As promised, here are some videos from the speaking tour this past spring. The main video embedded here is a group discussion I had in Philadelphia with about 20 men. The first 30 minutes are me talking my head off, and then the rest is open Q&A discussion among the group.

And below are some specific video clips from a talk I gave in Cologne, Germany about two weeks later.

• Dating is Not Like a Market But an Economy
• Why Rejection is Good
• Two Mistakes Men Make With Vulnerability

I’ll be posting more videos before the end of the month. If you like them, be sure to subscribe on YouTube to see all new videos as they’re uploaded.

The post VIDEO: Dating as an Economy appeared first on Postmasculine.

I read an article the other day on time management and it emphasized the importance of saying no and turning down projects which aren’t sufficiently urgent or beneficial in order to focus on the tasks that are.

This has been the big lesson for me the first half of 2013. Up until this year, I rarely turned down any project or opportunity because either I couldn’t afford to or it didn’t make sense to. But the past six months that’s changed and I’ve paid for it. I’ve felt stretched far too thin. And for the first time ever, I find myself emailing people back and saying, “Thank you, but no.”

It’s a good problem to have, a good lesson to have to learn. It signifies a certain level of success. And while there are quite a few stressed-out hours from this spring that in hindsight were unnecessary, the business will be better for it.

So with that, I’ve decided to take a hiatus from blog posting for the month of June. As of next Monday, I will be free of all of my previous commitments and I plan on using the coming month to focus on the new book that I’m horribly behind schedule on writing.

The book has proven to be a beast of a project. In my opinion, the quality of it, both in terms of depth of content and writing, is on a whole different level of anything I’ve done before. But unfortunately, that means it’s coming out slowly… and painfully. My goal is to get most of a solid draft done this coming month and hopefully have it released by the end of summer.

Also, during the next month Models will be updated for what is hopefully the final time. I want to clean up some of the language and science in the beginning of it, add some more chunks on vulnerability and excise a lot of the unnecessary style, health and lifestyle advice that makes the book a little bit long.

The language will also be revised in Models to make the advice in it as cross-cultural as possible, as I’ll be having it translated into some foreign languages the second half of this year.

(Yes, everyone who has bought the book before will receive the new version for free.)

In the meantime, there will still be some updates on the site this coming month. I’ll be posting videos from my recent speaking tour here and you may see a couple guest posts go up while I’m away.

I’ll continue to be active on Facebook and Twitter. And all of the new video will also be uploaded to my YouTube channel. So stay in touch.

See you in July.

The post Hiatus appeared first on Postmasculine.

For those of the men who are single, sexless and stressing about it. Take a moment to consider…

…That before meeting someone, instead of worrying whether they’ll like you, you could wonder if you’ll like them?

…That instead of feeling the need to impress her, you could wonder if she impresses you?

…That instead of sitting there silent, wondering what to say next to get her to like you, you could sit there silent wondering what she will say to make you like her?

…That instead of waiting around for her to return your call, you could find something to do while she waits for your call?

…That instead of worrying if you’re tall enough or good-looking enough for her, you could decide whether she’s too superficial to recognize your great qualities?

…That instead of trying to come up with the perfect date, you could decide that a woman who really likes you doesn’t need a perfect date?

…That instead of looking for a conversation she’ll enjoy, you could talk about something you enjoy?

…That instead wondering when she wants to be kissed, you could decide when you want to kiss her?

…That instead of feeling insecure about how good in bed you are, you could wonder on how good in bed she is?

…That instead of looking for her approval, you could decide whether to give your approval to her?

…That instead of getting upset about why she doesn’t want to be with you, you could decide that it means you probably wouldn’t want to be with her?

This may all sound a bit selfish. But, in fact, it’s having strong boundaries and high self-esteem. Only making time for people who make time for you. Only being interested in dating people who are interested in dating you. Worrying about what will make you happy instead of what will make her happy. Looking for a woman who meets your needs instead of trying to always meet hers. Changing yourself to become the man you want to be, not the man you think she wants you to be.

You may be saying, “But I don’t have enough experience to think like this,” or “I’m not cool enough to decide if she’s good enough for me or not.”

It’s that sort of thinking that got you here. It’s time to change your mind about dating.

You’re the only one who gets to live your life. Take it seriously. Have standards.

Women are attracted to someone they can look up to and respect, someone who they can trust. If their man is constantly looking to her for approval, for what to say and how to feel, how could she respect or trust him?

The questions above are designed to change your mind, to change your mind about how you are going about dating and going about meeting women.

Chances are in the past you have searched for a tactic or strategy that will make her like you, that will make her want to be with you, that will make her want to have sex with you.

This mindset leads to unattractive behavior. This mindset creates your anxiety, your insecurity, your need to impress her, to try too hard, to say or do things that don’t feel like the real you.

You are what makes a woman feel these things — not the words, not the strategies. If you aren’t happy with the results you get, then it’s time to improve you.

Change your mind about dating. Change your mind about yourself and change your results with women.

The new mindset leads to attractive behavior. It helps you freely express yourself. It removes fear of rejection and being insufficient.

I don’t care how hot she is. Is she good enough for you? Yeah, she’s got a great body and a pretty face, but do you enjoy being around her? Are you ready to leave on a dime if she offends you or breaks your trust?

If not, that’s probably why you’re not with her.

There’s no such thing as “dating advice.” It’s all about self improvement. Work on yourself. Conquer your anxieties. Resolve your shame. Take care of yourself and those who are important to you. Love yourself. Because otherwise no one else will.

The post Change Your Mind About Dating appeared first on Postmasculine.

Some practical advice today. I read a shit-ton. And I occasionally get asked about it, particularly from college students. “How can I read more? How can I read faster? How can I remember and use more?”

Although I’m technically a blogger, writer and internet marketer, I actually see my occupation as synthesizing and sharing information in unique and efficient ways. A big part of that is therefore reading a lot of cool stuff and then being able to share that cool stuff easily.

Most people don’t realize that the way we’re taught to read when we’re young makes us poor readers when we’re adults. There are practical and logical tactics one can utilize to read non-fiction material more efficiently.

In my book Models, a passage that surprisingly drew a lot of attention from readers was the section where I described how I challenged myself to read 50 non-fiction books in 50 days when I was 19-years-old. In the book, I described this experience as one of the most useful of my life. University courses became a breeze. My writing got better. My ability to consume information increased drastically. And I gained tons of new insights and perspectives on my life and the world around me.

What seems to catch people’s attention is that they assume it was some massive feat of will power. It was at first, but within a week or so, I adopted a few strategies to make the whole process more efficient and more enjoyable. Once you get the hang of it, consuming a typical popular science book should take no more than a few hours (exceptions if the book is either really good or really bad).

These are strategies anyone can use and require little practice. You can be up to speed and doing this stuff within a week or two. It will just take some conscious effort at first and a little bit of practice. For the most part, these tips are practical and logical, not some uber-speed-reading techniques.

But before we get into it, let’s start with a question:

“What is the purpose of reading?”

That sounds like a pretty stupid question. It’s so obvious that few people bother to think about it. But why do we even read in the first place?

The answer is the transmission of information. Written language has the magical power of taking an idea from my brain and inserting it into yours, regardless of space or time or whether we like each other or not.

But when we’re young, the purpose of reading is to learn vocabulary and proper grammar. Therefore the way we’re taught to read when we’re young is designed to do that efficiently, not necessarily transmit information efficiently. What we have to do, as educated adults, is re-orient the way we read to consume information and ideas efficiently. Grammar and vocabulary are pre-requisites for this, but not the ultimate purpose.

(Note: In the cases of good fiction or poetry, it’s often not desirable to read the book as quickly as possible, since the purpose of reading it is the artistic merit of the writing itself. For this reason, in the case of extremely well-written non-fiction, or when reading fiction or poetry for pleasure, I forgo most of these strategies.)

Step 1: Shut Off Your Inner Monologue

When we’re kids, we’re taught to read by sounding out every letter and then every word. As we grow older, we continue to read through an internal monologue in our head.

The problem is our eyes are capable of identifying words and sentences much faster than our inner monologue can make sounds. The first step to reading faster and more efficiently is to stop sounding out the words in your head. This requires some degree of mindfulness and I actually think meditation can help with this.

Mastering this, by itself, can double or triple your reading speed within a few days. And when you do encounter a piece of great writing (*cough* like mine *cough*) you can always turn the monologue back on to really enjoy it. I have a handful of favorite writers and bloggers that I always keep the monologue on for, because beyond the information I simply enjoy their style of writing. But most of the time the monologue goes off.

Step 2: Scan for Important words only

FYI: Kids suck at reading.

Once you get the hang of reading without sounding out every word in your head, you’ll find yourself beginning to chunk groups of words together into larger chunks of meaning. Instead of seeing “the” “cat” “was” “mad” separately, your mind will register “the cat was mad” as one single piece of information. Once that happens, certain chunks of words will stand out in paragraphs and your eyes will just glide over the filler words without wasting time or energy on their content.

For example, this sentence, “In effect, the cat’s biggest concern had not been the lack of food, but rather the demonstrated lack of care by his owners.”

Will soon register as this, “Cat’s biggest concern — not lack of food — but — lack of care — owners.”

You get 90% of the meaning with about 50% of the words.

I’ll use another example from an article I read last night. It’s from the Harvard Business Review and is about defeating procrastination. This is the first paragraph:

“A recent early morning hike in Malibu, California, led me to a beach, where I sat on a rock and watched surfers. I marveled at these courageous men and women who woke before dawn, endured freezing water, paddled through barreling waves, and even risked shark attacks, all for the sake of, maybe, catching an epic ride.”

But as I read that paragraph, this is what stands out as my eyes scan it:

“A recent early morning hike in Malibu, California, led me to a beach, where I sat on a rock and watched surfers. I marveled at these courageous men and women who woke before dawn, endured freezing water, paddled through barreling waves, and even risked shark attacks, all for the sake of, maybe, catching an epic ride.”

That’s 50% of what’s actually written. But you’ll notice that the relationships between those chunks are all already implied. In many cases the adjectives hint at the action taking place and so reading the verbs is unnecessary as well.

Scanning paragraphs like this takes practice. But this can double your reading speed yet again. And the beauty is that if you scan through a paragraph and don’t completely grasp the meaning, you just go back, slow down, and add the words back in until makes sense. Then take off again.

Step 3: Read only first and last sentences of paragraphs

If we accept that the purpose of writing is to convey information, and if we’re not reading something for the pleasure of the writing itself, then it makes no sense to read any more words or sentences than are necessary to convey the information. That means that there’s no reason to continue reading sentences that describe a concept you already understand.

The fact of the matter is that most non-fiction is not written well. It’s usually repetitive and long-winded. They’ll give example after example of a simple concept you already understood. There’s no reason for you to suffer through this. Especially if you’re a smart and selective reader.

Whenever I read an article, a section of a book, or a chapter where I feel like I already have a decent understanding of the subject matter and am merely looking for something new or something that stands out, I will read only the first sentence of each paragraph. By design, paragraphs introduce new ideas and new topics. And when you limit yourself to the first sentence of each one, you’re limiting yourself to sentences that introduce each idea in the piece of work. If I come across a sentence that piques my interest, THEN I will go back and read the entire paragraph or section. If I reach a point where I’ve lost track of what the author is talking about, then, and only then, I will go back and read the last few paragraphs until I’m caught up to speed, then I’ll move on.

Another option is to read only the first and last sentences of each paragraph. It’s actually startling how much information you can pick up just by doing this. Try it. Dig up a magazine article you’ve never read and go through it reading only the first and last sentences of each paragraph. Only read entire paragraphs if the you don’t understand the first and last sentences.

Then go back and read the whole thing beginning to end. Compare how much information you gained by doing the latter. It’s likely not that much.

Step 4: Skip entire sections, chapters or Even the book itself

I’m amazed by how many people persist in reading crappy books that they’re not learning anything from.

If you are consistently running into shitty ideas, things you already know, or the book is just extremely repetitive (like most self help books), then just skip entire sections. Right now I’m reading Phil Jackson’s new autobiography about being an NBA coach. He had an entire section of the book about his interest in Native American rituals. I’m not interested in Native American rituals, I’m interested in Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. So I skipped about four pages. I’m now halfway through the book and feel like I missed out on absolutely nothing.

As for ditching a book entirely, I usually give any book 10% before I decide whether to finish it or not. If it’s a 500 page book, I’ll give it until 50 pages. If it’s 100 pages, it needs to grab me within 10 or so. If it doesn’t grab me or I find I don’t respect the author, then before giving up on it I’ll check the table of contents and skip to the chapter that appeals to me the most. If that chapter still doesn’t do it for me, then I put the book down and don’t look back. I’d estimate that I end up putting down anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the books that I start and never read any more than 10-20% of them.

That may surprise some people. But I’ve found that one really good book gives me the value and information of 3-4 crappy books. So there’s no sense on wasting my time on books that are not transmitting the information I’m interested in.

Step 5: Relate any Important information to things you already know

How are you going to remember all of this stuff?

The way the brain is set up, the majority of our memories will exist in our sub-conscious and only become accessible in relevant contexts. Ever been in a conversation with somebody and something they say suddenly sparks a memory you hadn’t thought about in years? Yep. They’re down there. They just need to be associated with something useful for them to come up.

This is why whenever you come across a new or useful idea, take a moment to relate it to something you already know, understand or use. For instance, I recently read a book on Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. Positive Disintegration is a theoretical framework and reading about it was quite dense. It was fascinating, but I ended up having to take some time to relate each of his ideas to personal experiences or other psychological frameworks that I’ve studied in the past. As a result, his ideas are far easier to recall. Instead of trying to recall the theoretical specifics of positive disintegration cold, I can remember the social anxieties I struggled with for years and how that represents one of the processes in his framework. That then allows my brain to access the information from the book quickly.

Later when I studied Robert Kegan’s work — another developmental psychological framework that was dense — I then related it to Positive Disintegration. The frameworks are similar, involve five stages, and have basically the same endpoint. My memory of each reinforces the other now because I see how they interrelate. I don’t have to recall both in a vacuum, but I can recall parts of either and soon have the whole of both.

Step 6: Highlight, bookmark, keep a database

But even then you won’t be able to remember everything, or at least not accurately. So it’s important to be able to reference your knowledge.

(Note: This is where it gets nerdy.)

I believe as a study tool itself, highlighting or underlining is overrated if not useless. What it’s useful for is reference. I highlight/underline all important facts or ideas that I want to be able to reference in the future. If there’s a whole section that is important, I’ll dog-ear the page down (with Kindle, you can just add a bookmark).

This won’t actually help you retain anything by itself. The retention and usefulness comes from building a reference database of references.

When I finish a book, I go back and make notes on the parts I highlighted and bookmarked. I then write a short 100-200 word summary of the book and the points I took from it. This takes anywhere from five to 30 minutes. But it’s worth it. I also keep my database on Google Drive, so it’s accessible anywhere (even on my phone).

Some people are really into mind mapping. I never really got into them, but it’s the same concept.

I only do this with the best books that have important information, not everything I read. I’d say only 1/3 of the books I read make it into the database. But it’s been incredibly useful for me, especially in regards to my business. And the best part is, it’s there forever. There are books I read 10 years ago that I’m foggy now on a lot of the specifics. In 10 years, if I ever get foggy on Dabrowski’s theories, I can pull them up at any time, at home, on a bus or train, waiting in line at the airport, and refresh myself.

The post How to Read Faster and Retain More appeared first on Postmasculine.

So stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this guy. He’s like a prince, or an orphan, or kind of a loser — like an orphan-prince-loser-type guy.

And then there’s this girl. And she’s hot.

And then usually there’s a bad guy too. And he’s bad.

So, logically, our orphan-prince-loser-type guy has to save the hot girl, and usually does it by beating up the bad guy. He solves the super secret conspiracy to overthrow the government, or destroys the evil space ship, or has a sword fight to the death where his ear gets hacked off and he barely lives. Shit blows up. People die. The bad guy ultimately loses.

The crowd goes wild. And our former orphan-prince-loser guy is now a capital-H Hero. And what do heroes get as their reward for saving the universe? Duh. The hot girl.

What I just described to you is loosely the plot of practically every story you’ve ever been told — from Star Wars to Iron Man to Good Will Hunting to Super Mario Bros.

And, of course, every Disney movie ever made.

Sometimes there will be a wrinkle in the story too, making it “tragic.” Like the hero will even die for the hot girl (Terminator, Titanic) or the hot girl dies and the hero decides to go on a murderous rampage to for love and righteousness (Braveheart, Gladiator), or the girl turns out to be batshit insane and the hero realizes he threw away his entire life for nothing (Gone with the Wind, Vertigo). And in rare instances, the hero cannot be with the hot girl for legitimate capital-H Heroic reasons and must live a life of solemn “what if?” misery (Casablanca, Shawshank Redemption, etc.)

Yes, this practically is every movie you’ve ever watched, every comic book you’ve ever read, every video game you’ve ever beaten, every story book that your parents read to your drooling face.

And it’s fucking up your sex life.

Yes, Disney is wholly responsible for your lack of sexual confidence. And here’s why:

These stories send messages to us as we’re growing up. Some of the messages are nice, like “Trees are good!” and “Greed is bad!” Other messages are bad. They’re messages that are hammered into our drooling faces our whole lives and they give us really screwed up expectations. One of those bad messages is: You must earn the vagina.

If you want to be with a beautiful girl, you have to do something capital-H heroic, you have to stand out, be someone unique and amazing and awe-inspiring. Otherwise pretty girls will never like you. You have to save the fucking world. Then you are rewarded with vagina. That’s all you are and all you’re worth, a proud vagina-recipient. So start blowing shit up.

Obviously, the vast majority of us haven’t saved the world or blown anything up recently. In fact, the reality is that even if all of us are unique and special, none of us actually feel particularly unique or special at any given moment. None of us feel like we’ve done anything capital-H Heroic. We all feel like, well, just us. And apparently that’s not good enough.

It’s the storybook narrative. And in the 21st century, it really screws up our dating lives:

1. Men spend their entire lives believing they’re not good enough to be with a woman. Men are taught to feel an immense pressure to impress women, to perform for them, to show off their money or their cars or how many digits of Pi they can memorize, so chicks might like them. This is needy and unattractive behavior and reinforces low self esteem as well as sexual anxiety. There’s a reason most guys need to be hammered to even tell a girl they like her. They all feel like they’re not good enough to like her.
    
2. Women spend their entire lives waiting for a man to do something amazing to impress her. Or, in other words, she spends her entire life waiting for her prince charming, her knight in shining armor to come “sweep her off her feet.” Women are conditioned to believe that they’re a prize that men are supposed to win through some great achievement. And when no man is saving the world or cutting off people’s heads off with a badass broad sword in the name of her love, then she inevitably ends up disappointed. It sends the message that she’s not good enough. No man is killing himself for her vagina. Therefore her vagina must be faulty in some way.

The storybook narrative instills sexual insecurity and promotes lofty standards, which, when unmet, causes both men and women to become ornery and unaccommodating to the realities of attraction and the courtship process.

When men feel like they can never be good enough to win the vagina, they decide to come up with ways to take it. Sometimes they do it through manipulation. Sometimes they do it through over-compensation. In extreme cases, they may do it by force.

When women feel like they can never be good enough to have their vagina won from them, they try to trick men into earning it. They play hard-to-get, create a bunch of unnecessary drama, or always keep the man guessing as to their intentions.

Sex as Transaction, Sex as Performance

But I’ll be real for a second, Disney isn’t actually responsible for this stuff. The storybook narrative has been going on for most of western civilization. It’s littered throughout Shakespeare and medieval texts. Even the Trojan War in The Iliad is started because of a beef over a hottie named Helen.

Hey, girl. You want me to build a giant wooden horse and ransack the ancient city of Troy for you?

The reason this narrative has existed so long is because marriage was the economic and political building block for most of the existence of civilization. In feudal societies, the way you guaranteed security to your estate was through marrying women of wealthy (and often competing) families. If you were a man of one of the underclasses, the only way to “marry up” into wealth or greater power was through accomplishing some amazing feat, usually in war. Hence, the epic tale of valiant knights saving the princess that is so often repeated.

But we live in the 21st century. Our politics and economics are no longer arranged through marriages. No one marries for political power. Women have jobs and earn their own money. We live in free-market democracies. 99.9% of us will never see a battlefield in our lives.

Years ago, sex writer Clarisse Thorn introduced me to the idea of sex as performance versus sex as transaction. The idea was originally put forth by Thomas MacAulay Millar in Yes Means Yes (a book that, I won’t lie, made me cringe a little the first time I read it). The idea is also backed up and expanded upon in books such as Sex at Dawn and Marriage: A History.

The idea goes something like this:

Anthropological evidence suggests that in pre-history, hunter/gatherer societies were, umm, rather “loose” with their sexual morals. The idea of marriage or sexual possession was (and still is) largely anathema to most of these groups. But with the rise of agriculture, humans, for the first time in our species’ existence, had surpluses of resources. And not only did we have surpluses of resources, but men, due to their size and strength, gained a large competitive advantage at acquiring them over women. Men began to compete against one another economically, hoarding surplus resources and then using those resources to dominate the others around them. Economic hierarchies were born. City/states followed. Monarchs and lords and the feudal system followed from that, as did organized warfare and the first empires.

(Famous scientist and author Jared Diamond went as far as to call agriculture “The biggest mistake in human history.” I’m not sure I would go that far.)

The problem with this new social structure was that men, for the first time ever, had two major concerns: 1) they needed to guarantee paternity of their own children and 2) they needed to manage their political competition through marriages, alliances and familial bonds.

Thus female chastity began to matter. Fidelity began to matter. Fertility began to matter. Sex became an economic and political transaction, and women — who were now useless for war and physical labor — became pro-creating assets for men. Women provided sex and procreation. In return, their families were given resources, dowries, political alliances, land, etc.

Men now had to win the vagina.

And so they did, for about 7,000 years plus or minus.

But as I mentioned earlier, times have changed. We don’t arrange our society through marriages anymore. We can will our resources to anyone of our choosing when we die. We have legal systems in place to guarantee our assets. Women have jobs and their own incomes. STD’s are no longer lethal. Women (and soon men) have birth control and can dictate their own procreation. We live in the most non-violent period of human history. People are living to almost 90.

Treating sex as a transaction no longer makes sense. In fact, now that the economic deck has been shuffled and largely equalized, treating sex as a transaction harms the self-esteem and emotional health of both men and women.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we no longer need to use sex to fulfill our physiological and security needs. Now we can move on to using it to meet our needs for intimacy and esteem.

What Millar proposes — somewhat radically — is that we should treat sex as a performance, as an activity that is done for the sake of doing it, for the sake of self-expression and pleasure and intimacy.

When sex is treated as a transaction, it’s often in both men and women’s interests to hide or misdirect their intentions, creating the perception of higher value so they can earn as much as possible from the interaction. As I’ve detailed before, this leads to all sorts of unpleasant processes that makes dating a pain in the ass and interferes with intimacy and self esteem.

When sex is treated as performance, then it’s in the best interest of both men and women to approach it with clear intentions, without shame, and without judgment — strategies which are proven to attract more members of the opposite sex, to create more satisfying sexual relationships, and to remove any ambiguity as to each person’s intentions.

Is it possible to ever 100% reach a model of sex as performance? Probably not. Despite contraception and medicine, women will always bear more risk for sexual behavior than men. Men will always have higher sex drives than women. It’s an ideal. And as an ideal it should be strived toward even if it’s never met. For all of our sakes. And so maybe the next generation won’t have to be brainwashed by the same Disney movies we were.

The post How Disney Ruined Sex For Everyone appeared first on Postmasculine.

In psychology, there’s a well-observed phenomenon known as the actor/observer bias and it states that we’re basically all a bunch of assholes.

The actor/observer bias states that all of us unconsciously assume others to be more responsible for their negative actions than their environment, and for ourselves to be less responsible for our negative actions than our environment.

For example, if you are at an intersection and someone runs through the red light and almost hits you, you think, “Wow, what a shitty driver. That guy is an idiot.” But when it’s YOU who runs the red light and almost hits somebody, you think, “It’s not my fault. The guy in front of me was driving slow and the light changed too quickly for me to stop.”

When it’s us, it’s not our fault. When it’s someone else, they’re a shitty person.

But it gets worse. The opposite happens with positive actions, too. In our own case, we over-estimate our own responsibility for the great things we do and under-estimate the responsibility of others. For example, if someone else wins a prestigious award, we make assumptions that they got it because of their connections or some sort of conspiracy and not of their own work. But if we win an award, we assume it was all because of the great work we did.

The actor/observer is a natural bias that afflicts us all. We can be mindful and try to be better about it, but we’re never completely rid of it.

Nature Vs Nurture

But what’s interesting is when you take the Actor/Observer bias and add the nature versus nurture argument to it. The nature versus nurture argument is a philosophical debate that has been going on for centuries. It’s the debate over whether behavior is primarily determined by biology or by one’s environment and prior experiences.

The answer, of course, is it’s both. Both our biology and our environments are always determining our behavior at all times. And on top of that, our biology and our environment influence one another. For instance, having elevated testosterone will cause us to behave differently, but also being subjected to certain environmental factors can raise our testosterone.

But recently, with the discoveries of neuroplasticity and epigenetics in recent decades, most biologists these days concede that environment is overall a stronger determinant of specific behaviors than biology.

Biology defines the parameters of our behavior and creates our proclivities for certain behaviors (i.e., risk-taking, neuroticism, etc.), but ultimately our external influences and past experiences determine exactly how we behave at any given moment.

But regardless, the nature/nurture debate is still foggy. Is that person violent because they have a genetic predisposition to violence? Or did they grow up in a horribly violent environment? Why do some people come from horrible environments and become healthy, admirable people and others come from good environments and become despicable people?

These questions are not easily answered. And may never easily be answered.

The answer is always that it’s somewhere between the two but we’re never certain exactly where it is. And in these foggy nature/nurture situations, our actor/observer bias will often kick in and make us more likely to attribute the poor behavior of others to biology — the idea that they were simply born a bad person rather than influenced to do something — and attribute the bad behavior of ourselves to our environment our culture.

So if a co-worker is perpetually underpaid at work, we will attribute it to him/her being inherently stupid or incapable. Whereas if WE are perpetually underpaid at work, we attribute it to being screwed over by incompetent management.

I told you it makes us all assholes.

When the actor/observer bias comes joins up with the nature/nurture debate, I call this the biology bias — the assumption that other people or groups are biological predisposed to undesirable behavior, while our behavior is simply caused by a faulty culture.

You see the biology bias pop up in all sorts of places. Instead of dealing with the actual policy arguments of many conservatives, liberals simply whitewash them as being unintelligent and inherently selfish people. Conservatives do the same with liberals by making assumptions about how they’re inherently lazy and feel entitled. Both sides rarely stop to consider the environmental factors that caused the other side to have liberal/conservative views in the first place.

The biology bias becomes particularly dangerous in the context of racism. For centuries, Europeans enslaved Africans, Native Americans and Asians based on the assumption that they were of a different (and inferior) species, that they were somehow biologically less capable than their European colonizers. But it turns out, European societies enjoyed major geographical advantages that eventually allowed them to colonize the planet (Read Jared Diamond’s fascinating Guns, Germs and Steel for more on this subject.)

Much of this still goes on today. As T and I discussed on a podcast a few months ago, he’s been arguing with a group of so-called “Human Bio-Diversity” bloggers who believe that since the average African-American has an IQ 10 points lower than the average Anglo-American, they are therefore inherently stupider or less capable.

The Biology Bias and Sexism

“When racist and sexist ideologies sanction certain hierarchical social arrangements based on biology, that biology is usually false.”

- Theodore Kemper, Social Structure and Testosterone

In my book on dating, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, I have a whole section in the middle of the book about defense mechanisms.

We all use defense mechanisms to avoid our anxieties and protect us from dealing with our shame. For instance, if we have a lot of sexual shame we may develop defense mechanisms such as rationalizing reasons to avoid sexual encounters, over-analyzing sexual situations, or over-compensating by trying to have sex with absolutely everything and everyone.

Another common defense mechanism is to stereotype a population, especially if we feel victimized by that particular population.

Women make an easy target for the biological bias because a) many men are perpetually frustrated by women and b) there are obvious biological differences between the two sexes (of the “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” variety.)

Over the years, I’ve seen the following biological arguments made about women as a population: they will use a man for his resources and then move on (like locusts or something), they will lie and manipulate you to get you to like them more, they are overly emotional, they are less intelligent and incapable of rational thought, they seek sexual attention to make themselves feel better, they will cheat on you or leave you the minute a better option comes around, and so on.

None of these statements have any biological evidence backing them up. All of these statements only apply to certain individual women, some of whom cluster in certain locales (like say, I don’t know, sleazy clubs). All of the men who make these statements have a history of rejection or emotional trauma involving women.

Coincidence? I think not.

For me, this is the contradiction that underlies most of the manosphere literature out there and ruins it for me. Undesirable behavior from women (they’re manipulative, overly-emotional, hypergamous) is attributed to their inherent biology, while undesirable behavior from men (weak, feminized, too sensitive) is attributed to a culture forced upon them. You can’t have it both ways. Either you face up to the overly emotional, manipulative behavior in yourself as well as women, or you focus on the cultural effects on both genders. You can’t have it one way for one gender and the other way for the other.

But wait! There’s more!

Feminists are not immune to these types of actor/observer biases. These are just a few of the examples of reverse-sexism I’ve seen from the other side of the fence over the years:

If a woman fights her way to the top of the corporate ladder, it’s her ingenuity and hard work. If a man does, it’s only because he’s benefiting from patriarchy. If a man complains that a woman is being flirtatious, then she is sexually empowered. If a woman complains that a man is being flirtatious, it’s harassment. If a woman says she likes a strong man who takes care of his body, she is asserting her desires. If a man says he appreciates a woman who dresses up nice and wears high heels, he’s a pig.

Granted, many feminists side-step much of the biology bias by subscribing to the belief that culture defines everything. But they still fall victim to the actor/observer bias constantly, like the rest of us.

One could even go so far as to say that the so-called “battle of the sexes” is mostly just the biology bias in action. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Regardless of our gender, race, sexuality, nationality, religious beliefs or political beliefs, as humans our minds are bad at dealing with large populations. It’s too much data. Our minds take shortcuts in order to manage all of the information they consume. These shortcuts, if unchecked and unregulated, can easily turn us into bigoted assholes.

That goes for racists and reverse-racists. That goes for sexists and reverse-sexists. That goes for religious nuts and atheists. That goes from liberals and conservatives.

We are all equal in that we’re all biased against populations and groups who we don’t identify with. It’s unconscious and inevitable. But it’s only particularly evil if these biases are forged into long-term beliefs and later transmuted into actual prejudiced actions.

That is why practices such as mindfulness, therapy and meditation are so crucial. They help us not only become more objective about others, but also help us unravel the the biased beliefs and limitations we place on ourselves.

Or as Anaïs Nin once said: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

The post The Biology Bias appeared first on Postmasculine.

I should start off by saying the reasons laid out in this article on why young Americans should work overseas are practical and not ideological. This is not a liberal argument or a conservative argument; it’s a life argument. For two centuries, if you were young, ambitious, and college-educated, North America offered you the best opportunities. But the tides are changing and that’s no longer the case.

The odd thing is that no one in the United States seems to realize this yet. People haven’t caught on. And what does that mean? Opportunity. Tons of it.

One of my best friends recently told me that the prestigious multinational corporation he worked for was itching to permanently send him to India. They wanted him to manage their expansion into that market. And, obviously, India is a huge emerging market. They gave him the Godfather offer to go — enough money to live in a mansion, with personal chefs, private drivers, everything. The irony, of course, was that my friend is a first generation Indian-American. His parents gave up everything decades ago and fought their way to the US to give their kids opportunities they would never have had back in India. They succeeded. What they didn’t expect was that that opportunity for their son they gave up everything for? It was back in India.

And such is the irony for this generation of Americans. Our grandparents immigrated to the US for opportunity. And now, in many cases, with our US education, the greater opportunity is elsewhere.

If you are college educated and under 30, there’s a significant chance that you would be better off working in a country outside of the United States and I will explain why.

Reason #1 – Your market value is higher elsewhere

So the primary argument of this whole piece boils down to this: We’ve all heard the horror stories about how college grads can’t find work or are stuck working a job they’re insanely over-qualified for. In the US, there are simply no longer enough quality jobs for everyone with a university education. We have an education surplus. It’s reached the point where many are openly questioning whether going to university is even worth it, while others call it an outright scam.

Meanwhile, you have massive emerging economies in Asia and South America that are desperate for college grads and especially for western-educated college grads.

It’s simple supply and demand. There aren’t enough jobs in the US and Europe anymore for young people. There aren’t enough highly educated people in emerging countries. Put two and two together, and your market value is much higher elsewhere.

In fact, western-educated employees are valued so highly in many parts of the world, that companies will deck you out, covering everything from your expenses, housing, transportation, as well as benefits, just to get you to come over.

Reason #2 – The quality-of-life/cost-of-living ratio is now much higher elsewhere

A friend of mine recently told me that he spoke to a luxury hotel owner in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hotel owner was desperate to hire managers with western education. He claimed that Malaysia’s education system, while good, taught obedience and that Malays did not problem solve or think for themselves. Therefore they made poor managers. He was willing to hire anyone — yes, anyone — with a western university degree and immediately put them in a management position, a position that would take at least five to 10 years in the industry to reach back in the US. Perks included paid housing (penthouse suite within the hotel in downtown KL), paid transportation, and all the benefits.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Hah, yeah, but who would want to live in a shithole like Koala Oompa Loompa?” I know. I thought the same thing… until I went there. I expected dusty markets with loud motorbikes, no electricity and spiders the size of my face.

But, as with most Asian cities, I got something totally unexpected: Kuala Lumpur is amazing. In fact, it’s probably a nicer city than the one you live in right now. Don’t believe me? Let’s just put it this way. I went to a mall in Kuala Lumpur and there was a ferris wheel and a roller coaster inside the mall. Yeah…

Kuala Lumpur’s indoor roller coaster is better than you.

The fact of the matter is that the developing world (minus much of Africa) has in many ways caught up to the developed world and caught up fast. It’s happened under our noses and we haven’t even realized it. When I started traveling the world in 2009, almost every place I went to blew my expectations away. I expected to show up to a dirt heap and get my kidneys carved out, and what I got was an amazing quality of life for my money.

Similarly, when my girlfriend, who is Brazilian, began traveling around the world a few years ago, she had the exact opposite reaction: every place she went was not nearly as nice as she expected. Why? She grew up in Brazil and assumed that the US and Europe were technological and social paradises, light years ahead of her native country. She was wrong. Over and over again, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Economists measure quality of life with different metrics. They also measure cost of living. By these metrics, usually the same countries come out on top. What nobody has measured (to my knowledge) is a quality of life PER cost of living metric. Why nobody asked me about this, I have no idea.

But it’s an easy concept to grasp. Here’s an example: $3000 per month in New York City gets you a shitty roach-infested studio apartment in a bad part of Brooklyn or Queens and a lot of fatty take-out meals. Chances are you are working 50- or 60-hour weeks and the weather sucks six months out of the year. In Bangkok, $3000 per month gets you the nicest penthouse apartment in the city, your own driver, access to some of the best restaurants and nightlife in Asia, and you’re probably working 30- or 35-hour weeks. The high-life there is probably 90% of the high-life in NYC, but you’re now living it on the same income that got you a shitty studio apartment back in Queens.

Reason #3 – The Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

I hate to be the one that breaks this to you, but the jobs aren’t coming back. Sure, unemployment rates have dropped to below 8%, but as Republicans correctly point out, this is because people are giving up on working altogether and the real number of jobs is falling. The US government keeps reporting job growth every month, but what they fail to mention is that the job growth is slower than the overall population growth.

There is a structural change in the economy. Technological improvements mean our economy can produce more value while employing fewer workers. Economists refer to this as the de-coupling of labor and growth. Technological automation and globalization has created an economy that can grow while employing fewer people. This technology and outsourcing has also developed an economy that disproportionally rewards entrepreneurs, investors and corporations. Hence the whole “We are the 99%” hubbub a year or two ago.

And with the accelerating rate of technological advancement, the problem is only going to get worse, not better. Democrats and Republicans will continue to blame the sluggish economy and shitty job numbers on each other. But know this: that if it’s anybody’s fault, it’s Silicon Valley’s. And the same technology that has enriched our lives and allows me to write this and you to read it, is ultimately the culprit.

Shit’s changing, folks. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. We’re seeing a perfect storm of sorts: the decoupling of economic growth to household income and labor productivity with a simultaneous aging population. I don’t care who is president; things are going to be a mess for a while to come.

(If you’d like to learn more about this, I highly recommend reading this book: Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee)

Reason #4 – It’s time for everyone to grow up and become global citizens

Christopher Hitchens, about traveling the world, once wrote:

What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight.

This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people.

In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere.

There’s a lot of alarmism in the media these days. Iran is going to start World War III. War between China and the US is inevitable. A bunch of rag-tag tribesmen in Pakistan are going to wrought nuclear annihilation on all of us. Drug runners in Mexico are going to chop your limbs off. Bizarrely named African rebels are going to drink your blood.

It’s time to get over the hype, move beyond the overblown cultural differences within the human species, and to get over, as Hitchens quotes Freud as saying, “the narcissism of the small difference.”

Living abroad has been one of the biggest personal growth experiences of my life. It’s given me the most unique and memorable experiences of my life. It’s made me smarter, wiser, more tolerant, and more empathetic. And I’m by no means unique in this regard. Just about any world traveler will tell you the same thing.

But the biggest asset has been eliminating my narcissism of that small difference. A lot of people throw around the cliché “broadening your horizons.” But I see it simply as engaging humanity. Recognizing that our perceptions of the dreaded “other” are dominated by the extremes. And that despite cultural differences, people are all trying to get the same needs met.

As a young adult, your biggest assets are time and ambition. If you fail today, you have the advantage of being able to start fresh tomorrow. The difference between a broke, jobless 22-year-old and a broke, jobless, 26-year-old is basically nothing. So use those four years to do something crazy, to shoot for the moon.

Leverage these years. Because one day you won’t be able to. The world is changing in ways people haven’t caught on to yet. And you can position yourself to be there to capitalize on this new borderless, instant-information economy.

Or you can position yourself as part of a by-gone era, serving up lattes at Starbucks, paying off that English Lit degree you never used, wondering where you went wrong, and why Obama (or whoever is in the White House) hasn’t fixed everything yet.

It’s your job to fix your life. So get moving.

Resources to help you work overseas:

• Career Hack
• Transitions Abroad
• GoAbroad.com
• British Universities North American Club
• Easy Expat
• Overseas Digest

The post Why Young Americans Should Work Overseas appeared first on Postmasculine.

I used try to convince myself that I didn’t want to have sex. Yeah, it sounds weird, but it’s true.

At least in very specific contexts it was true. Like girl-in-my-bed-with-her-shirt-off-at-3AM type of contexts.

This was back in like 2005 or 2006. My ex-girlfriend had recently ripped my heart out of my chest and carved it up with a steak knife, and suddenly semi-naked girls in front of me had the magical effect of making me not-so-interested in sex anymore.

I’d find excuses, like I was too tired, too drunk, had to get up early, and so on. I would distract us from the situation by pulling up some song on my computer or playing guitar for her. Yes, I’m cringing just writing this. But it’s true. I did it. And I believed it too, at the time. It felt real. That was the problem.

I developed some bizarre beliefs around this period. One of them was that any girl you had sex with would immediately demand a serious relationship from you. Like there was some sort of binding agreement that came with a naked vagina. I rationalized that maybe I just didn’t have a big sex drive. I rationalized that it was the girls who weren’t very interested in sex, since after all, they only had their shirts off and weren’t practically raping me like the girls in the porn videos always did.

So her shirt would pop back on. I would busy myself with some song on iTunes and/or drink myself until I passed out. By morning the problem would solve itself (i.e., she would go home).

Then the next day, after she would leave, I would jerk off thinking about how hot that girl was and what an idiot I was for not going for it when I had the chance. The low sex drive excuse became inexcusable. The willingness of the girls became inexcusable. Even the expectations of relationship nonsense became inexcusable. This happened enough times and I had to come to the painful conclusion: it’s me.

The “it’s me” conclusion is one of the hardest conclusions for any of us to come to. Yet, we all probably need to come to it more often. Hell, one could even argue that one should err on the side of assuming it’s always you. At least that way you always feel empowered to do something about your situation.

We’re All Unreliable

I wasn’t alone. And neither are you. We all do this to some extent. We all buy into our own beliefs and conclusions at face value. And why not? After all, our conclusions always seem the most reasonable to us at the time.

Psychology has made some amazing strides in the past couple decades in showing just how unreliable we all are. Ancient Buddhism put a heavy emphasis on embracing “not knowing” or embracing not attaching to specific thoughts or feelings. Eastern spirituality has emphasized that we should watch our own thoughts and treat them just as that, thoughts. And western psychology has caught up and come to many of the same conclusions. There are three researchers in particular I want to cover. And ironically, they’re all named Dan.

First up, Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow shows that we are all actually emotional (and selfish) decision-makers, and that our logical mind spends most of its time finding reasons and justifications for what our emotions have already concluded about a situation.

For instance, after the horrible experience with my first girlfriend, I was afraid of sex. Point blank, that was the issue: fear. And that fear dictated my decision-making: acting like a weirdo with a hot shirtless girl in front of me. I would get weird. She would feel unwanted and insecure. I would get nervous. No one would have sex. And I’d be afraid to ever call her again. Yet, somehow my rational mind found a couple neat and tidy beliefs to justify all of this erratic behavior.

Next up, we have Dan Ariely, who in his book Predictably Irrational points out that we’re terribly ineffective at measuring the cost/benefit of most situations, ESPECIALLY when emotions get involved. We suck at making apples-to-oranges comparisons. We suck at evaluating potential downsides to situations we like. We over-estimate the value of things that come with high costs.

For instance, I meet men and women all the time that make the following mistake. First, they assume since someone was difficult for them to attract — i.e., they put a lot of thought and effort into it — that therefore person must be universally highly desirable. But this is simply not the case. Someone who is highly incompatible with you will feel difficult to attract, but that doesn’t mean that they’re worth the effort.

Conversely, many people make the mistake that since they perceive someone as very attractive, then they must invest extra thought and effort into attracting them. Men make this assumption all the fucking time and I want to punch them in the balls whenever they do. “Well, she’s hot, so I HAVE to act different around her.” No. Wrong. Incorrect.

And finally, we have Daniel Gilbert, our last Dan. In Dan’s excellent book Stumbling on Happiness, he shows us how we’re terrible at both a) predicting what will make us happy/unhappy in the future and b) judging how we actually felt in the past.

Back when I was scared of sex, I had bizarre expectations of what these women would want of me and what I was obligated to do in return. I was protecting myself in that moment. I knew nothing about what they actually wanted or even about what I actually wanted.

We think we’re constructing expectations to lead ourselves into a better future. But usually our expectations are designed to protect us from the present.

Some people dream of having the perfect car. Some dream of the perfect job. Some people start naming their first-born child an hour into the first date. Our expectations and desires about the future are diversions and protections from dealing the moment staring us right in the face.

Believing Your Own Bullshit

There’s that old self help saying that goes, “If you keep doing the same things you’ve always done, then you’ll keep getting the same results you’ve always gotten.”

The problem is that our mind has always constructed really good reasons for doing what we’ve always done. That’s why we do them! But the Three Dan’s show us that just because our mind believes something or gives us a reason, doesn’t mean it’s right or useful. In fact, sometimes it’s harmful.

Any time you want to change yourself, you are going to have to dismantle the reasoning your mind constructed to justify your past behaviors.

As the Three Dan’s have taught us, most of our reasons for unhelpful behavior are bullshit. Most of our reasoning for our behavior is to justify our prior emotional decisions. And many of our emotional decisions are based on fear or anxiety or avoiding dealing with some sort of past trauma.

I talked to a woman recently who complained about her work/life balance. She was pulling 70+ hour weeks on the regular running her own business, and even her free time was spent networking with possible clients or associates. It was driving her nuts. But her reasoning was that she needed — not wanted, not preferred, but needed — to earn over one million dollars per year before she would allow herself to start a family.

Yes, one million dollars.

Well, after some prodding — and by “prodding” I mean me and a few other people telling her that that’s absolutely ridiculous — it came out that she grew up poor with unreliable parents and spent part of her childhood living out of a car.

Bingo.

Our bullshit always sounds reasonable to us… until we realize we’re unhappy or unsatisfied and can’t put our finger on why. This is why it’s great to have friends or a therapist or a community of people around you who can challenge you on your beliefs and assumptions.

The “Why?” Game

You know how little kids incessantly ask “Why?” to everything? There’s a genuine curiosity and openness to children that drives them to question everything. And it usually drives the rest of us crazy.

I’m not sure when I started doing this. It was probably when I was high as a teenager or something. But a long time ago I started asking “Why?” about a lot of my internal thoughts and rationalizations. And then I’d take those answers and ask “Why?” again, and continue looking for the most emotionally relevant answers.

At some point, I christened it the “Why?” Game and used it with much success with a lot of my clients when teaching them how to open up with their emotions and have deeper conversations.

The “Why?” Game is great because it immediately gets at what actually matters: emotional motivations. And from there, prior beliefs, prior traumas, poor decisions, etc.

Here’s an example of the “Why?” Game with my awkward sex avoidance above:

Why do I keep passing up on these sexual situations and keep regretting it? Because when in that situation I become more focused on something else and less motivated by sex. Why? Because I don’t want to deal with all of the expectations and drama that comes from sex. Why? Because I’m not emotionally prepared for that kind of thing. I don’t want it. Why? Because I feel like my only girlfriend had expectations I couldn’t live up to (whoa). Why? Because I guess I never felt good enough for her, especially after she dumped me. Why? Because I don’t feel like I’m good enough to receive sex and affection from women (double whoa). Why? Because I grew up in a family where emotional connections were seen as part of transactions and obligations and not freely given. Why? Because my parents had trouble with many of these same intimacy issues in their own lives.

Now, granted, the above paragraph took me months of self-questioning and therapy to work out. But within a few of those months, it unfastened my weird hang-ups about my sexuality. Soon I was able to face those same sexual situations with a much clearer and more objective head, and as a result, the anxiety dropped of precipitously.

Whenever I feel stuck I’ve developed a simple habit of asking “Why?” It’s something I can just feel now. I’ll run into a situation or action where I consistently feel stuck or unhappy or obsessive. And I bust out the “Why?” question.

Usually, the answer does not come immediately. Sometimes you have to give yourself a few weeks or even months to play with the question. Just keep asking it. Eventually the answer will come up. And you’ll know it’s the true answer because you’ll feel it. It will carry a far greater emotional weight than any other explanation. Often times, it will be the one answer you want to avoid or deny, but can’t. And when it comes, coming to accept that uncomfortable answer will go a long way in remedying the beliefs and behaviors causing you to suffer.

Viktor Frankl called this process logotherapy. It has since grown to become an entire branch of clinical psychology. I think it’s just how to stop lying to yourself. How to harbor a healthy skepticism about yourself, calling yourself out on your own bullshit, undoing the mental traps we all set for ourselves yet few of us ever notice, much less disarm.

The post How to Stop Lying to Yourself appeared first on Postmasculine.

I am close to finishing my speaking tour and, as you can imagine, I’ve been talking a lot about vulnerability and why it’s so beneficial for men to implement into their lives.

Interestingly, the same couple issues and clarifications keep coming up at every stop. So I figured I’d throw up a blog post for everybody’s reference, once and for all, so I don’t have to continue explaining myself over and over.

First off, just as a quick refresher, vulnerability is when you consciously choose to NOT hide your emotions or desires from others. This can be as simple as complimenting someone on how good they look, approaching an attractive stranger you don’t know, establishing clear and strong boundaries, or expressing your undying love to someone.

Vulnerability is the cornerstone concept of my book Models: Attract Women Through Honesty.

The benefits to vulnerability are massive, although not always pleasantly achieved. In fact, vulnerability is usually downright uncomfortable. But that’s OK. Because being vulnerable in your interactions creates a greater deal of trust and intimacy, removes games and ambiguity, creates sexual tension through bold behaviors, accelerates sexual and romantic relationships, builds self esteem and (usually) demonstrates confidence to the other person.

And no, you don’t have to be tall, rich, handsome or whatever. This is for humans. That means ALL humans. ALL relationships. It just happens to make your sexual relationships far more sexy and intimate.

People don’t realize this. But honesty is sexy. Exposing yourself is, err… sexy. Saying, “Look, let’s cut the bullshit, I think you’re great and would rather hang out with you alone,” is attractive when you say it with conviction and mean it. Saying, “This is a bit awkward, but it’s only because I feel a little nervous around you,” is, believe it or not, a universally attractive statement when it’s genuine.

The logic is simple:

The greatest demonstration of power and security is to actually make oneself defenseless, to become as comfortable with one’s weaknesses as possible.

When accompanied by authenticity and personal accountability, vulnerability is almost always extremely attractive behavior. When it’s not attractive, then it signals legitimate incompatibility. All in all, it makes your dating life 1,000 times easier and more fun to navigate.

If you want to understand vulnerability and its benefits more, I recommend reviewing a few other articles:

• Power in Vulnerability explains why vulnerability is actually a sign of personal strength and attractive.
• Vulnerability and Manipulative Women explains how being vulnerable attracts the right women into our lives and creates healthy relationships.
• A Note on Vulnerability clarifies that vulnerability is determined by intentions, not by the actual words you speak.

The Two Mistakes

There are two big mistakes people make when attempting to be more vulnerable and authentic. The first mistake is that they view vulnerability as simply another technique. They think, “Oh, I’ll just share everything bad about me and then she’ll have sex with me.” The point of vulnerability is a relinquishing of control, not a tool for further control.

Any expression of emotions or vulnerability must be unconditional, that is, without expectation, otherwise it’s just another form of manipulation.

If you share a heartbreaking story about your dog dying because you think that’s what someone wants to hear and that that will make someone like you or be attracted to you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s not genuine, and therefore it is not vulnerable. Not only are you continuing to be fake and inauthentic, but you’re now whoring out some of your most cherished life memories for the sake of getting your penis wet. Congratulations. You are officially desperate.

Instead, you should share the story of your dying dog and the emotions that went along with it either because a) you are genuinely inspired to by the conversation, or b) as a way of relating to the emotions or experiences of whomever you are speaking to. Boom. It’s just who you are. And here it is. No expectations. No desire to control people’s perceptions of you. Just share yourself and let go.

So that’s the first mistake people make. Pretty straightforward.

The second mistake with vulnerability is more complicated and is something I lovingly refer to as “emotional vomit.”

Emotional Vomit and You

Emotional vomit is when you suddenly unload an inappropriate amount of emotions and personal history into a conversation, usually to the utter horror of the person listening.

Emotional vomit is difficult because on the one hand, it is genuinely vulnerable, but on the other hand, it’s repellant and unattractive. In effect, you’re being open and authentic about how needy and pathetic you are. And whether hidden or apparent, neediness is never attractive.

So I get a lot of emails saying, “I was vulnerable, I went on and on about how much I loved this girl, and it freaked her out. What gives?”

The difficulty with emotional vomit is that if you’re harboring a lot of neediness, then it needs to come out somehow, in some way, for you to ever resolve it. This is what I refer to as the pain period. In my article on the pain period, I give an example of me emotionally vomiting about my ex-girlfriend at the time. In fact, I emotionally vomited that one a few times to a few different people back then. And in most cases, it was met with pity and in the case of women, turned them off completely.

The mistake people make with emotional vomit is that they expect the simple act of vomiting it out to suddenly fix their issues. The point of emotional vomit is to make you aware of your issues, so you can fix them. When I went on and on about what a lying stupid whore my ex was, all of that anger didn’t fix my neediness. What it did was got me to see how angry and loathsome I had become without me even knowing it. When we’re isolated in the padded walls of our minds, it’s easy to believe we’re justified in everything we think or feel. It’s when we expose those thoughts and feelings to the light that we realize how far off track we’ve become and it allows us to readjust in the future.

And that’s what I noticed. I noticed that for how angry I was, I certainly wasn’t nearly as “over her” as I thought I was. It was around this time that I got into therapy which helped me realize that my anger at my ex went even deeper and was also related with my family.

Eventually, after more reflection and calming down a bit, I was able to realize that actually, I had placed an inordinate amount of expectations on my ex and I hadn’t been such a great boyfriend either. This effectively resolved much of the issue for me, much of the anger for her and for women in general. But it was hard and painful to get there.

The emotional vomit gave me the awareness to do my healing, but it wasn’t the healing by itself. Eventually, you have to become accountable to your own thoughts and feelings and work them out. If not, then you’re just going to continue to be that angry man, screaming about how lying stupid whores, turning off everyone you come across.

Professions of Undying Love, Blah, blah, blah

But in most of the complaints I get about emotional vomit, it involves the man professing his undying love to a woman and freaking the girl out. The men often feel cheated, as they put themselves on the line and gave these women the gift of their love and emotions.

Although getting rejected in this way sucks, I would call this a good problem to have. Because it shows you that your emotional investment is incredibly disproportional to your actual dating experiences. If I went on a coffee date with a woman, and she wrote me a six page email professing her undying love for me, I would freak out too. Yes, she’s putting herself out there and making herself vulnerable, but her emotions are completely disproportional to the substance of our relationship, and are therefore needy and a turn off.

People who do this are demonstrating anxious attachment behavior.

When men do this, they usually find a way to blame the woman (or women in general) for not appreciating them or for taking advantage of them. What they should be doing is looking at what inspired their own emotions and whether those emotions are reasonable or not. Are you daydreaming about marriage before even kissing her? Are you crying because she cancelled your date to watch the baseball game together?

The intensity of your emotion is not proportional to the depth of the relationship and should be a glaring billboard letting you know that the issue runs deeper within yourself and not with her. You’re not in love with her. You’re in love with the idea of her. You’re in love with the idea of not being alone or not being desperate anymore. The woman herself is interchangeable and meaningless.

Women sense this. And that is why this is so unattractive.

Take responsibility for your emotional vomit. Analyze the emotions inspiring it. Be accountable to them. And then build yourself up and invest in yourself to overcome your neediness. This is not a short-term get laid solution (although one must be vulnerable in those situations as well). This is a long-term life solution. So start implementing it now.

Note: If you want to get really deep into vulnerability and why it’s so important to emotional health, check out Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly.

Also: There are tons of readers who have implemented vulnerability into their own lives to great effect. If you have, or if you feel like I’ve forgotten anything, please tell us about it in the comments. Thanks.

The post The Vulnerability Primer appeared first on Postmasculine.

Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare. All of its power comes from leveraging the imperfections of the human mind and the tendency for people to make dumb decisions when they’re afraid.

The bombings yesterday killed three people and injured over 100 more. When all is said and done, probably about a dozen people will be dead. It’s tragic and upsetting.

But over 115 people die each day in the US due to car accidents. An estimated 125 die each day due to lack of access to health care. A whopping 1,162 die due to smoking-related illnesses. And 105 die each day due to suicide.

In the grand scheme of things, a bombing like this is a blip on the radar, gone as quickly as it came. Yet it generates a much stronger emotional reaction from us than anything else. Everyone is talking about it. It’s impossible to go anywhere on the internet without reading about it. Why?

Psychological research has shown that humans have a number of fear triggers, triggers that cause us to become far more afraid than the actual threat itself merits.

One is when an act of violence is random. If the act of violence is directed at a specific individual or group, it’s easy to brush it off as someone else’s problem. They may be dead, but we’re safe. But when it’s random, our minds have a beautiful tendency to always assume we’re next. It’s the same perceptual bias that keeps people buying lottery tickets, the self-absorbed notion that we’re always somehow the one in a million.

Secondly, terrorism is public. Terrorists intentionally target public places so that even if they don’t injure the most people, the most people will see it and be affected by it. There’s a symbolism to terrorism. The more significant the public event, the more magnitude the violence will be perceived to have. Had this bomb blown up at a retirement home in Wyoming, chances are it’d get far less coverage. And sadly, it would feel less significant, even if it killed more people.

Finally, terrorism takes advantage of the fact that fear sells. Humans are wired to feel like fear is more important than any other emotion, therefore we’re far more likely to share it, broadcast it, and yes, even view it. As a result, it spreads throughout society like a virus, reinforcing the idea over and over again to everyone who sees it: you’re next.

This is why we get everyone and their mom on Facebook and Twitter posting soliloquys about how upset they are. We get media outlets are pumping out article after article of unconfirmed “news.” And we get widespread voyeurism, as nobody can look away from the gruesome pictures and videos. Everybody buys into the drama. Everyone feels righteous in their horrible emotions. And everyone then continues to spread the disease of fear further.

The problem with indulging in this process is that it’s this exact process that makes terrorism powerful: our reaction to it. Terrorism depends on the victims to be too self-absorbed to look at the situation at a population-level. It depends on people becoming self-righteous and paranoid and on them becoming glued to the repetitive news coverage for 12 hours straight. It depends on people buying into the irrational belief, “I’m next.”

It’s drama on the highest scale, the ultimate reality TV show. And when you indulge in it, you open yourself up to disgusting beliefs. Apparently a FOX News employee tweeted to “Kill all Muslims.” People on Facebook are beginning to post long rants about US foreign policy or whatever their pet cause is, despite the fact we know absolutely nothing about who did this or why they did it. Tear-jerker stories abound this morning of some random dude who tried to pick up and carry another random dude who lost his leg, marathon runners who ran to the blood bank despite the fact that there was no need for blood, and of course the politicians’ obligatory platitudes about country, strength, justice, blah, blah, blah.

My initial reactions were no different from everyone else’s: shock, disbelief, fear, sadness. My cousin ran in the marathon and finished less than an hour before the explosion occurred (she’s fine). Many of my friends still live in Boston and in many ways I see it as my home town. Hell, I stood on that corner just six days before, waiting to meet a friend for dinner. It was surreal, and horrifying.

But that’s where it ends. This incident honestly doesn’t involve me. And it doesn’t involve you either. Unless you know one of the 100 and some odd people sitting in Mass General Hospital right now, or you were standing on Boylston yesterday afternoon when the blast happened; it’s not about you.

Mourn the tragedy. Feel the anger and sadness and confusion. But then move on. This isn’t about you, or me, or your aunt who used to live there and oh-my-god, my brother’s friend used to work in an office building like three blocks from there.

This is not even about country or religion. It’s about one derranged murderer, the victims, and the police.

That’s it.

Terrorism is a fact of our age. The internet and 24-hour media machine enable it. But it’s a psychological weapon. A home-made bomb does little. Hijacking a plane does little. Even blowing up an entire building does little. It’s the fear and paranoia and blame and hate of the millions of people who watch it that does something. And it does something insidious.

In World War II, the Germans attempted to bomb England into oblivion. The idea was to bomb the English population into making Churchill withdraw from the war on the continent. It was terrorism on the widest scale imaginable. People died like this every single day.

From this period, a famous English phrase came about: Keep calm and carry on. Death is only as scary as you make it. Horrible acts like this can only control you as much as you let them. Feel the emotions, express the emotions, but don’t indulge them. Don’t indulge in the pointless news stories. It will only make you more upset and less able to cope. Educate yourself. Don’t be corrupted by the fear. Don’t buy into the hate. This was a crime and we already have systems in place to deal with criminals. Just keep calm. And carry on.

The post Why Terrorism Works appeared first on Postmasculine.