Early 2024 Pivot:
I'm gonna take it easy for now.
I’ve now shifted from listening rap, to — late night jazz, and psychedelic rock.
Authenticity is very rare in this modern world. And therefore, very precious.
I feel very stuck. Very claustrophobic. It’s as if the more I try, the deeper the hole I dig for myself. Because supposedly we are not supposed to try that hard, and instead be authentic.
But then, the less I try, nothing happens. Because, of course, if we don’t take action, how do we expect anything to happen on its own.
It would have all been fine, had something, anything, good had happened in all these years that I’ve been “trying”. An iota of evidence. But no. God chose to deprive me of any sign of “ok bro. yeah your efforts mean something. I’m gonna give you a small taste of positive feedback for all the struggle you’ve been through and all the effort you’ve been putting in.”
Just want to put a disclaimer here that whenever I put out one of these sad and ranty posts, I don’t mean to say I give up, or that I blame anyone, just that I’m venting out. I’ll be back to my “normal” self in a matter of days, if not weeks.
But yeah, it does weigh on me, that after all these years, my life has just become a collection of sad journal entries and pity blog posts I write while crying.
So, as I’ve mentioned earlier, stuck phases are the perfect breeding grounds for growth/pivot/change/metamorphosis.
So, what is the lesson this time?
As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m not gonna be gymming anymore.
I feel like gymming to get a good body so that people look at you and are attracted to you is not worth the investment. If you are just doing it for the health, it’s fine. But the more I think about it, for guys, having a gym body is really not the most important thing nor a deal breaker. We are mostly judged on our personality, our drive, our purpose, our attitude, etc. And I see this all over. The most successful men, when it comes to work, or women, are not all that good looking, rather they have that idgaf attitude. That non-neediness. The more you work on your looks, (beyond a basic threshold of just being good at the fundamentals), I think it starts to become needy.
Looksmaxxing might be a more appropriate advice for women, but then again, they have been taught to looksmaxx since they are born. For men, grooming, hygiene, body language, and a good dressing sense is essential, but going overboard with those gym bodies, or dressing gay, or dressing like what looks good on ig reels is really not that attractive IRL. So gym was a no for me.
Towards that end, I embarked on a journey to figure out, if not looksmaxxing, and since I do already fit the baseline criteria for looking attractive, as several people have already told me, I need to work on fixing my brain, which is the most important impediment. The less time I spend looksmaxxing, the more I time I can spend on fixing my brain.
My habits before this shit phase were: {social, diet, gym, yoga, & walk}.
I’m retaining only: {diet}
, & {walk}
from these. Those are the only two out of those 5 that really make my brain feel really good. Walking (8k steps a day), especially is the most meditative time of my day, even more than if I were doing yoga. So my diet metric is basically “eat healthy” even if that means not losing weight as used to be my goal till now, I feel like getting all the nutrients in and being healthy is much more important. So no eating less. So my rule for quality is eat all the nutrients, and my rule for quantity is, it when you’re hungry, but only when you’re hungry.
The other thing I’m doing, is being very lenient with myself, on a lot of counts. For example, I’m spending a lot of time on screens, but I’m measuring and reviewing that time do gain awareness, but I’m not taking any action against it as of yet, will probably do, once I am better.
A habit that I’ve added, to make me feel very brain-grounded, is: {work}
.
I kept running away from work, trying to become someone I’m not, trying to run away from my strengths, only to realize that my work grounds me, it makes me feel secure when I do it well, it opens up opportunities for me, and I love it and am fortunate enough to have the kind of work I have. I have been too disrespectful to it, so I decided to now give it it’s due. Not only to pay respect, but for my own sake. I’ve been doing it for a while, and I feel much better when I start working, and then eventually get into the “zone”.
So, the 3 new habits that I have, are: {work, walk, diet}
.
I have been wondering a lot about what to do about the most important and weak area: what I claimed would be my “social” habit at the start of the year.
So, I’m not sure what to do with it.
The more I think about it, these days, the more I’m convinced I shouldn’t go out of my way to do socio-centric things that are antithetical to my identity. Because in trying so hard, I’m only signalling my “neediness” in fact when I look back over the last year where I did so many social fear tasks, and it was great and wonderful at times, but then there were times I look back and I realize I was trying so hard to be like and including and my desperation might have been exuding off of my body like crazy.
Actually, it’s not just that. The more I started observing these extroverted-types, and the more I got into their territory, the more I realized I didn’t want to be like them. I just wanted their outcomes. But when I actually looked at what they talked about, and how they spent their days, I kinda realized I loved my shy introverted self much more, even though I’m probably much less happier and have worse outcomes than them in life because the world is geared towards extroverts. What I didn’t like about them was they always talked about other people behind their backs, and mostly in a bad way. The topics they touched, while socially entertaining, just kept repeating, and after some time, it just felt as if they had nothing new to say. Really boring. Extroverted people are gifted with the confidence and charisma, so we are attracted to them initially, but if you spend enough time with one of them, you usually find they lack depth, and can be much more boring than an introverted person. Idk if this makes sense, but I also felt that extroverted people “care” less, in a way that of course they’re more surrounded by people, but when you talk to them, it feels as if talking to people is like a job to them (that they like) but are kinda detached, and they usually care less about an individual person, when compared to introverts. Maybe because they care less, they are able to take more shots, and more risks and form bigger social circles. But I do think that comes at the tradeoff of giving up depth. It all feels kinda like a transaction. And I’m not even talking about an extrovert’s relationship with me, I’m talking about observing the relationship of two extroverts.
For these reasons, I realized that I really did not want to become the kind of guy who focuses on knowing everyone, and everyone knowing me. At least not through pure going up and talking to everyone kinda style, maybe through my work, and deepened through acts of kindness, etc. Not just fucking talking to people and acting needy and desperate without any substance to follow all the time. Having a bit of a class.
But, at the same time, I don’t want to be completely isolated and not have a life.
I tried going to clubs and shit, but then I asked myself, again, do I really want to get drunk and dance and burst my ear drums listening to loud bollywood music?
I like doing nerdy things, I always have. So the thought experiment I ran was, if I had friends that I could hang out with on the weekends, and if I had a girlfriend that I really liked, would I still want to go to the clubs?
I realized, that I do actually like staying home and doing nerdy things, as long as my minimal threshold is crossed, which it is not. Even when I’m not socially anxious, I don’t like spending time with people if my brain is not being simulated. It does not necessarily have to be intelligent or nerdy conversation, but I’ve been talking to some normies and just the way they talk makes me think I want to talk to some other more smarter people, even if we are talking about something as normie as bitching about other people. I like smart people.
More importantly, can I get a girlfriend without going to the clubs? As was the answer with gyms — I believe, yes, I can get a girlfriend that I like without going to the clubs, or the gym. Because I don’t like clubs and gyms. If you truly like them then I believe you should really go, because they are the social norms.
Not following social norms does result in a slightly less normal social life, but as long as I fulfill that criteria of hanging out with my friends on the weekends and getting a girlfriend I like, it doesn’t matter does it. Do I need to sell my soul and act “normal” — and over the last week or two I’ve been feeling no.
It’s better to develop an I don’t care attitude when it comes to conforming to social norms. Which also translates well into non-neediness. And I’ve been feeling that changing your identity to get people to like you is the neediest of all things you can do.
But then, if that’s the case, what was the reason for me to embark on this change journey in the first place?
The problem was that I did have a shit social life. But, now I feel, in order to improve my social life, I need to do it my way, instead of trying to conform to a standard, or emulate a social butterfly. What does that mean for the future exactly?
It means, that I need to decouple my work, and my nerdy interests like tech and science and books, and duolingo, and psychedelic rock, and other such things from my social life. What that means is that I need to maintain my gainz when it comes to my strengths. I need to hold my ground, I need to focus on things I’m good at, and derive confidence from them, instead of deriding them, and saying that they’re the bane of my existence.
I’m already doing that based on my new {work}
habit. Idk why I every gave up on work, it’s the most important and grounding thing to be completely honest. And also, now that I’m driven, work can lead to mo money and mo opportunities, and if I do really great, right, and this is true for everything, if you provide a lot of value to the world, you will be asked to come to places, do shit, and there’s just basically a lot that comes with working hard and doing great work that’s useful to others and that others are interesting in as well.
But, at the same time, there was something still wrong right?
Yes, I think there’s a lot socially wrong that comes with being in the nerd trades.
But, just like a nerd can go to the gym and craft a great physique, without losing his ability to hack, a nerdy can also selectively work on skills that help him build a good enough social life and fill his void without giving up his innate strengths and the identity he loves and keeps him grounded.
Working back from the goal, to be more focused, and to only focus on the main thing and not any proxy goals, I realized that I need to go back to focus on general ways of getting a gf. I was too heavily focused on getting IRL confidence, that I completely gave up digital/online ways of connecting and socializing.
So, one of the things I’ve kinda started focusing on, now, is: {online dating}.
I realized a lot of my normie friends were actually meeting women this way, and not the old IRL way anyway. (and they are not better looking than me) so I must be doing something wrong with the profile/chat that was fucking things up for me.
So, anyway, yeah, one of the focus now is: {online dating}. One key thing with online dating that I didn’t do before is to show my authentic nerdy self and interests and based on that match with girls that share that. I remember that there was a time when I watched anime and I matched with a lot of girls on that. I stopped putting anime after I kinda grew out of it, but it is a good nerd signal tbh. Other thing with chat is to be honest and authentic and say whatever comes
So, yeah, online dating is a sure shot thing that needs to be done, because it’s a low effort low risk thing even if the probability of reward might be low as well.
But is that enough? Is that all that’s required?
I wouldn’t lie and say I don’t have social fears.
Because I do.
Maybe if I stick to this authenticity shtick, I won’t have those anymore, but still, this is something I do like working on, as long as there are no perverse incentives like selling my soul, etc.
So, I’ve decided to continue, what I used to call BE (behavioral experiments) but now call them {fear tasks} just creating fear stepladders and taking action and doing those things. This name change is occurring because I think the number one thing I need to do is take action, not just focus on my thoughts and beliefs etc. as CBT wants me to (where BE comes from).
In a way, fear tasks are the best way to fight against in-authenticity. When I want to say/do something but to protect my “image” I say something that fits the societal narrative.
So, the goal would be to create fear stepladders made of fear tasks towards a goal that is aligned with my authentic identity. That is, no step/task on the fear stepladders would be about trying to be non-nerdy or doing things that I don’t like doing. But then you might ask, if these are fear tasks you wouldn’t like doing anything of them — to that I would answer, any task I would not like doing were fear not present, would not be included in the fear tasks.
Edit: I woke up the next morning, and I felt lonely as fuck.
Granted I also watched some of my friends’ ig stories. But nevertheless, I feel like there should be a component to my social woes that might not entirely be guided by fear, but by going out there and connecting with people. Sometimes they may be the same things, and sometimes, maybe not.
I don’t know exactly how to quantify it.
But yeah, and I’ve made this observation before, in my 2023 eoy post, that I need a {social circle} separate from {social courage}.
That is, I need to put effort into just going out there and doing social things. I think it is more important than fear itself. As I see it, most people are actually probably more socially anxious than me on average since I started working on my anxiety. Probably. But anyway, yeah, most people are kinda shy, and I can do things they can’t nevertheless, I still lonely. So I’ve started to believe it’s less a matter of overcoming my social fears, and more a matter of just socializing, in general.
So, I’m just thinking, how do I do it?
I’m thinking, since most days, (especially if I’m not planning on looking like a weirdo anymore) I will not have enough opportunities to test my social fears. So I’ll club the fear tasks, along with another category called {social effort} to do something every day, under the same umbrella.
I know I’m getting back to the same social {circle+courage} model.
I guess that’s a good thing. I’ve arrived to the same conclusion after thinking through this from scratch twice.
So, anyway, what would be considered a successful day of this clubbed {social} habit? The litmus test of course, for social effort/circle is at least that I did not feel lonely or isolated today. Like Elon Musk said, “I decided I never wanted to feel lonely again.” I think that’s a very nice and easy way to put it. On most days I can talk to my flatmates, or my colleagues, and that’s probably good enough. Then on the weekends or work from home days, I need to go a step further and talk to other people out of the way, like those found online, or those found through going out there and engaging with people through social fear tasks.
So I guess the better metric for social habit is not to do something I’m scared of, as you usually do run out of things, and you still end up lonely. But rather, the metric is something more broad like, “Do whatever it takes, to not feel lonely.” So what that would mean is, could be just simple social effort, could be just social fear tasks, could be spending time on online dating or other kinds of social apps to meet people and make connections, etc.
So, there you have it, all my life, SORTED.
My daily habits: {social, work, walk, diet}.
social: “do whatever it takes to not feel lonely.”
work: “1 hour.”
walk: “8k steps.”
diet: “eat healthy. only eat when hungry. do not eat when not hungry.”
I know that the daily metrics are kinda a bit dumb/subjective for social/diet, but I think restricting it to something more hard and concrete would not work, as I have tried before. These are big and vague and ambiguous topics and need to be that way.
And anyway, I’ve decided to go lenient on myself, and stop following any hard metrics, and go with the flow with life as it goes. (wasn’t it obvious when I said I’ve started listening to psychedelic rock again)
So, we’ll see how it goes.