Influenced by a post from notlurkinganymoar link, I’ve decided to keep a journal on my quest in becoming a better man.

This post is more of an introduction, before I start writing my FRs, to remind me where I’m coming from when I look back on myself, but I hope my story can help motivate some of you.

Background

I’m 23 and graduated from college last Spring. I was way too burnt out from school to go job searching, so I decided to travel around a bit and just kick it with my good friends. When I came back from my long vacation feeling new and refreshed, it was time to find a job. After going through a bunch of job listings, I realized I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. More importantly, I found I didn’t even know what I wanted out of life in general.

Luckily, I stumbled upon /r/seduction a few months ago from a reddit comment explaining the dirty evils of this community. Intrigued by the comment, I checked it out and concluded this person was full of shit. This place was exactly what I needed: A community helping one another in building a better life through good, honest advice and a supportive attitude. I love my friends and family, but I was getting irritated from hearing their advice like “Just be yourself!” or “You’ll know it when you see it!” Although their hearts were in the right place, their advice just wasn’t constructive enough and it sounded like they implicitly encouraged placing the source of reaching my goals outside of myself. This community helped me fix these issues.

After going through Blueprint Decoded as suggested by TofuTofu in one of his posts, I felt like everything was starting to come together. I started writing out my purpose in the different domains of my life (e.g., myself, work, family, and friends) and then wrote my goals to achieve these purposes through the SMART method. I used Google calendar to keep track of my deadlines and made sure to look over my purposes and values every now and then to keep me in check. By going through this whole process, I was finally giving up the notion that whatever I wanted will somehow find me. I realized that having things find you is a dangerous mentality to have because you give up the power of knowing how you’ll get it, where you’ll get it, and when you’ll get it. With that mentality, you’ll be like the guy who mopes around all day just hoping for that magic fix to come to you. You’ll have better odds winning at the casino than having that magic fix find you.

After getting my life put together and having a meaningful plan to pursue, I feel great. I have a smile on my face every morning now because I know what needs to be done and I actually go out and do it. As for my social interactions, they have increased tenfold. I have had a solid group of friends that I go out with every week since college and always end up having a good time, but now the experience is even better. I started moving out of my comfort zone more often and just opened everyone. Yes, I’ve been rejected several times by being out there, but I found they made for great stories. And guess what? At the end of the night, I still had the love of my friends and family, the people who actually mattered.

It’s interesting. Before seddit, I had the mentality that I valued my friends highly. However, when we went out, I somehow placed these women on a pedestal and thus creating that approach anxiety and all that nonsense. I was placing these women, who I didn’t even know, above my friends who have been with me through thick and thin. How fucked up was that? But now that I got everything straightened out, I put them no higher than the same level as my friends. Now it’s much easier to carry a conversation with strangers, man or woman.

I admit, every now and then I feel terrible about some of the things I did the night before (e.g., “Wow, I can’t believe I said/did something so stupid.”). I’ve come to accept that you can’t actually stop that feeling from ever popping up in your life. That’s just what your mind does sometimes, kind of like procrastination. But you can choose to limit how long you wish to dwell on it. What I have been doing is I ask myself whether or not my actions have violated my life purpose and values. If it did, then I either have to justify my actions or reconsider whether I truly follow the purpose/value that I violated. If it didn’t violate anything, I read up on the articles on seddit pertaining to my issue, create a solution to fix my error, move on with my life, and execute the solution should I come across the problem again. If it works, great! If not, I repeat the process again. I make sure I record this problem and solution somewhere. I juggle with a lot of things in my mind and I tend to forget things sometimes, so keeping a record saves me a lot of time trying to remember the solution again.

Anyway, I want to thank everyone in this community for putting the time and effort in creating great posts and discussions. To give you guys an idea of how I'm feeling right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2sX22KEkkE&list=PL09C5228590ED9F36&index=57&feature=plpp_video

I couldn’t have done it without you guys