Overstimulation Is Killing Your Masculinity (pt 1)

Man is overstimulated.

Unconsciously checking his phone hundreds of times a day without even realizing it.

Getting absorbed into social media for hours, completely losing track of time and the task at hand.

Unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes without opening a new browser tab to look up a pointless fact.

Constantly filling his head with other people's ideas, opinions, and advice.

Mindlessly distracting himself from his purpose and ending each day feeling unaccomplished.

Having access to everything, all the time, at a moments notice has been the worst thing that's ever happened to man.

It's killing the masculine spirit.

Men aren't inspired to get out of the house, discover who they are, and explore the world.

They hide behind their screens- comforted by memes, porn, and pointless games.

It's no surprise the majority of men feel depressed, isolated, and misunderstood.

When your mind is overwhelmed with stimulation, it's pretty hard to figure out who the fuck you are.

Overstimulation is the biggest contributing factor to the epidemic of suffering men are facing.

In the next two letters we're going to explore how overstimulation is killing masculinity, and every man must do about it.

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Stop Seeking More Information and Do Something

Growing up, I read Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet over and over again.

The book is about a kid named Brian, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash and must survive in the Canadian wilderness for months.

That story had a profound effect on my life.

I not only wanted to read about Brian’s adventures - I wanted to be him.

I would spend hours a day dreaming about being alone in the woods - building friction fires, living off the land, and testing my spirit.

But that’s all it was - a dream.

Growing up, the only thing I knew about survival was from what I had read in books and watched in shows like Alone.

In an actual survival situation, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days.

No amount of information I consumed gave me the required skillset to survive.

It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I stopped learning about survival skills and started practicing them.

When I was 26 I went to my first primitive skills gathering - a week-long event where hundreds of people congregated to study the skills our hunter-gatherer ancestors used to survive.

I left that gathering with a few tricks and a bit more confidence, but it was child's play compared to the 28-day minimalist survival course I did last year.

I learned more about survival in those 28 days than years of reading books and attending workshops.

In five days, I went from never creating a friction fire to easily busting one out whenever I wanted.

During the course, we would stop each night to set up camp and cook our one meal for the day.

The only fire-making tools we had were bow drills we built out of sage brush and paracord.

If we couldn't start a fire, we couldn’t cook our food.

When you’re genuinely starving and hiking 8-15 miles a day, you learn how to build a fire - no matter what it takes.

Or so I thought...

There were seven of us on the course, and all of us were taught the same lesson.

Despite learning the same techniques and building the same tools, I was responsible for starting nearly every single fire on the entire course.

Some people never figured out how to use the bow drill.

They watched me, thinking that would somehow help them find success.

They would try half-heartedly a few times, eventually giving up and relying on me to build us a fire each night.

When the course entered the solo phase and we each spent five nights alone, they were left to build their own fire.

All of them were stuck eating raw flour and dry lentil beans.

This taught me a lot about the importance of getting off the court and into the ring.

If you want to learn fast and build applicable knowledge that sticks, you have to get your hand dirty.

It's all about reps.

The only reason I was able to start a fire consistently was because I kept experimenting with my technique.

I never stopped practicing.

I refined my approach until I found a consistent method that guaranteed results.

Most men waste their entire lives watching tutorial after tutorial on how to start a business, or how to cold approach a woman, or how to lift weights, yet never do the actual thing.

This is complete mental masturbation.

You can’t learn anything by watching someone else doing it - you need to throw yourself to the wolves and figure it out on your own.

You have to have skin in the game.

If you want to learn how to build a business, sell a product you haven’t created yet and set a release date.

If you want to get in shape, sign up for a marathon with a friend and compete with him.

If you want a girlfriend, begin approaching women and starting conversations.

You don’t gain muscle by watching fitness YouTubers or get a girlfriend by reading books about relationships.

The endless quest for more information is killing you.

It's filling your brain with useless concepts, theories, and ideas instead of real-world feedback and experience.

Seeking "more" knowledge is an addiction.

The brain doesn’t know the difference between doing something yourself and watching someone else do it - it produces the same hit of dopamine.

It may give you the sensation of accomplishment, but it doesn't produce any results.

I spent five years listening to business podcasts before starting my first business.

None of the information from those podcasts was retained because I had nothing to apply it to.

My return on listening to those podcasts was 0%.

If you want to accelerate your growth exponentially, spend 90% of your time doing the thing instead of learning about how to do it.

You should only be reading books or taking courses when you can apply the information immediately to solve a specific problem you are facing on a project.

Anything else and you are wasting your attention and energy.

You are getting high off the stimulation, pretending you are learning something, but moving further away from taking action towards your goals.

You don't need more information.

You need to start.

Quit "learning" and start doing.

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Masculine Clarity Flourishes in Silence

“It’s only after you’re bored that you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.” - Naval Ravikant

Have you ever noticed you have your best thoughts while in the shower or on a walk?

I’ve never met a man who receives a bolt of clarity while doom-scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix.

The most respected minds in history knew answers come during moments of uninterrupted silence.

That's why these accomplished men spent large amounts of time in contemplation while wrestling with huge, complex problems.

During long walks, or periods sitting in stillness, solutions would spontaneously arise.

One of the core masculine gifts is directionality - the ability to see the future, create a plan, and execute.

Feeling into what needs to happen next, then taking aligned action.

When a man loses touch with this gift, his life becomes meaningless.

He gets stuck in habitual thought loops.

He loses his sense of purpose.

He can’t lead himself, his woman, or his community.

He quickly becomes hopeless and depressed.

I went through a bad bout of this in my early 20’s.

I took a job out of college that I didn’t actually want to do, but it paid well and was really easy.

Within a few months I fell into a deep depression.

I had no direction in my life and felt like I was going nowhere.

So I did what most depressed men do - filled my days by getting stoned, watching porn, and playing video games.

This was a downward spiral - it’s hard to have any clarity about the future when you never create a moment of space to think.

Eventually I hit a point where I had a psychotic break and completely fell apart, quitting my job and moving to a new city in the process.

I could’ve avoided that if I had regularly taken time to be in silence.

If I had just learned to be with my own thoughts and boredom, I could've found a solution to my misery.

Now when I’m feeling completely overwhelmed, instead of seeking more stimulation, I meditate, go for a walk, or journal.

It only takes a few minutes of meditation to realize you're insane.

There is plenty of shit to work out in our head, we don’t need extra inputs to solve our problems.

The best decisions I’ve ever made have come after spending a significant amount of time in contemplative silence.

Seven years ago, I started attending Vipassana meditation retreats once or twice a year.

During these retreats, I would take monastic vows - literally going monk mode for twelve days.

No speaking.

Fasting eighteen hours a day.

No eye contact with other people.

Meditating over twelve hours a day.

During those times in silent retreat, I received so much clarity about what needed to happen next in my life.

It’s where I came up with ideas for my business, places I was going to travel, where I was going to live, and projects I wanted to undertake.

I would come out of each retreat reborn - energized and inspired to implement my new vision into reality.

Not everyone can take twelve days off a year to go into silent meditation.

But a man must create periods in his life where is completely alone with his thoughts.

Waking up thirty minutes earlier each morning and sitting in your backyard in silence will change the entire trajectory of your day.

Going for a silent walk on your lunch break allows you to return to work refreshed and recommitted.

If a man does not continually carve out periods of solitude to let his mind settle, his entire consciousness will be warped by social media, the 24-hour news cycle, and the indoctrinated culture around him.

He will lose touch with who he is, never have an original thought, and float further and further away from his life’s purpose.

A sovereign man understands that without silence, none of his thoughts are his own.

He becomes a caricature - repeating whatever propaganda he most recently heard on the news, or the hot take on some celebrity bullshit that has no relevance in his life.

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Final Thoughts

Any time I'm feeling overwhelmed in life, it's because I'm allowing too much information in.

When you get the message, it's time to hang up the phone.

Find a quiet place.

Put your phone on silent.

Let go of what you think you need to learn.

And stop believing the answer is out there.

Dedicating a few hours a week to sitting in silence and committing to creating more than you consume would transform your entire life in six months.

Next week, we're going explore a few more reasons why overstimulation is killing your masculinity and what you can do about it.

For now, notice when you compulsively reach for a distraction out of "boredom" or "needing" to know, and try doing nothing, instead.

"Nothing" is likely the exact thing you need.

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​- Evan