Three Legendary Mindsets
On earth, we are constrained by certain realities. If you stand on the ground, hold a book over your head and release it, the book will fall. If you eat fast food three times a day, never exercise and drink sugary drinks like water, you will be obese, and if you treat her like a star, she will treat you like a fan. These are realities of life. Like the sentences above, the effects follow the causes that precede them in life. There is a fundamental and more pervasive truth on earth. However, you define success; success ends with hard work and luck, which is variable. However, it all starts and dies in the same place as one’s mindset decision. So, to ensure we do not lose these time-tested mindsets that Legacy Gentlemen have used to revolutionize society, I will cover three mindsets that will make you legendary.
Problem Solving from First Principles
We must understand what is wrong then fix it, also known as problem-solving—those who revolutionize and change the world using first principles. First-principles mindset is the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem and then creating solutions from scratch. This kind of thinking is the precursor to innovation. If you use this method correctly, you will not be bogged down by perceived limitation, but because you use best practices as the “jumping-off point,” you will save time and produce outstanding results. So, let’s talk about the framework for first principles.
First Principles framework
1. Identify and then challenge your assumptions – write down long-held assumptions about the issue you are trying to solve or the value you are trying to add. If you are trying to gain 10 pounds of muscle, you might assume you don’t have the body type that can do it. If you are trying to start a real estate wholesale business, you might assume it can’t be done without a large sum of money. Challenge your beliefs. How do you know an assumption is valid? What would happen if the opposite were true?
2. Separate the issue into its fundamental principles – what are the most basic truths of your case? Asking thoughtful questions is one way to identify fundamental principles. Let us go back to Henry Ford. In the early 20th century, making cars was time-consuming and expensive because the team making the vehicles had to be knowledgeable master craftsmen on making or assembling most of the parts. Ford asked if this was the only way to do it.
3. Create new solutions – with the parts identified, ask how can they be recombined in a different way to produce something new and insightful? Someone who believes they have the wrong body type to gain 10 pounds of muscle could try a weight gain nutrition program with high-intensity weight lifting workouts with no cardio workouts. A budding real estate entrepreneur could partner with several small investors to share costs and perform essential tasks on the property. It’s important to be fearless and think like there is no box. As Elon Musk once said, “Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.” So, think big and go crazy.
This problem-solving mindset is one of the first arrows in your legendary quiver. So, do you think you have to be born with it or grow into it?
Growth Mindset
Have a growth mindset. A growth mindset believes that intelligence and ability can be nurtured through learning and effort. Growth-minded people see setbacks as a necessary part of the learning process and bounce back from ‘failure’ by increasing effort. This mindset has positive effects on motivation, professional, and academic performance. The evidence suggests the brains of people with a growth mindset are more active than those with a fixed mindset–particularly in areas associated with error correction and learning. In her 2006 book Mindset, Dr. Carol Dweck explains this idea entirely; however, I will go over the high points.
The main difference between growth and fixed mindsets is the belief in the permanence of intelligence and ability; one views it as very permanent, with little to no room for change in either direction (fixed), while the other views it as more changeable, with opportunities for improvement (growth).
This difference in mindset will lead to marked differences in behavior. When you think intelligence and abilities are immutable traits, they are not likely to put in much effort to change their inherent intelligence and abilities. On the other hand, when you know you can change these traits, you become more willing to put in the time and work to achieve ambitious goals. You will gain more than others with a growth mindset because you will be less concerned about looking smart or talented and put more energy into getting better. This is the second arrow in the legendary quiver. Boom! Winning.
Winning Mindset
Many Americans were winning so much they were tired of winning in the past. This is a product of a winning mindset. Boom winning! A winning attitude is a determined, resilient, deep thinker whose ideas are most initially rejected until the successful outcome starts showing significant achievements. All noteworthy inventions came from this rare, exclusive, and golden winning mindset. Most of them were, at first, tagged as lunatics and manic before they could conquer the world.
Champions possess the winning mindset. Someone who presses on against all odds, undaunted in pursuit of his goals, is the one labeled a winner. A winning mindset isn’t something you are born with; It must be developed. Once it’s possessed, it will propel you to achieve all your goals and aspirations no matter the conditions around you.
In his book “Think and Grow Rich,” Napoleon Hill said, “Your mental attitude is something you can control outright, and you must use self-discipline until you create a Positive Mental Attitude-your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.”
Yes, the mindset of a champion produces winners. You do well to emulate such an attitude. It leads to excellence in every facet of your life. It’s the same mindset Michael Jordan developed when he spent hours and hours practicing his craft to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time. A winning attitude clearly calls for focus and sacrifices, but any gift on your way to greatness is never too big and is undoubtedly worth the effort. This idea is best demonstrated in Valuetainment’s Patrick Bet-David video on the winning mindset. Mindset quiver equipped to move toward legendary status.
Is that all?
Your thinking sets the course your body will tread, as I have written before. Having the correct mindset is the precursor to success in all areas of life. First Principles, Growth, and Winning attitudes are three weapons in your mental arsenal. These are not the only thinking patterns you need, and they are all useless without you putting in the work. Get your body fit, get your money right, and know your value. Doing these things will put you on the path to being legendary.
HOW TO GROW YOUR STYLE VIDEO STORY
Men Grow Your Style: A Quick Primer to Men’s Fashion
Do you dress like a bum? Most people do. So, let’s be honest, unless you care about your presentation to people all the time, now and then, you dress like a bum. No worries, you are not alone. However, your bum attire time should become less frequent the older you get. So, gentlemen of all ages, here is a plan to grow your style. Thanks to the internet, you can use many stores to put together classy, trendy, and quality outfits. But you need to find your unique style, enter Legacy Gentlemen. Style is knowing what fits you and carrying it well. Here is how to grow style.
Collect Legendary Style Inspiration
The primary challenge of growing your style is not having enough clothes to wear. Most men have things in their closets and dressers that they need to get rid of immediately. Also, if you use thrift stores and online stores, it will be easy to build up your new stylish closet. But the thing that might make getting dressed hard is that you might not have a theme or message in mind every day you dress.
That’s why your style process should start with gathering sources of inspiration. This can come from anywhere you like: Legacy Gentlemen, celebrities, brands, and historical public figures. Find people and styles that resonate with you.
You’ll probably start to notice some repeating themes. Don’t overthink it but pay attention to patterns in your choices. Maybe you gravitate toward specific colors, items, or designers. Use that as your guide. Does your guide remind you of someone?
Style Icon
This might be the time for you to pick a style icon. Style is basically knowing what fits you and carrying it well. A style icon inspires fashion; this person is always well attired, wearing what is good and what suits him and not necessarily what is in vogue. He sets the standard for his age, station in life, and station in society.
We at Legacy Gentlemen came up with three Style Icons; oddly, two are British: James Bond, the fictional character, and Tyson Beckford, a male supermodel, and Idris Elba, a British actor.
Copy Everything Good
Pick a few classic items to wear with your new inspiration in mind. Did you know you were awesome before you bought the clothing? Your new clothing indeed makes you a bit more awesome. Suppose you do not feel confident enough to own your new unique look just yet. No worries, this is why we have the style icons. They look good, so looking like you look good.
Go through magazines, videos, and social media accounts, and find a specific outfit you like. Now, recreate it using things you already have. Pay attention to color combinations, fabric texture, different layers of clothing, accessories, and most importantly, the shoes. You do not have to match precisely for the same feel, attitude, and swagger. These are your clothing and someone else configuration of them. This is now part of your style, which you can rearrange anytime.
You can quickly put together great-looking outfits when you build from existing looks. This will also help you see what message you want to send to people. You have a message to send. What does your icon say, suave ladies’ man, the sexiest person in the room, distinguished hot, and getting better looking with age? Are you feeling your style icon?
As you develop your style, you will no longer need to follow other people’s outfits. But keep this idea in your back pocket for days when you’ve got that “nothing to wear” feeling—it’s great for breaking out of a rut.
Keep Old Clothes
The old “If you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it” rule, No if you have not worn it in seven to ten years maybe. If it no longer fits, yes, get rid of it now. Look, it does not hurt to save a few old things that you do not wear often. Your style will evolve with time, and that seersucker suite you have not worn for years might have the occasion arise in the upcoming spring or fall. But it must fit, get it tailored or get rid of it.
Ignore Trends
Forget about being “fashionable.” Create your style, do not become a slave to pop culture trends. Fashion is not style; they are two completely different things. You are not aiming to be trendy. You are becoming legendary. Your style is about creating an everyday look and identity curated to your taste and lifestyle. Each item you incorporate into your wardrobe should represent who you aim to become.
Trust the Process
Hey, gentlemen, your style is a journey, not a destination. Your look should evolve with time, reflecting your growth and experiences along the way. Act and dress your age. Don’t strive to land on a final, finished version of your style. The process is the point, and every iteration of your style at a given moment is an authentic reflection of who you are. You’ll change and learn throughout your life, so relax, embrace the changes, and let your fashion choices reflect your growth.
Kill the bum
This was a short primer about how to build your style. Never forget people judge you within the first 8 seconds of seeing you. In this short time, your look, including your body language and personal style, is the only thing people judge at that time. So, raise your level one. Replace your tee shirts with henleys or polos. Upgrade your jeans to chinos, ditch your current sneakers to minimalist sneakers, or better yet, have seen what causal dress shoes have to offer. At some point, in your 20’s, 30’s, but hopefully by your 40’s, you must dress differently from the other age groups. With your increased age, you have gained experience, wisdom, and class. You should dress like it. That was the old you who ran to Walmart or the grocery store in tee-shirt, jogging pants, and tennis shoes. Kill that bum. We are the Legendary ones. Live it.
Lose Your Mind Video Story
Lose Your Mind
If you want to be anything: rich, successful in business, confident in love, outgoing in public, or even more creative, there are videos, books, courses, and coaches who can help you get there. The best of them will immediately put you on the path of thinking like a person possessing the habits and qualities you are looking to build. They want you to lose your mind and gain the mindset of your chosen self-improvement goal. Becoming a Legacy Gentleman is no exception. We act differently. To act differently, you must think differently. Once you think differently, you become different. After you are reborn, you can go live that difference, and it will draw people to you, some admirers and some haters, but none will ignore you. But nothing starts until you lose your ungentlemanly mind.
Five Steps to Legendary
Losing your ungentlemanly mind is no less than a five-step process. You must work inside out. Starting with your image to define how you will affect the world—moving on to the point where the most important thing you do is the last and most visible act, the culmination of the four preceding steps. So instead of starting at step five and counting down to step one, I will begin with step one being the end-state goal of all men. Once you chart your path with steps five to two in consideration, you can genuinely say you have lost your ungentlemanly mind.
You Are the One
To be a man whose beliefs, lessons, and actions live on past your time on earth, a Legacy Gentleman makes himself his central point of focus. The Legacy Gentleman’s thoughts and actions should push him and the world toward his goals, his mental point of origin, so to speak, his every step should forward his effort to bend the world around his will. “You and the accomplishment of your purpose are number one non-negotiable every day. All men must live in this. Yes, we love our wives, absolutely we will die defending our family. However, Legacy Gentlemen, you must be first. If you do not put your purpose first, you will be no good to anyone else. As I said, you must do the following four things first to be a value and not a drain on the world. But to indeed be on this journey, you must put and keep your world centered around you.
Definite Purpose
You must recognize that you are here for a purpose. We are men; we eat, have sex, and fight if we have time; we do other stuff like shower and sleep. However, after school, after a good job or starting a business; once we find a wife and 2.5 kids or settled into your life as a swinging bachelor, Legacy Gentlemen must seek and find that action which takes your life from a daily grind to one more brush stroke on your magnum opus. Everyone’s life has a definite purpose. This definite purpose might not be your job. Your definite purpose might not make you any money; in fact, it could be expensive. Nevertheless, doing this action, championing this cause will be the most important thing in your life. You have it, find it, grab it, and squeeze everything out of it. We only have one life. Live it to the fullest.
Grow Your Ends
When you lead people, there is a concept that you must understand before you can be a good leader. People are not means they are ends in themselves. This concept should be transparent, but I will quickly review it. The original saying is that the ends justify the means, a phrase of Sergey Nechayev, the 19th-century Russian revolutionary. It means that if a goal is important enough, any action you take to accomplish it is acceptable. Generally, that statement does not remove the need to act morally. However, this concept is overlooked today. The idea is that people are not means, tools to accomplish goals, but goals themselves. The previous realization requires that leaders consider how tasks they assign people will help shape them into the leaders of tomorrow. People are worth investing your time and effort in. Your co-workers and subordinates are the organization leaders, future partners, and, yes, Legacy Gentlemen of tomorrow. So, you must know that others have value.
Master of More Than One
Legacy Gentlemen must become self-sufficient men. Self-sufficient is a loaded term. Should we be mountain men, living off the land, eating only what you kill? Yes. Should you be able to fix every gadget, machine, and engine around you in your modern urban home? Yes. What about being able to fight off a gang of ruffians to protect the purity of a carload of college co-eds whose car has broken down on their way back to State University after spring break? Also, yes. The common theme is to be a manly man, a renaissance man, or like a Boy Scout of my childhood “Be Prepared.” Learn to master your everyday environment, urban, suburban, or rural. After you master your area, work on learning the other two areas.
You Are Not the One
The last point I want to cover is last for a reason. It almost directly contradicts the first point if you give it a surface and non-rational look. But we are men, and we lean on logic, not feelings, so we can quickly harmonize You Are the One with You Are Not the One. You must recognize that there is a higher power than you. That power is God, Nature, or the spaghetti monster in the sky. But you must be accountable to someone or thing more significant than you who will know what you do in private. If you know a higher power is real, how can you do anything but understand it and sever it above yourself? You must bend the knee to something greater than you. This final judge will hold you accountable for how much you lie, cheat, steal, and murder even if no one knows.
Legendary Steps
Growing these five qualities will cause you to lose your ungentlemanly mind. You cannot think like this and be like everyone else. Make you your mental point of origin, find your purpose, recognize that people have value, be self-sufficient, and know a higher power. Doing these things will make a life of fulfillment and success a matter of time, not chance. Lastly, you will become legendary.
The Origin Story Video
Legacy Gentlemen: The Origin Story
Pick One: Child Molester, Simp, or Womanizer
Nowadays, it is easier to find a positive depiction of the black plague than a proper gentleman in popular culture. In contrast, I cannot deny that pop culture writers make an excellent point on the worldwide carbon footprint reduction the black plague produced. However, upcoming men, boys, and society are worst off without the stabilizing influence of the classic gentleman. Today we see “toxic masculinity,” “deadbeat dads,” child molesters, simps, and womanizers all running around being called men. Are these “men” supposed to be our role models? No, thank you, fellas; in fact, boys and young men today are also rejecting them. We all instinctively know that we could be our best selves without putting women down, crushing other people, while fulfilling all of our responsibilities.
Gentleman vs. Legacy Gentleman
What do we mean by Legacy Gentlemen? First, let us start with the Gentleman part. Today gentleman at best is a term that means nothing special. Many people see gentlemen as interchangeable with “guys,” “boys,” “homies,” “bros,” or men. At worst, it conjures the image of the dudes shaking dollar bills at “Gentleman’s Club.” So, to ensure we are working from the same sheet of music here is a definition. A gentleman is a man with excellent manners, who has an above-average understanding of situational etiquette, keeps his cool in most situations but can respond appropriately if force is necessary, knowledgeable, and capable of many things scholarly and manual, properly courteous, and possessing high moral standards. The above-listed qualities of gentlemen are open-ended and vague because they change over time and are influenced by the popular culture in which the gentleman resides. Also, notice the limiting qualifiers. We are talking about real people who are not perfect and will make mistakes, but perfection is the goal. How is a Legacy Gentleman different? Firstly, all generations Boomers, X, Y, Z, Alpha, and beyond are needed as Legacy Gentlemen. Legacy Gentlemen have the mindset, do the work, and teach the values that 1000 years from now, men, women, and children will look at and say yes, we need more of that in our lives. The quest to build and teach these qualities far and wide is the mission of the Legacy Gentlemen community. Come on this journey with us.
Why This Consumes Me
I am a Black Gen X man born in the Midwest but grew up in Atlanta in the 1990s. I was raised by my divorced mother and my two sisters. So, my positive male role models were the men my mother put in my path: United Way big brother and Boy Scout Masters. Later, the men I put in my path were coaches, teachers, professors, then as an adult; I found mentors. Notice I said positive, meaning people who objectively helped me learn a skill that made the world better and grew my strength, knowledge, or moral sense. Far too often, I ran with and followed the lead of destructive role models. When I did, my life and the people around me were worst off. As I moved to adulthood, then becoming a husband, then father, the positive role models are far and few in-between. Heck, my few positive role models, actors, athletes, singers, and business leaders eventually were shown to be worse than some of the convicted criminals I used to run with in the streets. The realization that the larger-than-life icons failed me and that the everyday heroes are the ones who can make the real difference in the life of children and young adults. I made a commitment to God to be a man of value and principle and to teach those principles to as many people as possible. I want everyone I meet to dress like, speak like, and do the same things the men who changed my life did. This is my passion, raising the standards of behavior for men today to make better men.
In The Pipe and Smoking it
Yes, my goal is to transform every man into a Legacy Gentleman. Every little boy, every teenage young man, every man just starting on their life’s journey, and every grey-bearded man into a Legacy Gentleman. I know this is an enormous task; some might call it a pipe dream. Nevertheless, this is the never-ending mission of Legacy Gentleman. So, I will take this dream and put it in my pipe and smoke it. Please take a second, breathe it in. That is the smell of thoughts, looks, and actions changing into the gold standard, which will last for the next 1000 years. This is going to happen, do not miss the train.
Becoming The Gentleman!
Hello Gentlemen,
Welcome to the Legacy Gentlemen Community.
Throughout the week we post articles, videos, and social posts on style, faith, or manliness.
Please, join my mailing list below to receive notifications. We are all committed to sharing the mindset, skills, and actions that we have taken that have enriched our life made us successful and increased our happiness. Share your thoughts on the topics we cover and let us know what you want to see us cover.
That is all for today, but Legacy Gentlemen will launch full content next week.
We will help you become legendary!
Hello, Gentlemen!
Mission
Strong, confident, moral men are not born and don’t happen by accident; they are purposely shaped by other men with those qualities and refined by experience. Legacy Gentlemen is committed to being a resource for this purposeful shaping.
Purpose
Provide information in all forms that teach men the values, skills, and actions that society admires and desires today and 1000 years from now.
