The Art of Being Ruthless
How to Be Bold, Find Your Spine and Take Control of Your Life
By Michael Sloan
Copyright 2016 by Make Profits Easy LLC
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Ties That Bind
Chapter 2: Ruthless with Yourself
Chapter 3: Pragmatism and You
Chapter 4: Becoming the Bold
Chapter 5: How to Get What You Really Want
Chapter 6: The True Authority
Chapter 7: Go to War and Win
Chapter 8: Always About Goals
Conclusion
Introduction
Are you tired of being pushed around? Do you hate it when others are disrespectful to you, rude or even violent towards you, causing you to feel helpless? In today’s society, it seems that there are two different kinds of person: the one who is willing to take whatever they want and the one who’s always being taken advantage of. If you’re tired of being a doormat, pushed around and always being the guy to come in last, then this is the book that you’ve been looking for. We’re here to talk about how to become ruthless. We’ll discuss what ruthlessness really is, how it can benefit your life and what kind of mindset will allow you to become as ruthless as you want to be. Don’t let your boss, friends and relationships hold you down any longer. You don’t need to wait for some kind of permission to become the best kind of person that you want to be. All you need is the strength, guts and willingness to step up to the plate and recognize that you’re in charge.
Let’s be clear about something. Ruthlessness isn’t about being evil. It’s not about hurting people, crushing others or causing harm. Rather being ruthless is all about learning how to get what you actually want out of life and preventing other people from controlling you. You see, everything ultimately boils down to control. Your boss controls you with your paycheck, your relatives control you with guilt and the corporate world controls you through materialism. We are here to help you break free of all of those controls and assist you in becoming your own man. Being ruthless means that you are free to do as you please and that you are not bound by other people’s methods of control.
This book isn’t about taking shortcuts; it’s not about how you can get ahead by being corrupt. Instead, we are presenting a mindset that will allow you to move freely in your own life, free from the guilt, shame and other hooks that people put into us from a very early age. We’ll look at what control really means, then we’ll move into talking about how to be ruthless in your decision-making process. We’ll also explain what pragmatism means and how it can be beneficial in your life and then finally, we’ll talk about ways you can become more ruthless in everyday life. If you’re interested in learning how to grow a spine, take control of your life and achieve everything that you want to achieve with boldness and confidence, then let’s get moving!
Chapter 1: The Ties That Bind
From the very moment that we are born, other people seek to control us. Our parents feed us when they want to feed us, they clothe us how they desire and they take us wherever they want. We have little say in the things that happen around us. Then as we start to get older, we become autonomous. We start learning to make our own decisions, despite how young we are. We start to develop a sense of self and that self is often at odds with other people. We want to play loudly, but Mom and Dad are trying to sleep, so they shush us. We want to run around, but the parents don’t like us doing that. If we do things they don’t like, sometimes they even punish us. We begin to learn, from a very early age, that if we don’t act how the adults want us to act, we will be punished. What happens when we get in school? The teachers exert influence and control on us as well, shaping us and forcing us to do as they wish. If we don’t act according to their will, if we try to do things our own way, we are scolded and punished. This cycle of punishment and coercion lasts all the way up until we’re graduated and out of the house, living on our own.
This system of control isn’t based on freedom and rationality, rather it is based primarily on punishment and shame. So instead of teaching a child to be independent, adults often discover that it’s easier and more effective if they control the child. Emphasis on understanding and overcoming problems are diminished, instead of teaching children that mistakes are good, we live in a society where mistakes are brutally punished and shame is weaponized against most children as a means of control.
So, what happens when you grow up in a world where your parents and teachers focus on controlling you instead of aiding you in your journey? Control quickly becomes the only world we know and as a result we begin to experience a significant reduction in our own free will. We begin to act out of compulsion, instead of out of our own desire. Punishment dictates our actions. So, we grow up in a world where we aren’t given a sense of confidence and autonomy. Instead, we are taught to obey and if we don’t obey, we become punished.
This creates a mentality within most people, a mentality of compliance. Compliance is the key to control. It is actually very difficult to force someone to do something that they don’t want to do, unless they are compliant. Compliance is a combination of a broken spirit, a weak will and a sense of fear. As we grow up in a world that demands compliance from us, we end up becoming that broken spirit over time. Our wills are weakened from a lifetime of being forced to follow orders at every step of the way.
This doesn’t just leave us when we turn 18, either. For many people, we end up trapped in this compliant mindset for most of our lives. When the boss tells us that we’re going to have to work late tonight, we agree. When the girlfriend calls us up and demands that we cancel plans, we agree. We are still just as compliant and weak as a little four-year-old boy who just learned that his parents punish him when he’s too loud inside of the house.
Now there is a place and time for a long, drawn out conversation on what the most effective parenting methods are, how to use them and why we should teach children strength instead of compliance, but this isn’t the book for that. Still, it’s important for you to be able to know that the reason why most men and women are so afraid and nervous about the world around them is because of the compliance instilled in them by their parents. Even if your parents were really kind and you weren’t punished that often, you still grew up in a world that punishes failure and rewards success with little thought as to how it affects the development of a young child.
You might be someone who doesn’t like to step on toes. Maybe you get nervous or worried when it comes to conflict, or perhaps you’re someone who always does what you’re told, even if you really don’t want to. Most likely, in some way, you are compliant. There are a lot of ways that we can mask compliance, there are a lot of ways to justify blind obedience in our lives. We can say that we’re just being nice, or that we don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. You can be nice and refuse to be compliant. You can avoid hurting other people’s feelings and still get your way. We often find ways to justify our compliance and act as if fear wasn’t the sole factor that was driving our motivations.
Think about it for a moment. If you didn’t have fear in your life, what would you do differently? If you weren’t afraid of your boss, losing your job, dealing with conflict or demanding a raise, how different would your life be? Fear of punishment is programmed into us at a very early age and guess what? When someone spends enough time stuffing feelings and emotions into our minds, it doesn’t go away magically. And so, we grow up learning to be good little boys and girls, but we are taught a strange definition of good. We are not taught to do good because of morality, rather we are taught that obeying authority is the ultimate g
ood. Are you too loud in class? Being good is being quiet. Do you want to eat cereal for dinner? Being good means you only eat cereal for breakfast. Do you want to have the weekend off? Being good means coming into work on a Saturday. We aren’t taught basic principles of right and wrong as much as we are taught how to be compliant with the world around us. The rules constantly change and to us they make no sense. The adults always seem to be making up new rules that stop us from doing the things that we want.
So, we become conditioned to become afraid whenever we try to stand up for ourselves and fight back. We find ourselves dealing with serious emotional and mental health issues at times because we are so worried, anxious and afraid. The punishments have stopped being dealt to us, after all we’re adults, but the fear of being punished still haunts us. Then we end up in a voluntary position, such as at college or a job, where we aren’t actually required to be there and we act as if we are still being controlled. So, we begin to comply. Work late? Sure, thing, boss. Unfairly graded paper? Well what are you going to do about it? Assertiveness, courage and boldness do not exist in a world of compliance and so we aren’t set up to do the things that we really want to do.
Then someone comes along, someone who doesn’t really seem to care about this culture of compliance. He speaks his mind at the workplace. He demands and gets a raise when he feels like he’s earned one. If the boss tries to punish him for his actions, he looks elsewhere for work and finds it. He’s the kind of guy who will ask for the manager when something in the restaurant goes wrong, he’s the kind of guy who women feel safe around because he’s willing to step up to the plate and handle things until they are more to his liking. He isn’t bound by compliance at all. Instead, he is free to live without fear and that is what ruthlessness really is.
Being ruthless isn’t about being nasty or cruel, that’s a mischaracterization. Being ruthless is about putting yourself first in terms of doing the things that you actually want to do. It’s about being free from the expectations and the controls that other people have on you. You can be a ruthless individual and still be a moral person, but most of the time we don’t really act good out of morality, we act good out of compliance. We do the things we’re supposed to do because we fear punishment! So, don’t think that by talking about ruthlessness that we’re here to tell you to be wretched, evil and cruel, because that’s not really what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to tell you what it means to act ruthless by living life on your own terms. No one wants to be controlled, no one wants to be owned or to have a large list of rules put on them each and every day. But the compliant man is the one who accepts these rules that have been set on his back and lives under such a burden each day without ever questioning their legitimacy.
So, if we’re going to learn how to cut those ties, to release ourselves from the bondage that has been placed on us by society, then we’re going to have to be able to identify the fatal assumptions that we carried with us from childhood into adulthood. Once we question and challenge those assumptions, you’ll learn that you indeed have a choice as to whether you want to live in fear or if you want to be your own man.
Fatal Assumption One: I Have to Obey Authority.
We often experience this feeling that we have to obey whatever authority figure is over us. When it comes to dealing with customer service situations, like getting a refund, we might find ourselves feeling like whatever the customer service representative has to say is the final word, even if we don’t get our way. If we’re in a workplace situation, we might perceive that obedience is required if we are going to keep our jobs. So, we exist in a world where we must, at all times, obey our masters and do as they say. We might try halfheartedly to get our way but at the end of the day they are the ones in charge.
Now there’s one little problem with this fatal assumption. Your boss isn’t actually the ultimate authority at your job. The corporation isn’t the ultimate authority when it comes to getting a problem resolved, even your relationships aren’t the ultimate authority on how you spend your time. You are actually the ultimate authority figure in all these situations. Why? Because you chose to be there in the first place. You are giving your boss permission to ride you every day because you are choosing to go to work. When a company refuses to be of help to you and you back down, you are allowing them to get away with their actions instead of just asking for managers until you finally get your problem solved.
You are ultimately responsible for your own actions, ideas and thoughts. If you don’t think that you have any other choices in your life, if you think that you are trapped by your own boss, then of course you are going to obey everything that he tells you to do. Of course, you are going to cower in fear when he threatens to fire you over some imagined slight or problem. If you want to be bold, courageous and ruthless, you are going to have to realize that you need to stop seeing your boss as the guy in charge. Truthfully, you are the only one who is truly in charge.
Does this mean you are free to ignore your boss and do whatever you want to at work? Not at all! Remember, the point of being ruthless is getting what you actually want, not just being a jerk. There is a greater freedom to be found when you come to the realization that you are responsible for the horrible boss that you have in your life, for the toxic friends who drag you down and even for living in your own country! This freedom comes from realizing that any authority that you are under, it is because you choose to be under them.
Now there are forms of authority that should be obeyed, such as the law of the land. Breaking laws is dangerous and immoral, plus it could seriously cause you harm in the long run, so we’re not advocating that you refuse to follow the authority of the government. At the same time, if you don’t like the way a government is being run, ultimately you have the ability and authority to find somewhere else to go, one that might be more to your liking.
The problems happen when we feel like we don’t have a say in who is in charge of us. When we believe that we are required to obey someone, it creates feelings of tension and resentment. When we voluntarily place ourselves under someone else’s command, it’s because we have respect for our leader and we trust them. We don’t feel controlled by those people. On the other hand, if we feel a compulsion or requirement to follow someone’s lead, it tends to drain our sense of independence and freedom.
You aren’t required to do what your boss says, ultimately. There is nothing that is forcing you to stay under his command. He cannot harm you or use physical violence to control you. So why do we feel like we have to listen to these authority figures? It’s because of our compliance culture. The reality is that you are free to do as you please.
At the end of the day, you don’t have to work at a job you don’t want. You don’t have to do what your boss tells you and you don’t even have to hang out with people that you don’t like. You are responsible for your own choices and no one else has the power to tell you otherwise.
Fatal Assumption Two: If I Don’t Do as They Say Bad Things Will Happen
This is most common in the workplace. “If I don’t work late,” the compliant man cries, “I’ll lose my job!” “If I don’t let my boss make those lewd comments about me,” the compliant woman bemoans “I might not be able to move up in the company!” It is true that you might be in a position where you’ll have to deal with serious consequences if you don’t choose to obey your boss. But you’ve got to ask yourself if those consequences are actually the worst things that can happen to you.
The reality is that the worst thing that can happen to you is for you to lose your own sense of freedom.
When we put ourselves in situations where we are entirely dependent on other people to survive, we end up in a very unfortunate situation. If you feel like your job is a necessary thing, if you can’t live without a job that you despise, then you are doomed to always be beholden to your company. This loss of freedom that we experience is actually worse than any punishment that can be dealt to us.
If you desir
e to become ruthless, then you are going to need to be able to become free. A ruthless person is someone that says “I’m going to be my own man. I’m not going to be beholden to any other individual.” This kind of attitude requires some level of sacrifice on your part, however. If you want to engineer your life to where you aren’t dependent on external factors it is no easy task. But the reality is, when you feel like you are forced to work somewhere against your will, if the fear of consequences are the only things keeping you compliant, you are more akin to being a slave than a free man.
Breaking out of this slave mentality is going to require you to make some hard choices. It requires a total shift in thinking. You have to stop caring about obeying society around you and instead you need to start caring about how you can be free from these controlling factors in your life.
So how do we break free? How do we get out of a situation where our lives are constantly under other people’s control? The fear of punishment can be so overwhelming at times. We fear losing our jobs, relationships, money or material possessions. These fears can entangle us and bind us, trapping us in positions that we never really wanted to be a part of in the first place. How many times has a short-term job turned into a long-term nightmare? How many draining relationships are you in right now? There is only one solution and that solution is to cut the ties that bind us.
What are these ties? Well, a few ties are financial burdens such as debt, financial obligations to other people. There are relationship ties such as a bad romantic relationship or toxic friendships. Sometimes these ties are simply emotional, like guilt. If you want to be free, if you don’t want to be beholden to anyone, then you are going to have to focus on learning how to cut those ties.
Let’s not mince any words. The process of going from being a beholden individual to being a free man is hard. We’ll look closer at breaking those ties in the next chapter, but for right now, we’ll continue looking at the false assumptions that the compliant individual follows.
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