Rollo Tomassi
Master Don Juan
"Self-love is not so great a sin as self-neglect. - Henry V
One of the single most common myths is the JBY - just be yourself. Allen does an admirable job with this article, take the time to read it, however allow me to elaborate on this.
I think that pride is one thing that people get very confused about. It's a healthy thing to have pride of oneself, to be proud of our accomplishments; it's a very real source of self-confidence. It's quite another thing to be "prideful", and this is where the disconnect comes for a lot of AFCs, particularly ones with strong ego-investments in morality, chivalry, honor, etc. My old AFC self used to struggle with this as well. The AFC sublimates himself, self-deprecates, because he believes, erroneously, that this ideology will separate him from the herd, make him "not-like-other-guys". He mistakenly believes that he's unique in this when actually he's in the majority. Why? For the answer all you need do is look at the most common threads on SS.
Guys don't search out this site because they're getting too much pussie. They search it out because what they've been doing isn't producing the results they want. When you think about this, they've been doing exactly as you've described - working from a script. We like to point out the flaws in autonomously adhering to a script with regards to PUA techniques; you become a social robot, not "yourself". But from an opposite side, what you're doing now, or have done, as an AFC is equally as scripted. The only difference, and far more insidious, is that you've internalized these AFC "scripts" that others have conditioned into you, as personal investments over the course of a lifetime.
Now, as an example, lets look at your story. After dropping your AFC mindset for a one based on self-interest, what happened? You began to see results. You can hook up with women the calibre of which were previously unavailable to you before, and all it took was replacing your chump behavior and mentality with one of self-concern and self-priority.
I'm going to stop here for a moment and say that I don't believe for a second that this is your case, or at least not so emphasized a case as you'd like to believe. I say that because I've heard for so many years the "I'm-tired-of-the-game" rationalization for rAFCs returning to their more comfortable, rejection-avoidance AFC mentality. I can't tell you how often I hear 19 y.o. kids tell me "I' done with the ONSs, the clubs, the games. I've had all kinds of hot women and meaningless sex." This is generally because they are tired of the real rejection and the social education that comes from it.
One of the biggest dangers of the PUA ideal is that it does nothing to address the root problem of AFCism (for lack of a better term). AFCs don't want to stop being AFCs, they just want their ONEitis (or their 'dream girl") to hook up with them long term and then drift back into a comfortable 'just being themselves'. In The Game even Mystery, with all his PUA prowess, degenerates into a simpering, borderline suicidal chump when he realizes that his PUA scripts do nothing in an LTR with Katya (his ONEitis). The most notorious PUA in modern history is still an AFC, because he hadn't killed that mentality, that AFC internalization - hadn't killed his inner AFC.
Another very common occurrence is the "reformed" AFC who makes progress toward becoming more DJ, and as a result gets his "dream girl", only to lose her after devolving into an AFC once he's in an LTR with her. I'm not a big Ross Jefferies fan, but he did say something very profound once, he said "teaching PUA skills to these chumps is like giving dynamite to children." This is very true because the potential for disaster is much higher. Most guys want that silver bullet, the magic formula that will get them the girl, but it does nothing to prepare them for the LTR - they don't become Men, they become children with dynamite.
Humility is an admirable quality, don't get me wrong, but humility is only genuine when you're confident of your own abilities. It takes a humble Man to walk away from a fight that he knows he could win, but chooses not to engage in. Generally humility is only self-gratifying, because only rarely will other appreciate it as humility (those familiar with your abilities) and not view it as cowardice, or at best a lack of confidence. Pride often appears arrogant because people of lesser accomplishments become envious, and people of better accomplishments think less of them than you do. If I were to venture a guess, you dropping a more arrogant impression is why you saw a difference in other's attitude toward you. It's very important not to appear too perfect, but it's equally important not to seem spineless.
One of the single most common myths is the JBY - just be yourself. Allen does an admirable job with this article, take the time to read it, however allow me to elaborate on this.
I think that pride is one thing that people get very confused about. It's a healthy thing to have pride of oneself, to be proud of our accomplishments; it's a very real source of self-confidence. It's quite another thing to be "prideful", and this is where the disconnect comes for a lot of AFCs, particularly ones with strong ego-investments in morality, chivalry, honor, etc. My old AFC self used to struggle with this as well. The AFC sublimates himself, self-deprecates, because he believes, erroneously, that this ideology will separate him from the herd, make him "not-like-other-guys". He mistakenly believes that he's unique in this when actually he's in the majority. Why? For the answer all you need do is look at the most common threads on SS.
Guys don't search out this site because they're getting too much pussie. They search it out because what they've been doing isn't producing the results they want. When you think about this, they've been doing exactly as you've described - working from a script. We like to point out the flaws in autonomously adhering to a script with regards to PUA techniques; you become a social robot, not "yourself". But from an opposite side, what you're doing now, or have done, as an AFC is equally as scripted. The only difference, and far more insidious, is that you've internalized these AFC "scripts" that others have conditioned into you, as personal investments over the course of a lifetime.
Now, as an example, lets look at your story. After dropping your AFC mindset for a one based on self-interest, what happened? You began to see results. You can hook up with women the calibre of which were previously unavailable to you before, and all it took was replacing your chump behavior and mentality with one of self-concern and self-priority.
I'm going to stop here for a moment and say that I don't believe for a second that this is your case, or at least not so emphasized a case as you'd like to believe. I say that because I've heard for so many years the "I'm-tired-of-the-game" rationalization for rAFCs returning to their more comfortable, rejection-avoidance AFC mentality. I can't tell you how often I hear 19 y.o. kids tell me "I' done with the ONSs, the clubs, the games. I've had all kinds of hot women and meaningless sex." This is generally because they are tired of the real rejection and the social education that comes from it.
One of the biggest dangers of the PUA ideal is that it does nothing to address the root problem of AFCism (for lack of a better term). AFCs don't want to stop being AFCs, they just want their ONEitis (or their 'dream girl") to hook up with them long term and then drift back into a comfortable 'just being themselves'. In The Game even Mystery, with all his PUA prowess, degenerates into a simpering, borderline suicidal chump when he realizes that his PUA scripts do nothing in an LTR with Katya (his ONEitis). The most notorious PUA in modern history is still an AFC, because he hadn't killed that mentality, that AFC internalization - hadn't killed his inner AFC.
Another very common occurrence is the "reformed" AFC who makes progress toward becoming more DJ, and as a result gets his "dream girl", only to lose her after devolving into an AFC once he's in an LTR with her. I'm not a big Ross Jefferies fan, but he did say something very profound once, he said "teaching PUA skills to these chumps is like giving dynamite to children." This is very true because the potential for disaster is much higher. Most guys want that silver bullet, the magic formula that will get them the girl, but it does nothing to prepare them for the LTR - they don't become Men, they become children with dynamite.
Humility is an admirable quality, don't get me wrong, but humility is only genuine when you're confident of your own abilities. It takes a humble Man to walk away from a fight that he knows he could win, but chooses not to engage in. Generally humility is only self-gratifying, because only rarely will other appreciate it as humility (those familiar with your abilities) and not view it as cowardice, or at best a lack of confidence. Pride often appears arrogant because people of lesser accomplishments become envious, and people of better accomplishments think less of them than you do. If I were to venture a guess, you dropping a more arrogant impression is why you saw a difference in other's attitude toward you. It's very important not to appear too perfect, but it's equally important not to seem spineless.