Stop bullshitting yourself

A phenomenon I sometimes encounter in my consultations is that guys aren’t honest with regards to their level of success with women, or the complete lack thereof. Often it takes five or ten minutes until they finally admit that they are virgins, or have had a sloppy make out with some drunk chick at a party five years ago, and no action whatsoever since then. Of course, I don’t intend to mock those guys. In fact, it’s great when they reach out and ask for help.

Yet, I think that whenever you are not honest with yourself, no matter what we are talking about, you will only make it harder for yourself to really progress. To give you a simple example: If you go around thinking that you are doing “quite well with women” or that you are “pretty okay with girls”, when in fact you barely dare to speak to them, but occasionally get phone numbers or contact details that rarely lead to dates, and those dates never go anywhere, then you’ve got a problem.

Instead, it’s probably better to quantify your level of success, and don’t attempt any kind of justification. It’s just a number in the end. To give you one particularly egregious example I dealt with last month (I asked the guy for his approval to discuss this on my blog): I ask the dude to recount his experiences with women, in order to zero in on root causes of his problems, but I couldn’t get any clear answers out of him for a while. It began with him claiming that he has had sex with “less than ten women”, implying that it was a number close to ten. I pointed out to him that he is only wasting his time and money if he’s not being honest with me, which caused him to tell me about his only sexual experience, which consisted of him meeting a girl that did all the work. He got hard, put a condom on, fumbled to get his dick in but eventually managed. Yet, he got limp again within seconds, slipped out, and was unable to get it up again. It’s no big deal, and nothing experience couldn’t fix. Yet, in the end it emerged that his total count was a grand total of one, if you count very generously.

Him telling me that he has had sex with “less than ten women” is about as truthful as me saying that I have a net worth of “less than ten billion dollars”. Sure, it’s a true statement, but it’s totally ridiculous, as I’m so far off that number it’s not even funny. Yet, I have noticed the same kind of bullshit so often it really is not funny. How often do guys tell that they “bought a car” or “own a car” when they are leasing it, or finance it with a loan? How many people claim they own a house or an apartment even though they are decades away from paying off their mortgage? How many guys claim they are “great managers” or are “experts” in this or that skill? Far too many.

Now consider the psychological effect of lying to yourself. Who do you think is more likely to actively work on getting better with women? A guy who wants to get laid, gets some interest, but is fully aware that he can’t “close” his dates, or some chest-thumping bro who has fucked “less than twenty-five women”? Similarly, who will more diligently pay off his mortgage, finance-bro who “owns a house”, or diligent-bro who admits to himself that he is $250k in the hole, and that compound interest will fuck up his future financial planning if he doesn’t steadily pay off his mortgage? Or think of coder-bro who is an “expert” in fifteen programming languages and knows the “full stack”. Is he likely to invest time in mastering just one or two skills, or is his colleague modest-bro who is aware that he has gaps in his knowledge more likely to do so?

In the end, the choice is yours. However, one path will lead to people saying on their deathbed that they’ve fucked “less than ten women”, while someone more honest with himself may actually end up getting laid. The other examples I mentioned are similar inasmuch as bullshitting yourself may allow you to be content with your mediocrity, while honesty may make you want to really get better at something.

5 thoughts on “Stop bullshitting yourself

  1. What I am going to say is very stupid. Yet, I want to know what it really means. Since you mentioned the same in this post, what does it mean to be honest with yourself?

    I lied to my teachers, parents, friends and etc. more than I told the truth when I was younger. Does that mean I wasn’t being honest with myself?

    How did I end up getting laid often even when I lied about it to my friends?

    I am not looking for a dictionary definition but a explanation of a vague concept, at least to me it is vague.

  2. Your anecdote about the client reminded me of a past comment of yours along the lines that if you have crippling social anxiety, then therapy might be more applicable than learning how to get better with women.

  3. This bullshitting yourself scheme in Pick Up seems to be a remainder of the “fake it till you make it” by Mystery.
    Or, more likely, people have been bullshitting themselves forever and PUA just made it work for them, just like in many other “service industries”.

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