Get Free Email Updates!
Join us for FREE to get instant email updates!
-By Caleb Jones
A short while ago, Roosh made a blog post titled Why It’s Folly To Design Your Own “Lifestyle.” When I saw that title, I perked right up. Lifestyle design is what I do, what I write about, and what I help other men with. Lifestyle design is what I did, and doing it has made me literally the happiest man I know. Lifestyle design is what I continue to do, and will continue to for the rest of my life. I consider it a key component of not only happiness, but of life.
I’ll double down on this. Lifestyle design is not only supremely important, but it’s more important now than it has ever been in all of modern history. Decades ago, when the average American man of average intelligence, skill, and income was able to get an average job and be able to support a stay-at-home wife, a house, two cars, and several kids, lifestyle design wasn’t nearly as important. He never got divorced and worked at the same company his entire life. He paid extremely low taxes, the purchasing power of his dollars were very strong, and the economy was (usually) good.
Today, absolutely none of that is true. Your government has destroyed your currency, thus rendering a nice lifestyle on an average income impossible, and is taxing the shit out of you, while creating false economic bubbles that price a three-bedroom house out of the range of most Americans (and don’t even get me started on the Europeans, where a detached house isn't even an option for most higher-income Europe dwellers). For people getting married in the Western world nowadays, lifetime risk of divorce is now well north of 70%, and growing. That means if you’re dumb enough to get legally married, you’re in for a divorce a few years down the road, and will be single all over again. Only now it will be with government holding a gun to your head for child support and/or alimony payments. Lifetime employment is also now a thing of the past, just like lifetime marriage, and the odds of you working at the same job, or even at the same company in five years are pretty low.
If a guy like Tim Ferriss tried to put out a book like the Four Hour Workweek back in 1952, or if I put out the Unchained Man at around the same time, no one would have bought them, because virtually no one needed them. Today, the average guy needs lifestyle design if he wants to live a life of long-term happiness. Otherwise, if he follows the standard system, he’s fucked.
You and I could argue about which lifestyle design is “best” or is appropriate for certain types of people, but lifestyle design is not only important, but required (unless you want to be the typical societally programmed drone).
Roosh says:
Guess what? That happened to me as well. You did it regarding pickup and women, and I did it regarding money and business. By my late 20s, I accomplished everything I wanted and was suddenly aimless and didn’t know what to do.
That was because I made the same mistake you made, Roosh. I didn’t have a Mission. I had desires and goals, but I didn’t have a Mission that encompassed the whole of my life. As I describe in my book, your Mission is not a goal. It’s not something you achieve and then you’re done. It’s something that lasts for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20 years (though the rest of your life is better).
I established my Mission over ten years ago, and guess what? I’m still chugging along, excited to work on it, despite the fact I’ve already accomplished most of my life goals.
If you all have are goals, then yeah, if you’re lucky you’ll hit them all and then look around, confused as to what to do next. But if you have a Mission, you’ll never have that problem, since a Mission can’t be “accomplished.”
A second thing you failed to do, and I failed to do, was to design a life that had the capacity for long-term happiness. Instead, we focused on short or medium-term happiness. As I have discussed many times at this blog, a lifestyle designed around banging as many chicks as possible is not a lifestyle conducive to long-term happiness. That kind of life will make a guy in his 20s or 30s very happy for about 5-10 years or so, and then he’s going to be depressed and desultory.
I made the same mistake in my 20s, albeit in a different area. I based my lifestyle around running a typical brick and mortar business full of overhead and employees, and a traditional monogamous legal marriage. Dumb! Monogamous marriage doesn’t work any more in the Western world, and the traditional business these days is simply a source of long work weeks and never-ending stress. My lifestyle was societally acceptable but not conducive to long-term happiness at all.
Like your banging chicks lifestyle, my lifestyle was designed for medium-term happiness at best. For a few years, I was very happy with that lifestyle. After a few more years, I was unhappy. I chose wrongly, just like you did.
It’s not that lifestyle design is bad. It’s that both you and I chose the wrong designs. If we had focused on lifestyle design for long-term happiness in our 20s, we would have never had a problem.
Correct. If you’re not happy, you need to design a new life so you can be happy, and happy long-term.
And by the way, you’re right to imply that the grass often isn’t greener. I’ve discussed that before as well, and lots of men in our reading audience make that mistake. But, sometimes the grass really is greener.
When I was monogamously married and having mediocre sex with a jaded, overweight woman three times a month (at best!), I thought the grass would be greener if I wasn’t legally married or monogamous anymore. And guess what? I was right. Today, I have sex around three times week with beautiful, happy women with perfect or near-perfect bodies. The grass was objectively greener.
When I was working 70-80 hour weeks as a typical business owner, I fantasized about the greener grass of a business with near-zero overhead, with no employees, that I could operate from anywhere in the world, and that wouldn’t require long hours to maintain.
And guess what? I was right. Today, I work half those hours working on projects that excite me and I actually make more money. The grass was objectively greener.
Sometimes the grass isn’t greener, but sometimes it is. It depends on how rational and objective you’re being.
Correct! Because you were not focused on long-term happiness and you didn’t have a Mission. You just had goals.
I agree that’s one reason, but the larger reason is what I stated above; that the standard life men now live, in terms of money, lifestyle, etc, sucks ass.
I’m in the process of doing that same analysis myself. Trust me, I’m going to come up with an answer. And if I end up being wrong, no problem, I’ll just move again. I have the ability to do this because of...wait for it...lifestyle design.
Incorrect. When looking at a lifestyle, we don’t have billions of options. We have several that can be categorized and quantified to a reasonably accurate degree. For example, there are nine options for men as they age in terms of their woman life. Not billions. Nine. You’re smart enough to pick the best option for yourself out of nine, even if it takes a few years to think about it. The same could be said for where to live, what kind of income you’d like, what kind of business you want, and your physical fitness. You’ve got perhaps 5-20 reasonable and realistic options of each, not “billions.”
Yes, because you chose wrongly in your 20s. Now you need to design a new life that will cover you from your current age to well into your 70s and beyond. Something sustainable and conducive to long-term happiness and flexibility.
And I’ll give you a hint as to what that lifestyle can’t include: being a player all the time or a forever monogamous marriage. Neither of those are sustainable models in the modern era. Neither of those are going to make a man long-term happy. The answer, as is so often the case, is somewhere in the middle.
Good talk, Roosh.
I’ll double down on this. Lifestyle design is not only supremely important, but it’s more important now than it has ever been in all of modern history. Decades ago, when the average American man of average intelligence, skill, and income was able to get an average job and be able to support a stay-at-home wife, a house, two cars, and several kids, lifestyle design wasn’t nearly as important. He never got divorced and worked at the same company his entire life. He paid extremely low taxes, the purchasing power of his dollars were very strong, and the economy was (usually) good.
Today, absolutely none of that is true. Your government has destroyed your currency, thus rendering a nice lifestyle on an average income impossible, and is taxing the shit out of you, while creating false economic bubbles that price a three-bedroom house out of the range of most Americans (and don’t even get me started on the Europeans, where a detached house isn't even an option for most higher-income Europe dwellers). For people getting married in the Western world nowadays, lifetime risk of divorce is now well north of 70%, and growing. That means if you’re dumb enough to get legally married, you’re in for a divorce a few years down the road, and will be single all over again. Only now it will be with government holding a gun to your head for child support and/or alimony payments. Lifetime employment is also now a thing of the past, just like lifetime marriage, and the odds of you working at the same job, or even at the same company in five years are pretty low.
If a guy like Tim Ferriss tried to put out a book like the Four Hour Workweek back in 1952, or if I put out the Unchained Man at around the same time, no one would have bought them, because virtually no one needed them. Today, the average guy needs lifestyle design if he wants to live a life of long-term happiness. Otherwise, if he follows the standard system, he’s fucked.
You and I could argue about which lifestyle design is “best” or is appropriate for certain types of people, but lifestyle design is not only important, but required (unless you want to be the typical societally programmed drone).
Roosh says:
In my mid 20’s I bought the idea that I could create my own lifestyle from scratch, not based on consultations from wise men or guidance from church and family, but from my own desires. After years of work, I successfully created a lifestyle that satisfied the desires I had in that particular stage of my life, but once those desires changed, I was stuck with a lifestyle that no longer served me, and unsure of what to do next.
Guess what? That happened to me as well. You did it regarding pickup and women, and I did it regarding money and business. By my late 20s, I accomplished everything I wanted and was suddenly aimless and didn’t know what to do.
That was because I made the same mistake you made, Roosh. I didn’t have a Mission. I had desires and goals, but I didn’t have a Mission that encompassed the whole of my life. As I describe in my book, your Mission is not a goal. It’s not something you achieve and then you’re done. It’s something that lasts for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20 years (though the rest of your life is better).
I established my Mission over ten years ago, and guess what? I’m still chugging along, excited to work on it, despite the fact I’ve already accomplished most of my life goals.
If you all have are goals, then yeah, if you’re lucky you’ll hit them all and then look around, confused as to what to do next. But if you have a Mission, you’ll never have that problem, since a Mission can’t be “accomplished.”
A second thing you failed to do, and I failed to do, was to design a life that had the capacity for long-term happiness. Instead, we focused on short or medium-term happiness. As I have discussed many times at this blog, a lifestyle designed around banging as many chicks as possible is not a lifestyle conducive to long-term happiness. That kind of life will make a guy in his 20s or 30s very happy for about 5-10 years or so, and then he’s going to be depressed and desultory.
I made the same mistake in my 20s, albeit in a different area. I based my lifestyle around running a typical brick and mortar business full of overhead and employees, and a traditional monogamous legal marriage. Dumb! Monogamous marriage doesn’t work any more in the Western world, and the traditional business these days is simply a source of long work weeks and never-ending stress. My lifestyle was societally acceptable but not conducive to long-term happiness at all.
Like your banging chicks lifestyle, my lifestyle was designed for medium-term happiness at best. For a few years, I was very happy with that lifestyle. After a few more years, I was unhappy. I chose wrongly, just like you did.
It’s not that lifestyle design is bad. It’s that both you and I chose the wrong designs. If we had focused on lifestyle design for long-term happiness in our 20s, we would have never had a problem.
The need to develop a lifestyle comes from not liking where you are, who you are, or what you have, combined with a belief that the grass is greener.
Correct. If you’re not happy, you need to design a new life so you can be happy, and happy long-term.
And by the way, you’re right to imply that the grass often isn’t greener. I’ve discussed that before as well, and lots of men in our reading audience make that mistake. But, sometimes the grass really is greener.
When I was monogamously married and having mediocre sex with a jaded, overweight woman three times a month (at best!), I thought the grass would be greener if I wasn’t legally married or monogamous anymore. And guess what? I was right. Today, I have sex around three times week with beautiful, happy women with perfect or near-perfect bodies. The grass was objectively greener.
When I was working 70-80 hour weeks as a typical business owner, I fantasized about the greener grass of a business with near-zero overhead, with no employees, that I could operate from anywhere in the world, and that wouldn’t require long hours to maintain.
And guess what? I was right. Today, I work half those hours working on projects that excite me and I actually make more money. The grass was objectively greener.
Sometimes the grass isn’t greener, but sometimes it is. It depends on how rational and objective you’re being.
The actual design of your lifestyle is therefore mainly guided by the emotional or egocentric part of you that has desires and aches for something else. Already, I’m sure you can see the folly of designing a lifestyle based on desire, which is transient and can never be fully sated. Many men such as myself used their desires to design a grand lifestyle that included slaying pussy, making money, and traveling the world, which was nice for a time, until inevitably you arrive at a road block where you’re forced to ask, “Is this it?” You reach your goals but lose momentum, feel empty again, and start desiring new things.
Correct! Because you were not focused on long-term happiness and you didn’t have a Mission. You just had goals.
Lifestyle design has become so popular among both men and women because meaning and purpose have been removed from their lives, particularly god, family, and tribe.
I agree that’s one reason, but the larger reason is what I stated above; that the standard life men now live, in terms of money, lifestyle, etc, sucks ass.
For example, for the past two years, I’ve been completely stuck on where I should live, and no analysis I’ve done has given me the correct answer. This is because there is nothing in my genetics that was designed for me to process so much information in designing my life and choosing the best city in the entire world to live in
I’m in the process of doing that same analysis myself. Trust me, I’m going to come up with an answer. And if I end up being wrong, no problem, I’ll just move again. I have the ability to do this because of...wait for it...lifestyle design.
You’re set up to fail the second you believe that a certain lifestyle will make you happy, because you don’t have the genetic wiring or ability to determine which lifestyle is best based out of the billions of combinations available, and even if you did, you’d likely adapt to it and see diminishing value over time.
Incorrect. When looking at a lifestyle, we don’t have billions of options. We have several that can be categorized and quantified to a reasonably accurate degree. For example, there are nine options for men as they age in terms of their woman life. Not billions. Nine. You’re smart enough to pick the best option for yourself out of nine, even if it takes a few years to think about it. The same could be said for where to live, what kind of income you’d like, what kind of business you want, and your physical fitness. You’ve got perhaps 5-20 reasonable and realistic options of each, not “billions.”
and even if you did, you’d likely adapt to it and see diminishing value over time.That’s true to a degree, but if you create a lifestyle based on long-term happiness, you’ll have the flexibility to modify things as you progress and age. I doubt my current sex life will look the same when I’m 80 years old (though its possible!). I know my income and businesses will look different too. That’s okay. I’m allowed to adjust (not radically change, but adjust) and so can you.
I certainly feel more wise from my lifestyle journey, and can now sell more books and get more blog hits from all that I’ve learned, but I don’t feel like a “better” or “happier” person.
Yes, because you chose wrongly in your 20s. Now you need to design a new life that will cover you from your current age to well into your 70s and beyond. Something sustainable and conducive to long-term happiness and flexibility.
And I’ll give you a hint as to what that lifestyle can’t include: being a player all the time or a forever monogamous marriage. Neither of those are sustainable models in the modern era. Neither of those are going to make a man long-term happy. The answer, as is so often the case, is somewhere in the middle.
Good talk, Roosh.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.