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Archives for October 2017

How To Develop The Self-Trust That’ll Keep You Going No Matter What

by Visko Matich · Oct 21, 2017

WHEN I FIRST DECIDED I wanted to change my life, the most palpable objection I faced was not from anyone else, but instead from my own mind. Young and naive, I believed that I inherently had the ability to achieve what I wanted to do; I believed it so strongly that it didn’t seem like a question as to whether I could accomplish it or not. But just as I believed this, I also knew, with certainty, that I could never trust myself to do it. I knew that even though I could accomplish what I wanted to, I was almost guaranteed not to. As if in response to my self-belief, a voice would say:

“Yes you could do it, but you are going to piss your future away.”

This wasn’t self-loathing or lack of confidence in myself, it was instead a simple assessment of how I had behaved to date, and the actions I’d taken (or rather, failed to take) with any consistency.

As far as my life was concerned, I was someone who started things then abandoned them. I was someone who got periodically obsessed, burned myself out, procrastinated, doubted myself, then gave up.

I was a quitter.

And really, given the overwhelming evidence – a lackluster school performance, failure at not one but two university courses, and a tendency to fantasize about my future rather than actually finish any attempts to achieve it – why would I think otherwise? Why would I trust myself?

When the way we’ve lived results in a life we’re unsatisfied with, then more often than not it’s due to the bad habits we’ve accumulated on the way. When we’re young and stupid, we give no thought to the life we’re building for ourselves, and often let various unconscious inclinations lead us to develop patterns of behavior that create a life we would never have consciously chosen.

So we want it to change. But just as we unconsciously built a life we never wanted, in equal measure do we learn to lack trust in our ability to build a life we’d consider worthwhile. Even though we might believe we have the capability to achieve what we want, we have zero trust in our ability to actually do it.

The trick then is rebuilding that trust.

LESSONS FROM A SALESMAN

To start, I need to talk about selling. Why? Because that’s where I came up with this idea.

Sales jobs, if you haven’t had one, are what I’d describe as the worst-best jobs ever. The worst, because you’re constantly exposed to how much bad performance crushes your self-esteem, and the best, because they show you just how ruthlessly productive you have to be to get exceptional results.

In order to stay profitable in a sales business, you have to develop a work ethic that is reliable. Sales is an emotional process. The closer you get to a sale, the more heightened your emotions become; positive and negative. When things are going well, you get excited, energized and elated; when things are going bad you get anxious, stressed and irritable. And it is this exact heightened state of emotions that engineers the haphazard work ethic of sales employees.

When things are going well, their priories shift. When things are going bad their priorities shift. But in reality, it is rare that the actual nature of their effort should ever change. In any sale, the fundamental elements are almost always the same. In any sales pipeline*, the fundamental elements that go into building that pipeline are almost always the same. Therefore, it stands the reason that the same consistent actions should be carried out.

Outside of sales, the importance of a work-ethic can be harder to grasp. In activities that aren’t like sales (i.e directly tied to your income), it can be harder to emotionally connect with the importance of consistent actions. In fact, more often than not people confuse their lack of emotional connection to their work for an inability at it or a fear of failure. Often, it’s neither, it’s simply the perspective they’re viewing the work from. But if you’re building a business, writing a novel, or developing a saleable skill (like, for instance, coding), then the consistent actions you take determine the eventual success you will have in that field – no matter how far off or abstract they are.*

Whilst the eventual reward might seem far away, it’s eventual materialization exists in the here and now; in the choices and actions you are making day by day. In sales, we described this as “every action you take now pays off 3 months from now”, and it lies at the heart of what necessitates a solid work ethic.

And in my experience, this work ethic always boils down to three truths.

THE THREE TRUTHS OF AN EXCEPTIONAL WORK ETHIC

1) Focused work trumps ‘hard work’.

2) Consistent, targeted work trumps ‘hard work’.

3) Trust is built on consistency and predictability.

Truths 1 and 2 are simple. When talking about their work ethics, people often like to brag about how hard they work, how many hours they put in, and what time in the morning they like to wake up and so on and so forth. But in my experience, the amount of time worked isn’t the crucial factor, and in fact, isn’t always the best perspective.

And that’s for a simple reason.

Burnout.

The more aggressively you push your body, the quicker you will burn out in the long term (crashing, losing motivation), and the quicker you will burn out in the short term (procrastination, creative blocks).

This is not to say that you shouldn’t push yourself (you can and always should), but your metric of success for your work ethic should never, ever be the degree to which you’ve pushed yourself; but instead the caliber of the work ethic you’re engaging with.

When I say focused work trumps hard work, I mean to say that 1 hour of attentive, focused work trumps 3 hours of distracted, multitasked work. When I say that consistent, targeted work trumps hard work, I mean that 1 hour, repeated each day, of specific and productive work, trumps 3 hours of random, unpredictable working.

This means that your work should be judged not on how much time it required, but by…

THE THREE METRICS OF SELF TRUST

  1. How much undivided attention you give your work.
  1. Whether you do your work every day.
  1. Whether your work was specifically targeted in a way that has a strong influence on your desired outcome.

And the reason that all three of these metrics are important is that, when combined, they bring us to the 3rd truth:

Trust.

The easiest way to stay on top of an excellent work ethic is to have the trust in yourself that you are capable of achieving the work you need to achieve and that you are definitely going to do it. And this truth is built on nothing more than a reflection on your own consistent and predictable output, that in turn nets you constant and predictable results. The way we apply our energy informs the habits we build. The habits we build inform the person we become. The person we become not only informs the results we get but the trust in what we can continue to get.

When you’ve put in consistent effort towards your work, you’ve developed the trust that means you’ll never stop.

 

*A sales pipeline is a rolling forecast of prospective deals that are currently in process and may or may not occur.

*If they’re right actions, that is. For instance, writing a lot is a more efficient at making you a better writer than reading a lot is.

 

Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

 

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It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

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Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Passion, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Self Help, Self Improvement, Success

This Is The Most Attractive Thing You Can Ever Do

by Visko Matich · Oct 9, 2017

PATRICE O’NEAL was an exceptionally gifted comedian. Referring to his standup as performances, he would prefer to improvise what he knew he wanted to talk about, adjusting it based on his own mood and the mood of the audience. As a result, his structure was haphazard and unpredictable, but the authenticity of it built a relationship between himself and the audience; a relationship where they were often at his mercy.

Jerry Seinfeld once said he never looks at the audience, instead preferring to focus on the noises, the rhythm, and sticking to the material he had in this head. Patrice was the opposite; during his standup, he didn’t just look at the audience, he involved them, he held them hostage to the uncomfortable conversations he wanted to have.

It would be easy to look at Patrice and say that his talent lay in his ability to improvise where other comedians would need planned routines; that he was just that funny. But this would miss what gave Patrice his real talent:

His unflinching honesty when it came to what he believed was the truth.

No matter who he was speaking to; man, woman, black, white – he said what he thought, and he said it unashamedly; often calling people out on their hypocrisies and exposing people to parts of themselves they weren’t aware of.

I remember when, in one of his radio appearances, a female writer called in to promote her book on how to train men to be better husbands – a book she based around applying the same techniques used in animal training. Barely seconds on the air, Patrice launched into her, saying:

“Urrrgh – that’s hilarious. Again, automatically I’m gonna tell you what the flaw is in your thinking: you don’t want to be the – the controller. That’s the thing. Women don’t want to win, you want a winner. You don’t want to rule the nest – that’s why you’ve never met a happy woman boss. You don’t wanna be there. You’re angry about being a boss. You want a boss. You want your man to be the leader. This is why it’s already flawed on a prehistoric level. Why – you don’t wanna run your husband. Do you know why running your husband is not sexy? Cause you don’t wanna be there doing it. That’s why it never works for a woman to run things – cause you don’t wanna – you look at your husband like URRRGHH – look at this bum letting me run his life. Phooey. You have a – you just have a loser for man.”

She left the call a few minutes later.

Now, I’m not here to debate the merits of Patrice’s argument (if you really want to know, I agree with him*), I’m just here to explore what it was he was doing. Which, in essence, was staying true to himself no matter what. No matter how uncomfortable, how confrontational, how alienating it was; Patrice stayed true to himself.

Whatever the subject matter. If he had a view, he said it.

In my article on Charisma, I wrote that being okay with potentially being perceived as unlikeable, and actually leaning towards that, was a hallmark of charisma. Instead of trying to please anyone, just shamelessly being yourself and expressing who you are with a take it or leave it attitude was essential.

Nowhere is this truer than in dating.

WHY MEN LIE TO WOMEN

If you’re a woman and you’re reading this, I think I need to reinforce to you the fact that men rarely tell the truth. We want to do it. But we don’t.

Instead, what we do is filter.

A common trait in people struggling with social anxiety is that they will be very conscious of what they say. They will be extremely picky about when they enter a conversation, how they enter a conversation, and acutely sensitive to how what they say will be received. Now, I don’t just mean received after they’ve said it, no, I mean how it will be received before it’s even been said.

They’re like the bad Politician version of themselves. What they say is essentially the pre-packaged, planned, and politically correct version of whatever they actually think – if you’re lucky that is. Usually, it’s just what you want to hear, regardless of what they think.

The reason for this is simple. They want you to like them.

Now you’re probably wondering “yeah that’s great, but what the hell does that have to do with men and women?”

Well with men, they almost always talk to women like they have social anxiety.

In fact, a man who talks freely around women is so rare, it may as well be a myth.

And the logic behind this makes perfect sense. When someone with social anxiety is altering their conversation, it’s to get someone to like them so they aren’t a threat and won’t socially hurt them. When a guy talking to a woman is altering his speech its also because he wants her to like him.

Can you guess why?

What is it that he could possibly want?

Whether you like it or not, a fundamental part of the male-female dynamic is that men want what women have, but women are the gatekeepers for what men want.

Part of the male psyche is always dedicated to winning what we want. Like one of those birds who builds a nest and does a dance, or a silverback who drums his chest the loudest, on some level, our actions are guided by the desire to charm or impress the gatekeeper into giving us what we want.

The problem with this, however, is that it sucks.

When you allow what you want from a woman to dictate all of your behavior, you’re allowing yourself to be driven by your neediness, your shallow baser needs, or your manipulative nature; but worse than this, you’re trading your self-respect for sex. Or in the case of relationships, love too.

Yes. Sex has become more important to you than who you are.

And on any level, relationship or single, placing sex (or love) as more important to you than who you are isn’t just a lack of self-respect, it’s an act of stupidity.*

THE MODERN PLAYER IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

The more you lie to a woman in order to get what you want, the more you aren’t just disrespecting yourself, but through that disrespect, you are making yourself far less likely to get what you want.

And the reason for this is blindingly simple.

You’re unattractive.

And I don’t mean – big nose, bad teeth, small dick unattractive.

No, I mean your soul is unattractive. Who you are is just ugly.

In my article on the Fundamental Characteristics of the Attractive Man, I stated that the only trait that mattered was that a man developed himself, for himself. Not for her. That he built his life around who he is, what he wants, and who he wants to be. He accomplished his potential, he found his enjoyment and he went after goal, after goal, after goal, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

But this principle of developing yourself for yourself extends even further, in a way that is so essential it baffles me that I didn’t really expand on it. Here’s what I forgot to emphasize:

When you lie to a woman, you are using your own voice, your own words, your own expression of your identity, not for yourself, but for her.

On a fundamental level, this is the most unattractive thing you can do. It doesn’t matter how much you live for yourself, develop for yourself, and have fun for yourself; if your basic expression of your own identity, in words, is not for you, but for her, then you’re toast. You’re kablooey. Like some kid who acts tough only to come across someone truly aggressive; your attractiveness was an illusion that she will very quickly see through.

Your words are the expression of who you are. Before you do anything else with your life, the words you choose to communicate with, the words you choose to say, and the words you choose to stand by are the clearest representation of who you are, and what you firmly believe. Your words are your soul.

And it’s either attractive or unattractive.

It’s either for you or for her.

KILL THE POLITICIAN

Before you do anything else you have to fix how you speak. You have to start aligning your words with what you actually think and feel.

Not what I think, not what the news thinks, not what your friend thinks, not what will avoid confrontation, not what will get you laid and not what will make you friends, get you a promotion or make your parents love you; you have the say what you think and feel.

You have to find the Politician within your soul, put a .44 Magnum to his head, and blow his brains right across your frontal cortex until there’s nothing but your unfiltered voice blasting out like a guitar solo.

In words of the late, great Bill Hicks “play from your fucking heart”.

And you have to do this every time you speak.

Now, this might sound complicated, but it’s the method is actually very simple.

  1. You get in touch with who you are.
  2. You have to take the risk and just say it.

But as step one requires being traumatized, falling in love, breaking up, reading, questioning your values and all the gold of living that you naturally will have experienced to some degree already, I’m just going to say this:

The easiest way to start understanding who you already are and what you think and feel and believe is to start writing all of it down and exploring it. Get to know yourself by confronting yourself, and supplement that with the writing of people who have also done this; Freud, Tolstoy, Rousseau, Eliot, Levi, Frankl, Emerson, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau, Twain, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer, Jung, and pretty much anyone whose writing has stood the test of time.

Because that’s what good writing is; identity – distilled and perfected. The more you do this, the more you will figure out the essentials of who you are. The only tonic that works better is trauma, and that’ll show up when it shows up. Just strap in and enjoy the ride.

Now let’s move on to 2) You have to take the risk and just say it.

I know countless people that practice meditation who are completely out of touch with their identity and words. They have almost nothing to say, and if you ask them any penetrating questions about themselves, they sit there with this airy look about them, eyes glazed over like a caught fish – what do they sit there doing? Have they attempted to think about nothing for so long that they’ve emptied their brain of all their merit as well?

God knows.

The reason I find this ironic is that the single greatest way to murder your Politician is to develop presence. When you develop presence (read: the awareness of what is happening right now and what you are doing right now) you develop the ability to spot your own bullshit, and when you’re faking your own identity – i.e saying stuff to appease your boss, women, make friends – instead of saying what you actually think.

The more you learn to spot when you’re not saying what you think, the more you can start pulling the trigger and start saying what you actually think.

This is best represented by looking at the conventional patterns of behavior, and how they fit into your life and automatic behavioral patterns.

Friendliness, being nice, being agreeable, being a gentleman, being confrontational, expressing displeasure, expressing annoyance, silence, hatred, anger, sadness, laughing at misfortune, taking pity on someone’s misfortune; all of these are examples of typical patterns of your own behavior.

But here’s how it needs to work:

Don’t be friendly unless you want to. Sometimes, you’re gonna feel like annoyed, irritated, you’ll want to be alone. The same goes for being nice. You don’t have to be nice if you don’t feel nice; if someone’s fucked you off, tell them.

Don’t be agreeable unless you genuinely agree or get on with the person. This one is essential. If you don’t enjoy their company, if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, if you think they’re wrong, say it and voice your opinion. Yes this will be confrontational, yes this might mean you’re in the wrong sometimes, but yes this the absolute right thing to do. Back your own opinion.

Don’t be a gentleman unless you want to. Big shock but not every woman deserves to have the door held open for her. Hell, some deserve to have it slammed shut on their way out. 

Be confrontational. If your opinion, beliefs, and values come into conflict with someone else’s and you don’t say or do something – why the fuck are you even alive? Why are you the spectator of your own life?

The same goes with displeasure, annoyance, silence, anger, hatred, black humor, empathy – if they are real within you, then you need to start expressing them. Don’t hold them back.

In other words: Never lie. Never pretend.

Because the more you learn to align your voice and actions with your soul, the stronger it becomes.

This is the pumping iron of spiritual strength. And when you’ve backed who you are long enough, and developed an identity, a will, and a soul that is robust and honest – then you’ve developed a strength that nobody can fake, and nobody can take away.

This is taking responsibility for your own inner strength and worth – your own personal power.

And in seizing your personal power, you’ve made the most attractive decision you can ever make.

 

*I’ve met many individuals who claim they’d be happy with this. But I’ve never met a woman who actually was.

*This is far from something I just see in single guys. No, I see this in guys in relationships even more. Because those guys aren’t just worrying about sex, they’re worrying about love as well. If neither of those needs is in a healthy place within you, then you’re sending the Politician to talk to your partner so much that you start to morph into the Politician. 

I can’t think of a single guy I know who isn’t like this with their partner.

 

Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

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Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Dating Advice For Men, Life Advice & Personal Development, Uncategorised Tagged With: Anxiety, Approaching, Attraction, Charisma, Charm, Comfort zone, Conversation, Courage, Dating, Emotions, Fear, Finding Our Passion, Game, Goals, Honesty, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Neediness, Passion, Personal Development, Psychology, Self Help, Self Improvement, Sex, Talking, Women

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