Read Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha Online
Authors: John Romaniello
Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (6 page)
Arrogance is assuming that, because you've reached a certain level, you're entitled to certain privileges and opportunities. People who rest on their laurels are arrogant. On the other hand, pride is acknowledging your success but always retaining the mind-set of an intern. You have to earn every opportunity, hustle for every success, and prove yourself over and over againâno matter who you are and what you've done previously.
The difference between these two qualities is easily differentiated. Do you talk about your prior successes as a means to create new opportunities for yourself and others, or is it done with the expectation that people will automatically react with reverence and feel humbled in your presence? Are you looking to always work hardâon your projects or partnershipsâor are you simply looking for a way to beat the system and receive what you think you should be given?
The Alpha understands that pride is an essential part of self-actualization. You can't improve yourself and the world you live in if you don't acknowledge your success. This is change psychology that depends on reinforcement. You need to believe you are good, and the only way to do that is to reference what you've done right. At the same time, pointing to prior success shouldn't change the fundamental drive to become better or the effort you put in during that process.
In the end, the difference is simple. Pride is the province of the Alpha who has done and will continue to do great thingsâand arrogance is the calling card of dickheads and pretenders who are simply masquerading as power players.
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ALPHA TRAIT #5
HumbleâBut Not Self-Loathing
The drive to avoid arrogance can swing too far and bring you to a place where you no longer value yourself or what you achieve. Just as pride is important for acknowledging your successes, humility is equally important for confessing how hard it was to become better and accepting that you may not be the best and that you have a lot of work to do to get where you want to go.
Humility is important. It keeps us sane. It keeps us grounded. Most importantly, it keeps us
hungry.
Understanding that you are smart is essential to building the confidence you need to achieve; reminding yourself that you're not Einstein is a strong driver that will help you learn more and become even smarter. But thinking that because you're not Einstein means you're patently stupid, well, that goes past the point of humility and dips into self-loathing.
This dark side can manifest itself in a way that is truly self-destructive. When you become self-loathing, you venture into a universe where you are incapable of taking pride or credit for any success. Self-loathers genuinely lack so much confidence that anything that is accomplished is never seen as a direct result of their effort, time, or contributions. They are paralyzed by a belief that no matter what they do, they are not good enough. Self-loathers downplay achievements, direct praise only toward others, and castigate themselves for all shortcomings and failures. In other words, the highs are still considered valleys, and the lows can drive confidence to the depths of hell.
The Alpha understands that anyone who can't be a little self-deprecating is taking lifeâand himselfâtoo seriously. He's humble and hungry, but he gives himself credit where it's due. And he never, ever loses faith in himself.
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ALPHA TRAIT #6
TolerantâBut Not Weak
We probably don't need to tell you this, but you're going to have to put up with some crap in life. Whether it's with friends, loved ones, coworkers, or bosses, part of life is dealing with crap. It's an inevitable fact that no one can avoid. Patience and tolerance are essential to understanding your place in the world, as is being comfortable with opposing opinions and beliefs. Your opinion is not the only one that matters, and your job is not to convince everyone to see the world as you do.
Whether it's in the office or at the bar, you can't be argumentative with everything that goes against your worldview and values. You have to be tolerant of people's mistakes, shortcomings, and personal opinions. Doing otherwise is being narrow-minded and an asshole. And you don't want to be an asshole.
At the same time, there are lines in life. And if people cross themâwhether repeatedly or egregiouslyâyou have to be willing to put your foot down. This doesn't always mean being aggressively confrontational; in many situations, the Alpha displays his tolerance by addressing inappropriate behaviors with helpful solutions. In the workplace, when people are screwing up, punishing them for their mistakes is not always the best way to fix the solution. Addressing the problem and providing an alternative path to help them become better is an approach that works best for everyone.
Other times, a more aggressive approach is needed. Within the working world, you'll inevitably have a boss or superior who will go above and beyond to make your life miserable. You should feel empowered to address these behaviors in a way that improves the situation. In these moments, you need to be aggressive and confident. You need to confront the problem, lay the cards on the table, and leave your adversary with no choice but to see the situation that has been created and the steps that need to be taken. As the Alpha, you should always be thinking about solutions, not problems. And in the most extreme cases, this might mean you need to be able to walk away and find a different job.
Part of being the Alpha is understanding that the toxicity in the world around you can literally make you a less evolved person, making you more unhappy and thereby negatively impacting every related aspect of your life.
Determine your morals and values. Remind yourself that not every disagreement is a point of contention. But remember that being tolerant is not an excuse to sacrifice the core of who you are. The Alpha inspires the world around him to become better, and that can't happen if you're too fearful to voice your opinion and settle for a life where you're always the bitch.
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ALPHA TRAIT #7
DedicatedâBut Not Obsessed
We're all familiar with the image of the workaholic. You know him as the guy who stays late at the office and works himself to the bone. Doesn't matter if it's Monday at eleven
A.M.
or Saturday at two
A.M.
âthe workaholic is a machine designed for one purpose: getting things done.
On one hand, we admire these people. There's something to be said about a great work ethic, hustle, and desire to take on seemingly impossible projects. On the other hand, there's an aspect of the workaholic that we pity. That's because there's a fine line between dedication and obsession, and knowing where to draw that line makes all the difference between whether your hustle and grit are virtuous traits or deleterious characteristics that cause you to lose sight of what's really important in your life.
The difference between dedication and obsession is that dedicated people work themselves toward a point of achievement. The Alpha outlines goals so there is a quantitative or qualitative way of determining success. This is what keeps him humble and hungry but also prevents him from endlessly chasing more work and spiraling into obsessions. The obsessed are those who can't pull themselves away from their desks. They focus infinitely on one thing and one thing only, so much so that everything else important in their life becomes blurred or diluted, or at worst disappears. The obsessed oftentimes possess another dangerous traitâbeing self-loathing.
In order to draw the line, the Alpha understands that being dedicated means approaching goals like a sprint, in bursts of concentrated effort. Obsession is a marathon, a life spent chained to a treadmill chasing a carrot with no hope of ever feeling satisfiedâand that unfulfilled feeling laces the very essence of everything in life.
The French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne once wrote, “Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.” While this is true in the sense that the top 1 percent of 1 percent of all achievements might be unlocked by
only
a single-minded pursuit, madness is the more common consequence of obsession. It leaves you bitter, empty, and alone. Alphas are dedicated to their families, friends, health, and most of all to themselves. They are dedicated to improvement, but they are not tied to a narcissistic view that impairs their ability to create a rich, multifaceted existence.
ACCEPTING YOUR ROLE AS THE HERO
“There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.”
â
ROBERT JORDAN
,
THE GREAT HUNT
ARIA CASINO, LAS VEGAS
T
he reason every guy struggles with fitness
can be explained by Joseph Campbell. Understand that, and the transformation becomes easier.”
The man across from me glanced down at the cards on the table, his eyes lingering just a second too long on the eight of spades, which was the far right in the line. The eight had come on the turn and had been preceded on the flop by the queen of hearts, ten of diamonds, and ace of diamonds. He reached into his stack and tossed some chips in the middle. I wasn't sure how muchâ
some chips
was the best description, since he didn't make a verbal declaration, or even take the time to count out a bet. Just grab and bet. In poker, this is generally either a very strong move or a very weak one; it all depends on the man making it.
I was sitting in the poker room at the Aria Casino, Adam Bornstein on my left. Adam was finally taking a break from questioning me long enough to let me assess my next move. The guy across the table, the one who had made the bet, sat in stony silence as well. I didn't know his name, but I mentally labeled him Trucker Hat, for the very obvious reason that, contrary to all logic, he was still wearing a trucker hat about five years after society had collectively decided that it was no longer okay to do so.
It was 12:47
A.M
. in Vegas, but my body was still on New York time, and I had been playing for a few hours already. I should have been exhausted, but instead felt elated. It was too early for Trucker Hat to be making moves like this.
I glanced briefly at my cards, as though they might have changed in the last minute or so. Didn't matter. Play the man, not the cards. I counted out a pile of chips from my stack, and set it aside. I took a few deep breaths, deep enough for Trucker Hat to see. I stared at the queen, then the ace. I waited a bit longer and then doubled, declaring a raise. Eleven black chips went into the pot.
“You really think that'll work?” Adam resumed his questioning once the chips were down. It was a game within a game.
I glanced at Adam, then at Trucker Hat. “Raising? Yeah, usually does. Makes guys think twice about calling with middle pair.” I ended the speech with a smirk and a wink. Adam wasn't talking about the bet. I knew that.
“What? No,” Adam said. “
Campbell
. Do you think guys will get Campbell? Not everyone's a fucking
Star Wars
geek.”
His point was lost on me. I don't understand people who don't like
Star Wars
.
“Dude,
everyone
gets Campbell. It doesn't matter if they haven't read his stuff. That's the entire point. It's burned into the consciousness of every culture. It's the way we tell stories. The monomyth isn't . . . isn't fucking
invalidated
because you don't know about itâit's the fact that you can understand it without learning it that makes it
more
valid. And valuable. I think they'll get it.”
Trucker Hat was eyeing me. Well, sometimes. His eyes darted back and forth from my face to Adam's to my chips and back to me. He was clearly trying to reconcile the spectacle of muscular guy in an unnecessarily tight T-shirt
*
talking about Campbell. In the mind of most people, meatheads and myths are probably not related.
Adam considered my words. Trucker Hat considered his move. I considered his chips.
Call.
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STARTING FROM SCRATCH
Who the hell is Joseph Campbell? And what happened with the bet?
If you are like most people, after reading that your brain is probably processing one of those two thoughts; possibly both.
Why? It's something called
anterograde memory
. We focus on the last thing we heard and forget about everything else that preceded it. Our memories therefore, are the result of strategic timing of information that is sharedâor not shared. Knowing this, it's easy to understand how most people come to understand the world. It's always about who has the final word. And when it comes to your body and health, the wrong people are repeatedly delivering the final salvo that leads you down a frustrating path. It's the same path you take with every diet and fitness book.
Which is why we arrived at Campbell. It's time to take a new path and an entirely new approach to your life and your body. This is bigger than a fitness book. This is a life overhaul. And Campbell's ability to make it blatantly clear how we subconsciously avoid or fail to recognize the hurdles that prevent us from becoming who we want to be was the perfect structure to help us end your frustration and guide you to a better lifeâto take you from ordinary man to Alpha.
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CHARTING A NEW COURSE: THE HERO'S JOURNEY
Joseph Campbell was an American writer and lecturer who was best known for his discussions of mythologyâparticularly comparative mythology. He examined the myths across cultures, generations, and centuries, and he realized that all great stories converged around analogous concepts. Campbell plotted an outline that covered the universal patterns that appear in myths from the cultures of antiquity like Greece, Sumer, and Babylon; medieval and Renaissance-age folklore from Germany, Spain, and Britain; and even more modern stories in books that were published through the mid-twentieth century. This pattern results in a seventeen-stage storytelling structure known as the monomyth.
Also known as the Hero's Journey, the monomyth was covered in Campbell's definitive work,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
This book became one of the most influential of the twentieth century and introduced the masses to the concept that all great heroes have similar paths.
Taking it a step farther, writers in other disciplines have applied the monomyth to everything from psychological treatment to athletic programsâall with equal success. Campbell's theories can be applied to nearly any concept, and will prove suitable for examination of any great change. The monomyth is universal, and the journey exists in the lives of all menâyou, me, your buddies at the barâand not just the characters in the books you read and the movies you watch.
The problem: we fail to realize that we are the hero and that our life should be a tale worth telling.
This is why we oftentimes don't reach our potentialâbecause we completely avoid the opportunity to take the journey that can improve our lives. This is important for one simple reason: you
need
to believe you can change your life. This is the very foundation of behavioral change psychology and the determining factor of whether the information you receive in this book will actually help you.
People
want
to change and become better, but when they don't believe they can, they end up stuck in the same place: the first stage of the Hero's Journeyâthe Ordinary World.
According to Campbell, the Ordinary World is the boring and mundane existence where the hero lives at the beginning of his journey. It marks the sharpest contrast from the Special World where the hero eventually ends up.
The Ordinary World is Luke's farm in
Star Wars
. It's Dorothy's farm in
The Wizard of Oz
. It's the Joads' farm in
The Grapes of Wrath
.
*
But it's also your desk. Really, it's any farm. Ever. It's your desk. It's your couch. It's your bedroom. It's the office parties you hate going to. It's the food that makes you feel like shit. It's every fitness book you've ever read.
Most people just accept this. They swallow their reality as the only one that's possible. It's normal. It happens. But it doesn't have to be that way.
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THE EVOLUTION OF AVERAGE
If you considerâas we doâthat every great change you make in your life is an adventure, then the starting point for your journey is
your
Ordinary World. It's a world that you know, whether it's tame and sane or chaotic and destructive. However, it's a world you also want to leave. That's why you have this book. If you were happy with where you are, you would not seek change; if on some level you didn't crave that change, you would not be reading these words right now.
But it's good that you areâbecause change is exactly what
Engineering the Alpha
is about.
We want this book to do more for you than just help you get in shape.
Don't get us wrong. We're happy to pack ten pounds of muscle onto your body, drop you to less than 10 percent fat, and make your sex life almost too much to handle. And these changes will happen. We'll teach you why optimizing your hormones is the key to everything, and we'll share the science and real world results that make this an undeniable truth.
But more than anything, we want this book to serve as a blueprint and a guide to creating your own version of the Hero's Journey. Remember, the goal of all of this is to engineer you into the Alpha version of
you
. And in order for that to happen, you must reach a moment of Apotheosisâone of the late stages of the Hero's Journeyâwhich is when you achieve, even if only for a second, the highest level of self-awareness.
Remember, these things don't just apply to mythology; this is an essential psychological process that you need to go through in order to reach your goals, and apotheosis is one of the most important steps in that process. It's the moment when you become who you were meant to be.
Your hormones make these improvements possible, but the biggest hurdle is learning how to navigate the journey and not fall victim to the traps and barriers that sidetrack the ordinary man.
By avoiding those, you'll unlock your truest and highest levels of potential. And when that happens, no dream scenarioâwhether it's for your career, your body, or your personal lifeâwill be untouchable.
But none of this is possible until you realize that you need to pave your own path and stop jumping around from one program to another, taking an ADD approach to changing your life from the inside out. You need to go
big
. Invest in your search for the truth and play out your hand with confidence so that you can see what happens when you make a gamble on the only investment that always pays out: yourself.
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BACK TO THE GAME: ARE YOU ALL IN?
The pot was now at just under three grand. Could be a good haul. But now that Adam had brought me back into the debate, I was focused on Campbell.
“I think,” I began, just as the dealer laid out the next card, “it's relatable if you explain it correctly. It's not just about myths. It's about being a hero, being more than you are. Evolving. It's aboutâ”
“Becoming the Alpha,” Adam finished with a smile. “It's to you, by the way.”
The action was to me, that is. Another card had appeared on the board; Trucker Hat had checked, passing the action.
I watched him, sitting in a state of anticipation and self-satisfaction. It's funny, sometimes, watching people. You learn a lot at a poker table. I glanced down at the final card to have hit the boardâa two of hearts. It didn't change anything.
Shrugging, I pushed my remaining chips toward the center of the table, totaling $6,680. “All in.” Sometimes you have to give them what they want.
Trucker Hat jumped out of his chair and called, pushing his chips in without hesitation. In poker, this is known as snapcalling or instacalling. His chips brought the pot to $10,300ish.
Adam took a deep breath and asked, “So what part of the Hero's Journey are we at right now?”
“This would be the Ordealâthe climax, the big showdown. The lightsaber battle on the Death Star. Stage eight, I believe.”
“I was kidding. Only you could think about the monomyth with 10K on the line,” said Adam with a chuckle.
Trucker Hat turned over his cards to show two eights. “I got a set of eights,” he declared triumphantly. Strong hand.
I looked at Trucker Hat, then at Adam. “Apotheosis.”
Turning over my cards to show a jack and a nine, completing a straight. I had the nuts, or the best possible hand.
*
Trucker Hat was not pleased. Adam was.
“Apotheosis, huh?”
“Yeah. That's stage nine, a moment of enlightenment or inspiration. Now, on to stage ten. Time to put this money to some good use. Let's grab a steak.”
E
NGINEERING THE
A
LPHA
S
UBJECT:
Ian Estabrook
T
HE
O
RDINARY
W
ORLD
At the start of my transformation, I weighed 206 pounds and was a little over 15 percent body fat (measured via calipers). I was one of those guys that looked fit, but really had much to be desired. I wanted more from my body and life, but wasn't sure if I could actually reach the levels of success I imagined.
A
CCEPTING THE
C
ALL
When someone is thinking of finding a mentor or hiring a coach, they usually consider the cost, and then review a list of their success stories, philosophies on training and nutrition, and training certifications. In my search for a coach, I kept all of these qualities in mind, but I was also looking for something more: “How will this person improve my quality of life?” It takes a special flair to make changes that dramatic. I did my research and stumbled upon Roman's blog. I read every blog post, and I knew I had found my coach. John Romaniello fit the bill perfectly and would be the guy to offer something differentânew ideas and results.
A
LPHA
S
TATUS
After the program, my body weight dropped as low as 192 pounds at 8 percent body fat. Once I had “reset” my body, Roman geared my training toward gaining muscle mass. To my amazement, I ended my transformation weighing 206 pounds and still 8 percent body fat. This is the biggest and leanest I have ever been simultaneously, hands down. Despite not being my primary goal, Roman also got me much, much stronger.
It's hard to put into perspective how much Roman has done for me with his program. He freed me from the confines of conventional thinking and broadened my training horizons by encouraging me to not always follow the most worn path. I'll never look at training or eating the same way again, and that's a great thing. Roman's selflessness, dedication, and attention to detail has done more than just change my bodyâit's changed my life.