First a qualifier: this piece is only applicable to men who are or wish to be sigma. If you’re a wannabe alpha, this is the wrong place. If you’re already alpha, I don’t believe you.

I have one overriding goal in life: to increase and protect my medium-term happiness. What does that mean? Happiness is the goal and everything else is contingent upon advancing it. Some people will put other objectives first:

• be rich
• be popular
• fuck hot women

I don’t.

At best those are second-order objectives because you think they’ll make you happy. At worst, they aren’t even that. Becoming rich traps you and directly limits your power (that sounds paradoxical until you begin to understand true power lies not in controlling others but in being able to do whatever you want to do). Can Prince William go icognito to Budapest and fuck some hot chicks in a whorehouse? No, but you can. Can Bill Gates argue with someone in a bar and punch him in the face for getting lippy? no, but you can. Can Cristiano Ronaldo go for a quiet walk through a Madrid park? No, but you can. The greatest personal freedom is found in not being too well-known.

Often, what riches, popularity and hotties give you with one hand they take away with another. There were some experiments on chimps in which they were rewarded with food if they collected special tokens. Soon researchers could motivate the chimps to perform tasks just for tokens – because the chimps had learned tokens could be exchanged for food. Before long, there was a secondary market amongst chimps doing favours for each other for tokens. Kind of like EBT cards now.

But what happens when the experimentors stopped redeeming tokens for food? Chaos.

Chasing riches, popularity, hotties (or whatever else is a second-order objective) should never be the objective. Always keep your eye on the real food – happiness – and be prepared to switch up on those second-order objectives if they take you away from the goal. I choose medium-term happiness because short-term hedonism is extremely destructive and long-term happiness is a mirage which won’t be there when you are finally ready to claim it.

So given this one overriding goal, how do I achieve it?

The devil is in the details and will differ for each man but here is a little wisdom which will apply to every man. Two meta-level goals that will almost inevitably put you closer to the main goal: Increase your control of your time. Increase your personal freedom. If you can do that, you can act upon the opportunities for happiness that come up and there are no accumulated liabilities holding you back. This is the essence of sigma masculinity. With this in mind, here’s a cheat sheet for mindset shifts that will steer you ever closer to increased control of your time and freedom.

1. Never surrender your right to decide
You can never ever delegate your responsibility for your own decisions. No matter who pressures you into a decision, no matter what their prestige or power, you must always make up your own mind. Circumstances may force you to act out of alignment (e.g. corporate work) but keep your thoughts your own. If you find yourself waiting for a blogpost by your favourite writer before developing an opinion on a subject, you aren’t being prudent. You’re being a woman.

It’s okay to defer to a superior authority’s expertise but not to defer to their interests. So for example if you’re in a gym and a superior fighter gives you some technical advice on your right hook, you should probably take it. He still has to convince you, but you’re amenable to the advise. In contrast, if he wants to push you off the heavy bag so he can queue jump it, tell him to fuck off. Nobody – not Putin, not Jesus, not anybody – has the right to co-opt your mind and your interests.

2. Don’t be a fan or a follower
If you desribe yourself as this, you’ve already broken rule #1. A fan is someone who sucks another man’s dick. A follower is someone who carries another man’s baggage. There are men in the world you will naturally respect and admire and this is a great thing. There are heroes in this world. You can be inspired by and taught by such men. I highly recommend it. But heroes are not looking for men to suck their dick.

Follow them? No, don’t be such a faggot. Women and children follow.

3. Don’t lead
I respect the hell out of Donald Trump, the man is a natural leader. That’s great and he’s alpha. Thing is, I’m not alpha and don’t wish to be. Alphas are permanently tied up in alliances, conflicts and status-jockeying. While that energies them, it flatly contradicts a sigma male’s control of his time and freedom. Trump has access to many great things that I don’t, but those things don’t matter to me half as much as my time and my freedom.

A good leader becomes responsile for his followers. That’s restrictive and undermines medium-term happiness.

4. Never give a shit about the opinion of anyone you don’t respect
I almost wrote this without adding “you don’t respect” but that would’ve been a little too isolating, and isolation leads to hubris. Respected peers can give you encouragement in your darker times and bring you down a peg during your more hubristic times. Value that but be very careful who you allow to advise you. Would you seek investment advice from a hobo? Relationship advice from a hen-pecked cuck? Fitness advice from a slob? Seduction advice from a chode?

The world is brimming with unsolicited opinoins from morons whose only goal is to chip away at you in order to make themselves feel good about messing with your frame. Anyone who has started a blog or high-profile Twitter account knows all about them. Ignore them. You have no duty to listen to, or even acknowledge, the opinions of any person on this earth.

5. Being respected is more important than being liked.
Stop trying to be liked. It’s extremely feminised behaviour. Women care what other people think about them because they are hard-wired to fear outgrouping. Men are their own powerplant. We bring the value to the group and if we don’t like the group we’ll take it elsewhere. When you’re the value, you don’t fear outgrouping. The group fears you leaving it.

People won’t trust you anyway. There’s something fluid, icky and distasteful about dealing with a man who moderates his own opinions in order to win popularity. Stand up for what you believe, polarise, and the let the chips fall where they may. You’ll have everybody’s respect, even if it’s grudging and hostile. From there, the men who deserve your friendship will make themselves known to you.

6. Better the respect of a small group of worthy peers than the adulation of a million morons
I used to call this the “Robbie Williams effect”. The former boy-band member can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t play an instrument, can’t write a song and yet for two years he was the most feted performer in the UK. At one point he performaced in front of 40,000 morons at a RobbieFest live event. Shortly afterwards he was in drug rehab.

The reasons are complex but a big part of it is the Imposter Effect. The adulation of no-nothing idiots is worse than worthless – it’s harmful. It’s the reverse of the supposed “wisdom of crowds”. If so many morons have so unswervingly come to like you, then you must be they kind of person morons like. That’s more damning to your psych than fucking thirty fat girls in a row. If you must solicit respect from others, make sure it’s people whose respect is worth having and that it’s based on living your values.

7. Popularity is weakness
I’ve known men who are so good-looking that they are constantly checked out by girls in bars or on the street. It’s a favourable position to be in if you can handle it. How could you fail to handle such an obviously favourable situation, you ask?

When you swim in unsolicited positive affirmations you become accustomed to them, and soon dependent upon them. Rather than looking inward for reasons to feel good, you become externally referenced. Feeling good is no longer within your control but is dependent upon a never-ending supply of positive affirmations. That will cause your internal referencing to wither and die. You should be as happy sitting under a tree alone at the beach as you are performing on a stage in front of a thousand fans. The exhilaration and emotional involvement will obviously differ, but your base level of self-worth should not.

We’ve all seen the spectacle of old boxers who can’t give up the sport, of singers touring long after their voice cracked, of formerly good-looking guys still hanging round bars trying to draw IOIs. It’s undignified. Don’t seek popularity. If it comes, keep it in perspective.

8. Never follow the flavour of the month
There will always be a new cause celebre, a new star, or a new fad. Always, without exception, and like the Wehrmacht trundling East it’ll always seem like it’ll last forever. There’s a word for people who follow trends: women.

Following a trend means unmooring your boat and letting the current dictate where you go. When that current expires the next current picks you up. There’s a word for people who allow themselves to be swept off their feet: women.

A man is in control of his own destiny. He doesn’t surrender it to fashion. Some of you may decide it’s smart to hop in front of a bandwagon and try to direct the crowd – whether it be Sarah Palin co-opting the Tea Party, or one of the many manosphere attempts to latch onto popular movements. This may be smart, but it’s effeminate. If you’re pushing the bandwagon, you’re effeminate without having the consolation of being smart.

Always be on the look-out for better-positioned men looking to co-opt your money and time into building their own empires. It’s like going to a rock concert – all that your money and adulation does is elevate the rock star to a position where he can fuck your girlfriend backstage. Don’t be cucked.

10. Always be ready to walk
No matter who you are talking to, how long you’ve known them, and what rewards they can bestow upon you….. be ready to walk away if they start tooling you. Your happiness is internally-referenced and you control your time and freedom. Nothing they might give you can ever outrank that, and they might well start chipping away at those things you desire most. Don’t even bother fighting to try to “beat them” – that also cuts into your time and freedom. Lock them out and never think of them again.

Paradoxically, if you live your life by the above-mentioned principles you probably will be more respected, more popular, richer, and fuck more hotties. That shouldn’t be the goal.

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