The Art of Being Ruthless

by Michael Sloan

  It’s going to take a lot of energy and effort to become a new kind of person. Change does not happen overnight, it’s a steady, progressive increase. If you want to become someone new, someone who’s stronger and more effective, you’re going to have to make the commitment inside of your own heart and stick to that commitment.

  There is a discipline that is required to become ruthless. That discipline is learning how to reject the emotional turmoil and discomfort that you feel within yourself as you look to change. Instead you must embrace the discomfort of becoming a new person. We live in a society where comfort is held above all other things. In our microwave culture, we look to things that make our lives quicker and easier. We want things fast. If you want to buy something online, you can have it shipped to your house in two days. If you want pizza, it will be at your house in 30 minutes or less. We live in a world where we just want things as quickly as possible and without much work.

  We desire happiness above all else. We crave comfort. At the same time, this cultural desire for improving our lives in order to enjoy comfort has created a weakness and a softness within us. This softness has led us to see anything that is uncomfortable as bad. Discomfort has become the enemy in our quest to be as comfortable as possible. Believe it or not, it is very possible for you to be happy and compliant. You can work really, really hard for a long time, you can spend your whole life working the 9-to-5 in order to build up a big retirement account. You can work for the man until you hit retirement age and then finally, after all those years, you are free to live out the rest of your life doing whatever you like. Hopefully you were able to manage your finances right and can afford retirement. This course of action can make you very happy, at the cost of 30 or 40 years of your life.

  Does that sound attractive to you? Do you feel something deep inside of you say “No! That wasn’t what we were meant for!” We were meant for far more than just obeying our masters and doing what we are told. But comfort is another weapon used to control us. Giving up material things is uncomfortable, but those material things are how your boss can control you at work. Think about it. If you didn’t have all the expensive stuff, if you didn’t have to pay for the house, the car and your credit cards, what kind of power will the boss have over you when he threatens your job? Better yet, how much power would the rest of the corporate machine have when you don’t feel a deep-seated compulsion and need to buy their stuff?

  There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable but comfort isn’t the point of our lives. We weren’t meant to just sit around, lazy and happy. We were meant to be strong, rugged and powerful people. Now people tend look at the strong and ruthless individual with envy and jealousy. When the world sees a person, who refuses to follow the rules of the system, they become hostile to that person. That envy runs deep and can make the compliant individual feel uncomfortable around the ruthless individual.

  Strong people can be intimidating because they don’t need comfort, they aren’t held hostage by the desires of the flesh and they aren’t held hostage by the need for pleasure. Rather they are commanded by something greater, they are commanded by their own free will. And they are free from having to worry about what other people think or say about them.

  If we want to become a free minded, ruthless person, then we are going to reject the things that are controlling factors in our lives. So, what are the things that are controlling us? What are the things that have their hooks in us so deeply that they are preventing us from living our lives as we please? Let’s take a look at this list:

  Controlling Factor One: Comfort

  We’ve talked about it already in length, but comfort is something that is really used to control us. If you want to be free of the control of comfort, then you’re going to have to learn to accept that discomfort isn’t painful. We often erroneously feel that discomfort is painful. Consider the cold shower for a moment, if you were to take a cold shower, you would most likely gasp, shudder and feel a sensation akin to physical pain. Your body would be immensely uncomfortable and would try to escape the unpleasant situation as quickly possible. So, it tries to signal to you and tell you that you are experiencing severe pain. In that moment, you feel the immense desire to find comfort wherever you can. So, if the body reacts that way, what gives you the ability to take a cold shower? Your willpower! You have the ability to force your body, in spite of what it wants, to go against its own natural desires and to push past the pain and unpleasant sensation of cold water. Cold water is not going to kill you. But your body and its desire for comfort is going to try and convince you that you are in some kind of trouble. So, if we want to become stronger, we’re going to have to learn to stop worrying about our own comfort.

  Comfort is how the corporate machine makes us do the things that we don’t really want to do. Comfort is how they lure you into buying a brand-new luxury model car that you can’t afford. When you have to make a choice between an old beater or the brand-new car, you are going to most likely feel the pressure to do the comfortable thing and buy the expensive, unnecessary car. The most comfortable choice is also the thing that puts you in debt. And what does that debt do? Debt controls you!

  Think about food! It is always more comfortable to go out and eat at a restaurant than it is to go home and eat. It can feel way more comfortable to run and grab fast food in the moment, than to have to eat ramen at home. So, we reject the discomfort of eating frugally and instead indulge ourselves in the comfort of eating good food at restaurants. If we can afford it, that’s fine, but think about it. If you’re in a position where you can’t afford to eat out and you still are, you are putting your own comfort first.

  If you want to be your own boss, if you want to be ruthless with your life, then you’re going to have to be the boss of your own body first. You’ve got to reject comfort and instead make decisions that go out of your own comfort zone. It isn’t comfortable to exercise, but if you want to work out to improve your body, then you’re just going to have to accept that you’re going to be uncomfortable. It is a test of will to push yourself physically, it is a test of will to refuse to eat bad food and it is a test of will to not spend an afternoon wasting your life on video games. All of those tests of will can lead to a stronger personality within you, which can allow you to become more ruthless. You could exhibit a greater degree of control on the world around you when you are not mastered by your own flesh. Reject comfort today and make the decision to take the stairs instead of the elevator. Start seeking out challenges instead of hiding from them. Don’t give into the desire to be comfortable, because comfort is how these people will control you for the rest of your life. Break the tie of comfort and no longer will you be bound by all the fancy toys that the corporations and your bosses use to enslave you.

  Controlling factor two: guilt.

  Guilt is a powerful factor that can control us in most social situations. People often use guilt to motivate others into doing what they want. It is often a form of manipulation and control. For example, if a woman wants to hang out with her husband for a day and he is busy, rather than communicate clearly that she would prefer to spend time with him, she might use controlling phrases to guilt him into feeling bad about going out. She might say to herself out loud, “Boy it’s been really long time since we’ve hung out and I’m just so lonely,” as opposed to saying “can we spend time together? I would like to spend time with you.”

  You might not see the difference between these two phrases but one of them is a controlling phrase and it’s using guilt to control. The husband in the situation feels pity and sorrow for his wife, as she is saying how sad and how lonely she is, and instead of making a rational decision, he makes an emotional decision to stay home and hang out with her because he feels guilty. Consider the other side, one where she clearly communicates what she wanted. He would have the ability to make the decision free of her manipulation. Why is giving into guilt bad? Because it will build up resentment between both parties.

  He will feel
regret or frustration with her manipulating him into staying home with her and then resent her for the rest of the night. On the other hand, if he has a free choice, without emotional manipulation, his decision to stay with his wife was his own choice, freeing him from resentment. Guilt creates a feeling of pressure, but choice doesn’t involve any kind of coercion.

  Guilt is a weapon commonly used by family and friends to get you to do things that you don’t actually want to do. The worst part about this weapon is that it eats you up from the inside, making you feel bad for choosing to do things that they don’t want you to do. There are appropriate times to be guilty. The time to be guilty is when you do something morally wrong or harm another person with malicious intent. The wrong time to be guilty is when other people put that guilt on top of you. A toxic friend might be a sad sack; they might always be dragging you down and the only reason you hang out with them is because you feel guilty for where they are in their life. When you take on other people’s guilt, you’re transferring their responsibility in the situation to yourself. This can then lead you to make decisions that you generally don’t want to make, but you feel a compulsion to. This is just another method of control. Guilt, when used wrong, will make you feel miserable. It will take the joy out of your life and will only increase resentment, bitterness and frustration within you.

  How many people stay at their current job because they feel guilty about leaving? There is no shortage of people in this world who feel like they owe their employers something. The truth is you only owe your employer your work. He pays you and you work for him, if the arrangement were ever threatened on the company side, they would fire you in a heartbeat and replace you with someone else. But when we think about getting a new job, when we begin to consider the idea of finding employment elsewhere, we start to think instead about our own emotional obligation to the company. And the feeling of obligation controls us. It stops us from taking advantage of opportunities and looking for better jobs. And so, in a misplaced sense of guilt we are held back from advancing our career, trapped in the prison of our own mind.

  And what do people say when they see someone who exists without guilt? They become envious! They become judgmental and harsh. They point and say “look at that person! They have no sense of shame; they have no guilt.” This is common when you see a CEO make a fortune at his company. A lot of bleeding hearts will point at the CEO and say “look how many millions of dollars he’s making; he should be ashamed when his company is only paying $10 an hour to their janitors.” The CEO doesn’t have any guilt and is free to reward himself with millions upon millions of dollars for his hard work, regardless of what people say. We might look at that and say that it’s horrible, we might say he doesn’t deserve that much money, but we are merely transferring our own sense of responsibility onto him. He has his own beliefs and in his own belief structure he believes it is perfectly fine for him to reward himself. Who are we to say that he can’t? Yet if he were to allow other people to put their own beliefs and pressure on top of him, he would feel guilty for his choices, despite the fact that he personally has no problem with it.

  Guilt is one of the strongest ways to control a human being because it’s emotional. Not only is it emotional, it is entirely based on how other people want you to feel. Other people in your life are determining what makes you feel guilty and they work as hard as they can to inflict that guilt on you. We are following the rules to someone else’s game and the worst part is we didn’t even agree to play this game. What did we agree to exactly? That’s a problem when it comes to guilt. We never actually agree to the premise and the rules that they put on us. We somehow managed to agree that we should feel bad when we don’t do what other people expect us to do.

  Don’t fall into the trap of being guilty just because other people want you to feel guilty. You’ve got to cut the tie of guilt in order to have real control over your life. You should never do things out of a sense of obligation because it doesn’t create a healthy environment. All that guilt creates is frustration, resentment, bitterness, anger and eventually erodes away at your core self.

  If you let the ties of guilt control you, you won’t ever be happy because you are allowing other people to dictate your own emotions. You are not responsible for how other people feel. Even if you refuse to do something that they want and they are sad, if they cry or if they’re upset, you still are not responsible for their reaction. Everyone is responsible for their own emotions; everyone is responsible for their own actions and opinions. Create a firm boundary in your heart and in your mind to never let guilt be the thing that drives you forward.

  Controlling factor three: money.

  It has been said that money is the root of all evil. That might be true but what’s more true is that money is the root of all compliance. Our bosses can control us with money. Our lives are controlled by corporations and their desire to own us through the use of debt. The Bible says it best: the debtor is slave to the lender. When you owe an exorbitant amount of money, you are not a free man, you are a slave. Slavery has changed. It’s no longer about one individual controlling you, rather it’s about a group of different people controlling. We are owned by the corporations and our employers. When we are buried in debt and have no savings, any threat to losing our income can control us.

  Money is a necessary evil. We need it to survive in this world, but the question is why do we need debt to survive in this world? Corporate America would have you believe that debt is a necessary and even a good thing. There’s so much pressure to have the newest and latest things. “Get into debt for stuff,” they tell us as they push their high rate credit cards at us. “Buy now, pay later!” They tell us that we need to get into debt in order to be happy, so we spend money that we don’t have on things that we don’t really need. Then we’re stuck struggling to pay it all back for a long time.

  The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” has become a way of life in the modern world. Money, when you don’t have enough of it, can cause you an enormous amount of stress in your life. In fact, one of the most common reasons for divorce is money issues. As we try to keep up with the materialist world around us, we find ourselves growing too weary and exhausted. Chasing after money has a steep price and the social pressures around us would like us to believe that more money is a necessary thing to always be pursuing.

  So, what are we supposed to do when it comes down to the money conundrum? Are we supposed to renounce money and go live in a commune? No, it’s not that easy.

  Money is influence. If we want to participate in modern life and make a difference in the world around us, then we are going to need as much money as possible. The ruthless individual doesn’t work for his money; the ruthless man makes his money work for him. What’s the difference? When money works for you, you don’t feel the worry and fear of losing it. You aren’t forced to work for a crummy job that you don’t want. When you work for your money, you might end up giving hours of your precious life away in order to obtain it. If you’re working 14 hours a day, seven days a week in order to get money, guess what? You’re not controlling anything. You are the one being controlled by money.

  If we want to get away from being controlled by our money, we are going to have to master our own cash flow. We are going to have to say no more to our frivolous spending and have a tight rein of control on our money. We must be ruthless with ourselves when it comes to our spending, savings, and debt management. Remember, the goal of being ruthless is to cease being controlled by the world around you so that you may be free to do as you please. This means that we have to change our relationship with our money in order to become free. It is no longer simply about getting out of debt, rather it is about taking control of your finances so that no one else can control you. It’s not easy to make such a decision, but it is necessary if you are going to become a ruthless individual.

  Money is just another tie that needs to be cut. You need to stop working for your money and make your money start working fo
r you. It’s no good for you to be in a position of subservience to your boss because you need a paycheck. If the idea of losing your job causes your heart rate to spike because you can’t afford it, guess what? You can’t afford to be ruthless because you are incapable of being free. Suck it up, get your finances in order and cut the money and debt ties that control you.

  Controlling factor four: time.

  The ruthless man is the man who controls his time and controls it well. He doesn’t allow obligations to take control of him and he doesn’t allow his work to extend itself into his own personal life. Rather he respects his own self enough to have boundaries. Time is a very precious and rare resource; we don’t have a lot of it in our lives. We have 24 hours a day and that’s it. What we do with our time is of the utmost importance. At times, we can end up in situations where we are wasting our time because other people don’t have the same respect that we do for our own time. This puts us in a precarious position especially when it comes to things like surprise requests for volunteering, mandatory overtime or a spouse signing you up for something without your permission.

  We don’t have a lot of time in our day provided that you are getting adequate and sufficient rest. You really only have about 16 hours after sleep. We give most of our time to our employers, family members and chores. Then we’re left with a few hours for ourselves which we then tend to squander on things such as television, video games or movies. So, our day goes by and comes to an end, then we start right back where we were the next morning. We continue the cycle of work, sleep, work, sleep, ad infintium. And we continue to allow other people to waste our time until we finally learn how to say no.

  No is such a scary word to people because it’s a boundary that refuses to obey what other people have to say. There is value in saying no, in fact it is way harder to live a life built around always saying yes than it is to simply say no. But saying no can feel uncomfortable and can create feelings of guilt. The word yes-man is used to describe someone who refuses to say no, even when it would be better to do so. These individuals like to delude themselves into thinking that they are being nice guys, that they’re friendly and helpful, but the reality is that they’re just doormats.