Sometimes we all feel like giving up. We’ve had one rejection too many, one failed date too many, and are just plain tired of everything.
This is especially a problem when you have bucked yourself up numerous times, gotten back into the game, and STILL get knocked down yet again. Sometimes it just seems like life is against you. What can you do?
We have a different view on giving up than you might have heard before. Despite what you may have heard, giving up can actually be a good thing to do…If you do it properly.
“Giving up” is something that few of us allow ourselves to do. It seems so permanent. It seems so personal. And it’s rough to give up in one area of your life without feeling like a failure in every area. So you end up living by the creed of Commander Taggert in “Galaxy Quest:” “Never give up. Never surrender.”
The problem with this philosophy is that it puts you at war with yourself. You try to push yourself to go to one more niche event to meet women, or to talk to one more woman, or to flirt one more time, and all the while another part of you is working against that effort, saying “Forget it. It doesn’t work anyhow. Remember the last 200 rejections? Why even try?”
We think that you can get a lot more done in your life if you aren’t being torn apart by internal conflicts every step of the way. We think you are better off giving every part of you a place to live, if you can…including the part of you that is discouraged and wants to give up.
The biggest problem most men have with “giving up” is that it seems permanent. If you give up on pursuing women, aren’t you becoming a level one seducer again, and dooming yourself to being alone? The answer is, “no.”
The men we have worked with who can’t “give up” are often men who live their lives believing that they always must be able to handle everything, no matter how difficult it is. Very often they felt this way in their families of origin, when they were kids. They often felt like they had to be able to be surrogate parents to their own parents, or to their brothers and sisters. As adults they often take on a great deal of responsibility at their jobs, or feel guilty when they don’t. Unfortunately, never “giving up” doesn’t make you happy. It leaves you stressed out, controlling, and not open to innovative solutions.
“Giving up” can be a doorway to something new. For example, we have been working on Internet promotions for our site for the last year, and we just aren’t very good at it. After a year, we were so tired of the pain of doing web promotion (even though it was working) that we decided to “give up” on it. We said, “Screw it. We give up. We hate this, and we aren’t going to do it anymore. We’re going to spend our time doing what we like and are good at–creating products and services for men about dating.” It was only after taking this stand that we were truly open to new solutions, and it didn’t take long for someone to show up who is now doing some of our Internet marketing for us. Our willingness to “give up” made us able to see what could be possible. If we’d been trying to do it all ourselves, we might have asked this marketing guy for coaching, but it never would have occurred to us to simply have him DO it for us. Refusing to “give up” kept us focused on doing hard things, largely because they were hard and challenging. “Giving up” allowed us to see a simple and all-but-effortless solution to our problem.
We regularly “give up” on dating, when dating is giving us a hard time. We’ll say, “I’ve had it. I am giving up on dating. I’m tired of it. I’m giving up on dating, and focusing on other areas of my life.” It doesn’t take long before the freedom that “giving up” has given us refreshes us, and gets us back in the game.
We’ve all heard people talk about how “when you stop looking for a lover, a new one often shows up.” This is because “giving up” opens your mind to new possibilities, new options–even to the possibility of things being easier than you ever dreamt they could be.
“Okay,” you are saying. “I’m sold. So how, precisely, do you I give up on something?” We suggest that it can be relaxing to say, out loud, what you are giving up on. Saying, “I give up on dating,” might be a really relaxing thing for you to say right now.
We don’t mean to get all metaphysical on your ass here, but, “I give up” can bring you a feeling of freedom. “I give up,” can start to feel like, “I give up the belief that I have to be able to control everything, to be able to handle everything, and to be able to succeed at everything.” From there it’s not to long a stretch to even have a feeling of faith associated with giving up: “I give up on having to be able to handle everything all the time, and I can let the Universe at large take care of at least some of my life.”
Done properly, giving up is a way of letting go of some of the excessive, superhuman expectations you have probably placed on yourself in your life. And done properly, giving up should feel like a weight is lifted from you. Men who we teach this to usually feel it as a relief, as if a weight is lifted from their shoulders.
So lets apply this to your specific question. You’ve been having “one bomb after another” with women. Why not give up for a while? Tell yourself that, for the next week at least (or even two, or three), that you are not going to pursue women. Say, “I give up on dating,” knowing that you are not stopping forever, but let yourself feel like you are.
Anytime you feel yourself pressuring yourself to go “do something to get women,” say to yourself “I give up on dating,” and do something that is truly enjoyable for you, and that serves you having a life you love in some other way.
We don’t know what will happen when you do this, as “giving up” often opens up some space for unpredictable new things to occur. At the very least, it will give you some time to relax and rejuvenate yourself for your next seductions. But as you keep giving up, keep your eyes open for new, simpler, more fun and easier ways to date.
 |
Ron Louis and David Copeland are dating coaches and authors of the best selling “How to Succeed with Women” and the creators of Seduction Techniques |
