LIFE UNCIVILIZED

Dating And Life Advice For Men

Emotions

5 Surprising Life Lessons From Ancient Chinese Wisdom

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chinese wisdom

ONE DAY a student came to Confucius and made a confession. ‘Master,’ he said with downcast eyes, ‘It is not that I don’t delight in your Way, it is only that my strength is insufficient.’

Instead of being moved by his pupil’s honest humility, Confucius replied ‘Someone whose strength is genuinely insufficient collapses somewhere along the way. As for you, you deliberately draw the line.’

To him, the pursuit of the way (that is, the right way to live life) was something to be prioritized above everything else. It was something you willfully cultivated inside yourself, even if you were to discover you didn’t have what it takes.

To do anything less was unacceptable. It wasn’t an honest failing, it was a willful failure at life.

Confucius is arguably the most famous of the ancient Chinese philosophers. Rivaled only by Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, Confucius’s teaching had widespread influence over Chinese history, one that survived repeated attacks and dismissal by opposing schools of thought (read: Communism).

Describing himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing” Confucius saw himself as simply reaffirming the ancient wisdom that had come before him, going so far as to have supposedly shaped the famous Five Classics himself. Confucianism, the school of thought born from his teachings, stresses the importance of this ancient wisdom, namely in the form of emulating moral exemplars, study, and skilled judgment; all stemming from a foundation in the cultivation of the self. That is the virtues, behaviors, and habits that brought them to life.

THE ANCIENT CHINESE WISDOM OF SELF-CULTIVATION

Self-cultivation was extremely important for ancient Chinese thinkers. Similar to Aristotle, they believed it lay at the root of everything that was important. ‘There are many charges’ wrote the Confucian thinker Mencius, ‘but the charge of one’s self is the root of all others.’

Personal responsibility wasn’t just recommended, it lay at the heart of everything. Aristotle wrote similarly, referring to courage (perhaps the ultimate sign of responsibility) as the virtue that made all others possible. This idea carried on in Western thought and is can be seen throughout works of art. In Milton’s Paradise Regained, when tempted by Satan with dominion over the earth, Christ responds:

Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules 

Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King

The idea of taking responsibility for your life is one that has reverberated around the world. But not always with the same implications in behavior, and not always taken as far as the ancient Chinese thinkers instruct.

Through proverbs and wisdom, they reveal a different approach to some of the problems of our lives: being a good person, making plans and setting goals, becoming more present and less aimless, and learning to understand ourselves.

In other words, it’s time to dust off some ancient scrolls and see just how they can help us live a little better today.

1) YOU’RE NOT AS GOOD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE

Everyone has an idea of how moral they are. This idea is often unconnected to reality, but rather a justification of whatever actions we’ve taken. Actions that are motivated by thoughts and feelings we rarely admit.

It pays then, to figure out just how moral we actually are.

Confucius never made his stance on whether people were innately good or evil clear. Mencius and Xunzi, however, thought otherwise.

‘Human nature is evil,’ Xunxi wrote. ‘And goodness is caused by intentional activity.’ Similar to Christian ideas of original sin, Xunzi saw you, me, himself, and everyone else as predisposed to being at best, dicks, and at worst, monsters – people who were more often than not going to make the wrong decision.

Far from being a pessimistic douchebag though, he viewed goodness as a possible outcome of accepting this innate evil character and taking actions towards goodness instead. Where Aristotle stressed the importance of exercising the habits of virtue in the pursuit of excellence, Xunzi saw it as the one thing keeping our negative qualities at bay.

In contrast, Mencius wrote ‘The tendency of man’s nature to do good is like to tendency of water to flow downward.’ In other words, goodness to us was as natural as gravity. We are inclined by nature to do it, and it takes deliberate effort to do otherwise.

The reality probably lies closer to Confucius’ own ambiguous stance. That being, you don’t know. But you can actively move in either direction. Whilst the idea of practicing good virtues is nothing new, the concept of actively practicing immortality doesn’t get as much attention. At least, not outside of fiction.

Books like Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and Paradise Lost demonstrate how being grossly immoral isn’t so much a product of our nature as it is our deliberate encouragement of what is already there. Raskolnikov entertains the idea of killing, Anna convinces herself her marriage is boring to justify her adultery, and Lucifer egotistically clings to his pride, even though he knows it only brings him to ruin.

Where books like The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker have shed light on our own fixed, biological nature, it remains the case that alongside that nature is the way the world and everyone interacts with it. Whether we’re born innately good, bad, weak, strong, brave, or cowardly, we also always have our choices.

We can always strive to be better. One small habit at a time.

2) YOUR LIFE PLAN IS DOOMED TO FAIL

In all corners of western culture is echoed the same message. “Find your passion, become successful.” This idea permeates storytelling, advertising, and internet culture so much that it’s rapidly become taken as fact. Inside you, me, and everyone else, there is something that we can find that once found, will set the world into a simple, straight line to success.

Except, in reality, there’s one little problem. When it comes to your dreams of success, your passion, and your goals … The world isn’t a simple, straight line.

It’s the opposite.

This idea is central to many of the ideas in ancient Chinese wisdom. ‘The way that can be made into a clearly defined way is not the way’ writes Laozi in the Tao Te Ching. Which is a more eloquent way of saying ‘Your long term plans suck.’

The world isn’t as logical as we’d like it to be. We can order time from 365 days right down to the millisecond, but it doesn’t change the fact that the world, our lives, and ourselves are fundamentally ruled by randomness. Shit happens that we haven’t planned for, struggle to deal with, and want to run away from. Other stuff happens that is unexpected, good, and sometimes amazing.

And this randomness happens all the time.

When we make plans about how we want our lives to go, set ourselves long term goals, ambitious new years resolutions, or declarations of where our lives will be in 5 years time, what we’re actually doing is neglecting to take into account just how powerful the rule of randomness is in the world.

Because the world is random and misshapen.  It doesn’t fit a plan, and no plan could ever fit it. There is only the right reaction that occurs at the right moment. And that changes day by day.

This understanding of Laozi’s, that the ‘way’ cannot be clearly defined, is similar to Tolstoy’s observation about life in Anna Karenina. In passages often overlooked as boring, Tolstoy has various characters attempting to improve the lot of their peasant’s work ethic. To do so, they employ popular English theories of labor, as well as English machines, and hope everything will go well. But it doesn’t. Neither the plans nor the machines fit with the experience, culture, habits, or land of the Russain people. It turns out what works in England doesn’t work in rural Russia.

Tolstoy, like Loazi, is attempting to illustrate the folly of plans that don’t first take into account the randomness of the world, and how that randomness takes on a unique character of its own. Similarly, just as our plans must be flexible to accommodate reality, our ideas of our own ability to build habits or motivation must be as well. We can’t just lay whatever we want down. We first have to see what’s already there.

3) MINDFULNESS DOESN’T MEAN YOU SIT ON YOUR ASS

Alongside clean eating and hitting the gym, mindfulness is the most commonly touted way of improving your life.

Want to be more successful? Meditate. What to have better social skills? Meditate. Want to achieve A, B, C and be X, Y, and Z? Meditate.

The idea is everywhere, but the most commonly accepted form of it might not be the one that serves you the best.

Mindfulness has come along way from Siddhartha sitting under the Bodhi tree. There are books on how to use it to become more successful, more at peace, to achieve no-self; as well as at least two popular apps where grown men talk quietly into your ears as you sit in the lotus position.

(If you’re into that sort of thing…)

But outside of its modern popularity, mindfulness actually has other forms.

Confucian mindfulness takes a different approach than sitting on your ass trying to achieve no-self. In fact, Confucius was cynical about exactly that. He wrote ‘Living in retirement to study their aims, and practicing righteousness to carry out their principles – I have heard these words, but I have not seen such men.’

To him, mindfulness was active. It has you getting up and doing something. Interacting with others and engaging with the world. Because it is only through that action, interaction, and engagement that you can truly cultivate yourself and the correct way of living.

This way of thinking sees mindfulness is an active relationship with the world and other people. It’s not an act of sitting cross-legged and focusing on the breath but finding the true, moral way to live, as it exists in a moment by moment basis. And as you find that moral way to live, developing the strength, through practice, in order to live it.

Now whilst this might seem radically different to traditional ideas of meditation, the theme, at least metaphorically, is similar. The death of self is the ultimate result of taking action. It is not something that arrives through 15 minutes of practice, focusing on the breath, or staring at your navel.

It requires you going out into the world and doing what’s right.

4) YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU HATE

We all like to hate. You’ve probably, in the last five hours alone probably thought about things you hate multiple times. Many of those will be people. Donald Trump; the people who voted for him; the people who didn’t vote for him; your parents; your ex-girlfriend; your boss; maybe even me.

(I hope not…)

But the implication of hatred is that we are somehow different to someone else. That they have done something or acted in a way that is entirely contrary to who we are, what we value, and what is important to us. So we despise them.

But what if their actions, rather than being contrary to who we are, were actually closer than we think? What if everyone else was just a window into ourselves.

‘When you observe goodness in others,’ wrote Xunzi, ‘then inspect yourself, desirous of studying it. When you observe badness in others, then examine yourself, fearful of discovering it. If you find goodness in yourself, then approve of yourself, desirous of holding firm to it. If you find badness in your person, then reproach yourself, regarding it as calamity.’

To him, other people weren’t just people to interact with, they were ways of learning more about ourselves.

Contrary to Western thinking, ancient Chinese wisdom thought of the self as not really a thing (like, for instance, a soul), but more a mess of energies, emotions, and habits being pulled in all sorts of directions. Some of these ‘messes’ form patterns, some of these are forever random. We’re constantly in an environment that we’re passively reacting to.

And far from being just you, it’s this way for everyone.

Everyone is a mess. And it’s this mess that you have to take responsibility for.

(Well, not you, because according to this idea there is no you – so wait a minute, your mess has to take care of your mess? What the fu—)

Practicality this means that your idea of ‘you’ isn’t as certain as you think. What you want isn’t what you think. And your idea of others is often just a window into yourself.

A lot of this has been backed up by research. Neuroscience seems to increasingly be suggesting the self is an illusion. Research on happiness suggests we have no idea. The entire idea that you know who you are, and that you know how different you are to other people is flimsy at best.

What’s more likely is that you’re a mess. But in taking a close look at the mess presented by others, you can take steps to sort out your own.

5) YOU SHOULD TAKE A STEP INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S SHOES

Because we are such a mess, ancient Chinese wisdom suggests that one of the best ways to deal with this mess would be to engage in rituals. And no, I don’t mean stuffy religious rituals, I mean practical, empathy-based ones. Rituals that help us break through the illusion of self, and see ourselves from another perspective.

One method was to deliberately put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re in conflict with. If a father was in conflict with his son, it was both an individual’s obligation to imagine the life and situation of the other.

The son must imagine the responsibilities, concerns, and intentions of the father, and the father must imagine the youthful energy, the growing desire for independence, and innocent foolishness of the son.

It isn’t hard to see how this practical application of empathy would be a good idea. As a ritual, it actively strives to lessen conflict and build a deeper understanding of each other’s position – something that is integral to compromise, and in turn, healthy human relationships.

In the West, the two ideas that parallel this come from Carl Jung and Christ himself. The former wrote at length how the flaws we see in others were merely projections of our unconscious shadow – the traits we wished to hide from ourselves because of shame. When we judged someone for their greed, egotism, or promiscuity, it was rather those traits we were judging, and repressing in ourselves. Rather than accepting and moderating.

The latter stressed the importance of looking at yourself before you judge others. When confronted with a woman who had committed adultery and was to be stoned to death by a crowd, he confronted the crowds own immoral behavior and their right to judge anyone. Later, he advised his followers to avoid judging anyone at all, lest they are judged in the same way. And that before you can understand the faults of anyone well enough to judge, you have to understand your own.

THE ANCIENT, EVERYDAY PRACTICE OF CHINESE WISDOM

You aren’t who you think you are. You aren’t as good as you think you are. Your plans are uncertain. And you are what you hate.

On the surface, this might seem like bad news, but on closer inspection, all it says is that you need to release your certainty and treat uncertainty with the respect it deserves.

Instead of believing you are something, you take steps to actually become it. Instead of assuming you are fixed, you look for the evidence that says you are not. Instead of assuming you can predict the outcome of the world, you remain flexible enough to handle whatever outcome it thrusts upon you. Instead of looking at everyone and seeing what you separates you, you instead look and see what brings you together.

This way of thinking might seem the opposite of a Western mind, but the ideas of ancient Chinese wisdom actually have a lot of crossovers with some of our oldest ideas, and many of our newest advances. And the heart of rings true, regardless of your background.

In order to live the right way, you have to take care of yourself. You have to take on the charge of cultivating who you are.

Because as Confucius understood, that lies at the heart of everything else.

 

Photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash

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How To Stop Your Pursuit of Emotional Validation And Approval

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how to stop chasing emotional validation

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

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

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

But sometimes you do get it.

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

And you keep on playing.

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

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

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

Let me explain.

PROBLEMS WITH MOMMY AND DADDY 

Here’s how this whole thing works:

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

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

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

(Feel sick yet?)

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

So go ahead and wrap your head around this:

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

Now this, with age, becomes:

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

See how it’s the same thing?

THE WAYS YOU PURSUE EMOTIONAL VALIDATION 

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

Here are some examples:

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

How about that for a bad cocktail?

HOW TO STOP CHASING EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU ARE YOUR NARRATIVES

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m unlovable.”

“I’m not as good as other people.”

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

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

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

SORT YOUR BEHAVIOUR OUT AND THE REST WILL FOLLOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MOMENT BY MOMENT PRACTICE OF SELF-ACCEPTANCE 

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

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

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

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

Why wouldn’t you?

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

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

how to stop chasing emotional validation

THE OPPOSITE OF CHASING EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

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

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

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

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

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

 

Photo by Mark Daynes on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

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This Is The Most Attractive Thing You Can Ever Do

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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

 

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3 Unexpected Life Lessons From The Greatest Warrior of All Time

by ·

KOJIRŌ SASAKI stood on the beach waiting for his opponent. He looked out along the shore, and across the rolling waves, but there was no sign. He had waited for hours; they had all waited for hours.

The year was 1612 and the location was Ganryu island, located off the coast of the Bizen Province in Japan. Sasaki was a masterful swordsman, who eschewed the traditional katana in favor of a ‘No-Dachi’; a long and heavy two-handed sword considered by most to be too cumbersome to be effective. But despite its length and weight, Sasaki wielded the sword with incredible speed, accuracy, and grace; basing his strikes off of a swallows tail in flight.

He had fought many duals before, and he had never lost. That’s why they called him ‘The Demon of the Western Provinces.’

His opponent was a man named Musashi Miyamoto. A vagabond and Ronin, Musashi was known for his heavy drinking, his unkempt appearance, and his flagrant disregard for the conventions of the Samurai. Despite this, he, like Sasaki, was rumored to have fought many duels and never have lost.

For each man, the other was to be his greatest opponent. Yet Musashi was nowhere to be seen.

Stood on the beach, surrounded by officials and the noise of the ocean, Sasaki began to wonder. At the very least this was a sign of disrespect, at the worst it was a sign of cowardice and his opponent had fled.

As if to confirm his suspicion, the officials around him began to whisper to one another. “Perhaps he has fled.” “Yes, he has run away in fear!” They said.

Sasaki wondered. Perhaps he had fled.

———

A few miles south of the beach, in a small inlet, a fisherman sat in his dingy. The sun was hot but wasn’t a bother. He had been paid handsomely by his passenger; a strange, disheveled looking man who sat hunched over at the end of the boat. The man, who as was usual for him, was hungover, wiped the sweat from his brow stared up at the sun, then grinned at the fisherman. Almost in contrast to his unconventional appearance, he looked happy.

Reaching down into the belly of the dingy, the man picked up a spare oar, and drawing a knife from his belt began to carve strips of wood from it. After some time and many blade-strokes, the belly of the dingy had been filled with shavings and the oar was long and curved in a smooth angle like a katana. The man smiled at his work.

“Let’s go.” He said.

Musashi Miyamoto had woken up drunk that day, and spent most of his journey to the island passed out; but his strange appearance and lateness were not accidents or flaws of character, but rather his strategy itself. Having won his first duel at the age of 13, Musashi was no stranger to combat and was something of an expert at killing samurai. Over the course of his life, he had fought in wars, killed entire dojos, and traveled far, killing famous, notable warriors; all whilst being a masterless Ronin himself.

Killing samurai wasn’t just what he did, it was what he was. Not only did he know their techniques, but he also understood their code and culture. He knew how to get under their skin.

———

It was some hours into the afternoon when Sasaki spotted the boat on the horizon. Stepping forward and shading his eyes from the sun one of his officials shrieked “It’s him! It’s Miyamoto”, which sent all the officials running back and forth, flocking to and fro from Sasaki, unsure of what to do.

Grabbing the nearest man, Sasaki looked into his stunned eyes and said “My sword.” The man stared, mouth agape then fled up the shore to a small hut, shouted at a peasant woman, then hurried back carrying a large, sheathed weapon. Sasaki took it from him and securing the sheath and hilt in each palm strode down the beach towards the shoreline.

The boat was parked just offshore, in the shallow water. A small fisherman sat in the back, fixing a wide-brimmed straw hat to his head, and in the front, a ragged looking man cut the final touches on a large wooden carving, then sprang from the boat into the knee-high water.

The man waded to the shore, drenched from the knee down, and once free of the water stopped a few up the beach to brush the sand from his feet. Saski walked forward and took in his appearance. His clothes looked like they’d be worn for days. His face was pockmarked and unshaven. But it was his gaze that affronted Sasaki most. Behind his serious composure, the man’s eyes seemed to say “Oh, so this is Sasaki – Well, what of it?”

Sasaki’s face was a carved stone, and his eyes did not blink. The two men stared at each other for some time, until an official ran between the two, followed the flock. “Miyamoto,” he said, and Mushashi nodded. The officials all stared, and their heads turned between the two, back and forth, waiting for some kind of movement. Some were stunned, some were scared, and all of them standing on edge.

Striding forward, Sasaki gripped the hilt of his sword, adopted his footing (never too wide, never too short, with his feet loose and agile), and drawing the katana from its sheath, tossed the scabbard onto the sand.

Musashi looked at the sheath, then him, and with a new wildness in his eyes said: “if you have no use for your sheath, you are already dead.”

But Sasaki heard nothing. His hands did not tremble, his body did not move. His pulse was steady, his breathing was rhythmic. This, he had practiced. He was Sasaki Kojiro and he had never lost a duel. He knew this from experience, from what others told him, and from what he told himself in comfort, whenever he felt pangs of doubt or moral discomfort. He was Sasaki Kojiro, victory was as certain as it ever was, as it always was, not simply for the work and achievement he had so far accrued, but because of the being that he knew he was in relation to other men. The knowledge of his superiority to other men and his habitual expectation of their deference was why, despite his outward and internal physical calm, his mind blazed with fury. He was Sasaki Kojiro, and here was his opponent; a filthy, unkempt man who kept him waiting and arrived carrying a piece of wood. To any Samurai this would be a mark of dishonor, but to Sasaki, this was a disgrace.

Musashi stepped forward and their eyes met. He raised his weapon, an enormously long carved wooden oar, as long, if not longer than Sasaki’s own No-Dachi. His internal state was hidden, Sasaki detected that much, but his stance was fine, comfortable and confident; all the details of his body, his expression and the position of his sword spoke clearly; disgrace or no, Sasaki knew, as any master of a profession knows, that he was in the company of a man equal in his craft. Sasaki stepped forward, Musashi back; it seemed he too, had come to the same conclusion.

The officials gasped and sprang back. Many who were friends of Sasaki said nothing and simply stood horror-struck, tearing at their beards. A few seagulls had flown down to the shallow water, bobbing like boats, to watch the proceedings. All were silent, save for a young boy who at a slight movement from Sasaki burst into tears and fled towards the trees.

Sasaki felt calm now. His body was relaxed, but his grip was firm. His eyes, locked on Musashi, felt like dew drops. There was little sensation in him except for his breathing; but behind it, there was a disgust that was held for Musashi. He cared little for him and wanted to disgrace him by killing him on the beach.

A wave crashed and Sasaki struck a swift blow, Musashi moved and lashed out with his oar. “Ah ha!” Sasaki thought to himself, “that was the fatal strike!” Sasaki moved forward towards the sand. “He is defeated!” But there was a glare in his eyes, and he thought “What is this?” And could not recall where he was and what had occurred. “Yes, this is the beach.” He thought. Then, lying on his back in the sand, he grew tired, cared nothing for fighting, and forgot about that and everything else, and only wished for the sun to leave his sight.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto stood above his opponent, watching him die. The officials were half-mad, some screaming and others stooping over to look at Sasaki.

Musashi, still trembling with nerves, felt great unease at how important the man had seemed only a few seconds earlier, only now to die peacefully on the sand, with a childlike smile on his face that was quite detached from the reality of everything that had occurred. He couldn’t help but think the man was quite beautiful, and he had destroyed something beautiful for no reason at all. He wished he could end all of this nonsense, wake the man up and talk to him. Instead, the man slowly stopped breathing, as the blood pooled around his chest.

Musashi felt a pang of sadness. Here was one of the greatest swordsman that ever lived, and now he was dead, and that was that. Musashi looked at him and bowed, then, leaving the officials with the body, he turned and marched down the beach, through the waves, and climbed back onto the boat. Some of the officials who loved Sasaki ran down the beach into the surf after him, swinging katanas and shouting, but it was too late, the tide had gone out and Musashi had gone.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto* had fought in countless duels, but it would be this one that would change his life. Self-taught from a young age, Musashi had his first duel at the age of 13, where he struck down a Samurai. Continuing on to fight in wars and dueling, Mushashi came to know everything there was to know about combat, going so far as to develop his own style; which ignored most of the accepted teachings at the time, and was based largely on efficiency and practicality, removing all flowery movements.

Later in his life, he retired to a cave and would go on to write his treatise on life and strategy called “The Book of the Five Rings”, as well as his “Dokkodo”; his 21 rules for a disciplined life. Remembered mostly for his incredible fighting ability and for the wisdom of his later writings – Musashi has always struck me as a fascinating figure, not so much for what he accomplished, but because of the principles that allowed him to accomplish it. He’s a man who sought complete perfection in what he did, but at the same time completely spat in the face of the accepted culture of his time.

There are many lessons to learn from Musashi, but I believe it is these principles that serve to teach us the best lessons. Not just on achievement, but on living itself.

Here are the lessons of Musashi Miyamoto.

YOU’RE GOING ABOUT LEARNING IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

It’s easy to think that in our desire to acquire mastery of a skill we have to rigorously adhere to the way of mastery that has gone before us. We ask “how do I write a book?”, “how do I start a business?”, “how do I have good relationships?” and we search and consume information that we believe will show us the way to master and achieve these various goals.

But in many cases, this is failing before we’ve even begun.

In many cases, there is no way, there’s only your way.

Musashi defeated every opponent he came across. No matter how much they trained, no matter which style they’d mastered, no matter how many people they’d beaten; they all lost.

Yet Musashi never had a master or even a formal style. He taught himself. In his own words:

“You can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size.”

A Ronin from a young age, Musashi was forced (or rather, compelled) to wander through life figuring everything out for himself. His approach was unconventional from the outset, and in many ways seems to have been set in tone from his first duel, when, at the age of 13, he defeated a master samurai using the man’s own short sword and a wooden pole.

Because he taught himself, Musashi didn’t have a fighting style that was particular to anyone else; in fact, he invented his own. It’s a style that’s best captured in his own words: “I practice many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher”

Musashi approached the craft of fighting from a place of reality. Taught entirely through his own real-world experience and ruthless desire for perfection, Musashi was quick to disregard many of the accepted practices of other fighting styles – considering many of their movements unnecessary, impractical, and serving only to impress onlookers. Instead, his style was quick and efficient, utilizing both hands and simple, practical movements. The clearest embodiment of this was his choice to weird two swords, instead of one.

When we’re attempting something new we almost inevitably come to a head-on collision with our fear of failure. We feel constrained or withheld, we avoid and procrastinate, and we doubt and deny our ability. This is normal, hell I feel it every day, but it also causes us to look for ways to circumvent our fear and find a path towards our goal that will make us feel safe.

Like a guide, a teacher, or a master.

But if we stop for a moment, and really consider the skill we are trying to achieve, how often can the skill we desire not be learned with common sense? Is writing a book really that complicated? Is starting a business truly that confusing? Is having good relationships really a mystery?

Or are you just scared you’ll fail and not sitting down and using your own imagination and problem-solving abilities?

Musashi is an example I always return to when I think of self-trust. When I want to try something frightening and doubt myself, I always think:

  • How can I solve this problem?
  • What do I need to achieve in order to solve this?
  • What do I need to do in order to achieve that?
  • What do I need to learn in order to do that?
  • What is the best way to learn this?
  • Is there any reason I can’t learn this by action and reflection?
  • Will I learn more by teaching myself than by having anyone else teach me?

This is nothing new. Experience has long been touted as the best teacher, and I’m not here to say anything different. What I’m suggesting is that when fear strikes, and you begin to doubt your ability to do this on your own; fight doubt with doubt. Doubt your reasoning up until now and instead break down the problem you’re confronted with. Engage your brain and figure out solutions for yourself. Because it’s going to force you to come to the conclusion you’re desperately trying to avoid:

That you need to take action. You need to try.

Instead of reading how-to guides, your attempt to write a book becomes a process that evolves as you write the book. Instead of going to seminars and taking lessons on entrepreneurship, you start building a useful product that you can either pitch to investors or start selling. Instead of reading blogs on the internet on how to have good relationships, you go outside and start talking to girls, getting rejected and learning from it.

Because in doing so, you don’t learn someone else’s way, you learn your way. And that’s something nobody else knows and nobody else can teach, and the world has never seen before.

STOP LOOKING FOR SUCCESS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

I imagine that after killing Sasaki, the greatest rival of his age, Musashi looked upon his dying opponent and wondered why it was that instead of feeling happiness, he felt only sadness. He was finally the greatest fighter of his age, but instead of feeling joy, he felt only the sadness that he had killed this warrior for no reason at all.

It’s been noted that this was the moment Musashi refused to kill in duels ever again but I would imagine it was also the genesis of what he came to express later in life:

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside yourself.”

Everything is within. Seek nothing outside yourself.

A product of his age and ambition, Musashi was a killer, but he was not a psychopath. He came to realize that despite achieving what he’d wanted to achieve, it did not bring him anything he wanted, it only came with the cost of a great man’s life. Something he ultimately did not want.

Although a dramatic example, it taught him the example he needed; we cannot find what we want outside of ourselves without first finding it inside. For him, this was satisfaction that came from dueling, but for yourself, it might be a sense of importance from fame, a sense a manliness from having a lot of sex, a sense of superiority through becoming successful – all of this isn’t going to work. You’ll just end up like Musashi, wondering where the feeling you thought you’d have has gone. If you don’t already have it internally, you’ll never find it.

You have to change how you feel inside. Nothing else will work.

I believe this is why a lot of guys I know continually find themselves chasing women. They believe that aside from the satisfaction of getting laid, they’ll feel a sense of internal fulfillment; but when they do finally get laid, they never feel this sense of fulfillment, and instead of questioning this, they simply chase the next girl hoping she will be the one do it for them. They crave more, thinking that will solve their problem rather than confronting the problem itself.

I see this with sex, money, success; any form of material ambition that once achieved doesn’t live up to what we think it would. We either reevaluate or we chase more.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same people who chase more, only to feel nothing, often end up spouting nihilistic beliefs. They looked for meaning outside of themselves. And as Musashi says “there is nothing outside yourself.” When you’ve lived a life finding nothing, you start beginning to believe life is meaningless.

This perspective is often the most challenging to take on because it directly confronts our ego. But ultimately that is the choice. We have to let it go, or let it win. We have to keep feeding it externally, or instead look internally, and find what we were always searching for in the first place.

THE COMPOUNDING OF SHITTY LIFE CHOICES ™

One of the most harmless ways to ruin your life is to waste your time on pointless crap. At the time, it might seem like you’re enjoying yourself, but as these small moments of waste pile up and compound on each other, suddenly it’s 5 years later, and you’ve spent nearly a quarter of your life staring at a smartphone. It’s moments like this that make people wonder where their youth went, and why they can’t seem to achieve their dreams, or even worse, never did at all.

Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” The way we use our time then determines the person that we are. And when we use our time poorly, this poor use of time compounds and grows until years have passed and we are no longer a person we ever wanted to be.

Queue the panic attack and mid-life crisis.

I call this the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™ and it’s acting on you every day. It’s acting on you right now. Each time you take an action which is poorly chosen, worthless or completely negative, this adds to the pile of shitty actions you’ve already taken, stored away in your life like a bank vault of fuckups. And like a bank, you get interested on this in the form of the resulting poor self-esteem.

And the more you add, the more it grows; and the more it grows, the more you hate yourself.

This brings me to two quotes I’ve always liked by Musashi:

“Do nothing which is of no use.” And “Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

The first is probably my favorite, exceptionally brutal qualifier on how we spend our time. Once it’s in your brain, it sticks like a virus and questions “is this useful?”, and then if it isn’t “why are you doing this? What could you be doing instead?”

When we orientate our lives into useful activity, our choices compound into massive results that are massively useful; like a book, a business, or a good relationship. When we orientate our behavior into useful activity, we actively medicate ourselves against the ever building effects of the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™.

When we get all stuffy and bogged down with crap, all it takes is one useful decision to start setting it right. And when we start building the habit of doing that every day, we’re not just setting our days right, we’re setting our lives right.

This is not to say that things like playing video games and watching youtube videos are something you should never do. Fun is useful after all, it just comes down to moderating excess, knowing whether your actions are truly making you happy,  and being conscious of how you are spending your time. If all of your actions are like water that spills into either one of two cups, a good choices cup, and a bad choices cup, make sure the majority of your actions flow into the former, so that at the end of the day, it’s as close to the brim as you could get it.

Try it and see if you aren’t satisfied.

Musashi’s second quote is a useful reminder and antidote to the ever-present and ever negative berating of self-esteem.

“Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

It’s easy when we’ve consistently failed to develop ourselves to get caught in patterns of negative self-talk where we endlessly reinforce an idea of who we are (usually, that we suck), telling ourselves that we cannot achieve what we want to achieve because not only have we failed but that we are a failure.

Sometimes, the argument can seem pretty convincing.

But just because you’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means you need to do something different today. You need to take a different action to the one that resulted in failure. You need to start the day anew and try something new. And then you need to do that tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, until finally, you are that ‘something new.’

Don’t get hung up on the past. Defeat the past.

 

*In Japanese, the last name is typically said first, so the correct way to say his name would be Miyamoto Musashi, although, as I’m writing in English I felt it better to stick to English conventions. The same can be said for Sasaki Kojiro.

 

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

How To Stop Being a Self-Loathing Burnout

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IF YOUR LIFE is anything like mine, then somewhere between the waking up; showering; taking a dump; masturbating; singing; watching youtube videos of cats; watching youtube videos with a cat; wondering what it would be like if your bus smashed into someone; reading a book; browsing the internet and feeling guilty about not reading a book; being late for work; waiting for the day to end; replying to a message in the group chat only to start an argument; approaching that girl in the supermarket; getting too nervous to approach that girl in the supermarket; chastising yourself for being a pussy; arguing with your manager; arguing with your manager’s manager; going to bed on time because you’re content; going to bed too late because you fundamentally dislike yourself; writing something worthwhile; writing something that’s a complete load of shit; checking your website stats; or measuring your penis, it’s incredibly easy to lose track of your day.

And if you lose track of your day. You lose track of your week. And if you lose track of your week, then that starts to add up exponentially and all of a sudden you realize you haven’t done anything worthwhile in a hell of a lot of time, and your mother was right when she told you that you were a loser.

In order to keep track of a life that is going to get away from you, it pays to have a measure of just what exactly you’ve driven forward.

Human willpower is about as sturdy as a three legged chair. The more we exert ourselves, the less we end up having, and the less we have, the more we fall prey to making decisions that we do not truly wish to make. And far from willpower being something we can realistically train throughout our weeks, more often than not, the simple nature of the routine in our lives often causes it to deplete on mundane tasks.

The reality of willpower is this:

Through the simple act of being swamped by your day to day routine, you are going to run out of willpower, and you are going to make decisions that are contrary to your goals and interests.

Just as it pays to recognize the limits of your willpower and take steps to expand those limits, it also pays to recognize that those limits are going to defeat you more often than not, and you are going to suffer as a result. Just as you cannot go to the gym for the first time and lift the biggest weight on the rack, you cannot hope to force your mind into a state where it will be able to perform feats of incredible force of will. The training takes time, and again, as with the gym, if you over-train, you will see set backs and more failure.

This may seem fairly straight forward and obvious – but the problem is that when we want to improve our lives, our happiness is often tied to metrics of how much we have improved, and because our happiness is so deeply tied to that improvement, we measure our performance on a day by day basis based on how much we’ve improved. This leads us, inevitably, to notice how much we’re not improving, and exert more willpower in the effort to improve.

Which, as I’ve mentioned above, more often than not leaves us in a place where improvement is unlikely.

It’s a process that we all engage in, and it’s a process that cripples our effectiveness. 

The trick then is to break the process.

And we do this by addressing what causes us to expend our willpower. That being the way in which we choose to view our own progress.

I can’t remember who it was, but in a book about success (one of the many I’ve swallowed), some guy said that he reviewed his week, every week, and he credited his success to this. An idea I liked at the time, but one that never caught on, this is something that lingered in the back of my mind ever since.

The idea is a simple one, but one that can be deeply tied to our self-image. As I wrote above, when we desire improvement, all we notice is when we aren’t improving, and this leads us to pursue and expend excessive effort from a state of neuroticism. In other words, when you hate yourself, you treat yourself badly. When our foundation for improvement is flawed, so too will all of our efforts; and the longer we engage with flawed efforts, the more they will compound upon each other, corrupt our motivation, and sink our dreams.

I propose another idea. Look at where you’ve moved your life forward. Maybe this week. Maybe this day. Just look for where you’ve moved it forward. In any way shape or form. Look for where you’ve moved it forward.

Instead of being lost in a race against who you no longer wish to be, or what you’re trying to escape from – look at where you’ve moved your life forward. Maybe this week. Maybe this day. Just look for where you’ve moved it forward. In any way shape or form. It doesn’t have to be a success, it doesn’t have to be some ringing achievement, it just has to be some kind of forward movement of any measure. Because cumulatively, over any period of time, any movement, of any size, adds up to a bigger movement.

And in life, big movements add up to big changes.

And it is within these scarcely perceptible changes that we actually grow, not in the goals or wins that we drive ourselves to seek.

And in any form of ambition, whether that be specific or an emotion change within you, it is the movement that constitutes the distance gained.

But right now, I’m sure you thinking, that’s all well and good, but what if I haven’t moved my life forward in anyway. Not today, not last week. Not ever.

Uh, okay? Who cares? Move it forward now. Move it forward tomorrow. Just move it forward in whatever way you can. Just do something, anything, other than giving yourself shit. After all, is dragging yourself down and beating yourself up internally not a step backward? Is it not a destruction rather than a construction? 

Because at the heart of it, any forward movement is an action you’ve taken towards building something new.

Maybe you want to be more social; maybe you want to get a better work ethic; maybe you want to have a better dating life; maybe you want to be better at guitar; maybe you just want to get better at being proud of yourself. Whatever it is, within that desire, is a tiny, microscopic improvement you can make on a daily basis, that in some way, will move you forward; will move your life forward.

You could do something as small as saying something nice to a friend. You could do something as small as saying hi to a colleague you haven’t spoken to. You could do something as small as not looking at your phone for 30 minutes; focusing on work for 20; read a few pages of a book; ask a girl for directions; tell a girl she looks great; spend 10 minutes practicing a guitar riff; read some music theory; or just sit down and take a moment to figure out what your values are in life.

Y’know, important stuff.

Because within any goal, there are tiny steps of progress. And all you have to do is take them, and recognize that you’re achieving movement.

When we fail to accurately measure our lives, we become neurotic about our progress and exert unnecessary, excessive effort in an attempt to accelerate our progress. This results in us losing control of our will, and falling into poor routine and poor decision making.

This all stems from our sights being on the win that we want, rather than the steps what we’re taking. But it is only the steps that get us there. The steps we take are the vehicle that carries us the distance. In other words, the steps are the win.

When we learn to measure our lives by the movements we have taken, we learn to keep our actions in the present, consciously advance our lives in realistic ways, and prevent ourselves from falling into neuroticism. Because at its core, measuring our lives accurately comes from a place of self-acceptance, not self-hatred.

Isn’t that foundation you’d rather build from?

 

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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!

How to Become The Master of Your Motivation

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THE LONGER YOU PURSUE or try to generate motivation within yourself, the longer you will fall prey to what is already motivating you, and consequently, never change the actions you take. Just as a sailor must harness the direction and force of the wind in order to get to his destination, so too must we learn to harness our own innate pre-existing motivations or we will be blown off course.

It seems like there is an enormous, never ending patch of internet real estate devoted entirely to useless advice on motivation. Ranging from “never give up” platitudes on persistence to echoed sentiments of “you choose your own destiny”; motivation is treated like something that we can learn; a skill that we can obtain.

This, of course, means that when we’re lacking in motivation, it’s due to our lack of will, ambition, drive or discipline. In short, when we’re lacking in motivation it means that we are lacking in strength of character. This position, the most commonly held by people, is the most persuasive. Chiefly because of how it allows us to self-aggrandise when we’re doing well, but also, more sinisterly, it allows us to indulge in our feelings of worthlessness when we’re lacking motivation. We agree with this reasoning of motivation because it agrees with how we feel about ourselves.

But consider your life. How often have you willed yourself into a state of motivation, and how often has motivation arrived on its own, generated from a place within you that you have entirely no say over? How often have you turned motivation into a skill, and how often have you simply been at the whims of varying motivations throughout your day, that arrive and depart of their own accord?

If you’re anything like me, then motivation shows up whenever it wants to and has little to do with your own determination. Motivation isn’t something we learn or generate but in fact, something that is already there, and already motivating us.

When we pursue and identify with a goal, and then lack the motivation to pursue it, we often fail to realize that our lack of motivation doesn’t stem from laziness or lack of discipline, but often because we are already motivated to pursue something else that is contrary to our goal. And the longer we fail to identify and understand this motivation, the longer we are susceptible to its influence, and condemn ourselves to move away from what we want.

I spend a lot of my time writing. I consider it my dream to become a novelist. To write well structured, emotionally engaging, dramatically memorable stories is something I’ve wanted for the last 6 years of my life. I would consider myself very motivated to write. I write on this blog, I read innumerable amounts of fiction, and have spent countless hours thinking about structure, plot, and character; yet I have scarcely taken any large strides towards my goal of becoming a novelist.

I have ideas, I have characters, plots, scenes, structures, acts, moments, images, descriptions; I have, at the point of writing this, at least three clearly outlined novels in my head. Yet still, they go unwritten. Despite my motivation to pursue writing, of which this blog is a testament, whenever I approach the craft of fiction, I shy away even though the pursuit of writing fiction is what I am so motivated to pursue.

So why don’t I write?

Because I believe that I don’t know what I’m doing, and because I’m scared that my stories, once written, will reveal me as someone who fundamentally isn’t a novelist. And for someone who is actively invested within his identity with the idea of being a writer; this would be intolerable. This would be painful.

And it’s a contradiction.

Just as I am motivated to change (through the act of becoming) the novelist that I believe I am, I am even more motivated to not pursue that change as it threatens the identity that I am possibly a novelist. My motivation lies more in enjoying my idea of myself than it does the reality of what I want my life to be.

But this contradiction doesn’t just stop at writing.

When I was younger and looking to improve my dating life, I decided I wanted to approach girls during the day and I considered myself extremely motivated and driven to do so. I would go out, I would dedicate time to figuring out what I wanted to say, wear, do, act, and where I would go about doing this. But strangely, once I’d arrived, I was never really motivated to do so. The tricks that I’d learned – getting myself in state, desensitising myself, and visualising my goal – never seemed to work, and instead, all I seemed to notice was how fucking weird it is to approach people during the day, and that everyone would see, and that I was a social reject.

Needless to say, I rarely approached. And far from just being during the day, this reluctance extended into meeting girls at night. It was something I didn’t want to be seen doing, and no amount of generated motivation could change that.

Because, as with the writing, I was already motivated. Rather than being motivated to change my dating life, what I was motivated by was something far different. And as soon as I realized that, everything changed.

When it started looking at my actions and how I went about pursuing my goal, it became apparent to me that I was more than willing to sort myself out and put myself in the necessary environment, and I was even willing to approach. I had no problem with motivating myself to change my life. But when it came to changing my life by approaching girls in front of other people in socially awkward ways, I would always back down. Always.

Changing my life, it turns out, wasn’t my real motivation. Preventing social embarrassment was. So, I began to dig.

And it only got worse.

Preventing social embarrassment wasn’t just my motivation, but changing my life was simply a channel through which I was attempting to prevent myself from being embarrassed, rejected and alone in future. I wanted to change myself into that ‘cool, confident, fearless’ guy I pictured in my head. The one who was the exact opposite of how I felt.

What led me to seek to change my life was exactly the same thing that was preventing me from approaching. I was both propelled and withheld by the same force.

Try that for a mind fuck.

That single motivation – to never feel like I didn’t measure up socially (whether that be with others, friends or romantically) motivated 90% of the decisions I made within my life.  Even if the motivations seemed to be contrary, and caused me to take actions against my best interests, the motivations for each were often exactly the same thing.

And it was only upon understanding this relationship, that I began to by extension, understand myself, and work on the factors that were affecting and nurturing my motivations.

Understanding that I wasn’t being motivated by a desire to have a better dating life, but instead to protect myself from being alone allowed me to address that fear of aloneness, and address the issues of inadequacy that were shaping my life, and affecting my motivations. And it was no surprise, that upon doing this, my motivations began to fall in line with my desires.

Likewise with writing, understanding that my motivation stemmed from my investment in my idea of who I was allowed me to realize how it was holding me back, and defining the actions I could and couldn’t take. When I was certain about who I was, anything that threatened that certainty was a threat to my very being, and by extension, a threat to my happiness. Letting go of that allowed me to view writing as it is – a craft and a way to enjoy my time.

This is why I look at motivation less as a series of techniques, and less a reflection of our ‘strength of character’ and more as a deeply personal relationship. When we lack motivation in our lives, it’s usually because something is fundamentally wrong, and is being left unaddressed. And rather than addressing it, we usually seek to pile things on top of it and crush it with will power and determination.

Instead, if we treat ourselves with empathy, if we pay attention to the actions we’re taking and ask ourselves ‘why’ our true motivations begin to come to light and we can begin to unearth the contradictions within our lives and our identities. And once we’ve discovered those contradictions, we can begin to work on them.

Because that’s the secret.

Motivation isn’t about forcing ourselves to become who we want to be, it’s about discovering who we actually are.

 

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!

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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!

Why Do We Continue To Procrastinate? The Real Reasons You Procrastinate — And How To Stop

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AS LONG AS the pursuit of our goals threaten the way in which we chose to perceive ourselves, we will consistently fall into patterns of procrastination in order to stop that pursuit, and protect us from that threat. As long as procrastination remains an emotionally driven experience, any attempt to solve it with band-aid solutions will result in failure.

I do not know why I continue to procrastinate. Logically, it makes no sense. I am well aware, knowing emotionally and intellectually, that the achievement of work is the only thing in my life that seems to bring me consistent, predictable and satisfying happiness. So, therefore, it follows that I would pursue this as my primary pursuit above all others, and given the satisfaction in achieving it, I would never be tempted or led astray from the activity of my work.

But as I am writing this article, you already know that this is not the case. Instead of doing my work and achieving my happiness, I procrastinate.*

Happiness is a unique goal. Rather than something that can be achieved on its own, it is rather something that is achieved as a result of other achievements. It requires a degree of nourishment before it can come into bloom. For some, this is socializing, or connection, or exercise, or winning, but for me, this is only work. Specifically, work dedicated to removing whatever is in my head, and actualizing it in some form; like, for instance, this blog post.

Diagnosed with ADHD at a young age, I’ve often found the world incredibly boring. Travelling lost it’s wonder extraordinarily quickly, dating women eventually blurred into one, and socializing with friends always became, and will always become stifling. Not just inclined to easy boredom, I am also deeply internal, an affliction which I struggled with for most of my life.

In school, this manifested as an inability to understand anything that was being taught to me, as my mind was busy doing something else, and refused to be told what to learn. In socializing, this made conversations excruciatingly painful, littered with shyness and self-consciousness, and a stifling degree of overthinking – something that I still manage to this day.*

This boredom and restless mind, when combined, result in a happiness that is deeply tied to the expression of new thoughts that I have had. When I was stuck in school, struggling to focus, it was because my mind was busy with something else; that something else being having ideas like this one.

PROCRASTINATION

My procrastination, as I have experienced it, is a deeply emotional issue. Prior to writing this article, I took a look at the landscape of posts detailing the same subject. From habits that can prevent procrastination, to environments that facilitate it – every single post left me with a feeling of disappointment. Like I was looking for a cure for the common cold, and instead, all that was explained to me was how to deal with a running nose.

Procrastination seemed like a far deeper issue than they presented; one that was tied to the way we perceive ourselves, and specifically, the way we perceive ourselves within our work. And as a result of this deep tie, any attempt to apply band-aid solutions to the emotion through habit, would only result in short-term, short-sighted fixes, that make for a great list post, but offer little of actual value.

However, before we leap into tackling procrastination, it is important to understand whether we are accurately identifying procrastination itself. Struggled with since the time of the Ancient Greeks, procrastination has often come to be defined as putting off work that needs to be done. This example is largely sufficient when applying it to say, revising for an imminent exam, but it becomes less robust when applied to work that has a less tangible need.

To combat this, I delineate procrastination into three categories: minor procrastination, false procrastination, and true procrastination.

MINOR PROCRASTINATION

Minor procrastination is laziness by any other name. It is the deliberate avoidance of work that is neither enjoyable nor easy, but needs to be done, and is avoided for no other reason than the effort required and the lack of enjoyment. Typically, the procrastination involved will entail low effort, high enjoyment activities such as television or video games.

This procrastination is extraordinarily shallow, and what the majority of procrastination advice seeks to cure. It is a result of poor habits and is amended with better habits – whether that being giving yourself plenty of tasks, working without the internet, goal setting, stimulus control, or leaving areas of high distraction or typical relaxation (like your house).

This procrastination is a matter of training, and if I’m honest, not really a focal point of this article. The trick, if you want advice, is to always get the hardest thing done first, and keep a to-do list every day. If you do those, you will not fail to master minor procrastination.

FALSE PROCRASTINATION

False procrastination is something that is difficult to identify. If we accept that procrastination is putting off work that needs to be done, then false procrastination arises when the nature of work requires a specific amount of thought, or the need of the work isn’t urgent.

I have written about the merits of doing nothing before; that in allowing our minds time to collate information in silence, we give ourselves a far better chance of making creatively inspired decisions. False procrastination is no different. In fact, another name for it might just be thinking.

Some goals require in themselves a degree of procrastination and distraction in order to be effectively actualised. Men such as Tolstoy and Schopenhauer, to the Buddha or Steve Jobs all praised the merits of idleness as a keystone element of work.

In what I think is one of the finer illustrations of false procrastination, Hemingway said that he would write in the morning for a few hours, and once finished, never touch or think of his writing again until the next day, whereupon his rested unconscious would have the necessary material and inspiration to continue.

TRUE PROCRASTINATION

True procrastination, on the other hand, has little do with the necessity or nature of the work, but instead everything to do with the work’s relation to us.

I’m sure you can think of a time when pressed with a deadline, you have sat at your computer screen, doing any other task but the one demanded of you, all whilst being subjected to the ever-present whispering conscience which takes you to task on your procrastination.

“You shouldn’t be doing this”, it repeats.

But ignoring it, you continue.

True procrastination is essential to identify, because it is not a habit, but instead a relation that we have with ourselves, and the engine through which we exert ourselves on the world; our work. This relationship is fundamentally emotional in nature, which is why we feel so disconcerted when we fail to get started on our work.

When I detailed the elements in my psyche that compose the union between my happiness and my work, I did so for a specific reason – I was attempting to show how our self-concept ties to our work. In mine, it is tied to my need to express what I feel. Yours may be similar, or it may be different, but either way, your work is some form of expression of identity. And herein lies the problem.

If work is an expression of our identity, then any issues with our identity will manifest as issues within our work. If we lack confidence, then we will lack confidence in our work; if we are insecure, then our work will be insecure; and if we feel like what we have to express is fundamentally unworthy, because we are fundamentally unworthy, then we will avoid work that seeks to express that, as we believe it will result in us being hurt.

Just as false procrastination can be relabelled as thinking, true procrastination can be relabelled as protection.

True procrastination, unlike minor or even false procrastination, is the kind of procrastination that occurs when you know you want to achieve a goal that is deeply tied to your identity; like your dream of becoming a novelist, or your aspirations of starting a new business. It is within these goals, that the protectionist nature of true procrastination will begin to arise and attempt to prevent you from pursuing what it is you so badly long to do.

THREATS TO IDENTITY

When we hold a dream of ourselves, that we hold to be ‘the real us’, we tie that dream to our identity. When we attempt to pursue that dream, what we are actually doing is attempting to prove that is who we are.

And it is exactly this reason that we procrastinate.

When we believe that ‘the real us’ is a novelist, failing to become a novelist threatens that belief about our identity. It threatens who we think we are. And that’s terrifying. Whether it’s becoming an actor, an entrepreneur, a fighter, a singer, or a moralist; any goal that is deeply tied to who we choose to believe we are also brings with it a terror that we might not actually be that person.

And if we aren’t that person, then who the hell are we? And why were we pursuing something we never were?

It is the certainty of who we are, that exposes us to procrastination. In deeply believing we are something, we expose ourselves to the terror that we might not be.

The solution then would be to not choose to perceive ourselves in any way and to hold no dreams. But I think this is redundant advice. You, like me, have little control over your dreams, but what we can do is scrutinize them. Challenge our motivations, and challenge the way we perceive them.

Procrastination is an emotional issue, with deep ties to our identity. As a result, it can only be handled by understanding that identity and approaching the issue as an emotional one. The more we come to understand why we are deeply connected to our goal of achieving something, the more we come to understand why it’s important to us to achieve it, and the more we challenge these beliefs, and present alternatives – the less we become tied to their actualisation.

When we accept that we are not our goals, but instead our goals are actions we choose to take, we shift our focus on to the actions we wish to take right now, rather than the fear that we might not be who we set out to be. Because it is only when we take those actions, that we get to find out.

*Whilst procrastinating as I wrote this article, I did an online test that told me I was a highly advanced procrastinator and should seek immediate help. Highly offended, I closed the window and started watching cats leap into boxes on youtube.

*Far from being unable to function in normal society, I actually have a fairly active social life and do well at work. But despite this, I still find these things enormously challenging, as my mind is always elsewhere. The mental equivalent of having one lung.

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!