Why do I say these things? Because experts tend to suffer from tunnel-vision and not having a balanced life. They tend to live in an alternate reality where live balance or common sense comes second. One such example is for example with bodybuilders.

The truth is, you can get as much as muscle as a champion natural bodybuilder, while only doing 1/10th of the work and worrying he does. The truth is, within any field, 1% of the details produce 95% of the results.

Experts tend to obsess with those 99% of details that only bring an additional 5% of results. Which is why you shouldn’t be taken advice from these dumbasses.

So who do you take advice from?

If you are for example an entrepreneur who also wants to be ripped, well built and travel a lot, you should take advice from a businessman that has that amazing physique while traveling a lot and doubling his business every 6 months.

That guy will give you a lot better advice than a “bodybuilding” expert who has no life, no friends and no money because he spends his entire time obsessing about the details of bodybuilding that no sane person outside of that cult can even notice.

To hear a great bit on this, click play, to hear Dennis Prager make a great point on all this…

A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)

But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.

Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com

If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick.

Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com

Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.

The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.

And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer.

 

Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com

 

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

By nature, many entrepreneurs are inventors and good at solving problems. But how easily, or naturally, do these creative and practical processes come to most people? How can we harness the right frame of mind to make money and improve productivity?

The part of the brain that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our prefrontal cortex (PFC). It is the “executive” part of the brain — the moneymaker. It regulates emotions, thoughts and ideas and makes success and fulfillment possible.

But the PFC must be coaxed into action. Vanderbilt University management professor Richard Daft says that the average human spends only about 2 percent to 10 percent of their time each day using the executive brain. The vast majority of our time is spent reacting reflexively, just like the other animals on the planet.

Five Ways to Channel Your Inner Millionaire

When it comes to landing your next big deal, which frame of mind do you think would be your better asset?

ANIMAL MIND		EXECUTIVE MIND
Jumps around		In the here and now
Automatic		Intentional
Rote patterns		Thoughtful
Reactive		Reflective and measured
Sees negative		Sees positive
90 percent to 98 percent of time		2 percent to 10 percent of time

The better characteristics fall under the executive mind. Now, imagine what you could produce if you could add just one more percentage point to your own executive category. Consider these five ways to cajole your reluctant PFC into action and harness your brain power to maximize productivity:

1. Lead it. Direct your brain to focus on something. You decide what your PFC will attend to, as opposed to allowing it to scan the environment for something novel and interesting. This is a deliberate, executive-level function that requires your full effort. The more you focus, the more insights you get.
2. Weed it. Avoid messy thinking by moderating what’s on your mind. If you don’t, your brain might take the break it needs without asking your permission. When this happens, it will shut down and go into the reactive animal brain. This can lead to trouble.

   One way to “weed out” the items on your brain’s plate is to turn off every device that can contact or distract you for one hour each day, close your door and work on just one task. You’ll probably get more work accomplished in that hour of focused time than you would in four hours filled with distractions.

   Also, tell your brain what you deem most important by prioritizing your to-do list. If you don’t prioritize, your brain might go for what’s easy, which may not be ideal.

3. Speed it. Give your memory a break and speed up your thinking. Instead of trying to remember all that you have to do, write it down. By redirecting this energy you will have more to draw upon to be creative and productive. Thinking slows down when you overcrowd your brain with disparate things to recall.
4. Rest it. We all know the virtues of a good night’s sleep. But daytime rest is critical to fueling the brain as well. Taking regular quiet intervals to allow your PFC to do what it wants to in the first place — wander and reflect — helps to prime it for the more critical tasks of thinking and problem solving.

   Take a walk or distract yourself with something completely off subject throughout your day. Creating deliberate distractions will prepare you for bursts of brilliance.

Two Studies Confirm That Happiness and Health Are Linked to Relationships

February 10, 2002

A study by the University of Florida of what makes elderly people satisfied with life and a separate study by researchers at the universities of Illinois and Pennsylvania into which students are really happy have come to remarkably similar conclusions. It all boils down to relationships.

The Florida researchers found that those who expressed real fulfilment in their twilight years were those who joined in cultural, social, religious and sporting activities. In terms of what kept them happy and healthy these things were more important even than physical activity.

The researchers at Pennsylvania and Illinois identified 22 college undergraduates who scored in the top 10 percent on a variety of measures of happiness. They then compared those very happy students with 60 others who were average in happiness and 24 who were very unhappy.

They found that the happiest students differed from the other groups in consistent ways. They were more social, spent less time alone and reported strong relationships with friends, family and romantic partners. They were more extroverted, more agreeable and less neurotic than their unhappy or somewhat happy peers.

Satisfied with their lives, the very happy students “had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones and reported many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis,” wrote Dr Ed Diener and Dr Martin Seligman in their report, which appears in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

But the researchers found no link between happiness and behaviors that in previous studies had been associated with general wellbeing. The happiest students did not exercise more, get more sleep or attend church services more frequently than their less happy counterparts.

However, lest anyone conclude that an abundance of happiness equals uninterrupted bliss, the psychologists noted that even the happiest students had their bad days and low moods, confirming that their emotional systems were in working order, not stuck in a single, blithesome mode.

“Virtually none of them are at a 10 and nobody stays at a 10,” Dr Diener said. “So many people say, ‘I want to be happier than I am now.’ There is this expectation of being super happy.”

In fact, Dr Diener said, unpleasant emotions not only signal that something is wrong, but motivate people to make necessary changes.

Dr David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, MI, said the study’s findings underscored the importance of “our deep need to belong and to connect with others in deep relationships.”

Gosh! In the Uplift Program we’ve been saying that good relationships are essential for happiness for years. So nice to have our concepts backed up by yet more research. BM

 

Exploring Life at the Top of the Happiness Scale – New York Times

In the annals of psychology, misery has always taken center stage.

Textbooks are replete with accounts of the melancholy, the fearful, the neurotic and the delusional. The dysfunctional have been minutely deconstructed, the despairing given unstinting scrutiny.

But what about those at the other extreme of the emotional spectrum? Who has bothered to take stock of the especially gladsome and buoyant? Who has plumbed the mysteries of the utterly content?

If systematic investigation is used as a benchmark, the answer is: Not many.

But in a new study, two psychologists have begun to address this legacy of neglect.

The researchers, Dr. Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, identified 22 college undergraduates who scored in the top 10 percent on a variety of measures of happiness. They then compared those very happy students with 60 others who were average in happiness and 24 who were very unhappy.

The happiest students, the study found, differed from the other groups in consistent ways. They were more social, spent less time alone and reported strong relationships with friends, family and romantic partners. They were more extroverted, more agreeable and less neurotic than their unhappy or somewhat happy peers.

 

Exploring Life at the Top of the Happiness Scale – New York Times

And on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a personality test whose scales measure a smorgasbord of mental pathologies, they scored the lowest of the three groups. (One exception was the test’s hypomania scale, an index sensitive to high energy and ebullient spirits, on which six very happy participants received high scores.)

Satisfied with their lives, the very happy students ”had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones and reported many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis,” wrote Dr. Diener and Dr. Seligman in their report, which appears in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

But the researchers found no link between happiness and behaviors that in previous studies had been associated with general well-being. The happiest students did not exercise more, get more sleep or attend church services more frequently than their less happy counterparts.

 

Exploring Life at the Top of the Happiness Scale – Page 2 – New York Times

 

Dr. Diener said that although strong social bonds appeared necessary for happiness — every very happy student had them — a rich social life was not in itself sufficient to guarantee happiness. Some members of the very unhappy group also reported good relationships and frequent socializing. Nor was it clear from the study if being very happy led to more satisfying relationships or vice versa.

And lest anyone conclude that an abundance of happiness equals uninterrupted bliss, the psychologists noted that even the happiest students had their bad days and low moods, confirming that their emotional systems were in working order, not stuck in a single, blithesome mode.

”Virtually none of them are at a 10 and nobody stays at a 10,” Dr. Diener said. ”So many people say, ‘I want to be happier than I am now.’ There is this expectation of being super happy.”

In fact, Dr. Diener said, unpleasant emotions not only signal that something is wrong, but motivate people to make necessary changes.

Exploring Life at the Top of the Happiness Scale – Page 2 – New York Times

Dr. David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Mich., said the study’s findings underscored the importance of ”our deep need to belong and to connect with others in deep relationships.”

But he said it was curious that, given the results of previous work, neither exercise nor religious practice seemed associated with being happier than average.

For his part, Dr. Seligman said jokingly that he was somewhat dismayed by the results of the study.

”These were not the findings I was hoping for,” Dr. Seligman said. ”As an introverted intellectual who spends a lot of time reading, it tells me that I’m not going to be a good candidate for the upper 10 percent.”

He added, however, that in his view, there were probably different forms of happiness. One type, Dr. Seligman said, has more to do with raw feelings, ”the giggles and pleasures and joys,” of life. The other is closer to what Aristotle called ”eudaemonia” (”good spirit”), a state characterized by engagement, flow and immersion in life activities.

In a study that asked ”How often are you immersed in what you are doing?” Dr. Seligman said, he might even make it into the happiest group.

 

Keep going. Keep going. Suck at it. Suck at it. Think about what it feels like to suck at it. On the other side of sucking at it, however, is being good at it. You have to go all the way through the process, so don’t be surprised when it’s difficult.

Kids try new things. They just go for it. They could care less how silly they look. They want to learn and grow and try and get better. You can be just like this if you are willing to start where you are and encourage yourself each time. It builds courage, it helps you overcome fear, and it develops your individual source of control because you don’t pay attention to what anyone else thinks.

It took me 3 years in golf before I could even start keeping score. I didn’t let anything like being horrible at it make me quit. I decided I would rather be a beginner, than be on the sidelines of life. It has paid off in so many ways that I apply to the rest of my life. It’s a very good skill to have. I now try lots of new things because I know how to suck at things in the beginning and it doesn’t bother me.

The gamers think game is everything.

And it is, but they’re still wrong.

Because what they think is game is not really the game.

The real game is life, and the only scorecard that a man should ever care about is the one he makes for himself.

So then, why do gamers hate non-gamers so much?

Because they’re looking for validation, and in doing so they’ve not only failed in the game they play, but in the whole game entirely. They still have not let go of their need to have their actions approved by their peers, and as long as they continue they will never have obtained any level of mastery over themselves, let alone some convoluted idea of MASTERING the game of attracting women.

By trying to control others, one is controlled by them. What we seek to possess owns us.

Those who seek to posses game will be controlled by it. The “skillset” becomes a game that controls the gamer, putting him into a frame that needs constant validation to acknowledge the existence of said skills.

In other words, one who seeks to be consider proficient in game, to obtain the status of mPUA, Guru, or otherwise will ultimately be sucked into a game in which only through the validation of women can he consider himself valuable. The only way to PROVE that said “skills” work is through the seduction of a woman, and her seduction requires that you meet her validation for seduction.

Rather, it is the man who is not tied down to “winning” at game. The man who care not whether said woman is seduced or fucks off, and cares not for scoring more pussy that is freed from needing the validation of women. For this man, game is nothing more than amusement and a dalliance in pleasure he enjoys. It is not the purpose of his existence, it is not that which he bases his life around. For this man, game is no different than taking a shit on the toilet and playing a game of solitaire. He does his thing, and if he so desires, he amuses himself as he does his thing.

The ultimate game is to play life how you choose, the way that your heart desires. Not for women, not for the approval of online denizens and their PUAs, and certainly not for ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD. The ultimate game is a game of SELF.

In the immortal words of James Brown (a man who has bedded far more women in his life than most of these EXPERT game players);

“The way i like, it is the way it is,
I got mine ‘n’ don’t worry ’bout his”

From: Success in 24 Hours by John Reese

Have you ever seen the Hugh Grant movie, About A Boy?

If you haven’t seen it you should rent it because it’s a great movie. But if you have seen it then you’ll recognize the following quote from Grant’s character “Will”…

I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour. Taking a bath: one unit, watching countdown: one unit, web-based research: two units, exercising: three units, having my hair carefully disheveled: four units. It’s amazing how the day fills up, and I often wonder, to be absolutely honest, if I’d ever have time for a job; how do people cram them in?

I’ll admit the title of this post is a bit misleading. It reads like you can get everything you want “in under 24 hours” but that’s not what I mean by it. I used this title to not only get your attention but to demonstrate the POWER of this statement if you fully grasp it.

In order for you to accomplish anything in life you have to learn the power of INCREMENTAL SUCCESS. Let me explain how it works…

It doesn’t matter what you want to accomplish… making a million dollars, losing 50 pounds, learning to speak French, etc. In order for you to accomplish what it is that you want you MUST achieve your goal incrementally. There’s no other way for it to happen – it’s IMPOSSIBLE.

No one makes a million dollars without making $1 first. No one loses 50 pounds without losing 1 pound first. And no one becomes fluent in French without learning how to say “bonjour” first.

So now that we’ve established that accomplishing anything you want must come through incremental progress, then you realize that success is created by a series of smaller accomplishments that add up to the final goal.

The next thing for you to understand is the process of TIME UNITS.

Just as the character in About A Boy managed his entire life, you need to understand how time is applied towards incremental progress for ANYTHING you want to accomplish.

The main unit of time in our lives is THE DAY. That 24-hour period that repeats again and again until one day we die. It’s what we live our lives by. Every day is an important day and in order to accomplish everything you want in your life you must account for each and every day.

Do you know why the kiss of death in trying to accomplish anything in life is the old mantra of I’ll start on it tomorrow?

And you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have that product you want to create. The one that will make you more money. Or that new blog to set up. Or that affiliate marketing campaign to put together. Yet somehow you easily convince yourself, “I’ll start on it tomorrow.” And you lose yet another day of your life that you’ll never get back where you made ZERO INCREMENTAL PROGRESS.

When we are living any given day it’s so easy to put things off. It’s so easy to procrastinate. It’s so easy to convince ourselves that tomorrow we’ll start going to the gym. Tomorrow we’ll start eating healthier. Tomorrow we’ll do some writing that we’ve been putting off. Tomorrow we’ll start studying Japanese.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Well, there’s a reason why most people don’t accomplish that much. There’s a reason why it seems like WEEKS or even MONTHS go by and you haven’t accomplished things you know in your heart you really want yet you haven’t made any progress towards them at all.

It’s because it’s so easy to put things off until tomorrow.

So Here’s What You Need To Understand…

This is exactly what changed my life when I was struggling as an entrepreneur and really helped me break-through to finally building wealth for myself…

If you are trying to accomplish anything, in this case growing your income, you must do something every single day towards accomplishing your goal. Let me repeat that…

YOU MUST DO SOMETHING EVERY SINGLE DAY TOWARDS ACCOMPLISHING YOUR GOAL.

It doesn’t matter how big or how small this effort has to be. It just has to be SOMETHING. So every day that passes in your life you will incrementally be closer to getting everything you want. It’s a simple, yet powerful concept.

If you want to lose weight, for example, then just walk 1/2 mile each day. Not a mile. Not 5 miles. 1/2 mile. If you walk 1/2 mile each day that’s like walking 3.5 miles a week. Walking 3.5 miles seems pretty far to most people. But 1/2 mile is nothing. Yet you get the same net result from walking 3.5 miles whether you accomplish it in one day or one week.

Almost anything worth accomplishing in life seems BIG when we look at it from “Step 1.” Everything requires incremental progress. And most things requires MANY steps to reach the finish line.

When we are faced with everything we must do to accomplish any goal it often seems so overwhelming that it’s much easier to just put off starting it until another day. And that day often becomes a week, a month, a year, or more often than not… NEVER.

If you want to grow your business you must be taking action every single day that contributes towards your goal. This doesn’t mean checking your email more, or looking at stats more, or “doing research” (i.e. surfing sites all day) it means putting in the work towards creating that product, or doing some writing for an article or blog post, or making a video you’ve been wanting to make, or setting up a site and testing some Adwords, etc. etc.

Stop letting a single day go by when you aren’t making at least SOME incremental progress towards ALL your goals and it is IMPOSSIBLE that it won’t change your life for the better.

Even if it’s just a small step each day. Because that’s a step you’ll never have to do again and you’ll be even closer to accomplishing your goal.

“People will spend 10, 20, 30 years trying to find a way to quickly and overnight get their perfect body, when if they had actually gone the slow way, they would have gotten it in 2-3 years”

I then realized that this goes a lot further than just weight loss. In fact, I believe it is the main reason that people fail with self-help and personal development in general. I mean think about it. There is a guide to getting any skill, attribute or lifestyle that you can imagine, yet rarely does anyone succeed in it.

• Most people are trying to get rich over-night.
• Most people are trying to get a perfect love-life over-night.
• Most people are trying to get the perfect body over-night.
• Most people are looking for the ONE SPECIAL MAGIC silver bullet that will solve all problems in their life, over-night.

People are always trying to find a a “magic bullet” because:

1) They fear remaining who they are (fat, not-rich, not as popular as they wish…) for much longer

2) This is what culture has been (and keeps on) selling us. Things on TV are always instantaneous and done over-night.

The extreme irony of this approach is that it takes longer! People end up spending more time finding and taking shortcuts, then it takes to have walked the original path.

Let us take “making money online” as an example

When you look at these people, you notice they’re all looking for the tricks. They spend one sleepless night after another trying to find ways to FOOL the system into giving them money. They may want to find the best way to trick people into buying stuff. Or they might be desperately trying to get the latest technology to manipulate google into giving them customers. Some of them are trying to find the best technology to spam their website to the top. And then others are looking for the best marketing trick to con their readers into making an impulse purchase. What happens?

They spend a whole bunch of effort and time into some finding a trick, and eventually find it. When they do, they earn a whole bunch of cash, literally over-night! Life is good, life is easy, money is flowing into the bank-account. Life is great! And then, before they know it, they wake up one day, and they see that the trick stopped working. The system has caught on to their trick, and its no longer working. They’re back to square one.

So how do they respond to this?

What is the very first thing they do when the trick fails? They try to find the next magic bullet of course! And so the cycle repeats, year, after year, after year.  If these people were to actually sit down and draw a yearly average, they would see the truth. In fact, they would realize they’re not making more then someone working at McDonald’s. More of their time is spend chasing a magic bullet, then getting the short-term benefits of one, when it is found.

Why do WE ALL keep on going and hitting our heads against the wall like this?

The reason we keep doing this insanity is because it always “appears” like it is “just around the corner”. We always think “no, not this time, this time it is different”. We convince ourselves that the magic bullet that keeps on giving is one attempt away.

Another reason is that magic bullets do work pretty well – in the short term. The buzz you get when you earn a whole bunch of money in a week messes up your mind. You forget that it took you 3 months of making nothing to get that magic bullet. All you remember is the buzz from that one week where you cheated the system and made a whole bunch of money in a single week.

Another great example of the way people use this to screw themselves over, is weight-loss

People who are trying to lose weight tend to be the poster-child example of this phenomenon. They will go out there, try to find out what the latest fad diet of the month is and vow to stick to it. They will do this diet for about 3 weeks, lose 20 pounds of mostly water… and then crash. After they can no longer bear the diet’s difficulty, the will decide to “take a break”. In this break, they will find themselves binging uncontrollably until they balloon back up to their previous highest weight.

Seeing the scale on the weight, do these people say “Wait, maybe I should find a long-term, slow and easy solution”? Nope… They say that it was the wrong diet, and spend a few months searching and preparing for the next magical diet. The magic bullet that will turn you into a supermodel in 4 weeks or less, is, well, just around the corner!

Ironically enough, this cycle repeats itself year, after year, after year. Even though every single one of these people knows consciously and logically that the best way is to take it slow, they don’t. They know that the only permanent way to lose weight is to do it at no more than 2-3 pounds per month.

The most ironic thing is that they will spend 10-15-20 years running away from the 1 year path!

Isn’t that almost insane? A person will waste 20 years trying to find the magical 1 month-shortcut, where they could have achieved the goal in 1 year, had they chosen a slower path. We all do this, as it seems to be hard-coded into our psyche. Whether it is losing weight, making money, gaining social skills, building a career or writing the next award-winning novel, we all prefer a little insanity.
So what is the solution my friend?

The solution that I will propose is that:

the fastest way to get there… is to s..l..o..w.. down

There are 2 critical factors to making this work:

1) Accept yourself fully as you are (be grateful)

This might seem ironic and a bit new-agey, but it works. The best way to change who you are, is to accept yourself as you are right now. The pre-requisite geting a six-pack is to accept your current beer gut. The best way to become rich is to accept that being poor is ok, and that being rich won’t magically solve  of your problems. Like Timothy Ferris says [paraphrased]: The moment you realize it’s not so bad at the bottom is the moment that you’re ready to reach the top in the easiest manner”

There are apparently some studies on the psychology behind this stuff, so when I’m ready researching them, I will update this article

2) Take it slow

Actually commit to the process of getting whatever it is that you are after, but do not commit to the outcome. Be consistent. Work on getting it every single day, but have the utterly unbreakable belief that “it’s just as ok if it takes me 10 days, 10 months, or 50 years. I will work on it, until I get it. And you know I’m grateful for where I am right now. I am grateful I already have what I have, as most people on this planet don’t even have this.”

- One camp says “York hard, just grit your teeth, and will your way toward success”

- The other camp says “Just focus on your thoughts, get your internals in check, and the external will take care of itself”

Specific examples include:

The Dieting Industry:

- One group will tell you to just grit your teeth, huff and puff and force yourself to exercise and willpower your way trough torturous diets, who cares about balance, results are all that matters!

- Another group will tell you that it’s all in the mind. In fact, if you get your emotions and internals handled, you will naturally find yourself losing weight effortlessly and easily

The PUA Industry:

- One group will tell you to just force yourself to go out 7 nights a week, hit on 30 women a night, study and apply this subject 4-5 hours a day, until you get this stuff handled

- Another group will tell you that it’s all “inner game” and that you just need to get your beliefs, emotions and feelings in order…and then women will magically flock to you

General Self Help:

- One group will tell you to willpower your way to greater success in life. Just set goals and go after them like a bull-moose.

- Another group will tell you to relax, and just visualize what you want, just believe you already have it, and attract it!

I think both approaches are extremes

Specifically, in the PUA realm I know people who spend years stuck in either extreme, refusing to take into consideration the points of the opposite approach. I know guys who have been sitting at home and working for years on releasing emotions, changing their wardrobe, doing tapping and hypnosis for hours a day! Guess what, they’re getting no results, but still insist this is the way to go.

On the other hand I know guys who have been out there “in the field” for years. They have stubbornly been approaching dozens of women a day, every day, for years. And they never seem to get anywhere. Some of them haven’t gotten a single date out of it. And they still refuse to see that there might be an internal issue. There’s something that’s internally sabotaging them from getting results. But being in the “external extreme”, they refuse to look at inner game.

Why do people get stuck in these extremes?

I think the reason people get stuck in either of these extremes is because they see the fault of the opposite extreme. In other words, the inner-game extremist can see how outter-gamers are getting nowhere, and he mocks and ridicules them. At the same time he’s making excuses for the fact that his approach is failing as well.

It’s funny, but the ideal approach is actually a sort of balance or a mix between the two. The thing however is that the mix isn’t an exacting 50/50 mix. In fact, it varies depending on the situation, the time and the problem being solved.

Why Specifically Do These Extremes Fail, And How Can We Solve This?

A funny way I like to use to demonstrate things, is through the use of numbers and “points”. Let me set up the scenario first. Let us a look at a person who has a problem, and how others would try to solve her problem. Let us say that this is a person who is working on her social confidence. For example, this person finds that she’s not being friendly enough around people, and would like to be more positive and social in different situations.

- The external based person would tell her to just force it out. Just force yourself to go to as many social meetings as you can, and force your mouth into a smile, and force yourself to talk to people

- The internal based person would tell her to not worry about it. Just sit at home and visualize yourself being friendlier to people. Just visualize yourself being charming, charismatic and friendly

The truth is that if she tries the first approach she will find that she’s fighting an uphill battle. She will go to places, feeling really bad and stressed. Trying to force her mouth in a smile, she will find that it comes out really weird and cheesy.

Attempting at this point to chat people up, she will find that due to the anxiety, she blurts things out in a really weird way that confuses people. Eventually, she will decide that working on this social problem is too much work for now. She’ll decide to postpone it for later in the year, when she can dedicate the energy it requires.

If she, however tried the second approach, she will find that there is absolutely no stress involved in this approach. In fact, she feels really, really great about the idea of meeting people! Heck, she finds that sometimes in social situations, her mouth naturally, and effortlessly stretches itself into a friendly smile.

The problem however is that she finds that the progress is really, really, really slow. Having no external-based plan on purposefully going out to meet people, she finds that she only does so spontaneously. This means that maybe she goes out once every 2 weeks, and maybe tries to talk to 2-3 people an outing.

Let’s do the math now!

- This woman’s issue is that lacks the habit or confidence to smile and chat people up. Let us say that she has 15 points of conversational confidence
- On the other hand, her goal, of effortlessly chatting people up and being friendly probably clocks in at 50 points of conversational confidence

She can try to force herself to go out, walk up to people and be super-friendly. That, however is an action that requires (50 points) of confidence. Seeing that her baseline is just (15 points) of confidence, it would be a huge stretch to try and attempt it. Its like never having lifted weights in your life, going into the gym and trying to lift the 40 pound dumbbell on your first day. You’re just pushing against impossible levels of resistance.

Some people try to solve this problem by just pushing and pushing and pushing endlessly. The idea is that if you attempt to lift the 40 pound dumbbell enough many times, its actually building your strength. Eventually, you’ll be able to lift it, if you force yourself to try it enough many times.

On the other hand, she can sits at home and do NLP & visualization exercises. Doing this, she will get a temporary boost. In fact, right after doing some “social confidence” hypno-session, she’ll actually feel like she has 50 points of conversational confidence. And yes, if she were to immediately walk out of the house and go talk to people, she will find herself charming, charismatic and like-able. She will find that people react well to her, and love her attitude.

The problem? It is fake confidence. All of those inner-game exercises and inner-work just make you *feel* as-if you have (50 points) of conversational confidence. Mere minutes, or hours later, this state is gone, and you’re back to your usual 15 points of conversational confidence. The way the inner-game-extremists try to solve this problem is by simply doing more inner-game. The idea is that if you do these exercises enough, eventually the state becomes permanent.

So What Is The Ideal Approach?

Actually, the most scientifically validated approach for behavior modification is the progressive-conditioning method that I mentioned above. In it you break down the problem into small enough chunks, to where each chunk is only “slightly hard” to perform. Whereas going full out to talk to everyone with a huge grin might seem impossibly hard, simply going out with a light smile is only “slightly difficult”.

She would decide to simply go out on a regular basis, and just have open body-language (20 points). At first, it will be slightly uncomfortable because she only has 15 points of actual confidence. If she is committed and does this enough times, she will find that it is now effortless and her default state of being. Now, she officially has (2o points) of conversational confidence.

At this point, she can force herself to do the thing that requires (25 points) of conversational confidence. She can go out and have a light smile on her face, while she makes easy eye-contact with people. If she does this enough many times, it will become comfortable, and yes, (25 points) will become her new level of conversational confidence.

But Where Does Inner-Work Come Into All Of This?

Attempting at this point to chat people up, she will find that due to the anxiety, she blurts things out in a really weird way that confuses people. Eventually, she will decide that working on this social problem is too much work for now. She’ll decide to postpone it for later in the year, when she can dedicate the energy it requires.

If she, however tried the second approach, she will find that there is absolutely no stress involved in this approach. In fact, she feels really, really great about the idea of meeting people! Heck, she finds that sometimes in social situations, her mouth naturally, and effortlessly stretches itself into a friendly smile.

The problem however is that she finds that the progress is really, really, really slow. Having no external-based plan on purposefully going out to meet people, she finds that she only does so spontaneously. This means that maybe she goes out once every 2 weeks, and maybe tries to talk to 2-3 people an outing.

Let’s do the math now!

- This woman’s issue is that lacks the habit or confidence to smile and chat people up. Let us say that she has (15 points) of conversational confidence

- On the other hand, her goal, of effortlessly chatting people up and being friendly probably clocks in at (50 points) of conversational confidence

She can try to force herself to go out, walk up to people and be super-friendly. That, however would be a massive undertaking worth (50 points), for someone who only has the capacity to do (15 points). Its like never having lifted weights in your life, going into the gym and trying to lift the 40 pound dumbbell on your first day. You’re just pushing against impossible levels of resistance.

On the other hand, she can sits at home and do NLP & visualization exercises. Doing this, she will get a temporary boost. In fact, right after doing some “social confidence” hypno-session, she’ll actually feel like she has (50 points) of conversational confidence. And yes, if she were to immediately walk out of the house and go talk to people, she will find herself charming, charismatic and like-able. She will find that people react well to her, and love her attitude.

The problem? It is fake confidence. All of those inner-game exercises and inner-work just make you *feel* as-if you have (50 points) of conversational confidence. Mere minutes, or hours later, this state is gone, and you’re back to your usual 15 points of conversational confidence.

So What Is The Ideal Approach?

The truth is, that even though progressive conditioning works well, it is not optimal. Sometimes, if you have a lot of resistance, you’ll have to break down the problem into so many chunks that it takes years to walk all the steps. In fact, sometimes you’ll not be able to break down the problem into small enough chunks.

This is where inner-game comes in. Remember how it produces “fake temporary competence”. Well it turns out, this is actually useful. You can actually use inner-game work to speed up the real world progressive work. If you were to do your plain progressive conditioning you’d have to first practice the (20 point) step until its comfortable. With the addition of inner-game however, you can jump steps.

Instead of setting your progressive conditioning goal to first doing a (20 point) step, you can go straight for the (30 point) step. Before leaving the house, you would simply do some inner-work to get a temporary (30 point) confidence, and then go out into the real world and do it. If you do it enough times, then (30 points) becomes your new, permanent baseline.

This is what I believe is the true use of inner and outer game. It is with outer game that you solidify things and turn them into a permanent attribute. And it is with inner-game that you remove the roadblocks and give yourself temporary boosts to speed up the process.