Hey all, hope you've had a wonderful Christmas this year.

My sob story

My background: Skinny nerdy kid that had never been too popular. Started implementing TRP last year of highschool (circa 18 y/o). Got some dates, got laid for the first time. Also had major impostor syndrome because I was just putting on an act instead of being truly confident. Then at about 19 I got a long term gf and moved out for the first time. Despite the gf being madly in love in the beginning, 2 years into the relationship it looked like it would all fall apart because of how much of a depressed mopey piece of shit I was. I would just play games and watch YouTube videos all day long, while my life was falling apart. I couldn't keep a job for more than 3 months (because I was procrastinating massively), I didn't know how to cook / clean for myself. I spent a few thousands on camgirls and a few hundred on prostitutes during this time. I was working out but without significant results..

I spent a lot of time studying human psychology, Jung's cognitive functions, self help books etc. A lot of what I learned was bullshit, however some of it was gold. And thanks to that knowledge I managed to then grind my way out of the hell I was in and now I have a stable job, good money, finally bulked up and muscular and I'm always at the top of my game. And yes, I'm still with the same girl from before. Feels like she fell in love with me head-over-heels a second time. Other girls want a piece of me too (sometimes they even get one) like they never have before. Other men in my friend groups respect me massively.

I have achieved something that a lot of my friends who were also interested in self-development and the red pill haven't been able to. Actual, tangible results. Every motherfucker out there can sit on here all day long, philosophizing about what women want, about how it all works in theory, but very few actually get their hands dirty and only a tiny fraction succeed. My goal with this post is to help you succeed in achieving your goals, whatever they might be.

1. One brain, two minds

Take a moment to look at this image.

This is your brain. There's two "minds" inside of it.

The first one is the rider, the conscious mind. That's basically you. Whatever goals you have, the rider has them too. When you consciously think to yourself "I'm gonna go for a walk after lunch", the rider is the one steering the elephant so you both go for a walk.

The elephant is the subconscious mind. As weird as it may sound, that's not really you in any way whatsoever. The easiest way of understanding the subconscious mind is that it's some other, separate thing occupying space in your brain together with you, with hands on the controls over your body that override yours. And one more thing - you can't really talk to it. Almost as if it doesn't understand your language. Not a scary thought at all.

The subconscious is much more stronger than the conscious. This can be useful at times, like when you touch a hot stove, it acts right away and pulls the hand off, instead of having to wait for your slow, conscious mind to realize your flesh is burning.

However it can easily become your enemy. What if you're trying to steer the elephant down a path it doesn't know or that's hard? If the elephant decides it doesn't want to go that way, what can you as a tiny rider do against a 6 ton animal that's refusing to move? Not a whole lot.

Young people on here or in any other self-improvement community usually get motivated with all the newfound knowledge and say stuff like "Wow! First thing I'm gonna do is get absolutely jacked (or any other goal for that matter)." They might even get a gym membership, work out for a month or two and then slowly stop showing up. And they're genuinely confused why. It's not like they don't want it enough.. However they fail to understand that they didn't manage to convince the elephant to go down the path of self improvement. Instead, it seems the elephant prefers the pizza and video game path.

This failure to keep your own promises to yourself lowers self-esteem and feeds depression. I believe this is the main reason why most men have low self esteem and I believe it's been like this all throughout history and is not an artifact of our modern age.

Sadly, many of these people will just give up after many failed attempts where the elephant just pulls them back into their old ways. They start thinking that change is impossible and that just makes them feel even worse, because their worldview changes into one where they're prisoners. They turn into blackpillers, mgtows (I know there's a handful of normal mgtows out there, but let's be real here, many just couldn't figure out this game stuff).

Elephants don't speak English or any other sort of human language. It's not as easy as whispering "please let's get fucking jacked" to its ear, even if that might be what you really want. In the next chapter, we'll take a look at how to actually change the elephant's behavior according to our goals.

2. Training your elephant

The elephant hears, sees, feels and smells everything you do. And while it doesn't understand what the rider is telling it, it reacts to this outside stimuli very well. That's why external validation feels so good. You can have all the "self-love" you want, you can keep telling yourself how much of an awesome person you are, but your self-confidence can still be in the shitter. But then someone else comes along and genuinely compliments you and suddenly you feel like the best motherfucker on the planet and your happiness chemicals in your brain skyrocket. That's the elephant actually believing it.

Side note:

This is why you can get women attracted to you even if they rationally think you're an asshole/jerk. That's why they say shit like "I hate confident short guys". The confidence excites her elephant and even though she consciously doesn't want to fuck a short guy (maybe because of social stigma), the elephant might start walking down the path of sexual arousal, while all her rider just sits on her elephant, watching, unable to do anything.

This is also the reason why game works on women even if they're aware you're using game, like in this field report.

End of side note.

The key to get the elephant to go down difficult routes (working out, waking up early, cold approaching girls, working hard at your job) is two things:

  1. Changing your environment to minimize the effort needed to achieve the goal.
  2. Breaking up your goal into very tiny goals that are easy to achieve and slowly increasing the load until you achieve your goal.

In a throwback to my social progressive overload post, this is exactly how I learned to talk to any woman I want. At first, I was scared shitless to just talk to a person I didn't know. So that's where I started. I had a goal of talking to 1 stranger per day. The important part here was to keep it consistent. Talking to 5 people one day and then no one for three days is worse than talking to 1 person every 4 of the days. By the way, this is exactly how I started working out too. It started with 10 daily pushups in my bedroom. Then 20. Then 40. Then some weights. Then a gym membership.

You're teaching the elephant to go down that route every single day. The goals need to be easy so you can actually achieve these things every day. And this is actually a way of tricking the elephant of liking the path.

Think of all the things the elephant likes - videogames, porn, junk food, screens.. if something feels good, the elephant will want to do it again. Which kind of brings me to the other point - changing your environment.

Cut out the cheap sources of dopamine as much as you can and replace them with things that move you closer towards your goals. Funnily enough - despite seeming hard at first, this will make things easier for you! If you manage to wake up and start doing the good habits before the bad habits start creeping in. And remember you don't have to do journaling, cold showers, 5 AM runs and all that bullshit to be succesful. A lot of people on here preach "quitting" porn, "quitting" videogames. What they fail to mention that it's impossible to quit an addiction - you can only replace it with another addiction. You're going to try and turn your good habits into an addiction.

Changing your environment also applies to changing your goals and routines to make them more realistic based on what you've seen. For the longest time I would go to the gym in the afternoon which came with the fact that I had the whole day to decide if I was a little bitch or not. More often then not I'd find an excuse not to go to the gym.

The solution? Go first thing in the morning. Best decision I've made. I don't have time to say no, I get it done and then I feel like an absolute beast all day because I've managed to conquer myself again.

3. Do what you're most afraid of

When it comes to choosing your habits - try to sort out your deep rooted insecurities first.

If you feel weak, vulnurable and are scared of walking outside at night, you need to start by learning how to fight. Go to a Muay Thai gym.

If you feel skinny, hit the weights.

If you've got money insecurity, get a job and find some ways to stack cash.

If you can't talk to women, go out there and start talking to strangers.

You should prioritize the things you're most scared of doing. There's so many gymcels out there it's unreal - men with amazing looks that can't talk to women for shit and thus can't get laid. If you're someone like that, you should be out there talking to women and not solving it by putting on even more muscle. To succeed in life and with women, you need to be amazing as a whole, not just in one or two ways.

And I'm aware that there's a bunch of you that are lacking all of these things - much like I did long ago. In that case, pick one thing and start working on it. The thing many people don't realize is that training the elephant is a skill. And much like with every skill out there, you slowly get better and better at it.

It's incredibly important that you stay true to yourself and don't let your ego get in the way. You have to recognize that "yes, I don't have any friends, I should probably go out to a bar and talk to some people". Say it out loud if you need to. Sometimes the hardest part of this whole process is admitting you need to work on yourself in a certain way.

4. Some final tips

Some of the greatest people all around I know personally are addicted. They're hard fucking workers. They got successfully addicted to productive habits and now they can't quit. This is where you want to be. When you get into this stuff, you start fearing videogames, comfort and all that shit that makes you weak because you realize just how subversive it is. Wes Watson is a good example of a person that no longer craves comfort because they've got their shit on lock.

When you're an addict to productive habits and stuff that builds you up, you feel so confident everyone can see it. My greatest increase in my confidence with women and men was when I started to become all the things I always wanted to become. That's the kind of confidence that can't be faked and that's something that'll get you laid like nothing else. I wake up smiling every morning because there's no greater source of self-worth than winning against your own mind.

Everyone can make it. Everyone can be whatever they want, just don't give up**.**

Here's a quick list of the issues I've had in my life and what I did to solve them. Might serve as a helpful reference sheet to help look at yourself. Don't gloss over any of these if you see yourself in them, I don't want to hear any "oh yeah, I'm the same, but I don't feel like changing / I don't need to change". That's fear talking. Remember, you want to do the things you're most afraid of:

  • Fear of fighting/conflict in general - signed up for Muay Thai, this will push your confidence incredibly far because most people don't know how to fight and that makes you valuable.
  • Insecurity from being skinny - hitting the weights. I recommend getting a personal trainer to learn the right technique and everything that comes with training (nutrition). It's incredibly important to count calories and sleep well if you have fitness goals. I made more progress in 1 year of eating properly and working out than 2.5 years of just working out hard.
  • Insecurity of talking to strangers and talking to women - progressively went from daily goals of talking to 1 stranger a day, then to having 1 fully fledged conversation per day, then to flirting, then to getting instagrams / numbers or instadates
  • Money insecurity - got a good job in IT (no college degree). This was probably the easiest of them all cause I was always interested in computer programming. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.