Why Strength, Self-reliance & Sovereignty Matter
This is something of a personal ethos of mine that has naturally developed over the course of the last few years.
The characteristics I’ve come to admire most in other men, and therefore those I’ve sought to develop more within myself, can be summarised as:
- Strength, in all things,
- Self-reliance wherever possible,
- Individual sovereignty.
When combined, these characteristics make for powerful and influential men that create freedom and value for their families and their local communities.
If this could be reduced to a single characteristic, it would be strength.
Strength could be used by all men as a guiding principle for improving their lives.
Being physically, mentally and spiritually strong is a hallmark attribute of successful men. Seeking to maximise strength in all the critical domains of your life, as a man, is a worthwhile and useful pursuit.
This might seem a little one dimensional, but there are really a multitude of aspects to strength that make it the most important attribute to develop as a man.
Consider that you can be strong in the following ways:
- The most obvious, physically strong and robust, you are healthy and capable of difficult challenges, resilient to ailments and injuries,
- Mentally strong and resilient, capable of withstanding moments or periods of high stress and difficulty without succumbing to pressure, assertive with positive intent, won’t quit,
- Financially strong, able to provide for yourself and your wife and children, cushioned from the unexpected events that life inevitably presents to you, building a future and a legacy for your heirs and local communities,
- Spiritually strong, the spirit is your life force that is immutably strong at its core, capable of driving you forward infinitely, driven by a strong resolve to achieve a mission,
- Sexually strong, virile and capable of strong sexual connection and expressing physical love is essential to male fulfilment.
Many modern men are not strong in the ways or domains I’ve listed above. And it is little wonder that most modern men are depressed, out of shape, purposeless, broke and lonely.
You can see how being strong in all of those domains would create men of worth and value in the world. It is also easy to see how being strong across those domains effectively gives rise to the other two key characteristics I called out earlier – self-reliance and sovereignty.
In fact, being strong is a pre-requisite for admission into the territory of self-reliance and sovereignty.
To my mind, the person I want to be and the life I want to live, is embedded within the pursuit of strength, self-reliance and sovereignty.
If you’re a man, I posit you could pursue strength in your life across all domains and it would not steer you wrong.