TLDR:

Frame, consistency, and integrity necessitates congruence and internalization.

Body:

"Be yourself." Possibly some of the worst, yet widely distributed, blue pill advice out there. But advice such as this wouldn't be so widely appealing if there wasn't at least a nugget of truth hidden deep down, underneath the layers of bullshit and laziness perpetuated by it. Let's see if we can cull out the value, if any, from such a platitude.

The value is in consistency and integrity.

My journey through masculinity took roughly the following shape:

  1. Confusion about the world, attempting to go about it in the way I was raised.
  2. Frustration things were not going as they expected.
  3. Awareness that there are alternative ways to view the external world around me (enter TRP, Buddhism, Nietzche, etc. etc.).
  4. Improvement (physical strength, mental strength, charm, intelligence, unbridled masculinity, manipulation, drive, etc. etc.)
  5. ?

Once the results started to come in, I still found myself breaking frame at times. I found myself secretly subconsciously wishing things weren't so. I found that occasionally I'd feel twinges of jealousy of my friends taking trips to Disney with their significant others, comfortably enjoying their relationships with not a care in the world regarding optimizing their own lives. Why would I envy such naivety emotionally, when logically I saw little value in it? And statistically a good number of them are going to live happily every after. Or at least monogamously ever after.

But I preferred my way of going about things. Yet what was missing? Why was I breaking frame on occasion, for example supplicating to a girl when logically I knew I "shouldn't"?

Enter Impostor Syndrome.

Impostor syndrome (also spelled impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome) is a term coined in the 1970s by psychologists and researchers to informally describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments.

I made such rapid changes in my personality and physique, that it didn't feel real. I felt like an impostor. I felt like I was putting on a mask. I was waiting and wondering if I was going to get "figured out" as faking confidence.

Fake it till you make it, is something which may give some nice short term results, but as it is inherently an illusion, will break down the more somebody gets to know you. When I subconsciously preferred things to be blue pill at times, my new "me" felt like a layer atop the old me.

Think of how adults can quickly regress to their old childish insecurities when back visiting family for holidays. Or how your old high school friends will see the "new you" as something fake, since "your core never changes!". They see the static vision of how you were in high school, as your "core", and any changes you make as simply fluff atop your core essence. Whereas when you meet somebody new for the first time as an adult, they only know the static "you" at the time you meet them, and more properly see your old high school self you as simply a snapshot along your journey.

So what are the effects of this impostor syndrome? Well, there's a subtle fear which infects everything you do. A fear that you'll be figured out. A fear that it's not "real".

So how do you kill it? You recognize that your actions in the present moment dictate the "real" you. You internalize and actually prefer to go about the world this way.

Once your impostor syndrome is killed, there's no "trying" to maintain frame. There's no faking abundance. You must internalize things like "it's their loss", so you don't have to keep repeating it to yourself in a vain attempt to feel better. A lot of responses on /r/asktrp give the actions to take in a given situation. But the question will never come up if the tenets are internalized.

Kill the conflict inside of you, and decide what pieces of TRP you agree with and choose to incorporate into who you are, and don't look back. Otherwise, you'll subconsciously slip up in your "fake it till you make it" persona.

"Being yourself" is necessary to maintain consistency in your persona. It takes little effort. But make sure you've committed to who you want to be. The effort comes from making yourself into someone worth being. Then being yourself is easy and preferred.

Lessons Learned:

  • Rapid changes in self-improvement may lead to imposter syndrome, which will make maintaining frame a constant struggle.

  • Internalization removes that struggle, and makes maintaining frame simply "being yourself."

  • The effort should not be in maintaining frame, but rather in morphing "yourself" into someone worth being.