One assumption I’ve lived my life by for a long time now, goes like this: “If it’s a matter of me being screwed up, or masses of people being screwed up (in the same way), then it’s far more likely that it’s me being screwed up.”
Just to paint a couple examples. Some of my favorite comments, emails or forum posts that I see regularly go like this: “I go out and try to meet girls, but the problem is all of the girls in my town are catty and immature. So I guess I just need to move to a new city.”
Really? So, it’s not you who’s screwed up, it’s the 140,000+ single women in your city who are ALL screwed up. That’s a totally reasonable observation.
Or you get guys who claim that ALL — not some, not most, but ALL — American women are fickle and too individualistic. Or that ALL Western women are immoral and cheaters and would never make a good girlfriend.
Guys making negative assumptions and stereotypes about MILLIONS of women for no other reason than to shirk accepting responsibility for their own short-comings. This appears to me to be nothing short of a victim-mentality and it pervades a lot of guys’ thinking, some in more obvious ways than others.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the general observations are wrong, it just means you’re interpreting them in such a way to victimize yourself. Sure, American women may be more fickle and pretentious than their European counterparts (then again, they may not be). Women in your town might actually be more closed off than women in a bigger city (or they might not). But you’re choosing to let those observations be responsible for your results, because it’s easier to feel like the victim, to feel like that fucked up and cruel world is short-changing you, rather than admit you just suck at something and nobody else seems to care.
Humans stereotype for a reason: so that we can manage large chunks of information in order to orient ourselves more efficiently. Often, stereotypes can be useful. But often they’re not. Often they’re nothing more than excuses; ways for us to avoid the blame and responsibility for not being satisfied with our results. And these excuses hurt us, and shut us off from opportunities.
So returning to the “women in my town are cold” example. Yeah, they may, on average, be colder than say, Las Vegas women. But are ALL of them? No. Maybe 40%? 50%? But if you write them ALL off as being cold and use it as an excuse and not take responsibility, you’re effectively shutting yourself off from 50% of the women in your town. You’re effectively missing out on hundreds of opportunities.
The same goes for complaints against American women. There are something like 40 million single women in the US. And you truly believe you can’t find ONE good one? Who’s fault is that? It’s your fault. You’re being lazy. You’re being lazy and unfairly judging millions of women all because you aren’t willing to take responsibility for your failures.
I believe strongly in taking responsibility for everything that occurs in your life. Our minds are always looking for ways to avoid pain and failure and rejection, and so they’re constantly churning out rationalizations to keep us impeccable; it’s THEM who’s fucked up, not us.
But when one practices taking responsibility for everything that happens in their life, you stop blaming others. It becomes less a question of blame and more a question of sacrifice. It’s no longer THEIR fault that you’re still single because they’re all cold bitches, but now it’s your fault and a question of whether you’re willing to sacrifice the extra effort or not to find a woman who isn’t a cold bitch. Taking responsibility and morphing blame into sacrifice empowers you. It puts the ball in your court and returns you to the healthy reality that the only person in this world who determines your success and failure is you.
The question of blame, responsibility and sacrifice is a profound one in relationships as well. Dysfunctional relationships almost always crumble under the pressure of one person blaming the other for their shortcomings or transgressions. Research has shown a direct correlation between the amount of blame leveled between partners and their propensity to break up (topic for an upcoming post). The recipe for a healthy and happy relationship is one where both partners take responsibility for their own emotions and their choice to commit to the other.
Just to give you an example. Before I got into all of this dating advice stuff, I dated a girl for four years in high school and college. I was madly in love with her and she ended up cheating on me and leaving me for another guy. For a long time I blamed her for being a cheating, lying whore and was very angry. Rightly so. But as time has gone on I’ve recognized a few things: 1) I wasn’t exactly boyfriend-of-the-year, and in many ways, her cheating and leaving me wasn’t very surprising; 2) there were plenty of warning signs that I chose to ignore or was just completely oblivious to; and 3) regardless of her actions, I made a conscious choice to commit to her day in and day out, and the risk of being cheated on was always a possibility in that commitment. In the end, I made the conscious decision that I was willing to sacrifice the risk of being hurt in order to enjoy the commitment of our relationship. And I wouldn’t take that decision back. It was my responsibility.
That’s an extreme example, but again, the application is ubiquitous. I used to have a pretty stern love/hate relationship for slutty club girls. My style of game was (and still is) very much intellectual- and humor-based. I prefer to get girls into interesting conversations where I can show off my mental gymnastics. For a long time, the ability to hook and attract drunk party girls in high-end clubs alluded me. It frustrated me for a long time and the ‘hate’ part of the love/hate was that I saw them as fickle, stupid and shallow. Now, that may be true, but I was blaming THEM for my lack of success with them. I mean, how dare they not be attracted to me! If they weren’t so dumb, they’d be lining up to bang me, and that’s how the world should be, right?
The truth was, I had to make a choice… was I willing to make the sacrifice in order to learn how to pick up girls like that? At the end of the day, that’s the only relevant question: the girls you meet will be the girls you meet, but are you willing to put in the effort and sacrifice to make something of it? When I did, I found something out: that I don’t particularly enjoy girls like that, even if they are hot. Eventually, I was no longer willing to make that sacrifice. Should they change who they are just for me and my values? No. Is it their fault I wasn’t able to get with them for so long? No. Is it their fault that I often CHOOSE not to bother with them anymore? No.
Stop fashioning yourself as a victim. The world is not conspiring to malign you. The world is pretty fucking indifferent towards you. Take responsibility for your life and stop blaming those who don’t behave in the way you wish they behaved.
Get your dating life handled. Become an attractive man once and for all, without faking it or pretending to be someone you’re not.
Models: Attract Women Through Honesty has been referred to as the best book in the field by many, and has received five-star reviews from all over the world.
A colleague of mine is an experienced therapist and talked about something like this, using an example of depression and having a low opinion of yourself.
He said the world is a complicated place, full of all kinds of conflicting information. If someone believes something, it’s very easy for them to cherry pick ‘evidence’ to ‘confirm’ or ‘prove’ their view is true. A depressed person can easily find ‘evidence’ that they’re a failure as a human being for example.
In my own experience, what I find tricky is that I’ve noticed the people with the worst attitudes are often the ones who are the most vehement in believing that they don’t have an attitude problem at all, and that their view of things is real.
My counselor friend talked of the same thing, how he could suggest to a depressed client that their depression was darkly coloring how they viewed the world, and the client would get irritated and go, “You don’t get it. I truly am a loser. Why don’t you see that?!”
Another thing is the idea of self-fulfilling prophecies – how we can induce in people the behavior we expect out of them. Like if a guy says all girls are cold, well what is he possibly doing to make them all act cold? Is he off putting or coming on too strong?
Again, I find the people who are the deepest into doing this will often deny the most strongly that it’s a factor. They’ll get angry and say you don’t get it. They’ll get mad at you for blaming them, when they’re sick of feeling bad about themselves. And in their life experience and personal reality, girls really are cold all the time, so they believe it’s an outside problem.
Everyone should have a therapist…especially anyone connected to this industry.
‘Coaching’ and the brilliant marketing behind anonymous self-help has caused more issues than it has healed.
I am a coach too, but if you have the choice between me and a therapist, pick the fucking therapist PLEASE!
well, when we are born. we are presented 2 choices.
1) see the world for what it’s
2) see the world for what you think it’s.:=)
I personally think that the fact that we are alive in this universe makes us winners already.
If we make a quick axiomatic statement that we are not religious or spiritual and take on the belief that this life is the one life we have and there is nothing else, then through a quick calculation of numbers and probability, we would realize just how improbable our existence really was.
I think it was David D in one of his programs who said that it helps to think about how improbable our very existence is. Imagine just how many people, how many of our ancestors had to figure out how to survive and reproduce for us to be here.
Then also imagine the billions or trillions of different male sperm which would have been possible to inseminate one random female egg, and then imagine the multiple ways which we could have been biologically developed in the womb, and the possible places we could have been born and raised, and maybe we would come to realize how lucky we really are.
The only reason so many people view themselves in a bad light and call them a failure is that they are comparing themselves to other human beings. There will always be people who are better than us in a certain way (and who are also in worse places), and one of the hardest things for a human being (but especially for a man) to do, is to stop comparing ourselves and competing to see who is the best.
At the end of the day, we are all going to be dead, all the people we have loved and will love will also be dead, our legacy and memory erased from existence, and this planet will be destroyed. So what if my former classmate from high school now works as an investment banker, just became a doctor, earns 7 figures, dates supermodels, or is getting married. I am happy for them. They may look good on the outside but they got their own problems, their own worries. Now the real question is, do I want to sacrifice a good portion of my precious, nonrenewable resource of time to go after the same things as my fellow man to have the same lifestyle, as well as their problems? I know I could become a millionaire in 10 years if I really focused and went after my goal, but is the sacrifice for this goal too great? I think so.
So figure out a way to stop comparing ourselves to others, stop living for other people, trying to get their approval or validation, and figure out what is really important to us, what we truly value.
I know I am not a victim. I used to believe that I was a victim, that the world was so unfair and that I could not win. I felt like I was always struggling not against this world, but against my fellow human being, man against man, brother against brother, both competing for the same small amount of money, women, statues, and power in this world.
I am giving up that rat race of giving up so much of my life, my time, and my energy just to make my own ego stroke itself because I managed to make slightly more money or bang hotter girls than my fellow human brother.
For all the guys who feel like they are failures because they are not as socially valued as their fellow man, I say “who cares?”
I realize now that sometimes I will choose to not desire to view the world as it is because it just won’t help in any way. Sometimes, it is not helpful to be fully aware and honest about this world.
The fact that we are alive in the universe makes us winners already? mmmm….. I guess other people just sometimes win more then others. Don’t you think?
It’s true that a lot of people compare themselves in a very negative way to others. But have you ever considered the fact that these are just people that havn’t found out yet what their talents are? Most of the time these are just people who don’t know what makes them special or unique.
I don’t feel that you are using this argument to stop comparing yourself to others, I feel that you’re more using it as an excuse “to settle for mediocirty”.
- If you know you have a certain talent that makes you special then you want to develop it right?
- If you know that you can get a better girl in your life by working out, finetuning your lifestyle. Why wouldn’t you do that?
This is the essence of life! People are always trying to fulfill certain values. For one person being a millionaire is called financial stability for someone else it’s having a nine to five job. The only time you will feel down when comparing yourself to others is when YOU THINK that you can’t achieve the same succes as they are having. Especially if you don’t know what your own desires are.
Yes there will always be people who seem to have it all. But have you ever taught about it that this is just YOUR perspective and NOT THEIRS? It’s pretty funny that these people are probably comparing themselves to you as well.
It all boils down to knowing what you want out of life and then going after it. This is what I feel makes my life meaningfull and I’m happy with this because these are MY desires. If you really know what you want and you’re going after it then you will always be happy and comparing yourself to others will be minimized enormously.
Or do you really think that Tom Cruise is jalous at Will Smith for having an amazing 2008 (hancock, I am legend).
I think a LOT of guys use this kind of comments just like excuses to don’t take action. This could be an excuse: women are bitches and cold I don’t want to approach them. Or on the other hand they were rejected so badly for a woman that they think all women are like that. I remember when I was an AFC how women rejected me right and left and how I used to think that women were evil. A lot of women criticize that we men give too much importance to physical beauty but ALL women discriminate men based in physical and inner game aspects. For women is ok to shit-test guys to see how unreactive and how confident they are in their own skin and in that process women can be harsh, specially in U.S.A., IMHO. http://www.examiner.com/women-s-relation…t-complain
I haven’t traveled so much like Mark, but so far american women are the harshest I’ve ever met, at least here in Boston where I live, they think thay can be as harsh as they want. Because we belong to a community that teaches us that we have to remain unphased we see it just like a shit-test but for the AFC out there he can see it like something cruel and thoughtless. Could be some truth in those allegations that you expose above Mark. I’m not american and took me a long time to get used to the way americam wpmen behave and even today I choose to go out with SWEET american women.
http://www.practicalpickup.com/lame-american-girls
True… although there’s a fine line between knowing the reality of the situation, or knowing if you’re just falling victim to “grass is always greener” syndrome.
Golden post Entropy…keep it up!
I guess you can’t really blame people for that. The hardest thing to do in my opinion, is to capture reality you live within and learn to live with it. I also used for a long time to be angry towards people because I always had to struggle to get what I wanted, and boy, when you struggle for a long time, you begin to get tired before you reach your 30′s, you just feel like you lived 100 years. Not a bad thing, but it took me long time to understand that blaming people and adopting a victim mentality simply means you’re just in fact accepting to continue to live a shitty life because you can’t really get in touch with what’s good within yourself. It may sound new age, but it’s like shifting from shitty mc donald to real good and healthy good burgers.
Good post, and a good message that hints closer at the larger issue.
PS: I hear you have some questions on online dating. If you need anything, get in touch.
Not so much questions as gripes. Been doing a lot of experimenting.
I think it comes down to the fact that it’s easier to make up an excuse to explain why you can’t be successful with women rather than admitting you have a problem.
When I first started learning to improve with women I made up lots of excuses. It was easier than say “I need to get myself sorted cos that is where the problem really lies”. Once I did realise this, I had a much better out look on the whole situation.
“The world is not conspiring to malign you. The world is pretty fucking indifferent towards you. Take responsibility for your life and stop blaming those who don’t behave in the way you wish they behaved.”
Gold. Really enjoy reading your thoughts. Thanks.
I agree to an extent.
But honestly, sometimes changing your environment can really help a lot.
I know I was experiencing massive number of day game rejections and nothing was working, and I can honestly say that it was because a large number of girls in the area are very closed off. Because I had no reference experiences, I didn’t know what to do in the rare situations a girl actually liked me. The whole “stop acting like a victim and keep approaching mindset” was what was given to me by other people and I kept trying and approaching. This really made me dislike pickup which made me even worse and shittier at this.
Its nearly fucking impossible to progress without reference points, and if your local environment is tough its like hitting my head against a wall.
Suffice to say, it took me 3 weeks in another city crashing at a friends dorm and some positive reference points of girls trying to actively hook up with me which resulted in me letting go of most of the anxiety I had about “being a pussy”. It was amazing to walk down the street and see girls checking me and my friend out instead of pretending that we are invisible. I was actively beating myself down because I thought I was being a pussy and others said it too even though I did 1000+ day approaches. It was just my environment, women are cold and most guys date down and I wasn’t willing to hook up with a 4 or 5 for a confidence boost.
Looking at the results of other guys doing daygame it was pretty obvious that I was judging myself harshly in an environment where even cool good looking guys with successful careers were struggling to get a rare lay. And because of the constant blowouts and time they spent doing pickup without actual results I could see the tension in their eyes.
Of course you’re a veteran so you probably would clean up here regardless.
Can’t resist being a jerk and pointing out the irony that the homonym for ‘elude’ is used incorrectly after the part about ‘show[ing] off my mental gymnastics’.