Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

for anything. It’s about finding your self-confidence and continuing to push yourself every day. It’s about being hungry to be the best version of yourself.
    Becoming the Alpha is different for every man. Maybe it’s traveling across the Atlantic to become the world’s best bodybuilder, becoming an actor or a politician, or even transforming into the gladiator you once dreamed of being. This is your shot at something bigger.
    You picked up this book because you’re searching for the same thing I was when I sat under the stars after a long day of big visions in the Austrian countryside. So turn the page and start finding it.
    —Arnold Schwarzenegger

INTRODUCTION
    The Fall of Man
    “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
    — HENRY DAVID THOREAU
    Y ou are not your fucking khakis . *
    You were built to be strong, fearless, confident, and powerful. You were designed to tame wilderness and carve canals through mountains, to conquer nations and build empires, to cross oceans and walk on the moon.
    These are great things that great men can do and have done: achievements that require strength—and the wisdom to use it judiciously. While these examples loom large in history and may not seem immediately applicable to you, all men have what it takes to accomplish great things, and to be great themselves.
    But examine the ordinary man and you wouldn’t know it. Most men do not understand the levels of greatness they can achieve—not because they haven’t tried—simply because they have no conception of the limitations they are facing, limitations they are creating.
    The reason is a simple but hard-to-swallow truth: most guys unknowingly live their lives in an ordinary world with no thought to leave it.
    Chances are, you are one of those guys.
    This is not a judgment. We have no doubt that you bust your ass and strive for excellence. Of course you do; men, by nature, are driven to succeed and pursue greatness with their entire being. There’s a certain swagger to being a man, a swagger that is built into your physiology and coded into your DNA—a swagger that is both created by ambition and simultaneously propels it.
    But look at the ordinary man, and none of those traits are readily apparent. You don’t see physical prowess; you see bad posture and high body fat. Talking to the ordinary man, you don’t hear confidently spoken words giving voice to intelligent ideas; you hear clipped, half-developed thoughts, oftentimes expressed in a timid nature that undercuts the speaker’s manhood.
    The ordinary man is no longer impressive. We don’t expect the ordinary guy to be particularly strong, particularly smart, or particularly fit—or successful, driven, funny, or confident. We don’t expect him to be particularly anything.
    These qualities are not expected of the ordinary, but they are the province of the Alpha. We expect these things of the Alpha—he’s the one with the strength and the wit, the charm and the poise, the drive and the leadership.
    Reading this, you might recognize in yourself a few of the qualities of the Alpha; perhaps you’re already on the way to breaking away from ordinary, already engaged in a battle against typicality and mediocrity, working to become something more. It has no doubt occurred to some men reading this book that they can change, grow, and improve. Some. But not all. There are others who don’t realize that they can change, or that they should change. They don’t realize that they need to change. Some men are perfectly content in their universe.
    Our warning isn’t about happiness or comfort. We know—and hope—that many people reading this are living good lives. This book is about creating a fundamental recognition that as long as you live in the ordinary world, you are limited. And that by making some very small, strategic changes, you can trigger dramatic improvements to every aspect of how you live, the way you feel, your impact on others, and your health and wealth.
    It’s an undeniable reality that very few people are living the exact lives that they want, and that even fewer have advanced as far as they can physically, personally, and professionally. And we know that this book can help anyone get to the next level in any of those areas.
    It’s not about where you are in an absolute sense; it’s about where you are relative to where you have the potential to be—and the sad truth is, very few men these days are living up to their potential.
    It