aurum

The stronger the denial, the stronger the shadow .

You’re definitely in a unique situation. My advice is slow everything down. Don’t try to do any weird cold approach, pua nonsense. You’ve got way more girls than guys so that creates an interesting dynamic. Even if you don’t want to date most of them, you still have options. At the same time, your total number of classmates is extremely tiny. So everyone is going to know everyone. It’s like a single tiny tribe, where reputation spreads fast. You’re also 16. So you just want to be building basic social skills at this point. Really I don’t have much advice for you other than go be a 16 year old. Make friends. Be as social as you can. Attend whatever events or gatherings there are. Get a crush and then get your heartbroken. And get in a little bit of trouble.

Of course masculinity and femininity will exist on a spectrum for everyone. It’s not “everyone is 50% masculine and 50% feminine”. But your mind can easily use that to pretend that therefore you have no feminine repression. “I’m just more masculine, that’s why I don’t resonate with any of this feminine stuff”. When in fact most of us in modern society are suffering from a lack of integrated feminine.

Most definitely it has been worth it. The biggest thing I've gotten out of it has been confirmation that I'm not crazy. When you're in a toxic relationship with someone, and the other person sees no problem with their behavior, you can easily start to think that maybe you're totally off. Maybe they're right and you're just overreacting. But once we sat down with someone, it became obvious that I wasn't crazy at all. That I was in fact seeing what I was seeing and feeling what I was feeling. That our relationship was, as I suspected, toxic. Of course that doesn't mean there's never any room for you to look at your own behavior. We always have to take responsibility for what we're bringing to the relationship. But it was just very refreshing to hear someone validate my concerns instead of making me feel like I didn't know what I was talking about. That sort of thing can ruin your self-esteem and even make you start to question your judgment in other areas of your life. It's also an opportunity for you to just get things off your chest that maybe you've been holding back. When we go through our daily lives, it's easy to repress things or just get caught up in patterns. But in therapy, it's like you have this magical hour blocked off where you're free to express just about anything you've been experiencing. And that's acceptable because it's "therapy", and that's what you're suppose to do in that context. So yes I'd recommend it if you can get your mom to go and find someone qualified. Not all therapists are created equal and it's worth finding a good one.

@Klaudia They definitely have some very good content. Leo has posted them on his blog before. My only gripe with some of their guests is that it can get overly intellectual at times. It feels like mostly deep left brain thinking. But if you like the content on Actualized.org, than you probably resonate with that sort of thing.

***leg reveal***

@somegirl Mother issues run deep. I’ve been to numerous therapy sessions with my own mother to heal our relationship. There has been progress but it’s like dragging someone kicking and screaming. Whenever I feel like maybe we’ve really put the past in the past, suddenly something else comes up and it’s like we are right where we started. Your mother may never change. As long as you don’t think your living situation is at stake, you can draw boundaries with her and firmly maintain them. You could try therapy if she is open to that. But those are essentially the extent of your options until you move away. Unfortunately, it just seems like a facet of modern life that most of us grow up in households we would rather get away from. Parenting is in the dark ages.

Perhaps one or two. This is just my understanding of the spiral. It takes a long time to truly move into a new color. It doesn't happen in a week. For myself, when I read the descriptions of each stage, I find the most resonance with Green / Yellow. Even if I intellectually understand that Turquoise is the goal, my behavior and thought process often doesn't line up if I'm being honest. I suspect most people are struggling to even just move solidly into Green. That is basically the pinnacle of modern society. But it's still a minority. So for anyone to get beyond that is really impressive. You basically have to outgrow all of modern society.

@Rasheed Philosophy and psychology are easy picks. Sociology is probably decent too as @Elham said.

Actually companies change their name in the early stages often. Obviously you want to avoid that if you can. It can be costly to have to redo all your branding. But it does happen. And unless you're already a huge company, changing a name will likely be a small endevour. And if you are a huge company, then congratulations, you've already built a huge company anyway. I wouldn't make this a top priority. People will buy from a brand named zcgi87 if you truly solve their problem. There are things that are way more challenging in starting a brand than picking a name, and that's where you want your attention to be.

I doubt you’re going to find anybody on this forum. Turquoise seems to be extremely rare. I certainly don’t think I’m stable in turquoise myself.

This one is niche. It’s for songwriters who write using the guitar: I find most people who teach music theory make it extremely complicated and dry. Jake Lizzio does neither of those things. His videos are always highly engaging but also informative and practical. He can teach you just about all the theory you need to know to become a solid songwriter. The second channel is Jordan Hall, colleague of Daniel Schamachtenberger: If you like Daniel, you’ll find a lot of crossover with Jordan. He has an interesting series about his alternative way of structuring society called Civium. I don’t know if I agree that his ideas will work, but I accept that they’re well thought out and can get you thinking along some interesting lines. Worth checking out for serious systemic thinkers interested in social change. Third channel is Isabel Paige. She’s kind of a hippie, yogi, vegan girl living in the mountains and starting a farm. Hits a lot of cliche stage Green tropes. Her videos are mostly just for entertainment but they have great energy. She seems to be very much enjoying her life and that’s what I like about it. I also love nature so I’m a sucker for these kind of things:

Yeah this is good. I made a similar point earlier in this thread. Sure, I like sexual novelty to a degree. And maybe there’s some biological impulse in me to “spread the seed”. But realistically, I’m now in my 30s and not looking to crank my lay count into the stratosphere. I’m looking for something much deeper than that. And so, it’s not worth it for me to use strategies that maybe will get more women attracted to me if that means sacrificing quality. And by quality I mean quality of partner and of the relationship itself. The strategies I want to implement are the ones that are going to get me the highest quality match. Damn anything else. Who cares if I could potentially attract more women with a Rolls Royce? If that’s why she’s with me, that’s a bad sign to begin with. We’re not going to be compatible. Which is of course not to say women should have no needs in relationships. Or that there’s nothing for you to do as a man to develop. But there’s certainly needs that are more conscious than others. And that’s what I’m screening for. As a large generalization, I feel like the debates that have been having on this subforum can be broken down to two types of guys: 1) Guys who have yet to integrate leadership / assertiveness / dominance 2) Guys who have and are looking for what’s beyond The guys who haven’t integrated these concepts to a sufficient degree want to keep hammering the importance of status / leadership etc because that’s what they feel they lack.

??? MC Hammer

Yes I'd say that was well said. I had deep insecurities related to female validation in my early pickup days, and they're probably still there to some degree. I'd hardly even care if the sex was terrible with the girl I hooked up with. As long as I "got laid", I'd feel good about myself. The more girls wanted to have sex with me, the more I felt like a boss. I'd even fudge my own lay count in my head to make it larger than it was. Oral sex counts as sex right? I'm so cool... Underneath all of that, I basically just wanted to feel desirable. But chasing that through pickup was just a black hole. How many girls was it going to take before I get there? 5? 10? 20? 50? It was never ending. Much like a millionaire who is convinced their next million is going to bring them happiness, I was doing much of the same thing but with women. Now my interactions look much different. They look more like what you described above, although I don't do much cold approach these days. If I do cold approach it's very casual. It's more about being social than anything else, like striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to you on a plane. I'm mostly just focused on my life purpose, my friends, my family, my happiness and just being myself. And sometimes women come into my life, and sometimes they don't. There is an illusion of control that pickup gives over your dating life. But the reality is that when it's time for you to meet someone, you'll meet them. And when it's not, you won't. Ironically though, I had to go through pickup to learn that. So I don't shit on pickup. That would be hypocritical. Any guy reading this who wants to try it, go ahead. It can be a lot of fun. But these same insights are likely awaiting you on the other side of that journey.

Diana Richardson:

More Layla:

Layla Martin is good for this:

But we also need to acknowledge that there are likely degrees to which this is true. For some women, status is way more important than others. Likewise with men and "nice tits", which is already a subjective notion. And that as people raise in consciousness, it's accurate to say these things become less important.

Yes I have no plans to eschew status. But as I'm looking for a committed relationship, my main priority is how to build that properly.

No dude. This is so backwards.

I agree. And I don’t think that contradicts anything I said. You will attract people who want what you’re offering, so be conscious of what that is.

That’s certainly what my years in PUA have taught me. Status, status, status. My point still stands regardless. If my hook is status, I will attract women who are interested in status. And this is potentially not going to be the most conscious women who would make for the best relationship. I am not suggesting men abandon leadership. I do think that’s essential. I am simply pointing out how chasing status could actually backfire.

A corollary to this would be that men who are seeking a good relationship are shooting themselves in the foot by trying so hard to obtain status. If you project all this status as a man, then you are likely only to attract women who appreciate status, and therefore who are in their masculine. Or to put it in spiral dynamics terms, Orange attracts Orange. It does seem to me that a healthy balance exists, and that women do appreciate more objective attraction triggers to a certain degree. But at a certain point you have to let that go.

It’s interesting because I feel like RSD (one of the biggest PUA companies) taught something similar. They always railed against guys who believed that their success with women came down to object measures like looks, money or even status. They often would push a narrative that attraction with women was way more subjective and based on how she felt, versus an objective resume type of mindset. It was this fluidity and subjectivity in female sexuality that they taught was the reason you could easily pick up women. In other words, because women don’t care how you look or the money you have, you could go out to a bar and find success right now. All those things you thought you needed, you didn’t. That was the core message I took away from them. The reason RSD would always push this narrative was because there were so many insecure guys who refused to believe it. They just could not grasp that women really were not judging their looks that harshly. And they constantly projected onto women how they would get picked up. I know you are not a fan of cold approach. But I do find it fascinating that you seem to be saying something similar in terms of subjectivity. Where you and RSD seem to diverge is about selectivity. You’re arguing that female selectivity is because of women’s ability to perceive men as unique. While a company like RSD would probably argue female selectivity exists because women are biologically driven to seek out alpha males and then to get them to commit. This was also the origin of female subjectivity, as women were looking for subliminal hints of alpha male behavior, like body language or vocal tonality, rather than object measures. Thanks for clarifying. I love this topic so these ideas have been fun to play with.