Real Social Dynamics Blog

YAY! 2010 New Year Happy Times -- A Month LATE. And Whaddup With Me & Real Social Dynamics??

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:22:00 +0000

(Been away for a good year. I wanted to write a longer article to make it up to the people who used to read this blog and let everyone know what I've been up to -- if you're new to Real Social Dynamics check out www.rsdnation.com for more immediately applicable articles on the topic of dating. I wrote this article a month ago for New Year's but I'm posting it a month late.)

WHOA.

2009 done?? Hoooooooo my GOODNESS.

First up, I’ve got to apologize for being a big dickhead to every avid reader of this blog. I’ve been out of touch this year, and even managed to imply I’d reinitiate the blog without following through.

:(

The offense hasn’t been without notice by personal friends as well—-most of my communication has had to become “scheduled” and that’s obviously pretty lame to people who aren’t used to it.

I’d love to say it’s because I’ve been jet setting around the world to posh parties with Puff Daddy and David Beckham, but it’s mostly been the typical personal and work related stuff. You turn thirty, you take on more complex challenges, your priorities change, etc.

Regardless, if you’re a buddy and I’ve been off the map, sorry!!

The past year has been, well, DIFFERENT.

Somewhat titillating, somewhat repetitious, and of course as always, very eye-opening.

(Because if it wasn’t EYE OPENING, then what kind of self help GUUUUUUURU would I be?? Hmmmmmmmmm.....don’t answer.)

2009 was the first year since 2002 that I lived in the same city with minimal travel (well I travelled to like 10 cities, but it was mostly screwing around on the West Coast).

2009 was also the first year I taught a full schedule of bootcamps in long time, usually four programs a month. I also managed to get the old pimp game back up to snuff, and record the entire process with hidden high definition cameras—the last piece of the “POOOAH legacy” puzzle I narcissistically envisioned as a melodramatic young wannabe.

(It turned out to be strangely satisfying......like Patrick Bateman filming himself with the two hookers while flexing in the mirror in “American Psycho”.)

Probably most important though, 2009 was the year I found out I was having my first kid (a son!), only to be smashed up in a t-bone car accident later the same week.

Soooooo, lots to catch up on!

This blog will be about the year 2-0-0-9.

Leaving Hawaii

The story starts in Fall of 2008, the tail end of the two and a half year stint in Honolulu Hawaii.

The time I spent in the islands was nothing less than a PRIVILEGE.

I hope the pictures I’ve posted on this blog over that time have conveyed some small aspect of what it was like, but ultimately it’s impossible unless you experience it for yourself (do it!).

(The old apartment -- FUCK!!)

When I think of the perfect society, I’m like that guy who built the Griffith Park Space Observatory who thought the world could be transformed if everyone could look at space through a high powered telescope, except instead of looking through a high powered telescope, I think the world could be transformed if everyone could visit HAWAII.

(Of course this makes little sense, as evidenced by the many NON-transformed people who’ve been there—but I can use my imaginaaaa-naaa-tion.)

Hawaii is a big favourite for spiritual woo-woo people because the environment is so vibrant and colourful and alive.

The whole idea of “just be in the moment without judgement, and everything will look so amazing and cool” becomes VERY REAL in a place like Hawaii, because, well, if you just relax and be in the moment, EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IS SO DAMNED COOL.

The fluorescent colors, the fresh air, the neon blue ocean and perfect weather—even the RAIN in Hawaii is awesome, like a “light misting” to cool you off and leave behind a RAINBOW for fuck’s sake.

:)

Then we decided to move to different island in South Brazil called Florianopolis. I was addicted to the island lifestyle, and the girlfriend wanted a change of pace. Tim Ferris was all about it on his blog—it seemed like the “trendy” thing for a person in my situation to do.

The two and a half years in Hawaii had obviously moved me away from the obsession of picking up girls (this was probably apparent by the subject matter on the blog).

My interest was leaning towards self development and the whole field of human potential—the idea that you can take someone who is failing to fully evolve (like 99% of people), shake up their reality in a way they’ll never forget, and give them a direction to move forward.

I figured I’d work on Real Social Dynamics while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the next business in the non-distracting environment of South Brazil—a new gig, and more awesomeness like in the Hawaiian islands.

Then in August before leaving Hawaii, circumstances came together where I threw up a final month of bootcamps on the schedule.

I’ve always had a passion for teaching infield programs and done it on-and-off for years—essentially working for free. Obviously the organization gets paid, but I usually do more important for tasks RSD by focusing on other projects we have no one else capable of, and I pay myself the same either way.

I think the effect of this is that I’ve never come to associate teaching with money in my mind, so I’ve been able to maintain my love for it as a “hobby” as opposed to a “means to an end”.

Mainly I view it as an excuse to step up and do the crazy shit I’d be too lazy to do on my own, and also, to force myself to EXPLAIN what I do so I can become more conscious of it and keep improving.

Anyway out of nowhere, what was supposed to be the last month of teaching turned out to be the most fun I’ve had in years.

It reminded me of why I wanted to build RSD in the first place—not to sit in front of a desk “building a business”, or to read grown men bickering with eachother on the internet, but to structure a life where I could be out in SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS teaching a personal passion that was difficult for me to learn.

(Like, OH YEAH........THIS is why I fucken DID all this!!)

I’d go home at the end of each night feeling more relaxed than I’d felt in years—like a similar feeling that you get after gardening or doing construction. I felt like I was doing REAL WORK, working with my hands, getting my “elbows in the mud” like human beings are designed for.

It was the same feeling of doing work that I felt was valuable and important that got me hooked on this way back in the day—it sounds very clichéd, but it made me feel AWAKE and ENGAGED WITH LIFE.

I realized that for years I’d been harbouring unconscious jealousy towards instructors for living the lifestyle I wanted to live. I’d been telling myself that I’d get back to teaching eventually, and then in focusing my energies on stabilizing the business, I deviated so far from my original purpose of that I no longer remembered why I started in the first place.

It was like I was building and building Real Social Dynamics, to the point of absurdity where it was doubling in size every year.

The entire time I was telling myself this story about how “I’m sacrificing my own immediate gratification to help other people make a living for themselves” when in fact nobody ASKED me to do all this or indicated that it was a priority. I’d just assumed they wanted me to so I could feel important, and people were getting weirded out seeing me unhappy when I was isolated and overworked.

(Stephen Covey says that to work synergistically within an organization it needs to be WIN/WIN or no deal. I was playing LOSE/WIN which Covey says is the worst of any deal, because it builds resentment towards the people you’re trying to help and eventually dissolves your relationships with them.)

From this I realized that I needed to get back into the areas of RSD that I really enjoyed—even if it stopped propping up the growth of the organization at the expense of my physical and emotional health, and downshifted it to a more regular pace.

Obviously I knew I had to keep building the organization as well (and get more done in less time by improving my speed and efficiency -- like I do every year), but I realized as good ol' Ice Cube says, “life ain’t a track meet, it’s a marathon....” -- and that I had to maintain a pace that was sustainable over the many years required to build something amazing and worthwhile.

(Covey also has good insight here: he calls it maintaining the “P/PC balance”—implying that if you overdo it on the “production” side you’ll burn out “production capability” and “kill the golden goose”. You've got to work hard to build an outstanding life, but you've got to love your *experience* of life on a day-to-day basis as well.)

Soooooo, Hollywood round 2!!

With all that said, Los Angeles was IN, Florianopolis was OUT.

I informed the girlfriend I’d be dragging her to Los Angeles for at least a year of teaching bootcamps, packed up our gear, and jumped a flight back to the mainland.

The change was tough for her because she's a rabid surfer (click the picture and check out the surfing scar on her upper thigh -- this chick is hardcore.)

And it was crazy for me as well...

Getting back to LA I was immediately struck by the lack of vibrant color I’d come to take for granted in Hawaii. It made me feel like I was living in a dead environment, like I was choking and dying.

I even had bizarre dreams about hiking in islands, and getting down on my knees with arms to the sky like Tim Robbins in “Shawshank Redemption,” yelling “I never left, it was all a baaaaad dreeeaaaaaaam!!”

Then I’d wake up back in LA, like “Duhhhh, NO, I’m still here.......”

(Check the colors on the left compared to the right -- I took the left at the sea cliffs on the island of Molokai and the right at Runyon Canyon in LA.)

The city took a while to grow on me.

At first I was going to move to Santa Monica by the ocean, but I felt that it reminded me of Hawaii and got on my nerves. I moved to Hollywood instead.

Then as a few months passed I realized that wherever you live, if you choose it consciously, you’re there because the environment has something it needs to teach you at a specific point in your life.

Moving back to Hollywood was the best thing I could have done for myself. Staying in the islands would have been a stagnation—essentially a glass ceiling on my progression I may have never recognized. The lessons I’ve absorbed since being back in LA have been priceless.

The transition nonetheless took time......

Los Angeles has historically been the Real Social Dynamics flagship city—the HOLLYWOOD bootcamp. Taking on the bootcamps full time in LA was a hobby, but also a responsibility to the culture of the organization in my mind.

The other instructors run such effective programs at this point, it’s not like back in the day where I could dominate just from having the most experience. These guys are role models to me in terms of the skills they bring to the table, so I knew I’d have to work at it to maintain the same standards.

Picking up girls in Hollywood is different from the Hawaiian islands in many respects.

Getting back into it I felt rusty, like when I first came to LA from Canada and had trouble getting attraction because I was too much of a wide-eyed kid.

It’s not that Hollywood is hard AT ALL—it’s one of the easiest cities in the world once you’ve gotten accustomed to it. But there’s an obvious adjustment in terms of the amount of stimulation and attitude that’s required to get a girl’s attention, compared to living on a tropical island.

Another challenge was that my profile had increased from the book “The Game” and the subsequent growth of Real Social Dynamics, so coming back to a major city meant being stopped and gawked at in the clubs throughout the night.

There’s nothing like getting back into the swing of things (with the initial shit nights and blow outs) and having random dudes in the club pointing to their girls saying “Hahaha, LOOK, that guys is a PICK UP ARIST!! Let’s FOLLOW HIM AROUND!!”

Newbies are often paranoid that there’s people in the club “judging them” and wanting them to fail. The REALLY paranoid ones probably even harbour delusions that people will pull out their camera phones and film them getting blown out to post up on YouTube.

WELL I REALLY LIVE THAT REALITY!!

(And I think it’s hilarious my life has come to this point—I’ve brought it entirely on myself!!)

To deal with this I shaved my head completely bald.

I thought it would be cool, and especially with my hair thinning over the years, it would allow me to see what it would be like when I eventually went “bald for real”.

The shaved head was pretty sick. The convenience was legit and I looked better than with insane-scientist long hair (although pale—but didn’t care).

Girls would come up and kiss the head all night, then you’ve got lipstick on it and the other girls get jealous and randomly open you—if you’ve never shaved it and you’re curious what it’s like, do it THIS WEEKEND.

(Don’t worry, it grows back extremely fast, even within days.)

The only thing I didn’t like about it was the OTHER BALD GUYS who would come up to me to say “Hey handsome....” or “Looking good!!”

It was like being initiated into a world-wide secret support group for BALD MEN!!

:)

Anyway the long crawl back to awesomeness took about a year...

There were the typical shit nights and times I honestly wondered if I had the motivation in me to take it to that level again.

The breakthrough was when a buddy of mine busted out a cheap camera and started filming me.

I didn't really do anything special that night, but a lot of the shit I did was just FUNNY to watch. It cracked me up and I was showing the footage to buddies over the next few weeks to get them laughing.

This piqued my interest in the possibility of filming.

It got me thinking of videos of dudes like Kelly Slater and Tony Hawk, how they’d film themselves doing the sickest shit and show the clips so people could look and be like “GOD DAMN!!”

That’s not to say I’m pimping like Kelly Slater or Tony Hawk (these guys have literally been honing their craft for a lifetime) but I wanted to bring MY OWN personal best to the table—and capture those “OOOOOH SHIIIIIT!” moments that inspire people to learn this stuff.

The next year was spent learning how to record live pickup, and getting it down to a fine science.

The drive to get myself filmed was the push I needed to pull the old skill-set back up to previous levels, mainly because of what I felt it would do for the people learning this stuff.

Maybe just as important, I felt it would do a lot to legitimize the industry—which is good for everyone, not just Real Social Dynamics.

In the same way I chose to spend hundreds of thousands to create the video programs instead of using a handi-cam and DVD burner, or to make RSD Nation into a legit hub instead of just leaving it as a vBulletin, I wanted to record something that would make it super obvious this is a very worthwhile area to be interested in.

Watching video of myself was also highly educational.

After a mediocre night, I was able to see the LAME TENDENCIES that were blowing me out—the most common being rapport-seeking vocal tonality, trying too hard to get a laugh, and lack of clarity in my intent (oftentimes I just looked like I didn’t want to be there and was “going through the motions”). It made it easier to recognize in students as well.

Conversely, I was also able to see what I was doing EFFECTIVELY when I was kicking ass. With the tendency to watch myself doing awesome over and over on my computer at home, I got more in touch with how I was on an “on night”.

The repetition of watching it eventually made me feel like I was THAT GUY but ALL THE TIME.

I found myself going through peaks and valleys throughout the year.

I generally noticed a month of big improvement followed by a month of being uninspired—pretty much exactly what George Leonard describes in the book “Mastery”.

My goal was to get film of myself peaking, so I wound up giving my film crew a break for the month when I was feeling myself sort of “deflating” and then booked trips to Scottsdale and Las Vegas to film as I felt myself entering into a peak.

(Again no comparisons to anyone else here, I just wanted MY OWN PERSONAL BEST.)

Funny enough, another big help was certain posts I’d read on RSD Nation about how the footage we’d get would just be short clips, not really teaching anything substantial, and a waste of time.

A lot of that feedback turned out to be valuable motivation, because in difficult shooting situations it pushed me and the film crew to take more aggressive risks to get the shots.

Many of the shots are totally absurd. Like I don't even need to say what I'm talking about here, because you can obviously guess. Anything you can imagine in your wildest imaginations, like, ANYTHING, you can assume we shot it.

It’s like we were kids trying to outdo each other on the snowboarding ramp—getting ballsier and ballsier in terms of what we were willing to attempt—and by the end of the year it was like “Uhhhh what the fuck were we thinking?? HAHAHAHA, uhhhhh, *WHAT*??”

It took us about a year to get all this down...

The first six months was mostly getting the hang of being recorded and adjusting to the extra anxiety of overzealous bouncers, possessive boyfriends, and mall security guards freaking out (especially because when you’re kicked out of a favourite venue—poof!—you can’t use that venue ever again).

We’d shoot here and there when we had opportunities, but nothing that awesome or up close in the action.

The next six months was a continual improvement of the technology and film techniques we were using, until about a MONTH before the World Summit, when we had a breakthrough in our recording process that allowed us to record entire nights of crystal clear footage, uninterrupted.

Most of the footage we showed at Summit wound up being shot just in the last four weeks.

Ultimately the year involved a lot of headaches, messy incidents and inconvenience, but at the end of the day when you’re capturing something on film that you’re psyched about, it’s a massive rush.

There’s an anxiety and suspense all the way home that the shot came out the way you hoped, and if it comes out with a clear shot and clean audio then you know you’ve got something amazing on your hands.

Recording infield footage was the big “work project” I focused on in the year 2009, so shooting the type of videos I’d envisioned was very satisfying and awesome.

I’m planning to continue shooting new footage for every year’s Summit, but for now it’s another milestone checked off the bucket list.

(Oh yeah and if you want to see it, get your ass to a free workshop where I'll be showing substantial amounts—www.rsdfreetour.com. And if you learn a lot, attend one of the upcoming outer game tutorials where we combine many hours of footage with interactive exercises--or even the World Summit this August in Las Vegas--www.rsdworldsummit.com)

PREGNANT!!

Anywayzzzzz, this lead me to the NEXT really big event in my life that I experienced this year: MY GIRLFRIEND GETTING PREGNANT, and me getting into a vicious CAR ACCIDENT only a few days later!!

It all started when I noticed this little bump on her stomach and a very slight bloating, as if she was eating a bit too much food lately.

I was like "YO -- you look like one of those college chicks who drinks too much beer!!"

(Check out the bump on the tummy in the right picture compared to the left ^^^ -- little did we know there was a kid in there!!)

A few weeks later I received a curious message from during a bootcamp. It said “Hey babe, would you be mad if I was pregnant?”

I texted back “no I’m cool” and then immediately went back to the seminar. I found myself stuttering and looking flustered for the next two minutes, and I finally said to the students, “Okay sorry, I’m a bit unfocused here, look at this text I just got.”

They started laughing at me nervously, and told me to text back and find out the deal.

I texted back and she said that she wasn’t pregnant, she was just curious how I’d react. Then the next day she wakes me up in the middle of the morning when I’m in a deep sleep, with a big yellow envelope that says “Owen Cook”.

I open the envelope and there’s a tiny diaper, a soother, and an ultrasound of a tiny baby on it.

I say to her “What is this?” and she says “It’s the bean.”

I say “I need to sleep, stop fucking with me. What is this?” and she says “It’s YOUR bean.”

I say “Are you pregnant?” and she says “Yes.” I say “Are you fucking with me?” and she says “No.” I say “Are you sure” and she says “Yes, I just went to the doctor this morning, I didn’t want to distract you last night while you were teaching."

"I've been pregnant for the past three months."

I say “Okay that’s awesome. I guess I have a lot of work to do, I’m going back to bed,” and then roll back over and start to go to sleep.

Then I realized that I’d have to remember what a dick I was being for years, and rolled back over to say how happy I was, do the whole “hugs and kisses” happy time thing.

Obviously I wasn’t really sure what to think of it because the timing wasn’t right. But I also knew that there were a lot of upsides, like that I'd always dreamed of having kids at some point anyway, and I could be a younger father and have more to offer them.

Beyond that, for years I’d had a theory that when you have a kid, that certain petty and small-minded voices in your head would become quieted.

That definitely turned out to be the case: it was an effect I could instantly observe by maybe 20 or 30%.

I think it’s like a “brush with death” where you have to have a strong intention for the epiphany to STICK, otherwise you just fall back into old habits. Because I’d had the desire for the epiphany for so long, it generally seemed to maintain itself.

(And by the way, at this point eight months into the pregnancy, I’m so psyched about the kid that if she miscarried I’d immediately try to have another one. I mention this because there were a number of times during the first two trimesters when she was showing likely symptoms of miscarriage--I'd like to write another article on this at some point.)

Then speaking of a “brush with death”......

Anyway life goes on, and with the World Summit about a month away, I had a highly specific vision in my mind for a type of shot we were still missing for the event.

Basically I wanted an instant pull home right after the club ended because of how quiet and well lit it is on the streets after hours—the typical deal where the girls who didn’t meet a guy are walking home pissed off, you swoop in and instantly bring her home.

It became my single-minded focus to get this shot before Summit in September, because I knew it would be so relevant for the students in Las Vegas. We’d had several of them throughout the year but had never gotten a clear shot of it on film.

Then three weeks prior, I finally GOT the shot I wanted while filming in Scottsdale!!

I’d skipped a weekend of bootcamp to go out there, specifically hoping to get THIS EXACT SHOT, and I was pumped beyond belief. I drove home on a massive high and rambled about how the persistence we’d maintained had paid off.

Like “YEAH BITCHES, WOOOOOOO!!”

Kobe scoring the three pointer to win the game in the fourth quarter type shit.

Then I got home, checked the camera and found the AUDIO hadn’t recorded!!!! The microphone battery had run out just minutes before the open, and the entire clip was on silent.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU....

:(

I was pissed, frustrated, and bashing myself for not having a faster learning curve earlier in the year, because if I’d learned faster then I wouldn’t have been doing this last minute.

What struck me was how I couldn’t stop myself from complaining and feeling sorry for myself.

I remember thinking...

“Damn I’ve just found out I’m having a kid with a healthy and intelligent woman. The whole reason I stayed with her in the first place was I respected her family values and I knew she'd make a great mom--and the decision is paying off!!"

“Ten years ago I thought I’d be alone my whole life and now I’m in this situation—I’m fucken blessed. And all I can think about is how I failed to get the DAMNED VIDEO??”

“What happened to my big EPIPHANY about not being petty and bothered by the small stuff??”

I spent the Sunday in Scottsdale hanging out with friends, and it should have been great time.

I put on like I was in a good mood because I dislike it when other people drag me down, but all I could feel was pissed off at myself.

I made a lot of stupid comments like “We probably won’t get another shot like this before Summit, I fucked up, etc...” totally ignoring all the GOOD stuff we’d already accumulated.

As I drove home, I remember even thinking to myself, “I deserve to be hit by a plane or something for being this ungrateful. I’m like one of those lame victim complex motherfuckers I teach my students not to act like. I thought I was long past this type of thinking, what am I missing here??”

At first I was thinking it was just a natural symptom of the single-minded focus I’d maintained over the past year, but I realized it was something more than that.

What I was realizing, as I observed what was going on with me, was that my frustration was ultimately based in FEAR. The fear of letting go of attachment, and what that would mean on a deeper level.

Like, what does it really matter if I got the shot or not??

The sun will still explode someday, wiping out any trace of my existence, my kid’s existence, and any possible legacy I could ever leave behind. So to be emotionally investing myself into this was in some ways a DENIAL of that reality.

Now obviously this might sound funny, like some sort of complex rationalization not to feel sorry for myself—“I shouldn’t feel bad that I fucked up because the SUN WILL EXPLODE”.

However this is the way I’ve come to think about these things over the years, particularly after the Neil Strauss book “The Game” when a lot of my more "petty" motivations of having everyone think I'm awesome and cool had less possibility of being fulfilled.

The way I’ve been trying to see it the past few years is like this: you work because of what it does for you as a person—the emotional balance it gives you, the sense of contribution, of being fit to meet the requirements of life, etc.

It’s about the PROCESS.

To be emotionally affected by the failure to achieve a RESULT would mean I’m denying all that—I’m basically LYING to myself about the nature of reality, and on an even deeper level, who I am.

Didn’t I have FUN this past weekend?? Wasn’t it COOL??

So if the process was a good time, it was just the RESULT I was fretting about.

Thoughts of death started entering into my mind: how I must have become disconnected with the reality that I’m going to die someday, and how I was burying my head in the sand with some sort of bizarre role play that any of this was actually significant.

This is no joke, this is NOT something I'm saying to make the article seem cool, it is literally EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING, when.............. *BLAM*!!

Imagine you’re sitting in your house (or internet cafe, or wherever) right now, and out of nowhere you hear some sort of SMASH, feel JOLTED past the point you can physically resist against, and then fade to black.

The next thing you know you wake up with glass all over you, and you’re bleeding and struggling to breathe.

Very surreal.

As I tried to determine what had happened through the haze of semi consciousness, I slowly came to the realization that a speeding pickup truck had just t-boned the old Toyota my buddy was driving me in, and smashed directly into the front passenger seat where I was sitting.

My side of the car was partway crumpled in, the car was totalled, and the pickup truck that hit me was totalled from the front end as well. I couldn’t breathe properly because the impact had pulverized my ribs.

I eventually managed to use my legs to push myself through the shattered glass and onto the sidewalk.

In a half dazed state I considered what my girlfriend would deal with if I died, how she’d never have a chance to say good bye to me or know my final thoughts.

I fumbled with my phone to text “I love you”.

Then I texted PAPA “I love you bro” as well, thinking how affected he was going to be if I was dead, and how he was the guy who’d given me the initial opportunity to create most of the good things I enjoyed in my life.

(I couldn’t think of anything more MANLY to say to him that didn’t sound gay, mainly because I wasn't able to form thoughts properly and my fingers weren't very responsive.)

Then I just lay there on the side of the road, thinking to myself “Holy shit, I had a kid this week because I’m gonna die. That’s why it happened this week. And my kid is gonna go on without me.” I felt resigned to it and very relaxed, but also deeply concerned for the people who would be affected.

FORTUNATELY, this was just me being paranoid because I was fine (as you can see because, uhhhh, I’m writing this blog).

There was a risk that I could have had permanent spinal injury or something like that, but overall I wasn’t going to lose my life out of it.

The fire department showed up and checked me out.

Lying on the grass beside the sidewalk, I tried to talk to formulate my thoughts into sentences that made me seem coherent, and asked whether they felt the hospital could do anything for me. They didn’t want to give an opinion, so I asked them to give one “off the record” and I wouldn’t hold them responsible.

They said the injuries were mostly internal and there was nothing the hospital could do other than give me x-rays and a lot of Advil. They said I’d be tired and in pain the next few weeks, that I might require rehabilitative therapy over the longer term, but that for now there was little to do other than rest and allow my body to recover.

I eventually propped myself up and hobbled back to the apartment where I was staying, which was nearby.

As I passed the lady who hit me, I shook her hand and told her I was totally fine. She looked like she was still in shock, so I tried to appear unhurt and like I thought the whole thing was funny.

I got back to the apartment I was staying at, and thought about the responsibility I had to my kid—how WEIRD it would have been for him to have to watch me on pickup videos to learn about who I was, etc.

I realized I hadn’t even gotten a life insurance policy yet because I’d just found out about the pregnancy, and that I’d fucked up in that regard as well.

The idea that I could have died made me feel an incredible drive to LIVE and see my son grow up.

It was a weird change of headspace because I’ve normally never felt a fear of death—I’d always thought that you essentially walk through life ALREADY DEAD and that life is something to be ACHIEVED.

But the idea of dying became different to me.

I realized that a lot of my dreams, like crossing Africa by jeep and hiking through mountains and all that, would have to wait for a while. If I die then I die, but I can’t feel like it was from my own recklessness or I’d be violating my responsibilities as a father and a man.

Anyway the recovery wasn’t too bad, especially considering my original assessment.

The drive home from Phoenix to Los Angeles was hilarious—we followed by buddy in another car while he drove the half destroyed Toyota to the junkyard, and other cars honked and cheered him on. My buddy got like 300 bucks for his wrecked vehicle and we crammed into the other car to head back.

Every little bump was gouging, like “Owww, owwwww, owwwww!!” as we crossed the Arizona desert, and the irony of having to spend 6 hours in a car the day after an accident wasn’t lost on me.

Regardless I’ve always loved driving across the desert because I grew up thinking I’d never travel outside of Canada, so seeing something bizarre like the desert reminds me of how far I’ve come.

(The film team and a very shaken and nervous "Tyler" on the drive home -- I seriously couldn't ask for a better team or better friends.)

I also feel very peaceful when I’m in the desert, which is why I love the drive to Las Vegas as well, and camping in Joshua Tree national park (the one from the show “Entourage” where they eat magic mushrooms). I want to visit the Grand Canyon this year too—I’ve flown over it a bunch of times but want to see it up close.

I was stuck in bed for a few days back in Los Angeles, and started walking comfortably again later in the week.

And guess what?? I wound up getting the shot anyway.

The next few weeks I felt better and better, and eventually got to the point where I could consider leaving the house. By the time World Summit was a week away I decided to hit the field again and try to get that damned shot!!

One night out in Huntington Beach and *BAM!!!* I nailed it.

That’s right, all the frustration that day in Arizona was for nothing. I kept my focus and let go of the outcome, and got the EXACT SHOT I’d previously been struggling to get.

This smeared the POINTLESSNESS of getting down on myself over a video shoot even more in my face. It made me feel like I NEEDED to get hit by that car—like it was the best possible reality that could have entered into my life at that point in time.

I feel very similarly about the book “The Game”.

I imagine my life without it, and realize I probably would have gone deeper down a path of denial about what’s important in life—“what’s important in life” being who you become on a core level, living for your own enjoyment, and fulfilling the values that are important to you, regardless of whether anyone recognizes or acknowledges it.

Any experience in life that strips away your bullshit delusions and gets you closer to your core is a good one. In the currency of getting closer to a semblance of self knowledge, gain is loss, and loss is gain.

Anyway after a year of preparation, WORLD FUCKING SUMMIT!!

Sooooooo, World Summit was now a week away, and it was time to comb through the footage and edit it down. What a job!!

My video dude and I bought a high powered editing computer and spent the week burning through a year’s worth of memories. It was crazy to see all the bullshit nights I went through as I was getting back into it—then to see how I gradually improved.

We edited the clips into various presentations, with segments that showed the specific things I wanted to teach—openers compilations, rejections compilations, pickups using a lot of intent, pickups where I made the girl chase, where I remove the girl from other dudes, physical game, pulls with ADD party chicks, chill game with more intellectual girls, etc.

It’s funny because as the typical OCD creative person, I was anxious if the videos were good enough.

Nick (Papa) and TIM showed up at about 5:30pm to leave for Vegas the night before, and I was pushing it until 7:30pm to finish the edits. We’d been working on it all week and were basically down to the wire in terms of getting it all done.

Finally I finished and sat on the couch, looked at Tim and said “Wow I’m just sitting on a couch. This is the first time I’ve just sat on a couch and done nothing in about a week. It’s pretty cool.”

I’m sure Tim was like “YEP, back with OWEN again...”

I gave high fives and props to my video dude after we’d spent the week hanging out, joked about how we should edit more videos when I got back from Summit, and jumped in the big Escalade Papa had rented to drive us all up to Vegas.

It was cool to catch up with Tim for the first time in a year, and drive through the dessert in peace and anticipation of the event. I got to my buddy’s house in Vegas and caught a few hours of sleep.

Woke up in the morning and downed some fruits and green tea, and shot off to the Summit.

I really wondered what the event would look like. I wondered if the footage would make any difference in terms of guys getting laid during the week, or if I’d gone through all the drama for no tangible result.

I also hadn’t done any major PUA speaking events since recording The Blueprint in December 2007. The two or three little talks I did over the past year—I felt they were pretty vanilla and uninspiring, so I was curious what I’d be able to produce.

The morning drive from the suburbs to the strip was very bright, the desert sun glaring in my eyes.

It felt like a dream to be finally doing the Summit after the year of preparation, and I thought to myself “This is the movie I see now, this bright fucking desert, and soon the movie I’m seeing will be an audience looking at me and wondering if I’ll deliver the goods.”

I’d seen Eckhart Tolle live in Phoenix earlier in the year—front row seats about ten feet away from him. It was such a monumental moment to see the dude live in person, one of the coolest experiences I’ll ever have.

Remembering this, it made me think about how for Tolle it was probably just another day at the office, but for me it was on a totally different level. I realized that even though it fell outside my reality, for some people in the audience who’d taken the leap to travel and attend this thing, it was probably a similar type of crazy experience.

I wanted to DELIVER for them. My expectation was I’d be rusty and gradually shake it off over the week -- but that definitely didn't turn out to be the case.

I’ve never felt so centered, relaxed, and effective in my entire life. It was like being up there was what I was meant to do.

The key was in keeping my focus away from how I looked or how I compared to the other speakers—just 100% on making the experience awesome for the audience.

It was weird, but I could FEEL the years of learning how to articulate and intertwine concepts (like in Blueprint) combining with the efforts I’d made to hold the attention spans of L.A. party chicks over the past year.

Like I could feel multiple levels of communication funnelling through my head at the same time, the content, the humour, the emoting and emphasis, etc.

I finally realized that day that if I live to see it come to fruition, I have the potential to become a very good speaker/orator. It might take me until I’m 40 or longer, but I’ll eventually get there. I’m willing to take my time.

Anyway the week at Summit—fully exceeded my expectations.

People normally ask me “What’s better, Bootcamp or Superconference?” and I sort of snidely laugh and say “Uhhh, what do you think??”

But after World Summit, I can’t answer that question anymore—I suppose it depends on the individual in attendance, where they’re at, etc.

Half the people in the audience (100 out of 200 ) got laid that week, many four or five times.

I think it was due to multiple factors.

1) the fact that they’re in Vegas for a week applying what they learned. 2) seeing videos of myself and instructors to cement the ideas in their reality throughout the week. 3) having other students there to go out and wing. And 4) seeing other instructors at the same clubs out pulling girls and doing their thing.

(Like Alex~ got laid four times in a single day—I’m not sure if I should be disgusted or impressed, but the students were always around to see this and learn.)

The week in Vegas was SIIIIIIIIIIICK!!

We ate at different restaurants every day, went out to hot clubs, had a big dorky birthday party for me that was full of dudes (and was super fun--so fuck you all!), and the future mother of my spawn came down to visit for a night to see “La Reve” and eat at Steve Wynn Steakhouse. I enjoyed it because it felt like I’d earned it, after the year of preparation to put together the event.

It was cool just blasting around Vegas for the week. The big lights and excitement. The dude who put me up at his place also had a hot tub in the back yard, so we’d have people chilling back there until the early hours of the morning on some nights.

Papa was initially saying he thought the week in Vegas would be too long, but by the end he was like “This is so fucking awesome we’ve gotta do it again next year.”

I agreed with him SOMEWHAT.

I felt we should shorten the event to 6 days instead of 7, so everyone can get home for work, and start the talks at 2pm each day instead of noon. Most of the students literally looked like they’d had the shit beaten out of them by the end of the week, so I think this will be helpful in holding up the energy the entire time.

Anyway World Summit was one of the truly amazing experiences of my life, and thennnnnnn...............

IT WAS DONE. Back to reality.

("Photochop me. I'm the GAYEST PICTURE EVER.")

So onto he other passion project from this year—“The Relationship Transition”

I still had some recovering from the accident to do, so slept like 11 hours a day back in Los Angeles. It took me another month to get back in the gym, and another 2 months to get back my strength and size.

The next few months I spent on “Relationship Transition”—the book I’ve been working on this entire past year.

It’s my favourite project right now. More profound for me than Blueprint, or maybe more realistically, sort of a next level. It started with just relationships and went in all sorts of crazy directions that are only loosely related.

No promises on the release date—I’ve made that mistake before, so let's just not go there. :)

Working on it I recently had one of those slews of epiphanies where I had a hard time sleeping properly. It’s been a few years since I’ve been through something like this—you may remember a similar epiphany I spoke about at the end of BP Decoded.

It started with me explaining how we all have different “selves” that are forced to relate to each other in a relationship, and it wound up being three weeks realizing all sorts of intense ramifications of this.

For a while I had a hard time even talking to people because I’d be seeing all these new aspects of them I'd never recognized.

It was like being a pick up artist newbie again, like “OOOOH, was that a COCKY AND FUNNY I just saw??? Is that guy a NATURAL??!!”

It’s weird because you move through life sort of assuming you’ll have the breakthrough you need to reach a next level, but sometimes you wonder “Am I ever going to have it??”

Then when you forget about it, forget that you’re waiting for it, and KA-PLOW!!—it comes into your life.

For me, this was the breakthrough I was waiting for, not only in terms of the unique material I needed to take RSD to the next level, but more importantly, for my own development as a dude.

I feel like this is the level of awareness I've been missing my entire life, and that if I just stick on my path without getting scared or deviating, that success will be a foregone conclusion.

These types of epiphanies can also suck pretty massively, because it’s a lot like giving birth to a baby (hmmmmm, well in some respects).

I’d keep waking up at night and having to enter notes into my cell phone.

I’d think I was about to fall back asleep, and BOOM, I’d wake up and have to enter more notes.

I was walking around like a zombie for a few weeks due to the lack of sleep, and I knew it would continue until I’d vomited out everything I needed to get out of my system.

Now I’m sitting here with pages of scattered notes, and I’ve got to start assembling them into linear explanations that will allow people to understand what the hell I’m talking about.

It’ll probably be a few weeks until I’ve got the chapter complete.

Anyway, I’ve talked about some of the more monumental events of 2009, and I’ll wrap with a few other progressions that happened throughout the year.

I was actually hoping to write this article to around 20 or 30 pages, just to make up for the lack up updates the past year for anyone who used to follow this blog, so let’s see if I can make that happen. :)

The first is that I dropped about 40 pounds and got healthy.

I took a major interest in anti-aging as I was turning 30, and basically shifted to a diet of healthy whole foods packed with vitamins, anti oxidants, polyphenols, flavanoids, etc. A lot of teas and spices in there as well.

I knew I had a major opportunity since I wasn’t travelling all the time this year (which makes it really hard to diet), and I needed to do it before I picked up that lifestyle again.

It was cool because I basically did it with cardio and eating properly.

At first I dropped down to around 180, then when I got to 170 I was feeling pretty good. When I finally woke up one morning and weighed in at 169 I was like “HOLY SHIT!! I’m in the 160’s for the first time in five years!!”

I shot over to the Beverly Center and bought my first pair of “skinny jeans” in many years, as a sort of joke slash self reward. I’ve since had to buy new clothes AGAIN as I dropped down to about 157.

Unfortunately the accident had me out of the gym for a while, so I’m at around 163 right now (the result was I lost muscle and gained fat).

I’ll be dropping to about 155-150 or so as my final weight, over the next few months.

I also read through another pile of cool books, as usual.

This year my reading list was mostly focused on health and anti-aging, neuroscience, and autobiographies of world leaders.

My favourite health books were “Younger You” by Eric Braverman, and “150 Healthiest Foods” by Jonny Bowden. I read the first about 50 times, and the second probably over 100.

That’s not to say I read them mechanically, over and over. I just picked them up off the shelf for a few minutes every day—kept adjusting my diet, reading over the aspects I missed.

I think I got better at sitting down to read with focus and for longer periods this year, probably from continuing to do it every day.

I remember when I graduated college in 2006 and I hadn’t read “for fun” in many years—and the first book I read was Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.

It was a hard book for me to read at that time and I wasn’t sure if I’d really finish it, but pushing through a big brick like that gave me this weird nerd confidence that I could get through anything, and I’ve since read about a book a week.

(Currently I'm reading "The Clinton Tapes" by Taylor Branch -- which is phenomenal.)

Strangely, I also filled up my house from top to bottom with TREES AND PLANTS.

I think it’s hilarious, I've turned my house into the jungle from the movie AVATAR.

(Although I did not take it as far as Jeffy, who took it upon himself to become an Avatar BLUE ELF.)

The plants provide oxygen and remove toxins from the air, and I wanted my kid to grow up without the Los Angeles air pollution hindering his IQ (even more than having to inherit his genes from a dad as bone-headed as I am).

I’ve found the plants also do incredible things for the atmosphere and ambience of the apartment. I highly recommend it—the book I got is called “How To Grow Fresh Air” by B.C. Wolverton.

If you’re curious, I’ve got a huge Lady Palm, a Dwarf Date Palm, an Areca Palm, a Rubber Tree, Janet Craig, Peace Lilly, Dragon Tree, Corn Plant, Dracaena Warneckei, Golden Pothos, an Umbrella tree, and then Snake plants which don’t require light in the bedroom.

These are apparently all really good for indoor air quality—I think I’m now addicted to plants like a reality star addicted to plastic surgery.

I did meditation for 20 minutes a day, usually twice a day, but almost always at least once.

I’ve come to realize how valuable this is, and I've fallen in and out of the habit for years. This year I resolved that I'd finally maintain it.

My interest in meditation has little to do with becoming enlightened or reincarnated into a Bhudda (although I guess if that happened it would be...........interesting.)

It’s more based on eliciting a “relaxation response” as Harvard M.D. Herbert Benson called it in book: “The Relaxation Response”.

There’s benefits that need to be experienced to be understood—TRY IT!!

My focus was also on work productivity, and in particular, an obsession with increasing brain power—I think I even went from FULL RETARD to MODERATELY UNINTELLIGENT.

Ultimately this started from a massive increase of stress at the beginning of the year. I realized I needed to up the brain power if I wanted to achieve a lot of my goals, which often involve sitting in front of a desk for long hours at a time.

Some of the interesting discoveries and experiments—creating a “darkness chamber” to sleep in, so I could experience 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep in the pitch dark (so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face).

I also ate a “brain diet” loaded with berries, greens, essential fats, teas, spices, clean meats, and even played with supplements like L-Theanine and various other neuro optimizers.

I didn’t stick with the supplements in the long term but found them to be helpful in re-establishing “normal levels” when I deplete them from too many long hours.

The twenty minutes of morning cardio in conjunction with weights seemed to have a positive effect as well—especially after a few months of it becoming a habit. They say cardio increases BDNF (look it up!).

I generally loved getting my cardio back up to speed this year—I went from being fat and not able to run for more than 3 or 4 minutes, to being able to full on SPRINT for about 20 minutes. I never took it further than that with the morning cardio, but continued with hiking in Malibu a few hours every Sunday.

The result was that I became able to handle longer work days without becoming burned out. If you’re working long hours, I recommend you give it a try.

The work productivity experiment also included removing the internet from my house entirely, to the point that I use it only a few minutes a month. I also stopped answering my phone 100%--I usually check it once a day.

This was a hard needle to pull out of my arm because I love the internet and I love INFORMATION. But I realized that reading the internet is a maaaaaajor distraction (that’s right SUCKA, you’re distracting yourself right now!!).

I remember the first week I gave up the internet, two summers back, I read Nelson Mandela’s 600 page autobiography within a week.

I realized from this that I generally read around 600 pages a week, the only question is whether it’s high quality reading or bullshit on Wikipedia and Digg.com, porn sites, etc.

I did a decent job of getting the internet out of my life, but shifted back and forth. This year I finally got it out of my life entirely.

That’s right, the internet = GAAAAAHNNNN!!

I’m writing this article right now on my home computer which has no internet, and surrounded by a bunch of plants.

Tomorrow I’ll go to the internet cafe and copy & paste this whole thing to the blog, and do my 15 posts a week on RSDN (I give myself 90 minutes which limits me from reading anything other than content based questions).

Speaking of focusing on productive work and not bullshit on the internet, Real Social Dynamics got on the “Inc. 5000” list this year.

This was pretty hilarious, Papa calls it the “World’s Biggest Spam List” because we’re now solicited by random businesses on a daily basis.

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company-profile.html?id=200908600

Regardless, notice we did this with THREE ON ONE BOOTCAMPS.

No compromise of product quality whatsoever, in fact product quality improved as it does every year, and we did the majority of these sales based on word of mouth of satisfied alumni—since we do little media or advertising.

WOOT!!

On time off I managed to explore most of the Los Angeles wilderness, restaurants, and hit up the Lakers home games.

To get a break from all this I hiked nearly every trail in Malibu on Sundays after bootcamps, and made it out to Azusa a few times as well.

The hiking in California’s very different from Hawaiian because there’s Coyotes, snakes, deer, etc. One day I was getting out of my car and a Coyote was standing directly beside the door—it took me a second to realize it and stop myself from opening the door.

A lot of people forget that California has some amazing outdoor environments...

I drove the Pacific Coast Highway up to Santa Cruz, and the roads were hugging the mountains along the ocean—VERY NICE.

The other hobby was eating at one new restaurant a week, which was about fifty over the year. I wanted to enjoy the food in a world class city after living on an island with the same food for two and a half years.

The restaurant was my “one cheat meal” a week during the diet—the policy to never eat at the same restaurant twice allowed me to enjoy so many restaurants I normally never would have seen.

Live Lakers games were also a major hobby, having the world champion team in my own city and all that. It’s been a lot of fun getting out to the games regularly, and I’m going to hit up the Dodgers games in the summer as well.

I really have very little “time off” from Real Social Dynamics, so if I’m going to take some time away, it’s going to be for something enjoyable—a good movie or a live sporting event, restaurant, or getting into the outdoors (plus pumping the girlfriend's tummy full of babies.)

I find these types of activities bring me back to work feeling replenished and ready to slog it out.

Oh yeah, and we released Jeffy’s book “Nine Ball” this year.

I don’t know how many people noticed this, but I spent about a week before the day of the launch writing a salescopy that would mimic the type of irreverent humour Jeffy has in his book.

(To do this, I really tried to understand who Jeff is as a person, and learn what his humour is all about. It was something I wanted to do anyway because I’ve known the guy for so many years.)

Go to this site right now and read the RED HEADLINES: www.the9ball.com

I laughed my ass off the entire time writing this shit, combining typical hypey salescopy with off the wall insanity.

I couldn’t bear to leave up a sales page for a book written by JEFFY with pure sales, so I wrote it on a level where I’m practically telling you NOT to buy it (like saying he’s demented, a sexual deviant, etc).

Luckily people didn’t pay too much attention and bought the book regardless.

Nine Ball was the first printed book we’ve ever published. I think the stock looked beautiful and came out even a bit better quality than most hardcover books (better than say, the Richard Branson book I’m looking at on my shelf).

I’m psyched that we were able to take the original idea of just releasing an eBook compilation of Jeffy’s famous reports, and create a real book out of them.

As an avid reader, the quality of Jeff’s writing in the first hundred pages (the new stuff) really blew me away, and the reports all sequenced out were a lot of fun to read again, after many years. I think the book offers a really intense perspective on the game for guys coming into this, and a lot of entertainment for guys who've been in it a long time.

Overall it was just a massive win for Jeffy to put this thing out, and the feedback we’ve had on the book has been phenomenal. I'm pretty interested to see where Jeff decides to go from here, now that he's got it behind him.

Lastly, this was the year I feel I finally gave up a lot of “attachments” on a very deep level, in a very real way. I feel I’ve come to UNDERSTAND the nature of attachment, why it’s bullshit, etc.

Out of everything in this article, and everything I experienced, I think my major challenge this year was “attachment”.

It was a continual focus, always on mind mind—recognizing where I was attached.

Ultimately we all eventually have to give up ALL of our attachments when we die, so to me this is something that’s very obvious as being important.

In recent years it was the struggle to give up attachment to status, reputation, people’s opinions, MY OWN opinions, material objects, my sense of security that I could make an income for myself, etc. This year I took it further.

Due to a series of events throughout the year, I came to realize I also needed to sever attachments to my general feeling of safety and not being harassed, my privacy, and even my MEMORIES of past events (in the sense that if people I care about or admire have different opinions about them, even memories that are “treasured” in my mind, I have to let it go).

I realized that it’s like that motherfucken TOLLE says, “The NOW is really all you ever have.........”

(And this isn’t just with the typical shit like cars, job, women, etc, but literally EVERYTHING.)

I realize this sounds obscure or even weird, but I think anyone whose walked a similar path will know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s like I don’t even need to bother explaining it because you’re either on this wave length or it has little interest to you.

The bottom line is that your life is a movie that's unfolding in front of you. That's all you get, that's all you're ever going to get, and when you think about it, nothing can really mess that up unless YOU "make meanings" out of things that aren't really all that important.

Regardless, it’s amazing how clarity of mind becomes natural when you’re acting from a position of “core intent” as opposed to “attachment to the result”.

Okay I’m done, I hope you enjoyed this shit!!

You can probably tell that I'm psyched about everything I did this year -- almost like "weirdly enthusiastic".

Maybe it seems funny to you, but the truth is that if you DO NOT think that what you're doing is awesome, maybe something is out of alignment.

One of the first rules of pickup is that "the party is always with YOU..." -- like, "I'm doing the coolest shit, and whatever anyone else is doing is awesome for them, but I'm enjoying my own personal adventure."

This is engrained into you from day 1 of learning this stuff, and after a while you learn to "live it for real".

Sooooo, if you're not equally psyched about your own life, it might be time to wake up make something out of it. Keep making little adjustments like the ones we just talked about, until you've obtained an equally obnoxious sense of self-satisfaction.

;)

These events have been the most meaningful to me, and comprised a year in my life where I was mostly healthy and enjoyed a lot of good times. I'm pretty damned grateful for it, because you never know what the future's got in store or how much time you're gonna get.

This will probably be my last article on this blog for a while, so keep up with me on RSD Nation (www.rsdnation.com) and I'll see you soon!!

Thanks for reading!!

Tyler

..........Just Chillin' Here In this Cocoon

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:15:00 +0000

Usually my writing goes in floods and droughts.

The past few years I was pretty prolific on the blog, but lately my focus has been on the 2 books I'm working on (Relationship Transition & Blueprint).

I'm still writing every day, but the focus is there and not here.

Anyway, I "went away" for a while back around 2005-2006, and came back with the ideas you read on this blog the past few years. In the same way, I've kind of gone away, and I'm forumulating the ideas that are going to comprise RSD for the next couple of years.

I'm thinking to start posting back on here again, and maybe the short 2 page format articles on RSDN. I'll give it a shot and see if it's usurping my time away from the books again. Most important is that I don't have that creative flurry right now, because I'm back in the cocoon of new paradigms, as opposed to "emerging" from the previous paradigm like I was the past few years -- so we'll see.

btw, what are we up to at Real Social Dynamics?

Jeffy has just finished his book. HOLY SHIT!

My two books are going great. New RSDN launched. Papa is doing a tour of 245 cities in a year (that's 245 cities in 360 days, folks -- dude is insane).

Recording tons of infield footage, almost every night for months now. Hundreds of hours worth, maybe thousands. All with HD cams and hi teck wireless mics. It's for the World Summit we're doing this September in Las Vegas.

The bootcamps I've been teaching in LA have been going awesome. I look forward to it every weekend. Enjoying them like crazy -- coming back to teaching full time was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I'll hit this up a bit more next week.

Tyler

No It's Not A New Blog....But Some Cool Things Are About To Happen

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:35:00 +0000

You may have noticed the blog has been bustling with activity as of late. :)

Believe it or not, this is a sign of many cool things to come. It's been a few months since Real Social Dynamics has done anything note worthy, but that's changing on January 21st with the launch of RSDN 2.0.

We have some concerns that the server might be a bit sluggish on the day that it comes out, as we anticipate an unusually high number of people checking it out. If there are slowdowns on the first day then please be patient, as the site will begin to run very quickly on days 2, 3, and onwards. The server we use is high powered and expensive, however the number of people browing on that first day will be abnormally high.

It's been a dream of mine to launch this site since around 2005-2006. It seems sort of surreal to see it finally happening, and it's another milestone in this whole RSD project that I've involved myself in these past few years. I've worked with designers on and off since last January, and more intensely since the summer, to see this come to fruition. I guess I'll believe it when I see it finally go up.

To celebrate the launch of the site we are also releasing the RSD Mastermind Special. It features two seminars that I did after Blueprint, which I feel are two of the best I've ever recorded. It also features Jeffy, Tim, Alex, Ryan, Saad, Christophe, and others. Saad's "Day Game" disc is some of the sharpest daygame tutorial I've seen, and could easily be sold as a "stand alone" program. Ryan's "verbal game" program has been making waves of late as well, which you can read about on RSDN. Jeffy's disc is the material that he's worked on since the release of The Jeffy Show. All the discs are IMO absolutely solid and worth checking out.

If you haven't looked into this program yet, check it now:

www.rsdmastermindspecial.com

Lastly, I've been slaving over "The Relationship Transition: A Pocketbook For Guys Living The Dating Abundant Lifestyle Looking To Make The Leap To Relationship Land" (tentative title) these past few months. I'm pretty much in love with this book. I feel like it's the future of Real Social Dynamics.

This is a book that shows where the community leads you. Instead of the melodrama we've all read over the years about how to get a girlfriend you have to discard everything you've learned in studying success with women, this book talks about how the knowledge you've gained can benefit you and improve your life. Being in a four and a half year relationship myself, I can't really imagine how that could have been possible without what I've learned here (or at least that I could have enjoyed it as much), and this book is going to talk about the insights I gained from that.

The community has evolved. When I was doing the Blueprint live seminars I always had at least half the room walking up on the breaks and saying "I'm not that excited by picking up girls anymore, because I have that decently handled, but I'm into the self development angle so I came to the program." There are many people who have done the community thing, gotten on with their lives, and they are hungry for a project that addresses what goes on AFTER the initial learning curve.

My team was pretty nervous on my treatment of this book because obviously I'm not some old dude in a 20 year relationship who can talk about raising kids or whatever. But book is on the TRANSITION aspect -- what you deal with when you go from being single and actively dating to a relationship. It's basically all the blunt and raw stuff that happens in those first few months and years.

To research the project I called about 20 of my friends who I consider to be both good with women as well as relationships, and interviewed them about their experiences. The experience of writing the book has also improved my own relationship very noticeably, as it's forced me to really examine what works in a relationship and what doesn't.

Funny enough, I feel like even guys who have no interest in relationships will find it valuable in terms of "picking up girls" -- because it grounds you in what you want from women and what you're screening for. My intuition is that it will also eventually go somewhat viral in the mainstream (in a few years if I accept one of our publishing offers), because it's really the first book I've ever seen FOR GUYS on the topic or relationships that doesn't suck, aside from David Deida.

I think it's funny because the mainstream will look at it and initally think "Awwwwww, see a pick up artist dude is now saying that relationships are the right thing to do -- it's proof of my belief system." Then they'll start reading it, and it will pretty much shock the heck out of them, but then still come to the same conclusion that a relationship is great thing to do. I wonder how they'll reconcile that?? :)

Anyway as of right now, I'm debating whether or not to continue using this blog for my future articles, or to use the new RSDN. All instructors will be using the new RSDN however there is a strong following on this site here, so I'll decide that next week.

Stay tuned!!

Tyler

LOL @ Alex's Editing SkillzZZs

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:33:00 +0000

Working on a few articles this week. New RSDN coming this month or next. Two books on the go. Relaunch of RSDU as well.

Wanted to link this vid Alex created. He manages to portray himself as being somewhat trendy & hip looking in this video, which I haven't been able to reconcile in my head, but somehow he has done it. Amazing. :)

You can hit up his blog at:

http://www.alexattitude.com

Timmy has had some pretty nice action over at his blog lately. The "Flawless Living Plan" -- I REALLY recommend you check it out NOW. Dude is busy juggling two careers (music + FN'ing it) so catch him while he's around:

http://www.naturaltim.com

Have fun!!

Tyler

Real Social Dynamics Update -- "The Way Of The Future... The Way Of The Future..."

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:38:00 +0000

Just dug up this random video of Tim -- which he recorded just before walking up on stage at the "Transformations" Superconference. This was a really fun time in the company that brought back some nostalgia (the last few years have been really great actually) and I thought to share the nonsense with you.

Alright so I wanted to throw up a quick update.

Topics on the agenda -- stuff I'm up to lately:

-New RSD Nation
-Blueprint Book
-The Relationship Transition book
-RSD Underground revamp

So I've been at my desk writing -- in what I call "Howard Hughes Mode" where I essentially go crazy from being in the house too long and mumble about "the way of the future" a lot.

It's fantastic. :)

Blueprint book has been a trip, because the writing was done mostly between ages 24 and 26 (I'm 29 now) and so it's hard to edit without updating the style.

Nonetheless it's been amazing to be back on it. I'm really proud of the work I've done on this book, and I can't wait to share it with everyone.

In the meantime, I've gotten into zones where I've been on it so long I can't look at it anymore -- and rather than just taking time off I've been messing around with a short book on the topic of relationships.

It's crazy because it's quickly turned into about a 120 page exposition, which I'm going to call "The Relationship Transition". I really have no experience or desire to talk about a 10 year marriage, or how to raise kids -- this is a book that's specifically on the topic of the TRANSITION that you experience from actively dating to being in a committed relationship.

I've been calling about twenty of my closest friends (who I consider "good with women" and still choose to be in relationships) and cross-referencing my ideas with them, to get a wider viewpoint. It's really been an amazing journey and helped me in my own relationship as well.

What I like is that it's a new set of ideas to keep things fresh. It means we don't have to talk about offering value and unreactiveness for another year. :)

Which book will come out first? I'm not sure, I'm just working on both of them as I feel like it, and which ever one is completed first will come out.

Next up, the new RSD Nation -- OH MAN!!

I'm so psyched about this new rendition of the site. It's got full social networking capabilities with what are in my personal opinion the best aspects of MySpace and Facebook combined (I actually used a poll that I did on RSDN to figure out what people wanted -- coincidentally I also did a poll today on relationships and the idea of RSD doing more press appearances, which also yielded a lot of great feedback).

The site will have new instructor articles posted on the landing page from Monday to Friday. Our designer created two versions, a white and a black, and I couldn't decide which one I liked better -- so we made it possible to click on a color button at the top and choose your own color.

Another cool innovation is that the top of the forum will have a video with me explaining te mission and guidelines of the community, which I think will further our goal of making it as positive and constructive of a place to participate as possible.

From there, we're also relaunching RSD Underground -- the massive flop that came out about a year ago.

The history behind this site is that we had a new set of website designers, and we said "Let's create a video site" without really thinking it out. The site sort of gathered dust for a year, and we've since decided to load it up with 16 "personality conveying" videos of each instructor. I chose the number 16 because the site has columns of 4 slots, so it will be 4 rows of 4.

My goal is to acquaint people with team team as much as possible (similar to how "Transformations" did) -- and also to give people as much information as possible when deciding whether or not to take a live program. There is so much confusion and random proganda spread about bootcamps in general (regardless of what company) and so this should make it pretty obvious what the people are like, and what the program is like. It will also generally just be entertaining.

Anyway I've also been thinking about what I want to write for the next blog article. It's funny because when I'm really happy with an article, I only tend to feel inspired to write a new one when I feel it takes it to a sort of "next level" in some way or another. I've been really happy with these last two articles and I haven't really been creative enough to think of anything new as of yet. That's why it's cool to just add a little life update like this one -- to get the juices up in the brain flowing again.

Alright so I'll be back in the next week or two. Thanks for continuing to check this blog!! :)

Tyler

PS: Check out Alex and Ryan's latest blogs -- VERY COOL.

www.alexattitude.com

www.ryanforreal.com

Positivity And State Conditioning -- Why Seeing The Good In Yourself, Your Experiences, And Other People Makes You A More Potent Dude

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:53:00 +0000

Heeeeeeeey, what's UP??

I want to start by saying thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed the last article.

That's really where my life is at right now -- the zone I'm in -- so it was awesome to see people relating to it.

So I'm still snowed in with the December deadlines for Blueprint book and new RSD Nation. This is definitely the hardest period of work I've experienced in my life, but in many ways, also one of the most rewarding.

Today I want to talk about another topic that's become significant for me over the past few years, which is the philosophy of "Positivity".

As a dude who was pretty friggin' aggressive and angry most of my life, this has been a new way of thinking that's helped me on a lot of profound levels -- with meeting women, relationships, my professional life, and generally just with the vibe I'm in on a day to day basis.

So hopefully there's at least something in here you can learn from. Let's do it.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF POSITIVITY

Positivity is hands down, one of the most attractive qualities a man can have.

That means your attitude, the things you focus on and talk about, your view of yourself, your view of others, and the emotions that you’re addicted to feeling on a day to day basis.

To have this go “click” in your head you need to understand how it works and how it can benefit you, and then develop a sort of personal philosophy for dealing with the world that keeps you in a positive emotional state.

This is important not only for attracting girls, but also because it’s a sort of hidden code that “cool” people intuitively understand and “uncool” people are usually clueless about.

HOW POSITIVITY MAKES WOMEN MORE ATTRACTED

Positivity makes women attracted to you. Why??

First off, human beings are unique in that we are consciously aware that life is uncertain and we’re going to die some day, and yet at the same time we have the ability to focus on the positive and maintain a healthy and optimistic worldview.

Generally speaking, a positive worldview is an indication to women that you’re resourceful enough to engage with the world full-on.

When a guy is too mentally flimsy to keep himself in a good mood, women are left unsure about whether he’s fit to cope with the day to day challenges of his life. But when you are engaged with the world in a state of positivity, your mind is attuned to all of the hidden opportunity that is constantly surrounding you, and you are infinitely more resourceful.

Next is that being a happy person is an indicator of good emotional and mental-health. It communicates to the girl that your emotions are wired properly, and that your time and energy aren’t being depleted by personal drama. Being positive also gives you an air of being vibrant and physically healthy, as opposed to being delicate and meek.

Lastly, and possibly the most important, is that the way you feel internally is always being projected outwardly and transferred to the people around you.

When you feel positive you infect people with positive energy, and when you feel negative you infect people with negative energy. Being an attractive adult man means managing your emotions so that people feel uplifted when you’re around.

Emotions are contagious.

Especially with women, whose minds are wired with the ability to mirror and empathize with whatever it is that you feel (which is why when you feel overwhelmingly happy girls will say “You’re so awesome!”)

This effect is also amplified when you’re the person who is more socially forceful, which is usually expected if you’re going to attract women. So the transfer of how you feel to the woman you’re talking to becomes even more intense.

THE FOUNDATION OF EMOTION BENEATH THE WORDS

A secret that most guys who do well with women grasp instinctively, and that almost everyone else fails to realize, is that women respond more to the emotional state you’re in than your actual words.

Even if you’re yelling at a girl and giving her a hard time, if you have a strong foundation of positive energy beneath the words she’ll usually like it because you seem fun.

She may even giggle and shriek because you’re overloading her with positive emotions – and you’re being funny by mixing up the verbal and non verbal channels (like saying “You’re crazy” while beaming with positive energy, or “I’m shy” while beaming with self esteem).

This is similar to the modern day prescription drug television commercials, where the narrator describes the various nasty potential side effects with a soothing voice and relaxing music, and people just focus on the positive tone.

On the other hand, you can be in an emotionally depressed state and try to cover it up with jokes and happy words, and the girl will laugh for a second but still sense that something about you is out of alignment.

BE AUTHENTIC FROM WHATEVER STATE YOU’RE IN

Now this knowledge might cause you to become paranoid if you’re in a bad mood. You might even feel yourself descending into an excuse based mindset of “I can’t talk to girls today because I’m not feeling at my best.”

This is mentally scattered, and a totally useless way of looking at it.

A man always has to be able to communicate authentically from whatever emotional state he happens to be experiencing.

You will feel negative at certain points of your life, but you also have to know that it can never stop you from being who you are. Otherwise you become afraid of bad emotions and wind up blowing them out of proportion (and you inadvertently create a self-fuelling loop of “feeling bad about feeling bad”).

An analogy would be how studies have shown that being positive and eliminating stress can improve your immune system. But if this knowledge makes you think “I’m being negative, this is destroying my health” then it becomes yet another way to make yourself even more stressed.

The same goes for meeting women. You can understand that being positive makes you more attractive, but if you play a game with yourself where you say “I’m not feeling good, so I know this is going to go bad” then you’re creating a self fulfilling prophecy that wasn’t necessarily the case.

It’s all about working with what you’ve got. If you’re feeling great, then know that this will help you and approach with confidence. If you’re feeling down, then approach regardless and assume she’ll be attracted based on some other quality in your character.

The point is that being positive is in your best interests, you will never be perfect with it, but you generally just do the best you can.

You use this knowledge when it serves you, and discard it when it’s not.

WHAT POSITIVITY IS AND IS NOT

Positivity is a decision to seek out and focus the value in all people and situations, while filtering out anything that’s of no use.

Being positive doesn’t mean that you can never be “negative.” There is a time and a place for everything.

But it does mean that you have to draw clear lines in your mind about when you’re willing to engage in negative energy, and not allow yourself to be sucked into it at any time outside of that.

Positivity is not about burying your head in the sand and being naïve.

Positivity is not about being the weird over-positive guy who has a blank stare into space.

Positivity is not about overdramatizing everything as if it’s “Sooooooo great!!” in a way that seems inauthentic and fake.

And positivity is definitely not about ignoring the essential truths of life, or running away from the entire nature of a situation and interpreting it objectively.

What positivity is about is recognizing the subjective nature of the human experience – how what you focus on becomes an unconscious habit and creates your sense of reality – and then becoming the type of guy who radiates an attractive positive energy out towards the world.

So let’s have a look at the benefits…

YOU STEP INTO THE SHOES OF GUYS WHO ATTRACT WOMEN

When you take on a positive mindset, you’re walking in the shoes of the guys who naturally attract girls.

The reason for this is obvious: if you’re enjoying a lifestyle where you have everything you want – women, sex, fun, friends, purpose, challenge, hobbies – what do you have to be upset about? Not much.

Being positive is basically a way of communicating that you’re smart and resourceful enough to get your life together. It gives the impression that you must be internally fulfilled.

Ironically it’s often the people who live very unsuccessful lives, and don’t respect themselves enough to care, who come across as being the most happy (the lack of personal standards allows them to be naturally “care free”). But regardless of how they achieve it, their attitude still gives the initial perspective to an outsider that “life is good with this guy”.

Now on the other hand, you can probably find counter examples of guys who are positive but still haven’t had a lot of success with girls (maybe they aren’t being assertive enough). And you can probably find examples of emotional train-wrecks who still have women chasing them regardless. The world is a big place and you can usually find examples of just about anything.

But generally speaking, if you’re living a happy life and you continually renew your emotional chemistry through a healthy sex life, the difficulties of life don’t need to affect you the same way they affect “normal” guys.

(And when you think about it, by being negative you are in some ways pinpointing yourself as a guy who could be frustrated for a variety of reasons, including loneliness and a lack of physical intimacy.)

The bottom line is that when you take on the mindset of the guys who get the success you want, you are taking a step closer to getting similar results for yourself.

"Positivity is potency" for exactly this reason – it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

YOU ASSUME THAT PEOPLE SEE THE BEST IN YOU

Even if it’s not always realistic, your emotions tend to react on the assumption that whatever you’re thinking about other people is probably pretty similar to whatever they’re thinking about you.

If you think badly of people – of course you’re going to feel defensive – it’s your reality that people are having all sorts of negative thoughts.

But when you get good at finding the best in people, suddenly your reality is that they probably see the best in you as well, and you speak with the full assumption that people will be totally cool.

This is different from being a groupie or a fan boy – where you think so highly of someone you place them on a pedestal above yourself. That isn’t really thinking positively, because it’s just some personal drama you’re dealing with that people don’t even appreciate.

The point is just that when you see the best in people, you free yourself up from the mental noise about whether or not they’re judging you, and it makes you more at ease to put your real personality on the line.

This changes you in a very profound way because you are sort of “side stepping” the psychological need to feel high status when you’re “putting yourself out there”. You’re just at ease with yourself, at ease with other people, and at ease with the fact that people have their pros and cons.

On the other hand, sometimes people will try to “side step” the need to feel status by just looking down on everyone, so they can feel good about themselves by comparison. This can actually work in the short term, but it’s a cheaper way of feeling confident that forces you to rely on all sorts of nonsense rationalizations to continually justify it.

More powerful is just to judge no one (you can discern their behaviour – but not judge their inherent worth), and to be social with an almost child-like freedom of expression.

PEOPLE LIVE UP TO THE IDENTITY YOU SET FOR THEM

When you expect the best in people, you give them a new identity to live up to.

A girlfriend who wants to cheat on you will be far less likely if you give her a total trust (assuming you have personal boundaries and you’re not tolerating blatant disrespect).

Being jealous you give her the excuse to say “Well he already thinks I’m going to cheat so I might as well just do it and have fun.” But giving her an identity as a girl who you regard as having integrity, she suddenly has a lot more to lose.

It’s the same thing with your opinions of people in general.

If someone is frustrating you, give them a better identity to live up to. Oftentimes their behaviour will totally change.

Other times it will accomplish nothing, and from there you can call them out on it or blow them off. But the general practice of “helping people to find their way back to the positive person they really are” is often the better approach.

PEOPLE WHO ACT FAKE TAKE OFF THEIR MASKS

It’s a funny aspect of human nature that we often relate to each other through a filter of social positioning, seeking approval, and general weirdness.

Sometimes you might feel inclined to complain about it, like “People are so superficial” or “Everyone is so self-absorbed!”

But when people act fake it’s usually because they’re afraid of putting their real selves out there. And when you obviously have a positive outlook towards everyone, people can sense they have no reason to put their mask on in front of you, because you’ll like them either way.

This can be a self-fulfilling prophecy in your everyday life.

Suddenly the exact same people who cause headaches for everyone else will put their best personalities forward for you, and your reality becomes a much better place to live.

GIRLS FEEL MORE QUALIFIED TO BE WITH YOU

When you have your life together, it can be hard to find a girl who measures up.

Most physically attractive girls don’t have the same motivation to work on themselves that you do – because the opposite sex is going to fawn over them either way.

For a lot of guys this creates a barrier. Girls will feel comfortable talking to them because it’s just a spontaneous conversation in a social environment. But when the same guy takes the time to call and invite her out it seems like he has an agenda, because he obviously doesn’t value anything in her other than sex.

Being the kind of guy who sees the value in people does a lot to side step this common issue. Ultimately it comes from realizing that the strong points in a girl are usually going to be found in areas totally different from yours. That’s the beauty of masculine and feminine energy.

When you’re inclined to see the best in people, girls feel like it’s more congruent and normal that you’re interested in them, which makes them more interested in returning your calls.

It also makes you an addictive source of validation, because they become their “best selves” when you’re around.

YOU LEARN FROM EVERYONE AND BECOME MORE RELATABLE

As you become “socially stronger” one of the biggest issues becomes relating to people on a level that makes them feel good. Oftentimes people will initially “like you” because they respond to status as a knee jerk reaction. But if you don’t reciprocate a genuine interest, it leaves them with a feeling of lingering mistrust.

Now think about it from the reverse perspective...

When a social interaction is important to you, your mind tends to be hyper aware of every little detail. You’re bracing yourself for something crazy to happen, and being extra aware causes you to “make meaning” out of random nonsense the person said or did that really has little significance.

Likewise when you become an object of importance in people’s minds, they’ll tend to do the same to you. With the best of intentions, and without realizing they’re doing it.

People often have a paradoxical relationship with people of high status. They love them, hate them, want their validation, and want to punch them in the face at the same time. They’ll be as fast to talk badly behind their backs as they’ll be to say “Oh hiiiiii!” when they bump into them in real life.

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is to make the decision that “You can learn something from everyone.” This is what makes you a relatable and a genuine human being.

And more important than the petty (and impossible) pursuit of making everyone like you, is that there really is something that you can learn from everyone.

With some people it’s obvious, and with some people it’s a lot harder to find, but there is value to be found in every person on earth if you are curious and open-minded.

By taking an active interest in learning from people’s best qualities, you are adding heaps of new ideas and abilities to your own personal repertoire.

It’s easy to learn only from people who you identify with. But more powerful is also to learn from people different from you, even who have qualities you dislike.

YOU OPEN YOUR MIND TO LEARN FROM SUCCESS

Seeing the best in people also applies if you’re not the most popular guy, and you’re making excuses in your head about how the popular people are all big jerks.

When you refuse to identify with people who are doing better than you, and you refuse to relate to their point of view, your mind turns off from learning what they’re doing.

This is similar to when poor people look down on the rich, believe that rich people have no problems, believe that rich people are holding them down and manipulating them – instead of simply learning from what makes them successful.

Even nastier is “side stepping” the need to feel status by looking down on the popular people, when you lack the substance to back it up. This causes all sorts of intense rationalizations. Elaborate webs of personal myths that become more important to you than your experience of the world in real life.

Obviously these sorts of mindsets represent a tremendous waste of time and energy, and a lot of useless emotional drama.

The healthy and powerful approach to life is just to see the value in people, ignore what’s of no use, and reap the benefits that come with a positive outlook.

POSITIVITY DOESN’T MEAN YOU LACK STANDARDS

The most obvious objection to seeing the best in people is that it conveys a lack of standards about who you’ll allow into your life.

Being a cool guy means people have to earn your friendship. You won’t be friends with just anyone. That’s a part of what makes people value your time and attention.

The difference is that there is always a foundation of no judgement and positivity in your view of people, regardless of whether or not you decide to spend time with them. Some people you meet for only a few seconds, and others you know for your whole life.

On the surface it seems paradoxical, but you can have a love for all people and still discern which relationships you’re going to invest your time and energy into. You can also establish boundaries, call out bad behaviour, and expect people to be their best selves around you, while still seeing them in an extremely positive light.

It’s the difference between how you operate in the world, and the sense of positivity and love towards people that you have at your core.

(As utterly funny as that sounds...)

Obviously this opens up a lot of room for hypocrisy. But any time you’re working on your own code of conduct, you aspire towards acting more in alignment with your values and integrity over the course of your life.

Beyond that, the other obvious objection is that seeing the best in people could mean you lack standards about learning from people’s behaviour.

The distinction is that as a guy who has a strong sense of reality, and who has the ability to interpret the world through your own eyes, you naturally focus on the “good stuff” and screen out anything that’s “bad”.

Usually it’s people who are unclear in their sense of reality who feel the need to dwell on the negative. They do this with a positive intention, because they’re in a zone where they feel like if they didn’t, they’d inadvertently lose themselves.

The point is that once you’ve reached a level where you know who you are, you know your place in the world, and you have a decent sense of what’s realistic and what’s not, you can see the best in people and anything outside of that doesn’t hit your radar.

You can make “discernments” about people’s behaviour without having to make “judgements” about whether they are “good or bad” (except in extreme cases).

This doesn’t really require a lot of thought. It just happens.

THE WORLD IS OFTEN WHATEVER YOU THINK IT IS

As you can see, positivity is just a big self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most of the time the world is whatever you think it is.

By being positive, you bring more positive people into their life, and make people who would have frustrated you act ten times better when you’re around.

You think better of people... which gives you the confidence to act better... which gets people to act better around you.

You look for the good in the world... which makes you find the good in the world… which makes you a more resourceful person.

And so on and so forth.

Bottom line: be a positive guy.

THE SKEPTICAL VOICE OF WISDOM

Over the course of your life, your mind has a tendency to pull you towards the social roles that you determine will suit you best.

At some point you might have taken on the role of being the guy who is sceptical or critical, and gotten more attention from it than if you’d been a quiet nobody with nothing to say.

Stop and consider...

Out of all the things you criticize, would they still bother you if you had all the attention you wanted from women and people and friends?

This can be a hard question to answer. It’s hard to know what issues are truly important to you, and what you focus on more from a place of frustration and a lack of identity.

You have to realize that while the issues that bother you might be fully legitimate, a lot of them you wouldn’t be focusing on and talking about if you had everything you wanted out of life.

A man has to have a sort of “standard” of what issues are worth his attention. The types of issues you ““make an issue out of” are a reflection of how you value yourself and your time.

There are issues that are “profoundly relevant” and “befitting” for a successful guy to be speaking out against (issues that extend beyond the needs of his ego and his own petty circumstances). And then there are issues that more geared towards people who don’t see themselves as having any bigger shoes to fill.

When you’ll make noise about just anything, it reveals you as being the guy who has little to offer other than the role of the “sceptical voice of wisdom”. It’s not that your criticism isn’t valid. It’s just that the amount you focus on it shows you have nothing else going on.

The real players in this world are rarely critics. They’re the people who do what they do, and who create the energy that other people latch onto, including the critics.

Ultimately you have to be firm in the role that’s most in alignment with the life you want to live and enjoy.

POSITIVITY IS A CLEAN ENERGY THAT PEOPLE APPRECIATE AND TRUST IN THE LONGTERM

Sometimes it’s just easier to relate to people in a frenzy of trash talk and negativity

(We’re talking about bitterness and a false feeling of superiority here – not when it’s teasing or joking around in good fun.)

This is a very tempting thing to do, because people often seem to enjoy talking about other people and feeling better than them by comparison, or talking about their problems and getting all self righteous.

The problem is that trash talking has a tendency to be addictive, and it becomes your “default mode” for relating to people and creating a bond. After a while it gets embedded into your psychology. You can barely go a day without using it as a “conversational crutch”.

Think of negativity as like a dirty energy that gives people an erratic buzz for a short period of time, but then leaves them feeling drained and sick of it in the long term.

That’s why you can relate to a lot of guys by calling women “bitches” – and at first they’ll be laughing and feeding into it. But later they’ll realize it’s a “wounded mindset” and lose a lot of respect for you.

(The same goes for women who are wounded about men. Their girlfriends will feed into it at first, but later they’ll realize it’s just immature.)

Positive energy, on the other hand, is a sustainable and “clean buzz”.

You can feel a positive state for an indefinite period of time, and it only further energizes and enlivens you. Positivity is always cool.

It also builds an incredible amount of trust, because people see they can speak well of you and you won’t trash them when they’re not around.

NEGATIVE EMOTIONS CAN PLAY A HEALTHY ROLE

An important question to ask your self is “What is negativity, really?”

Is it negative to recognize nonsense as being nonsense?

Is it negative to discern people’s good and bad behaviour, and to make distinctions about what’s acceptable and what’s not?

That’s not the case at all.

Negative thoughts and emotions are meant to serve a purpose. They direct your attention towards your needs that aren’t being met.

That might be a personal boundary that you’re failing to maintain. Or a bad situation that you’re seeing on the horizon. Whatever.

When you interpret internal negativity as a “signal” that there’s a problem you need to address quickly, it is serving the purpose for which it’s designed.

And that’s a very positive thing.

Dealing with negativity is also good for you when it’s in reasonable doses. It keeps you grounded in the reality of the world, so that when difficult situations arise they don’t floor you.

(An analogy would be how if you spent your entire life avoiding germs your immune system wouldn’t be as resilient. A certain amount of exposure is actually good for you.)

The issue is that the emotional state you’re most accustomed to experiencing becomes engrained and addictive over time.

So when you’re experiencing negative emotions too regularly, and it becomes a pattern, you later wind up being negative even when there’s no point.

YOU CAN’T JUST TURN IT ON AND OFF

Your mind is extremely adaptive.

Whatever emotional-state you experience the most, your mind lays down mental pathways to it, and you become unconsciously inclined to access it again and again.

Over time, the state that you’re most used to feeling becomes wired. It might not feel good, but it feels familiar. You’ve become addicted to it.

If you’re a gangster and you spend 10 years of your life fighting rivals and dodging authorities, your mind will adapt to thrive in an aggressive and paranoid emotional state.

At first you learn to fight to deter and avoid problems. But eventually you grow to like it, and you unconsciously put yourself in situations where you know chaos will ensue.

You’ve been born with this ability to allow you to adapt (and eventually thrive) in even the harshest and most undesirable of circumstances. It’s a gift.

The key is to use it consciously in your favour instead of addicting yourself to a state of mind you don’t want, without even realizing that you’re doing it.

YOU CAN TELL WHAT ENERGY YOU’RE ADDICTED TO

Generally you can tell what energy it is that you’re addicted to, positive or negative, by looking at a few basic factors.

-The way you see people
-The types of people you resonate with
-The vibe of most of your conversations
-The way you remember the events in your life

When you talk to a positive guy, you’ll usually notice that it’s hard to get him onto negative topics for too long. That’s because when you’re addicted to an emotional state, your mind will often create blind spots to anything that could jar you out of it.

You can be fully angry or upset, but if you talk to him about it he won’t really process with the same depth. He’ll probably just say “That sucks man... Awww well...” and then direct the conversation back to something funny or interesting just by reflex.

A guy who tends to be negative, on the other hand, won’t be able to get enough of it. He’ll love the topic, keep directing the conversation back to it, and go on and on and on about all the negative ramifications of your dilemma.

That’s because as a rule of thumb, people tend to gravitate towards conversation topics that reflect their inner state.

When you start to look for this stuff, you start to see it all around you. That doesn’t mean that any time someone addresses a negative issue that they’re negative. But you can get a general sense of what the state they’re most accustomed to by looking at the overall larger picture of how they act.

Beyond all that, generally speaking you can see what emotions you're addicted to just by the company you keep and the way that you remember your life.

If you're a guy who has a lot of negativity "wired into your neurology" then people who are negative will resonate with you on a very deep level.

And likewise, when you think about your life you'll probably remember a lot of the more fun events as being a lot less cool than they actually were.

This happens because with memory "every recall is a reframe" -- so whatever emotional state you're experiencing, when you recall your past experiences you'll likely re-focus what you remember out of it to match up with the way you feel at the time.

SO IN CONCLUSION... MAKE THE DECISION TO BECOME A MORE POSITIVE DUDE

Hopefully at this point you're seeing at least some of the value in a philosophy of being positive.

Maybe you agree with everything you read here, or maybe you feel some of it applies to you and some of it doesn't. Whatever.

The point is that if you're ready to make a change in your life, you have to be very deliberate about it.

It might seem crazy, but if you're willing to get out of your comfort zone then try the "Positivity Challenge" where you spend 10 days reframing everything in your life with a positive spin, and using the way you use your body to take on a more positive way of carrying yourself.

A big key here is also joking around and laughing a lot. Nothing is better for creating the foundation of a positive state.

You'll find that when you do this, you begin to see yourself as being a better guy, you'll see the best in other people, and you'll see your life in an infinitely better light.

It's up to you, and the choice is yours about how you want to live your life, but when you're ready to give this a try, it's always here waiting for you.

Thanks for surviving this massive read!! I'm back to work.

Tyler

Periods Of Intense Productivity -- Avoiding The "Garbage In And Garbage Out"

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:30:00 +0000

So I've been holed up in "work mode" lately -- not taking phone calls or getting onto the internet very much.

I've always thrived off of stating my goals publicly, to force myself to be consistent, and my goal right now is to have Blueprint book and the new RSD Nation out by January 2009.

I'm in the zone right now. I've just experienced the most productive year of my life. There have been a lot of rewards for it, both personaly and professionally, and I'm aiming to take it to the next level in the coming months.

What I want to offer here are a few secrets I've been lucky to figure out, and that I've found to be incredibly helpful. A lot of this has been becoming a sort of revolution in how work is done in recent years.

(And by the way -- being back on Blueprint I'm writing about "picking up girls" on an ongoing basis, so I'm thinking the articles over the next few weeks might venture into a lot of non POOOAH related areas like this one -- if you don't dig it, wait for Blueprint because you'll be swimming in all sorts of great stuff on how to become better with girls.)

Alright let's do it.

1- REMOVE THE INTERNET FROM YOUR HOUSE

Getting off of the internet is tough...

I mean, it's so damned COOL. There's so much info at your finger tips it's like you can gluttonize yourself with it.

What's not to love??

Well in Honolulu I removed internet from my house and found that my productivity basically doubled. The internet is a massive diversion. It allows you to continually "click over" to some other site when you don't feel like working.

More than that, I realized that in the past I had an addiction to checking email. Running operations there are always these little "fires" you have to put out on an ongoing basis.

These are distracting and annoying, but even worse, they give you a little shot of adrenaline and stress. Over time the little adrenaline injection becomes addictive, even if it's unpleasant.

Your nervous system is adapted to become addicted to whatever state is most necessary -- whatever you're most exposed to -- and over time you start putting yourself into situations where you can get your "fix" even if it isn't what you really want. That's what the internet became for me.

In Hawaii I fixed it, by making it so I had to bike to the internet cafe about 15 minutes away whenever I wanted to use it. The charge was about $10/hr and it forced me to write my articles from home and just bring them to post them.

In Los Angeles I have a situation where there's a few computers in the lobby, so I can just walk downstairs every few days and do what I need to do. Totally solid.

I still check my favourite sites and blogs, but it's on a PROACTIVELY DECIDED ON period of time, instead of just surfing and surfing.

Really I can't recommend this highly enough.

2- REMOVE TELEVISION FROM YOUR HOUSE

This doesn't even need much explanation.

TV in the house is giving mainstream media a direct link to infect your brain. They change the frame every 7 seconds to keep you constantly stimulated, which causes you to become addicted to instant gratification. No good.

I still have a few shows I enjoy, like "Lost" (because I come from Hawaii so I love all the shots) and "Entourage", and ummmmmmm, actually I think that's all I really watch at this point.

All of these I watch on my laptop player, with no advertising, which I order from Netflix.

Mostly I like to watch nature videos like "Planet Earth" (on Blu Ray -- waaaaay better) and "Blue Planet" so I can plan out the places I'm interested in visiting and it puts me in a good mood.

3- POUND YOURSELF FULL OF BERRIES AND FRUITS AND VEGETABLES AND CLEAN MEATS

White flour, white sugar, saturated fats........NO GO.

I find this stuff fries my brain and burns me out. You eat this stuff and you can't seem to get anything done.

I love food and I love eating, but I pound myself full of all sorts of great stuff that makes me feel "powered up".

Running bootcamps on the weekend I sometimes forget to bring food out with me and I wind up eating hamburgers and all sorts of crap. I've had to discipline myself to bring out the pocket-sized organic bars and proper food in a tupper ware.

Obviously it's funny in contrast to the lifestyle of alcohol, drugs, and eating after-hours pizza that most of these people eat. They're in a different phase of their lives than I am, so it just is what it is.

You have to watch yourself when you're going out a lot, because when you're immersing yourself around party girls on an ongoing basis, you start to become a lot LIKE them.

For the most part, going out a lot is a super positive habit, especially when you're learning all sorts of new stuff about social interaction.

It's just a point of being super clear on your personal standards for yourself, which is valuable in making yourself an attractive person regardless.

4- BLACK OUT YOUR BED ROOM AND SLEEP IN THE PITCH DARK

Most people don't realize how under slept they are. Even if you go to bed early there's still usually light leaking into your room that deprives you of sleep.

Generally you want the room you sleep in to be so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. Even if you go to bed early there is still light that comes in around 5AM that reduces the ability of sleep to renew you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland

Personally I have my window blacked out 100%, and I put a curtain in front of the door so no light can leak in through the door either. It is very literally pitch black. Phone off. Ear plugs. Yup, those too, as utterly neurotic as it sounds.

Generally I want my mind with full clarity during the day because when I'm underslept I get paranoid and stressed out. I also find my mind tends to veer into a lot of old patterns that I spent years working to change -- negativity, nonsense, bullshit, etc.

The only thing I've proven to do well when under slept is public speaking and running bootcamps. For some reason the little trickle of adrenaline I get from teaching sort of balances out against the lack of sleep.

Regardless I always strive to get as much sleep as possible. The "sweet spot" is 8 hours. But I'd even rather sleep 10 hours and be in the zone all day than sleep 5 hours and have the extra time.

5- TURN YOUR DAMNED CELL PHONE OFF

Any time you answer a text message, answer a phone call, or do anything that takes you out of your zone, it's going to be a least a few minutes before you get back into that zone.

I find I get the most done in 90 minute to 120 minute chunks.

Generally the most productive parts of my year come from when I'm fully engaged in what I'm doing. None of this multitasking nonsense.

I also don't share this often, and I don't judge people for it AT ALL, but I have the personal opinion that having your cell phone left on when you're out with friends is obnoxious.

It's cool in certain situations when you're waiting for a girl to show up, or some buddies to arrive, but once you've got the whole party going it's time to hit the off-switch.

6- RECOGNIZE DRAMA AND AVOID IT

In case you didn't know this about me -- uhhhhh, I've been around a bit of drama in my life.

And so it's been huge, almost epic, to get into a zone where I've consciously moved past it.

Sometimes people ask me about this, like "Does that mean you're AFRAID of drama?? AFRAID of negativity?? Why even react to it enough to avoid it??"

I agree with that, but where I'm coming from is I've been around drama, and heck, been the guy PROPAGATING drama for the first twenty odd years of my life. I figure I've sort of "been there, done that..."

I've learned that the only power drama has over you is it's power to DISTRACT. If you lose even five minutes of your day on some thought loop about people who are annoying you, you've screwed up.

If there are people in your life who are making your head "spun out" with drama, end your relationship with them and let them know the reason why.

(Assuming you're being reasonable and clear thinking -- not just blaming other people for how you feel, when you're being dramatic yourself).

In the past I've had people do that to ME, and it actually helped me to recognize the problems with where my head was at. There is no "favour" in tolerating second class behaviour from people because it communicates to them that what they're doing is cool.

Again -- before you cut out drama from your life, recognize and fix YOUR OWN drama.

BE the person who you expect others to be. You don't attract the friends who you WANT, you attract the friends that are similar to what you currently ARE.

If you change yourself, the types of friends you'll have will improve along with you.

7- WHEN YOU DO SOMETHING FUN MAKE SURE IT'S SOMETHING YOU REALLY ENJOY

To be honest I haven't really figured out what my new hobbies are going to be now that I've moved back to Los Angeles. I'm still re-acquainting myself with the city.

My main hobby for the time being is teaching bootcamps. I consider that my "off time" for the week, even though I'm working hard.

In Hawaii I used to do a lot of hiking and surfing. I also used to bike around all over the neighbourhood.

A day of that leaves me feeling good and ready to work. This is in direct contrast to how the majority of people spend time watching TV or surfing the internet, which just numbs their brains.

"Time off" should FIRE YOU UP, not be used as an ESCAPE.

Do NOT answer your phone when you're out having fun. And even more important, do NOT allow to be dragged into drama or gossip or internal negativity during your time off, because then it becomes absolutely useless.

A big thing when you're working hard is to just take time off to laugh with your friends.

That's something that I've ignored a lot over the years, and I'm now realizing how important it is.

Just being social has a sort of aspect to it where you go home feeling like life is good.

8- MEDITATE FOR 20 MINUTES A DAY

People ask me about this, and my outlook towards it is very practical.

The purpose of meditation is to calm down the internal dialogue that's slowing you down from getting things done.

Meditation basically RECONDITIONS your brain to focus itself sharply, instead of needing to be distracted and fuzzy. This is really such a difference from where most people's heads are at, although hopefully in our lifetimes we'll see that begin to change.

Think of your internal dialogue as a wheel that spins and spins and spins. Meditation slows it down and gets you into that state of clarity that is super productive.

It's a shame that meditation has been associated with the sometimes over-the-top eastern "gurus" and "reincarnation". I have a great deal of respect for all different cultures and belief systems, but I also think such a strong association to the average person who doesn't identify with it can turn them off.

Personally I was turned off of it for YEARS because I had associations to white people dressed up in Indian garments saying "Namaste" and making funny prayer movements.

Sometimes I'll see people get into meditation and get so much peace of mind out of it they wind up using it as an escape.

They get sucked into a mindset that the only goal in life is to be "in the now" -- when for a young person (anyone younger than 50) that's far more about escapism than it is about having profound experience of life.

In my mind meditation is especially applicable for peak performers.

That could be entrepreneurs, CEO's, writers, speakers and stage performers, or ANY occupation AT ALL.

It's a simple habit where you just sit in a chair and look at the wall, allow your awareness onto your breathing, and around the 10 or 15 minute mark you'll find that you become incredibly calm.

There's really nothing to this. You don't have to sit cross-legged or close your eyes. No "Ohmmmm" noises. None of that stuff.

Personally I just sit in my office chair, set my phone alarm to ring "Alarm only" in 20 minutes, and stare at the wall or out the window for twenty minutes.

This is obviously pretty funny to think about, but at the same time, most people who've kept up this habit and then fall off will say stuff like "Man I really need to start doing that again" and "Wow I was really at my best when that was my zone".

You can even get all self righteous and view it as "ME TIME" -- where you're just enjoying yourself, doing what YOU want to do, chilling out and enjoying the fact that you exist.

9- POUND YOU BRAIN FULL OF OXYGEN BY EXERCISING

In Honolulu I used to wake up and blast around the volcano beside my house every morning, along the ocean, and back home. In Los Angeles I'm stuck with a cardio machine but I just read while I'm doing it.

This pummels your brain with oxygen and makes you a smarter dude for at least a few hours.

Generally you want to be pounding yourself with exercise, so your circulatory systems are pumping you brain with oxygen and endorphins throughout the day.

People who live sedentary lifestyle tend to be more "DUUUUUR" than people who exercise. It only gets worse with age as well, which is why most people are less intelligent as they get older when in reality they should be a lot smarter (because they have more knowledge and life experience).

Humans are evolved to walk about 11 or 12 miles a day. If you look at how your ancestors migrated from Africa to Australia, Africa to Asia, Africa to Europe, Africa to Russia and then through to Alaska and all the way down to South America -- this was all in an incredibly short period of time.

These people were incredibly intelligent and adaptable to make it that far, despite not being formally educated.

If you want the similar advantage, which as absolutely melodramatic as it sounds is your BIRTH RIGHT (cue the music -- duh duh duhhhhhhhhh), you have to make it your hobby and passion to make use of your body in similar ways.

10- READ BOOKS THAT HAVE THE VIBE THAT YOU WANT FOR YOURSELF

Generally I try to read every day, and around 400 to 700 pages a week.

Sound extreme?? Well I'd wager that YOU read about the same amount.

The difference is whether it's random Wikipedia articles, Digg, CNN, etc, or is it really high quality stuff??

Warren Buffet's partner Charlie Munger has a great quote:

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time-none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads-and at how much I read. My children laugh at me, they think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out"

Personally I lost the habit of reading for about 3 years when my energy was driven towards mastering POOOAH. My focus was on going out and learning from the world.

Since then my fascination has only increased, but that's something I've furthered by travelling 3 or 4 months a year.

To get back reading took a bit of an adjustment. At first I felt like I wanted to "take a nap" when I'd sit down to read, or I'd get up and pace around every few minutes.

I basically just pushed through it, and forced myself to read for at least an hour a day. Even if I wanted to get up or take a nap I'd just keep doing it. After about six months it was no problem, and at this point I'm good to sit inside reading all day if it's necessary.

However I don't think that "absorbing information" is the purpose of reading at all.

I think that a really great book has a sort of frequency or vibe to it that's based in positivity, abundance, presence, intelligence, and wit, that sort of "re-aligns" you every day to that sort of mindset.

Purpose of reading = re-alignment with that vibe.

Not necessarily more knowledge to tell yourself "I'm soooo smart."

That's also why I enjoy reading autobiographies even if the information in them isn't always directly applicable.

ALRIGHT SO THAT'S IT!!

You'll notice the key and theme here is CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSING YOUR INPUT.

If you allow trash into your system, whether it's bad sleep, bad food, distraction, gossip, pettiness, or whatever, it's going to be "Garbage in, garbage out..."

Do your best to maximize the positive influences into your zone.

A bit of bullshit is totally fine, and you don't want to lose your grounding in reality by living in "Happy world" all the time -- where a bit of nonsense knocks you on your head.

The point is just to make the conscious choice to saturate yourself with the "good stuff" -- and when you do that, the results you're going to produce are going to be a reflection of that.

And this isn't something I arrived to over a short period of time.

It was an adjustment over the past few years. Each habit was implemented individually, usually over a month's time.

In the past I was younger and I didn't care that much about my life. I allowed myself to get involved in bullshit, whether it was neglecting my health, getting involved in useless drama and gossip, or allowing my mind to run all over the place.

I implemented all this stuff because I realized I'm getting older and I wanted the time to visit the places I wanted to visit, and to do the things I want to do.

Oh yeah, and before you ask, I still make the time to go out and hit the clubs three nights a week -- so this isn't an "either/or" type of scenario.

AT ALL.

The bottom line is you're worth it, no??

You have to respect yourself enough to figure out a system to get what you want in life -- adapted to whatever phase of your life you're in at the particular time.

This is a small window into MY system, and if you want to elevate yourself then you likely want to come up with one of your own.

Hopefully that's helpful, and of course, thanks for reading, as always!!

Tyler

OH YES It's On In L.A.

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:27:00 +0000

So. I finally did it.

Back to Los Angeles!! YES.

Leaving Honolulu kind of sucks. Waking up every morning on the ocean balcony with the lush landscape -- uhhhhhhh, it's a bit different than waking up in a condo with a hepafilter going 24/7.

But L.A. is where I need to be at.

A final six months or a year of non stop bootcamp to wrap it up (I haven't decided yet).

Then the main reason I'm here -- to be fully immersed in the classes I need to take to in order to start the "long walk" to mainstream crossover.

One of the big lessons I had already figured, and that was blatantly obvious speaking to the big guy/girl audiences last week, is that to crossover you really CANNOT take yourself too seriously.

In Blueprint I was all crazy intense which related to guys on the core issues they deal with. In the mainstream it's all about being laid back and making fun of yourself.

The past few years have been about getting the professional life together. Going from being a hotdog stand of kids trying to hustle into the limelight to running a proper organization.

Those habits worked to take things to this level, but the NEXT level requires a new focus stacked on top of the old one.

Maintaining the work habits and professionalism on cruise control, but at the same time, easing into a more ridiculous and laidback state of mind.

Realizing it's all just a fun journey, and the biggest joke is, well, yourself.

That means hitting up the improv, open mic comedy, vocal and media training, and taking more time to clown around with my friends.

This sounds trivial but I think it's so f__king key. You can't be rolling into the mainstream as dude who calls himself TYLER DURDEN the known PICK UP ARTIST and be all self important like you can in the underground.

"Hello. IIIIIIIII am Tyler Durden. Super Charm Pick Up Artist turned Anthony Robbins wannabe." Uhhhh, NO DUDE, go sit back in your corner.

It's got to be like "Yeah, I GET IT that this whole deal is kind of insane. But it's also pretty cool if you check it out."

It's all about connecting with people in a way they can relate to. Once they're open minded THEN you can turn up the volume knob.

You don't just pump your message like "bang bang bang" -- you've got to be fully cool with the fact that you're kind of a weird dude, because the circus of mainstream media is going to bring that type of energy towards you either way.

At the same time I think it's still good to be a bit controversial and hated on, like in the underground, to embrace it and not resist it. So it's always a mix between the type of dude who sparks an emotional reaction and strong opinions to keep people talking about you, and then simultaneously, still being able to get your message across.

Anyway this is a whole new deal, with a couple of new skillsets.

There's going to be some growing pains here -- but hey, there's nothing new about that one.

Tyler

First Big Gig !! -- Week Of Blasting The Comfort Zone

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:38:00 +0000

So this week I had my first big gig for 1000 people!!

I shared the stage with the people from the movie "The Secret" and various other awesome speakers from all different backgrounds. It was amazing.

My buddy Jesse hooked me up with this and said there was one caveat: "The audience is going to be 50% women."

Obviously I was pretty dumb-founded because 1) I'm NOT a woman, and 2) I've never taught this stuff to women within a professional context.

To prepare I sent out a promo to the email list in Los Angeles where I'd do a free 2 hour program for anyone who would bring a girl with them.

I think I must have had a lack of faith because I was joking with Papa that probably nobody would show up. But we had a solid turnout of about 50 people -- thanks to the 20 guys who had the guts to bring a girl and introduce them to this area of their lives.

The situation was absolutely hilarious.

Guys who weren't able to get a girl on time were out on the street pulling girls into the seminar. The girls who were brought in advanced were totally cool and comfortable but the girls who were met on the street were obviously initially skeptical (except a few who were super chill).

At first I felt off balance and disoriented, but the program was FULL AWESOME and I learned a lot.

For guys I spoke about how our paradigms in the game evolve, and for girls I talked about the games that women often play and how to achieve true substance beyond that in order to attract and hang onto a guy who has a lot of options.

I also invited the women to talk to me about their issues and we addressed them, which was really educational for me.

It was definitely a lot more, uhhhhhhhhh, "interesting" to be surrounded by a group of fascinated (and fascinating) women for Q&A after the program than my usual barrage of all dudes. :)

What I loved most about the program was that it wasn't a "Rah Rah!!" fest of guys talking THEORETICALLY about "hot babes" that they want to hook up with.

Rather it was totally blunt and raw (as always), but at the same time because it was 60% women IN THE ROOM it was more grounded in the tangible reality of relating to a girl on a level that escalates.

Beyond that, I felt like it gave a vibe where learning this stuff was natural and WIN/WIN, which gave the guys in attendance more than just theoretical knowledge -- but an actually internal sense of feeling super good about the material they're learning (as opposed to the "subverting the social order" type vibe you sometimes see in the PUA community).

The entire time I was thinking "WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO DO THIS??!!"

It's just so much more...........*REAL*.

Like FULL LEGIT and focused on the core of WHAT WORKS -- because the female energy in the room prevents the minds of the guys in attendance from deviating into "absurd theory land".

I could see a situation where every free workshop I teach has "bring a girl" as a being mandatory.

Obviously a lot of guys just won't attend out of fear of being judged (or inconvenienced), but it ultimately FORCES everyone to relate to women very directly when they're thinking about what it means to be attractive.

Anyway the program was this past Saturday and it was good preparation for the 1000 person audience which was on Tuesday.

At the same time, I could see that the material for Saturday's audience was NOT going to be adaptable for Tuesday's audience because it was so personalized.

This left me with a crazy amount of lingering anxiety over the next two days because I felt unprofessional and unprepared. My average audience is 50-350 of all guys, and teaching material that has years of polish on it. The idea of engaging 1000 people and half women with material being improvised on the spot was totally outside my comfort zone.

Regardless, I threw together a 90 minute presentation of what I THOUGHT might potentially jive with the audience and decided to give it a shot.

I sat at the back of the room with adrenaline surging while they introduced me to the front, watched as the big group jumped up for the standing ovation (despite having no idea who I am), and strolled up to the front.

With the sea of people I couldn't see the back of the room. The lights were in my face and I could see the big videos of me off to the right and the left.

I was so "outside my head" I didn't even really know what I was saying. The crowd tested me a few times and I just teased them down and got everyone laughing.

From years of interacting with women I knew all sorts of "hot button" topics that they'd find engaging, and obviously the material for guys had years of preparation.

It was soooooooo easy to break out the larger audience in laughter.

With a 50 person audience your humor has to be like a laser because people are more self conscious and many of the guys want to be "too cool for school". With a 1000 person audience the people are just waiting for an excuse to laugh. You can say literally anything and they're roaring in laughter and cheering you on.

It took me about 3 minute to figure out the "pattern" of how the audience responds and make the adjustment in speaking style. I'd never done a speech like that in my life. It was a totally different vibe.

But now that I've figured it out I feel like I "get it" and I'll never have to think about it again.

Anyway I was probably the most nervous and unpolished speaker, but at the same time I think the content of the speech was the most entertaining -- how could it NOT be with such an off the wall topic??

After the speech I walked back to the VIP room and felt my head and eyes pounding, as well as super nauseous like I couldn't eat or drink.

I think I was holding in a lot of stress from feeling unprepared the past few days. More than that though, I think over the years I'd been feeling a sort of repressed uneasiness about how a mass audience of women would respond to the ideas that are taught in Real Social Dynamics.

By communicating directly with women I realized that this was totally unfounded. Probably there are more GUYS who object to this type of material because they're rationalizing a life time of doing things WRONG than there are women who aren't into it.

(Obviously you can never please everybody or make everybody like you -- but bottom line is the crowd response was rock solid).

So from this I learned that 1) it's possible to do big audiences, 2) women love this stuff when you relate it to them with blunt honesty about where you're coming from, and 3) if you're willing to put yourself out there you can push through anxiety and adapt in the moment to produce results.

I take nothing for granted, but assuming I continue to work hard I know I'll be speaking to 5,000 to 30,000 person audiences within 5 years.

This was a lot like the first time speaking for David DeAngelo at the "Mastery" program back in 2004. Totally new and unfamiliar, but the experience that was a next stage in personal evolution.

The time and rigor has been put in over the years to prepare for this, so it's just a point of continuing to execute.

Thanks for reading!!

Tyler

Beyond A Narrow View Of Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:04:00 +0000

In the middle of moving away from Honolulu -- probably no time for any substantial article this week so thought to post this home video from South Africa.

There were several videos from this trip, and this was one that friends seemed to have a strong response towards upon my return home.

You may find this to be off-putting, however on the positive side, South Africa has made incredible progress as a nation in recent years. It is really a beautiful and amazing country.

If you're interested in learning more I recommend Nelson Mandela's book "Long Road To Freedom" and visiting the country in person to have your experience reading come to life. I am personally planning on a cross-continent excursion from Cape Town to Cairo within the next two years.

My personal passion in Africa is it's amazing culture and natural environment. I also believe that as I take on more responsibility in future years, travelling will allow me to learn more about the patterns, trends, and historical context of the world in which we live.

There was an interview between Roger Ebert and President Bill Clinton posted on RSDN recently -- which touched on the movie "Fight Club".

RE: I got an email from somebody who said, "Well, my generation," this is an amazing email, "my generation has been denied the opportunity your generation had to fight a war like Vietnam. We don't have any way to test ourselves so we have to go to movies like "Fight Club."" And I'm thinking, "That's not what wars are for." His reasoning seemed to be so screwed up.

WJC: Well, the young people they don't have to deal with Vietnam, but I think if they had they would find it was way overrated. You know, losing 58,000 people and a whole other generation of people who were alienated from it and the traumas that so many people went through and there's not a person who went through it who's still not marked by it in some way.

Or even more importantly, the civil rights movement, you know that was a very positive thing, but for the people who suffered under the oppression of segregation or who like Congressman John Lewis had their lives threatened because they stood up for civil rights. You know, I wouldn't wish that on the young people of this generation. There's still a lot of problems in this world.

You know, if they really want to throw themselves into something they could figure out what to do about the AIDS epidemic, threatening Africa and increasingly Indians in Asia. They could figure out what to do to save a lot of these kids that are still being lost in our own country. There's still mountains to climb out there. There are things outside yourself to throw yourself into. You don't have to get beat up by somebody you know.

In my mind Bill Clinton is a clear voice of reason right here.

Chuck Palaniuk's book is an expose of a generation that lacks purpose and masculine intent -- a generation that feels empty.

However as we have become an abundance based society -- and as an individual that could be abundance in your dating, personal, and professional life -- let's not forget that there are many mountains left to climb.

It's perhaps not a lack of challenge, but a lack of focus on any higher purpose in our modern "me" based culture, that makes people feel something missing in their lives.

Tyler

A Very Quick Thought: The "Loudness" Of Your "Inner Voice"

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:01:00 +0000

A quick thought (and a strange story)........

About a year ago I was dieting down and took a "fat burner" for about 2 weeks.

Fat burners are basically pills that elevate your fight or flight response. I later learned they don't really do anything to make you lose weight, but make you agitated so you'll burn around 7% more calories by fidgeting and pacing around.

What was most bizarre about this was that during the second week I stupidly landed myself in 5 altercations in 7 days.

The final altercation, and last straw, was when I was winding up to lay out this guy who had talked a bunch of shit to my buddy Olcay (because his girlfriend walked up and started flirting with him -- which wasn't Olcay's fault at all).

I remember hearing the storming of the keen-eyed bouncers converging on me for about 3 seconds before they put me in a choke hold that almost knocked me unconscious.

WHOA!!

Anyway the big thing I learned from those two weeks, aside from that taking fat burners is absolutely stupid, is that different people have a different "loudness" to their "inner voice".

Whereas normally I wouldn't fight anybody for any reason (because that's an old part of me I've left behind), on fat burners I found myself rationalizing and unable to think "big picture" enough to see how useless it is.

That being the case, I wondered, "What would I do if this was the way my mind was wired ALL THE TIME??"

It's easy to condemn people for being angry, but at the same time, it's worth considering that they might have a harder time dealing with it than you do.

Maybe when somebody pisses you off you're able to stay calm and say "This dude is being a fool. It's not worth the trouble to teach him a lesson. Let him figure out his life on his own."

(Funny this was how I was rationalizing it -- I needed to stop guys acting ignorant from doing this to other people).

But another guy might have a voice in his head screaming "FUCK THIS GUY!! FUCK THIS GUY!! FUCK THIS GUY!!" that won't shut up.

What I realized is that many guys who study success with women have the same type of challenge.

Some dudes get that voice that says "You're not good enough... You're going to create an awkward social situation..." and they just ignore it and approach the girl anyway.

Other guys hear it, and it won't shut up.

It totally consumes them and they identify with it to the point of thinking it's ACTUALLY TRUE.

Personally my inner voice has probably been pretty loud over the years (especially when I was a kid). I see things and feel them very vividly.

At the same time, this has forced me over 28 years to continually establish and improve upon what I guess you could call "pillars of sanity".

Whereas I feel emotional chaos very vividly, I've also learned the skill of keeping the inner voice in check.

I view it a lot like how Wesley Snipes has to deal with his vampire disease in the movie "Blade". Whereas most people will just turn into vampires if they get bitten, he's already actively dealing with it so it's handled automatically.

When the volume knob on those crazy inner voices (that everyone deals with to varying degrees) gets turned up, you have to have those quick fire laser guns armed and ready to zap them out.

That can be in the form of reframes, attitude, changing your physiology, and various other "centering" rituals that you've implemented throughout your day.

It's also about learning about the structure of your mind. Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth" is a fantastic guide for that, and really you can go as deeply with the topic as you're interested.

You've got to let the emotions "flow through you" and "run their course" instead of resisting and compartmentalizing them. I never cried since I was probably 10 or 12 years old until I was around 26 when I learned how to do it again. Since then if I get pissed off I just let it out quickly and get back on with it.

This has been a massive asset.

It allows you to take on situations of greater and greater pressure, and actually offers you the ability handle a greater load than most people could handle because you already have the habits in place.

I really believe that over several years you can use your condition as leverage to become a lot happier than most people, because once you've "got it down" the rest of your life is pure gravy.

Anyway this was really just meant to be a quick piece for guys on RSD Nation who post articles like "I'M SO INSECURE ABOUT X,Y,Z!!" or whatever else is ailing them.

Hey, we all feel it. I know that inner voice is messing with your flow and it's not easy to turn down the volume.

Instead of letting it take you over, use it as leverage to become focused and present on an exceptionally high level.

It will allow you to sort out your own life, and be an inspiration for others in the process.

Make sense?? Awesome!! :)

Tyler

What The Heck Is A "Figurehead" Anyway??

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:20:00 +0000

Wow, what a couple of weeks.

Bootcamp is my true passion. I love it. Man is it ever fucking fun.

If I could do anything I wanted, I'd teach bootcamp three days a week and use the rest of my time to be in the outdoors.

Anyway it looks like there was some confusion on what I meant by "moving on from the figurehead role with RSD" so I wanted to talk a bit about that.

Let's hit it up with a bit of Q&A........

"WHAT THE HECK IS A FIGUREHEAD??"

For me a figurehead is a man or woman whose face represents the brand of a company.

Richard Branson is the figurehead of Virgin, Donald Trump is the figurehead of the Trump Organization.

The success or failure of these organizations benefit, but also HINGE upon the day-to-day reputations of these charismatic individuals.

In my own case I've been the main figurehead of Real Social Dynamics over the years.

However in the past 24 months the emphasis on my personality has been shifted towards other talent on the team.

(Note: Tim either looks really cool or really gay in this picture -- I can't decide).

The travelling workshops are taught by Jeffy -- and they rock.

The Superconferences have been taught by Tim, Alex, Nathan, Ozzie, and Jeffy for nearly a year now (without me being there) -- and they've reviewed more highly than any SC where I was in attendance.

The most recent DVD program was by Tim -- and it was "flawless".... :)

The bootcamps are taught by a crack team of super professionals -- Jeffy, Ozzie, Tim, Alex, Nathan, Ryan, and Saad.

So I haven't been the main figurehead of RSD for some time now.

My recent post was just the first time most people have probably thought about it.

SO WHAT IS YOUR ROLE WITHIN RSD??

Being a figurehead has been less than 25% of my responsibilities with RSD, and so far in 2008 it has been non-existent.

My duties consist of content creation, management, strategy, marketing, instructor training, innovation and quality control, and a litany of other tasks. My average workday this year has been 10 to 13 hours, and oftentimes 20 hours for several days during the launches of our DVD/CD programs.

I've done this because I believe in what Real Social Dynamics has to offer so strongly, and being the sole teacher would limit the value I can contribute.

Right now RSD consists of a team.

Jeffy, Tim, Ozzie, Alex, Nathan, Ryan, and Saad. Extra instructors are Todd, Christophe, and Siam.

That is probably the strongest, most deeply talented group of individuals I could ever have been privileged to surround myself with.

By running RSD in the way I've been doing it, we've been able to offer live in field trainings at a THREE ON ONE student to instructor ratio for $1500 in the local cities.

FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!! FOR A THREE ON ONE!!

???!!!

The coming year will likely see prices increase to $1950 and $2450 for events where instructors have to travel. That's because prices have remained the same since 2003 and instructors are due for a raise.

Regardless this one of the accomplishments with RSD that has given me tremendous happiness.

The fact that even a young guy in his twenties can afford to take a bootcamp with a master instructor at a price that's within reach means the world to me.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE??

Visionary organizations that contribute the most to culture and society are often born through the efforts of a strong-willed individual (or a small group of them).

However if that company is to survive past the death of the founders, the core ideology must be institutionalized and woven into the fabric of the organization.

Real Social Dynamics has grown into something more important than a toy for me to screw around with. It's bigger than my own personal interests.

What RSD represents is a light for guys who want to change themselves.

It represents a culture of becoming conscious and personally evolved. A culture of moving towards authenticity and unplugging from social conditioning. A place where you can go to re-tune into the frequencies of presence and abundance and positivity.

It's also pretty cool because guys get laid a lot.... :)

My vision for RSD is an organization and culture that's around a lot longer than I am.

The truth is RSD is not about ME. It's about YOU.

Like Hillary Clinton who steps up and endorses Barrack Obama for the good of her party -- I will always do what is best for the organization.

Obviously the "fun" thing to do would be to continue as figurehead and soak up all the attention. But that's not what's best for the longevity of the culture.

I'm an experienced figurehead and I have my own gifts to contribute. But there are also guys on the team who are more talented and more on the cutting edge with dating and pickup than I am.

These are guys so strong their potentials have only shown the tip of the iceberg.

My own strongest ability to contribute is in the area of building a culture that has a positive influence on the largest number of people possible.

As Jim Collins would call it "Being a clock maker instead of a time teller."

OTOH if I see a value in stepping up and putting my face out there I'll continue to do it.

For as long as I've been doing this I've always been at the beck and call to do whatever it is that's needed to be done.

WHAT DIRECTION IS RSD GOING IN WITH THE COMING YEAR??

The Blueprint book will most likely be finished and released in the coming months.

Jeffy has a book that he's been working on for a few years now, which I'm very excited about.

Ozzie has also been putting together a program on "High energy environments and physical game" which will most likely be a book, potentially with accompanying audio.

From there my biggest project is the launch of the new RSD Nation.

So far it has $100,000 dumped into it and that will be pushing $200,000 by the time it's completed.

The new site will allow users their own social networking profiles and blogs, similar to Facebook or Myspace.

It will also feature multi-media instructor articles 5 days a week on the front page, similar to the articles you read on this blog.

I'm also going to be completing a "mainstream" book that I've been working on, which will help people to learn more about RSD without their first dose being the somewhat eccentric Blueprint material.

WHAT DO YOU SEE REAL SOCIAL DYNAMICS CONTRIBUTING TO OUR CULTURE AS A WHOLE??

The growth curve of RSD has been extremely aggressive.

I haven't cowered away at the struggling economy, and instead I've opted to take matters in my own hands by growing the organization at a frantic pace to provide people with more jobs.

Right now we provide over 60 people with full time paid employment, and another 40 with internships that endow them the education and skills to find opportunities with us or other organizations.

Consistently I've watched as organizations this past year have allowed the fear of economic recession hamper their ambitions toward greatness when in a lean times what's needed is exactly the opposite approach.

If RSD is lucky to survive the tightrope walk that will ensue over the next 10 years, my goal is to see the culture spread into the mainstream.

There will never be a situation where every guy out there is into RSD. It's not possible because it deliberately only appeals to a certain kind of person.

But my dream is that everyone who needs this culture will at least have the opportunity to become aware of it.

This may sound self important, but I am a huge believer in the power that it gives men when they "get their balls back".

And when you intertwine that culture into self actualization and learning to offer real value to other people, that effect becomes magnified.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS IN TAKING ON SELF HELP IN ADDITION TO REAL SOCIAL DYNAMICS??

Obviously this has been a debate for me, and I've flipped back and forth.

My true passion is teaching bootcamps.

In my ideal world somebody else would have my job with RSD and I'd just teach bootcamps every weekend.

I've also dealt with a lot of personal doubt about growing a new enterprise.

On a certain level I could see the advantage of sticking purely with RSD and just enjoying my life. I love the island of Kauai and I picture myself moving there and raising a family.

Doing that would allow me to focus on other goals that I have, like learning to climb mountains and hopefully climbing Mount Everest someday.

I'm also planning an expedition through the African continent from Cape Town to Cairo which will take 3-6 months and might be filmed by the Discovery Channel (I'll be doing it for my own experience whether they film it or not).

My biggest hobby is being up in the mountains and in the ocean. I want to get into scuba diving and riding motercycles. I want to keep travelling to more exotic places, like the Amazon and Antartica and Tibet. All this stuff takes a lot of training and time.

(Probably speaking about this so nonchalant to the casual reader seems odd -- but these are my passions and they're what keep me going through the tough times).

Regardless I've felt a calling into the self help world because I feel it's the area in which I can offer the most value.

I am a strong believer that it's individuals who change the world, and that every generation requires people who have the ability to offer their contributions.

The world is plagued with many problems which I have no ability to solve, however I can make a minor but significant difference by educating myself and others on the subject matters we engage in with RSD -- but to all people on a wider scale.

I also have a dream of starting a non profit (NGO) and donating 20% of annual profit for various humanitarian projects, and I believe I can make it happen.

The areas I'm most passionate about are the environment, climate change, and education. I'm so fascinated by this stuff I have to put it down to prevent myself from being distracted -- because to be in a POSITION to do anything about it I have to stay focused on my more immediate tasks.

I'm also very passionate about global poverty however I believe that for the global economy to be afforded time to stabilize our climate needs to be stable as well.

Papa has always said that the key to solving the world's problems is found in "Education and infrastructure" and this is a huge passion for both of us.

Being in self help puts me in a position to make contributions in those areas, and access to the types of people who can help me to make a difference.

Obviously the Nelson Mandela's and Richard Branson's of the world will not answer the phone calls of a "pickup" teacher, and that's a realistic fact that I have to deal with.

On a certain level I've put myself in a difficult position by being in the dating field. That's both because of the controversial nature of the subject, and also the various negative press I've taken as a result of the industry being so young and competitive.

Many of the articles I wrote in my early twenties reflected a degree of misogyny and immaturity. My biggest press exposure is a very well written book that calls me out as being untrustworthy, souless, and manipulative.

This will obviously follow me for the duration of my career, however these are hurdles I'll continue to cross by basically paying it no mind and continuing to put out the best value I'm capable of producing.

The truth is I would never BE in this position if it weren't for the "pick up artist" stuff.

So while I may have regrets, I'm extremely grateful.

HOW THE HECK ARE YOU GOING TO PULL THIS OFF??

The self help industry does over 8 billion a year in sales.

The key to "making it" in self help is to speak to audiences continually, and get involved in training like improv, stand up comedy, hip hop, and anything I can do to make myself more dynamic on stage.

To do that I'll be surrounding myself with a team of teachers and advisors who can work with me continually in order to reach the level I need to reach.

I'm going to be required to "go back to the drawing board" on a lot of things and become a newbie again. Many of my best skills I'm going to have to re-learn from the ground up.

On the good side I've built up a large number of contacts in self help over the years, and many of them have been super helpful.

My writing skills and ability to articulate personal development are already at a level on par with anyone else out there. What you read on this blog is probably less than 1% of what I know, and what I have to offer.

So I'm confident with at least those areas.

The bottom line is I'm willing to be disciplined, adapt and evolve, admit and learn from my mistakes, and meet the challenges I face head-on.

SO WHERE WILL YOU BE LIVING THIS YEAR THEN??

My lease in Honolulu runs out on September 20th and I'm scheduled to relocate to Florianopolis -- a beautiful island in South Brazil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florianopolis

Here is a quote as probably most people reading are not familiar:

"Florianopolis Brazil is one of the most beautiful and safest cities in the country and is where most Brazilians and other neighboring countries go to vacation (not Rio de Janeiro, as many would believe). Florianopolis (called Floripa for short) is famous for it's abundant beautiful women and white sandy beaches pumping with some of the best surf in the world. Many world travelers claim that, with all things considered, it is the best place in the world and have even settled there full time or simply purchased vacation homes there."

My girlfriend is from Latin America and surfs 7 days a week, and I thoroughly enjoyed living in Argentina last year -- so it stands out as an ideal living situation.

However one option I've suddenly found myself considering is going back to Los Angeles and teaching a final year of bootcamps every single weekend -- while doing the training I need to do for self help during the week.

These last two bootcamps have really caused a change in me.

Not only is my "pick up artist" skillset firing on all cylinders right now, but I'm feeling more present, calm, and outgoing than I've ever felt.

That's after what turned out to be an unusually stressful and hectic work week, which further highlights how good it's been for me.

I'm seeing a lot of value in the in field teaching, and I also realize that in the future I may not have the ability to teach in the field because of my exposure being elevated (similar to what I'm sure a few of my peers and past mentors are dealing with today).

I remember a passage in Russel Simmon's book "Do You!" where he talked about a hip hop artist who used to think it was all about the money and cars and women. Later he got all that and realized it was anti-climatic. What he really loved was rapping and creating music.

That's in many ways how I feel about RSD. What I really love is teaching bootcamp. I laugh my ass off the entire time and I go home at the end of the night with a feeling of calm that I can't get from doing anything else.

I love watching the guys improve because I feel like I'm taking a time machine and teaching my past self, back when I really needed it. It gives me a sense of closure on that difficult time in my life.

On top of that I really just love chatting up girls and "banging the guns" of the skillset I spent so many years working to improve.

I'll be in the Napa Valley in Northern California the final week of September to speak at the PSi Seminar "Principia" event.

During that time I'll make the decision on where I'll be living this year, and then relocate.

AND LASTLY, WHAT CAN *YOU* EXPECT TO GAIN FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH RSD THIS YEAR??

This year is going to be the bomb.

You've seen nothing, literally, absolutely nothing.

Just from these past bootcamps I've developed a solid 4 hours of new material that I've found extremely valuable.

Really practical stuff on rapid fire state changes, and the ability to talk endlessly. I expect to develop it over the coming month.

Guys like Alex are really stepping up and blowing me away.

Aside from posting bizarre videos of being rejected by drunk chicks on Youtube, he's stepped his skills up to a level I never thought possible.

You've probably noticed that he's written a 40 page article on www.alexattitude.com -- it's the second one down on the right toolbar.

Tim has also returned from spreading the gospel of the flawless natural through Europe (he's now taking a break to decide on his future in Australia) -- and he's reported that Ryan is in his opinion the top instructor on the team right now.

Obviously that's up for debate and rabid competition, but this is going to be a very big deal as he moves to Chicago and runs amuck across the Midwest.

He also has his own blog coming, which the beta prototypes are now up at www.ryanforreal.com.

We may go with a different site address and different look. We're still messing around with it. Actually we're thinking of re-naming Ryan "Yahya Jones" and having him grow a mustache. No kidding.

Jeffy's public speaking has hit a new level from his year of travelling -- ie: the stratosphere.

I attended his free 2 hour program this month in Honolulu and it was hands down the funniest 2 hours in recent memory. I had to contain myself from rolling around on the floor.

Nathan is just KILLING it with his programs right now. He has his own angles on "being your own guru" and "being the man you're meant to be".

I've been soaking up everything he's doing in his programs and seeing a cirriculum that's innovative and entirely unique, centered around the core of RSD.

Ozzie is as consistent as ever. He's dealing with a loss in his family right now, but he's continued to persevere and create new and innovative material.

The man is really going to "change the game" with the release of his material on high energy environments and physical game.

Saad is furthering his other career of acting, and bringing in all sorts of improv exercises that he's mastered into his program. That's a brand new area that I've had limited exposure to, and that he's opening me up to this coming year.

Papa is coming back to teach bootcamps full time. After taking years away from it he's going back to his roots in RSD.

The man has taught more programs than almost any instructor in the industry and yet nobody knows it. That's about to change.

(Note: Especially with me posting this ridiculous picture of him at this pink toga party).

Ultimately it's all this movement that comes together to create the energy and vibe that comprises Real Social Dynamics.

With a peer group like this, how can you NOT make the choice to step up and take action??

That's what I want YOU to be a part of. As the reader, as the end-user, and as a guy looking to actualize all your potential.

We do this for YOU. We do this to "pay it forward" and see you "pay it forward" too.

This is a year that you're going to step up your skills with women to a level you never thought possible.

You're going to do this for the dating lifestyle you've always wanted. You're going to do it for the personal strengths that you develop in the process, and for the value that allows you to offer to others.

You'll continue to be enlivened and to have your eyes opened wider and wider to a new abundant reality -- just as you've come to expect.

That's my mission to you, and that's what's got me so hard at work. I'm out here hustling harder than ever.

It doesn't stop.

Tyler

Potential Final BC Events

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:07:00 +0000

Alright so probably by now you've heard I'm wrapping up with my role as figurehead of RSD and moving into self help.

If you're not a regular reader of RSDN then you probably guessed it based on the content of this blog.

This has been a conflict for me personally because "personal transformation" and "pick up artistry" are intense passions of mine and I love teaching bootcamps. Funny enough I actually consider teaching bootcamp my "time off" because I enjoy it so much.

Regardless I have to take this next step which will likely limit my future availability to, well, pretty much nothing.

That being the case, I'm considering teaching one final round of bootcamps here in Honolulu.

Usually when you read about a guy like myself doing a "final round" of BC's it's some sort of stunt to extract an inordinate amount of money, however I have no interest in that.

For as long as I've been in RSD it's always been the standard Special Event price of $2000 for the 3-on-1's, and any BC I run is always three straight nights from Thursday to Saturday.

Usually I'll bring you out to the mountains during the daytime on Saturday if you're interested but that's outside of the official bootcamp hours and purely to relax (ie: save the game questions until the program hours begin -- just have fun).

This is a cirriculum of intense personal transformation and skillset development that I've developed over 7 years. If you've seen "Blueprint Decoded" this is about 100 times more intense because it's live and in the field, where I rule like Godzilla knocking down buildings in Tokyo.

I love the field. It makes me feel like a blue whale gorging down krill "Mwwwwaaaaaaaah". Or like Sonic the hedgehog collecting all the rings. I really can't get enough.

If I do this, I'm only looking to take on students who are serious about personal transformation and their skillset.

I take these extremely seriously and I expect you to bring the same level of commitment. Any BC I teach is expected to be a formative experience and one of the most defining weekends of your life. This can only happen when both the student and the teacher are firing on all cylinders.

You will NOT find the dates on the schedule. I want to read what your interest is in this personally.

It doesn't have to be anything crazy but you have to be clear on what you want to get out of this.

That being the case if you're *serious* you can email me directly at tyler@realsocialdynamics.com.

The potential dates I'm considering (and again, this is tentative whether or not I'll do this) are:

August 21-23 (sold out).

...and

August 28-30 (sold out).

...and

September 4 - 6 (update: this WAS sold out but there was a cancellation, so there is now one final slot).

...and

September 11 - 13 (update: sold out).

I may do one of these weekends, or all three. I haven't yet decided so include the date which you're most interested in.

Also include your phone number so my very helpful admin (Stuart or Huey) can contact you as soon as I decide.

Obviously the bootcamps I run are known to be intense. I've taught about 90% of the well known PUA gurus over the years and I'm a perfectionist.

Many people are shocked by the level of intensity I bring to these so if you want to know what to expect you can read the following:

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=28069

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=11440

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=14592

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=17027

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=7552

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=10557

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=5325

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=5322

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=1029

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=252

Have fun!!

Tyler

So You're Too Smart For Your Own Good??

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:10:00 +0000

(Out of the loop for a while. Dragging around the poor team on various treks in the Hawaiian islands. Let's crank this out real fast and raw.)

If you’ve ever suspected that you’re too smart for your own good, today’s article is for you.

First of all you’re probably wondering “What the heck does it mean to be too smart for your own good?”

You can have many types of intelligence.

Book smarts. Street smarts. A genius with music. A genius with locating discount grocery store coupons.

Whatever.

This being a blog about “social dynamics” the topic is how being a smarty-pants plays out in your social life.

There's a few main areas I've personally noticed over the years.

Let's run 'em through.

THINKING WHILE OTHER PEOPLE TALK:

Right off the bat, if you’re the kind of person who creates a lot of value by THINKING then it’s probably going to be hard to locate the off-switch.

Learning is an addiction.

Once your brain has been forced into a gear where it’s learning all the time it goes from being tiring and annoying to enlivening and awesome.

You start to see the bigger picture and realize all the potential.

Over the years you become a fiend for more knowledge.

"MORE BITCH....MOOOOOOOOOOOORE."

The same goes for analysing information into useable, practical bite-sized chunks.

Analysis is an addiction. So you think and think, and then think and think some more.

The problem is that while other people are talking, what are you doing??

THINKING.

After all, if you’re thinking in terms of big picture concepts then you’re probably holding up all sorts of images in your head and trying to weave them together into something coherent.

Ironically it’s often when you relax for a minute (while listening) that the jumble of information starts to congele into some sort of epiphany.

So you’re listening to somebody and –C-L-I-C-K- you have a realization.

"Wait a sec man...Wait a sec...Did you realize blah blah blah blah blah blah blah..."

The problem here is that it’s always about YOU.

You’re interrupting the other person and they don’t feel like you’re listening to them.

The solution to this one is to make a firm life commitment to “let some of them go” in terms of your ideas.

This was actually a point made to me about five years ago by a buddy of mine.

He told me point blank “Dude you HAVE to decide what’s more important to you. Vocalizing every idea or having people think you’re a cool guy. It’s up to you.”

I said to him “Yeah but my attention span is short. If I don’t get it out I’ll lose it.”

Again he said “It’s up to you man. It’s one or the other. Do what you want but it’s up to you.”

This hit me hard and I never forgot it. From then on whenever anyone spoke I made the choice to listen to them one hundred percent.

The bottom line is that when another person is talking, you have to allow your awareness to be on THEM as opposed to your own train of thought.

If you have a realization while they’re talking you have to accept that you might lose it.

"I might forget this and NEVER get it back. That’s fine. The world will be OK."

TELLING PEOPLE THAT YOU’VE ALREADY THOUGHT OF THEIR IDEAS:

Next is probably one of the biggest ways that “smart folk” successfully alienate themselves from untold legions of people.

That’s that in all likelihood, you’ve already thought of almost every idea that the majority of people have ever had.

Now of course, that doesn’t mean that you have nothing to learn from people.

It’s just that the average person who is trapped in the day-to-day grind of running the rat race and keeping up with the Jones’ probably hasn’t had a lot of "free time" to consider their ideas under a microscope.

They’re either too busy or too indifferent. They have other priorities.

The result is that when they share with you an idea they’re really proud of, you’ve probably already thought of it, analysed it, and weighed out the pros and cons.

The problem with this is that there’s nothing more obnoxious than when somebody shares an idea and you say “Oh yeah I already thought of that. Have you considered blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...”

Many years ago I remember there was this guy who worked at the Pita Pit who told me the most genius idea he ever had.

Are you ready for it??

It was to create a website called www.bootycall.com.

He even made me to promise to hold it as a secret so he could make the millions, although I guess I kind of blew that one by posting it here.

Sorry!!

I offered him a litany of good reasons it was a non-practical idea, and as you can expect, he was super appreciate.

Uhhhhhhh, or not.

The issue is that you might think you’re helping the other person but they’ll almost always dislike you for it.

And with good reason.

Most likely they were NOT asking you for your advice. They were just socializing and wanted to get excited about something with you.

Or maybe, just maybe, they want to make their own mistakes?? Ever thought of that one.....SMART GUY??

Instead you’ve got to learn the art of saying “Oh cool man...That sounds awesome.”

This allows people to feel good about themselves, and even cooler, you come across as intelligent automatically because most people care more about being understood than receiving critical feedback.

Obviously there’s cases where people want real feedback, and that’s a matter of common sense.

But you already knew that.

Truth be told you REALLY CAN learn something from everybody. Even people who appear not to be "with it" entirely.

It might not be "analytical" but it can be very practical, and a lot deeper than you would ever expect.

In my opinion it's the people who realize that they can learn from every single person they meet who are the most intelligent.

GIVING ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY HAPPY WITH WHERE THEY’RE AT:

Over the years I’d say that the dumbest, most useless thing I’ve ever done is offer advice to people who are perfectly happy with where they’re at.

The key to understand here is that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to be dissatisfied.

Why??

Because you know what your potential is.

You know full well how to make an outstanding life, exactly what it would look like, and the steps involved in building it.

But most people are happy with easier, simpler lives. They appreciate the little things.

It might sound belittling but it’s not.

Having travelled South America, Mexico, and Africa this year, I can say for sure that many people who appreciate the little things have a very DIFFERENT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE than the so called “intelligentsia”.

They’ve learned to love life passionately and gain happiness from the fun they share with people around them. Or maybe from playing soccer or a musical instrument. It doesn’t matter.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have both an outstanding life and an appreciation for the little things, but many people simply do not need that.

(And trying to convince otherwise them is no different than an advertiser who tries to make you feel incomplete for not owning their product).

Up until about two years ago I would give advice to anyone who I thought could benefit.

Then I started restricting who I would offer advice to, and even actively changing the topic when people asked for it.

From there I picked up the extra slack by “brain-dumping” the people who I care about the most -- because I always wanted them up to speed with all the cool stuff I'd figured out.

However I’ve since realized, funny enough as recently as this week, that that is not a good way of relating to them, and in fact it’s even MORE important not to bombard people who are close to me with advice.

It might come from a super positive intention, but it’s not serving the greater good of the relationship.

Here is the rule I’ve since devised.

If you’re talking to somebody in casual conversation, the only time you offer advice is when you say “I could offer some advice if you want.”

That means it’s very specific that you are now “offering advice” and it does three things.

First it’s just a lot more polite in case the person wants to say “Ahhhh actually screw it, I really don’t care that much.”

Second, it confirms that you’re doing the other person a favour, as opposed to being an annoying dude who bombards people with your opinions.

And third, which I think is most important, is that it forces you to be aware of how often you’re giving advice. You can’t very easily say “I can offer you some advice” more than once or at most twice in a conversation, so it pretty much autocorrects the whole tendency.

In fact this rabbit hole also goes deeper than you might have realized.

When you offer too much advice to people you're close with they may stop taking care of themselves.

They’ll begrudgingly accept your role as the “dad” while simultaneously being somewhat annoyed in circumstances where you haven’t taken care of everything.

You have to let people make their own mistakes.

Chances are that YOU gained your best knowledge through various screw-ups, and you have to give people the gift of making these screw-ups for themselves.

This week I’ve made a firm resolution to offer advice to people only within two contexts.

First is if they make an appointment to ask for it, and second if I’m being paid within a professional context.

Make sense??

Good. I hope you appreciate this advice.

JUDGING PEOPLE BY YOUR OWN STANDARDS INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM LIVE THEIR LIVES:

Hands down, I’d say one of the biggest problems that smart people have with meeting women is that they harbour an arrogance that most girls are simply not on their “level”.

"She’s not smart enough for me...She’s LUCKY I would even talk to her."

This is 180 degrees different from the playful cockiness that a lot of cool, attractive guys have.

The issue here is a deep seated incongruence between your belief about a woman’s so-called “worth” and the fact that you STILL want to sleep with her.

On one level you’re trying to imagine yourself as being superior. But on another level you feel the desire to be with her.

Maybe she works at a make-up counter and likes to read “US Magazine”. Maybe she actually cares about being trendy and listens to Brittany Spears. But you still want her and it bothers you because on some level a rejection would make you feel de-valued.

The issue here is that there is a difference between an intellectual connection and an emotional/physical connection.

You want a physical connection with her, not an intellectual one. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are both absolutely valid.

Your desire for her is because she’s developed a side of her femininity that you find exotic and engaging. As a man, to attract a girl like that, you have to develop your masculinity on a similar level.

The “worth” of a person is not defined by their level of actualization, because that is every person’s personal preference. You might judge a girl negatively for it, but really you are just judging yourself.

And you don’t have to.

Just because you don’t judge somebody else doesn’t mean you give up your own personal standards.

It actually means that you’re smart enough to distinguish the needs of other people from your own.

FAILING TO SEPARATE WORK FROM PLAY:

And the mind goes “Whiiiiiiiirlllllll and whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllllll!!”

Vroom, vroom, and more vroom. It just doesn’t want to stop.

And that’s a good thing because it gets you success, while other poor saps languish in a purgatory of mediocrity.

But to have a satisfying and happy life, you have to have firm distinctions between your time for work and your time for play.

Otherwise you wind up like Howard Hughes. Who appears pretty cool in “The Aviator” but is not actually how you want to wind up.

Morning = 20 minutes meditation.

That gets your day off on the right foot.

From there you need firm resolutions that you will NOT violate as to when you’ll let your mind run off in all its crazy, albeit highly productive directions.

If you do your best thinking at night then allocate 8 hours at night to do so. Whatever. All that matters is that work is work, time off is time off.

Force yourself to stick to this.

Punish yourself by NOT writing down your best ideas that you have outside of the work period, otherwise it will never stop.

You’ll work, work, work, and then DIE having done nothing but work.

Not very cool. Or sustainable. Or attractive to girls. AT ALL.

Hope that’s useful!!

Tyler

Fueling Your Neurology For Work And Play

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:40:00 +0000

(The Africa articles have been difficult so I've decided instead to get back to writing with a random article. This is a personal piece and I hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned.)

In marketing there is a principle which states that...

"Most people, by the time they become adults, will lose their capacity for youthful abandonment. They will never lose the CRAVING for it but they become psychologically starved because they no longer have the ability."

This is pretty fascinating when you consider all the advertising with images of adults with big beaming smiles on their faces while using the product – but when you think about it, how many adults do YOU know who have the ability to have that much fun??

By my own personal estimation, fun is probably one of the least commonly experienced emotions among adults.

When an adult says “I’m having fun” it’s more often a vacuous jargon that means “I’m interested in what I’m doing” as opposed to the ecstatic abandonment they enjoyed when they were kids.

Of course, most folks would never admit it to themselves because fun is thought of as being the “light at the end” of the tunnel for achieving success.

You get to have fun during your leisure time, so if you want to have more fun, simply become successful so you can take time off. Right??

This is basically thought of as being a truism.

Probably because it WAS true at one point, but as you get older you don’t realize your neurology has changed.

(We’re using the word “neurology” pretty loosely in this article -– but you catch my drift).

The way it works is basically like this.

Your neurology adapts to whatever circumstances you’re most accustomed to.

So if you’re a little kid who’s used to playing around all day, you’re probably going to feel antsy and restless when you’re asked to focus on school.

And if you’re an adult who slaves furiously to meet deadlines for years on end, you’re probably going to feel trapped in your head when you’re out trying to have fun.

This has been a hot topic on my mind for the past several years.

Back when I used to go out and chase girls 7 nights a week my personality was basically a barrage of humour and jokes.

Then I sat down to write “The Blueprint” in 2004 and I found myself jittery and resentful for having to focus for hours at a time.

I remember getting up to walk around the back yard every few minutes, grudgingly buckling back down to write, and then getting up to scurry around again and again.

Later I adjusted to working an hour without distraction. Then two hours. Then maybe four or five.

Finally as I started adjusting to the extreme workload that came with RSD’s struggle in 2005 I found myself rolling out of bed, turning on the computer, and working straight through until it was time to go back to sleep.

There were periods of consecutive months between 2005 and 2007 where I worked 16 hour days. I simply adjusted and accepted it.

Around 2006 I noticed my personality had changed, both for the better and the worse.

On the positive side I found I could hold multiple concepts in my head at the same time and see how they came together without losing my train of thought. My attention span seemed to increase noticeably while my fluid problem solving skills and creativity became lightening fast relative to where they’d been before.

At the same time, I noticed everything I thought about, spoke about, or spent time on, was work.

Simple socializing like small talk and joking around became awkward. If it wasn’t about work I felt anxious like something bad was about to happen. As if I lost my momentum for even five minutes I’d go back to slacking off and spend another year struggling to get back on track.

The only exception was teaching bootcamp because I could rationalize to myself “This is for work”. Bootcamp was always the part of the week I looked forward to because I could have fun and let loose without feeling guilty about it.

(Funny enough I also came to understand why students often speak of being “exhausted” after each night of bootcamp. It’s because their neurology gets burnt out from several hours of fun in a row and they need to re-connect with their introverted comfort zones).

Anyway the pressure I was dealing with in my mid twenties was probably more than was reasonable for a person of my age and maturity at that time. So I’m proud of how I dealt with it overall.

Then as I came into 2007 I made the ambitious decision to make it the “most fun year of my life” – which I stated publically in the New Year’s Eve blog video as a way of committing myself to follow through.

Now you might think to yourself “Having fun?? Uhhh, that’s easy!!”

The difference is that when you’ve got a team who relies on you to produce results, or else they don’t eat and there’s no roof over their heads, having fun suddenly becomes a source of stress because it feels like a massive waste of time.

On top of that, and this is obviously a generalization, I’d noticed over the years that most of the folks who had a talent for being relaxed and having fun also tended to be flunkies and underachievers in their professional lives.

This was an interesting dilemma because on a certain level these were the guys who I modelled and admired.

Usually they’d spend a lot of time laughing and hanging out with friends and taking life easy, which gave them a sort of care-free vibe that was attractive and contagious.

But later as I’d get to know them, I realized they were projecting an illusion of coolness, because their lives were mediocre at best (and a total train wreck at worst).

I’ve often suspected many of these guys were burdened by a delusion that someday they’d get paid just for being cool. Like a male version of Paris Hilton or Tila Tequila, I’m not sure.

The problem was that a part of their “cool factor” was they lacked an inviolable personal standard for the quality of their own lives.

Their “neurologies” were never burdened down with stress or compulsive analysis because if things weren’t going well they’d just laugh it off and rationalize. But years of living in this zone also left them with no ability to deal with friction, setbacks, or adversity because their higher priority was maintaining the flow and their happy vibe.

In my experience this was a form of weakness because their external circumstances often weren’t in alignment with the happiness of their internal world, which forced them deeper into personal denial.

Put them into a situation where avoidance and rationalization could no longer deal with their problems, and suddenly they’d be whining like young children with no ability to cope.

Again, this is a generalization of many people who I met over the course of my life. But I also feel it’s fairly on point in terms of the commonalities I saw in many people who on the surface seemed socially super successful.

In my early twenties I remember feeling somewhat nervous and approval-seeking around these types because they had something I wished that I had myself. But as I hit my late twenties I became more indifferent, if not sympathetic, because I realized they’d taken a route that would cause problems for them down the line.

I guess that’s what you’d call “coming into your own” – which really just means you don’t buy into other people’s values above your own. Funny enough it often makes people question themselves because you seem so confident in your own way of doing things.

Anyway over the years I discovered that there’s actually TWO ways of getting that carefree vibe...

The first is just to ignore reality and make having fun the higher priority.

But the second, which in my view is the more powerful way of doing it, is to continually challenge yourself in your professional life while learning the art of separating work from pleasure.

What they don’t teach you in school is that your neurology becomes ADDICTED to whatever emotional state you’re accessing most of the time.

So when you notice that most guys who party all the time seem mentally retarded in their professional lives, it might seem so sad and pathetic that it turns you off of letting loose.

But at the same time, you have to also realize if you sacrifice fun for the purpose of professional success for too long you are essentially FRYING your ability to enjoy life – which is equally short-sighted.

Doing this will lead you to a place where having fun becomes “going through the motions”.

You become so analytical and disconnected from the REAL EXPERIENCE of true enjoyment that you don’t even know what it is anymore.

As absurd as it sounds, you wind up analyzing it the same way you would a business proposal, with an objective criteria of what fun “should be” instead the emotions you’re actually experiencing.

"I’m doing something interesting (or that costs a lot of money). Therefore the conditions for having fun are now met, which means I must be having fun."

There’s no ACTUAL lighting up of the “happy centres” in your neurology. That part of your neurology has withered away.

It’s like if you lie in bed for a year and now all the muscles in your legs have atrophied and withered away. How much of a “work out” can you really do??

Maybe you can exercise lightly for a few minutes, but then after that the tissue has been worked and you’re forced to take a break.

Only after a few months of repetition have you gradually built back enough muscle tissue to work it without burning it in more than a few minutes.

This is the vicious cycle which so many adults wind up trapped in without their conscious knowledge.

You’re having “fun” but you’re not REALLY having fun.

You’re not detoxifying yourself from all the cortisone that builds up in your system at work, so there’s no renewal taking place.

You show up for a fun activity because you think you’re “supposed to” but the truth is you’d rather be back in your work-addicted comfort zone.

It’s just that if you stopped going out altogether then you’d have to admit to yourself that the way you’ve been living is wrong.

And that’s almost impossible because you have so much invested in it personally, let alone with your family and staff who depend on you to pay the bills.

So what do most adults do??

They use ALCOHOL as a crutch because it stimulates those emotional pleasure centres for them.

(At least for an hour or two before they become belligerant and a pain in the ass).

To get past this you have to make a very deliberate effort to pump up your “happy” neurology on a regular basis, so it doesn’t lose its capacity to process those types of emotions.

That means continuing to dominate in the professional arena and producing the results that people expect from you, but at the same time, making a clear separation between work and play.

In my case I started out by going to the beach a few times a week. I hated every minute of and thought about getting back to work the entire time (which isn’t fun either but at least you get rid of that anxious feeling that nothing is getting done). But it was a start.

Then I started doing hiking and getting outside to add to that. I’d drone on about work to my poor buddy Olcay but over time I was able to recognize what I was doing and minimize it by putting myself in check.

Finally one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle was deliberately forcing myself to laugh and joke around.

I got this idea from the principle that “Changing your physiology will change your state”.

The idea was that I’d force myself to laugh in the places where “normal” people would – ie: at the points where I USED to laugh before I became a peak performer self-parody.

To do this I actually told my friends “I’m going try to joke around more and laugh more. It will probably seem insincere but I need to do this.”

This helped me to get past the internal resistance of appearing incongruent.

I’d noticed over the years that the fear of being perceived as incongruent was probably the biggest hurdle which held people back from reaching their potential with success with women. So I knew I had to get back to a space like when I was a pick-up newbie where I was pushing envelope in terms of testing out new behaviour and not caring what people thought.

This was tough around guys like Tim and Olcay who are super socially intuitive. These are guys who KNOW if I’m somewhat “faking” it, and because I know they know it, it’s even harder.

But these are also my real friends and genuinely supportive, so I didn’t let it hold me back.

The cool thing was that over about 6-10 months it became natural and internalized. I still felt my neurology being exhausted having too many hours of fun in a row, but the threshold where that would happen was a several hours more.

I’m probably at about 60% of where I know I could be (typical analyst – wooo!), but considering my work ethic is at about 200% I know I can eventually catch that up.

What I learned from all this is that work and pleasure need to be separated consciously and deliberately.

As a peak performer the temptation is to make work your entire life.

You’ll make vacuous statements like “You have to be well rounded” because you THINK you’re supposed to say things like this (or maybe that balance might make you a better performer).

But it’s as much of a rationalization as the flunky who talks about how he’s rejected the professional world because he’s above the fray of capitalist society, when in reality he couldn’t secure a decent job to save his life.

The key is to treat both fun and focus as different muscles that need to be worked and trained independently (even if you’re training them at the same time).

It’s cool to build your neurology to cut through ungodly loads of work like the mental equivalent of Jay Cutler.

More than just pride of being a true producer, there is something philosophical about being a person who can talk about their dreams and really achieve them (as opposed to telling yourself random lies).

But you ALSO have to force yourself to laugh and have fun throughout the day. Otherwise your dreams will probably turn out to be meaningless.

That’s because when you’ve lost your capacity for true abandonment, you wind up doing things just to do them. For no real reason at all.

I think Robert M. Pirsig hit the nail on the head when he said:

"Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum."

And you know, once you’ve stepped into the mindsets and behaviours of a corporate “suit” it’s not going to go away over night.

You have to gradually nurse yourself back to a state of semi-normalcy. That means putting in the identical effort that you put into developing your professional skill-sets to discovering how to have fun again.

In the meantime, you don’t want to lose that ability to put in a week of 16 hour work days in the urgent situations when it’s called for. So you’ve got to maintain a balance where you don’t revert back to your old teenage-self who struggled to produce results.

Peak performance is the art of being fully engaged with “focused present energy” and then renewing your mind and spirit with total relaxation and being fully unplugged.

From my perspective I feel like I’m coming into a really good zone, because I’ve been cultivating that “carefree” side of my personality while I’m still enjoying the benefits that come from working hard.

And the cool thing is that by combining hard work and having fun synergistically I finally HAVE been able to have the most fun year of my life.

The trips to Mexico and Africa this year never could have happened if I haven’t taken it to the next level in terms of my work ethic, but at the same time, I was actually able to enjoy them because I’d also taken the effort to make having fun a personal priority.

So in my opinion you CAN have your cake and eat it too.

You do NOT have to become another victim of the professional world any more than you have to become a victim of being a burnt out party-boy.

Moderation.

The Greeks have been talking about it for thousands of years and deep down you probably knew it was true.

My hope for my own career is that as I evolve and progress people can look at me and say “That guy is a really hard worker, but he also seems like a balanced, cool guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

The whole cartoon character thing is OK in your twenties because you’re LEARNING and it’s about trial-and-error.

In your thirties it’s about as uncool as holding onto existential angst... Uhh, NO.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and I think that as you get older you really need to work all this stuff out.

Anyway that’s my goal, and hopefully this article has offered you insight if you’re in a similar position.

I’ll be back later with the details from my recent experience in Africa.

Thanks for reading!!

Tyler

Big Things On The Horizon...

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:21:00 +0000

I've just returned from Africa and plan to have several articles up about the experience this upcoming week.

Tim's amazing program "Flawless Natural" has launched on DVD/CD and the first copies have now shipped.

It's program that's going to challenge the way you attract women and teach you to do it better and more effectively. I've been involved with the development from start to finish and I urge you to pick up a copy immediately.

You'll find it at www.flawlessnatural.com.

Lastly, the new RSD Nation is near completion in terms of it's design.

I've been working on it with my team for the past several months and I'm absolutely psyched to see it finally coming together.

This is going to change the way forums are run in the community forever. I'm surprised nobody has created something like this yet but I guess it's cool to be the first.

Keep your eyes open!!

Tyler

Oh My Goodness...

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:57:00 +0000

What a journey it's been to create this over the past several months.

On the phone with Tim 10 times a day while he worked on it endlessly since last January -- and now it is finally here.

http://www.flawlessnatural.com

This is a program that I am truly, deeply proud of.

I watch it and just feel the RIGHT VIBE coming off of it through and through.

Anyway I'm off to the cradle of mankind for a few weeks and won't be around but I wanted to leave up the official announcement for you to read and enjoy.

And of course PICK UP YOUR OWN COPY OF THE PROGRAM.

Sometimes regular readers of this blog will come up to me on the street and say "Congrats on getting that out" and it's like "This program isn't about ME it's about YOU...Did YOU pick up a copy for YOURSELF??"

I notice guys will play a game with themselves where they have a self image as being the old wise man up on the mountaintop above the fray of the life.

But ultimately this is self destructive because it does nothing to actually improve YOUR results and YOUR happiness.

What WILL improve your results is making the decision to live your dreams -- and having access to elite sources of knowledge such as Tim who I've had access to myself now for many years.

You'll also notice in the sales page I talk about how Tim has been the guy who I've modelled most of my major insights after between 2005 and 2008 and that is absolutely true.

The only sucky part of all this is that it's impossible to keep this guy around. He's off to go DJ'ing again soon enough and this program is basically his lasting legacy of his time with RSD.

Anyway have a look at the site and think about what YOUR goals are in all this.

Because this is about getting you access to the kind of resources that are necessary to make it happen, and for pretty friggin' cheap (almost suspiciously cheap) I might add.

Alright I'm on basically the biggest adventure of my life...Here is the official announcement, enjoy!!

Tyler

---

Tim's Flawless Natural Method is now LIVE!!

http://www.flawlessnatural.com

This site will literally shock and amaze you. Click over and have a glance at it right now.

Today it is my privilege to announce the release of what may well be the most hard hitting, hyper effective dating video and audio recording of all time.

The immediate results of this program have been unprecedented. And the testimonials blisteringly positive.

With 6 full DVD/CDs Tim is about to finally reveal to you the frightening unstoppable effectiveness of natural game.

As you have probably heard by now, Tim has long been known as being the man whose skills with women have been sharpened over many years into an EPIPHANY INDUCING SPECTACLE.

The wisdom that he has to impart is will enlighten you with the most lethally effective secrets of his natural approach and core masculine sexuality ever exposed.

This is a program that is deliberately designed to rock your brain on multiple levels, as Tim has developed a "transfer method" for uploading his entire know-how from his head up into yours.

He reveals to you the hidden code of his Flawless Natural Method and lays his entire toolbox bare by:

...unveiling his step-by-step breakdown of his entire "5 Step Total Method" for creating staggering natural attraction with effortless ease.

...pummeling you with the personality he uses to trigger massive attraction and allowing you to tune into the frequency and vibe at your leisure for hours on end.

...and lastly, giving you access to interspersed clips of LIVE IN FIELD VIDEO from his personal archive to make this a "guaranteed win" and the most successful dating program you have ever done.

It's taken Tim many years of in the trenches field experience to figure this stuff out on his own, and today he is going to shave off your learning curve towards shocking success with women by many years.

"The Flawless Natural Method" will drive deep, internal and external change into the way you interact with women for the rest of your entire life.

That's what the "Flawless Natural Method" is about.

And frankly, I'm not even scratching the surface of the thing.

Dare yourself to take a walk on the wild side - click this link.

http://www.flawlessnatural.com

And get yourself a bit of "in the know" with a true veteran professional who will put you on the fast track to reaching all of your goals and dreams.

You quite simply won't find a recorded program like this -- anywhere.

A "super elite level" session with a dating genius of this caliber has NEVER been taught in this format before.

And that's why, since I knew this recording was priceless before Tim decided to release it to the public, I can't even guess what the value of it is now.

To start listening to this audio and video recording right away, please visit:

http://www.flawlessnatural.com

And if you have questions, please contact support@realsocialdynamics.com or call 1-310-652-0137 and we'll be happy to speak with you.

I hope you enjoy it...

Tyler, Executive Producer
Real Social Dynamics

P.S. The "special edition" release of this recording with the SIXTH BONUS DISC "Flawless Forever" and the CUSTOMER APPRECIATION SEMINAR is only available until July 23rd.

After that, I will either REMOVE this "special edition" version forever, OR I will raise the price to significantly to avoid diluting the value of the strategies revealed in this priceless audio and video recording.

...this is still a bargain when you consider Tim's one-on-one consultation rates are $4500.00 per weekend -- or $10,000.00 per week!

To get your own personal copy, visit:

http://www.flawlessnatural.com

Are Royalty Rich Prick Bastards??

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:21:00 +0000

(Before getting started, Tim has just launched a brand new site for his upcoming "Flawless Natural Method" which is being released on July 2 @ 12PM EST. The site itself is really kickass and contains tons of free value. Click over right now and have a look prior to reading this article. It's at www.flawlessnatural.com).

So there was a thread on RSDN recently and I thought it was an interesting topic for a blog article.

http://www.rsdnation.com/showthread.php?t=24807&highlight=royalty

Basically it was a thread about a TV special on the obnoxious lifestyle of British Royalty.

It really got me thinking about beliefs that are empowering, beliefs that are disempowering, and everything in between.

For me, there is no advantage in being born rich or poor. It is absolutely arbitrary.

In order to become financially successful, a person who is born as a “have not” will usually be required to undergo a level of personal evolution.

They will have to learn to love themselves and treat themselves with respect by working hard. They will have to learn discipline and the frustratingly gradual nature of progress.

Moreover, they will have to learn a spiritual aspect in that an entrepreneur must deal with massive financial uncertainty, and at times very serious financial loss.

Maintaining success in the long term comes back to that old distinction of "ego versus self esteem".

A person who seeks success in order to glorify themselves will rarely maintain it, while a person who works hard for the privilege of operating at their highest potential and offering value without credit will tend to survive in the long term.

Now think about the financial elite...

They will not have the advantage of engaging in this path from the same perspective -- that "No roof over head, no ground under foot" mode of existence that will shape them into better people over the course of their lives.

And their challenge is two-fold...

When you have had to slave, work, sweat, and risk financial doom for years in order to arrive in a position of abundance, you have a value for a dollar.

You are in a sense, grounded, because you know what’s involved in the creation of wealth and you appreciate it.

More importantly though, is that there is only true enjoyment in that which you have rightfully earned.

For a man who has earned his financial position, to eat at a fine restaurant is a lavish experience because it is the result of work that he produced with his own two hands.

He can eat in contentedness, and in a peaceful moment away from work, because it is his right to do so.

In his heart, he knows that everything could be taken away from him, but that within him are the resources to build it all back, better and stronger than before.

For a person who did not earn their position, every moment of extravagance is a reminder of what they lack.

There is no true enjoyment in any of their privilege. An African tribesman dancing around a fire in his mud hut village is far happier.

What they experience is a simulated happiness, and when it doesn’t satisfy, it makes them feel truly insane.

Human beings are very much like trees or plants, in that we need wind and weather to grow stronger, and a strong set of roots for equilibrium for when we grow tall.

If you’ve ever gardened, you’ve seen what happens when a plant grows up over a wall or any kind of support, and how when you remove it the plant simply falls over and cracks and usually dies.

That is a human being, and those born into the financial elite are often in many ways like the plant that’s grown up against that artificial wall, never aware it was doing so.

The truth is that the level of privilege of the British royalty is so far excessive and superfluous that it is beyond anything anyone could ever put in any real perspective.

Far more important is the sense of self reliance as a man, which offers more happiness than any amount of money could ever provide.

Their journey towards their own truth is no more or less difficult than anyone else’s. It is just different, and they will have their own challenges and ways in which they can choose to evolve.

The only true advantage that is “fair” or “unfair” in this world is education and economy.

In the past year I have travelled Latin America as well as inner cities in the United States, and realized that there are indeed some people who have been dealt a hand in life that is truly unfair.

Human beings, when left on "default setting", are often trapped in mindsets of scarcity, pettiness, and prejudice, anger and hate towards others and themselves.

People who come from poverty oftentimes speak in slang and dialects that points them out as uneducated and creates barriers to their future.

And people who live in economies that are mismanaged by corrupted and radical governments can have all the greatness and potential in the world, with no means through which to express it because the opportunity is simply not there.

That, to me, is the only real instance of fairness when it comes to wealth.

Personally I would never feel envious towards anyone for anything. Be that a guy who is taller than me, better looking, or more financially well off.

I would never scoff at the gifts I’ve been given by looking at other people with jealousy, hatred, or disdain.

Now that’s not to say that it’s bad that the people who expressed negativity towards the royalty shouldn’t have done so.

To me, the value or RSDN is that you get to put your ideas out there to get feedback as well as scrutiny. I value ANYONE who takes the risk to their ego of posting their views on anything, because it exposes them to valuable feedback.

Outlooks and perspectives evolve.

Anyway hopefully this has offered some evolution to your own outlook. Ultimately it is just my own opinion, and how I've chosen to make sense of the world.

Tyler

PS: Did you check out Tim's brand new site?? It's about YOU and maximizing YOUR experience with this stuff. Have a look, it's at: www.flawlessnatural.com.

Tim Launches New Video Blog!!

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:39:00 +0000

Oh nice, very excited!!

Tim has just launched his brand new video blog at:

www.flawlessnaturalvideoblog.com

You've GOT to see this. Have a click over right now and see this for yourself.

Now Tim and I have just got this going so there are still a few kinks. The studio's just been put together in Tim's apartment and we're still tinkering with the camera set up and the lighting and the whole deal.

Regardless, the new videos ROCK!!

If you're interested in learning about Tim and seeing what he has to offer you in terms of your understanding of this material, run over right now and have a look.

www.flawlessnaturalvideoblog.com

Have fun!!

Tyler

Do Human Beings Inherently Hate Themselves?? (Guest Starring Jeffy As The Video Game Addicted Dumbass)

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:52:00 +0000

Aaaaaaaaaaah, BACK WITH THE BLOG!!

Planning to get a little bit intense on you today. Is that alright??

GOOD.

So I was thinking about all the different "models" or "ways" that we can understand the human tendency to be so lazy and self-destructive.

That's not to say all people act this way -- and I count myself lucky to be surrounded by 99% of people who are driven to live a happy life.

But this is definitely a common phenomenon, and it is in many ways the "default state" when you lack the proper education about why it's so vastly important.

Anyway one of the ways of looking at laziness (and the resulting self-destruction) would be to just to say that you are hardwired by genetics to conserve on time and energy, and that your caveman brain doesn't always have the perspective to move beyond a paradigm of instant gratification.

Another explanation would be that our day-to-day habits are so deeply ingrained that to change them requires more strength than the average person can summon up.

Then there's the more practical ways of seeing it, like that most folks are so flat-lined with uninspiring employment that they simply lack the physical and emotional momentum to get anything done.

Or more fancy and esoteric viewpoints, like that modern society has got us on a diet of simple sugars and saturated fats which makes our brains too jittery to be fully engaged, and that television and advertisement has us addicted to a state of endless stimulation.

Probably if this is the first time you've ever considered the compounding effects that this stuff is having on your life you might be freaking out.

(And we haven't even gotten into the *really* trippy stuff like how a culture that's based on enhancing the identity of the individual distances us from the natural state of stillness and clarity and creativity -- because that's a topic big enough to require an article of it's own).

Alright, so all of these are great ways of understanding laziness and self-destruction but today I want to focus on an entirely different way of looking at it.

This is a theory that I've conjured up recently, and maybe it's a bit deluded or controversial, but for whatever reason it's been brewing in my mind.

For me a major reason for people's lazy and self-destructive tendencies is an insidious, underlying psychological foundation of self hate.

I've been thinking lately about how there's a crazy paradox to being a human being -- because unlike other animals who can just act selfishly on unconscious autopilot, YOU typically have a consciously held value system.

(You might have been spoon-fed your values unconsciously, or integrated them on your own, but you have this value system and you know it's there).

Now in this value-system you might have qualities like integrity, working hard, offering value, or doing the right thing.

Whatever it is for *you*.

And what's cool is that when you LIVE by your own value system you gain what might be called "personal power" -- like confidence, clear thinking, passion, and self esteem -- so you get a big reward.

But then see, the crazy paradox is that it's also in your genetically inherited DNA to do things that get you gain over other people that you did not earn, or to sell out your values in order to save yourself time and energy.

That's why when you go into a public bathroom you'll enjoy the glorious sight of piss all over the toilet seat from the last 10 guys who've used it before you.

Most folks, when not being monitored, really can't be bothered so much as to aim at the center of the bowl or to swipe a piece of toilet paper and wipe off the "miss fire".... :)

It's crazy what this simple phenomenon says about overall human psychology.

Then of course, there's also the aspect where the person thinks "Even if I clean up all this mis-aimed piss for the next person, I bet THEY won't be bothered to keep this toilet clean so I'd might as well just leave it."

So on some level I think people probably know unconsciously that they can't always trust themselves to live by their values, and beyond that, they assume the same of other people as well.

This is really coming through right now with the trend of climate change and global warming.

There's a lot of ways of explaining people's indifference towards their own planet, but I think one of them is an unconscious belief that "We're going to screw up the whole deal sooner or later anyway, and on a level we deserve it. So I'd might as well just not think about it and enjoy the ride."

Personally I have a belief that when somebody does something that they know is inherently wrong, they will unconsciously do things to punish themselves and bring their circumstances into alignment with what they feel they deserve internally.

Maybe they'll get sloppy in their work and lose a bunch of money.

Or maybe they'll be lazy and sabotage their personal relationships.

Oftentimes it's also in the form of creating chains of rationalizations upon rationalizations, where they can no longer think clearly and wind up screwing up their lives.

So in a lot of ways it comes down to "self respect" and how when you live in alignment to your values you'll tend to respect yourself enough to create the external conditions that make for a happy life.

(Incidentally this is also why when people have deliberately done things to try to make my own life difficult I've rarely invested myself into worrying about "justice" or anything like that. I've always figured that people's circumstances will eventually catch up to their level of self-respect).

Anyway I think it's interesting because when you love yourself it's natural that you'll want to do things to make your life better.

It's like how you see RSD instructors who in the past few years have all gotten into pretty good physical shape.

There's been a rash of people asking "Yeah but you guys are all in good shape, so obviously it means that you ADMIT IT that LOOKS MATTER with women right??!!"

What they don't realize is that most the guys I work with in RSD used to be in pretty crummy shape back when they started to get a level of success with girls.

That means that, YES, they would go out and meet girls and bring them back to make love to their ghastly out of shape bodies.

Shocking I know...

Then later as they built a sense of self worth it was only natural that they wanted to start eating healthy and going to the gym -- or in Jeffy's case decreasing his consumption of alcohol and drugs.

The inclination to take good care of your physical body is a SYMPTOM and not the CAUSE of having gotten success with girls.

Is that because you need to get laid a bunch of times to feel good about yourself??

Definitely not.

It's just that when you're TAKING ACTION TO HANDLE YOUR LIFE it's natural that you feel like you're "worth" the investment of time and energy that being in good shape will demand.

To me this is really a natural type of thing.

Self esteem is in many ways a wheel that's always spinning -- whether that's towards a life of happiness or a petty existence of laziness and self-hate.

If you live in accordance with your values and offer a lot of good, it's natural that you want to keep doing more and more of those positive things, and then your circumstances begin to improve and your lifestyle hits a level that's off the chains.

On the other hand if you sit around violating yourself by being complacent, then it's natural that you lose respect for yourself and your life slowly unravels and decays.

Funny enough there was an incident with Jeffy this year that really illustrated this point for me...

As Jeffy tells it, after getting back from the first leg of the Jeffy Tour last winter he received for Christmas a shiny new Nintendo Wii.

He started playing it and figured "Well I've been working so hard this year, I really deserve a break and need to unplug."

Then, to the best of my recollection, after he continued playing it from morning 'til night for a week straight he felt like "I'm such a piece of shit...I'd might as well just keep playing this."

So ultimately his motivation to keep creating better conditions for himself was flushed down the toilet -- because he no longer had a self image as somebody who was deserving of all the gifts that he had to offer himself and the world.

(As absurd as that sounds -- we've all been through it).

Now that's not to say that playing a bit of video games is inherently bad. Some of them are actually really complex works of art. It's just that the NON-SIMULATED world is also a pretty amazing place and it's a matter of where you choose to spend the bulk of your time.

I know in my case, treating myself with respect is like a behaviour cycle I'm always trying to slide myself into.

Motivation has nothing to do with living up to other people's superficial expectations of your lifestyle or "Keeping up with the Jones's".

This is about a PASSION FOR LIFE.

I have a straightforward set of assumptions, which while simplistic, are basically a source of inspiration that doesn't quit:

1- I am alive.

2- It is all futile, yes, but unless I'm going to take action on this and KILL MYSELF then I'd might as well take the action to make for a happy life.

3- Living a happy life is about your internal world, of course, and it is simultaneously about enjoying the FINEST that this world has to offer (travel, food, literature, friends, personal connection, risk, amazing women, and the whole shebang).

4- Nothing in this world will inherently "tickle" you as advertising suggests, so YOU have to BRING THE PASSION to it and make it fun.

5- To find passion you need motivation which means knowing that "gaining value is about making a living, but offering value is about LIVING A LIFE" -- and to offer the most value to other people you have to LOVE YOURSELF and MAKE YOURSELF STRONG.

So yeah, this might sound woo-woo or melodramatic. But this is how I've made sense of the world.

You might have also noticed how it's a recursive cycle, and that #5 flows right back into #1.

Alright time to wrap this up...

The title of this article posed the question "Do human beings inherently hate themselves?"

So what's my opinion??

For me, without the proper social structures to educate folks about the pros and cons of their humanity, yeah, I think it is definitely an issue.

What we need to realize is that the idealized views about human behaviour, the simplistic narratives with which we've been raised -- they do not represent the entire picture of who we are.

Human beings have both "admirable" qualities and "despicable" ones. And by this way of looking at it, we are very complex.

In every person there are multiple "selves" that operate at various times. Sometimes we are in our "higher self" and sometimes we are in our "lower self" -- or so to speak.

For that reason you can judge instances of behaviour but never ultimately categorize a human being. It just depends on the paradigm with which they're operating at the time.

People need to stop judging others for their flaws, but more important is that in order to do that, they need to stop judging THEMSELVES.

Behaviour can be changed. People's paradigms can be changed.

For that to happen we have to recognize that we are WORTH the investment of time and energy to create the conditions of a happy life.

Right now humanity is in a place where it really needs to forgive itself for it's flaws, or else suffer the consequences.

That means becoming "OK" with the complex nature of who we are.

It's not about convincing OTHER people to wake up and get their lives together. It's about BEING AN EXAMPLE and making the decision to live by your own values first.

From there, it's all about the execution.

Making choices that are befitting of person who treats himself and others as first class human beings.

And how do you get a first class ticket on that path??

I think it's a topic that deserves an article of it's own. So stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!!

Tyler

PS: Tim's blog has been *buzzing* with activity lately. WOW. You really need to get in the loop on this: www.naturaltim.com

George Leonard's "Mastery" -- The New Eckhart Tolle

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:10:00 +0000

Hopefully I've got your attention...... :)

So one of the things I was really happy about in the past year was how we were able to get Eckhart Tolle's work into the PUA mainstream.

Tolle is one of my favourite people in the world, and I say that because he is one of the few people I have ever encountered who does not appear to have any agenda other than making the world a better place.

By coincidence, his book is also a basically a lengthy explaination of "being in the now" -- which is one of the most vital concepts that you must not only understand but INTERNALIZE if you want to be a natural with women.

Now having seen the spread of that, there is another book which I've recently read that I would love to pump in the realm of RSD.

That book is "Mastery" by George Leonard.

This is a book that is very much parallel to the years worth of articles I've written on "Implementing A Habit" and in the DVD/CD set "Transformations".

One of the concepts that I continually pound into the heads of students during bootcamps is the need for a long term habit implementation strategy.

This is vital.

In fact, it is hands down the biggest difference between those students who fail and those who succeed.

I remember back when I first got into teaching success with women.

My belief back then was that if I could cultivate the ultimate skill set with women that I could demonstrate it, and then students could immediately model and replicate it.

This worked consistently in the short term but sometimes failed to produce the long term results that I always wanted.

Several times a year I'd bump into ex students on the street who were ON FIRE during the program but hadn't maintained the habit ever since. This drove me to a level of exasperation you cannot imagine if you haven't experienced it yourself.

(Bear in mind I also bumped into a lot more who DID follow through -- but just seeing those who didn't would absolutely f**k up my day).

Later I focused on the teaching aspect, in terms of developing more effective ways of getting the information from MY head into the mind of the student -- as well as lowering the student/instructor ratio to 3 on 1.

This produced an even more consistent level of results but I'd still have those odd cases where I'd bump into students who didn't follow through.

Finally I arrived where I've been at for the past two years, where I created self-development material which can then be synergized with the pick-up stuff in order to emphasize the path that's required to achieve long term results.

This has been great and the 6 month follow up phone calls have yielded the highest percentage of long term transformations I've ever seen.

However now having found George Leonard's book "Mastery" I feel a need for celebration -- because the average 3 hours that I'd normally spend on bootcamp teaching long term habit implementation is now laid out beautifully in one simple and elegant book (and I can just refer people directly to this book -- which allows me to cut that time from 3 hours to 1 hour and then use the extra time to teach other things).

Do you want a secret window into the types of topics I've covered in some of the most results-producing bootcamps I've ever run??

Read "Mastery" by George Leonard.

For me this book is elementary and obviously didn't produce the kind of epiphanies that I had while reading Eckhart Tolle. I've been doing this stuff my entire career.

But my excitement in this case stems from what STUDENTS can get out of it.

If you are someone who has never walked the path from novice to total mastery over several years then this book is a MUST READ.

And if you are someone who has walked that path many times over, then you will respect the straightforward way in which he's articulated it.

It is quick and easy read, and will teach you key elements like:

-How to ride out a plateau

-How to enjoy the process over the outcome

-How to be a long term winner and not be brainwashed by the anti-mastery attitudes of society (people who've seen my section in "Transformations" will see the parallels here).

If this sounds cool, that's because it is, in fact, very cool.

I give this book my highest recommendation for anyone learning how to better themselves and get crazy awesome results with girls -- so be absolutely sure to check it out.

Have fun!!

Tyler

The Glory Of Group-Think

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:52:00 +0000

Alright we're gonna play a little game here......

I'm gonna lay out three instances of phenomenon and leave it up to YOU to guess what it is.

You game??

OK here they are:

1- A news piece on "the community" is done that portrays studying success with women in a negative light, and people get annoyed that something they're a part of is being disliked by the mainstream.

2- The "trend of the week" in pickup (ie: compliments VS teases / structured gameplan VS free flowing) is something someone disagrees with, and he goes and makes post after post on various internet forums about how the trend is wrong and he wants everyone to see the light.

3- A famous guru keeps a semi circle of eyes-glazed-over followers around him at all times, and the followers constantly look to their guru to discover their own path.

Any guesses?? What's the commonality here??

Well I guess the title of the article kind of gave it away......... :)

What we're talking about is the bizarre nature of human psychology in all it's glory.

It's the phenomenon known as RELYING ON GROUP THINK.

The way it works is basically that people have two ways of determining their sense of "reality":

1) First hand experience.

2) The second hand experience of other people.

Because we don't have the time and energy to verify everything about the world for ourselves, our psychology is usually tuned to rely most heavily on 2nd hand information.

There's a whole intricate system to this -- which if you've experienced The Blueprint then you're versed in my spiel on that.

The long and short of it is that the stronger your ability is to SEE THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR OWN EYES the more confidence you can gain more quickly.

This actually results in you being a lot more attractive to women, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Right here what we're talking about is this.......:

The "dating community" is supposed to teach you how to see the world through your own eyes and become a a man who dictates his own sense of reality.

But more often than not it winds up as just a NEW form of social conditioning & group think to replace the old crutch previously provided by the mainstream.

Now let's breakdown the three examples under this new light.

1- What the mainstream masses think about studying success with girls has nothing to do with you.

Literally nothing. No, no, duuuuude, it's like, literally NOTHING to your life.

You can try all day long, but you will not find a single tangible change to your day-to-day existence based on whether the media's coverage of this stuff is favourable or not.

And it *definitely* doesn't affect the way women respond to you.

So why would you feel an emotional reaction to a story, or even invest a single minute of your life into watching a nonsense media spectacle AT ALL??

Well if you're noticing this in yourself, it's probably because you've been drawing your confidence from a "well" of group-think.

If more people accepted your way of thinking then the "I want people to agree with me" mechanism up in your head would be happier with you.

This would raise your confidence, and funny enough, make you more confident around women because you'd feel like you're doing the "right thing".

Even though what other people think means absolutely nothing -- so long as YOU are getting the results that you want.

Next........

2- What other people in the community think about what works FOR YOU has nothing to do with the way you choose to interact and relate to women.

I've read posts from guys who said they used to get success using pick up lines and then read about going natural and lost confidence in what they were doing before (or vice versa).

Uhhhh, why??!!

If what you were doing before was getting you the dating & sex life that you wanted then why would you switch it up??

Again, if you're one of those guys then the reason is probably that you were previously gaining confidence in the "pick up lines" from the fact that there was a whole community of guys claiming they worked.

Pull that out of the equation and it's like the rug being ripped out from under you, and that's just nonsense.

One of my goals in creating The Blueprint as a "set of principles" instead of a "how to" was because what works for YOU is not always what will work for somebody else.

The bottom line is this: if you THINK what you're saying to a woman will "work" then it PROBABLY WILL.

That's because of the confidence and congruence that you have behind it, and so when you're talking to her she's feeling that vibe and energy coming off of you.

So whether a bunch of guys who you`ve never met on the internet agree with you or not, you have to find your own way of doing things.

And lastly.........

3- Just because a "guru" offers you his or her experience does not mean that it alleviates you the responsibility of having to think.

One of the freakiest aspects of the "guru phenomenon" is that in many cases the guru initially has LESS confidence than the average person.

What needs to be understood here is that most people who lack confidence will respond by becoming introverted or deferring to other people constantly.

But in the case of a "guru" its often somebody who has learned an "alternate strategy" where they gain enough people to surround them and validate what they're saying that they can say:

"Look, all these people agree with me...I must be right!!"

Meanwhile the followers all get to say:

"Wow there's all these other people who agree with him/her....He/she must be right!!"

So there is basically a symbiotic relationship going on here.

Both the guru and the followers are exploiting eachother as a crutch to gain a stronger sense of their own beliefs.

This is actually a topic that goes a lot deeper and it deserves it's own article -- including of my own experiences with it, because they are freaky and bizarre.

OK so what is a healthy approach to knowledge then??

Well first of all, it's great to go out and seek new ideas.

Looking for better opinions, cultures, and perspectives is always one of the best things you can ever do.

Beyond that, being involved in a mastermind group that continually attunes your mind to the "frequencies" (as they say) of presence and abundance is probably one of the biggest factors for learning success with women that you can possibly find.

The difference between a healthy approach and a bone-headed one is whether or not you're moving towards your own core or just replacing one form of social conditioning with another.

So next time you feel yourself having an emotional reaction to someone not agreeing with you, ask yourself:

-"Am I reacting because I rely on other people to agree with me in order to feel confident that my sense of reality is accurate??"

-"Am I reacting because the foundation that my sense of reality is laid upon is shaky and easily de-stabilized??"

-"Am I reacting because secretly I'm not sure whether I'm right or wrong??"

And if any of those are the case, then start continually "putting yourself in check" when you feel yourself relying on the crutch of people's opinions instead of seeing the world through your own eyes.

In fact here's a tip for you to play around with...

Whenever you feel the urge to correct somebody, experiment with just letting it go.

Notice how it makes you feel BETTER because you're confirming to yourself that you don't need other people's approval to be certain of your beliefs.

Moreover, notice how when you slip up and correct somebody that you feel the cheap thrill of their agreement followed by a buyer's remorse for knowing how irrational it was to care about what they think.

Of course there's a big difference between straightening out a buddy to help him out and relying on other people's agreement as an addiction to a psychological crutch -- but this is obvious by the emotions you feel in your body when you open your mouth.

The act of "offering value" always aligns you with the present moment and a clean feeling of self esteem.

The act of "taking value" (ie: speaking to gain agreement from the other person) will conversely get you in your head and leave you feeling antsy and clasping for straws.

Anyway hopefully this article hasn't been too aggressive or freaked anyone out.

It's just a little something to let stew up in the noggin' for the next time you find yourself caring about other people's approval of your ideas.

Of course it's always good to cross-reference your beliefs with outside input whenever possible -- the challenge is knowing the difference between when it's constructive or just useless and absurd.

Have fun!!

Tyler

PS: Been hearing all sorts of crazy rumours about some sort of massive Summer Special -- you NEED to click this link to see what I'm talking about: www.rsdsummerspecial.com.

PPS: Tim has been super active on his blog. Have a quick click over to: www.naturaltim.com.

Tim Vanishes...........And Then Re-Appears

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Word has it that Tim is now back in Los Angeles after his leg in Australia and Tokyo.

I'm hearing rumours about some intresting activity over on his blog recently, so I think I'll click over and check it out.

And you're invited.

Just take a quick click over with me to www.naturaltim.com.

Woooooooooooo!!!!!

Tyler

The Mexico I Experienced -- 15 Cities In 6 Weeks

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:29:00 +0000

Woooooooo, got the Spanish soundtrack for this latin-style'd article.

So. Yes.

Just jammed back into Honolulu after 3 months of straight travel.

Nice little jaunt around the continent. I've got mixed emotions about being back.

First few weeks it was all "Get me the out of here I wanna go home!!" but by the end it was like "Keep. Going. Bitches. MORE."

Excursion started in Los Angeles and then off to X-Games in Aspen for RSD Executive Retreat.

Hit that up with the crew, it was amazing.

Watching Ciaran and Toli stuck up on the hill the whole day, classic!! Carving down the hills in Aspen I felt like a happy little kid again.

Next up was Ottawa to get the passport renewed.

Damn that thing was in need of replacement. Every time I went through customs they laughed at me asking if I'd put it in the laundry.

Good thing I know how to talk.

Social dynamics, Luke Skywalker style: You WILL let me into your country, this passport is JUST FINE.

While in Ottawa it was 20 hour day workmode leading up to The Blueprint launch, causing me to get sick for the first time in a long while.

Got up in the middle of the night and remember feeling the "life force" draining out of my body -- thinking melodramatically that my heart had just randomly stopped.

Then it was drop, thud, and kiss the floor. New horizontal position much better. Feeling the blood slowly trickling back in my brain.

First time I've ever fainted. Interesting experience. I think one time is enough.

Lay there around an hour gathering the strength back and then crawled downstairs and to start pounding water. Yum yum.

Next day laid in bed staring at the wall totally still thinking I could somehow heal myself, which apparently actually worked.

Got up for the final 24 hours leading up to the launch and wrapped it about 1 minute before the noon deadline.

Blueprint is in orbit. The rest is history.

Thus the trip began. Definitely the hardest travelling I've done so far. Fifteen cities in six weeks.

What follows is an assembly of maybe 0.0001% of the experience.

Fully loaded with pictures. Click them to see the full sized versions, many are much cooler that way.

With The Blueprint wrapped I hit the Ottawa airport and flew out to Toronto, linked back up with my girlfriend in Mexico City, and headed down to Acapulco.

What did I expect?? No expectations.

Toli the genius lends me his oceanfront double-story penthouse in the heart of the main strip which was the bomb.

Thanks Toli!!

Apparently Acapulco was a mega classy hotspot during the 1960s when Elvis Prestley and Elizabeth Taylor used to visit.

Now it's more of a cheesy Spring Break type deal -- like Tijuana on steroids.

Still, easy to enjoy when you've got Toli's kickass pad.

Main tourist strip is absolutely fine, although very funny with all the little "Herby" style 1960s taxis buzzing around.

One of this proud fleet even had blacklights and music and a strobe inside, creating a mini-danceclub for this insane taxi driver to blast around town in.

Boom, boom, boom, ayyyyyyyyyeeeeee!!!

Learned how to drive Mexico-style very quickly. Not by choice but by necessity.

Driving Latin America is like playing a mini game of "Chicken" with every lane change. Fun!!

Rule: Do NOT use your turn signal or driver behind you will jump in and take your spot.

No, no, no politeness allowed. Polite people will be chopped into bite sized gringo-chunks and used as street-meat in the roadside taco stands.

This is about showing you're willing to crash and destroy your car more than the other driver is. No fear. Point and shoot style.

To the victor goes the spoils of the lane and then you're off to duke it out with the next road warrior.

Anywayzzzz, restaurants up on hill overlooking the ocean were fantastic. My favourite was this Thai-fusion place called "Zibu".

Good to relax and unplug from the insanity of the previous month.

Found myself thinking about work constantly at first, which I later learned to turn off and just chill.

Was also a very cool earthquake while we were down there.

Girlfriend and I are in the gym and hear somebody drop a big rack of weights. Except it keeps going and going. And going. We realize it's an earthquake.

Mexico though. Expected. Whatever.

From there I grab the girlfriend by the hair, caveman style, and drag her kicking and screaming to Taxco.

Or maybe we just pleasantly decided to go mutually. I can't remember.

Taxco is a little silver mining town about 3 hours outside of Acapulco. Pulling into this place was like going back in time.

Felt like a Hayao Mazaki movie.

Night time arrival, we see the old town laid up against the side of a mountain.

This is the first experience of the "real" Mexico. The trip will have many more.

Hotel is up on a massive hill.

We drive and drive, up, up, up, until we eventually reach the top. Amazing view of a mysterious city with bells ringing and energy buzzing down below.

Check in and drive back down the hill. I'm nervous and inexperienced in this type of environment.

Find a great restaurant and view the city from atop the roof.

There's fireworks going off, with sounds of booming and the bells echoing off the mountains -- burned into my mind for hours afterwards.

Next morning we wake up and look out to a to view that's entirely different during the day.

Blast down the hill and check out the city. So cool. So interesting.

Different cars, different houses, different ways of life.

Their lives seem smaller, more connected to community. Maybe bigger in that regard, you know, surface VS depth type stuff.

They're visibly happier than most in the surrounding region, probably because of the thriving silver industry.

Money can't buy happiness, true.

But sustenance is absolutely vital and these people have achieved it.

Driving back home it's all about the "free highway" as opposed to the pay highway. Poverty is visible and very painful to see.

State of Guerrero -- extremely poor, extremely ill-maintained.

Random animals all over the streets and garbage framing every inch of the highways.

Entire state of Guerrero smells strongly of ash from farmers clearing their fields...burning sides of the roads to clear the trash.

We run out of cash to pay the toll roads. No credit cards accepted??!! Uhhh, woops.

It was the final tunnel through the mountain, and I know we're in a sticky situation because the toll is nearly $10 for a short little section of road.

What mayhem would it have allowed us to avoid?? Let's find out.

Back up in reverse and weave through oncoming traffic on this latin american highway. The other road warriors are thrilled.

Take the route through the "non-tourist side of the mountain" of Acapulco to get back home.

People hustling to make a few pesos everywhere you look. Some who can't afford clothes walking around aimlessly.

Get home, plan the trip for Puerto Escondido the next day. Wake up, and we're off.

Drive is literally 8 hours of endless "ejidos" shanty towns -- shacks on small-scale subsistence farms that produce for local markets.

People seem malnourished and stare at you as you pass. Government controlled Pemex gas stations are like little slices of Beverly Hills to stop in every few hours. You realize as you pass through literally an entire state of these conditions that this is not just isolated, but how most people in the world actually live.

Finally we get into Puerto Escondido which was priceless.

Puerto is one of the premiere surf locations on the planet.

You drive through town until you get to the "Playa Zicatela" -- the strip where all the hippies and surfers live.

A whole culture there. It's still off the beaten path to an extent so it's got an authentic vibe.

Until you've been to a place like this there's really very little way to describe it. You've just got to experience it for yourself.

Explore the city for the day, eat in the restaurants, talk to the people, generally screw around.

The girlfriend has a big allergic reaction for some reason that night, breaking out in hives.

At first we notice it on her arms. Then we look and it's "Damn it's on your entire body!!"

Walk downstairs, ask "Where's the nearest hospital??" and they laugh like "Uhhhh, you don't want to go to the hospital in Puerto Escondido senior."

Jump in the car and head into the super shady downtown area in the middle of the night. Wonderful.

Locate some Benedryl type stuff in a streetside pharmacy and luckily it gets rid of the hives overnight.

It's the first time it occurs to me that many of the basic securities I take for granted in North America are not always available.

Next day is fantastic.

I teach myself how to ATV along the ocean and up in the hills. Comes in handy later in the trip.

We watch a few pro surfers getting dragged around on Jet-Skis into 15 foot hardhitting waves, then bounce for Oaxaca City.

Trip to Oaxaca is through the mountains and a challenging drive.

Just like the the Puerto trip it's filled with poverty and random animals on the street you have to watch out for.

These people live without our comforts, appear to find happiness in their familial and communal bonds.

Maybe they are happier than us. Maybe just frustrated. Who knows??

The endless curves are nauseating for the first few hours.

Brakes on the van are starting to wear out so I have to make sure that they last until we reach the next town -- otherwise take a fun roll down the side of a cliff.

It's all good, all a part of the fun.

Views up in the mountain are amazing. Total freedom.

Eventually we come out of the mountains into a more desert type region.

Beautiful, relieving, great to be out of the mountains with those shoddy brakes.

We start seeing little cities as we approach the main Oaxaca City.

I have no idea what to expect or what it will be like.

All I know is Oaxaca has many natives and some who speak in native tongues.

Keep driving with Oaxaca City just past this last horizon.

A mix of natural beauty and ill-kept towns as we approach.

Mexico is ultimately a different world just beyond the man-made Southern border of the United States.

Always love roads with trees tracing them like this. Don't know why.

Finally hit Oaxaca city. Outskirts.

A day's driving has paid off, and the brakes on the vehicle have held up to boot.

Can't believe it.

The hotel is simultaneously a government congress building. It's a giant stone mansion with gardens and green dining areas in the middle.

Makes any American hotel look like....whatever.

Hit up the night time entertainment.

Whole time I'm thinking "Man I should be in my hotel watching TV". Ummm, no.

Head downtown, walk around, check it out.

Going to bed that night CNN is on the television.

All the driving of the past few days, it occurs to me on a deep level for the first time in my life that all the crazy shit you see in the news is actually real -- or at least about real places.

Tripped me out, I'm texting back and forth with Tim who's back in Los Angeles.

City looks different in the morning. Nice.

Ever wondered what the widest tree in the entire world looks like?? I hadn't.

Well this is it.

Not the tallest. Not the biggest. But the widest known tree on the planet.

Uh huh.

Oaxacan natives. Zapotec, many speak a native language and do not speak Spanish.

Wonderful people. Mostly dirt poor, after the tourist-deterring violence that broke out due to union strikes in Oaxaca the previous year.

Some are successful, many create income for themselves by crafting exotic rugs and beautiful hand-painted figurines.

They appear to work much harder than we do. Didn't sense that any of them had any issue with it or complained.

BAM!! Hit the first ruins.

Monte Albán. Very important historical/archaeological find.

Amazing city. Amazing that an entire culture thrived before wiping eachother out, the remains being mopped up by the Spanish.

There are stone carvings of disfigured people up against the walls.

Royalty used to inbreed and created them to research the cause of the birth defects. Keepin' it in the family!!

Water channels run underneath the city. It was elaborate.

Amazing to believe it's just gone, makes you wonder about the fragile nature of our own civilization.

Back to Oaxaca City centro.

Known as "la Verde Antequera" for being mostly built in green tinted stone.

Then out for another night in the Plaza de la Constitución.

Local entertainers spot me as a gringo with a latin girl and decide to tool me relentlessly.

Backing up into me yelling in Spanish that I'm grabbing them from behind. Saying I'm a gringo and it's not my fault I don't know any better.

The whole crowd is laughing. Hilarious. Awesome vibe. People are connected to one another, having fun.

None of this faceless chode in the crowd on his way home to watch TV nonsense. It's a community and it comes across healthy and good.

Done with Oaxaca, off to Puebla.

Driving is amazing. The toll roads are easy and smooth. Minimal road-warrioring.

Gotta enjoy the journey, no??

Big chunks of the trips are spent driving so you learn how to have fun with it.

Love the winding roads. I want see the whole world, every city, and everything in between.

First time I've seen big landscapes full of cactuses. Kept looking at it curiously while I was driving.

Do not crash, do not crash.

Yup, made it to Puebla.

What a city. Wealthy. Cultural. Historical.

Inventors of the great Mexican dish "Mole Pueblano" -- what more could you want??

Puebla is a mix between New York, Montreal, and Mexico City -- all fused together in a big happy threesome.

From being there a few days it felt like a model of a city in Latin America that absolutely works.

Loaded with hundreds of historic churches, you can hit up a different church-venue every day of the year if that's your thing.

They're everywhere. Mexico is a very Catholic country. Gives the city a European feel.

Big volcano on the way out.

Used to be covered in a giant glacier, up until this century when it retreated and exposed the mountain as a result of accelerating climate change.

Passed through a city unexpectedly on the way back to Acapulco. Cuernavaca.

Outlying areas were stellar, fresh weather, rolling hills, and blue flowers in the trees.

City of Cuernavaca itself was, well, a city.

Stayed a few hours and then bounced. Wonder if I'd have found anything interesting had I been around longer.

Pay highways on the way back were of stark contrast to the free highways.

Mexican tolls are among the highest in the world, usually costing fifty to a few hundred to get from Point A to Point B.

Benefits include road that's nearly free of traffic, minimal pot holes, and far fewer psychotic drivers (ie: people who actually care if they die or not more than they care about dominating the road).

Found these bridges to be interesting for some reason.

Wonder what it takes to build these roads cutting through the mountains, it must be insane.

Back to Acapulco, fly out during sunset to Mexico City -- AKA Mexico D.F. (Distrito Federal).

Heard nothing but horror stories about it up until this point. Travellers I come across seem to have no love for the D.F.

Supposedly endless traffic, scary motherfuckers trying to kidnap you, yada yada.

True?? Doubtful. Second largest city in the world, most important economic and cultural centre in the country -- it's gotta be cool.

Most people on airplanes look blasé about it, sitting there watching Rush Hour 3 or Kung Fu Panda on the screen.

I find air travel mindblowing and often stare out the window most of the trip if there's anything interesting.

Get into Mexico City. Drive from irport feels like coming into LA or NYC.

We're at The W Hotel in Polanco, where Papa and co. come to meet me for RSD stuff. Good to see friends again.

Next eight days it's like living back in the US.

Zocalo in Mexico City is wicked -- one of the largest squares in the world.

For me it's a more evocative and inspiring capital than any I've seen in my travels so far.

Art gallery off to the side is surrounded by a big labour strike.

Gotta love how they strike down there, so dramatic, makes American strikes seem tame.

Remember waking up last year in Argentina with the apartment spray painted "Fuck Bush" by protesters wearing ski masks and burning American flags.

Inside the gallery is a corridor-long painting depicting the entire known history of Mexico -- from the times of the natives to the Spanish conquerors and beyond.

Makes you think about your own life, your place in history, what false beliefs you might be under, and how people will see the lifestyle you lived in years to come.

Crazy how much European influence you find in Mexico compared to the rest of North America.

Never know what to expect down there.

Was surprised to find a building similar in appearance to Empire State -- Torre Latinoamericana.

"Hey bro -- what's down there??!!"

"Oh yeah, that's the ruins of the Aztec city we destroyed and built the D.F. on top of back in the 1500s.

Figured it was nice real estate, naw mean??"

"Yup, yup, it used to look like this. All, like, happy and stuff."

"Now it looks like THIS.......Wooooot!!"

Whatever, a lot of shit happened back in the day.

And modernity does have it's conveniences. Mexico City is pretty glorious, like a NYC or LA that's off the radar of most people in North America.

Maybe we could avoid repeating this though.

At least we've got these cool archaeological finds to check out in museums.

Apparently found in lakes and various hiding spots.

Few remaining pieces that weren't destroyed when they realized the economic viability of wiping the culture off the map.

Outskirts of Mexico City contains some of the most exclusive real estate in the world.

Move there, and YOU TOO can own your own shanty shack.

Only trouble is trying to figure out which one is yours when you drive back home from work.

"Uhhhh, I think that's me up in the top corner of the mountain....The faceless grey one."

"Oh wait a sec....They all have that....Hmmmmmmmm."

Gotta see it to believe it. Nothing can really prepare you.

First time seeing this type of situation was on the way in from the airport in Rio De Janeiro last year.

Every country and major city in the world has it's own socio-economic problems.

It's the endless ocean of it here that's so flooring.

Too large in scope for the average person to make any sense out of, so you just look at this and shrug your shoulders and get back to your life.

"Hey wasn't there a new Paris Hilton video on TMZ??"

CLICK.

Jump over to Teotihuacan, an hour outside Mexico City.

Pyramid of the Moon.

And of course, Pyramid of the Sun, third largest in the world.

Imagine being a native living in a village out in the jungle and walking in to see this place??

You can imagine these types of constructions, and the resources required to build them, were likely so outside people's realities back then that superstition was the only way to rationalize their existence.

Easy to connect the dots between this and the Vatican City from last summer.

Awe-inspiring but also obviously designed (whether intentionally or unintentionally) to bring folks into submission to their system of beliefs.

On the drive back from Teotihuacan there's the Lady of Guadalupe --- cultural and religion icon in Mexico.

From Wikipedia:

"According to traditional Catholic accounts of the Guadalupan apparition, during a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531,[1] Juan Diego saw a vision of a Virgin at the Hill of Tepeyac.

Speaking in Nahuatl, Our Lady of Guadalupe asked him to build an abbey at that site. When Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the bishop asked him for a miraculous sign to prove his claim. The Virgin asked Juan Diego to gather flowers, even though it was winter when no flower bloomed.

He found Castillian roses, gathered them on his tilma, and presented these to bishop Zumárraga. When he presented the roses to Zumárraga, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted on the cloth."

Interesting to see the girlfriend's reaction, as a girl with a fully traditional Mexican upbringing.

Zoooom, Mexico City wrapped up it's off to the second largest city in Mexico -- Guadalajara.

Downtown is very historical and fascinating, city itself is seems more or less North American.

People in Mexico often fill your head with warnings to be careful, especially at night.

Downtown is supposedly dangerous at night, true or not I have no idea, so that's solved by throwing on the hoodie to appear like a trouble-maker.

Oftentimes in supposedly dangerous cities you just dress funny -- walk around shirtless to appear homeless or grow long hair and a beard to look like a broke hippie.

Easter weekend in Guadalajara so the city is ghost.

Everyone's headed off to Puerto Vallarta about 5 hours off.

Getting there you drive through the town of "Tequila" where the world's supply of tequila is created from blue agave plants, which you see growing in vast fields on the sides of the roads.

Funny driving by the town that's the source of the drink so many people around the world pump into themselves year after year.

Imagine growing up in the town of Tequila??

You'd probably either love drinking or think it's the most boring thing in the world.

Rest of the drive has some great moments.

Love blasting through valleys, up and down hills.

Fascinating to see lifestyle contrast between local economy and American tourist dollars.

Hmmmmmm, are these pics from the same region??

Yes the two neighbourhoods are about fourty five minutes away from eachother.

One is the tourist area, the other is the community that lies beyond.

Tourists, mostly who've flown into the tourist area of Puerto Vallarta directly from the US and Canada, enjoying the authentic Mexican experience.

Hahahaha, to each their own... :)

One night out clubbing. Streets were going crazy. Had a great time.

Wake up the next morning and definitely ready to bounce -- like Vegas it's an in-and-out type vibe.

Drive past the clubbing area in the daytime's so funny.

Street was GOING OFF just the night before, chill and mellow during the day.

So the deal is this.....

Gotta make it back to Guadalajara for the flight to Cancun by tomorrow morning.

Highways are packed bumper to bumper with Easter weekend wrapping up, so plenty of time to kill.

What's cool to do in Puerto Vallarta during the day??

Hearing rumours that the set of Arnold's classic "The Predator" is half an hour up the road.

Gotta be kidding.

Hit the road, locate a dirt path we follow up into the hills.

Thought this was a really innovative way of babysitting the kids -- who needs parenting when you can leave the little bastards in a chained up trampolene??

YES!!

The Predator. A true honour. Feeling so blessed.

Alright, so here's what gets me.

Arnold Swarzenneger........THE MAN.

Living his life and having a ball doing it.

Becomes a mega movie star, nearly a billionaire businessman, marries into the Kennedy family, gets elected by the people of California to govern one of the most prosperous economies in the world.

Meanwhile TWENTY YEARS LATER this little shred of his past existence, like a faint dream in his mind, is still going -- possibly the cheesiest tourist concept known to man.

Wonder if he knows about it. What would he think??

Open-air restaurant and surrounding jungle is pretty darned cool though, gotta say.

Thought I'd get this tee-shirt and hat for Jeffy cause he gets tickled by this type of absurdity -- but figured photo and appropriate posedown was probably equally bizarre.

Way out is nice.

Sun is going down and I want to make it to Sayulita on the way back before dark.

Had to first scramble down a semi steep dirt hill to get a good view of this interesting looking rock.

Perched up against a tree, gotta stop getting distracted and make it to Sayulita!!

Story behind it is this...

So my buddy Alex Allman hears I'm in Mexico and emails me about a mutual wealthy friend of ours who's left California and relocated permanently to this little surf town called "Sayulita".

Fourty five minutes outside Puerto Vallarta.

Gotta to be pretty unique cause dude could live almost anywhere in the world.

He's off to California while we pass through, we're fine to do our own thing.

Get into town just before dark -- miscalculated the sunset, but hey, at least we got to spend an extra hour in awe of the Predator. Woops.

Arrive in Sayulita and it appears like a typically low-income town from the outskirts. Shacks and all that.

Initially sceptical but driving in it's looking more and more interesting.

Slick, very slick. Love it.

Downtown is full of life and good vibes. Mexico meets the happiness factor of Disneyworld.

Everyone's walking around, surfers, tourists, co-existing happily with the locals from what it seems.

There's apparently big mansions up in the hills but can't see them at night.

Restaurants are the bomb. People are congregating at the Zocalo watching a dance troop.

Cool little stores, like this one with the sand floor, it's obvious why this place is addictive.

A few hours in and out, and it's back to Guadalajara for the flight to Cancun.

Figure it's some cheesy tourist joint. Really no idea what to expect.

Growing up in Canada you hear about the rich and popular kids going to Cancun on vacation. Travelling was outside my reality back then so stories always went in one ear out the other.

On the map it looks like some sort of crazy long peninsula. Hard to figure what it looks like in real life.

Flying at night you see the long thin lit up strips of hotels down below.

Stars are out and the ground is blotted out with jungle, the long runs of hotels extending out into the ocean.

Sounds funny to say about a spot like Cancun but from the air it looks mysterious and intriguing.

What the heck is this place??

Apparently it's a square shaped peninsula that's got rows upon rows of expensive resorts lined one after another.

The perfect setup for American tourists because allows them to enjoy the glory-times beach and weather without having to endure too many encounters with real Mexicans.

There's hotels like the "Grand Mayan" which are like an Americanized Mexican-bastardization that actually exist in Mexico. Like the classic Leo Dicaprio flick "The Beach" where the tourists fly all the way to the country just to do the things they do back home.

Regardless Cancun is a part of Mexican culture in that it represents the second highest source of revenue for the country.

So much so that when the peninsula was flattened by Hurricane Wilma it was rebuilt in record time.

And on the good side they've got an unbelievable blue to their ocean and perfect white sand -- all visible from almost every hotel.

Anyway asking around, asking around...

Keep hearing there's a much tighter spot called "Playa Del Carmen" about 45 minutes up the road.

Chill spot of choice for Europeans, let's see if it lives up to the hype.

Uhhhhhh.....Yes!!

Playa Del Carmen is loaded with super trendy & chill lounges similar to Cafe Del Mar in Ibiza -- literally perfect for bootcamp and playing a little POOOAH.

I will be back, to live. Next year 100% for sure.

No need to check out the local pyramids and ruins because I'm coming back. Gives me something to look forward to.

Anyway it's about that time.

Pack the suitcases and hit the airport for the final flight before heading back to the US -- off to Cabo Sans Lucas with connection via Mexico City.

Flying out of Quintana Roo in the daytime, jungle extends outwards as far as the eye can see.

Clean air, clean ocean, nice clear day. Beautiful.

Recommended: CLICK these pics to make them full sized and see how the landscape changes as you approach Mexico City.

Flying over mountains outside the D.F. it's harder to see the ground as the air becomes tinted with a slight grey.

There's miles of industrial excavations outside the city.

Human habitation starts a long way out from Centro because it's so sprawling, endless, and vast.

Sky is tinted with white/grey such that only the landscape below you is visible.

Try to look too far up, left, or right and you can't see properly due to the air pollution that's trapped in the "bowl shaped" city by the surrounding mountains.

Keep flying and flying, with endless urban sprawl.

As you land some colonias (aka -- neighbourhoods) are more visible because they've taken the effort to plant an unusually high number of trees.

The green parts of the city are very pleasant because so few metropolises are innundated with as many trees as the wealthy parts of the D.F.

What the local government needs to do is spread that out throughout the rest of the city -- or use some sort of vegetation that can grow all over literally every building from top to bottom and clean the air.

And there it is. Landed in Mexico City once again.

Like everyone I've got a love/hate relationship with the place.

Hot clubs, hot women, all the high society stuff you can ever want.

It's exciting and cultural and you could explore the place endlessly for months at a time.

Pros and cons, pros and cons.

Stay in the airport for about an hour and board the airplane for Cabo.

Fly past Guadalajara again...

Then over the Gulf of California (aka -- Mar de Cortés) to reach the deserts of Baja California Sur.

Rolling deserts with bright colors.

Overhead it looks different from anywhere I've ever been.

First time exploring this type of terrain.

It's not the lush green landscapes I've come to appreciate in Hawaii but equally beautiful in it's own way.

Landing in Cabo we're introduced to the trade that basically built a brand new economy in the middle of the desert -- timeshare sales.

The locals are all in on it, from the guy who helps you with your bags to the taxi driver to the hotel clerks to the waitresses.

Never have I seen such fearless and aggressive salesmen anywhere -- we could all learn something from the way they "plow" and have no fear of rejection.

Dodge and weave our way past them to the rental car and go for the convertible.

One hour drive from the airport to Cabo Sans Lucas is extreme happy fun times -- one of the most stunning of my life.

Wake up the next morning to a beach so bright I can barely open my eyes.

Los Arcos is the symbol that Cabo is known for and while in pictures it might look random in real life it is obvious why.

Time to hit the trails, see how far we can make it up the peninsula before it gets dark.

Driving there are many government housing projects.

To an American they likely look whatever, but they're a luxury in comparison to the standard ghettos I've been seeing through the rest of the country (particularly in the South).

Seeing the region by car is a lot like flying over by airplane, except close up and personal.

On the way up the peninsula we discover an ATV'ing spot, where I teach the GF how it's done.

ATV'ing winds up becoming a lifetime hobby of mine during this trip. Fully addicted.

Trail leads up to a vista of countryside.

Relax for a bit, then it's back home before dark.

And finally, after six weeks..............it's the final day in Mexico.

Can't believe I'm going back to the US. Mixed emotions. Gotta make it good.

Decide to head up towards the small surfer towns on the coast.

Pass through the "non-tourist" areas on the outskirts of the city (you know what that means) and make it through an ocean of cactuses.

Never seen this many before, blasting down the road to make it as far out as possible and then head back in before dark -- preferably avoiding traversing the non-tourist areas in a convertible on the way back in.

Towards sundown we spot a road sketchy dirt road down the to the ocean off in the distance.

Drive down the road and stumble onto a spot that rents ATVs.

These are not just regular ATVs. These are standard transmission, high powered beasts.

And the trail is leading off along the hills tracing the ocean. It must be explored.

It's closing time. Everybody's going home. Gotta convince the manager to let us take one last ride.

The owner agrees to offer a private tour.

Teach the girlfriend how to operate the standard transmission (years of living with my insanity -- she is hardcore), and we're off ripping into the hills.

Experience with the owner is really uplifting.

Barely spoke to the guy, but was not necessary. He comes across as a very enlightened dude.

Grounded, humble, value offering, and seemingly very at peace with himself. Simultaneously charismatic and respected with his employees and 100% in control of his world.

He's from the coast of Spain near Morocco, the business and surrounding trail sites he's entirely set up on his own.

He takes pride in his work and our enjoyment of the tour without wanting any credit for it. At the end he will not accept a tip, and gives the GF the sweater off his back so she'll be warm on the drive home.

For me it represented the type of peace that can be learned from spending your life working hard and in the outdoors, and also, a reminder that there are very good people in the world.

Turns out we don't make the drive home before dark.

Side of the road is covered in dead cows -- the GF spots about 5 or 6 on the way back to the hotel.

Farmers apparently don't fence them in, so every night it's cow happy time on the highways of Los Cabos.

Get lost for a while in the sketchy neighbourhoods, but after six weeks in Mexico it's all good.

Final night in Mexico. Gotta pack and get some sleep.

Can't believe I'm heading home. Mixed emotions. It was an adventure.

Next two weeks are to be in Los Angeles for instructor training.

Then it's Spring in Hawaii, Summer in Europe, and of course the upcoming Africa and South America trips.

Lots of travelling ahead of me in the coming months. Got a mountain of work to do in Honolulu to prepare.

Flying back into Los Angeles it looks like the entire city is paved in diamonds and gold.

How is it possible?? This money?? This opulence??

In the same way Mexico looked so strange at first, having been away from the US it now looks almost absurd.

(That's me reppin' Hawaii with the hang-loose).

Mexico was a tough trip for me.

At various points I slipped into a mindset of "What the heck am I doing here??" and considered packing up and going home.

There's something about that "reptilian brain" that wants to have a lair that's stable to go back to.

Travelling might seem glorious but it's also draining and throws a monkey wrench into all the daily routines that keep you stable and on track.

At times driving through hours upon hours of poverty between cities I felt like I couldn't look at it anymore -- like I just wanted to shut my mind off and pretend it didn't exist.

I'm the type of dude where I have a hard time just experiencing life passively.

I've learned to experience my emotions a lot more vividly in the past years and when I'm new to an environment my brain is soaking up everything like a sponge.

Driving through the outskirts of the cities in Guererro, with the burnt out buildings and garbage and lack of resources -- it felt like I was in a movie I needed to turn off.

It wasn't so much that it existed (social problems exist everywhere and always will) but rather the MILES AND MILES of it.

The social challenges in the world are so vast that most people just choose to ignore them.

Government is oftentimes slow to act and bogged down in bureaucracy, as we see with the education system's inability to stay on the cutting-edge.

As a business owner I look at the speed of implementation in these organizations and just cringe.

Privitization also comes with it's own sets of problems, and then of course, there's the cultural aspect that many people simply have no desire to elevate themselves because it's outside their existing reality.

Then you have the issue of globalization and consumerism where the question is whether our "advanced" society is even desirable in the first place.

I really have no answers to this and I doubt that anyone does at this point.

The more I learn the more I realize I don't know, and that many of my old opinions were pure "know it all" speculation.

To be a leader all you can do is experience the world with a fresh set of eyes, study study study, and become the type of competent and affluent person who has the ability to make things happen.

In the meantime you've gotta have a lot of fun, because if you lose sight of that, then you become myopic and the bigger picture becomes lost.

Mexico was a unique place and a profound experience because of it's highs and lows, it's vast cultural diversity, and it's amazing people.

I've spoken about travelling a lot after having so many intense experiences over the years -- and I've always thought about doing an article that opens up a window into my world.

Oftentimes I think people get put off with the level of enthusiasm I have for everything I do, and maybe that's because they've done similar types of things and didn't find them to be as climatic or profound.

For me it is just the opposite of that, maybe because I was never a guy who was supposed to make it this far, and it is just the most amazing thing.

Finally I thought I'd stop thinking about writing something up and actually just put the pad to paper (figuratively), which is what this long diatribe has really been all about.

Hopefully you've enjoyed it, and maybe found a source of motivation for doing whatever things in life it is that YOU personally want to do.

Thanks for checking it out.

Tyler

Appreciating What The People In Your Life Bring To The Table

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler-Real Social Dynamics) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:03:00 +0000

Pic of the crew down at the FN Superconference in Australia.

Man I wish I was there...

Anyway wanted to get into a really important article, and while it may not come across as climatic, if the title has grabbed you on any level I recommend you read it carefully all the way through.

Maybe you know this stuff already, and in that case it's a reminder.

Or maybe you've been walking through life without a map like this, and it's really what you need to hear.

I want to talk about a tendency today that I've watched friends and foes alike use to destroy their own lives and happiness.

This the tendency of failing to appreciate (or perhaps better stated -- to *forget*) what the people you surround yourself with are bringing to the table.

We're talking classic self-sabotage here.

Screw Your Life Up 101.

We all do it to various extents, it's just a matter of how much we're able to recognize and keep it in check.

I've seen it over and over, especially in situations where people's lives are about to hit a "next level".

Here is my opinion of how and why this occurs.

Basically we all have a concept in our minds about how much success we're supposed to have in life.

Most people think that success is a positive event that they would welcome.

That's not entirely true however -- or at least, life doesn't tend to be that simple.

In reality any time your quality of life starts to accelerate past your mind's unconscious concept of where you're "supposed" to be you are now leaving your comfort zone.

When this happens, you slam into what's known as a "success barrier".

And what happens next??

The good old "RAS" (reticular activation system -- the psychological mechanism that makes you FOCUS on certain events and SCREEN OUT others) kicks in and starts playing tricks on you.

Rationalizations deluxe.

You start to focus on petty bullshit, lose sight of the big picture, and forget just how far it is you've come.

(Not to mention how far down you'll fall when you return to your old situation).

Oftentimes this comes in the form of allowing disputes to escalate with the people in your life who are most helping to move you forward.

Why??

Because it's those valuable relationships that your mind recognizes as being the easiest leverage-points to sabotage and bring you back down to your previous life.

"So-and-so doesn't really appreciate me..."

"They have no idea what I'm bringing to the table, they'd be so lost without me..."

"The biggest source of stress in my life is so and so...I could be so much happier and do so much better on my own..."

Etc etc.

Now sometimes this is actually true.

To be a winner in life you need to recognize the people who are polluting your mental/spiritual space with negative influence and allow them to go their separate ways.

At the same time, the key to remember is that if you got involved with the person in the first place then surely there WAS a good reason for it at one point.

Moreover, the brutal reality is that oftentimes you need to look at YOURSELF.

Because if you're failing to get along with one person then there's a decent chance that the same dysfunctional tendency will rear it's head in your next relationship as well.

I can say personally that whenever I've fought with my girlfriend I've always had to take a pause and ask myself some hard questions like (and these sound easy -- but they're a lot tougher than just letting your mind go off into it's indignant default state):

"What's causing this??"

"Even if it's her, is this behaviour totally independent or is it a mirror of something I'm putting out there??"

"Realistically if I broke up would I wind up in the same type of argument with my next girlfriend as well??"

Being in a relationship when your job is to take out guys to pick up other girls on the weekends is not easy.

But just by asking these types of questions I've been able to do what no other "POOOAH guru" I'm aware of has done successfully -- maintain a relationship for nearly 4 years.

One thing you'll notice about me is also that I've never spoken a negative word publically about anyone I've ever been involved with.

Obviously that's because it's second-class behaviour and I expect more from myself.

But more importantly, it's also because I recognize if I've had a falling out with someone that it's more important to focus on what I can learn from it than it is to run around trying to rally people towards my opinion so my ego can say "Look!! Everyone agrees with me!! I must be right!!"

The way I see it is life is a learning-curve.

You always have the option to keep evolving to the next paradigm for as long as you're interested -- which means becoming a better person and more fit to live in the world with every single year of your life.

For me, every relationship -- whether with business or women or students or friends -- is an opportunity to become better at relating to people.

I know in my case in the first few years of running RSD I allowed a lot of relationships to go sour.

In the following years I learned from it and probably managed to cut that out of my life ten fold -- where now even with a 100+ person staff and over 100 times more clients who I come into contact with, I've learned to relate to people on a level that I know is Win/Win.

Will that always be the case??

Of course not. But it's continued to improve.

I know with Papa (AKA Nick Kho -- CEO of Real Social Dynamics) and myself there are probably no two people who are more opposite on this earth.

That's both in terms of our personalities as well as our 180 degree different visions for RSD.

We communicate differently, we think very differently, we look at the world ENTIRELY differently.

Any day of the week, if you know us both, you can look at RSD as an organization and figure out which element was Papa's decision and which one was mine.

But we work through it and we compromise -- and that's why the organization has weathered adversity for all these years.

It reminds of a few years back reading the epic "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

Instantly I related to how the lead character, Dagny Taggert, had the brother who insisted she produce her usual stellar results despite that he was cutting her off of from the resources she needed to do so.

The brother would yell and scream to get what he wanted -- thinking he could "shut his eyes to reality" and make enough of a stink that the world would just magically alter itself to accomodate his unrealistic ideals.

At the time, and as a guy a few years younger than I am now, I felt like that was Papa and I.

Contained in my own personal myth was the idea of myself as the creative guy who produced the programs that we were known for.

Nick was the guy who wanted me to keep creating more of these at the same high calibre -- but at a faster rate because he had no concept of the time and effort that was involved.

With more experience, however, I began to grasp the old self help principle of "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

The more realistic perspective of the matter is that both Nick and I slipped back and forth between the various roles.

On one level, with only 16 waking hours in a day Nick wasn't realistic to think I'd produce the type of material RSD is known for at a faster rate.

At the same time, one thing I didn't realize was that in many ways the person who was acting like Dagny Taggart's brother from the story was ME.

In insisting that product quality match my vision to the most obnoxious extent (far beyond what 99% of people could even recognize or appreciate), I was ignoring the reality that Papa was being forced to pull nerve-wracking highwire acts to find the venture-capital to keep us afloat.

RSD is an entity far larger than myself, and it is not my personal empire to make meet my every creative impulse any more than it is Papa's to use as a personal piggybank.

My rigidity nearly bankrupted us several times over the years, and that put Nick under a stress that I could never understand without having been in his shoes.

It is very easy, for example, to say "Fuck anyone who's in it for the money."

But there's also a harsh reality to money, and unless you've been in the situation where you're forced to come up with it out of thin air like Nick, your opinion really doesn't mean shit.

So see, in the same way I'd read Atlas Shrugged and thought "If Nick read this he'd instantly understand where I'm coming from" if Nick were to read the same book (which incidentally he has recently but we haven't talked about it) he would very likely think in reverse the same thing.

We are ALL the heroes and justified individuals in our own personal mythology.

We're in the right, God is on our side, and everyone who doesn't see that is just fucked.

But in reality, or at least as close to it as we can get, the people we surround ourselves with often bring more to the table than we can possibly realize unless we pause and take stock.

It is extremely easy to forget, and a very hard thing to focus on when we're feeling self-justified and looking to lay the blame.

(Especially in the same neurotic detail that we focus on the other person's bad sides when we're in a "mood").

I mean really, how often do you stop to be appreciative for what you get out of your relationships in comparison to how much you spend thinking about the downsides and the bigger and better deal??

But that's unchecked human nature in all it's glory...

Our inflated delusional egos which seek to give us confidence that we don't need anybody -- maybe serving the purpose of allowing us to put on a front so people won't think we need them too much -- which causes us to make these bone-headed moves.

And you know, probably a good 50% of people reading this are engaged in a self-dialogue right now where they're saying "This overly optimistic bullshit doesn't apply to me, I don't get into "moods", blah blah blah."

Of course it's not going to get them anywhere, but at least it will keep their belief systems temporarily intact.

In the meantime, I'm trying to focus on what's good about the people in my life, and bringing more of that energy in my direction every single day.

Have fun!!

Tyler