Having A Big Mission & Taking Action: A Moral Imperative

Marvin Liao
3 min readJun 4, 2022

A man must build their own value. They do it by achievement. Hard accomplishments-wealth, fitness, position, education, winning physical and mental competitions.

I love Radigan Carter. Read his entire post below.

“What do you do every day, constantly strive to get better at, that improves not just your life, but the lives of others? What is that one thing that you are building above all else, trading your time — no, decades of your life — in exchange to will into existence that is good and beautiful in this world?

That is a mission, and everyone needs one.

I promise, once you have one, you never want to go back to living without one.

The very world itself feels different without one, like losing all the vibrant colors and being left only in a haze of grey.

Source: https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/you-need-a-mission-in-life

A Mission allows you to push yourself. So you can fight against comfort. As Simon Sinek says: “Start with the Why.” This allows you to not give up when you run into challenges.

To succeed you need to have some good mental frames.

  1. You need to accelerate in your life. Focus on Momentum. As former kickboxing champion and all around baller Andrew Tate says, you gotta be “Always Attacking Life.”
  2. Change your language in your mind and how you speak. It’s “I get to do this” NOT “I have to do this”
  3. Face Reality, No matter what
  4. Take total responsibility for everything in your life. Or paraphrasing Jocko Willink’s words, Total and Complete Ownership. If your life sucks, it’s your own fault. It’s also up to you to fix it.
  5. Believe and live in a state of abundance, not scarcity.
  6. Embrace discipline and hard work.

You also need to have a Code to live by. These are rules you operate by and that reflect your values. Values like “My Word is my Bond” or “Do What you Say, and Say What you Do”. A code is critical. I love this description below from Primer Magazine.

“Life’s already hard enough without us drawing lines in the sand, and make no mistake, that’s what having a code means. Sailing with the wind, living by society’s standards rather than your own — that’s all going to be an easier way to live, and having a strict, well-defined code, regardless of what it entails, will eventually put you at odds with the world. That’s not going to be pleasant, but it is going to be good for you. The resulting struggles (if they don’t kill you) will only make you stronger.

Character’s like a muscle that it needs to be worked out, and muscle can only be built up after being torn. The only way to strengthen your morality is to force yourself into moral crises, ethical dilemmas, and hard choices, pushing yourself to grapple with these issues. Let’s be real here, with or without a personal code life’s still going to throw those tough decisions at you — how prepared are you going to be? The hard fact of the matter is that we need to get good at being good.”

(Source: https://www.primermagazine.com/2015/live/come-hell-or-high-water-why-every-man-needs-a-code-of-conduct)

Perhaps this is why I find the American western frontier period during the 1800s so personally interesting. It was a tough place. But because it was so tough, surrounded by hostile Indians, sparse of population and with very little law enforcement, you had to rely on each other as fellow settlers and small townsmen. If someone calls you a coward or liar, you would be expected to fight or shoot him. The reason was because that was the worst thing anyone could be accused of. Your fellow cowboys, neighbors and townsmen needed to know they could rely on you. There is something to that. It’s also something I find that is missing in our modern life.

These are important for anyone in this world. You get exactly what you put into life. Push yourself and avoid too much comfort. “Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.” ~Louis L’Amour

Having a mission and a code is critical for every young person. It aids our human imperative of creativity, building, exploring and conquering the frontiers of the mind, body and geography.

Again, Louis L’Amour wrote: “Nations and Men are alike: they go forward or they stagnate and die.”

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Marvin Liao

Ever curious: Tsundoku, Reader, Aspiring Shokunin, World traveller, Investor & Tech/Media exec interested in almost everything! www.marvinliao.com