I've been giving a lot of thought lately to being a Red Pill Man in a Community.

Posting my last random thought helped me get my head straight (I now realize that Alpha Bonobo > Alpha Man > Alpha Wolf). So here's another thought for your collective corrections:

Community sometimes happens by accident, and sometimes sucks.

  • I don't want to be the guy with a truck who spends every other weekend helping someone move.
  • I don't want to be a guy with no friends.
  • I would rather have no friends than shitty friends.

Many books talk about finding the people who will challenge you and build you up. But none of the books address how to build relationships with those mentors. And the books rarely address what to do when I'm objectively not worth those mentor's time.

Some things I think I do know:

  • It's not hard to decide who I should not be spending time with. This cuts the list of people I might spend time with way down.
  • It's easy to know when I'm too busy to spend time with people. I generally have a worthwhile schedule and I enjoy keeping it.
  • What remains is to a list of people I don't want to avoid, and occasional hours on some days when I don't have any prior commitments.
  • There are things that I can do with others, which benefit those others, and which I do not hate doing.

So my revelation is that I should actively work to fill some of those free hours with activities I don't hate, spent interacting with people who aren't on the avoid list.

Having started practicing the approach above, as an indirect result of swallowing the pill, I have observed that the effect comes full circle:

Because I have a schedule, I announce clearly in advance: what I am up for doing, with whom, when I can arrive, and when I will leave.

When I approach relationships this way, I become the guy I always admired but didn't quite understand.

Without really intending to, or even trying to influence anyone else, I become one of the pack leaders in the groups I chose to spend time with.