I am about to present empirical scientific data confirming that Alpha Male 2.0 concepts and techniques can and probably will be the most important things you will do in your entire life.Â
What? Â
Yes! I shall explain.
Back in the early 2010s, a woman named Bronnie Ware wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. They did studies on (and interviews with) very old people on their deathbeds to determine the biggest regrets they had in their lives. They collated all this information, and I’m about to give you the top five things these people said they regretted when they were on their deathbeds.Â
More importantly, Iâm going to show you that if you are an A2, at least four out of these five things will never apply to you.
Here they are, starting with the smallest and moving to the biggest:Â
Regret #5: I wish Iâd stayed in touch with my friends.Â
Out of the top five, that was the lowest, but it was one that showed up a lot. Whether or not you have lots of friends or stay in touch with them is irrelevant to A2, since some Alpha Male 2.0s are extroverts who have lots of friends and other A2s are more introverted like me. Either type of A2 works.Â
Regret #4: I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.Â
Why do you not express your feelings when you want to? Why do you think these people were scared to express their feelings?Â
Because they were outcome dependent! They gave a shit about what other people might say or think if they said certain things. They were scared of or concerned about the reaction they might get. In other words, they were outcome dependent.âŻÂ
When you are outcome independent, you can say whatever the fuck you want, and you don’t care what other people think. Do you think I have any trouble whatsoever with anyone in my life â or anyone in the public â saying what I really feel? Youâve got to be kidding! I don’t care! I’m outcome independent. I don’t give a fuck.
To be fair, everyone says, âI don’t care what people think.â The problem is they’re lying. They care a lot about what people think. On the other hand, as long as I keep making money, I don’t care what people think. Iâve proven that I can make a lot of money saying whatever the fuck I think without having to filter myself.âŻÂ
Thatâs true when you have the balls to be outcome independent. A core tenet of Alpha Male 2.0 is outcome independence; stop giving a fuck about things. And certainly, stop giving a shit about what other people may think, say, or how they react when you tell them how you feel.Â
So, if these people on their deathbeds had been A2, #4 would be eliminated off this list.
Regret #3: I wish I hadnât worked so hard.Â
What is a core part of the Alpha 2.0 business structure? (This is not Caleb now; this is Alpha 2.0.) Itâs when you have an Alpha 2.0 business, you make at least $75,000 per year, location independent income, on less than 30 hours a week.âŻÂ
Why do I include that 30 hours a week thing in the model? Because if you make a lot of money but you work 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week, you are not free. Iâve said this many times in my online courses, on my blogs, and in my other videos. I know because I used to be that guy. In my twenties, I made a good income, but I had to work 60-hour weeks on a regular basis to maintain that income, and I had no freedom. Â
I personally know (and personally work with) men who make a lot of money, sometimes seven-figure incomes, but they have to bust their asses every week. Â
That is not freedom. Â
Alpha Male 2.0 is about freedom, and the only way to be free is to make a decent amount of money on low hours. You can choose to work more than 30 hours a week â I choose to, but I don’t need to. Iâve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I can maintain my entire income (and I make multiple six-figures) on 15 hours per week if I choose. I can work all day Monday, half the day Tuesday, and take the rest of the week off (for the rest of my life) with no dip in income. I choose to work longer hours because I like it.Â
And even in my case, Iâm not going to regret that and say, âOh gee, I wish I hadnât worked so much.â I take plenty of time off, especially now.âŻÂ
So, if you’re A2, you’ll never have this regret: âOh my God, I was at the office for 40, 50, 60 hours a week for my entire life!â You donât need to put in long hours to maintain an A2 lifestyle. You have other important areas of your life that have nothing to do with work, right? You canât address those areas as well if you’re busting your ass 50 hours a week.Â
By the way, when I say 40-50-60 hours a week, I include commuting time. When you get in your car and you drive to your office and go through all that goddamn traffic (you people who live in Los Angeles, my god) you spend an hour and a half in the car or more per day or whatever⌠holy crap. I have buddies and relatives who spend an hour and a half in the car every day to and from work. You have to add that to your work hours. Stupid! The Alpha Male 2.0 income is location independent. You donât have to get into a car; you don’t even need to own a car. You can stay home, especially during COVID-19.Â
Regret #2: I wish Iâd let myself be happier.Â
What is the core tenet of everything I talk about? Long-term consistent happiness. Not happiness now and then being pissed off later, but long-term consistent happiness over the next 25, 35, 50 years. Weâre not talking about being happy and having a great time in your twenties and thirties and then having a horrible life in your sixties, but being happy long-term for the rest of your life.
âI wish I’d let myself be happier.â That is the antithesis of A2. Thatâs a beta male or a very stressed out Alpha Male 1.0 saying that. If you’re Alpha Male 2.0, you will never have that regret.
That is one of the differences between the Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle model and other lifestyle models, including traditional monogamous marriage, the pick-up artist lifestyle, the swinger lifestyle, the MGTOW lifestyle, and so on. These lifestyles might make you happy for a while, and then they make you unhappy later. The Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle makes you happy now and later and for the rest of your life, and you can maintain it the rest of your life.Â
You see how this protects you against all these problems? Now, letâs get to #1. The biggest regret of people on their deathbeds when theyâre old…Â
Regret #1: I wish Iâd had the courage to live a life true to myself â not the life others expected of me.Â
Where is that coming from? Societal Programming! Living your life the way your wife wants you to live it, or the way your mom wants you to live it, or the way your dad wants you to live it, or the way your friends want you to live it, or how your religion wants you to live it. I’m sorry to you more traditional guys, but that includes religion, folks. (You can have a religion as an Alpha Male 2.0 but if your religion limits you from living the way you want to live then your religion becomes incompatible with A2).Â
Live the life you want to live instead of the life you were told to live by your religion, or your political beliefs, or your culture. âA good person from India lives like this, and a good Chinese man lives like this, and a good American lives like this.âÂ
Fuck that! Live the way you want to live! That is classic Societal Programming. It is external sources in your life, including loved ones, including your mother saying, âDon’t live the way you want to live, live the way I think is appropriate. You should live the way I think you should live!âÂ
And you repsond, âOK, Mom.âÂ
âOK, Dad.âÂ
âOK, Donald Trump.âÂ
âOK, Chinese culture/Indian culture/American culture/European culture.âÂ
âOK wife.âÂ
âOK girlfriend.âÂ
Chapter 3 in my primary book, The Unchained Man, is all about how to clean out Societal Programming so you can live the way you want to live instead of the way other people, cultures, industries, groups, or religions want you to live.âŻÂ
At least four of these five things are classic symptoms of men who don’t live A2 lives. When you embrace and adopt the A2 lifestyle, you will not have any of these regrets (other than maybe the first one if you’re really introverted).Â
Working too hard, not being able to express your feelings, not letting yourself be happy, and not living the life you want to live â that is all anti-Alpha 2.0. So literally, you are guaranteed to avoid four of the top five regrets old people have on their deathbeds! Â
Do you see how important this is? Do you see how this isnât just something fun to do? Really think about this stuff
Is this really an issue for people? I feel most people feel they dont work hard enough.
I also believe you said it yourself that people these days are lazy and do not put in the work..
If you’re lazy but you still have to do some boring unfulfilling work to survive, of course you’ll feel overworked in the end.
So its not about working too much but about doing work that you doing like?
It’s a great article, I agree very much that by living Alpha 2.0 lifestyle or similar lifestyle concept the 4 things will not be something we’ll regret on our deathbed.
With this part I can’t agree fully. Also, it’s somewhat contrary to regret #5 about friends, and too big importance is given to making money, while people on deathbeds never mentioned money as important. If we have financial freedom making money means no added value to our life any more.
We shouldn’t be affected by what 99% of people think about us, the maximum we can do is understand their opinion and that’s it. But we should care what the most valuable people in our life think, if we want to build genuine, meaningful long term relationships with them. Here I mean your parents, kids, LTR-wife, 5-10 closest friends and your top 2 mentors. Caring and understanding their opinion doesn’t mean we’ll change our life choice and we can still be comfortable being true authentic self around them.
Having empathy for feelings of our closest people doesn’t necesarilly mean you won’t express your feelings or you are outcome dependent. These are two way, deep relationships and healthy people are biologically wired to need them. If we stop giving a fuck for literally everyone and become 100% unvulnerable it could lead to psychopathological extreme, being completely incapable of empathy and deeper emotions.
One thing is certain, doing any activity for more time than you can stand doing said activity is not the path to happiness. Changing activities, training oneself to be capable of working more, working less but making each hour count, are all valid approaches to fix this.
You’re correct. What they really mean is “I spent too much time at work.” Most normal humans spend all day at a bullshit job. They’re not really working hard, but they’re at work and can’t really do anything else important in their lives while there. That’s what they regret… sitting at their bullshit job instead of spending time with their loved ones, traveling, relaxing, experiencing, creating, etc.
Exactly.
It’s about both.
I care about what my wife and kids think of me… too a degree.  (In other words, I love them but I’m never changing for them.)
I also want my paying customers to feel they receive good value.
Other than those two very minor exceptions, I literally don’t give a fuck what people think. (In many cases I actually make more money when people are angry with me, as I’ve demonstrated many times in the past.)
So when I say “people” I’m not including those in my inner circle, but that’s a very, very tiny amount of people (less than perhaps five humans out of world of 7 billion?).
And even with my inner circle there’s a clear limit to my fucks given. If Pink Firefly demanded I become monogamous tomorrow, she’d out of my house within 48 hours and just move forward. If one of my children started yelling at me for not being a socialist or a Christian, I’d stop taking their calls and move forward.
I. Don’t. Care.
That’s why I’m happy while the rest of the world is screaming. đ
onward to amber!
Caleb what if your wife chance shes mind and say she not moving out of USA early next year. Do you still exactly follow same schedule that you planned?
Yep. Without hesitation.
Great article again Caleb, I’m very satisfied with the 2 recent video-blog articles. They provide fresh perspectives instead of just rehashing the common rules.
Question: how do you deal with things that you don’t give a fuck about but your ‘inner circle’ does and they are horrified/upset each time you do that?
In Open Marriage book, you recommend doing many things (some is quite a hassle) to be discreet and to cover up your OM as a traditional one (especially when fucking FBs) because Pink Firefly would concern about that. It seems to me that you recommend compromising (in the mean of spending/wasting time and money) to keep your loved ones happy and to maintain mutual harmony. That’s alright and probably needed, but I’m confused about when and where we draw the line about that?
Article idea: talk about the top 5 (or 10) most expensive courses/programs/books you’ve bought for yourself and how value-for-money those are for you.
Thanks!
https://alphamale20.com/blackdragonblog/2017/04/06/deal-shaming-language-family-friends/
https://alphamale20.com/blackdragonblog/2016/09/19/deal-problematic-family-members/
https://alphamale20.com/blackdragonblog/2017/07/20/managing-nonmonogamous-relationships-social-environments/
Very incorrect. I said to not blatantly advertise the open aspect of your marriage to your social/family circle since the odds are high that your wife (not Pink Firefly, but your wife) will feel weird if everyone in the universe knows you’re fucking other women. (Pink Firefly already knows that the entire planet knows I have sex with other women. How could she not know this?) I also said that over time you can talk to these people about it if you really want to and gave specific examples of how to do that.
Think for a minute. Do you seriously think I recommend that?
No, it’s not needed. That your Asian SP talking.
Added to the list!
Hmm, ok, I may misunderstand your words while skimming but this is the part I’m talking about (quoted from your book, hope you don’t mind):
While being OI yourself, you recommend avoiding nosy neighbors because ‘it will be difficult for your wife’. I thought if she allows you to have sex with FB at home, that’s the potential problem she will have to predict and being OI with it herself? (Like what Pink Firefly has to do with you talking openly about fucking multiple women on the internet, you wouldn’t mind that her co-workers, buddies, and extended family gossips about it, would you?)
This makes pushing for sex with FBs at home a moot point, for me at least, since I don’t want to give a fuck about neighbor’s gossips reach my wife’s ears (and potentially upset her) every time a FB visit me.
Those two paragraphs you quoted have nothing to do with Pink Firefly nor are they “recommend doing many things (some is quite a hassle) to be discreet and to cover up your OM as a traditional one,” which is what you said in your first comment, and why I had to correct you.
Now that you’re quoting me correctly, we can actually address the real issues…
Only if there was a “non-stop parade of women” coming to our house. But if there was (and my OLTR Marriage is not structured that way), then yes, neighbors might be an issue for your wife.
If that is the marriage you intend to have (an OLTR wife with FBs coming to the house all the time) then yes, you need to make that clear to her during the OLTR Talk and if she has a problem with that you keep her at the MLTR level and look elsewhere for a wife.
Correct, I wouldn’t give a shit. However, if she wasn’t the kind of woman who wouldn’t give a shit, it would possibly cause trouble in my marriage. If your OLTR wife is really unhappy all the time it will affect you. That’s the downside of living with a woman (since with an MLTR you can just say, “Well, that’s your problem” and do whatever you want).
That depends purely on your wife. If she’s doesn’t give a shit about what the neighbors say, you’re good. But if she’s consonantly bitching and complaining to you about what the neighbors are saying, you’ve got a real problem because you structured an OLTR Marriage incompatible with the woman you chose.
That is only relevant if you live in a village or something like that. In cities usually most people dont talk to their neighbours at all or donât even know who the neighbours are. Especially when you travel /work / move around a lot.
Certainly true in most Western countries, but not in Asia, where Leon seems to live. In several SEAsian countries, including Indonesia and Singapore, you are legally required to report overnight guests to a local authority. It’s an often ignored rule, but if lots of people in a neighborhood start objecting to your behavior, it can become an issue. At a practical level, it’s pretty easy to negotiate (for example, just don’t bring noisy, scantily clad hookers back home from clubs late at night). But it’s not true that you can completely ignore the neighbors.
You could get around it by living in an apartment block or one of the expatriate suburbs, but I don’t like those places. It’s a cost benefit thing: I find the benefits of living on the ground in the center of town outweigh the minimal costs of managing relations with neighbors. It works for me.
wow that some serious fascism right there
is that enforced? What happens if you dont do it? Fine? Or worse?
Depends very much on the area, at least in Indonesia. In the big cities and tourist areas, it is almost universally ignored. In rural areas (or even crowded, “respectable poor” areas in the cities), you could get anything from a polite warning the next day to being frog marched down to the police station in the middle of the night, particularly if your guest is a young woman from the local community.
But as I said, at a practical level, it doesn’t mean much. I’ve personally experienced a difficulty once in more than 20 years, when I was staying overnight with a woman at her house in a conservative village outside town, when a small mob turned up to demand to know why a foreign man was staying there. In fact, I slept right through it! She was quite a tough, assertive person and she stared them down. They left and somehow found out her father’s contact details and called him in the middle of the night. She got some grief over it, but she didn’t really talk about it or get me involved in it directly.
Seriously, one incident in more than twenty years — I think that falls under the two percent rule. There are many stupid rules that are never really enforced here. It’s pretty easy to avoid in practice.
So is that where your nick Incognito comes from? đ
Hehehe …
Ok, I get it now. It’s an issue because it might affect our own long-term happiness, so we either work around that (if it’s not too much of a hassle) or don’t let it happened in the first place. Thanks, Caleb.
@Incognito you’re spot on, mate. I live in SEA too and it’s basically everything you’ve said.
Partially true. The more densely populated your area is, the less it will matter. So yes, in a city, no one will give a shit. In a small town, everyone will (yet another reason why Alpha Male 2.0 is much more difficult if you live in a small down). In a suburb, like where I have lived, it depends; you might be fine or you may encounter a little gossip depending on who lives near you, the configuration of your street, etc.
As mentioned above, culture also matters. If you live in a more traditional or right-wing culture (parts of Asia or the Middle East), more people are going to give a shit. But if you live somewhere like in South America, no one will give a shit (again, unless you live in a small town, etc).