5 TRAPS Keeping YOU Weak (How to Avoid Them)
Let me tell you about the moment I realized I was a weak man.
I didn't know it at the time, but what happened that day actually changed everything for me.
Before I get into that, let's talk about why most men stay trapped in weakness.
Most men will never escape the weak man mindset, not because they can't, but because they refuse to change.
They fall into the same traps over and over again—traps that keep them broke, unmotivated, and powerless.
The worst part? Most men don't even realize they're trapped.
If you don't break free, you're going to wake up 5, 10, even 20 years from now in the exact same place, wondering why your life never changed.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
In this letter, I'm going to expose the five biggest traps keeping men weak and how to escape them.
Trap #1: The Victim Mentality
Weak men blame everything and everyone but themselves.
They blame their parents, the environment they grew up in, the hand they were dealt, even the government or the political party that's in office.
They want to remove responsibility from themselves.
Here's the harsh truth: no one cares about your excuses.
My father left when I was a baby.
My mother had to raise myself and my three siblings all by herself. I grew up on welfare in a poor neighborhood surrounded by gangs, drugs, and violence. No one cared about me, my mom, or my brothers and sister.
When I finally moved out on my own at 20 years old, I had to take care of myself. I couldn't blame anyone—everything I did moving forward was for my survival.
Remember, every man faces challenges. Some men rise above them, while others use them as an excuse to stay weak.
The difference is mindset.
How to Escape the Victim Mentality:
Own everything. Take responsibility for your life. If you're broke, that's on you—that's a you problem. If you're fat and out of shape, that's a you problem. If you can't be motivated to live a better life, that's a you problem. No one is going to blame you; you have to just take action.
Change your self-talk. Stop saying "I can't" or "I don't know." Replace your self-talk with positive, action-oriented words like "I'll figure it out," "I can do it," "I'm not scared," "I'm not weak."
Audit your thoughts. Whenever a negative thought pops into your mind, immediately stop listening to it and write it off as a lie. "You'll always be fat and ugly," "No one will ever love you"—recognize those thoughts when you have them and combat them. This is the internal war you have to have with yourself every single day. It's a battle between yourself—you will literally talk yourself out of greatness if you have negative self-talk.
Take immediate action. Weak men procrastinate. They put things off or find ways to avoid taking action. Successful men execute, and they execute now, in the moment. They don't wait for the perfect moment, for the next morning, for when the perfect day has arrived, when the sun is in the sky and the stars align. They take action immediately.
When you take full ownership of your life, your life changes instantly.
No more waiting, no more hoping—you actually start moving, making progress, moving the needle forward.
Remember at the beginning when I said there was a moment I realized I was a weak man?
That moment happened several years ago, after a really bad breakup with my ex-girlfriend. It wasn't just a bad breakup—it was ugly. Instead of handling it like a man, I crumbled and was all emotional.
I played the victim card and publicly aired out our business on social media, blaming her for everything and trying to get my friends to take my side.
I was emotionally powerless, completely controlled by her and the situation.
Breakups are tough for any man, but here's how I knew I was weak: she would text me to come over, and I would drop everything I was doing and run back to her.
No self-respect, no boundaries—just like a dog off its leash, sprinting at the command of its owner. And because we weren't together anymore, when I saw her with other guys on social media, it felt like a knife was twisting in my chest, pressing me every single time.
How did I break free from this? I'll talk about that later, but first, let's talk about Trap #2.
Trap #2: The Addiction to Comfort
Weak men choose comfort like an addict chooses his next hit—social media, video games, junk food, porn—easy dopamine with no effort.
Every time you choose comfort over a challenge, you're reinforcing weakness.
Why does this matter?
Growth only happens through struggle. No struggle, no progress.
You can't get stronger without resistance—you need to feel some pain for growth. Comfort breeds mediocrity. It kills your ambition.
When you're too comfortable in life, why would you want to feel any pain, discomfort, or challenges? This keeps men weak.
People don't like David Goggins because he's always running and yelling, but he's accomplished more than what most men will never accomplish in their lives.
They'll actually go to their graves as weak men because they didn't have enough courage to live a life with more fulfillment.
How to Escape the Addiction to Comfort:
Do something hard daily. Cold showers, early wakeups, intense workouts in the morning, public speaking, martial arts—train yourself to love discomfort.
Replace weak habits. Swap out social media for reading, replace video games with skill building, replace dating with building a business. Build instead of escaping to comfort.
Set daily standards. Define your daily standards: what time do you wake up, how often do you train, how much time do you dedicate to improving yourself? Decide on that and commit to it.
Delay gratification. Teach yourself to earn rewards instead of indulging in them for free. For example, if you train really hard, reward yourself with a delicious protein smoothie.
When you choose discipline over comfort, you build self-respect, confidence, and control. Weak men collapse under pressure—they don't thrive.
You, on the other hand, will thrive.
Trap #3: The Wrong Circle of Influence
Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. Weak men surround themselves with other weak men.
They stay trapped in circles where laziness, excuses, and low ambition are the norm. When your environment is weak, you also become weak.
You see everything on the news in your city—men who've lost their lives or their freedom simply because they're surrounded by the wrong people.
Think about it: How many young men have lost their futures because they didn't have a strong male role model in their life?
When a man doesn't have something positive to guide them, he finds the wrong crowd instead, and that crowd shapes their decisions, their mindset, and ultimately their fate.
Why should this matter to you?
Your circle defines your ceiling. Hang around weak men, and you'll definitely stay weak, end up in jail, or worse—even dead.
Strong men hold you accountable. They don't let you make excuses. Strong men want to see you win in life; they aren't jealous about your success.
Proximity is power—if you want to level up, you need to be around winners.
How to Build a Better Circle of Influence:
Create your circle. Ask yourself: who are the people that are pushing me forward, or the people that are keeping me stuck? If they're dead weight, cut them loose—your life depends on it.
Find a brotherhood. Join a gym, a mastermind, a group of ambitious men. Put yourself in environments where weakness is not tolerated.
Seek mentors. Learn from men who've already achieved what you're striving to do. Success leaves clues—you've got to follow those clues.
Cut out toxic people. If someone drains your energy and mindset, they don't belong in your life. That's friends, relationships, co-workers.
An image of the private mastermind Discord community that I am in during one of our monthly calls.
When you surround yourself with strong, disciplined men, you absorb their mindset.
Trap #4: Living Without Purpose
A weak man's life is directionless. They drift without any motivation, hoping for something to change—but nothing does change because they have no mission and no purpose.
Why does this matter to you?
Without purpose, your life is going to feel empty. You're going to wake up without drive. A mission gives you direction—you stop wasting time on meaningless distractions.
The most dangerous man is the one with purpose. He moves different—there's something different about guys who are driven.
Remember that story I told you earlier about my ex-girlfriend and how I knew I was weak?
Well, one night I had this thought: What if I put all of my mental energy into something that actually benefited me?
What if I stopped caring about her, stopped playing the victim, and actually focused on becoming a better version of myself?
Because how could I move forward, find love, or improve my life if I was still letting her control my emotions?
So like any man going through a breakup, I hit the gym hard.
I transformed my body like never before, dropping from like 20% body fat down to almost 10%.
Three images of me (Jovon) (235 lbs. of weight on a bench press, selfie mirror photo, and lean shirtless photo at 215 lbs.)
I got lean, I got strong, and I was looking better than ever. With that, my confidence skyrocketed. I was more driven, more attractive—I had a newfound purpose.
The purpose and goal was really to make my ex realize that she messed up.
And you know what happened? I started getting more attention from women who were even more attractive than my ex-girlfriend. The emotional hold that she once had on me was gone. I was no longer a victim. Sure, I was still sad about the relationship ending, but the lessons I learned changed my life forever because now I was living with purpose. I was more focused on leveling up my own life on my own terms.
How to Live a Life with More Purpose:
Ask yourself what you want. Not what society wants, not what your parents want or your friends—what do YOU want?
Define your mission. It doesn't have to be perfect—just pick a goal and attack it. Are you going to lose body fat, gain muscle, travel the world, build a business, get a better paying job? You have to decide that.
Cut out distractions. If it doesn't move you forward, it's definitely holding you back and it needs to be gone.
Take the first step. The only way to find purpose is through action, so you definitely have to start now.
As cliché as it sounds, once you have purpose, everything you do in life is going to change. You'll wake up with more purpose, more drive, more confidence. You'll stop drifting aimlessly in life and you'll actually start focusing energy to build things. You'll see that needle moving forward in the right direction, and this is what you need to change your life.
Trap #5: The Fear of Failure
Weak men are paralyzed by fear.
They refuse to take risks—they're afraid they might fail.
What they don't realize is failure is actually necessary. Every great man has failed more times than weak men have ever even tried.
I've had so many failures in my own life—a failed marriage, relationships, missed opportunities, and so many experiences that I've never actually got to experience because I allowed fear to control my life.
Why does this matter to you?
Fear keeps you stuck.
The longer you wait, the more time you waste. Failure is feedback—in order to improve, you actually have to fail at things.
This is how you learn and improve. Taking action actually separates the winners from the losers, the strong from the weak.
You have to be able to fail at things. You have to test, iterate, experiment, take risks—that's what develops and creates strong men.
Weak men are going to make excuses, they're going to procrastinate, and they're never actually going to take action on their life.
For example, there are going to be a lot of people who read this newsletter who are going to like the message but take no action.
There's nothing they're going to do after reading this that will change their life. And there's a select few—very, very few people—who will read this and actually take action.
How to Escape a Life of Fear:
Redefine failure. Stop seeing failure as the end—see it more as a lesson.
Take immediate action. The best way to destroy fear is through movement, through action. You have to stop caring what others think. Most people are too focused on their own lives to care about your failures. Again, no one cares about you, so you just have to get started.
Track small wins. Every progress, every failure—it's moving you forward towards success, confidence, changing your life. Every small step moves you forward in the right direction. When you don't even take small steps, if you don't take action, then you don't even move. You don't even take a step forward, you don't even move your life forward because you're too afraid.
Once you stop fearing failure, you become dangerous.
You start doing things. I talk about my Jiu-Jitsu journey—another year or two, I'm about to be a purple belt, I'm about to be dangerous.
So how dangerous can you be if you're not testing yourself, if you're not taking risks?
How dangerous can you actually be in life if you never try to build a business, never try to work on your body, find love, work on your mindset?
If you're on this self-improvement journey and you're not actually sure where to start, or maybe you need someone to talk to in order to figure out a starting point—you need clarity on the pain points that you're dealing with—click the link below to work directly with me one-on-one.
Thanks for reading. See you next time.
Jovon