Top 10 Habits Keeping You Delicate and Fragile

These are killing your masculinity.

A big part of being a man is developing the strength to govern your impulses and maintain your integrity under pressure. Sadly, most men today have been formed in the opposite direction: toward emotional reactivity, fragility, and softness, and have accepted this as the ideal.

To become the leaders God is calling us to be, we need to understand the influences and habits that are producing that weakness and effeminacy and root them out.

Here are the top 10 things that are making you emotional, fragile and delicate:

#10: Weak Movies and TV Shows

Don’t underestimate how much the media that you consume affects the depths of your character. It’s impossible to watch “Friends” reruns for years and not start to internalize the childish masculinity those characters present.

That show is just an example, but nowadays most TV shows and movies are deeply disturbing, and very few of them actually present positive role models. What they usually present are immature, feminine men or sidekicks to some “badass female lead”. Again, even if you don’t intentionally try to imitate them, if you flood your subconscious with such examples, you’ll slowly start to become like them.

The cure for this habit: Be more mindful of the entertainment that you choose.

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#9: Softness in Faith

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.
— Saint Thomas Aquinas

Lukewarm Christianity is a bigger danger than atheism. The lukewarm Christian perverts the good name of the Lord by failing to stand firm in His Word and values and by failing to be radical in his stance against sin.

Contrary to what some might think, this absolutely does not go against the commandments of charity, but instead, as Aquinas puts it, supports the precept of Christian justice. Good is Good and Evil is Evil, not everything is subjective, and while Jesus does love everyone, that doesn’t mean He likes or approves of your sins.

This is NOT Jesus.

Give your entire life to Christ. That’s the only choice. And you bet it’s a radical one. But being radical in favor of Truth is a good thing.

The cure for this habit: Quit the DIY Christianity and stop picking and choosing which laws to follow based on your own convenience. Make a conscious choice to give your entire heart to Christ.

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#8: No Serious Male Friendships

It’s very easy to remain immature and emotional if you don’t have friends around you who can call you out when you’re acting effeminately or immaturely.

Most male friendships nowadays are extremely shallow and revolve around getting drunk and chasing girls. That’s what most friend groups talk about and that’s all they really do together. That doesn’t help you mature and build yourself into a real man of God.

Men need other men to call them out, to compete with, to push them towards higher things. If your friend group doesn’t align with that, take it upon yourself to lead your friends there.

The cure for this habit: Join or create a group of likeminded men. Invite your friends to do manly things. Have a serious conversation with them and tell them why you want to do it. Make it a regular practice.

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#7: Defeatist Mindset

Whenever I mention chastity, both in the real world and online, most men brush it off because they genuinely think it’s impossible to control their sexual urges. If you think something is impossible, of course you won’t ever accomplish it.

There’s few things weaker than this sort of defeatist mindset, where you choose to be defeated before you even start trying. Chastity is just one example, but this mindset poisons everything else.

If you don’t truly believe that your vocation as a Christian is holiness, you won’t ever strive with all your might to get there. You’ll make excuses for your weakness and lack of integrity. You'll justify your sins and your lack of effort.

If it wasn’t possible to be a Saint, Christ wouldn’t have told us to be perfect. Bear in mind, this indeed wouldn’t be possible if we were to try to get there on our own, but have you forgotten that it’s not your strength that you rely on, but that of God Himself?

The cure for this habit: Set higher standards for yourself. Stop falling for the lies of the enemy that tell you it’s impossible to triumph over the sins that hold you hostage. Christ makes the impossible possible, but you must ask Him to help you.

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#6: Emotional Oversharing

Look at those images. Do they show the kind of man you want to be?

The Christian tradition has never asked men to be emotionless. We read in the Bible that Christ wept, the saints did too, and manly believers throughout history raged with righteous anger, and suffered deeply. However, it has always asked that a man's emotions be ordered by reason and directed toward God rather than expressed without discipline or restraint, which is what the images above seek to promote.

Maybe crying is not something to be ashamed of, but it’s definitely not something to seek actively.

Like any habit, the more you do it, the more difficult it is to quit it. If you constantly cry, you’ll become a man who is used to crying all the time. The same goes for being emotional in general: the more you give free rein to your emotions, the more often you’ll be controlled by them.

The cure for this habit: When a strong emotion arises, pause before acting on it. Ask whether the feeling is pointing toward something true that deserves attention and expression, or whether it is a passing reaction that needs to be controlled.