I don’t check LinkedIn very often, but almost every time I do, I see a former employee of mine posting something smart and corporate and shiny, and they usually have some letters after his name like “VP” or “M.D.” It’s no surprise with any one of these particular guys. Back when they worked for me, I knew every single one of them would eventually move on to do greater things. I mean, come on - it was a moving business. Literally everything was better.
That most certainly wasn’t the case for all of the guys. The other 90% of them almost certainly don’t have a LinkedIn profile. If I wanted to check in on them, I would have better luck checking the Prince George’s County court dockets.
I had plenty of time contemplate, during the mindless loading and unloading of heavy things, why some of these guys seemed to be on a trajectory toward success and the others had already cratered out.
The easy thing is to point to the socioeconomic factors. Let’s face it: generally speaking, it was the men of color who were already on their losing streak, and the white guys were, generally speaking already winning. There were so many exceptions, however, that I believe the easy diagnosis is at best more of a loose correlation than causation. Numerous white guys couldn’t, as a cowboy told me once, “Pour [pee] out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.” (One threatened to blow up my fleet). And several of the black and Hispanic guys were already working on their own degrees or side hustles. One of them, Byron, was a math genius who went on to study mathematics at the University of Chicago.
It wasn’t the color of their skin or even their family environments. No, most of the guys who cratered long before they could have were adept in the art of self-sabotage.
I’ve seen it with increasing clarity in my own life and the lives of probably a thousand guys since those moving company days. I think it breaks down into three categories:
Lack of Purpose
Seems obvious, maybe, but then again, maybe not. Every single one of the “90% Guys” had some form of purpose, albeit something involving money and women. They wanted more of that. They knew that these things would bestow some kind of meaning in their lives, or if not “Meaning,” then some sort of validation.
The 10% Guys knew what they wanted and had plans to obtain it. Lifting heavy things and putting them down was just a temporary means to an end - paying bills and taking out their girls (if they had time for them) with the intention of marrying them.
The 90% Guys would fight for paltry raises or risk their jobs over the smallest things. I once heard someone say that “people fight the hardest when the stakes are low.” The 10% Guys? There was nothing they wouldn’t do or volunteer for, and they were the ones I’d turn to first for leadership positions or special projects. They didn’t care - they were on-mission.
Making Excuses
The 90% Guys always had an excuse. A typical example: Saturdays were our busiest days. All hands on deck. Invariably, at least one guy would call out. I might get a call later that day, exquisitely timed to come in while I was hefting some gigantic piece of delicate furniture over some treacherous obstacle, and I’d have to put the THING down and listen this long story about how he forgot he was scheduled, his baby mama had to go to the hospital, or one of his 88 aunts had suddenly died (again).
No doubt this was occasionally true, but after awhile, the excuses didn’t matter. By the time I figured out that it was all a big joke to them, it was unbearable.
I saw a video yesterday that sums up my reaction to excuses now.
Taking the Easy Path
This audience probably knows all about Fr. Ripperger. In case you don’t, he’s a Roman Catholic priest who is pretty popular in traditional circles. I listened to one of his podcasts several years ago. It was about true masculinity or “being a man.” (Those are not sneer quotes). His main definition for authentic masculinity was “doing the rigorous thing” instead of choosing the easier—what he called the “effeminate”—path.
I’ve been reflecting on that for years. So long, in fact, that I’m actually starting to heed the advice.
So many guys, my former employees included, always choose the easier path. It’s a daily habit. It’s not even a choice, really. They “flow” with circumstances until, faced with some critical, life-defining milestone, they float down on down with the current instead of doing the thing that must be done. If they’re even still able to recognize a critical moral decision, they’ll go with whichever path provides the least resistance.
Why do men do these things/fall into these traps?
It’s several things. It’s the fear of losing control. It’s comforting. And, even though you know that the outcomes of these “decisions” are deadly, they’re at least known, and therefore “safe.” Plus, hope is a hell of a distraction—this time it’ll be different!
I’ve been battling these demons face-to-face lately. I might be using the examples from my moving days, but I’m no exception. Here I am at the monastery, on what I’ll call an “extended retreat,” with just about the best possible circumstances to rebuild. It’s quiet, everyone leaves me alone, and all the basic needs of life are more than met. So, what am I doing? I’m:
Organizing and automating task lists
Planning
Going for long walks and reflecting on things
Hey—all of this might be necessary to a degree, but I’ve fooled myself plenty. I don’t need another bit of evidence that anything other than buckling down, pushing through the distractions. At some point even the good behaviors, as opposed to the bad ones like drinking, fooling around, etc., are sabotage.
How to avoid self-sabotage
The solution, like all truth, is simple. Not easy, but simple.
Have a mission. Obviously it should be good, true or beautiful.
Take responsibility for everything in your immediate control. As you get comfortable with that, consider how you might be indirectly responsible for the negativity around you.
Do the hard thing and do it now. Later it’ll be harder (trust me), which means the hard thing now is actually easier than the hard thing later. (Dude…)
Like I said, I’d been battling Resistance and his reinforcements intensely over the last several months, so I finally started taking my own advice. I clarified the purpose of my work and my personal life (or finally relented, actually), owned up to my mistakes, and went into “monk mode” when all I wanted to do before and after my day job was either sleep or scroll. I’ve been doing, and guess what? Great things are happening! It’s almost as if there are laws to the universe. Go fig.
A few yeas back I got involved with a little podcast project called “Authentic Masculinity.” It seems to have dropped off the face of the earth since 2020, but they had a phrase that resonated so well with me that I made a leather bracelet for it. “Conquer Yourself | Conquer a Kingdom.” It was a bit too, I don’t know, self-referential (ironic), but I’ve come around. It is absolutely true. Quit sabotaging yourself and get on-mission.