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Dr Robert Glover talked about abundance in his book “No More Mr Nice Guy” like it was the creme de la creme of states of being for a man. To be fair, I grew tired of him talking about it because through reading his book it seemed like the elusive carrot on the stick scenario. I was always trying to achieve it but not quite getting there. It was frustrating.
Part of that was because I wanted to be at the finish line before I had started. Not setting myself small and realistic goals. That was me in a nutshell. Read a book then expect to apply the material and have it work in a day. Wasn’t going to happen. It took me 12 years to get as far as I have now. It’s just not an overnight thing.
I had to put down his book in the end. Not because it wasn’t informational or helpful, but because I couldn’t keep chasing what I wanted to achieve without doing all the small things. It was more frustrating than anything. There were forums for No More Mr. Nice Guy too, and whilst they were a place for support for people that really needed it, the place really wasn’t for me.
I remained there for quite a few months, asking questions and getting answers, however, I feel that sometimes it was more confusing than anything because post count was not equivalent to progression in life. There were some people with over a thousand posts but had yet to master the art of standing up for themselves.
Abundance was a hard trek for me.
The world is designed to keep me holed up in my own shell. We’re trained to think in terms of there’s not enough of x, y, and z. Think of the marketer that tells me that I MUST have this dating guide before it runs out because there’s nothing out there like it. Or the Politician tells me there’s no more money or the holiday brochure that tells me to buy before time runs out. We’re primed from an early age to think that we don’t have enough time or resources to do anything.
If we take a step back though, a true step back, we only need look at the sheer amount of diverse dating guides out there, or the number of wars we can afford to make out of thin air, or the number of holidays that are out there and the sheer choice that I have.
Abundance is everywhere when you open your mind.
It was a failing for me at the start, and why No More Mr. Nice Guy was all about abundance. I was one for getting severely upset at a mere rejection of a woman. My life had ended after a rejection, no-one was going to choose me and I’d never be happy. Yet if I had looked at the number of women in my community, never mind my own town, I’d have realized that choices were ample and if I was rejected, I could simply try with another.
A rejection isn’t a failure of self, it’s more of a compatibility test. I see women as potentially compatible with me and understand that there are many women that are compatible. Thinking that ‘the one’ exists feeds into the narrative that there is only ‘one’ person for me and reinforces a limited thought process. It’s like saying out of four Billion women in this world there is only one for me. Crazy, right? I was always thinking that there was only one woman for me and I had already had this experience. I thought I had missed my opportunity.
We often think in limited terms. I blame Politicians, marketers, and religion. A deadly sort of trio when used together. We are pandered to by the powers that be so that we needn’t think for ourselves or act on our own and it’s breaking us, tearing us apart from our original being.
I don’t think we truly understand that we have choice. I mean true choice. When we can choose the sort of relationships that we want to be in without fear of rejection from society, or we can choose the sort of Political factions we wish to align with without fear of isolation and rejection, or freedom of religion without need for justification.
Abundance for me was more than opening my eyes to a wider world, but more so a rejection of society.
For too long I had sat with my friends worrying about my actions and what other people would think of them. I chose potential intimate partners not only on their attractiveness and compatibility but on how society views them. I’ve read books written on ‘how to fit in’ and how to better myself but none that truly taught me the value my own self-worth. There are a lot of rules to society; what to say, do and how to act that somehow didn’t fit in with the way I was, or how I viewed things. It was like the world was trying to punch a square box through a circular hole. I’m one of these people that are slightly outside of the normalized zone; cursing myself for never being the perfect ‘normalized’ poster boy of the 21st century.
There are a lot of rules to society; what to say, do and how to act that somehow didn’t fit in with the way I was, or how I viewed things. It was like the world was trying to punch a square box through a circular hole. I’m one of these people that are slightly outside of the normalized zone; cursing myself for never being the perfect ‘normalized’ poster boy of the 21st century.
I TRULY learned abundance when I stopped trying to fit in.
When I realized that perhaps it’s time that the world started to fit in with me, and if it doesn’t want to fit in with me then it need not be in my life. Why should I spend an eternity trying to make it fit in with my life when it never wanted to be in it in the first place? Like friends, those that make life hard me, is it necessary that they need to be in my life? Or am I just too scared to let them go? What am I clinging on to?
That’s not to say at times I’ve had to learn to be diplomatic. Sometimes I’ve had to work with the circular hole. Like at my place of employment, for example. I learned that there are times when I had no option but to learn to work with what I had.
Yet, abundance didn’t come to me like a flash overnight.
It was something I worked at through years of learning and visiting places where I wasn’t welcome. Understanding that there are vast worlds that don’t fit into my narrative in the slightest. That my small bubble is just a mere speck on a massive, massive world. It’s something I had to work at for a very, very long time. I had to realize that there was more to the world than just what I see, hear and do, and, if it’s different that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong.
Finding abundance was pivotal to my relationships game.
I have often remembered friends telling me that they were at the dating table, and their potential partners telling them, “You know, you’re nice, but I’m not feeling it” and they have persisted in chasing whoever it was that was pushing them away. I often cringe when I hear that; I tell them, there are so many other women out there it’s unreal.
You should have looked at her, been polite and said, “Oh, I thought it was going really well. I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m a bit disappointed, but it’s your choice. I enjoyed our time together, perhaps we’ll see each other around?” Pay and then leave. Because she isn’t going to expect that, and knowing that you’re happy by yourself and not needy whatsoever emits confidence that is super attractive. You may find yourself with a different result.
Finding abundance was super hard, but really useful when I had got there.
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