Tactics Tuesdays: Destroy Your Own Learned Helplessness

Our society trains men to be helpless, for several of its own reasons. But it’s important you know helplessness is learned... not inborn.

Learned helplessness is the behavior shift that occurs when an animal or individual decides its situation is impossible to change. At this point, the individual decides he is helpless to affect the outcome, and simply gives up trying.

Some of the most tragic stories of crushed spirits come when you discuss learned helplessness. Animals who’ve been caged so long they won’t try to leave even if you leave their cage doors open. Prisoners who aren’t able to operate outside the penal system, so commit crimes to go back to the familiar comfort of the prison yard. And men who’ve been unsuccessful with women so long they don’t even try to meet them.

In a recent popular thread on our Beginners’ Forum, a forum member starts off by asking why women like dominant men and men who take the lead. But it quickly becomes clear his real issue is not a philosophical question of why women prefer dominant men, but an exploration of his desire for women, yet lack of motivation to take steps to meet, date, and sleep with them.

This article will not be about why girls desire dominance and leadership, per se. If you’d like more on those topics, see these articles:

• How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn’t Know About the ‘Winner Effect’

• A Failed Relationship is a Failure of Leadership

• Why Leadership is so Key to Seducing Women

• The Real Reason Many Men Can’t Get a Girl

Rather, this article will be about the phenomenon of learned helplessness in the modern male – where it comes from, who’s responsible for it, and what you can do to shake it off.