Below the water's surface in Cuatro Ciénegas, northern Mexico, lies a lesson for men. The Minckley’s cichlid fish waits until the alpha male is preoccupied and then sneaks past him to fertilize the eggs of the female. The popularized term for this behaviour is aptly called “sneaky fucker” and was coined by evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to describe subordinate males who take advantage of the opportunity to mate with females while dominant males are otherwise occupied. In fact, it isn’t just the little Cuatro Ciénegas that sneaks around planning to emit his semen all over the eggs. Giant cuttlefish do this as well. While larger males face off in physical combat to win mates, smaller males will often adopt the coloration patterns of females to “sneak” by competing males for a quick romance with the females.
Although there are most certainly ways to apply the gist of this sneaky-fucker family-planning scheme to life on solid ground, it does not mean you should aim for it. No, finding a mate should not be a strategic and shifty affair where your tactics are…well...fishy! Quite the opposite, in fact. You should aim for masculine excellence.
All right, enough about fish.
When I was in my early twenties, a few of my friends became obsessed with Neil Strauss’s book, The Game. Essentially, it’s a blueprint for how to be seductive and pick up women. Each week, the guys would want to go to the local bars and practice the pick-up process as outlined in the book. For a few weeks, I awkwardly tagged along. We’d go to the mall beforehand and pick out “peacocking” items (something flashy to try and stand out at the bar) while recapping and rehearsing all the steps to “the game” like the “3-second rule” or “the neg” (of which I will not go into detail about). While doing this, I always felt like a fish out of water. I wasn’t good at it; none of it felt like me, and none of it felt very honest or excellent.
It was only after learning how to be true to myself, and striving to be the best version of myself, that I met the woman who would become my wife. And even then, my own journey as a man had only really just started. Over time, I would come to understand that I had to learn not only how to continually honour myself and be a good partner, but I would also have to embrace my duty as a father, son, brother, friend, businessman, and artist. This was a constant evolution – a practice really – and through my commitment to that practice, I came to understand the essence of masculine excellence.
For me, this practice started first as a long-distance runner, and continued later when I set out on my own to explore the world and uncover what lessons it may hold for me.
I had been a long-distance runner through my teenage years where I had battled other men in a test of physical endurance and mental will. Here I learned about daily commitment to training the body and eating right. More than that though, I learned about the power of the mind and its ability to trap us in fear and negativity or empower us to excellence.
Occasionally my running coach would have me compete against older, superior athletes as a way to test my resolve and serve me some humble pie. Those “tests” showed me my place in the food chain of the local running scene. No matter how hard I pushed myself in the race, I’d lose those battles outright – I was not yet ready to face those foes. The defeats, however, also offered me perspective on who I had to beat and what I had to achieve in training if I wanted to be the best. Those losses motivated me.
On the other hand, the losses that plagued my soul were the ones where I “gave up” in the race when I knew I could have given more.
When I could no longer run due to injuries, and I’d hung up my running shoes for good, I threw on a backpack and hitchhiked across Canada. Although there were many job opportunities for me in my hometown at the time, I didn’t yet want the “good job” at the “good company.” Deep down, I knew I had to see more of the world to better understand myself and my place in it. Yes, I had trained and raced my way to success as a runner, but now I wanted to see how I’d stand up when faced with uncertainty and unpredictability in places and situations not yet known.
For a time, I couldn’t settle. If things got too easy in some cushy little beach town, it was time to move on. The farther I travelled, and the more remote and dangerous the destinations I found myself in, the more I came alive – like pieces of a black-and-white painting slowly filling in with colour. I was growing confident and expanding my consciousness because of real experiences I was having out in the world.
After a time, it wasn’t just adventures in the wider world that called me but an awakened desire to improve specific skills and explore creative projects. I took business and writing courses in university but eventually dropped out and pursued starting my own companies. There, no different than racing someone with superior ability, I both succeeded and failed spectacularly. Eventually, I found some footing as an entrepreneur, and while I honed my skills in business, I also began developing them as a writer and filmmaker. Again, through the creation and pursuit of my artistic projects, I faced both embarrassment and praise, rejection and progress.
Too often on my journey, I’d find myself floored by the harshness of it all. Other than the first few local job offers after my running career, it seemed nothing would be handed to me again. No doubt, life always tested my resolve and desire to keep going forward. Too often, I doubted whether I could or would. Life did not seem fair. Those around me seemed to always have more of what I strived for. and I wrestled with the choice to stay positive and learn and grow in the face of hardship. At times, sometimes years at a time, I experienced crippling depression and anxiety. The endless challenges of trying to make it in the world seemed too great a weight to bear, too hard a hill to climb, and I wished for an easier way out. Those were the darkest days of my life and although to a much lesser degree, I still deal with this today.
While in those bleak periods, I learned through the advice from others who had experienced all this before, to find new healthy places to channel my fears and frustrations. This led to hunting trips deep in the forest of Northern British Columbia and reconnection with running and exercising. I was introduced to couples therapy, medicine work, breath work, meditation and wisdom teaching, of both Western and Eastern traditions, and how to incorporate them into my life. It also became clear through my own experience, that shallower more hedonistic pleasures, like too much alcohol, scrolling social media, or binge-watching shows,were ephemeral and led to more angst and a lack of fulfillment. When I could tap into purposeful work or pursuits, a deeper pleasure and meaning would fill me up and push me forward.
You see, the point I want to make here is that in living my life and decidedly facing the challenges that it presented, I learned not only what worked for me but also how to show up as the best version of myself. It was coming into alignment with my authentic self without sneaky fuckery or a cunning gambit that made my wife interested in me. How naive and misguided my friends and I had been, thinking we could choose a woman, then fan our feathers and dance a jig to convince her into bed.
By showing someone our authentic self, we allow ourselves the opportunity to be chosen.
Life isn’t about playing some kind of mating game to keep our genetics flowing from here until eternity. Surprisingly, and yet not surprisingly, it is a call to something else – a journey both inward and outward to learn how we can become the very best version of ourselves. The vast challenge, terrifying as it may be at times, is how to do this well. It is far easier to ignore the call to be a great man. To be a sneaky fucker is easier. There is no millstone of duty and honour around your neck. No battles, no resistance…no growth…no excellence.
These days, the cultivation of masculine excellence may be harder to embrace than ever. The “crisis of masculinity” is all around us. No doubt we live in a Western society that seems to prioritize cultural androgyny and an ethos of gender neutrality and the ascension in the social hierarchy is achieved through victimhood. The discourse of masculine excellence is politicized. Our current society wants a society-shaped man bricked in by the popularized terms “toxic masculinity” and “male guilt” which appear to have become a proxy and forgone conclusion that a man will perpetuate the sins of his father.
These labels and pretexts, imputing on boys and young men, are part of the problem that perpetuates the very thing those who wield them, rightly, wish to cast out. In fact, these labels and terms don’t manifest as positive guideposts for masculine excellence but, instead, pejoratives that create sneaky-fucker behaviours.
So, how do we pursue masculine excellence without falling into the new traps laid out by society on all sides of this path, including those we unwittingly lay ourselves? Out in the world – the real one away from screens, headlines, special-interest groups, and op-eds – the world of sweat, blood, dirt and tears – things become clearer.
You see, as my father once told me, although we are born male, we must become men. We become men through a willingness to strike out on the journey, our own journey, face the hardships of life as best we can in the moment, and ultimately overcome them. To do this we must cultivate agency over ourselves and be able to make decisions independent of what others say or think. Not to numb or dumb ourselves down by the prescribed program laid out for us by society, or to peacock ourselves in order to appear as something we are not, or to skirt around the obstacles in our path.
We cannot be trusted by others until we trust ourselves. We come to trust ourselves by learning the cause and effect of our actions while also accepting that there is much we do not know or can control.
We cannot hold space for others until we can stand strong and grounded on our own two feet.
We come to stand strong by being willing to be strong even when we feel weak and helpless. This is vulnerability and it is elemental to masculine excellence. For this, we have to be willing to fail against foes, including one inside yourself, we may not be ready to face – not to sneak around them.
We must cultivate a sense of self-accountability and self-awareness, never lying to ourselves or those around us, and be willing to admit when we are wrong. We must know our traumas, heed their lessons, but not despair in them forever. Eventually, we must get on with it, as there are many things to be done. As Alex Hormozi says, “Heroes and villains always have the same backstory—pain. The difference is what they choose to do about it. Villain says “the world hurt me, I'll hurt it back” Hero says “the world hurt me, I'm not gonna let it hurt anyone else.” Heroes use pain.” In masculine excellence our trauma become an activation of positive energy for ourselves and others.
Don’t be individualistic or a lone wolf either – that is a fallacy of masculinity. We must stand shoulder to shoulder with our fathers, brothers, friends, kinsmen, comrades and mentors – lifting one another up and holding each other to the highest standards.
We must also study great men – seek inspiration from these men, both past and present. While learning to discern what’s right for us.
Great men and male mentors provide us the context for the embodiment of masculine excellence. By the same token, we need not compare ourselves to or compete with them but instead embrace them as a frame or reference as we compete with ourselves.
Foremost, we must learn to master emotion and impulse in favour of right action, and understand that we are entitled to nothing except our effort and our choices. It is only through discipline, sacrifice, humility and continuous action that we show up in this life as the person we aim to be.
Masculine excellence is a practice and process – the pearl of great price! It’s not something you deserve but something you receive. The more you do, the higher standards you hold yourself to, the more you realize you can do, the better you know you can be. As Dylan Deckard said, “We grow through what we go through” Thus, the life experiences we gain empower us. Through them, we become worthy of a partner, we become positive contributors to our society, and examples for our children, but, most importantly, we become the best version of ourselves.
Be steadfast and patient on your journey. Don’t settle for a sneaky-fucker life. Heed the call to be more. Reach higher. Accept the quest.
