@Will_V You make so many great points about our own self-beliefs, and how those beliefs lead us to perceive various social situations and react differently. A socially savvy person and a social beginner would perceive the same social situation differently. The socially savvy would be calm and collected and respond positively, even to nasty comments whereas the social beginner would take it on their egos and react defensive and negatively. So, what would you suggest for an absolute social beginner on how to get started with working on internal belief systems, or inner game to become a cool-headed, non-egotistical person, and like you said have a flexible social identity in social groups?
Could you please suggest any books, resources, or programs that focuses on getting that correct self-belief system or getting the right mentality in social skills and life in general? Thanks in advance.
It's hard to say exactly what resources I used to develop my beliefs. I read a lot, and expose myself to a lot of point of view, some extreme and some very ordinary, and from that I compiled my general worldview.
But it was a struggle, and extremely difficult in many ways. As a teenager and even into my 20s I had pretty bad 'social anxiety', and struggled to make friends or to be attractive socially. Although I'm still not very good at building lasting friendships, and I'm still quite a bit of a loner, I can meet people and leave a very good impression if I want to. And more importantly, I can enjoy my interactions with all kinds of people at a very basic level - not straining or getting drained or anything like that, in fact probably enjoying it more than they are because I'm not as confused as them about my self-perceptions.
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First of all, I think Chase has some of the best content I've read on going from a very negative place socially to a positive one. He has written many articles that for me, made complex topics about socializing (and almost by extension, relationship management) come together in a very succinct and understandable way. But I also believe that part of the reason they worked for me was because I think we happen to have a similar disposition, so not only was I getting the 'point' but the way it was developed was easy for me to sync with.
And that's very important, because the truth - about women, socializing, making money, achieving goals etc - exists in a million different places all around us and we don't realize, because what is necessary to really understand something is to go through the process of developing the idea yourself. If you can find a source of information that develops good ideas along the same orientation as your own psychological disposition, it's much, much more useful than just trying to fill your head with truisms and rules.
There are other writers on Girls Chase I like, particularly Daniel Adebayo (who communicates a very effective mindset for being a magnetic person) and Alek Rolstad (who has a lot of technical understanding of socializing and psychology).
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As far as socializing in general, I'll try to give you the three main 'realizations' I had when developing myself - because I think socializing and developing ones own self-identity are inextricably tied together.
Love the Truth
This is the main thing that saved me from all kinds of psychological catastrophe and emotional confusion, and the main problem I've seen with people who self-destruct. You must have a part of yourself that has no ego, that you can retreat to when you are in trouble to examine problems objectively and without emotion. I have a saying that I say to myself when I feel emotionally wounded or destructively self-critical, which is "Truth first, reconciliation later'. There are many ways to reconcile with the truth in a constructive way, but until you find it, you are lost and will almost certainly not only go down the wrong path, but also (as the mind is prone to do) build mental fortifications to keep you there.
And I say 'love' the truth, because it's not enough to accept it, you have to enjoy it like a drink of water when you're thirsty. And you must treat it with the level of respect that it deserves for being able to extricate you from all kinds of bad situations.
Prioritizing and being able to face the truth enabled me to see many bad habits and mental weaknesses that prevented me from having good relationships, even when someone had done something that was emotionally painful and I wanted nothing more than to hate them for it. I had a bunch of 'nice guy' habits - like:
- Giving to get
- Giving more the less someone gave in return (expecting at some point they would 'change')
- Losing focus on my own interests, desires and ambitions and prioritizing them lower than my 'duties' to others
- Thinking I could 'save' people from their stupidities
- etc
I would study myself and other people's behaviour carefully when there was a problem, and slowly I realized that things I was doing were not effective and producing the opposite outcome from what I wanted.
If you want to understand more about the 'nice guy' thing, I think
Robert Glover is very good. I haven't read his book, but I've watched a bunch of his talks and they explain things very very well.
As far as resources on how to develop the habit of prioritizing the truth, I don't really know any. It's just constant practice and habit, and the experience of seeing how it has helped you. Reading
Stoic philosophy is good for this (although it is missing vital things in my opinion). Reading
history and understanding how quickly things appear and disappear after a short struggle is very good for developing a healthy ego. Reading
psychology and neuroscience in general is very good for getting a clear perspective on how little we are really in control of ourselves and the necessity of understanding and mastering our minds -
David Eagleman is a very good and digestible author on this and I have several of his books.
Tend to your Inner Beast
There is no way around it: when the chips are really down, you have to be able to be very ruthless. I didn't realize this for a very long time, but anyone who is effective in society must have the psychological capacity to 'have their way' in the face of strong opposition, and this is what makes them respectable to others, and what makes others submit to them. And the only way to truly become capable of ruthlessness is to be able to enjoy using it.
Now to be very clear, it's not the only thing that makes someone respectable, it's merely a pre-requisite. If you are someone who is perceptive, generous, and fair-minded in the way you deal with people, but they can tell (and believe me, people just
know when you've got it) that you would give them a bloody battle if they ever crossed you, that is the most stable and balanced foundation for a relationship. People will trust you (because they know you do things because you really want to, not out of fear). They will even try to make you responsible for them, because they know you can deal with problems they can't - women are typical of this. And you will find that people are also more honest and open with you, because they know you won't take advantage (again, because you show that you
want to have a good relationship, but you don't
need to).
The only way to truly develop your inner beast, in my opinion, is to use it. Kickboxing was very good for me in this - I could put the gloves on and practice my killer instinct without creating problems in my life. Another way I practiced this was to cut myself off from people who had wronged me, until they apologized (almost never) or corrected themselves (sometimes happened). Until this happened, in my mind, they might as well have already been dead, and whenever I interacted with them I saw them purely as an opponent to be dominated and taken advantage of (subtly of course) and to feed my inner beast.
It's not healthy to operate in this mindset always, but it must be an option. And a lot of people don't realize, it's not about being particularly intimidating or aggressive, it's about dissociating your emotions from your actions, and doing what is effective rather than what you 'feel like'. When two people meet or even walk past eachother (especially guys), there is always a probing of sorts, small actions of dismissal or aggression or dominance that almost always eventually produce in one of them signs of submission or retreat. Most times, all you have to do to be intimidating enough to be respected is to not react with fear or escalation to their probing, to be generally assertive, and to be comfortable with knowing, again, that you are psychologically capable of dealing with any opposition they send your way with some of your own. It is usually a game of 'chicken' and whoever has the stronger and more sustainable self-belief gets to decide the initial terms of the relationship.
I know probably a lot of guys here have issues with
Jordan Peterson, but I think he deals with this aspect far better than anyone I know (
Carl Jung, who is the foundation of many of JP's beliefs and who called this inner beast the 'shadow', is probably the best single source of knowledge of this, although his writing is probably too academic for some). I can't really think of anyone else who does justice to this extremely important topic.
I very much enjoyed
Robert Greene's 33 Strategies of War, although as an author I think he idealizes his points a bit too much and sometimes it's hard to see how they fit into a balanced world view.
I developed my idea of this some time ago, mainly empirically - I noticed that all the most effective fighters, entrepreneurs, and men of history were capable of brutality that was not always warranted. I also noticed a sort of 'killer instinct' and reflexive dominance in the most effective guys I knew as far as socializing and attracting women, and I watched and learned from people who easily dominated me socially. And as I developed it myself, the results spoke for themselves.
Be Empathetic
I've always been a very empathetic person (which probably contributed to my particular problems in life). I typically have no trouble reading people and understanding them at a very deep level very quickly, and my misconceptions about them almost always came from idealism rather than lack of clear information. It's hard to say where it came from exactly, maybe it's biological, or maybe I just developed it early in life.
Although the first two points I made are necessary for avoiding problems and weak foundations in relationships, empathy is probably the most important thing for actually making the most of everything you do with other people. If you can read other people's fundamental worldview, it gives you a huge amount of covert power to influence them and satisfy them so that they become loyal and trusting toward you.
A lot of people confuse empathy with sympathy, but they are not the same. Sympathy is 'niceness', emotional synchronization, this is what women tend to have in abundance and what makes them generally suggestible and followers of more assertive personalities. Another thing many people don't realize is that anger and rage is inverted sympathy - you are still under the emotional control of someone else and following their lead, and you will tire out and submit eventually if you don't dissociate from it.
Empathy is simply the ability to run a movie in your head where you are looking out of the other person's eyes and seeing their view of things. Although it's probably correlated with sympathy, it doesn't mean that someone who is empathetic cannot be very assertive and even mean or cruel.
It's important to make the distinction because many guys think the only two things on the spectrum are aggression at one end and sympathy/niceness at the other. It's not the case. Empathy is a tool that you can use to influence people, to know what will attract them to you and when you are effectively attracting them, to know how to satisfy them and make them happy and content with you, and also to know when you yourself are doing something wrong, because you can look at yourself through their eyes, and what to do about it.
The easiest way to become empathetic is to practice it - watch people, ask them questions, try to understand them, give them your full attention. Become curious - I am insatiably curious about human nature in general, and especially women and all the awkward contradictions and fascinating gracefulness and flexibility of their behavior. And they
know I'm curious, which attracts them to me because they love warm attention.
When someone describes their life, imagine yourself in the same shoes, reacting the same way to things, and try to describe it back to them in a "so it was like X" in a way that they go "yeah, that's right!" and beam at you like you two just shared the same experience together. This is the core of deep diving, and it's my main modus operandi for engaging women (and also forming friendships with men, to some extent).
For people who are too self-centered, the book
How to Win Friends and Influence People is very good, although its excessive focus on giving to others can probably send some nice guys into a bit of confusion. It's a book that should be seen, in my opinion, through the lens of ambition, and the desire to lead and take control in a way that satisfies others long-term. In that sense, it's great.
I haven't read his book, which is probably great, but
Chris Voss has some fantastic youtube content on empathizing effectively with people, based on experience as a hostage negotiator, which I think is key because his job was not simply to 'be nice' but to understand and exert control over someone with whom there was no real basis for a relationship of any kind, and with whom aggression and attempting to be overtly dominant was worse than useless.
I generally dislike a lot of self-help books about empathizing and making friends with people, things like Emotional Intelligence seem to me about as useful as IQ in terms of understanding how to be more effective in the world - sure they exist in one form or another, and they're correlated with a good outcome, but they mean nothing and change nothing when someone reads about them. All they do is stir up competitive anxiety and restlessness whenever they are brought up, and are typically used to drive emotional arguments. It's much more effective just to go out and meet people and give them your full attention.
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Hope that's all interesting and useful!
www.girlschase.com
