The path to independence and confidence is not safe inner monologues, but your ability to face your anxieties and become strong enough to start cutting those inner monologues off.
You have to expect to move beyond safety and face off against greater anxiety. It is a hard path, but it is a path to forging a stronger identity, and a stronger identity will make everything come a lot more smoothly.
We all start out “feeling safe”, and think things like “improving is for those other guys”, and we grow comfortable feeling superior to them. You might have found yourself after a long day starting to drift into thought patterns where you try to lift yourself up by tearing others down in your mind: “He is just a fool”, “She just is superficial”, “If only they were smarter they would have seen my value.”
Ironically, however, this feeling of safety and superiority doesn’t help you out; it just cements weak behavior patterns and leaves you likely to have poor coping skills in future situations.
Toward Change or Away from It?
Let’s take an example of a guy that has the opportunity to stay in his parents’ house versus going out and dealing with the hassle of getting his own place. He goes out and tries to find a place but is faced with some rude behavior and uncomfortable feelings about the process.
If he goes back to his car and says “They are stupid”, “I don’t need this”, or other “safe” things, then, even if he talks himself around to still searching for an apartment, he may gain a quitting attitude when faced with any uncomfortable situations again, and this time drive to his parents’ house and stay there.
While on the other hand, if while he was more anxious he would cut off his ties to safety: “No, I have to do this”, “I can’t go back like this”, “Going back isn’t any more pleasing to me than this BS”. This way he strengthens himself upon each consecutive failure. To be truly Zen he can also avoid any negative speech patterns and keep a clear head, remaining in balance for each consecutive rejection.
Change starts with awareness of some factors and thinking about them on your own for a while. The task is worthwhile and will get you closer to your goals if you can cut off your safety monologues and free yourself up to move ahead with an open mind.
So if you are interested in changing those thought patterns up, here are just a few ideas to help get you started!
Changing Thought Patterns
Most of us start in this cocoon of safety. Our family loves us, at least some of the time, so when we go out into the world we think “I’m already enough, I don’t see why I need to improve anything. In fact, it’s probably an insult if anything indicates I could do better – I’m already the best.”
In all honesty, it is an understandable position to have, but in order to truly have an impactful life you have to take yourself out of the wool wrap of your family’s love that causes this. You must realize that frustration is part of growth and that fearing breaking away will limit you from reaching your potential.
It’s a simple fact of our personalities that some of us feel we have reason to have more “pride” than others, and as a result blissfully deny it is a problem. The result can be guys staying at home with parents, staying in a home town even if there is no real reason to, and bringing girls home to meet the parents.
Most with this pride try to bury it, and cover it up with some kind of approved achievement – it might be buying an apartment/house, it might be getting that job, it might be dressing a particular way, or just loudly mirroring the expressed opinions of your family.
But this just masks the problems in a way that discourages them from ever being addressed, forcing you to live extra years in an environment you could very well be better than.
What is the problem with all this? We are not addressing what we need to: our emotions. We avoid conflict with our family and enjoy the safety it brings, but it numbs us. It becomes a habit and, if we are not careful, we take this attitude into other parts of our life.
Often guys that have this as a prominent trait of their personality are not even aware of what they are doing, and they become copycats of their families and avoid all positive change. If you act without independent thought, you won’t have unique results; your family’s future is probably going to be your own, and that is going to be a huge turn-off for most girls. But don’t panic, this can be changed.
Take the First Step:
The first step is to understand why this “pride” isn’t actually valid social or sexual currency. Guys that think this is sexual currency sit back with girls and expect things to fall into their lap, only to be rudely awakened to reality when a girl politely side-steps all of his offers and leaves him with no cards to play.
You have to realize that this currency is BAD and that every single time you use it you are cutting off your sexiest trait: your ability to go beyond the norm.
Your family’s currency is priceless, but it also can’t be greedily used to make everything in your sexual life go your way.
Even if it takes you some time and reflection, please understand that it is important you start on the journey to understanding its obsolescence in sexual relationships and the rest of life. Keep it precious, by outing it only with family, and gaining a true understanding of scope with the rest of your life.
Don’t pay for things with mommy money, it makes you look really stupid in the sexual marketplace.
Take the Second Step:
The second step is about agreeing that this “pride” is not good social or sexual currency. Here are a couple quick reasons:
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We all have an amount of it before we have done anything, so by extension using this currency signals no progress.
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The result of accepting it as currency gives someone permission to throw attraction out the window and replaces it with guilt and shame.
In short, it is a destructive currency that discourages self-development.
Socially speaking, do you believe anyone should get ahead in life because of their families or would you rather they get ahead for what they actually do and can prove they do for others?
To remove your gleeful acceptance of this currency, you must understand that unbiased honesty and what you do and do not say is a higher standard than your family can give you. So separate yourself from relying on it.
Take the Final Step:
The last step is taking on frustration in the right way. For me, that is all about seeing frustration as an appropriate resistance that challenges my long held beliefs on what true currency is. The frustration will help me highlight areas I need to work on, help me earn true value, and deepen my understanding of life.
Frustration is usually a signal that we should RETHINK what we are doing, not that we should persist. In this way it helps you broaden your range of responses.
Use frustration’s tendency to make you rethink to help you break out of your “pride” and safety monologues. Allow yourself to start working on a more robust attitude of humility and productivity.
Breaking Out
Life can’t be lived if we are holding onto the past. It is time to let go, time to risk the frustration, time to admit you were wrong before you “get it” and show the world you have some faith in your ability to step up on your own and see things differently.
You may not want to add frustration into your “it is okay by me” list, but frustration is a part of the process of empowering yourself. Knowing this, will you kick, scream, and throw fits to avoid it?
Or will you crush your avoidance mentality you have gained from believing in bad currency?
The Two Kinds of Rebelling
In order to handle frustration (a part of independence) you will certainly experience some rebellious feelings. But you shouldn’t be alarmed; you just need to handle them well.
Rebellion often kicks in when we are fighting our frustration, and there are two kinds of rebellion: the kind that lets petty BS win, and the kind that refuses pride in favor of humility, growth, and the changing of ones idea of currency.
Neither has to be too volatile, and neither really deserves a stigma – what they do both require however is scrutiny, because if you do not scrutinize your rebellion it has the opportunity to make you fall on one side of the fence or the other and not care about the results.
Avoid allowing petty rebellion to ingrain in you the habit of blaming others.
Growth should be your aim, because it will ensure that your rebellion is not petty, and all blame should be extinguished over time because it will help you “get it”.
The Avoidance Mentality
The avoidance mentality is very insidious and in all honesty plagues the world, creating millions of A-holes, and shutting down sexual liberty. So while we see reasons to be proud of our attempts to seek safety and make our inherent currency accepted by others, it creates a very grotesque reality.
We don’t need to be proud of our origins, we just need to be proud of how far we have COME!
Have you progressed?
Or are you the same value you were to the world years ago?
Is your only pride from what makes you feel safe?
Or do you BUILD your personal value by improving yourself?
Family isn’t at fault; it just doesn’t communicate responsibility well to its members. If you look at the priorities of your family, it should be evident to you that showing you the path to independence is NOT a task they can do for you.
In your entire life, no one will TELL you how important it is to change that. We’ll inspire you, we’ll support you, we’ll talk AROUND the subject, but we will never trigger you to figure it out.
In order to succeed within yourself and bring those benefits to the world and, by extension, to girls, you need to lose the old pride and make every choice you make worthwhile.
Open Your Mind
- Stop envying and blaming others for getting girls
- Stop expecting girls to respond to anything but what is EXACTLY spot on
- Stop comforting yourself and avoiding the real work
- Start opening yourself up to what is outside your perspective
- Start appreciating specifics and details
- Start removing the safety lines and prepare yourself for moving ahead
No one can do it for you; it is up to you. If you are really serious about girls, you have to be very aware of this safety monologue, because if it’s running amok. Most girls will either put you on a leash or reject you very early on, and neither are results you want.
Just something to look out for.
Cody Lyans
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