How To Be a Good Man
10 principles to become who everyone wants you to be.
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Alright, you want to be a good person, friend, brother, husband, father? I got the blueprint right here. There’s a hell of a lot more to it than this, and I might add to or edit this list over the years as life teaches me more. I don’t always succeed in following these, but here are the basics:
How To Be A Good Man
1) Be a good person. (Crazy, right?)
Bet you saw this one coming. To be a good man, you must first embody values that aren’t male-specific. (In fact, you could make the argument that many of these principles aren’t male-specific. For female readers, following these could make you a good woman, too.)
I won’t go too in-depth because you know all this already, but compassion, honesty, integrity, and responsibility are values widely admired in nearly every culture across the world. They serve as the necessary foundation upon which one can build other principles. Follow the Golden Rule and treat others with kindness and respect. Without that as the baseline, the rest of these don’t matter. Now, on to the heavier stuff.
2) Say only what you believe.
Then, back it up. What you say, you must prove by your actions. Your words and actions should align with your values.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, every great man is an actor of his own ideal. To become who you want everyone to be, you have to act like him. A great man is a pillar, standing strong upholding his morals, his philosophy, his creed, his purpose, his honor, his worldview and all that he believes in.
Telling the truth is a necessary undertaking. We are hard-wired to be wary of hypocrites. Lying can lead to success in the short-term, but it never lasts. Divorce rates are high and people quit their dream jobs because no one likes being lied to, led on, overpromised or oversold. If you say what you don’t believe, others will fear you’re deceptive and manipulating them. Likely, you are.
Think about this in terms of a break-up - every girl in the world would prefer an uncomfortable conversation than being ghosted or left in the dark. You’ve likely heard “he was honest with me, so I can’t be mad.” Articulating inconvenient truths is beneficial in the long-term, despite the short-term evidence.
If you lie about facts, or make claims that you don’t believe, you are attempting to manipulate others’ perception of reality. What you are saying, whether you recognize it or not, is that reality is insufficient, and I am trying to disguise that. A great man can physically construct his reality, and therefore doesn’t need to falsely inflate it with his words. One can brag of building sandcastles, or build castles.
You remember the schoolyard instruction “if you don’t have nothing nice to say, don’t say nothing at all.” (I disagree - sometimes there is very good reason to not be “nice,” and nice is not synonymous with good).
I’d like to restructure the quote: If you don’t have anything good, true, and worthwhile to say, then shut the hell up. If it’s not funny or interesting or compassionate or beneficial to the relationship, don’t say it.
And once again, if you do say it - believe it, and be prepared to back it up. Profess only what you are willing to uphold.
3) Honor your commitments.
If you say you’re going to be somewhere, be there, on-time. If you say you will accomplish something, do so, as expected.
This should be easy. Doing what we say has been the primary method of demonstrating seriousness, respect, and care for others for as long as humans have understood time and place. For some reason, we’ve slipped into the habit of saying we’ll be there, then pretending that “something came up.” Here’s a simple trick to prevent this: don’t make a commitment you aren’t prepared to fulfill.
If you’ve ever met someone who takes his word seriously, you know right away that there’s something special goin’ on. Being known as someone who values their word and operates with high integrity is a cheat code for being trusted with greater opportunities and responsibility.
He who honors his commitments is reliable, dependable and trusted. There is incredible, miraculous power in knowing that someone’s word will be backed up with action. When “I’ll be there” truly means just that, the faith people place in you increases exponentially.
Aligning your words with your actions completes you and makes you whole. You wouldn’t buy a house that was leaning to one side, or a car that shakes laterally down the road. A song with sporadic drums and dozens of out-of-tune guitars will never get airplay. We yearn for what’s well-aligned - for many parts seamlessly blending together to become one. Become this by matching your speech with your actions, and doing what you say you will.
4) Do not be a burden.
As soon as you can be self-reliant in any aspect, do so. Think of how proud your parents were when you first rode your bike to school on your own. They’re even more proud when you finally move out, stop spending their money, and get to work on something that they can brag to their neighborhood friends about. Everyone else is proud too, and you are proud of yourself.
You should enhance others with your presence. You can’t render them responsible for you. Don’t be emotionally dependent on others, a liability in social settings, a financial burden to your friends, or disrespectful of others’ time.
If I can’t take you anywhere without you saying some dumb shit to girls, you’re not a good man. If you borrow money from your friend and never repay your debts, you’re not a good man. If you waste my time, you’re a waste of time.
This does not mean to never ask anything of anyone. Life is a team sport. Sometimes you’re gonna need your homeboy with a truck to help you move. Sometimes you’re gonna need emotional support and advice from your boys. Sometimes your card gets declined because you weren’t expecting to pay $300 for a tow and and the driver won’t let your car off unless you pay him in the next 30 minutes (shoutout my boy Grayson Bond). People are willing to help you if they know you’d help them.
I hung out with a dude in a wheelchair who I met for the first time last weekend, (shoutout my boy N-Mal). One could reasonably assume a crew with a guy who’s paralyzed requires some potentially inconvenient accommodations - walking/rolling from bar to bar rather than Ubering, locating the accessibility ramp, asking people to move, ordering drinks on his behalf. There are hoops to jump through. We were jumping for joy through ‘em.
N-Mal is a light to be around. The guy radiates charisma, laughs all night, and no one was bothered when he asked us to hold his cup to his mouth, we were honored to do so. That’s a good man. You can weigh people down, or make everyone around you feel like they’re flying instead.
If everyone around you is trying to fly, make sure you aren’t hanging onto their feet keeping them down. Understand the impact your actions have on others, and make sure people are positively impacted by how you behave.
5) Do not neglect your responsibilities.
Fulfill your obligations. This is similar to honoring your commitments, except you may not have voluntarily committed to these. That does not mean you are free from them.
Whatever you are, be a good one. Take the responsibility of being a son, a grandson, a brother, student, neighbor, teammate, husband, and friend with grave seriousness. I was born an older brother? Damn - maybe that was for a reason. In case it is, I’ll be all I can be to serve as a role model, example, and mentor to my younger brothers.
No one wins when responsibilities go unattended to. Absent fathers cause psychological pain to children, youth behavioral troubles, and the stress of single motherhood. Bad neighbors ruin dream homes, bad coaches steal young athletes’ futures, bad boyfriends cause lifelong trust issues. You can, with effort and intention, be good at any role that life and society sends you into.
6) Accept challenges.
Give it a damn good shot. Your friend wants you to run a Spartan Race? Hit a Murph at 5AM on Memorial Day? Cold plunge in the ocean to ring in the new year, learn to hold your breath for two minutes straight, visit a country that doesn’t speak English? Learn to backflip? Jump off this 40-foot-cliff into water?
These are difficult activities that likely scare the shit out of you. Do them anyway. It’s not about winning or losing, succeeding or failing. The real test is: Did you rise to the occasion? Did you accept the challenge?
Yes, men do die earlier than women for doing things like this. Also, men get the respect of more women for doing things like this - spontaneously engaging in difficulty makes you more interesting. Taking risks is necessary for developing bravery, confidence, and strength of character. Sometimes, the risks even pay off.
I’ve never ridden a horse. But if you put a horse in front of me right now, I’m damn well saddling the hell up. I might get bucked off or thrown feet into the air, but hell, let’s find out.
Not all challenges have to be physical like the ones described above. Step up to the table against a pool shark, or let some jokes rip if you’re called out at an open mic. When an opportunity arises, in the form of an adventurous friend or otherwise, your first reaction will likely be nah or hell no. Change that hell no, into ya know what? Let’s see what I got.
7) Earn your privileges.
You gotta watch Saving Private Ryan if you haven’t already. If you have, you gotta watch it again. I have three brothers and a mother and a hell of a lot of patriotism, so I cry every damn time I watch it without an ounce of shame. I’ll summarize:
During World War II, four brothers go to war. Three of them return home - with the war still raging - in beautiful wooden boxes draped in American flags.
To save Mrs. Ryan any further anguish and the hopelessness of losing all of her young sons to war, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his crew are assigned the mission of saving Private Ryan (Matt Damon), and returning him home from the battlefield alive.
“James” he says, as he pulls the private in close, whispering his final breath beneath the loud chaos of gunfire and bomber planes.
You get the point, right? Yeah, he’s talking to Private Ryan. He’s also talking to all the Americans in the audience, who were born into a country that had already won the war that turned us into a world superpower.
Any privilege that you were given or born into, you don’t deserve. No one does. Do not be entitled. You didn’t earn it by your birthright, therefore, you have to earn it after it’s given to you. It’s a way of showing gratitude.
If you had good parents, you weren’t entitled to them because you were a well-behaved kid or A-plus student. There are plenty of good kids, many even better than you, who had bad parents or no parents at all. It wasn’t anything you did - you got lucky.
Now, what should you do when you get lucky? Some guys win the lottery, spend it all on strippers, enjoy hedonism for a nice five-year run, then run out of luck and go back to punching in fast food orders. They end up back at the bottom because they were selfish with their privileges. Instead, you should use your privileges to benefit others.
My boy Julio Ayamel went to Good Counsel High School and James Madison University on football scholarships. A private high school and an out-of-state college, Julio’s ability on the field allowed him to afford a higher-quality education than he would have been able to without football.
Growing up in a paycheck-to-paycheck household, his family didn’t discuss financial literacy. He didn’t know the concept of stocks and investing existed until his sophomore year of high school. Good Counsel gave him access to classmates and teachers with knowledge in these areas, and Julio soaked up their lessons like a sponge.
You know what he could have done? Gatekeep the knowledge he acquired, stack money and mind his own business. You know what he did? He wrote a children’s book called The Things I Wish I Knew, to “educate and empower other individuals like myself.”
Can you ever fully earn or deserve your privileges? No. But hell, you shouldn’t waste them, and using them for good gets you a hell of a lot closer to being deserving of ‘em. Earn your privileges by sharing them.
8) Do not break promises to yourself.
If you tell yourself you’re joining a gym tomorrow, or quitting drinking, or throwing your vape away, you better do it or never speak to me again.
If you ever aim to take care of and provide for others, you gotta take damn good care of yourself. Chances are, if you’re a human, you care about yourself more than anyone else. If you break promises to yourself, who would you keep a promise to?
Let’s imagine this: you tell yourself I’m going out tonight, but I’m not drinking. You get there, out tonight, wherever that is and whatever that means. Friends surround you. Conversation ensues. Music plays. Smiles and laughter fill the air. All is well.
Then, out of no where, a surprise! An unexpected attacker reveals himself - it’s he who had once been your comrade, threatening you with his potential disapproval: c’mon, you sure you don’t want a beer?
He’s right, you think, one beer isn’t gonna hurt. That’s probably true, but the drink itself isn’t the problem. You let the minor coaxing of a friend dissuade you from living up to what you claimed. You were influenced into breaking your own covenant by a handful of jeering words. If you can’t keep promises to yourself, you can’t keep promises at all. If you don’t defend the small things, you can’t defend what actually matters.
You’re not just you in this moment, you’re a community of yous stretched out across time. We know this - the present effects the future. If you made a decision in the past, (I won’t drink tonight) and refuse to adhere to it in the present (never mind), then you’re out of sync. Which you is the decision-maker? The you right now, always? That’s a recipe for disaster with what-the-hell-have-I-done as a side salad.
I wrote a letter to myself when I was 15 that I wouldn’t smoke a cigar until I was worth a million dollars. All my friends know that once they see a lit cigar in my mouth, I made it happen. Fifteen-year-old me and twenty-two-year-old me are, in many ways, different people. Chad at fifteen didn’t realize how bad Chad at twenty-two would have a hankering to kick back in a refined lounge with a stog’, and how little money he’d have. But I can’t let that kid down now, can I? Keep the promises you make to yourself, otherwise, don’t make ‘em.
9) Never complain.
There is someone who has it worse than you. Always.
In fact, if you’re living in America, reading this through the screen of a luxury device connected to the Internet, I can name a couple billion people who have it worse than you.
There is nothing less masculine than complaining. Aren’t you a man? You know what men do? They do something about it.
Oh, you hate your job? Get a new one.
Oh, you hate your girlfriend? You chose her.
Oh, you’re tired? No one wants to hear it.
Now, if you genuinely don’t like your job or girlfriend or something in your life, a complaint can serve as the revelation that change is needed. You should never complain, but if one slips out from time to time, you gotta do something about it.
Complaining without action betrays a lack of self-confidence. If you were in a position to change your situation, you would obviously do so, which is evidenced by your complaints. When incessantly complaining without action, you’re revealing your belief in the powerlessness to change your life. 99% of the time, you are in a position to change your life (especially the young guys reading this) - it’s just hard, so you don’t.
Also, girls hate dudes who are whiny. And so do I. Dudes hate dudes who are whiny. I even hate the word whiny.
I overheard some soyboy talking about how it was harder today to be a man in America than ever before. Bitching his quirky colorful socks off about it. You know what? He had a compelling case. There are people who could be convinced of his argument.
But even if his theory is true, who cares? You’re not entitled to an easier life or an easier time to be alive.
In first-world countries, we live better than kings and queens did only 100 years ago. To complain is to disrespect everyone who contributed to the lives we live today.
10) Give a damn.
In elementary school we were taught that “caring is cool.” That’s true, but it sounds lame as hell.
Give a damn. About yourself, about those you care about, your neighborhood, your school, your company, our country, the world - all of it.
The worst kind of man is vague, aloof and useless. He doesn’t care. He has no roots, no connection to the world around him, no attachment of any kind to anything. He lacks clear direction or purpose, and because of that, the wind can scoop him up and send him anywhere it wants.
Giving a damn is ambitious and courageous. To give a damn is to challenge death and rage against life’s tragic ending. Yes, life could be meaningless, and the Sun could swallow our planet at any moment, but in the face of that hopeless futility, I still keep my room clean. I still want my children to be upright and strong. I still want my lawn to look good and my wife to never be cold.
That’s what the best men do - they remind you that life is worth living, despite all the pain and struggle and evil. Their life is a fight against that inevitable tragic ending.
We could throw our hands up and say it’s all meaningless, but that would be too easy. I’d rather give a damn.
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius
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