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Any guy who has ever set his foot on a forum devoted to the study of seduction or who has purchased a book on the topic is likely to be familiar with the expressions “outer game” and “inner game”. He will know that “outer game” advice consists of learning new behaviors, while “inner game” advice is all about restructuring your cognition, or, in plain English, information processing and thought patterns.
However, not everybody knows that this is a kind of therapy that psychologists have been studying for decades and that they call “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” (commonly abbreviated CBT).
Its name indicates that it builds on the earlier method of pure cognitive therapy (CT) and also on behavior therapy (BT). Both psychologists and aspiring seducers have been discussing which therapy is more effective, but, at least among the psychologists, there is more or less agreement that the combination of CT (“inner game”) and BT (“outer game”) is more effective than either alone.
This should not be surprising; if you approach a problem from multiple angles you are more likely to solve it.
This first article in the new series I am kicking off on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will address the CT part and teach you how to systematically challenge and defeat negative though patterns and unproductive beliefs.
Nearly everybody has something to work with here; there are very few people who are totally free from what are commonly known as “issues”.
Comments
Restructuring Rigid Thoughts
Hey Halvor, I really liked this post. I was hoping whether you could suggest a technique for me to restructure a rigid thought/belief.
It goes as follows:
I used to believe or rather, I still believe that happiness as well as change in my life depended on the fulfillment of a certain event(In my case its passing a certain exam but i have not able to do it yet; I failed twice) as such my mind is believing that "OK you can start changing yourself but first wait and pass this exam and as such i have been stopping my self from bringing about changes in my life. Long story short its like Ill change but only after this event is done, which i think is totally stupid but my emotions aren't letting me change even though i know that happiness is a state of mind and changes in my life are not dependent on events. I want to believe that change is possible even though I haven't yet achieved what i wanted to. Can you please suggest something to change this mindset of mine? I'd be grateful.
Your question
Hey,
I suggest that you try to find evidence to disprove the assumption that any specific event causes perpetual happiness. I am rather sure that most people have had the belief that they would be happy just if some event occured or they achieved something important. This is simply not how the mind operates, it only measures deviations from a "baseline". You have probably experienced this in other situations. As the Buddha says, happiness is not the destination, it is the way.
Hope this helps and if something is unclear, I'll elaborate!
Thank You
Thank You for the reply. Yes, I need to find evidence but i feel its more of an emotion-centric feeling rather than the mind.
However, you have said "This is simply not how the mind operates, it only measures deviations from a "baseline."- I did not get what you meant by this. Could you please elaborate? Thank You once more for your reply. :)
"Baseline"
Yes of course,
what I am saying is that the mind does not really pay too much attention to the absolute level of success or failure, but it pays quite a lot of attention to deviations from the recent average level.
This is the reason why a lot of people who are objectively very successful still suffer from depression - they probably believed that their material or social success would put them in a permanently euphoric state. Such emotional highs are generally short lived.
One can guess that evolution designed our mind this way so one would never get lazy, but constantly strive for more and more, which would clearly be adaptive during long periods of human history.
I personally believe that this is to a large extent remedied by not expecting any single positive event to change one's happiness permanently. A stable, positive mood is definitely something most people should be able to achieve.
Hope this made it clearer!
Yes...it did Thanks
I got what you were trying to say. You're saying even if i did achieve an event, the happiness from it would not be permanent as i would believe. Yes, indeed that is a very convincing piece of advice.
And truly, on the path of seduction, one has to constantly upgrade and improve oneself. I shall rewire my thoughts accordingly.
Thanks for the help Halvor, can't wait for Part II. :)
Welcome
Hey Halvor - nice to see a new writer approaching seduction from a psychological standpoint ;)
Something I often tell people to do when they want to motivate themselves to do something is similar to the Triple Column Technique. Something I picked up from studying lots of Anthony Robbins material is having people write down the pleasure gained/pain avoided by not doing XYZ, and have them write down the pleasure gained/pain avoided by doing XYZ. The goal being that you gain more pleasure and avoid more pain by doing whatever it is that you're putting off.
Anyway, great article and I look forward to reading more - maybe I'll learn some new psychology =D
-Richard
P.S. Join the forums ;)
Albert Ellis, anyone?
Albert Ellis,
anyone?
Thank you
I needed this, Halvor. Thank you.
Funny how I obsessively commit every "cognitive distortion" you named...
After 2 days, I'm already feeling much better about an emotional event in my life. Utilizing this with Buddhism (which is essentially cognitive behavioral therapy) is one sick remedy to all bad mental habits.
So again, I thank you :)
- Hector
Very intreresting
Hello Halvor.
I am again surprised positively by a new blogger's insight. Are you possibly a student of psychology yourself? or a psychologist? This really helps me as I am meddling with some basic psychology books out of curiosity. And seeing a written article on what I study at the moment with such good examples makes me smile out of recognicing the same material. This is really what caught my eye first place in GirlsChase: The use of basic psychology in everyday situations. This stuff is golden as you can't learn to apply with just the material.
Please, for the sake of me and reader's with the same interests, please keep up posting these psychological posts. For example, an article regarding the Martin E. Ford's motivation theory or more posts about cognitve influence on behaviour are something that would really raise the level of this website.
Yours truly
Robert
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