Mindsets

Quick post. Taking action.

One of our members on the discussion boards wrote about being depressed and not knowing what to do. My response to him was brief:

“To build on what Ray said... start cranking the handle.

Whether you’re lifting weights in the air, writing pages for your next book, or talking to a pretty girl, it’s pretty tough to feel bad about yourself when you’re in action.

It’s when you’re sitting still twiddling your thumbs that all the bad thoughts creep in and take over.

Want fewer bad thoughts? Spend more time in action instead of thumb-twiddling.

Chase”

A second reader followed up my post and asked me to write more on taking action.

So here it is.

The Ancient Greek philosophers had it figured out two and a half thousand years ago: you should know yourself. But fast forward to today and there’s no shortage of modern men who know nothing about themselves. These men are not going after what they want, because they don’t know their own desires. They suffer from self-perceptions that are stunted or warped, and they can’t be sure of themselves. Perhaps worst of all, men without self-knowledge question and doubt themselves – especially when they fail with women.

In Part 1, I showed how failing to know yourself will hold back your progress with women. In this article, I’ll talk about some strategies for learning about yourself. But more importantly, I’ll explain the principles behind the pursuit of self-knowledge. Once you understand these, you’ll be able to advance your self-knowledge, explore and strengthen your character, and, ultimately, triumph with women.

I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license when I was 16, and before my 17th birthday I got my dream job as pizza delivery boy. On my second night of work in Mississauga, Ontario (a suburb of Toronto), I got fired.

I went to an address with a pizza. As I approached the door, I could hear the pounding bass and the hoots and hollers of the people inside. I knocked on the door, and when it opened, a bunch of happy young people burst out practically on top of me, followed closely by thick wafts of tobacco and weed.

A cute girl about 3 years my senior (19 – LOL) tried to pass me a beer over the shoulder of the dude who was facing me and counting the money for the extra large… It was cold outside, so I suggested they let me step inside while they figured out the money and I could drink the beer (Canada and the USA have some of the most draconian public drinking laws imaginable and, ironically but not surprisingly, a huge problem with public drinking).

Someone passed me a joint. I found myself on a couch with a beer in one hand, a slice of pizza in the other, and the cute 19 year old on my knee giving me a “supertoke”. One thing led to another, and I was shocked and appalled to see how angry my boss was the next night when I went back to the pizza parlour asking if I could work again. I was fired on the spot. Logically I understood why, but I still resented it; why couldn’t I have fun AND have a job I love? Does life always have to be a tradeoff between doing what’s best for you and doing what you love to do?

As I get older, I’ve started to become more aware of the value of self-control.

Self-control is simply the ability to resist urges when it’s profitable for you to do so. It is the strength to put all things into priority and context. It would have taken only slightly more player skill to look at the host and the 19 year old girl and everyone else in that party in the eyes and tell them that I WOULD be back in 2 hours as soon as my shift was done, and if they would save me some booze and weed I would bring more pizza. How hard is that? I was already in with them. It was difficult because I had no self-control, no sense of timing, and no healthy view of context.

According to Napoleon Hill, author of the Think and Grow Rich, men learn self-control in one of two ways:

1. Their sex drive diminishes, usually with age but sometimes prematurely due to bad health or injury

2. They learn to sublimate their sex drive to higher thinking and purpose

Hill wasn’t talking about abstinence, he was talking about the correct sequence of profitable action. In a nutshell, if you’re feeling “frisky”, Hill wants you to do productive work FIRST, before turning to the opposite sex. Consistently doing so, Hill says, means your results in all areas of life will skyrocket.

Underlying my desire to risk my job to be close to a woman was an extremely high sex drive. Well into my 40s now, I find it challenging to go a full 24 hours without an orgasm and ejaculation at least once a day. It was 3, 4, even 5 times a day, for DECADES.

Don’t get me wrong – I was as unsuccessful with women as they come back when I was 16, but I was also very much a “natural”, something I did not fully appreciate about myself until well into my 30s.

It is late at night, your hands wrap around the wheel, the car eases out onto an endless stretch of highway. The road hums beneath you. Your breath is slow... In... And out... Your eyes are clear and steady as things come and go. You tune out the need to "get where you are going" and you just drive.

Life in that moment is just a sequence of breaths and subtle adjustments, and you never feel out of place or "off the mark". Your mind extends out into the horizon, and you lie in wait, perfectly ready.

Sometimes when we talk about women we get too focused on what is supposed to be happening that we forget how good it feels to not have to do a thing and just remain on target.

The other day I was sitting in the car with my mom, discussing a recent traumatic experience and its effects on my psyche. At some point in the conversation, I lost my calm and hit the car door in my rage. I immediately recognized my mistake and soothed my mind with some quick meditation. After swallowing my chill pill, we discussed my life-long struggle with aversion.

She conjured many anecdotes of my angst, whether it was yelling at kids over Xbox Live or getting 2nd place in a Tae Kwon Do tournament. Of all destructive emotions, anger is my closest and most poisonous friend.

To rid myself of this friend, we then brainstormed the cause of my anger and my mother proposed a theory, saying to me, “Hector, anger is a sign that you’re afraid. Animals only lash out in anger when they’re afraid of something....”

As my mind reeled, she followed with a question, “Hector, what are you afraid of?”

“So, you’re still single?”

“Yeah, you know, I just haven’t found the one yet…”

This is an excerpt from an exchange that happened years ago with a girl I somewhat had a crush on. This happened before I learned that there was such a thing as seduction and started out on the path of improvement.

The funny thing is, even though now I can imagine her rolling her eyes at this answer and thinking “yeah, right, that’s why you’re single…” at the time, in my mind it made perfect sense – I had a socially acceptable explanation; an excuse that made my non-existent romantic life “okay”.

And the saddest part was that I truly believed that if only I found “the right girl”, I wouldn’t need to put in any effort, better myself, become attractive, and everything would just happen naturally and I’d live happily ever after.

As romantic as it sounds, this pervasive fairytale-like fantasy was actually a limiting belief in disguise, and a common one at that.

But limiting beliefs are in effect not only in relationships and seduction – tell me what you’re struggling with and I’ll tell you in which life area you have the most limiting beliefs.

With this article, I’d like to discuss some of the more common limiting beliefs that are haunting an area very closely related to seduction – your appearance.

The reason why I’m focusing on this area in particular is that, even though all of us know that it’s a great freaking idea to work on becoming better with women – approaching, isolating, escalating, closing, managing relationships, etc. – many men, especially those who struggle and seem to have very little real success with women, still have trouble grasping the role of appearance in seduction and how to work on it.

Just like I did with my “I just haven’t found the one yet” excuse, they are telling themselves socially acceptable stories why they are not sexy men but expect sexy women to fall head over heels for them.

And so, let’s discuss some of those stories.

We’ve all been there. We’ve felt frustrated, minimized, and as if we didn’t deserve to succeed. We’ve been in a place where it feels as if diving into a new world (like women, business, or personal development) is like being dragged into a confrontation with all the deepest cuts you’ve ever felt (hell). We’ve been smothered by it, we’ve wanted for it to let up, and we’ve blamed ourselves for not being able to let it go (as if it were an abusive addiction).

But why?

Why is it that in order to learn something new we let ourselves be pulled into such a desperate place?

Why is it that the process of learning to live with the awareness of a new set of threats runs us ragged?

Why do we give up that part of ourselves in exchange to LEARN?