Post: #1

Was out surfing today and had a lot of time to think in between sets.

I recalled attending my cousin’s graduation this year—there was a pretty good keynote speaker. He grew up in the projects of Brownsville where he cracked the code of high school, got scholarships to and attended an Ivy League school, and is now a well-respected scholar.

His speech was very motivational and he kept reiterating the fact that the limitations people have in this culture are brought on first and foremost by themselves. His main point was that knowledge is power and we need to be constantly seeking knowledge and devouring information. True dat.

It got me thinking and I want to delve deeper into the topic.

I want to know what you think men’s main obstacles are in this world. What is holding them back? What is keeping them ‘blue pill’?

Of course its all up to every individual—you are the only one to blame. Living in America is still a fucking goldmine of opportunity if you have the willpower to do it—but most people are lazy fucks.

I want to know what specific experiences/limitations men put on themselves…here are a few that came to mind.

• ignorance
• anxiety
• self doubt
• other people (so called friends who are content being losers)
• fear
• comfort
• laziness

Thoughts on this?

Post: #2

Men allow family to hold them back.

When a man comes from a relatively stable background, he should be free of extended guilt and responsibilty to his family for the most part.

A dude that I grew up with, he helped out at his dad's shitty minimum wage corner store when his dad could have hired anyone. This guy is really smart and should have been applying his mind by learning about the world (he was college age) rather than selling Newports to crackheads after the game.

Or their loser friends. Especially these days, a man who would otherwise swallow the red pill is held back by his mangina mates out of pressure to be social and fit in. He would better serve himself and his friends by making a clean break and rolling solo, or finding solid red pill or otherwise useful mentors.

Post: #3

I would add low expectations and a lack of the sublime in their lives. There's no sense of awe.

I'm talking about that feeling where you read something written by a master and wonder how people can think like that and have such incredible command of the language. I feel like most modern writing I could write equally as well, or even better. Then you read some older stuff and it just blows you away.

Or I'm talking about those feelings when you go on a multi-day hike. The landscape looks painted on. Your body hurts. That cup of soup is the best goddamn meal you've ever had. You really feel alive.

On the weekend, I went to a waterfall. There were tour buses of Chinese tourists who rocked up, photographed it from afar, and then were gone in five minutes. Instead, we clambered over boulders and a trail that had been washed away by a recent typhoon, lifting the dogs across the more difficult and steeper parts, and then swam beneath the waterfall. We had the place all to ourselves. I saw wild monkeys and a deer. It was cool.

So many experiences are best described as "meh". They're not worthy of being told or of being heard. Who wants a life like that?

Post: #4

(08-04-2014 08:30 PM)Yeti Wrote:  Men allow family to hold them back.

When a man comes from a relatively stable background, he should be free of extended guilt and responsibilty to his family for the most part.

A dude that I grew up with, he helped out at his dad's shitty minimum wage corner store when his dad could have hired anyone. This guy is really smart and should have been applying his mind by learning about the world (he was college age) rather than selling Newports to crackheads after the game.

Or their loser friends. Especially these days, a man who would otherwise swallow the red pill is held back by his mangina mates out of pressure to be social and fit in. He would better serve himself and his friends by making a clean break and rolling solo, or finding solid red pill or otherwise useful mentors.

What's wrong with earning his inheritance like that? If he was smart he would expand the family business. I had a college buddy that worked for his dad trucking crabs at night after classes. He majored in business with a minor in Spanish to handle his workers better. His last semester he fired his dad took full control and was flying crabs to the interior of the country making enough money to buy a brand new truck and let his parents retire. I bet if I saw his dad right now his dad would be smiling hard. He wanted to quit the family business many times until he realized what he truly had.

Post: #5

This wasn't really a scalable business empire though. It was his dad's shitty corner store.

Meanwhile my friend was being held back in his hometown when he could have done anything that he wanted.

I get what you're saying and I see how working in a family businsss can be good, but that's if the family business is worthwhile.

Post: #6

NGE

Post: #7

There's a great quote by Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

But it's not just salary, it's everything. It's his friendships and family. It's his social standing, his status as being normal and mainstream. Thinking and seeing things differently is not only strange, it imperils what he already has. When you say something objectionable to him, he subconsciously sees his place in society wavering. He sees that to agree with you would be too socially costly, and he must shy away from your position. If you press your dissent too firmly, he may opt to shy away from you as a person.

Once you get comfortable deviating from your surroundings in one arena, it gets easier to do so in others. That's often why someone who is weird or eccentric is not just odd in one way, but in many ways. You realize that you either will not lose what you have, or that the loss is nothing as compared to acting with integrity and being true.

Post: #8

Biologically, most people - men & women - are meant to be followers. They're not supposed to "get it." They're supposed to assist the community. It's only a few who are supposed to "get it" and lead men.

Post: #9

Zep,

Don't worry about what Sting would do or think. Don't try to manufacture an emotion or a desire that is not there; don't try to convince yourself that you want something that you don't. These kinds of manufactured emotion never last, and trying to follow them is the way men waste time and sometimes waste their lives.

Instead, be honest with yourself and figure out what you really want; not what you should want according to some ideology or set of beliefs or expectations, but what you actually do. The answer could be surprisingly modest, such as, "I really want a nice wife and family with a few kids", or "I just want to be left alone and get away with working as little as possible", or something else. No matter. First and foremost, have no fear of yourself and be honest with yourself in answering the basic question of what you actually want.

Once you know what that is, try to see if there is a practical way to achieve it, and follow it to the extent possible. If there is no practical way to achieve what you want, then you have to dismiss it and accept that it's not possible, and then ask yourself what the next best thing is.

This may not sound very glamorous but there is no glamor in manufacturing emotions or trying to live someone else's life, nor in trying to achieve the impossible. Part of what is holding men back is that they try to twist themselves into knots conforming to a particular set of expectations; whether "blue pill" or "red pill" or any color in between. The best way to a happy life is to figure out the most practical way to do as much of what you actually want as possible; and once the course is set, relax and enjoy the ever-present, ever-changing variety of the objective world that surrounds us, and which is always greatly more interesting than the limited contents of our subjective self and its particular adventure.

Post: #10

Rules (i.e. the law). Men in the west weren't always as scared and timid, but the law has made it so that veering from the mainstream has much greater consequences. I'm sure this is to some extent by design. Men are increasingly expected to act civil and obedient to their own detriment whereas women can act like wild animals in a lot of instances (the Ray Rice incident comes to mind). Men are required to work more and get less in return. In school they teach if you get hit you don't hit back. This is straight up brain dead, and it's killing the male spirit. You know, that thing that created everything. Are there some negatives along the way with regard to the male spirit? Sure, but it's like Jack Donovan said, "Men are built to either fight or cooperate, they're built to fight AND cooperate". And this spirit is getting killed.

Post: #11

Analysis Paralysis

This is a big one for people who are used to reading a lot and consuming a lot of information, news, etc.

You end up getting perfectionist, and then want to wait until you feel like you know everything before you even begin.

Or, you have multiple tasks you want to tackle, but you can't decide on the most efficient way to do all of them, so you do something completely different where you can feel productive in place of what you should be doing to be truly effective.

I've seen it happen to guys here on the forum, and I even catch myself from time to time.

This applies across the board, whether it's Game, diets, a new workout plan, starting a business, etc.

Post: #12

The thing that holds me back the most is cognitive distortion. It's a psychological term that pretty much means that your mind processes things in an unhealthy and inaccurate manner. For instance, over thinking -- or making a situation seem more magnanimous and important than it actually is, stressing over negligible potential happenings -- is something that holds me, and I assume other men, back.

Post: #13

(08-04-2014 11:45 PM)Renberg Wrote:  The thing that holds me back the most is cognitive distortion. It's a psychological term that pretty much means that your mind processes things in an unhealthy and inaccurate manner. For instance, over thinking -- or making a situation seem more magnanimous and important than it actually is, stressing over negligible potential happenings -- is something that holds me, and I assume other men, back.

guilty as charged

Post: #14

Society's Safety Net

You would expect a person with the luxury of a safety net to have the willingness to jump even higher but unfortunately this is not so.

Strangely, the Safety Net creates a false sense of comfort and the illusion of 'having a perfect life' while also fostering a fear of risk.

We grow comfortable working in a decent paying 9 to 5, having free healthcare, having a decent looking blonde wife to fuck every night, being able to afford a decent looking car that makes your friends envious.

We grow so comfortable in living this average life that we begin to lose sight of the other things in life. This life becomes 'the Ideal life' to you. You feel that life can't get any better than this.

The Red Pill analogy has never been truer than in this situation. You may think you have Perfection but you are living in only the illusion of perfection, unaware of how greater your life could be until you wake up one day on your 40th birthday and feel the onset of your depression as your 'mid-life crisis' begins to kick in. You realise that you have wasted half your life on nothing but trivial and unimportant pursuits and soon Death will be knocking on your before you have even succeeded in finding the joy and satisfaction in your life which was promised to you back when you were a dreamy-eyed first-grader and when you were a pimply-faced adolescent.

Post: #15

The thing I believe holds men back most is lack of inspiration.

Inspiration is the wave that carries the surfer.

Without it, there is no momentum.

Post: #16

I can't speak for others, obviously, but the thing that holds me back the most is simply being comfortable. I have made the greatest progress, taken the biggest steps in my life when I was under pressure, and thus motivated to bust my ass to make changes in my life. I find it very difficult to motivate myself when there are no real consequences for being lazy.

I'm considering staying uncomfortable, closer to the edge than I need to, in the next few months as a motivational tool. I go back and forth; it's a hard decision, and risky no matter which path I choose. But I'm mostly concerned that if I take the comfortable path I'll stay in this rut and never make the changes I want to make in my life.

Post: #17

Yeah. Inspiration and energy.

Post: #18

Oversexualised society, means that men go under the pussy spell and see this as the only worthwhile thing of ever having. Not having a goal or mission in life that involves something other than getting laid, is going to really dent a man's inner game. Especially as most don't have game in the first place, and the women they are gaming aren't really women, they just end up chasing this fix around like a dog chases his tail.

Red Pill men, my life changed around when I was able to get a mentor, who told me how things were. Women can't tell you how to do anything in life, their experiences are completely different to ours; and the bottom line is that they are more like children in how they will never accept responsibility for their wrong teachings. Most men now are just blubbering freaks, seriously they are weak and apathetic.

Post: #19

Great responses. I think it’s a combinations of pretty mucha all of the above. It would be hard enough to counteract cognitive distortion alone, for instance, but to also to act in the face of lack of inspiration, the influence of family and friends, the law, analysis paralysis and social safety net? Very hard.

Perhaps, even more simply it could be as monster notes

Quote:Biologically, most people - men & women - are meant to be followers. They're not supposed to "get it." They're supposed to assist the community. It's only a few who are supposed to "get it" and lead men.

Post: #20

What was Goldmund banned for?

Post: #21

^^ that's what I'd like to know

he was a genuinely cool dude and I really enjoyed reading his posts

RIP

Post: #22

Looking back on my twenties, my close friends and social circle held me back from reaching greater horizons (dating, better job, more extensive travel, etc). I had to more or less wind it down and cut ties with a few of my buddies a few years ago after I realized how much they were dragging me down and we just had little in common anymore anyways. My greater circle of friends were great, really. Lots of community, security, people I could count on and be a genuine friend to as well. However, that circle prevented me from exploring other possibilities. Maybe it's my fault for not being more proactive and assertive to get out of that bubble sooner. I thought I'd achieve everything I wanted from having a solid social circle, family, a few close friends, a steady job, etc. Wrong. So, I tore most of that old circle up (actually, we sort of naturally aged-out of one another) and decided to start over. Now I am applying the lessons learned while trying to re-build my social life, hopefully wiser and more competent now, and with a more mobile/flexible circle of good friends.

Post: #23

For young men in particular alcohol holds them back. At first it provides "Liquid Balls", provides a false sense of confidence and dulls approach anxiety. Over time, it is overused it in social situations as it provides a comfortable norm. However, to achieve a complete comfort level with yourself and confidence in seducing women, clarity of thought and mind are necessary without the dulling affect of alcohol.

The biggest evolution in my game was developing a competence in approaching during the day and moving away from the reliance of alcohol that accompanied my nightgame.

Post: #24

(08-05-2014 09:33 AM)SydneyD Wrote:  ^^ that's what I'd like to know

he was a genuinely cool dude and I really enjoyed reading his posts

RIP

The rapist post was probably not a good idea.

WIA

Post: #25

WIA- what about the rapist post seemed like a bad idea? That thread is very still open so I don't think it was that.

I met with Goldmund three times- the guy is legit. I couldn't find anything he was doing here that would warrant a ban. I'm very confused and actually a bit worried if there was something that happened in Mexico.