When you eat bad foods, neglect exercise, watch a ton of porn, get caught up in the shitstorm of news and the internet, you basically fall for the societal trap that is designed to make you weak, unambitious, depressed, angry, toxic, miserable, and unable to find the strength or motivation to be the best you can be.

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It's really hard to realize you're trapped in this haze. We can't see our brains and see that it is broken, the same way we could see our arm or leg. We are ripped from natural awareness and bliss, and can't realize it. The depression feels normal, and we assume everyone must feel this way.

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One of the most powerful ways to realize it is when you attempt to attract a woman into your life, whether that's in-person or online dating. You get instant feedback about yourself. If you're constantly getting rejected or ghosted, something is obviously very wrong and needs to be fixed. You wouldn't think so, though, if you didn't try dating. Everything seemed fine until you tried bringing women into your life, just to realize they don't want to be anywhere near you.

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Women can't help but to reject you if you're in this haze. It's in their biological code. It's a blessing in disguise and an indicator that there is something you're doing wrong that needs to be fixed internally.

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If you've ever looked at a message you've sent to a girl way back in the past and cringed asking yourself why you would say that, you were probably deeper in this haze, and you've made progress in coming out of it.

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It's the same reason you get into a relationship, and a woman loses interest in having sex with you over time. She fell in love with who you were in the beginning. She was sex-crazy for you. Then you got lazy, fell back into old toxic habitual patterns, and now she just can't feel the same way she used to in the beginning. You allowed yourself to get caught again in the trap, and now you're back in the haze.

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It's really interesting seeing how this works. I think this was an evolutionary development that kept men on their best behavior for the sake of our survival. Maybe women lost attraction for men that got too lazy and became a risk for their safety as well as the tribe's.

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This is a powerful TED talk that goes into this a little further.

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These are strong quotes from the talk that stuck with me forever, and ties into what I'm trying to say here.

"Why am I feeling this strange doubleness?" And he said, "At some level, we all know these things. But in this culture, we don't live by them." We know them so well they've become clichés, but we don't live by them. I kept asking why, why would we know something so profound, but not live by it? And after a while, professor Kasser said to me, "Because we live in a machine that is designed to get us to neglect what is important about life."

"Your depression is not a malfunction. It's a signal. Your depression is a signal. It's telling you something."

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Highly recommend watching the TED talk, and would love to hear your thoughts.