One vital thing many people Don’t Fucking Get™ about self-improvement is that there’s a cap to it.
You have your limits, and you can never alter them no matter how much action you take.
At a certain level of self-development, there’s just nothing more to develop. You have a genetic limit to how much muscle and strength you can gain. Stuff like athletic ability, IQ, musical talent, that’s also set from birth. You’re innately more suited to certain tasks and jobs and roles than other people are.
This is normal and good.
And while you can IMPROVE the quality of your sexual relationships…
Who exactly you can potentially date, sex, have flings with, or marry, that’s entirely genetically/spiritually predetermined. No matter how high-quality you are, you can’t change whose type you are and aren’t.
Some people’s dating pool is filled with numerous options, and they have an effortless time finding new flings, hookups, and romances all their life. Some people’s dating pool is more limited. Some people don’t have a dating pool, and are being saved for one special person by Fate.
With fitness and health, it’s really all about the basics. I eat a good intake of carbs, fats, and protein. I sleep well. I rest well. I supplement Vitamin D and magnesium glycinate.
I hit my genetic potential for muscle gains when I was 19, and ever since then, I’ve just been maintaining it.
I’ve accepted that my “dating pool” is literally just one gorgeous, sweet, amazing, adorable girl, and I’m super excited to meet her at the perfect God-planned time, place, and circumstance.
As for whether I’m interested in writing takes on specific things, welp. Congrats to me for having opinions on things just like everyone else. I spend a lot of time internally pondering philosophical questions, trying to figure out “how things work”, and looking for final conclusions on a wide variety of things, which I can’t be arsed to type out. It feels much better to let things that aren’t my business be as they are, rather than judging them or labeling them.
And work/career/life purpose stuff… I’ll bloom with that when the time is right.
I’ve accepted that I’m just supposed to be a late bloomer with some things.
My hands and wrists are bigger than they were a few years ago. I’ve also gone up a shoe size or two. My torso, arm, and hip measurements, those are also larger than they were back then.
At 26, I’m still gaining height and bone mass, and likely am far from hitting my full adult skeletal structure.
So what if I haven’t attained romantic success or career success just yet? There’s no real “how to” to these things. Believe me, I spent almost my entire adulthood so far trying to find The Right Formula For Success, so I could figure it out down to every little detail, preach it, and show the world how worthy I am of being followed and listened to, because I’m the one who’s discovered The Right Ways To Live.
The reality is, there are as many ways to attain success as there are people who want success.
Go out into the real world, and you’ll never find just one specific, narrowly-defined type of person making big money, in a relationship with their dream partner, or in great form.
There’s all sorts of people in fantastic shape and health, looking beautiful and sexy no matter their genetics and body type.
There’s all sorts of people making good money doing something they enjoy, whether it’s mundane and “normal”, high-status and glamorous, ambitious and competitive, creative and unconventional…
And in the real world, sex and romance aren’t reserved for one specific type of person, unlike what many dating advice gurus preach. Everyone’s got their match. Everyone has their own individual preferences in what they want in a partner. Fit people, out-of-shape people, intelligent people, simple-minded people, tall people, short people, old people, young people, conventional people, unconventional people, upstanding people who take responsibility for their emotions, narcissistic people who blame the world for all their self-created problems, people of all races and cultures and backgrounds and upbringings, etc… They’ve all got their match. They’ve all got a person or people they’re perfectly aligned with and divinely predestined to get intimate with.
The most common falsehood people believe
The most common falsehood people believe is that there are right ways and wrong ways of life.
They need to go out into the world, discover what The Right Ways To Live are, then return home and convince everyone they know to follow The Right Ways To Live too, and to give up The Wrong Ways To Live.
Nope.
Humanity will never come to a final, definite, universally agreed upon conclusion on any Right Way To Live, or else our expansion and creativity and diversity would end. If you were to demand that everyone prefer and value the same things, conform to the same customs and ways of life, and act in all the same ways, you would be demanding the impossible. You would demand that all of humanity see life from one fixed viewpoint, which would be quite a lonely and Hellish existence. Without diverse and novel viewpoints, there is no vitality and no continuation of life. Only death, decay, and at best, stagnation.
What’s the right set of political, religious, and spiritual beliefs that are more right than all the rest?
What are the right philosophical, psychological, and scientific schools of thought that are more right than all the rest?
What’s the right set of values, preferences, and personal views that are more right than all the rest?
What’s the right way to make money and attain career success that’s more right than all the rest? By what age should you have these?
What are the right sorts of people one should befriend? What activities should friends do together? What relationship dynamics should you expect with them?
What’s the right sort of romantic partner one should be with? How should one choose a man or a woman to date, sex, and/or marry? What traits should you look out for in a potential match? Where should you meet them? At what age? How much of an age gap, if at all? What relationship dynamics should you expect with them? What’s the right way to be masculine or feminine? What should make someone feel manly or womanly? What’s the right way to have sex?
What’s the right way to dress? Talk? Behave? Decorate your home? Spend a weekday or a weekend? What’s the right music to enjoy? What’s the right set of stories to enjoy on a screen or in books? What’s the right set of sports, crafts, hobbies, aesthetics to enjoy?
What milestones and achievements should one have by a certain age?
What’s the right style of writing? Photography? Art? Music? Flirting? Film?
Some people make their entire careers out of trying to teach humanity what The Right Ways To Live are. I’m glad I wasn’t one of them.
Your soul did not come to this Earth intending to someday discover all The Right Ways To Live, fight and destroy all the wrong ones, and convince every “misguided, ignorant” soul out there to give up The Wrong Ways To Live and start following the right ones.
I think all of us have experienced something like that at some point. Thinking “if only that other person lived more like me, then…” and never changing someone else’s ways no matter how much we wished they would.
This happens the other way around also. Much of the depressive malaise I’ve suffered in my own life came from me believing someone outside me Knows The Way while I don’t. Believing that my path is wrong, and I need to make it more like some other guy’s to have a proper life, or that I’m worthless, worth less if I don’t have the proper lifestyle one should have at a certain age.
There are as many Right Ways To Live as there are souls on this Earth, contrary to what the dogmatists among us believe.
So what are your Right Ways To Live? How do you discover those if you aren’t already consciously aware of them?
The Experimental Stage of Life
I’d like to thank this Mark Manson article for inspiring this framework. I find it to be quite solid. However I’ll tweak a couple things about it.
Life happens in 3 stages:
- The Mimicry Stage
- The Experimental Stage
- The Commitment Stage
In Stage 1, that’s where people learn the basics of human life. How to take care of your hygiene, do chores, fit into society, have social skills, meet other people’s expectations with your grades and work performance and adherence to cultural norms…
The Mimicry Stage is all about looking to others on how to live. It’s perfectly normal when you’re a child or an adolescent to live without autonomy or personal agency. But you do need to grow up at some point.
In Stage 2, that’s where people begin to develop an individual identity, test their limits, and figure out how much responsibility they can really take for their self-development.
The Experimental Stage is all about exploring and experimenting with an abundance of new things. New people. New sports. New flirtations. New skills and hobbies and potential careers. New places. New TV shows and movies and music. New habits and new ways of life. In this stage of life, one builds up their courage and competence and self-direction. But even that caps out in the end.
In Stage 3, that’s where people begin to value longevity over novelty. They acknowledge their limitations, their innate individual strengths, and what about their lives is truly timeless vs seasonal.
The Commitment Stage is all about setting yourself up for the rest of your life. Committing to everything that matters most to you, and letting go of everything that wasn’t made to last for you.
Most people enter The Experimental Stage sometime during their teen years or early 20s. They’re ready to leave childish ways behind, and make their own way in the world instead of always playing games of social status and fitting in.
Those who stay in The Mimicry Stage beyond their early 20s never learn to live for themselves. They get a certain job or career just to meet society’s supposed expectations of them. They get a romantic partner, even get married and have children in some cases, just because it’s what they’re “supposed to do” as an adult, and have a draining relationship full of fights, arguments, and petty dramas because they’re refusing to have an adult’s level of emotional responsibility. People stuck in Stage 1 often wish they were a kid again, with no agency over their life, having their parents do everything for them. The normal adversities and responsibilities of adulthood really scare them that much.
Most people max out what they can do in The Experimental Stage sometime in their late 20s to late 30s, and in some cases, before they’re 20. After that, it’s not cute to be a 40something still acting like they did 20 years ago. Those who attempt to keep this stage of life going after its natural end, they keep “putting themselves out there”, trying to recreate their past youthful adventures… With not much to show for it. Just the same games they’ve played a million times, that get older and older the more they play them.
I personally was this way through my early 20s. I refused to accept that I was never going to get The Experimental Stage back, and I had a ton of grief over it. My life would never be like it was at 14-20 ever again.
My Experimental Stage began when I was 14, right at the start of high school, and it lasted me until halfway through when I was 20.
During that time, all the assorted self-improvement stuff worked wonderfully for me.
I made fast gains in the gym, and gained 40 lbs of muscle in under 3 years.
I was moving up in the high school and university social worlds, making an abundance of new connections, winning friends and influencing people.
I kept myself busy with a bunch of hobbies: martial arts, writing, photography, sports…
I’d go out or hook up with the occasional girl, and constantly get out in the field, approaching a bunch of random ladies, finding out which ones I could or couldn’t potentially seduce.
I’d read self-help literature a lot, and let it pump me up and inspire me to take action and conquer my life. Mark Manson’s work was a favourite of mine.
I’d take a hell of a lot of responsibility for my emotions and mindsets, and rarely ever blame, complain, or cause petty dramas. I was always trying out new clothes, new interests, and new adventures. I was 100% committed to being the best I could be, in all domains.
Back then, it was quite appropriate and expected of me to push my limits and experiment constantly.
But after I hit my genetic potential for fitness, got tired of going to the same parties and nights out every weekend with the same people, pulling the same game every time, and realized I would never ever make it with a conventional, “normal” career path…
I refused to accept that that was it for my Experimental Stage. I refused to accept that my days of self-development were OVER.
And yet, I still wanted it all right now.
I wanted to somehow break through my genetic limit for gains without PEDs, instead of accepting that my body was perfect, beautiful, and quite appealing to the ladies as it was.
I wanted to keep my old party lifestyle going with new people, instead of accepting that no matter what people I could possibly have nights out with, all it’d ever add up to is a few hours of escape sometimes. There’s no party I could possibly go to anymore that’d dramatically shift the course of my life or give me a new sort of experience I didn’t already get at a prior party.
I wanted to meet more girls, approach more girls, and flirt with more girls, because I thought there was some new demographic of girl I hadn’t already met that I could get laid with super easily, or some mistake I was making in the past that was stopping me from getting laid with more girls. I was obsessed with figuring out what I still had yet to learn with the ladies.
The reality is, the only “girl problem” I’ve ever had is that I’m a one-girl type of guy, and I used to falsely believe I was made for more than one of them. Even back in high school, I was objectively a catch, could attract girls, and never had shame or limiting beliefs about my sex. I just didn’t consciously recognize what sort of girl I’m ACTUALLY made for, and was always hoping for things to work with girls I’m not at all compatible with.
As for the girls I did date or hook up with during my university days, I got what I needed from those experiences and would stagnate if I was to get more of the same.
I wanted to find new ways to self-develop and self-improve and test myself, instead of accepting that there was nothing wrong with me, I was perfect as I was, and from then on, my life should have been about relaxing, moving on to new ways of expanding myself (just because you’re in The Commitment Stage of life doesn’t mean you stop learning new subjects and new skills, and seeing life from new perspectives!), and finding new things to enjoy every day, rather than finding new things to achieve.
I thought there was some Right Way To Live out there that I was missing, instead of accepting that it just wasn’t my time to bloom yet with certain things.
I kept experimenting, and every single one of my experiments in my early 20s was destined to fail. Unlike those of my Experimental Stage, which were quite meaningful, memorable, and served me well in the long run, the experiments of my Commitment Stage were dry, unrewarding, and gave me zero rewards.
I’d read new books and articles by new gurus, hoping to stumble upon some health hack, mindset, or esoteric secret of manifestation that’d finally get me everything I used to falsely believe I was lacking.
Instead of accepting that people bloom when they bloom.
The lesson of Divine Providence I learnt in my 20s was a harsh one but a necessary one.
What exactly about our lives is Fate and what’s Free Will, I have a strong sense of that now.
Our health and fitness is entirely in our control. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get your workouts in, eat well, rest well, and set your body up for long-term health, youth, and vitality. You don’t need anyone’s permission or to wait on Divine Timing to finally be allowed to have good health and fitness habits.
When it comes to work and purpose, some people have it all set up in their teens. Some of us make it in our 20s, and for some of us, it takes a bit longer to find our market. Regardless of what decisions we make, this is all Divine Timing and we bloom when we bloom in this domain of life.
Some people stay with their high school or college sweetheart all their life. Some people don’t achieve sexual success till their 20s. For some people, it takes longer than that to meet The One for them or to see their dating life take off. How and when and with whom our romantic life blooms, that’s all Divine Timing and it depends entirely on our individual predestined life path.
The quality of our life, that’s entirely in our control.
Some people are joyful and expansive in the career of their dreams and in the relationship of their dreams.
Some people are joyful and constantly expanding without a career and without a romantic relationship.
Some people are miserable and frustrated while making millions.
Some people are miserable and frustrated in a relationship with the love of their life.
Instead of saying anything else, I’ll direct your attention to the books where I’ve already said it all.
Everything I know about dating, relationships, and the sexes that’s held up against every real-world stress test and would work for any guy, at any level of self-development who’s trying to git gud with the gurls…
Went into Musings of a Failed Dating Coach.
(All the cumbrained falsehoods I used to believe about male/female dynamics got cut from it!)
Everything I’ve experimented with that actually WORKS to manifest your dream successes, romances, states of health and fitness, no matter what kind of person you are…
That went into Measuring What’s Divine.
(And I spend a good portion of the book debunking falsehoods most people believe about self-improvement, spirituality, and “how everything in life works”)
Get em, enjoy em, and have a fucking day,
– Ben
