In this edition of the peak performance newsletter, we will be discussing:

Table of Contents

• Author’s Notes:

• Disclaimer: Don’t read this if you get easily offe …

• Chapter 1: Traditional masculinity

  • Chapter 1.5: Don’t reduce yourself down to just a …

    • Trigger Warning: (Childhood trauma/abuse)

• Chapter 2: Modern Masculinity

  • Chapter 2.5: Here’s where emotional men triumph.

• Chapter 3: How masculinity has changed

• Chapter 4: Next gen masculinity

  • Chapter 4.1: What does this mean for you?

Before we start,

And in this email, I’ll be covering the 2 evolutions of masculinity throughout history, the crucial flaws behind them, and why the new generation of masculinity will soon to outcompete both of them in the modern day.

Also, if this post is too long for you to read in one sitting, then I recommend you try to split it into small chunks (5-10 minutes) when you’re walking around, waiting in line, stuff like that.

I try to condense this information down as much as possible, but I also want to give you as much value as I can to ensure that you’re time spent reading these emails is well worth it.

If this is your first time reading this newsletter, I talk about men’s issues and young men’s self improvement. So if that sounds interesting, then you might want to stick around.

Author’s Notes:

I’ll be discussing the 3 evolutions of masculinity, which is traditional, modern, and next gen masculinity.

I would be reminiscent if I didn’t say that I this email isn’t going to be my 100% original thoughts, since I actually took inspiration from one video on this exact topic since it really had an impact on my own life.

His name is Hamza and he’s a very popular figure in the male self improvement space. I think it’s a really good watch if you’re interesting in the same topics like masculinity, purpose, and discipline.

This isn’t going to be a total copy and paste of what he said, but I wanted to add my own thoughts in this topic since it’s been running in my mind quite recently, and I hope that you’ll find it interesting as well.

Although I do highly recommend that you go watch the full video, think of this post as a quick summary where you can take the practical lesson that I’ve learnt already and apply to your own life.

But enough with me rambling, here are my thoughts on how masculinity has changed throughout history and what this means for us as modern, young men.

Disclaimer: Don’t read this if you get easily offended

I just to give a quick disclaimer that for most of my emails on masculinity especially this one will be my unapologetically honest opinion, so I will be going unfiltered throughout this entire post.

Everything I say in this email, it’s not out of malice but out of love. I wish to see young men like myself rise up and live better, healthier lives, and I believe what I’m doing here is creating a positive impact on the world.

I think that young men should not be coddled, but faced with the truth of being a man in the modern day.

These lessons are from what I’ve learnt in my time on self improvement and my own experiences, so I understand that not all of my takes will align with everyone.

That being said, if you find yourself to be someone who gets triggered easily, then this email is not going to be for you.

Rather, I recommend you go to my webpage and find my previous emails on productivity if you want to focus on general self improvement instead.

You have been warned, but if you’re still interested then I encourage you to see this email through to the end, write down their thoughts on it, and see ways that you can apply what you’ve learnt here to benefit your own life.

Because that’s the mission that I have here on this newsletter, which is to provide as much value as I can to help improve the lives of young men through self improvement.

Chapter 1: Traditional masculinity

Traditional masculinity is basically a representation of the pure masculine traits that is within every man, which is discipline, being able to work extremely hard, and basically needing to turn off their emotions so that they can provide for their family.

Masculinity in it’s purest form is this, and even in the modern day these are quite respectable traits to have as any man.

Think about the people who have traditional masculine traits which could be farmers, hunters, blacksmiths, or practically anyone who needed to work long hours in undesirable jobs.

So I hope that you can still see that traits like discipline, like stoicism, is extremely valuable even in the modern day and will slingshot you towards the direction that you want in life.

And as we go through this email, don’t think that I’m trying to say that being hardworking is a bad thing at all, but we’ll go into detail now on why being that one dimensional person who just works hard might not be such a great thing after all.

You might be hyped up thinking that being more of a traditionally masculine man would sound awesome and I ensure you that it can be, hell I would say that I naturally possess more of those same traits than most people.

But what they don’t tell you is where you end up after people don’t need you to work as hard anymore.

Chapter 1.5: Don’t reduce yourself down to just a mule.

While traditionally masculine men was absolutely needed when times were hard, through the caveman days to the medieval times, it is actually less important in the modern day.

A million years ago, discipline is what allowed you to not get kicked out of the tribe and get eaten by a saber tooth tiger, but these days obviously the stakes aren’t as high anymore.

And that image of the strong, hardworking man who provides for his family might be tarnished for good after what I’m able to discuss with you in this chapter.

Because the men who only allocate time to just being the mule, being the money printer, often end up with worse lives and have broken relationships because of it.

Since you providing for your family and working really hard, it’s nice don’t get me wrong.

But it’s not what gets you loved in the long run…

The traditionally masculine man might of been the farmer, the king thousands of years ago, but now a traditionally masculine man in the modern day is the uber driver, the salary man, who works a 9-5, doesn’t really like his job, but works really hard anyways.

But that’s when you might be thinking, “wait a minute, what about the higher income jobs like doctor, lawyers, or engineers, surely they’re not in the same branch right?”

And that’s when it get’s a little bit tricky, because sure you could say that they might make a shit ton more money and that is extremely respectable, but the problem here isn’t about the money necessarily.

It’s about reducing yourself to only being the family mule.

So if you don’t mind, let me tell you a story, and maybe it can help you steer clear of the same fate that my father experienced being the traditionally masculine man in the house, as brutal as that may sound.

Trigger Warning: (Childhood trauma/abuse)

Both of my parents moved from Vietnam to the U.S, then had me, my sister, and a few other of my relatives also moved here as well.

My dad especially exhibited those traits of being hard working, as do most people in our culture, and he placed himself in a less than desirable job in the states.

He was a nail technician, and soon opened up his own nail saloon business.

And while we weren’t wealthy, it was definitely enough to get by and live a pretty comfortable life.

He worked hard and provided for my family, and on paper that would seem like more than enough to be considered a good father.

He took me and my sister out to parks when we were young, went out to eat, took us across the country, and I did have some fond memories of my early childhood.

But what you didn’t is that my dad who was the traditionally masculine men was extremely sleep deprived, had poor mental health, and have to work long hours before coming back home at 7.

Overtime, his physical and mental deteriorated. He got heavily addicted to caffeine which made him develop chronic insomnia. He couldn’t sleep for most nights, which made him constantly mad and irritable throughout the day.

So through most of my childhood, my dad was quite cold, extremely anxious all the time, and even abusive because he unleashed all of that pent up stress onto me.

So when my dad came home from work, I’d always get super fucking anxious because that symbolized unhappy and traumatizing times for me.

Coming back home from working a job that he didn’t like, he hated whenever I wasn’t working or studying so that would usually be when he would discipline me.

I was never a bad student, but my parents and my dad especially kept feeding me negative beliefs that I still wasn’t smart enough, so that always created a sense of uncertainty on how secure I was in the family.

That backfired, and I became constantly stressed to the point that my hands would start sweating profusely whenever I couldn’t complete an assignment in one of my classes.

I would remember the looks of my frantic mother whilst she starts screaming at me just because I underperformed in school.

Because whenever I had slightly worse grades, I would get shunned by my family for not working hard enough and often getting fucking beat because of it.

I know that this might be some dark shit that we’re discussing here, but when you live this lifestyle where the only the money and the grades matter, then that’s the life trajectory that you’re placing your future self onto.

So my dad, being the mule, brought home trauma and stress into the family, then it started to leach off to my mother and then ultimately to me.

And hopefully you can see by now that there’s no future in a life where you just grind, work, trying to make as much money as possible whilst not even living.

This in my opinion, is basically the equivalent of a modern day slave, who just works and works with no means to a goal but to just provide.

And when you place yourself as the mule who lives this lifestyle of just working, then it’s going to bring out the ugly side of you who isn’t going to be as caring, as loving, as present to your wife and kids as you could’ve been.

And that was the reality for my father, and especially in Asian culture where young men were fed this this lie that only providing and making money was going to give you the love and validation you wanted from your family.

Since it was never about the money that made your kids love you, it was if you acted like a genuine father who was actually caring towards them.

Chapter 2: Modern Masculinity

I won’t touch up on modern masculinity too much here, since I’m less informed about this side in general, but here’s what I’ve know based on what I’ve learnt so far.

Think of modern masculinity as exhibiting softer, more feminine qualities which is a contrast to traditionally masculinity which is to show less emotion and to be stoic.

And as it sucks to say, men aren’t really men anymore.

There are a lot of causes for the fall of masculinity, but most of that just comes down to BS conditioning when you were in school, a lack of fatherhood in the home, and western propaganda convincing young men to be more emotional and more feminine.

If you want to read about in detail, then I’ve previously made a beginner’s guide to purpose which covers why men are now becoming docile and weak.

But simply put, men aren’t needed to be masculine anymore because society has conditioned us to be believe that we no longer need it.

And they’re right…somewhat.

You can go through your entire life being more feminine and still live a decent life, but the question is if that is the most optimal way to live.

And in my opinion, we can do so much better than the both the feminine men and even the traditionally masculine men, but I’ll cover that in a later chapter.

So what problems stem from modern masculinity?

Feminine (modern) men will naturally be less disciplined, less hard working, and focused on love and relationships over their work.

And where that could be problematic stems from the fact that as men, our purpose, our mission, is the single greatest thing that we can work on in our lives.

And without that sense of purpose, then our own lives start to crumble.

When I’m not making progress in my goals, I start to feel this sense of agitation and regret, I start to indulge more in instant gratification, and overall my life gets worse because of it.

It’s not even our own lives that are being affected by feminization, but society in general falls because there’s no longer not enough men that continue to work hard.

I’ve listed these problems down, but you might be thinking that being a modern, feminine man doesn’t sound all too bad.

But at least for me, it led to me having an undesirable life since I was more feminine and had less respect from guys and women compared to if I was integrating the more masculine version of myself.

I don’t think you should be insecure of your masculinity or femininity, but you shouldn’t feel ashamed to want these desires of having more power, more status, and more freedom if it’s going towards a good cause.

So for example, but I didn’t pursue the desire for freedom, for validation, then I would’ve never started this newsletter which wouldn’t have positively impacted the lives of hundreds of people today.

So all I’m saying is that you should be able to let yourself feel those darker, more repressed emotions but be able to channel that energy for productive reasons.

Chapter 2.5: Here’s where emotional men triumph.

Even though I was shitting on modern masculinity just a second ago, there are still a huge number of merits that I believe we should talk about.

For starters, modern/feminine men are far likely to be happier than traditionally masculine men, better at sustaining long term relationships, and are often more caring and present.

Men on this side of the spectrum will focus more on relationships than their work, so in return their social life will actually skyrocket in comparison.

I know what I’m saying might sound extremely contradictory because I just mentioned a while ago how weak and emotional men are bad for society, but that could be said for traditionally masculine men as well.

Traditionally masculine men often have huge burdens to carry because most of them, including myself have been conditioned by fucked up childhood trauma to solely focus on making money/work over also spending time to build your relationships and social life.

But because most feminine men are generally normal happy people who don’t have messed up trauma, then they won’t have the desire of needing to work as hard.

So in terms of building relationships, then 8 times out of 10 most people would choose these types of men over the traumatized/overworked guy because their easier to be around with.

This isn’t to say that traditionally masculine men can’t form healthy relationships, but I feel like in my own personal experience that our obsession with making progress can sometimes strain it.

Because once you reach a certain point in your fitness, your business, or your career, then you get diminishing returns afterwards.

So getting your biceps 2 inches thicker or making an extra $500 a month isn’t going to save you from having a lonely life, but rather putting yourself out there, interacting with new people, actually experiencing life will.

Chapter 3: How masculinity has changed

The reason why I wanted to talk about masculinity in this email is not only because it’s vital for becoming happier and more fulfilled as a young man (in my honest opinion) but also because I wanted to discuss on how the competition is changing in the future.

50-100 years ago, the gold standard for any man was basically just to provide for your family, that’s it.

And the term meta that I’m referring (meaning most effective tactic available) has considerably changed since now it’s actually more appealing that young men focus on relationships than their work/purpose.

Again, because of feminization and western propaganda, men have been conditioned to be feminine and more emotional which led to the rise of low testosterone, no sense of purpose, and generally more symptoms of depression and anxiety due to a lack of responsibility.

Honestly, being a content writer in the male self improvement space myself, I actually think that this is a step in the right direction.

Because when we lived in harder times, men were forced to be the family mule and provide.

Women back then did not have a say in whether or not her husband was being abusive or violent, because she would have still needed a strong, masculine man to at least provide for her and her children.

So even though I do preach about some aspects of traditionally masculinity, there was still dark shit happening back then since women were getting abused at home by men who needed to work in those undesirable jobs.

So now that men are now more feminine and not placed in those stressful circumstances, a less percentage of women are being abused which you could say is actually a positive benefit of feminization.

Hopefully you could see by now that both traditional and modern masculinity do have their benefits but also their flaws, but the one who will outcompete both of them is what I’ll call next gen masculinity.

Chapter 4: Next gen masculinity

Next gen masculinity is combing both traditional and modern masculinity.

The competition, the standard 50 years ago was to provide, the standard or the meta right now is to be more feminine and focus on relationships, but the next meta will a man who’s capable of being extremely hard working but also caring and warm.

I believe that that next gen masculinity will the new meta, the new expectation for upcoming men in our current generation (assuming that you’re in your early to late 20’s)

Traditionally masculine men cannot compete because the new generation of men will be more charming, be friendly, and better at building healthier relationships.

Modern men cannot compete because they won’t have the work ethic to keep up with them.

So the answer is actually to combine the best of both worlds. To be stoic in your work but playful with others, to be ambitious with your goals, but still present in your relationships.

And hopefully if you are ambitious like me and many others, then I’m convinced that this should be the new caliber of men to strive towards.

But you might be thinking, “Wouldn’t he make hardly any progress in either because he needs to balance both?”

Compared to the men that came before us, we have the privilege now that we have access to education on the internet that teaches us how to be more productive.

Case in point, that’s why I made this newsletter, so that hopefully you were able to gain some valuable knowledge from what I’ve learnt so that you’re able to positively benefit in your work and relationships.

Back then, the conventional tactic to be more productive was to work longer hours whilst sacrificing your health and sleep.

But now, there is more information coming out that exercising daily, making sure that you don’t stare into blue light at night, and optimizing your diet is actually going to make you more productive compared to the version of you who’s sacrificing your health for more time.

The next generation of men, which includes us is equipped with the knowledge on these self improvements topics like sleep, diet, and mental health, so our work rate is going to far exceed what a traditionally masculine man is going to produce in a week than what we can in a few hours.

You might think, “But wait you should be more distant and cold to his kids because then they won’t turn out as well if you were more caring”.

Well no, that’s actually the complete opposite because that parental style makes your children more stressed, more traumatized, which will make them less money in the future, and they’re not going to appreciate you as much as a father if you raised them in this cold and abusive way.

And I’m literally the fucking proof of that example. I don’t consider myself as a lazy person, but even I understand that if I grew up with healthier parents, then my overall intelligence and the grades I got in school would have been the same if not much higher.

This isn’t to say not I’m not grateful for them, since I would’ve never have discovered self improvement if it wasn’t for what I’ve experienced growing up.

Chapter 4.1: What does this mean for you?

This is the harsh truth that you’ll have to face as a young man on self improvement.

Maybe not now, but in the near future, the competition amongst other men is going to be ridiculously high.

I bet you’ve already seen maybe guys your age (in their late teens to early 20’s) who are already semi on self improvement.

They are literally teenagers going to the gym, eating healthier, learning about dopamine detoxing, and reducing instant gratification.

So we’re going to come to this point in mankind where being either the traditionally masculine or modern men isn’t going to be enough anymore to get ahead.

This means for your relationships, the quality of woman that you can bring into your life, the career/business that you want to build, all of this is dictated by how much effort you want to put in right now.

The next generation of masculine men are going to absolutely slaughter traditionally masculine men because their healthier and happier, so their going to produce better results in their fitness and work.

Their going to demolish modern, feminine men because they can provide more for their woman whilst still being caring and loving towards them.

The competition in the future is going to be insanely cutthroat.

You can no longer be the one dimensional man who only excels at one thing, but rather the man who’s capable of doing both will be the one who will experience the best rewards out of life.

This goes for me too, and I have to remind myself occasionally that the competition is only ever increasing, so I have to stay accountable and make even more progress than my younger self.

Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t to live a life of regret knowing that I could have lived how I wanted if I would’ve have spent more time working harder for my future self.

If you resonated with this message or enjoyed this email, then you can click the “read online” button where you’ll find everything I discussed on mental health, dopamine detox, and young men’s self improvement.

I hope you were able to get some value out of this email, I’m sorry if it was a little dark at certain chapters but this is the harsh truth that I wished someone told me earlier.

Until then, take care.