Here in the United States, the inauguration of our next president is a year away, and the Republican primary season is in full swing. Journalists and pundits dissect the candidates’ every speech, appearance, and debate, analyzing what they did right or wrong, and who is waxing and waning in the polls. These talking heads, along with the people watching and listening to them at home, evaluate the candidates on who seems the most “authentic,” had the best line of the evening, or released the hardest-hitting advertisement. The whole thing can oftentimes seem more like a sport or entertaining sideshow than the lead-up to an important election.

So what should the more serious-minded citizen be looking for in the next leader of the free world? What criteria beyond hair and quips might a man use to evaluate and judge candidates for office, or those already in office?

Opinions will certainly differ on such a significant and pressing question. But while I was in college, I was introduced to an excellent yardstick for measuring our leaders, one that has stuck with me ever since.

It was there I took a couple of courses with Dr. J. Rufus Fears, professor of an incredibly manly subject: the history of freedom. One of the things the good professor emphasized to us captivated students was that a politician and a statesman are not the same thing. A statesman, Fears argues, is not a tyrant; he is the free leader of a free people and he must possess four critical qualities:

1. A bedrock of principles
2. A moral compass
3. A vision
4. The ability to build a consensus to achieve that vision

Let us now explore these four criteria of a democratic statesman in greater depth.

1. A Bedrock of Principles

The statesman builds his platform on a foundation of firm, unchanging, fundamental truths. These are the things he believes at his very core, his overarching philosophy.  Just as in the foundation of a house, storms may buffet the structure, opposition and challenges may arise, times will change, but the foundation remains. A statesman may change the details of his policies and his methods for achieving those policies, but only inasmuch as those short-term tactics of expediency serve the purpose of furthering his bedrock of principles in the long run.

2.  A Moral Compass

Dr. Fears argues that the modern politician makes decisions by using “antennae.” He puts his feelers out there to gauge the public mood. Once he figures out which way the wind is blowing, he then shapes himself and his message to give the people exactly what they want. But as Dr. Fears would hammer home again and again to us: A statesman does not govern by public opinion polls.

No, the true statesman makes his decisions by following the dictates of his own moral compass. He is not a relativist; he believes in absolute truths, and his moral compass is rooted in a sense of absolute right and absolute wrong. When something is wrong, he plainly says it is wrong and does everything in his power to fight against it. When something is right, he is willing to overcome any opposition to preserve and spread it. The statesman is ambitious—he must be to obtain a position of power—but there are things he simply will and will not do to get to the top. He is a man of integrity; he speaks the truth. He leads by moral authority and represents all that is best in his countrymen.

3. A Vision

A statesman has a clear vision of what his country and his people can become. He knows where he wants to take them and what it will take to get there.

Fears argues that a statesman’s foresight is one of his most important qualities, as he must be able to recognize problems on the horizon and be able to come up with solutions that are good not only for the short-term, but for the long-term as well. The statesman keeps in mind not only the here and now, but the world future generations will inherit.

4.  The Ability to Build a Consensus to Achieve That Vision

A politician may have a bedrock of principles, a moral compass, and a vision, but if he lacks the ability to build a consensus around his vision, his efforts to change policies, laws, and the course of history will largely be in vain.

A statesman, who again is a free leader of a free people, must enlist those who serve with him in the government to support his initiatives, and their willingness to do so rests on the pressure they feel from their constituents to align themselves with the statesman’s vision. Thus, a statesman’s success in building a consensus ultimately hinges on his ability to convince his countrymen of the soundness of his philosophy.

To win their hearts, the statesman does not use slick advertisements and PR campaigns. Ads and propaganda, Fears argues, are the tools of the despot. Rather, the statesman harnesses the power of the written, and especially the spoken word. He is master orator. His lifelong study of great books and the lessons of history allow him to speak to the people in intelligent, potent, well-reasoned arguments.

Because a statesman follows his moral compass instead of opinion polls, his ideas are often initially out of step with the public mood. But instead of tailoring his rhetoric to that mood, he speaks to the very best within his countrymen. He understands that while their ideals may be deeply buried, powerful rhetoric can bring them forth and activate them. The strength of his words comes from the fact that he actually believes what he says. And he does not make his countrymen’s hearts soar and burn with empty promises; he keeps his word and does what he says he will do.

In considering these four qualities of a democratic statesman, it may seem like a real one has never existed, because if one had, surely everyone would be in agreement on his exalted place in history. But in truth, even those who agree on these criteria would have plenty of disagreement over what principles the statesman should espouse, what constitutes a moral right and wrong, and most importantly, what constitutes acceptable means in obtaining his vision.

Professor Fears believes that the three greatest statesmen in history are Pericles of Athens, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. For all three men, their bedrock of principles rested on the ideal of freedom: democratic liberty, equality under the law, and individual freedom—the freedom to live as you choose. And these men had a vision of expanding this liberty further, out to the common man. And yet they all courted controversy in some of the measures they deemed necessary in order to achieve their vision. Churchill is criticized for things like the Bombing of Dresden and his advocacy of imperialism (he did not believe that national independence and freedom were the same thing, and thought that British colonists would have more freedom and liberty under colonial rule than if a country was turned over to a small clique of its own that would rule with tyranny). And Lincoln suspended the right to habeaus corpus during the Civil War.

Some feel that such actions cannot be justified, no matter the end goal. But Dr. Fears, who from what I gather from his lectures and books leans libertarian, sees the broader picture—he argues that every statesman must set priorities, and this can sometimes mean “saying no to the aspirations of one people for another.” In other words, even if the methods of the statesmen he admires were not always very savory in the short-term, what matters most in his estimation is that they ultimately led to more freedom for more people in the long-term.

So who do you personally think are the great statesmen from history? Do you think there are true statesmen among us now? If not, which of these qualities are the politicians out there lacking?

**Please note: Obviously this discussion will be political in nature, and while you are welcome to share your opinion in a calm, intelligent, civil, and gentlemanly manner, even the slightest whiff of snark, rancor, or any kind of unmanly silliness will get your comment deleted. Statesmen are great, but on this thread I will be a tyrant, ruling with an iron fist. All of which is to say: no nincompoops allowed.**

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From Courage, 1894
By Charles Wagner

Steadfastness is the indispensable quality of every man who one day does not wish to be obliged to say: “I have wasted my life.”

A man should not incessantly change with every impression of the moment, but should remain steadfast when he has once determined upon what is right. Of what use are the flowers if they do not produce fruits, and of good ideas if they are not transmuted into deeds? We must encourage stability, habituate ourselves to remain constant, and when we are sure that we are right, must fortify ourselves against invasion. Do not let criticisms or attacks disturb you.

Nothing is so difficult as to remain faithful. At each step of the way outside influences are brought to bear upon us to make us deviate or retrograde. And if there were only difficulties from without, it would not matter so much; but there are those from within. Our dispositions vacillate. We promise one thing with the best intentions in the world; but when the time comes to keep it, everything is changed–the circumstances, men, ourselves; and what duty demands of us seems so different from what we had foreseen, that we hesitate. Those who will fulfill on a rainy day a promise which they have made on a sunny one, are few and far between.

And so we go on casting our hearts to the four winds, giving it and taking it back again, breaking with our past, separating ourselves from ourselves, so to speak. And when we look behind, we no longer recognize ourselves. We see ourselves in the days that are past as a stranger, or rather as several strangers.

There is nothing like a steadfast man, one in whom you can have confidence, one who is found at his post, who arrives punctually, and who can be trusted when you rely on him. He is worth his weight in gold. You can take your bearings from him, because he is sure to be where he ought to be, and nowhere else. The majority of individuals, on the contrary, are sure to be anywhere but where they ought to be. You have only to take them into your calculations to be deceived. Some of them are changeable from weakness of character; they cannot resist attacks, insinuations, and, above all, cannot remain faithful to a lost cause. A defeat in their eyes is a demonstration of the fact that their adversary was right and that they were wrong. When they see their side fail, instead of closing up the ranks, they go over to the enemy. These are the men who are always found on the winning side, and not in their hearts would be found the courageous device: Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.

A profound duplicity, a discrepancy between words and deeds, between appearance and reality, a sort of moral dilettantism which makes us according to the hour sincere or hypocritical, brave or cowardly, honest or unscrupulous–this is the disease which consumes us. What moral force can germinate and grow under these conditions? We must again become men who have only one principle, one word, one work, one love; in a word, men with a sense of duty. This is the source of power. And without this there is only the phantom of a man, the unstable sand, and hollow reed which bends beneath every breath. Be faithful; this is the changeless northern star which will guide you through the vicissitudes of life, through doubts and discouragements, and even mistakes.

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If you’re like many men across the world, you probably set some new goals for yourself on January 1. Maybe it was to work out regularly or get into the reading habit. Or maybe you wanted to pay off your debt or increase your productivity.

Perhaps you did okay for the first week or two, but have already fallen off the goal-achieving wagon. Oh well. There’s always next year, right?

Hold on there, chief. No need to wallow in regret for the awesome life that could have been. There’s still hope for you yet.

To end this month-o-motivation, I set out to do a comprehensive post about all the ways to increase your chances of reaching a goal.

But as I waded into the research, what I found was that 1) summarizing all of the information required more of a book than a blog post, and 2) a lot of the methods didn’t personally strike me as all that helpful.

So instead I decided to cover the one tactic that was new to me, grabbed me the most, and most importantly, has been tested and shown to significantly improve your chances of successfully forming a new habit or reaching a goal.

This method is called “implementation intention,” and it’s a simple and effective way you can prime your brain for goal-achieving success.

What Stops Us from Starting and Achieving Our Goals?

Research has shown that the road to unfulfilled goals is paved with good intentions. By April, 50% of the people who made New Year’s resolutions have failed to keep them. And only half of people (and this number is likely inflated) translate their good intentions–whether made in January or any time–into real action. Interestingly, this is the same percentage of times that the average person is able to resist the four hours of unwanted desires they experience each day. Not too motivating, huh? In school, 50% is an “F.”

So what causes us to stumble on the path to our goals? Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer breaks the common obstacles down into the following categories:

Failing to Get Started with Goal Striving

Sometimes people fail before they even begin, because they have trouble:

Remembering to act. It sounds a little silly to say that people “forget” about their goals, but how often does this happen in our lives? We make it a goal to start reading 30 minutes before going to bed, but that night we start surfing the net, lose track of time, and not only don’t stop 30 minutes before bed, but end up hitting the sack an hour after we had intended to turn out the light.

Seizing the opportune moment to act. An opportunity arises to make good on our intentions and either we fail to recognize the opportunity in front of us, or we see it and don’t know how to grab it. The wife takes the kiddos to see her sister on a Saturday afternoon and you’re left home alone. It’s the perfect time to finish the dining room table you’ve been working on, but you turn on the game instead.

Second thoughts at the critical moment. Gollwitzer calls this “the problem of overcoming initial reluctance.” Here you do realize the opportune moment to fulfill your goal is at hand, you do know what you should do, but at the critical moment you have a difficult time choosing long-term benefits over short-term gratification. For example, let’s say you’ve made it a goal to take the physical side of the relationship slower with the women you date, but you’re kissing your new lady friend on the couch, and she smells so dang good…

Getting Derailed During Goal Striving

Even if you succeed in getting going with your goals, it’s rare that a one-time choice is all it takes to achieve them. Instead, you have to persevere in the goal, without letting these obstacles derail your efforts:

Enticing stimuli. It was easy to make reading a goal in the 19th century–what else were you going to do for fun? Now we’ve got choices coming out the wazoo. Studying every night seems like a good idea…but there are so many cat videos to watch!

Suppressing behavioral responses. This is a fancy of way of saying: “Old habits die hard.”

Negative states. Things like depression, stress, nervousness, and ego depletion sap your motivation to follow through on your good intentions. Simply anticipating a negative state has the same effect–hence, why you’ve thought about going to the doctor for a physical for the last five years and still haven’t made the call.

The Solution: Implementation Intentions

So those obstacles certainly stack the odds against you. But there is a way to fight back: priming your brain for success by formulating an implementation intention (“II”).

An II is simply a plan in which you link a situational cue with a response that will bring you closer to fulfilling your goal. To do this, all you have to do is reframe your goals as “if-then” statements. The “if” part is the situational cue; the “then” part is your planned response to that cue.

Thus your goal of “working out more” becomes “If it is Monday, Wednesday, or Friday at 7AM, then I will leave for the gym.”

“I want to plan regularly” becomes “If it’s 9PM on Sunday night, then I will make my schedule for the coming week.”

“I want to save $2,000 this year” becomes “When I get my paycheck, I will deposit 10% into my savings account.”

“I want to reduce my caffeine consumption” becomes “When I get a craving for coffee, then I will drink a glass of water.”

“I want to be more patient” becomes “If I feel myself getting angry, then I will take three breaths.”

You’re probably thinking, “There’s no way that something so simple can actually work.” But over a decade of research and nearly a hundred studies have shown that not only are implementation intentions highly effective, they can actually double a person’s likelihood of achieving their goals.

In one such experiment, two groups of students were asked to write essays over their Christmas break about how they spent their Christmas Eve. The essay was due 48 hours after Dec. 24. Researchers gave one group of students a questionnaire requesting that they specify where and when during that 48 hour period they planned on writing the essay. Effectively, they were asking these students to create an implementation intention without them knowing it (“If it’s December 26 at 3PM, then I’m writing my essay at the library”).

The other group wasn’t asked to specify when and where they planned to write their essays. They didn’t create implementation intentions.

The result? Only 32% of the non-implementation intention students finished the assignment on time, while 71% of the students who created an implementation intention completed the task. In other words, the act of creating an II doubled the students’ chances of achieving the goal.

How to Form an Effective Implementation Intention

Make sure your goals are clear and strong. No amount of implementation intentions can motivate you towards goals that are vague or that come from “shoulding on yourself.” Your goals must be definite aims that you truly want to go after.

Identify your personal obstacles to starting and sticking with your goals. Is it that you don’t remember to do the goal during the day? Is it that you have second thoughts at the critical moment when you need to follow through?

Now it’s time to formulate an implementation intention that will overcome your obstacles and keep you moving towards your goal:

Create the “If.”  This is the situational cue that will either present an opportunity you need to seize or a temptation you don’t want to succumb to. Gollwitzer notes that “The occasion or critical situation specified in the if-part of the plan could be either an internal cue (e.g., a strong feeling) or an external cue (e.g., a particular place, object, person, or point in time).”

“If I feel jealous of my friend…”

“If an attractive woman catches my eye…”

Create the “Then.” This is the response you will commence once the “If” cue happens. The response is designed to keep you on track towards your goal, and it might involve thinking something, doing something, or ignoring something.

“If I feel jealous of my friend, then I will think about one thing about my own life that I’m grateful for.”

“If an attractive woman catches my eye, then I will try to talk to her.”

If there is more than one obstacle keeping you from a goal, you can make multiple II’s as long as they’re all plausible and don’t conflict with each other.

Make your “if-then” statements as specific as possible. Vague “if-then’s” create room for deliberation and thus the chance you’ll make a decision that torpedoes your goals. Not “If it’s the morning, I will wake up early” but “If it’s 6:00AM Monday-Friday, I will get out of bed.”

Write down your II’s and review them daily. Best to keep them fresh in your mind.

Why Implementation Intentions Work

Why does something so simple as formulating “if-then” statements work so well in helping people achieve their goals? There are a few reasons:

Eliminates choices. As we mentioned earlier, competing choices often act as obstacles to focusing on our goals. Implementation intentions effectively remove these choices by giving you a specific plan of action for the decisions you commonly face.

Heightens awareness of obstacles and opportunities. Creating your IIs forces you to brainstorm and plan for the critical situations that will come up along the path to your goal and how you will respond to those situations. This exercise heightens your awareness of the threats and opportunities that arise each day, helping you identify moments when you need to take action.

Automates responses. If you’ve already decided exactly what you’re going to do when a certain situation arises, then you won’t forget to act or miss the opportunity to do so, you won’t have to waste your time deliberating on your course of action, and you’ll be less swayed to choose short-term benefits over long-term ones in the heat of the moment. Basically, your reaction will become almost automatic. And as we learned last week, automating your decisions…

Conserves willpower. By “outsourcing” our decisions to our implementation intentions, we bypass the self-control-fatiguing deliberation process, which conserves our precious willpower–the fuel that helps us achieve our goals.

Are implementation intentions foolproof? Of course not. Our brains are perfectly capable of overriding even the most well-thought out II’s. But they are an incredible tool for tipping the scales in our favor.

What goal will you be turning into an implementation intention? Have any experience with implementation intentions? Share with us in the comments!

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This is the sixth and final part of a series on the archetypes of mature masculinity based on the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading the introduction to the series first. Also, keep in mind that these posts are a little more esoteric than our normal fare, and are meant to be contemplated and thoughtfully reflected upon.

The King archetype is the most important of the four mature masculine archetypes. Just as a good king in mythological stories is often something of a Renaissance man–a good warrior, magician, and lover–the King archetype incorporates the other three mature masculine archetypes in perfect harmony. A man who accesses the King archetype in its fullness will also have accessed the Warrior, Magician, and Lover archetypes. For this reason, the King archetype is typically the last of the mature masculine archetypes to power up in a man’s life. In this way, it is truly the crown of the other archetypes, the energy that gives a man a sense of his full, godlike potential.

The Characteristics of the King in His Fullness

He is centered. 

Throughout history, cultures have often placed the king at the center of the universe. From him radiated all of existence. If you look at how ancient civilizations laid out their cities, we often see that the dwelling place of the king or leader sat at the center.

In addition to serving as the geographic center of his realm, the ancient king also represented its spiritual center as well. He was the intermediary between heaven and earth. Through his divine powers, the king brought order to the universe by reconciling opposite forces. Myths abound of kings battling evil demonic creatures and establishing order in chaos.

When a man is living the King archetype in its fullness, he feels that same centering power within himself. Not that he believes the world revolves around him, but rather that his confidence, purpose, and well-being give him a supreme sense of balance. Even when the world around him becomes chaotic, he remains cool, calm, and collected. He acts, rather than reacts. He’s the rock in crisis. A man fully engaged with positive King energy is completely present as a man. Because of his position at the center of things, he can survey everything that is going on, soak it all in, and then take a broad view of things. This overarching perspective allows him to remain immovable in the face of the passing and superficial.

He is decisive.

The King is the executive of the other archetypes, and as such, is charged with making decisions. His ability to be decisive is rooted in two things. First, who he is and what he stands for; the King’s core values are centered on firm and unchanging principles. So when a crisis comes, he does not waver because he has already determined the course he will take. Secondly, the King seasons his decisions with experience. His experiences provide him with practical wisdom: the knowledge of how to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.

He lives with integrity.

The word integrity is related to the roots of words like “integrate” and “entire.” In Spanish it is rendered “integro,” meaning whole. Integrity thus implies the state of being complete, undivided, intact, and unbroken. Integrity is really the bond that holds a man’s other virtues together; it is the mark of a man who has successfully integrated all good principles. His life is a unified whole.

The King has not only integrated all the other archetypes, but seeks this wholeness in other areas of his life as well. He mends broken relationships, keeps his word, acts with honesty, and takes responsibility for his actions. He is who he says he is; he doesn’t have one set of principles for Sundays and one for the rest of the week.

He protects his realm.

Historically, one of the king’s primary functions was to protect his dominion. When enemy forces encroached on his territory, a king would act with wrathful aggressiveness. Even today, we look to our leaders as protectors. The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, charged with the responsibility of protecting our nation’s security.

While a man might not be a leader of a country, he certainly has his own realms he’s responsible for protecting–whether that protection be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. If you’re married with children, your home is a realm, a place you want to make a refuge from negative influences. The department you’re responsible for at work is another sphere where you work to protect your employees from in-fighting, mediocrity, and layoffs. And your own psyche and personal boundaries are sovereignties that you must protect and defend with zeal.

Whatever your realms may be, when you’re accessing the King archetype in its fullness, you do what you have to in order to protect them, and this often requires accessing the aggressiveness of the Warrior archetype.

He provides order.

Throughout history, Kings have been lawgivers. The first, and perhaps most famous of these king/lawgivers was the ancient Babylonian king, Hammurabi. His code represents one of history’s first written sets of laws. These laws touched on all areas of life for ancient Mesopotamians, including trade, religion, and military service. Other famous king/lawgivers include Solon of ancient Athens, Lycurgus of ancient Sparta, and Moses (while technically not a king, Moses was a leader of the ancient Hebrews).

Just as these ancient kings provided order to their respective societies, so too does a man accessing the King archetype establish order in his own life and in the lives of those around him. We see the King manifest itself in us when we establish rules, guidelines, and principles for others to follow. A man accessing positive King energy doesn’t create rules just so he can reap the satisfaction of watching people obey him. Rather, his rules provide the structure that allows other people to flourish. Figuring out how to create rules that help instead of hinder people’s progress requires the kind of thoughtful reflection that comes from accessing the Magician archetype.

To completely integrate the King archetype into our lives, it isn’t enough to tell others how they should live; a man must also live by those same edicts himself. Before we can provide order for others, we ourselves must become men of discipline. As General George S. Patton told his son:

“Soldiers, all men in fact, are natural hero worshipers. Officers with a flare for command realize this and emphasize in their conduct, dress and deportment the qualities they seek to produce in their men. When I was a second lieutenant I had a captain who was very sloppy and usually late yet he got after the men for just those faults; he was a failure.”

He creates and inspires creativity in others. 

According to Moore, mythological kings were often associated with fertility and creation. Many ancient cultures believed that their king’s ability to procreate determined the fate of their crops. If the king was lusty, virile, and siring numerous progeny, the harvest would be bountiful.

But we don’t have to father an entire football team in order to access the King archetype. Whenever we take part in any act of creation, whether it be writing a song, starting a business, or yes, becoming a dad, the King archetype is manifesting itself in our lives.

To fully integrate the King in our lives, however, we must inspire creativity in others as well. A man who is accessing the King archetype understands that his power and influence in the world increases as he empowers others to live to their fullest potential.

He blesses the lives of others.

“The good king delighted in noticing and promoting good men to positions of responsibility in his kingdom. He held audience, primarily, not to be seen, but to see, admire, and delight in his subjects, to reward them and to bestow honors upon them.” – Moore, KWML

One of the functions of ancient kings was to bless those whom they led. As intermediaries between the gods and earth, the king had the power to bless his people so that they might prosper. In the Bible, we can read several accounts of the great patriarchs leaving a father’s blessing on their posterity before dying.

We often associate “blessing” with a religious act. While a man certainly accesses the King archetype by giving a father’s blessing to his children, just like Jacob and Isaac did, he can also bless others around him in other ways that aren’t necessarily religious.

Simply recognizing and honoring others for their achievements is a way we can bless others. As we get older, I think we take for granted the power that a kind word can have on a young person’s life. But think back on your own experience. Remember when you were a young man? How did you feel when an older person, especially a man you admired, gave you a compliment or went out of his way to recognize an achievement? If you were like me, it made you feel awesome. You might have stuck out your chest a bit more or walked with a spring in your step. You probably still remember exactly what they said to you. That’s the power of blessing in action. It uplifts and edifies others.

We can also bless others by becoming a mentor. We’ve talked about the importance of mentorship on the site many times before, but one of the reasons so many young men are struggling today is because they lack positive mentoring from older men. Moore argues that:

“Young men today are starving for blessing from older men, starving for blessing from the King energy. This is why they cannot, as we say, “get it together.” They shouldn’t have to. They need to be blessed. They need to be seen by the King, because if they are, something inside will come together for them. That is the effect of blessing; it heals and makes whole. That’s what happens when we are seen and valued and concretely rewarded for our legitimate talents and abilities.”

As we grow older, wiser, and more in touch with the King archetype, it is our responsibility as men to bless and assist younger men on their path to mature masculinity.

He leaves a legacy.

Kings throughout history were obsessed with legacy. In creating empires, building edifices, writing laws, and changing the culture, they sought to become immortal and to leave behind something that would remind subsequent generations of their lives and their greatness.

No matter the size of your principality, the desire to leave a legacy is a switch of manliness that cannot be ignored. Happily, creating a legacy need not involve the construction of great pyramids, but can come from any idea, business, tradition, relationship, or thought…anything that changes a person, the world, just a little and gets passed on, anything that lasts.

The Shadows of the King Archetype

The Tyrant

Unlike the King archetype which creates and blesses others, the Tyrant seeks to destroy and tear down. Plagued by narcissism, he really does think that he sits at the center of the universe. The Tyrant wrongly believes that power is finite; he has a scarcity mentality. He doesn’t understand the truth–that power and influence actually increase the more you share it with others. Thus the burden of maintaining his fragile illusion of absolute power makes him very insecure; any threat to his authority and supremacy enrages him and causes him to lash out with abuse–physically, emotionally, or mentally.

When the Tyrant isn’t viewing others as a threat and putting them in their place, he sees them as objects to exploit for his own gain; he is willing to push his friends, family, and employees under the bus in order to further his goals. We see the Tyrant manifest itself in this manner when businessmen or politicians further their own career at the expense of the people under their stewardship.

The Weakling

The Weakling is the passive shadow of the King archetype. Instead of taking control of his life and resolutely making decisions, a man possessed by the Weakling often abdicates his throne to others, handing over power, responsibility, and control of his life to them. This is the man who, though grown up, still lets his mother or father make his decisions for him. This is the man who kowtows to his boss’ or his wife’s every whim.

This is also the man who was abused in some way as a child, and when he becomes an adult and ascends into a position of power, relishes the opportunity to turn the tables and become the bully himself. “Now that I’m in charge, things are going to change around here!” But even in a position of power, the Weakling’s insecurity gets the best of him; he becomes paranoid that people are out to get him–and they often are because he’s such a jerk. This paranoia leads him to become even more controlling and cruel.

Moore believes that the Weakling and Tyrant shadows work in tandem with each other. It’s very rare that a man is ruled by one and not the other. Underneath every blustering Tyrant is a scared Weakling. And underneath every cowering Weakling is a Tyrant waiting to explode.

How to Access the King Archetype

The King seeks to integrate all the other archetypes and all good principles in order to reach his full potential–so that he may use this energy for a higher purpose and to bless the lives of others.

• Create more, consume less
• Leave a legacy
• Develop practical wisdom
• Become a mentor
• Find a mentor
• Establish your core values
• Develop the virtue of order
• Break away from your mother
• Develop a life plan
• Develop the traits of true leadership
• Protect the sanctity of your ideas
• Become decisive
• Avoid the corruption of money, power,and sex
• Live with integrity

Series Conclusion

This concludes our series on the archetypes of the mature masculine. I hope you got something out of the articles.

So how much credence and focus should you give to these archetypes? Well obviously their existence cannot be proven–only speculated about. And I do believe that the main focus of a man’s life should be on practical ways to take action. But pondering the more esoteric stuff is what guides you in determining what those actions should be. These archetypes represent one way–a very helpful way–of organizing those meditations and can lead you to a more productive exploration of who you are and what kind of man you want to become.

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In the first post in this series, we discussed the nature of willpower, noting that is a real mental energy.

In the second post, we explored the way in which this mental energy is a finite resource and how it can be depleted through the exercising of self-control and the making of decisions.

Now if willpower is a real, finite energy, the question that naturally arises is this: What can I do to strengthen, conserve, and harness this force to help me reach my full potential? The answer to that question is what we will be diving into today.

How to Strengthen Your Willpower

While there are many ways to conserve your willpower, there’s really just one way to strengthen it.

By working on any goal or habit that exercises your self-control.

Remember when we talked about how willpower is like a muscle, and that just like a muscle, you have to exhaust it in the short-term in order to build its strength in the long-term? When you work to change a habit, you deplete your willpower in the struggle, but over time, the strength of your willpower muscle increases from these exercises, making you better able to take on future tasks.

Your willpower is strengthened not only by tackling big goals, but also by doing anything that gets your brain out of its comfort zone—things like using your left hand instead of your right (if you’re a righty), working on your posture throughout the day, and trying to stop swearing have all been shown to increase the overall stamina of a person’s willpower.

The best part about creating a new habit is that not only does it strengthen your willpower, it also frees up more of your willpower fuel for other things. When a decision becomes a habit, it draws little, if any, willpower from your supply. The more good decisions you can make habitual, the less taxes on your willpower tank you’ll experience throughout the day.

This is why people with stronger self-control actually spend less time resisting desires than those with weaker self-control. By creating good habits, they minimize the number of temptations they’ll be faced with by making as many decisions as automatic as possible.

How to Conserve Your Willpower

Okay, so in order to strengthen your willpower, you need to work towards reaching a goal or changing/creating a habit. But everyone who’s ever tried to do that knows it’s not easy! How do you get enough willpower to strive towards and achieve your aims in the first place?

They key is to consciously conserve this force, keeping it from being frittered away on dumb stuff and saving it for the things that are most important to you. What follows are 20 ways to do that. This is incredibly vital knowledge; the man who learns how to harness this force of greatness is he who reaches his goals, makes better decisions, and progresses farthest in life.

Note: Some of these points are interesting and important topics in and of themselves, not only as they concern willpower, but life in general, and we had so much to say that the first draft of this post grew into a truly epic tome. So a ton was cut out (it’s still long though!), but we will be revisiting many of these points with their own in-depth articles throughout the year (a comprehensive post on goal setting will arrive next week, in fact). In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about the very fascinating studies that back up the efficacy of these techniques, pick up a copy of the book this series has been based on: Willpower: by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.

1. Only work on one goal at a time. If you only take one idea from this post, let it be this: only work on one goal or habit at a time. Because your willpower is a finite resource, when you spend your willpower on one thing, you have less it available for other things. Thus when you try to change multiple habits at the same time, what you’re doing is allocating just one sliver of your willpower pie to each goal. The result is not surprising: failure in most, if not all of them.

Instead, you want to funnel as much of your willpower fuel towards one thing as you can. Changing any habit is like driving an auto up a very steep mountain—the engine on your willpower-mobile needs as much power as possible to get to the top and over the other side without puttering out and sliding back.

2. Make changes during periods of calm. If your willpower is a finite resource, then you don’t want to attempt big goals and habit changes when you’ve got a lot on your plate. These stressors will suck away your willpower, leaving you without enough of it to reach your big goal.

3. Make your goal as clear and specific as possible. While some cynics scoff at those who make New Year’s resolutions, the resolvers get the last laugh; people who make formal New Year’s resolutions are ten times more likely to reach their goals than those with the same aims and motivation, but who never clearly articulate their aims.

Hoping to reach a goal without clearly defining it is like trying to find a place by simply driving around; you’re not sure exactly where you’re headed and thus fruitlessly burn up your fuel—or willpower.

4. Set things up on autopilot. When I wrote this post about how to stop mindlessly surfing the internet, I recommended implementing firewall software that blocks you from looking at certain sites at set times. Some criticized this approach as insufficiently manly, arguing that I should just work to overcome my mindless surfing through willpower alone. And that would be a fine idea…if I wanted to make that my one big goal for a time. However, that’s way down on my goal list—I’ve got more important things I’m working on for which I need every possible drop of my willpower supply. So maybe someday I’ll get down to making the ability to resist mindless surfing a habit, but in the meantime, I want to minimize any willpower sucks in my life by making that an automatic decision.

5. Don’t make big decisions on an empty stomach. The glucose in your bloodstream is part of what fuels the energy source of willpower, and it comes from any food you eat that contains carbohydrates. Exercising self-control depletes relatively large amounts of this glucose, and when glucose goes down, so does your willpower. No food=no glucose=no willpower=risk aversion and poor decisions.

This is why you should never go into anything important—a meeting, an interview, a test–on an empty stomach. And why you shouldn’t schedule say, a pitch meeting, right before lunch if you want to increase your chances of getting a yes.

If you need your glucose hit right away, eat something sugary, as this will get the glucose into your bloodstream and to your willpower supply quickly. But if you have time, eat high protein, low glycemic foods—the glucose will take an hour to get into your bloodstream, but you’ll avoid a sugar crash and such foods are better for you in general.

By the way, this connection between food, glucose, and willpower is one of the reasons dieting is so difficult. To shed pounds you need to eat less, and to eat less you need willpower, and to get willpower you need to eat. This conundrum explains why willpower has been shown to be more effective for making improvements in areas like school and work rather than one’s waistline; people with high self-control are in fact only slightly better at maintaining a healthy weight (they do exercise more, but this has much less effect on one’s weight than diet does). Willpower experts thus recommend trying to lose weight by making very subtle changes to one’s diet instead of drastic reductions.

6. Make to-do lists. Once you finish a task, your brain largely forgets about it. But unfinished tasks have been shown to stick in your head and jangle around. Your brain hates loose ends and will keep nudging you to do something about them.

The problem with these loose ends camping on your cranium is that they’re subtly eating up your willpower. They’re like so-called “vampire appliances,” appliances that are plugged in all the time and suck up a little bit of electricity even when you’re not actually using them.

To un-plug your vampire to-do’s, you simply need to take the loose ends out of your head and put them down on paper. The classic to-do list can really work wonders for your willpower. Be sure to make your list of to-do’s as specific as possible—as GTD guru David Allen puts it, you need to figure out your next action on something. So don’t write: “Plan trip.” Write: “Search for best airline fare.” And once you cross that off, your new next action would be “Buy tickets.” And so on.

7. Make a precommitment. You’re doing a Paleo-diet and eating only things like meats and veggies. Your friends invite you out to a restaurant, and you think, “That won’t be a problem. I’ll just get a steak.” But when you arrive and sit down, the waiter brings out a basket of warm, freshly baked rolls, and you shout, “Hot damn! This must be what heaven smells like!” And in the blink of an eye, you’ve stuffed two rolls in your mouth.

What happened to you in there? You were so sure you could handle the temptation. But you fell victim to what’s called the “hot-cold empathy gap.” When you’re contemplating a scenario from your easy chair, you underestimate how difficult resisting the temptation will be in the heat of the moment.

To prevent the hot-cold empathy gap, you need to make a “precommitment,” the creating of a contingency plan so that when you’re in the heat of the moment, and decide to give in, the option of giving in isn’t available.

For example, if you’re going to go shopping with someone, but you don’t want to spend any money, don’t bring a credit card, or bring a set amount of cash.

If you’re trying to cut down on your alcohol consumption, keep your house spirits-free.

And if you’re a Paleo guy, tell the waiter as soon as you sit down not to bring over the rolls at all (hopefully you have very understanding, or gluten-allergy-suffering friends).

8. Create routines.

If you have a set schedule for the day and a regular routine, you don’t have to dither about what you should be doing at any given moment. “It’s 10:00 pm—time to start reading for 30 minutes before bed.”

9. Build self-awareness through monitoring.

Self-awareness simply means consciously knowing what you’re doing each day, and it’s tightly linked with self-control.

Most people are pretty good at hiding themselves…from themselves. They have only the vaguest idea of how much time they’ve wasted surfing the internet, how much food they’ve eaten, and what they’ve spent that month. But if you don’t know where you’re at in a certain pursuit, there’s no way you’ll reach your goal; you won’t know what you need to change, how far you’ve come, and how far you have to go.

So look for ways to monitor, gather data, and “quantify” your life. Keep a food diary of what you eat each day. Weigh yourself every morning (while you may have heard weight loss gurus tell you this is a bad idea, studies have shown that those who weigh themselves daily are more successful at shedding the pounds). Use websites like Mint.com to keep track of your finances, and apps that track how you spend your time online. And so on. The more clear reminders you have of both your progress and your backsliding, the more likely it is you’ll stay on track.

10. Set up an accountability system. It’s not only helpful to monitor your own progress, but to have someone else looking over your shoulder as well. Keep yourself accountable by making a bet with a friend, setting an appointment to work out with a buddy, posting your progress publicly on a blog or on Facebook, or using a site like stickK.com.

11. Tackle the tough things first.

Throughout the day, you’re going to be exercising your self-control and making decisions, which will slowly deplete your willpower until eventide. So tackle your most important tasks as soon as you can in the morning, when your willpower tank is full and fresh. When taking a test, do the hardest problems first, and save the easy ones for later. And forget that notion about not going to bed angry with your spouse—nighttime is the worst time for arguments; your willpower is low, your capacity for impulse-control is diminished, and you’re likely to say things you’ll regret. It is absolutely amazing what a good night’s sleep will do—problems that felt all-consuming the night before will seem completely insignificant when you get out of bed. If you and your wife need to have an important discussion, do it in the morning…ideally after you’ve both eaten breakfast.

12. Get enough sleep and take naps. Sleep refreshes your willpower supply. So don’t skimp on getting your zzzz’s at night, and take a nap between one self-control exhausting task and the next.

13. Limit your choices. You already know that having too many choices creates restlessness. But it also saps your willpower as well. As you might remember from last time, your willpower takes the biggest hit when you lock in a decision, but it also gets burned up simply through the process of shopping around and weighing different choices. With all that browsing, you might think you’d end up with the best choice, since you sifted through so many options. But the shopping lowers your willpower, which makes you risk averse and unwilling to make a decision that shuts out other possibilities. Basically, this means that in the pursuit of perfection, you end up with nothing, instead of something that wasn’t flawless, but would have made you happy.

This is why speed daters have better luck finding a partner than those who use online dating sites; drowning in choices, the latter get stuck in perpetual browsing.

Instead of endlessly shopping around, figure out a criteria for what you want, and when you find something that works for you, stick with it– whether it’s a product, a church, or a lady friend.

14. Don’t try to work or make important decisions when you’re sick.

When you’re sick, your immune system uses a bunch of your body’s glucose to fight off the infection. It pulls that glucose from everywhere, including your willpower supply.

15. Distract yourself.

In the first post in this series, we talked about a study done with children who were told they could eat the single marshmallow in front of them, or wait 15 minutes to double their prize. Many of the children were able to hold out for that second marshmallow with a technique even a four-year-old can understand: distracting yourself. They focused on something else other than the marshmallow.

Turns out the old maxim was right: idle hands are the devil’s romper room. This is something I’ve seen over and over in my life—when I’ve got a lot of time to kill, and only the temptation to think about, I give in. But when my life is filled with activity and friends and interests, I’ll forget about whatever it is I’m supposed to be avoiding.

16. Keep yourself and your surroundings tidy and clean. There is a strong connection between external order and the strength of your willpower. In one study, some of the participants were taken into a neat lab, while the others were placed in a messy one. Those in the latter group exhibited less self-control: they ate less healthy snacks, gave up quicker on tasks, and were more likely to take a small amount of money up front, instead of waiting a week to increase the payout.

So if someone ever says, “Why are you making your bed? It’s pointless.” You can now answer: “Because I’m building my willpower, foo!”

17. Surround yourself with those who have similar goals. The people you surround yourself with have a big impact on who you become. Whether it’s smoking, weight, happiness, drinking, even study habits and GPA, research has shown that your group of friends influences your behavior–for better or worse. If you and your friends are all working towards the same things, it’s a lot easier to stick with it. But if you’re the lone man out, always swimming upstream against what all your friends are doing, you’re going to use up more of your willpower, and be more likely to struggle and fail.

18. Keep it out of sight and out of mind. Researchers found that office workers ate 1/3 more candy when the bowl was sitting out in the open than when it was placed in a drawer. Why? Because every decision we make depletes our willpower, and every time the workers passed the bowl, they had to decide not to take a piece, and each decision wore away at their willpower until they eventually gave in. And this is true for a great many things–not just bowls of candy. For example, don’t study in your dorm room if you’re going to have to keep resisting the urge to crawl into your bed and take a nap.

I’ve found the opposite is true as well: in sight, in mind. If you place a book you’ve been meaning to read by the john or a kettlebell by the couch, you’ll be more likely to pick them up and use them.

19. Delay gratification instead of nixing it altogether. Cutting something out of your life entirely increases the desire for it (forbidden fruit!) and increases the degree of binge if you finally give in, while postponing a pleasure both diminishes the strength of the craving and allows you to be satisfied with less when you do indulge. This is why it can be very effective to allow yourself one cheat day a week on your diet where you get to eat whatever you want, and why the Pomodoro Technique (working for 45 minutes straight and then taking a 15 minute break) can help you study more effectively. When you know you have a scheduled break/indulgence coming up, it becomes much easier to stick with a program without feeling overwhelmed by what you can’t do or have at the moment. (Of course this doesn’t work with things you want to go cold turkey on—don’t schedule one day a week where you smoke 5 packs of cigarettes).

20. Have a higher purpose. Having a higher purpose helps conserve your willpower because the structure and path it provides makes many of your decisions, if not automatic, then at least a lot clearer. This is one of the reasons there is a strong correlation between having strong self-control and being religious (this link is also due to the greater monitoring the religious get–both from God and fellow congregants, and the way the requirements of faith give the willpower muscle plenty of exercise through things like prayer, meditation, fasting, service, ect.).

The non-religious can get the same willpower-conserving benefit of living a purpose-driven life; they just have to work harder to create their purpose from within. This is done by eschewing instant gratification for honest-to-goodness ideals, and finding a reason for your goals deeper and less fleeting than the superficial. Do you want to get in shape for the ladies, or to become superhuman? Do you want to do well at your job to make big bucks, or to leave a legacy?

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