Advice for Young Men: the Good Men Project

[April 17, 2024]   We are introduced to “The Good Men Project” with the subhead “The conversation no one else is having.”  In a piece titled “20 Pieces of Advice for Men in Their 20x”, author Peter Ross provides some much-needed advice taken from men’s experiences to help men not waste a critical decade in their twenties.

1. Don’t Settle: Don’t be afraid to keep trying things until you find something that gels with you. When people settle, they tend to fall into a rut they can’t escape.  It also means you’re doing something you don’t want to do, so you don’t take opportunities to grow or improve.
2. Be Your Own Person: Being comfortable in your own skin and having your own mind is much rarer than you might think and is incredibly liberating.
3. Realize that Hardship is Good: Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. If you can learn to be emotionally resilient, make the best of a bad time, and not give up, you’ll have something that will serve you well your entire life – the ability to overcome hardship.
4. Learn How to Learn: Learning is generally pretty haphazard for most people because (ironically) they weren’t taught how to learn in school. They just listened to the teacher and did what they were told, and that was it.  What comes next?    Mastery is a big deal.  When you master things and become a subject matter expert, you usually level up your career and start looking at serious money and good working conditions.
5. Your Attitude is Crucial: After High School, some people went to college, some dropped out, and then went from job to job. Despite this, they ended up extremely successful.  The common factor was a great attitude and work ethic.  If you act like a typical entitled twentysomething and go from job to job, always bitching about how you aren’t getting anywhere or that no one listens to you, you’ll end up somewhere shitty in your 30s.
6. Chase Experiences: Experiences make life worth living, not material things. If you have things you want to do or try, get out and do them!  Your 20s is the time because you aren’t tied down with a spouse and kids.
7. Go on a Hero’s Journey: Also known as a rite of passage before we urbanized a few thousand years ago. Mine was joining the army.  I grew about 20 years in maturity in my six years there.  I was pushed to my limits many times, and I learned and experienced things most of the population would never have a clue about.  If you can do a gap year program like the Army, absolutely give it a shot.  If not, find some adventure and go on it.
8. Read a Lot of Books: Have you ever heard the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants”? That’s what you do when you read books.  In any area of interest, there are thousands of books out there to help you gain more knowledge and expertise.  Don’t waste all your spare time watching TV and playing games; spend some time feeding your mind.  You will learn so much from books that you won’t learn elsewhere, and most successful people you speak to will be avid readers.
9. Learn How to Build Relationships: Contrary to what you might think, career success isn’t just about your skills and qualifications. Your ability to build quality relationships by talking to people is far more critical.  Despite what you may think, you are most likely not an introvert; you need more practice at socializing because it is a skill just like anything else.  No one is becoming successful by being someone who can’t talk to others.
10. Be Smart with Your Money: You don’t have to buy a house in your 20s, but you need to save as much money as possible. Cut back on the partying a touch and use that extra money you haven’t spent to…
11. Invest: This goes with number 5. Start investing as soon as possible in your 20s, even if it’s a small amount because the magic of compound interest means the amount will grow bigger as you get older.  When investing, the best time to start is as early as possible, so do it now.
12. Choose Your Friends Wisely: A significant saying is, “You are the average of the people you spend the most time around.” Think about what your relationships are doing for you at the moment.  To be rich, you must spend your time around wealthy people and others who want to be rich.  Hanging around with stoners is going to hold you back.  If you want a magazine cover body, hanging around with people who go to McDonald’s will sabotage your efforts.  Whatever you want to get good at and succeed in, you need to find those same people and be around them.
13. Spend Quality Time with Them: Life can pull you in many directions away from the people closest to you. Build and invest in your friendships because strong friendships make life worth living.  Stop interacting online with everyone; get out and do things together.  Talk about real things as well, don’t just talk bullshit about the Kardashians or sports.
14. Don’t Try to Put on Appearances or Impress People: They won’t be impressed. If you’re average, people will like you because you’re just like them.  If you’re unsuccessful, people will like you and pity you.  If you’re successful, people won’t be impressed; they’ll often be jealous, thinking you don’t deserve it.  You can’t win whichever way you go.  Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks, and do what makes you happy.  Putting on appearances is exhausting because you’re essentially living a lie.  Be the real you, be the best version of you.
15. Learn Who You Are: Believe it or not, self-awareness is a rare trait. Most people have this image of who they are, but it’s often very different from reality.  When you know who you are and what makes you tick, you can look for jobs and careers that best suit you.  Learn your strengths; when you do, learn to work on them rather than your weaknesses.  When you play to your strengths, they get even stronger; working on your weaknesses all the time is frustrating and doesn’t yield the same results.
16. Stretch Yourself: So many people live in a bubble. Rather than trying new things, they sit in a comfort zone and decompose from the inside out.  You won’t believe how much your life and outlook can change when you decide to step out of that bubble and try new things.  It would help if you also tried to get out there and do things that will test you and scare you.  Get out of your comfort zone because it’s one of the best ways to grow.
17. Spend Time With Your Family: Because you only get one. Don’t blow off the once-a-week dinner with your parents or skip family events.  Families (along with friends) are the ones who will pick you up when you fall, who will be there when you need them most, and vice versa.  Don’t ever take them for granted.  Whatever beefs you might have with your parents, talk to them – they can’t fix things when they don’t know the problem.  Please don’t make them guess because they don’t have ESP.
18. Don’t Take Your Health for Granted: Join a gym, run, swim, join a local sports team, whatever. As long as you do something you enjoy and keep the weight from piling on, that’s all you need.  Make sure it’s fun, too.  If it’s fun, you’ll keep doing it, but also, why would you want to torture yourself and do something you hate to stay healthy?  If you can have fun while exercising, that’s a great double whammy.
19. Live Passionately: I saved this for last because I believe it to be the culmination of all the above points and one of the most important on its own. I mentioned that bored office people who talk about sports are a dime a dozen.  I mentioned them talking about sports because when they do, they are talking about other people living their passion while living a life of boring mediocrity.  Do as many things as possible that make you happy and that you have a passion for, because it will open doors that you can’t even imagine.  People love to be around positive, passionate people because they are energetic and interesting and have a zest for life.  I can tell people who are passionate about life almost as soon as I meet them because they have a fire in their eyes and an intensity in their voice that reveals who they are.  We only get one life, so make the most of it and love every second of it, even the down moments, because they make the up moments that much better.
20. Now that you’ve read all this don’t take life too seriously. No one gets out alive.

 I enjoyed this list of twenty pieces of advice.  They represent much of what I’ve written here on these pages, and many regular readers will know that they are true.  Right now, I’m on an adventure to discover more advice for young men (that also applies to young women), which is why I picked the articles that stand out.

Travel this adventure with me.  Make recommendations yourself in the comments section.  There is much more you can do to be a better young man.  The author of this article left out several suggestions that I will pick up in future articles.

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Please read my books:

1. “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
2. “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).