0060 Listener Feedback 01

A brief interruption of my interview with Paul Janka, in order to catch up on some listener comments and questions.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS EPISODE:

Learning to Love Feedback

Later today, a new show almost exclusively on listener feedback!

Learning to Love Feedback

Your recent dating and relationship experiences may look something like this:

Acceptance

Rejection

Rejection

Acceptance

Score!

Rejection

Rejection

Rejection

Score!

Score!

And so on. As men we want to measure our results so that we can determine progress or whether we need to modify our course, right? What if we bust up this whole paradigm and instead view life like this:

- Feedback!

Different Ways to Learn

You know there is a reason why we teach kids not to touch the stove, and why I tell noobs to develop a prize mentality. We’re helping them to avoid pain. But if we shelter kids too much, it ends up backfiring because we are creating people who have no ability to cope without our old asses backing them up

Feedback is what happens while you move through life. It’s happening every second of every day. Did you know that when you are waling down the street, millions of little neurons are firing and giving your brain feedback about the level of the road, bumps and cracks, wetness/iciness, the type of shoes you’re wearing, the level of energy in different parts of your body, the road ahead that you can see, and so on.

Now for adults, this process is almost entirely unconscious, because we’ve learned how to walk in a unconsciously competent way. As babies – in spite of falling down repeatedly – we got comfortable with the feedback. Almost all babies are instinctually ready to try and try again, without embarrassment, until their little brains accumulate enough feedback to enable them to walk competently.

How to Learn from Feedback

We can only learn from feedback when we are open to it, when we are fully conscious, when we don’t cower in fear of pain but when we welcome the feedback we get. If you see a man afraid to talk to women he is attracted to, that is a man who is thinking in terms of acceptance/rejection/scoring instead of the pure feedback paradigm that I am advocating here.

On the other hand, when you read about guys counting 1,000 approaches and not being able to get any dates, those guys also are not open to the feedback they are getting. Yes, they have become immune to the pain of rejection, but they are still blind to the huge amounts of feedback that they could actually be receiving. It’s almost as if they have tricked their brains into not recognizing the feedback, because they would interpret all of it as a rejection of themselves, so they don’t want to hear about or see a woman’s reasons. 

The attractive qualities that will draw women to you are within you, just as the inherent ability to walk is in the DNA of the baby. The difference between a person who can manifest the skills and traits of a winner and one who is stuck on the couch is his ability to receive and interpret feedback. 

Sometimes – I should say often – feedback is going to hurt. It’s going to create a response in our minds and bodies that we might call pain. Anyone serious about martial arts or weight training understands this. The sad thing is that most people abandon their goals at the first sign of discomfort or unfamiliarity. The key to success is being able to really feel through that pain, and make finer and finer distinctions. 

For example we would ask ourselves, does this pain indicate a weakness in my mind or body (a woman not thrilled with our demeanor, an unhealthy emphasis on her opinion of us), or does it indicate a real danger to my health (the pain from touching the stove). Only by acknowledging all the feelings that course through our body, and at the same time being determined to learn from it, push through and persist towards our goal, will we achieve success. 

Failure is not an Option

From now on, stop thinking in terms of “this hurts” vs. “this feels good”, but rather think in terms of, ‘what is my body telling me right now’? Where is the discomfort; what is it like in terms of intensity, shape and color; what am I learning about myself; what might I do differently the next time around?

Remember that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Some say he failed 10,000 times before he finally got it right. He said that he learned 10,000 different ways not to produce the result he was seeking. Edison could never have accomplished the amazing things that he did without persistence, and a keen ability to accept and interpret feedback.