At times people fail not knowing that failure is actually part of success. If you don't have squabbles in your relationships, then you won't appreciate the relationship. The problems that you face don’t come from your lack of knowledge, your limited experience, or your poor upbringing.
They come from something much simpler and much easier:
The way you look at the world.
More specifically: looking externally for rules of what you should do and what you shouldn’t do, for rules of right and wrong.
It’s really that simple.
Instead of looking inside yourself for what is real, true, powerful, and rewarding, you’re looking externally, to what other people say is right and wrong, placing all actions, ideas, and thoughts on either end of a big, wide spectrum that contains many shades of grey, and using that to try and guide your life.
It’s this idea of separating things to two ends of a spectrum - good and bad, better and worse that’s the cause of all your issues.
- Trying to be confident is making you nervous.
- Trying to have positive beliefs means you can have negative beliefs.
- Trying to be high status means you can be low status.
By trying to be in one category, you’re making sure that falling into the other category is a very real possibility.
This isn’t a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, here’s a quote from a guy who discovered this over 2000 year ago – Lao Tzu.
Success is as dangerous as failure,
Hope is as hollow as fear What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
Your position is shaky
When you stand with two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance. What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Believe it or not, failure is a necessary component of success. Merriam-Webster defines failure as the “omission of occurrence or performance; lack of success; a falling short.” I define failure as a stepping stone to success; a learning experience; an opportunity to grow. I rather like my definition better.
Hope and fear are both phantoms, That arise from thinking of the self.
When you don’t see the self as the self, What do you have to fear?
This is a quote from the Tao Te Ching.
What this means is that when you look at the world through this prism of two ends of a spectrum, where one end is good and the other end is bad, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Because whilst you might be able to hold yourself in one category for some short period of time, there are always going to be issues that push you into the negative category.
It could be people who are more in the positive category than you (e.g. People with higher social status) or events that eliminate you from the positive category (e.g. Women telling you that you’re not attractive).
And when you fall into the ‘negative’ category, then you feel bad and have to try and work your way back into the ‘positive’ category.
The way to not fall into the negative category isn’t to make sure you’re in the positive one all the time: it’s to stop looking at things in dichotomies.
If you put something into the ‘good’ category, the things that fall outside it then become ‘bad’. When you put something into the ‘better’ category, the things that fall outside it become ‘worse’.
But if you don’t put anything into the ‘good’ or ‘better’ category, then nothing is ‘bad’ or ‘worse’.
If you don’t try and go up the roller-coaster, you’ll never go down.
If you don’t try and convince yourself that you’re good at something, you won’t think you’re bad at it.
If you don’t try and be above someone, you’ll never be below others.
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Now you should have realised by now that I’m not saying ‘don’t try and change anything’, but the point of this is to get you to realise that this good / bad, better / worse, higher / lower is actually the root cause of your lack of success and your painfully slow progress.
Breaking through all your barriers – your lack of confidence, your low status, your negative self-beliefs – starts when you realise that the only place they exist is in your head, and to get rid of them you just have to start looking at the world in a different way.
“But there are things that are bad. How can I stop looking at things as good and bad when things are good and bad??”
Good question.
If you walk up to a stunning girl in a club and she tells you to “fuck off!” is that good or bad?
Some could say good, others could say bad. It really depends on which perspective you look at it from.
Is a brand new Ferrari more valuable than a 10-year old Land Rover?
Well, yes if you live in the city and go out on race tracks on the weekends.
But what if you live in the Kalahari Desert, have very limited access to service stations and spend most of your time driving through low lying scrub? A Ferrari would be almost useless. The Land Rover would be far more valuable.
Is an FHM model who’s ridiculously hot yet insecure, needy, and high maintenance more valuable than the girl next door who’s cute, but not anywhere near as physically attractive as the FHM model, yet is confident, fun, playful, and has things in common with you?
Well, if your purpose is to try and impress your mates and brag on PUA forums then the FHM model is the one to go for, but if you actually care about your long term happiness, then the girl next door is more valuable.
It all comes down to what you’re trying to achieve in life.
This is what determines what is more valuable to a person.
If you’re trying to travel overland through the Kalahari Desert, the Ferrari would be useless.
If you were trying to impress your petrol head mates, then the Ferrari would be the best option.
But does that mean the other option is objectively less valuable?
Value is determined by purpose. What you’re trying to achieve determines what you value on that journey.
In the words of a much more eloquent Man than I:
Nothing is good nor bad till thinking makes it so.
Here’s something for you to consider:
Is it going to be faster to learn different ways to prevent and deal with the thousands of different ‘bad’ things that can happen to you?
Or is it going to be faster to get rid of the idea of objectively good and bad, learn to focus on what you want out of life, and go about filling your life with those things?
Yeah…
So as you can see, I’m showing you the difference between two very different ways of doing things.
This isn’t about getting better tricks to attract women or developing more efficient techniques for pretending to be someone you’re not.
This is about shifting the very foundation of the way you look at, experience, and interact with the world so instead of trying to overcome barrier after barrier after barrier every time they appear, you can start to live in a world where they just don’t exist.
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