What You Need To Get To Your Next Level As A Man

“What do you think you need to get to YOUR next level as a man?”

That’s the question I asked a couple of thousand of my male readers…

Their answers provide a powerful insight that can help YOU become the better man that you know is inside of you, and fighting to get out.

The first thing I want to make clear is that ALL men, including me, and including men who are way further along the evolutionary path than I am, have a “next level” that they can feel bubbling up inside of them.

Achieving the transformation to your next level is one of the most pleasurable things a man can experience– and very often it’s massively profitable too (And I mean “profitable” in every area of life: socially, financially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually).

Here are the top 5 things are that men said they thought they needed to achieve to get what they wanted as men:

A large number of men said that “financial freedom” was the big thing they needed to achieve that would afford them the opportunity to grow as men.

An equal number said that what they needed most was a great woman by their side.

“Social confidence” was also up there at the top (and I think most men would agree that social confidence is also absolutely a big stepping stone to getting both financial freedom and a great woman).

Another very large group of men said that what they needed most was more “self acceptance,” and the ability to free themselves from the burden of their self-critical inner voice that continuously undermined their confidence and success.

But none of these answers were even close to the #1 answer that I received.

In fact, far more than half of the men that I surveyed used the same exact 3-word phrase in answering what they needed most to get to their next level as a man:

“I don’t know.”

Now I have to make a big, damaging admission here…

When I first went through the thousands of responses, even though this was by far #1 answer… I completely ignored it!

Why?

Well, I was looking for an ANSWER that I could address in a live program I was planning at the time, called “How To Man.”  So I was just putting aside the “I don’t knows” and tallying up the scores on the others.

Later when I showed the answers to Nathan Charles — my good friend, mentor, and partner in the creation of the “How To Man” program — he immediately locked in on the important thing that I had completely missed:

“These men are telling you what they need,” he said, “and you are ignoring it. You are missing the deep importance bound up in the feeling of ‘I don’t know.'”

After a long conversation on the subject, and some serious meditation, I have come to realize just how powerful his observation was, and how this “I don’t know” can give you some critical tools for achieving everything that is important in your life like…

Financial freedom
A great woman
Social confidence
Self acceptance
Sexual confidence and attractiveness
Greater achievement
Freedom from anxiety
Stronger friendships
Love

…and so much more.

Let’s dig in:

There are two kinds of “I don’t know,” and it’s important to figure out which one you’re dealing with.

The first type is a cop out. It’s something to hide behind so that you don’t have to risk being “wrong” or having to take action.

This is not a criticism, and it’s not making the “I don’t know” a “wrong” answer.

I believe men are telling the truth when they say that they don’t know.

But if that’s where you are, it’s important to recognize that this kind of  “I don’t know” is covering up your greatness.

Nathan said: If we honestly sat with the question, and we let ourselves go beyond that initial “I don’t know,” eventually you would find an answer to what could be next for you… something that would feel great to you and to everyone around you, something that would inspire you…

But it would also probably scare the living shit out of you.

My next step is scary for me, Nathan’s next step is scary for him, and yours is going to be scary for you too.  And this “I don’t know” is a freeze response, like a deer caught in the headlights.

But if you let yourself go a little deeper than that initial freeze, if you let yourself feel the inspiring truth that there really is something important there that could radically upgrade your life, then you can begin to see the second type of “I don’t know.”

The second type of “I don’t know,” is a humble recognition of an important truth that you haven’t been letting yourself look at.   It’s an invitation to an exploration.  It’s the possibility for living in the mystery of being real:

It’s the beginning of a journey.

(So look, I didn’t intend this blog post to be a marketing piece, but if you’d like a guide on that journey, you might be interested in checking out what we ended up building for the men with the  “How To Man” program).

Once you recognize this second type of “I don’t know,” it can juice up your whole life, and it can get you pretty much everything that you want, but don’t currently know how to get.

This power comes from moving the question out of the darkness of  “what you don’t know you don’t know.”

As an example, you KNOW that you don’t know how to fix the GPS chip in your iPhone.

But you probably didn’t know that you didn’t know that the Andromeda galaxy is going to collide with our galaxy in about 4 billion years… until you read this sentence.

And it’s fine that you didn’t know, and never even considered it, because you won’t likely be around in 4 billion years.

But if you don’t know that you don’t know “what’s next for you as man,” that’s a big problem.  And it can take you completely out of the game, out of the juice of living your potential.

Once you recognize that you don’t know, you’ve begun.

If you can find your truth in this matter, you can use your “I don’t know” as a (sometimes terrifying) springboard into a limitless future, (rather than as a comfortable couch that you never stand up from).

Where to begin?

Well, a good place to finding the answer of what is next for you as a man is any persistent complaint.  It could an internal complaint: “I’m lazy and have no will power!” or an external complaint: “Rich people don’t care about the average man!”

If you can’t isolate any of your persistent complaints, ask a close friend.  I promise you, they can tell you exactly what you frequently complain about.

Now the answer to this question is likely NOT what you need to get to your next level, but rather a trailhead– a starting point to embark on your journey.

It may, in fact, be unrelated to where you are going.

That’s fine.

It’s an old cliche, but it’s powerfully True, that you can’t steer a ship unless it’s moving. When you’re standing still, you can turn the rudder left or right and nothing will happen. But once you start moving, even in the wrong direction, you can begin to steer your course.

Ready to take a simple action step?

Create a weekly alert in your calendar. In it, ask yourself, “Am I on course?”

When you see it, you can reflect on your week and ask yourself if you jumped onto the springboard and took some small action — perhaps purchasing a book, pondering an important questions about your life while walking in nature, seeking a mentor’s advice, or a Truthful conversation with a good friend — or  did you simply sink back into the couch.

Perhaps you’ll have a different answer next week:  Am I on my course?

Likely more than 80% of the men who read this post will not take action, and they’ll sink back onto the couch.  There is no shame in that. Many of my dearest friends, both living and gone, never got off of the comfortable couch of the first kind of “I don’t know”.

Here’s one more thing you might not know that you don’t know:

You have a unique gift, but YOU can’t see it, because it’s so big in your life that you can’t make out even the outline of its edges.  It’s so normal to your every day existence that you discount its value.  You may have never once in your life intentionally switched it on.