Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

isn’t appealing to you. And we’re not talking about how you feel when you watch Brian’s Song . (If you don’t well up during that, you have no heart.) But if, like most guys, you don’t have your estrogen under control, you’re headed toward a life of tears.
    Your high estrogen will affect you emotionally, screwing with you on every level. Joking aside, this isn’t about crying at Hallmark commercials—it’s about a serious hormonal imbalance that can affect things from basic decision making to depression and thoughts of suicide. In fact, according to researchers in Australia, men with low testosterone and high estrogen are three times more likely to suffer from depression.
    9. Fertility Issues
    Legacy.
    As humans, procreation is one of our strongest drives. It’s a point of pride: you are not only the sum of your life’s work—you are also reflected by your offspring. And you directly impact and influence the lives of the humans you create.
    But what if you couldn’t produce children because of a problem you could easily prevent? That’s the reality for any man who suffers from low testosterone.
    At this point in your life, having children might not be a great concern. Or maybe you’re not interested at all. But whether you have children should be a conscious decision, not one that is thrust on you by a hormonal imbalance that you could easily avoid.
    Research has found that men with low testosterone are more likely to suffer from varicoceles—a medical condition in which the veins in your testicles are enlarged. While having big balls might sound like a good thing, in reality this condition is linked to infertility.
    One of the reasons you could suffer from low testosterone is because you have a lack of something called luteinizing hormone. This hormone affects the production of both testosterone and sperm. While this is reversible with treatment, even temporary sterility is frighteningly serious. With hormonal adjustment, you can right the ship quickly.

    BECOME THE HERO . . . NOW
    We’re going to go out on a limb and say that nothing we just shared sounds appealing to you. But this is just the beginning of how you’ve been misled by the fitness industry and why the advice you’ve been given is directly leading to some of the problems we mentioned. And in the next chapter, you’ll learn exactly how to make sense of all the misinformation and to identify the myths that are corrupting your body and your hormones.
    THE SEVEN TRAITS OF THE ALPHA
    “Leadership consists not in degrees of techniques but in traits of character . . . and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.”
    — LEWIS H. LAPHAM
    B efore you move any farther in this book, it’s important that you understand what’s on the table. As we’ve mentioned before, our goal is to completely redefine what it means to be the Alpha. We want to strip away all the negative connotations about the Alpha being cocky, the associations with meatheads, and the belief that Alphas are primarily pickup artists.
    When people think of the Alpha, they generally think of someone along the lines of Fight Club ’s Tyler Durden, who is a quintessential embodiment of the traditional concept. Existing as the alter ego of the narrator, Tyler embodies all the best qualities that the narrator believes don’t exist within him. Durden manifests himself as all the best parts but brings with him the absolute worst: he is attractive, strong, intelligent, and clever; * however, he’s also destructive, anarchistic, narcissistic, and detached. While he is an exaggeration, Durden lives as what our society considers Alphas to be. He is confident, but arrogant. Self-assured, but self-involved. He is charismatic, but dangerous.
    Whether or not Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club ) was intending to make Tyler a representation of the Alpha is not an issue; the reality is, he came pretty close to embodying the polluted idea of the Alpha. In the zeitgeist, an Alpha isn’t ideal. It’s completely flawed.
    Society has Alphas pegged wrong; they are not the strongest guy or the one who makes the most money or has the most confidence. If you read the dictionary, the Alpha is the top of any group. He’s the captain, the quarterback, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The Alpha is success. But more importantly, it’s a persona dependent on individual progress and success. It’s about attaining the highest level of self-mastery and always