Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in June 2018.
I was in an Uber on my way to meet up with a woman I’d known for some time.
She was one of those ones who’d been elusive.
I was direct with her from the get-go, as I do my best to always be now thanks to everything I’ve learned here at FEARLESS. There’s no mistaking it if I’m attracted to you. I’ve found it to be the most real, honest, life-changing way to be both with women and people in general. Direct and speaking your mind without hesitation or a filter as much as you can.
(But guys, where you’re coming from still matters. So no, in general, saying “Hi. You’re sexy and I want to fuck you” isn’t going to work because you’re not making her feel like a real human being and you’re not building an emotional connection with her.)
So we would flirt a little here and there when I saw her, but it just never really connected for her that strongly. Maybe I wasn’t quite her type, maybe (probably) I pushed her away with some of my leftover insecurities that rear their heads when a woman I’m highly attracted to gives me some attention but doesn’t just fall all over me right away, maybe other things that have nothing to do with me, probably a mix of multiple things.
So I’d put her in the “someday, maybe” file in my mind and moved my attention to other people and other things. But we’d still talk from time to time and I’d still see her every now and then.
And I knew that to connect with the kinds of women I’m usually drawn to – extremely confident, funny, outgoing, edgy, sexual, adventurous – to connect with them consistently (not feel like I’m relying on “getting lucky” with perfect situations, timing, moments, etc) …and strongly enough that the connection actually lasts longer than a night or two fling, there was one main thing I needed to expand on: Loving myself.
Because I’d come a hell of a long way, and felt a fuckton (1 metric fuckton exactly) better about myself, but now that I was getting all this validation, sex, and connection from the women that I’d been starved of for so long, the validation quickly became an addiction.
I had WAY more self-esteem than ever…but a lot of it came from women.
I was a bit like a drug addict, living (and feeling good) from drug hit to drug hit of external validation.
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As I sit here and write this knowing that friends, family…and women I’m dating, women I want to date, and maybe women I haven’t even met yet (hey, Tinder matches! And those of you creeping my IG profile and then ending up here before swiping!) will read this, it’s feeling pretty damn vulnerable. We get really raw and deep here at FEARLESS, but what I’m talking about isn’t uncommon. A hell of a lot of people – maybe even most people – get either some or a LOT of their sense of self-esteem from being wanted or loved by the opposite sex (or the same sex, or all sexes, “or whatever, it’s 2018” as a NYC Subway ad I saw recently so appropriately put it).
I just don’t want to settle for average or anywhere near average. I want exceptional confidence, exceptional social freedom, and exceptionally confident, awesome women in my life.
Ok, yeah, forget the friends and family – if I’m being honest with myself and you, the vulnerability I’m feeling writing this is really mostly about the women potentially reading this. Which just means there are more layers of self-love work I can do.
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So what I really wanted was the women to love me so that I didn’t have to do the work and just love myself.
To some degree, it was like before I had a dating life – desperate for validation and a specific kind of love. I was just getting the validation much more often. A much better drug supply! Victory!
It’s a lot like money, success, and fame. The outside stuff usually doesn’t actually make people happy long-term.
The inside stuff does. And it usually makes it much easier to get the outside stuff.
That’s especially true in terms of quality dating and relationships.
That inside stuff boils down to happiness and self-love.
Thankfully, Brian and my friends in our “FEARLESS Family” of alumni had helped me come to this awareness that I was a bit of an addict.
So I’d been combining some of the more advanced FEARLESS feeling and meditative work with Kamal Ravikant’s Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.
As I sat in the Uber anticipating seeing this woman and hoping – from the way she’d been more touchy and just more engaged with me lately – that maybe something would finally happen with her, I thought “You gotta love yourself, dude.”
I dropped my awareness inside myself and started to work on feeling more of that deep love for myself that was already there – I just needed to get below layers of ego and bs insecurities to get in touch with it and believe it more.
Feel it as much as I honestly could, let go of everything else as much as I honestly could. Repeat.
Just. Love. Myself.
…And then I realized what I was really doing.
It’s something I’d just been telling one of our clients that he needed to work on.
I was trying to “love myself” more so that this woman and women in general would love me more.
That’s not self-love!
That’s a higher-functioning version of trying to get external validation. Of sneaking around and looking for that next hit. Of wanting women to do the work of loving me for me.
The ego is one sneaky son of a bitch, the games it plays.
It’s fine to enjoy some external validation, enjoy connection, sex, and relationships. Those are healthy, great parts of life.
But we’ve also got to catch ourselves when we’re trying to love ourselves primarily to get something else.
The self-love and internal happiness really need to be the end goal. Not the means to an end.
Because otherwise, it’s not real self-love and it will only take you so far, anyway.
I know that might be a mindfuck if you’re doing this to get better with women, money, or anything else, after the rest of this post – It doesn’t at all mean you shouldn’t take outward action and outward practice towards whatever external thing(s) you’re working on, but the self-love needs to be an end in and of itself.
How great would it be just to really love yourself deeply, like you do a friend, family member, or lover, and truly be happy. Isn’t that the point of it all, anyway?
And when you really, truly do that, the other things and people are drawn to you like moths to a flame.
But sitting in the Uber with my realization, I wasn’t going to be hard on myself, either. I just laughed at the games my ego was playing, like a mischevious child. I sat in appreciation of my self-awareness to catch it.
And I loved myself just a little bit more.
You can attend the first-ever Masculine Self-Love edition of The FEARLESS Man Live – virtually or in-person with us in LA! Learn more here.
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