I find the """man up""" school of thought generally works for me when faced w a tough situation but 97% of the time it's presented as an obnoxious show of bravado. What are better ways to phrase this?

"Action over anxiety."

My mom has told me this since I was a kid, and it is still something I am trying to put into practice effectively when met with challenging situations. It is the most forgiving way I can think of to get yourself in the mental headspace you are talking about without the "time to nut up" connotation.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

not an exact fit, but i think about that sentence often

I prefer to think of it as "the only way out is through" or "the only path is forward."

For some problems it won't matter how people feel or even who is at fault. What matters often is how you begin to work through it. Once you're out of the hole you can reflect.

Rise to the occasion

In Swedish we say "Har du tagit Fan i båten, får du ro honom i land".

In English it would be "If you put Satan in your rowboat, you'd better row him ashore."

Technically what you're describing is discipline. It takes a lot of will power to just make yourself do something. You can take pride in that. Call yourself disciplined, principled, stoic.

In fact, you might broaden your perspective on this particular subject by looking into stoicism. It's like a "manly" mindset but without the gender or toxicity attached.

"I have to get over this some time, why not now?"

~ Louis Wu, from Ringworld, written by Larry Niven.

"Because I'm not ready" is also a valid answer, but it gets your brain moving towards the goal I find.

Thug that shit out

Really, that thinking should be a last resort instead of the default.

It's ok to be vulnerable. It's ok to ask for help. It's ok to do or say nothing while you assess a situation as sometimes that is the best course of action.

It's only when you have no options left and you must act that you actually need to take action alone. One might actually need time to process a trauma, or experience grief. And I would argue that the ability to be vulnerable with others is it's own type of strength.

For instance, if you are noticing that you are getting depressed and are finding it hard to perform basic maintenance tasks for yourself. Instead of first trying to be strong and convince yourself to do it every time. Maybe it might be better to seek help for your depression.

Your feelings are valid. Job still needs doing.

You don't get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don't get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can't help but reach it. We won't all see it, but it's coming...

Just keep swimming...

Persevere.

“Your feelings matter, but your actions matter too, and you choose those.”

“The only way out is through.”

“What can I do to improve my situation.”

Don’t let douchebags scare you away from this, but this is basically stoicism. It’s not that your feelings don’t matter, it’s just that sometimes you actually can change your situation and it’s good to do that then

Put on your big girl panties

The issue is the "man" up aspect. There are ABSOLUTELY times when you have to... Well, man up, nut up... Whatever. That's a fact of life - some situations require you to stop being a child, and instead face it like an adult would.

We run into issues with it being 'man' or 'nut' - these are gender-loaded terms, which imply that females aren't able to do the same thing. Do I think anyone actually means that when they say one of those things? No. Do I think a lot of reactions to them are overblown? Yes. We should still be cognizant of what the language we choose to use may say subtextually though.

There's another parallel issue to the advice to man up. That's that a lot of times, the people who get that advice HAVE BEEN manning up, and the advice giver is seeing them in a moment where they've been worn down and just need a quick whinge fest before going back to manning it up. Situations like that imply that having any emotions other than "git er dun" is a bad thing and you should just STFU and work.

As far as giving others advice goes, generally speaking unless they ask you for advice, don't. If someone's just coming to you with some venting about a thing and you tell them whatever version of "man up" you want, even if it's applicable, it comes across as dismissive. The person may not want advice, they may just want to unload a bit. If you can't do that without offering advice, then it's best to state that.

I don't know that there's anything quite as punchy, succinct, and general-purpose as "man-up" that doesn't have the sort of macho bullshit connotations, and if there is, it's probably some sort of psychobabble that wouldn't mean much to most people who need to hear it.

I'm also not a fan of the phrase itself, but the general sentiment represented by it has gotten me pretty far in life.

I'm not a religious person at all, but in certain contexts the "Prayer for Serenity" can kind of get you to a similar place.

For the SciFi nerds, there's Dune's Litany against Fear, or Yoda's "Do or do not, there is no 'try'"

There's also "mind over matter," you can't necessarily help what all the synapses and hormones and such in your body are making you feel, but you can sure as hell help what you do about it.

And of course from the advertising world there's Nike's "Just do it"

There's also some echoes of it in things like "be the change you want to see," or "if you want something done right you have to do it yourself," or "fake it til you make it"

Something else that has stuck with me is something one of my instructors said a lot when I was training to be a 911 dispatcher "don't do nothing." Make sure that whatever the problem is, you're taking positive steps to address it. You can't count on things resolving themselves, and you can't count on someone else fixing it either, you have to be the one to make things happen.

Again drawing from my own life experiences, I was a boy scout and the scout motto is to "be prepared" which I find pairs nicely with the saying that "people don't rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training." Do what you can to prepare yourself beforehand, and everything will fall into place a lot easier when the time comes. That can mean physical or mental training and practice, or it could be something like getting your clothing, gear, tools, meal prep, cleaning materials together the night before and setting up alarms, reminders, notes, etc. to keep yourself on track.

For people inclined to read up on some philosophy, ancient Greek stoicism had a lot to say about things like self control and virtuous living, and daoism/taoism which has concepts like "Wu Wei" which is tricky to translate and keep the meaning intact, but it means something like "effortless action" it's kind of a mix of just doing what is needed as it comes up without having to think about it too much, and a bit of, like God said to Bender in Futurama "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

As High King Margo puts it:

"LIFE IS PAIN. OVARY UP."

Gee, it doesn't fit you, it leaves out your whole gender? Take another look at yours. If you want something more neutral, and with a little softer edge,

"Sometimes you just gotta suck it up"

implies you understand that what they are facing sucks, doesn't suggest they're not a man if they fail, and doesn't imply that female=worthless.

There’s the old Nike slogan “Just do it” that captures the idea while having positive connotations.

Sounds a bit like Stoic philosophy. https://dailystoic.com/9-core-stoic-beliefs/ Number 6 and 9 specifically.

One thing that I have drawn strength from repeatedly in hard times was drilled into me by a great professor in undergrad (psychology):

You cannot experience personal growth without struggling; without hardship.

Think of the people who are sheltered from the real-world and then get a full dose of it and are unable to cope and preserve like others who had to grow up early.

I remind myself amidst struggles that I will be coming out on the other side a stronger and more capable person. It helps me to accept the shit on my plate and refuse to give up.

"Be the adult."

"If it is to be, it's up to me."

"Somebody has to and no one else will.".

"I don't have to like it, I just have to do it."

If it's for yourself, and you know what it actually means to you, just use it. While it's often derided, from both sides, if it works for you, use it.

While I'm generally quite egalitarian, I do have some old school feelings about what being a man means. I'm the proverbial tip of the spear. I'm the one who steps up and deals with the problems. It's also my responsibility to remain capable of that. If that means getting physical or mental health treatment, so be it. "Manning up" is me stepping into that role and mindset. I take on the strain, so that those I care about don't have to.

The poem "If", while dated is a good baseline for what manliness should mean.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

If it helps, the phrase "stepping up" can also work. It's not as complete as manning up, but still carries the same connotations to others.

The only way out is through

"OK, a few deep breaths and let's soldier through it."

(This is not an idiom, just something I realized as a parent.) Sometimes, being an adult means "reaching into the shit."

Shit has to be dealt with. My kids - as babies - could not deal with their own shit. It was my job and responsibility as their parent to clean up that shit. And sometimes something would get dropped in the shit. And you gotta reach in.

Nobody likes dealing with shit. Everyone tries to take as little shit as they can. But some days, no matter how I feel - it's on me to reach into the shit.

Doing the right thing is hard

When I getting to the point of boiling over, I remind myself that what I am doing is hard because its the right thing to do. It usually helps or at least puts me into a mindset that evaluates what I am doing to make sure that its worth the hassle.

"Fuck it, I give up"

I'm not very succesful in life.

using something along the lines of “someone’s gotta do it” always works for me

Sometimes feelings are good, sometimes they get in the way and it's best just to do what you need to do.

"Embrace the suck" Or "Fuck it, let's just get it done" work for me without feeling like it's invalidating half the population.

"Gotta go get shit done."

"Get it done" or "Take care of business". I guess another one is "Future me will appreciate this".

Maybe explain, as you're doing so well here, that your goal isn't to be invalidating. You could point out that sometimes distracting, venting, or leaning on coping mechanisms can actually become the problem. They can become a way to avoid and minimize our own feelings, abilities, and issues. Even basic actions, like taking a much-needed shower, taking a brief walk or finally making it through a whole workday can trigger massive chemical changes in our brain when we're in a crappy place.

I hope this helps. I think you're bringing up a really helpful sticking point here, and having received and misunderstood many a "man up" pep talk during depressive episodes, I gotta say it's a very cool move for you to workshop supportive language like this

I usually tell myself to "suck it up". Especially if it's something I know I will benefit from.

I think instead "be nice to the future you", in the end do we do most things for our future self. It may be hard today but you will be happy you did it tomorrow.

Where there's a will there's a way, you got this. Be tough.

It’s less “man up” and more “you can do this” to me. It’s not “fuck your feelings” and more “life is hard and uncomfortable, but you can do this despite hardship, because it’s worth doing”. Actually wanting to do something that is hard to do, is kind of a testament to the importance of the task. And also, sometimes I remind myself that feelings will pass and change all the time, so maybe they are not always that important.

"Harden up" or "Take a teaspoon of cement" are my go tos.

Let's roll.

Ain't no hill for a stepper

I think part of being a man is not caring what other men define your manliness as.

If you have an idea that "manning up" involves some change in machismo, I think that might be a little toxic. But, if in not caring that your behavior made other men think about, caused friction, and was then interpreted as machismo, that's better in my book.

If you like the sense of machismo and that phrase helps you as an imaginative aid, then why not. But I think it can be more constructive if you can interpret manliness independent from machismo

"Take responsibility for yourself."

"Be accountable."

"Learn to accept things you can't control."

"Self pity gets you nowhere."

These are all nongendered ways of saying your mental health is your own responsibility. Or, simply repeat to yourself your own observation, "If I'm feeling bad but force myself to do something, I usually feel better." You were already on the right track friend. Just realize gender has absolutely nothing to do with the concept and counter thoughts that tell you otherwise.

""""Nonspecific gender person who is typically relied upon to get things done without considering their own feelings on the matter -- up!"""

"Sometimes you've just got to grab your balls and jump"

Man up is a masculinization of a notion that equates to common adulting. It's about taking responsibility, which women are obligated to do as much as men in 21st century society.

A related term is to pony up meaning to pay a bill which has a lot of intersection (as many responsibilities are financial, especially those associated with manning up) so pony up could be repurposed.

Some variation of, "Well... Looks like today is my turn to be the adult," is usually what I say to myself when there's some necessary but unpleasant task that I have to take care of.

Face your fear. Do you feel scared to do something? That's totally valid and understandable. Do it scared. My point is, don't ignore the feelings. Acknowledge the feelings, then do it anyway.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." "If not me the who, if not now then when."

"Either I get over it, get through it, or I have to learn to live with it"

Monkey Up

Truthfully, I feel the response that said “Action over anxiety” is probably the best one I’ve seen in this thread.

I have a bunch of things I tell myself to try to keep up my motivation, and it does change depending on my mood. I’ll sometimes be kind and gentle with myself, silly, stoic, angry, and - try as I might to avoid it - even self-abusive sometimes.

But, really, though. It’s not about the phrase or the wording, it’s about motivation.
My ‘battle cry’ changes depending on how I’m feeling, but the underlying reality is that we must do these things.

It’s best if we don’t motivate ourselves with toxic masculinity or self-abuse, but it kind of doesn’t matter what we say: We must continue on.
The only other option is stagnation and death.

Just keep swimming, friend.

Don't let your emotions rule you.

I'm also fond of a line from The Matrix: There is no spoon.

Activating survival mode

While I don't have an exact answer for you I do have two rules that I try to live by that had helped me deal with being an adult:

1. To be an adult, you only need to know when it is apropriate to be childish. - This implies a shitload of stuff, it implies that you know what being childish means, as well as being able to read a situation. I treat it as a reminder that it is ok to keep playing and as long as you do it apropriately you can ignore critics.

2. Don't paint the devil on the wall unless he stands in the hallway, but it won't harm you to have some paint available. - Basically don't constantly prepare for the worst, but should the worst happen, take notes and analyze the situation, and be somewhat prepared to do so.

Suck it up.

Embrace the suck.

Stop being a pussy (I use this sparingly and only around people who I know can handle it. If they take offense, I tell them since I, being a woman, have a pussy, I get to say that. I am reclaiming the word.)

So far my favorite is "Rise up".

As a self-encouragement strategy, I agree, and often use the same trick.

maximum effort

time to nut up or shut up

never half-ass two things. whole-ass one thing.

There’s a bunch of colloquialisms that express roughly the same thing, as others have mentioned - take your pick.

Nowadays I say "this shit ain't nothing to me" or "it is what it is" a lot. I never thought about it being more gender neutral until this post though.

Feelings are just chemicals in your brain. Don't let those tiny bastards win.

Adversity is inevitable, mistakes are your greatest teacher. Learn and grow, or become your own prisoner.

Toughen up

When I was strugging with motivation in getting out to go for a run or whatever I found "Just do it" to be fairly effective. Only later realizing I was lifting the Nike slogan. Still, it works for me.

Old guy at work asks me if I like my job and I say no. He says "Work is for family not for you."

Do your duty. Take responsibility. Do what needs to be done.

Man up doesn't mean do something stupid, it means do it has to be done, good or bad. Get it done.

If you're going through Hell, keep going.

It's kinda sorta stoicism, just phrased in a judgmental, dismissive way, that is also pointlessly and rather toxically gendered. It's close to the minimum amount of helpfulness "advice" can possibly have.

Being done with stuff feels good if your reward system is working properly. Other than that, while you can have "inertia" issues getting started and that feels kinda stressful, procrastination tends to get stressful too, after a while. At a certain point you'll just have delayed the gratification to fit in some more worried and often unsatisfying faffing around.

Since pushing through whatever seems to work for you and make you feel better, I would focus on that instead of nonsense about not being macho enough.

My mantras are:
Just do it. 🗸 = stop overanalyzing, start with whatever action you can do right now
Always eat your dessert first. = start with the most enjoyable or easiest part of the task
Be someone else. = pretend it's not you facing the tough situation but someone else who asked you to get them out of it

I reframe it as a reminder that something is temporary. "I only have to deal with this for x more hours/days/whatever" helps me remember that while I gotta be tough now, I don't necessarily have to be later.

I worked with a stunt coordinator once who told one of his guys that he was going to drop him, lying parallel to the ground, from the ceiling. He wouldn’t be able to brace his fall (as he was supposed to be dead), so he told his guy he’d just have to “cowboy up.” Not sure that’s a better phrase, but it’s got more color.

"Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it."
-Logan nine fingers (Joe Abercrombie)

Helped me a lot in dark times...

It's not useful as a punchy slogan, but in periods of duress I try to step outside my feelings to evaluate my goals and reactions, and then when I have done that analysis I visualize myself doing a kind of DBZ power up sequence, but kind of defensively oriented. It sounds ridiculous and I am explaining it really poorly but it seems to help

Listen to this

"Fucking pretend you know what you are doing." Always seems to work. Feel how you feel l, and don't shame yourself for fear.

'show your courage'

'what cannot be controlled must be endured'

Buckle up Buckaroo

Edit: The wife and I always use the term "rally". Like, "Here we go a-rallying again" or "we're rally-gals today". So maybe instead of "man-up", you could try "It's time to rally"?

"We choose to do things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

"If it hurts, it means that it grows"

Come hang out in !hopeposting@lemmy.world

*cue Mulan Make a Man Out of You song

I'm going to analyze this assuming you're more manly than not, since that's where my experience is at.

Emotions are separate, related issues that can be tackled just like a man can. A therapist with "Men's Issues" experience knows how to frame the woo and abstractions of regular therapy with more actionable techniques. Someone with very intense or inappropriate emotions may need to face the emotions MORE than the problem at hand. There are techniques and viewpoints to be understood, and I had to use these myself.

It's stuff like simple facts about emotions. They exist. They influence your actions. They can be modified and analyzed. They need to be managed like an adult manages a child. Ignoring emotions can compact them into deep seated hurt that induce more emotions. Process your past to free yourself from that hurt. It won't be fast, but it needs to be done.

If certain situations that cause emotions can be avoided, do so when reasonable. If they cannot be ignored, recognize that external help through tools, techniques, and friends are not weakness, but the weapons you use to to fight your battles. Forgive yourself slipping while always focusing on the output. Learn to cry, and know how it makes you more powerful and strong.

Notice that this is closer to "wise old karate master" or "Boy Scout Scoutmaster" talk. It's what men crave but rarely find in popular media. IF the person does not have issues with their emotions and have a sufficiently sized ego, pulling them through the first steps of anxiety and hesitation is enough to make someone feel competent and secure. Positive visualization, goading their ego, pushing buttons (gently), it's good for many men but not for all of them, and it just doesn't translate to a lot of women. Expand your arsenal of emotional management for your target audience. You're a good person for wanting to find a better way to help others.

I don't remember the details but there was an Internet story about a dude who'd say "man up" and people explained why that was a problem and he updated to "fortify". And I really like that, because it kinda suggests also getting help where you need it to build up your defenses in order to face the thing you need to face.

You need to just see this as something that everyone has to deal with. You can feel your feelings still do what you need to do. Ignoring your feelings doesn't make you any more of a man.

"If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing"

Get prehistoric, go full barbarian, hulk it out, become psychosocial.

Lets do some wild improvisation!

It promts me to a) just fukkin do it and b) not expect perfection

Grit your teeth

Stiff upper lip

Sisu

Many ways to articulate this

There is something of a line between self-care and self-coddling. This is an example of active self care. Sometimes feeling better is a matter of building resistance to the desire to administer convenient but less enduring instant self gratification.

Maybe conceive of it as refusing to spoil your inner child who operates emotionally and not logically?

"Grow up".

https://www.knowol.com/knowledge/theodore-roosevelt-fearless/

I try to think about how happy and content Future-me will be once the job is done. I confirm the accuracy of this thought to myself by thinking back to how it was in the past when I completed some task that was difficult for me. So I think of an experience where I realized in hindsight that it wasn't actually that bad and that I was worrying for nothing that I might somehow fail. And even with things that ultimately didn't go well, I can still reassure future-me that there was no need to make a big deal out of it, because even my failures have lost their horror over time; for example, embarrassing moments at school, awkward dates or bad presentations at work. All these things are just water under the bridge or at best even funny when I think back on them today - and that's how it will be in the future: as soon as the job is done, I'll be alright, regardless of whether I succeed or not.

bro down, dude

Don't be such a pussy, pussy, You a damn pussy.

https://youtu.be/DgvGIjzRMWk?si=cqjLrlnM-vxovWCD

Reminds me of a short YouTube recommended to me here. In the second part, it talks about a guy who just tells himself “FORTIFY!!” As a similar vein, it’s pretty funny.

My usual is: Can't stop, won't stop!

I think the fuck your feelings is part of its effectivness its a reminder they dont matter in the face of the problem and you must work past them. The whole arrogent right wing thing well do u want to change your language to accomodate such people changing what words mean?

Time to shine? There's always old mate at work who has a good one-liner. "The shit jobs are the good jobs" (everyone knows it's a rubbish job so they'll cut you some slack) "Sometimes your the fuckor & sometime your the fuckee" "Weeeel, that's a shitter" "Maybe kick this one back to the brains trust" And so on

I tend to think of it like a personal trainer, "push, you got this, one more rep". More positive and gender neutral.

GSD - Get Shit Done

"You'll feel better once you go through" IMO fits rather well what OP is asking for. Specially for self-advice.

[mini-rant] People, stop assuming random orthogonal shit into the left-right axis. Seriously.

I can get why "man up" would be typically right-winger due to the sex-based stereotypes. ("Rather curiously" not mentioned by anyone here, right?) However, doing it directly with the "fuck your feelings" is stupid. [/mini-rant]

Stoicism

Who gives a shit what people think it means?

“Man up” is the perfect wording of it. It means take responsibility instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Historically the men are the ones who had to face full reality whereas everyone else could rely on some layer of protection.

You could also try saying “macho your nacho” which I just made up.

Only a yank could decide that basic human survival instinct and the only reason we're all here today is RiGHt wINg fuuuuckin hell 😂