Being an honorable man isn’t just a noble idea—it’s a path to power, respect, and success.

But watch out: non-honorable men may trip you.

At TPM, we’re experts in men’s success and power dynamics. Our real-world strategies help thousands of men every day.

Read on to master honor and win.

‘Be Honorable’ is one of our foundations of social success

Intro: What’s ‘Honorable’

An honorable man is a man with the character and behavior that others see as admirable, respect-worthy, and leader-like.

Honor doesn’t mean “good” or “nice.”
You can pursue self-interest, seek revenge, or break the law—if it fits the “honorable code,” you’re still honorable.

There is some degree of subjectivity in what’s ‘honorable’ and culture, personality, and context all play a role.

However, many general principles apply to most people, and most anywhere.
We’ll focus on these general principles.

How to Be Honorable

Guiding principles:

1. Tell The Truth – As Often As You Can, As Much As You Can

Frequent lying is dishonorable, but “always tell the truth” is naive.

Good guidelines are:

• Stick to the truth unless you cannot
  Lies are mines—the more you lie, the trickier the minefield.

🐍 IF you can’t speak truthfully:

• 1️⃣ Refuse to comment as default approach 🦅
  If not possible:
• Stay as close to the truth as possible: you’re more believable and maintain reputation if caught
• Use “spins”. People see them as “almost OK”.
  E.g.: Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”
• Lie by omission

2. Seek to Be a Net Giver, Never a Taker

• Give back when given
• Contribute to society
• Avoid being a burden and hate it when you are.

Similar with power:

• Respect respect-worthy men
• Re-empower others when due (no ⛏️ ‘power hoarding‘)
  Ie.:
  • Apologize when in the wrong
  • Let others speak after a dominant interruption

3. Be Straight, Avoid Unneeded & Obvious Sneaky Games

No games win prestige, but the worst are:

• Unneeded. It’s worse without a motive—it signals “inveterate manipulator”
• Futile, with low odds of working
• Overly selfish or damaging
• Obvious
• For small stuff that shouldn’t even concern a high-value man
• In close relationships

They’re the worst because:

• Signal low value, for even bothering with small stuff
• ‘Bent personality’ of an inveterate manipulator
• Destroy rapport and reputation, harming your best relationships

🔎 Example: If caught stretching the truth, don’t double down—say, “OK, I exaggerated, let me rephrase,” and tell the truth

Honorable quote to live by

For close relationships, remember this manipulation quote:

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

That’s the high-quality man’s mindset who expects high-quality people in his life.🦅

4. Own Your Choices, Avoid Excuses

Take ownership, privately and publicly, of your actions and choices.

🔎 Example: If you skip a ticket in a rush, own it, accept the risk, and pay the fine if caught, apologizing to the controller.

Doing the opposite will destroy your reputation:

🙋‍♂️How my mother lost my respect With Cheap Excuses

Lucio:
Confronted about smoking during pregnancy, my mother said that “she didn’t smoke in the 2 months most important for child development”.

Pressed that all months are important, she replied that the doctor said “Signora, there are plenty of smokers who make super smart kids”. 🦃

⬆️ The excuses don’t hold. Own your mistakes
Feels like gaslighting and only makes you angrier.
An honorable woman would have owned it. And ‘I’m sorry’ would have fixed it.
Instead, with this approach, I even doubt she stopped for 2 months.

5. Stand for Something

Pick a value worth fighting for and hold it, even under pressure.

6. Take Pride In Being Honorable

And associate disgust to dishonor.
It’s the best way to grow more honorable.

• 🏋🏼‍♂️ Exercise: Recall a time you acted honorably—did it build self-respect and pride? If it did, relive it. If it didn’t, do it now: you deserved it.
  When you associate with pleasure, your subconscious will guide you to more honorable behavior.
• 🏋🏼‍♂️ Exercise 2: Recall a time you or someone you know acted dishonorably—did you feel disappointed or disgusted?If it did, relive it. If it didn’t, do it now.

Do the same for the examples we’ve seen, like this one below: 👇🏼

🔎 Develop Distaste For Sneaky Manipulation

Him: The refund (…) is missing $9.
I’m also wondering if you’d be ok with me telling my close friends about powermoves if that’s OK with you.
It’s truly an exceptional experience

It’s cheap because it’s:

1. Obvious
2. Low-value: he sent several emails, over-investing for $9
3. Overly selfish: TPM already exceeded the refund policy
4. Futile: cheap tricks won’t fool us

🙋🏼‍♂️ I don’t accept this behavior from the people around me, and I don’t want it in my programs.

7. Empower Yourself

Honor requires power.

This is what many men don’t get.
Unfortunately, it’s not honor that gives you power.
It’s power that allows for honor.

Values and ethical standards are a luxury for any form of life that must prioritize survival and reproduction.

Without power, survival instincts take over: submission to higher status men, manipulation to keep a mate, and tacit acquiescence in fear of ostracism.

You can barely escape it: it’s psychological math.

Only empowered men can afford the luxury of honor.

And that’s true for both mind and life.

🙋‍♂️Lucio’s Take: the more empowered I became, the more honorable I became

Lucio:
It’s easy not to manipulate a girlfriend when I’m happy alone, don’t need one—and trust myself to find one whenever I want.

It’s easy to say, “I’m not the type of man who steals” when I’m living my best life while spending less than I earn.

It’s easy to give—and demand—respect as a solopreneur who doesn’t need any particular group or organization, and can simply say, “Not dealing with that sht. Bye.”

And it’s easy to be critically honest in my reviews here at TPM when I already like myself, and my self-esteem doesn’t depend on anyone’s liking me or approving of me.

Honorable Traits to Work On

• Courage
  • Lead from the front whenever feasible, show the way, and set the standards
    ✒️ Never ask anyone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself
• Consistency
  • Maintain a similar baseline behavior instead of “licking up, kicking down”
• Magnanimity in victory. Instead of crushing, offer a help-up
  ⛏️ Scipio Africanus book review, long but great example
• Spirit of sacrifice for the team and mission
• Assertiveness, instead of passive-aggressive or manipulative
  • Direct talk over overly indirect
  • Face issues head-on
    E.g., if offended, don’t stew; say it wasn’t cool

🔎 In Practice

In business

• Deliver customer value as a priority, and be proud of it
• See good work as a duty
• Honor the refund policy
• Only promote products you believe in. Reject poor ones

In groups and as a leader:

• Uphold the shared values
• Reward contributors, and punish those who don’t
• Defend team members under attack
• Defend the group, which may go into unhealthy extremes in some subcultures

🙋🏼‍♂️ Balance ‘defending your tribe’ with universal values and humankind
Group allegiance at the detriment of others can turn into toxic tribalism. The future of humankind depends on enlightened honorable individualists rising above small-minded parochialism to lead humanity forward.
Make a judgment call.
And unfriend inveterate as*holes instead of supporting them.

🦅 TPM’s Framework: Strategic Honor™

Strategic honor™ is a non-naive, power-aware code of conduct in which a man prefers and upholds truth, responsibility, and fair dealing by default and by choice, while remaining selective, guarded, and competitive in environments and with people where honor would be exploited.

The honorable approach can cost you with dishonorable people.
So TPM’s framework we introduce the Strategic Honor framework:

• Acting honorably as the preferred approach and whenever it builds long-term power, prestige, and self-respect, but
• Be strategically calibrated with your honor, calibrating to situations and people
• Aim to add value in relationships, in your work, and ultimately in your life

Strategic honor rejects naive moral absolutism.
It recognizes that power precedes honor: only empowered individuals can consistently afford honorable conduct.

As such, strategic honor is not weakness or “niceness,” but a high-status behavioral code that combines integrity with judgment, selectivity, and strategic thinking.

1. Be honorable in your close relationships, and only pick the best people for them
2. Keep tabs of give-and-take (‘positive calculativeness’) to ensure it stays win-win
3. Be strategic with dishonourable people
4. Be strategic in competitions. Competitors may not be honorable. And sometimes, winning is the priority.
   So the guidelines become:
   • Stay honorable enough, be a ‘good as*hole’, not a dishonorable one

Dig deeper:

• ⛏️ Manipulating a manipulator. Especially #1 and #3
• ⛏️ Who to straight talk to
• ⛏️ Assertiveness VS fading away

Effective Heroes Are Strategic

⚠️ Be careful being honest in corrupt and despotic systems.

They operate under a strict power code—law and ‘corporate values’ are a front.
If you uphold either, you’re the enemy: crooks hate honest men. They spoil the looting—and remind them of their crookedness.

Effective heroes plan their exit—or better, adapt and reform once on top.

Power Trumps Honor

A foundational TPM’s value is truth.
So here’s the truth:

Power trumps honor and reputation.
Including for advancing in life, achieving goals, and doing as you please.

I bet you can think of many examples in your life.
But if not, here are some for you:

🔎 Dishonorable But Successful Men

We could list many examples like Nero, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, etc.

But forget single names and focus on the concept.
The concept is that many non-honorable men succeed in life.

They thrived despite bad behavior and reputation, thanks to high value and power.

Why?
Because high-power jerks have value to provide, and can inflict costs.

So people didn’t want to antagonize them.
Instead, they sought them out, worked with them, or pretended they were good people.

It’s basic social exchange.

Sure, some of them faced consequences.
But most paid consequences for illegal behavior, not for being jerks. Big difference.
And even then, catching them was hard, and some of them even escaped the consequences.

Plus, let’s be honest: most enjoyed more success in a few years than 1.000 nice guys’ lives put together.

So… Why are we still partial to the honorable man’s approach?

Why we still advise “be honorable”

As a personal choice, we prefer it and expect it in our community.

However, we recommend it due to its significant benefits.
Intrapersonally:

• Higher self-esteem
• Life ‘contentedness’
• Resilience to criticism and attacks

🙋‍♂️Lucio’s Take: happy life thanks to who I became and what I’ve done

Lucio:
I’m not a “nice guy,” and not even a particularly “good” guy.
I don’t want those labels anyway—I’m here to achieve goals, not to be pleasant. My priorities come first, and I think very strategically.

But I’ve pursued those goals in win-win ways (or at least without taking).
I never go “asshole first” without a reason, and I believe I’m on track to be a net giver in life—my ultimate yardstick for an honorable man.

That makes me proud of who I’ve become, what I’ve done, and what I’m doing. It also makes for a far better life experience: I go to sleep content and wake up most mornings happy.

In interpersonal relationships:

• Better interpersonal relationships because time shows who you truly are
  • Better close and intimate relationships, especially

• Better long-term relationships because the longer you interact, the more character quality matters

• Better relationships with high-quality people who prefer high-quality men

For example, even as a child I admired the honorable man, and lost respect for my friend when he pulled this nasty power move:

Lucio: From a man-to-man disagreement, my fiend looked for group support to gang up on me. But the other guy refused to gang up. My friend was a dishonorable turkey 🦃. Fabio was an honorable eagle 🦅

And at a social level:

• More influence and ‘soft power’ with prestige
  • Increases social capital, whereas dominance and jerks deplete it
  • 360 degrees° influence, including above, whereas dominance and jerks influence best below, including needier people
  • High-value sub-communication. Upholding values is a “costly signal”. It sub-communicates one can afford to uphold values. Sneaky behavior evokes lower power.
    Note: jerk behavior is also a costly signal of power, but it makes you less prestigious, instead of more

• Better leadership because it’s easier to attract and retain top talent

🐍 A Crook With Honorable Reputation?

The Machiavellian bent is to be honorable only as long as it serves you.

And, technically, it pays off to be:

• Honorable when it’s convenient
  • Gain a reputation for honorable
• Cheat when expedient
  • Nobody finds out
  • You can disappear
  • You can score big, keep the loot, and don’t need to care about reputation

Call this approach “the perfect crook”.

We’d lie if we denied the effectiveness of this approach IF executed to perfection.
However, the devil is in the detail.
And perfect execution may be a chimera for most due to the downsides and risks:

• The truth tends to seep out. Sometimes publicly -think of Weinstein-, and more often privately, in close relationships
  ✒️ “You can fool some fool all the time, everyone some of the time, but you cannot fool everyone every time”.

• Lower self-esteem, potentially

• Lower life satisfaction, likely

Also, consider you can never escape a cheat’s company when you’re the cheat.
A good company starts with yourself.

And finally, our strategically honorable approach is a proven winning strategy already. Why hang onto a more cheating life, if you can equally win and be honorable?

Learn More

Want to be an honorable man who wins?

You need strategy and power skills to be honorable or dishonorable men will eat your lunch.

But if you can marry honor with smart strategy, you get the best of both worlds.

That’s our goal at TPM.
We developed Power University to turn good men into effective, honorable leaders—mastering power with integrity. Join us and level up.