• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

LIFE UNCIVILIZED

Dating And Life Advice For Men

  • ARTICLES
    • BEST ARTICLES
    • ALL ARTICLES
  • COMPLETE DATING COURSE
  • COACHING
  • E-BOOKS
  • ABOUT
    • CONTACT

Life Experience

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

by Visko Matich · Jan 15, 2019

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

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

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

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

“Lose 30lbs.”

“Get laid.”

“Start my business.”

“Write my book by April”

“Quit my job by July.”

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

But then you wake up.

WHY YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FAIL

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

Why is it then that they so rarely get achieved?

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

And that’s where we slip up.

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

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

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

Stemming from all of this is a simple perspective:

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NEGATIVE FORCE OF HABIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

Here’s how this bad boy works.

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

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

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

Don’t understand?

Here’s an example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now you’re on the money. Except…

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

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

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

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

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

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

Fix that, and things start to click.

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

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

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

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

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Goals, Life Direction, Life Experience, Personal Development, Self Improvement

The 3 Biggest Mistakes That Screw Up Your 20s

by Visko Matich · Jan 31, 2018

 

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

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

Not all mistakes are made equal.

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

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

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

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

These mistakes weren’t unique to me.

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

The patterns just kept showing up.

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

YOU’RE HOLDING ON TO CHILDISH THINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You can’t do this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU’RE WAITING FOR A FEELING THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL

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

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

To this day, it’s never been finished.

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

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

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

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

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

Repeat ad infinitum.

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

This was largely the case for me.

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, discipline.

YOU’RE PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT

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

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

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

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

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

No, it wasn’t.

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

And so, my focus was almost always external.

“Does this person like me?”

“Does this person find me funny?”

“Will those people reject me?”

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

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

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

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

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

So how to fix it?

Honesty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my own experience, all three work.

SHUT UP AND SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

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

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

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

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

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

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

Foundational problems

Essential, otherwise known as getting your shit together

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

Social problems

Has huge effects on your emotions

  • Social circle
  • Dating life
  • Family life

The Real Shit

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

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

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

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

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

Because here’s the truth about getting older:

The problems never stop coming.

 

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

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

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

Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash

 

 

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

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

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

by Visko Matich · Oct 21, 2017

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

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

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

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

I was a quitter.

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

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

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

The trick then is rebuilding that trust.

LESSONS FROM A SALESMAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE THREE TRUTHS OF AN EXCEPTIONAL WORK ETHIC

1) Focused work trumps ‘hard work’.

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

3) Trust is built on consistency and predictability.

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

And that’s for a simple reason.

Burnout.

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

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

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

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

THE THREE METRICS OF SELF TRUST

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

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

Trust.

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

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

 

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

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

 

Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

 

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

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

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

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

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

This Is The Most Attractive Thing You Can Ever Do

by Visko Matich · Oct 9, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She left the call a few minutes later.

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

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

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

Nowhere is this truer than in dating.

WHY MEN LIE TO WOMEN

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

Instead, what we do is filter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you guess why?

What is it that he could possibly want?

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MODERN PLAYER IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

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

And the reason for this is blindingly simple.

You’re unattractive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it’s either attractive or unattractive.

It’s either for you or for her.

KILL THE POLITICIAN

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

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

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

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

And you have to do this every time you speak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God knows.

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

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

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

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

But here’s how it needs to work:

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

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

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

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

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

In other words: Never lie. Never pretend.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash

 

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

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

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

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

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

3 Unexpected Life Lessons From The Greatest Warrior of All Time

by Visko Matich · Sep 17, 2017

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.

 

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

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

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

 

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

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

If You Want To Be More Charismatic, Start Telling Good Stories

by Visko Matich · Sep 2, 2017

IT DOESN’T TAKE A GENIUS to look around and see that, as a species, we’re completely obsessed with stories. Whether it’s the news, television, books or advertising, we consume stories relentlessly. And the reason why is no mystery.

Stories make us feel.

News makes us outraged. Titanic makes us cry. Twilight makes us gouge our eyes out and advertising makes us feel fat. Behind all the details of stories, there’s a feeling.

And if feeling lies at the heart of charm – it’s no coincidence then, that storytelling is one of the easiest ways to skyrocket your charisma.

In What Is Art, Tolstoy argued that art is when a feeling is transferred from the artist to another person. I believe charisma works in largely the same way; emotion is contagious, and when felt strongly, will often rub off on another person.

This is why when you feel anxious and uncomfortable, people tend to feel uncomfortable around you. This is why when you feel genuine warmth for someone they enjoy being around you.

The most charismatic people we meet are the ones who make us a feel a certain way. They’re the ones who capture our emotions and take us from a lower state of feeling to an intense one.

If we’re sad they can make us happier, or they can make us a sadder. If we’re angry they can make us laugh; if we’re bored they can make us excited.

And stories are the easiest way to do it.

Why else do we watch television when we’re lonely, scroll through other peoples lives on social media when we’re bored, why else do we go to the movies when our lives lack excitement?

Stories are everything.

But telling them well is a different matter altogether.

THE RULES

In this article, I’m going to break down the steps you need to tick off in order to tell a story well during a conversation. This is not something that is easy to do, but it is something that, with practice, you will learn to maximise your ability at. Below are the 7 techniques you will need to employ, in the listed order, to master any story you have to tell. For good examples of people doing this in practice, watch any stand up comedian worth his salt. It is essentially their job to do this well, and then some.

Here are the techniques:

  1. Start with the truth
  2. Embellish it
  3. Structure it
  4. Add obstacles
  5. Find your key elements
  6. Learn your delivery
  7. Fail, fail and fail until you’re good

But first, let’s start with the biggest excuse people normally give: I don’t have any good stories.

I DON’T HAVE ANY GOOD STORIES

One of the biggest complaints people have when it comes to telling good stories is that they don’t have any good stories from their life. And if you’re thinking this, then it’s a fairly compelling excuse; an excuse that’s, more often than not, justified with any number of reasons and evidence drawn from your own life. 

Maybe you’ve never done anything exciting. Maybe you’ve never experienced much of life. Maybe you’re a complete loser. Maybe you’ve been sat in your parent’s house all your life and have never known what it’s like to leave home.

But hang on, how many people have never left home. How many people know what that’s like? Isn’t that worth sharing? What the hell do you feel every day if you live like that?

I don’t know. I don’t think many people would know. But if you’re in that situation you might.

And that’s it. Nobody has experienced exactly what you’ve experienced and felt. It’s entirely unique to you.

You always have a story.

Now, it might not be as obvious as some of the examples I gave, but as with embellishment, you can take a kernel of truth and expand upon it. Often, you can take two separate, average stories, and blend them into one.

The other day I was on a train heading out of London when I needed to use the toilet. When I got inside, I sat down on the rattling toilet seat and went about my business. The whole place was filthy and cramped and got me thinking about a time I had food poisoning when I was on a bus, traveling. The bus didn’t have a functioning toilet seat, so I had to squat above it. The lock on the door didn’t work so I had to hold that shut as well. It was a nightmare. I remember that the walls were falling apart – all ripped and tattered. That, in turn, reminded me of the time I arrived at my third world hostel dorm only to find an insect nest in the corner of the room.

Eventually, sat there on the train toilet, I began to blend the stories into one. Until it became “I once got food poisoning on third world train. When I got to the toilet there was no seat, no lock on the door, and some kind of insect nest in the corner.”

And from there it basically tells itself.

The idea is that your life contains a variety of stories – some that will work from the outset, some that work better when combined – and all of them, without exception, are unique in emotional content to you. Nobody felt them the way you felt them. And passing that feeling on to others is what brings you together.

START WITH THE TRUTH, THEN EMBELLISH THE SHIT OUT OF IT

A good story starts with a kernel of truth.

Maybe it’s setting off the alarms at the museum, getting food poisoning, or asking a girl on a date. Whatever it is, the element of truth which you, or someone else, has experienced is the basis from which you build a strong story.

In my own life, I once set off the alarms at the Auckland Museum. That seems like a good place to start a story. But this on its own fairly thin, and lacking the necessary elements to heighten engagement.

In the early stages these elements are simple:

Context and embellishment.

Context is the events surrounding or grounding the story. And embellishment is what every story needs. Think of it like an amplifier, you take whatever you have that is true and amplify it. This might sound like lying, but as Mark Twain once said: “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying for a second that you should lie. That’s lame. And considering you’d be doing it to impress people, that’s double lame. All you need to do is take a story that is true and exaggerate some of the elements so that they make for a better story. Think of it as giving the truth a facelift.

Taking that to my own story, I would say:

“I once set off the alarms at the British Museum.”

It just sounds better, bigger and grander. The trick is to keep it believable, but just expand the story so it’s more engaging to the listener. Often, they’ll spot that you’re exaggerating but won’t care because they understand you’re just telling a decent story.

Now that’s a fairly simple example, but consider this:

‘In Bolivia, I was attacked by dogs.’

This is true, I was. There were two of them. However:

‘In Bolivia, I was attacked by a pack of wild dogs.’

Sounds much better.

But telling that story from beginning to end lacks context, so I would usually add:

“Before I went traveling, I had to get a bunch of vaccinations. My doctor recommended all of them, but I only got the essentials. I skipped rabies, as, I’d never gotten bitten by animals in my life so why would that change now? Well, In Bolivia…”

This establishes more of context, also adds stakes to the story (other than, y’know, getting eaten). Context is essentially helping the listener orientate themselves to where the story is and who it is about. The more efficiently you can do this the better.

But if you’re looking to tell a story, you need to make things emotionally engaging. This is done two ways.

  1. Through structure.
  2. Through how you physically tell it.

STRUCTURE

First, we’ll deal with structure.

The basics are simple. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Which roughly translates as:

Beginning (context and set up), middle (conflict), end (resolution).

The beginning is where you want to give your listener a sense of place and character, as well as any elements necessary for the context of the story. You want to introduce what the story character wants, and how that brings them into conflict with people/things.

The middle is where the meat of your story is and will usually be the longest part. This is where you want all the conflict to occur, all the obstacles that your character has to face here, building up to a final, largest obstacle that they’ll have to overcome before the story is resolved. The more your character loses here the better.

The end is where you resolve your story. You resolve the conflict and you explain how your character got/didn’t get what they want. Any other side stories, elements or jokes that have been set up get resolved here.

OBSTACLES

On top of this, you have characters who are attempting to achieve some kind of goal. In order to dramatize this, you put obstacles between them and the goal. This naturally makes the story longer, but also increases the chances it’s emotionally engaging.

For every obstacle you introduce, you want to introduce a way around it that either works or doesn’t work out. The best kind of ways around it are ones that result in a ‘Yes, but’ which is something I use to describe a plan that works but incurs negative results as a consequence.

Consider this example, I will put the obstacles in bold.

“In Bolivia, I was attacked by a pack of wild dogs. I had turned down a wrong alleyway a night and stumbled across a pack of them. Their ears pricked up, and they instantly launched at me. I ran around the corner, straight into a fence, which I tried to climb but my keys fell out, so I dropped down to grab them, and the dogs leaped at me, but I got them, and fell over the other side and ran off down the street.”

Essentially you want it to be:

I wanted X, but then this happened so I did this, but then this happened so I did this, but then this happened so I did this, and then I finally got X / didn’t get X.

That’s the most simple structure you can use. Now note that the example follows the structure. It has context (I meet the dogs) and conflict (I’m trying to escape the dogs), but it still needs resolution.

Now, if I was to continue this story (and please bear in mind I’m trying to write this as I would say it to someone, rather than how I would write it), I would do it something like this:

“I thought I’d lost them, but when I reached my hostel, they were there. Two of them were moving towards me. The biggest dog approached me first, some kind of Pitbull. He cornered me into my door and was growling and barking – but the one behind him was even worse – this feral, yapping thing, leaping up at me.

I had no idea what I was doing but I turned to the bigger dog, looked him in the eyes and kept saying “easy”, “easy” in a calm voice and trying to look non-threatening. In mind, this seemed like the right thing to do. It never occurred to me that the dog probably spoke Spanish. I kept doing it and I don’t know what it was, maybe I reminded him of someone who treated him kindly, but he stopped barking and turned to leave. The little one, the beta dog, followed him. I was shaking, but I pulled myself together and opened the door. As soon as I did they both spun, and leaped at me. I slammed the door shut as they hit it and I fell to the floor hearing them barking and bashing against it, trying to get inside.

Laying there, all I remember thinking was “why the fuck I didn’t I get my rabies vaccination?”

The entire of that resolution, is true, incidentally.

Aside from the two basic obstacles of the dog, I also punctuated the general story with ironic or funny observations (the dog speaking Spanish, and my vaccinations). This isn’t as necessary as introducing an obstacle and an inventive way of overcoming it, but as humor is the most pleasant feeling, if you can get someone to laugh or smile, you’ve done a good job.

Now, this might seem like a lot of effort, but the reason I do this is simple. The embellishment and detail helps to build the emotion that I was experiencing at the time; panic and excitement.

But a story on it’s on isn’t enough. Where an experienced writer could take the above, and layer it with atmosphere, reversals, and drama – in conversation, you don’t have that much time, so you have you have to tell it well.

You have to tell it with feeling.

THE TELLING: KEY ELEMENTS AND DELIVERY

The difference between written story and spoken story is the time that you have to tell it. A book is all about deep immersion. I could go into detail about what the dog looked like, what the street looked like, what my relationship with the Bolivian economy is like and how the moon hung in the sky – but face to face that would take ages. It would bore you to death. You’d feel awkward standing there as I blathered on. Try reading a couple of pages of a book out loud. You’ll immediately notice it takes ages and that not a lot happens.

In person you want to be brief, you want to strip any story you have down to the basics, embellish it where necessary, dramatize it so it has feeling, and then you want to tell it. Because it’s in telling it that it comes to life.

The two rules for telling are expression and pauses.

Expression determines the mood/emotion you are trying to convey, and pauses give the expression emphasis.

Take this example. A few years back, I lived in a house filled with strange people. One was an alcoholic, one had pet rats, another was into S&M and another was wildly promiscuous. I usually tell stories about the last two; short ones, that rely almost entirely on the telling.

“My housemates Ex was banging on the door. She was saying she needed to pick up some of her old things. Sure, whatever. He wasn’t in, but I knew he’d placed her stuff in a box near his door. I left her to it, and she set to rummaging around in to box checking it was all there. When she was done, she picked it up and headed out. As she passed I took a look inside. Sat on the top was a strap on dildo. What the – ?”

“My house mate ran into my room one morning in tears. I asked her what was wrong and she said “I brought a guy back last night and he was really awful to me in the morning”, I felt bad for her and asked her what happened and she said “well, he started being really rude, laughing at me, and he turned to his friends -“ “hang on, what were his friends doing there?”

Neither of those work that well when you just say them, they rely entirely on saying the very last element with a look of complete confusion, bewilderment, and eventual figuring it out. This is for two reasons:

  1. It’s exactly what I felt at the time.
  2. It’s exactly what the listener is feeling.

The stories are about the realization that my housemate used to get pegged by his girlfriend, and that my other housemate had a gang bang. In both situations, I was none the wiser, and this news was dropped on me in a strange fashion. That was the feeling, so that is the feeling I need to convey.

The general principle of expression is to feel it strongly. Almost exaggerate it. Just as you embellish details, exaggerate expression. It just heightens the effect. Then, with pausing, hold it for longer than you think is necessary. Hell, I often look around bewildered, then wander off at the end.

So for the example of the dogs story. I would typically tell it quite fast paced with a general emotion of fear or worry, slowing down at points of emphasis. Fast paced because I was being chased. Fear because I was scared. And slowing down at moments like “It never occurred to me that the dog probably spoke Spanish” because that only really works if I say it like it’s a moronic realization.

The trick is finding the moments that are the key elements that the story hinges on. These moments are the ones where the feeling exists, and it is these moments, that when targeted, will help the person listening feel the same thing. The same principle applies for punchlines of jokes.

FAILURE

For every story I tell that lands, there’s a dozen where the altimeter gives out and I glide in ignorance straight into a mountain face.

Some people won’t like what you’re selling, no matter how sharp it is, and what’s worse, you won’t be good at selling it till you’ve failed to do so a dozen times.

It’s all well and good to have a great story, but until you’ve taken the risk in conversation to tell it, you’ll never learn if it’s actually any good and if you actually have any ability to tell it. As I’ve argued before, charisma of any kind hinges on you potentially being unlikeable.

Stories epitomize this. There are few things that risk a negative response more than telling a story badly. It is a woeful faux pas. But you have to go through it and you have to risk it.

There is no other way.

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

Good stories don’t just entertain, they help people learn who you are, and what you feel.

One of my biggest problems is that I have always been a class clown. The dipshit at school who said stupid things to make people laugh always got sent out of class and was always looking for approval. In many ways, I’m still that guy. I like to entertain people. The only thing that’s changed is I care less about what they think.

The flaw with this is that whilst I make people laugh, I often end up avoiding stories which really open me up (and by extension them) as a person. I make them feel what I want them to feel, rather than feel what I am. In reality, I need to tell better stories like anyone else, not just for charisma’s sake, but to feel closer to the people I’m around. To make me feel less alone.

For you, this will be no different.

You’ll have been through a break up, or you’ll have met someone that inspires you, or failed sometime, or succeeded sometime, you were probably brave once, you were probably a coward once – you’ve lived a life, and because of this, you’ve experienced all the various things that other people have, but in your own unique way.

Learn to share that uniqueness.

Because when we’re trapped within ourselves, and the most we offer socially is entertainment, or even worse, silence, we never actually let people get to know who we are. We never actually escape our own loneliness.

It’s not how I’d want to live.

I remember when I first started dating. Girls would always ask me why I was single, how long my relationships were for and why they failed. Of my biggest relationship, I would always say “it fizzled out”, and move on to some entertaining story or joke. I shared nothing of value about myself.

The truth was that my relationship failed because I was needy, didn’t really have my own life, and I was manipulative and terrified of being alone. My ex-girlfriend contributed in her own way sure, she didn’t really know what she wanted. But my reasons were clear, and my responsibility. I was needy and a bit of a loser. But years later, despite being confident that I was no longer that same person, I never shared that. I always moved on. Scared deep down that those same reasons for being rejected then would be a reason to reject me now.

What happened when I opened up about it was quite the opposite.

They accepted it. And shared some of their own failed relationships and emotional failings. They admired the confidence.

Go figure.

In admitting I wasn’t confident in the past, it turns out I was now.

For years I’d felt like that was a weakness, an ugliness that was unique to me, but in reality, plenty of other people; men and women had been there. Telling that story allowed me to realize I wasn’t alone.

And it allowed them to realize they weren’t either.

 

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

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

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

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Attraction, Charisma, Charm, Comfort zone, Conversation, Courage, Dating, Game, Identity, Life, Life Experience, Neediness, Personal Development, Relationships, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Skills, Women

The Simple Art of Not Wasting Your Morning, Day, Week, Youth, or Life

by Visko Matich · Aug 8, 2017

 

I’VE ALWAYS HATED the idea of a morning routine. Touted in podcasts, blogs, and self-help books, they’ve always come across as some kind of scam. I mean, if I want to be a successful lawyer, what use is it for me to wake up, perform dynamic stretching, eat quinoa and black beans (all within half an hour), and then recite my empowering, refined and impassioned mantra into the mirror. Wouldn’t all that practice make me better at all of those things? Wouldn’t, y’know, practicing lawyering make me a better lawyer?

The morning routine has always fallen into the category of: “Hey, if you’re too scared to actually pursue your dream, here’s some unrelated activity you can do to make you feel like you’re actually making progress!”

Rather than offering an actual solution, it just capitalizes on fear. And the beauty of it, if you’re an internet marketer, is that there are so many different things someone can do in the morning, that you’ve always got another solution to sell.

Yeah, It’s snake oil.

And I hate it.

But in the case of prolific and award winning author Salman Rushdie, I like to make an exception.

When asked about his writing process, Rushdie was quick to admit he didn’t engage in any bizarre rituals. What he did admit, however, is that he had a habit of getting up, and immediately getting to work.

He woke up, and he started working on what he needed to work on.

Using the first of the morning’s energy.

Rather than another shit-show of bizarre, impractical, unrelated and often useless tips; his own process was one that made obvious and perfect sense.

As the day goes on, our energy fades away. So it pays to start work as soon as you fly out of bed.

PRIORITISING EFFORT AND LEVERAGING ENERGY

If we accept that the first of the morning’s energy is the freshest then we accept that we are likely to be most effective during those first hours after waking. If this is true, then it stands to reason that stacking the most difficult, challenging tasks during these hours is the effective use of energy.

Every thing that you’re less likely to enjoy, more likely to put off, and more likely to find difficult, should be immediately attacked during this time – as there’s no point in the day that they’ll be easier and quicker to complete. The longer you leave them, the more their difficulty only magnifies.

Now, this is fairly useful, if obvious, advice on how to structure your day and maximize your energy with your work – but where it got me thinking was when I realized that more than just good advice for your day, it’s damn good advice for life.

DAMN GOOD LIFE ADVICE

When we’re young, we have more energy and more freedom than we will at any other point in our lives. As with our day, the longer our lives go on, the more our energy depletes and the more the options available to us are restricted by our responsibilities. And if there is no point that we’ll have more of these resources, we owe it to ourselves to stack the difficulty into the early years of our lives as much as we can.

Just as there’s an eastern proverb that says “the best time to plant a tree is right now”, there’s also a Life Uncivilized proverb that goes like this:

“It’ll never be easier than it is now. So get the hard parts done right the fuck now.”

Shave my head and dress me in orange.

Just take a look at any success:

The guy who builds his own business suffers through long start up working hours, limited time to socialize, takes huge risks with his future and often invests large amounts of his own money on ideas that will not pay off, and only returns him back to the starting line, where he starts all over again.

The guy who gets the better dating life spends years getting rejected, suffering through questioning his identity and staying up late in bars and clubs during his work week. He will often feel unattractive, unworthy and like a social reject.

The guy who writes the novel spends years devoting time before or after work to write down passages of writing that go nowhere, to multiple novels that fall flat and don’t work. His first finished work will likely be met with meek praise from his family and series of rejection notes from publishers.

Within any example of achievement, there are inherent demands of suffering that must be met. These demands, in each example of achievement, require huge feats of effort, persistent and emotional resilience. They also require time. There is no time than the present that we will have more energy to engage with these demands. There is no better time than right now. No matter what age we are – right now is always best.

I guess what I’m saying is this: we’re often told to enjoy our youth, but what we should really do is suffer through it. Because when we have more energy to tackle the suffering inherent to the goal we’re pursuing, we are more capable of taking on that suffering, and thus the difficulty of that challenge is in itself greatly diminished.

It’s never easier than it is in the early hours. This is true of the morning. This is true of your work week. This is true of your life.

When we front load our youth with suffering, our middle and later years are free to focus, hone and capitalize on the rewards our grunt work achieved us. This could be a better marriage due to understanding yourself, your emotional needs and women better. It could be a better understanding of novels through a mastery of plot, character, and revisions. It could be a better understanding of business through a honed instinct for buyer behavior, marketing, and lean business models.

It could be anything. But it will be learned by failure, and it will be learned by suffering and struggle.

Use your energy wisely. Get it out of the way early.

 

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

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

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

 

Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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

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

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

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Dating Advice For Men, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Certainty, Comfort zone, Courage, Dating, Finding Our Passion, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Personal Development, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Self Help, Self Improvement

Next Page »

Copyright © 2021 · No Sidebar Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • TERMS AND CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTACT
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.