Path of Men

Helping you unfuck your life.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

You’ve entered the chapter where it all goes right

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

The funny thing about likability is that chasing it often destroys the very qualities that make you likable.

you become agreeable instead of honest, performative instead of genuine, and dependent on approval instead of comfortable with yourself.

stop trying to manage everyone's perception of you. just be real.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

you seriously underestimate what can happen when you stop waiting and start moving.

a year of making better decisions can change your entire position in life. six months of taking real action can open doors you didn't even know existed.

stop treating your current situation like a permanent reality.

decide what you want. find a way forward. and start acting like it's possible.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

you'll never feel completely ready. stop waiting for certainty before making a move. you develop confidence by acting, judgment by making decisions, and skill by figuring things out along the way. take the shot. learn from what comes back. adjust and keep moving

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Being present means not making your happiness conditional on reaching some future point.

Have goals. Build something. Pursue what you want. Just don't spend so much time living in the future that you miss the only place where you can actually do anything about it.

Tomorrow isn't guaranteed, but that doesn't make planning pointless. It makes how you spend today matter even more.

[Electra @Electrarythm]

Enlightenment

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Bro got betrayed once and decided to make emotional constipation his entire personality. Now he calls being incapable of trust, generosity, or human connection “wisdom".

[Deep Psychology @DeepPsycho_HQ]

Don't lend money to anyone. Be selfish. Cut off people who contribute nothing to your life. Save yourself; don't expect others to. Society is full of sick people who only think of themselves and are ready to commit serious evil. Don’t get attached to people; save yourself.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

We've trained ourselves to see everything through the question of usefulness. Does it make money? Does it improve our status? Does it get us closer to some goal? And anything that doesn't produce a measurable result starts feeling like a waste of time.

But not everything valuable has to be useful. Sometimes you should look at a flower because it's beautiful. Spend an hour watching the clouds. Make something nobody asked for. Laugh at something stupid. Get lost in a conversation with no agenda.

That childlike part of you isn't childish. It's the part that can still experience life without constantly asking what it can get out of it. Don't sacrifice that just to become productive.

[ADONIS @adonispara]

The secret of genius is to carry the childlike spirit into old age and never lose your enthusiasm.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Sexual energy can be a powerful source of drive, but it doesn't automatically make you powerful. What matters is what you choose to do with it.

You can spend that energy chasing instant gratification, attention and validation, or put it behind something that actually matters to you. But don't turn suppression into some kind of virtue either. Bottling up desire doesn't make you disciplined; it just gives you another thing to fight within yourself.

You don't need to be afraid of your desires, and you don't need to obey every one of them. Learn to direct them. That's where self-command begins.

[Semen Retention Archive @semenarchive]

Love this quote from the DUNE series: Semen retention is the KEY

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Masturbating to porn can leave you feeling insecure, less confident, and uncomfortable making eye contact.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

I agree with the part about accepting yourself instead of hating yourself out of a habit.

But I'd be careful about turning this into another complicated explanation of why you're addicted.

Sometimes you watch porn because you're bored, lonely, stressed, avoiding something, or simply because you've made it an automatic response to an urge. And then you feel guilty, promise yourself you'll never do it again, and spend the next few days fighting yourself.

Now you've got two problems: the original behaviour and the shame you've attached to it.

You don't need to hate the part of yourself that wants instant gratification. You need to understand what you're using it to avoid, stop treating every urge like an order, and start making different choices.

You don't overcome a pattern by declaring war on yourself. You overcome it by no longer needing to live inside that pattern.

[Nornal Guy 🧙‍♂️ @theralkia]

How to beat porn addiction:

The core issue is that your libidinal energy is trapped in the lower energy centers, preventing it from being channeled into higher forms of expression: physical, emotional, relational, creative, and spiritual.

The libido energy, like all parts of us - conscious or unconscious, still seeks expression, and so it continually discharges itself through compulsive porn use.

1. Understand why the energy is trapped

When unresolved emotions become associated with sexuality (shame, guilt, fear, rejection, and inadequacy etc.), the natural movement of libidinal energy gets trapped.

The libido can't be harnessed as a creative, spiritual, life-force energy, and so is instead trapped in unconscious behaviors.

For example, you may consciously desire mastery of your urges while unconsciously carrying shame around your sexual impulses. This creates an internal conflict and causes further fragmentation: one part of you seeks expression, while another condemns it.

The sexual energy then becomes trapped in this fragmentation. The dual ends of the fragmentation - the natural impulse to express, and the ego's judgement of its expression - perpetuate the loop. Each side fights itself so consciousness (the center) can never be attained.

2. Recognize how the ego reinforces the cycle

The ego attempts to control the libido (read: avoid processing the emotional content that has attached to it) through suppression and resistance.

But the unconscious emotional material continues to exist, building tension in the ego-body. This leads to a total loss of aliveness, embodied joy, and life force energy, because the energy is being pushed down instead of transmuted. Eventually, the accumulated tension will hit a point of no return, and the repressed energy will explode outwards in a compulsion.

This is the cycle of the porn user who tries to quit with willpower. It always fails because the underlying need isn't being met, and so the body eventually disposes of the energy in the safest (most programmed) way: through porn.

The cycle:

Unprocessed emotions → Energetic contraction → Accumulated sexual tension → Compulsive pornography use → Temporary release → Shame and guilt → Further contraction.

The shame that follows porn use reinforces the repressed emotions that continue the cycle of avoidance, then explosion.

3. Stop trying to suppress or discharge the energy

The solution is neither repression nor compulsive release. It is learning to contain the sexual energy while staying embodied, and consciously choosing how you want to use the energy.

When sexual urges arise, bring your awareness into the body. Notice the sensations in the pelvis, lower abdomen, etc., and observe where the energy feels somatically contracted.

Then just stay with the raw sensations and notice what emotions arise with them. As you process these emotions, the sexual energy will integrate into your conscious awareness, and you will learn to channel it with your will instead of being horny all the time and compulsively cycling through avoidance and shame.

4. Allow the libido to move into the higher centers

As the unconscious emotional material is felt, the libido becomes less bound to lower expressions. The goal is simply to rein it in by processing all of the unconscious emotions that have been attached to it.

"Discipline" will never work here because discipline is founded on repression and self-betrayal. If the energy can't flow, it can't be consciously expressed. Discipline is an avoidance of the actual emotions attached to the addiction you are trying to strong-arm yourself out of. You are signaling to the ego-mind that the parts of you attached to the addiction are bad, unsafe, and shouldn't be expressed, so they continue to hide and reinforce your addiction.

TL;DR: You must accept the part of you that is addicted to porn, instead of hating and running from it.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Why does a man asking for help still feel like a plot twist

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

There's nothing at the end of the corporate ladder.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

double down on the things that make you feel most alive.

the things you naturally gravitate toward. the things you can spend hours doing without needing anyone to push you.

that's where you should invest your energy. develop the skill, get better, find new ways to use it.

stop trying to become good at everything. build on what already pulls you forward.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

the game rewards the player who seek no rewards but the game itself

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

most people will tolerate the same problems for years without ever questioning their approach.

same routine. same frustrations. same results.

the difference is being willing to look at your situation, make a decision, and try something different instead of waiting for life to change on its own.

stop repeating the pattern. find another way forward.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

Money = Life energy

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

the funny thing about becoming the man you want to be is that you stop needing everyone to see your value.

you start trusting your own judgment, taking risks, and building a life that excites you.

and ironically, that's often when other people start noticing you too.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

The point isn't to keep finding new ways to suffer. It's to stop treating discomfort like something has gone wrong.

Take on things that demand more from you. Have the difficult conversation. Take the risk. Do the work when it's uncomfortable. Put yourself in situations where you can't rely on the same old excuses.

But don't turn suffering into some fucking achievement of its own. You can endure years of misery and still learn nothing from it.

The real measure of growth is how much more of reality you can handle without running from it, making excuses, or abandoning yourself.

[PROFESSOR @SIGMAPROFESSOR]

the secret to life is to deliberately expose urself to higher levels of suffering until lower level suffering becomes irrelevant. Otherwise, u'll spend ur entire life crying over trivial pain, achieving nothing worthy of it. Increase ur threshold.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

you have no idea how much your life can change when you actually start making moves.

one decision can create a new path. one risk can change your direction. one year of consistently choosing expansion over comfort can make your old life feel unrecognizable.

stop waiting for the perfect moment.

you don't need to see the whole path. you need to take the first step.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

at some point in your life, you'll see a way out of the loop you've been repeating.

a chance to change direction, drop the old identity, and start making decisions that move you toward something better.

don't waste that moment trying to preserve the life you're trying to outgrow.

see it through.

[Path of Men @PathOfMen_]

a good nap is proof that sometimes the best way to get more out of life is to stop trying so fucking hard for a minute.