http://therationalmale.com/2015/11/24/attitude-sells/

Mindset

It’s a Tomassi Maxim now, but bears repeating; Alpha is a mindset, not a demographic. I’ve explained what I mean by this on many occasions, but when it comes to what I consider the abstraction that is Alpha it can primarily be reduced to a particular mindset of masculine dominance and confidence.

I wont belabor this here again, but suffice to say that while I believe there is a natural component to it, I do think that to varying degrees this Alpha mindset, or something approaching it, is a learnable state for men. That said, I also think men need to use caution when when evaluating how to go about cultivating and internalizing this mindset.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the hope for a magic solution to your problems in life. There’s no shortage of motivational speakers and charismatic ‘self-help’ gurus ready to sell you a book, or a sermon, or some self-styled social movement promising to show you how to develop this “winners’ mindset”. It’s important to bear in mind that any mindset you learn is only as legitimate as the realities that inform it.

A lot of hate directed at PUAs, motivational speakers, pastors or even your parents can be traced back to their failings in understanding simple evidential realities. Their hopeful formulas for your success end up being frustrations and anxieties when they’ve proven to fail you because you invest yourself in part, or in whole, in them.

Much of what constitutes Blue Pill conditioning is founded in the same misgivings. It’s very easy to hype up and sensationalize Blue Pill idealisms in ‘optimism’ soaked rhetorics, but these hopes are easily dispelled with a Red Pill aware lens. That’s one reason the Red Pill can be bitter – it’s a real buzz kill when you’re high on Blue Pill optimism.

The primary reason I’ve always been reluctant to be prescriptive with Red Pill awareness in practice is because I’ve always believed that the Red Pill is never going to be one size fits all. While Red Pill truths are universal, their application is subjective to the man employing them. How he develops the mindset that best serves him is contextual to his own circumstance.

That said, I think a pragmatic approach based on Red Pill awareness and the fundaments that make it up would serve men best in developing a Red Pill mindset that works for him. You might think that in light of my recent Purple Pill post that I’m alluding to the ‘coaches’ and re-definers of the Red Pill in all this, but lots of “Red Pill” men are actually Purple Pill hoping that some of the old rules might still apply.

While I emphatically recognize the power of positive thought in altering one’s mindset and changing the course of one’s life, I also understand that zeal for change needs to be tempered with a healthy skepticism. If you find yourself being swept up in a tide of super-optimism that’s the time to question the foundations of it. Positive, motivational memes can become clichéd aphorisms when those foundations are proven to be false.