Olaf

@Butters Sure, there are ways to work smarter. I just don't think the default should be to work less, but rather to produce higher-quality work. Increasing quality is more important than simply working hard. Hard work is mainly a way to increase quality by gathering data and experience. For example, someone with 20 years of experience in a certain niche has accumulated so much data and developed so much understanding, wisdom, and knowledge in that specific area that working hard might not be necessary anymore. There simply isn't much more data they need to gather. Instead, they can focus on producing high-quality work. That's also what Owen is doing right now. He's gathered enough data over the years, so now he focuses on doing what works and creating the highest-quality output possible. The quality of the sales page, the quality of the lead generation, the quality of the YouTube videos, the quality of his personality and energy in those videos, everything is focused on quality. But he can do that relatively easily because he's been doing it for 20 years.

@Butters Probably you were having fun and in flow state, but just cause that happend one time that quick, doesn't mean it happens all the time and everywhere. Don't forget that a club is very different then during the day where people are sober and make more rational decisions than getting carried away in the moment. Also you said it happend one time, does it happen every night? Don't think so.

@Leo Gura yes agreed

Following your purpose can be hard. It can be difficult, and it can still be exhausting. I think there's this fantasy that when you follow your purpose, everything becomes easy. That's simply not true. Following your purpose is still like running a business, and if you're an entrepreneur, you know how hard that is. The only real difference between being an entrepreneur and following your purpose is that you're more aligned with what you're doing. Following your purpose doesn't mean you forget about money altogether. Making money is still a big and important part of your purpose. I'm not saying your goal should be to become rich, but earning money is still necessary. Because of that, sales and marketing still require time, effort, and energy, and they can still be draining at times. I think the idea that you can simply be happy and spend all day doing what you love is a fantasy. The reality is that it's a mix. You get to spend part of your day doing work you genuinely enjoy, but there are also practical aspects of running a business that aren't always enjoyable. I also think the amount of work required is often underestimated. I work harder now than I ever did in any job, and I've worked 45-hour weeks before. That shit is easy as hell compared to following your purpose, because your income doesn't depend on clocking in and out, but on how well you perform. You can't really afford to have a bad day. A bad day can mean making $0. At least, that's been my experience. Everyday I am almost giving 100% of myself, which is a lot of energy put into something, besides that you don't just go for it 100% blindly, you also make calculated decisions along the way and multitask, have to analyse everything almost constantly etc. So don't believe in this idea of just blindly following what you love and hope for the best, that is relying on luck versus a strategy. I don't rely on luck and never will set myself up to rely on luck. Hard and smart work, those are things I rely upon.

I read your post and these are my original thoughts, forget about money, forget about success. What can you commit to for the next 10 years? This is an intimidating question, because you feel you might change and grow and want to go on different paths. But just as you want to commit to be a millionaire under 30, you should much more importantly, commit to one path. Business is like a marriage, you have to be loyal to it, you have to marry it and not go from thing to thing. So what can you see yourself doing for 10 years? Then whichever path, despite the money, makes you feel you can commit to, then commit to that and never look back on the decision. Don't chase money as money will run from you, instead go for the decision that feels aligned, doing things solely for money will make you hate the process and therefor quit early or hop from thing to thing, purpose brings stability as you can commit to something much more likely if you feel the purpose behind it, then when you are looking for an outcome. So to summarise: What can you commit to for the next 10 years? And don't make money play a factor in this decision.

@Butters I would say it is a bit of mix of both. You can grind too hard that it is actually not effective anymore, but I do feel that working hard in a certain area helps to get more data and then when you have all that data, you can now make more informed decisions. So grinding is just to get quantity of data, but quality, which in the end matters most, comes from being present with what you are doing, which actually means to work less hard. So what I do nowadays is that I have periods where I grind to get data and I have periods where I work less hard, but focus on quality and use the data I gathered from the grinding. I don´t know if this makes sense, but I think you get the point.

@YIDIRYIDIR yes this is kind of the rock bottom approach, like a homeless person on crack hits rock bottom so deeply that it can give a new motivation, like for example with Grant Cardone who was addicted for a long time and then made billions after he hit rock bottom.

@Leo Gura yes I agree and also it is hard to get out of a rushed energy once you are in it, I think it is best to start slow from the very start

I approached today and I didn't have too much time, so I rushed both my warm-up and approaches. As I am rushing, I feel the women still respond to me, but also make them feel in a rush, not because they are in a rush, but due to my lack of presence. Now chasing a certain number of approaches in a certain amount of time, sounds productive, but I think it is actually building resistance instead of presence. I guess still better than doing nothing, as it is making a habit of approaching, but not optimal for sure. Also once you rush it is kinda hard to stop that momentum, it is like you have to start present from the start, at least in my experience. Just like when you get angry, it is hard to go from anger to completly calm, it takes hours, it is better to be calm from the beginning, I guess. That is why I like to approach mostly in parks or places with nature, as I get in my natural element and relax, calm, although it could be a bit of a weird place to approach, probably best would be nature with some people around on the grass or something, so she doesn't feel like you are doing it in private. Yet a busy city center can make you feel in a rush even when you aren't in a rush, especially in the bigger cities with millions of people. Anyways, I would say location is important and one thing to make you present, like nature, but not rushing a certain number of approaches in a certain amount of time, also helps. It is okay to have a certain amount, but I think it shouldn't be too ambitious, as it would become more about rushing through the approaches than making one approach work well, be present and enjoyable both for her and you. btw let me know if you guys want to hear more of these updates on my approaching journey when getting back in to pick up? I thought it would be valuable to share my progression rather than state how it is or not. I am still learning and becoming aware myself as I am getting back into it.

@Ulax good to know you are enjoying it

@Valach Appreciated!

I don't think you can change inner game, unless you are doing infield approaches. Here me out. JUST working on your beliefs, what you think about yourself, how attractive you are etc. It feels like a lie. It is like you are trying to earn the confidence without taking the action to get that confidence. Yet if you take action, naturally you start to feel more attractive. Whether it is true or not, when I am in flow state, I see a girl, I look her in the eyes and my mind goes "she wants me" and I am 100% believing that thought. This might sound super narcissistic, but these confident thoughts just come up naturally when you are taking action. There is no way you can ONLY do inner game, look a girl in the eyes and think authentically that she wants you or that you are attractive, in fact it would be covering up your own authentic thoughts that tell you, you are unattractive and not confident. Maybe listen to the thoughts, take action to become more confident. And then naturally you will have good inner game. I think it isn't bad to think you are unattractive. If you aren't in flow state, I can feel like that too, but in flow state, you naturally start to think you are him. You naturally start to assume girls are into you, like authentically, I don't create a thought in my mind that she wants me, it is like I feel that she wants me. And who says I am making it up? lol. And btw, I don't think it is about having balls of steel, just saying "hi" to people could be an okay start, then maybe ask for directions and eventually approach, it doesn't have to be this cliff-feeling moment where you are going for the hardest approach straight away, in fact it probably could backfire on your confidence having that approach. Just like going in the sea, you do it step by step, slowly adjusting. One more note: I do come from a background of spirituality and doing basic inner work already, so if you are highly traumatised or have some mental issues, like this wouldn't be enough of course! You would need medication, a therapist or psychiatric help etc. And only after that, take action, hope you get the point.

@Valach I forgot to mention, I lost motivation to go to night clubs, but actually after coming back into game after a few years I am now very motivated to go out during the day and approach woman, because these girls I can actually see as my girlfriend and actually I am more motivated than I was before. The girls in the club are intoxicated most of the time, which is kinda unattractive, as well as their lifestyle probably isn't super healthy. I don't drink and if a girl smokes or drinks allot, we are probably aren't a match as it is a different lifestyle. Going to a club is fun, but it is also empty as I feel none of this can lead anywhere and you wake up all tired the next morning being super unproductive. Sure maybe my motivation is not so much to just have sex with every girl and get a huge body count, rather to find a good partner, which changes the game completely how you play it and what you do. If you are a sex addict that is literally a mental health illness; also it is unattractive I don't think woman want a lustful men who is ready to have sex with everything that walks. Also the reason I try to stay away from direct approaches if possible as with direct approaches I feel like I am giving her too much the idea that I want to sleep with her when I literally don't know if I want to sleep with her at all, I have my standards aswell and I don't just take any woman as my partner, otherwise I wouldn't even needed to do all of this to find her. I would simply find some girl in the club and make her my girlfriend and join her in taking vodka shots every night and drinking beer till the morning comes.

@Valach I know inner work, I know Julien, I know trauma release, I am not a rookie. Yet trauma release isn't the solution for confidence, you can do trauma release all day and it wouldn't be any better then jerking off. For serious trauma you need something more serious, either medical treatment, EMDR, etc. You really think some letting go work of Julien is now gonna make you super confident? The funny thing is that even in Julien's course of letting go he demonstrates people to take action in public to let go. He is asking people to take action, not to do just inner work. Actually the only manifestation coaches I kind of respect are the ones that say "but you have to take action tho not only manifest" HAHAHA no shit.

If inner game was a real thing, then Owen would be a billionaire, it is precisely that it is hard because you do have to take action, face rejection etc. and not just some inner work. Again if you are highly traumatised go seek therapy or something, not inner game. It is like manifestation jerk off shit, I am allergic to it at this point. Think about how fucked up manifestation is, people literally do nothing else than taking no action AT ALL and visualising, dreaming, affirming money, relatinoships, whatever. Then they say it is true, because Jim Carrey visualised 10 million. WELL he WORKED his ass off for YEARS, we only gonna consider him writing down 10 million years ago as the reason he got that check? If you work really really hard and somewhere belief in manifestation or inner work, you got my permission, but most of the people that are into it, don't do any work.

@Valach flow is what confidence is, don't misinterpret me. Flow = confidence. Nobody that is not in a flow state is 100% confident. Nobody wakes up in the morning and is 100% confident, this is literally all RSD teaching is. I don't know if you have listened to Owen's course, but it literally talks about this, where you have to warm up, get into flow and momentum, you even see how the first few approaches go shit and then later at night it goes well. If you wake up in the morning and you directly open the hardest set and it goes well, then go teach your own course on inner game, I think many guys would want it over the RSD teachings, but I simply don't believe in such fairytales, it sounds like a bunch of BS and escaping the work that is required.

@Ulax it is like manifestation courses, which makes people feel good about not taking action

Today I did 50 observational openers, just to test what works well with observational openers. I had a day off so I thought why not spend some time on this social stuff. I noticed some things in my experience. When I was thinking too long to come up with something it came out stifled/tense and of course less responsive. Now when I maybe had a rough idea what I wanted to open with, like then it could work. Yet the best ones where within the moment itself. I look at someone and whatever comes up. For example you make eye contact, you notice an ice cream, you say "its good?" like is it some genius charismatic line? no lol. Yet it can work fine as it is spontaneous and not try hard. Then later on I tried that same line, but I saw someone walking with ice cream 1 minute away from me, preparing myself 1 minute to open with that line made it come off really badly. So spontaneously let it come out instead of preparing it 1 minute in advance or even a few seconds in advance. If I look them in the eyes and even something comes out very unsmooth for example you see someone have some creative thing on. You say "its... creative" and you point to what they have on. That is literally a horrible line, but atleast if in the moment that is all you can come up with, then it is better then some genius line prepared minutes beforehand. This is atleast my experience: let me know how it is for you. I think for a general approach, where it is a basic hook that you can use over and over, that is different as you know what you are gonna say, you just say the same shit over and over. But with observational openers, I think spontaneous and in the moment matters, having no preparation or minimum preparation before the initial approach.

@cle103 I have a problem to take a day off, I always end up wanting to do something `productive`, it is a problem hahaha

@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.