Masculinity

They’re simple, but they consistently bear fruit. In this episode, three straightforward ways to be cultivate higher status—that do NOT involve buying a Bugatti Bolide—that you could start on the second you finish this podcast.

Transcript

All right, gentlemen. Welcome back.

Today we’re going to be talking about how to increase your status without having to make more money. Is that important? Sure. Are there millions of videos on YouTube and millions of podcasts that are out there talking about that? Absolutely. I’m not gonna be talking about that. I’m gonna talk specifically about what else can you do to elevate your status. And these are simple things that you can begin to execute on. And they’re things that I have found pay dividends in your life, specifically within dating, but also just in any sort of social situation: at work, on your resume, getting a job, interacting with friends, and just in terms of being able to have more social skills.

Let’s just get started. Let’s just dive into it. The first thing is to get into better shape. Now, I know this might sound basic, and I can already hear the body positivity commentary coming at me. But very simply, we all know that it’s hard for a man to get into really good shape, right? If you’re a dude and you’ve ever tried to have a six pack, it’s hard. I’ve struggled with that for a long time. It’s a very challenging thing. And so we know that it takes effort, it takes grit, takes determination, takes discipline in order to just be in decent shape. I’m not even talking about Olympic athlete -evel shape, or the top 1%. I’m just talking about taking care of your body, seeing what it’s capable of, prioritizing healthy eating, and going to the gym. If you do that and it’s something that’s a priority for you, automatically, for women specifically, it is going to elevate your status in their eyes because they are going to consciously or unconsciously, come to know and realize that you are putting effort into something that a lot of other men aren’t. We’ve all seen the commentary about dad bods and how it’s okay, and yada, yada. I’m not gonna get into that. I’m not gonna have a debate about that.

But just prioritizing that is going to elevate your status. People will look at you differently. Because we all know that it’s very easy to go stuff your face with fast food on a daily basis, and to eat all the junk food, and to eat all the stuff that you don’t want; and it’s much harder, it is much more challenging to be somebody who is disciplined, who is dedicated to their body, to how they feel, to how they treat themselves in specifics. So that’s number one.

The second one is very interesting one, which is improve your male relationships. Improve your male relationships. So women will often judge a man right after this sort of initial first couple dates – women will often judge a man based on the man and the men he surrounds himself with. So if you are the guy who’s surrounded by other men who aren’t doing interesting things, if you are somewhat successful and the guys that you are surrounded by are not successful at all, and they’re still hanging out in the parents’ basement, playing video games, 8 to 10 hours a day, not making any money, and they’re in their early thirties – not to judge anybody that might be watching this that is living that life, it’s not to hate at you – but women are going to judge you based on some of the men that you’re surrounded by. And guess what? Men do the same thing. When you meet a new man that you’re trying to build a relationship or build some sort of friendship with, and he starts to meet some of your friends, if all of your friends don’t have anything going for them, it’s going to feel a little bit awkward and a little bit strange. And so just by simply taking the effort to build some better male friendships, and to improve the male friendships that you have, it’s going to send a signal specifically to women that you have done something challenging. Because again, we all know that it’s difficult, a little bit more difficult for men to make and maintain really good, healthy male relationships.

So if you’re surrounded by good men – I’m surrounded by really good men. Solid guys who I have respect for, who have done some incredible things. Things that I haven’t accomplished, things that inspire me, things that I aspire to. Men that push me and challenge me. That makes me a better man. We’ve all heard the saying ‘iron sharpens iron,’ but it’s not just about that. It is about the external perception. If you are surrounded by exceptional men doing exceptional things, that is going to naturally increase your status amongst other men and in the eyes of women.

Next is probably something that maybe is a little obvious, but it’s more challenging than we give credit to, which is develop a more robust and deeper level of emotional intelligence.

So who loves emotionally intelligent men? Women do, right? Women are seeking. I get messages all the time on Instagram: “can you create a dating app with the men that follow you? Can you create a dating or matchmaking service that I can date the men that work with you?”

Women love emotionally intelligent men, and I already know I’m gonna get a ton of messages from women that tune into this podcast and into this show saying, “yes, please create that dating app!” And maybe I should. Let me know if you think I should.

But women love emotionally intelligent men, right?

One of the things that research has shown over and over again of what women are looking for in a relationship is not just your ability to acquire or procure resources now or in the future, but your ability to be compassionate and kind. This is a very important thing because a lot of women have heard stories, have witnessed firsthand other women – maybe their mom, maybe their sister, or maybe them – being mistreated by men. Maybe a father, maybe a brother, maybe a boyfriend, maybe a colleague or a coworker. So most women are very sensitive and very aware of whether or not you have some kind of emotional intelligence. And when I say emotional intelligence, I mean the capacity to understand what is happening in you emotionally and the ability to communicate what is happening in you emotionally, while being able to sort and sift through it. And that might mean that you have, again, this is where that network of men comes into play, right? Having other people in your life that you can rely on, that you can talk through some of the challenges in your life with, that you trust enough to share some of the details of the challenges and the obstacles that you’re facing.

When you have that robust network and social community of men, it’s naturally going to improve your emotional intelligence, especially if those men are men who are actively working on themselves in some way, shape, or form. And when I say working on themselves, I don’t mean that they’re obsessed with personal growth, or self-help, or self-development. I mean men that are legitimately working on themselves to be better men: to be a better father, to be a better husband, to be a better provider or contributor to his family, or his society, or his community. A man that is actually standing for his values. So if you are somebody who’s working on your own level of emotional intelligence, that again levels up your status. Not just with women though, this will level up your status within a company, within a corporation that you might be working with. If you are an entrepreneur, that is going to elevate your status as an entrepreneur because you are going to be able to speak to people where they’re at if they are emotional, or sometimes dealing with certain business situations, things do get emotional. And so you’ll be able to navigate and handle situations that other people might not be able to, and that is unequivocally going to give you a leg up on the competition and on the market.

Now, the last thing that I’m going to say, I think this one gets underestimated and under-indexed, undervalued more than anything else that I’ve said on this list; and maybe I should have prefaced that so that people stayed through to see the last one.

But the last one is super simple, which is do interesting shit. Do interesting shit. Just follow things that you are passionate about. We all know from experience, from being at a party where you’re talking to somebody – and they just don’t do anything. They don’t live an interesting life. They aren’t interested in exploring the world, or exploring books, or exploring technology, or going on adventures, or creating memories.

Their life consists of working nine to five and watching Netflix, and that’s the extent of their life. You try and have a conversation with them and you’re like, “I don’t even know what to talk to you about.” Like we’ve exhausted in this 5 to 10 minutes every tv series that we’ve watched in common, and now I don’t really know what to talk to you about because you aren’t doing anything with your life. And again, this isn’t to shame or judge people. It is simply to say that if you want to elevate your status amongst people, go and do interesting things. This is why I have pursued a number of different careers in my past.

I wanted to do things that were interesting to me. I went and got a degree in music. I sang classical music. I traveled. I performed in China, in the Czech Republic, in Italy and Germany, in France, and in North America. I raced motorcycles. I street-raced motorcycles. I stunted motorcycles. I learned German. I learned Italian.

I have done interesting things and all of those things have led to me being able to have a tremendous amount of stories. I worked construction in gravel pits and built sidewalks. The things that I have done have made it so that in social situations I can talk to almost anybody. I can talk to individuals that are interested in CrossFit or working construction, or are in finance. I have an arsenal that is my life, that is the experience that I have lived in my life that give me the capacity to talk to almost anybody.

That is so invaluable, and I gotta say, I didn’t go do those interesting things so that I could tell other people about them. I did them because that lit me up. That became a path for me to move closer towards a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. It gave me joy. It was hard. It was confronting a lot of the times. But doing those interesting things, whether it was exploring a job or adventuring out into the world, backpacking into nature solo by myself for six or seven days with just food and water, with no cell phone – those types of things are things that allowed me to push an edge, to confront something within me. To allow me to meet a part of myself that I otherwise wouldn’t have met.

And those things make people interesting, right? When you meet somebody that’s done something that you’ve never done or you’ve never thought about, there’s an automatic interest that happens because you’re like:

“Oh, why did you go do that?”

“You raced professional race cars, right? Like you raced Porsches? You’ve driven around the Nuremberg Ring? Like that’s pretty freaking cool. Tell me about that.”

“Oh, you packed through Japan for five weeks on your own or with a buddy? Cool. Tell me about that.”

So when you live an interesting life, it elevates your status with people because again, those things are hard, right? Going and doing interesting things on a consistent basis is not easy. It is very easy to live an overly-domesticated life where you go and do nothing. Where you just repeat the pattern day after day, and you get caught in this very banal way of living where you go to work, and after work you go to the grocery store, and you come home and you make a meal and you watch something on tv, and then you go to bed.

That is easy. But to be somebody who is pursuing martial arts or Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the age of 60, or to be a 20-year old who’s trying to create some new form of robotics, or who’s interested in creating a theory of everything, or who’s traveling the world and trying to solve problems in third world countries…

That’s fascinating.

And so all of those things will create intrigue. And when you create intrigue within the other people that are talking to you, whether it’s a colleague, or a woman that you’re wanting to get their phone number, or it’s just somebody that you’re meeting at a party. When you create intrigue, it signals status. It’s an unintentional, unconscious signal that you have status, because intrigue is connected to status because there’s something mysterious there. And oftentimes that intrigue is there because that person has a part of them that they see in you. That they – it’s like: “oh, you’re exploring something that I’m interested in, that I’ve always wanted to go do, but I haven’t.”

Those are the things that I’ve got for you. I’m curious about what you have learned that elevate status, either within relationships, with women, or just in general, outside of simply just making more money. So fire me off a DM on Instagram at ManTalks. And as always, make sure to Man It Forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. Subscribe to wherever you are listening. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

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