Introduction
What’s up /r/AsianMasculinity? My name is Power_Leap. I’m here to help people out by outlining what I personally think is a solid path towards real, self-realized manhood. Feel free to civilly disagree, ask questions, or contribute.
There’s some good advice in /r/AsianMasculinity, but I often feel there’s not enough elaboration. For example, “stop caring about the media.” I totally agree! But that’s not something that you just read on Reddit one day, and instantly get. Things like “stop caring,” “practice eye contact,” or even “pick up hobbies” are all pieces of a larger puzzle, that all interact and influence each other. They aren’t singular tasks that you can just do and check off your list. What I want to try to do is outline the actionable steps I took that had the greatest effect on me personally in becoming a well-rounded, confident Asian dude. Call me out if I’m not being specific enough. Feel free to PM me. Let’s get started.
PART 1: VISION
The first and most important thing is this: figure out what kind of person you want to be. There’s a saying that goes, “If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.” If you don’t set values, principles, and goals for yourself, how can you expect to do anything but meander aimlessly through life? How can you be anything but aimless, if you’re not aiming for anything? Now, none of this has to be set in stone. Your goals for yourself will change over time. But you need to have at least some kind of vision of the sort of man you aspire to be. Nothing great was ever built without a blueprint.
I think of it like the character creation step of an RPG. I dunno about y’all, but I sit down, I decide what kind of class I want to play, how I’m gonna play it, what my style of fighting is going to be, what color pubes would match well with my eyes, everything. This is the same attitude I apply towards my life. Personally, I want to be a bad-ass scientist and man of many manly talents. I want to be intelligent and well-read, as well as tough and able, and have skills like boxing, wilderness survival, music, archery, car repair/maintenance, etc.
This is the first step to not giving a fuck. First, have a vision of who you want to be, independent of what anyone else in society thinks because fuck them. This is about you. This blueprint gives you something to work towards, whether it’s by signing up for dance lessons, or getting a lockpicking starter kit, or just reading and learning about something. And as you work towards it, it becomes less and less a mere vision, and more and more a reality. It won’t take long before you look at yourself in the mirror and you realize that you’re no longer just another cookie-cutter dude. You’re starting to look like a person who’s custom-built, according to your own specifications, and that is a big fucking deal. Why? Because now you can walk around in life proud of what you’ve built, even if it’s still a work in progress.
You guys like metaphors? I like metaphors, and here’s one I particularly like. Imagine life is a turbulent river. It shouldn’t take much effort because that’s what it is. You never know if it’s going to knock you over, or trap you in an eddy, or generally just fling you around. If you don’t have a sense of identity, you’re just a shapeless cloud of sand and debris in this river (and I’d say most people are). The current pushes and pulls you around, and all you can do is go along for the ride. Fuck that. If you want control over your life, you need to take all that sand, crush it in your manly, veiny hand, and turn that shit into a rock.
(superman turning dirt into diamond)
The first step to doing that is to decide who you want to be. The second is to work towards it. Become a rock and the river of life has no power over you. Just as a rock inevitably sinks and settles, you move towards your goals and your vision, and nothing life throws at you can stop you.
The Asian Side
Since /r/AsianMasculinity is for Asians in particular, I should address the Asian side of this topic. I’m second generation. My parents came over here from Taiwan, and all they really instilled in me as a kid was to be a good student, go to a good college, get a good career. We never talked about their lives. I basically knew nothing about their past personalities or dreams or fears. Considering their backgrounds, and my grandparents backgrounds, I don’t blame them. That’s just the way the culture is if you’re only a couple generations descendent from farmers. They simply didn’t have the luxury of thinking about identity or who they wanted to be. It was enough to live comfortably and provide for their kids so that those kids might have more of an opportunity to dream than they did. If you’re a second-generation kid like me, that means us. We have that opportunity to dream about who we want to be. We also get the mixed blessing of being the first, of starting with a blank slate. On the one hand, my parents didn’t guide or give me any examples of what I could aspire to, other than being academically successful, and it made me comparatively boring and dull in my younger days. On the other hand, other than the whole stay-in-and-study thing (which is relatively easy to shrug off), I have essentially a blank identity canvas to paint on, however my naked frolicking heart desires. Going even further, I think the fact that I’ve carved out the person that I am today completely with my own two hands has given me confidence that I wouldn’t have if I had just passively absorbed certain hobbies or traits from my parents.
The Takeaway
So here’s the deal. Sit yourself down. Figure out what kind of man you want to be. The way you want to interact with people, the skills you want to have, the things you want to understand, the values that are important enough to you to fight for. Write it down if you have to. Hell, post right here in the comments describing your vision. Start working at it. Keep at it long enough and soon you’ll find that it’s become a habit. Soon you’ll notice that everything else just starts to fall into place.
Original Post: http://www.reddit.com/r/AsianMasculinity/comments/2cuq6w/power_leaps_guide_to_manhood_part_1_vision/
Reposted with permission from /u/Power_Leap with slight modifications