The 5Ms by Amerix

1. Muscle

This relates to building your body and being healthy. In this part, I will highlight not just building muscle but just taking care of your body. You have to do the following:

  1. Eat well
  2. Exercise
  3. Get good sleep
  4. Be hygienic
  5. Dress well
  6. Fix your posture and walk
  7. Self defense

Most people think that being a man is all about muscles. Muscles are important but not the whole story. How you present your body and take care of your body is encompassed around how people perceive you at a glance. However, this doesn't mean that you should not know how to fight. When it comes to it, know how to punch a nigga in the face.

2. Mind

You can have a great body but no one wants to be around a strong idiot. You have to be well-informed, educated and show dexterity in thought. You have to have some content as people would say. You can do the following:

  1. Read widely
  2. Write well
  3. Learn new skills
  4. Be articulate in your speech
  5. Engage in creative activity
  6. Test your mind and knowledge with elaborate games and tests like chess, Go

Your mind is the control-center of your life. It is what helps you make sound decisions and process large amounts of information to make conclusions. As Ray Dalio puts it, the quality of life is determined by the quality of your decisions. With great decisions, you take actions that have the greatest success.

3. Matter

You can have a great body and a great mind but with no assets to your name. What are you doing? Gathering resources is what your body and mind should be doing. You use your mind to decide what resources to acquire and your body goes and gets those resources. You can do the following:

  1. Gain a valuable skill and master it
  2. Start a business that provides value
  3. Buy land and make it productive
  4. Pool money and invest it
  5. Build or buy a house
  6. Buy a car

Please note the order of things. You must consider assets as the major priority or at least the end game. The end game should not be to own a car. A car is a liability, which is something that take money out of your pocket. A business is an asset, which is something that puts money in your pocket. For all of us, our skill is our first and most important asset. We mostly use it to get a job, which is a start but it is not the end. Use your skill to get assets then use your assets to get liabilities.

4. Men

You now have a great body, a great mind, a bunch of great assets but you have no social life. You are vulnerable to attack. No man is an island and if he is an island, he will succumb to the waves. You need a strong network of people that you can trust, build together and defend each other. When life is going well for you, you become a target. You can do the following:

  1. Join a club or community based on your interests.
  2. Keep in touch with friends from previous phases like school, church, childhood.
  3. Keep your family close, especially your father and brothers
  4. Respect and have ramport with men in your line of work and related areas of your work
  5. Meet other men at networking events and get-togethers and keep in touch

Having men around you will benefit you in the long-run. When you are successful, you will want people to share that success with. You want that to be your tribe of men. They will guide you, sharpen you, defend you and lift you up when you are down. Grow with them from the beginning and make sure that you level up together. Drop the ones who don't want to level up as they will drag you down with them.

5. Money

Once you have the 4 things above: a great body, a great mind, a great portfolio of assets and a great tribe of men, the product is getting that sweet money. You are valuable in society at this point and it will reward with value in return. In our capitalist system, this is in the form of currency. The bank account will have money streaming in, your stock options will be rising in price and your investments will be getting interest by the day. You can do the following:

  1. Budget your spending
  2. Increasing your revenue
  3. Manage an investment portfolio
  4. Use credit and loans to your advantage
  5. Acquire ownership through stock options
  6. Have an emergency fund

Having money is not the end of it. Money is a tool and it has to be used according. Now that you have it, you have to have a vision of how to preserve, or even better, deploy it to grow. Investing your money to grow even further. The skill of using money to make more money is a game that few people play well. Your time will come to practise it.

6. Mission

I have added a 6th one. You have a great body, a great mind, a great portfolio of assets, a great tribe of men, a great bank account. Now what? You cannot just sit there and do nothing. The world has many problems that need solving. The world needs more leaders to guide it. With the platform that you have, you have the moral authority and responsibility to give back to society. As Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility". As a great man, you have a duty to lead your people and this starts with what you want for the world. You can do the following:

  1. Craft your purpose
  2. Share your experiences and story with others
  3. Educate people
  4. Be charitable and give back to the vulnerable
  5. Engage in civil discourse
  6. Start and invest in impactful programmes
  7. Stand up where there is injustice and wrongdoing
  8. Promote and embody good and upstanding values
  9. Build and do things that make the future a better place
  10. Leave a legacy for the next generation to take up and run with

Having a mission is what gives all the 5Ms meaning. Unfortunately, a lot of the manosphere gets caught up in the details of what it means to be a man, that they forget what men are good for in the first place. Men are leaders and leaders have a vision of the future and make it their mission to ensure it comes to life. You cannot have a man without mission. A man is always on a mission. It gives him a reason to be a man in the first place. Men are built to do, not be.

Conclusion

Being a male has its advantage and disdvantages but it is a blessing and I would not trade it for anything. Knowing that I can build myself into whatever I want, as long as I put in the work, is an empowering thing. Getting things easy is good in the short-term but disheartening in the long-run. The fruits only taste sweet when the toil has been grueling. You appreciate the good things in life when you have been subjected to suffering to get those things. Men are built to suffer. Men are creatures of responsibility. Men are objects that tame chao and turn it into order while also balancing the chaos within.

You don't become a man, you choose to be a man. Every day that you wake up, you have the choice to be a man or not. Being a man is about doing, not being. It never ends. It is our eternal battle until death. Carry it with a pride.

Being a man is a privilege and all men should take pride in that. Otherwise, no one else will.