Touching grass, and noticing how 80% of people aren’t going to make it. It’s a small story to show you how simple it is to be among the top 20%. It’s not easy, but it is simple. Unfortunately if you’ve gone online to see other people talk about what works and what doesn’t, you’re only going to see the 80% posing as the 20%. After this, if you don’t know why I’m such an asshole on Twitter about self help, then …
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Drinking coffee out of my ‘Don’t Eat Paint’ mug, seeing self help (read: self analysis projecting as coach) accounts yelling the same 100 platitudes from Marcus Aurelius Meditations, rephrased to sound novel and thinking back to my hard working days on the ranch, or my warship, or my office. Does any of this reflect reality?
Not really
It does reflect a brief interaction at my time on the west coast as an instructor in Fleet School. My Chief walked in with the rest of us. We were commenting on the latest trend among the students, getting arrested while drunk and waking us up at 3 in the morning to get them out of jail and in to school.
“We don’t get paid enough for this. I’d rather be sailing” from the Cape Brettonner with 5 kids at home and less sea time than the rest of us. The chief walks up and has his weekly I’m still one of the boys speeches:
“You know, when you get civvie side, you’d be lucky to get paid what we do. At your rank you’re making what, 80k a year? (yes) it’s just not possible to get that. This is the best job you’ll ever have.” I don’t think it’s possible for a sailor to give out wisdom unless they are sitting on a desk with only a single cheek while holding a coffee cup. Every Petty officer 1st class or Chief will tell you the same thing.
This is the best job you’ll ever have.
Which is funny, because they were the last generation who were put in front of a judge and told you can either join the military or do prison time. We are millennials, and are too far detached from the GenX to have that concept. The message was repeated, almost as much as ‘happy wife, happy life!’ from a dude twice divorced and shore posted so as to avoid the hat trick.
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Friends and I would hang out after work. Drinking at the pub, girlfriends in tow, playing music bingo and eating chicken wings. We would talk about dreams occasionally. Everyone had something they would rather be doing. Switching to officer ranks, starting a business, changing trades, joining the spec-ops, or just working civvie side. Every one of us would pause because of the mantra
This is the best job you will ever have.
We never knew it, but that sentiment created a scarcity in us, a fear of leaving a stable, well paying job behind because of the possibility that this is peak career. Some of the guys wanted kids, and the military encourages it. Once you have a kid, your odds of leaving the military drop to nil. No one takes on risk once they have to provide for their stay at home college educated and underemployed wife and the kid he loves. Nevermind you won’t see them for half the year.
My original Substack story was about my final years with the military. I was in a blessed position where the CAF made my life so frustrating that the risk of leaving was an easy choice. The funny part of that story, is that half of my friends had put in their releases within the year. My best friends wife confessed to me one day:
“You know, once you quit and we saw you were actually doing way better, it gave him the courage to do it himself”
The half that left moved on and found out that the narrative they gave us was absolute bullshit. 6 figure salaries in Canada are absolutely doable. We had top secret security clearances, a work ethic second to none, skills that were transferrable. One became an officer then transferred into government contractor. Another went west and was working on machinery for the oil rigs. Another went north and did the same for the pipelines.
I was the least successful out of all of them as I was only just making 100k a year.
The few that stayed behind were still doing the same thing we were doing 7 years ago. One is married to a plate that accidentally got pregnant. He was drunk and she came back for one last fuck. 2 kids and a life of quiet desperation later. Now he is the rank of that chief from earlier. The other has 2 kids and a college educated stay at home wife who is baking her bodyweight in pastries and not working. He sails for the extra pay to afford the house they live in.
The military has turned to shit in the last decade. Liberals get in power and gut the forces, it’s been that way as long as my parents can remember. They do this because the military is not allowed to protest. Eventually some story gets out where sailors are buying food with food stamps, conservatives get into power, and we start ramping up spending again.
That’s not to say everyone who remained is doing badly, one of my friends is now training boarding party members on some interdiction level combat, but I know no one who left and isn’t happier and more successful for it.
So if you don’t understand what the point is, it’s this
The reason the Pareto Principle exists is because men allow themselves to be manipulated into sacrificing themselves for the benefit of others. Women aren’t evil, your boss isn’t evil, no one is evil. They simply want you doing what’s best for them, not what’s best for you.
They are the same type of people who pick Greek statue profile pictures on Twitter and tell you to vet your woman better bro! As if the solution in my above example is to find some magic divining rod to tell the difference between the college educated stay at home dependapotamus and the power couple wife who has kids, still works, and doesn’t want to expand her lifestyle at the expense of your back pain.
The friends I know who left were all married, and each wife or girlfriend had trust in their vision for the future. The idea that their men were unhappy was enough for them to trust in his abilities to land on his feet and thrive. Two stay at home wives, and one power wife earning +200k a year. Nothing about them is different than the stay at home wives or earning wives from the men who still serve.
You can’t vet for something that other people can’t do for you.
And the only thing that seemed to matter was someone to lead the way. I don’t mean to pat my back too hard, but just seeing the possibility was enough for a half dozen men. This is why I love seeing red pilled guys leaving field reports. It’s because the pareto principle, while accurate, doesn’t tell the right story. It’s not a case where men are either Morlocks of Eloi, working in a caste system where some make it and some don’t and there’s nothing you can do if you weren’t born 6 feet tall with 6 feet abs.
In reality, the reason the 20% get over the 80% is simple: It’s because they take calculated risks and collaborate with people equally calibrated to. You can use a rising tide raises all boats if you want, but it was a little too on the nose for a naval story so I won’t. Men afraid to take risks in fear of not being able to provide for their families versus men who were afraid not to take risks in fear of not being able to provide for their families sustainably.
I don’t care if it’s about getting laid, making career changes, moving to different countries or starting a business. All of life is about calculated risks. That’s why men earn more money, have higher career success and do anything of worth, because they shoot their shot. They had trusting women beside them, sure. But it’s not that big a thing, as these guys always had that spark of trust in them.
My girl too. When I told her I was leaving my corporate job to be a writer and a brand online she didn’t even hesitate
“You got it babe”
Of course she later admitted that she was impressed I had 10k followers on Twitter, and already spoke at conventions, but that’s how trust works. Trust, but verify. For women, it’s not about trusting their men like a shot in the dark. Since she knew me we had moved across the country, had multiple career changes, and a constantly increasing lifestyle. Is it really about trust at this point, or simply seeing a constant string of risks that she could never imagine taking and seeing them all pay off?
Do you know what they call the stupidest guy graduating from medical school?
Doctor
This isn’t to say it’s never had hardships. I would laugh of each one and work on overcoming them. And like I said earlier, I was the least successful of the successful. I’m not jealous or envious as being in the Pareto distribution is the goal, not dragging everyone beneath me to win the crab bucket Olympics.
If I had to distill this into Twitter level wisdom, I’d say
Take calculated risks
Never let someone else allow you to sacrifice for their benefit, I don’t care if it’s child or wife or boss
If you have a peer or friend who shows you a path, follow in his draft
Learn from the mistakes of others
Realize most peoples advice is a way of justifying their own inability to do something
We had an intervention of our one friend. He’s paying for sex and drinking a lot lately. He really loves his kids though, so I guess his sacrifice was worth it. I do wonder how that will play out in the next decade or two.