Pic related.

WWI veteran, poet, author, Surrealist painter, occultist and founder of Chaos Magic A.O. Spare came up with the above model of the ego as an inherently fragile, dependent expression of a greater self. Look at the inner trinity of desire-imagination-conceptualizing: what we call "hamstering" here. In order to protect itself, the ego selectively filters subjective perceptions of objective realities (Descartes wrote extensively on this). This feedback loop will cause the Evans of the world to be stuck in doldrums of frustration.

Freeing oneself from the ego is being rid of the opinions of others. It's that IDGAF attitude that breeds the aloof, mysterious image girls love. Anyone who's doing that as a PUA tactic is still outcome dependent - their validation is keyed directly to whether or not they close. Faking amused mastery does not work. Instead, become the independent master and they'll come to you. Once your mind is free of the constraints of outcome dependence, you'll find what you're truly capable of - Spare, like many practitioners, refers to this as "magic" which I always thought of as a hokey term, but in the sense of "directly affecting the world around you through willpower" it seems a fair description; it likewise aligns with various teachings from the Buddhist doctrine of living independently of desire, to Elliott Hulse's advice to live with your heart instead of inside your head.

Meditate on the above and share your results. It won't strike a chord with everyone here, but it has helped me and continues to do so, and hopefully the next time you catch yourself wasting your mental energy in a hamster loop, remembering that the will can only function in completeness when independent of the limits of ego.

Gym time.