Who would’t love a beta male?
Caring, sensitive and so stressed…
What’s not to love in that? Wanna learn a bit more about them?
Please proceed…
It’s been a while since you last saw me posting something non related to wealth right?
Well, to be honest last week’s project about the top 59 entrepreneurship blogs, was a bitch to put together and to promote, so I run out of time doing a thorough research for my next topic.
So, no super business guide this week. Let’s stick to something “lighter”.
Let’s talk about what a beta male is, what are the main characteristics of a true beta male and whether we should avoid them or not (hint: we should always avoid them).
Characteristics of a beta male
In this very compact post, I will walk you through the most basic/dangerous ones, just to make sure you will be alerted when you notice one of them. Remember that all of those traits are not switches ON or OFF. Some people might be 100% followers but 50% value takers and 25% self-disciplined.
That is, not all beta males are “equally” beta males, in the same way, not all alpha males are “equally” alpha males.
So let’s get at them one by one.
Trait #1:Beta males love instant gratification
Best described by the famous “Marshmallow Experiment”, where some kids were given a candy in the promise to receive more of them if they didn’t eat that original candy for a specific amount of time (while the “teacher” was absent). Needless to say that most of the kids very happily ate the candy. After the original experiment, the scientist followed these kids through adulthood only to notice that the kids who didn’t eat that candy tended to succeed more in their lives.
This trait is a core characteristic of a beta male who cannot really wait to enjoy the benefits of an action at a later time. You must have seen this very often in people who take big loans to buy cars, go on vacation or in people who overload their credit cards, making expenses they would not afford otherwise.
My advice is wait until it is time to enjoy it. If you don’t have money to buy this car or these clothes, learn to be patient. Save the money for it and make sure you associate this purchase with a victory or achievement you had at some area, so it is a real reward for your efforts and not just some spoiled present you got for no apparent reason.
See the video that follows for the experiment
Trait #2: Beta males hate to leave their comfort zones
Who doesn’t right? Well…for good or for bad, the place where awesome things happen is outside our comfort zones. The sooner we become aware of this, the better it will be. No great achievement ever came from within our comfort zone (no, lottery doesn’t count as an achievement).
If you want to expand, you really need to leave this comfort zone behind. I made a brief mention to what is the R.A.S and how it makes us take action or stay idle. In today’s environment most of the times our subconscious mechanisms cannot tell between a real or a non existent danger. Our primitive brain translates any effort we need to make into burned calories.
As a consequence we become more lazy and we need tremendous amount of energy in order to get out of our “safe zone” into the unknown territory. Getting outside of this zone might equal death some million years before. But today, most of the times, staying inside your comfort zone means laziness.
Don’t let this overwhelm you. At first you will need to spend a big chunk of willpower to get you moving, once there though, you will make this new area your personal comfort zone. Gratz, you just expanded it.
Trait #3: Beta males fear responsibilities
Have you ever seen when something goes wrong but all of a sudden nobody’s responsible for this? This trait is among the worst and as a matter of fact, a very difficult one to overcome. Beta males not only tend to reject their responsibility on everything (it’s always other peoples fault) but as a consequence of this, they are always the followers of the group.
Very rarely a beta male will take initiative or the responsibility of an action or plan. Leadership is not their strong point, but if we wanna be fair, not having the responsibility might make you sleep tight at night.
Saying what is to be done and being responsible about it, is a premium characteristic only between true leaders. How many times a day you meet people who blame everyone else but them selves for everything? Their mother is responsible for being fat, their father for being assholes, the government for being poor and their girlfriend for leaving them.
It’s getting old already. Stop acting randomly like a headless chicken, think and act strategically. Grow up, be a man, have a plan and be liable to it!
[bctt tweet=”Grow up, be a man, have a plan and be liable to it!”]
Trait #4: Beta males see only the results
Facebook was an overnight success…Didn’t you know? Mark wrote some code for 2 days and all of a sudden, became a billionaire. It’s that easy. Come on. Let’s be serious. I am getting bored of hearing people always focusing on the last meter (not even mile). Facebook, apart from a kick-ass idea, had also an awesome process to reach this idea.
Our friend Mark didn’t become billionaire neither because of luck nor of his cool idea. He is a billionaire because he had a pretty good idea and he worked his ass off to build a process in order to implement this idea. It really is very dumb of some people to believe that just a cool idea is enough.
Want a proof?
I have an billion dollar idea – let’s find the cure for cancer. That drug would worth some serious coin. Anybody know how to do it please?
How’s that for a cool idea?
The hard part is to implement something and do it efficiently, not just to think about it. Whenever you think of an idea, don’t focus on the finish line but also on the way to get there. How is that system going to be built, what resources we are going to need, how much time we need to allocate etc.
Trait #5: Beta males are occupied with people or things
Not their worst characteristic but it sure gets to my nerves. Honestly hearing people talk about other people or a thing they heard somewhere drives me crazy (not an alpha trait to be honest).
That is why evening news are so popular, beta males and females around the globe, not having something better to do (apparently), stare their stupid TV for a plane that crushed 5000 miles away from them and they cry about it.
I know OK, people died on that accident, I get it. Is there something you can do though about it? Even if you could do something (like giving money to their families or something) would that bring back these people? Trust me on this one. People need to occupy their time with something completely unimportant because they don’t value their time enough. They always say: I don’t have time for this or that but they don’t miss such news on the TV, radio or Facebook.
On the other hand successful people, who tend to be alpha males, are occupied with ideas that will help them increase their net worth and/or their free time. They think about building systems that produce money day and night and not who is dating Lady Gaga this month.
I advise you to do the same (not the Lady Gaga one)…
Trait #6: Beta males love to suck value out of others
That is a biggie. That is also the main reason why beta males rarely make big money. When someone’s #1 priority is how to take something, it contradicts 100% with the principle of giving value in exchange for money.
They always ask what they can get, and seldom do they say “I have to give you this”. I have to admit I was a value taker myself some time ago. I cannot say if I have fixed that 100% now but I sure work all the time towards this direction. I try to do it, not because I am a good person but because I know that this is the way to success.
You need to give in order to receive. The more you give the more you receive. Try to give a million dollar value to people and they will be more than willing to give you 1 million dollars in actual money. Even if you don’t get it back in actual coin, at least you will get a ton of positive feelings and some possibly useful allies to cooperate in the future.
Trait #7: Beta males live a negative life
Because of their prior bad decisions and unnecessary risks, beta males always think that life always throws shit at them. They are surrounded with a negativity bubble, that everything in life sucks and somebody (else) should do something about it. They cry and whine about women not loving them but they fail to see that they don’t really give them a good reason to do so.
Who wants to be around a negative person all the time. It’s just so energy consuming. Even the cute little babies, often become unbearable when they start to cry non stop. Sure, bitching about everything is a proven way to build rapport with the 90% of the people out there. Whining resonates inside us and makes us feel comfortable. Within certain limits though. It should be 9 times about “feeling awesome, productive and useful” and 1 time “I feel bad because a calculated risk I took, didn’t work”.
Complaining about a faulty result isn’t bad. It’s pretty human actually. The bad thing is complaining a lot. So quit that story and write a new one. With a lot of work, improvement and feedback, results will start to get better. You just need to enter a positive spiral and stay there for as long as you can. It will work like a domino effect. The more positive feelings you have, the more energy you will have to push forward.
From there, you’ll be able to “automate” this positive state and make it bigger and bigger, with each new victory you score.
Trait #8: Beta males don’t have self discipline
Who would have thought about that?
I mean really, if you cannot make a plan and stick to it, how do you expect to achieve anything in life. After all, this is all for your own well being.
I cannot quit smoking, I can’t follow this diet, I don’t want to work a lot…and the list goes on and on. Like I said before, we are genetically programmed to go after only the easy things. In order to excel though, you will have to go after the difficult and extraordinary things.
Sure, it’s your choice to live on frozen pizzas and sleazy fries that cost 2 bucks for the rest of your life. But if you do, you should be aware that:
- You are reading the wrong type of blog (this ain’t your turf)
- Nobody will remember you for being average
- You will struggle day in and day out to survive a mediocre life
Should you comply with all the above, then please be my guest and quit on everything you start. Take only on the easy stuff. Eat like a pig, work as little as you can and keep every unhealthy habit that makes you feel goooood (temporarily).
Success (like survival) ain’t mandatory. It’s not for everyone. It is for the very few that will put their rationality above their lower level emotions and they will make the right thing, at least most of the times.
I like sugar as well…Do I eat a lot? NO, you know why? Because it is the rational thing to do. Sugar is bad for my body. Why let my emotions take over? If I do, I will lose one more battle in my self discipline field and I hate losing battles.
Trait #9: Beta males are always stressed
When biology talks, bullshit walks. The more stressed someone is the more beta he is. Nature gave this to people in order to be able to tell the good ones from the beta ones apart.
Again it’s the same cycle I mentioned earlier. Most people (over 90%) are naturally born betas. That ain’t such a tragedy though. After all, you can’t choose to be born by Mark Cuban. What you can choose though, is the way you will live your life.
The average beta, grows under stressed environment. That way he becomes stressed as well. The more chronic his stress, the more difficult to overcome. That is the exact opposite of the positive spiral loop I mentioned earlier. The more stressed, the worse the decisions and the actions you make. Bad decisions and actions lead to more stress and so on.
In his excellent book “Games Primates Play“, Dario Maestripiery, mentions that it is relatively easy to find out who the alpha male of the group is, just by measuring the cortisol levels of each individual. Cortisol level, which is a very reliable stress indicator, tells us that the guy with the highest level (no he doesn’t win), is the true beta of the group.
Conclusion
This post isn’t about shooting all the beta males of this planet. Actually beta males have some very useful characteristics as well. Being the “techies” of the tribe, they made all the weaponry and every low level task needed to be done.
They are extremely useful in every society, in such a level, that a society could not operate without them. They are the majority of the population for a good reason. Every machine needs a lot of cogs in order to work but only one brain.
Every successful model in history, whether it was a company, a sports team or even a country, worked this exact way. A leader (usually an alpha male), leading a bunch of beta males (and females). With an average distribution of 1 alpha male for every 9 beta males out there (this is a life experienced estimation, not scientifically proven), you can easily imagine that being around them is pretty easy.
The bad thing about it, is when you don’t want to have a beta mentality but you try to change your beta nature to something better. This is the hard part, because being around so many beta people, makes you think and act as beta as well (on a subconscious level).
What I try to do is, I always try to have an opposite force (an alpha force?), that will help me keep a balance inside my mind. Usually this force is:
- Read books, usually around a healthy wealth mindset and human nature
- Read useful blogs of the same kind, wallstreetplayboys.com is such an example
- Try to be around successful people, who at least have a healthy mindset and an alpha potential
In case you cannot avoid a beta frame interaction, at least try to dedicate as little of your time as possible in order to have the minimum impact on you.
It was not your choice to be born a beta but It will be 100% your choice to die as one.
[bctt tweet=”It was not your choice to be born a beta but It will be 100% your choice to die one.”]
*A side note: At this point, I feel the need to thank Iraklis Kiriakakis and Social Dynamics for helping me wake up from my beta sleep and for helping me follow the long, hard road of self improvement some time ago. I will never forget it.
