Part of being a man is taking care of yourself. That seems obvious but, it might have much further reaching implications than just doing your own laundry. Why do you have to take care of yourself? What does it mean you have to take care of yourself? What do you have to do? How can you do it? That’s what we’re here to find out.
This post is one from a series of posts about the Masculine Mindset. If you’re interested, here are some other posts from this series.
Table of Contents
Why?
If you haven’t read; “Nobody cares about you” that make this article a bit clearer. That article is the stick while this one is more of a carrot.
The title of that article alone should be enough explanation of why you have to take care of yourself.
1. No one else is going to do it
The reason why you have to take care of yourself is that nobody else is going to do it. Nobody is going to give you the life you want for free. Nobody can give you happiness.
You have to do it yourself and that’s hard work. There are also other things nobody is forced to do for you. More about those things below.
2. Give direction to your life
If you take care of yourself, you can give direction to your life. Many people just float along in a river that takes them wherever it takes them. If you are like that, sometimes you’ll crash into a rock. Sometimes you might go over a waterfall. And sometimes you’ll get into calmer waters.
But how about you take a paddle and start rowing in a direction you prefer. While you might not be able to paddle upstream, maybe you will be able to avoid the rocks and waterfalls.
3. Can’t help others before you help yourself
Now I’m not trying to argue that you only care about yourself. Helping other people is an honorable thing to do. If you’re not in a good position however, it’s very difficult to be helping others.
Once you take care of yourself and get your life in order in many facets, it becomes much easier to help other people AND you can help them in different ways.
In what way?
So how do you have to take care of yourself? There are many different ways in which you should be able to take care of yourself.
Basic
The first things are pretty obvious. They are very basic life skills you need to survive. Even if you don’t always have to do these things, you should know HOW to do them. These are simple and easy to learn the basics of.
- Cleaning
- Cooking
- Laundry
- Fixing basic things around the house
- Starting a BBQ
- Make money
- Paying bills on time
Advanced
Then there are some more advanced things you should be able to do.
Financial
- Make a budget
- Do your taxes
- Be prepared for the future
Planning
- Making a plan for your life
- Setting goals
- Taking action on those goals
Social
- Making friends
- Keeping friends
- Having healthy relationships
Physical
- Staying in good shape
- Staying healthy
- Being able to defend yourself and your loved ones
Of course for some people these things are easier than for others. These are things you can learn to some degree however. That’s what makes them skills. Some of these skills are pretty easy to learn the basics of. Some of these skills need a lot of hard work.
Without some of these skills, you will run into situations where you are dependent on other people for their help. This is something you want to minimize since you cannot depend on other people’s actions.
How?
Ok, you realize you might have to change some things in your mindset. How can you go about doing this?
1. Realize you have to
This is the mindset part. You have to change your mindset to where you know you have to take care of yourself. You can’t expect other people to do things for you, take care of you and always protect you.
If you get dropped alone in a random place, do you know how to survive? And I don’t just mean the middle of the jungle. What if you move to a new city and you have nobody around you to do things for you. How will you take care of yourself?
Those are the basic things. Then the more advanced things are skills you need whether you’ve got people around you or not.
2. Don’t expect anything
I’ll refer again to; nobody cares about you. Once you realize that nobody (has to) care about you, you’ll realize you must be capable of caring for yourself.
You can’t make other people do things they don’t want to. They don’t have to care about you. It’s nice if you have people that do care about you but, you can’t rely on their goodness. When you start expecting acts of care from people around you, you start feeling entitled to them. At some point this will probably make the other people around you feel used.
If you don’t expect anything from people, it makes every act of care that goes your way extra special. It’s like a little bonus for your life.
3. Goals
Take control of your life and set some goals. The goals are where you want to go. It’s obviously important to know where to go. If you don’t know, you can start moving but you ultimately don’t know if you’re going in the right direction.
If you’ve set big goals, they might seem insurmountable. It’s a good idea to split them up in smaller goals. Bite-sized goals you feel confident in being able to reach.
Once you have done this, you can think about which skills you need to learn/improve to help you reach those goals.
4. Action
Once you have set your goals, it’s time to start moving. This is where the skills and the mindset come in. To reach the goals you’ve set, you will need the mindset that you have to do it yourself. That you have to work for it, if you want to reach where you want to go.
You also might want to improve your skillset. They will support you in reaching your goals. Which skills you need obviously depend on where you want to go.
What if I can’t?
Some people are not able to take care of themselves in every way. They are dependent on others for at least some things in their life. They are just physically or mentally unable to do some things. What can you do then?
What CAN you do?
First think about the things you CAN do. There are likely some things you are capable of. Try to become very good at those things.
You might feel like you’re a burden on someone else if you have to rely on them. Why don’t you do what you can for them? If you become very good at something useful, they will be happy with your help.
That’s not to say helping others should always be a straight exchange. But you will probably feel better about yourself if you can do something back.
Hi there. I’m BetterDaily. I’m a man in his early thirties that likes to travel, ride motorcycles, work out and write. Usually I write about men, things related to masculinity and things men like. Teacher by day, blogger by night.
