Serenity
Moderator
Exactly, you want something from a woman that you don't want from a man. That's outcome dependence, you depend your sense of self on how the interaction with a woman goes. With a man you don't desire such an outcome, it doesn't matter as much and as such is less outcome dependent.
The brain is plastic, fear response is not as hardwired as you might think. Psychology would be absolutely useless if our brains functioned like computer chips, wired a particular way and set to remain like that. This is obviously not the case as you do not require surgery to effectively rewire your brain, your brain is designed to change and adapt. But it won't if you refuse to even think it's possible, firing the same old pathways and thus reinforcing those "wires".
I'm not denying that smell has certain effects. Some less pleasant smells clearly make most people gag.
As is all parts of the brain, which is plastic. Where do you think the mind resides? You're essentially denying psychology by this point and substituting it with smells. I never needed oils to change the way I respond to the external world, I just used directed willpower and time. Using willpower is exhausting, but if you use it when you have an undesired response to break up your usual response pattern you'll start firing different neural pathways or creating entirely new ones. With a bit of repetition you'll strengthen the better pathways and the old one will weaken. This is obviously not done by thinking about the physical neural pathways, this is effectively done through psychological techniques, whether you're aware or not about what happens "under the hood".
Mystery uses psychology or at least tries to. By telling guys they need 1000 approaches it's more likely they'll accept that they need a lot and be positively surprised when they needed less. He doesn't mean it literally, way less is needed for a significant change to occur. The issue is that most guys are impatient. Had he said 10 they'd go out to do 10 approaches and wonder where their confidence is and call him a scam. If he says 1000 they'll do 10 and feel confident because it only took them 10 instead of 1000. Framing is key.
I suffered badly from social anxiety. So bad that I absolutely feared talking to anyone I didn't already know, even on the phone and particularly the opposite sex. Did I smell oils to fix that? Hell no! I figured out pretty fast that exposure to what I fear would help normalize it, make it less impactful. How many approaches did it take before I noticed a huge difference? It took me 2, yes 2! I confronted it head on and did what I feared the most, interacting with women. Saw first hand that nothing objectively bad happened and the next times got progressively easier. How long did it take from start to zero symptoms? About 1 year. The first few times had the most effect, it took away a lot of it, but I could still feel it although getting less and less for each time.
Every time I felt the anxiety I used my will to go against it instead of falling back into the old pattern. Let me tell you, it was tempting to just avoid it altogether, to do as I had done in the past. That was the old neural pathway, the path of least resistance to my brain was to fire that reaction pattern. I realized I had a choice, I can let the mind control me or I can take control of my mind. I can listen to my amygdala or I can ignore it, but going against base emotions, that so-called "hard wiring" takes a lot of energy at first.
As you think, so shall you become.
Many people enjoy fear, there's an entire genre of entertainment with fear being the primary emotion they attempt to trigger. What to one person is fear may to another person be excitement. I don't think those 2 feelings are very far apart at all. It's a very similar sensation, but it's framed in very different ways. The anxiety I used to have is replaced with excitement, I learned to enjoy the unexpected. It's actually boring for me when everything goes just the way I expect.
Definitely a valid point. If you just expose yourself, but do zero reflection on your experiences I'd imagine nothing much will change. I remember reflecting A LOT upon my experiences after exposing myself to my fears.
Yes! I was writing my response to corrector explaining exactly this when you posted this. The established and reinforced thought patterns are easiest to follow, it's the path of least resistance. Breaking these patterns requires that you resist the easy way and choose the hard way. If you're not feeling that resistance you're not growing. I messed myself up a lot by doing this, at some point it felt like my entire mind was scrambled. Identity ripped to shreds, every belief questioned and in a state of extreme doubt. Yet I did this intentionally as I realized too much was wrong, I decided to tear apart everything I thought I knew and start over to put myself together more carefully. You don't need to go to that extreme, you can practice this more carefully and get good results.
Forcing is actually exactly what I mean. I think it comes down to how hard you wish to improve. I simply couldn't accept my situation, I wasn't getting what I wanted out of life and was willing to go pretty damn far for it. I'd vividly imagine laying on my deathbed filled with regret over all the things I didn't dare to experience in life, just that small glimpse of what it would feel like scared me more than anything else. It would be unimaginably sad. Everything else seems so insignificant in comparison to that. Trying is way more important than winning, because regret is worse than failure.
Still, I didn't shake my thought patterns overnight. I had to keep hammering at it every opportunity I got. Forcing myself in the direction I wanted to go, reminding myself about how I wish to look back on my life when I'm old. Fully internal self-sustained motivation, at that point the scope was far beyond just women. Women actually became rather insignificant with that paradigm shift. A lot of the "huge" problems discussed on this forum appear trivial to me, I may often fail to see why something is a problem because I don't operate on that level anymore. I have to remember a former version of myself, one that is vastly different from the man I am today.