4 Pitfalls Men Under 35 Must Avoid If They Want to Be Successful

If you’re a man who’s under the age of 35 (especially if you’re Gen Z), the world is a much different place than the one your grandparents or even parents grew up in.

World population is at its highest point at any point in known human history.

Technology is changing our expectations and reactions faster than we know what to do with.

The dating landscape is different with the rise of social media and apps.

As a result, you have a world where the advice of previous generations may be non-applicable or outright ineffective.

And it’s not because it’s bad advice. On the contrary, much of it is very good. However, many parents and grandparents just don’t know what’s going on.

While I do not consider myself an enlightened sage, as a man who is under 35 and who pays attention to what’s going on, I do think there are some things that will help any guy who is in this age bracket.

In this article, I’ll be going into:

• The biggest pitfalls Gen Z and millennial men face
• Why it’s easier (and paradoxically harder) to become a fully self-actualized person in the modern world
• What you can do to avoid these pitfalls and live life more abundant

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The Curious Case of Delayed Adulthood

In 2023, there are many conveniences that are afforded to us now that were just a dream 100 years ago.

In today’s society, you can:

• Move to a new city every couple of years and reinvent yourself
• Decide to delay marriage or never even get married at all
• Quit your job and become an entrepreneur
• Travel around the world for less than 10k
• Change careers multiple times

These things were either a remote possibility or non-possibility for our grandparents. Our grandparents lived relatively static lives.

They probably worked the same job for many years (possibly all their life), met one person and immediately settled down, and could go years of their life without really learning new things.

One set of my grandparents were born in a foreign country, in a relatively small country, in a smaller city, got married and had 7 children during their early 20s to early 30s.

Contrast that to myself – I was born in America, I live in a mid-to-large sized city, I am not married and have no children.

The lifestyle is completely different.

Regardless of that fact, there are still universal laws that are operant no matter what time you live in or where you are located.

Ignorance of these universal principles leave a man open up to the real possibility that he may end up “becoming Peter Pan“.

What do I mean by this?

I mean the real possibility of becoming the guy who:

• Never takes on significant responsibility
• Runs away from challenges
• Thinks life is one big party that never, ever stops

There’s always been these types of guys in society, but we’re collectively reaching a point where there are tons of guys who fail to get over this period way past the point they should have already done so

Call it “extended adolescence” or “failure to launch“.

There’s a lot of reasons for this but one of the main ones is–indulgence.

Why is indulgence so bad for men?

If you look across the globe, most civilizations contain some variation of “the zero to hero” myth (see The Hero with a Thousand Faces).

Meaning, the hero is usually a young man often very unschooled in the ways of life who has to achieve some sort of grand objective.

It may be in the form of:

• Saving a damsel in distress
• Rescuing an entire empire from destruction
• Gaining redemption for a family, clan, or tribe

In between him and these goals are various pitfalls, dangers, and challenges that force the young man to “level up” in different ways.

As a result, the man is often a very different one from the one who began the story, many times dramatically so.

This is an example of a masculine archetype.

Why is this important?

Societies of the past realized that in order to get men, especially young men to guard against degeneracy, they needed to have some kind of “rite of passage” in addition to learning about tales of noble character traits.

A society has been successful to the extent that it separates a worthy goal from its male members with a barrier of socialization.

For example: if you wanted:

• Status
• Mating opportunities
• Living a comfortable life
• Some degree of financial independence

You had to be a relatively productive member of society.

You had to be someone who was immersed in the real world if you wanted access to these things.

It required “leveling up”, it required maturity.

The modern world possesses a wide amount of opportunity male or female.

However, it is very possible for the modern man to completely piss away his life because his desire for status, sex, and money can be satisfied with “consolation prizes”.

What are some of these consolation prizes?

Well, in order to get a good perspective of them – you’ll need to be aware of the pitfalls that many young men are finding themselves entangled in.

4 Things That Waste a Young Man’s Life and Potential

I want to start off this section by saying: your life is your life. You are free to do with it what you choose.

I am not here to force people to do things.

I can’t tell anyone how to live their life. I can’t force anyone to do anything and neither can you. I can only make suggestions.

However, the vast majority of men either don’t think these things are problems or they don’t even know that these things can become problems.

They can only become problems because it is possible to throw away chunks of your life pursuing and doing these things with little or no return.

If you want to be one of those people who avoids regrets as an old man, you’ll want to keep this in mind.

Pitfall #1: Video Games

I’ll say this: there is nothing wrong with video games.

People find themselves up in arms whenever someone attacks video games and thinks that the person attacking them is some uptight boomer who has never touched a controller.

On the contrary, I was a massive competitive video gamer in my teens and early 20s.

I had almost every console, had played almost every major release, knew tips and tricks on how to dominate and blow away competition.

However – I realized that in order for me to advance to different stages in my life and my self development, I would either have to decrease my time dramatically or stop playing altogether.

I didn’t want to do the latter, so I ended up reducing my time on it.

However, as I started to get more involved with the world around me and in my own self development–my taste for video games started to diminish dramatically until it got to the point where it became a chore to even have them in my house. I ended up giving away my consoles to charity and selling most of my games.

That was almost a decade ago and now video games are even more popular than when I was playing.

According to TrueList, the gaming industry is a $300 BILLION dollar industry and 3 billion people consider themselves “gamers”.

That’s a large percentage of people.

Even further, 3-4% of gamers have a bonafide addiction. That may sound like a small number, but keep in mind – 3-4% of 3 billion is around 90-120 million people.

And that’s the amount of people who have admitted it.

That’s a significant amount of people and especially men–who are finding it hard to function as valuable members of society because of a gaming addiction.

If you want to find out some methods on how to beat an addiction, check out this podcast I did:

Pitfall #2: Lack of Financial Literacy and Access to Easy Money

In today’s world, it is ridiculously easy to make money. In fact, it is easier than ever to make money on the side and do it in a productive and scalable way.

It’s possible to create a “patchwork career” where instead of working a traditional 9-5 job, you “cut and paste“ various odd jobs in the sharing economy.

In addition, it is easier than ever to make the jump to self-employment.

Regardless of that fact, most people in a first world environment such as America either:

A: don’t know how to make money

or

B: don’t even know how to hold onto (and make grow) what they have.

Enter the realm of credit cards.

Various banks and financial institutions wouldn’t hesitate to give a credit card to a dog because it’s too damn easy to spend money.

Likewise, most banks and financial institutions would love for you to max our your credit card and owe them interest upon interest.

As of 2023, Americans have a walloping $986 BILLION of credit card debt, back up to near pre-pandemic levels.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a credit card – but when most people don’t understand financial basics such as compound interest, that’s a massive problem.

Funnily enough, most Gen Zers believe that they will be financially well off one day. There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic, but when only 2% of adults are millionaires – it’s quite clear that not everyone’s going to make it there, especially not without a strategy or financial know-how.

And if you don’t know how compound interest works, it’s possible that you will spend your entire life just paying down debt and never building true wealth.

Pitfall #3: Female Idolatry

Putting women on a pedestal comes in various forms for many guys.

This can range all the way from fantasizing about “the perfect one” and developing “oneitis” all the way to being a full blown pornography addict with a capital A.

And if every man is being honest, every man has had oneitis and every man has at least seen porn, both of these occurring at some point in their lives.

Many men live their entire lives pining after “The One” or fantasizing about beautiful women – all the while they make no new effort to meet new women.

This then makes a man a prime candidate to be a porn addict.

Because of this, pornography is more profitable than Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL combined.

Multiple studies have done showing the link between active pornography use and decreased brain function.

And of course, why should you make the effort to talk to your crush when you can pull up the internet and easily find someone who looks like her?

However, if you want to be a dynamic and active man in your life, you’ll need to break this addiction and the terrible habit of oneitis.

And at the root of idolizing women is the fact that most men do not have a clue on how to interact with women.

There’s a variety of causes for this but the key is to understand that women are just as human as you are and they don’t like being seen as goddesses.

Pitfall #4: Listening to Mainstream Information

It’s no secret that most of the media out in society is negative.

Most of the news is negative, most of the sites on the Internet are negative, and most people are flat out–negative.

There’s a biological reason for this. We have an inherent negativity bias that has helped to keep the species alive for millennia, but despite this – we live in the safest era ever in history regardless of what the news says.

In addition to that, most mainstream information does not teach you how to be a better person because most people don’t have a growth mindset and practice self development. Most mainstream information does not contribute to a healthy mental diet.

Therefore, most suggestions and “advice” that comes from a mainstream narrative should be carefully examined and ignored, if the need be.

How to Avoid the 4 Pitfalls

On their own, these pitfalls are dangerous. However, when they’re combined together – they are catastrophic.

In addition, this is just scratching the surface of things which Gen Z and millennial men need to be aware of

But all hope is not lost. You can avoid these with some degree of conscientiousness, intentionality, and of course – effort.

Here’s some ways on doing that.

1. Get Involved

According to many studies and reports, Gen Z are the most risk averse generation in history. And while risk aversion is good, the fact of the matter is–life is risk.

You cannot mitigate risk from every area of life and if you try, you will end up missing out on many things.

A man should be getting more involved in the world, not less.

• Go to more events.
• Talk to more women.
• Get into more conversations.
• Get involved in more hobbies.
• Find ways to be helpful to more people.

This will remove you from your self-imposed isolation that many younger people find themselves in.

2. Reduce your reliance on digital media

Many young guys spend A LOT of time on the Internet.

Most of that time is spent searching, scrolling, looking, and whatever else. And while the Internet is a great tool (you wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for the Internet), it is a terrible master.

Much of what you see on the Internet is a dumbed down, hyped up, or completely false version of reality.

And if you pay attention to what much of social media is telling you, you’ll either develop a social media addiction or a very pessimistic worldview (or both).

The goal is to use the Internet and other related devices as a tool, rather than as an outlet.

Again, if you want to do this – you’ll need to get involved in the world around you and stop being a passive spectator in your own life.

3. Create an environment of artificial scarcity

If you live in the first world, it’s no secret that we live in a world of abundance. Information is readily accessible, amenities are everywhere, and access to some form of cash is easily available.

However, despite this seeming abundance – the individual would do best to create some limitation in order to prevent the bottomless pit of “more”.

What are some examples?

• Stop watching pornography
• Spend less time on the Internet
• Wean yourself off of your parents’ pocketbook
• Stop running to entertainment when you’re bored
• Live a lifestyle not dependent on drugs and alcohol
• Taking a basic apartment in a “decent yet safe” area of town
• Try and live on as little money as possible and save most of it

And these are just a few examples.

The main goal is to separate yourself from living a life of unawareness and bring yourself deeper into the light of self-awareness.

These constraints will force you to think in creative ways and become the man you’re meant to be (with time). It is only by experiencing the pain that comes from lack that you’ll be motivated to launch towards the pleasure of a good life.

If you want a deeper dive on how indulgence erodes your self-confidence, masculinity, and drive – check out that podcast episode.

4. Start a self-development lifestyle

A self-development lifestyle will naturally barricade you from many of the dangers that many younger men naturally face.

It will inform you, prepare you, and make you more mentally strong for any of the challenges that life will inevitably throw at you.

You can start living a self development lifestyle by:

• Finding ways to push yourself out of your comfort zone
• Seeing your life as one giant “project” with which you are gaining competence daily
• Integrating new hobbies and activities into your lifestyle
• Reading self development books
• Taking self development courses.

This is why I created Cornerstone, a course designed to help you build, live, and maintain and active and dynamic self-development lifestyle.

It is a set of 4 modules based around 4 key areas in holistic human self-improvement.

I highly recommend checking that out if you’re looking to level up in life.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

In our modern environment, there’s many more distractions that the average young man has to content with than at any other time in human history.

Regardless of that fact, there’s more opportunity around than you can shake a stick at. However, you can only grasp that opportunity when (and if) you decide to get involved in the living of life, reduce your reliance on digital media, create an environment of artificial scarcity, and start living a self-development lifestyle.

Always ask yourself: “if I continue on this path, where will I be in 10 years?” In fact – don’t even ask about 10 years – where will you be by this time next year if you keep doing what you’re doing?

You don’t want to be that 40-something or 50-something year old guy who looks back on his prime years with shame and regret knowing that he could have done so much better.