A Better Alex, stage 2: ASC Journal

[apollolux]

My club's treasurer gave me a copy of Mark Manson's Models as her attempt to give me some sort of actionable advice that's more than simply "love yourself" or "work on yourself," so I'm reading that right now. Even only on chapter 3 "Power in Vulnerability" I'm already seeing things I was doing right and wrong naturally long before I started listening to subs and stuff I'm doing after then.

I definitely need to see this book through, as so far it's the most objective of the materials I've read up to this point.

edit: Well then. Seems chapter 4 "The Gift of Truth" has the most poignant bit of advice for my situation so far up to this point (emphasis mine):

Unconditionality

[ ... ] Those guys are being honest about their intentions and their feelings, but they're not getting anywhere, are they?

But once again, they are not being honest about their intentions. They may compliment a woman and buy her things, beg for her attention, but their intentions are conditional. They're not genuine. They're only giving praise and affection under the assumption that they'll receive it in return.

[ ... ] When you lavish gifts and praise onto a woman who has not done anything to earn it, you are sub-communicating a desperate need for her attention and validation -- a willingness to sacrifice your self-respect and wealth to win over her affection.

All this time I thought I was being genuine, but indeed I was being conditional about my praise and affection and apparently it's been like that for a long time. Explains a lot, really, and I'm fairly certain it was due to a learned lack of confidence in myself.

I hope that ASC does enough of the job of (re-)building confidence and restoring authenticity to tide me over until I can start AM6.