Shattering The Lens
A Thoughtful Look Into ThingsArchive for Love, Sex, and Relationships
“I Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” – Getting Over Your One-itis
There is a disease that men often suffer from. It’s called oneitis. Oneitis refers to the affliction of one woman on a man’s heart and mind. Generally, symptoms include an inability to focus on things other than this one woman, a feeling of loss or sadness of something which the person never had, general increases in anxiety, and an inability to see the value in other potential suitors. Oneitis happens when a man becomes fixated on one woman, convinced that she is the one for him and that no other woman can compare. This belief never corresponds with reality.
The thing to know is that oneitis is itself a symptom. It is a symptom of some other insecurity or emotional problem from which the man is suffering. The trouble is that guys often try to fix oneitis by fixing the symptom. But, like any good doctor will tell you, you need to find the root cause of the symptoms and fix that or the symptoms will continue to return. People give you advice like distracting yourself with other endeavors, friends, or other women. The reality, however, is that these things will only solve your problem if the root cause is that you’re bored. If a fundamental boredom with life is the issue, then additional “distractions” are great, but otherwise, you will eventually return to your fixation. Below, I’ve included real tangible advice to help you get over any oneitis.
1. Talk to Somebody – Get therapy. You need to find out what the real issue is. Maybe you’re afraid of the future. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re good enough to be loved by anyone else. Maybe you have a poor body image. There is something there; I guarantee it. That something is being satiated by the fixation on this one woman. Don’t go to regular therapists that everyone else goes to, though. You don’t need somebody to talk at. You need somebody who will actively engage with you and work to dig deeper to a real honest answer. You need someone who you can trust to poke at your emotional buttons. This may be a friend, an ex, a mentor, or any number of other people. You need to talk through your life, from childhood to present, and discover what it is that is informing your current oneitis.
2. Reinvent Your Image - This is integral to getting over a oneitis. You need to shed your former emotional structure which allowed you to fall into the fixation in the first place. Part of this is shedding the comfort and routine of your old image. Develop a new style. Buy new clothes, shoes, and accessories. If you’re really committed to going it hard, then get a stylist to completely revamp your look. Get a manicure and a new haircut. Make a day of it, and go to a spa. These things will refresh you and your emotional state, allowing you to effectively approach life with a bright new perspective.
3. Be Social – You need to go out an meet people. You need to make friends that add new types of excitement and engagement to your life. You need to develop an appreciation for many different people and types of people. This way of life will help you realize that many different people have things to offer, and there are more people out there than just that one girl. This advice is not intended to get you laid, as sex will not help you solve the problem most of the time. You should go out and connect with new people, men and women. Find out about them, and let them find out about you. You will find that you can engage with many different people, and your life will be much richer for it.
I hope this helps, and good luck.
Why I Hate Your Pink Equals Signs
I do my best not to write emotionally charged posts that make sweeping generalizations. Every now and then, however, I find myself traveling a path of agitation that only a cathartic chastising of the greater social media community can cure. This is one of those every now and thens.
Let me start by saying that this post does not apply to all people who displayed the surprisingly ugly logo on their respective social media profiles. In fact, the pink equals signs that were accompanied by photos of the person standing in front of the Supreme Court, talking to their respective legislators, or even attending a rally were more than tolerable; they were invited. What isn’t invited is the picture being posted by everyone else.
Most of the people posting the logo are just engaging in a peculiar sort of moral masturbation to make themselves feel good. I’m not saying they don’t believe in ‘marriage equality,’ but they don’t work toward it. If you have never attended a rally, donated to a campaign, written an article, written a letter to your congressman, or done anything else to actually contribute to the movement, then your display of a logo is nothing more than annoying. It is something that you’re doing to serve your own emotional needs rather than to serve the actual cause.
The increasingly troubling aspect of this phenomena is that it perpetuates a blind adherence to a concept that people don’t really understand. Many of these logo fiends have an infantile emotional understanding of the what ‘gay marriage’ even is or the arguments for/against it. They don’t understand the research which has been done regarding sexuality, nor can they provide defensible reasons for what they believe. This state of mind makes these people no better than those on the opposite side. If “love is love is love” is an acceptable argument in favor of gay marriage, then “killing is killing is killing” is an acceptable argument against abortion.
In short, if you’re one of these people who hopped on the bandwagon and couldn’t argue your way out of a paper bag, shut the fuck up; I’m tired of hearing you jack off your moral superiority load over everyone’s collective faces. If you’re one of those people who actually have been discriminated against, have contributed to the cause in tangible ways, have personal tales to tell, or even know what you’re talking about, then I invite you to speak more loudly. I like hearing what you have to say because it’s meaningful, and it doesn’t wreak of self-gratification.
How Learning to Pick Up Women Changed My Life
It’s not about getting laid. I mean, sure, that’s how it starts for a lot of guys. It’s sort of how it started for me. I wanted control, and I wanted understanding. I didn’t want to be taken advantage of again or to feel absolutely rejected. That’s how it started.
In a few months, I lost the feelings of embarrassment and rejection. They no longer meant anything to me because I had been rejected more times in a couple weeks than I had in the entire rest of my life. And you know what’s great about that? Nothing changed in those couple weeks except that I freed myself from mental and social constraints that had held me back without me even realizing it. I was in the same spot after one hundred rejections that I had been in before the one hundred rejections. The difference? I was now ready to experience success. And I’m not talking about small successes like graduating college. I’m talking about major successes like getting an MA at 19, publishing a research paper in a peer reviewed journal, presenting at an international philosophy conference, and ridding myself of toxic relationships.
This all began with me wanting to be better with women, and I want to share a little bit of that journey today. In part, I want to clear up some misconceptions. “Pickup Artists,” as they are known, often get a bad reputation. Of course, there is some merit to this bad reputation as there are some pretty sketchy guys out there. But, I’m not here to talk about them because nobody knows about them. Think about it, can you name one sleazy pickup artist who teaches people how to take advantage of women? Yet, you have a consistent belief that that’s all those people do. The really good ones, though, the ones that are world famous, don’t teach you how to get laid. They teach you how to become your best self. They teach you invaluable life skills: building relationships, demonstrating social value, networking, getting into a career you’re passionate about. That’s what I want to talk about. I want to talk about all the things that Game teaches, the things people aren’t aware of.
Game teaches courage. It’s terrifying. Approaching one hundred strangers (all women) in the course of two weeks and asking them out is one of the most terrifying things I have ever done. I got rejected by each and every one of those one hundred women. As I mentioned earlier though, the great thing about it is that I am no longer afraid to approach any woman, no matter how beautiful or famous she may be. This courage transcends quite easily to other parts of my life. I’m not afraid to be honest with my parents, nor am I afraid to confront my superiors at work. I am not afraid to challenge people when they are being cruel, nor am I afraid to take financial risks. Fear of rejection holds us back in multiple aspects of our lives, and overcoming that fear requires true inner courage. Game teaches you inner courage.
Game teaches accountability. You must be accountable to yourself. One of the fundamental components of learning how to pick up women is actually learning how to pick women….duh! To do this, you have to learn new techniques, set goals to practice them, and develop a consistent method for receiving feedback and learning from mistakes. Accountability is useful in all aspects of my life. I can hold myself to an exercise and nutrition regimen. I keep commitments to friends and family, and I am unafraid to call people out when they don’t make commitments. I am reliable, loyal, and helpful. Game teaches you accountability.
Game teaches you to let go. Romantic movies constantly depict this ideal of letting go and living freely. People want to engage in what they’re passionate about but rarely take the steps to do it. Learning to pick up women is risky. You have to let go of your preconceived notions about social interactions, and you have to become vulnerable. You have to open yourself up to new concepts, ideas, and people. The world of pickup is strange, filled with interesting characters and unique ideas. It is difficult not to pass a priori judgments. In order to experience what the world has to offer, you must be willing to free yourself and take risks. Game teaches you how to take those risks.
Game teaches humility. There is always somebody you can learn from. There is always somebody who has some knowledge or lesson to offer. Understanding this reality makes you truly humble. Most people who are humble are that way falsely. They act as if they believe others have value, but their true inner selves do not reflect it. Such false humility only inhibits growth. Game is a constant learning process, a process which involves drawing lessons from endless sources and actually trying to understand those lessons to derive value from them. This constant process breeds a realization that there is always something to be learned from someone. This is real humility. Game teaches humility.
Game teaches acceptance. Being more social means meeting more people. It means meeting many different kinds of people. It means meeting good people, smart people, stupid people, cruel people, kind people, and all other kinds of people. What this means is you must learn to interact with all those people. In so doing, you learn to see value where others may not see it. You learn to see what really makes people tick and what may be motivating them on a deeper level. You learn understanding on an unprecedented level, and in so doing, you learn real tolerance, not the fake tolerance that people talk about on Facebook when they change their profile pictures to pink equals signs without ever having been to a rally. In accepting others, and also accepting yourself, you learn to love. Game teaches you to love.
This is just a short list and all I’m going to include in this post. The reality is that the community of men that studies and teaches game is not about disrespecting women, though others may think that. This community focuses on self improvement, living a better life, and becoming a better person. The lessons, skills, and people to be found in the halls of pickup artist workshops and meetups are unlike those available anywhere else in the world. The secrets are flowing to the outside world, but there are still some things we haven’t told you 
Limiting Beliefs – What They Are and Why You Shouldn’t Have Them
You have limiting beliefs. So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to understand what limiting beliefs are. You’re going to learn about all the problems they cause. Then, you’re going take a deep look inside yourself and find out what your limiting beliefs are, and you’re going to work on ridding yourself of those limiting beliefs. This may seem scary, or confusing if you don’t know what limiting beliefs are, but fear not, for I shall help guide you through this process.
What are Limiting Beliefs?
As the heading to this section suggests, let’s start by talking about what limiting beliefs are. A limiting belief is any belief you have which prevents you from doing something or hinders your ability to do it. These beliefs can manifest as a result of many different things such as your relationship with you parents, a traumatic life events, social conditioning, etc…
There are a couple questions which need to be addressed immediately. Limiting beliefs are always wrong. When I say ‘wrong’ I mean that they do not correspond to reality. The reason a limiting belief will always be incorrect is because a proper assessment of reality can never hold you back, even if the assessment identifies a roadblock to success. An accurate belief will allow you to navigate the world more effectively and actually accomplish what you would like to accomplish.
Identifying Limiting Beliefs
We are biologically constructed to have limiting beliefs, but we are also biologically constructed to have adverse physical reactions when we process or think about these beliefs. Concurrently, and I’ll elaborate more on this in the next section, we are biologically constructed to physically resonate with actual reality. Through our perceptions, we have an actual print of reality somewhere in our minds. When we cognitively process that image and put it into words our brains can consciously work with, we recognize that, and it triggers a physiological response. So how can you identify limiting beliefs?
Throughout your day, you will find yourself thinking about particular assessments of the world and of other people. When you think about these things, take a moment to look at how your body is responding. Do you have a dull weight-like pain in your solar plexus? Have you started sweating a little bit more? Are the muscles in your back and neck suddenly carrying more tension? Are you losing track of where you are and what you’re doing because you’re lost in your thoughts? Are you losing motivation to act? Is your mood becoming increasingly sad or worried? If you answered yes to most of these questions, then you are processing a limiting belief.
Let’s take a common example that many students deal with. The belief looks something like this, “My major gives me way more work than anyone else.” When students, particularly in the hard sciences, think about the work they are faced with, they often have the adverse physiological responses mentioned above. This belief is perpetuated throughout our college education system by students and faculty alike. The trouble is that this belief limits a student’s ability to act to resolve the tasks they have to complete. The student accepts his/her reality as one of constantly being stressed and overloaded with work. In reality, the national average of difference in hours of weekly work between the most demanding and least demanding majors is approximately 5 hours. That’s it, 5 hours over a 7 day week, less than one hour per day. However, stress assessments of students across the country consistently show that students studying in the “more demanding” majors have much higher stress levels completely disproportionate to the amount of work they have to do. The reason for this is that the limiting belief prevents students from actually searching for ways to improve their workflow and task management. It also prevents them from completing their work as efficiently as they would otherwise.
There are some key types of limiting beliefs you need to be aware of. One type is the example used above. It’s a perpetuated inaccuracy about a quantitative aspect of reality. Another good example is, “There aren’t enough hours in the day for everything I need to do.” Another type of limiting belief is a perpetuated inaccuracy about a qualitative aspect of reality. So, for example, “Engineering is harder than Anthropology.” There is quantifiable way to measure “harder,” and the difficulty of any discipline is relative to the person studying it. A final type of limiting belief you should be aware of is the affirmation. Sometimes, limiting beliefs will disguise themselves as false appreciations or happiness. For example, “I am happy with my relationship,” or, “My career is right on track.”
Learning to identify your limiting beliefs is the first step to getting rid of them and opening up your world to an entirely new set of possibilities.
Getting Rid of Your Limiting Beliefs
As I mentioned earlier, we are biologically constructed to resonate with reality. Think about any time in your life when you have had an epiphany. Relive the physical responses that your body underwent. You probably sat up straighter, your eyes widened, you facial muscles lost tension, etc… The reason is because your brain recognized that you had processed an image of reality which you already had but were not consciously aware of.
Let’s think about this logically. For every statement you make like this ones I used as examples above, there are a total of five logical permutations. One of these permutations must be true. Let me use an example to explain what I mean. Take the statement, “All apples are red.” It has the following 4 permutations:
All apples are red
All apples are not red
Not all apples are red
Not all apples are not red
At least one of these statements has to be true. And, you may have noticed that when reading them, you realized that #3 and #4 were both true, and you probably responded to that realization physically in some way. In order to rid yourself of your limiting beliefs, you need to phrase them in the statement form like this one and write down each of their permutations. Then, read the statements aloud to yourself. When you get to the one (or two) which are true, you will know it immediately. Some of these realizations may scare you initially, and you may be reluctant to accept them. The key to ridding yourself of these beliefs is to approach the process with a completely open mind.
Once you arrive at reality, you will no longer cling to your limiting belief. The next step is to actually act on your newly discovered knowledge. If your realization is about another person, go talk to them about it. If it’s about your work management, talk to people who can teach you way to better manage your time. Acting on your realizations reinforces them and prevents your limiting beliefs from taking hold again.
I realize this may seem like a tall task, but it is definitely manageable. Follow this simple outline, and you will become a completely new person.
Good luck!
The Five Best Vibrators
The Five Best Vibrators
If you’re looking for a little (or in this case a lot) more pleasure, check out this list of wonderful little toys that are guaranteed to give you what you’re looking for.
1.
The Lelo Nea
2.The Hitachi Magic Wand
3. The Butterfly Kiss
4. The Doc Johnson Lucid Dream #14
5.Slim Teardrop Bullet
