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Anxiety

Taking Risks is The Most Important Part of Self-Improvement

by Visko Matich · Jan 29, 2019

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

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Filed Under: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Certainty, Comfort zone, Confidence, Courage, Goals, Identity, Personal Development, Self Improvement

How to Be Confident in Yourself – Building a Foundation That Lasts

by Visko Matich · Sep 7, 2018

how to be confident guide

NOT TO GET all Biblical on you, but I need to start this article on confidence by talking about the Devil. Yeah, I know, not your typical start to a self-improvement article, but I promise, it’ll make sense in the end.

And it’ll be a shitload more useful than me telling you to ‘just believe in yourself.’

There’s a moment in John Milton’s Paradise Lost which has always stuck out to me. Satan (aka the Devil) has been thrown out of Heaven for rebelling against God.

He’s decided that rather than repent his crimes, he’s going to bust out of Hell, search through the void and find God’s new rumored creation (read: man) and corrupt them into turning their backs on the big man upstairs.

So off he goes on a grand adventure, meeting all manner of strange people on the way, and eventually finding himself on a mountain outside the Garden of Eden.

It is here that he has a momentary crisis of conscience.

Recalling his former bliss in the paradise of Heaven, he mourns his ruined life and realizes he has nobody to blame but himself.

He realizes that the real Hell is within him and it is of his own making. Instead of living in accordance with God’s will (read: selfless love) he could only love himself, and could never, despite knowing it was wrong, live a life where he had to submit himself to something greater.

His pride simply wouldn’t allow it. And now, he’s ruined his life. He knows he will never again be happy. And I mean, we shouldn’t feel sorry for him, because, y’know, he’s Satan, but it’s hard not to.

The guy’s made the ultimate fuck up.

As he sits on the mountain, it seems like redemption might almost be within his grasp. He knows where he’s gone wrong, he just has to let go of his pride and change his course.

But he can’t do it.

He tells himself that he can’t turn back and be redeemed. He says he knows his pride would eventually have him rebel, and he knows he’d always make the wrong choice.

In the midst of this woeful self-pitying, there’s a little aside that’s always stood out for me:

He says that he can never give up his war on God because all that he tempted to his way of pride and vanity (read: the other fallen angels) would see him as the fraud he knows himself to be.

And that is something he couldn’t allow. He has to be seen as better than he is.

how to be confident

Do you see where I’m going with this?

So he continues what he’s set out to do, and condemns himself to ruin for all eternity.

Not a great plan.

Rather than being a mustachioed, pitchfork-branding villain, John Milton’s Satan is a sympathetic one. He makes mistakes that any of us could make, and he painfully feels the errors of his ruined way of thinking.

Like any of us, he knows deep down that he’s led himself astray.

His vain pride is a lot like the failures I see in myself, and almost everyone else. They don’t stem from anything real, they stem from an unhealthy desire to be seen as something we’re not.

To be seen as better than we actually are.

And when it comes to confidence – that is the mistake that none of us can make.

WHAT CONFIDENCE IS NOT

Before we even address what confidence is, we have to address what it isn’t. And unless you didn’t get the allegory about Satan, it’s this:

Your vain desire to be seen as better than you are is toxic bullshit that will fuck your shit up.

I believe that’s the exact definition you’ll get on PsychologyToday.

So long as you perceive confidence as something that revolves around other peoples perception of you, specifically, your status in relation to them, then you will never be confident.

To throw some more Biblical wisdom at you (Okay, okay, just this once):

‘You cannot serve two masters.’

As long as you serve the wrong one (read: vain insecurity) you will continue to make your confidence worse. So long as you measure yourself by the opinions of others, you will only ever notice the instances where you don’t measure up.

And I assure you, that’s about as fun as it sounds.

Look, I get why people do it. Hell, I did it all the time, and like anyone, I still lapse into doing it sometimes. When you don’t feel confident, you often harbor feelings of inferiority that you desperately don’t want people to be aware of.

As a result, you try to pretend to be what you aren’t.

But as we’ll see later, this is a betrayal of your confidence on two levels.

Confidence isn’t just ‘not faking it.’ It’s also not forcing it. You can’t will yourself into a state, trick or hypnotize yourself into healing your confidence issues. At best, those are band-aid solutions. They peel off when wet.

The only way to be confident is to do the hard work and build the right foundation. That starts by cutting out the faking, the forcing, and all the bullshit. If you don’t do that none of the following will work.

Understanding what confidence IS NOT is crucial to understanding confidence itself. Because confidence, it turns out, isn’t really a thing.

WHY THE CONCEPT OF CONFIDENCE SUCKS

So confidence isn’t faking it or forcing it – you get it. But what is confidence exactly?

Well, I think there’s a simple reason why everyone gets it so wrong. And it’s in the name.

When you think about confidence it’s probably some glossy Hollywood version. Think, Tom Cruise, intense, serious look, running fast, and fighting guys.

Confidence is focused, driven, determined, strong. Right?

Or is it something else?

If you think about confidence in your day to day life, it’s often nebulous and hard to pin down. It never really feels the same way, and whenever you think you have it, it vanishes just as quickly as it showed up.

It’s never as concrete as it is in the movies. And in fact, when you think about it, it isn’t really a thing.

Confidence isn’t an emotion.

You aren’t confident because you’re possessed by some magical, all-powerful feeling. No, you’re confident because at that moment you’re more capable of handling your fear and anxiety than you usually are.

Their power over you is diminished. Rather than being something, confidence is simply the weakness in something else.

Which, when you actually look at the word itself, makes sense.

The Latin root of the word confidence is confidere which means ‘having full trust.’ Confidence is simply the ability to trust yourself in your ability to do things. This is most closely related to the idea in psychology of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is basically your belief in your ability to achieve things. Where self-esteem is how good you feel about yourself, self-efficacy is how good you feel about your capability.

But how does this relate to confidence?

Confidence exists in the relationship between you and your fears and anxieties. The better that relationship, the more you will trust your ability to act despite your fears and anxieties. And as result, you will be far more likely to act confident.

Confidence isn’t a super-emotion that washes out all others, but rather the acceptance and experience of emotions that you don’t want to feel, and the trust in yourself to manage them and act anyway.

Confidence is feeling afraid.

WHAT CONFIDENCE IS

Someone is confident when they do something that triggers fear and anxiety. They are more confident the more they do this with ease.

Confidence is a muscle, it gets stronger and weaker the more you use it. But like any muscle, it has muscle memory so the more you’ve developed it in the past the quicker it will return if you slip-up in the present.

There are a few different ideas that relate to the building of confidence. The first is the Greek / Aristotelean view (I can’t believe that’s a word) that you build your virtues into one robust individual – the ideal man so-to-speak.

This idea has permeated Western Culture since they first put it on a scroll. Every superhero, historical theory, and impulse you have to worship politicians has its roots tied up in this.

The Aztecs had a different view. In their society, the world was seen as ‘slippery’ and that man was too inherently flawed to stay virtuous within it. In their eyes, man would always slip down. Their solution to this was to prize the community, as people would always need to rely on one another for support and guidance.

That such a human-centric philosophy came from a society that tore the beating hearts out of people baffles me.

When it comes to confidence, my experience has been that it’s somewhere in between. You have to rely on yourself to act despite the presence of fear and anxiety, sure. But this action doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

It exists in your life.

And as we’ll see, what surrounds and supports an action can often be just as important as the action itself.

HOW TO BE CONFIDENT

Okay, I’ve said that confidence is about acting despite fear and anxiety, but let me get something clear:

You cannot overcome fear and anxiety.

It’s not possible to ‘overcome’ emotions like that. You can only change your relationship with them. You will always feel as afraid as you are now, but the power that fear has over your actions will change. The way your body reacts to it will change. Instead of paralyzing you or making you run, your fear will become something more akin to a motivator.

Your confidence increasing/decreasing? That’s just your relationship to your fear changing. For the better or worse.

You build a relationship with your fears and anxieties by honestly appraising who you are and then taking uncomfortable steps to confront them. Confidence does not exist in a vacuum – the happier you are with the rest of your life the easier it will be to develop confidence in areas where it is lacking.

That said – It doesn’t cross over.

It’s easy to think that fighting someone in a boxing ring, or public speaking would help you overcome a fear like approaching girls but this isn’t the case – the confidence is built where it’s built.

What does happen however is that once you’ve built confidence in one area it’s easy to believe in your ability to build it elsewhere (self-efficacy showing up again).

THE TWO TYPES OF CONFIDENCE

Confidence can be divided into two separate types: active and passive confidence.

Active confidence relates to your ability to take actions that confront fear.

Passive confidence relates to your day to day confidence in yourself.

The two are interlinked.

The more you build your active confidence, the more your passive confidence gets a boost. The more you build your passive confidence, the more your active confidence gets a boost.

Of the two, your passive confidence is the most important, but it’s important to build both, as the ‘boosts’ works equally in reverse.

A weakness in one causes a weakness in the other. I.e. Not confronting a fear of approaching will always kind of dig away your self-esteem.

The reason I divide the two is that they’re built in completely different ways. So treating confidence as ‘one thing’ is dumb and will limit your results.

ACTIVE CONFIDENCE

Active confidence is built by taking actions that confront your fear and anxiety.

There is NO OTHER WAY to do this. You can’t outsmart it. You can only confront it.

how to be confident

Unless, like me, your fear is gigantic, man-eating Sharks. Then you’re fucked.

You have to take consistent, repeatable actions that are always uncomfortable, and always move you in the direction of your anxiety and fear.

Let me repeat the most important part:

Always uncomfortable.

Building active confidence is entirely dependent on you finding the action you’re taking uncomfortable. It is required to be difficult, uncomfortable, anxiety-provoking, or frightening.

If you always avoid these feelings, then you will never develop your relationship with them, and you will never develop confidence.

The easiest way to do this is to break whatever it is you want to do into the smallest possible version of itself. As I like to call it:

Do the least-most frightening thing you can do. And do it over, and over, and over again. Then make it more frightening and more uncomfortable.

Active confidence isn’t built in big swings, it’s built by chipping away. You feel the fear and anxiety, and you act despite it, however small you can.

PASSIVE CONFIDENCE

If active confidence is acting despite fear and anxiety, then passive confidence is the quality of your relationship with yourself despite the opinions of others and the impact of the world around you.

I.e. if you fail at something you don’t feel like a loser and hate yourself.

Or if some people don’t like you, you’re okay with it and it doesn’t wound your feelings.

In other words, you achieve the fabled ability to ‘not give a fuck.’

This is where Keanu would say ‘woah.’

So how is passive confidence built?

Passive confidence is tricky. In my experience, it’s a result of a combination of factors – namely your overall happiness, your self-esteem, and your self-efficacy. And whilst I’ve only written an article on self-esteem so far (the others are fermenting as we speak), all three revolve around the same principle.

The more you develop your life so that it genuinely gets your emotional needs met, the more you will develop passive confidence.

There are a lot of theories on ‘not giving a fuck’, but in my experience, most are overcomplicated bullshit, and this is the simplest way to achieve it.

When you’re validated by your own life, you’re a lot less likely to need validation from other people. You’re a lot less likely to pursue emotional needs that are dependent on other people.

This also explains why narcissists (people who have a bottomless need for validation) can have their entire lives together yet always ‘give a fuck.’

Passive confidence stems from your own ability to take care of yourself. This is basic self-love 101. But as calling it self-love is lame as shit, we’re going with passive confidence.

THREE SHORTCUTS TO PASSIVE CONFIDENCE

There are three shortcuts I know of to help with developing passive confidence, and I use them in my own life:

1) Focus on how little you need to get your emotional needs met

You don’t need as much as you think you do to be happy. In fact, you need less than half.

Happiness is simple. It results from doing basic things well. Your life is secure, you have rewarding connections with others, you gain new experiences.

You don’t need to be a rich, famous, celebrity banging, public intellectual, world class MMA fighter. In fact, thinking you need any of that is only going to make you more miserable.

Whereas something as simple as walking in nature with a friend would have ten times the benefit.

As a culture, we do the exact opposite of this, and it ruins us. We’re always thinking we need more, when in fact, we need nothing.

The main irony here is that the more we chase, the more likely it is we end up chasing the wrong thing. This is because the things we actually need are so staggeringly obvious and simple that they don’t require any chasing.

They just require you to change your perspective and make better life choices. Ones that redirect your focus away from whatever your emotional issues are driving you towards, and more towards the happiness that’s right in front of your eyes, under your nose, and within your grasp.

2) Practice integrity

Know your values and boundaries and honor them. That means you align your life and actions with your values, and you align your behavior with your boundaries.

That is what integrity is, and it is enormous for your passive confidence (as well as your happiness, job satisfaction, sex life, and relationship success). It’s also something you can practice every single day.

If we’re honest, we all use personal development techniques and ideas in order to get something we feel we need. Women, success, whatever. But in reality, the most important techniques are the ones that don’t get us any of those.

They’re the ones that teach us to have to have a better relationship with ourselves internally. This is what living in line with your values and boundaries does. It gives you a rock through which to ground yourself.

It gives you a foundation on which to build. One that isn’t built on sand.

When instead we forget or don’t even know our own boundaries, we pursue whatever impulses or ideas enter our heads, often ones that are contradictory to what it is we actually want and need.

Not only is this an aimless way to live, it’s also a clear sign that there are things we haven’t emotionally come to terms with. It’s a sign we need to take a hard look in the mirror.

3) Pay attention to the little things

When people walk around with shitty narratives about themselves and others, it always translates into shitty behavior. Likewise, when people have confidence issues, they always encourage shitty thoughts in their own head, which lead to poor decisions… and, yeah you get the idea.

It’s like the Butterfly effect, only without the time travel.

This is an idea that’s explored to an insane level of detail by Leo Tolstoy in his books War and Peace and Anna Karenina. It’s also an idea I return to all the time.

The idea is this:

Life exists in tiny moments, and those tiny moments add up to big, important ones. Because of this, it is incredibly important you pay MORE attention to the tiny ones than the big ones.

Which is the opposite of what we always do. We get so hung up on the big stuff, that we don’t notice ourselves sewing the seeds for disaster in all the little ones.

These tiny moments in which life exists – these can be unnoticed, inconsequential thoughts, or simply small, tiny habits you repeat every day. They’ll be different for everyone. But learning to view life in this way makes a huge difference.

To slip another bit of Biblical wisdom here (alright, this time really is the last!):

You cannot harvest grapes from a thorn bush.

In plain, millennial English this means: if you carry round fucked up shit inside yourself, then all the stuff you get outside is going to be fucked up too.

Makes sense.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO BUILDING ROCK-SOLID CONFIDENCE

This is article is long as fuck, so to finish up here are the steps you need to to take moving forward. The simpler you keep these steps the better. The more you overcomplicate them, the harder it’ll be.

They’re listed in order. But steps 4, 5, and 6 can be done simultaneously (and should be). You could effectively name doing that as ‘living responsibly.’

Here we go:

1) Stop faking any and all behavior, stop lying and stop trying to impress people

Non-negotiable. Cut that shit out today.

2) Be brutally honest with where you’re lacking

Just as we hide our flaws from other people, we also have habits of hiding our flaws from ourselves. These are our defense mechanisms in action. But these don’t actually serve us in any useful way, they just make it harder for us to get our needs met.

Pay attention to where in life you think you’re letting your needs go poorly met, then question why this is?

3) What active steps can you take to build active confidence?

Active confidence requires you to do something. You cannot get it any other way. What uncomfortable, anxiety-provoking actions can you start taking to build it?

Remember, if they aren’t uncomfortable or don’t provoke anxiety, they don’t count.

This could be asking the cute Starbucks barista out, having a difficult talk with a loved one, or attending a new social event alone.

4) Take them

Stop thinking and just do it.

5) Assess your passive confidence

If passive confidence is having a life that you enjoy, where are you holding yourself back. What could improve?

If you do enjoy but aren’t feeling that confident about it – ask yourself just how much you really enjoy it, or whether that’s just a way of protecting you from taking the uncomfortable actions that would truly make your life better.

That goes double for you, guy who is addicted to playing video games instead of socializing. You can’t bullshit me, I was just the same as you were.

6) Address your passive confidence

Stop thinking and just do it. Start today. Because like anything related to confidence, nobody is gonna do it for you.

There’s only one person who can solve that problem for you, and he’s the exact same one you see in the mirror.

THE ONE RULE OF CONFIDENCE

At the beginning of this article, I retold John Milton’s famous story for a specific reason. Within Paradise Lost is the clearest example of what not to do, yet the example is the one we so often overlook, especially when it comes to confidence.

When we think of confidence, what we really think of is self-aggrandizing ideas like fame, charisma, success, and pride. But these ideas have nothing to do with confidence. These are just the things we think will give us confidence. We fool ourselves into believing they’re what we’re really seeking.

But as was the case with Milton’s Satan – they’re not.

In reality, confidence comes from not making the basic mistake that pursuing these things suggests you’re making:

You’re living for something outside of yourself. In particular, something that you feel you need from others.

For you, it’s not your perception of yourself that matters, it’s how other people perceive you.

That’s the mistake. You don’t realize you’re okay as you are. So you keep looking for others to tell you what you can’t tell yourself.

Real confidence comes from comfort. A comfort with yourself, your life, and a trust in your own actions. Real confidence is internal, it has nothing to do with anyone else.

And that is a comfort that is built. It begins and ends with you.

If, like Milton’s Satan, your idea of yourself is wrapped up in status, power, and the opinions of others – before you take any other step, you have to reconsider the ones you’re already taking.

Because it’s those steps that are stopping you from having what you always been seeking.

 


Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and SHARE it on social media.

If you want to go into more depth with any of the topics I write about and build a structured plan for applying them to your day to day life – then check out my Dating and Personal Development Coaching service for a free 15-minute consultation.

And be sure to check out my free ebooks on dating and anxiety.

If you want an easy way to stay up to date on the latest content, like me on Facebook, and you’ll always be the first to know.

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: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Anxiety, Confidence, Fear

The Hidden Cost of Not Being a Failure

by Visko Matich · Sep 4, 2018

failure rate

IF TIGERS worked on Wall Street, they’d be kicked out the door in five minutes. Contrary to their reputation of being the deadliest cat on the planet (that honor goes to the tiny black-footed cat) it’s estimated that 95% of a Tiger’s hunts end in complete failure.

That means the odds of it successfully hunting are about 0.0526. And if you’re wondering why the hell you’re attending math class right now, let me give you some context. That’s not much better odds than the Tiger correctly guessing the ace of spades from a deck of cards.

Tigers, despite their reputation as the biggest, baddest cat on the planet, fail all the time. And considering most of their life is spent hunting, that means most of their life is spent out of breath, feeling embarrassed, and watching some shit-eating gazelle spring away.

But this isn’t just how it is for Tigers. This is how it is for all of nature.

The vast majority of animals fail all the time at exactly what they are designed to do. The tiger fails to hunt, the bear fails to scavenge, and the blue whale fails to… well, it fails to do whatever it is that blue whales do.

Failing is part of life. If we want to do what we’re best at, then we better get used to failing.

You’ve probably heard the quote ‘if you want to succeed double your failure rate.’ It crops up all the time on LinkedIn, motivational images, and youtube pep talks.

The guy who said was a man named Thomas J. Watson. Aside from putting IBM on the map, Watson was hailed as the world’s greatest salesman when he died. Despite his legacy being reduced to a quick shot of motivation, there is a deep wisdom to what he says:

Everyone wants to be so good that they never fail, but maybe the reality is that we have to fail more.

Much more.

HOW OFTEN ARE YOU FAILING?

If you were to stop and think about your goal – maybe it’s getting better at dating, starting a business, or writing a movie – how often have you allowed yourself to fail at it?

And I don’t mean failed to even start. I mean you started an attempt. You saw it through. And it ended in complete and utter failure.

You got rejected. The business went bust. The script sucked.

If you’re honest, like most of us the answer would probably be: ‘I haven’t.’

Everyone wants something, but rarely we do ever try to get it. Instead, the closest we get is trying to figure out ways to avoid failure. We engage in perfectionism, we try to learn as much as we can, or worse, we procrastinate our way out of ever trying.

So our dream… stays exactly that. A dream. Lost in our defense mechanisms.

One of the easiest ways to understand how realistic your goals are is to take a look and see how hard you’re failing. If like the Tiger, all of your attempts have ended in failure – then you’re on the right track.

Why?

Because it means you’re actually trying. It means you actually have something to learn from. And it means you’re actually in the ballpark of eventually getting lucky.

You don’t kill an antelope without chasing one in the first place.

If, however, you’ve never failed, it’s probably because you’ve never tried. And because you’ve never tried, your goals just aren’t going to happen.

You aren’t being realistic.

If you want to develop charisma, you have to slog through years of being boring. If you want to meet women who think you’re great, you have to meet dozens who think you suck. If you want to write a great book, you have to write dozens that are unreadable garbage. If you want to have a great sex life, you have to get shot down by all the people who would never fuck you. If you want to run a successful business, you have to go bankrupt and live off baked beans… Or something like that.

Failure isn’t the indicator that you’re on the right track. But it IS the indicator that you’re actually on a track in the first place. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t doing anything. You aren’t moving. You aren’t growing.

You aren’t doing shit.

YOU DON’T FAIL BECAUSE YOU DON’T CARE

Failure is like any other shitty experience. It’s part and parcel with the good ones.

No matter what goal it is you’re trying to pursue, the majority of the experience will not be that enjoyable and most of your attempts will end in failure.

This is an immutable rule of life. People make entire careers selling self-help books which say this in slightly different ways. The thing you love is the thing you spend most of your time suffering through. The thing we love is the thing we fail at.

But if everyone knows this, why do we hide from failure so much?

The truth is that you fear failure because you care only about the result of your goal, not the process of actually attempting it. This is because it isn’t really about you doing it, it’s about achieving it changing who you are.

Your goal isn’t an intrinsic expression of who you are, it’s a band-aid for your emotional issues. You don’t want to write because you have something to say – you want fame and adoration. You don’t want a great sex life because you’re in touch with your sexuality – you want emotional validation and dependency. You don’t want to succeed at business so you can add value to your own life and others – you want it so you can show everyone how much better you are than them.

Your goal isn’t so much as a goal as it is wish fulfillment for your self-esteem issues. And this is why you don’t achieve it.

Because in failing to achieve it, you reinforce the idea that you’re the opposite of what it is you wish you were. And your rock bottom self-esteem can’t handle that.

So it stops you from even trying.

THE UNSUNG BENEFIT OF EMBRACING FAILURE

There is an obvious benefit to embracing failure. You learn from the experience.

The more you fail, the more you know where you’re going wrong. And the more you know where you’re going wrong, the more likely you are to go right.

You’re also more likely to be lucky. It’s no wonder that Thomas J. Watson was considered the world’s greatest salesman. He understood the importance of luck and it’s relationship to failure.

When he said ‘double your failure rate’ one of the things he was saying is that you don’t get lucky without repeatedly being even more unlucky. So you should make a habit out of being unlucky all the time.

Rejection therapy is something which embraces this idea and makes it practical. You continually expose yourself to rejection. Some people do this for confidence, and many guys do it to get over their approach anxiety. Whatever your goal is, continually exposing yourself to rejection is the right way to go.

But the unsung benefit of embracing failure is the effect it has on your mindset. Because you’re okay if you fail, you’re not as dependent on your goal succeeding. You’re doing what you do for you, and nobody else.

This, incidentally, is what I argue is the core principle of being attractive.

In sales, this is where you develop an indifference to the whether the buyer purchases your product or not. You know it’s benefits and you know it’s value to them, but you’re okay with their decision either way. You don’t need them to buy. They can take it or leave it.

More often than not this makes them more likely to buy it.

Whereas when your entire attitude is ‘please buy my product.’ What do you think happens? It’s the exact same thing in dating. When you’re happy in your own life, having a great time as you are, your results increase.

When you embrace failure for failure’s sake, you learn to become okay with your neediness.

In other words, in failing, you learn to get out of your own way.

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and SHARE it on social media.

If you want to go into more depth with any of the topics I write about and build a structured plan for applying them to your day to day life – then check out my Dating and Personal Development Coaching service for a free 15-minute consultation.

And be sure to check out my free ebooks on dating and anxiety.

If you want an easy way to stay up to date on the latest content, like me on Facebook, and you’ll always be the first to know.

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.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz 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!

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Filed Under: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Anxiety, Failure, Fear, Success

Defense Mechanisms – How to Stop Being a Victim of Fear

by Visko Matich · Sep 2, 2018

WHAT IF I told you that half of what you think is ‘you’ isn’t actually you? What if I told you that you that almost your entire idea of ‘you’ was just a series of inventive lies that have tricked you into becoming someone that you never, ever wanted to be?

And what if I told you all of this was done in an affectionate effort to keep you safe?

You’d probably be thinking – if that’s true then just who the hell am I?

Your brain isn’t always on your side. As you attempt to do anything that provokes anxiety, your brain almost automatically comes up with patterns of thought and behavior to stop you. These patterns are so convincing that you don’t even spot them for what they are, and often, they come to form your beliefs and eventually your very identity.

Just as you can be full of shit, it turns out you can also be full of poor patterns of thought and behavior.

Psychiatrists call these patterns defense mechanisms.

I call them ‘your bullshit.’ And if there’s a magic pill in any kind of personal development it’s this: ‘learning to spot your own bullshit.’

Because it’s that exact bullshit that keeps you from growing, stifles your happiness, and turns you into a version of yourself you never actually wanted to be.

———

I first came across defense mechanisms when I was a plucky young man learning about improving my dating life. I was reading as many books and forums as I could (not advised), and trying to combine them as best as I could with some kind of grounding in psychology (also not advised).

A lot of what I came across was toxic, unnecessary, or just flat out wrong.

But in the case of defense mechanisms, it was slightly different. There was something about them that always rung true. That I saw reflected in myself, and everyone I met. And as they seemed to be directly related to anxiety, approaching, and expressing sexuality – they were simply too good for this young man to miss.

Defense mechanisms it seemed, were what stopped me and everyone else from taking the actions with women that we wanted to take.

Whenever we wanted to approach one, kiss one, or even ask one out – there they were. And in this new, fancy psychology, I figured I’d found myself a cure.

So like any good nerd, I was hooked.

A SHORT, UNNECESSARY HISTORY OF DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Even though my focus was on dating, defense mechanisms have been something that have found their way into every aspect of my life.

Whether I was trying to pluck up the courage to talk to a cute girl, or procrastinating my way through video game after video game instead of writing – defense mechanisms were always lurking behind the scenes.

Just as they will be for you.

Defense mechanisms aren’t exactly a new discovery. Whether it’s Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or John Milton’s fallen angels – observers of human behavior have long been pointing their fingers at the bizarre ways people go about avoiding uncomfortable feelings and unraveling their lives.

The idea of defense mechanisms was popularised by Anna Freud. She took what was her father’s rather doom-and-gloom view of the human psyche and created what could be called a roadmap of human self-deception. One that, through understanding it, offered a way of undoing our flaws.

To her, our defense mechanisms were the ways in which we defended our ego from harm, and in order to live properly, we had to understand and manage the ways in which we did this. In other words, these seemed to be the elephant in the psychological room.

Years later, her work was expanded upon again by Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant. And his expanded research was so on point, it paved the way for many of the psychiatric classifications we have today.

He also gave this incredibly good Tedtalk. Unique for teaching what is maybe life’s most important lesson, and is also a good substitute for Nytol.

Vaillant was the first to organize defense mechanisms into hierarchies that corresponded to what was essentially our emotional development. To him, a person’s ability to manage their defense mechanisms healthily was intrinsic to their maturity and well-being as an individual.

And he was right.

What Freud and Vaillant managed to do was lift the lid on everyone’s mind, and reveal the hedge maze of behavioral patterns underneath. Far from being unique snowflakes, we all engaged with highly similar methods of bullshitting ourselves and hiding from our emotions.

Y’know, like children.

Luckily for us, Vaillant also showed that through understanding their patterns of bullshit, people can and would change for the better.

Which is where the next part of this outrageously long article comes in.

THE MANY, MANY DEFENSES FROM ANXIETY

defence mechanisms

Despite what Darth Vader says, it is wise to lower your defenses. Defense mechanisms don’t actually protect you. They imprison you.

Now, I totally get that’s dramatic. But bear with me:

The more you give into your patterns of bullshit, the more you avoid taking actions which are going to:

  1. Actually, represent your desires.
  2. Confront anxiety and make you grow.

I think I speak for all of us when I say nobody wants to live life with the training wheels strapped on. Eventually, we’ve gotta kick those fuckers loose and start nosediving down staircases.

There are many, many ways in which you’ll try and keep your own training wheels on. My bullshit won’t always be your bullshit, but in almost everyone I’ve met, they’ve collected not one, but a cluster of defense mechanisms that hold them back.

Some are lost in denial, fantasizing, and blaming the world. Other’s are always acting out and regressing into a childlike, dependent state.

For me, I was either avoiding reality completely, intellectualizing it, overcompensating, or worst of all, forming my reactions to events in completely disingenuous ways. As you’ll see in a moment, all of these suck.

Now for the sake of brevity, I’m going to try and limit this to anxiety and dating. I do write a blog that covers that topic after all, and to be honest…

Nowhere are people’s defense mechanisms more on show than in dating.

That said, I will add some other, personal development related examples where appropriate.

These all apply whether you’re feeling anxiety, sadness, anger or any emotion you find uncomfortable. And whether you’re dating, trying to start a business, or doing public speaking – it doesn’t matter.

Within every behavior that provokes an uncomfortable emotion, there is a defense mechanism that can and will rise up to ‘protect you.’

Here are the main ways you’re doing this:

DENIAL

Reality can be scary and upsetting. So you deny the reality of situation exists, as to accept it would make you anxious or in emotional pain. This is called denial, and it’s pretty much every teenager ever.

There are thousands of ways this can crop up in your life. In dating, this is most commonly seen as:

“I don’t really want to speak to her.’ When you’re attracted to her. Or “I don’t have anxiety around women.” When you quite clearly feel anxiety around women. Or ‘I don’t care about winning.’ When in reality winning is extremely important to you.

PROJECTION

If you’re racist, sexist, or bigoted, this one almost definitely applies to you. Projection is where you start seeing in other people what you refuse to acknowledge in yourself. Whether this is a feeling you don’t want to feel or some unconscious motivation – projection is your easy way out.

Instead of dealing with it yourself, you protect it onto someone else – and you see it everywhere.

These are projections are usually persecutory in nature (i.e racist/sexist).

This is deeply tied to blame and anger, and in my experience sits at the origin of many generalizations about the opposite sex. “Women are sluts” is actually “I’m scared of women”, “All women are over-emotional” becomes “I’m emotional and just not conscious of it.”

Instead of pointing the finger at everyone else, maybe it’s a better idea to look in the mirror.

FANTASY

There isn’t a single person reading this who isn’t guilty of this. In fact, this is less a defense mechanism than just a part of being human.

The idea behind fantasy is simple: what you want provokes anxiety, so you seek out some kind of unthreatening fantasy to ‘achieve it.’

For example, this could be:

“Expressing my sexuality makes me anxious, so I’m gonna feel good about myself by fantasizing about being some sexuality confident guy all the time.”

I have a friend who does this with violent movies and he doesn’t even realize it. That’s his defense mechanism for being afraid of confrontation. I have another friend who does the same thing with video games.

What’s your method?

REGRESSION

Regression is where you adopt a childlike, dependent state in order to feel safe from whatever anxiety you re currently experiencing. This can be anything, but I always tend to notice regression in social situations.

For example, you’ve come to a party to socialize and meet new people, but doing so makes you anxious, so instead, you cling to the people you know, often following them around like a lost puppy.

Regression is a relinquishment of your own personal power. You’re saying ‘I can’t confront my anxiety, but I hope you can do it for me.’

This might seem like a downer, but almost everyone engages with this on some level. If I haven’t been on a night out in weeks, and am feeling nervous, this can be something I spot in myself.

The trick is to spot it, then break the dependency.

PASSIVE AGGRESSION

If you live in the western world, please stop and read this section. It applies to pretty much every element of your day to day life. If you’re British, read it twice.

Passive aggression is where the confrontation that comes from direct aggression makes you anxious, so you attempt to mask it or sidestep in socially acceptable, but unpleasant behavior.

An easy example of this would be someone has annoyed you, and instead of confronting that directly, you say something shitty in the guise of being socially acceptable. All because the idea of direct confrontation makes you anxious.

But in terms of dating… I find this directly relates to sexuality. For example, you’re sexually attracted to a woman and want to express that. But expressing sexuality makes you anxious. So instead you throw some bullshit lines at her, or you tease her, or you try to be her friend.

These are all passive forms of expressing your sexual aggression, which makes you anxious. Instead of saying ‘you’re cute’ or something direct, you dodge it, smother it, and stifle it.

In any instance, whether its sexual, or just confrontation – the rule is almost always the same:

There is no good substitute for being direct.

defence mechanisms

ACTING OUT

Acting out is an action that you take almost impulsively, without awareness of the motivation that drives it.

This one is more complex, and often hard to spot. But in my own life, this came in the form of being highly impulsive with alcohol and eventually, with sex.

I had unconscious needs to avoid anxiety and to get validation, and I ended up taking those actions as ways to get those needs met. For a long time I just thought I was a big drinker and so on, but in reality, I was just acting out.

A while later, when that was less on an issue, I found myself avoiding anxiety about my future by procrastinating and impulsively watching garbage on youtube. It was the same shit, but with a new outlet.

I see this all the time in people who cheat on their partners, need excessive attention from the opposite sex, and guys who objectify their sex lives. They just don’t know what’s really motivating them, and they’re acting out on autopilot.

They have something they don’t want to feel, so the immediately start to smother it.

INTELLECTUALIZATION

A woman is more likely to acknowledge her own duality. A man is continually blinded by his intellect and does not learn through insight. ~Carl Jung

This is probably the reason you arrived at this blog. And if you’re male, almost definitely the reason for 99.9999% of your issues in personal development.

Intellectualization is where you try to learn/understand as much as you can about whatever causes your anxiety in the hopes that it will make it go away. I.e. You feel anxious about expressing sexuality, so you learn as much as you can in the hopes the fear will go away.

But here’s the thing…

This never works. It cannot work. It is impossible.

If your problem is emotional, then dealing with it is an emotional process. Thinking has nothing to do with it.

Whether your problem is anxiety in dating, fear of failure in your work life, or underlying issues with procrastination and motivation – the issue is always emotional.

Some probably think this sounds like the least masculine thing in the world to do. All I have to say to that is this:

You don’t become a well-rounded man without getting in touch with your feminine side. It’s not possible.

Moving away from the feelings is what made you end up here. Maybe instead you should start moving towards them.

COMPENSATION

Compensation is where you attempt to cover up your perceived weaknesses or anxiety by taking actions that ‘mask’ them.

This is usually where people overcompensate. You feel inferior to women and that makes you anxious, so you pretend you’re superior to them. You act cool. You act indifferent. You try to demean them by insulting them.

In reality, you’re just scared.

When it comes to dating, one of, if not the main reasons for this is feelings of inferiority. An inferiority that we desperately try to compensate for.

Alfred Adler, a psychologist back in Sigmund Freud / Carl Jung era has a quote that explains this perfectly:

‘If people feel inferior and weak in one area, they try to compensate for it somewhere else.’

In regards to dating, or even socially, what he’s saying is:

If you feel ‘less’ than other people you will act in a way to compensate for this feeling.

Nearly ALL your bullshit behavior comes from this one principle of Adler’s. All the faking, trying to impress people, and delusions of superiority – they all come from this. Jokes about the guy with the sports car who has the small dick? This too.

In my experience, compensators always know what they’re doing deep down. They’re the small kid on the playground shouting about his dad being bigger than everyone else’s.

RATIONALIZATION

Rationalization is where you use faulty logic to explain a poor behavior or feeling.

You get rejected by a woman and it makes you feel ashamed and embarrassed. Which is normal. But instead of going ‘oh well’ you go ‘she’s a fucking bitch’. In reality, she’s allowed to reject you, and it doesn’t make her anything.

You procrastinate on your work, telling yourself that you don’t need to do it yet, even though putting it off longer noticeable causes you more stress.

You cheat on your partner, telling yourself you shouldn’t tell them because it would just hurt them if they found out.

Rationalization is where you try to turn whatever is obviously an unacceptable act into an acceptable one. But you don’t do this for others. You do it for yourself. To rationalize away the feeling that comes from your shame, guilt, or anxiety.

REACTION FORMATION

Have you ever had someone you completely disliked, thought they were an asshole, but instead of making this obvious, you were in fact really nice to them?

Reaction formation is where you start acting in completely the opposite way to how you want to act due to feelings of anxiety.

I.e. In the example above, it causes you social anxiety to be upfront about your feelings with that person, so you ‘form’ a new, non-threatening reaction.

Or, you want to have sex with women, but this provokes anxiety in you, so you outwardly express zero sexuality and may even claim to not care about it all. In truth, you do, you’re just scared. (This was pretty much my entire teenage life).

DISSOCIATION

Have you ever noticed that when people are fresh out of a breakup they suddenly start hitting the gym and setting themselves wildly ambitious life goals?

This is dissociation. Drastically changing who you are to avoid emotional pain.

In the case of a breakup, you feel shame about yourself for having been part of a failed relationship, and you don’t want to keep seeing the person in the mirror. This was me 100%. In reality, I was just sad and needed to confront it and accept it.

It’s also anyone who felt like a loser back home, moves to a new country and suddenly drastically overhauls their identity. The geek at school who becomes a try-hard later in life. Pretty much any stereotypical “zero-to-hero” cliche.

But as with my own post-breakup life change – it doesn’t fix the feeling. At best it just puts down a band-aid.

Funnily enough, dissociation is also nearly always the plot of superhero origin stories. Which I think lies in their appeal.

DISPLACEMENT

Displacement is when you shift your sexual or aggressive desires to a safer, less emotionally threatening outlet.

I.e. the guy who wants to shout at his boss, but can’t so comes home and screams at his wife.

This is one of the more complex defense mechanisms, as it tends to burst out of you unaware. Something happened to you earlier that you repressed, and later it erupts out of your when it feels safe.

This can be obvious, like the example above, or it can extremely subtle. Like pornography.

You feel sexual desire, but you’re afraid of women. Approaching women and asking them out threatens your anxiety, so instead, you seek out somewhere ‘safe’ to outlet that sexual desire. In reality, all you’re doing is avoiding anxiety.

Displacement can also be seen in the micro-moments of your life, where stresses at your own failures are repressed (see below) and then you lash out at people with anger you’d actually been directing at yourself. This is something I do all the time, and have to work hard to get a handle on.

REPRESSION

What you want causes you anxiety, so you attempt to force it out of your mind and pretend it doesn’t exist.

I.e. You avoid anxiety by repressing any sexuality whatsoever.

I.e. You tell yourself you’re happy without a social life.

I.e. You say you don’t care about achieving anything.

And the sad thing is that you can do this so much that it eventually does become unconscious, and begins affecting you in subtle, almost imperceptible ways. Not only is this a bad idea, for reasons Carl Jung expresses nicely in this quote:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

But it’s also a bad idea because you’re taking who it is you really want to be and driving it deep down into the back of your mind. Which, if you’re honest, isn’t something you truly want to do.

Instead of repression, you just need to develop a better method of confronting your fear.

THE DANGER OF YOUR DEFENSES

defence mechanisms

Remember when I said that if our defense mechanisms get repeated enough they become our identity? Well if you acted in all these ways enough you’d probably end up hating and avoiding women, socially needy, addicted to pornography and shallow escapism, and at the same time decrying sex and behaving sexless.

A bizarre, living contradiction. All because of simple mental patterns.

You can probably imagine why it’s so important to bring awareness to these. If we want to direct our lives, we have to know what’s already pushing us, or in this case, protecting us.

Even though I’ve kept much of the focus of this article on dating and sexuality – defense mechanisms affect every part of our lives. Procrastination, fear of failure, and all the ways in which we avoid bringing to life the person we wish to be – these all sit hand in hand with our defense mechanisms.

When you bring these kinds of tools to the story that you tell yourself about your own life, it’ll soon become apparent that not everything you consider ‘you’ is actually you. In most cases, it’s just armor that you’ve accumulated to make yourself feel only what you want to feel.

But you can’t live life picking and choosing your feelings.

You have to feel it all. Especially anxiety. Especially the feelings which suck.

As long as you succumb to your defense mechanisms and allow them to protect you from uncomfortable feelings, you will always hinder your growth as an individual – keeping yourself immature, infantile, and incapable.

In all the ways you never had to be.

—

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Filed Under: Dating Advice For Men, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Anxiety, Dating, Defense Mechanisms, Fear, Personal Development, Psychology, Relationships, Self Improvement

The Four Types Of Men On A Night Out – According To A Woman

by Visko Matich · May 2, 2018

MY SISTER has a theory. It says there are four types of men you encounter on a night out. She first told it to me when I was sat in Trafalgar Square, fresh out of a breakup, and emptying my heart to her about what a loser I was, and how much I sucked with women.

Back then, I was terrified of them.

She’d always believed in me, and had to some degree bought into the mask I used to present to other people – the one where I was confident, and “didn’t give a fuck”. So when I told her the truth – that was I anxious, socially terrified, and had rock-bottom self-esteem – she looked at me like she’d been slapped in the face.

But then she thought for a little while and said she was going to help. And she began to tell me her theory.

I’ve heard her say it a few times since. It’s a theory that almost every girl who’s heard it unanimously agrees with and one that every man she’s ever told it to has laughed, fallen silent, then quietly admitted he’s one of them.

I’ve now put that theory here, more or less as she told it to me, but with my own experience, and journey through the types added on.

THE FOUR TYPES OF MEN ON A NIGHT OUT

TYPE ONE: THE DRUNK

You’ve seen his guy before. He gets all up in the girls face, says something that he thinks is funny, or perhaps even, intelligible, gets handsy, and usually gets rejected. Then he brushes himself off, drinks some more, and starts all over again.

This type of guy fucking blows. Not only does he stink of booze, slur his words and have a stupid fucking look on his face; he fears women and fears rejection, so he numbs himself to that fear through alcohol and/or drugs. He knows deep down he fears women but has resigned himself to the fact that alcohol is his only way out.

In short, he’s a coward with self-efficacy issues. For a long time, this was me.

How you end up here: You probably live in a culture where this is the norm, and haven’t questioned whether it’s worthwhile or healthy.

What to do about it: Stop drinking / limit your drinking, confront your fears, develop your self-efficacy.

Probable outcome: Depending on your looks and sense of humor – a non-existent to unfulfilling sex life (at best).

TYPE TWO: THE ORBITER

Ever been in a bar and seen a girl you really like, and instead of doing anything about it, you just stood there with a drink in your hand, occasionally making eyes at her?

Yeah, this one is you. And 99% of other guys.

This guy, because he is so common, has an enormous amount of variation. But the principle is always the same. He is not okay with his own sexuality. He tells himself it is bad, and it is not wanted. He does not give himself permission to express it.

So he freezes, or he overcompensates. In my case I spent years as a teenager as the dumb frozen guy, then as the loudmouth who tries to suck all the attention in the room up, then when I first started going to clubs, I was that guy who danced near to girls, but never actually did anything.

Maybe one of those is you. Maybe it’s not. But if you aren’t the kind of person who gives themselves permission to express their sexuality, then your issues with sexual shame are going to imprison you as this type of guy.

How you end up here: You’re the kind of person who avoids leaving their comfort zones, and you’re probably not very self-aware.

But as The Joker says all it takes is a little push.

What to do about it: Take a small step. Then another. Start approaching. You will get rejected. Eventually, after you realize it isn’t so bad and you don’t have to know what to say, you won’t. You need to confront your sexual shame.

Probable outcome: Always knowing you’re a coward deep down, and a permanent, low-level feeling of dissatisfaction, like you, had more to offer but never lived up to it. But if confronted, a simple enough step to type four.

TYPE THREE: THE INSULTER

This is every single guy who uses ‘banter’, ‘jokes’, ‘arrogance’ or whatever facade he’s chosen to attempt to lower the girl’s self-esteem in order to get her. He’s the guy who is condescending, insults what she’s wearing, points out a flaw in her body or face, all whilst trying to pick her up.

And he’s the biggest loser of the bunch.

He has the basic level of courage that the first two lack, so he can approach consistently, but he has enormous issues with his own self-worth and resents women deep down. For a long time, I would step in and out of this like putting on new shoes.

And it was always down to my narcissism and anger at other people. Y’know, that voice that says it’s never “your fault” and that other people (read: women and/or society) are to blame.

Yeah, that was me.

I find this guy the most transparent of the bunch. Even more so than the orbiter. Because this guy fears rejection he tries to control rejection. He tries to control the interaction, to be the dominant one, to be the “alpha male.” In reality, he’s just scared, using learned behaviors to simulate someone who isn’t, and is essentially bargaining for some kind of validation from the girl. He ‘games’ her so that she needs his. But only so that he can get hers.

The worst part of this is that it gets you results – but the results you get are gained in trying to scratch an itch they can never actually scratch. This is the toxic mentality that pervades the “manosphere”, “the red pill” and most dating advice I’ve ever come across (which is usually either “win her like this” or “trick her like this”).

How you end up here: Unresolved emotional (read: Mommy) issues which resulted in a desire to validate yourself esteem through a vagina.

What to do about it: Urgh. I’d recommend starting over completely. Top to bottom restoration. Maybe some therapy. You need to accept that your sexual desire is okay in and of itself, and that rejection doesn’t mean anything about your self-worth. You also need to understand that the more you try to stay in control of interactions, the longer you will never be fulfilled and will always be trapped in this mindset.

Probable outcome: Likely to reach type four. Which is a waste because this one has the most potential but will unlikely achieve it.

TYPE FOUR: THE MAN

This is the guy the walks up to a girl and hits on her. He’s okay with his sexuality, expresses it in an honest manner. If he gets rejected, that’s fine, he doesn’t take it personally. If he doesn’t, he starts chatting and sees what happens.

It’s really that simple.

He sees what he wants, and he goes for it. He doesn’t try to smother his fear in booze, or freeze, or try to lower her self-esteem. He just feels the fear and does it anyway.

How you end up here: You built a life you’re proud of, you think you’re okay, through a lot of experience being awful with women but powering through. You’ve been rejected hundreds of times.

What to do about it: Nothing. You’re nailing it.

Probable outcome: A solid dating life and self-esteem. You’re probably pretty happy too.

NOW IF YOU’RE FEELING INSECURE…

The interesting thing is – all of the above… It applies to women as well. Regardless of what you’ve got dangling between your legs, if you aren’t comfortable expressing your sexuality – if you’re overcompensating, numbing yourself, or outright avoiding – you’re going to fall somewhere on this scale.

Somewhere that isn’t type four.

For every type of guy listed above, I’ve met some kind of girl that falls within this spectrum. Only she’s the, uh, girly version. 

So, which are you?

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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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: Dating Advice For Men Tagged With: Anxiety, Confidence, Dating, Nightlife, Women

The 3 Biggest Mistakes That Screw Up Your 20s

by Visko Matich · Jan 31, 2018

 

IT WOULD BE EASY for me to say that I wasn’t financially literate, I looked for confidence in all the wrong places, I really wanted to be liked (and loved) and this made me needy, I didn’t know how to have fun, I didn’t work hard enough and I didn’t treat my time like it was important.

But those mistakes, whilst irritating, are stuff we all go through. They’re obvious. And if I’ve learned anything about mistakes, it’s this:

Not all mistakes are made equal.

The shitty thing about growing up is that nobody teaches you how to become an adult. The truth is, you have to teach yourself. The mistakes that you make in life are the problems you have to solve because it’s in solving them that you become the adult nobody could ever teach you to become.

Looking back on my early twenties, it’s become apparent to me that past the detail of my life there were patterns of mistakes, each with specific underlying principles, that were directly getting in the way of my growth as a person. And far from being obvious at the time, these patterns were almost impossible to spot.

So they continued, and instead of growing up, I stood still.

Eventually, I slowly (read: far too slowly) figured out what was going on, and started to fix these mistakes. Some of them were easy, but other’s took years. And it was midway through all of this fixing that I realized something:

These mistakes weren’t unique to me.

Far from being a special snowflake – these were in fact patterns of mistakes I saw in everyone. Sometimes much older, sometimes much younger – it didn’t really matter.

The patterns just kept showing up.

Which got me thinking. If I could fix them, then everyone else could too.

YOU’RE HOLDING ON TO CHILDISH THINGS

When you leave school, university, and your parents behind, life suddenly becomes very different. Instead of being surrounded by people your own age, you’re working with people of all ages; instead of your parents paying for everything, you have to pay for everything; instead of everything being simple and uncomplicated, everything is complex, difficult and often threatening.

It’s a cliche, but the world is a scary place. It’s a constant – whether you like it not – competition, where you have to compete with other people and your own shortcomings in order to provide a life for yourself, and in many ways, in order to be happy. Life after childhood is a series of complex, mature problems that we have to take responsibility for, or they will dominate our lives and determine their direction.

If we don’t get financially smart, we get financially trapped. If we don’t get good at dating, we end up in dead end, unhappy relationships, or worse, alone. If we don’t develop a good work ethic, we hamstring our career or kill our dreams. And all of these, rather than being simple, are complex issues that require us to use a lot of emotional horsepower.

In other words, it’s incredibly easy to get in our own way.

This is why, when confronted with this new reality of adult life, we often sought a retreat into childhood.

It’s funny, looking back, to see how, frightened by the idea of what I needed to be in order to have the life I wanted, I instead prolonged my teenage life well into my early 20s in order to dull the constant feeling of anxiety the world gave me. I was well aware of what I needed to do, but instead of building myself up and educating myself, I retreated to video games and shallow escapism. Games where I could temporarily make myself feel like a winner, and shallow stories that fed my fantasies about a simpler, more black and white life; where I was special and important, instead of not.

This was comforting, and in the context of my youth, seemed harmless. After all, a lot of people my age were acting this way. Hell, most of western culture seemed to be acting this way. Geek culture had spread across all mediums and instead of our lives and hobbies and interests changing and growing to reflect the deepening challenge of our lives, culture seemed to be feeding a demand for the exact opposite; something that nourished the desire for the cocoon of childhood to return.

The complexities of a struggling adult life were replaced by power fantasies of superheroes or normal guys becoming drug kingpins – both under the guise of being ‘mature’, even though, at their core they were just more stories about a wish to not be powerless.

Dating, one of the most challenging things we can do emotionally, was reduced to what was essentially a slot machine. And reality TV fed us fantasies of being attractive and getting attention.

And finances? Well, they were just fucking boring. Savings? Investments? Pensions? Cashflow? What benefit was that to a life?

Like anyone else, I sought avoidance whenever I could. And it hurt my life.

My work ethic stunk, and I wasted years procrastinating. My dating life was shallow, stupid, and made me a vain, insecure, try hard. My finances were a mess and constantly ate away at me in the back of my mind.

And all of this, compounded on itself until a single voice echoed in my head:

“You can’t do this.”

When we turn our backs on reality and run for comfort, we are unconsciously telling ourselves that we’re not capable of taking responsibility for our own lives; that we don’t have what it takes to solve the actual problems we’re being confronted with.

When we drown ourselves in power fantasies, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we were someone else. When we drown ourselves in fantasies of love, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we felt like someone else. When we frivolously blow all our money and fail to secure a solid financial foundation for ourselves, we’re telling ourselves that consequences aren’t our problem. And all of this just makes us want to bury our heads in the sand even more.

The retreat from the responsibility of adulthood is nothing other than a retreat from the challenge of taking command of who we are.

And it’s a retreat that stunts our maturity and cripples our potential.

But if we took on the problems adult life puts in front of us – if we engaged with a world that was intellectually and emotionally challenging; if we developed a robust and consistent work ethic; if we built an exciting and rewarding dating life that stemmed from our interests and personality; if we took steps to develop a growing and secure financial situation for ourselves, we would be taking on the challenge of our lives in a way that made us leave every stage of our lives behind, and develop our abilities and personality into capable reflections of the world in which we existed. Reflections that thrived on the challenges presented.

And I guarantee, if you did that, you’d look at all that childish shit as it always was. A dream of being the person you are now.

YOU’RE WAITING FOR A FEELING THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL

Early into my twenties, I was struck by an idea by for a movie that I felt was entirely original and needed to be written immediately. Seeking to coax more of it from my head, I plugged music into my ears and let the sounds take my small kernel of imagination and grow it into a vast world; one I could shape into a story.

Once home, I wrote a few notes, messaged my friends about it, then left it, touching it occasionally over the next few years.

To this day, it’s never been finished.

I imagine that you, like me, have often found yourself in a place where you’ve been seized by an idea, and felt such a strong feeling towards it (for instance happiness, aggression, passion) that you felt it was extremely important for you to pursue it. Yet, after starting, the initial feeling begins to dwindle, and so does your effort, until you cease pursuing it entirely, and your idea that was conceived with such a great strength of emotion ends up as just another scrap of paper in the trash – or worse, a reminder of how you don’t “finish things.”

You start things because of a feeling, and then stop them because the feeling goes away.

This same principle I see in countless people looking to change their lives or, often, just make small changes. They feel something strongly, they make a decision, they take action, the feeling dwindles, they stop. The shame they felt at their weight as they entered the new year fades away, and their resolution to go the gym fails; the energy they felt, when imagining their story, dissipates, and they cease to write it; the ambition they felt towards starting their business dwindles under the difficulties, and it becomes just another aborted startup.

Now, sometimes this is fine – we get older, and the way we feel about things change. I no longer chase girls like I used to, and I certainly spend less time in the gym. But more often than not – we give up on the things that are actually important to us (i.e our creative passions) because the feeling just isn’t there. We’re not in the mood, we lack motivation, we lack passion. So we stop.

That is, until we feel something again, start as we did before, only to stop, once the feeling fades away.

Repeat ad infinitum.

It would be easy to say that rather being in love with what it is we want to do, that instead we simply love the feeling associated – the heightened sense of being, of purpose – or perhaps we just love the fantasies that our imagination brings to life alongside them – of success and adulation.

This was largely the case for me.

I would start and stop, over and over, enjoying the idea of success rather than the effort required to bring it about. But even when through discipline I started to avoid that kind of thinking – the pattern of starting and stopping over and over didn’t cease. Because, as ever, I was relying on my feeling to keep me in the game.

When I felt good, the days were easy. When I felt bad, I didn’t bother. And the bad days came a lot more often than the good.

That’s the lesson I failed to learn: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a good day or bad; it doesn’t matter how you feel. All that matters is the consistency of effort.

The basic principle of anything difficult is that some days it’ll come easy, some days it won’t – and that’s fine. Your feelings are transient and fleeting and based on hundreds of other factors, many of which are difficult to control. In many instances, the feelings you’ll feel towards the work you need to do are beyond your control and take care of themselves.

That means the only thing that is in your control is whether you continue to keep being productive despite the feeling. This means doing what needs to be done.

In other words, discipline.

YOU’RE PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT

The longer you fail to perceive who you actually are, the longer you prevent yourself from solving your real issues. The longer you spend pretending to be someone else, whether to yourself or others, the longer you will never develop confidence in who you are, and will always be plagued by insecurity.

When I was a teenager, I was socially anxious, insecure and sensitive to the opinions of others. When invited to social events, I told myself I wasn’t interested “in that sort of thing” and instead hid away in my room and played video-games. Later, when I was at university, I alternated between this same avoidance, or extreme overcompensation, where I drank heavily and acted like an idiot. This continued for some time, until, in my early twenties, it dawned on me that:

  1. I was socially anxious.
  2. I was avoiding confronting this.
  3. As a result of this avoidance, I was dealing with that anxiety by fleeing it or trying to smother it.

I realized that as long as I kept doing the same things I was doing, my social anxiety (the true problem) would never change, and I would be stuck being swept around by my various ways of trying to deal with it. I realized that because I had failed to perceive what my actual problem was, I incapable of ever actually solving it.

Now, you might say, well, if you were acting in that way, wasn’t it obvious you were suffering from anxiety?

No, it wasn’t.

Because the other way I dealt with this problem, was by trying to create an image of myself where none of this existed. Just as I did with myself, I didn’t want anyone to perceive me as I actually was.

And so, my focus was almost always external.

“Does this person like me?”

“Does this person find me funny?”

“Will those people reject me?”

In other words “will these people treat me like someone who is anxious and thus confirm what I am fleeing from?”

Eventually, I realized what was going on, and through honesty, therapy and effort, I was able to heal what was causing my anxiety. But this principle, of failing to perceive myself accurately, and thus pretending to others, is a principle I have spotted everywhere. And it always has the same implosive effect.

  • The guy who’s insecure about his self-worth compensates by going on about his intelligence, what he knows, how he’s right and builds an identity around this. As a result, he rarely recognizes what he doesn’t know, and thus leaves huge gaps in his thinking, hamstringing his intelligence. (This is actually called the Dunning Krueger effect).
  • The guy who’s scared of violence compensates by going to the gym and creating a large physique and carries himself around aggressively, only to watch the facade come crashing down around him when confronted with real violence. 
  • The guy who lacks self-esteem doesn’t respond well to feedback. As a result, when people accurately point out he’s not very hard working and easily distracted, he gets aggressive and rejects everything they’re saying – regardless of whether it’s actually true or not.

In each case – whether it be acknowledging what he doesn’t know, learning how to fight, or accepting that feedback is not a criticism of who he is, but what he does – the best solution is always to confront the source of the actual problem, as the solution the problem often creates of its own accord usually just sends you in a repetitive, self-destructive cycle.

This is, I believe, why people stay stuck in such repetitive cycles. Whether it be anxiety over their future, their safety, their parents, their relationships; whatever it is, as long as they fail to perceive it as it actually is, they’ll be constantly chained to its control over their behavior.

So how to fix it?

Honesty.

Take a long, hard, honest look at yourself. Be brutal. Take a look at your actions and choices and really question what they say about you? Take a look at your patterns of behavior and consider what might actually be motivating them. Ask yourself – what am I really accomplishing with this choice of behavior? What am I actually trying to achieve? And why?

9 times out of 10 you’ll be trying to protect yourself from something. That ‘something’ is your real issue.

Fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of rejection. Fear of anything, experienced in a way that’s unique to you.

Then, once you’ve found it and explored it, you’ve got to confront it.

Sometimes, this means making taking certain actions. If you’re socially anxious, this means leaving your comfort zone and going in the opposite direction your anxiety is trying to compel you to go. If you’re afraid of the opposite sex, this means gradually pushing yourself to approach them more and build a dating life. Whatever your issue is, taking actions that directly confront the issue are some of the most powerful ways to solve them.

But sometimes it just requires that you open up to someone else, anyone else, and let go of the shit that’s weighing you down and confining your life. This can be with friends, this can be with family, or it can be with a professional therapist.

In my own experience, all three work.

SHUT UP AND SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

When I look back on my early twenties, the most staggeringly obvious learning is that I failed to take responsibility for my own life. I looked for retreats into childlike avoidance whenever I could; I waited for things to feel good before I took on any challenges, and I failed to perceive myself, and what my problems actually were.

And as long as I was acting in that way, I failed to grow.

The more we hang onto childishness, the less we focus on the problems we need to solve. The more we wait to feel ready to take on those problems, the longer we will go without ever solving them. The longer we attempt to be someone else, both to ourselves and others, the longer we will never work on our actual flaws and capitalize on our actual strengths.

That is in a nutshell what happens over and over again.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When it comes to adult problems, there are generally three categories of stuff we need to keep in check, which when we do, result in the growth we desperately need.

Foundational problems

Essential, otherwise known as getting your shit together

  • Financial intelligence
  • Discipline and work ethic
  • Health
  • Career

Social problems

Has huge effects on your emotions

  • Social circle
  • Dating life
  • Family life

The Real Shit

By far the most important – the 80/20 rule of all of the above

  • Your ability to deal with your own emotions
  • Your understanding of yourself
  • The development of your self-confidence

When we keep these in check, we are actively solving the problems of our lives, and through that responsibility, are growing into a more capable version of ourselves.

At the beginning of this article, I said that nobody teaches you to be an adult. And I was telling the truth; nobody does. Becoming an adult is a by-product of making mistakes, creating problems, and solving those problems. Often that’s external things like finances or relationships; but in each of us, there are things we’ve carried over from childhood and our teenage years, that live within us and deeply affect who we are, what we want and what we will become. These are the problems that are unique to us, and that we owe it to ourselves to solve.

We cannot escape who we are. We’re stuck with ourselves for our entire lives. And because of this, we owe it to ourselves to take responsibility for what’s going on up there, to confront ourselves – in all our ugly, shitty, flawed ways – both externally and internally, and take care of our lives and how we feel about ourselves, and grow until everything that troubled us in the past is no longer an issue.

Because here’s the truth about getting older:

The problems never stop coming.

 

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Photo by Martin Reisch 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!

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Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Life Advice & Personal Development, Uncategorised Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Certainty, Comfort zone, Courage, Dating, Finding Our Passion, Game, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Neediness, Passion, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Relationships, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Skills, Success, Talking

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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