| Making Friends with Your Anxiety
Topics:
1) Defining Your Anxiety
2) Fear vs. Anxiety: The Differences
3) The Right and Wrong Way to Deal With Anxiety
4) Anxiety: Your Personal Coach
5) Learn to Enjoy Anxiety
Defining Your Anxiety
Anxiety is having fear about fear. Fear that means nothing. Anxiety is to practice failure in advance.
* Anxiety focuses all your awerness to the unknown future. It's not an actual threat or present threat.
* Anxiety is produced from within and has no relationship with the outside world.
* "Anxiety does not protect you from danger, but from doing great things" - Seth Godin
Fear vs. Anxiety: The Differences
Fear is a very important function to keeping us alive, to avoid predators like tigers and snakes, have the senses to feed our family, to give us the right to play again tomorrow.
- In our present world, there is not much genuine fear. But, when you do find them it is important to take note of them and heed their warnings.
Anxiety is a form of dangerous paralysis.
* Anxiety is you over exaggerating the "what ifs".
- "what if she slaps me in the face."
- "kick me in the balls."
- "Throw their drink at my face."
- "What if that guy is her boyfriend?" ... (FYI: 80% of the time it is not their boyfriend).
- "What if I interrupt her."
* Basically, anxiety is you rationalizing (aka:your self talk) of lowering your odds for success.
* All human beings have this terrible habit of mistaking their anxiety as a form of fear. STOP IT!
- Example: It's understandable to expereience fear when facing a grizzly bear because you might die. It is silly to feel fear approaching a beautiful girl that you like. Hahaha ... but of course it is easier said then doing :p.
The Right and Wrong Way to Deal With Anxiety
There are two ways to deal with your anxiety.
- The first puts you in an endless treadmill.
- The second, which is far more difficult/uncomfortable, approach leads to all sorts of great outcomes.
1) The first approach is to get assurance.
* To seek assurance from others whose overcome this anxiety (aka: go on a pua forum to ask help ^_^.)
- It is human nature to indulge in ones worries by asking people to "prove" to them that everything will be just fine. To "reward" that anxiety with reassurance and positive feedback. (Why else are you reading this article ^_^?)
- Here is a typical hamster running in a hamster wheel scenario of a typical newbie.
You've discovered the world of pua and memorize a heap of routines to run on your targets. You go out and discovered you have approach anxiety and you end up wasting your night or you only approach 1-2 girls. You go on a pua forum to get reassurance that nothing bad will happen. Now you've got your assurance and positive feedback that nothing bad will happen, you are confident to go out and "sarge" again. But, when you do go out and approach you develop new anxiety of maybe "running out of things to say" ... to anxiety to "opening mix sets" and you are stuck in running endlessly in this hamster wheel. I know this because I've experienced this addiction of being reassured of finding and learning as much pick up material and barely taking action and executing what I've learned because of the increasing stacks of anxieties I conjure up. To avoid wasting your time and actually developing yourself in "being great with women" is to first step off of that hamster wheel and accept anxiety for what it is.
2) The second approach is to immerse yourself with the anxiety.
* First acknowledge your anxiety, understand why you have it, befriend it. Know that it's there and learn to be acostume to it and move on. (Again, easier said then done ^_^).
- No rewards for your worries (aka: don't seek assurance or positive feedback for your anxieties).
* Let's further elaborate why it's not so good to seek assurance to conquer your anxieties.
- The problem with reassurance is that it will create a cycle that will never end (aka: hamster running endlessly on a hamster wheel).
- Reassure me about my issue and I will find another thing to worry about. Reassurance does not address anxiety, it actually amplifies it (ex: finding more things to rationalize). Consider you have an itch. You scratch that itch and it feels good and so you repeat this scratching, forever, until you are bleeding. Therefore, don't scratch that itch!
* It sounds insane to immerse yourself within your anxieties. Yes, accepting something that feels uncomfortable may seem unnatural. In the moment, accepting your anxiety may make it worst. But, just learn to acknowledge its presences and don't try to feed the fire with your rationalizations or even trying to numb it (aka: booze or drugs). Just accept it and embrace it like a hot summer day.
* An interesting things happens, the fire burns out! Once you fully immerse in the anxiety it won't be able to keep it self together. It's like when you've finished your presentation and you have not been laughed at, or your work review has finished and you haven't been fired, or when you sum up the courage to finally approach that girl, have a 2 minute conversation with her, eject from the interaction, and realize you are still alive and unharmed. Facing reality is the best reassurance of all!
- What's happening here, is that the brain realizes that the anxiety spell looses it's effectiveness on you. Especially, when you befriend your anxiety and not react to it.
* My advice (aka:my opinion :p):
- Is to balance 1/3 learning pua material with 2/3 of executing what you've learned. Studies shows that "1 hour of planning = 3 hours of execution".
- To seek the uncomfortable and immerse yourself in it until it becomes comfortable. "Successful people search for the uncomfortable."
Anxiety: Your Personal Coach
*If you want to really make your game/life work, you must learn to make your emotions/anxiety work for you.
- Don't try to run from them, don't ignore them, don't feed them with rationalizations and assurance, and don't allow them to run your life.
- Even the painful emotions (aka: anxiety) are actually an inner compass that directs you towards the action you MUST make to improve the quality of your life.
* Many people misinterpret that emotions are our enemies, that emotions are dictated by our pass.
1st) Many continuously look for reasons why their pass has messed with their present or why they are so screwed up that they can't approach a hot babe.
- If you keep seeking why you suck, your brain will provide references to support your suckingness.
- Therefore, adopt the mindset of: "Your pass does not equal your future" - Tony Robbins.
2nd) Don't treat your emotions (aka: anxiety) as a enemy. Instead, understand that our emotions are their to serve us.
- Again, use your emotions as guidance to know what the right action to take to improve the quality of your life.
- Therefore, adopt the mindset that anxiety is not your enemy, but, it is a call to take action!
- Example: You WANT to approach a girl you life, but you are scared to do so. Realize that the anxiety you are feeling is a action signal to go approach that girl! This is what it means to be fearless! Being fearless means not being afraid of something you shouldn't be afraid of (lol :p).
- Do this and your anxiety will transform from your enemy to your ally.
- Do this and experience the true potential of what humans are capable of.
- Do this and experience what it feels like to have your soul smile.
- Therefore, anxiety is not their to murder you, or to stop you from being happy. It is there to guide you, there to be your personal coach, to a achieve a greater quality of life.
Learn to Enjoy Anxiety
*Enjoy that you have approach anxiety! Embrace you have approach anxiety. Transform the word anxiety and nervous with excited and thrilled. Let go of your self image and laugh at yourself when you do something ridiculous. Who cares if people laugh at you.
"Success is going from failure to failure without losing ENTHUSIASM" - Winston Churchill.
- Let's say you go and approach and you end up tripping. You can either:
a) Let your emotions get the best of you.
- Over reaction is very non reactive to girls.
or
b) Laugh at yourself and enjoy that you took action.
- The art of not making things a big deal is highly attractive masculine trait!
* Realize that this is not a big deal!
- Don't try to plan out every step of your interaction. Noobie: "First I will open like this ... then I will say this story to make her laugh ... then I will neg ... then go physical when she does this ..."
- Life is boring when it is predictable! Game is all about the weird, awkward moments. If things don't go your way you laugh at your self and learn from it to overcome it the next time. If things don't go, again, you learn from your experience from before and you destroy the obstacles. These are the fulfilment you get from game.
Enjoy the journey!
* Remember the girls are the bonus. Who cares if you don't pull. Develop a sense of "who cares if I don't pull". The paradox of game is to not game. When you internalize this pulling will just come. This is what we call being out come dependent! Where the girl will notice no leeching of value but just an offering of value and will just fuck you.
- Attachment to the outcome and desperation will kill your game and you will cry when you go home after a no pull night.
- This is the journey ... their is no destination ... be prepared for the long haul ... Let go of the outcome and enjoy the present/journey. Stop controlling everything that doesn't go your way. Just calibrate after the fact ... Learn to love challenges ... This is the beauty of life!
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