Emerald

What I would say is to just focus on socializing in a more friendly way, and don't jump to asking anyone out straight away before a more flirtatious connection is established organically with one particular woman. Social circle works the opposite of pick-up in the sense that, it's important to come at it from a neutral platonic friendly place and to just be yourself. Otherwise, your interest will seem disingenuous or socially un-calibrated. So, just have fun and make friends... and if some organic feelings start to arise, don't jump into it too quickly. Let the feelings develop.

Yes, elementary school was when I felt the most like a social pariah because I didn't have enough social tools to navigate social situations. Part of that was just a projection of my own shame. But I was also teased a lot because I was very sensitive and not socially calibrated at all (partly because I was too aware of social consequences for my age, so I couldn't let myself be). And I was one of the least popular kids in my class. So, I always felt really desperate for friends.... which repelled them or gave them a leverage point over me. Like some kids would use that to boss me around because I had no sense of self-respect or boundaries because of my desperation for friendship. And I just felt like everyone was superior to me. The worst case was when I was in the 2nd grade, and I was at recess and sitting on the balance beam and sulking by myself about how I didn't have any friends. And this really manipulative girl named Tiffany came up and "befriended me". And that friendship lasted for a period of time (maybe a month or two). And she used to emotionally blackmail me and say "Do _____ or I won't be your friend anymore!" She wasn't the only female "friend" to do that to me. But her stipulations were the worst. And I think she may have been sexually abused at home, because it was usually something sexually inappropriate or sadistic that she was forcing me to do. She definitely had some serious issues. Around 8 years later, my best friend Shanna ended up going to juvi hall for bringing alcohol to school... and she met Tiffany in juvi. And I had already told her the Tiffany story years earlier, so she remembered her name. She said she was still a real psycho. One time she had me kick a male classmate in the balls under threat of "I won't be your friend anymore". One time she lifted up my dress in front of some other students. One time she tried to make me knock a book out of a kindergarteners hand (which I couldn't even make myself do). And there were a few other things. So, it was always about having me do or endure something over my boundaries... because she could sense that I was desperate for her friendship. And she could use "Do this or I won't be your friend anymore" as a means of having control over me. So, that's what elementary school felt like. It wasn't until I was in 8th grade that I figured out how to socialize as not to repel people. And then, high school was smooth sailing socially. I haven't really struggled socially since I was about 13. But before then it was an ABSOLUTE nightmare. I was also a romantically precocious child and had crushes since I was 3 years old. And my feelings were never reciprocated by the boys I liked. In reality it was because most kids are not even thinking like that yet. But childhood me, interpreted it as meaning that there's something fundamentally wrong with me and that I'm the ugliest person on the planet. And I used to fantasize about getting married as a very young child (between age 3 and age 6). But when I was in kindergarten (at age 5 or 6), after half of my life pining for romance and marriage, I remember crying in my bedroom that no one was ever going to want to marry me because I was ugly. And if some ugly old bald man wanted to marry me now (at age 5) that that would be my only opportunity for marriage and I'd have to take it then or leave it forever. And I had this assumption that all my classmates were already dating and that I was WAY behind them. Clearly this wasn't happening. But I almost needed to believe it was in order for my reality to feel like it matched my feelings. I also had another non-romantic version of this shame and feeling of inferiority where I imagined that, if I owned a Walmart, no one would come and shop at my Walmart just because I was the one that owned it. So, my childhood shame was REALLY out of control and it made me feel like a social pariah... and even project that onto situations where that wasn't actually happening at all.

You're welcome! It's definitely super important to build something that gets very valuable results for people. That's when things really pick up momentum-wise.

Thank you! I'm glad you found it insightful! It is difficult to track Shadow Work progress objectively as it's mostly an internal shift (that manifests in external changes). But I write notes and an action step at the end of each session and check back in at the beginning of the previous call. And I also ask people as they go if they notice any shifts or changes relative to the issue they're looking to change. But it's quite subjective. And it's not quite like fitness coaching or business coaching as it's a very non-linear process and doesn't have any kind of a to b structure. And I just do a single discovery call.... but I know some entrepreneurs that do two where they give a free demo first and then attempt to close on the second call.

That's something that you must choose relative to different facets of life. And that is also part of making sovereign choices. But if one gets caught up in victim's mentality, they give up their power to whichever person or group they're labeling as the villain in an "across the board" way.

Yes, Black Israelites believe that they were the original Jewish people that were the REAL descendants of the ancient Israelites. And of course, Nazism is the classic example of the mythologized past of the "ancient Aryan people". But these are common because it works on people by presenting them with a myth that makes those with a strong collective national identity feel superior just by belonging to that group... and enables them to feel collective grief and grievance at "them" who brought down the superior people.

Just keep in mind that power and responsibility always rise and fall together. And as responsibility grows... so does your power. And as you reject personal responsibility... you lose personal power. And as you project more responsibility onto others... they gain more power over you (psychologically and/or otherwise).

Sure. I don't track it too closely. And I don't do cold outreach because I have a YouTube channel. So, I don't have any data for the response rate as people just sign up for calls directly from my emails or videos. But my appointment show rate is probably about 65%. And then, about 20% of my appointments sign up. But it's getting easier now because this program for helping people overcome self-sabotage is one I've been doing for about a year. So, I'm getting more referrals. So, it's about 60% sign-up rate for referrals.

@stephenkettley I actually was just asked this by someone else. I've been working as a coach for the past 6.5 years. Here are the recommendations that I gave to the other person... "The main challenge with having a sustainable coaching practice is getting clients. I was able to make it work pretty easily because I have a YouTube channel with a decent-sized audience. And it's ideal to set up some kind way for many people to get free value from you... either through YouTube, social media, speaking gigs, etc. But there are tons of people who are making a living off of coaching who don't have that. Instead, they learn the following... Cold Outreach and Appointment Setting on social media or over the phone Sales (how to conduct and close discovery calls on Zoom) With those two things, what you need is to do a lot of volume (50+ cold outreaches per day). But be sure to mind the limits of any given social media app you use. You'll also want to build a signature coaching program that has a unique value proposition that solves a major pain point for people. For example, I help people overcome self-sabotage. Then, decide on the number of sessions in the coaching package (I do 13 one-hour 1-1 sessions in mine). And price it at the value of the value proposition, not for your time. I recommend a minimum price of $1500. I charge $2800 for my signature coaching program because it solves a major problem for people and they will be able to get far more value back than what was invested. This also helps when you get people on discovery calls as you can position your coaching offer as the thing that alleviates that pain point. Here's the order that I recommend doing things in... Figure out your value proposition for your coaching package - ie."I help (target audience) go from (pain point) to (desired state) so that (positive consequences of being at the desired state and away from the pain point)." Figure out how many sessions and other things that your coaching package will include and what the price will be Try it out on family and friends for free Do cold outreach to find your first 5 clients to join at a special beta price (half off is good) You'll need to learn cold outreach, appointment setting, and how to conduct discovery calls Iterate on the program based on the feedback of those 5 clients Do lots of volume (50-100+ outreaches per day) with cold outreach Continue to improve your sales skills Ideally - create a YT channel, social media account(s), or some other way for people to find you and get free value from you Get those people on an email list, so that you can send them information about your offers and get them on discovery calls"

@Majed I think you must be giving off some desperate vibes when you're doing pick-up. Women can easily sense that you're coming with an agenda that you're holding onto too tightly. Instead, you would probably get a lot more success if you just learn to socialize in general and make some friends (male and female). The more well-resourced you are with your social circle, the less you'll come off as desperate and needy. Think about social connection like it's water. Now, if you already have plenty of water, you can be fairly casual about your relationship with water. You don't have to worry about it because you know it's there. And you're well-resourced. But if were out in the desert for 2 days with no water with zero clue on when you'd get water next... you'd be freaking out about water and feeling so desperate for it. Right now, you're probably in the latter state... where you're not socially well-resourced. And so, you're putting so much pressure on making pick-up work out. And it's probably coming across in a way that repels because of the desperation. It's sort of like me in elementary school when I had no friends. I got SUPER desperate about it... and that desperation repelled people even more.

Yes, that is true that MAGA has the Fascist Golden Age structure of "We were once great, but we fell. So, we need to make us great again!" What I mean is that our Fascist mythos is more based on vague ideas about the 1950s, which is something we have more information about. There's an idealization and a super-imposition of a mythos that intertwines with the pop-culture of that time. But the American "Make the empire great again" story doesn't involve outlandish ideas like "the ancient Americans built the pyramids"... but only because we hang our ultranationalist stories on more modern events that we have less mystery around. The closest thing to that is in Mormonism where they believe that the Garden of Eden was located in America.

@NewKidOnTheBlock Hey! I was reading through this thread, and I found my name! I get that it's not fun to have something pointed out about yourself that's a "flaw". But victim's mentality will genuinely bring your life down in so many ways. So, it's actually good to become conscious of it if there's a patterns of feeling like "'x group' is responsible for my unhappiness"... regardless of of whether x group is men, women, construction workers, or furries. etc. It's a subtle way of offloading both personal responsibility and personal power... and then getting to wallow in self-pity because "the villain group is causing me strife." But it just steals your power from you... and it will make it harder for you to connect with people if you're seeing others as the villains of your story.

The US doesn't really have that too much. But it's not because we outgrew it or something. I'm sure that if such a narrative were fed to nationalist-types in a drip-fed propaganda kind of way, they'd lap it right up. I just think it's harder to do when you're a multi-ethnic country... and a young one at that. If you know the starting point of a people OR it's really clear that there's little blood relation between the people, it's harder to super-impose that kind of stuff onto their history.

But you forget... that while that may be true, they were only the lowly stone masons in my family's employ, who drew up all the blue prints for all the great monuments and commissioned all of them.

Apt

That's interesting. I had assumed that all older countries have a group of hyper-nationalist Fascist-types dreaming up all sorts of wild stories like that. But it then causes me to wonder... is it just because the outlandish story places that have that have a fuzzier history, or one that isn't well-taught in schools?

That doesn't surprise me at all. I'm sure that it's in every country that's 500+ years old.

I know quite a few Hungarians through my husband (both in Hungary and in the states), and most of them are not very nationalistic.. except for a few of his more distant friends. But yes. Lots of Hungarian nationalists want the land back from Romania and will hate on Romanians because they took Transylvania like 100 years ago. And they did fall from being the powerful Hapsburg Austo-Hungarian empire to being a poorer country when that happened. So, it is a collective national trauma. But it was deeply ingrained into my husband growing up (in the 80s and 90s) that there was this default hatred of Romanians. Then, when he was in his teens he was like "Why do I hate Romanians?" And he realized that he had no reason to and that it was stupid. But Hungarians hating Romanians for taking the land was seemingly as normalized as hating on gay people was back in the 90s. It was just taken for granted as the norm. And to be fair, there are Hungarians that are native to Transylvania (my late brother in law was Hungarian but born in Transylvania). But there are FAR more Romanians in Transylvania. So, it makes sense that things are as they are. But it's literally just doing the group-think that comes along with maintaining a nationalist identity to hate on an out-group.

Yes TOTALLY delusional. My husband and I frequently laugh about it as he's never had a strong nationalist identity. But unfortunately it's not new delusion at all. Most older countries probably have some similar version of that as it's the archetypal ultra-nationalist Golden Age narrative. Americans are somewhat spared from it in our country's mythos because of the fact that we learn a lot of real facts about how America was founded since it's just about 250 years old. And the delusional narratives we use are more like sugar-coated superimpositions of fanciful meaning onto stuff that did happen (like Manifest Destiny being used to explain away genocide) rather than all-out fabrications of stuff that never ever happened that's 100% myth. Also, the fact that we know that we're a nation of many different cultures prevents nationalists from mythologizing about Americans being the superior people of the same blood. And that instead gets placed onto racial identity instead of national identity. But if America was comprised of one single ethnic group (or appeared to be) and America were 500+ years old, you'd be hearing all kinds of outlandish tales about how the original pure-blooded ancient Americans were responsible for building the great pyramids. Yet again, according to Mormonism, the Garden of Eden was located in America. So, there are some instances of this.

@Leo Gura Who would have thought that someone whose work theorizes and waxes poetic about a mythological past where there were ancient advanced civilizations that were once great and then fell would be attractive to Fascists. This is just par of the course for nationalistic Fascist types or even just run of the mill nationalists from other countries outside of the US... but you don't see a lot of this with American nationalists because America is such a new country. So, we build our country's nationalist mythos differently than older countries build their nationalist mythos. Instead, you only see this "we were once a great ancient people until they took us down" around the concept of race in more niche Neo-Nazi echo chambers, since there is more of a taboo against racism that isn't there with nationalism (which can be framed as patriotism). But my husband is Hungarian, and he knows some run-of-the million Hungarian nationalists, who are as passionate about Hungary as American nationalists are about America. And it wasn't too uncommon for them to believe some wild pseudoscientific stories like... "Here's the REAL story about the ancient Hungarians who once were the dominant world power and were responsible for ALL innovations in the great early civilizations." This is me paraphrasing what I remember from reading one of these articles that one of his friends posted on FB like 10 years ago... 'Hungarians were the original people who were behind all the advanced civilizations in the world. In fact, it was Hungarians who taught the Ancient Egyptians how to build the pyramids. And Hungarians used to be the dominant people in the world, until (fill in x group) came and oppressed them and stole credit for all of the things Hungarians created.' So, when you have a "historian" who talks about Atlantis... and how it was once a great civilization and then fell, it tracks on nicely with the Fascist tendency to put the archetypal "myth of the golden age" in some idealized past that never actually existed. The concept of Atlantis in general is a great "blank screen" that Fascists (and run-of-the-mill nationalist types) can project their mythologized past onto.

Right wing pundits often misuse post-modern relativism to muddy the waters and create confusion... so that they can convince the average non-political person to shift further right. Post-modern relativism gives them the veneer of a balanced view of "just sharing a perspective... and who's to say who's right or wrong". Jordan Peterson tends to do this a lot... especially in the past when he was playing the part of the intellectual who's just "considering all the perspectives." But this is just them using that element of Stage Green as a tool. They're typically using this Stage Green tool as a way to re-normalize and resurrect old values (usually traditional or ethnocentric blue values) that society now deems as taboo. So, it's the post-modern "let's look at the myriad of different perspectives because that's the balanced thing to do."... and once people fall for it enough to normalize those perspectives, it turns into "This is actually the ONLY correct way to think about the world. If you disagree, there's something wrong with you or evil about you. And we want to codify this paradigm into law and punish anyone who challenges it."

If I were in that position, I'd probably want to keep 90%+ of it in the market in a stable long-term diversified investment fund. Bear in mind that the longer you keep that money invested, the more you get compound interest on it. And if you keep that money in there until you're at retirement age, you will have a nice comfortable old age. And that's important to prioritize. But, if I were in that same position where my investments are great, in the future, I would also make sure that I'm putting away money every month just for personal enrichment. I might also take out 10% of what I put into the market to have as a liquid asset to use for personal enrichment... education, travel, experiences, fun, etc.

It's probably similar to why Mormon's aren't supposed to drink coffee. You'd think the prohibition on drinking coffee is because of the caffeine content... which is what I always assumed. I thought it was similar to prohibiting alcohol because caffeine is also a psychoactive substance. But the actual reason why Mormon's aren't supposed to drink coffee is because Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) was reading some random article back in the 1800s that said that hot drinks were unhealthy for the body. And he believed that. Then, he told his followers that they should stop drinking coffee because he thought the article had sound advice. Though from what I understand, he also wasn't super strict about that himself. So, while I'm almost positive that the prohibition on eating pork originally came from health concerns... the continued adherence to it is just because that's what the rules are that the leadership of the religion set up. And people have just put a lot of stock into those that set up the religion.

It seems that there's an incompatibility between you and her in terms of your values and lifestyle preferences. You have to decide whether or not that's a deal-breaker to you. Some people would be okay with sacrificing psychedelic use for a relationship because it isn't that big of a deal for them. But others would not feel okay with making that sacrifice. For me, I don't use psychedelics often. I do an Ayahuasca ceremony once per year, and that's it. And I'm probably not going to do it again for a good long while because the Ayahuasca church that I usually attend closed up. But even I still wouldn't be okay if I had a partner whose values didn't match my own who gave me an ultimatum that I can't do an Ayahuasca ceremony... not because that person is wrong for having those boundaries themselves, but because it just wouldn't be a good fit. I'd definitely break up with them because they wouldn't be understanding why I do the ceremony... and they'd just be on a totally different wavelength. And I'd definitely say that sex is not a good reason to stay in a relationship. And that you would stay in for sex indicates to me that you have some scarcity thinking around sexual/romantic connection. This may be what's led you into an incompatible relationship in the first place. So, you have to question whether these value incompatibilities are a deal-breaker for you... or if you're willing to make the sacrifices she needs to feel comfortable in the relationship. Those are really the only two options.

@aurum It seems you're correct about Stage Green within the model itself. But I suppose, I disagree with that characterization within the model. What seems quite evident to me is that each level of development forms a unique and sustained societal structure... from Purple to Orange. But Green never gets seen as a sustained collective societal structure. And in order for a Stage Green culture to truly coalesce into the mainstream (beyond just random political or hippie circles)... as all other stages have done, you have to have an ordering principle. And the more individualist stages of human development require deconstruction and chaos where individualism is the highest value. But in more collective societal structures, you actually have to have a structure. So, I think the model is a bit faulty in that way because they are making conjectures about Green without ever witnessing a Stage Green society in the way that they have witnessed or have historical records of societies from Stage Purple to Stage Orange. That's why I don't perfectly agree with the Spiral Dynamics framework in this regard to the quote you mentioned... as it's framing Stage Green and hyper-individualistic and deconstructive, when re-coalescing collectivist phases of human development require convergence and limitation. Otherwise, Stage Green would be the only phase of human development that isn't possible to reach in a sustainable way. And that doesn't make any sense why we'd just have to skip that one as a collective.