Free Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha by John Romaniello

something greater—what is captured by Campbell in mythic structure and known as the Special World—you should be unwilling to settle for something less than what is possible.
    If you are tempted to read on and make changes—then this book, these words, and these pages will drive you to a life-changing experience. If you’ve learned anything, it’s that you know your life could be better.
    To paraphrase Campbell, we believe that all men were meant to be heroes of their own tale. To go a bit beyond him, we also believe that men should look and act like heroes: that they should look strong and be confident, look great and be great.
    But in order to get there, you need to take the next step in the journey. And if you cannot bear the thought of not taking that step, then you have heard—as all heroes do—the most important sound a man can ever hear: the Call to Adventure.

    RING . . . RING . . .
    The hardest part about this entire book won’t be the workouts, the diet, or finding a way to make time for all the sex you’ll be having. It’s going to be letting go of ideas that you “know” are facts. After all, in order to make room for what is right, you must first purge what is wrong.
    Like a quarterback learning a new playbook, you have to forget your old coaches and 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.

    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