Self-Observation

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the truth can often be a hard pill to swallow. It can be like trying to down a giant horse-pill vitamin that you’re doctor recommended you start taking; with no water!

Yes, it’s extremely tough to come to grips with things you don’t want, or wish weren’t true. But when you do recognize and accept these things, you become better for it.

We all want to think of ourselves as being proficient in many different areas of life. Some of these areas may include: working, singing, playing sports, reading, driving, having sex, or being successful with women, to name a few.

But there often comes a time when after being unsuccessful after many, many attempts, in whatever it is we are doing, we start to comprehend that we really aren’t all that gifted in this particular field. However, rather than trying to make adjustments in our approach, many of us (myself included) like to ignore our failures, and keep trying to succeed despite changing nothing!

The great Albert Einstein himself, perhaps the smartest human being ever to walk this planet, famously said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Man was he right with this one!

I’m not writing this to be negative, but rather to re-shape some of the common mistakes that I see guys making. Look, nobody is perfect, and we all make mistakes, and we all often suck very badly when we first try something new! That’s just the nature of the beast; learning a new skill, no matter what it is, is a very tough thing.

Virtually nobody in the world can just start something brand new and master it right away. We all will usually fail a few times, if not many times, before we start to get good at whatever it is we are trying. Just think back to when you learned how to drive a car, and how awful you were, or even many years before, when you first learned how to read. Can you recall just how pain-staking and excruciating the process was? I sure can.

Instead of being able to maneuver a vehicle like Jeff Gordon the minute you stepped into the driver’s seat, I’m sure you were jerking the car up and down the road, pressing the gas too much, or jamming the break too hard, and then not hard enough. A learning curve was definitely in place at this moment.

But how did you learn?

You learned by making adjustments. You learned by seeing what worked and what didn’t. You were self-observant and aware of what was going on. By having those failures of jerking the car, perhaps running stop signs and red lights, making turns that were too wide, or maybe even hitting some things along the way, you were able to see what worked, and more importantly what didn’t work, and then you were able to correct these mistakes.

If you had help along the way, in the form of someone like a parent, friend, or teacher, telling you what you were doing wrong and how to fix these mistakes, you probably learned faster. But ultimately it was YOU who made these corrections and YOU who had to be self-observant and aware of how to fix these issues. If you weren’t aware of what to do and how to improve, the tips that were being given to you would have gone in one ear and out the other, and you wouldn’t have learned how to drive…or read this for that matter.

If you didn’t have help, and you learned all on your own, or mostly by yourself, then you too were self-observant and able to pick-up on your mistakes and errors at the time, and then fix them. This is very critical and effective for learning how to get better at something. Again without these adjustments, you would not be able to drive.

It is through self-observation that we can ultimately adapt and grow for the better. We must hone in on this particular trait if we want to improve our lives and learn from our experiences.

So what does this have to do with game?

Everything.

Guys who do not practice self-observation, the act of seeing what works and what doesn’t and then making adjustments accordingly, are guys who are not successful with women. These are the guys who fit right into what Einstein was saying. The guys who do the same things over and over again, and fail in the dating department, but think that for some reason, they are going to miraculously have success. Well, it doesn’t work that way.

If you’re one of these guys, you really do have to start observing what you are doing. Start taking a deep look at the way you are going about meeting and attracting women. If what you are doing right now is not working, you need to make some changes. I know, it’s not easy, trust me, I know! But it needs to be done.

We can only grow and get better at things by seeing what we are doing wrong, and fixing these mistakes. We have to recognize that even though it may not be easy, and even though it may not be what we want to think or feel, we must accept that we are not doing well in this area.

From here however, we can start to make progress. And this is where it gets good. We start to fix the mistakes that we do and we start to correct our problems and then soon enough we find that we are actually proficient in this “new” (or old) skill that we weren’t good at before. Just like driving, we figure out how everything works, and then we get our minds to take over and it becomes second nature. We become more and more comfortable and soon enough even master this skill, like any other skill we’ve mastered before.

Failing at something is okay. It happens to the best of us. Failing at something and not making any changes and any attempts to alter your approach is not okay however. But by being self-observant, we afford ourselves the ability to better adapt to our failure. We give ourselves the best tool for growth and success.

Start becoming more aware and self-observant in what you do and you will start to reap the benefits of all your endeavors!