Some thoughts on self-improvement July 13, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Other, Personal , trackbackCraig and I bought a new couch for our apartment a few days ago. It’s sweet. The couple I bought it from were also involved in personal development and some of the things we discussed really hit home. I mentioned my experience at Art of Seduction and how powerful it was for me to see men I’d helped a year ago and the incredible changes they’d made in their life. And the couple pointed out that it wasn’t just a man’s life I was changing, it was his, and his children’s, and their children’s children. The new skills I can give people will be passed down in their families. I’m not just helping individuals; my work changes entire branches of family trees.
It took a few minutes for that to really sink in. I love my job.
We also talked about people who fight the opportunity to change. “I’m fine the way I am.” “People who don’t like me as I am are just narrow-minded.” “If I change, I won’t be myself anymore.” I had a friend who once told me unhappily, “I’m shy and introverted. If I changed that, I wouldn’t be myself anymore.” How much more tragic can you get than weaving your own unhappiness into your identity? I told this to the girl I bought the couch from and she laughed. “When you got to kindergarten, you couldn’t read or write. No one says, ‘I won’t be myself anymore if I learn to read!’”
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That’s true, if you’re unhappy about being shy and introverted, then you should definitely make an effort to change it.
But what if you don’t really like talking to people, and the only thing that bothers you, is the fact people keep telling you, that you should be more social? Should he or she change in that case? Here, we see a person that would like to be anti-social so to speak, but people seem to find that unacceptable. They might not be happy pretending to be social, yet they aren’t happy that people seem judgmental about their anti-social tendencies. I’m not sure what to do in this case either, but I thought I’d throw the question out there, to see what other people think.
I love this part: “I mentioned my experience at Art of Seduction and how powerful it was for me to see men I’d helped a year ago and the incredible changes they’d made in their life.”
So did you discover a pattern in these men in terms of what they did in the time since you first helped them to make such incredible changes? Are they going out more to refine their AoR skills during the day, AoA skill at night, working with coaches, working with wings? I guess what I want to know is what is the path to the best change after AoA and AoR?