I remember the day my father died in the hospital. I remember the last few breaths he took. I stood there, looked at him for a while, and left his room for the last time. As I stood in the elevator, the doors slowly closed, and my mom’s friend watched me in silence. I couldn’t believe he didn’t make it. We descended to the ground floor, and her husband met me in the parking lot, offering a comforting hug. The tears welled up in my eyes.
When I got home, my little brother was the first to look at me when I opened the door. He knew what happened. Our family has changed and will never be the same again.
The death of my father served as a slippery slope for the years that followed. I found myself grappling with depression. I was already depressed from my military service, but it had gotten even worse. I decided to put my faith in self-help books. I read them all. Books on dating, psychology, motivation, and spirituality. Ironically, I believed I was making progress. I thought I’d be fine. While some of these books might help a penny drop, they don’t heal you. I doubt a book can do that.
At the time, “getting girls” was my only desire. I’m not sure why it was such a big deal for me. I think I was so unconfident, and lonely, I felt like women would be the perfect cure. I went out to bars and clubs three times a week, trying to get some girls into my life. But my approach backfired. The more I went out, the more I got rejected and the worse I felt. I tasted the toxic mix of hope followed by disappointment too many times.
Deal with the root cause of the problem
Failure tends to act like a whirlpool. Sometimes we’re so busy “trying”, we don’t realize we are doing something fundamentally wrong. You’re so busy with the symptoms you mistake them for problems. This pattern applies to almost any area of life, not just self-improvement. Let’s say you’re in the market for a job. You applied for over a hundred positions, and all you got was crickets. Maybe companies emailed you saying, “Thanks, but we won’t be moving forward with you.”
BLAH. YIKES. You start thinking, “Damn, am I that bad? Must be something wrong with the market. It must be the economy. Or maybe the war. Perhaps, you know what, all I need is to apply to more positions.”
But reality never lies. Maybe the market isn’t at its peak, but people still do business. Companies still hire new employees. They just… don’t hire you. Then a penny drops, and you think, “Maybe I need to improve my resume since competition is high.” You give it a shot, and start getting phone calls from companies wanting to interview you.
The methods and tricks I tried to get women were nonsense. But to be frank, I approached so many girls, you’d expect to get at least SOME results. But I didn’t, because I was depressed. This underlying state affected everything I did.
When in doubt, pause. Zoom out. Ask yourself, “What are not-so-obvious reasons causing you to fail?”
The key to enduring any failure
I made one big, nasty, monster-like mistake when I failed with women. I was constantly mad at myself. I never gave myself a break. A break which, most of us need SO much. The least I could do is have some self compassion. I didn’t realize it back then, but I was doing my best to succeed. I took hit after hit, and still kept going.
This process could have been three times less painful if I hadn’t been so hard on myself. Luckily, my therapist helped me see how stupid this was. Your ability to recover after a failure is proportionate to your ability to forgive yourself. Constant self-beating is the quickest way to create your personal hell.
Next time shit hits the fan, focus on a couple of things. One, don’t resist or deny your emotions. Whatever you resist- persists. Declaring war on your emotions is useless. Second, have some self-compassion. Tell yourself it’s ok to mess up. Tell yourself most people would probably feel the same way you do. Third… get up and try again. You can give yourself some time if you must. But at the end of the day, I don’t see any options other than trying again.
The secret sauce called patience
Boy, being patient when you truly want something can be hard. You may lose hope even if you’re willing to work for it and take the heat. It’s rough when failure follows a failure. When I tried to start my own business, I had to make more than 110 sales calls to close one client. Every rejection felt like a punch in my stomach.
Here’s the key, though. If you’re willing to keep going… If you’re willing to learn from your mistakes… eventually you’ll win. That’s not a philosophy or my own subjective opinion. When you want to achieve something, at some point, you become too good NOT to succeed. It’s funny how it works. But it does.
Patience, my friend, is the greatest necessity on your way to your goal. By “patience”, I don’t mean sitting at home waiting for a beautiful girl to knock on your door. Or you are doing absolutely nothing throughout the week while hoping to become a millionaire. That’s not patience. That’s being delusional about how reality works.
By “patience”, I mean putting one foot after the other on the way to your goal, without needing to become an overnight success. Do that long enough, and success is yours.
Conclusion
There’s nothing glorious about losing, it’s true. But I believe sometimes one has to go through hardships to succeed. You’re not fighting for your place under the sun. You simply go for what you want- consistently, until you reach where your heart desires.
Get my free ebook, “Life Lessons From Getting Rejected by Hundreds Of Women”
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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