Chickfight
Senior Don Juan
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2010
- Messages
- 477
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- 30
One important lesson I've learnt is to constantly live on the edge of your comfort zone. Not completely in it, but not completely out of it either. The reason for this is nobody can maintain living COMPLETELY out of their comfort zone for extended period of times. The only reason people reach that far out is out of desperation and when it ultimately fails, it teaches them a false lesson that going out of your comfort zone is bad.
I think back to when I was fourteen. I never had girlfriend, never even had a real female friend. I had a couple of friends who were considered "cool", but I was not. Mostly because I was extremely shy. One day I found out a girl was pretty into me. Apparently the girls had a list in written in their bathroom of the hottest guys in school and I was listed 3rd by her recommendation. So I'm thinking "**** it, lets do this." So I asked for her number in chat and then texted her asking to be my girlfriend. I had spoken the total of about one sentence to her in person. Needless to say it didn't work, and I was so crushed I receded back into my shell. It just reinforced my reality that getting a girlfriend was an impossible task and it was four more years until i finally kissed a girl.
When you're living on the edge, you're constantly doing things that make you slightly uncomfortable. If you're in a club and walking up to a girl and getting her number seems like an impossible task to you, don't try to do it. Instead, make yourself do something only slightly out of you comfort zone. Walk up to her and just smile and say hi instead and leave. If you're constantly walking up to girls saying hi, eventually you'll be so comfortable doing this, you'll get bored just saying hi and you'll WANT to push it a bit further. Maybe say hi and introduce yourself, and so on and so forth.
I'm not advocating to not take risks. I love taking risks, but it falls under the same rule. If you're scared to death of taking any risks. You shouldn't suddenly put it all on the line. Consistently take small risks instead. Eventually it'll be normal for you to be taking small risks, and you can start pushing yourself to taking bigger ones, with confidence to back it up. The reason you can't be insanely out of your comfort zone is that when you approach something like that, you don't have any foundation of confidence behind it. You'll go at it with false bravado which will completely crumble at the slightest external pressure.
An example; you're afraid of standing up for yourself and calling people on their bullsh!t, because you fear getting ostrasized or whatever. You've never done it before. One day, you suddenly get frustrated and shout out "YOU'RE FULL OF SH!TT!!" to someone fvcking with you. Everyone looks at you like you're crazy and you actually do get shunned. Suddenly your confidence crumbles and you wonder what the hell you were thinking.
What if you had taken a different approach to this? What if instead you started telling people "I don't agree with that" or "why you gotta be like that?". You keep standing up for yourself consistently and pushing that further until you become so comfortable standing up for yourself that one day when a someone starts giving you bullsh!t, you just laugh in their face and calmly tell then to piss off. That's real deep-rooted confidence behind that and nobody would shun you for that, they respect you for that. A couple of kids might look at you like "I can't believe he just said that", but you have such confidence and belief in yourself that their objections just fade away.
The way I see it, when you're living on the edge, you're constantly expanding your comfortzone piece by piece. You're getting PRACTICE taking risks and doing things you wouldn't normally do, but you're never setting yourself up for failure and disaster either. It's a 24/7 task. Repetition is the father of learning and the reason why you get comfortable doing these things is because you KNOW by real firsthand experience you CAN do these things. Being comfortable with any situation comes from confidence which comes from really KNOWING you can do it. If you keep it up, keep living on the edge ALWAYS, you even become comfortable living on the edge. That becomes your standard mode. The only direction you can go is forward and the world becomes your playground. You're free.
I think back to when I was fourteen. I never had girlfriend, never even had a real female friend. I had a couple of friends who were considered "cool", but I was not. Mostly because I was extremely shy. One day I found out a girl was pretty into me. Apparently the girls had a list in written in their bathroom of the hottest guys in school and I was listed 3rd by her recommendation. So I'm thinking "**** it, lets do this." So I asked for her number in chat and then texted her asking to be my girlfriend. I had spoken the total of about one sentence to her in person. Needless to say it didn't work, and I was so crushed I receded back into my shell. It just reinforced my reality that getting a girlfriend was an impossible task and it was four more years until i finally kissed a girl.
When you're living on the edge, you're constantly doing things that make you slightly uncomfortable. If you're in a club and walking up to a girl and getting her number seems like an impossible task to you, don't try to do it. Instead, make yourself do something only slightly out of you comfort zone. Walk up to her and just smile and say hi instead and leave. If you're constantly walking up to girls saying hi, eventually you'll be so comfortable doing this, you'll get bored just saying hi and you'll WANT to push it a bit further. Maybe say hi and introduce yourself, and so on and so forth.
I'm not advocating to not take risks. I love taking risks, but it falls under the same rule. If you're scared to death of taking any risks. You shouldn't suddenly put it all on the line. Consistently take small risks instead. Eventually it'll be normal for you to be taking small risks, and you can start pushing yourself to taking bigger ones, with confidence to back it up. The reason you can't be insanely out of your comfort zone is that when you approach something like that, you don't have any foundation of confidence behind it. You'll go at it with false bravado which will completely crumble at the slightest external pressure.
An example; you're afraid of standing up for yourself and calling people on their bullsh!t, because you fear getting ostrasized or whatever. You've never done it before. One day, you suddenly get frustrated and shout out "YOU'RE FULL OF SH!TT!!" to someone fvcking with you. Everyone looks at you like you're crazy and you actually do get shunned. Suddenly your confidence crumbles and you wonder what the hell you were thinking.
What if you had taken a different approach to this? What if instead you started telling people "I don't agree with that" or "why you gotta be like that?". You keep standing up for yourself consistently and pushing that further until you become so comfortable standing up for yourself that one day when a someone starts giving you bullsh!t, you just laugh in their face and calmly tell then to piss off. That's real deep-rooted confidence behind that and nobody would shun you for that, they respect you for that. A couple of kids might look at you like "I can't believe he just said that", but you have such confidence and belief in yourself that their objections just fade away.
The way I see it, when you're living on the edge, you're constantly expanding your comfortzone piece by piece. You're getting PRACTICE taking risks and doing things you wouldn't normally do, but you're never setting yourself up for failure and disaster either. It's a 24/7 task. Repetition is the father of learning and the reason why you get comfortable doing these things is because you KNOW by real firsthand experience you CAN do these things. Being comfortable with any situation comes from confidence which comes from really KNOWING you can do it. If you keep it up, keep living on the edge ALWAYS, you even become comfortable living on the edge. That becomes your standard mode. The only direction you can go is forward and the world becomes your playground. You're free.
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