter the world from a place of scarcity, fear, and anxiety, ensuring that the only impact you have is to negatively affect and drain those around you. What is more selfless? Making sure that you are taken care of so that you can take care of others? Or focusing all of your energy on others until you are burnt out, angry, and depressed? 4. If I Loved Myself at a Level 10 What Would I Do? As you face different challenges and choices in your everyday life, you should view every trial, question, and challenge through one lens and one lens only. “If I loved myself at a level 10 of 10, what would I do?” This question simplifies even the most complicated of questions and makes it very easy for you to figure out the best solutions. If you loved yourself at a 10/10 would you smoke that cigarette or abstain? If you loved yourself at a 10/10 would you watch another porn flick, wasting your day and poisoning your sex life, or would you find more constructive ways to spend your time? If you loved yourself at a 10/10 would you stay in that toxic relationship or bite the bullet and move on to someone who loves and appreciates you? If you loved yourself at a 10/10 would you continue living a sedated, numb life, doing just enough to get by, or would you stand up and pursue your dreams, leave “desire” on the sidelines and be a man of action? If you loved yourself at a 10/10 what would you do? 5. Vulnerability is Where True Power Lies We are all broken. From Bill Gates to Warren buffet to Kamal to Me. No one is perfect and no one has everything figured out. We are all on this journey called life together, and we are all blessed to be faced with different challenges and different successes. And it is your privilege, no… your responsibility to share the story of your challenges and triumphs with the world. You never know when one simple blog post, when one video, or when one conversation that you have will change someone’s life. Opening up, being vulnerable, and sharing your story could be the difference between a friend committing suicide and a friend radically changing their life and pursuing their dreams. Some of you may feel a bit uncomfortable sharing your story and being vulnerable with the people in your life. But you have to remember that your story has power. It has the power to attract people into your life who can help you on your journey and it has the power to reach people you may never know and radically transform their journey. Do not live a life that is so selfish that you deprive yourself of the joy you will experience by impacting the world with your vulnerability.

Born in Egypt, Dr. Nour left Cairo in 1977 after graduating in the top of his class at the Medical School of Cairo University. Looking for the freedom to study medical subjects of interest to him in the U.S., he made his way to London but got caught in three year immigration process. After many years of private Neurology practice in the Midwest and due only to an allergy to Canadian Geese, which flourish in large populations there, Dr. Nour moved to Southern California. Happily married with two daughters in college, he is now semi-retired. He is an accomplished painting artist, videographer, photographer and a graphic designer. He enjoys opera, sailing, tennis, bicycling, and learning about other cultures through travel, all while still enjoying helping patients with complex neurological disorders. Favorite Success Quote “With persistence, you can achieve anything your heart desires.” Key Points 1. “Love” is a Scientific Series of Processes that Occur in Four Distinct Phases 1. Mate Choice The first phase of love is mate choice. At it’s most basic level, this is the process of meeting someone and (subconsciously) deciding that they are a good match for you and your potential offspring on a genetic level. This phase happens almost instantly. 2. Falling in Love The process that Hollywood and pop culture have used and abused. This is the phase in a relationship where the two individuals will feel massive attraction for one another and experience a heightened increase in certain pleasure chemicals. This phase will typically last 1-3 years. 3. Falling Out of Love  A necessary part of finding true love, the third phase of love is where you effectively experience the proverbial “come down” from the neurochemical high that you experienced during phase two. During this phase of the process, you will begin struggling in your relationship and find your partner less appealing than you did before.  This phase will typically last around a year. 4. True Love This is where the rubber meets the road. During the final stage of love, “True Love”, you have experienced falling out of love, made a conscious and informed decision that your current partner is right for you, and you now experience a release of a new set of pleasure chemicals that are slower forming but longer lasting, leading to the much desired “Happily ever after”. 2. Falling Out of Love is Essential to True Love Many people assume that if they are falling out of love with their partner it is a bad thing. However, they should actually get excited. Falling out of love is an essential, if not the most essential part of the four phases of true love. You see, the first two phases of love cause people to experience such an overwhelm of pleasure chemicals being released in the brain that they quite literally cannot see the other person for what they really are. Thus the phrase “Love is blind”. However, because your genes are hardwired to help ensure that you are able to survive and procreate with the highest levels of success possible, phase two begins. During this phase, your genes are working behind the scenes to help you determine whether the person you are with is truly the best match for you in the long run. If you do not have this phase, you cannot have true love. Read that again and write it down. Unless you fall out of love with your partner, you will scientifically never be able to experience true and lasting love.  This is not an easy reality to stomach, but the knowledge and foresight of what is to come will allow you to make informed decisions about your relationships and truly determine what is best for you in the future. 3. If You Do Not Fall Out of Love with Somebody You Cannot Fall in Love With Someone New Many men beat themselves up and feel battered down because they are unable to move on after a bad breakup or divorce. Gentlemen, I have good news for you. It is not your fault. Despite what we have been lead to believe by the pop culture surrounding masculinity, on a chemical and neurological level, you cannot just get over it whenever you experience a traumatizing separation. You see, whenever you are caught in the second phase of love and your partner ends the relationship (often because they reached the third phase and did not know how to handle it), you are still caught in love on a chemical level. Your brain will literally not allow you to move on until you have experienced the biological and neurological effects of falling out of love. So what does this mean for you? If your wife or girlfriend ends things while you are mid-phase 2 are you doomed to an eternity of lovelessness? No. Even though your brain and genes are working “against” you, it is possible to recover. Typically this will occur whenever you maintain an amiable (or nonamiable) relationship with your previous partner and allow yourself to naturally fall out of love with them. If they have been removed from your life completely, you will often need to seek professional help to truly recover and move on to your next love in a healthy way. 4. Love and Sex Are Not the Same Thing A common fallacy among the uninformed is that love and sex are the same things. They are not. While love and sex are complimentary in their nature, they serve two completely different purposes. Think about it this way. Sex is all about satiation. It’s about achieving the goal of orgasm and there is a set amount of sex that any given person can handle before they are done. Love, on the other hand, does not have an inherent goal or “climax”. It is an ongoing process that can and should feel like a bottomless well. Have you ever heard anyone say “No thanks, I don’t want any more love today. You can take your love and go give it to someone else.”? However, love makes sex more intense and emotional and sex makes loves more binding. Like a doctor and a nurse, they work together, but serve very separate roles. 5. Your Capacity for Love Depends on Your Genes And now, the big one. This particular point will be uncomfortable for many of you and might even make some of you angry. But like the famous scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “The great thing about science is that it is true whether you agree with it or not”. Your capacity for true love, connection, and monogamy are all highly dependent on your genes. There are some people who due to their genetic variations quite literally cannot experience true love. The chemicals are there, but the genetic wiring to receive the “true love” chemicals are not. This is a hard pill for many to swallow. The fact that monogamy, fidelity, and the quality of your relationships can actually have anything to do with your genes, let alone everything to do with them, is not something that most members of society understand and accept. And while this truth may not be comfortable, it is the truth and it’s important that you remember this on your quest to find your own true love.

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Stephen Mansfield is a New York Times bestselling author and a popular speaker who works with leaders worldwide. He first rose to global attention with his groundbreaking book The Faith of George W. Bush, a bestseller that Time magazine credited with helping shape the 2004 U.S. presidential election. The book was also a source for Oliver Stone’s award-winning film “W.” Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama was another international bestseller. He has written celebrated biographies of Booker T. Washington, George Whitefield, Winston Churchill, Pope Benedict XVI, and Abraham Lincoln, among others. Publishers Weekly described his book, Killing Jesus, as “masterful.” Favorite Success Quote “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” ~Henry David Thoreau Key Points 1. Manly Men Need Other Manly Men  No man is an island. Even though you have heard the saying hundreds if not thousands of times, few men truly internalize what it means, and still fewer act on it. Just look at the statistics. A simple scroll across the front pages and you will find sky-high suicide rates among males, loneliness, depression, and anxiety in numbers that we have never seen before. Why is this? While there are many theories and hypothesis, a critical look at the situation makes things clear. We are a species that was built to be in community, and even though we are more connected now than ever before, most of us are utterly and absolutely alone. We have no one to call us up, no one to celebrate with us, no one to challenge us, to help us, to hold us accountable and keep us to our word. And because of this deterioration in our social structure men have become soft, weak, and effeminate. But it doesn’t have to be this way. As a man, you have the power to break this pattern. Make a conscious effort to meet and befriend other men. And when you are in these friendships, dive deeper than you ever have before. Hold nothing back and hold each other up. You will be amazed at the results. 2. Manly Men Do Manly Things If you want to call yourself a man, then you need to do manly things. Period. Does this mean that you should shave with a tomahawk, lift boulders for fun, and skin polar bears with your fingernails? Probably not (although that would be quite cool), it simply means that you need to embrace the masculine nature of doing instead of spectating  and talking. Get off of your butt and get into life! Learn a new skill, fix things, build things, explore, create, conquer. Especially if you are a younger man, get off of the darn Xbox and learn something practical. Teach yourself how to maintain a car, learn how to build and fix things, become a better public speaker. Just do.  Quit talking and take action, starting yesterday. 3. Manly Men Tend Their Field  Every man has his own field to tend. No, I don’t mean this literally, although some of you might. What I mean is that every man has his own set of duties and responsibilities and if you want to consider yourself a man, then you must tend to those responsibilities. Whether you are 15 listening to this podcast or 50, we all have our own fields. For some of you, it’s school work, your girlfriend, and your football buddies. For others, it’s your 8-figure company, your wife of 30 years, and non-profit. It doesn’t matter what your particular field is, what matters is that you are diligent in tending to and watering your field. Be disciplined in your action. Do what needs to be done. Tend your field. 4. Manly Men Build Manly Men  One of the less flaunted traits of manly men is that they build other manly men. There is an old saying that the true mark of a leader is not how many followers he has but how many leaders he creates. Regardless of your religion or personal beliefs about the historicity of Jesus Christ, his virtues as a leader are unquestionable. However, where Jesus excelled was at building up other leaders, in his case, disciples. In fact, he was such an effective leader that of the 12 men who followed him, all but one (or two counting Judas) were martyred for their belief in Christ. Now, whether you believe the stories or not, there is a powerful lesson to be learned about leadership and about the importance of building up those who are around you. Are you really a man if all you can do is take from others and be built up? Or do you need to take a step back and see who you can serve instead? 5. Manly Men Sacrifice Their Pleasures for Their Purpose  The true hallmark characteristic of all manly men is their ability to endure suffering. Manly men know that all greatness was bred through suffering. You must experience the pain and suffering of building and losing your dreams before you will be able to fully appreciate, live, and achieve in the ways that you desire. With the exception of individuals with inherited wealth, no man of substance, no man of great success, and no man of wealth ever achieved their status and material pleasures without first sacrificing and delaying gratification. If you want to be great, be ready to suffer. If you want to be great, don’t ask yourself what you want, ask yourself what you are willing to bleed for.