Having No Virtue Is Ruining Your Life

I have a confession to make. I consistently struggle to live by the virtues I preach on this newsletter.

I’ve always had the deep desire to make the world a better place, but I often fall short.

In the need to pay bills I’ve let my integrity fall by the wayside and worked for whatever company would pay me the most money.

After traveling the world for 6 months in search of myself and living in a monastery for a month to let go of myself I ended up living back with my parents.

With a few thousand dollars to my name I decided that if I was to make an impact on the world I would need to start by moving out my parents job which would require a full-time job.

I knew what I didn’t like working in operations (my previous full-time job) and that I loved writing so I joined the first company that would hire me as a copywriter — a cryptocurrency company called Ankr.

I was stoked. I was finally making enough money to move out of my parents basement (literally), and to live on my own.

But that’s where the problem starts. Once I moved to Colorado and had a place to live, I got complacent. I had all of the things I’d been obsessing about: a good paying job, a place to live, and friends.

So I got complacent.

I let myself fall into a drinking habit, and let myself fall into apathy

Worst of all, the company I was working for was more driven by greed than my previous company.

I know, I know. Most companies are focused solely on bottom-line, but this was one of the worst companies I’d worked for in terms of scraping money from pure greed and doing so by pulling on the strings of naive crypto investors wanting to make a quick buck.

But it paid good money so hey, how bad could it be?

Well, to put it bluntly, the lack of alignment caused immense suffering. The lack of integrity and apathy that I felt were crippling. They felt utterly insurmountable.

Whenever I felt the pain of a misaligned life I chose to numb it with alcohol. And I’m not someone that knows how to pace myself.

I got blackout drunk more times in those 8 months of working for that company than I ever had in my life. And to make things worse, my relationship deteriorated in front of my eyes.

The more I would use alcohol as a crutch, the harder it would be to escape the pangs of living a dishonest life. Without virtues guiding my decisions, there wasn’t a voice in my head that was strong enough to stop the unconscious drive to avoid suffering with alcohol.

Sure, I had the thought of trying to live by better values but then I would tell myself that it was too hard or that only those who are deeply religious spend time obsessing about virtues.

I was focused on self-love. But that didn’t work either. It never forced me into the fires of change.

What I needed was to reframe my suffering and to realize that it can be in service of something greater.

The Loss of Virtue

On a widespread scale we’ve lost touch with the virtues of previous cultures.

We’ve mistakenly taught an entire generation that living a virtuous life is an outdated concept.

That the only people who live by virtues are the hardcore religious folk. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.

In reality, virtues are independent of religion. Virtues are honorable values that anyone can choose to live in accordance with. Just because you see the value of loyalty and service to something greater than yourself doesn’t make you a christian.

It makes you a virtuous human being. Or at least someone who is striving to become virtuous.

Various warrior cultures throughout history have shared a few core virtues including: integrity, loyalty, service to something greater, discipline and courage.

It’s not that we’ve lost these values entirely. There are millions of people that are praising the words of discipline and courage. David Goggins. Andrew Huberman. Joe Rogan. Jocko Willinck. Just to name a few.

The real problem is that we’re missing the combination of multiple virtues. It’s not JUST discipline, but discipline in service of something greater, discipline that operates from a place of deep integrity that we’re lacking.

Then, to make things harder. Installing virtues requires a long-term commitment to truth and goodness in our life that modern culture is utterly deteriorating.

Good luck installing virtues in your life when you’re using instagram and youtube for 1+ hours a day.

Our role models used to be saviors and heroes and now they’re celebrities and multi-millionaires.

Is this really a world that we want to live in?

Why Would I Choose Virtue When I Can Choose Fame and Greed?

I can tell you firsthand, those 8 months that I chose to put greed and pleasure above all else were unfulfilling.

The point of installing virtues in our life is that it makes us feel more whole. And wholeness is peace.

To suffer is to experience internal tension. It’s when parts of ourselves our fighting against each other.

You know what causes that internal tension? Dishonesty and lack of integrity.

When we act in integrity and greater self-honesty effectively what we’re doing is dissolving the internal battles of our psyche.

No more sleepless nights.

No more hair-pulling frustration that you acted one way and wished that you would have acted another.

No more apathetic states of pity and self-loathing feeling that tell us we don’t have what it takes to face the problems in our life.

Don’t you get it.

Virtues are purpose.

To hold virtues as a central part of your life is to have a clear purpose and direction to move towards. It’s what helps you keep sight of why you’re here.

This is what it means to live a virtuous life.

It’s not suffering that is bad, but rather aimlessness. Suffering without meaning.

In fact, providing meaning to our suffering is one of the most impactful shifts we can possibly make.

So how do we make that shift?

Long-Term Virtue Training

We must commit to embodying these virtues each and everyday.

There is never a perfect embodiment of virtues, only degrees of embodiment.

Virtues are unconditioned values that we can aspire to but never fully materialize.

The goal is to strive as best as we possibly can to live them each day and to notice as often as possible where we’re out of alignment with the virtues.

This is not an easy process which is why I’m working full-time to co-create a 100 day Warrior program that helps you reflect on these values and install them into your daily life.

We call it the Warrior100 and it includes 4 daily challenges (meditation, study, exercise and integrity) over the course of 100 days.

If this piece called to you, join us for the Warrior100.

The challenge begins on September 1st. (doors close on August 25th)

Warrior100