Drop the backup plan

I used to be a proponent of the ‘Go fuck ten other girls’ principle. For me it basically implies – from a larger perspective than purely effacing your obsession with one girl by bedding as many other girls as possible – that you make sure you always have some kind of backup girl.

Let’s say you’re working on this one girl. You like her, she drives you crazy. It would suck if it didn’t work out, and that feeling is making you fearful and less effective and natural. What I used to do, is make sure I was also seeing another girl. Having another girl in the back of your mind does effectively alleviate a lot of the anxiety, and as such you can’t say much against the principle of having something in the back of your head that puts any undue anxiety you may be having about a particular situation in a more bearable perspective.

However; having a backup girl has the fundamental flaw that it is a shaky foundation. On the longer term, it means that your peace of mind in a certain situation depends on your relationship to your backup. Say you met a girl and with your backup in mind, you managed to stay calm and move forward. Then all of a sudden, your backup falls through. She doesn’t answer your texts, she has a new boyfriend, whatever. That’s right, your whole base falls through and you go right back to being outcome-dependent.

OK easy solution: get more than one backup! Yes again there is nothing to be said about the effectiveness of this strategy, and as I’ll tell you later it’s actually something that will be in your life even when you don’t actively pursue it as we are obviously doing in the situation where you ‘make sure’ you get some backup.

Here is the thing. Someday, somehow, your backup is going to fall flat on its arse. However well you structure it. It’s like those rainy Sunday nights where none of your friends picks up the phone. What I realised is that the strategy of having other girls as a backup for your peace of mind is flawed, as the ground it rests on is shaky.

So what other base could you have that is as effective, and that is rock solid? It’s yourself. The biggest point of growth for me lately is to finally get round to enjoying my own company, constantly. I used to do it occasionally and then let it slep again. But what gives you a really solid foundation is that even within a conversation you can turn back to that feeling of being all good, all by yourself. So you don’t need the conversation! It might be great, and very exciting, but you won’t feel lonely and dejected when nothing comes out of it. You still have yourself!

This process forced me to spend a lot of quality time for myself and shunning any form of neediness. It’s not easy, because these patterns are years old. And the replacement for that strategy, my natural way of being when I’m not trying to get anything may be readily available, it’s also rusty from ill-use. So I’ve had to get used to situations where I knew I could have done something better, but I didn’t want to use a strategy and I simply didn’t know how to handle it spontaneously. Without panicking or self-blame, I accepted the situations as they were and all of them turned out all right, even though they might not have been the fireworks they could possibly have been.

A very peaceful state to be in! And I am noticing with the strengthening of my natural way and complete independence of peace of mind, that people are becoming more attracted to me. Logical, I really love myself  As this happens, the true meaning of ‘being, not doing’ emerges again. Goals are directions, intentions that are there without you consciously having to strive for them. It’s in your aura: what you want is what you exude to the world, and the world gives you back. So for starters, take a look at what you’re getting right now: it could tell you something about what you are actually going for.