It’s not your flaws that you are aware of that cause insecurity and self-esteem issues. It’s the flaws you’re not aware of, the self-defeating beliefs you don’t even know you have.
Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains this problem brilliantly, “We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know.”
The harsh truth is that your analysis of what’s causing your social problems is inaccurate, limited, and completely biased. If you want to make a change, you must first learn the true cause of your social problems, understanding this is the foundation that any social self-improvement is built on.
Self-confidence and charisma (or the lack of them) are largely the results of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Psychologists have found that social expectations become social outcomes. This has been shown time and again by research on a powerful psychological force known as the Pygmalion Effect.
Imagine a babysitter is warned by a friend that the kid she’s going to babysit is a real shithead, he’s impatient, annoying, and arrogant. After hearing this, the babysitter becomes anxious about meeting this kid. When she finally meets him, just as expected, he’s horrible. This kid won’t listen to her, he has a short temper, and he treats her with total contempt.
There’s something the babysitter was totally blind to. The kid she babysat wasn’t usually a shithead, he was usually a perfectly normal kid. He acted like a shithead because she expected him to act like a shithead. Psychologists believe this happens because when we expect people to act a certain way, we treat them differently (often without our awareness). The person that’s a total asshole around you might be a saint around someone else.
This matches common sense, if you’re a Trump supporter and you met Hillary Clinton, you’d probably treat her very differently than a supporter of hers would, and she would probably treat you differently than she would treat a supporter of hers.
We don’t just cause people to treat us differently based on our expectations of them. Our negative beliefs about ourselves cause other people to treat us differently too. If you don’t respect yourself, your behavior will reflect this (and people will treat you with less respect.
Someone who is self-pitying gets pity, not respect. If you believe you’re a weird who doesn’t deserve to be liked, you’re going to act uncomfortable around people. You will be shy and closed off, this behavior will repel people, and as you notice that people don’t seem to like you, you’re going to build even more evidence that you’re a weirdo who doesn’t deserve to be liked.
Then you’re going to act even more shy and closed-off around others, and this pattern repeats itself ad naseum. If you were aware this was happening, it would be easy enough to deal with, but we don’t notice this happening. We only live in our own mind which can easily become a vacuum chamber of negative, self-defeating beliefs.
We can’t understand how a better mindset would change our life for a similar reason that a deaf person can’t really understand how hearing would change their life.
We don’t have the proper context to understand what our mindset is doing to us until we become aware that our mindset is damaging us and is negative in ways that it doesn’t need to be. Lack of this awareness is why you don’t think it’s your behavior that’s repelling people, but that it’s the ‘fact’ that you’re a weirdo that’s repelling people.
Without knowing it, we become our own worst enemy. We might believe people are assholes, but we don’t realize they’re just reflecting our own beliefs back at us. We might believe we’re not worthy of affection, but we don’t realize that we wall ourselves from vulnerability and make it impossible to receive affection.
We might believe we don’t deserve a girlfriend, but we don’t realize that we could easily get a girlfriend if we just took the right actions. In countless ways, we fuck ourselves, and because our brain is constantly looking for an explanation for our problems, we blame those problems on something we don’t think we can control to free ourselves of responsibility.
We do this because it’s easy, like it or not, our brain is designed to take the easy route, and facing insecurities is never easy. The truth is that you are in control of (and therefore responsible) for all your social shortcomings, but it’s intrinsically difficult to notice the damage you’re doing to yourself.
Changing yourself isn’t hard because it takes so much willpower or hard work, change is hard because it requires openminded introspection and honest questioning of your own thoughts, behaviors, and values.
Case Study: A Man Who Fucked Himself Over Without Knowing it
I had a friend, Nick, who was an interesting case, he was good looking by societal standards, 6’2, blonde hair blue eyes, athletic build. He generally seemed socially confident, you would never guess that he had a crippling anxiety towards meeting women.
He had hooked up with some women by getting wasted and trolling the bars, but they were rarely the kind of women he wanted in his life. Still, he would take what he could get and date the first girl who would sleep with him, once he dated a girl he wasn’t physically attracted to for an entire year.
After a few years of drunken debauchery, he met a girl who actually met his standards, she was athletic, ambitious, confident, caring, everyone loved her.He was super nervous when he met her, but with some nudging from his friends he managed to go on a few dates with her. After they started dating, he began acting incredibly neurotic.
Because of his nerves about this girl, he decided he needed to meet other women. He found a girl on tinder, slept with her, then on the same day (while the tinder girl was still at our house), he invited his crush to come by.
His dream girl came over, and the situation quickly deteriorated into sitcom-level awkwardness as Nick told his dream girl that he had slept with this other girl. Unsurprisingly, this turned his dream girl off, and they stopped dating.
A couple months later, Nick met his dream girl again, he was afraid to approach her, but another friend and I convinced him to do it. Surprisingly, she was happy to see him and they made plans to hang out again. Nick never followed through with these plans.
Nick hasn’t slept with another girl in six months since this happened. He will declare that he needs to start meeting women again, and he’ll go out once or twice (for 30 minutes before he drives back home), and then he’ll say he needs to focus on his career right now.
Recently he decided this dream girl of his fucked him up. He said what happened made him unable to meet women anymore, that he’s scarred, and this is why he won’t go out.
The Downward Spiral
From the outside looking in, his behavior is clearly neurotic. But to him, it all made logical sense. That’s the real problem, it’s so obvious how other people unnecessarily fuck themselves over, but we all have a bias to be blind to our own similar behavior.
It’s easy to notice when someone else is falling into a neurotic, self-destructive pattern, but it’s incredibly difficult to admit this to yourself.Nick’s mindset has a foundational issue that’s preventing him from growing. He is dealing with his relationship problems using what psychologists call a static mindset.
A static mindset is a belief that people don’t change, that we are the victim to external circumstances. A static mindset is a ruthless self-fulfilling prophecy.
For example, you can have a static belief that you aren’t intelligent. Maybe you didn’t excel in school early on and the feedback you got made you believe that school just wasn’t for you, you just aren’t smart enough. This calcifies into a static mindset that you are not smart, that you, as a person, aren’t able to be a good student. This mindset becomes self-reinforcing.
When you are assigned homework, you tell yourself that you’re not a good student, so you avoid the homework or approach it halfheartedly. When you read for class you don’t pay attention, because, what’s the point? You’re not going to get anything out of it anyway, school’s just a waste of time for a dumb kid.
Then the grades come in, your parents are disappointed, and the negative feedback is stressful. The easiest way to interpret this feedback is to blame your failure on something outside of your control. Something essential to who you are, like your lack of intelligence.
By doing this, you relieve yourself from the pain of knowing that your own decisions are causing you to fail. By doing this, it’s not your fault. Instead, it’s like a disease, something you don’t have to blame yourself for, something that you’re a victim to.
This is a negative self-belief that can only lead to negative feelings about yourself. Sure, you alleviate yourself from responsibility for your problems, but you accomplished this through negative self-evaluation. This frees you from one source of stress, and traps you in another, far more damning stress- the feeling of helplessness. You paralyze yourself and make action impossible, because your mindset says action is pointless, that you’re not good enough, no matter what you do.
Victims to Ourselves
Nick believes that he doesn’t deserve a healthy relationship based on mutual respect. So, he makes it impossible for himself to get in this kind of relationship. He avoids meeting women unless he gets wasted, and when he does meet a woman he really likes, he self-sabotages the relationship so that it’s doomed to end before it ever really begins.
He tells himself a story about why this is happening, a story about who he is- a person that is fundamentally damaged, wounded, a victim. And through making himself a victim, he entitles himself to continue acting in self-destructive ways, sabotaging his relationships with ridiculous decisions like inviting a second girl on a date with the girl he really likes.
And those self-destructive behaviors reinforce his static, negative self-beliefs. He must be damaged or he wouldn’t keep acting in such self-harming ways. If he weren’t a victim, then why does he keep making the same mistakes without ever escaping the cycle?
Most people do this, the differentiator between those who change and those who don’t is how effective you are at becoming aware of the damage you’re doing to yourself.
Every time you catch yourself falling into a self-destructive social pattern, you are opening yourself up to change. This is the only way to make real, substantial growth. Ask yourself how you might be doing this to yourself right now. It may be mild, it may be extreme, but self-destructive patterns are there, no one’s mindset is perfectly enlightened. We all have negative beliefs about ourselves.
The path towards deep confidence is a path of building awareness of the ways in which your mindset is damaging yourself, and then finally being free to let go of them and disprove them.
Don’t think of your mindset as something you need to ‘fix’, in a paradoxical way, this gives that mindset more charge, more power. What you resist, persists. Actively fighting against a mindset is emotionally acknowledging that mindset as valid. Conscious rebellion doesn’t work, the path towards true change is counter-intuitive, it is surrender.
By accepting you do have negative self-beliefs, by surrendering to the fact that these mindsets are affecting you, they lose their emotional power over you. This is the path to freeing yourself from your self-imposed limitations.
(Part three will dive into the specific how-to of becoming aware of your own negative self-beliefs and freeing yourself from the problems they create)
If you want to see part three when it's released, you can do so by subscribing to the newsletter at: http://socialinception.net/
silverpal 6y ago
I love this post! We too often victimize ourselves rather than trying to recognize our mistakes and fix them. The only problem is not to ruminate on things for too long. This will cause depression and not allow us to be present. Maybe Nick was ruminating on what he did wrong and that is why he is freezing up with women.
You really need to find that happy medium and get advice from either reading or more importantly a third person view. This is a hard game to play with yourself. If you made the mistake in the first place you may not be interpreting the events correctly. Then self-reflection may be pushing you down the wrong mindset.
Self-improvement is a hard journey. Going metaphorically for a second. Think about lifting. You have to use progressive overload. Continually pushing yourself further and going with bigger weights but if your form is off your going to just hurt yourself in the end. Weightlifting form is the correct mindset, putting those heavier weights up is more experience. Make sure you are operating from the correct mindset!
BenzoBoomer 6y ago
Mindset is huge, just the angle and perspective you view everything at. For example, when I was shredding for summer trying to get into that single digit bf, I used to view it as 'This is shit, I can't eat that pizza, those crisps' etc.. However I shifted my mindset to see what I would gain from shredding, not what I was missing out on. I told myself how good I would look, how great I would feel etc.. and that motivated me.
And this applies to literally everything in life
Fraita 6y ago
Great post!
I've just fell in this kind of downard spiral. I've never had problem with stutter and not more then anyone else, problem with articulate words. But latley i've started to stutter like hell and just "slum" the word out.
Don't know really why or what is happening, before I was a social creature and now I don't want to hang with people at all. I just think they are just slowing me down.
And another thing, is it wise to go in with an open mind and ask friends what the "worst" traits I have? Just to see my own "blindness".
I recently got pointed out that I have very feminine traits (been living with 4 girls since young age, and no male to look up to) and I try to catch my self when I "use" them. Good thing to work on :)
Good post and sorry to the readers of my english, hope you understand. I'm so PWO-fueled right now so I just want to spit out everything at the same time + with a bad English.
[deleted] 6y ago
[deleted]
Aghayden 6y ago
Part three will go more into what the step-by-step process looks like.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson goes deep into building self-awareness, fantastic book.
Thinking, Fast and Slow is written by Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and shows you many of the mistakes that the brain makes, reading it will seriously help you understand your own mind. The writing style isn't the most fun to read, but the content is brilliant.
DatingCoach111 6y ago
I won't recommend any methods for acknowledging self damaging patterns, but I believe we are all interested in knowing how we can create true, permanent change.
Look up Psych-K.
evilcatnap 6y ago
Sounds like you haven't quite grasped Daniel Kahneman's ideas yourself.
The idea in the book is that our normal state in life is to think fast --to live in reaction. Thinking slow - learning, analysing, reflecting - takes mental energy and is not something we enjoy engaging in often.
For example, most people may choose to attend a grocery store without preplanning. This is an exmaple of functioning in the fast state.
A person thinking slow will take the extra time to write a grocery list. In the long run, this saves you money and - possibly - time, but it requires shifting out of fast mode and expending more energy.
Basically, to avoid making mistakes which in turn allows you to live a better life --try and think slow more often.
Most people on the Red Pill are already doing this, or they wouldn't be here in the first place. In your defence, I suppose a reminder doesn't hurt.
However, the story about your friend sounded more like a guy without game knowledge rather than someone engaging in self-sabotage. Lust has a tendency to make men 'think fast' (react).
BestSC86 6y ago
I don't think game has anything to do with the dude inviting his LTR over while he has a Tinder fuck at his house.
That would follow the premise of Op more than a hapless dude without game.
I mean the dude apparently has enough 'game' to be fucking and dating two girls interested enough to come over and get pissed that he would introduce them.
whutyomamado 6y ago
I can also see it as a poorly executed attempt at dread game.
He should have been more subtle, rather than overtly inviting his crush to see him hanging out with another girl.
To add insult to injury he even told her they just fucked.
2Bait4Me 6y ago
Great read,looking forward to part 3.
[deleted] 6y ago
Can someone post me the link of part1
Bad_Wolfs 6y ago
Here you go: http://socialinception.net/zero-fucks-given-guide-deep-social-confidence-pt-1/
Luckyluke23 6y ago
dude this is amazing. I REALLY thought I was bad with women... then I read about nick... now I don't feel so bad...
I think this is the greatest post I have ever read. I've always been putting myself down for other reasons, but now I see I CHOOSE to do this.
it's really funny what a new mindset can do
Aghayden 6y ago
Glad you found it helpful, man.
clme 6y ago
I for one found your "case study" very weak. You presume things about Nick you can't possibly know, unless you are him. And the so-called self-destructive behavior of orchestrating the two girls to see each other might have been the result of Nick applying or mis-applying the Red Pill: getting the two girls to be jealous, to compete for him, leveraging social proof, etc.
By the way, the bullshit research by Carol Dweck on static mindsets has failed many replicability tests and is now quickly becoming one of the blemishes of social psychology. You do nobody any favors by citing what is quickly turning out to be pseudo-science or half-baked science.
Aghayden 6y ago
That's cool. He admitted what he was doing afterwards. And frankly, I have a more objective view of him than he does of himself (and vice versa).
Source on Carol Dweck's mindset research being bullshit? There's a lot of research beyond hers into mindset, hundreds upon hundreds of studies that reach the general conclusion that mindsets are something like a far more powerful and robust version of the placebo effect.
Riddlebottom 6y ago
Scott Alexander, who I can best describe as a psychiatrist obsessed with statistics, has an excellent series of posts about Dweck's theories and studies, and why they're most likely bullshit. This one and this one are the most general ones and you might want to take a look at them.
The tl;dr version is that if "growth mindset" actually worked, it would probably have revolutionized the fields of social science and education ages ago. This hasn't happened and none of Dweck's ideas have been successful in any practical setting. Her studies are also dubious for a bunch of reasons, and replications seem to be very hit-and-miss.
clme 6y ago
For lay people, an easy read is this: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/schools-are-desperate-to-teach-growth-mindset-but-its-based-on-a-lie/#
For people with more education, they can find recent peer-reviewed articles by Timothy Bates on Google Scholar about repeated failures to replicate Dweck's feel-good theory.
GunPostal 6y ago
This story doesn't make any sense. I think he is just bored, scared and stressed out of not knowing what to do with his life that's why he is playing the jealousy game with these women because that at least relieves his anxiety. It became a fetish that is though pleasurable, is not good in the long run. Now he got guilty, he is scared of losing his emotional support that helps him deal with this directionless life.
He must have mission in his life and that will help him feel grounded.
[deleted]
Pro_Like_Me 6y ago
I really hope you discussed this with nick at some point to try help him
[deleted] 6y ago
Two things:
1) I'm curious to know what caused Nick to feel this way to begin with... like the victim... damaged. I'd imagine something painful in his past related to girls. He was humiliated at some point. Exposed and made to feel very anxious.
2) So how does one who deals with a lot of anxiety combat it? You suggest that trying to find the reasons behind it and then conquering them is not the answer? Interesting. You could be right. So what do you propose a person do. Next time he or she is thrown into a stressful situation. Is the only answer to sort of turn the brain off and dive into it? It's not so easy. The brain is very powerful and near impossible to control - or turn off - for certain people in these in these situations. A very anxious person will tell themselves: "Okay, turn the brain off. Just stop thinking about it. These people all like you. This is a happy thing." But that leads to more anxiety. It is a brutal cycle. Love to hear your thoughts.
Nice write up
Aghayden 6y ago
1) I'd guess it has a lot to do with the shame of being raised in an extremely religious household, but I can't know for sure.
Yeah, you can't really talk yourself out of it. There's two main approaches that I find to be effective. One is to surrender to the anxiety, just sit with it, don't try to fight it, you can even try to make it worse consciously, by leaning into it, it loses it's emotional charge. Anxiety is a state in which you're fighting against your current emotional experience, if your conscious intent is, "Bring it on. I want MORE anxiety." Then it has no choice but to go away.
The other approach that works for social anxiety is to take the smallest step into facing your fears possible, if you're meeting women, it might be to just start walking around the god damn venue. Then it might be saying hi to people who walk by, then actually approaching them. It's like surfing a wave, if you do something too far out of your comfort zone you'll just make your anxiety worse, push yourself, but in a measured way.
IgnacioVarga 6y ago
TLDR Another armchair psychologist proceeds from 60 year-old findings by bona fide political philosophers and regurgitates them with entries that use hardly any complex vocabulary in order to seduce unintelligent/undereducated youths into the notion that
???
Another armchair psychologist proceeds from 60 year-old findings by bona fide political philosophers and regurgitates them with entries that use hardly any complex vocabulary in order to seduce unintelligent/undereducated youths into the notion that
[deleted]