Perhaps life’s greatest irony is that when we tend to care the least about something, we actually perform the best in that same thing. This idea can explain why most people perform poorly under pressure and why only a select group of people actually do well.
As humans we do our best in different aspects when we are carefree and the stress is off our backs. When nobody is watching us, we can make tough basketball shots or sing at the top of our lungs with ease. When suddenly someone foreign enters our domain however everything changes. We hit the side of the rim on those same shots, and we turn our loud vocalized chant into a quiet hum.
See this is a problem for everyone. Not just me or not just you, but everyone. We all feel social pressure at different times during the day and throughout our lives. That’s just how we are wired. It’s okay because it keeps us from acting like complete fools and having no regard for others. For instance, it’s this same social pressure that keeps us (most of us anyway) from walking around naked or swearing in public. However, a better line must be drawn in the sand. At some point, it should be okay to be ourselves and act the way we want to. Not every minute in public should be a minute where we think about what others think of us. At some point we have to take a stand and say “Who cares? Who really cares about what I do, and if I screw up? If I do, it’s okay.”
As you know, it took me a long time to really get good with women. It took me years and years in fact, to really understand women and to create a successful dating life for myself. When I first started out approaching women and first going out on dates with women I was awful. I was awful because I always stressed out about what I was doing wrong. If I told a joke and the girl didn’t laugh I would feel rejected. If I said something which she took the wrong way or was offended by, I would lose all confidence in myself. If it was time to go for a kiss and God forbid she didn’t kiss me back, it was completely over. I would be heart-broken and emotionally ruined for the rest of the date.
See I was trying to be perfect and have everything go right. The problem was…I wasn’t perfect. I never was nor could I ever be. Come to think of it, nobody is, and nobody will ever be. It’s a realization that occurred to me one day and one that really helped me change my approach.
After realizing that things were not always going to go my way, I realized that I could stop stressing so much about them. I started to give myself a break when something didn’t work out well for me. If I tried something like a joke or a kiss, and my date didn’t respond well to it, I brushed it off. I didn’t let this feeling hold me down or cause me further trouble. Instead, I just released it and cared not about it.
By releasing these worries I was able to have a lot more success. It was like shooting hoops when I was alone, because in a way I was. I was alone “in my own reality,” and I was choosing and deciding what I wanted my reality to become. I wasn’t allowing negative emotions to take over my life, but instead deciding to get rid of the negative, and focus on something else. In this case, it was focusing on enjoying myself and having fun. When you really start to focus on just having fun in life, you automatically shift away from negative emotions. Things like worrying about what others are thinking about you just don’t even cross your mind. And if they do, you just release them. Living a carefree life is a life full of success.
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