Olaf

@Zen LaCroix If you are not grounded any advice can be taken badly. It is like asking someone with BPD to just act cool. They take it to the extreme, there is no stability or groundedness to take it from. When people are in an anxious state, they aren't grounded, they shouldn't work on self amusement, they should work on getting rid of being stifled and anxious, which is okay if that looks weird for a second or two, just need to get rid of it. Then self-amusement is natural and needs a bit of attention, but not a crazy ton of focus.

Lately, I’ve been working very hard, and the tiredness is starting to catch up with me. When you work a 9-to-5, you clock in and clock out, that’s it. But when you’re running your own business, you have to motivate yourself every single day. Like, damn... every single DAY! Every single day you have to go out there and get it. I think most people never talk about this. They talk about the results, but rarely about the hard work required to achieve those results or how little energy you have left at the end of it. It’s not like you can just relax and do your work slowly. You have to grind, hustle, use your brain, analyze, and if your work involves talking to people, you have to bring good energy too etc. It all adds up. Sometimes I wonder if it’s too much. Maybe I should go back to a 9-to-5, but I hate the idea of a 9-to-5 so much. I definitely need to work on managing my energy because it’s catching up with me. Whenever I take a rest day, I realize just how much rest I’ve been missing. Hopefully, this is just part of the process and things will become a bit more stable over time. Hard work is necessary, but at some point, it has to evolve into something sustainable for the long term. Otherwise, I honestly don’t know how long I can keep going. Any entrepreneurs here? How do you deal with this?

@Jordan of the Shire thank you for sharing I will think about everything you said!

@AerisVahnEphelia If you only work on art, are you working at marketing at all? The "art piece" is the value, but without marketing no one knows you, no one sees you, no one buys from you, simple as that. If you don't got eyeballs on you, good luck being another artist with 2k followers and nobody buying art pieces. It is simply not how the world works, there is no difference between getting attention for an art piece as there is to get attention towards anything else. Experimenting how to get that attention would be where 99% of the focus should be on in the beginning, instead of spending all your time improving your art, unless you are doing art as a hobby, then don't expect to make money from it or a sustainable income, just enjoy your hobby.

I have been thinking a lot about why women fall for narcissists, and it came to me today. Most women have too many options. As a man, unless you work on yourself, your options are quite limited. You have to put in effort to get more options, whether by improving your social skills or through other forms of self-improvement. If a woman has so many options, an abundance of men, she naturally becomes more selective and conditional. The idea of unconditional love becomes very foreign when you have endless options. If you have very few options, one person can become your whole world. You can fall deeply in love quite easily, actually. Yet, if you have too many options, it becomes almost impossible to fall in love because you are constantly comparing. You think, "This person has this, but that person has that." You will never be truly satisfied. That is basically what is happening with women. Due to this abundance, they are not easily satisfied, and if they have a lot of options, they become more conditional. The only person who can override all of those standards is a narcissist because a narcissist's frame is, "You are less than me." If you are less than me, then all of your standards do not mean anything. A narcissist also doesn't truly feel love, so they treat you poorly. They give you almost nothing, or they give you breadcrumbs, which makes women chase them like crazy. It is one of the few situations where their standards are thrown out the window. The only woman who can withstand a narcissist is one who is emotionally mature or has become mature, either by having been in a relationship with a narcissist or by already having self-love and self-respect. With self-respect, you are far less likely to fall for a one-sided relationship. The one-sided relationship makes them feel like they have won. They feel they have won because they have access to the narcissist. But what a terrible prize to win! If a woman is with a narcissist, she might be happy for a while, believing she has found something special, someone who doesn't love her, doesn't put her on a pedestal, and even treats her poorly, which she interprets as meaning he MUST be better than her. Of course, this is only an illusion created by the narcissist's facade. When you truly see through the facade, what you are really seeing is a woman falling in love with the illusion of someone she believes is better than her. She falls in love with the image he portrays of himself while seeing herself as the codependent who cannot afford to lose the "prize," which is him. He is seen as the prize because he constantly brings her down while portraying himself as someone far above her. It is all an illusion, a way of controlling the frame. Of course, the narcissist would not genuinely care for her. If he truly did, she would likely lose interest, unless she had already healed the underlying issues that made her vulnerable to this dynamic. This dynamic can reinforce the idea that men should become narcissistic because it appears to pay off. At the same time, it encourages women to become codependent. Only after healing that codependency can they find healthy love again. True love would be two people loving each other, not some one sided relationship (narcissist-codependent) and that is very rare, especially these days.

@Valach of course, if you become secure, you are being seen as safe and boring. Entertainment is so important and toxicity is the greatest form of entertainment. Think how entertaining it is to be in a toxic relationship for most people? The yelling, the screaming, the hot drunk sex, then bottles being thrown on the wall during a fight, cheating, lying, this is all entertainment. It is like a movie or watching a soap, but now even better, you are in the soap hahaha. And then what does a healthy relationship got to offer? love, peace, stability BORING!!! That is the problem, maturity is boring, toxicity is interesting. They say entertainment is low consciousness, yet who was first the egg or the chicken? Low consciousness makes people want to watch or be involved in low-conscious stuff. Be high conscious and you might be looked at as an alien on a planet where it doesn't belong, youtube, TV, social media only promote toxic shit, because people only watch toxic shit, because people are toxic. If everyone was super healthy, we wouldn't have all the toxic shit on the internet, so the market is simply reflecting what the people want, if people all of a sudden would change, the market would change aswell and then all of a sudden we would be watching soaps of healthy relationships. Before that happens it must be year 2900 or something lol. Anyways that was my rant for today. Goodnight.

I think that karma is real, listen up. Things always go in the right direction for me in my life, when I am in such a shit mood, when things go wrong, when life hits you, but then, THEN you choose to keep going despite the setbacks. It is that breaking point where you have put in effort and got no result, again and again and again and again. Yet you try one more time, you try three more times, you keep going and the wheel starts turning. It is simple, give up and you lose, keep going and you win. Yet how far can we go? How much can we do without getting results or minimal results before luck is starting to strike us? I have found in my life that if you put in effort, the world, the universe, OWES you, it sounds weird, but it is like it OWES you to give back to you. If you give up, you simply don't get what you are due, what the universe, God or whatever wants to give to you. It is like you had to do all of this without much result, so that NOW the universe has to pay you, has to give back to you, karma. The only thing that would maybe fuck this up is if you become reactive, angry, or frustrated about the situation. I used to get frustrated, now I just think, okay the universe, the world, people owe me something, I have to keep going now, because I know my good karma is coming and then it comes every single time. I might be too woo woo for you all, but this is very real for me.

@Natasha Tori Maru Yes, secure is seen as boring, and maybe it is. I guess a roller coaster is more interesting than a straight road. At least the narcissist provides the necessary entertainment. Just look at TV, it's all about toxic relationships, cheating, and drama. That's what people find entertaining. If TV only showed healthy relationships, it would probably get zero views lol.

@Zenterus yes so mainly funny or playful observational openers work well during the day. That makes sense, I will keep it in mind, thank you.

Okay, eye contact is a superpower, but it is not just about eye contact. Like looking someone in the eyes doesn´t do the trick. The trick isn´t necessarily in the eyes as much as the energy. The eyes are the window to the soul. Now guess what, when your full of anxiety, fear, being stuck in your head, eye contact is not gonna be the solution. So first, getting more confident, social, more present in the moment, then you start to have presence. This presence is then booming from your eyes and it will do wonders. In fact, to me, talking is then only to make it less awkward or just of secondary importance. The eyes are primary as they tell everything about you, your energy and people read it instantly. If you blink or blink a lot or look away, they can see you are not confident and weak. If you hold steady, but not forcing it, like restful, presence, gosh they realise you are the real deal. Because you are the real deal, you have gained confidence, you have gotten rid of that anxiety, now of course you are not gonna wake up tomorrow and be all of a sudden in this presence or as the younger generation would call it, having `aura`. It happens after a long time of approaching and socialising, but once that happens, you can even open that way, you can simply open with first eye contact and then whatever comes up in the mind, because the words don´t matter that much, it is the energy. And the way people notice your energy is through your eye contact. It is the ultimate marketing, but you can´t fake it, you have to become the real deal.

@Vynce manipulation is simply seducing in a playful way, if you are playful, are you lying or just playing a game? She never knows and you don't know either, in this place things can be easily manipulated and people take it as far as their morals goes. That is why it is called game, you are playful, playing, nothing you say is serious and autistic which is how men communicate. So the idea is that you are not being truthful anyways from the start, you are in la la land, playing a game.

Being God is just being grounded, peaceful, stable, not anxious, therefor confident, this is ultimately the state building that is talked about in pick up. Just being present and in the moment. I like how Owen said that approaching is actually spiritual as you are learning to be present in hard circumstances, which is very true. It is easy to be present in nature, in the peace and calm, try doing that in a club while a girl pushes you and tells you to fuck off. HAHAHA

@eos_nyxia if the only men you are attracted to are toxic, then being done with men makes sense. I guess, that it is a love hate relationship, they don't appreciate a men who is healthy and mature, then they are gonna stay in toxic relationships or remain single. At some point there has to be somewhat of a shift to look for peace and stability in a relationship instead of the rush of the highs and lows and the chasing, which I think happens for some woman only after the age of 40 or 30, some earlier. Also a level of self respect to not let boundaries be crossed that shouldn't be crossed. Some woman will learn early, some will never learn, others will be hurt too deeply by a narcissist to never go on a date again, who knows. This is the problem I am seeing both in the narcissist and also the codependent, they are both broken and need self respect and love.

@Zenterus I agree with much of what you say, eye contact and vibe is huge and you can't fake it. Do you have some examples how you approach indirectly during the day?

@LordFall This posts intention is not to turn people here in psychopaths or narcissists. Rather to understand why woman fall for them and also why you have many codependent women who bring their own problems to a relationship, not only the narcissists, codependents are also toxic and haven´t healed. Someone with self-respect and maturity won´t get into such relationships, or at least not stay in it for any long time.

@Raze all these standards of women go out of the window when they meet a narcissist, unless she truly is mature. She will be drawn to a narcissist despite it being a bad choice. Again a narcissist is a great marketer, but it will be one-sided love, everything for him, nothing for her. At the most breadcrumbs. Have you ever eaten a salad and then you looked at a snicker and wanted nothing else then that candy? It is bad, but that is why its good.

@Leo Gura Yeah, fake or real confidence, it is mainly about how you portray yourself to be. How you market yourself. A narcissist is an excellent marketer with nothing to offer.

@Valach well, a woman can be delusional too, many think that a guy wanting to sleep with her is the same as wanting a relationship with her, so either true or false abundance, same result: they do feel like they have a ton of options.

@igor699669 Well that is very important information. I didn´t do any good meditation in Ukraine when I was visiting. I think prayer helped me a bit to find peace there. Just praying for the well-being of the people in Ukraine and for me to have strength. I think prayer is very powerful even if you don´t religiously believe in some God in the clouds. I don´t believe in such a God, but more as God as the totality of creation, which you can still pray to.

@igor699669 my experience is that physical health equals mental health. And mental health equals deepest meditations. You can still do meditations by becoming aware of your back pain and aware of your body, mind, surroundings, in no way should that be impossible. Yet the deepest meditations for me have been after a good walk. So why not combine it? Go for a walk in nature, work on your health and body and at the end of an hour long walk you sit still and just be. That is what I love to do. It is up to you of course. Yet I would always advice to work on mental and physical health before meditation, meditation is just the cherry on the cake.

@Kyle Gjerseth I don't have any advice on this. But congrats on your sobriety! 30 days isn't too long so I hope you stick to it for your own sake. Good luck on your sobriety aswell as applying to school for mental health. Hopefully your life will keep going in this positive direction. God bless.

@MarkKol testing is the way to success, this is good marketing advice even for content, you want to test different ideas to see what resonates with the audience, instead of religiously sticking to one idea and making it work. Although too much experimenting can also not be good, sometimes something is actually good, but it needs a bit more time to mature itself. Like some meals they get better if you let them sit in the fridge for a night, some ideas are good, but they need some time before they are proven successful. A month or two would be a good test period, rather then 1 week or 1 day. Test, keep what works, scrap the rest, test something else again, that should be the cycle. When I was coached with dropshipping they were testing too many different products, like 5 products a day and I felt this was a flaw in their coaching as sometimes a product just needed some small adjustments, some more time and effort put into it. So you definitely can test too much aswell. Sometimes sticking to one thing and making it work is the right way forward, sometimes testing is the way forward, it is a balancing game.

Yesterday we all watched Spain win. Now I am not a football nerd, but during the show something became very apparent to me, which I feel works the same in real life, not just in a football match. Spain was in control, it was cold headed instead of reactive. Even tho Argentina was trying to rush them and get them of their center and game, they remained calm. Which is almost like a shit test lol, where people try to get you off your center. My mind works like this, I connect everything to everything, I look at a football match and I think how that applies to socialising, business and everything else. Then lastly, but most importantly they were not in defense, but in attack mode. This is the biggest thing, really think about this. How much are you trying to defend versus trying to attack and get to achieve your goals? Are you playing to not lose or playing to win? I think that is the difference between a real winner and a loser. A loser would play defense, it is not about every shot hitting, but to aim for your goals or as Spain aimed to score 16 times or so before they actually scored. Sometimes it isn't about the best aim, but just about endlessly aiming till you get it right, endlessly trying again and again, standing up despite all the failures and just trying again, instead of trying to play defense and play it safe. Which in the end will always make you lose. Now think how this applies to business, to relationships and to your goals. I will be thinking about this a lot, let me know your thoughts, no nonsense reactions please.

@LordFall `that hurts I just had ear surgery` - clav how you take this guy seriously? Many young people seem to take this looksmaxing and clav guy seriously. This new generation is so fucked, I don't even want to get into it.

@LordFall I think that is the difference between people working on themself and people just durping around and not wanting to achieve much with their lives. If you want to grow and win in life, you can learn from anything: football, this forum, your own life experiences. Being comfortable in any area is indeed a problem. Good that you are taking proactive action towards moving forward.