LIFE UNCIVILIZED

Dating And Life Advice For Men

Archives for January 2019

Taking Risks is The Most Important Part of Self-Improvement

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why risk is good

Did you know that on the eve of his first Indian rights demonstration Mohandas Gandhi thought “You know what? I might get smacked about for this!” And called the whole thing off, staying in his neat black suit, practicing law with civilized gentlemen, and earning a nice and comfortable living for himself and his young family.

You might also be surprised to learn that Count Leo Tolstoy, on deciding to pursue a career as a writer found his prose abominable and couldn’t bear the effect of failure on his social reputation, so sacked the whole thing off and remained an officer in the Russain military, who in between moments of gambling and whoring, went back to his country estate, where he gambled and chased peasant girls, never to touch pen to paper again.

You will certainly be shocked to discover that Sylvester Stallone (I know, a bit of a step down from the last two) when sitting down to write the first draft of Rocky, couldn’t help but find the movie formulaic, his characters simple, and the idea of some Cinderella boxing story just a little too hokey. So two scenes in, he called it a day, and went back to being just another schlub, except with a bizarre, scarcely intelligible voice.

Or at least, that’s how it would’ve gone had they never taken any risks.

WHAT IS RISK?

“My momma always said life is like a box of chocolates.” Said Forrest Gump. “You never know what you’re gonna get.” But Forrest Gump is full of shit. And although it seems tangential to the article, this actually illustrates a key point.

People often fail to understand the difference between true risk and what is in fact uncertainty. And as a result, react in a way that doesn’t have any bearing on reality.

When Forrest says you never know what you’re going to get in a box of chocolates he is speaking in terms of uncertainty. As far as his analogy applies to life, he’s correct. The odds of anything in life are uncertain. But as far as a box of chocolates is concerned, he’s wrong. You have a fair chance of knowing exactly what you’re going to get. Because unlike life, the box of chocolates has pretty tangible odds. I mean, not only is he going to get chocolate, but there are fairly standard types of chocolate that someone gets in a box. For instance, it’s good odds that he’ll get a chocolate with strawberry filling.

While slightly less certain, Forrest’s catchphrase is no more realistic than saying “Life is like a pack of 52 playing cards, complete with Kings, Queens, Aces, suits, the lot. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Tell that to Rain Man.

REDEFINING RISK

In life, risk and uncertainty are not the same things. When it comes to true risk, elements are known and an outcome can be potentially calculated. It’ll rarely ever truly be known, but it’ll be far more certain than otherwise.

For instance, in a freshly opened pack of cards, you have a 1/4 chance of drawing a Heart. With those odds in mind, you have an idea of the risk you’re going to take if you’d gamble money on that outcome. It’s the same with reaching into a box of chocolates. You might risk pulling out the wrong flavor, but if you only dislike strawberry filled chocolates then there are good odds you’ll manage to pick one of the many that aren’t.

That is what actual risk is.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is what life is all about. There are no real tangible odds for whether your business will succeed, whether your motorbike will crash, whether you’ll win a fight, fall in love, publish a book, or have a good time traveling alone. In reality, nobody could possibly know these things. At best you’ll get statistics that fall apart under scrutiny.

So when people talk about “taking risks” in life, what they’re really talking about is uncertainty. This is what “taking a risk” in life is. Confronting the unknown. Yet when people talk about these kinds of risks, they talk about them as if the odds are already known.

The call uncertainty risk, yet treat uncertainty like it operates under the rules of risk. But in life neither of those things are true.

Got a headache yet?

So, for the sake of cleaning up:

When you think of TAKING RISKS IN LIFE, RISK-TAKERS, or tell yourself “THIS IS RISKY” you are thinking of an unknown that you have to confront. An unknown where there are no odds.

Unless it’s gambling or a box of chocolates, this is the rule.

This is what I’m referring to when I say “risk” from now on.

(After all, I’m not here to give you gambling advice).

WHY IS RISK SO IMPORTANT?

You. Your life. The opportunities you are confronted with. The very idea you have of your own identity. All of this is affected by the risks you choose to take in life. The more you choose to take risks and confront the unknown, the more each of these elements expands. The less you take risks, the more you’re confined within your apparent certainties.

“I can’t do that.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“X will happen, which will cause Y, and that would be stupid.”

“Only an idiot would do that!”

And so on. Whether it’s starting a business, riding a motorbike, defending yourself in a fight, approaching a woman, writing a book, traveling alone, there is always a certain answer as if the outcome is already known. And why confront the “unknown” if you don’t believe it’s unknown in the first place?

This is the hallmark of people who are risk-averse: they’re certain about something that it is not possible to be certain about. And as a result, they rarely discover what they never had the uncertainty to discover.

“I did have it in me to start a business.”

“I did have it in me to defend myself.”

“I was capable of getting her number and I did end up in love.”

“I did have a great time traveling alone.”

And when you never discover this, you never get to say the next part:

“I’m glad I risked it.”

The only way to engage with any form of self-improvement in life is to take consistent risks and confront the unknown. And the only reason you don’t take these risks is down to incorrect assumptions about the nature of risk itself, and incorrect, negative assumptions about yourself. As good old Mark Zuckerberg says “the biggest risk is not taking any risk… the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

(I imagine he said this prior to the Cambridge Analytica scandal…)

But if you’re risk-averse, then taking consistent risks is easier said than done.

THE ART OF RISK-TAKING

As that last tasty little quote demonstrates, it’s not out of character for successful people to recommend taking risks. On the one hand, they may be offering good advice, but on the other, given that -as I’ve pointed out- risks in life are a complete unknown, their faith in risk-taking probably has a lot to do with survivorship bias.

That is to say, it worked for them so they think it’ll work for you. But it doesn’t take a genius to work out that quitting your job and eating baked beans whilst broke isn’t necessarily going to turn you into Richard Branson.

However, regardless of the odds of it working, taking risks in life and confronting the unknown is an unavoidable step in changing anything in your life. It can’t be avoided and it can’t be eliminated.

So how do you do it?

The essence of embracing risk-taking behavior lies in the fact that a single big risk does not exist in a vacuum, but is in fact composed of much smaller risks you take day to day, and even, in the way you choose to think.

For instance:

If you choose to always think you can never make a lot of money, you will likely spend your money frivolously instead of investing it into your own development or opportunities, and when an occasion or idea strikes you that may have large potential returns (like say a business opportunity), it is unlikely you will have the courage to pursue it. In fact, you’ll probably self-sabotage it.

New position open up at work? Too late, you never asked about it.

Great business idea strike you? You’ll probably write it down, then find the piece of paper down the back of your bookcase in a years time.

Have a skill that you can offer to people? That’s great, but you’ll never face rejection by marketing it so nobody will ever know.

YOU HAVE TO APPROACH IT HOLISTICALLY

The big risks don’t happen as long as the small risks don’t either. And neither occurs if the thinking is confined by false certainties about yourself and resultant self-sabotage. But where does this process exist? Do you solve the thought and the rest follows? Or is it more complicated?

I think risk in life is something that has to be approached holistically. It’s not as simple as fix the thoughts and the rest will follow, as every step operates by the same principle. Whether it’s the thoughts, small risks, or big risks, the same principle is true:

You don’t know.

This is the only real certainty you have. You have no idea what thoughts are true and what aren’t. You have no idea whether a small risk of self-improvement (like saving money or reading) will pay off. You have no idea whether pursuing a promotion will end will in your favor; the big risks are always more unknown than any.

And I’m not here to tell you that they will pay off if you muster the bravery to try. I’m just here to say you have no idea. And neither do I.

It’s up to you whether you risk it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RISKS YOU NEED TO TAKE

Ironically given my earlier examples, I don’t actually think the risks you have to take in life involve chasing big dreams like starting a business or writing a book. In many ways those are irrelevant, or outcomes of smaller, more fundamental risks that play out day by day, altering you in ways that actually push you towards those kinds of eventualities.

In my experience, the most important risks to take in life are actually fairly simple, but almost universally avoided. They’re risks that fundamentally relate to our character, and specifically what makes us comfortable. Whether that’s in life, love, friendships, or the way we view the world.

Here are the most important risks to take:

1) RISK FAILING TO CHANGE… OR CHANGING AT ALL

One of the main reasons why I believe people genuinely avoid real, challenging self-improvement is that they’re afraid of the result. And I don’t just mean the one where they fail.

When you’re used to living a certain way it becomes comfortable. And as much as you might think you want to change, improve, or achieve your dream the way you do; the reality is that this change threatens your comfort now.

Let’s say you feel like a loser and want to be successful. Sure, succeeding might make you feel better, but it also threatens your conception of yourself now. On the flip side, if you attempt to become successful and fail, what might that confirm about you? Again, pretty threatening.

Either way, the answer is uncomfortable. So what do you do? You never risk failing or changing at all. You procrastinate, put off, or distract yourself with easier, lighter forms of change – like hitting the gym till you get that endorphin high.

But the real, identity level change? That remains untouched.

2) RISK REJECTION

A great relationship and a great dating life are determined by the same thing:

Your willingness to reject or be rejected.

In brief, as I’ve built an entire dating course teaching this, the more you are willing to be rejected, the more you will naturally, and attractively express who you are and attract women into your life who are great for you.

The less willing you are to be rejected, the more you’ll engage with needy, manipulative behaviors, and all around have a shit time.

Sure, you have to do some groundwork on yourself too. But actively risking rejection will determine the vast majority of your results and happiness in dating. So next time you get shot down, remember that you’re doing yourself a favor.

3) RISK VULNERABILITY

Emotionally exposing yourself is the easiest way to defeat the persistent sense of loneliness. When you constantly repress, hide, and filter your emotions from other people, you stop yourself from ever feeling truly connected to others.

This obviously has a negative effect on your happiness, relationships, and friendships but it also has an effect on your ability to express yourself, and ultimately, understand yourself.

When you develop the habit of never making yourself vulnerable with others, you’re actually developing the habit of never being vulnerable with yourself. Everything that would be beneficial for you to understand you’re instead jamming down into your subconscious. Typically for stupid reasons like being “more masculine” that have nothing to do with actually being masculine.

As far as taking risks in life go, the risk of vulnerability has its hands in everything from success to just your overall well being. Don’t discount it.

4) RISK CONFLICT

There is no way to be honest without inciting conflict. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but if you’re honest, someone’s going to get pissed off. Don’t believe me?

Look at what happened to Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi. Hell, Western civilization revolves around the idea of one guy getting whacked for being a decent bloke.

But when you fear confrontation or reprisals, you’ll do your best to never be honest. You’ll supplicate, you’ll amend and filter your opinion until you either have no idea who you are, you’re walked all over by others, or both.

Ironically, you do this to become more likable to others. Not only is this vain and insecure, but as I said in an earlier article, the best way to actually be likable is to embrace being unlikeable. Go figure.

5) RISK YOUR CERTAINTIES

Beliefs and intellectual opinions are some of the things we hold closest to us. But they’re often the most confining.

The easiest example of this is the divide in US Politics. Guys on the Right shout about how the Left are all Marxists and must be silenced at all costs, and guys on the Left shout about how the Right are all fascists whilst simultaneously recommending kids in MAGA hats get beaten up. Neither listens to the other, both shout at great volume, and both think they have all the answers.

Who’s right?

The right answer probably lies somewhere in between. A little bit of left and a little bit of right. But being locked in zero empathy certainties does nobody any help. Not only does it shut down discourse, but it’s fundamentally unintelligent and fearful.

You don’t become intelligent and confident by only understanding one side of a debate. And whether this is politics, religion, economics, or just the basic everyday opinions you have about yourself and other people – you owe it to yourself to challenge them.

Because it is in challenging them that you not only form unique opinions and get closer to the truth, but you also begin to face why you were clinging so tightly to those beliefs in the first place.

THE COSTS OF NOT TAKING RISKS

The cost of taking any risk is failure. If you were to take any of the risks listed above, you would be exposing yourself to the (possibly bleak) reality of your potential, rejection, emotional shame, conflict, and realizing how little you actually know.

And guess what? All of those things suck.

Some of them are painful. All of them make you question yourself. But despite this, all of them are worth it. Because the hidden cost of taking any risk is not taking it at all. Behind the painful outcomes, the embarrassments, and the shame that comes from failing, there’s also the reality of what you and your life will be if you don’t take the risk at all.

Sometimes this will mean you’ll stay exactly the same. Many times it’ll actually mean you’ll get worse – growing into someone bitter, who resents the opportunities they let slip away. Always wondering “what if?”

Because that “what if” is the biggest price to pay. We all have to choose a life, to commit to certain things and discard others – but we all want to make that choice from a place of freedom, not fear. And it is making it from fear that has us paying that price.

The real cost of not taking risks isn’t the potential you see in your dream, in someone else’s life, or on a movie. It’s the potential you have no idea that exists. The potential you have no certainty of and have to attempt to discover.

Because just like Mohandas, Leo, or Sly – until you try, you’ll have no idea.

 

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

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!

How To Stop Your Pursuit of Emotional Validation And Approval

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how to stop chasing emotional validation

AS FAR AS shitty life choices go, I think relentlessly pursuing emotional validation is in competition for the top spot with cowardice and immorality. Sure, the other two make the bold claim of making you incapable and inhuman, but pursuing emotional validation is pretty much the life choice equivalent of opting for a life of torture.

And I don’t mean bamboo fingernails off to the execution block torture. I mean slow, mind-destroying, water drop torture. It just drips, and drips, and drips, until you’re a shell of the person you once were.

This is really what the pursuit of emotional validation is like. Why? Because, as a result of your unhealthy motivations, your resultant behaviors have the unfortunate side effect of turning everyone off, and rarely, if ever consistently giving you the validation you want and feel you need.

But sometimes you do get it.

So like a gambler down on his losses, you say to yourself “it’s gotta happen this time!”.

And you keep on playing.

Now, I’m gonna dive right into this and make a bold claim:

When you have problems with pursuing emotional validation from others this really stems from a desire to get it from your parents. In other words, I’m saying you have a big old dose of mommy and daddy issues.

And sure, I know what you thinking. You’re thinking fuck you, what do I know, that’s gross, I have no problem with my parents I only keep pursuing toxic relationships by accident. Sure, that could all be true, but if you’re honest with yourself… we both know it’s not.

Let me explain.

PROBLEMS WITH MOMMY AND DADDY 

Here’s how this whole thing works:

When you have validation issues with one or both parents, you operate from a place of “why doesn’t he/she love me?” And when you’re operating from this place, you are constantly trying to validate that it isn’t correct, that they do in fact love you, but you go about this in a fucked up way.

What you do is that you seek out relationships that actively make you feel the same “why doesn’t he/she love me?” feeling so that you can “solve it” when they give you attention.

Aloof partners, chasing women who aren’t into you, staying in relationships where you’re treated like crap. That sort of thing. These relationships are all proxies for your mommy and daddy validation issues.

(Feel sick yet?)

To make this clearer, let me use an example. And as this site is geared at helping men, I’m going to stick to mommy issues. Sorry ladies, but feel free to swap it out for daddy – you know you want to. 😉

So go ahead and wrap your head around this:

  1. Mommy acts aloof.  Child you thinks “why doesn’t she love me?” And as a result feels worthless and chases validation to stop feeling that nasty worthless feeling.
  2. Mommy then gives you attention. Child you thinks “she does love me!” And as a result no longer feels worthless.
  3. Mommy is aloof again. Rinse and repeat.

Now this, with age, becomes:

  1. Woman is indifferent = “Why doesn’t she like me?” = I feel worthless = Chase validation.
  2. Woman gave me attention = “She does like me!” = I’m no longer worthless.
  3. Rinse and repeat.

See how it’s the same thing?

THE WAYS YOU PURSUE EMOTIONAL VALIDATION 

You’re probably thinking that this is one fucked up way to live. And you’d be right. Not only is it a fucked up thing to have boiling away in the back of your head, but it has a lot of nasty consequences in terms of your behavior.

Here are some examples:

  • You will pursue women who aren’t that into you because you’re addicted to chasing their (or rather, mommy’s) validation. You will often pursue these women at the expense of women who genuinely like you because they don’t give you that same feeling of worthless that you want to validate yourself against.
  • In order to get this validation, you will likely adopt a number of toxic strategies. You’ll either try to out aloof their aloofness (“Mr. Cool Guy”). Degrade their self-esteem (“Mr. Asshole Guy”). Be incredibly nice to them so that they’ll owe you something(“Mr. Nice Guy”), and so on. In other words, you’ll be a manipulative piece of shit who’s just chasing an emotional bandaid.
  • If you get rejected by a woman you’re seeking validation from you will take it extremely personally (“I knew it! I AM worthless! Woe is me”) regardless of whether that rejection had anything to do with you personally. (Spoiler: it almost always doesn’t).
  • You will then pursue women who have rejected you (i.e. exes) in order to heal that negative validation you’ve perceived yourself as receiving. This won’t end well.
  • You will generally attract into your life women with similar issues, who have, as a result, developed problems with attachment. This makes it more likely that your relationship will 1) suck 2) end in disaster, and 3) validate your emotional issues.

How about that for a bad cocktail?

HOW TO STOP CHASING EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

By now you should be thinking one of two things. Or maybe both.

  1. This sounds just like me!
  2. How the fuck do I avoid this shitshow?

But don’t go gouging your eyes out just yet Oedipus. There are a number of simple things you can do.

The first thing you need to understand is that having a screwed up relationship with emotional validation is pretty normal. The vast majority of people are like this, so you’re not some abnormal weirdo, and you don’t need to start beating yourself up and telling yourself how much you suck.

(That is what’s motivating all of this after all).

On the flip side, however, having a screwed up relationship with emotional validation is not an emotionally healthy way to live and won’t benefit you (in any way) in the long run. So it pays to sort it out.

The second thing you need to do is bring awareness to your behaviors. If you accept that your process of pursuing emotional validation isn’t that healthy, then you need to figure out what exactly it is that you are doing.

For example, I was the kind of guy who consistently chased women who were hot/cold on me. I would then act like I didn’t care, and get in some kind of game with them. Either way, I was pursuing, trying to force, or run away from validation. This is something have to bring awareness to and manage even now.

You might be someone who constantly supplicates and acts like a friend, or you might be a complete jerk. The key thing is that you look at your behaviors and ask yourself “what motivation does this behavior really serve?”. “What need am I trying to get met?”.

It won’t take long for you to unmask the ones that are after validation.

YOU ARE YOUR NARRATIVES

On the surface, calling something “mommy and daddy” issues probably makes you think you need to go lie on someone’s couch and cry for 200 dollars an hour. But this isn’t quite the case.

Sure, if you hate your parents, I’d probably sort that out. Carrying around that baggage is going to do you a world of hurt. But if you have issues with emotional validation that you connect with your parents, yet at the same time, your parents are actually kinda okay – the problem lies less with them and more with the narratives that you live by.

When you’re a kid, running around in your diaper, building legos, and getting your penis out for no reason it’s easy to misinterpret things. Whilst your parents are all around good people, they make mistakes (parenting is hard after all), and these mistakes are part of the way you come to understand the world.

Mom can’t come to your birthday because she’s overseas on work? Oh, that must mean I’m worthless, unloveable, and the rest of my life will follow this belief. Cue years of bad relationships.

The issue here isn’t some massive issue stemming from your dark, terrible past. It’s just some dumb, misinformed, childish narrative that you adopted mistakenly, and held on to for far, far too long. So long that your behaviors and identity began to form around it.

This is what the stories you tell yourself do. They sit there in your brain repeating over and over, branching out into thoughts, beliefs, and even actions themselves, which validate and continue the narrative ad infinitum.

“I’m unlovable.”

“I’m not as good as other people.”

You get the idea. I believe this doesn’t just stop with issues of lovableness, but also relates to people’s conception of life, morality, and their role in the world. But that’s another issue.

The answer, then, to your pursuit of emotional validation isn’t to cry to Dr. Phil. It’s to pay attention to how you’re forming your narratives about yourself in the small day to day moments. Specifically how those narratives relate to your pursuit of emotional validation.

So to bring it back to your mommy and daddy issues. The key thing here isn’t that the issues are about mommy and daddy, the key thing here is that they’re yours.

SORT YOUR BEHAVIOUR OUT AND THE REST WILL FOLLOW

You are what you choose to do. But you are also what you choose not to do.

Every time you take an action motivated by your desire for emotional validation, you reinforce that desire. Every time you do not take an action because of your fear of being negatively emotionally validated, you reinforce that desire.

I.e. every time you play games with someone over text because you want them to validate you, you reinforce your need to be validated. Or alternatively, every time you avoid approaching because you fear being rejected (and the “confirmation” of being unlikable/unlovable) you reinforce that desire.

Your actions, in a sense, are a discussion you’re having with yourself. When your actions are based around validation, you are telling yourself that you NEED to be validated. You’re telling yourself that there is something wrong with you and that you need to confirm that it isn’t true.

And it’s a conversation you keep having to have over and over again. Because it never stops needing confirmation.

(This is something like the self-hatred version of James P. Carse’s infinite game idea).

On the flip side, when your actions are based less on the desire for validation (which will always be there), but rather on what you genuinely want to do, you are telling yourself that you don’t need to be validated. You are telling yourself that you are OKAY regardless of the outcome.

Sure, a negative outcome isn’t enjoyable. But you’ll live. And you’re not going to base your actions around avoiding it.

THE MOMENT BY MOMENT PRACTICE OF SELF-ACCEPTANCE 

This conversation you’re having with yourself is what I like to think of as the 1% improvements of self-acceptance. There’s an idea, popularised by James Clear, that says you either improve by 1% or regress by 1% every day. That these percentages compound over time to produce massive changes. For good or bad.

Now I think when it comes to self-improvement this is an easy way to get really insecure. However, I do think that it is this way with emotional issues and self-acceptance. Sure, you can stare in a mirror and explain what you accept about yourself, but your actions demonstrate this as well. And they’re happening moment by moment.

Each action pushes your 1% in one direction or another. Playing games? Oops, you’ve fucked it up. Approaching because you want to? That’s my boy.

At first, you’re going to struggle with this. There’s another idea popularised in self-improvement that says “happy people don’t need to try to be happy”, “confident people don’t need to try to be confident”. But this idea is predicated on the fact that “happy” or “confident” people are universally the same. Which is comically untrue. You’re different from me (thank God) and everyone else. Your level of acceptance, your beliefs about yourself, and the techniques you’re going to have to use to improve your relationship are going to be unique. So if you struggle at first, that’s normal.

Why wouldn’t you?

1% changes in the right direction are often imperceptible. You have to keep making them. Keep acting from a place of indifference to validation. Challenging your behaviours and questioning their motivations. So that in a year, you’re 365% better. And you accept yourself and interact with your need for emotional validation in a way you never really believed you could.

Because at the end of the day, it’s like L’oreal says.

how to stop chasing emotional validation

THE OPPOSITE OF CHASING EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

To wrap up, as frankly, this article is getting too long, I want to put a final note on vulnerability. The opposite of chasing emotional validation is allowing yourself to be vulnerable in a way that you would normally avoid.

To bring it back to mommy issues (thought you’d escaped didn’t you!?), this would be allowing yourself to take actions that would risk “confirming” that you’re “unloveable.”

This means getting rejected for authentically expressing your interests, values, boundaries, opinions, and so on. What would otherwise be called your identity. All things that you’d typically hide or alter to avoid being rejected and the “confirmation” that comes alongside it.

At first, this is painful, and your behaviours will be based around avoiding this at all cost. By either desperately pursuing a “confirmation” of the opposite, or trying to manipulate the other person into pursuing it from you.

But the opposite of chasing emotional validation is to accept it and take the hit. And sure, it’ll suck now. But over time, if you keep moving in the right direction, you’ll just be better at being you. And the only person you’ll be looking for validation from is yourself.

 

Photo by Mark Daynes on Unsplash

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!

How To Be Incredibly Consistent – Make Your Bad Days As Good As Possible

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how to be consistent

I HAD a busy day planned. But here’s what actually happened instead:

I woke up at about 7:30 am. So far so good. Got up, did 30 minutes reading, then another 30 minutes of writing. Holy shit I am nailing it. Got another set of work done, hit the shower, threw some eggs in the pan (not at the same time), washed, had breakfast, and got back to my desk. This day was on fire. I wrote down a list of things I needed to get done. I took a client call. And then did a little more writing. It seemed like nothing could stop me.

But then it all fell apart. Something happened. And 2 hours later, I realized I’d fucked off for half the day.

How I ended up on youtube I have no idea. Roswell? JFK? This is another one of life’s great mysteries. It honestly baffles me, but there I was. What was I watching you ask? Well, despite not owning a console, and despite not playing video games, and despite not enjoying it when I did play, I for some reason decided to watch a guide on how to beat the zombies mode in Call of Duty Black Ops III.

(So apparently the way you do this is you sort out the spooky demon rituals as early as possible. Don’t worry about the zombies at this stage and you’ll be sweet. – Visko)

But I didn’t stop there. Oh no, after learning this useless information, I ventured out into the world of video game design. Yeah, give me a break it was in the sidebar. Not only is this worthless knowledge for me, but it’s something with literally nothing to do with my life. Despite these objections, I strapped myself in and watched a 40-minute critique on the game design in the new God of War.

(His essential point was that, although narratively compelling, the game sucked a big one when it came to combat and was basically a 10-hour walking simulator. What a wild ride. – Visko)

After that, I did a bunch of things. Louis CK’s new standup leaked online. I checked that out. Despite what Twitter says it was pretty funny. I read some news gossipy articles on Brexit. Then I realized I’d fucked my whole day up.

So I did -and this is the most important part- what you, me, and anyone else does in this situation:

I started feeling like crap.

THE SECRET TO BEING CONSISTENT

Everyone wants to be consistent with their work ethic. You set goals, you want to see them achieved. You have things you need to get done, you don’t want to see them pile up. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s going to the gym, getting work done, getting chores done, or working on something just for you… it just doesn’t seem to happen the way you want it to.

Consistency is the answer to this problem, but given it’s so simple an answer, why is it so hard to actually achieve?

First off, there are many ways to be consistent, but never having a bad day is not one of them. Here’s a maple-cured-bacon-wrapped secret for you:

You’re always going to have bad days.

You’re always going to have days where you goof off, jerk off, and fuck off your time till it’s all wasted, the day is over, and you’re going to bed way later than is a good idea.

And yeah, sure, I know I’m not the best person to say this. But take it from me, I know some seriously disciplined people, and even they suck at this. So if you feel like it’s just you… guess what, you’re not special. We all suck. Even Mark Wahlberg.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way. Here’s another super-secret:

Beating yourself up for having a “bad day” isn’t actually helpful and actually encourages you to have an even worse one.

When you get down on yourself for having a bad day, you only serve to make yourself feel more and more like shit. And when you feel like shit, the last thing you want to do is actually do anything effort related. It’s boring, why would you? Instead, you want to do something that makes you feel better. Like, y’know, watch that next YouTube video.

After all, it’s better than feeling like crap.

YOUR “BAD” DAYS AREN’T AS BAD AS YOU THINK

Having a bad day is normal, and ironically, given how I referred to them, bad days really aren’t bad days.

Family killed in a car crash the same day you’re diagnosed with herpes and go bankrupt? That’s a bad day. Procrastination and laziness? That’s a pretty normal day. It’s just not a good one.

Realizing that your bad days aren’t actually bad is a big step in reframing your negative “I’m worthless” state of mind. The same state of mind that’s only going to drag you more and more into the muck of procrastination.

Doing this is one of the basic skills of what I like to call Being A Better Friend To Yourself™. This isn’t positive thinking per se, more building a better, more realistic relationship with yourself and your emotions so that, no, you aren’t positive all the time, but you also aren’t unnecessarily negative to your own detriment.

It’s a big topic, and one I’m sure I’ll do an article on at some point, but the main idea here is that you put yourself on your own side, and reframe your own actions in a realistic light.

The other thing you have to do is actually recognize when your day has gone off-piste. You need to cultivate that voice that doesn’t say “you’re fucking it uuuup!!!” But instead says “come on, we need to do this instead…” and offers a soft, gentle, psychologically healthy helping hand.

Okay, so the day hasn’t gone according to plan. It’s not the end of the world. How can we make this day better?

This brings us to another secret. THE secret fo making yourself consistent:

Take your “bad” days, and make them as good as possible.

Let’s be honest, your good days take care of themselves. They’re not where your focus needs to be. You know when you’re having one, and what you need to do get takes care of itself. It isn’t about as having as many good days as possible. It’s that your bad days, or rather normal days, are as good as they can be. That’s what you want to focus on.

You do this in a few simple ways:

  1. What are the bare minimum things you need to achieve? Really think about this. No, restrain your ambitions for a second. What is the BARE MINIMUM you need to achieve?
  1. Do these things move your life forward? Don’t bullshit yourself. I mean actually move your life forward.
  1. What do you need to change right now in order to start doing them? I.e. if you’re buck ass nude, haven’t showered, and it’s 3 in the afternoon, maybe sort that out first.

This might sound simple, or even incredibly small, but there’s a reason for that. It’s incredibly easy to make a “bad” day a lot better. You just have to DO something. It just feels hard when you aren’t.

MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF

The way you get consistent in life is by managing your “bad” days so well that despite them, they don’t get you down, and you still get something done, you still produce something, and you still move your life forward.

Sure, they still suck. Sometimes. But you can still do something.

This is the heart of consistency. You’re not consistently leaping through rainbows, working like a dog, and have the discipline of Batman. You’re just consistently moving your life in the direction it needs to go.

Some days it will be big leaps. Other days it will be little steps.

As long as you aren’t stuck in the same spot, or worse, dragging yourself down. That’s all that matters.

And now that this is out of the way I have a Splinter Cell speed run to watch.

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.

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How To Set Yourself New Year’s Resolutions That Won’t Fail

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IT’S NEW YEAR’S DAY. You wake up hungover, or perhaps, fine because you spent the night alone, and you decide you’re going to change your life. This is something you’ve done on many New Year’s days, as well as on your birthday. You feel that somehow, with the passing of a year, your life isn’t where you want it to be. You remember your list of goals that you set yourself 365 days ago. Despite having over 8000 hours to achieve them, they sit there as reminders of how badly you’ve fucked up your time.

What was it? Youtube? Netflix? Overeating? Procrastination? Fear of failure? Social anxiety? Never asking anyone out? All of the above? You run through all the reasons your life isn’t where you want it to be, and this makes you feel like shit. So instead, you retreat into a fantasy of where it ought to be. The success, the confidence, the feeling of control over your life. And that fantasy, mixed with the anger at your own failing alchemically transforms into a new and empowering motivation.

“This is the year.” You tell yourself, maybe looking directly into the mirror.

The motivation feels like your fantasy is now an achievable certainty. You pace about your room, sometimes speaking out loud, crafting new goals that will, in turn, craft you into the person you feel you must become. Then, feeling like you have a grip on exactly what it is you need to do, you set yourself some concrete goals.

“Lose 30lbs.”

“Get laid.”

“Start my business.”

“Write my book by April”

“Quit my job by July.”

And maybe you do something to get started on them today. Then you go to bed, feeling that you’ve surmounted the obstacles that beset you last year, and have now entered this new year with a newfound capability and self-mastery that ensures your success. Smiling, you fall asleep.

But then you wake up.

WHY YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FAIL

There are over 500,000 minutes in a year. Sure, you’ll probably spend half of them asleep, but no matter what your goal is, that’s plenty of time to achieve it. Hell, it’s plenty of time to achieve multiple goals.

Why is it then that they so rarely get achieved?

I think the answer revolves around a basic misunderstanding. Instead of setting our resolutions around an honest understanding of who we are, we set our resolutions instead around a desperate desire of who we want to be.

And that’s where we slip up.

The start of a new year is a weird time. There’s the arbitrary desire to reflect on your life and assess how far you’ve come along to date. The fact that this can be done at any point during the year doesn’t seem to affect it, even if you actively do this. So we’re all left, day one, sitting there wondering just who the fuck we are, and why we aren’t where we wanted to be.

In part, this stems from a western way of looking at life. Goal orientated. Ladder orientated. Constantly trying to improve your lot. You’d think, given the important role Christian thought played in western culture that “take no thought for the morrow” would’ve gained more traction, but we really went the other way. We’re constantly searching for what it is we want next. We’re constantly looking for the next “thing” to achieve, possesses, or become.

Where eastern philosophy is more about living in harmony with life, westerners, rightly or wrongly, have a predilection to see life as something to be consistently conquered. Couple this with basic human motivations (fuck more, earn more, impress others more) and insecurities (you’re not good enough, nobody loves you), and you’ve got a recipe for everyone massively overestimating the importance of the New Year (it’s no different from any other day), and some serious self-esteem beatdowns.

Stemming from all of this is a simple perspective:

I’m not who I want to be. I’m not where I want to be.

And this perspective, understandably, makes you feel like shit. Why wouldn’t it? You’re essentially telling yourself that you’re not good enough as you are right now. You’re also telling yourself, inherently, that you will feel better once you become who you want to be and arrive at where you want to be.

(Spoiler alert: humans are terrible at predicting what will make them happy. So you’re probably definitely wrong).

Happiness has become a destination. Cue the fantasy of your life to come.

Now I’ve railed on fantasy before. And rightly so. Most of them, if you’re honest, are vain and have their roots in a desire to be more loved, respected, admired and so on. Even the shallow ones, like having sex with hot women, have sinister roots in a desire to feel approved of (read: mommy issues). But in the instance of resolutions and goals, fantasy presents a unique obstacle.

When you build goals around the person you want to be, you neglect to pay attention to the person you actually are.

THE NEGATIVE FORCE OF HABIT

Over the course of your life, you have acquired certain habits and are acting under the influence of others that may well be genetic. The sum total of these habits are the actions you take on a day to day basis. But here’s the crucial part:

Just as these habits determine the flow of your day to day life, these habits also act against any new habits you try to force upon yourself. This is the resistance that acts against you when you attempt anything that is contrary to how you have lived so far.

When undertaking any new goal, you have to take into account that it is YOU who is undertaking it. The entire way you’ve lived your life until now, what you are comfortable with, what you have conditioned yourself to do, what your strengths, weaknesses, limitations, culture, and rhythms of living are… All of this has to be taken into account.

You can’t just break a goal down into steps and assume it’ll work for you.

This is one of the great failings of the self-improvement industry, and why so many people are left empty-handed by it. What works for me does not work for you. What works for guys like Tai Lopez, Tony Robbins, James Clear, Mark Manson, does not work for you.

What works for you is what works for you. And only you can figure that out.

For you to achieve any goal, or in this instance, ring out 2019 having achieved your resolution (you go girl), you have to find a way to apply that goal to the person you currently are. Because like anyone else, you are imperfect and chaotic. You don’t make sense. Many of your character traits are random, and not beneficial. This is who you are. But you’re also unique (that’s right snowflake!), so you have to apply a unique solution that works for you: one that takes into account all your chaotic, random imperfections.

In other words, the most important part of your goal isn’t the goal itself. It’s that it’s yours.

HOW TO SET NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS THAT DON’T SUCK

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You’re probably not a slob. But luckily for us both, I am.

I hate waking up. I have poor self-control with food. Or rather, I have poor self-control with anything. I procrastinate often. Minor, forgotten chores build up into a mountainous day long ordeals. My work ethic is random and unpredictable. Some days it’s 16 hours, other days it’s 16 minutes. Either way, it’s never on what I need to do. And to top it off, I’ve spent a sizeable chunk of my life walking around daydreaming.

By all accounts, these traits would make me completely worthless. I mean really, read that over again. What a piece of work. But luckily for me, I have slowly managed to, uh, manage these traits.

My dating life is great. My work is going well. And despite constant obstacles, I generally bounce back and am usually pretty happy.

Which begs a question: how can someone who on paper blows complete ass do okay despite it? Don’t you have to be some completely composed, Bruce Wayne hardcore motherfucker to nail this stuff?

The trick is what I like to call the PRINCIPLE OF UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES. (I know, great name). And when you couple it with a little bit of understanding Y-O-U, you’ll be just fine. No matter how much Dorito cheese dust you’re covered in right now.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

Here’s how this bad boy works.

First, you need to understand that you suck. You don’t inherently want to do things as much as you think you do, your motivations are inconsistent, unreliable, and likely vain, and you’re flawed in ways that directly conflict with whatever you want to achieve.

Second, you need to understand that your goals and resolutions suck even harder. Telling yourself to lose 15lbs, start a business, write a book, get laid; these are all vague goals that have little to no connection to who you actually are, how you live, or how you’re flawed. Unless you’re like Tiger Woods and have spent your entire life pursuing your passion, you’re probably not very well calibrated to it.

But more importantly than that, the goal itself is an outcome. Losing 15lbs, starting a business, writing a book, getting laid; these are all outcomes of certain actions that you will have to take. And those actions are outcomes of even smaller actions that exist in small, day to day moments.

Don’t understand?

Here’s an example:

Want to meet a nice woman, have a great time, and get buck wild?

This is going to require you to approach women and talk to them. This is also going to require you to start going out to places where women are more often. Perhaps that’s just being more pro-social, perhaps that’s specifically going to bars. This is also going to require you to confront a lot of anxiety when it comes to other people, regardless of their gender. On a day to day basis, this is probably going to mean you’ll have to take more risks socially, in order to confront and manage your anxiety, so that eventually, sometime this year, you’ll be comfortable enough to meet plenty of women, and eventually, the one for you.

In which case, you might think the resolution would be to take more risks, as that’ll end up with, uh, the buck wild. But I’d go even further than that. The resolution would be to confront your emotions and allow yourself to be vulnerable on a day to day basis. More so than you ever have. Dating is an emotional process after all.

But that’s not even the full picture. That’s just me breaking it down for a random fictional man who doesn’t exist. You do exist, and you would interact with that breakdown in conflicting ways. Which brings us to:

Third, and finally, you need to set incredibly simple, achievable goals that take into account your flaws, and take into account these simple principles. And then you need to do them.

Here’s another, and I promise final, example:

Let’s say you’re an ambitious, intelligent, creative guy. And like any ambitious, intelligent, and creative guy you want to write a great book, and start a great business. Okay kiddo, sounds good. But you also happen to be lazy, disorganized, and a chronic procrastinator. Oh boy, no longer sounding good.

Now you would probably, in anger at your flaws, and the fact you’ve let yourself down for years set yourself all manner of specific goals (i.e. first draft by February. Latest!). But as you’ve read this article, maybe you’ve broken it down into even more specific goals. After all, isn’t getting the first draft by February an outcome of smaller actions? You bet your ass it is. So wouldn’t it be better to set writing every day as a goal?

Now you’re on the money. Except…

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

You never write every day. You often wake up late, feeling groggy and disorganized and kiss the whole day goodbye. Then you get mad, set an alarm, wake up early but feel like crap because you haven’t got enough sleep, start procrastinating and then pass out at 3 in the afternoon. Fuck, this isn’t going so well!

And you don’t understand. You feel like you have everything you need to achieve. But everything’s a mess. You can be consistent for a little while, but then it all falls apart and you return to type. It’s not even that the writing and business work is hard. It’s just that you can’t be consistent. But then you realize…

The work isn’t the thing you need to focus on. You already want to write and start a business. Finding that motivation isn’t the problem. The problem is that you’re always lacking sleep, feeling groggy, and either missing or not having access to the best energy of your day.

Your resolution shouldn’t be any of those goals. It should be to go to bed early, sleep a decent amount, and wake up on time. If you did that, the rest would start taking care of itself.

This is the underlying principle. The thing that actually determines whether you will succeed or fail. And it’s almost invariably nothing to do with the goal itself, but everything to do with mistakes you’re making in your everyday life. Some flaw, or bad habit that you’re letting get in the way.

Fix that, and things start to click.

By taking into account the underlying principles of your goal, and understanding the inherent flaws of your own character, you get to the heart of the changes you need to make. Instead of getting lost chasing goals and fantasies of the far-flung future, you stay in the here and now, making the exact, simple, achievable changes you need to make in order to succeed.

This is why when people tell me their grand, impressive resolutions for the year, I start to zone out. I’ve heard it all before. More often than not, from myself. Not only do we usually tell people these for no other reason than that we want them to admire us (as if we’d actually achieved them), but these resolutions aren’t the things we actually need to achieve.

It’s the small moments where we stay up late, keep our phone in our pocket, or hide from the risk of anxiety. Those are what count.

Because at the end of the day, the big things you’re chasing, they’re just made up of the little things you’ve never paid any attention to.

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!