Being unhappy with who you are isn’t actually a bad thing so long as you see it in the right way.

Being in this state means that you know you can be better. You know there’s a higher calling, a greater ideal somewhere out in the future that’s pulling you to hunt it down, to become it.

You’ll only start ‘feeling good about yourself’ if you start improving, changing, evolving, growing, bringing up your surroundings along with it.

As such, one of the greatest travesty’s placed on our youth today is telling them that they’re perfect just the way they are.

This robs them of one of life’s greatest joys and gifts; improvement.

The knowledge that you’re getting better feels like nothing else. It feels great. You stand taller, hold your head up higher, and you know that your horizons are brighter today than they were yesterday or last year.

You, I, none of us on this planet are perfect the way we are, what we have that is truly incredible, however, is potential.

We ought to celebrate our potential by working to reach it instead of resting like we’ve achieved something simply by being born.

You’re reading or watching this because you’re not content with who you are.

You know there’s more you can become. However, you have no clue just what you can achieve.

So, how do you change who you are to move closer to this potential?

To become tougher, smarter, more successful, wealthier, happier?

To become truly impressive, the guy who walks into a room and everyone recognizes there’s something special about this guy…

This is why we’re all here…

To become the best we can possibly become. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been lazy your entire life, if you’ve continually fallen short or fallen back on bad habits.

You can change. You can change right now and become far better than even who you dream of becoming.

In the process you’ll be happier, your life will have more meaning, and you’ll be proud of who you present yourself to be to the world.

So, how do you do this?

1. Dream up your archetype.

Who are you trying to be when you do the right thing, when you rise early, work hard, and maintain discipline?

What’s this ideal? How does he look, talk, act? Where does he live, what does he eat, when does he train? Who does he hang out with, how does he think, what has he achieved?

Get detailed. We rarely make our goals and dreams, our future, concrete, when having a clear idea of who we’re meant to be makes it simpler and easier to become.

2. Make a plan/choose the games you want to play.

Life is a series of games. Winning them won’t make you happier, because happiness can’t be dependent on anything. As soon as ‘you’re happy because of something’, your happiness can be taken away if that thing or person is taken away.

That said, you’re here to win, to become the best you can be. Humans need forward motion, and the metrics we judge forward motion by are games we play.

We play the wealth game, success game, marriage game, family game, health game, and so on.

Choose the games you want to win at. Make a plan as to how you win at them, but make the plan a daily one.

What do you do everyday that helps you win these games?

Do you have a morning routine? Work time? Family time? Date night?

Whatever games you want to win, they’re dependent on daily excellence, it doesn’t matter how far ahead into the future these games exist.

3. Kill the past.

Mistakes and regressions will inevitably happen as you try to change and improve. They don’t necessarily have to, but if they do, forgive yourself, drop them as if they never existed, and keep moving forward.

Because our past is the only us we know, we lead ourselves to believe that this is who we truly are.

But the future self, our ideal, our potential, is actually who we are and who we’re meant to be. You are not your past, for good or bad. The future is limitless, why not focus on what can be instead of what has been? 

...Especially if what has been hasn’t been all that impressive or indicative of our potential.

When you make a plan and start moving on that plan, drop the past. Drop all guilt and regret and move forward, always focusing on who you’re becoming, in a sense, killing who you’ve been.

4. Celebrate your victories.

Practice feeling good about the good things. What the hell is the point of getting better if you don’t celebrate your improvement?

I’ve always set milestones that, when reached, are celebrated. Typically I go on a trip, sometimes I’ll buy something I’d never buy under normal circumstances. Regardless, celebrating victories in some small way makes you want to have more victories.

If life is one long struggle after another without any celebrations, it’s just not as fun or successful.

5. Grade yourself twice a day.

Reviewing your life annually isn’t enough, nor quarterly, monthly, or even weekly. You should be grading your day at least twice a day.

Take a microscope to your day and see where you’re falling off or getting off track. 

The more you do this the more you’ll recalibrate and get everything in the right direction in the only period of time that matters, the current moment.

Waiting a year to judge your life or to see where you went wrong or even how you’re improving is a travesty. 

6. Do what you set out to do.

This, essentially, could be numbers 1 through 6. Doing as you planned is the single thing that will break you free from a state that’s mediocre compared to what it can be. 

When you think about success as simply intention or idea followed by action, then result, recalibration, and more action, you see that becoming who you can be is simply listening to what that ideal is telling you to do.

It’s the internal voice that says, “don’t eat that doughnut”, or “do the work and don’t watch TV.”

We all have that voice that tells us what to do and what not to do, most of us listen to the other voice, the one that excuses laziness, sin, sloth, and mediocrity by making excuses or giving reasons for such behavior.

Steps 1 and 2 are about creating a vision, a plan. All you have to do is do the things that bring you closer to that dream and avoid anything that pushes you further away from it.

Why not?

The options we have in life are far more limitless than we realize. We think we’re destined to be who we’ve been or who our parents were or this or that, but it’s not true.

Success by any metric is also dependent on the individual. 

Great men cannot be held back from achieving greatness. Eventually they get it. 

Great men are simply men who do as they planned, both in a daily sense and a broader sense.

Be the guy you can be. Change. Evolve. Win the games you choose to play instead of doing things that bring you shame. Shut off the TV, stop watching porn, stop sleeping in and missing workouts. Man up. Move forward.