Everything below is copied and pasted from The MANual or The MANual Part 2: Rebuild The Mind - Ascension

You can get a copy by clicking on the links.

As men, we are at the forefront of leadership in this world. That means we are there making the decisions of how things get done. When it goes right, we’re left alone. When it goes wrong, we get every finger available pointed at us. We’re looked up to so that we can be held as an example, in both good times and bad. It is in both the good times and the bad times that as men we needed to be counted on. How many times have you heard it said that there is no such thing as failure, only new lessons being learned on the path to success? So no matter whether you’re on your knees or standing on top of the mountain we have to keep moving forward. It’s our cross to carry. The burden of manhood. We must be strong, unbroken, virtuous and upstanding.    

We carry the world on our shoulders. This determines the future of not just ourselves, but of our children and thus the world. It’s the butterfly effect. Our small actions in our little corner of the world resonates through society and the world at large. You can write 250 characters in a Twitter post that have the ability to impact millions of lives. Just go ask Elon Musk. Or Julian Assange. Or Cristiano Ronaldo. Maybe you don’t have the same amount of followers they do but the point remains valid. That your standards have to be high for yourself so it can benefit you, and in turn others too. The decisions you make affects a whole generation, so you have to chase wisdom in all you do. The music you hear, the movies you watch, the activities you indulge in, and the people you hang with, affect your future more than you think.

I have lost the woman who raised me to suicide. I battled poor social and emotional skills throughout my school going years, which continued well into my late twenties as I shut out society trying to understand myself. I became a father at 19. I became a step dad to a child with special needs at 29 and have added 3 more to our patchwork family since. I lost over €200,000 in the financial crisis in 2008 and became unemployed in 2012. Between 2015 and 2017 my wife and I suffered two consecutive miscarriages. In 2017 I finished college for the second time and quickly became depressed, leading to suicidal tendencies due a loss of identity and ability to provide for my family. This was later found to be due in part to a medical condition that is now being treated. This is not a sob story. These are the events that shaped me. That made me who I am today, and I am damn proud of that. Battle scars are not something to be ashamed of but to be celebrated. I am still here and for that both my family and I are grateful. Now, I am in charge. I have my shit together. I maintain myself. I watch over myself because as much as my wife does that for me too, it is me my family and friends look to, not the other way around. That’s the purpose of this book. To provide you with the tools, the knowledge and to raise your awareness to the things that I believe can make the difference between life and death for a man.

In this my wife has been crucial. At the bottom of the barrel my wife came to me with tears and told me she didn’t have the strength or ability to help me. Her words to me were ‘You are going to have to do this for yourself, because I can’t.’ She wasn’t telling me I was on my own or didn’t care, she was just being honest about having to deal with the trauma of losing two pregnancies while continuing to raise 3 kids, the oldest with Downs Syndrome and Autism amongst other diagnoses. She had enough on her plate that my despair was more than she could cope with. So I asked myself a few questions and found just one that needed to be answered:

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.”

So I asked myself if I wanted to die and what were the consequences if I did? I had children and a wife. This wasn’t just about me. And in the end, luckily, that was enough. I had a responsibility to my children and having lost the woman who raised me to suicide, I had an experience to draw from of just what life would be like beyond my passing had I gone through with it.

A broken home has lasting mental effects on every member of your family. I had to remember that the love flows from me. As the head of this family, that too is my responsibility. From me, it flows to my wife, and from her to the children. Raising a great family starts with me; starts with you. It starts with our values. Our children listen more to what we do, than what we say. So what were my actions to be?

That’s why on your own, it’s your responsibility to be valuable. People want to become your friend, do business with you, tell other people about you, fall in love with you, and generally listen to you just because of your light. Your light is your value.

The basis of relationships today is value. Everyone is after something.

It's all an exchange.

It's all a subconscious trade by barter.

So to thrive in this world, become valuable, and you'll get whatever you want.

Comparison is why young people are unhappy and I'll explain...

It's not easy to see what your mates are doing and not feel like you're being left behind. But this is wrong because you don't see their struggles and the sacrifices they've made to become what you see. This was me. No one saw my struggles because I kept them to myself. No one knew what I was doing to drag myself forward and beyond the life events that we trying to drown me.

“But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”

Rocky Balboa

The work you have to do is to forget about how far everyone else has gone, and focus on where your strategies are taking you to. This is how you progress.

This is how you remain at peace despite how fast everyone is going.

That’s what this book is.

The pointers.

The strategies.

The advice that I pulled together over the years that have literally kept me alive and always moving forward.

I wish the same for you.

Create a process, and be dedicated to it daily.

And there's no way you won’t win.