Growth never ends, so get your vitamin D

When you start on a journey of self-improvement that is wide ranging and multi-faceted you’d better be ready for a fight. When you decide beyond all doubt that it is the right thing to do, that you MUST do it and it becomes your identity then you can’t look back. Quitting half way would be worse than having never started. Once you’ve seen the sun it is impossible to crawl back into your cave and forget about it.

It is quite an undertaking, your entire sense of self is at stake. There will be many dark times when you feel so much resistance that you lose hope for a bit and wonder if you have what it takes. Even during the tough times I’d still rather be fully aware, wet-shaving with the razor sharp blade of my fear and getting that all-important Vitamin D.

At some points on your journey it becomes hard to remember how you were before you began. You go through periods of self-doubt and wonder if you’ve made any progress at all. Old negative habits, vices and thought patterns keep arising and calling you back like sirens to the shore. “I thought this would all be cleared up by now?” you think.

For me, the realization that I was not living well or meeting my potential was an epiphany. I had been living in the dark. The fact that I could do something about it was earth-shattering. I dove into my journey of self-improvement with obsessive vigor and determination. I was goal orientated and I had targets. There was a destination.

But as I moved forward the map just continued to unfold and reveal more and more territory. I came to realize that self-improvement is a never-ending journey. It is a way of life. There is no finish-line.

You must make your (never-ending) journey with love in your heart for yourself. You gotta be totally supportive of yourself. You gotta realise that the negative things in your life linger and tempt for a long time. Xvideos will always have 50 new scenes a day, getting high will always be fun, BBC News 24 will forever be addictive, eating high GI foods will be momentarily satisfying ’til the day you die, approaching a beautiful girl will always provoke some anxiety. If you beat yourself up over these realities you will always be stressed to the max. Smart men and women have designed the harmful shit in our modern society to be HIGHLY ADDICTIVE. The battle to stay autonomous, healthy and out of the clutches of those that wanna sell you shit and hold you back will always rage.

Cut yourself some slack but keep pushing on. Be stubborn. Realize growth never ends, and that you don’t want it to. Be positive and love yourself through the tough periods. Enjoy the journey, see the funny side and love that your eyes are open.

Get out from under your fear

If something scares you, DO IT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. This is the only way that you will learn the invaluable lesson that most of your fears are totally irrational. Not only are they baseless, but they are keeping you back from leading the type of exciting life that you could be living, a life in which the sky truly is the limit.

Most people go through their lives with a very low ceiling of what is possible for them. They don’t realise that to fulfill their potential and be truly happy takes work and genuine effort. When something scares you and gives you a feeling of anxiety, what you are experiencing is the residue of the fear our ancestors felt when they were living in a very different world filled with very real dangers, such as disease, famine and real violence. Our ancient ancestor’s anxieties served them well and kept them safe. To feel fear is in our genes, but it is now a hindrance and we must learn to act in-spite of it.

The problem with modern man is that we still get that feeling of anxiety but we live in a totally different environment. In the modern world taking risks often results in great rewards. The worst we can expect from acting in the face of our anxiety is the warm caress of a blush, the heat of mild embarrassment on our backs and a useful lesson in life. We live in the safest environment any humans have ever lived in. We are safer than we’ve ever been, so our anxiety has nothing genuinely dangerous to focus on and instead effects us when we want to talk to an attractive girl or sing our new song at open mic. If we never act in-spite of these feelings, it never gets proven to us that in today’s world it really is totally safe to lean into your fears and do the things that make you anxious.

Because this fear is so inherent in so many of us, we need to teach ourselves over time to be braver and less insipid. If you have a social shyness problem and you would like to interact with strangers but find you don’t because you are too reserved and your ancient, redundant fear impulses are getting the better of you, then the only way to overcome this obstacle is to lean into your fear. Start small by making small conversation with a shop assistant or asking somebody for directions on the street. The next level would be to ask someone for their opinion on where the best place to get coffee in your town is. If you keep this up for a while you will realise that people are not so intimidating and that there really is nothing to feel anxious about. You will begin to talk to strangers with ease and warmth. Your interactions will become more natural and pleasant and you will begin to enjoy people in a whole new way. You will realise just how much you were missing out on when you couldn’t talk to strangers. You will realise how stifling and limiting your old fears were.

In order to get over my own social anxiety I set a challenge for myself to talk to 3 strangers everyday, man, woman, young or old, every day until my anxieties about talking with strangers abated. Doing this helped me to become a much better conversationalist and it greatly reduced my SA.

Immersion therapy works.

Be honest with yourself. Don’t trick yourself into thinking that you are just fine the way you are. If you find somebody attractive but can’t introduce yourself then that is your fear getting in the way. Learn to do it.

The regret of not doing something you want to do is so much stronger than the regret of trying and failing. Learning to control and act in-spite of your irrational fears takes time and is an ongoing process. You are building a new reality and you have to convince your subconscious mind that it is real. Lean into your fears at every opportunity and you will lead a richer, happier and more exciting life.

Pretty girls ARE NOT getting chatted up all the time

There is a myth going around amongst the male populace. The myth is that pretty girls have lots of guys going up to them and chatting them up all the time.

Not so. This myth is horse-shit.

Believing this myth means that men are more intimidated than they ought to be at the thought of making first-contact with a pretty girl. They think that because girls are getting all this attention, they need to stand out by being super-impressive and saying really clever, jaw-dropping shit.

In reality, the vast majority of men NEVER go up and talk to unfamiliar girls that they fancy. FACT: Most guys are just too afraid to try their luck with strange and exotic tail.

I have lots of cute female friends and they vouch for this. I am out observing society more than most. I spend time in lots of different environments with very different clientele; the gym, university, bars, cafes, the streets, parks, even nightclubs – girls are not being hit on as much as guys think. You rarely see it.

Most couples meet through their social circles.

Girls mostly get chatted up by; socially inept, unattractive ‘gamer’ guys with weird and forced behaviors, or drunk guys.

If you are a ‘normal and cool’, semi-charismatic dude with his shit somewhat together and you can be chilled and positive and shoot-the-shit sober with the filly of your dreams then you are way ahead of the curve. No fancy tricks or gimmicks needed. (Trying too hard always looks lame anyway.)

You can stand out simply by being one of the rare non-needy, non-drunk guys that come and chat her up in a non-weird way.

So go and talk to the next cute girl that tickles your fancy. It never goes badly. At the very least you’ll probably end up making both your days.

Less ogling and more opening

Do not pedestalize beautiful girls.

Last night I was sitting in a busy bar with some friends. My buddies were ogling all the girls that were milling about. They were saying crude things about the girls body parts and even speculating on the levels of sexual athleticism that the girls may have! Needless to say they were not chatting to or communicating with any of these girls, (apart from the awful sub-communication that must radiate from a group of men trying to hide their ogling).

I was keeping quiet because I realize that ogling is very low value. Talk about putting a girl on a pedestal! It’s crucially important to realize that beautiful girls are just like you. Ogling reinforces the idea in a mans head that beautiful babes are unattainable. This is bad.

Some people would argue that barely concealed ogling and commenting is degrading to women. Perhaps, but I think it’s more degrading to the ogling men. By doing this a man is massively elevating the girls value by comparison to his own. By admiring her physical features from afar, making comments to the other lads, but not communicating with her he is putting her on a pedestal. It implies that he and his boys are a pack of lower value creatures that are somehow inferior to the hotties.

This sort of behavior will eat away at your self-esteem if allowed to continue. You are objectifying women and making them into objects to admire secretly and from afar. You are failing to see them for what they really are; normal people who have worries, insecurities, do smelly farts and want to be hit on by cool, charismatic guys.

You will have so much more success with girls if you can bridge the gap between them and you. Stop thinking of them as beautiful and terrifying aliens. You and they are all the same. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

It’s OK and perfectly natural to appreciate a girls beauty but be sure not to pedestalize her. Remembering and constantly re-realizing that gorgeous girls are as human as you and me is good for your game.

You internalize this new idea by talking to pretty girls at every opportunity. When you see a girl you are attracted to go up and talk to her. You will soon realize that most beautiful girls are down-to-earth, friendly and even shy.

So, in short, less ogling and more opening.

Love yourself

It’s all too easy to ignore our own positive traits and focus on (and exaggerate) what we perceive to be our negative traits. This is very damaging to our quality of life. As the noble laureate Katy Perry often wails, “Baby, you’re a firework”. Katy has clearly cottoned on to the importance of realizing your own value and being self-confident.

It is crucial to our happiness that we love ourselves. Not realizing our own worth will mean that we won’t have the confidence to try for what we want in life. We will never reach our potential. Someone not reaching their potential, in their one and short life, is extremely tragic.

Being conscious of our qualities and loving ourselves gives us the confidence to do what we want. It lets us take risks because our self-worth is not dependent on outside factors, such as what other people think of us. We have self-confidence.

If you find someone attractive, you should absolutely go up and talk to them. The potential rewards dwarf the potential pitfalls (of which, I believe, there are literally none (‘rejection’ is character building)). But you’ll only be able to go up to the desirable person confidently and bring your best-self if you truly believe that what you are offering them is an attractive proposition. You gotta believe that they are the lucky one.

Everyday on streets, in cafes, on underground trains, in gyms, in prisons etc. people who are very attracted to each other and who would greatly enrich each others lives DON’T meet because they are too unconfident and unaware of their own value to take a risk and say “Hi”. How sad!

Great things don’t just fall into your lap. Life enriching achievements must be worked hard for. If you can have a true confidence and understanding of your own positive attributes then you will have the ability to go out on a limb and start making your dreams come true.

We are often more inclined to focus on what we don’t like about ourselves than we are to think about what we do like about ourselves. I’ve met so many physically beautiful people who are totally unaware of their beauty. They are used to being attractive and it is no longer something that they notice, it is their default. They find something else to worry about and concentrate on that; there is no logic in low self-esteem.

You can choose how you think and what to focus on. You can decide to stop exaggerating, inventing and defining yourself by your shortcomings. Never let a rejection or a lose or failure to reach a goal lower your self-esteem. EVERYBODY on the planet has setbacks such as these ALL THE TIME, it is an entirely normal part of being a human and it has zero reflection on your worth. Hell, the more mistakes you make, the more you’re LIVING YOUR LIFE TO THE FULLEST, at your edge. Rejections are lessons and a sign that you are growing and leaning into your fears.

Everyday you should spend some time remembering what you are good at and reminding yourself of your positive attributes. Write a new list of what you like about yourself everyday if necessary. Or make a comprehensive list and read it everyday. Learn to love yourself.

People who love themselves make much better company and ARE MORE ATTRACTIVE. Self-depreciating people become tiresome very quickly. You need to love yourself in order to give love to others.

We have to believe in ourselves enough to be able to chase our dreams. This means ditching the negative thoughts, being strong and brave and retraining our brains to realize that we are special. Often we are our own worst enemies. We need to be our own best friends.

A lack of confidence will keep us from having happy and fulfilled lives. It will keep us from being content on our death beds. We must battle hard to banish our self-doubt and start to really love ourselves.