Mindsets

About a day ago, we had a commentator on the post on how to become romantic who weighed in to let me know that it's silly to try and get better with people, and that most people have better things to do, and that in fact you really should just be yourself, and anyone who doesn't realize how awesome you are is simply intellectually stunted.

Where do people come up with this malarkey?

I know he represents a vanishingly small minority on this site -- and likely was just a passerby -- but this mentality represents the majority of the thought on the subject in mainstream society.

"Just be yourself. If people don't like you for who you are, who needs 'em?"

Quite likely one of the most counterproductive mindsets a man could possibly have. Anyway, I addressed that commentator's individual points pretty thoroughly in the comments section of that article itself, so I won't revisit it here, but I do want to talk about this mentality of "just be yourself" -- and why it's such terrible, terrible advice.

I sat there in a café by myself, staring blankly at a couple of abandoned plates of food.

"I won't let this make me bitter," I whispered under my breath.

I'd spent the night talking and moving from club to club with a girl I liked a lot and had been pursuing for months. She was smart, funny, tall -- beautiful. Everywhere she went, she attracted men to her, like moths to a flame. But she treated me different than all the other guys rotating around her; them she'd be polite but dismissive toward; me, she'd spend hours just sitting there talking to. She didn't do that with anyone else. That night, it'd been just us, the entire night -- and she'd been talking about the two of us going to an "after-party" together -- I started thinking that finally, after all this time and effort, I was getting somewhere with her. I suggested we could just chill at my apartment.

And then, in the middle of us eating at a café at the end of the night, before heading to our "after-party," some guy she knew happened to show up, just as she'd gotten up and was heading into the bathroom. She was excited to see him -- then, they disappeared around the corner together. When they came back, they were laughing like little kids... and they sat down next to each other across from me.

I'd been sitting next to her before she got up.

It was early 2006. I didn't know what I was doing -- I'd only been trying to get better with women for a year, and only actively doing it -- religiously -- for about 2 or 3 months now. But I figured I had to try to save this; I'd try anything I could. It couldn't fall apart -- not now. Not when we were so close, after months of hard work.

So I tried boyfriend destroyers, even though this guy wasn't her boyfriend.

I tried seeming as calm and nonplussed as possible as they flirted in front of me.

I tried going over the top and telling them what a beautiful couple they made as they fed each other food across the table from me, hoping she'd protest that they weren't a couple. Instead, she only played along more, telling me she'd been chasing this guy forever but that he kept turning her down.

And then, despite my efforts, the moment I went to the bathroom to collect my thoughts, they disappeared.

The bill was waiting on the table for me when I got back. And they were gone... off into the night together.

"Don't be bitter," I said to myself.

I'm being driven nuts right now about a discussion I'm having with my girlfriend about something we've already discussed and I thought was settled. It has to do with a difference in belief systems; I show her solid evidence and research from the West proving my position, she returns to hearsay, word-of-mouth, and ingrained beliefs she's getting from friends in the East who aren't actually informed on the matters at hand but have firm beliefs on them nonetheless.

She's normally a very logical, rational girl, but this specific matter is driving her uncharacteristically batty, and she's falling back to fears refuted by science but given weight by popular opinion. Understanding why this happens to otherwise sane, rational individuals is key to understanding how people's views of the world are built and maintained.

It's similar to the autism-vaccine "debate" that's going on in the States right now, or the electricity-cancer "debate." No matter how much research is done to show that there is absolutely, positively, no link whatsoever between vaccines and autism, or power stations and cancer, people continue to believe there are causal links anyway, because they've seen and heard sources that support their position.

The worst part is, it doesn't matter where those sources got their information from. It doesn't even matter if the sources outright say, "I just know it." The only thing that matters is that there are, indeed, sources that support the position.

Enter reference points: something I've mentioned at times on this blog but haven't devoted an actual post on (see "How to Get Real Girls" and "Social Status: Building It and Using It" for the latest posts that mentioned these). Reference points and reference experiences are what we use to define our belief systems, worldviews, and ideas about reality, and they're absolutely crucial to the way we see life on Planet Earth.

A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even.

She tells him all kinds of things about herself, her eyes wide and filled with excitement. It feels as though there's a bubble around them, in which only they exist; the outside world falls away.

For a while, as time passes, the energy and enthusiasm only builds. It builds and builds, until it hits a peak; a crescendo. And then... it begins to fade.

The guy panics mentally; he can tell he's losing this girl, whom he felt so sure was his only minutes before. He works hard, trying to turn things around, to reignite the passion that was there. But alas, his efforts fail, and the fire dies.

He's fallen victim to a painful fact of life and love: attraction has an expiration date.

But what's more painful is, guys almost never realize this is why they failed. Usually they assume it was a value problem, or that they need to get better at maintaining attraction.

If only they knew the truth: they did just fine with attraction. It was, ultimately, that failure to act in a timely enough manner that led them to losing the girl.

Question from a reader named Sam yesterday:

Hi Chase,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great advice and content you post here. Some of this stuff is pure gold because I have had a few "ah ha" moments, especially about the interchangeability of value and good feelings, and this I think will take my game to a better level. More importantly though, it has greatly increased my understanding of relationships, not because you didn't know this, but you "just couldn't put it into words".

Another thing I learned here was that I was making the mistake of investment, but from what I have read here, there are a few things to fix here and there on this part. Can you please write up a comprehensive post on investment? (haven't come across one here yet) And some of the dos and don'ts of it. You did mention in one of your posts (chase framing post) your would write about "comprehensive investment / compliance post".

You probably hear a lot of praise, but I'm just putting it out there that this is indeed great stuff. I honestly do wish I had come across your site earlier. All in all, you now have a regular reader.

Investment's a great topic. It's one of those things that boggled the heck out of me early on, but it pays such incredible dividends in the end. Once you really get down a strong, solid gameplan for investment and you know what you're doing with it and you have your strategy for approaching investment in whatever situation, your interactions with women run so much more smoothly.

Of course... getting there, well, that's the challenging part.

Just received a comment from an anonymous poster in response to a recent blog entry entitled "Baiting vs. Trading Information." I'll repost his/her comment in its entirety here:

"Women will be interested in you when you stop treating them as though they are subhuman, or aliens you must develop strategies to "catch." You should fuck off and die."

Well, now.

My first reaction was defensive: who is this nameless, faceless person stepping up to attack so bitterly while hiding behind the veil of Internet anonymity? And where did he/she get the idea that I recommend "catching" women or treat them as subhuman or aliens? Cleary, this poster hasn't spent a great deal of time reviewing the content on this site.

The poster presents an interesting question, though, and one very much worth addressing: Is seduction wrong? Is it wrong for a man to learn how to do well with women?

Is learning how to get girls a bad thing?

Was discussing this on a forum with a guy; I used to talk about it a fair amount, some time back, but it's sort of faded from my life in significance. It just isn't on my mind much these days anymore, but I do remember how big a deal it was for me once, and hopefully my story and process can help a few people.

I used to be depressed. Really depressed. For about ten years, I was so utterly despondent and resigned about life, I thought the rest of my life would be that way. I was often filled with anger and resentment toward the world, and felt like I was fighting against everybody else. Forced outside the system and viewed as an unwelcome interloper, I was friendless and without companionship, isolated and alone. I didn't belong anywhere.

How I turned things around, and transformed myself into a guy who's constantly positive and optimistic – and no, it ain't an act, I really am optimistic, in a realistic, practical, still-somewhat-cautious way, all the time – and filled with a can-do spirit and good at getting what he wants and succeeding at most things he tries, at least over the long term – how I turned myself into that kind of guy from the complete opposite, well, that's the subject of today's post.

And I feel it's worth saying before the jump, that yes, you can do it too. There's nothing all that exceptional about what I did – but you're going to have to be a little stubborn to do it. If you ever struggle with not feeling so great though, and you think you're ready to start pulling yourself up by your bootstraps now, read on.