Fight, Fuck and Be A Monk #1

Man To Man: You Were Built For This. So Why Isn't It Working?

To have a fulfilling life is like climbing staircases, but it’s easy to mess it up.

Tennis legend Andre Agassi reached the pinnacle of his profession. When he got there this is what he said:

“I did it — I’m the number one tennis player on earth, and yet I feel empty.”

What went wrong?

You’re built for this climb, but it’s easy to misunderstand two fundamental drivers. This either slows you down, stops you, or robs you of lasting satisfaction.

Your desire is to thrive and enjoy status. That means you want to achieve things, build, create, go on adventures, make money, have sex, build your tribe and connect. But, if you want to do that at speed and with fulfilment and happiness, you’ll need to solve two problems along the way: how and why, because they’ve both been corrupted.

The first is how you ascend with skill and pace in a way that is deeply rewarding. It requires many things, but across each of these goals is one common ingredient — a particular type of power, and it’s one most men aren’t clear about. The second is the why, and it’s also a problem to be solved.

As a man you’ve been hit by a perfect storm of mixed messaging, a lack of role models and loss of rites of passage. Absent this clear signage it’s easy to reach for achievement to find a place in the world, to find your meaning and status as a man. If that’s your ‘why’, it’s flawed. A tree grows taller not to prove itself to the forest, but because growth is its nature.

Status was never meant to be something you chase — it was always a reflection of your inner state. Lose your state and your status collapses.

You should want to act and be strong because it’s your pleasure to do so — not because you need to prove something. You only need to prove what’s in question.

In folklore, Iron John finds castles in faraway lands, bangs on the door and asks whether there are any dangerous battles that need fighting. That’s the spirit of men at their best — enjoying testing their state, not proving their worth. Iron John remains a vital part of your nature. You’re born to be powerful, but that power needs to be built, tested and guided. As men, that’s our fight.

But who shows you the way today?

The battlefield has changed. It’s moved to the boardroom, the bar and the bedroom. The currency is money and sex. Money is the proof. Do you have the power to make the sales call, to run the meeting, to negotiate success? It’s your scorecard. Sex is also proof. Do you have the nerve to ask her out? Are you compelling enough to catch the eye of the one that lights you up? Are you desirable? Are you trusted?

And let’s be honest — you know the feeling, we all do. Maybe it’s that moment when you want to make a call, or say what needs to be said and something stops you. Perhaps it’s the second-guessing, or the performance anxiety you want to ignore? The quiet shame of letting yourself off the hook and watching the moment pass. That’s not a character flaw, it’s a matter of male power and it’s a problem that can be solved.

These are the staircases you need to climb, not to prove yourself, but to test your state. But nobody teaches you about this power you need, its structure, its dance, what builds it, and what steals it.

The Missing Ingredient

So, what is male power?

It’s an energy. An expansive inner thrust that lights you up and drives you forward. It’s spontaneous. It’s the quality that allows you to own a room, to hold a difficult conversation, and step onto the battlefield of life. It’s the opposite of weakness, which is contracting, fearful, and lifeless.

Inevitably, along the way, you mess up or go backwards. We all do. You can spend decades climbing only to slip and come crashing down. It can take just one moment of madness, like WeWork’s Adam Neumann, who blew up one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs of 2019. Tiger Woods. Sam Bankman-Fried. The list goes on.

You may blame yourself, or others, or factors beyond your control. The key is to be intellectually honest and analyse why you failed to climb the stairs of your life — or fell back down. But weakness makes us stupid and dishonest. Reclaim your power and you reclaim your clarity, and you’ll usually discover a pivotal moment where weakness crept in. That’s the signpost of where you need to go to work, but it operates like a thief in the night and can be hard to spot.

Of course the anatomy of failure is nuanced, but it’s always fuelled by your psychological structure, which drives how you see and act in the world, and your inner power is a reflection of this.

This then is the external staircase that most men focus on in their desire to win, but there’s a parallel ascent, another type of staircase, an internal one and the prize is even greater. At the base of this, life feels dulled, isolated and numb; at the top, it is flowing, connected and intuitive. That’s the prize for those who invest in the climb. Let’s call this your inner ascent.

This is the journey of the monk, the quest to open your heart, raise the level of your awareness, and ultimately to know your true nature. And he walks hand in hand with the warrior.

For this climb you must know yourself and penetrate the bullet-proof vest of the stories you tell about yourself and believe are you. This is no passive journey. You have to explore and explode the myths and ghosts that lie within you that frighten and limit you, which takes us back to sex and money.

Here, sex and money become the currency of change. Why? Because they come fully loaded with guilt and shame, which creates inner conflict that robs you of your power. Think of a river — it has a natural course and a natural power. Dam it and you introduce friction that erodes its essence. Flow is its nature. It’s the same for you. Clear the blockages and you build power and climb the staircases faster and with a smile.

It’s a battle, a fight, that requires male power. That’s why, to be effective, monks cannot be passive.

But here’s the thing. The fruits of the monk’s work don’t just propel you up your inner staircase, they give you rocket fuel on the outer one as well. People notice a different you.

Life responds badly to weakness, it costs you the sale, it makes you invisible at work, it kills passion in relationships, it leaves your date still looking.

Male power does the opposite.

So how do you build this empowered state and keep it on track when the pressure builds? For this you need a combination of clarity, process and practice. It’s a combination of the modern day Iron John and the contemporary monk. Inner and outer work.

The Dashboard

Clarity starts with awareness — observing at any given moment how you feel and knowing what you have to work with. This allows you to build a dashboard, a moment by moment gauge of when you’re at your best, when you have the space to meet the situation according to its needs, and when you’re in the right place to lead, seduce, sell, or fight. It’s measurable, testable, and puts you in control.

But here’s what most men miss. Power doesn’t exist in isolation — it shifts according to the room and who’s in it. The General commands his troops but if he falls sick, the power shifts to his surgeon. The judge rules until the appeal court sits. The shopper has the dominant hand until the deadline looms. These dynamics are everywhere — sometimes we see them, mostly we don’t. If you can read this dance, keep your power and treat it as a game rather than a threat — you’ll control the agenda and drive attention. And that changes everything.

To get there at your top speed, you’ll need three things: to understand what gives you power and what steals it, to learn how to navigate with power - power shouldn’t shoot from the hip, it needs a radar to guide it. And finally, how to apply it most effectively to build the life you want while feeling deeply alive.

And you want these set out in clear actionable steps.

It can be easy to dismiss these as subtle forces that don’t matter enough to take action. But consider the footballer who changes the trajectory of his shot by just two degrees — and scores the goal that wins the World Cup. The margins are small. The difference is everything. The ripples are everywhere.

In my next piece, I’m going to show you exactly why male power is worth building — and why developing a strong, stable, internal state is the most important thing you can do as a man. One that holds under pressure. One that doesn’t crack when relationships test you, when money is tight, or when the stakes are high. That’s the foundation everything else is built on. That’s what we’re going to build.

Two degrees. That’s all it takes.

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PS The title Fight Fuck And Be A Monk is an homage to French philosopher Alain Forget. His ideas permeate the principles discussed here.