Abundance Mindset

[HentaiHakujin]

Decided to place a thread a bit more positive on top since the next 3 down are some variation of PUA are creeps or rapists. The focus however is not really PUA, but rather focused on a game mindset that has value across the spectrum of your life: the abundance mindset.

Something I read that really stuck with me was, "man is a social animal. You won't be happy alone. It's not our nature. We are men not gods." And for the greatest majority of people that is true. Isolation and loneliness can easily lead to despair. People want to make connections. They often struggle to do so and that also weighs on the spirit.

How do we wind up as who we are? Genetics likely accounts for certain traits. Socialization at very formative stages likely fills in the rest. I have few doubts that childhood influences a lot of who we are, and when it comes to issues of sex the high school years probably shape a heavy portion. You have those boys who were always popular with everyone who develop confidence and a social circle that carries them a long. Then you have those boys who didn't have that. That boy has a huge crush on a girl and she finds out about it. She laughs at him. He is turned down for the date. That alters his mindset about his basic level of attractiveness. He develops a scarcity mindset. Nobody will love me. I will be alone. This is done off a sample size of 1.

People find rejection painful. We actively seek to avoid it. We often define ourselves based on the responses we get from others. If you start your romantic life with rejection it influences how you will behave going forward. You aim lower than the last rejection you had in hopes of finding an affirmative. Worse even is developing oneitis, the belief that the object of your affection is the only one who you could feel that for. It is a short trip to anger when that person rejects you. A person can also leave themselves open for a truly negative person to enter their life because they are willing to tolerate anything just to have someone. Scarcity mindset.

Romance is not the only area where rejection shapes us. You want to do business with someone. They reject you. You want to sell something to someone. They reject you. You want to be friends with someone. They reject you. You want to join a club. They reject you. And the natural response to rejection is to wonder if there is something wrong with you.

One of the solutions to all of this is to develop the abundance mindset. Women didn't reject you. This girl you just spoke to rejected you. There will be another girl. This individual doesn't want to do business with you. There will be another person who does. This guy doesn't want to be your friend. There will be another person. 5 billion people on the planet. They did not all reject you. Abundance. An abundance mindset allows you to realize you have worth and something to offer outside of the singular interaction you just had. A disappointment is a moment not a life.

This does not imply that there is no value in self-improvement, but it emphatically affirms that no singular interaction defines your worth as a person. No set back or rejection represents a permanent state. You can feel the sting for a second. Then you realize it is temporary. You realize there is going to be another moment just as valid as the one that passed. You can try again with a free spirit. Abundance. If you hold on to the failure that you just had then it will carry through to the next opportunity and poison that well. Learn more, yes. Improve yourself, sure. Become embittered or fearful of rejection, no. An abundance mindset realizes that each moment has the ability to stand alone.

PUA use this principle to engage lots of women and be okay with more rejections in an evening than plenty of men would risk in a decade. Over time the emotional impact of a rejection, something they have gotten used to, doesn't sting much and is reduced as an obstacle. To the extent that PUA advises/trains damaged men to alter their earlier programming of scarcity, it is a service.

The principle holds in the other areas of life. Engage with people and groups that interest you. Don't take it so hard when it doesn't pan out. There will be other opportunities.

My 2 yens.

 

[Sinapse]

Great post.

To me, abundance means looking at the world and seeing opportunity, as opposed to the pain of the process and fear. Where one person sees danger, fear, and failure, the other person sees opportunity, chance for success, and learning. As Connor McGregor said, "We win or we learn". It's that simple.. the only way you lose is by not trying anything at all for fear of imagined (or real) failure. This topic is intimately connected to the growth mindset, shown here:

Most people who succeed, in both business and pickup possess or develop (and that's important - it CAN be developed) a growth mindset. And most people who think pickup doesn't / can't / would never / shouldn't work have a fixed mindset. This is the same reason why I find "Be yourself" as pretty lame advice - it assumes no possibility to improve.

Going down the list on the right

-Embrace challenges. To me this means going after girls who scare / intimate you. Always choosing action towards women (and pursuits) where you may not even seem to belong or may be skipping the normal "protocol." Just like LeBron skipping college ball to jump straight into the NBA, or someone with incredible talent being hired over someone with a sterling educational pedigree - if you have the ability and courage, you can jump to the front of the line. It's all about moxie.
-Persist in the face of setbacks. Rejections will happen... a lot. How do you respond? Some of my greatest successes came just after some of my most humiliating failures.
-Effort as the path to mastery. I talk about "the path" a lot, and even go as far to say that ego death is the goal, in some ways, of pickup, and beyond that, most disciplines. When you mention that one interaction does not make or break a man, this is what I think of.

No set back or rejection represents a permanent state.

I also think the flip side of this is important - no one "success" is a permanent state either. One of the most sobering realizations in pickup is when you finally get with the kind of girls you were pining after the whole time - magazine models, gravure girls, race queens, hostesses, or whatever it may be - you realize that having sex with them does not make you complete at all. In the end, while pickup is a social skill, it is fundamentally about peace with yourself, with or without a girl. The end point of most game is in affinity with particular, specific women and a deepened appreciation of them. It's almost as though through the whole journey you're gorging yourself on a buffet, and only at the end do you realize how to actually savor the flavors. The whole time you think you are, but when you look back on it you realize you were just "going through the motions" of stuffing your face. How many people eat mindfully? Very, very very few. Everybody loves food but so few actually really, truly take time to sense and feel it. In much the same way I think many people sort of sleepwalk through sex and love, feeling as if they are getting nutrition while at the same time missing the appreciation for what is right in front of them.

-Criticism. Rejections are a gift. Each rejection is both totally irrelevant and totally relevant.
-Success of others. Do you feel the need to drag other guys down or look down on them for their successes, or are you inspired by them?

Ultimately, these points lead to, as the image shows, either a deterministic view of the world, where men believe things like:

"I could never get a girl like THAT"
"I need to / have / did settle for a girl on my level"
"I'm too [old / fat/ ugly/ shy/ etc] to get with a girl I really like"
"Success with women isn't something you can learn, you just need money and good looks, and since I don't have those I won't have success"

It pains me when I feel that guys have these kinds of beliefs because I know what is possible and I've seen guys who are fatter / older / uglier and shier than just about anybody out there get with some stunning women. "Game" is really just gaming yourself and your own mind.

 

[hkAlone]

I have been thinking for a while about a deserved reply to the many points mentioned above. I would need a dozen of pages to write down all my thoughts but I understand nobody would have neither the time or patience to read it
Let's keep it simple then.

I understand that visualizing opportunities by hundreds or thousand gives you a frame to ignore out natural tendency to fear rejection. In the case of meeting women in a megalopolis, I do perfectly agree that it is a successful strategy to consider your approaches as simple tries and catches without any consequences for you. If you live in a small village or in a tribe in the Amazonian forest, it would be another story.
Having some natural reserve is surely due to our evolutionary history where the number of potential partners met during your lifetime was indeed quite limited and a rejection could have easily compromised your capacity to procreate or worse you could be banned from your tribe. We can easily apprehend that in such conditions fearing rejections was a winning strategies for reproduction. I understand that the PUA community figured out that the first brain hack was to force yourself going through this reserve by experiencing many rejections in a short period of time to make your brain realize there are basically no consequences... (in a neurological term you pre frontal cortex is trained to ignore the rejection fear signal coming from your amygdala, by confronting you many time to the feared situation without any negative consequences. Such methods are also used to cure people from PTSD or phobias).

Great! You can then work out on becoming a proper PUA (being more witty, getting more assertive, etc...). You're now on your way to bang hundreds of women. Congratulations.

From there, I realize there is nothing I can really say to mitigate the appeal of such messages as they are both true and super appealing on a marketing perspective.
All these guys who have been lurking at attractive but inaccessible women their entire life time, can suddenly have hope.

On one side, getting more comfortable socially is actually a good thing.
But even if approaching/dating/banging many women is an appealing prospect from an outside protect, I have met very few people enjoying it on the long run.

A culture where you're promoting having sex with many girls, bragging about it, sharing pictures, doesn't seem like a fulfilling one if not childish way of living.
If you are promoting the development of social skills, the empathy for the women you're approaching and making sure you all have a good experience and being a part of a symbiotic system with your parents, exploring each other inhibitions and sexual desires, I would think very positively about it.
It's the difference between hacking women's brain and loving women's brain.

There we come back to @Sinapse comment on the advice "Be yourself". He thinks it is a lame statement that limits your capacities to a fix status. For me, it means being authentic, accepting yourself with your weaknesses, strengths, emotions, ambitions and desire. Don't be a machine with a goal but a human being with an assumed background. It means to me be honest with yourself and others.

It's not in contradiction with a growth mindset.
Quite the opposite. If you accept what you are, you know both what you need to progress, how much efforts it will be, how much willpower you need.
In other words, make sure that the women you meet, really meets you and not a fake assertive version of you. The act cannot last the strength of time.

Furthermore, if you don't accept yourself, you cannot commit yourself and people don't want to commit with you.
In other words, banging hundred women doesn't mean being respected by hundred women. In most cases, you realize how such relations are compromised from day one as you showed a level of assertiveness that doesn't reflect who you actually are. You can get the sexual reward, but more frustrations can come next.

Are there many successful PUA stories ? PUA guys feeling relax on their relationship, appeased.
Do PUAs manage to have successful professional and personal life ?

 

[HentaiHakujin]

My original piece here was not focused on abundance mindset for PUA purposes.

I have met very few people enjoying it on the long run.

I think that is generally understood in the PUA community. Different things for different life stages.

childish way of living.

That will invite who decides what is a manly way of living? There are big discussions about a concept called the female imperative where what is defined as manly is how well one supports the reproductive/social aims of females. That would be a very long discussion.

It's the difference between hacking women's brain and loving women's brain.

You could restate this more positively. You can now love a woman for who she is rather than who you think she should be. You can stop being frustrated when what you have been told does not line up with what you observe.

In other words, make sure that the women you meet, really meets you and not a fake assertive version of you. The act cannot last the strength of time.

There is a bit of fake it until you make it. You express confidence to develop attraction. You receive attraction which develops confidence. You now have confidence which further develops attraction. Cycle continues.

Furthermore, if you don't accept yourself, you cannot commit yourself and people don't want to commit with you.

Of course you can, it is called settling. You can absolutely loathe yourself and wind up with someone you loathe simply out of fear of being alone. You are committed out of fear rather than more positive emotions. Conversely, people may very well commit to you, it just won't be the people you want. If a woman wrote your sentence, everyone would recognize the lack of truth. She would have no self-esteem and everyone would trace that to why she has that crappy guy she is with so loyally and why he hangs around her. Men and women are both humans and not entirely dissimilar.

In other words, banging hundred women doesn't mean being respected by hundred women. In most cases, you realize how such relations are compromised from day one as you showed a level of assertiveness that doesn't reflect who you actually are. You can get the sexual reward, but more frustrations can come next.

The PUA type may not care for the respect of all women. He does want the tools to be attractive to more women and perhaps be able to be respected by the female he really desires. See the bit above for the cycle of improvement. Most PUA would definitely concur with the thought that if you do not retain frame and continue the behaviors that earned the initial attraction then that attraction will wane over time. This is no different than a man marrying a beautiful woman and then after a marriage the makeup, clothing and body size change tremendously. The attraction diminishes comparatively to what initially brought them together. If a man ceases to carry himself in the manner the woman found attractive then it is the same. Nobody on the other side of the PUA divide would encourage a man not to be 'romantic' because that isn't what he is.

Anything worth having in life generally requires some work. We work to become the people who can have the lives we want. We went to school. We went to the gym. We went to work. Our whole lives are work of self-improvement and responding to social feedback or else they are lives of mediocrity and regret (insert standard disclaimer that not all people are like that... always sociopaths and anti-socials but I think we are good for 2 std deviations falling into the above).

 

[HentaiHakujin]

Again, this post was not a PUA focused one. I am not a PUA (to be one and to be successful at it takes time and commitment I have not put into it). I do believe it works. I do believe it has utility in other areas of life. I like to use things that work to achieve the life I want.

 

[Sinapse]

But even if approaching/dating/banging many women is an appealing prospect from an outside protect, I have met very few people enjoying it on the long run.

This is a debate we could certainly have. But it would be something that most members of an "adult guide" board would be related to.. In other words, PUA and P4p are both about having an abundance (or at least some) sex!

"Be yourself". He thinks it is a lame statement that limits your capacities to a fix status. For me, it means being authentic, accepting yourself with your weaknesses, strengths, emotions, ambitions and desire. Don't be a machine with a goal but a human being with an assumed background. It means to me be honest with yourself and others.

I don't think it's a lame statement. I think it's very true and an admirable and important goal. Rather, I simply think it's bad advice. It's not actionable and doesn't have any particular steps from which you could improve.

Are there many successful PUA stories ? PUA guys feeling relax on their relationship, appeased.
Do PUAs manage to have successful professional and personal life ?

Almost everybody I've met, nearly without exception, is much more happy and satisfied with the quality of their social relationships. Most guys I've met who actually take it upon themselves to really commit to pickup end up improving many other related areas of their lives as well, from fitness and friendships to business and travel.

The part I think you're confusing is the method (cold approach pickup) with the reward and goal. Many people, both within the pickup community and from the outside looking in, see getting laid as the final goal. In reality, getting laid is merely a step on the path at best, and a side effect at worst.

To continue the recent metaphor I made about food and hunger, if a man was saved from a desert from starvation and you placed a glorious high quality sushi course meal in front of him he might scarf it down quickly, but likely wouldn't appreciate it and might even throw it back up. Similarly, he's not likely to reject anything at all! To that man some simple, basic food like a lentil soup or some bread would be a better first meal. However, once you are regularly eating, the concepts of depth of flavor and contrast can be appreciated, and he might reject meals that aren't up to his standards. But standards don't exist when you're starving

In much the same way, what drives people to pickup (desire for more sex) and the best part of what people end up getting from pickup (depth of relationship and greater affinity, both with women and the world in general) is quite different, so much so that they never realized they wanted it in the beginning.

Another question entirely is if sleeping more women has a positive or negative affect on your ability to happily be monogamous with one women in the traditional sense. I do think an abundance of options might make this difficult, but I don't automatically assume that's better or worse. In other words, I don't think that marriage is automatically the most noble and best end-point of a romantic relationship or life. However, what I believe hardly has anything to do with any other guys goals. If he wants marriage more than anything, game will help him get it, not hurt it. And if his goal changes along the way, there's likely a good reason for that