I've read The Rational Male, 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The Way of Men. I've eaten the sidebar like a buffet, sifted through the blogs for their gems, gorged on the entire TRP archive, taken up a weight training regimen, changed my look, style, and demeanor, put new meaningful rules into my life, and finally finally finally found my life's focus - that activity which presents a lifetime challenge while tying in everything I've ever done or will do into a single passionate path. It's something that would still pull me in every day for the rest of my life even if all women suddenly disappeared.

And while it's all just beginning for me, I will end my manifesto from November 11 here because TRP is a community. It has given me so much, and the next few paragraphs are my offering in return. Some of this may apply to you. Don't expect all of it to apply.

If I don't have a true passion, women are the ultimate distraction.

For me, women are the ultimate distraction. Once games and addictions were pushed aside, I was left with “self-improvement with hopes of getting a woman.” But that would not improve me because the improvement I needed was to stop trying to measure up to women’s standards. In fact, trying to please women is what got me into the mess in the first place. As long as I was forever looking for my life's purpose in their eyes, I would always be moved by forces not of my making.

I've been in Monk Mode (a term hated by some, but I really can't put it any other way). The term “Monk Mode” refers to the period in which a man rediscovers himself apart from distraction, but men are of course obsessed with the notion of women during this period. “I’m lifting so that I can get girls.” “I’m starting a comedy routine so that I can land women.” “I’m joining this sport so that I can find a woman.” The danger is that I could have found one too soon, latched by a stray during my time of most intense focus, and then I would give away all that vital energy for the promise of an immediate payoff.

Carnal payoffs are fine when I'm centered, focused, and can handle them. They’re false prizes when I'm in a stage of near unlimited growth and the realization of potential.

Distractions happen most when I’m doing what I need to be doing. When my true calling and life’s work is sitting at my hands or fingertips, the universe will rain down people and problems and promises in order to rip me away from it. It’s a balancing mechanism, the entropic pull of mediocrity that keeps everyone in the shallows and lounging on the shore. Well, nearly everybody.

I pull away from the shore by:

1)Enduring long pauses, silent moments of anxiety and fear. Just breathing them in and existing inside them.

Category: Meditation

Books: When Things Fall Apart, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart

2)Resisting payoffs. Masturbation is a payoff. Drinking is a payoff. Games are a payoff. Concrete answers are even a payoff. Even hitting on women for me was a payoff. Do you realize how painful that is? Beautiful women, gorgeous women show interest in me, and I had to stop reciprocating because my interest was shallow, unformed and desperate. I could be physically masculine, body language masculine, strong look and strong eyes, but my words didn't measure up because I was grasping for a quick payoff out of desperation.

Category: Masculine honesty, Boundaries

Book: Models: Attract Women through Honesty

3)Reading theory. Putting it into practice. And then stopping. Read books, read books, read books, read books, and then stop. At the beginning of the learning process, my mind was open to so many possibilities, all the truth that TRP had to offer. But as I finished reading my 50 or 60th blog post or 6th book, I found my vision narrowing. My life became about that single thing, but by that point I had invested so much that these principles and guidelines started to become ingrained. I didn't need to read about them anymore. It was wasted energy and narrowing my focus. I stopped when I went to grab Greene’s Art of Seduction one day. “I can learn a little more from this book, but it will cost me too much effort for too little return while I could be exploring other fresher avenues of learning and skill.”

Category: Preparation vs Practice

Book: Mastery

4)Being passionately pumped or angry. Hard rock ballads, ridiculous and high energy rhythmic beats, uptempo blasting dance synth.

5)Finding focus and meaning through denial. Less stimulation leads to finer more precise attention. Drunks and addicts don’t notice idiosyncrasies and minutiae. They can’t engage others on a deeper level because the addict’s mind (whatever you’re addicted to), is overstimulated. It needs big payoffs, constant intensity, and the promise of reward after reward after reward. The calmly stimulated mind can just be. It stays taut on the lone line to the goal. The addict’s mind is a puzzle piece rigidly formed to connect with its single stimulus. Alcohol or games or dog porn or whatever. It’s predictable and non-creative. The mind in its naturally calm and non-needy state attracts and fits with all types of forms and functions because it’s not constantly anticipating one or another. New feelings and experiences happen this way.

Categories: Asceticism, Stoicism

Books: Basically anything that honestly tackles addictive behavior

6)Enduring disquiet. Disquiet is that feeling in my chest near my heart when I can tell that someone or something is seconds from pulling me out of the zone. Even as I type this, someone is texting me trying to feed off the energy I’ve built up. They can tell. They want it. They want what I have to offer. Allowing the disquiet to just exist, not giving in to others’ desire for using me as stimulation, is foundational for building strict boundaries, the types of boundaries that create desire in others.

Side Note on Dating

I am still occasionally desperate for validation. I have had many objectively gorgeous women respond to my masculinity in a very positive way in the past few weeks, but even the fact that I call attention to it shows that it has too much power over me. Gorgeous women wanting my validation should not be a surprise to me. It should not be difficult to handle. It should not be something that keeps me up at night wondering, “If I had done this” or “I could have done this, I could have nailed them.” It should be an objective response of, “I have been improving my frame and energy, and women are responding by desiring that energy.”

My goal now is to eliminate that desperation or at least put it in its proper place and place it in proper perspective. A woman is a woman, not some blown-out-of-proportion thing that I need. That just drives me back into a cycle of validation through external means and overstimulation. How do I do it?

Because I’m in the process of mastering a skill that takes extreme focus, dedication, and energy:

Don’t hit on women. I know that lots of advice focuses on talking to women and getting comfortable or focusing on push-pull, physicality, etc. But I have some personal issues such as – I’m overly capable of conversation. I’m so adept at keeping conversations going that I just make them go and go and go. Without real emotion and focus, they’re all mediocre interactions. I realized this recently. No conversation I have with a beautiful woman right now where my focus is “having her,” will end in that result. I need it too badly, and I turn myself into a series of manipulative statements in order to get what I want. Women can’t always see through that, but they can feel the distinct lack of true passion and emotion.

7)Turning my needs into wants. If I ever feel like I need women, I will work to simply want them.

8)Not letting women bullshit me and waste my time, at all ever. Set them straight from the beginning, no matter how mean it sounds. But don’t actually be mean.

9)Approaching a woman only if I’m really motivated(if you’re unpracticed and simple approach scares you, ignore this and just approach everyone). I’ve approached hundreds of women. It’s not the fear that holds me back. It’s the lack of desire, the lack of core investment. I think I want them. I want to want them right now. But I’m way too conscious of how much time and energy they will suck out if given the chance. And without proper boundaries, this will happen:

(Thank /u/tannhauseroverture for this) - Guy is on a roll ==> Girl perceives Guy as "Alpha", gets wet ==> Girl likes the chase, gets even wetter, starts qualifying hersef to him ==> Guy is too stupid to just grab her and fuck her so she has to take nuclear option and initiate herself ==> Sex ==> Girl got what she wanted (Sex), Guys judgement is clouded by oxytocin ==> Girl goes all in, plays the OMG-we-got-so-much-in-common game (you don't, she is a hipster-Girl with a nosering, she has no interest or opinions, she was mimicking yours the whole time) ==> Guy falls for her ==> Girl dries up, downgrades Guy to orbiter ==> end of story

10)Not stopping the march toward personal progress. If I slow my progress through cheating (increasing stimulation through porn or masturbation or over-escalating with women just to get a rush) then I become desperate again instantly.

11)Staying mindful of the fact that it never gets easy. It’s always difficult. Fear always takes courage, and an open active life invites fear. If you stop needing courage to live day-to-day, then your life is not consistently open. It is not rough, real, and will have less affect both on you and others. It is far less rewarding and much more predictable leading an easy life. That means the highs are lower and the lows remain just as scary. But since you’re not aiming so high, you will have less to fear. Less fear means less reward.

12)Remembering that the pain and fear are not a burden. They carry me like pain carries a boat through the water, stroke by painful stroke.

13)Remembering that every moment of a conversation with a woman who desires me is a series of moments where she tries to find ways to drain my energy and gain validation for herself. If I’m earnest and easy, she will drain and drain happily feigning interest in me while getting her fix. The lack of suspense and dread will define it as a dead interaction for her, just another guy she could easily have and doesn’t need to bother working to attain. Being kind and strong in my boundaries without using my “please like me” or “please fuck me” mien will lead them to push more and perform for me as they go even farther out on a limb to try to get what they want.

14)Becoming more aware of what true distraction is. I used to think of distraction as a single big thing that could take away from the whole, but it’s actually a lot of little things that gradually chip away at focus from moment to moment.

15)Becoming supremely irritated that everything else in life isn't [insert my big focus here that I don’t want to say openly online in order to protect my identity]. Then I realized I love this particular activity because it’s just the opposite. For me, it’s ingrained in everything, all the time.

Personally:

I am an incredibly high energy sex addict. That means I have to actively resist female overtures. I show more passion and create more suspense by resisting than I do by leading. You could actually call it “leading by resisting,” but that is specific to my station as an attractive and in-shape male that women like to test. Once a woman feels like she “has” me, she loses interest. That part is common for everyone.

Because I’m high energy and a sex addict, I absolutely cannot masturbate. I will lose focus, chase absurd momentary rewards, and spend days in the land of easy mediocrity. Conversely, if I don’t masturbate for a long time, I enter a zen state where I’m high energy and highly aware but in a relaxed, confident way.

Someone posted on here (paraphrasing), “If you’re post-30 and still chasing tail, there’s something wrong.” This is my truth. If I intensely follow my focus, women come calling. The moment I sacrifice that focus for the promise of some ass, they sense it and scatter again. Best to hang onto something meaningful, enrich my life in unpredictable ways, and let the tension with women build rather than chase the herd and leave myself behind.

As for TRP, it's been a life preserver, a coach, mentor, and drill sergeant. But I can't really read anything else in here that I wouldn't learn by just going out an putting it on the line. Thanks for writing, contributing, debating, being dicks, and giving my starved masculinity a boost on its way back into proper form.