It’s been a year since I finally woke up. A year since this massive fight with my now ex-GF where something in me snapped. A year since my first OYS. A lot of emotions are boiling, deep down. I’ve grown immensely this year, but there’s still so much more work to do on myself before I can call myself a proper man.

Here are the six concrete actions I took this year that had the biggest impact. The order is more or less chronological.

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1) Seeing a good hypnotherapist

I don't care what the macho men say, this is too important. Without the four hypnotherapy sessions I took at the start of my journey, everything would have been a lot more difficult, unbelievably slow. What is hypnotherapy? It’s the same as therapy, but instead of only talking about your problems, your past and limiting beliefs, you actually confront them. The therapist makes you visualise situations (purely fictional or from your past) and act inside them. The first session, I realized just how much I hated and despised myself, and how much this had been making me miserable for years. I saw myself as a child, my inner-child, I saw how I had pushed that child inside of me away, and that this was the cause of the constant, deep sadness that I was experiencing. I was the only one responsible for my feelings of loneliness. Which also meant I had the power to change them. I realized I was constantly hiding my true self from others, and that I despised myself for such cowardice. After that first session, over the course of a year, I slowly reconciled with myself. Little by little, I clawed my way back into life. To this day, I still use the tools that the hypnotherapist taught me (visualizing my inner child, etc).

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2) Writing down my “frame”

I cannot remember how I came up with this, but at some point I thought to myself that I had no idea what my frame was. So I wrote it out. It came out as a list of actions I valued, and actions I despised. It looked something like this :

  • “I do not accept to be talked down to
  • I do not accept when people (myself included) try to bring me down
  • I enjoy spending time with people who spread positivity
  • I like people who are genuinely curious
  • etc”

It was a pretty short list. But it made me realize that the girl I was with at the time was on the wrong side of most of my values. I had been hiding from that very obvious fact, but I couldn’t hide from it any longer. Suddenly, I had something to fight for. Shortly after writing this little list, I stood up to her for the first time. It's as if writing my values out had given them legitimacy. Of course, I didn’t turn into a steeled-frame Arnold overnight (I’m still very far from it), but I finally understood why “fighting for one’s values” mattered: because if you don’t defend your values, then it means they don’t have much value, and so they’re not actually values.

It’s around that time I understood why the Tien An Men guy had done what he did. Before, I would have thought “what an idiot”. But now, I truly admire him. His frame holds even when he's looking down the barrel of a tank gun.

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3) Reading WISNIFG

There’s a reason this is required reading. For me, the idea that I could just do what I wanted without any justification was mind-blowing. I had (and still do when I’m not paying attention) always been taking every single one of my decisions based on the “rational reasons” for and against. It took a lot of time, but I’m now at a point where I am much more in touch with my desires, and am a lot more able to say “I feel like it” or “I don’t feel like it” and leave it at that. Again, I’m nowhere near perfect, but the difference with a year ago is enormous. I've connected with a part of myself (my gut) that I had been ignoring up till now.

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4) OYS “she”-ban

The main thing that OYS helped me with is the “she”-ban. All those who have written OYS know how this simple rule changes everything. It made me realize how little I was my own MPO. Even outside of OYS I started implementing the ban. I would catch myself not being my own MPO and reframe. It’s a little thing, but important nonetheless.

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5) Gaining more control over my mind through daily meditation

I meditated every day for about 2-3 months after the breakup. I had meditated before, but this stint was the most beneficial. My mind was racing all the time. I would try to imagine the future, I would have imaginary conversations with people, I would dream up scenarios in which I was either the hero or the victim… I would spend so much time daydreaming. Meditating, I had so much trouble not being swept away by these trains of thought. So I started asking myself: is this a thought I want to remember? If the answer was yes, I would write it down, if it was no, I could forget it. In both cases, I was freed from it. Little by little, I developed a mental reflex: when a useless trail of thought starts, I (usually) catch myself pretty quickly and put an end to it.

This reflex is still active today even though I don’t meditate anymore, and is really helping me stay sane and focused on reality.

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6) Booking a one-month trip alone

This is the result of all that’s come before: starting to take care of my inner child, writing my frame down, understanding I could take decisions based on “gut-feeling”... I decided I wanted to discover latin America, because I felt like it. So I booked a flight. One month. For me, one month alone in another continent felt massive. It felt scary. But most of all, it felt liberating: I was actually taking care of myself. Once I got there, it was overwhelming at first, but I got in the groove of it. Meeting people in hostels, trying to speak Spanish, making up an itinerary as I went along, hitch-hiking…

I realized I was much stronger than I thought I was. I realized my “gut-feeling” was much better at taking me places than my conscious rational brain. I realized the feeling of being free is invaluable. I connected with something deep down inside me that is amazingly strong. As a result, a mission has started to form for myself, though it’s so big I’m still half-scared of it.

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Addendum: what about lifting?

Lifting is actually the year’s (relative) failure. I went from using lifting as way to channel my anger (that was great), to lifting because “I had to” and because I wanted to look good. But this is stupid. I stopped enjoying lifting because it had become a chore. I stopped making progress because I couldn’t push myself (I still went religiously 3 times/week (even 4 at some point)). I started to hate myself as I saw the muscle I had built the first six months slowly transform into fat around the waist. I tried changing my program, my diet, but nothing worked, because I was more concerned with my appearance than with my fighting spirit. In the end, sure, lifting got my confidence levels up, but it also drove them down when I wasn’t performing, which is, of course, outcome dependence and validation seeking. Just realized this a few days ago: time to inject anger back into the system.

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And on we go, carrying the stone back up the mountain. See you there.