Hamstrung

Today was a slow day, so I ambled down to the nearest greasy spoon and ordered a cooked breakfast and coffee, sat down and started reading my good (if a little dense) book.

Imagine my surprise when no more than two minutes after ordering my breakfast arrived! It didn’t look like I thought it should, but in truth I couldnt actually remember what I ordered in the first place. I tucked in. It was adequate.

About 10 minutes later, the chef brings out another order. “Number 6!” He calls. I ordered a number 6. Fuck. I know how this schema plays out.

He takes it to an old gentleman, who is notably irate. He starts jabbing his finger at his written order on his table, points at me (it seems I am eating this mans breakfast. He should thank me. It’s shit). And apparently he can’t wait for it to be cooked again. He gets a refund and leaves.

What struck me most about this whole encounter is just how much this old man invested in the inevitable outcome. I have no reason to eat his breakfast over mine – dude didnt even order a sausage, FFS. There were a grand total of four customers in the whole place, in a space about the size of a large living-room. He could have said just about anything, given a little wave, and the breakfast he wanted could have been his – “oh, I think that’s mine”, “glad you said something old-timer, I was about to brown-sauce this bitch to death”.

But he didn’t. He clammed up, stewed, ruminated, and finally detonated his ball of negativity like an emotional grenade. He chose that outcome. An infinity of small gestures at his fingertips, each ending with him actually getting what he wants, but that feeling of righteous anger is just so… nourishing. If he was alone in this ultimately self-defeating pattern, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I see this game played out repeatedly. I play it myself.

There an old NLP maxim that states “the person with the most flexibility has the most power”. If something doesn’t go your way initially, and a 3% course correction makes it all better, you would course-correct, right? Well, you think you would, but how good is the emotional payoff if I don’t? Do I get to yell (righteously)? Feel vindicated? Earn some public sympathy? Fuck the breakfast, give me a moan instead.

Think about this. I can guarantee you’ve
run this programme at some point in the last month. We all think we actually want what we profess to want. The scary thing is you might be more fulfilled with the story.

you could be happy too, if you weren’t so invested in being unhappy

– The Last Psychiatrist

Fredrika Stahl – So High

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6dDhT-u20

Listen to the above song, and tell me it isn’t a fairly perceptive view of women choosing to date the wrong men

Link

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person

Read. Digest. Act.

5 Easy Things

This is Assanova’s advice, paraphrased, but since the Great Man himself isn’t with us anymore (aside from rare posts on Sleazy’s Forum), its worth restating if only for my own benefit.

Not so long ago, I put on a few extra pounds. My timetable and motivation didn’t allow for much in the way of, well anything major. So I took a quick reality check, and made 5 easy changes:

• I stopped eating a massive bar of Cadburys every evening
• Cut down on fizzy drink consumption
• Restricted pizzas (my personal food of choice) to Friday only
• Swapped sugar in tea and coffee for Agave Nectar
• Stopped all takeaways

Now, lets be honest – none of this is revolutionary, I won’t be winning any self-discipline awards, and really all of these should be considered essential if you’re serious about losing weight. But the overall willpower cost of these actions is low, and the cumulative effect is a steady shedding of my belly. Win-win.

Bottom-line, you can shift yourself along the attractiveness spectrum and improve your body and self-image by simply making a few easy changes. Don’t fret about dumbbell-flys if you really don’t want to go to the gym.

The Worst Way To Start an Evening/Über-Hot and Sweet Shot Girl

First girl I talk to tonight.

She’s a shot girl; her and her attractive friend are being paid to hock some spirit at bars around town.

She stops to talk to me and my friend. She’s about 20; a student nurse who’s doing promotions to top up her pay. She’s wearing a slinky blue promotions dress that leaves very little to the imagination.

Her night is going slowly. She’s bored. My wing makes brief conversation with her friend, she talks to me.

We have a lot in common. We talk about work, studies, and have a great connection. Suddenly my friend turns up, with a friend in tow I haven’t seen in two years; I tell her I have to talk to my friend, we smile and part ways.

During my conversation with my friends I turn back – she fixes me with eyes that melt my soul, and a big smile. Come talk to me. She likes me. I like her.

Here it starts to go wrong. By the time I make it back to the table, they’ve been moved on by her Supervisor. We settle at the table, and at one point she walks by. I don’t stop her to continue the conversation.

As we leave, I want to find her. Too late bro. The window closes.

This fucks up my night. My desire to spark a conversation with some random tubby drunkard in the club is tempered by the knowledge that the hottest (and sweetest) girl I was likely to meet that night I’d already met. And wasted a golden opportunity with. I stalled. I staled. Night = wasted.

There’s a lesson to be learnt from this, but right now Im far too angry to learn it. Fuck sake.

Hangovers are the Devils balls

Last night was my first night out in a while. It was enjoyable. I drank a little, danced a little, and met a very nice Hungarian Nurse. Sadly I didn’t push it further, but could have and should have.

Today I feel like shit though, off of the back of very little alcohol. This is not acceptable. I need to order and test this RU-21 and see if this helps.

The virtuous circle of Hotter Girlfriends

A good friend of mine recently got himself a Hotter Girlfriend. Not someone you would class as a particularly confident or dominant guy, it was interesting to watch him slowly morph, entirely unconsciously, into a more assertive man. His self-esteem slowly increased, he asserted boundaries quicker and with more force, and he slowly came to expect a higher level of respect from those around him.

The idea that we change in response to our environmental cues is not a new one, but the inevitability of it unsettles me. If the worlds overwhelming feedback to you is that you are a cunt, this will slowly, but surely, corrode your self-image. Inevitable.

But my friend is an example of this in reverse; if the world tells you that ‘you ROCK, dude!!!’, you will morph into that as well. In ‘How to Win Friends..‘ Dale Carnegie spoke about people living up to the trust you place in them; imagine that on a macro level. Slept with a stripper? Positive feedback. Awful blowout? Negative feedback. Slowly, but surely, you subconsciously form an idea of your ‘place’ in the dating world. Of course, this feedback loop is a process in many other areas of your life, fuelling your overall self-concept.*

In short, the change in my friends self-image is a result of a ‘bleed-through’ effect from continual positive feedback from banging a hottie.

Does the opposite happen if you are dating someone you don’t really like (yes, people do this. We call it settling)?

FUCK yeah it does…

*Of course, how much weight you assign any particular environmental feedback is, surprisingly, within your control…

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