Being rejected by someone is not a statement on you. You have no data, you cannot have that data. For you to know, you would have to be able to read their minds. There is a possibility that they have no idea what they are looking for in a relationship and from a partner; they are probably just following their instincts. Or let’s say they do know what they’re looking for: there is a possibility they have no idea whether it is good for them or not. What matters is, do you know what you are looking for? And more importantly, whatever you are looking for—do you know with certainty that it is good for you?
HOW TO LOOK FOR THE RIGHT PERSON
Who are you?
The answer to this decides what type of person you would want to bring into your life. The truth is, the more you know yourself, the more power you have to make a better choice. After all, you can employ that knowledge about yourself—What kind of a person would be best suited for who I am—and then look for only such people.
Now, in all fairness, nobody expects you to know yourself a hundred per cent. You’re changing with time and experiences, and discovering new things about yourself. So, to make even a half-decent choice, the answer to ‘who are you’ should be somewhere between where you are right now and where you want to be; in short, somewhere between reality and aspiration. That would be the ideal situation.
What’s the reality? Most people have no idea nor any inclination to find out who they are. What they have is either a completely crazy idea about themselves—a fantasy character—or an aspirational idea about themselves which doesn’t take practical reality into account.
An example of the first type is, I am a fucking stud: this moron thinks he is no less than James Bond and girls should be dying at his feet. Another example is, I am a queen: this moron thinks she is royalty or one of the members from the Kardashian clan. The problem is, a lot of people really believe their fantasy characters. And because they believe in them so much, they are working on making them real on a daily basis.
An example of the second type is, I am a genius at what I do, and the world will one day know about me: these are people who are so detached from their practical reality that even though they are absolute shit in what they do, instead of accepting their current reality, they think the opposite.
Now, imagine what kind of partners such people would be looking for? They have no self-awareness, so what they look for is either attraction or validation of the bullshit they tell themselves. I deserve the hottest person. I deserve a really rich guy. I deserve a person who will blindly believe in me.
When rejected, people who live in a fantasy world think their fantasy character needs more work. I am not tall, I am not muscular, I am not charismatic, I don’t look like that famous person, I don’t look like that model on Instagram, I don’t have that body yet. I am less, inadequate and undeserving until I have these things.
When people who think they are the best get rejected, they simply blame the person. She is dumb. She doesn’t get art. He was not intellectual. He was not on my level anyway. He wasn’t smart enough.
If you want a decent relationship, then you need to quit the bullshit of finding these fantasy people, the incredibly hot girl, or the guy from the movies who is always around. You need to be realistic. What you are looking for should be based on who you are right now and where you want to be.
When you start to care about ‘who you are’ in a realistic manner, instead of blindly falling for people, you start caring about who they are. Attractiveness should only be an entry-level qualification; it shouldn’t be a deciding factor. There are millions of attractive people on this planet.
So, the first question is, who are you?
This means who you are intellectually, sexually, emotionally and professionally. You can take all the time you want to figure out the first three, and it is up to you to do it. Nobody can do it on your behalf while you sleep. The last part is who you are professionally, which you can find out by asking these questions:
What is my ambition? (What do you want to become exactly? Where do you want to reach?)
What are my current goals? (Short-term and long-term goals to actualise the ambition mentioned above.)
What is the routine I need to achieve my goals? (Doesn’t need explanation.)
What are my dreams? (Why do you want to achieve that?)
What is the nature of the line of work I have chosen? (How demanding is it? What’s the scope for relaxation? At what age and with what skillset would you have achieved credible respect in your field or workplace?)
The questions above give you an idea of where you are and where you want to be.
Now you ask the other person the same question, who are you?
The first answer they will naturally go to is what they do, for example, I am an engineer. The second answer is whatever gives them an emotional or/and intellectual identity. They might cite race, religion, nationality, belief systems, ideologies, causes, etc. The third answer is the most important. It is data that deals with their choices, decisions and actions, to which you must pay serious attention. What they do as a career doesn’t matter. What they say they believe in doesn’t fucking matter. How attractive they are means shit. It is what they have done and have been doing that shows you who they are.
Therefore, what you look for is:
Do the choices, decisions and actions they have made in their past and are making in the present ensure the safety and support of your current purpose in life?
What patterns do you notice when looking at what they have done and have been doing?
Do these patterns suggest an approach of carelessness, destructiveness, impulsiveness or of seriousness, self-control and an attempt at stability?
This approach ends your previous experiences with rejections as you aren’t focused anymore on people that fascinate you with their appearance and popularity. On the contrary, you are now engaged, silently or vocally, in rejecting people whose decisions, choices and actions seem either incompatible to yours, or disagreeable to you. Not only does this bring down the number of rejections by a lot, the impact the rejections have almost stops mattering to you. You’re not playing the game of probability anymore. You are not desperately waving your flag to be accepted by anyone you desire. No, you have put the priorities of your own life on top. If you do find such a person but are met with rejection, the reminder that rejections are normal applies very aptly in that situation, as you must not forget, People are weird. It has nothing to do with you. What you have right now is a criteria, which is much better than having no criteria, and certainly far better than chasing fantasy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW YOUR SELF DIES
Side note: It is entirely possible that you may be slightly exhausted from reading the last chapters. But here’s news for you, the chapters from now on are very interesting. So you need to get that energy back up. We are moving to new foundational principles like: fuck approval, acceptance and happiness. It is going to an interesting read. This chapter is a short introduction to our discussion about seeking approval.
THE WARNING
Imagine at the crucially transformative age of thirteen, on one random day, your dad, mom, grandad, or somebody else you trusted sat you down and told you they want to have an important talk with you about avoiding something people do a lot, and you are going to do as well. No, it’s not smoking or drugs. Here’s what it is.
‘Listen up kid, as you grow into adulthood, you’re gonna meet a lot of people you will really like. And because you like them, you will really want to be liked by them. Which is fine. It’s natural to want to be liked by people you think are great. But there is a thing called approval, which you haven’t thought about. It’s a very dangerous thing, and if you want to be intelligent, you must never forget it.
‘When does it start and how does it work?
‘Well, it starts with you wanting to prove to yourself that you are capable. But there are two problems with that. The first problem is, you are a kid. As
a kid, you look toward authority to give you confirmation on whether you are good at something or not. Just like in an exam, even if you know you have done very well, you still wait for the teacher to give you that confirmation. You don’t get any satisfaction from simply knowing it yourself. Basically, you don’t know how to grade yourself yet, so people you see as capable become that authority; you rely on them—and not on yourself—to tell you that you are capable and worthy. To prove you are capable to yourself, you start doing whatever they will like. After all, their approval means you are capable. Your inner voice becomes secondary, their voice becomes everything.
‘The second problem is, although you want to prove to yourself you are capable, you don’t know what to do in life yet. You’re a kid, you haven’t figured out shit about what you want. So you look at those who you think are awesome and capable, and whatever they are doing becomes a very practical thing to do to be capable too.
‘And just like that, kid, you start doing two things: first, whatever you think will make them like you more. That becomes anything that will please them. Second, because these people are liked or respected, you want to do the exact things they are doing in life, basically replicate their careers. For example, take all the kids who decide to become doctors because their parents are doctors, only to later realise they don’t actually wanna be doctors themselves.
‘This could either go very well for you or very badly, either way, you won’t become intelligent—perhaps smart, even clever, but not intelligent—because that’s the path of the follower, not a free person. Do you wanna be intelligent? Then always remember that, whenever you like somebody, there is a thing called “approval”, and it can destroy the individual in you.’
THE MURDER OF INDIVIDUALITY
Let’s take an example: Think of the last time you felt a deep sense of self-satisfaction from doing something. But once it was presented to the relevant authority—teacher, boss, mentor—they were not very impressed. In fact, they thought it was mediocre. Or they did not show any particular delight or excitement in your creation. And that work, to you, immediately became shitty. It slightly broke your heart, and what once made you proud quickly became something that reminded you of failure.
When such experiences happen, the following changes are made by you:
You decide to not focus on the feeling of self-satisfaction anymore. There cannot be any satisfaction if it has not been approved by those you want to impress. Satisfaction now comes after their approval. What the self says doesn’t matter anymore. Only what they say matters.
You stop relying on yourself and rely completely on ‘those who know better’ to tell you what you should do, how to do it, and what’s best for you. Your original ideas don’t matter until they have been approved by them.
Your ‘self’ is not being developed. It is being ignored and treated as an unreliable entity. What is being fully developed is an identity that you think will be liked by those you want to impress.
You start working in the direction that will make them happy and which they approve of, instead of finding out what will make you satisfied.
The result is, after a period of time, you become completely divorced from your ‘self’. What you hear from your self are whispers of what you’d like to do. Those are whispers because the voice of your self has been suppressed so strongly for a very long time. The whispered ideas have no credibility because they have never been trusted or applied. In short, for a very long period of your life, you remain confused, clueless and always looking for guidance—either for examples you can replicate, or somebody to hold your finger and walk with you.
You are noticing the word ‘self’ here. The ‘self’ is the individual in you. It is the person you don’t want to accept and run away from to become a different person. It is who you really are. It is who you are meant to know better, empower and develop. And since you’re not in touch with your ‘self’, our first objective would be to unite you with it. Then we will eradicate the parasitical thoughts and practices, like constantly seeking approval and acceptance, which destroys your individuality. One by one, we are gonna deal with everything. Let’s start with happiness for now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SCREW HAPPINESS
HAPPINESS IS YOUR OBJECTIVE
Generally, in life, what you want is happiness. Behind most of your actions, choices and relationships, the demand is happiness. What you haven’t realised is that happiness is not the same as satisfaction. If you were simply asked, ‘Do you feel satisfied with your life?’, your mind will look for the answer either elsewhere or someplace deeper than where happiness resides. I may feel happy, but I don’t know if I am satisfied. It’s a question that makes people really pause for a moment and think: Hmm, never really asked myself that.
So, what makes you happy?
The general answer to what makes you happy would be, making my parents happy, being nice to people, partying, smoking weed, watching great television shows and movies that make me think, spending time with my friends, shopping, having sex, working out, watching my favourite content creators, and doing well in life. Now, ask yourself, does any of that provide you satisfaction? Thinking about this might be hard and challenging for you because, frankly, you have never really thought about self-satisfaction. When something is not on your mind, you obviously don’t notice it nor pay attention to it. So you don’t think about self-satisfaction because all your attention is focused on happiness. And when happiness is the objective behind your choices and decisions, your mind assesses things you want to do only on the basis of happiness. Would this make me happy?
WHAT IS SELF-SATISFACTION?
Your major struggle in life is to be happy; it is not to be satisfied. Now, self-satisfaction does not mean you won’t be happy, nor does it mean that you will be happy all the fucking time. What it offers is something better—a state of mind called peacefulness. You would be at peace with yourself. And this is also where the problem comes: to be at peace with yourself, you will have to know your ‘self’ first. So, how much do you know your self? The answer in a lot of cases would be, fuck-all, because in our youth we are busy practising to become Mr Savage and Ms Flawless. And our ‘self’, to us, is definitely not those things; it’s confused, vulnerable and emotionally unstable. So, we ignore it. What you don’t realise is: you can’t be something you’re not. At best, what you’re gonna be is a copy, an imitation and a poor parody. But what you do have is the power to find out who you are, and fix and develop whatever you think is weak.
1. Self-belief
The more you know your self, the stronger your belief in ‘self’ becomes. Yes, the knowledge of self produces self-belief; who knew, right? It happens because, with more and more knowledge, you’re able to make better assessments.
What do you think happens when you know nothing about your self? You are either filled with self-doubt or make bad assessments. An example of bad assessment is overconfidence. An overconfident person is one who has badly assessed the information about their own capabilities.
It’s as simple as this: you are unsure and scared of what you don’t know; you’re confident and comfortable with things you know. You experience self-belief because you are getting to know who you are.
2. What does your self want?
With knowledge of self comes clarity on what the self wants. This is very different from what you want. You can tell yourself thousands of things that you want. What the self wants comes only by knowing the specific wants that make sense to the self.
3. What you don’t want!
Furthermore, the knowledge of self produces the knowledge of what you don’t want, which is far more important than knowing what the self wants.
A lot of times in your life, you have no idea if you really want to do something, but you may do it out of impulsiveness or pressure from people around you. Bad habits tend to start this way. A lot of bad experiences happen this way. The logical side of your brain knows it is wrong, but overexcite
ment or the need for approval takes over. Knowledge of what you don’t want interferes and acts as a reminder of what really matters to your ‘self’. In moments of confusion, it helps lift you out of the spell of emotional captivation and makes you think logically. When given power, it can become a tool that eliminates anything that will bring harm to the ‘self’. For example, in dating, when you know for certain what you don’t want, you’d be able to easily run away at the first sight of a red flag.
Therefore, knowing well what your ‘self’ doesn’t want improves your decision-making abilities. This enables your view of yourself as an individual, and it also gives your identity uniqueness in the eyes of people.
4. What makes your self happy?
Lastly, the knowledge of self also provides the outline and understanding of what would make the ‘self’ happy. How is this different from whatever you think makes you happy right now? Well, there are a lot of things that make you happy in general—let’s call these activities general happiness. The problem with general happiness is, these are things that almost every person in this world enjoys. These activities and things are designed to make people happy. Things that make you happy in general, and things you specifically enjoy, are two different experiences.
There are a lot of things that you might be doing for fun which you don’t actually enjoy. You just never cared to listen to that feeling. You’re either doing them because other people in this world are doing them, or because people you like are doing them—they are popular or they are what your friends are doing. The truth is, you haven’t asked yourself honestly if you actually enjoy this. Knowing what you actually enjoy is one part of knowing what makes the self happy. The other part is knowing what would give you long-lasting happiness. And that has very little to do with enjoyment and more to do with stability and structure in life, thus creating peacefulness in the long run.
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