I’ve been trying to improve myself as a man and have a wonderful dating life for about 2.5 years now. I definitely might do one of these for how my lifestyle has changed over the last 2.5 years in the other thread but for now I typed this one out.
Currently I have an amazing girlfriend. It’s so great to be in the moment realizing how good I have it with her. I think in the past I’ve had some amazing opportunities with great women who I didn’t fully appreciate because I didn’t understand what I was lucky enough to have. I’m sure in some ways I still do that with my girlfriend now.
One of my biggest problems is my lack of ability to perceive my life in a positive light despite all the wonderful things I have in it and accomplishments I've made. It’s a constant battle for myself, being content vs. figuring out what could be improved. I read something The rawness
http://therawness.com/reader-letters-1-part-5/ that kind of hit me nicely yesterday. ‘You are fine just the way you are…and there’s always room for improvement’.”
I have rarely pulled girls from bars despite having spent a pretty large amount of time trying. Looking back I can see a lot of the reasons why I was kind of not having success. I failed to escalate physically as much as I should have. I wasn't good at managing logistics at all. I'm kind of a particular person and I only vibe really hard with certain girls. Most girls I've dated have seemed to have a lot of the same attitudes.
I've never really had a high conversion of day game either but I've never committed to practicing much. Approach anxiety gets me during the day pretty bad. I do still impress myself regularly with how many nice social interactions I manage to have with strangers though.
Most of my success has come from just being as awesome as I could and being myself as much as I could and jumping on opportunities as they come along. I’ve recognized some great opportunities and taken them. I met my current gf on the train for instance, developed a friendship, ect.
Girls have actually come to me a lot of the time through social circle and just made it obvious they wanted to hang out. I don’t take all the opportunities that present themselves to me, not even most. I have definitely let anxiety get the best of me, avoided certain situations, and just not been attracted to some of the girls. I still have a pretty great track record of amazing people and experiences in my life still though. I am actually pretty happy with my improvement and progress with my dating life over the last 2 years. Extremely happy and even impressed with myself. It feels weird to say that for me but yeah I have worked hard and reaped some nice benefits.
I’d say learning when to take advantage of good opportunities is a very valuable skill to have. I’m still working on it but so far I’ve ended up in some amazing situations. Sometimes that’s led to me getting hurt pretty badly but looking back on everything so far everything has totally been worth it and I’m glad I had all those experiences to grow from. I hope as much as possible most people feel the same way about their experiences with me.
Notes (In my experience)
1. The only thing holding you back is you. It isn’t the girls.
2. Help is here if you ask for it. If you don’t ask for it, you won’t get help.
3. We as men can have a really hard time opening up about things. We as men can also have a really hard time communicating with each other about our problems and giving quality advice.
3. Helping other guys and listening to their problems will help you with yours. It can also get kind of addictive. Be careful how much of your emotion you invest in it but definitely realize we have a gift here.
4. Emotionally connecting in your relationships makes you closer. This goes for friendships, family members, lovers, co workers (sometimes), ect.
5. If you can show you care about what someone has to say without coming across as “needy” and needing to know what someone has to say, people will like you more.
5. You will get hurt a lot during this process. You will fall off your bike many times. You need to embrace that and not let it stop you from getting better. No one became successful in life without bumps and bruises
6. Inevitably you will hurt other people. Try to go about the world as well as you can. This is really subjective but just try and do your best out there.
7. If you find things you care about and work towards those goals yourself day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year you will find yourself being a slightly happier person.
8. Sometimes it really can be hard to see how far you have come in life. It’s easy to sit there and continually judge how much better you could be doing than look at all the small accomplishments that got you to the point that you could be working on the things you are working on now. I think this goes for a lot of things in life.
9. Being able to really listen to a girl is probably one of the most attractive traits you can have.
10. Not all girls will love you if you speak your mind and be yourself but the ones who do will really like you. A lot of guys are afraid to just be themselves. It’s true. It’s not that guys don’t have cool selves it’s that they hide them from the world. You don’t have to go crazy bragging but you probably have some things that make you great.
11. A lot of problems can be improved on slowly if you just work on it and don’t let the problem itself overwhelm you.
12. A lot of guys that have problems with women don’t want to really work on their serious problems. They want a quick fix. Developing your overall life will almost always help you with women. Obviously you need to not only do that but increase your interactions with women in general a lot. This all takes a lot of time, work, emotional energy, physical energy, ect.
13. If you want to really be successful in life with women it’s good to try to cultivate a lifestyle that will attract the types of women that will really fill your needs. If you aren’t filling those equivalent needs how can you really be successful in any long term basis?
14. 99% of the time when most of my gf’s at least complain about something and are being “irrational” they know they are being that way deep down and will admit it if you really pull it out of them and probably later even if you don’t but they really just want to let out all that steam. This rarely happens with my gf’s but when it does it’s like they are just mad for other reasons and need to get out all the bs to get to the core of the issue and if you just keep letting them to talk about it without even trying to direct the conversation and just listen attentively they will work it out for themselves. A LOT of the time girls don’t need you to tell them what to do. They just need someone to listen to them.
15. Most girls really appreciate it when you let them be there for you somehow some way when you are dating.
16. If you show girls you genuinely kind of care about getting to know them a little even if it's not forever they love opening up
Zac's 2.5 years of Dating Improvement
