F3 Every January a man resolves to change. By December he is right back where he started, one year older. F3’s field manual explains exactly why that happens, and it is not because he lacks willpower.
Why do capable men end up stuck?
F3 has a name for the man this happens to: the Sad Clown. He looks fine from the outside. He is not necessarily overweight, but he is not fit. He is not necessarily alone, but he is lonely, with no real friendships. He is not unemployed, but he has no real purpose or direction. He seems happy, but that is only what he seems, not what he is. He shuffles through his days doing what he thinks the world expects, trying to seem like a man instead of be one. The obvious fix is to just try harder, and F3 says that is exactly where men lose years.
Why doesn’t just trying harder work?
Because the Sad Clown’s efforts are what F3 calls amateur moves. He hits the gym for a week in January. He makes the annual golf trip. He shows up at the dinner table now and then. These bursts of effort never take, and by year’s end he is exactly where he began. F3 is blunt about why: no man can pry loose the death grip he holds on his own comfortable rut. Left to himself, he stays exactly as he is. If effort alone cannot do it, something else has to.
So what actually turns a man around?
Two things, F3 says. First, a disruption, usually another man willing to shake up his settled life and call him to move. Second, a real decision F3 calls turning Pro. The amateur only resolves to look like he is trying. The pro commits to actually change. Instead of trying to seem like a man, he decides to be one. And then he does not lean on a once-a-year burst of motivation. He makes a small commitment he keeps every single day: to get a little stronger, a little more connected, and a little more grounded in what he believes. F3 calls that daily choice the Daily Red Pill. It is not dramatic. It is just today, done again tomorrow, which is the only thing that ever actually sticks.
F3 calls this the Daily Red Pill, the start of getting right in the F3 Nation Q-Source, the field manual for virtuous leadership that F3 is built on. Read the full teaching: f3nation.com/drp. F3 Denver is where men practice it. Find a workout.