Is Your Male Ego Sabotaging Your Dating Success?
Article Source: Dating Books For Men. Copyright 2008
Author: Michael Pilinski
S P O T L I G H T
Michael Pilinski is the author of
Without Embarrassment
To learn more about how this book compares with others in its genre:
The primary driving force that pushes men to greater and greater heights is their Ego. The Ego's absolute determination to overcome anything that Nature should throw in its way provides great survival value. But anything this powerful can become problematic when focused in the wrong direction - namely, back at itself!
The dictionary defines the ego in this way - it is: "The personality component that is conscious, directly controls behavior, and is most in touch with external reality". While this is accurate, this simplified definition fails to convey the complex problems that can take hold when one's ego gets in the way of itself.
Failure to meet your own expectations can create frustrations that lead to anger and rage, feelings that can turn inward on oneself in the form of self-destructive behaviors, or which may be directed outward in a way that can be harmful to others. Either way, the news is not good, and the result can completely disrupt your social relationships.
The extraordinary sensitivity of the
male ego is something that few people fully appreciate. In a sense, the chronically frustrated ego becomes like a tender open wound - one that can be jolted painfully by even the smallest negative comment. An ego turned inward to the point of extreme self-preoccupation is what John Bradshaw has called the
Disabled Will.
The problem here is that protecting a sensitive ego from continuing harm quickly assumes a greater priority than does seeking rewarding life experiences. This condition sets the stage for all manner of thought distortions like mind-reading, global stereotyping, defensiveness, and jealousy. But the real trouble begins when men with a damaged ego start taking even the slightest criticism or rebuff too personally. Because they are locked in a state of perpetual fear, their ego becomes arrogant and over-reactive.
Men with hyper-sensitive egos tend to view the act of meeting women as something that carries an almost life-or-death importance. This leads to a kind of intense pressure to "never be disliked" that can become a destructive mental burden. Sometimes the problem can be traced back to a single socially-traumatic event, but just as often its insidious roots can be traced to a series of lesser failures to connect with people throughout life.
On other words, the disabling of the will sneaks up on you until one day you realize that, well... you've just plain GIVEN UP on trying to be social with, or attractive to, anyone. This loss of motivation can be devastating. Soon, the possibility of getting laid has become no longer even a consideration for you - your unconscious mind has accepted the idea that this possibility is just not in the cards for you. This is the point where you begin to slide into porno, drugs, sexual addictions and other disabling behaviors in an attempt to fill the void of a lonely, isolated soul.
It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to guide yourself back to a saner form of existence if you can just make peace with your troubled ego and stop being so hard on yourself.
In simple terms, you need to learn to try not to hold yourself to impossible "SuperMan" standards of human performance that no one can achieve. A heightened fear of rejection is directly tied to a disabled will, so dealing with this problem can lead to an enormous improvement in your emotional-thinking process, and a richer dating and sex life.
In this spirit, I offer you three ideas for taming your out-of-control disabled ego...
1) Get Some Perspective
An ego turned inward is one that is overly obsessed with itself. This leads to a distorted view of reality. Try to get a better perspective of where it is that you fit into the continuum of human existence. Anyone too wrapped up inside their own head is usually also isolated from others to some extent. People begin to seem like emotionally dead animations to them, so it becomes all too easy to hate others. The best thing to do is
get out of your shell and help out - contribute to society in some way and begin to reconnect with the rest of humanity. Sign up for some volunteer work at the city mission, or a nursing home. Maybe start out at the SPCA if you find it easier to deal with animals rather than people, but do something with people eventually, because the idea is to pull yourself up out of your isolation.
Heck, you may even meet some fine women by doing this! The point is, you've got to get out there and mix. It also doesn't hurt that women are drawn to people professions. So you will meet more of them in places like this than you will working down at the garage with the other miserable grease monkeys. Helping the less fortunate can also produce a kind of "ego shock" experience that can be life-altering, and this will leak through in your general attitude, and in ways that are impossible to predict. So get off your self-satisfied ass and get busy experimenting with some perspective alteration.
After all, your life is a grand experiment, and the world your laboratory.
2) Do Something You Never Tried Before
A mind that expands to new dimensions will never return to its original shape. If your thinking style just plain sucks, it's likely that you are also stuck in a rut, and you are going round and round with the same old sour ideas about EVERYTHING. Often one of the primary causes of self obsession is
insecurity - an inward focus on your own fears that just dominate over all other thoughts.
The most effective way to tackle insecurity is to get right up in its grill and challenge it. Pick something that scares the shit out of you and dive right into it! It doesn't even have to be anything to do with women or your social anxiety, it can be something like getting on a plane for the first time if the idea of flying scares you.
Just pick a fear and face it down. This induces a shock to your internal belief system that will re-program your sense of what's personally possible for you. This is how you build confidence all throughout your life, by pushing the envelope here and there wherever you can. If it has been a while since you last tried something new, then you have stopped growing as a person. Growth creates confidence, and confidence is the foundation for major upgrades in your life experience, including your relationships with women.
3) Take a Deliberate Punch
Any boxer will tell you it takes more to become a great fighter than just 10 mile runs and flailing away at a speedbag for hours on end. While this stuff might be essential for maintaining the kind of power and stamina he will need in the ring, a boxer's training would be utterly inadequate if it did not include sparring with an actual partner. This is because a prizefighter needs more than just intense aerobic and strength training - he needs to be able to take a punch. A
lot of punches in fact!
To play in the social ring requires the same kind of ability to become callused, but this time what's needed is a MENTAL toughness rather than a physical one. And this is where the disabled ego is particularly weak since it is provoked by the slightest perceived put down or dismissal and is always on the defensive and ready to strike back. When you have become highly rejection sensitive, this problem can become so bad that you will eventually become paralyzed to act in your own sexual / romantic interest.
The solution is to take a punch, not to the face but to the EGO for the express purpose of toughening it up!
Many men are afraid to get in a real fight because they have no experience with ever having been punched, even as a kid, and so they have no idea about what their tolerance for this kind of pain might be. Well, the same thing can happen to you mentally if all you do is run around ducking every situation where there could possibly be some risk to your ego. You will never get a sense of just how tough it could actually be. So go out and do something
deliberately embarrassing or humiliating and take a nice nasty shot to your ego.
Seriously. See how painful the mental bruise actually is - see how long it takes for you to shake it off, and not give a shit anymore. I bet you will be fairly surprised at the reserve of mental toughness revealed to you. This exercise will teach you some HUMILITY and it will back you away from the god-like grandiose thinking flaws which are the common signature of the disabled ego. You will find that once this aspect of your "fear package" is dragged into the light, it will burn up just as quick as a vampire in the sunlight!
A point of fear will then have become a point of courage, and you will be on your way to better things.
Personal change is tough. You may not be able to force yourself to do all the things I am suggesting, but to the extent that you CAN you will find it makes a tremendous difference in how you begin to relate to the rest of the world. And to women.
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B Y T H E S A M E A U T H O R . . .
Michael Pilinski is the author of
Without Embarrassment
Michael Pilinski, the author discussed in my Without Embarrassment review, is a deep-thinking battle-scarred woman's man, who has figured out how to ascend the Male Dominance Scale by which women grade men as a potential mate. Care to improve your score?
To learn more about how this book compares with others in its genre, or read and in-depth review:
