Friedrich Nietzsche Lessons On Building Self-Worth

We live in the age of hollow men. Men who are struggling to feel a deep sense of value and worth. Men who are caught doom scrolling through social media, chronically comparing themselves to other people and apologizing for even existing, trying to build a sense of self worth and value from external validation, from, from likes online, from approval from women and other people. You see, if you grow up in a culture which many of you have, that constantly tells you that you're not needed or wanted, you begin to question whether your value as a man is relevant or whether you should even bother doing the hard work to become a man who is valuable to the culture that that is actively rejecting you. Now maybe that doesn't really matter to you, but maybe you grew up in an environment like many of us have, where you were told that there's something wrong with you, that nothing you would ever do would be good enough, that you'd never amount to anything, that you were dumb or stupid or no matter what you did, you'd bring home a 95% and all you would hear is, where's the other 5%? Nothing was ever good enough. Well, Nietzsche, the great philosopher of fire, believed that your worth, that real worth as a man doesn't come from being liked, from necessarily being safe or being accepted. It comes from becoming worthy to yourself, worthy of yourself. Nietzsche actually said, what is great in man is, is that he is a bridge and not a goal. What is great in man is he is a bridge and not a goal. In other words, your value as a man isn't something that you have, it is something that you build. It is something that you construct through struggle, through pain, through becoming. Now it took me a long time to realize this because I grew up in that environment hearing those same messages. You will never amount to anything. You're always going to be a screw up. And I grew up believing that. And what did I do? I became a man who screwed up a lot, messed up a lot. And I did those things because inside of myself I didn't have a deep connection to any type of worth or value. So if you're wanting to build value, if you're wanting to build self worth inside of yourself as a man, then let's begin and let's follow some of the steps that Friedrich Nietzsche would have said. You as a man need to take in order to develop self worth. So step number one, become who you are. Nietzsche's central principle was simple. Become who you are, not who your parents wanted you to be, the doctor or the lawyer, not who society is telling you to be the safe man that is overly apologetic for being male, not who your trauma has forced you to become. Your worth as a man is not found in comfort. It's not found in compliance. It's found in a principle that Nietzsche talked about, which was self overcoming. Nietzsche called it the path to the Ubermensch, the higher man. Not a superhero all. Although I did love Superman growing up. But someone who crafts himself, someone who creates himself despite the obstacles, despite the pain, despite the hurdles, despite the social commentary and pressures from family, he said, no one can build the bridge on which you must cross the river of life. No one but yourself. Every time you face something that scares you, that frightens you, a breakup, a failure, having to ask for something at work, a setback in a project, and you don't retreat, you are actively building that bridge. You're proving to yourself, I can bear it. I can bear it. I can grow through this challenge, this hurdle. And that is a huge element of developing self worth. Not thinking that you're enough, but becoming enough through the act of facing a challenge, of continuing to move forward in the face of the fear. And this is something that I have started to teach my four and a half year old son, Something that I wish somebody had told me when I was growing up, which is do it scared. Do it scared. I say this to him all the time. He says, dad, I'm scared to climb this, you know, playground. I'm like, great, do it scared. I'll do it with you, dad. I'm scared to put the skates on and go out on the ice by myself. Great, let's do it scared. This is the motto that we as men have forgotten to pass down to the generations after us. Step number two, or part number two, is the forge of suffering. The forge of suffering. Nietzsche didn't want men to be free from suffering. And in our modern culture, there's this notion that your aim or your goal, that our societal goal is one of trying to create a utopian culture or society that is completely devoid of suffering. But Nietzsche realized that suffering is actually a fundamental element when it comes to creating self worth. He wanted to teach you and me as a man how to use suffering, what to do with the material of our pain. He said, he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. When you as a man have a mission to something worth bleeding for, something worth pressing forward for, pain doesn't become an obstacle. It doesn't become a reason to collapse. It becomes something that is educating you. It's not something that you even need to seek. It's not something that you need to create more of. Pain is inherent part of life. And when we avoid suffering, we create more suffering. When you avoid suffering, when you avoid the hard conversation with your girlfriend or your wife, when you avoid the hard decision in your business or in your career, you create more suffering. And most men today are depressed in many ways. Not because life is too hard, while for some that might be the case, but because life is actually too comfortable. And maybe you're one of these men. You are actively avoiding the pain and the challenge of your life. You are running from it. You're pretending to be a victim from it. And because of that, you have no real direction, no test, no purpose. Because what you are seeking is comfort. Without a why, every how feels unbearable. But when you find a reason to push forward, and by the way, I wrote this in my book, your pain can be your purpose for a period of time. If you are lacking a why, let your pain be the why for a period of time. Now, what does that mean? It means going into your pain, understanding it, not avoiding it. Beginning to understand the origins of why it exists, how it is forming your life, beginning to integrate some of the things that you have rejected about yourself. Maybe your anger, maybe a sense of compassion or, or ease or grace or love As a result of your pain. Pain becomes meaning and meaning becomes worth. Pain becomes meaning and meaning becomes worth. This is what people have talked about in alchemy for thousands of years. Every scar you earn becomes a receipt for who you are becoming.

Part number three is his notion of will to power. Nietzsche's concept of the will to power wasn't about control over other people. It was the drive to expand. The drive to expand, to rise, to create values when none were given. And for many of you that are out there, one of the major challenges that you experience is the vacancy and the void of any real masculine traits or role models, any real examples or direction of what it could look like for you to be a mature man, a man that has a deep sense of self worth and isn't completely overrun by his pain, by his suffering. And because of this, most men in today's culture are outsourcing their values. And you might be one of these men. You have outsourced not just your values, but like me, you outsourced a deep sense of validation, seeking from other people. Acceptance, love, praise, recognition, validation. And when we do that, what we ask ourselves is, what do women want? What does society want from us? What do my friends want? What you do? What will society allow for me to do, or how I should act or behave? What does success look like for other people? Nietzsche would probably laugh at this. He'd say, stop asking for permission to just exist. Stop asking for permission to develop your own sense of worth and value, and stop asking for other people to reinforce that you have value. Create your own standard, set your own measure, be the architect of your direction, of your values, of your hierarchy. Nietzsche said, the individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. It's this notion that we oftentimes want to collapse under the pressure of society. Friend groups, family systems constantly imposing their will onto us. How we should be, how we should behave, what decision you should make, how you should live your life. And if you want to feel worthy, part of what you have to do is you have to stop trying to fit in. You have to be willing to disappoint another. You have to be willing to be disliked by people that are maybe in your life right now. You have to be willing to stand alone long enough to hear your own voice again. Because self worth isn't built through external acceptance. It's built through the cultivation of internal authenticity. And this is something that I know very well. When I started man talks, I was terrified that I was going to get ostracized, that people were going to be disappointed, that people wouldn't understand me. And guess what? All of that happened. All of that happened. I faced ridicule, I faced doubt and judgment. I had people tell me that this was never going to work. I had people that I really respected in business that said, don't do this. You're never going to make a living from it. I had friends who didn't understand what I was doing. I had family members that had judgment around what I started to put out. But this was my true path. And it was me stepping into my own sense of self worth. Now, the last piece I want to talk about are the enemies of self worth. The enemies of self worth. Nietzsche warned about the great poison of men, which was resentment. And it's what he called resentment. It's the sickness of comparing, of envying, of moralizing, of blaming. That's what happens when you can't rise up or you collapse under the belief that you can do anything for yourself. And so you start to compare yourself to everyone else around you. And I see so many men doing this. They do this with their finances, their bodies, the women that they're with. And what I see a lot of men doing is comparing their personal pain to the pain of others in a way that erodes and disrespects their own pain. A lot of you guys, what you do is you don't deal with your own stuff because what you say is, well, I don't have it as bad as Ted, you know, he was really abused. What I went through, that's no big deal. And so you disconnect from, from the truth of the pain that you've been carrying so that you never have to deal with it. Nietzsche said, nothing burns more deeply than the envy of those who suffer. And every time you build your identity around outrage, around resentment against women, against the government, against the world, against your past, against your father, you lose your power, you lose your potency. Resentment erodes a sense of self connection because resentment is dependency in disguise. Resentment is dependency in disguise. You are letting the people that you hate define your worth. You're trying to get a sense of self in an oppositional, confrontational way. The only way I can know myself and possibly have a glimmer of my own value is in contrast to the people I despise or the people I have resentment towards. This is what Nietzsche would have called a slave morality, a slave mentality. Living to be good, to be approved of, to be non threatening while resenting the people that you feel harmed by or hurt by, or jealous of or or envious of. That's how society domesticates you as a man, through praise, through compliance, through punishing, any type of strength. But Nietzsche's noble man didn't ask, am I good? Am I okay? He didn't ask other people, do you validate me? Am I okay in your eyes? He simply asked, am I becoming stronger? Am I creating more vitality and more life? Am I someone that is becoming someone I respect? Do I admire and appreciate myself? Self worth dies in comfort, it dies in conformity. It dies in self pity. Self worth dies when we hold hatred and hostility towards others as a means of trying to build up our own sense of self. But it is born again in risk, it is born again in honesty. And it is born again when you prioritize connecting to a deeper level and quality of voice, of truth and authenticity. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is this notion of becoming. How do you as a man build fully self worth truly? Well, Nietzsche's answer, honestly, I don't think today would have been traditional therapy and it probably wouldn't have been some notion of self love. What he probably would have talked about if he was on this conversation right now is creation the act of forging yourself into something larger than you are now, the act of constructing and creating yourself into something higher, into something deeper, into something wider and broader than you currently are now, through struggle, through solitude, through fire, through. And so many men that I work with, they are spending their life force and energy and cognitive bandwidth desperately trying to avoid the fire, the downfall, the bottoming out of their life, desperately trying to avoid the struggle and the solitude. And I'm not advocating for you to isolate yourself or run away from all your problems. What I'm advocating for you to do is, is turn towards the struggle in your life and see that it has value. Turn towards the solitude that you're avoiding because you don't want to be with yourself, because you don't want to have to face maybe the self loathing and the anger and the hostility that is present inside of you. Self worth isn't something that you find looking in the mirror through positive affirmations. It's something that you earn through a type of battle. It's the discipline of your work. It's the integrity of your word. Stop lying, start telling the truth. And it's the courage to keep moving forward when everything inside of you wants to quit. Build the bridge. Take the next step. Become hard. Nietzsche wrote, not cold, not cruel, but resilient. And we need more resilient men. The world needs you to be a more resilient man. The world will break under the weight of soft men who are disconnected from self worth, who are self loathing, who are chronically spinning out and seeking other people's validation. And again I say to you, I am not saying any of this to shame you. I was this man man. I was the epitome of this man. I hated myself, I hated who I was. I had zero level of self worth, self value, self compassion. And I had very little resiliency and very little willingness to face and confront the hardship and the struggles in my life. I was the chronic victim to them, the self pity wreaked on me. So Nietzsche said, the secret of life is to live dangerously, to build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius, to live dangerously, to build your cities on the side of volcanic mountains. And that's really what self worth is. It's to stand near the fire, to face the chaos in your life, to create meaning out of the conflict and the challenge that you as a man are facing right now. You don't have to go and seek more of it. Maybe some of you need to put yourself in situations where you're forced you know, you're getting up at 6am, you're going to the gym, you're doing the hard things. But stop trying to be good and start focusing on becoming whole. So if you feel lost or hollow, stop searching for worth in other people's eyes, start building it in your own. Not to be perfect, not so you can be loved, but by becoming a man that you respect. This is the essence and the core of it. I have worked for a decade, more than that, almost 12, 15 years now, to become a man that I respect. And that's what Nietzsche meant when he said, become who you are.