- Disclaimer: I’m not being paid to write this, nor have I been given anything for this review. I am doing this review because of an article I love on Dr. NerdLove (find it here, it’s about what couples can learn from Gomez and Morticia Addams. PHENOMENALLY AWESOME READ). After reading more I wanted to do an article about how to build your lifestyle based on Dr. NerdLove. A lifestyle that you will love and makes you happy.
- I think Harris has some great stuff on his website, and this isn’t all that he focuses on. But building your lifestyle is what I will focus on in this review
- Link to website
The Positive Value of Anger
Are you happy with your life? Or do you sometimes get frustrated, or even angry that it isn’t where you want it to be? Are you trying to build a lifestyle that you’ll love, filled with women who find you attractive and friends who look up to you?
I’ll be honest, sometimes I feel an indescribable rage. I have had back-to-back worst years of my life. 2017 hit me like a big bag of thundercocks. Then 2018 followed up like a train blazing full speed ahead right into my chest.
My life isn’t where I want it to be. And that’s okay.
It’s also okay if your life isn’t where you want it to be.
Anger, when channeled and controlled, can be a force for good. That’s a point that I loved on Harris’ site, an article on the Positive Value of Anger.
Anger, he argues, is like fire. Fire, when used properly gives us life. It helps us cook food, it helped propel the human race forward. Without fire, where would we be right now?
While not directly related on how to build a lifestyle, it is something worth noting. Because someone who is consumed with rage all of the time cannot develop a lifestyle that will make them happy.
Harris opens the article talking about what people get wrong about anger. That you shouldn’t actually ‘let off steam’ as it makes people angrier.
Someone gets angry, then does something to ‘let off steam’ and it feels good. This helps create a vicious cycle of ‘get angry and then feel good’.
Then of course there is the other terrible aspect of wrath. One where someone will lash out whenever they get the slightest chance.
What Should We Do With Our Rage?
Where does that leave us on how to build a lifestyle? How do we use our rage to do something good?
Harris has a great personal story that he uses to illustrate his point. To keep from spoiling his article, I’ll leave the link here again for you to check out. It’s a great read.
But what is this special trick?
Simple, you get angry at your life. You get angry, and think about what is making you angry.
Is it a lack of something? Or is it about a problem in your life?
Since this website is about personal development and learning more about women we’ll use that as an example.
If a guy lacks women in his life, it’s okay to get mad about it. Harris admits that this is what got him started on talking to women.
This is also what got me started on my journey. There was a girl that went back to her abusive (her words not mine) ex instead of going on a date with me. Even after she expressed a lot of interest in me.
It was something that I could not understand for the life of me at the time. While I never lashed out at her, I was angry with her. Though I understand it perfectly now, it took a long time to get here.
That was the moment that I got pissed off with women in general. It was also the moment that I decided that in order to build a lifestyle that would make me happy, I needed to get this woman thing under control.
I knew the problem: women didn’t find me attractive. I also knew the solution: become attractive to women. All that was left was the goal: to bring women into my life.
I felt an empty wrath at my lack of women. The anger was the lack of women, and the fact that they weren’t attracted to me.
The goal was to fix that.
The rage I felt was the fuel that would give me the motivation I needed to reach that goal.
And that’s what Harris argues is the positive force of anger. Use it like gasoline to reach your goals.
Don’t let your rage consume you, don’t let it get to a point where it takes over. And don’t try to bottle it up. Instead, accept it and try to understand it.
Why are you getting angry? What is triggering this wrath?
Once you figure that out you can start fixing it. Then live with that rage whenever you want to quit.
If you start working towards a goal and start getting lazy I want you to come back to your fury. When you want to quit I want you to remember the pain that started your journey. Then I want you to keep going. Keep going and reach your goals.
Once you reach your goals you can let go of the pain and anger that it once brought. You can allow yourself to be happy and content. But you’ll find, that once you start down the rabbit hole of self-improvement you get addicted to it.
That’s also a great thing, in my humble opinion.
But now that we know what to do with out anger, let’s look into how to use it to change our lives and build a lifestyle we can fall in love with:
The Grimes Test and What It Means for Your Love Life
If you want the short version of this section, check out Harris’ article on what he calls “The Grimes Test“. The entire page is an infographic about this very section, and the next article we’ll cover.
The article opens with what people generally ask. Things like “How to message that hottie on Tinder?” or “What does it take to get a girlfriend?”.
Instead Harris wants you to ask yourself “Why do I deserve to have a girlfriend?”.
Honestly, the answer to that question is less than what a lot of people think it is. That’s the good news for the type of people that don’t want to listen to excuses.
But the answer to that question is more than what ‘nice guys’ want it to be. A lot more, which is the bad news.
The Grimes Test goes into it a little more, but more or less; a lot of ‘nice guys’ ask why women don’t love them. They’re so nice after all!
Well, congratulations to nice guys everywhere! Nobody gives a fuck.
Being a respectable human being is the bare minimum. However, being respectable is not the same as being respected (check out this article on how to get more respect).
Women are attracted to strength. Even men are, in some ways, attracted to strength in other men (and I don’t mean sexually in this case, though that could happen depending on the person).
Being nice isn’t strong, it’s just being nice. It doesn’t mean that you have to be an asshole, though some damaged people will confuse that with being strong.
No, what I mean is just that; being strong. It means standing up for yourself, which I’ll get into more later in this post and also in the post linked a few paragraphs up. It also means being in control of your life, which we will partially cover right now.
Become Someone Worth Dating
Here again, Harris covers five general tips on becoming someone worth dating. These aren’t the only things you need to do, far from it in fact. But if you get these things down you will be ahead of most average joes. Certainly all of the impotent ‘nice guys’.
Let’s cover a few:
Get Your Shit Together
This doesn’t mean that you have to own three Ferrari’s and a colossal mansion.
Neither does it mean that you have to be such a pillar of manliness and strength that you make Hercules himself jealous.
But it does mean that you can’t be like the guys in this sub Reddit.
What Harris is talking about in this section is that women don’t want to date the types of guys who get mad over being single. Similarly, they don’t want to date people who are full-on rage monsters, or about to be.
For me, this was something that hit me pretty hard. I had to disappear from the dating scene for a little while. I was angry all of the time and I had to work on it.
Yes, it sucked. Yes, I was horny pretty much all of the time.
Doesn’t matter.
I knew that women didn’t want that version of me. Hell, I didn’t even want that version of me.
Therefore it was something that I had to work on.
Even now I still get depressed and frustrated at times. But because I’ve worked on it, it’s not something that consumes me. I’m no longer a walking powder keg ready to explode at any minute. And more importantly, I’m using this to further my life in ways that will make me happy, not just content.
Back then, I knew that if a woman rejected me I would get pissed off at her. It wouldn’t even have been about the woman, she would have only been a trigger because of everything happening to me at the time.
That’s bad.
Therefore, I avoided women because I didn’t want that to happen.
Now, rejections still sting a bit, sure. I won’t lie to you. But they don’t make my blood boil like the guys in that sub-Reddit.
I have some emotional self-control. And I’m working on the parts of my life that were shattered over the past two years. A great deal of what happened these past two years weren’t even within my control.
In some ways, my rage was justifiable and even understandable.
Whatever you’re going through might not be under your control. Your own rage might be understandable.
I feel for you. I feel for you because I’ve been there.
But it doesn’t matter.
As men, it’s our job to take command of our own lives. It’s tough at times. Sometimes I hated it and I still do every once in a while.
But as Harris is telling us in the article, and as I’m telling you in this review: it has to get done.
There’s no shame in it. There’s no reason to feel guilty about it.
Just do your best and day by day keep improving little by little. Use your rage, don’t let it use you.
Don’t give up, and keep moving forward. We’ll get there 🙂
Get Fit to Build a Lifestyle You Can Be Proud of
This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point.
When you are working on your mental health, work on your physical health while you’re at it.
You will look more attractive, you will feel more attractive and exercise is a great stress reliever. Burning off that stress will do wonders for helping your mental health as well.
It’s a positive cycle that feeds into itself.
Again, this doesn’t mean that you have to look like a male model. Just get in the best shape that you can possibly get into.
Cut down on the junk food and start eating better. Pick a diet that you can stick to for the rest of your life. Then do it.
For me, personally, this is a keto inspired diet. For the watered down version; the keto diet is a diet that tries to drastically lower the amount of carbs you eat. It also focuses on eating healthy fats.
I say keto inspired because I can’t get rid of my fruit and I don’t want to (some fruits have quite a few carbs in them, not called nature’s candy for nothing).
With the exception of eating junk food once a week or so, this is something that I can stick to pretty well for the rest of my life.
I’ve lost weight doing this and this is what is working for me, even though I’m not even exercising at the time of this writing.
In addition, once I get my financial life under control I plan on joining a rock-climbing gym that also does yoga classes. Then I want to get into martial arts, swimming and a whole host of other physical activities.
Choose Something You Enjoy Doing
There are a lot of ways to exercise. This is your life. When it comes to building a lifestyle you will love you have a lot of freedom to choose what you want.
While a lot of men swear by it, you can do things other than just lift heavy weights.
For a lot of men out there, that’s the ideal for them. That’s the way that they choose to exercise and it makes them feel great.
Not so for me, and it may or may not be that way for you.
Just pick something you enjoy doing. Something that adds to your life. Remember, we’re trying to build a lifestyle. We don’t want a fad diet. Neither do we want to do a bunch of stuff that we will hate.
What we want, is a lifestyle that we will love. That’s what we’re trying to build. What’s the point of living if you hate your life?
There are a monstrous amount of options for you to choose from. Just get out there and verb while being aware of what you put into your body.
Dr. NerdLove has a few more points he addresses in the article so make sure to check it out. But for now, let’s dive into what it means to get your ideal lifestyle.
Develop Your Lifestyle
Though not the beginning of the article, nor the only thing in the article (which is great, make sure to give it a read), it was something that I feel is neglected a lot.
This one single point that I feel is the most important in Dr. NerdLove’s article about developing your lifestyle:
Build a Lifestyle to Find Your Tribe
While you’re working on your diet and whatever form of exercise you’re choosing, try to find things you can do with other people (and if you need help in charming people to make friends check out this link).
That doesn’t mean that you have to choose some kind of group exercise activity. Perhaps you prefer going to the gym alone. Or maybe, finding your tribe means playing a video game with your friends.
Either of those are perfectly fine. What I mean is that to have a lifestyle that you will fall in love with, you have to do things that will help bring people into your life.
Human beings are social animals. That means that we need friends, we need lovers and we need a tribe. A tribe, is more or less a place where you can call home with your friends.
For men, what I suggest is to find some kind of common cause.
Sports are an excellent example, though they aren’t the only ones. Video games, while on the opposite end of the spectrum, can also be the perfect example.
Whatever it is, find a group of people that all have a common goal. This could be self-improvement, this can be sports, this can be a creative group, video games, whatever. It can be almost anything!
There Are Only a Few Rules:
- It has to be something you enjoy doing
- This needs to be something where people in the group help each other
- Try to find more than a single tribe, make sure at least one of them is a guy’s only group
There are a lot of different dynamics at play when you introduce women into an environment. Just like there are lots of different things in a women’s only, or men’s only environment. A coed group can give you things that a men’s only group cannot give you, and the reverse is also true.
The other reason I say this is because we want a lifestyle that can bring women into our lives. This means that if you’re doing something you love, and women are brought into it, it’s a natural next step for some people to pair off with each other.
It doesn’t have to be the only way to bring women into your life. You don’t even have to date women you find in your tribes, but it is one way.
FIND THINGS TO DO ON YOUR OWN
Just like we need each other, we also need to do things on our own.
Let your lifestyle find things that will bring people together, but don’t neglect getting some alone time.
We all need some time that is just for us. Every once in a while, we also need some time where we literally don’t do anything productive.
There are some days where I will become a complete hermit just to recharge my batteries. On days like those I will literally not even speak to a single person. Sometimes, I won’t even see another person in an entire day.
Taken to the extreme, that’s unhealthy. In moderation though, those days become amazing days I look forward to. They help me relax and they’ll do the same for you.
That doesn’t mean that you have to take it as far as I do. Maybe you just need an hour here or there, or perhaps you do need that day once a week.
Find what works for you. Find balance.
That isn’t even close to everything in that article, but it’s such an important point that I had to single it out.
These next two articles are just as important in building your ideal lifestyle, and they go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Lifestyle Hack: Find Your Boundaries
This is the biggest problem that I see with nice guys; they have no boundaries.
Harris starts his article off with a great personal example of him not enforcing his own standards of respect. He also goes into some reasons why it’s so important (besides being attractive).
People who don’t have minimum standards on how they expect to be treated are easy prey for abusers. Back in my own early life, before high school and even during high school I was like this. I was prey.
And people knew that. Therefore, I became an easy target and allowed people to run over me.
Do you think this made me happy?
FUCK NO IT DIDN’T!
I was miserable.
It wasn’t until I started to love myself more and enforce certain things that people started to treat me with basic respect. And that’s not a coincidence.
You see, as much as society likes to preach about how everyone should treat everyone with respect that isn’t how it works in the real world.
No, the real world works much differently. If you want respect you have to earn it.
Defend Your Line in The Sand
Finding your boundaries, and enforcing them, is the single greatest thing that people can do. Not just men, but women too need to find their lines in the sand, and stick to them.
If someone tries to cross that line, then firmly push them back to the other side.
You don’t have to be an asshole to do this, but you do need to be firm. Not enforcing your own personal border is how misunderstandings happen.
I’ll give you an example of my most recent ex girlfriend:
She didn’t like it when I would eat her Oreo cookies. However, she always offered them to me so I thought it was okay to grab one when I was there.
When I did this, she started giggling and playfully punched me in the arm. She did all of that, while also telling me she didn’t want me eating her Oreos unless she offered one to me.
Does that sound like a line in the sand to you?
It certainly didn’t to me.
Little did I know that she was being serious. I did not know this because she wasn’t serious when she brought it up.
It wasn’t until later, in a moment of stress for her about something else, that I learned that this was actually bothering her. This was a shock to me because she was always so clear about her other boundaries. But for some reason, she wasn’t about this one.
It was out of character for her to be so conflict averse, especially for something as boring as “Please don’t eat my Oreo cookies unless I offer them to you”.
Because of the way she tried to draw her Oreo-filled line in the sand I assumed she was joking. Because of that, I interpreted it as her just being a cute, silly girl.
I give you this example because sometimes when people step over a line, it’s not them being an asshole. Some people are just wet noodles and too chicken to say that they don’t like something.
Some people put up with far too much bullshit.
Eating your Oreos isn’t the only way people will take advantage of you (if you let them). This next point was something that was hard for me to understand until I read Harris’ article.
Guilt Trips
I’m going to quote the Doctor on this one (article linked here again for easy access):
How many times have you had someone – a friend, a lover, even family – pull a guilt-trip on you? “Oh, you’re the only one who could do this for me, everybody else just ignores me. You’re the only person who cares about me.” or the ever classic “If you really cared, you’d do this simple thing for me.” They are trying to use guilt as a lever, the better to force you to take on responsibilities that aren’t yours.
How many people have said “How can you not do X when I’ve done Y, Z, and Z1 for you?” – even when you didn’t want them to do these things? They are trading on reciprocity, making you feel obligated to them because they’ve done something for you.
These are people trying to trade on your poor boundaries.
So too are the friends and lovers who will try to drag you into their drama – who have a never-ending list of complaints and grievences that they expect you to take responsibility for. The ones who throw childish tantrums and yell at you if you don’t immediately accede to their wishes. The ones who try to hold you hostage to their whims with threats – threats of cheating on you, threats of breaking up with you, even threats of self-harm… all to keep you in line.
It’s up to you to stop them.
Please don’t get me wrong: I don’t bring this all up in order to blame the victim for the bad actions of others. I bring this up because sometimes people simply don’t recognize the problem in the first place, or understand that they have the power to make it stop, if they only would reach out and take it. It can be difficult to read the words when the book is too close to your face; sometimes you need a little distance and perspective to realize what the issue is.
That was the truth for me. I wasn’t enforcing boundaries on simple things. And I think that’s the same for my ex girlfriend.
When it came to bigger things she would tell me if she didn’t want to do it, or did want to do it. It was the same with me.
In this way, it’s not a matter of not having any boundaries. And I suspect this is the same case for your typical nice guy. They have boundaries, but they don’t have enough of them or feel like they shouldn’t have a line for certain things.
There is a certain truth to that. Sometimes, some people have silly boundaries. And there are a lot of people out there that enforce certain things in a way that isn’t called for.
Here’s an example of a stupid boundary. For those that don’t want to click the link, it talks about something called ‘fart rape’. Where basically if a man farts in front of a woman it’s considered some kind of rape, or something. I’m not entirely sure on the details and I don’t care to be.
That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of. But it is a great example of a silly boundary that normal people don’t want to be accused of having.
That’s reasonable.
It’s also reasonable to say “Hey, I don’t want to smell your stinky ass. Please do something about that”. But to call it rape?
I think most normal people can agree that is taking things too far.
Example:
Going back to my ex girlfriend: was my eating her Oreos without permission a boundary worth having?
I believe so. Hell, even asking people to not fart around you is a somewhat reasonable request.
Not the most damaging line to cross, sure. But if it upset her then I think it’s worth being brought up.
The reason that I bring that up again, is because some people will guilt trip you about your boundaries. Especially about smaller issues, just like the Oreos. Say you don’t like to be touched, but one person keeps touching you. After you bring it up the other person tells you to quit being so sensitive.
This is a classic guilt trip. This is them going on the offensive and telling you what you should or should not be comfortable with.
But here’s the thing, they don’t get to decide what you’re comfortable with.
ONLY YOU GET TO DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE AND ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH!!!
What if People Ignore Your Boundaries?
And this brings me to the last article I want to review on Dr. NerdLove about designing your ideal lifestyle.
If you want to build a lifestyle that will make you happy, sometimes you have to dump your toxic friends.
If someone does something that you are not comfortable with, tell them. Make sure to be firm with them (otherwise you might get someone like me who keeps eating your Oreos in blissful ignorance).
This can be your relationships, or it can just be your friends. It can also be your family.
If they keep doing whatever it is that you asked them to stop doing, then you have a choice to make.
Going back to the touching example from earlier: say someone keeps touching you. You’ve asked them to stop, and that you don’t like it.
What should you do about it?
In my opinion, that depends.
Say for example that they apologize and explain that they are a touchy person in general. It’s a big part of who they are and that when around you they will do their best to tone it down.
Does that mean that you flip out when they touch you again?
Absolutely not!
It just means that you bring it up that they’ve touched you again. If this is a real friend, they will acknowledge it and try to do better.
As long as this hypothetical friend is sincere, there is no problem. Just keep repeating your boundary until you get the desired effect you want.
That doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen again, because it probably will. That’s okay, as long as they’re trying.
But if the person who doesn’t like being touched freaks out and starts swinging then that’s not an appropriate response either. It’s also something that a guilt-tripper will try to accuse someone of doing “Hey, don’t be so sensitive” or “You’re overreacting”.
As long as you’re being respectful, you’re not overreacting. The other person is just an asshole.
I don’t want to spoil the article, and this review is already quite long, so I will drop the link here about what you should do next. That article also goes into how to dump toxic people in your life.
There is a cliche that says you are the sum of your five closest friends. And there is some truth in that.
The reason is because the people we interact with the most influence us in ways that we might not even understand. If someone is constantly bringing you down then you might not even realize that you’re more negative when around them. Or even while thinking about them.
That can leak out into the rest of your life.
It’s also why this is one of the most important points that I’ve covered in this review. Definitely check it out. If you’re someone who other people try to take advantage of, you will gain something out of it that will help turn you into someone who commands respect.
Command respect, without being an asshole about it. And if you need help in doing just that then leave a comment so we can tackle the issue together!
Keep Moving Forward
-Alexander
UPDATE: Check out this follow-up post about 11 things in life that just aren’t worth it