The usage of the word we're talking about:
"alpha:
informal
denoting a person who has a dominant role or position within a particular sphere.
"take turns cooking for each other if one of you is too much of an alpha chef" "
Simply means being dominant, or not being passive. Masculinity is dominance symbolically speaking.
Alpha is being masculine. Which you can express through a variety of methods: succeeding in whatever you do, which could be in the workplace, with social relationships, in competition etc.
Men are born to compete. That's our biological role, to fight the competition and get our genes passed on.
You are the sum of your parts, that much is true. So you are an amalgamation of all your ancestors who passed DNA onto you. They survived whatever hardships the world has known, beyond that, found a mate, and then reproduced. So sure, you could say some people are born alphas. No doubt about it. Many athletes are born with physical gifts none of us were born with. They were born lucky.
The real beauty of the human condition is that we have intellect and reasoning, and self-awareness. We can use tools, and use medicine to heal us when we are sick. Above all, we can improve if we have the desire to. While we are tremendously social and group-oriented animals, one man can move mountains if he so desires. Frequently I think of Tesla, he did so much to change the world.
Your position on the social hierarchy determines the amount of serotonin your brain releases, in other words the higher you are in status, the better you feel. To illustrate the point, that's why you see chad on the dancefloor not giving a fuck, with his ball-cap backwards calling everyone "bro". You can learn many things from Chad, but part of the way he acts, is well, because he's Chad and he's higher up on the ladder than you. He feels good all the time. Your goal should be to feel like him, but on a deeper level you should have a desire to make yourself better.
The task you have before you is to climb the dominance hierarchy. Better to be good at something in a small domain, than to be average at a few things across different domains. That's what we call a niche. They serve a very clear purpose.
Alphas are not just chad-athletic types. You have alphas in business, politics, the arts, and so on.
As far as getting higher up the ladder: the answer to that should be self-evident. As I said you find a niche, which you may already have. Improve, get mentors, observe others better than you, work longer, harder and smarter. Exercise, because it is key to regulating your emotions more effectively. Have a regular schedule (why do many rich men like Warren Buffet do the same thing every day? Because it regulates your body and makes things simpler, freeing up time and energy for you to focus on the important stuff). Ensure plenty of sleep. Make sure your testosterone is at the proper levels. Get into nature. Socialize.
Remember that you are a male. If your life is in order, you are already more alpha than most. If it's not, get it in order.
One last thing: i think all alphas are very knowledgeable. Either in their domain, or across multiple domains. It doesn't hurt to educate yourself (whether in the classroom, with a book, or by learning from peers). Alphas generally know what the truth is, and don't let themselves get sidetracked by society, political correctness, or group-think.
I think the question that should be asked is not, "what is alpha?", but,
"what makes men attractive to women." And the answer is simple: wealth, status, success, and to a lesser extent athletic ability and looks.
Thus, alpha men are rich always in some way (not necessarily money, but maybe in knowledge, skill or information), have a high group status (whether that be socially, work, community, etc), and have success or mastery of one or multiple domains.
Attraction triggers are fundamentally different for women than men, therefore women are generally looking for dominance--ie masculinity.
As far as people that became alphas, it certainly happens, examples: Steve Jobs (pot smoking hippy who spent time on communes), George Lazenby (leveraged a career in modeling into becoming the next James Bond with no acting career, thereby becoming the most desired Western guy in the world maybe apart from Mick Jagger, and thus one of the most successful modern womanizers), and Roger Federer (who became the best tennis player ever arguably after getting out of his head, mastering his emotions, and working year in and year out to improve against one of the toughest rivals you could have, ever, Rafa Nadal).
To end, I'll quote the inspiring story of how Lazenby became Bond:
"George Lazenby on Bond, sex and the 60s: 'They had the pill … I was a handsome guy' "
Quote:Quote:
Alone on the sand, Bond – played by Australian model-cum-actor George Lazenby – turns to the camera and delivers the now- famous line: “This never happened to the other fella.”
Those words are a cheeky, self-conscious reference to a changing of the guard, the New South Wales-born performer landing the role in rather unlikely circumstances (more on that in a moment) following five Sean Connery-led films.
But the line works on another level too. When it comes to Lazenby’s relationship with the James Bond franchise, a lot of things are relevant to him that never happened to the “other fella”, be it Connery specifically or any other actor who has played the martini-sipping, gadget-deploying, double entendre-delivering secret agent.
Lazenby is the only Australian to play 007, for instance, and the only actor to have landed the role with no prior acting experience. And unlike his colleagues Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, he played Bond once – and never again.
...
But mid question, Lazenby interjects. “I wrote it! That was my line!” he exclaims. On set, he would issue complaints such as, “I betcha the other fella didn’t have to do this” and “this didn’t happen to the other fella”. The film’s director, Peter Hunt, asked him to say it off the cuff, according to Lazenby, “so I said it, thinking it would never be in the movie. And they used it.”
As he keeps talking, the actor gives me yet another “only George Lazenby” to add to the collection. “I did my own stunts – except the skiing, because the insurance company said no skiing, although I did some anyway, in close-up – and I’m the only Bond who ever did that,” he says. “Sean Connery wouldn’t step down a step without saying ‘stunt man!’”
A new stranger-than-fiction documentary, Becoming Bond, explores Lazenby’s life, unpacking how the former model lied and scammed his way into the audition room by pretending to be a seasoned actor – and then, against all odds, nailed the part. The film, which is screening in Australia as part of the American Essentials film festival, also addresses the question that has plagued Lazenby for decades: why, after achieving the seemingly impossible, he did the seemingly unthinkable by rejecting a million-dollar offer to sign on for six more Bond films.
The documentary considers this mostly in the context of Lazenby rejecting a “slave contract” proposed by the studio. But also, as he explains to me, “I had advice that James Bond was over anyway. It was Sean Connery’s gig and, being in the 60s, it was love, not war. You know, hippy time. And I bought into that. They also said there’s a guy called Clint Eastwood doing movies in Italy, getting 500 grand for a month, for doing a western. They said, you could do that. So I didn’t feel like I was losing the million dollars.”
In his colourful and outspoken subject, Greenhaum found a mother lode of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll – and a person more than happy to talk about his exploits. Lazenby estimates he has slept with “maybe a thousand” women. “In the 60s alone there was sometimes three, four, five a day. For years. They had the pill. It was on script. I was a handsome guy from Australia ...
“It was ridiculous. It really was. If you were handsome, and you had the balls to ask them – I mean, how many times you could get it up was how many times you could do it.”
The actor has previously said that the day-to-day requirements of working on a film reduced his sex life (“It restricts you to the people who are around you”), and he clearly wasn’t fond of the on-set experience. “You’ve got to be there on time. You’ve got to be dressed and made up,” he grumbles. “It’s OK every now and again but to do it seriously, you need to have a different frame of mine than I’ve got.”
One of the anecdotes Lazenby recounts in Becoming Bond, which features re-enactment scenes starring Josh Lawson, is of a day in the 60s when he picked up a woman off the street (“she was engaged, by the way”), and took her to a nearby friend’s house for tea. Some time later, when the woman announced it was time for her to leave, Lazenby’s friend turned to them and said: “You two aren’t going anywhere, I put LSD in your tea.”
Lazenby says he “didn’t even know what acid was, until I saw my breath going across the room, watched the curtains moving and started to taste colours.” The former 007-from-Down-Under was later fed marijuana by that same friend in Germany, he explains; when he noticed this friend reading a menu upside down in a restaurant, he erupted into a laughing fit so hard he had to leave the premises.
According to Lazenby, his consumption of mind-altering substances came after 007. And when it came to alcohol, his beverage of choice was a far cry from the delicate shaken-not-stirred: “I was just drinking beer when I got the Bond movie and drinking beer during it,” he says. “There was never a martini. I had one sip of one once, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t into hard liquor at the time. I was into beer, which wasn’t very James Bond.” Indeed, there’s not a lot in George Lazenby’s story that was.