On April 27th this year, exactly at 3:14 AM, my son was born. I was together with my wife in one of the delivery rooms, nervouslyholding her hand while listening to her final scream before little Benjamin entered the scene. Next door (left and right), I heard other screams, too. I was not alone in becoming a father this night, but for me it was for the first time. I felt a sense of pride,… and a sense of responsibility. Surely, it was time to making the leap from someone just living life to someone that had figured it all out. Except I hadn’t. Let me give you a brief overview of my life and the goals I want to accomplish.
The Role of Self-Improvement in my Life
As long as I can remember, I was interested in self-improvement. I vividly remember standing in the local bookstore, at age 15 (!), and looking for books on motivation, success, and discipline. The first book I picked up back then was Coach, The A. L. Williams Story by Arthur L. Williams, and I still have that very same copy to this day. The German version, though, had a somewhat more… clickbaity title (German: “Das Prinzip Gewinnen: Tun Sie alles, was Sie tun können, und Sie werden alles erreichen!”; translation: “The Principle of Winning: Do everything you can and you will achieve everything!”). The book offered valuable life lessons, but for a 15-year-old living in Germany, such lessons were hardly applicable and I was only left with a sense of inspiration. Nevertheless, this marked the beginning of my (unhealthy?) love for self-help books. They always made the promise to fix what was broken inside. So, I picked up a ton of other books over the next few years, as I felt that something was not right with me.
Although I don’t really know, I assume that the main driver for my urge to improve my life at such a young age was my fatherless childhood. At age five, my parents got divorced, and I only engaged with my dad and his new partner every other weekend. After age 18, we dropped the weekends and I only saw my dad now and then, primarily on birthdays, until I haven’t seen him in person for almost a decade. We met a couple of weeks ago with his partner and my twelve-year-old half-sister. It is important for me that Benjamin connects with his roots.
As for my mom, she married again when I was ten, and so I had still a man present in all my life. However, he was hardly a father figure to me, as he struggled tremendously with his own demons. I recently watched the podcast with Joe Rogan and Chris Williamson, where Chris talked about vulnerable narcissists. Although generally speaking, he is a nice guy and very helpful (as long he gets praised for it), it was the perfect description of my mom’s husband. If I would be honest, I think his f**ked up mental health amplified the misery of my own mental health. All this led to the fact that I never really had any male role model in my life that I would love to imitate and to learn from.
Now What?
No, really,… now what? I am a 34-year-old man with a newborn. I still am in the process to grow up and take on this massive responsibility. I gained all this bullsh*t knowledge over the last two decades, but it feels like that all of it is theory and not practice. Even worse, in the last three years, the world turned crazy. Big C. kept us at bay for two years and there is no end in sight. Then there is war between Ukraine and Russia. Now we will probably enter a major recession, as energy prices are prohibitively expensive (we own a house that totally depends on natural gas, so f*ck me). At the same time, social media seems to make people dumber and dumber. People lost the skill to think critically and argue logically. They also lost their core values and rather chase the next dopamin rush than serving the community in any way.
What I want is to be a father that my son can look up to and learn from. In some way, going back to the roots of manhood. I want him to be emotionally and physically strong, and that he eventually leads by example to inspire others to become better. It is important to become independent. It is important to cultivate good mental health. It is also important to be healthy and in good physical shape. It is important to set high goals and reach for the stars. It is important to be humble. It is important to be kind and serve the community. Finally, it is important to be curious and to think deeply about various topics, such as human nature and life in general. In order to teach my son core values and lessons, I have to do better myself. I have gained a lot of experience in my life, but I consider myself a novice that has wasted a lot of potential. I am not sure, if my perfectionism distorts reality or if I can really see how it is.
What’s the Game Plan?
This Blog’s mantra is delay of gratification. The opposite, instant gratification, is a term that refers to a temptation (or human urge) to do something right NOW that will give you momentary pleasure for a short period of time, but will actually hurt you longterm. The more weight the gratification has, the worse it can impact your mental health. For instance, you will oftentimes be very remorseful, if you ignore important tasks (maybe cleaning your home) for instant pleasure. Examples include unhealthy food (pizza, ice cream, etc.), lazy entertainment (Tik Tok or youtube shorts are the worst, as these short bursts of dopamine impact your level of concentration tremendously), or masturbation. Delaying gratification demonstrates will power and control over one’s desires, and can be used as an indicator of mental strength. This is the main theme of this website: articles on improving ones mental strength based on scientific evidence.
In this regard, there exist an unlimited amount of topics that I would like to focus and improve on. Unfortunately, my time on this earth is limited and so I hope that my journey will make sense in a couple of years from now. Here is a list of questions that I brainstormed a couple of minutes ago and that capture the essence of the topics I would like to reserach, apply, and write about.
- What is true happiness and how can I achieve it? Happiness is an inflationary term and can actually mean a lot of things, but it’s surpiring what science tells us about real happiness in contrast to what most people believe. For instance, it is empirically validated that money will not make us more happy (this is probably common knowledge). Helping others, though, can have a huge impact on our well being (maybe not so commonly known, but something that can be applied right away :)).
- What is the meaning of life? What I mean here is not the meaning of life from a bird-eye view on humanity, but the individual purpose of one’s life. In his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in multiple cocentration camps during World War Two. One may wonder how it is possible to continue living and find meaning under such circumstances. There are lots of different directions to go and many of them will touch on philosophical views, humanpsychology (for instance, Adlerian psychology gives a nice answer to this question), and maybe even religion. What do I think what the purpose of my life is? I honestly don’t know yet, but I am eager to find out.
- How do I exercise my body properly? I started lifiting weights around age 20 and took it rather seriously a decade ago or so. Although I do not consider myself naturally talented, I managed a 150kg PR on the squats and a 180kg PR on the deadlift. My current squat and deadlift are nowehere close, though 😀 Since 2016, I started running (again) and ran several half-marathons. I still dream about completing an ultramarathon, but I am currently in too bad shape,… fortunately, I have accumlated a lot of knowledge about training regimens and nutition that I am willing to apply and write about. My goal for 2023 is finishing my first marathon strong!
- How do I exercise my brain properly? This one is probably the topic I know most about, as I naturally love learning just for the sake of learning. I read many books on mnemo techniques, language learning, speed reading and so on. However, I have to admit that I am totally out of shape and haven’t practiced any of the stuff mentioned before for nearly five years now. It is fair to say that this brings me back to a beginner’s level in cognitive skills. Even worse, I convince myself that I love language learning (I learned English and French in school, Japanese in university), but I haven’t practiced any of it besides english for a long time now… Unfortunately, its all gone. I want to pick it up again and will journal about my progress.
A couple of more broad questions that come to my mind:
- What knowlege do I need to accumulate and how can I do it properly?
- How can I learn anything?
- How to achieve greateness?
- How can I build mental strength and become maximally resilient?
- …
I am sure, there are many more questions to ask and aswer, but I think you get the gist of it.
Final Words
I dedicate this blog – or rather journal of my self-improvement – to my first born son, Benjamin. The goal is to provide extraordinary content for improving one’s life. Then, when my son is old enough to make use of this content, I will hand the articles I am going to write over to him. This will probably result in twelve years’ worth of content. Dear reader, I hope these articles will help you as well. It is not easy to be a man nor to be a father in this day and age. Let’s keep working hard for our sons and daughters to pave the way for their success and to bring up great human beings. Please consider the articles I am going to write, as this may also change your life for the better.
Love you, Benjamin.
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