Free Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha by John Romaniello Page A

dissociate yourself from much of what you have been led to believe is true. And therefore your assessment of any situation is filtered through the lens of those truths. But if those truths are not accurate, then every piece of information is being filtered through a fractured lens.
    The problem is magnified when you consider the way information is shared and made viral. You know the headlines we’re talking about: “The Truth About . . .” is one of the most powerful headlines possible because it incites the fear of deception. No one likes to be deceived, and fear is an extremely powerful motivator. But it’s a power that is often misused and abused.
    One nugget of mistruth can spread so fast that the sheer number of people who support the so-called truth strengthens the inaccuracy of claims. You see this happen at every level of life—from the playground in elementary school to the political debates in D.C. This is how myths are perpetuated, and it’s a process that’s difficult to overcome.
    Health content is one of the worst offenders. Whether it’s the same crap you read last year or the “secret” you already know, nothing is really new. Nothing feels like it’s going to change your life. And most of the so-called adventures you take are circular, leading you right back to where you started—only you’re now in a worse position because you’re more pissed off than you were six weeks before. And you still don’t have abs.
    So we reviewed as much diet and fitness information as humanly possible. And through it all—the successes and the failures, the classes and the lectures, the books and journals, the clients and the mentors—we kept coming back to the same conclusion: hormones are the key to everything. And we know this because when we tested programs designed to optimize hormones, participants lost fat, built muscle, and became the heroes of their own lives.
    But their success—and your success—isn’t just about doing a workout or eating certain foods. It starts with something much harder: rejecting everything that the vast majority of people believe is true.
    Why? Because that’s what Alphas do.
    This is the real secret that will allow you to follow the workouts confidently, eat with freedom, and optimize your hormones in a way that will make everything much easier. After all, that’s the point of this book: to make looking great, feeling great, and living a better life easier than it has ever been.
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    ANSWER THE CALL
    If you want to accept our information as your new reality, then you must reject your old approach.
    We’re telling you this because we know how you’re going to react to the truths we share. Some may sound crazy. Some might not make sense. And some might sound so difficult that you’ll be angry. Trust us—nothing is too hard. It’s just different.
    You’re going to have a moment when you say, “This is bullshit.” So much of what you’re going to read is going to sound antithetical to what you believe and counter to what everyone else is saying. One way to reconcile what you are reading and what you want to believe is to say that we’re wrong.
    In the context of mythic structure, this is known as Refusing the Call. One of the earliest stages of the Hero’s Journey, this is the moment when the hero is approached with the idea of the adventure itself. After he has been called, he must decide whether he should embark on his journey. In many cases, the hero may refuse—or, at least, consider refusing—the Call to Adventure.
    Refusing the call is normal and extremely common, but it doesn’t get you out of the Ordinary World, which is why we want to make sure you recognize the signs that could easily sabotage your journey without you even realizing it.
    With traditional heroes, the refusal of the call may happen because of a sense of obligation, fear,