Summary
The following is a true story of a man who swallowed the Pill. My best friend from college, Buckets.
Most of what happens to us in life is by chance
When I first met Buckets as a freshman in college, he was your classic video game introvert. He seldom talked to anybody, walked with his head down to class and back, never left his room unless he had to. As you can imagine, he never talked to girls. Stark contrast from me, a former athlete, gym rat, douche bag frat boy with dreams of Ranger School.
He and I became friends by chance because we lived in the same dorm. During a dorm floor NBA2k tournament we met for the first time in the finals of said competition. He didn’t say much to me, but I could sense the competitive fire in his eyes. I don’t remember who won (just kidding, I got destroyed) but a bond of kindred spirits had been formed.
Considering I lived across the hall from Buckets, we suddenly found ourselves knocking on each other’s door to play video games, head out to eat and talk about life. Our exterior lives were starkly different, but that fire I sensed was equal to my own. I could tell that he was destined for more, he just wanted a push.
That push came one Friday night when we were playing NBA and a good friend of mine texted me about an impromptu party at one of our annex houses. I turned to him and told him we were going out. It was at this point I got hit with his sobering truth.
“I’m a virgin”
Of course, I thought at that time I could get anybody laid (I had just been awarded Wingman of the Year by my fraternity) so I let him know to stick with me and we would fix that. We went out that first night and I learned three distinct things:
I had no idea how the game worked for me, let alone for my friend.
My advice of “Be Confident” and “Talk about whatever you want with girls” was not particularly helpful.
Things that I said versus what Buckets said, regardless of if they were the same words or not, received different reactions.
That last one really hit me hard. Those old standbys have always worked for me. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Buckets decided to leave early. I didn’t blame him, I had failed him, but a new goal had started in my mind. It didn’t exist at the time, but we had just begun our TRP journey together.
“I want to start lifting…”
Buckets knocked on my door the following Monday. I went to the gym at 5 every day in college, and he said to me straight up. “I want to start lifting, can you help me?” Something I know well. I started lifting at 16 because when you’re 6’ tall and weigh 145 lbs you’re easy to tackle and pathetically easy to block. By the time I met Buckets in college I was 195 at a lean 12% body fat.
One of the pieces of advice always parroted around this sub is to go lift. At that time I had only lifted for two reasons: To get better at sports and to prepare for Ranger School. It had never even crossed my mind that girls responded to my size. In fact I still didn’t fully internalize that until I found TRP nearly a year ago. But looking back, this was the spring board of Buckets transformation.
I knew that in this endeavor, I wouldn’t let Buckets down. I asked him what his goal was and he said “deadlift 400 lbs”. I didn’t need to ask anything else. He had set a goal, a lofty one for a man of 5’7”, but a clear and defined goal. In my mind, motivations change and grow but your goal is your goal, and if you had a clear vision of what that is, nothing can stop you. No matter what happened, we went to the gym 5 days a week every week for the rest of college.
Without realizing it we had come up with our first Maxim: You Are Your Goals
Mine was to get to, and pass Ranger School. His was to deadlift 400 lbs. We allowed nothing to get in our way
Confidence is a side effect of comfort
About three months after Buckets started lifting he took a job as a cashier in the campus coffee shop. I was getting him to approach girls in the wild, with limited success because he still lacked the inner confidence to say hi with conviction and without fear. I was pepping him up all I could but he needed something more. I credit this job with his journey to extroversion more than anything else.
I could see it happen all on its own. In the first month after he took this job he had begun saying hi and making small talk with the customers at the coffee shop which was an excellent cross section of the student body. So it wasn’t just hot girls, it was football players, it was foreign exchange students, it was alumni and parents. His confidence to make small talk grew simply because he learned that not only is it ok to talk to strangers, they are more than usually open to talking in general. He also learned that if they don’t want to talk, that’s ok because there is an endless stream of people behind them who will.
After the three months I began to notice that my friend Buckets had become quite the little chatterbox. I didn’t mind, this was the Buckets that I met at the beginning of the year, now everybody was meeting him for the first time. I knew Buckets before he was cool.
After four months, he was a regular social butterfly, and the girls were starting to notice. I’d take him to parties and he would not only hold his own but often times make friends and genuinely enjoy himself, a huge contrast to that fateful Friday night at my fraternity’s annex.
This is the key point. He earned his confidence, and he did it all by himself. When he became self-aware of his progress (He didn’t always believe that he was improving, even when I told him he was) we added to our list of maxims: Everything is Earned
But something was still missing. His body had become visibly larger, he had new and stylish clothes to cover his newfound size, he spoke with confidence and girls were responding positively to him, but he still wasn’t nailing sorostitutes.
The whole school year had passed and Buckets was still a virgin. I guess I had forgotten about it, but he wasn’t defeated. Besides, we were moving into an off campus house the next year that would double as one of my fraternities annexes. “Keep doing you, bud. I’ll see you in the fall”
Monk Mode and time for reflection
I looked back on the year that summer. I had hooked up with 24 girls and Buckets had 0. What am I doing right? Why can’t I teach it? In retrospect “being arrogant as fuck” isn’t advice, and while it’s technically true, leaves a lot open to interpretation. Fuck, this is hard. I chose a different approach. I started to think in terms or how things felt. How did I feel at certain points in conversations and how did I think they felt at those same points. I came away with a few sticking points.
When a girl started to say or do things that I liked, I would give them pleasure. If they said or did things didn’t like, I would apply some pain. I did that with everybody actually. Add in a dose of abundance (didn't call it that at the time but its what it was) and I had started to figure it out.
Now don’t misunderstand me here, I didn’t slap girls like it was the 50s. When I applied pain I would limit attention, give them a subtle check or remember that everybody loves me and move on entirely. When I was rewarding girls for doing things I liked I would take them on dates, do stuff together, and invite them over to hang out with my friends.
Buckets hadn’t figured that out yet. He was still trying very hard to impress girls, and with my unfortunate advice to that point, he had done nothing to take them off the pedestal. Luckily, I had a game plan, and school was back in session.
The Alpha is born
I wasn’t the only one who had done some serious reflection. When we moved in Buckets, who hadn’t stopped lifting over the summer and was looking damn big, had come to a similar conclusion that I did. He told me that he was tired of being walked over and was going to stand up for himself more. I held my tongue on what I had come up with over the summer because I was intrigued. Let’s see what the kid can do.
That night we had our housewarming party and the kid stuck to his word. He was confident in himself, talked about what he wanted and punished girls who disrespected him. He still didn’t get laid but I could tell that the girls were starting to react to him differently. The way a girl would for an Alpha Male.
He had successfully whet their appetites; he just needed a little refinement. So that week we talked at length about our two guiding principles and third maxim: Everything Stems From Pleasure and Pain
Armed with knowledge and a new found respect for himself, we went out the next week and it finally happened for him. A little over a year after I met Buckets he lost his virginity. He didn’t allow that to stop him either. His goal to deadlift 400 lbs never wavered. He never blew off the gym to spend time with a random whore. He never allowed any sorostitute to lock him down. He was the center of his own circle of friends as genuine as I’ve ever seen.
Like a proud parent I watched Buckets grow up before my eyes. Those last two years at college were the best of my life.
Conclusions
MAXIM #1: You Are Your Goals
MAXIM #2: Everything is Earned
MAXIM #3: Everything Stems From Pleasure and Pain
Buckets is my best friend from college and I am proud to tell his story, but for a different reason than you might think. Because he did it on his own. All I did was give him the push he needed. My effect on his progress was in fact minimal at best. But, what I want readers to realize is that even though he did it on his own, there were a lot of down times, a lot of frustration and yes, even physical tears. He may have figured the game out but I was there to pick him up when he fell and refocus him when he was veering off the tracks. In the end, I felt the pride of what I could only imagine a father feels when watching his son grow up. I can only imagine how Buckets felt.
This might be a long winded way to say TRP theory works but it does. Let Buckets be one of your success stories.
P.S. - For everyone wondering if Buckets ever pulled 400 from the floor, he did. It took him just over 2 years to do it.
Did you like my post? Read my blog: AlphaAsWhat.com
Good story though I'll say that you sell yourself short. The truth is Buckets is lucky to have you as a friend. If you hadn't taken a chance on him and developed that friendship, who's to say he would have turned out the way he did. He did a lot of stuff on his own, but he would likely have never thought to do it without you.
Good job.
True, almost a frat-comedy movie script: jerk helps nerd and nerd helps jerk without the necessary women-friendly love story of settling with a slut. I wish I had such a start.
It's a great buddy story. One of the big obstacles for guys is isolation - we're reluctant to buddy up. Women tend to form wolf pack cliques to support and validate each other. Betrayal is common in these packs because, socially, many never really graduate beyond a high school mentality.
Is indicative of women's general immaturity vs. that of man's, as caused by low testosterone, solipsism and an evolved female mating strategy for befriending and tearing down the competition with plausible deniability. Female strategy = ruin everything around you so you're the best option, male strategy = be the best you can be so you have the most options.
And? Did you get into Ranger school?
Oh, and
is some of the truest shit I have read here. You can tell someone to be confident, but if they have nothing that they feel confident about than it will rarely work.
I did. I bring that tab with me everywhere too.
Would love to read a post either here or on the blog detailing your military experience and how it affected your growth as a person.
Do you think such a post would be well received? Unfortunately I'm not sure how that would tie into the message of the sub... I'll look into it
While not sexual strategy per se, a post from an EC about self-actualization and becoming a better man by taking a path not generally discussed here (the military) sounds like a damn valuable post.
A perspective on military service through a RP lens is something I for one am extremely interested in.
With respect for your time, should you decide not to make a post about it here I would pursue the opportunity to discuss it with you via PM or another medium of your choosing.
If you do it in a way that shows conquered trials and how you grow from it then yea it would probably be fine here.
I think you should. I'm a vet too, and your writing and experience differs from mine. My writing is more of a briefing, and I didn't do Ranger School. Hell, I did votech instead of university.
Write it.
It'd be great for guys looking to join the military. I come to RP because I know what ever I'm reading is brutal, honest truth about anything. Reading a clear cut story about how range school really is would be a awesome addition to the sub.
I second that. I would suggest setting a traditional male goal- one highly valued in male circles- and achieving it with everything that entails would be interesting reading. If you brought up how women and men react after finding out your military history that could work. Also, I wonder if anything teaches holding frame like being in front line training and military.
Rangers lead the way bud. As a 33 whisky intel nerd I'd love to hear your story. Remembering spending time at fort we gotcha listening to el diablo rant away brings back lots of memories.
As someone who didn't go into the military but could see the possible benefits, I would love to read it
Add the ranger school videos from youtube. They show the entire course in a ~6 part series. Cool stuff. It's one thing to describe, it's another to see it in action.
Tl;dr carrying heavy shit, while starving, getting little to no sleep in the dirt and mud.
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
-- John Quincy Adams
I worked at RTB for my last year before I got out in 05.
Good times.
I can safely say that you guys are the bane of my existence. ;)
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What can you say about how most of the people who start don't finish and how to make it to the point where you put that tab on?
Also, are you going to get a tattoo of that tab on the exact spot on your shoulder where the tab goes on your uniform?
Ha. I do not plan on getting the tab tattooed to me any time soon.
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The greeks used to say that the purest form of love was between two men. I used to think that was homosexual. Now I realize they were right.
Well.... they did do each other as well (and younger boys). Though, they had regular sex too, with different women - no qualms.
That sounds gay as fuck but when you think about it u realize its true lol
Good story. So I guess you could say that your conclusions is your "Bucket List"?
Ha! That's awesome!
are you here on the weekends mate?
Not usually.. to busy most weekends having an awesome life to be on reddit.
I'm not a very emotional person, but this is a pretty touching story.
Respect.
When the student is ready, the master will come.
You had a lost lad tread the ironpath where he would repent for his sins of broki with daily prayers to Brodin (may peace be upon him). Now he is a proud and worthy disciple of the Allspotter.
You led a man from the dark virgin islands across the stormy seas, to the shores of cancunt in just one solar cycle.
I shed tears of whey at the thought! May the gaingels forever bless you. Surely thee and thy comrade shall enter the gates of Swolehalla.
Using my SEC priveledge, I recommend you this point towards Senior Endorsement. For if this dedication to mentorship does not qualify you for such, nothing will. This is what is missing for men in today's society, a guiding hand towards masculinity and their self-improvement potential.
♂
Wow, thank you! And in character too!
How is your brother in steel progressing in the lift of the dead? Has he yet lifted 400 dead souls from the underworld?
The Prophet of Brodin
This is the first post in a long, long time that could actually be sidebar worthy. Regardless, thank you for this. Maybe have the guy speak for himself here some day eh?
This is a good story but it lack sufficient insights and doesn't break enough new ground to be really sidebar worthy.
I'd say it gives an overview of the entire process to become alpha, with all the key elements involved (lifting, setting goals, social skills...) like no other post has done so far. It's valuable in a 'this is what's needed', 'this is what you can expect' kind of way.
Good shit. When I was a freshmen, I was avoiding low status guys like the plague and got swept up in trying to be the cool popular bro I never was in high school. I was that Indian kid who only hung out with white dudes, all my friends were from the frat I was in. Didn't want to associate myself with people who reminded me of who I was in the past. I realized it was a lack of confidence and insecurity that was driving that behavior. You made a best friend for life, a ride or die type of dude that will be there for you if you ever need it.
I grew out of my sorority girl social-ladder climbing phase sophomore / junior year, and started to network and build relationships with people who had diverse traits from different pockets of my campus. To this day, those are the friends I still talk to from college. Those became my network. And I didn't become any less cool for hanging out with kids into theater, music, etc. They throw decent parties and have hot slutty girls too.
Lead by example and you'll find that worthy people gravitate to you. Lead by running your mouth and trying to talk TRP or game or whatever else unsolicited advice into other people... you'll attract compulsive arguers and excuse-makers.
This should be required reading for newbies.
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I dont think it should take a year for you to start getting laid. A 2 months of reading pua before i got laid. Having sex with a cute chick isnt that hard.
Wow! Thanks for that endorsement!
Honestly, this is what I like the red pill for. Men helping each other do badass shit.
You're the kind of friend I wish I had in college. I didn't discover TRP until I had already graduated, and I graduated the sort of person that I imagine Buckets would have been if he had never met you.
You changed a man's life, bro.
You're not the only one.
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This is sidebar material, basically sums up TRP process, you're the number one priority, everything else comes second, LIFT! Self confidence comes from lifting and improving and everything natural ( with some hard work ) falls in place from there on.
While us readers experienced Bucket's transformation in a matter of minutes, we shouldn't forget that Bucket experienced it over the span of a year. Change is not instantaneous. Bubbles went to the gym at 5am every day for an entire school year. I did the same thing my freshman year and it definitely paid off.
For those of you looking to achieve new heights, remember that self-improvement is achieved through daily installments of good habit and an overarching vision.
Keep your eye on the prize.
Inspiring read. What drove you to help him to that extent?
I don't save a whole lot of stuff, but I'll be saving this. Good shit man.
fuck yeah man, what I love is he approached you for help to become someone not just free handouts or an easy way out.
It lights me up to read about guys out there that still behave like a real guy should. You help those you care about because they are on your 'team'. You respect where respect is earned. You derive happiness from your friends successes.
Great story man.
Fuck. That's some awesome content, and great story telling of actual experiences.
You know, this brings up a thought that I have often, and surprisingly many people forget about an effective way to learn.
I was at a financial seminar, with a fairly packed room of around 150 people. The seminar had just started, like within the first couple hours of a full week event. The host asked everyone what's one of the best ways to learn. Most people stayed silent, others said books, others said college/school. I answered with "A mentor". The host was floored. The entire room was silent. The host then asked everyone to give me a round of applause and said it was the first time anyone has given that answer.
Buckets'* Story.
His name is Buckets. It's his story. The apostrophe shows that it is his story and it goes after the s.
FUCK! You are correct. I'll try to fix that
If you want to be picky about it... it'd be Buckets's Story. The additional S differentiates conclusively between the singular and the plural possessive. It's a stylistic point of clarity.
As you say, when it's a singular noun ending in an S it's stylistic- however most sources I have read recommend that you only add an apostrophe (and not an S) if adding both makes the word cumbersome. For example, it would be "Odysseus's cruelty", but not "Achilles's heel". This can depend on your region and accent, however from my region it would most certainly be Buckets' and not Buckets's, unless of course you like sounding like Smeagol.
You can write however you like. I even write however I feel is natural when I'm writing casually. That's when I'm happy with "each to their own and just be sure you've communicated your point well enough so that the reader understands."
Once people step away from the "each to their own" of casual writing and declare something specifically to be right (i.e. nitpicking), I will not accept the response of "it's down to what you feel is right and a value judgement etc etc. (Or in this specific case: judge whether it makes the word cumbersome or not.)
If you wish to start debating the rules of grammar, you've left the realms of allowing communication first and prose second. You've stepped into the land of "this is what makes good quality prose." If this is of interest to you, I would strongly recommend you familiarise yourself with "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White. Originally published in 1959, the commandments it hands out for good quality prose have been around closer to 100 years. I believe it's in its fourth or fifth edition now.The best professional writers all use it as a mini reference manual for any of their professional prose. More casual writing tends to skip out certain rules for ease of reading because, despite mass education, people can't read properly. They try to speak everything they read like some three year old who's only just picked up their first picture book.
As far back as Socrates, we've known that the written word of a man is to contain and convey information in a different way to a spoken word. Socrates was half correct when he stated that the written word loses some of its meaning and therefore he did not want to write his thoughts. (Luckily Plato had a go at conveying his thoughts and beliefs.) He is right that the written word can lose meaning that would otherwise be delivered through tone, inflection, emphasis and so forth. However this is not good reason to avoid writing these things down. It is a demonstration that an improvement in your prose is necessary in order to convey things correctly.
Let's use your examples. I would contest that both of those, Odyssesus's cruelty and Achilles's heel (so long as you are specifically referring to the heel of Achilles the warrior, and not talking about the colloquial phrase) are perfectly acceptable because they contain the information you wish convey concisely. There is no ambiguity. However they are not a good choice to use in speech because, as you put it, you sound like Smeagol and it sounds bad. You would rewrite the sentence to something like "the cruelty of Odysseus" or "the heel of Achilles" in order to maintain both clarity and form. Conversely, it is bad form to speak using words in an ambiguous fashion if your target is to convey a specific message. You should reform the sentence to solve this problem, or use tone, emphasis and inflections to better convey your meaning.
Therefore from this we can summarise that the duty of proper prose is to be written differently than a similar communication should be spoken. In a way, grammar and punctuation within prose is the substitution for emphasis, tone, inflection and pace. As writing becomes more casual, the stylistic principles of grammar and form relax to allow you to better convey things like emotion. The way you do this is to make it more like the spoken word, rather than written communication. We are more used to this because of the increased popularity of fiction that relaxes these rules. All that said, writing and speaking are two different forms of communication and you can't use the implication that they communicate in the same way as the basis for an argument. (That the underlying assumption necessary to make your point valid.)
Not sure if this will be useful to you or not, but I hope it will.
That's nice and all, but it's nothing to do with the writing being casual or formal, nor am I saying 'to each his own'. I'm not saying it's a value judgement in terms of 'do whatever makes you feel happy', it's simply that the many authoritative sources are split on the issue.
Sure, the Strunk and White guidelines are to always use apostrophe S, however these guidelines (despite being influential) are not commandments as you say. There are many other manuals of style and it's not possible to say one or another is objectively correct, as by definition language is shaped by usage and the style manuals must (and do) adapt to this over their subsequent editions. It may lag behind by a decade or two, but if slowly a new tendency in formal writing were to emerge, slowly but surely style manuals would catch up to this, even if the new tendency turned out to be contrary to the previous guidelines.
The Associated Press (AP) and Modern Language Association (MLA) call for only the apostrophe when the noun ends in S.
Even the Chicago Manual of Style, which prefers an apostrophe s, acknowledges that either can be correct:
The New York Times and Boston Globe use apostrophe S when the final S is not sibilant – so Arkansas’s but Kansas’, boss’, and rowboats'.
So it is simply not as clear cut as you are making it out to be.
It's as though you are trying to nitpick someone on an Oxford Comma, you can debate it until you're blue in the face and cite all the style manuals that back you up, but someone can do the same back to you and neither of you would make any progress, because there is simply no currently universally accepted 'correct' way.
A patron saint of "the Lost Boys". Letting him earn his own but guiding in a brotherly and even fatherly fashion. Well done, and written spectacularly in RP fashion.
Can you give more examples of how he was disrespected and how he punished?
Does anyone have similar examples?
It seems that you learned way more from this experience with your friend than most people learn from actual college classes. This was a great post thank you for sharing.
Excellent post. If I have any constructive criticism, it would be regarding your third maxim. I don't really see how Bucket implemented it or how it affected his outcome. It also does not ring as enlightening as the first two, which are 100% spot on.
What you "discovered" through introspection probably could be better explained as being "present and sexually comfortable in your role as leader during interactions with women." One manifestation of this is rewards/ punishment but I think it's more than that, and fully articulating that thought may have been more helpful. By this I mean: Bucket is physically fit and comfortable talking to people socially, but unable to fuck them- the maxim that lifts him up to that final level and gets his dick into the hairy fish is more than reward/ punishment.
Anyways, it all worked out. Great write-up and strong work as a friend and a man.
I'm short and from my post history you can tell I'm not very confident about it. This was nice to read. Sometimes I feel like you have to be born with the right cards to play well.
If you're ever in the south, I'll buy you a beer. We always support our troops in the south.
good write up. btw, you whet an appetite and wet a whistle.
How did you have Buckets lift? What would you recommend for someone who has done Starting Strength and wants to look jacked?
It's really not complicated. Lift consistently, focus on gaining strength on compound movements (preferably the big 3), and keep your diet in check. Strength and muscle gains take time; don't expect to get big in a few months or even a few years.
Try the Push/Pull/Legs split, Reddit has its variation that you can try.
Where do I find it? I heard a lot about PPL but haven't found a detailed program.
You can just google "PPL split Reddit" ("A linear based progression..." is the one I'm talking about - RedPill doesn't allow external links), alternatively there's a number of detailed programs on the Bodybuilding website.
Thanks for this, you are godly.
Pm me and I'll send you a link
You've been on fire with these posts
Thanks. There's more to come...
This is currently on the second page of the Front Page. What the hell?
What you did that helped the most was just being this kid's friend. I don't just mean the social value you bring. Having a friend that actually gives a damn about your improvement helps tremendously.
On top of that, you were a high value guy so he could pick up on your mannerisms, how you socialized, and could bounce ideas off you (2 heads better than 1 type deal). If he did this alone it probably would have taken him longer and he might not have had enough grit to continue.
Nice job man, you're a great fucking dude.
Great story. Reminds me a lot of myself. I was beta as fuck before I met one of my good friends in college. He managed to alter my mindset for the better. Some of the most important lessons you'll ever learn in college are not taught in a classroom. Excellent post.
Really nice post, curiously enough I'm in a very similar situation like buckets here but the difference is that I don't have a friend like that just TRP to pushed me out of my comfort zone, since I discovered the sub 5 months ago my life has improved a lot. However the virginity issue remains unresolved but I know I just need to put more effort in that area in order to get results, like you said everything is earned.
I'm a lot like Buckets, but I don't have a bro to help keep me on track. Reading about his struggles and slow development is encouraging, because over time it's been really hard to trust that I'm improving. 8 months into trp and I'm finally beginning to straddle the divide between the past and my goals. I'm getting strong, and my inner game is slowly getting there. Eg. I still have shaky frame, but I am way more confident striking up conversations.
Thanks for sharing Bucket's story, man.
You fucked 24 girls in one year during college? I'm doing something seriously wrong during my fraternities parties.
I love your posts and based on this one I think it would be really valuable if you wrote on focusing on your college lifestyle/game (or at least, what you can recall). Like an extended FR. I think a solid amount of lurkers here are college-aged men, and it's an environment with such incredible opportunities that I think it deserves it's own post - it could drive RP theory home in very effective way for those people.
So did Buckets ever deadlift 400 pounds?
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God, give us all friends like you, OP!
That was goddamn inspirational
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In the grand scheme of things, is being big everything, no.
In your case, I would ignore anything I say about getting big. You have chosen to fight. Most people don't want to do that. You keep doing you, bud.
very nice story, good job op
Comfort and Confidence going hand in hand is a great point.
This is a huge insight. Thank you for putting this out there in simple words. I do the same thing but you are right. I would phrase it as not giving a fuk. The truth is though that's exactly what humans do. We react. And we are more likely to react to our immediate experience. Thus, with people in general it's good to show them immediately how you feel about whatever information they sent you. That way they will immediately know to either keep doing that or else change whatever it is they are doing so they can get your attention and keep it.
People are no more than children who can absorb information and deal with it a little less immediately. Still though. If a stove is hot (pain) you will pull your hand away if you touch it. If someone smiles (pleasure) you will try and do something either the same or similar to keep the smile. Fundamentally this is the basis of our minds and interactions with not only the world but one another. If anyone reading this can harness this you will be able to control your world better. Promise you living life without worrying about anyone else except yourself is the best thing you can do. Obviously I don't mean be a complete idiot and not care about people. Just don't care about what others think and let them know by sending them pain or pleasure.
Great post OP.
Great post. Really resonates with my as I used to be like Buckets, but had an alpha male "friend" who did the opposite of what you describe. Not trying to garner sympathy, just wanted to say good on you for helping a dude.
Does "everything stems from pleasure and pain" refer to what stimulated him to change?
One of the best stories I've heard in general. Reason I say that is because I feel the same way as Buckets. I recently lost my virginity but it wasn't how I liked and now I've realized I did it out of peer pressure so I lowered my standards. I feel for Buckets because I partially do the same thing and play video games on my down time and don't do anything else besides workout and go to work. Thanks for the motivation. Respect to you for being a good friend and respect to buckets. Good fucking shit.
Great writing and structure man. This was a pleasure to read. The one main thing that stuck with me was:
EVERYTHING IS EARNED.
Everything on here is earned. The issue that most guys that come around here have is that they expect the answer to come immediately. It doesn't and its hard. Find some goals and stick to them. You'll get there with enough work
This isn't a huge deal or particularly pertinent to the moral of the story, but at the top of your novella you mentioned "dreams of Ranger School". Im sorry, but I must establish whether you meant RASP (Ranger Selection) or actual Ranger School? Because no sane person wants to spend 10 days in the mountains, 10 days in the forest and 10 days in a swamp with ZERO showers, 1/2 rations of food, e coli/ tics/ horseflies/ 3 hours of nightly sleep. RASP is basically Special Forces Selection Lite. Similar (land nav, ruck marches, push ups, running, flutter kicks, etc), but 8 weeks long instead of SF's 80 weeks, and you get full meals at RASP.
Not RASP. The 61 day course also known as Ranger School.
ahh so you were either going for an 11a, a 37a or an 18a/180a. For your sake I hope it was one of the latter two, because I found the big army to be insufferable, yet found the more self-guided ARSOF (ArmySOC) life to be much more liberating and adventuresome. or I guess you coulda been a FORECON LT, a Scout Sniper Sgt or just an 0321 going for a USMC commission
Either way, I was a double stack. I didn't want to lose 40 pounds of muscle and get ticks when I had already completed SFQC
edit: Is the Florida phase as fucking horrible as my Ranger officers tell me? I knew a guy in the 75th who left for Ranger School 200 lbs and came home 160. I would rather do a 20 mile timed ruck every day for a week like in selection than do that school, but I applaud your drive. For me, I never considered doing anything but SF ops and living the lifestyle of waking up at 8, not 5, working out, spending 4 hours at the range, practice some SOCCQB, and finally blow doors up and practice clearing rooms, mitigating lethal threats and working with host nation compatriots, so I signed my 18x at 22 and have had 3 years of good so far.
You're a boss for taking someone with potential and mentoring them.
I don't see this often enough.
A couple months late to the party, did you happen to go to University of Southern California? I know this kid named Buckets and feel like this is totally him, if not don't even let me know. I want to paint the picture the kid I know is the Buckets you're talking about. He's a bad ass kid that gained his own personality, while i'm going through my own journey I hope I can grow like him, when I first met him I could tell that we had similar back stories. You just kind of know.
Did he ever hit his goal though?
Does it even matter? (Hint: no). By the time Buckets actually deadlifts 400, it won't be a big deal to him anymore. Assuming he is lifting properly, by the time he pulls 400 it is no longer seen as a huge milestone, but merely another stepping stone on his journey.
It's nice to have "goals" in mind, but when you achieve those goals you quickly realize that the arbitrary feat you set out to accomplish is nothing in comparison to the overall journey of self-improvement.
I just was wondering, wasn't insinuating anything.
When he told you he was a virgin, you could have totally replied "we can change that ;)" and fucked his boipussy. And this story could have been a cute romcom instead.