Where to start

[CartesianTheater]

I don't exactly which section to post this in but I'm a little overwhelmed and I don't know where to even begin.

About six months ago I read No More Mr. Nice Guy. It fit me pretty well, I joined their forums and posted a little but nothing particularly meaningful. I loved the book but to be honest found the forums to be pretty lacking. From what I see I like what is going on here much better.

About me. I'm 31, I live with my parents. I just earned an associates degree. I'm currently training for a job that I don't really feel passionate about but will pay me better that anything I've ever done before, enough to get out on my own and start actually living my own life. I would like to return to college but I have no idea for what, I am lacking any real direction. I had a pretty big drug habit from my teenage years all the way through age 28 when a mushroom trip opened my eyes to the reality of what my life was turning out to be. Dropped my drug friends and started the business of getting my life in order. At the time I was feeling very personally powerful and thought it would pretty smooth sailing and even if I hit a rough patch I would just power through it, suffice to say that is not how things worked out. I have really struggled with making new connections since then. I am seeing recently I have deeper self-esteem issues than previously realized, and of course as mentioned the lack of direction. I feel I have outgrown or lost the passion for most of my previous activities and I'm not really finding lots of new stuff that I care about. I struggle with meaninglessness.

I feel like a big part of this has to do with my lack of any real substantial relationships. I feel very isolated, even around people. At times I can open up and be very social, I am often surprised at others high level of receptivity towards me when I do. I have no real guy friends but especially with women. I am at this point just feeling so disillusioned about women and dating. I have had a couple girlfriends by dumb luck, but nothing to write home about. I feel very terrified of trying to make anything happen. Specifically I have been terrified of ever trying to approach women but I'm really seeing now there is no way around it. I think I have lost a good amount of self esteem from not trying. Now I feel pretty stupid and stuck by lack of experience. Another big issue for me is being afraid of my own power which I know I have. I read Models and the thing about polarizing brought up some conflicting feelings for me. I know it works and it feels good to do it, but it also sometimes makes others confrontational which I get sick of dealing with, so I draw back into myself instead of living in order just not to deal with it.

Despite this I still feel with some direction and effort and tastes of success to motivate me forward I have the potential to build a life that I enjoy living.

What I really want is to develop a sense of purpose/direction, connections that are equally important to the other parties involved as they are to me, learning to initiate and grow both sexual and more long term, if I desire, relationships with women, and just in general more better feelings of personal power, positivity, and being happy with my life.

I'm sure this is not a complete picture but is a good rundown for an introduction, and as stated in the thread title, I'm a bit lost on where to even start.

[Korg]

Well first off congrats on dropping the drug habit, not an easy task to do, take pride in that achievement.

Your trying to find yourself again, it seems to me like your going to fast. Slow down a little, learn to walk before running.
Work on one part of your life at a time, I would advise to first get stability in your life and then move/think about the future. You'll notice that things become easier en drop into place, instead of hitting a brick wall.

[hakr]

I loved reading your post. Have you read Mark's book models? When I read it, I found my confusion about where to go, what to do, etc narrow quite a little bit. I am nowhere near the man I want to be, but I am getting started. Maybe there will be more guys on here who will give you better advice but here we go....

1. Make a list of skills/things you want. Tackle them ONE by ONE. Doing too many at a time overwhelmed me.

2. One thing that you should have without exception, in my opinion, is going to the gym/some sort of physical activity. Make this a habit. When I am in a rut or feeling down, I always feel better after a gym session. There is always a girl with a perfect ass doing yoga or on the treadmill

3. Learn something to help you get rid of your anxieties. This will help you until you die, because negative thoughts, beliefs, challenges will always be there. I recommend CBT (The Work by Byron Katie), REBT three minute therapy or something more holistic like the Release technique by Larry Crane.

4. Journaling is an effective way of "finding/looking for" the problems you are experiencing. When you re-read your journal entries, you might find a sentence like "I feel I wasn't good enough to do....." or "I am too short/brown/ugly for....". Then pick these up and clean yourself up using one of the techniques above. Sometimes it takes months to completely get rid of some negative things, I am still working on A LOT of mine.

I can personally vouch for all 3 of them, still use them today. Depending on my mood I will use one of the three. I keep Models as my "bible" to refer to when it comes to women/lifestyle stuff.

This is the only advice I can give you, anything else would be speculation/keyboard jockeying. Good luck boss

[Tim]

I completely agree with Hakr about exercise. Personal development comes in all shapes and sizes and everyone should go after what they're interested and what makes them happy, but being fit and healthy is one of the few things everyone should aim for. There are so many benefits from working out and eating well it's not worth mentioning them here. I think you should find something you can fit into your life and practice/engage in regularly. For many guys that's working out at the gym, for others it's playing a team sport, etc. The one thing I would advise you in how you decide this is that you should be choosing it based on what makes you happy, not what will get you the most muscles or girls. Similarly with eating a healthier diet; sometimes you're going to have do deny yourself junk food, but focus more on finding foods and meals that you enjoy eating and are relatively nutritious, rather than trying to always be perfect.

Apart from that, when it comes to specifics self-development really differs from person to person. You could journal like Hakr suggested, or you could try meditation. You could do that by yourself, or find a group to join. For a hobby you can learn another language, or you can join a book club.

A couple of things that consistently come up are dealing with emotional issues, and forming healthy habits and removing unhealthy ones.

I think both http://postmasculine.com/why-its-so-hard and http://postmasculine.com/emotional-needs-part-1 are good for the latter, as well as 'Models' of course.

As for habits, there was a thread that got into it a bit the other day: http://postmasculine.com/forum/Thread-I-...discipline

Let me know if you want me to expand on any of this. Good on you for taking charge of your life btw

[Chaos]

Let me drop a little thing here. Reading this I feel a little bit like I felt when I read Thor's introduction.

There are two ways of seeing your history:

- You're the ex drugg addict which was losing his life and wasn't worth a damm.
- You're the guy who dropped drugs, got a degree, started to put together his life and is thinking about going back to college.

The thing is you've already done some awesome stuff and you keep fighting and trying to do better. You have the will, now once you get in a direction you KNOW you can get whatever you aim for, what, is it gonna be harder than dropping drugs and the life you've previously known?

Think about it, and give yourself some credit. Granted you may lack connections and have a lot of doubts and some low times, but overall you've managed a lot of harder things than learning to connect with people and attract girls. AND you must have a ton of stories to tell.

[CartesianTheater]

Thanks for all the responses everybody.

Just to cover a couple of things I already eat right (been slipping just a little,) exercise, and meditate. Writing this thread was a good place to start because thinking about my response has forced me to focus a bit more on where I would like to see improvement. A BIG, big, HUGE thing for me is the thing about being afraid of my own power.

At one point in my life in my late teens lower twenties I felt very whole and on top of my game. You see I'm kind of a nice guy but wasn't ALWAYS a nice guy. I used to be someone with lots of personal integrity and personal power. I started to feel like that was always bringing trouble to myself though. Despite the fact that I was nice and polite through being direct someone always wanted to talk to me about some issue I had "caused" for them. I remember once I mentioned liking some book or another that was kind of thick and later having someone come to me to tell that I made their friend feel bad by saying that I liked that book because their friend had a hard time with it, like that was some how my fault. Or maybe just in general not being afraid to speak up if I didn't like something, for instance if someone was whining and going on and on about some story in their life and I just didn't care and instead of telling them "oh yeah that's horrible" I might say something more along the lines that I thought they were being silly and could change the situation if they wanted and they would get mad, or people being upset because I didn't fit the status quo. At some point it just started to feel to me like having personal power was just too much damn trouble.

So I read Models and Mark talks about polarization and that is something I kind of used to do naturally and I know it works and t makes me feel good. At the same time however you end up getting people who get upset with you or want to argue with you all the time over some trivial statement they disagree with. I am kind of outspoken at times when I'm not feeling like I have to hide my real self and not all people are always okay with that. Such as the other day some people around me were talking about messed up baby names, and I mentioned something about no one having the last name Hitler anymore. It was a real observation but also obviously very tongue in cheek and it was aid in appropriate context, but I could see one of the people start eyeballing me. I feel like once one person has made a decision about you they will try to get others they know to also dislike you as a form of validation or something. Once again here it feels like being yourself and expressing you personal energy outward is just a constant fight.

As a last thing, I sort of feel this way with women too. Although I never quite stepped into the adult world and started getting into relationships or having sex at that point, I was always sort of natural with girls too, not always with showing intent or getting physical but that is different issue. Just when I would talk to them I am a very genuine guy and I can often see them perk up and get really into it really fast when I would talk to them. The thing is often at this point as Mark says in the book it is like they are rooting for you to be that awesome guy, and it often feels like they start watching you super closely to see if you can keep it up. Sort of like once they see you potentially fit some archetype they start looking for you to fit it exactly and I don't. The whole reason they became interested is because I didn't but now they will lose interest unless I do. Suddenly interaction becomes work and what was fun becomes unpleasant, and I kind of just want to drop out of the whole thing.

I am not the best writer and I hope there is some coherence between these issues I've presented and someone can follow this post. To me these things are all tied together through the fact that I feel like I get in trouble, or there is some major drawback to powerfully asserting who I am in social situations. I have been a powerful person before and I've had a general idea of this issue in my head for while. I feel like I have some other issues but this is a big thing for me and if I can unravel it I may start making a lot of progress in all areas of my life. So I'm looking for outside perspective and advice or from anyone who has had a similar sort of issue. I know I would be happier from putting myself out there more, but it almost seems like my subconscious won't cooperate with that intent until I overcome this issue in some way.

[Tim]

Your problem sounds more like you were a social disconnect rather than you had too much power. You shouldn't be afraid to hide your opinions, but you should know when to be polite and not overshare. Knowing the difference comes from having social awareness and empathy for others. Do you feel like people often misunderstand your intentions? Do you offend people and don't have any idea why?

[CartesianTheater]

I don't know exactly what you mean by social disconnect. Of course I have a general idea but I don't know specifically what you imagine when you use that term. I was always an outcast as kid, I had friends when I was using drugs (in retrospect probably had a lot to do with me using them to begin with) and since I have been somewhat isolated. However I was a very sensitive kid and I'm an empathetic person, honestly perhaps too much for my own good.

I think being overly reserved and under-sharing rather than over sharing is my problem. As a kid i learned not trust people and then have been repeating patterns ever since. I've learned being some-what aloof often draws people into you albeit in a somewhat manipulative way, it still provides rewards for someone who isn't really secure about putting himself out there.

I would say the offending thing happens on occasion but is not an everyday type of occurrence.

I still think there is some level of being afraid of power going on. A sort of care-taking and self-preserving kind of thing. Because I know emotional pain, and I'm aware it's a universal experience, I don't want to do anything that could cause it to others so I self censor in order to avoid the perception that I am the cause of others pain. Also it (in my head) keeps others from forming a negative view of me.

[CartesianTheater]

As another example. My job has sent me out of town for a month. I had kind of forgotten about the social dynamics (pardon the phrase) that go on there.

As I have mentioned, in the recent past I have allowed myself to become a "nice guy," I have only recently woken up to this fact. There are certain people at my work who I have allowed to talk to and treat me on less than respectful ways.

I'm thinking about going back to my regular location in two weeks and being in such a way that stands up to such treatment. The thing is I know there will be a backlash. People work to maintain the status quo and once they have begun to see themselves vis a vis myself in the social hierarchy they will push back (in this case potentially explosively verbally.)

So I am afraid of asserting myself in this situation and afraid of consistently not backing down if I'm being mistreated. This ties to the whole power thing because as I've mentioned I wasn't always this way. I'm not someone who grew up being afraid of confrontation, it only came later through what I view as whiney and victim type responses from others on a consistent basis (which is making me a whiney victim.) Situations where I view myself as having been mature and reasonable, but there is a reaction and it becomes easier just not to say what I think....but I am no longer happy with this as a solution, not only does it make me feel bad, and like I'm being walked on but it is dishonest and also letting people who I feel may have less integrity than me lead which is in the end, not good for anyone.

What I'm looking for here isn't a solution to the specific instance(s) I used as examples, but how to get over the underlying attitude(s) that are the cause of the behavior. Often in these situations in addition to being afraid of a backlash, as silly as it may seem, I may be letting someone disrespect me, or not coming back at them, in order to keep from making them feel bad. I guess because I feel like I've been made to feel bad in the past I don't want to inflict such pain onto others. Like because I've been punched in the nose and I know it's painful, I wouldn't do it to someone else. I know empathy is a good thing, but this is just too much for my own good. The general attitude has become so pervasive it carries into many or all areas of my life, not just direct conflict situations. Although not limited to, including approaching women. I hear complaints about creepy guys (or whatever the particular label for a given situation is) so much that when I think about doing it, I don't because it might bother her despite the fact that I want to, putting someone else's needs ahead of my own and ending up consistently alone and affecting my quality of life.