You finally get the courage to go up to this cute girl on a busy city street and you strike up a conversation. Your start to get jittery, your heart pounds violently, and you are uneasy as can be. Then, after working up the courage to go for the close, you ask her for her number and she gives it to you.
You decide one day to walk up to another cute girl on a busy city street and you strike up a conversation with her. You feel relaxed, you don’t really give a shit, and you casually talk to her like some random stranger. Then, you go for the number and she tells you she has a boyfriend.
In which situation did you really win?
Well, too soon to tell.
In the first situation, the girl texted you back after you texted her which got you all emotionally excited. You felt like you won a fair deal with this hot girl and your emotions were just all over the place. Then, she ghosts you after a couple of texts and it just stays in your mind, what if you text her a couple more times now? What if she is with the guy who embodies the very kind of guy you hate? What if she forgot about you? What if she is just “busy”? All of these thoughts just race through your head.
In the second situation, you laugh it off and go on with your day, approaching another hot girl at a bar or nightclub. No jitters, no heart pounding, and none of the worries on your end anymore. Maybe you get a handful of numbers that day, maybe you get none, who really cares?
You can see where I am going with this now. In reality, the second situation is one where you really “won”.
All too often, we get way too attached to the outcome. We worry about the outcome even well before the event which causes us to get nervous, anxious, worry, and defeat ourselves long before the battle has even started. We get way too emotional and put undue pressure on ourselves as a result of all that has piled up.
When we get into the event itself, we overthink things and stop truly being ourselves. We do not really put our best out there because the pressure causes us to be too constrained and “tight” as some say. What ends up happening is that we do not perform to the standard we are supposed to because we let the moment get too big for us.
It happens in all aspects of life really, not just dating. Whether it is that dream job interview, that performance on stage, or a competitive match. We just let the moment get too big for ourselves and lose who we are as a result of that moment. In sports, they call this “choking”.
But think about it, how much control do you really have in a lot of these outcomes?
Girls rejects you, is brutally mean to you, and is just not interested. Well, what if she actually does have a boyfriend? What if she is having a bad day? What if she is going through a rough time in life and rather not talk to strangers? What if she is a genuinely bad person that loves hurting feelings?
Job of your dream rejects you for some reason. What if they were going to hire internally and you were just there to fill space? What if the manager prefers someone who is culturally way different than you are? What if there was legitimately a perfect candidate for them on paper with more experience than you? What if the job itself is genuinely not a good fit for you and even you knew it deep down?
In a lot of these situations, you don’t really have as much control of the outcome as you would have initially thought. Sometimes, whether it is due to the circumstances or just plain dumb luck, things are just way out of your control. Perhaps the outcome was really decided to where even if you gave it your best, it would have had the same result.
So naturally you would think I am allowing you to make excuses right? To blame outside circumstances for your failures? To ignore all accountability?
No, I am asking actually you to have even more accountability than you normally would by looking at what you can control, primarily your emotions and reaction to the situation. If you get anxious and nervous when approaching a girl but she gives you her number, you have not really won.
You could have controlled your feelings, emotions, and anxiety by mastering your inner-self but you didn’t. In that case, even if you won, you actually lost. You lost because you could not control the things that you could have controlled, you failed to do so.
Now if you go up to a girl, get rejected in a harsh way, and even have a few strangers laugh at the situation but you somehow kept your cool internally? You win. If you kept that cool frame and didn’t let the moment get too big for you, you actually won.
There is a catch here of course, because obviously at this point I am creating a spam approacher who goes around saying the same worthless crap to women but gets rejected all the time. If that guy is somehow not moved to think at some point “maybe my lines or something about me really sucks”, well then you are either dealing with an insane person or an idiot.
The question you should be answering yes to in order to see if a situation has been a win is whether you were yourself in that stressful situation. If you were yourself not some anxious guy who let the moment get too big for him, then you won. You only lost if you failed to control the outcome of one thing you always have a control of, your reaction to things.
In pickup, they call it “outcome independence” and on the red pill, they call it “holding frame”.
If there are any parts of those two movements I agree with, it is basically their push to get men to be outcome independent. Once you become outcome independent, you approach things differently. Rejections hurt less (even though they still hurt), stuff rarely rattles you, and you are more of yourself in stressful situations.
Even if yourself and the genuine you is not enough, who cares? At the end of the day, you won the only war you could control the full outcome of based on what you do, the war with yourself.
