I want to ask you a question; what makes someone attractive as a guy and socially powerful? I’ve been asking myself this question for some time now so I can…frankly…have a lot of women find me sexy, and make other men respect me more.

I’ve now found out a few things from watching some people I wanted to be like in life, changing out in the real world as well as through study. Now I want to share them with an audience.

If you didn’t already know this about me, I work at a nursery….no not like a child daycare nursery, but a selling plants and hard physical labor nursery. I have done this for five years now.

I work with plants. I dig them, plant them, carry them, and sometimes load them on trucks, I am also the crew leader with about 7 people right under me at any given time. I’m just saying this to give you reference as to why you might want to listen to me on this topic.

There is this guy there at work now that is part of my crew, he’s about 21 years old, and he complains ALL THE TIME. He actually doesn’t even work that hard, and what he DOES DO he whines about. Not very many people respect him there and he asked me today “when are people going to stop picking on me here?”, this is what I told him in a round about way but this is more detailed:

You’ve got to stop complaining so much. Doing stuff you really don’t want to do sucks, I know that, but you’re going to have to do it anyways. For the most part, that’s why they pay you to come here and work…you’re not supposed to like it. If you liked it, then you’d be paying them.

Yeah it sucks, but sweating it only makes it worse for yourself and for those around you. Acting like it doesn’t faze you let’s other people wonder “is this even hard for him?”. Letting them just ponder whether you’re using yourself to the limit, letting them question where the limit to your strength really is. It makes us appear more powerful.

There is this other guy there that I occasionally have the…privilege to supervise, and he’s actually and honestly the slowest person that works at the entire place, it aggravates the hell out of me because I work my ass off. It’s as if he’ll actually TRY and figure out a way to get out of working, he’ll take breaks constantly using the bathroom, forgetting tools in the work van so he’ll have to go get them, and just generally being lazy.

Everybody talks about him behind his back with zero respect, calling him “the sissy”, “lazy”, and “turtle”…generally no one wants to work with him and he’s about to get fired. When at work we are there to work and some people just don’t get that I guess. So the conclusion I drew from that and other related experiences is…

Working the hardest you possibly can at what you’re doing, and always working that way…being stuck on balls to the walls GO allows you to become good at a lot of stuff. It makes it hard for other guys to outdo you at it and thus it makes you a leader, an example to be followed, and respected.

Plus it all adds up into accomplishments when taken in other directions than just for our day to day jobs, when it’s taken outside of the work place. Does that make sense, it gives us tangible strengths…eventually leading us as men to have more in real life than the women or woman we want beside us, increasing the attraction by increasing our self-worth.

These two qualities, not letting them see you sweat, and working really really hard at everything makes you almost appear larger than life to some. That there is something that you just have…you make the extremely hard look easy and all the sudden you’re leading people, and have become the alpha male of your friends outside of work by your ambitions.

Working hard is part of being a man, not trying to get out of hard work by tricking others or mooching…that DOESN’T make you powerful though I’ve done it before and felt powerful for a short time. Eventually your guise is seen through and people think you’re nothing but a lazy leach; we’re eventually devalued and often excommunicated when we take this route as guys.

So sorry to say for some, but you can’t just live in your mom’s basement and play World of Warcraft until your 45 and just EXPECT women to love you the way you are. As a man you’re EXPECTED to get up off your ass and do something, to make things happen…it is the main definition of being a man. WORK.

Doing that which must be done regardless of the pain, regardless of the pushing it’s going to take. To look at any situation from behind your own two eyes and come from there, unchanging, unwavering and knowing totally that you have what it takes to get it done.

Actually, really, out in the real world, implementing what you learn from other people is a big part of being productive, learn something new and do it, learn something new and do it, learn something new….you get the picture.

Usually the really important things we should be doing are the ones we hate the most. I’ve found that it’s best to just get the crap outta the way so we can relax, it gives us this sense of accomplishment and even more of a reason to finish the rest of the work which is kind of a piece of cake from there on.

For example before I started writing this article, I didn’t know what I wanted to say, or how I was going to go about saying it, all I had was a topic I wanted to write on. It all seemed semi-complicated and like a looming cloud of something I simply didn’t feel like doing because frankly, I’m worn out from work but that’s just how things are in life.

Things we SHOULD BE doing we aren’t usually going to like…everything seems tougher than when we just dive right in and start doing it. Things just start to flow after we get started and stop procrastinating.

This is especially important if you own your own business or would like to…when we don’t have anyone watching over our shoulder or telling us what the next step is, then we need to become our own motivator we need to become our own inspiration, we need to be able to pick our own self up off the ground when need be.

Turn on the eye of the tiger song, grit our teeth and push through, it’s the price we need to pay if we’re ever to escape from the mundane.

It’s much easier just to chill out, watch some T.V. scratch yourself, and drink a beer before crashing for the night…then get up go to work and do it all again the next day, I know this.

This world is a great big festering neon distraction, everything wants your attention, and people have paid millions of dollars just to distract your mind from what you were doing to what THEY want you to do. This is politics, this is consumerism, but we need to defend ourselves against it lest we just be capitalistic zombies.

Post signs up, little sticky notes next to your T.V. and computer saying “is this the most important thing you could be doing right now” and hopefully it will remind you because I know how time can slip away, days, months, years. How our best intentions our dreams can sometimes be killed and that couple of minutes watching the tube turns into three hours of veg’ing out. Time to fight for our minds, I hope I’m motivating and not seeming commanding here.

If we were to plan to do things it usually works out better because we all know we can make a million and one great excuses as to why we shouldn’t or can’t do the dishes today, or mow the grass, or finish making new content, take our Dog and Girlfriend for a walk, or whatever.

Yet also we both know these things got to get done else stuff starts falling apart, so it’s best to set the time aside ahead of time. Two hours of uninterrupted time where we do nothing but work on the important stuff not just the urgent stuff (not everything urgent is important at the same time). Think long term and set some blocks for every day, at least two hours.

Remember procrastination makes us feel bad inside and just going for it and getting to work makes us feel productive, accomplished, and happy.

I hope this came out right but hell it’s too late now, it’s up and you’ve already read it so there it is, hope it helps you live the journey ya want to live, now get out there and make stuff happen.

Did you know that 65% of US households play video games? Of those who play, the average person games for around 18 hours a week or a total of 39 WHOLE DAYS out of the year, holy…crap…that’s A LOT of time that could be used for something a bit more worthwhile since gaming really doesn’t invest anything in our future or make us better people.

I remember when I use to play video games ALL THE TIME, to the point where it was making me call off work because I’d stay up too late the night before, nerding it up. I never wanted to leave the house or talk to people anymore because the imaginary worlds on the games seemed so much more colorful and better than life. I ended up destroying a great relationship with my girlfriend back then because of it, because I stopped spending quality time with her, don’t let that happen to you.

If you’re ready to kick that gaming habit then there are a few key things you can do, I’ve made a list of the steps for overcoming video game addiction because I love lists and I think it makes things easier to explain, so let’s get started.

Step 1: Become determined to change
Our first step is to make a serious agreement with ourselves to overcome this problem. If playing games has affected your life by making it worse then write down how it has done so and be honest about it. It’s better to accept things that are wrong with us than to deny them because it makes it easier to work on them, once we can actually see them. You could also ask yourself, if you’re a “towards motivated person” what would you rather have that is more valuable than playing these video games? What could you get done if less time was spent playing video games? Making something a goal and being serious about it makes it much more likely that we’ll follow through with it, when we do whatever it takes to overcome a problem it makes us UNSTOPPABLE in the world.

Step 2: Keep track of how often you play your video games
I know it’s kind of a pain, but whenever you sit down to play a game just mark it up and write down how many hours you spent playing it even before starting to quit the habit (being honest with yourself here is key). Doing this gives us an idea of what impact it’s having on our time and how to make it so we don’t play them as much in the future. If we have no idea about how much we play in the first place how are we going to play it less?

Step 3: Lessen the time you play
Get yourself an egg timer or you can use an alarm clock for this next step.
Even better than that, tell someone to come and pry you off of the video game at a certain time that’s less than what you normally play. Video games have the ability of making us completely forget that time exists and often we find ourselves playing for hours when we only intended to play for a “couple of minutes”. So getting a family member, girlfriend or boyfriend to come and get us when it’s time to pry ourselves away is really good because it gives us someone to be accountable to also. When it’s time to go…go, don’t wait till the next save or when you get to this or that check point, shut down the program or turn off the system.

Remember: it’s just a game and nothing bad in the real world is going to happen if we don’t save our game. Nothing good in the real world is going to happen either if we do reach that checkpoint.

Step 4: Slowly decrease the time spent playing
After a half a week or a whole one, whichever you feel more comfortable with, start to lessen the time spent playing video games. Try to get it down to say…just playing a game on the weekend for a few hours. There is nothing wrong with video games, it’s just that the addiction to them or making them a major activity in our lives causes problems. When we practice a little self-control, games can be a way to relax and as a kind of reward for doing what we need to do in the real world instead of something that has a negative impact on our effectiveness or relationships.

Step 5: Assess where you’re at in your recovery
Video game addiction is just like any other addiction, some people can’t do the thing they’re addicted to AT ALL or else they relapse back into their old habits. I’m this way with a lot of things in life so I just have to give them up completely. When I use to drink I wouldn’t be able to just have one or two beers I would end up getting drunk. So I had to give the habit up all together in order to stop living like an alcoholic.

If you find that you’re unable to kick the habit of video game addiction using the steps above then it’s time to take more drastic measures. If you play games on a computer and you’re serious about getting past it then it’s time to delete all your games and give them away or destroy them altogether. If you play console games and can’t play them in moderation, maybe once or twice a week max, then I’m sorry to say but it’s time to get rid of the console and the games. This may all seem a bit drastic but it will make it much easier to stop playing once the thing isn’t there anymore to tempt you.

I hope all of this helps you in your recovery as silly as it may seem to some people, I know not many people take video game addiction seriously but to those who have it or to those whose life has been affected badly by it, it’s a serious situation. Video game addiction is just like any other addiction, there are reasons for why we do it, steps to overcome it, and a withdrawal process.

If after you stop playing video games for a while you notice that you’re becoming depressed, then it’s not the video games fault or the lack of them, it could be signs of an underlying depression that the video game was only masking, the video game really fixes nothing and isn’t NEEDED to escape those feelings. In that way we can have withdrawals sort of, watch for them, and if you need a way to escape from those feelings then it’s much better to find some other form of positive escapism, maybe practice an instrument, sing, write poetry, walk through the park with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or anything else that is good and you like doing. Make more friends or do things that give you more self-esteem, be kind to others, and it can fix the reasons why we had to play video games in the first place.

If the depression worsens though, then please please PLEASE seek medical help as this could be a sign of a bigger underlying problem and something a professional can help with better than me.

Video game addiction can be overcome completely though, nobodies stuck, and it’s just a step in becoming a better person, just stick with it and I have faith anyone can get there. Thank you for reading my article.

To your best,

Aaron

Never mind talking to women, or hanging out with a lot of friends, I had no friends, because I just couldn’t risk the rejection. There was a lot of things socially wrong with the way I was back when I was a kid, many things I’ve fixed, some I still haven’t, but I’ve learned a really valuable lesson about accepting rejection along the way, and that iiiiis…

We can’t REALLY see ourselves fully, I know you’ve probably already came to that same idea somewhere in your life where what you think about yourself, or want to believe about yourself simply isn’t true. What we are is kind of obvious on the other hand to other people though whether we want to hide it or not, eventually or immediately the truth about ourselves shines through.

So in order to avoid the rejection we sometimes don’t even risk it, we don’t approach that woman or ask for a raise. Also we sometimes avoid even rejecting ourselves, in order to avoid the pain of that we treat a required change within ourselves as if it did not exist; because flaws with the way we are, at least to me, is the greatest pain we can face as individuals other than say getting your arm broken, burnt, or having an eyeball taken out.

Worded differently, knowing that we are wrong and that a massive change to ourselves is required to right it, is a very large amount pain and we often avoid it…creating fantasies and lies that comfort us instead but do not fix the problem.

Pain MUST be dealt with though, it is required for growth, face the pain and face the fear. Find the courage to do that which you know you must do…but are avoiding…then simply DO IT. Only through pain can we see our weaknesses and find ways to correct them. Pain is the only salvation. There is no easy way out and I know it sucks, but doing what you fear the most can become the greatest life-changing experience you may ever have, you must only walk through the door already opened for you.

The pain we find in dealing with the unknown, with change, with approaching strangers, or any worthwhile endeavor is tiny and only temporary compared to the life lived in boredom, mediocrity, and staleness. Be yourself, show others who you really are, be honest, and stop being so damn terrified that you “might be found out”. HOPE to be found out, because nobody’s perfect, embrace your flaws.

Actually pray that others might see flaws and tell you about them, so that you at least have the potential to gain greater freedom by learning from them. Rejection isn’t that bad of a thing because without it, we can’t grow.

I know you’ve noticed that all of us only have a limited amount of willpower that we possess at any given time, it’d be nice if our will was absolute and we were like Gods but it seems more like we can always change some crap in our lives but often after that will storehouse runs out we’re back at square one…this is how I’ve come to understand getting past that and after using this formula in my life for a bit, seeing profound changes happen with it, I want to share it with you.

Here comes the scientific sounding part…outside influences in our life; friends, family, the communities we hang out in (this one included), what type of info we allow into our brains (reading a self-help book as compared to watching the news on T.V.) where we live and how it’s kept…all of these are natural affirmations in our environment that overrides our best interests some times…it’s like a person who’s trying to stop drinking hanging out in bars all the time, what do you think about him, do you think he’s going to pick up another bottle regardless of his intentions?

If you want to succeed then you’re going to have to create the personal environment that propels you to greatness instead of keeping one by default that almost promises failure while all the time just beating your head against the wall.

It seems like we have this sort of equilibrium when it comes to our personality, our character, which is caused greatly by the places we frequent and the people we communicate with most. If you are to change the environment around you with your will instead of the action directly you will automatically get the habit you want. If you wish to stop negative thinking all together, surround yourself with positive people, figure out how to make friends with them and hang out with them instead of negative people.

Hang out where these people do and it’s impossible to not be influenced by them subconsciously or to make a few friends like them. Do what they do in essence, find out their environmental influences and create that environment for yourself. You will be magnetically and naturally pulled into becoming more like them in lifestyle and character without much effort on an individual action level.

Here’s a secret…affirmations simply don’t work, not because the idea isn’t sound, but because the 10 or 15 minutes we just spent saying something to ourselves is overridden by the natural affirmations we constantly find in our job’s, via our GF/BF, by talking a lot to and watching negative people and how they treat us, which is said on autopilot the whole time we’re awake…so 15 minutes as compared to the other 8-10 hours spent saying something (thanks to the outside world) that is contradictory to that.

Create your world…look at the influences you have in your life now, look at your friends, what kind of person would have those kinds of friends? That is who you are when you relax your will. Change everything, I mean thats the end result of changing yourself anyways right? It changes the environment around you…so just try it out, start at the end, change your environment or influences in your life first. Give it a go for a time and let me know what happens, would love to hear your guys stories and share some of mine.