Background

You may have heard the term "leverage" used in a business context before. Leverage is the investment strategy of using borrowed money: specifically, the use of various financial instruments or borrowed capital to increase the potential return of an investment.

Simply put, if you put $1,000 down to buy a $10,000 car, you're ten times levered ($10k purchase/ $1k of equity or cash). If you went and immediately sold that car for $11,000, you've doubled your "real" money ignoring interest. Magical. This concept forms the basis of most modern finance and can be expanded upon into infinity (trust me, I am an investment banker).

Body

The Red Pill is also leverage. With TRP, you are able to take the information here and leverage your (most likely) pitiful masculine equity into real returns. The thing is, this occurs over time and on a path unique to you. That path is likely to start with changing your mindset, lifting, and eventually getting your first taste of success. This is a great step, but you're still very leveraged: TRP and its lessons are your debt instruments. Amused mastery, agree and amplify, etc. are all borrowed capital.

AT FIRST, it is not you getting the girls, it's mainly the method getting the girls. That's not to say your equity isn't rising - the fact your physique has improved and you're getting more of what you want out of life is proof. You might graduate from there to having pussy in pipeline form. Good for you. Your masculine equity is still levered up.

You must eventually deleverage to develop your masculinity. IBM and Microsoft issue debt when it is convenient, and pay it off when it is convenient. You should too. This is where the concept of a "path unique to you" is critical. We're all here because this stuff works, but you must become yourself at some point. Without finding your own style, the rewards will become hollow and you'll ask yourself ugly questions like "What's the point?"

This mindset and lifestyle deleveraging is the act of moving beyond the method and (i) defining what it means to be a man on your terms and (ii) relying to little or no extent on what you read here to achieve (i). I am not advocating leaving TRP - I am saying that any example of the type of man you should aspire to be exists beyond the sidebar and the posts. The act of deleveraging is making your own set of tools, and coming here to trade notes.

Conclusion

"Fake it until you make it" is oversimplifying it in my opinion - I say "use it until you no longer need it". Remember that the end goal is having the life you want to have. I recommend not stopping until the business of your life is deleveraged.

Until then, if you remain mindful that your novice and intermediate "returns" are borrowed capital you are likely to end up a valuable man. Treat this as an Ikea manual, and your desk is going to look pretty fucked up by the time you give up on building it.

Good luck out there.