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Pretty inspiring, from a pick up artist, who talks about baldness, propecia, minoxidil, and his battle with thinning hair:
Points of Change by Tyler Durden.
"Dude, you're losing your hair.."
"What are you talking about?"
"Look at your crown. You're going bald."
"Yeah, whatever.."
"No, come look in the mirror.."
"Uh oh..."
"Why me? Why can't some other guy get this? Don't I have enough problems as it is? Why did God pick me to get this? Couldn't he have picked one of the
cool kids? Couldn't he have picked a guy with a better looking face for it?
Couldn't he have picked a guy who was already married to get this? If I can
just get married before this happens, I won't have to worry about it. I've got
time...... for now."
So off we go. To the old pictures. To the daily mirror checkup. To the
plethora of internet websites brilliantly designed to play off of insecurities.
I'm looking at every guy around me. How bald is that guy? Is he bald?
OK, enough of my old thought patterns.
I'm going bald. Thinning, really. Mildly. Guys who meet me would never ever
notice it. But I can tell you the exact amount of baldness that any guy around me has. I'm aware of every hairline in the room. I even have plenty of cool hairstyles that will cover up the thinning as it progresses.
All of this fantastic stuff I learned a few years back, as a chump with no
girlfriend and no ability to get a shred of attention from a girl if my life
depended on it.
My logic at 21 years of age: If I can't get a girl now, how will I get one
when I'm bald and less good looking than I am now?
My model of the world at 21 years of age: I like good looking girls, so girls
will only like me if they think I'm good looking. f***!!
I took Propecia and Rogaine for 2 years thereafter. It stopped the thinning.
Then after my first summer of workshops, I decided to let it go. I felt that
it would be hypocritical to do otherwise. How can I stare a bald guy in the
face, and say "It doesn't matter", when I've just popped a pill a few hours
before? I've seen many bald PUAs, some of whom are amongst the best. Time and time again it's been shown that it doesn't matter. It's just that socially
conditioned voice in the back of my head playing tricks.
All of this I know - now. But this whole thing really ****** me up for a
while. Probably about two years. I mean, it *really* ****** me up. I was so
****** up over it, I look back on it and I feel almost as if I'm exaggerating
because I can't even relate to what that would feel like anymore.
But there was a good side. First, it made me realize that I was going to die.
Soon. Not soon, as in SOON. But soon as in the fact that time flies and your
life passes you by before you know it. I've been doing workshops almost every
weekend for two years now. It was supposed to be a field trip that Papa and I
were going to take together. I haven't lived in a stable house in two years.
I've been travelling. *Two years* has blown by. It feels like five minutes.
My life will be like that. Every key stroke entered into this post is another
second that I'm not getting back no matter how clever I think I am to
"outstrip" it - as Heidegger would say, for my fellow geeks.
Losing my hair, combined with losing my girlfriend, were two of the biggest
change-driving incidents that happened in my life. They happened around the
same time. It changed my thinking pattern 180 degrees. I felt like I had only
a few years to do the things I wanted to do. I started getting sh*t done....
double time.
I resisted losing my girlfriend. I remember how I begged for her to come back.
I didn't particularly like her either. She was cute, and we lived together. I
mean, imagine that - a girl liked me enough to come live with me! After
nineteen years of nothing, and all of a sudden a cute girl wanted to come and
lived with me! How could I not love her?
When she dumped me, my frame just fell apart. I was just a total mess. I
begged for her to come back. I knew she'd ****** the guy from the Pita Pit.
The PITA PIT!! But I chose to ignore it. I didn't care, I just wanted her
back. I just wanted the feelings to go away.
I sat in bed for a few months, sleeping 18 hours a day, and then 2, and then
18. If I could go back to sleep, I could feel better. I played a lot of
Street Fighter II. Watched TV. Failed my second year of classes and pissed
away my chances at grad school. Damn, I would have kicked ***. Woops.
My old girlfriend is cute little married porker now. Do you know what a girl
who is 5'1 looks like when she adds on 40 pounds? Go see my ex. And she's
depressed and low-self-esteem. But I didn't know it at the time. I was
low-self-esteem myself - how could I have known that of someone else? My
friends from Canada sit back at home in their bored depressed ruts. They'll
probably never grow nor ever leave. The whole world is out there, and they'll
probably never see or learn about it, nor probably ever see or learn about
themselves. Of course with lower standards comes easy gratification. Who am I to judge them?
God damn though, I've seen some cool sh*t since all of this started. I've been
all over. I remember skiing down a hill in Whistler BC, and thinking about how
lucky I am. I want to see more, too. I want to see everything I can. I want
to see even the weird places like the Arctic and Africa. sh*t, this stuff is
so cool. Have you guys ever been to Vegas? It seems like no big deal, but
have you ever stopped to think of how COOL Vegas is?? And there are so many places like that. It's pretty cheap too. Like you can get on a plane for two or three hundred and stay in a shitty hostel of you have to. But if you don't get off your ***, its too inconvenient. f*** that though - Do it!!
None of this was on my mind a few years ago though. It was outside of my
reality. My reality lied upon the 401HW strip from Ontario to Quebec.
Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal. And my relationship reality lied within
the context established in my high school and peer group.
I look at the girls that I meet now, and these are the girls that wouldn't have
given me the time of day a few years ago. I don't think of it like that
though. I just think of them as kind of cute and dorky. I don't really view
them as hot, but more on a deeper level. Like I feel their insecurities and
shortcomings and I know where I'm at in relation after all the work I've put
in. I own the frame on them like its nothing. It doesn't even take a second
thought.
Sometimes though I'll be with a girl I'm dating, like out shopping or
something, and I'll snap back into old thinking patterns. Like "Holy sh*t,
this girl could be with any guy but me." I snap out quick, because that
thought path leads to nowhere. It's all bullshit, too. I'm a natural now. I
can forget sometimes though. Only for a second. But it reminds me that I have a past that actually existed. I talk about it and I feel like I'm
bullshitting. Like, I'm running a routine or something. But it actually
happened. What's this sh*t I wrote about freaking out from thinning hair? Did
I really feel like that?! Should I even be admitting it? It is representative
of who I am? Was that me? It can't be. Can it?
Sometimes I forget about what it took to get to where I'm at. Like, I can
totally relate to all those naturals who say "Dude, this isn't that hard. Just
be cool. Enough with all these retarded analyses. Just be cool." That's why
I post immediately even the most subtle detail. Within a day, I'll have
internalized it and will have lost my ability to articulate it. Or I'll think
its too subtle to post and just dumb. I feel embaressed of my archive, even
though I know its good. Guys tell me they like it, and I'm like "sh*t dude,
you read that?! That thing is way too dense. Just be cool and escalate." But
really, without all those piled up posts, the game wouldn't exist. And that's
an indication of progress, which is a good thing.
It was a solid effort over several years. I always had goals and was working
at them. I think that *** misrepresents how hard it is to go from chump to
PUA. If I'd known what I would have to go through just to get my first lay,
I'd have never even started. The same with my business. But I always thought that success was just around the corner. I was convinced. More importantly, I enjoyed the process of it. I immersed myself in it.
Every month that went by, if someone hadn't seen me, they'd say "Wow man,
you've really changed. Your voice is different. Your vibe is different."
Girls say it to me. It's tangible. Like a guy who makes diet changes and
exercises, and the progress is slow but if someone doesn't see him for a few
months its almost freaky.
Wherever I went, I was looking at guys. Constantly. Looking at people around
me. Playing the game. Asking for feedback. Meeting people. Looking at where
I was getting bad feedback. Watching naturals in the clubs. Meeting guys in
the community. Looking at myself in a detached manner. Ouch, it hurt
sometimes. A lot, really. I'd make progress and feel good about myself, and
then realize that I still sucked. I couldn't totally figure out why, but it
came to me over time. I feel like I still suck compared to what I could do
with more time. The community is not a good bar for what's possible. I set my
own bar for what's possible.
I was consistent. How many guys can claim that? In my opinion, very few. The reason I say that is that most people I meet are able to get to a high level far faster than I was. If people would put in the same effort that I'd put in, I think they'd get better than me in less time. I'm not a fast learner. I
have a few areas of exceptional aptitude, but overall I lack in cognitive
capacity compared to my peers. Every area that I'm good at are things that I
sucked at, but put in ten times the effort of everyone else to get a result.
I've had to come to terms with that over time. Rather than letting it piss me
off though, I use it as motivation.
Like with pickup, I played two years before I got a result. Two years to get
laid a single time. Two years of walking up to girls with my throat tensed up
and my voice cracking dry and my heart pounding and my forehead visibly
sweating. Guys wonder why I kept playing so hard after I got good? It was
momentum. I was going so hard that I don't think I could have stopped even if I wanted to. Two years to get laid. f***!
When it happened I couldn't believe it. I had a bunch of near misses for a few
months prior to it. I knew that it was coming, but didn't totally believe it.
When it happened I was in shock. I remember getting the girls' clothes off,
and I was like "sh*t, I'm close.. Even if I don't get it, I'm going to get it
soon.." I nailed it. She even stayed over night and we hooked up in the
morning. I turned the girl off within about three weeks by going back to old
behaviour patterns. But for that period of time I had a girlfriend again. She
was just as cute as my first girlfriend too.
This was all played out in the real world. The chatforum isn't a place to
learn pickup. I learned pickup on my own. I had guidance. I couldn't have
done it without having met the best. But streamlining and re-wiring all of my
thought and behaviour patterns was complicated. That is how you get girls, by the way. It isn't through anything other than that.
Cool guys get laid. If you're not a cool guy, you probably won't get laid very
much. It's not by being alpha or being sexual or having rapport or anything
else. Those are just things that you add into the mix to do even better.
Like, every weekend I meet guys who are nerds but trying to use this stuff, and it just makes them come off even weirder. I could make a tape of guys from the community trying to implement the tech they learn - even the most simple stuff like "alpha BL" or "sexual state" (let alone my sh*t), and sell it as a prime time comedy special.
If you're not cool, then that's the problem. Cool just means congruent in your
actions and all that. There's no universal of cool. It can come in a million
forms. Even nerdy can be cool, if it comes from the right place. And this is
all learned in field. Because through the dumb "comedy special" worthy moments where you're trying out tech that you don't understand, you're progressing. Even if you drop it down the line, its changing your awareness of communication channels. It's changing your thought patterns. It's changing YOU.
You can only learn to understand it through trial and error. That's what I
did. Papa and Twentysix went around an entire club of 5,000 people and
high-fived everyone in it several times, just to see what would happen.
Twentysix got laid out of it! Can you actually believe this sh*t?? I used to
tell girls to close their eyes, and I'd kiss them. I had a girl at a juice
counter shreik and freak out. I thought she'd call the police, but she was
totally into it after she calmed down. It amped attraction somehow. WTF?!?!
All of this comes from the field. Real life. The chatforum is a place where
you can read stuff that will make sense of PAST EXPERIENCES that you've had. It can even give you a few idea of how to get out there - magic penny style. But mostly, its just something that gives you a resource where you can look back at what you did and make more sense of it.
In my opinion, the difficulty for most guys is that they don't really want it.
They don't REALLY want it. They want it if its easy, but they don't really
want it. If they did, they'd go and get it. I really wanted it. I was driven
to go and get it. Most guys aren't. Most guys reading this post look on it as
though they are watching a movie or reading a fictional novel. They don't
really want it. They just want to feel good about themselves. They want the
emotion more than the outcome. That's cool too though. In my opinion, anyway.
So all of this stuff, that's me. That's my personality - who I was and who I
am now. How bad do you really want it though? What's going to drive you to do it? The stuff that I spoke of - those were my points of change. What are
yours?
-TD
Processing The Long Term by Tyler Durden.
Today's folks have a short attention span. Most people don't have what it takes to be successful in any endeavour - be it getting through a long book, sticking to a diet, getting to the gym, or anything else that requires the implementation of a habit.
The average person can't hold their own attention in a lecture that lasts longer than a few hours, and fewer still can retain and articulate a summary of what they learned. I laugh at how most people I know think that they will start businesses, and yet if they're required to get to a simple task they can't accomplish even that.
There's an old adage "If you want something done, give it to a busy man." Papa is a great example of that. He's one of the busiest guys I know, but I can ask him for anything and it'll be done almost for certain. He doesn't have that "I want to keep myself in a happy state" issue to deal with, so the initial hard part of pulling himself out of a lazy state isn't an issue.
The mind does not learn how to hold attention or switch states over night. It's conditioned over long periods. To sit down and read a book for half an hour is hard for some people. For others, it's easy to spend an entire day in study. The same goes for implementing habits.
For some people it is easy, because their mind is conditioned to process the long term benefits. Moreover, they have a history of having implemented habits and seeing a result from it (as opposed to someone who's never accomplished something via a long term endeavour and so has no reference of what it would feel like).
The qualities that make you successful in the endeavour of becoming good with women are the same qualities that make you successful in life. The level of success that I achieved wasn't bred over night. It was a culmination of previous patterns of success that I'd built over 20 years. Learning to pick up women wasn't the first thing I applied myself to build a level of skill at, and it certainly won't be the last.
I have no problem sitting inside all day to read something that will help me. And there is no doubt that after having done that, I WILL be able to articulate what I learned from that book - both in summary and in detail. I'll also have a precise game plan of how I'll IMPLEMENT and USE what I learned.
Generally I can learn from people and quickly filter out what is useless and find the positives. You will rarely hear me speak negatively of anything or anyone, because I am focused only on the positives of my experiences and what I can learn. People will ask me what I thought of a book and I'll say "It was great." They'll point out all the flaws and ask me if I agree, and to that I respond that at this point for me to find any idea of perspective that I hadn't come across is a good find. I saw the negatives, but they were filtered so quickly that I literally FORGOT about them.
I believe in INVESTING IN MYSELF. I view myself as WORTH IT. The ONLY reason that I wouldn't invest money into my pool or knowledge or experience is if it wasted my TIME. Because I truly believe that with any new piece of information I can convert that into tangible gain far greater than the cost of the attainment of the knowledge itself. I believe in continual learning throughout your life, to keep yourself sharp, happy, relevant, and on the ball.
Most people, from my perspective, live life in a trance of reaction. There is no proactive steering of the ship. They just walk through life in a daze and react to things as they come up. They seek out structure to keep them in check, almost like grown up children. It is simply TOO HARD for them to implement habits that don't yield instant results over the long term. Their minds aren't conditioned to process it, beyond the immediate emotional reactions that they're feeling. I sympathize, but honestly it's just pathetic - if you feel that you are a part of this majority you should make it your life mission to change your status.
One of the ideas that's been addressed about modern society is that boys are never taught how to be men. There are no rituals or responsibilities that SHIFT our child-like thinking from "How does this make me feel right now?" to "Am I living my values?" or "Is this (or the daily habits that I'm engaged in) moving myself closer or farther away from what I want out of life?"
I think that because most guys have not experienced a high level of pain in their lives, there is simply no reason for them to think this way. They don't understand that to be PROACTIVE is to have a set of daily habits that will prevent that pains of life from coming up in the first place, and will create the awesome life that they want.
Their mind is not processing any harsh sense of immediacy, because it hasn't made an emotional link between the way they live their lives and the lackluster way that their lives will end up. They just don't see how severe the consequences are and they think they'll live forever.
To me, to have lived a life without experiencing the best of what the world has to offer is a tragedy.. A total waste.
It's crazy to me how people just don't have the drive to pull themselves out of their repetitive lifestyle. You suggest taking a trip in a few months, and they're all for it. But come time to do it, and it's all "This will cost me money. I'll have to inconvenience myself by being away from my daily grind."
They don't realize that time is ticking away.. That in ten years their mind won't process how much they avoided inconveniencing themselves, but only the interesting and cool things that they did in between.
Guys are no different about the process of becoming good with women. They don't process that there are all these amazing women out there that they will never experience - that they are missing out of one of the best things that life has to offer... That their life is BORING.
To me, there is only one priority in the area with women. GO OUT. Get out there and meet people. Get social experience under your belt.
Build it into your life. Create a plan and NEVER deviate from it - not even one time. Accept that it's there the same way that you accept all crucial things in life. Make it a "part of who you are".
Work to change the way you process things. Realize that you are getting old and that your life will pass you by FAST.
You need a detailed vision for what you want your life to look like by the time you die, and a detailed plan of what DAILY HABITS you need to REALIZE that life.
Revise and adapt that plan, but do so by your LOGIC and INTELLIGENCE, not by EMOTIONAL REACTION.
Stop processing things in terms of the immediacy of how it's making you feel, and rewire your emotions to respond to whether or not you're living your values and moving closer to your overall vision for yourself.
Do this, and do it continually, and your life will expand proactively instead of stagnate in a reactive haze like most of your friends.
-TD
