The large majority of information on The Red Pill focuses on behaviors, activities, traits, and ways to develop those traits, that do one very significant thing: Make you more attractive. If you read enough material without really delving into the details, that seems to be the primary focus of The Red Pill. Being attractive. Becoming more attractive. Attracting others. Staying attractive – more attractive than others. Passively keeping others aware of your attractiveness. Attractive this. Attractive that. Attraction.

But if you look just beneath the surface, The Red Pill is about something more. The Red Pill is about being happy. It’s really a collection of thoughts, essays, and theories about how to be happy as a man. Actually happy. Happy. Not just content, like a fat video game addict jerking off to porn and drinking beer. Not just not sad, like a henpecked married guy going through the motions. Happy. Successful, proud of your life, eager to wake up in the morning, confident about the future, happy.

Why all this focus on attraction, then? Because we don’t live alone on a private island. We interact with other people. Other people can help us be happier, or they can stand in our way. And the one thing all humans share is their love of things that are attractive. People treat attractive people better than they treat average or unattractive people. People help attractive people. People want to see attractive people succeed. People want to be friends with attractive people, latch on to them, enjoy the ride that is their life. People like attractive people.

Thinking about The Red Pill as a path toward becoming more attractive is a bit of a disservice. Because it makes The Red Pill sound like a song and dance. A show. Like something we’re doing to get noticed. And in many cases, especially for guys new to The Red Pill, that’s exactly the case.

A man will read a pile of material, and it will click. He’ll think to himself, “Holy shit! That’s the reason my marriage/LTR/dating life sucks. I’m barely a man. I need to lift weights, stop taking shit from people, start doing constructive and interesting hobbies, get an awesome job, and start doing manly shit around the house.” And he’ll start doing some of this, which is awesome!

But our example man misses a critical point. Women still shun him and his friends think he’s annoying. Because he struts around all day talking about how hard he’s working out, how healthy he’s eating, and makes sure everyone knows that he just built a deck himself and is currently rebuilding his transmission. After all, people are supposed to be attracted to masculine men who do this shit, right? But it doesn’t “work.” Everybody’s annoyed at him and thinks he’s an ass, and they still treat him like a loser.

A newcomer to The Red Pill is excited. He’s learning so much, doing so much, feeling so much better. He wants to talk about it. It’s interesting to him. Exciting. It’s hard to just shut up and do shit.

I started out this way. Every time I did something manly around the house, I’d tell my wife about it, because I wanted her to notice how I was changing, improving, and taking care of shit. It annoyed her. She laughed, minimized my efforts, never really thought much of it. Because I still wasn’t a man. I was a boy playing the role of a man. Every time I did something right, I’d run to my wife and tell her, eagerly seeking her approval and validation. She was still my mother, not my wife. But I had to, right? Because otherwise, she’d never even know about 99.9 percent of the things I did around the house! How the hell is she supposed to start respecting me when she doesn’t even know that I’ve become respectable? She won’t notice any of the awesome things I’m doing if I don’t’ tell her! I’ll just be doing manly shit, and she’ll keep being the same disrespectful bitch because she doesn’t know!

And there’s the problem. A man who’s doing that shit for others, hoping to impress them, is a slave. A monkey. A clown. An entertainer trying to dance and put on a show, hoping for the support and validation of his audience. Nobody has sex with clowns. Nobody hires and promotes clowns. Nobody wants to see a clown succeed.

The huge majority of your awesome life is going to be completely invisible to everyone. Nobody will notice 99 percent of what you do. You can have your ducks in a row, your shit in gear, and your life can be awesome, and nobody will know about 99 percent of that except for you.

So if doing awesome shit isn’t going to impress anybody, why do it? Stupid question. You do it because being awesome its own reward. Being awesome changes you. It changes your walk, your talk, and how you perceive the world. It changes what’s important to you. Being awesome won’t make everybody love you. 99.9 percent of the world won’t even know you’re awesome. But being awesome will make you confident enough to not care, because you know you have your shit together. You’re happy with your life, eager to get up in the morning, and confident about the future.

That girl across the bar? She doesn’t know you’re awesome. But you do. You know you can walk over to her, talk to her, and spark her interest, and if she’s a bitch, then you talk to that other girl four seats over instead. You know they’re just women, and sex is just sex, and you have a great life with or without them. And when you talk to them, it won’t be about how awesome you are. You won’t tell them shit about your life. That would be unattractive anyway. You just use them for your entertainment, shoot your mouth off, and take charge of your own happiness. It’s not your job to entertain them or make them happy. It’s your job to entertain and please yourself. And their job to do the same for themselves.

You’re never truly free until you abdicate all responsibility for anybody else’s happiness, and stop doing anything for anybody else. Nobody else cares if you’re happy. If you don’t take responsibility for your own happiness, nobody will. All of this lifting and self-improvement, and becoming more powerful, successful, manly, and what-not – that’s not something you do for girls. That’s something you do for you.