Prayer

I have already posted about my regular morning routine, so I'm gonna commence with my evening ritual.  The first portion is prayer.

I personally find this one a particularly interesting one, being that I am an atheist.  It seems pretty futile, even comical, that an atheist would engage in prayer at all, much less every night that he remembers to do so.  But I think there is power in ritual.  Strip it of its mystical or spiritual overtones, it still has a profound effect on one's psyche.

I'm not sure what exactly those effects are, though I'm convinced that if I were to look into them I could definitely find some pragmatic and even concrete benefits it has on your psychological health.  If nothing else, it helps me to focus on the positive and, more importantly, on being active.  Seeing, being an atheist, I hold no pretense about any omnipotent supernatural beings coming to the rescue and taking care of things for me: I realize that if I am to manifest something into reality, the burden is on me to do it.  Prayer, at least the pretenses of prayer, permits me the opportunity to pronounce what I wish to see manifested freely, without restraint.  It is an opportunity for me to declare what I would have be, removing the shackles of what is supposedly realistic or practical.  I give myself permission to dream and push my creative limits in terms of what I feel I can cause to materialize.

So I practice prayer fairly regularly.  Call it unrestrained and benign, even altruistic, goal-setting if you will.  In either case, it amounts to the same thing: willing yourself to conceive of possibilities beyond your perceived limits.

Optimism is a habit

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

I make a habit of regularly thinking positive thoughts at certain intervals during the day.  Does that sound odd?  If I contemplated it from a common sense point of view, I think it would.  I, personally, don't know anyone who does that.

But what Aristotle said struck a chord in me.  Why are we able to wake up at the same time every day?  Why can we alter our bodies through diet and exercise?  How can we build a skill or competence at something?  Habit.

Why, then, should our thoughts, our mental processes, even our personalities be any different?  What, if anything, defines a personality?  How can other people accurately say that we're happy or motivated or kind or shy or ascribe to us any other personality trait?  By observing how we normally behave.

If that's the case, then optimism, like any other dispositional trait, is just a succession of habitual behaviors, the act of continuously and repetitively being optimistic.  So my strategy is simple: Be optimistic regularly.  Three or four times a day, my bell goes off on my phone and I stop and think about why I'm happy, or what's going well, or what I did well.  It doesn't matter how trivial it might be, for just a couple moments, I contemplate only the positive.  And I think it's working.  You will be hard-pressed to find me complaining and even if I do venture into the negative, it's pretty fleeting.  It's soon succeeded by a positive outlook.  Almost as if by habit.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you want to change, if you want to be more motivated, happier, upbeat, outgoing, brave, confident, whatever, it's simple: don't assume it's never going to happen, or that it will magically happen some day.  Start changing what you do.  Rather than ask "Why aren't I happy?"  ask yourself a more productive question like "What do happy people do?  Am I doing that?"  If you're not, try it.  What do you have to lose?

Always question

I recently had a realization, and I'm going to feebly attempt to verbalize it (no, verbalize does not necessarily mean "say", it means "put into words", so writing counts. Go look it up if you don't believe me).

As people canvass life, they come up realizations as, quaintly enough, I just have.  We have experiences, we reflect upon them, sometimes with more emotion than reason, but in any case we instinctively draw conclusions.  Some of these conclusions are faulty, some not so, usually in direct correlation with the extent to which our emotions were involved in making them.  In any case, we then settle upon an assumption, which is used to make inferences in the future and even shape more solidified beliefs regarding associated phenomenon.  Simply put, our experiences shape how we view the world, some times rationally, sometimes not.

What often happens afterwards is we feel compelled to tell (or in the worst cases, lecture or preach) our newfound wisdom to those around us.  We can often feel encouraged in our beliefs when we share them with those in our closest circles.  After all, even if they don't necessarily agree with us, they still are supportive.  It is when we try to pass this knowledge on to others, particularly others who hold on to opposing views (which they came upon via profound experiences and equally deep realizations... see where this is headed?) and we run up against a stone wall that is called either a principle or close-mindedness, depending on which side of the wall you are on.  This can be immensely frustrating, and I realized why.  It's not that you are necessarily angry at the individual per se; there will always be individuals whose views are opposed to ours.  It's that you realize that if the goal of changing the hearts of an individual is so daunting, then how can you hope to have any meaningful effect on the entire world?  If the expenditure of such copious amounts of energy and effort are to no avail to just one person, then what does it take to move whole societies?  The thought is intimidating, overwhelming even.  So how is it to be accomplished?

Initially I assumed reason, logic.  Human beings have an unprecedented capacity to use critical thinking to rise above their current situation, to not be swayed by ephemeral moods and to look at events from an objective viewpoint.  The key word is capacity; this does not necessarily mean we exercise this potential or develop it.  We can be, and often are, still swayed by our psychological attachments to our identities which are wrapped up in our beliefs.  Whether or not this is "right" is irrelevant.  It simply is.

So then I started to think the solution was persuasion.  Humans are emotional creatures, there is no escaping that.  So in order to change hearts and minds we must appeal to their emotions.  Sway others to our cause, that's the solution.  But this did not sit well with me, and I soon realized why: This type of thinking is what induced masses to compromise their morals or values and allow for such atrocities as the Holocaust.  Hitler was a master of mass persuasion at the expense of reason.

So what is it?  You could mix the two and become a politician, but if you consider it, is it any wonder, then, that politicians are considered untrustworthy?  You could relinquish the dream of inspiring the masses because they are too [fill in any negative adjective you feel is appropriate, for instance "ignorant" or "blind"], while relinquishing a tiny bit of your hope, your humanity.  You could continually futilely battering people with your cold, calculated reason, or manipulating them with your impassionated persuasion.

None of these solutions sit well with me.  Then it dawned on me.  Use the oldest philosophical trick in the book: Questions.

The socratic method.

The few times I have managed to open minds or hearts, albeit only slightly, was with patient, considerate but reasoned questions.  It is the ideal mix of reason and empathy, all the while acknowledging that the other person's thoughts and opinions matter (and they do, I'm not just saying that).  Why do they matter?  Because you can never be sure that YOU are right, and if you practice this method, you are giving the other person a chance to persuade YOU with their reason, with their experience.  Scary, isn't it?  The other methods do not allow this.  The socratic method does.  As far as I can see, it is the straightest path to the truth: the alliance of two diverse minds in cooperative endeavor to take a small step closer to the truth.  A slow, ardous, exhausting process, but in the direction of truth.  If you allow another to expound his or her truth, you permit them the opportunity to persuade you.  If you allow another person his or her own thought process, you allow them to change their own mind without having to shove your agenda down their throat or swindling their rational faculties.

So I want to go back to it: questioning people's claims, asking them to examine their beliefs.

The perfect weapon against faulty reasoning?  The question "Why?".

Motivation is a habit, not a state

I remember reading or hearing something awhile ago, it had to do with motivation.  It struck a chord (or perhaps a nerve) with me in particular, because I used to wonder about all this self-motivation, affirmation, self-improvement stuff.  How come, even though I've read so much of it and practiced so much of it, do I still hit lazy spells and lose motivation?  If it's so effective how come so many people just go back to their old habits?

To answer that question, I have two questions for you:

1. How come you keep getting hungry, even though you keep eating?  You put food into your stomach six hours ago, why is it grumbling again, goddammit??

2. How come you keep feeling sleepy every night?  Didn't you just sleep 4, 5, 6 maybe 7 or 8 hours last night?  Why does this keep happening?

I hope my analogy is pretty clear, but just to be on the safe side: Your mind needs a consistent intake of motivation, just like your body needs a consistent intake of rest and fuel.

I wish I could remember which motivational speaker said this and turned the light bulb on in my head, but I don't.  I want to say it's Tony Robbins or Steven Covey, but then I might be doing a disservice to whoever actually said it.

It made sense to me because I am aware of how most people view motivation: We watch a movie like Rocky or Beautiful Mind, feel wonderful for awhile, are satisfied by that ephemeral feeling, ride it for awhile but decline to make the effort to SUSTAIN it, to keep it going, through daily, ritualistic (and often tedious) practice.  It's the quinessential story for failure: it was fun and exciting at first, became drab or tedious, and we stopped.  The same is true for health, diet, sleep and exercise: if we keep it up even when we don't feel like it, it'll stick around and results will inevitably (but precariously or randomly) appear.  If we quit, the results we have built up will stick around for awhile, but gradually disappear.

I realized this when I developed two habits: think positive thoughts consistently throughout the day, and watch something motivating, positive or optimistic every morning before starting my day.

It starts the same.  At the beginning, it's powerful and I can feel the effects tremendously: I'm pumped, ready to go, wondering why I didn't discover this (or keep this up longer) earlier.  Soon enough, I reach a sort of plateau, where I can think of a dozen "better" things to do.  Eventually, I make excuses: it's been working, I can skip once; it's not that important; I could use the time to play a little poker or check out some interesting website.  Up until now, this was enough to turn the snowball into an avalanche and eventually I'd quit, weeks or months later wondering where my motivation had gone.

Well, I'm pretty sure there's a correlation, because for the past month or so I've been forcing myself to keep up these two habits whether I felt like it or not, whether I did them well or not (kind of like how I feel writing this now.  I'm pretty sure stylistically what I'm doing sucks, but I don't care, it's more important that I do it imperfectly than use imperfection as an excuse not to do anything).  I set up a timer on my iPhone that goes off every hour and reminds me to think something positive, no matter how trivial or minor.  Every morning, some time between 7am and 7:30am, I watch at least one positive, motivating or optimistic video on YouTube, and then listen to some uplifting music.  If, for some reason, I don't have access to YouTube or videos, I read something positive or motivating.  Here are some examples:

These are just a few examples.  Some small, seemingly trivial, some major.  I don't care, whatever makes me want to work harder, exhaust my effort more and contribute.  Watch and GO.  And it's been having an effect.  It's starting to feel natural, just like eating, drinking or sleeping.  It's slowly becoming an integral part of my day, to the point that I actually feel weird or icky if I don't do it.  People who exercise regularly will probably understand what I'm talking about: even if you don't really feel like doing it, you know you'll just feel "wrong" if you don't, so you do it, without really even thinking about it.  Speaking of which, it's about time for me to do a bit of exercise.

Try it.  Every single day, for at least one month, preferably more.  Even if you don't feel like it, even if it's cumbersome or you're tired.  Just do it.  See if it doesn't make a difference.  If it doesn't, you'll have wasted a total of 150 minutes of your month, maybe less.  You were going to waste that watching TV anyway.

If you're not sure what to watch, here are some channels you can check out:
Sean Stephenson
Brian Tracy
Positively Positive
Eric Thomas the Hip Hop Preacher

Or, just check out the "Motivation" and "Positive Videos" playlists on my channel.

 

every morning

Every morning I wake up and yell "Good morning!" as loud as I can, throw open the curtains and make the bed before I have time to realize how sleepy I may (or may not) be that day.

I then ask myself an empowering question.  This morning it was "What am I excited about today??"

Then I set my timer to go off once a hour and make sure there's a positive thought going through my mind at the time.

Then I listen to pump me up music while I exercise.

Then I get some breakfast and take a shower.

Then I watch motivating videos on You Tube while I work until I feel like I'm gonna cry.

One way to start a morning

It's been awhile, so you'll forgive me if my normally beautiful prose style is a bit less than adequate.

In any case, I'm still working on self improvement on a day-to-day basis, particularly in terms of motivation.  I'm pretty much fully focused on a business venture, and I realize that just like the maintenance of one's physical health, mental and psychological health is a day to day practice, an ongoing process, not something you plug in once and then is complete.

Quite awhile ago I read Tony Robbins' book "Awaken the Giant Within."  I am now a fan of Tony Robbins and highly recommend that book, particularly for anyone who feels lost or like they have no direction in life.

Among a myriad of other things, one concept that I got from the book that I've turned into a practice is the habit of asking yourself empowering questions.  I choose one question a day and focus on it.  It's one among many other things I do to get myself going.  Here are my particular questions:

Monday: What am I happy about in my life now?
Tuesday: What am I excited about in my life now?
Wednesday: What am I proud of?
Thursday: What am I grateful for?
Friday: What am I enjoying in my life right now?
Saturday: What am I committed to in my life right now?
Sunday: What do I love?  Who loves me?

Tony Robbins recommends asking all of these quetions every time, but I'm a bit pressed for time, and I found myself rushing through them rather than really contemplating them and allowing my responses to resound through me and really inspire me.  What questions you use in particular, why, how many and how often you ask are not that important; the central idea is to make them positive and inspiring, and hopefully in a way that charges your creativity.

Passion

Watching a video on YouTube on being successful.  This is why I add motivating videos to my favorites.  Sometimes I get lost, or stray, or have to make a choice.  And it's hard.  But sometimes the right message at the right time sets me back on my path.

There are two questions that popped in my mind after watching the video:

1. What am I willing to sacrifice everything for?
2. Even if I could never ever make any money from it, and I had to be poor or broke my entire life no matter how hard I worked at it, what would I STILL do?

The answer was twofold: write and inspire.

I would write stories, movies, books, songs, whatever, that inspired people.  I would write tales of courage, battle, struggle, hardship and overcoming.  I would let people know that life is not easy, but it's worth it, and it can be joyful.

The crossroads I am at has to do with relationships.

I absolutely adore my girlfriend and she is one of the greatest people I have ever met.  But I also love the adventure of the completely free and single life.  I must choose.  But this is not about women and it's not about my girlfriend, it's about my path.  The only thing that matters is what is going to fuel my creative energy, and how can I learn to inspire and connect with people more?  It's a simple question and, like most simple questions, hard.

Here's the video, in case you're curious.

 

Continuation

Last time I went for my goal I was drunk and didn't actually complete it again, so I decided to do it again.  I realized that, although it's fine as "practice", I'd rather not complete my goals drunk.  Also, I want to try them on my own, and/or on the street as well.

So I went to an international party by myself.  I'm not a big fan of those, but they are great places to practice stuff and warm up for the rest of the night.  Plus, thanks to connections, I usually get into them for free.  So I had one drink, not nearly enough for me to even get tipsy, and went to work.  I didn't say "Hi!  What's your name?" to everyone, but pretty close.  Although it seems obvious objectively, it isn't until you really experience how friendly and welcome most people are that you start to realize just how much we inhibit OURSELVES, rather than are inhibited (by society or whatever bullshit).  Once you warm up, it becomes very natural and enjoyable to be sociable, even if you are an introvert like me.

Last weekend I was going through something tough so, even though I went out, I didn't complete any assignments.  No matter, I have plans to do so next weekend.

I'm going to greet and ask the name of everyone in whatever venue I wind up in next time.  That will be the very first thing I do.  I may even start with the most "difficult" people first (whoever looks weirdest or most intimidating).  If I don't go to any particular venue, I'll just walk up to some girls on the street and ask them.  I'm not sure how many or how long I'll do it, I'll probably gauge it in the moment.

In addition I have a "party" game I wanna try.  If I get a chance, I'll post about it next time.

Wedding weekend

Went to my first bonafide full-on wedding last Saturday.  Prior to that I attended a former student's wedding after party, but this time I was there for the whole shebang.  It was two hours of a lot of sermonizing (both literally and figuratively), a lot of trite and contrived well-wishings and enskying to God and love and all that.  I think it's great to praise and honor love, but next time do it with a little more heart and a little less head.

Anyway, after that was the more pleasant (albeit expensive) reception.

My goal this weekend was just to say "Hi, what's your name?" to everyone.  I got off to a very tenative start at the dinner.  I was exhausted and very much in my head, and mostly stuck to chatting with people I had met at the wedding or on the bus ride over to dinner.  But after a bit of assistance from the free wine, champagne and beer, I was off and running up to and at the after party.  I didn't quite say hi to everyone, and I was a bit intoxicated (though considerably less than the time before), but I must have approached at least 75% of the people, and I tried it a little differently than I had expected to.  See, I've been watching a bunch of the short (generally less than 10 minute) RSD videos on you tube, and I decided to give their way a try: I was very direct and assertive.  Rather than "Hi... what's YOUR name?" my approach was "HEY! What's your name?"  The responses were interesting.  It was very attention grabbing.

Regardless, I'm going to try this again, preferably with EVERYONE in the venue AND more sober.  Should be fun.

I'm going to keep this one brief since I'm off to work in about five minutes.

pushing past comfort

I've decided to take it upon myself to try something that feels uncomfortable because you're not "supposed to" do it at least once a week.  Generally these things are to be conducted in social settings because, quite simply, most of our actual discomfort comes from human interaction.  There's very little discomfort to be found in solitude.  Where I tend to think we feel the most acute discomfort is in defying what we have been socially conditioned to accept as inappropriate or improper behavior.  I'm not going to go so far as to do anything criminal or intentionally malicious or harmful, but things that other people may potentially dislike.

I'm going to start slow and easy.  The goal was simply to walk up to people (particularly women) and playing a simple guessing game with them.  Just bring a friend and say "We want to guess something about you," state what it is and then guess it.  That's it.

I didn't do it as much as I would like to have and I was more intoxicated than I initially wanted to be, but I did it, and it was fun.  One group of girls walked off on us before we got a chance to ask them anything, a few groups of people ignored us, but most were friendly and I even got a few hugs and one pair of girls asked if they could take a picture with us.

The point was to demonstrate to myself experientially that not only will no harm come to us for trying such a thing but that it can be enjoyable, not just to ourselves but to the people talking.  We found out, for instance, that one guy and girl just got married.  Another Korean guy started asking me stuff and tried to engage us in conversation, even after my friend told me he looked like he wanted to punch somebody so I shouldn't talk to him.

Something else struck me, and it wasn't until I got home and contemplated the night that it started bothering me.

I have another friend who has been, on and off, doing this sort of thing on a regular basis (granted, with attractive females exclusively, which I consider even more admirable).  I've gone out with him a couple times, and realized that any expectations I felt were only self-imposed: he never criticized or ridiculed any results I got.

This time it was different.  There was a group of five of us, and a couple times I was "rejected" outright.  Two of them laughed at the rejections.  I was a bit perplexed and I realized why: first, it seemed as though they thought of rejection as the status quo, or what was "supposed to" happen, rather than an anomaly.  Second, their comments proceding the laughter seemed to indicate that they were "better" with women than me, as they have not yet "failed" and so by default, they have a score of zero and I have a negative score.  I realize that's overly analytical, but I see no other reason to celebrate another person's perceived failure and the fact that NONE of them took any initiative the whole night leads me to believe this.

That's the other thing: NONE of them took ANY initiative (i.e. any risk).  I had to push them to enter into an interaction with me, and every time I did they expected me to lead and make the decisions.  I figured since it was my idea I was obliged to start, so I took each one of them, one at a time, and walked up to a person or two people or a group and initiated the conversation.  After that, I basically said "Ok, your turn." and no one did anything, so again I said "Ok, I'll go with you, but you have to come up with a question."  None of them did.  When it came time to asking, they each turned to me and said some variation of "What should I ask?"

They were also very anal about the actual game itself, missing the point that the game was irrelevant; it was a conscience excuse to get them to do something they unconsciously wanted to do: interact with women.  When I woud ask a binary question: "We're guessing whether or not you're students.  I say you are." they would get huffy about how they weren't prepared for the question or that it was an either/or question so they didn't get to creatively come up with an answer.  This baffled me.  Who cares?  It's a game!

Finally, in between interactions, there was no interest in pursuing it.  They all agreed to come out with me and try it, but once an interaction ended they would begin conversation that had nothing to do with their current surroundings; nothing about what questions to ask or who to approach or what was going on around them AT THE MOMENT.  It was all intellectual talk, talk absorbed in the future, the past or the abstract.  It struck me to just what propensity men will often try to "escape" even the slightest stress about what is actually happening by retreating into their heads or into conventional patterns of behavior.

I don't blame them, but I feel a little let down.  They seemed gung ho to try something silly, but when it came time to pay the piper, they seemed to back down, with commonly accepted mediocrity as their excuse.  I'm a bit torn in terms of what to do.  I'm not going to quit, but would it be best to do this alone?  Or to find more like minded people and limit myself to doing it with them?  Or to continue pushing people I consider friends to trying new things?  I think, deep down, most of these men WANT to push themselves, and maybe even want someone to help them do that, but I also think it doesn't matter what you WANT, it matters what you're willing to DO to get what you want, and I'm not sure how willing they are to be unconventional.

This was a first step, a baby step.  It's only going to get incremently more challenging from here.  Not necessarily more "exciting", but more challenging.  It will take stretching, it will take feeling discomfort and embarrassment and nervousness.  But that's the whole point: in the end, I will still be alive, and grateful for it.

Next up

"Imagination is everything.  It is the preview of life's coming attractions."

- Albert Einstein

I've decided I want to work on this blog again regularly.  I'm going to go through a series of exercises, some minor, some major, some temporary, some consistent, some seemingly insignificant (to you), others possibly seemingly impossible, but I'd like to keep a fairly consistent record of them.

The first one is part of my morning routine that I would like to maintain daily.  When I wake up, the first thing I do is literally hop out of bed and say "Ohayo gozaimasu!" (Japanese for good morning) in a powerful voice.  The very next thing I do is ask myself "How can I make today just a little more extraordinary then before?" and I answer that question.  Sometimes I accomplish my goal, sometimes I don't, but I always consider it.  I am answering that question right now (by writing, in fact doing a little more than I did before in regards to writing).  It never has to be anything big; it could be "ask someone how they're doing today." or "smile a little more often today."  or "do an extra 15 minutes of exercise".  Anything that makes you feel better than you would have otherwise.  The more concrete it is the easier it is to accomplish.  Saying "be happier" is close to useless because it's not a concrete action that you can picture in your mind.  Saying "smile more" is better, because smiling is an action, but "more" is a little vague.  Something like "smile at everyone I see" is perfect; it's quanitifiable, imagineable and attainable.

Finally, I've taken on an old exercise: maintain eye contact with people for a certain period of time every day.  Right now I just spend 5 minutes a day trying to hold eye contact with others.  It's actually more difficult than you might think (at least for me it is).  I noticed my body tensing, my breath stopping and other such fear-based reactions coming to the surface.  My mind started racing, worrying about what other people might do/say if they caught me staring.  I tried "multi-tasking"; consciously dealing with my "fear" while unconsciously trying to maintain eye contact at the same time.  It made it more difficult.  But I noticed something interesting (which I virtually always notice when I do things like this): the more I kept forcing myself to do it, regardless of my emotional or mental state, regardless of how difficult it was and how easy it would have been to excuse myself, the more the fear dissipated and I just starting feeling calm again.  This is the essence of behavior modification; the more you experience something, the more you force your mind to adapt to it and create a state of homeo stasis within you.  But like exercise, this particular modification either expands or stagnates, it never remains static.  In other words, if you do not continually practice, your ability will worsen, not stay the same.  But once you get over it, your comfort zone expands.  When your comfort zone expands, so does your personal sense of freedom.  Your body goes from "I can't do that!" to "It's so hard to do that!" to "It's hard to do that, but I can." to "I can do that."  That's what freedom is about.  When your freedom expands, so does your creativity.  Soon you discover things you believed you couldn't do, you can, and you start to wonder what ELSE you can do that you had thought you couldn't...

It's endless.  Enjoy the ride.

 

Sean Stephenson

If you haven't heard of Sean Stephenson, you should have.  Watch this link just to get a fraction of an idea of how enormous this man really is.  He's done ten times as much as people twice as "big" as him.  Watching him just speak to people was massively inspiring to me.  The first thing that came to my mind was "If this guy can accomplish as much as he has in as little time, what's MY excuse?"

Certainly, we all have the capacity and the freedom to create as many excuses as we desire, some may be more "valid" than others.  But in the end, so what?  Is that really what you want your life to add up to; a series of excuses with nothing to show for it?  Zoologically, that type of organism - the type that syphons off of life by consuming and taking without giving anything in return - is called a parasite.  Harsh, maybe, but how many times do people like Sean Stephenson have to prove their existence and the capacity of the human being before we finally believe it?  It seriously baffles me sometimes.

New Direction... again?

It's been an interesting ride so far. I've been doing a fair bit of reading. Part of that is rereading David Deida's Way of the Superior Man. I've been rereading that a lot lately. Not only do I agree with the values it proposes, but I like the way it's written; it's open, intuitive. I've spent months, if not years, trying to improve myself with women. Like a typical learning curve, my improvement hit me like a ton of bricks recently. I felt overwhelmed. I still do, but I'm handling it better. I was seriously considering giving it up completely and settling for one girl, but I've decided against that. I recently re-acknowledged the fact that, like anything else in life, I'm going to make mistakes. It's a natural part of the process, unavoidable. On top of that, it's perfectly fine. I have decided to allow myself the mistakes and to allow myself to try things for the first time to experience them for myself.

I had a very open talk with Yasuko. I told her that I see other girls and at some point she's going to see or find out. She seemed surprised. Intriguingly, the intention was to end things with her, because I felt she (and I) was getting too attached. I care about her a lot. I even told her I love her, which is true. Yasuko is not a girl who is going to be my "one." Not ever. But she's a great girl, and she seems to understand and accept where I'm at. That was the upside: She seems cool with it, at least for now. However, she seems to feel that a) she's more privileged than the other girls and b) she know has the right to ask me whatever she wants. I'm actually fine with A, except for when she finds out one day. I don't like B and I want it to stop. Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing.

Michiyo and Rina seem ideal right now; they don't ask questions or make demands and are willing to let things happen naturally.

The one thing is, though, I realized that Yasuko offers me something that I'm not sure Michiyo or Rina can or want to offer: I can go out with Yasuko and totally be myself; flirt with girls, kiss other girls, get their numbers. She accepts it. Rina and Michiyo really understand me deeply and I feel we connect on a deeper level, but I wonder how they'd handle a similar situation.

I realized I don't require a girl to fulfill all these things for me, but I would like at least one girl who I can take out with me in public, one girl who I can connect with and be open with, and one girl who can keep things casual, fun and infrequent. They don't have to be the same girl. But I'm quite sure I wouldn't be satisfied with one girl at this point. Ideally, one girl who is my girlfriend, who I can take out and who connects me with, and then lets me have the other fun girls.

I realized I don't have time for multiple intimate relationships. I also realized that I brought them upon myself. I spent too much time with the girls and was too open too fast. I had a similar problem before, except this time it was delayed; I was wise enough to wait until we were sexually intimate to really open myself, but even then, it was too soon, too much. So I'm still learning to space it out. I tried seeing seven girls every week and I got burnt out. Rina and Michiyo seem very flexible, so it won't be hard rearranging the situation with them. I basically told Kayo that I didn't think we should meet any more cuz she was getting too attached. She told me she still wanted to see me and that she would try to cool down. I stood Sayo up and she still wants to see me. Makiko is flexible. Ai is busy anyway and needs her freedom. So I've decided I'll keep things the way they are with Yasuko, Rina and Michiyo and I'll try the new "plan" with the others.

The plan is from now on, I only invite new girls out once a month. They can pursue me more persistently if they want. Only random contact, meeting for a short time, very convenient times only. After awhile, if they seem cool or close to my ideal, maybe twice a month. No more than 4 "girlfriends." The rest are for fun.

I really want more time to myself. There is still so much left to do in my life besides women. For the most part, the idea of pursuing new ones leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Can't be fucked. But every once in awhile they come out of the woodwork; girls from my past, people I meet at parties, girls on mixi, etc.

I went to an international party on Sunday that I didn't feel like going to. Yasuko coaxed me. Without the alcohol, I don't know how I could have brought out the party side, but it came out. Big time. Had a good time, but felt exhausted after. Could have gotten about half a dozen numbers, only bothered with two. Dunno if I'm gonna bother contacting those girls are not. The only ones worth it would take some serious effort, and I don't feel like putting in the effort at this juncture.

I still have a long ways to go, a lot to learn, and a lot is still confusing for me, but things are slowly starting to become clearer. I'm in control of my life, my activities and my state. I lead things and I make the decisions. Everyone else can hop on board or get off, their choice. I'm a lot stronger and more sure of myself than I have ever been, so I know I'll be alright. I'll continue to make a LOT of mistakes from here on out. A lot of people, myself included, will get hurt. Then we'll grow and become even better.

There's a lot more to say, but I'm going to leave it there.

Little idea

A few weeks ago I pondered a situation: About once a week I go to this cafe near my place called Cafe Veloce. One particular day I went there there were four female employees, ALL cute. I love chatting with (or chatting up) girls working, but I was at a loss in that situation: If the chat went well with one of them, what do I do? Should I try to "network" and get a group meet? Do I wait until I can "isolate" them (when they work separately) and try to close all of them? Do I pick one?

I consulted a few friends and came up with my solution: Try chatting them all up at least once first, pick the one who seems the most fun (and hopefully most keen) and close her.

How did I come up with this solution?

I work at a culture center in Tenmabashi. There's a lobby where they give me the attendance sheet. About three cute girls work there, all friendly. Right before the lesson starts, one of them goes to the room to clean up. I usually get there early. I had a chat with one of the cuties named Tomoe. She was EXTREMELY keen and seemed cool enough. I didn't close her then, and it occurred to me that, even though the actual reason was that I didn't have the balls, it might work in my benefit: What if one of the other girls is MORE keen, or COOLER or both? So I decided I would wait til I had a chance to chat up the others, and then try closing the one I liked most.

Poof, idea is born.

Re-evaluation

For as long as I can remember, I wanted multiple intimate but non-exclusive relationships with lots of women. Now I have it. I would say as of about a week or two ago, I've got six "regulars", or girls I am having sex with regularly. I adore them all. There's Makiko who I've been seeing for about 2 years now. She's nowhere near what I want ideally, but it's easy to be with her, and she's never demanded anything out of our relationships. She also seems to really enjoy sex and has a cute butt. I've known Yasuko for awhile, but we've gotten more serious in the past couple months. She's actually very sweet and is good in bed and has a pretty tight body. Rina and I just started. She's a lot of fun, spunky, intelligent and cute. She also has two kids. She doesn't seem too serious, which is a good thing. Kayo is quite sexy, voracious in bed and is a challenge. Ai is extremely pretty, young, a challenge and seems adventuresome in bed. Maybe a bit troubled, though, we'll see. Michiyo is sweet, intelligent, upbeat and we have a lot of similarities. On top of these girls are a few girls who seem interested in starting something: Sayo, Miki, Ayano, etc.

So I finally got what I wanted. It's fantastic, and educational, but at the same time, it's opened me up to certain things.

The instigator was a house party I decided to have at my place. Prior to this experience, I just invited everybody and let the chips fall where they may during the party. I wound up making out with a girl last time, so I was satisfied. So I went ahead and did the same thing this time around as well. Mistake. I wound up inviting 3 of the girls I'm seeing to be in the same place at the same time with me. Doh.

A number of things have occurred to me:
I can't keep up six relationships simultaneously forever. I can possibly prolong them by either finding the right girls or lying, but they can't go on forever. Most, if not all, of them have to end at some point.
I love intimacy. I love building intimacy and getting to know people deeply and creating something together.
Women love intimacy. But they also love feeling special, exclusive.
I don't necessarily need intimacy.
I think it would be cool to be able to bring a girl out with me and flirt with other girls and make out with them with her there and have her be cool with it. I think I could be cool with it if I understood what our relationship was about, as well.
I can't possibly maintain relationships with every single girl I think is cool. I simply don't have the time or energy.
I love women. I think there are a ton of cool, attractive women out there and I want to get to know all of them.
Sex is a precursor to a deeper and more fulfilling relationship.
I have other things in my life that I want to focus on besides women. I can't keep this up forever.
I could have a shitload of relationships with women who are cool with meeting only once or twice a month, usually just for sex and time together, not dates.
I could reduce the number of girls I see so I can focus more time, energy and money on them. This would meeting upping the quality.
I could just let the chips fall where they may as far as how many women I'm seeing and how often and what types of relationships I'm establishing.
I could work towards having one exclusive relationship.
I could just go for one night stands, which would require me learning how to seduce a woman more quickly and effectively.
I could meet lots of new women through parties, events, bars and clubs. This requires money and time. It's easier to pull women home quickly from these events. I run the risk of establishing a reputation at these places and running into people.
I could meet new women on the streets. It'll challenge me in an area I feel weak at but be fun (and free) at the same time. It'd be harder to actually create relationships with these women, at least at first, but that's part of the challenge. There's no crossover with anything else I'm doing in my life.
I could meet women online. It's easier, but slower than meeting directly. It's also an area I don't have a lot of experience or confidence at.
I could work on trying to establish and maintain as many relationships as possible. This would satisfy my desire for variety and give me a lot of experience and knowledge about women. It would also satisfy my desire for relationships and/or intimacy. It could become complicated and it seems like the women would be susceptible to considering themselves my girlfriends. It would also probably take a lot of time, and potentially money and energy.
I could try to establish even more relationships, til I reach the breaking point, then let things fall as they may. This would, for a short period of time, be extremely exhausting and time consuming, but eventually things would sort themselves out. I would also not have time for meeting other women, which could be either a good or bad thing. I could wind up discovering a lot more. I am on a bit of a rush now, so it would be very possible for me to be able to add new people now, which might be fun since there's quite a few girls interested in me now, on top of the other ones.
I could increase my ideals, and eliminate any one who doesn't meet them. This would reduce the number of women I'm seeing, and would increase the quality. It would be harder to add new girls, though, and I might miss some interesting experiences.
I could go for only girls who are cool with and aware of the fact that I see others and/or girls who are fine with going out to social events with me and seeing me mess with others. This would reduce a lot of girls, ones who are also cool but simply would rather not be aware (i.e. have it thrust in their face). However, even though I may be missing out, this would also simplify a lot of things.
I could go exclusive. I can't imagine being satisfied by this, but it would be the simplest solution.

So why do I still pursue pick up? There are still a lot of things I have yet to experience:
-The ability to cold approach women
-The ability to quickly seduce women; same night lays, minimizing resistance, screening for sexual open-mindedness
-Being with super hot women
-Meeting my ideals or desired experiences (dating a dancer, dating a sexually open minded, dating a Chinese girl, etc.)
among many others.

There are so many beautiful women out there... but the end goal of simply saying hi to them is either to get laid and then ditch them or to establish relationships.

I don't see a lot of fulfillment out of getting laid once with a girl and then having nothing (or virtually nothing) to do with them. But maybe that's just because I haven't experienced it yet? Or because I see no point in just entering a person's life and then leaving it. I'm not sure. This is something I want to try some time. Or maybe, realistically, there is no such thing. Maybe it turns into something that lingers, but in a different way than a typical relationship, where you just reconnect when it works for both of you.

Relationships seem more fulfilling now... but they also take more time, energy and money. I can go on having one night stands til I get tired of them; there's limitless potential, but there's a limit to how many relationships I can maintain in a satisfying way. How do I determine this limit? How much time and energy am I willing to dedicate to them? How do I choose between different ones? What do I do when new opportunities arise? Is my priorities new experiences or building old ones? What do I get out of maintaining multiple relationships? What do women want out of them? What do I do when I feel overwhelmed? How do I decide who to drop and who to maintain? What am I offering to women through this? What are my beliefs about love, romance, women and men, sex, monogamy and polygamy, freedom?

So many questions and so little experience.

Consecutive Days

Chaka and I went out again last Sunday. I'm now doing five warm ups (five really quick "Hi!"s within a minute of each other) to get myself pumped up and then 10 "challenges." This week's challenge was walking up to a girl, making a comment and walking away. Chaka and I were pressed for time so we went to Takashimaya and made the rounds on each floor: We each had to approach a girl before moving to the next floor. I think we managed ten approaches in about half an hour. Sometimes I get some sparks of creativity that are a lot of fun. I'll make notes of that in the future.

I've also come up with some "stages" or harder things I'd like to try should what I am currently working on no longer feel like a challenge. Currently, I'm going out twice a week, giving myself one minute per warm up and no time limit on the rest of the approaches, approaching 15 girls total, generally during the day time with a partner. My approaches are simple. In the future, I'd like to increase the frequency (3+ times a week), number of girls (20-50), time of day, going out by myself, doing more challenging approaches, etc.

Stefan and I did our first of three consecutive days yesterday. The warm up was fun, but we went to Umeda at night and it was pretty tough. We wound up trying to squeeze in our last ones at Hep Five right before they closed.

I haven't had any number closes yet, but oh well.

The previous "success" has ceased to bother me. I'm in a good spot right now. I've been seeing three girls regularly, all of whom are crazy about me, and had sex with another one who could easily become a regular soon (she's married and we've known each other awhile). On top of that, there are a few other prospects, all very young (which I don't have yet). Little by little I'm learning that, at least in a big city like this, there are opportunities abound. Just keep your eyes open.

I think the whole "inner game" thing is less about girls "noticing" your improvement and more about you learning how to find and utilize opportunities more often. I see girls on the street noticing me more, and I think it has less to do with them noticing my changes than me being in the mindset of seeking out opportunities and going for them. Still working on the "utilizing" part though.

I love being a positive improvement on people's lives. One of my regulars called me out of the blue, just to talk. It was easy to tell she was down. Without even talking about her problems, within five minutes she was her usual genki self. Because she called me. That's a great feeling. It's even better when she emailed me later to thank me, saying she was glad she knew me. That's what I want to provide for women: Making them glad they took a chance/risk to get to know someone new.

Haven't emailed Nao. Luka said she was gonna stop by the bar on the 29th when I work. We'll see.

Ai1 (the girlfriend) and I are still getting along. I'm seeing Makiko on Saturday. I'm seeing Kayo this Thursday. She's in love with me, but has a financee (thankfully). May invite Yasuko out, dunno yet. Ai2 (short, cute and very smart girl who's a potential) and I had a date on Sunday. She cancelled. Sick, apparently. Meh. Said she's going to invite me out again, we'll see. Ayano (a girl I had fun with last Saturday) may come out to Coolabah next month. May go out to eat with Ako. Asuka and a friend of hers and myself and a friend of mine may have a picnic or house party or something. Same with Miho, who just broke up with her boyfriend (trying not to get too excited about that).

Sexy bartender turned out to be one of those small windows of opportunity. I had the opportunity but didn't quite go through it fully, and now it's closed. Oh well. Definitely did better this time than the times before.

Miki came over. I messed that up, in a sense. I think I played it really well, but I stopped myself again. She was on my bed, leaning towards me, touching my leg and such... and all I did was kino. I made up some lame excuses in my head and didn't go for it. The problem clicked though. Initially I had this mindset that there was "some" mental block preventing me from escalating with women. I got it. I take it too seriously. It clicked with me that it was no problem getting Miki to hang out with me, flirt with me, touch me and come over to my place, even though she mostly just chattered about her boyfriend. She even stayed over later than planned. Why? Because I didn't care. It was all play. It was "I feel like saying this, so let's just see how she reacts." or "I feel like touching her here, so let's see what she does." All with positive results. So why didn't I grab her or touch her sensually or kiss her? My mindset was "Ok, that stuff isn't play, that's serious." Uh uh! It's all play. In hindsight, I wish I had just grabbed her waist and pulled her towards me to see what she would have done. My gut tells me she wouldn't have resisted. Actually, she may have resisted but either a) only initially or b) she still would have liked it. I know I would have. For next time.

I'm still focused on meeting girls on the street and from mixi. I came up with some ideas for mixi as well: Once I fill My Mixi with friends, people I know and/or good contacts (business owners, DJs, etc.), I'll use My List to add girls who I want to meet individually. In other words, mixi for friendship and business, list for flirting and pick up. Basically girls who don't seem like they'd be great connections (don't have a lot of friends) but are cute and interesting, put on my list and flirt and experiment with. Anybody else, schmooze and add to my mixi.

Everything else I'm just plugging away at! Like I said, the party was a success; I surpassed my profit goal and my number of people goal. I've decided that if I can do it again next month, I'm going to add to my repertoire. Right now, an evening party at Slices seems appropriate. Again, once a month. I think my goal there would be 5000 a month and at least 12 people. Should be fun.

Day 1

First, the records with Stefan and Chaka.

Chaka and I met up last Friday, a week from now. He only had about 45 minutes to work with me, so we just tried something new: sitting in front of a cafe and calling out to girls who walk by. We only managed one each, but it was fun, and I wanna try it again.
Stefan and I went to Umeda on Monday. I had some new subgoals, since my original goals (walking up and asking for directions to 5 girls a time) have become less challenging: Five girls, simple as possible but also quickly as possible, and then another five girls with whom I take my time but challenge myself with a little more (asking opinion openers or something else silly or fun), for a total of 10 at a time, or 20 a week. I succeeded.

I realized the first five are like the stretch before a workout. I don't feel nervous about it, just lethargic. Once I get the ball rolling, though, I get back into the flow and the rest are kind of downhill, it snowballs.

Anyhow, I got one number and Stefan got an insta-date with a girl passing out flyers. Good times.

I noticed that now success is making me nervous. I feel like I have to or should be living up to a higher standard. I feel an increased sense of awareness, like what I used to offer girls was good, but I could offer more and they, ideally, want more. But I'm not used to it yet, so I feel a sense of dissonance. I COULD continue to offer what I've been offering now (fun, good times, good conversation, a bit of flirting), but it's not enough, not for me or them, and I know I can offer more, I just don't know how yet, and I get that feeling of "but that's not ME" which is bullshit code for "I feel very uncomfortable trying new things."

In any case, this is something I want to continue to challenge myself with, so I'll keep it up, at least twice a week, no matter what mood I'm in. Just stick with it.

Updates on the last two closes: Nao, the less cute one who wrote back, I haven't written back to, but will this weekend, probably to invite her out for the 14th or 15th (I'll be organizing a party and bartending, respectively). Luca, the other one, actually wrote back yesterday, apologizing for her late message. She wants to meet up this weekend. I was supposed to meet Ai this Saturday, but I'll see her on Monday and I saw her for two days yesterday and the day before, so I'll cancel with her to meet Luca tomorrow.

I cancelled with Kayo for today because I wanted some time to myself to get things done. I'm still feeling like I shouldn't have... but it is my time and I can meet her again. If she really wants to see me, she'll wait, I guess. I hope.

No word from sexy bartender. Will see her around again though. If not, there's a shitload of women on mixi and on the street, anyway.

In any case, still plugging away. I'm pretty sure that soon I'll have so many options I won't know what to do, which is great for everybody all around. I was thinking maybe some day I can parlay this into some kind of self-help work or job... would be fun.

Oh yes, I've decided to give myself another challenge: I am in a bad financial state, but I'm still feeling really sociable and wanting to do this. I've decided that I am ONLY going to meet girls from either the internet (particularly mixi) or on the street, both of which are free. If I happen to get any contact information or interest, I'm ONLY going to meet one new girl a week for no more than a few hours. Only Kayo, Ai and Makiko are exceptions, since I've been seeing them regularly. I'm also going to spend no more than about 1000 yen (or $12) on any one of them at one time. This will be until either a) I find enough regulars to keep me busy or b) I get my financial situation in order.

Speaking of financial situations, I've decided that this summer I'm going to focus on the following things:
A) Finishing up my coursework so that I can create more teaching job options for myself.
B) Working on getting my own private group lessons going at a local community center.
C) Starting translations
D) Figuring out how to use my writing skills and interests to generate income (blogging, writing content for companies, editing, etc.)
E) Figuring out some way to use my teaching skills, experience and knowledge to offer services to people.
F) Getting really good at poker.

This way, I'll hopefully have four sources of income: teaching, translation, writing and coaching. If I could make the equivalent of even just 50,000 yen each from them (about $600), I'll be okay. Til then, no partying.

New Directions

Yes, that's a reference to Glee. Oh well. I'm too tired to create my own post heading right now.

I've decided to start a new blog for my personal pursuit of self-improvement. For right now, this will mainly be concerned with certain behaviors I'm actively trying to incorporate, focusing on one in particular: improvement with women.

One aspect of this is hitting the streets with Stefan and Chaka, two guys who have recently become friends of mine. Stefan and I go out on weekdays, Chaka and I on weekends. I'm considering including other guys in the group for the weekends too, but that's a topic for later.

So I've decided to record certain things, like how much time I spent, how many girls or groups of girls I approached and what the results were, as well as anything I consider worthy of note.

I didn't actually take down any notes, so I'm going from memory, but last Sunday (which would be April 24th) I started with Chaka at about 3:30pm and finished at 5:30pm. We walked up to five sets each. The approach was simply asking girls to take us from Namba Parks to Takashimaya, and then from Takashimaya to Namba Parks. All my approachs were much smoother, and there was a pair of girls who were warming up to us pretty easily, so I used the "I'm a bartender around here, you should come to my bar" excuse and got her email address. She wrote back, actually, but we still haven't set up a time to meet. I think there's a good chance we will again. I also asked a girl on her cell phone listening to music to take us to Namba Parks. She was cute, a 8 or 9, and she put up some resistance at first, but gradually warmed up. I even offered her to let us find the place ourselves, but she insisted on taking us all the way. At the end she said "Mata ne" (See you), so I used that to get her address. She hasn't written back, but it was still cool. Never gotten two closes on the street in one night. At a bar or party, sure, but not on the street.

Later that night I went home with a girl who I'd talked to two or three times and works at a bar. Half Filippina, Half Japanese, 23 years old, sexy eyes, nice tits. Hope to see her again, but we'll see.

The odd thing is after this (for me) phenomenal success, I felt MORE nervous. I feel like now that I'm aware I'm capable of more than just saying hi and asking for directions, it means either a) it's already time for me to step up, which is going to expose me to more failure and discomfort, at least initially or b) I may start to feel a bit of monotony at continuing what I'm doing now, which is building a foundational base.

On Tuesday, April 26th, I went out with Stefan. That was my 4th time so far (I don't recall the first two very well, so I'm not including them), and I've noticed a pattern: Generally the first 5 or so approaches all feel very rough, like when I stretch before exercise. After that, I kind of get into a groove, rhythm or flow and it feels a lot more natural. Not necessarily easy, but... more effortless. Like exercise, I'm sure this will be rough at first and I'll have a lot of mental and psychological resistance to it, which is probably why it was a good idea to bring friends with me.

I've also decided to start asking a ton of girls on mixi to meet me for dates and such. I'm going to start with girls who have fewer mixi friends themselves, as they would be less useful as networking contacts, and then move on to girls who are not on my mixi or have nothing to do with my mixi.

I'm going out again with Chaka this coming weekend and Stefan the following week during the week. I'm seeing Kayo tomorrow night, Tamaki on Sunday, having a small house party on Tuesday and then Ai on Wednesday and Thursday. Should be fun.

I still have a lot to learn, which is intimidating, but I'm doing something about it, which is very empowering.