Beauty and depth

Had another great night yesterday! In general, it’s been going really well the last two weeks. In listening to the Blueprint, I realised again that all I need to do to get rid of my feeling of displeasure, if it has no real grounds is to… drop it. Like a hot coal. Be happy! It’s a habit, not something that happens to me. That’s one to remember. It’s also the struggle with ego; I’ll let it go, it’ll sneak back in, I’ll resist its presence but in doing so only strengthen it… It’s a process I need to go through, get to know the ins and outs of it so I recognise its phases as they happen and learn what reactions work for me. Another liberating thought: we’re all constantly in cycles. From realising we’re not happy with the situation as it is and why, to defining what should be better, to creating a strategy to make it better, to implementing it, to evaluating the results, to defiing what should be changed and kept. I have this thing where I feel ashamed of going into introspection, or not feeling like going out. Like I’m sick, and there’s something wrong with me that I need to fix or something. But it’s just the cycles, and every cycle has its characteristics and reflection on our behaviour. Sometimes you’re best staying in, in others you’d better get out there. But I think this is quite advanced stuff; newbies should just get out there ;-D

So what worked? I entered the place alone yesterday, so I was a bit tense about that. But I admonished myself to relax, and above all, take care of my own needs first. I remember that most of the great nights I’ve had, started with some time spent by myself relaxing or in a good conversation with someone, something that connected me to myself. So I figured if anything real and good was going to happen, the first thing I needed to do is connect to myself. I sat down a bit, looked around. I went outside and took a piss. I ordered a drink (no alcohol! Like Jeffy, I only started drinking once I was on fire :p). Walked around.

I felt the urge to ‘do’ something but resisted, and of course in doing so did a lot of things very naturally. When I felt the thought come, I just dropped it. No self-reflection needed, only trust and connectedness to myself. And also the soothing realisation that any social situation won’t just open up to you the moment you walk in (or not many). It takes some adaptation: time for people to watch you, get used to you and appreciating your value through the actions they perceive of you. So while everything you do has a meaning or repercussion, it’s just no use trying to control it; you never know who’s going to like or dislike you for any given action anyway. As long as it fulfills you and you’re considerate to others, anything goes.

Then, I felt it was time to talk to someone. The difference with half an hour before that is that now it was just because I wanted to, not because I expected it from myself. I wanted to share myself around, now that I had briefly rediscovered what riches lie inside

I approached, and the reactions weren’t great, but I didn’t let it get to me. I think it’s understandable that people don’t always react well to strangers walking up to them. That’s just the way it is. In fact, I use a variation of BlueWave’s approach here: I walk up, say a few lines, not too much, then leave. Half an hour later, I’ll come back and say some more. Yesterday as well, I was having great fun with some friends that had come and some girls we met, and I could see the people I’d approached glancing now and again. That’s social proof for you. I noticed that if I keep on respecting myself, I make people respect me. If I get a funny look, I give a funny look back. If they react weird, I understand, don’t get angry and extricate myself from the conversation with a smile. The more I learn about my own processes and childish reflexes (because they were learned in childhood, often come up inappropriately even though as adults we backwards rationalise them into social patterns ), the more I see how we are all children. I understand who people feel afraid of strangers, I FEEL when they uncomfortable and more and more, I’m able to tune into their feelings and flow with them to comfort. Hard to explain, but I’m sure you understand. If not, talk to more people!

In fact, here’s my theory on the social matrix and ‘building an evening’. In the beginning, take it easy. Be humble and nice. If people don’t react well, bow out with a smile, don’t expect anything from them or yourself. At some point, you’ll make friends. Talk to them for a while, get comfortable, get to know each other. Create a base. Then, when the time is right (you decide), start talking to other people again. Go back to your base. Replenish your energy! Your battery isn’t eternal, at least I can’t meet new people all the time – I need some comfort as well. Return long enough to charge yourself and to add something to the evening with your friends (important!), but not too long to start procrastinating (fifteen minutes-ish is my natural rhythm). As you start talking to more people, start spending time with those that are more worthwhile to you. A mistake I still make often: don’t spread your energy around too much! Scout, introduce yourself, and select. Another great thing: introduce people to each other. They automatically assume that you’ve known them for ages, even when they find out that you haven’t the impression of familiarity stays (trick of the mind).

In introducing people to each other, you’ve effectively opened up the room. This is another kind of energy, another kind of state. You can go talk to people just because you think they’d like this other person, or you can talk about a person you met and if your conversation partner is interested, go introduce them to that person (even if you didn’t really talk to them, most of the time they’ll feel honoured). In this way, you slip in and out of groups without anyone really noticing. Once people see that you’re going around and being well-liked, there is no stopping you anymore. Basically, yesterday, I talked to ALL the hot girls, and high-fiving the guys. I admit there is still more than enough work on my confidence and consequent comfort building, escalation etc. but at least I was talking to people, and getting a good vibe! And you can’t please everyone anyway. Some girls even started giving me the eye, like publicly, and all I had to was smile and walk over. Beautiful.

So then we changed venues. It was a bit harder at first, a really crowded place with younger girls (more bullshit, less realness), but then I spotted the hottest woman I’ve seen in ages. I was talking to some people at the bar in a group, and asked if she was a friend of theirs (getting introduced eh…) but she wasn’t. So I walked up to her, and said ‘So who are you?’. She looked at me, taken aback, amused. I just stared at her with my eyebrow raised (my trademark, I even have a special wrinkle above my right eye from doing it ), she started laughing and said she was L. I introduced myself, I introduced myself to her friend, I asked her if he was her boyfriend, we talked about stuff (don’t remember). Such a great energy! Charged, but relaxed. I could see she liked me. At the end, I said we’d go for a coffee. She said ‘I don’t have coffee with just anyone’. I said something like ‘Just anyone?!’ and told her to give me her number. She laughed, and said that she had a boyfriend. This is where it could become contentious for you guys. I bowed out. We had talked about how you shouldn’t interfere in relationships as they were hard enough as it is, so it would be a bit weird of me to push it. I also said that I’d have coffee with her even if she had a boyfriend, like as friends, but at that point it was up to her. I chose the elegant option, and said I was happy to have talked to her. We kissed goodbye (cheeks) with a big smile. Even though I didn’t get her number, this is pretty much my first conversation with an absolute 10 that I felt completely comfortable in (not a doubt in my mind) and that went like fireworks! Someone more evolved might have gotten more out of it. Let me know! In any case, I’m hoping I run into her again…

No kidding - she looked a lot like this.

One more thing that I want to note on all this: becoming good socially and with women, or at anything, is not just about getting used to success, feeling that you deserve it. That comes quickly. The hardest part, for me, is getting used to the inevitable lows that follow nights like these. As great as the night was, I still ended up in bed alone. That I don’t mind. I don’t need to dive in bed with a chick I picked up, I’d rather get to know someone better and build a special moment with them that still feels worthwhile after I come all over her face and I met enough women yesterday that I can and will go for that with. Back to the point: getting used to lows. This morning, I was not a superstar. I skipped the morning at work and lay in till noon. I scuffled to the kitchen for some tea and a sandwich. The interactions that seemed so heroic yesterday looked different in daylight. I started wondering if I didn’t make a fool of myself, being so hyper. See what’s happening? Self-consciousness at not being in the same state. Because you can’t be in that state all the time! I started my night out really chill, taking time for myself, grounding. That wasn’t too superstar either. After being up there though, I start thinking that I should be up there all the time. So what I need to do: get back to the ground. I guess it’s a kind of performance: my moment of glory becomes a point of feedback afterwards for future growth (at its best). It’s another form of letting go of an ego that springs up in those beautiful moments. I want to say ‘that was me. Look at how cool I am’. But in fact, it’s happening through me. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, things just flowed. Just like this morning, I’m more subdued and I want to chill, so my flow is to accept whatever state I’m in. This is the basic secret of all this stuff: accepting the state you’re in NOW. It could change, but it only will when I first accept what is now.

That’s what went wrong last weekend. I had a great time like yesterday, only I started feeling like this was ‘the new me’ and I became greedy, going out five nights in a row and ending up depleted, and not liking what I ended up with. You see, every day you live the way you want to live is like a point added, a rock to the mountain you’re building. Every day you live against those principles however, like letting your ego take over and trying to consciouly force a replication of something you had yesterday, are points that you lose. So the main point is: stay with yourself and your integrity, don’t sidestep your conscience. Stay humble. Accept your state as it is NOW. Even if it means not going out for two months and digging into your soul, seeing yourself become anxious in approaches and feeling like you haven’t made any progress at all. Everything you feel has a use. Maybe it’s a lesson that you need to learn. Maybe it’s something you thought you had learned but that still lives within you, on a deeper level. Maybe something is calling for your attention that you haven’t been wanting to see ever since you started out going out with girls. The periods that I’ve retracted in myself were always the foreboding of a new level that I achieved afterwards, and the more profoundly I went into it (as in, the less I resisted whatever I was feeling), the more profound the change in me was afterwards. It’s the cycle I talked about in the beginning of the post. Sometimes you need to dig deep to find what’s troubling you, and your mind doesn’t give its treasures up easily.

Something to all of us here, who think about how we can improve with the ladies, and the few between those that are thinking about how they can make themselves more valuable and how they can love themselves more completely. First thing is that thinking about it makes your situation clearer. So being conscious isn’t all fun and games – it hurts more. Other guys live in a daze and think they’re rocking, because in their minds, they get all they want. I have it myself all the time, so I know. I tend to get intimidated when I see guys in night life, looking so confident, so pimp. It’s like they have it all together. But now that I’ve started talking to them, and really try to look for that force that they seem to exude, I see that it’s all a farce. Every guy out there is afraid of approaching beautiful women. Every guy ends up in the friend zone. Every guy fucks the wrong kind of girl because it’s all he can get. Every guy wakes up wondering what the fuck he was doing getting drunk yesterday and making a fool of himself. Every guy in a relationship has to struggle through doubt, power struggles, boredom, temptation… Every single guy has to deal with the lonely nights, with giving a place to meaningless sex, with how to explain that yes, he is here alone. And every guy feels like a hero, a little boy, when he plucks up the courage to go up to that girl and make it happen. He feels like a fucking PIMP when he gets a number, and a ROCK STAR when he meets her again and beds her. That’s it

No, ONE more thing about seduction. Angel taught me this These days, I don’t really try to ’seduce’. I look for realness. In me, in the people I meet. I talk about the things that keep me busy, even my work or my exes or something, and then when they talk I listen to them, genuinely. That in itself may not get you laid like a motherfucker every night, but it sure as hell will set you up with a lot of phone numbers and grateful girls with lots of curious girlfriends One woman literally told me that I seduced her by simply listening to her actively – “that is so rare!”. So, be attentive. Don’t be afraid to be a friend! The whole friend zone thing is true, but think about your social life. If you have ten cool chick friends, how good are your chances of having some female company next Friday? And how long do you think those girls will be able to resist when they spend time with such a cool, attentive, funny guy?

Your comments – compilation

I want to say thank you to all of you who have been reading this blog, and most of all those of you who comment, criticise, add on to my thoughts as well as support me offline. Thank you Nouvelle, Angel, Wim, Cruise, and also BlueWave and Grandmaster G for your experience and insights. Please keep on gracing me with your experience, as it’s this more than anything that is making me grow.

Before I write my next post I want to show you which of your quotes have inspired me. I hope you don’t mind me paraphrasing you as it might seem different outside of the context.

Angel

One of the strangest thing about self improvement seems to be that the things that you feel only happen to you, in fact happens to 90% of other people…

My game these days is based on giving a woman an excellent night out, regardless where it ends (with a deep conversation, a laugh and a tear, a kiss of in bed).

It fullfills me knowing that a woman had a great time when hanging out with me and I feel good about it again (something I lost when trying to ‘get the woman in bad asap’)

Wim

What is important is to define the goals you toil for from the top, from YOUR desires. You push yourself to achievement, and that is good, but the end goal is not yours. That is why you feel empty.

Maintain your own balance.

BlueWave

One of the dots I’ve connected over the years is knowing which circumstances I need to be most effective, with regards to women. Like singing, knowing which styles you’re good at naturally, and which styles you’re better off leaving to other singers.

“hard selling” myself, with a kiss or fuck close from the first encounter is definitely not my area of expertise. I’ve had them in the past, but like you touch upon in your blog, they’ve hurt me more than they’ve enriched me.

Nouvelle

You don’t always need or should have an emotional connection to sleep with a woman.
And it ‘ll only be hurtful to you and her, if it’s done for the wrong reasons, ie trying to cover other holes in areas of your life with sex.

I really get why you want emotional connections, but it feels like you NEED them, when in my humble opinion they should be a bonus.

Be social, be aware of who you are and what you want. Those things are like a muscle. If you don’t move them, they will atrophy and die. If you want to strengthen them, it will take time and it will hurt at the beginning. But you always gotta be excersizing the muscle for it to stay strong.

Damn, I wish I wrote all that! Thanks guys

Guest Post: BlueWave

My good friend Bluewave recently found the time to read my blog and he sent me this insightful email (not least for its praise of my blog ). What I find interesting is his approach to women. He’s never read any of the PUA stuff (except the Game, which is just something to get you started) but his dad was a natural and active ladies man, and he’s been in a relationship for ten years – which hasn’t stopped him from frequently approaching women, or having options. I’ve always found him to leave an undeniable impression on most people he meets – those he chooses to interact with. I remember when we were younger, he would go up and talk to the most intimidating people that I hardly dared look at, and actually impress those people just by talking! I didn’t understand how he did it at the time, I though he was just another kind of person. Then something clicked, a few years ago. Why not me too?! Since then, I’ve been working on just that a core confidence he had in his own abilities and soul. There’s something to learn here; for one the ability and confidence to choose who to interact with and next to effectively connect when you’ve chosen to. So it is with respect and admiration that I share his mail with you now. Read, enjoy, engage!

“It feels like you’ve connected a lot of dots in this blog,…by thinking about a whole range of causes and effects in your life, and how you’ve come to stand where you’re currently standing on your map of life…and my thought was that I’m pretty positive there’s a lot of information there, a lot of dot connecting there, that some of your readers will not have given too much attention to in their quest for a better understanding of women.

It’s uncanny how well you bring into words the various stages of development you’re going through,…from “just” learning the lines, and tactics, to thinking about why some lines and tactics work better than others, to why you’re using lines and tactics at all, to why you’re even in the predicament of needing to think about lines and tactics with regards to women.

Something like that, just the line or the path you’re on is clear and radiant when reading your writing, which makes for really interesting reading.

I’m certainly not a made-man. Like everything else that helps me out at any given moment, it’s a set of instincts and intuitive calculations I adapt when around women. Not at all refined, on any level, but effective enough for me to find and draw in women that appeal to me. My dad is definitely at the base of it all, making me conscious right from the start how relevent and necessary it is to be aware of my interaction with women, and how to tweak my sex appeal when I find myself in the company of a woman I want.

One of the dots I’ve connected over the years is knowing which circumstances I need to be most effective, with regards to women. Like singing, knowing which styles you’re good at naturally, and which styles you’re better off leaving to other singers. For instance, I don’t feel comfortable actively trying to connect with women in a club, especially if you’re sober and thinking straight. It’s just too loud, too distracting, too clouded with the masks people wear when they’re all dressed up and aching to make their best impression on the world at large,…but put me in a small study group, or a library, or a fitness club,…places where people are more or less just themselves trying to better themselves, and I’ll connect with pretty much anyone I choose.

I’ve also noticed though that I need 3 brief interactions to get into the zone with that person. The first interaction is nothing more, or should be nothing more than creating a healthy curiosity, and leaving a gentlemans impression. No hunting tactics, no overstaying your welcome, no overkill, no pushing buttons,…just being nice and well mannered. In the second interaction I get to refer to the first interaction with humour remembering important things like her name, the company she works at, what she was wearing, how she had her hair up,…pretty much anything that signifies she left a good impression on you,…again without hunting or piercing barriers,…more a case of unclothing her psychologically.

By the third interaction there’s almost always a mild form of longing to hear what you have to say, or just to spend time exploring eachother some more, and it’s at this stage that I get to step up a gear without having her feel like I’m intruding or violating her personal space. If you’re banging or even knocking on that door from the first interaction, you may get your kiss close, or even fuck close, but deep inside, she’ll realise sooner than later that she feels intruded upon or violated in her personal inner space,…losing respect for herself, and thus, you.

After three interactions, you’ve reached a point in her mind that you’ve swept her off her feet with an effort spread over numerous weeks or in the best case months, and the playing field is pretty much yours to do with as you please.

That sums up my approach, and I’ve gotta say, for me personally, it’s never, ever failed. (failure defined for me as a woman who in no way, shape or form considers any type of relationship with me.)

So, “hard selling” myself, with a kiss or fuck close from the first encounter is definitely not my area of expertise. I’ve had them in the past, but like you touch upon in your blog, they’ve hurt me more than they’ve enriched me.“

This is not Bluewave but he looks like him :p

Going from Dependence to Interdepence – The Rodin Edition

Earlier today, I was struggling with the next questions:

Is it possible to be happy being single, or is it just not in our nature?

Or are we naturally wired to be in relationships?

To what extent does the tendency to have a partner differ from person to person, and what does it depend on (nature/nurture)? Is it tied to having personality prone to addiction?

And could we speak of a universal maturing process of dependency/indepence/interdependence (cf. Covey – the 7 habits of highly successful people)? Meaning you start out needing other people, a relationship for validation. Then you learn to validate yourself in a process of detoxicating from validation addiction. Only then can you start loving people truly, with dependency, and in freedom. I do kind of believe in this, only I’m not sure to what extent one should take the independence part. I don’t believe it means becoming a recluse. But what, then, is the true meaning of ‘independence’?

When you’re single, life tends to be a lot more extreme; not only do you have more freedom to go where you want, when you want it, it also feels more intense. A relationship tends to give everything a more stable air. Of course, you also have passionate, destructive relationships and boring single life. But I’d say these are more the exception than the rule, so I’ll talk in general terms. Tell me if I’m completely off the bat here.

My sister is married and has a kid. I asked her about this, how I’m stuck between thinking I should just let it happen, fold back upon myself and be self-sufficient – not NEED women at all – and on the other hand, going out there and making it happen – ACCEPTING that I need women and will be enslaved to that urge forever. Both aren’t really attractive to me or even working out for me, and I didn’t know what direction to take. This is what we discussed.

To make a long story short, the solution that felt best to me was to not be busy with organising my life around meeting women; they’re all around anyway. But when I see a girl I like, I have to learn to pluck up the courage to go up and talk to her. That makes me think of Zan’s parable about the girl in her fortress: you don’t besiege her from a distance; you don’t hang around by the walls pretending you just like hanging around there; no, you ride up to the gates, spread your arms and ask her to let you in. You never know how a woman will react to you. Maybe she likes your being a bit nervous, maybe she prefers you to be completely smooth. At least you go, and you open yourself up to her. At least then you’ll know.

So it’s a combination of tranquility, of non-activity, with directed and decisive action. I don’t want to be ‘on the prowl’ all the time. Sometimes I feel obliged to be busy with it. My mother will say something like ‘So how is it with the girls?’ which triggers this unrest in me to be a ladiesman, to smile smugly and say it’s all good. But this pressure itself cripples me, as it’s an outcome. You can think it’s childish that my mother influences this much – I don’t particularly like her effect on me either, but it’s there. You guys must think I’m such a pussy by now

Also, I want to talk about this a lot more. I’ve been locking myself up and forming all these crazy hypotheses, because I didn’t trust anyone’s judgment anymore. If everyone is to a certain extent the victim of their beliefs, our culture and social pressure, what use is anyone’s opinion? Even the people that indicate this truth – like they say, nothing is true, not even that. And if there is no truth, what use is anyone’s vision? You can go round in circles indefinitely looking for a way out of the paradox. My suggestion is that there are general lines and talking at least gives you another perspective, forces you to humility and broader thought. Looking for the third option.

Back to the point: when you’re single you bear the weight of that. You are responsible for your own validation. When you’re in a relationship the validation is more or less taken care of, only you carry the responsibility of a shared fate and a constantly mutating little monster that needs attention and care (not a kid, the relationship ). So there’s always a weight to bear. A good insight for me, that there is no salvation in either, that there is no instant gratification pill (dixit TD in the Blueprint Decoded, which I appreciate greatly). Salvation is carrying the weight of your fate and accepting it, taking responsibility for it and preferably with some style. I realise I’m not the most stylish sufferer or weight-bearer in the world :p a lot of you might think that I take it too far and you are probably right – it just feels to me that I can’t function until I have some kind of satisfying answer or vision, afraid as I am to waste time on taking the wrong path. Try that on for paradoxical value

I’d say true independence is bearing the weight of your fate yourself. Not counting on anyone or anything to save you. It doesn’t mean not needing anyone else; I think it’s useful to seek out others for advice, exchange and maybe even some validation when the going gets too rough. The difference with dependence is that you don’t deposit your weight on them, you merely indicate it and together you take a look at it. I would say this is the nature of interdependence, to bear your own weight and share it with others at the same time. Which is why we’re all here on this blog, to share and to learn – so thanks for your comments and insights.

A long one/Undecided.

Been away for a while – how do I start?! A few months ago, I realised that the way I was doing things wasn’t making me happier, better, or more fulfilled. So I backed out, and realised I still had some work on processing my previous girlfriend. Which I did, with some pain. On the whole, I’d say it hasn’t been a particularly sunny period. I’ve been thinking a lot, sometimes getting lost in my thoughts and feelings and not knowing how to get out. This was cleansing at times, and relieving that I finally let myself ponder certain subjects, like why I feel guilty about having broken up with my girlfriend and how I really feel about being single.

One of the biggest revelations for me in this period was that I’ve hardly ever been proud of being single. Actually, when I retrace my history since I was 16, being single has always been this kind of lesser state for me that I needed to get out of as quickly as possible. With the predictable result of course, that the more I feared it, the more I gravitated towards being single and often I felt like it was unattainable for me not to be single. I envied guys with girlfriends and felt inferior to them. When I slept with girls that wouldn’t be my girlfriends in the long term, I didn’t really respect them because I was cheating myself that I was just having fun; I wanted security in a relationship and get the anxiety out of the way. When I did have a relationship I ended up just as restless in the relationship as out of it, as another person can’t satisfy my need for self-love. Afterwards, when we’d break up for some reason, I’d realise that I did really love them but that I was ashamed that they’d find out I was also afraid of being alone. And I’d yearn for them, mainly because I couldn’t handle being alone. It seems so obvious now, and yet I still tend to it. If you’ve been believing something for a long time, it can get ingrained in your system pretty deep. This one, for me, is deep. For me, being single was being a failure.

Being a PUA offered a way out; I saw a shining path that would take me out of the purgatory of not being able to live with or without women. I would rise above sad singleness or having to be in a relationship as I would get an endless supply of validation by chaining up different women, not being dependent on any one. Filling the void, so to speak. So I set to work, approaching, closing, kissing, eventually fucking. And it worked; I filled the whole and felt on top of the world. Until one day, or gradually, I started feeling empty. This is what Ciaran was referring to I think: that you get caught up in dependency on external validation, an addiction that slowly eats away at you inside as you collect souls and lose your own.

So in December, I quit this way of doing things. I fell back into my comfort zone – not approaching actively, just hanging with friends, and slowly becoming afraid of talking to women because I still wanted to score with them but without feeling like I had to chase them. This didn’t work out too well even though it wasn’t terrible either; I did meet some girls but I didn’t get any special connection or sex. I ended up longing for my ex which caused me to text her on Christmas. No reply.

I went to Prague for New Year, Hawaii in February, and had quite a good time. But most of the time I was thinking: ‘I have to do something. This isn’t good enough. Go talk to people, make it happen!’ Like a veil over my state of being. I was there, but in a way not there. I remember a course I did in January and a group I was working with remarking after some days that at the start of the four days, it seemed as if my words weren’t really coming out of my mouth. Like they stayed stuck in there, afraid to come out. Or not wanting to come out, wanting to be found, to be sought out. But stuck in between both states, of feeling like I should act on the one hand and not wanting to on the other, nothing really identifiable happened.

So at a certain point, I was stuck at a fork in the road. One option was that I was recovering from something, that I needed to take time for myself, that my pulling back was a good thing for me to get back on my feet. The other, nagging thought I had was that I was doing things the wrong way, looking at it the wrong way. That I should be doing stuff, that this wall between me and the world was useless and a change in strategy was needed. When I tried to sarge, my energy would flare up but when I started talking, then it would suddenly feel useless and my energy would drop, my inspiration would run dry, and I’d just feel like crawling in bed and being alone.

Make no mistake: this doesn’t mean I was locked up, antisocial, unfriendly or whatever. I was to my own standards, but I doubt many people really noticed. I just hung out with my friends more, and didn’t approach new people that much. Maybe they were relieved that I shut up a bit more. This is another thing I learned here: I have a big mouth and this regularly comes between me and a real connection with someone. You can impose your will on someone by talking over them, thinking you’ve convinced them with your energy and zest, but more often than not they just don’t feel like arguing with you. I learned this when my travel companion in Hawai’i did just that with me. As I couldn’t get away from him, I had to face it and deal with it, which ended up in me realising I was just the same with other people, and how horrible it is to feel like you’re never going to get through their torrent of words and explain what you want to say. I asked my colleague, a quieter type, if I was indeed like this, and he said I was. That was a humbling experience for me.

Of course being able to talk loud and discuss agressively is also a quality. In certain situations it is. Obviously, I use it inappropriately at times making me boorish where I think I’m clever, and loud where I think I’m just present enough.

The days after this realisation, I experimented with this realisation and saw the changes around me. I feel into the background of events. People came to me with a certain expectation, then I saw them realise I was different and slowly I became more isolated. Not that I was intent on experimenting, it seemed like an insurmountable effort to do it, like a charade that I didn’t want to play to save my hide.

It’s a weird feeling to become so conscious of yourself. In the end almost every thing I’d say or do would get an instant analysis. Like when you fall on the ground and have chafe marks all over your body, every move you make hurts and you become painfully conscious of your body. I couldn’t help it, it just happened. It’s like the mask got ripped off my face and the sun burned on my skin. I started planning what I was going to say to people, something I hate and see as a complete waste of time and strong indicator of distrust in myself. Even worse is to know that you know, and not know what to do about it. That’s where I was.

I tried to heal myself, to do exercises to ease my mind, get off of it. And I was assuaged, but not relieved. Hindsight is just rationalising interpretation, so I’m still not sure whether I was healing from something or hurting myself. It could be I really hurt myself when I was actively picking up. While part of me was flourishing and feeling invincible, another part of me hated it. This is the part of me that stopped it in December, the emptiness that ground me to a halt.

The central question of this whole evolution is: how can I achieve genuine affection for myself and for others? It starts with me. I need to love and trust and respect myself. I didn’t have that when I was sarging earlier. I admired myself, but I didn’t really respect myself. I felt like I was manipulating. I couldn’t figure out a frame that made what I was doing acceptable. Even though no-one really judged me for it, I judged myself. That could be old standards, or an instinctive warning signal.

I don’t think I’m made to be a ruthless hunter, which is what I was trying to become. I’m not made to always have all the answers, be the dominant alpha male, take care of the little girl in her… I’m just a guy and I want to learn to give love, not how to wheedle love out of some poor unsuspecting girl.

I talked to Nouvelle a few days ago, right when I had no more answers. Because on the whole, my life is great, yet I didn’t feel the spark, the love. It feels so ungrateful, to have everything except love and not be happy with it. Nouvelle told me something that suddenly unlocked something inside of me. It started when we were talking about social game, and how he’s now concentrating in making girl friends that he doesn’t bed. He actively says this, that he just wants to hang out, and that he doesn’t even want to fuck her friends either. This is of course a great offer for a girl, and you could say a complete reversal of the Game. Going from avoiding the friend zone to diving right into it. And what the beauty of this is: so much less pressure! And so much easier to meet new girls. And a great way to stay tuned to the feminine wavelength.

I met Jeronimo and Leonard last Thursday. Like me, they were hanging out in a bar as guys, talking amongst themselves and probably occasionally speaking to a complete stranger in an effort to strike up a connection out of nowhere. And I’m sure there are guys that are really good at this, but me, Nouvelle and many others I know after about a year into the Game are suffering from what I affectionately call ‘Cold Approach Burnout’. You walk up to a girl with this intention in mind, pumping yourself, feeling confident. Then all of a sudden you get a flash of tiredness at the work ahead: the plowing, the pushing and pulling, the being funny and entertaining while blablabla. Pfff…. How much easier to go out with some girl friends that proof you and that can help you meet other girls without half the hassle! And also, isn’t it much a nicer way of going out, period? I mean, when I think of the nights I went out to sarge with guys have this shadow. There’s something off about it, like milk that you’re not sure is stale but you still don’t trust it. Standing around, scanning the room incessantly, being so obvious. OK I admit, I could just do it better as well.

And there’s another thing. I was re-reading Jeffy’s DVD slides and a lot of the things on there I am not really doing well. Simple stuff: vocal projection, storytelling, time constraint… Maybe I’m just not doing it right. Maybe this is what makes me so tired, the fact that I’m being rejected on certain things, not being able to take the feedback anymore, suddenly taking it personal and folding back upon myself with a vengeance. I’m sick of not being taken on who I am inside, having to learn these techniques to show what’s inside. Or no – it’s not inside. I’m trying to be something I’m not. I have this image of an amazing guy in my head and I’m not bad, but I’m not the guy that I have in mind. The difference between the two and the expectation that this image, this ego, entails, frustrates me.

Where am I getting with this? Main thing for me is pressure: by forcing myself to be something, try to achieve something with people, I lost touch with myself. Faking it until you make it, or lose yourself. You can only become what gels with who you are, something I conveniently left out of the equation when I made my goals. It’s the hardest point in the Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle) for me: how to combine acceptance and tranquility with achieving things and moving forward. When I take the pressure off and go out with a mind to make friends with girls, that I have nothing to prove and nothing to be, it becomes so much easier. I don’t have to be anyone, I already AM. I don’t really know who that is, and it doesn’t really matter. I surprise myself! To find the Buddha, you must kill the Buddha. To find yourself, you must kill the ego, lose yourself.

And I want to be proud of being single. Eckhart Tolle also says that whatever your situation is, you should make it a Paradise. And I think he’s right. I’ve spent so much time feeling pressed to have someone it’s not even funny

But there’s still something missing. I had a great night yesterday after I talked to Nouvelle (thanks so much, I love you!), and a great morning. Now, tonight, as I’m writing this and preparing to go out, I feel the same tiredness come over me. Maybe I’m okay with being single, but I still long for the warmth of someone to be there. I guess it comes down to the fundamental loneliness, the thought that no matter how closely you wrap yourself in other people’s warmth, you’re still only heating yourself up. You understand? The thought that you need others to heat up, that you’re dependent on them, and the fear of not getting that heat. I know it’s a question of loving yourself and I’m sincerely trying to do that by respecting myself and my body, sleeping more, not forcing myself when I’m talking to people while still giving them my attention. I know that when I’ll go out, I’ll be fine. But right now, I almost feel like crying. I’m pretty fucked up I guess

This is the thing about discovering yourself: sometimes you really discover things that blast you away. I have the feeling I’ve stumbled on something so big, I can’t just whisk it away with a reframe or a breathing technique. I could be wrong, but I may just have to digest this one. Are other people like this? Do they have these wallops to deal with? Do they retract within themselves and come out shiny and new? Or is it just me and a bunch of self-inflicting pain addicts?

Another thing is that I don’t trust my intuition anymore. What is intuition? A reflex-judgment based on certain rules that don’t necessarily make sense. Good reading on this subject is Dan Gardner’s ‘Risk’. Anyway.

I’m on a raft drifting on some sea and I don’t know where I’m going. Something inside me is urging me to let go, to drift, to accept. Another part of me wants to swim, decide, set sail somewhere. But where? In a way it feels right, and on the other it feels useless.

How to fall in love

It’s been ages – I’m still working on the recap document, but just as a warmer upper:

- Find a complete stranger.
- Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.
- Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

York psychologist, Professor Arthur Arun, has been studying why people fall in love.

He asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married.

From yourmazingbrain.com