..it’s actually a by-product of a much deeper mechanism that’s been at play all your life.

We’re all looking for things in our life.

We want stuff, and when we get it we fell good. It’s a no brainer. Think about the car you’ve always wanted. If you got that .. how would you feel?

Or even, think about the girl of your dreams. If you got her, how would you feel?

Now, if you’re reading this, I’m going to guess that there’s things in your life that you want that you don’t have.

Correct? If you had everything then you wouldn’t be reading this, you’d be playing with everything you’ve ever wanted.

And because there’s things you think you want but don’t have, it’s pretty hard to accept yourself, as you are, right?

But what if that changed?

What if you found a way to get everything that you’d ever wanted. Do you think you’d be able to accept yourself then?

You can probably guess where I’m going with this.

Achieving self acceptance is all about proving to yourself that you can get what you want.

When you can do that, then you will accept yourself as you are. If you can’t get yourself what you want, then you’re not going to accept yourself.

Think of it like this: if you walked into a car yard and told the salesman that you were going off road through forest and sand dunes and you needed a car, and he tried to sell you a sports car, are you going to accept it?

Of course not. Because it’s not going to do the job you want it to do. It can’t get you what you want.

You’re going to want a big 4WD. It’s pretty simple.

But lets say your situation was different. You walk into the car yard but this time you’re not going to be going off road through forests and sand dunes.

This time you’ve moved into a cramped apartment block in the city with no off street parking and petrol prices went through the roof.

If he tried to sell you a 4WD are you going to want it? Are you going to accept it? No, because it’s not going to be able to get you what you want.

It’s not going to be easy to park and it’s going to chew through the petrol.

If something is able to achieve it’s purpose then you will accept it. If it can’t, then you wont. It’s not rocket surgery.

This is the secret here. If you can show yourself that you can get everything you’ve ever wanted, then it’s natural that you’ll accept yourself.

This is the point where most guys say “Well, so you’re saying that in order to achieve self acceptance, I have to be able to walk into a bar and be able to get any chick?”

Well, that all depends…

But before I touch on that, let’s take a step back and touch on the most important part of this whole discussion: what are you looking for?

Self acceptance happens when you’re able to get yourself what you’re looking for. So what are you looking for?

I know this might sound like a big question, so before you answer, consider this..

The core of any desire is a feeling.

For everything that you’re looking for in life, you’re not actually after that object, you’re after the feeling that you’ve associated with that object.

Here’s a little exercise for you to try.

Write down a list of everything that you can think of that you desire: hot women, money, cars, power, control, whatever you want.

Then, after you’ve written down that list, imagine yourself with each one and pay attention to how you’d feel if you got it.

Write the answer down next to each one, then see if you can find a common theme.

Seriously, do it. It’ll open your eyes.

……….

Come on…

……….

DUUUU EEEEET.

………

I’m about to spoil it for you…

……..

It was Aristotle that first said that happiness was the pursuit of life.

Everything else in life was a means to an end, happiness was the only end in itself.

The word you came up with might be different to ‘happiness’ but for everyone, it’s some feeling of desirable emotional state.

Now that’s out of the way, lets get back to that question:

“Are you saying I have to be able to walk into a bar and get any chick?”

No, I’m not. I’m saying that you need to be able to get yourself what you want, when you want it to develop self acceptance.

It’s only that you’ve associated happiness with getting a hot chick that you think you need to do that to develop self acceptance.

Getting a hot chick to feel happy is part of one of three primary pathways to happiness.

I’m going to go through the three VERY briefly here. They might make sense to you, they might not.

If you haven’t experienced them, it’s kind of hard to imagine how they would feel but don’t worry. It’s not an issue. Just being aware that they exist can be of huge benefit.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with any of these pathways. They’re just a way of looking at the world. I’m not having a go at anyone for using any of them, I’m simply pointing them out.

GETTING

‘Getting’ is the label I use to describe the pathway where you think that you need to get things from the external environment to be happy (yes, I’m very creative with the labels).

This is usually in the form of all the fun things that the great marketing machines of our western society throw at us..

..money, jewellery, holidays, cars, women, big houses, all those things that we’re supposed to collect so that we can finally be happy.

The underlying basis of this pathway is that the person perceives that their emotional state is controlled by the external environment and so to be happy, you then have to take control of the external environment.

When you have power over the external environment, then you will have power over your emotional state.

DOING

‘Doing’ is the label I use to describe the pathway where you think that you simply do the things you enjoy to get the happiness you want out of life.

This in the form of happiness that comes from undertaking activities that are intrinsically rewarding to you, regardless of what other people think of them.

It might be dancing, singing, football, cards, whatever it is that brings you happiness simply from taking action, regardless of the outcome you achieve.

(If it’s based on the outcome, it falls into the ‘getting’ category because you’re relying on your ability to control the external environment).

The underlying basis of this pathway is that the person perceives that relying on the external environment will never get them what they desire and they realise that in order to have the happiness they want, they have to do what they want to do.

They don’t place responsibility for their emotional state on anyone else’s shoulders or on any outcome, they simply take control of their happiness.

CREATING

‘Creating’ is the label I use to describe the pathways where the happiness you experience comes from making the world a ‘better’ place.

Now, when I say ‘better’, I mean increasing the amount of love and happiness for every person in the world, regardless of who they are, what they do, what they look like, etc…

A person at this place has all the happiness that they need and desires to share it with those around them.

They know that happiness comes from within and so therefore they don’t need anything outside themselves to be happy.

They can simply give happiness and love freely to those around them without requiring anything in return.

Now, here’s the clincher: what do you think the different obstacles and benefits to experiencing happiness that each pathway produces?

If you’re sense of happiness is based on getting things from outside you, how much control do you have over that? How easily are you able to control your happiness? How easy would it be to develop self acceptance?

And how do you think this effects your interactions with women? If you think you need to get her to be happy, how needy, clingy, and outcome dependent are you going to be?

But what if you followed the doing pathway? How much control do you think you’d have over your levels of happiness? How easy would it be to develop self acceptance?

And how do you think this would effect your interactions with women? How needy, clingy, and outcome dependent would you be?

But what if you followed the creating pathway? How much control do you think you’d have over your levels of happiness? How easy would it be to develop self acceptance?

And how do you think this would effect your interactions with women? How needy, clingy, and outcome dependent do you think you’d be?

So, this is how you develop self acceptance. You prove to yourself that you can get what you want out of life.

When you can give yourself everything that you’ve looked for, then self acceptance is a by product. All the issues you face in developing self acceptance are due to the different pathways you’re using.

Change the pathway, change your levels of self acceptance. Simple as that.

LoGun

Love. Joy. Serenity. Peace.

But the ugly ones? Well, we don’t really talk about those, do we?

However, those ugly emotions are just as important for us to experience and express.

Because the “good” ones cannot exist without the “ugly”.

What’s happiness if there’s no unhappiness to compare the happiness to, right?

But that’s not the real point of this post.

The real point of all of this is to ask you who’s running the show that is YOUR LIFE:

- are you the one experiencing the emotion, allowing it to be there, to express it, and to allow it to change (as it always will) into the next emotion?

or

- do you try to stifle it; lock down on it, pretending it shouldn’t be there, acting all cool and calm and collected, when really you just want to punch every asshole in the room?

Who’s running the show in this scenario?

You or the emotion?

I ask, because everything you do in this last scenario is governed by that emotion.

“I can’t let people see I’m angry, so I’ll just smile heaps.” Are you smiling because you want to smile, or because you want to hide your anger?

“I can’t show this woman that I’m nervous. So I’ll act cool”.

When you’re acting WITH your emotion, you’re expressing yourself. When you’re acting over the top of your emotion, you’re trying to suppress yourself.

One is the action of someone who can walk through the world freely.

The other action is one of somebody constantly controlled by their emotions, reacting to life, rather than creating their experience of it.

You know what the secret is to getting an emotion to release it’s grip on you?

Express it. Stop pretending it’s not there.

Stop making it wrong.

I suggest to you that if you weren’t supposed to be feeling that emotion, then you wouldn’t be.

Anxious when you see that woman over there? Then BE anxious. Admit to yourself that you’re anxious and it’s OK, rather than trying to “argue” with it.

Hell, get in touch with your balls and let her know that you’re feeling a bit nervous.

In expressing it, you release it, and it’s hold on you.

In the scenario of the hot girl and the anxiety, in expressing that emotion, the words that follow are now owned by you, rather than being motivated by your need to cover up your anxiety.

It’s real, it’s honest, it’s authentic, and the most beautiful thing is that it’s easy:

I’m feeling anxious… peace.

Jonathon

(I poured a drink on her sister’s head in the middle of Hugo’s – in retaliation for her throwing ice at me … mature, I know)

My girl got understandably upset and, on the way home, said something to me which I found disturbing:

“Let’s not fight again .. let’s just make each other happy”.

That sounds so romantic in that Cinderella-ish, “happily ever after” kind of way .. and that expression is built into our language, as if the formula for happiness is:

Step 1: find the right person
Step 2: be happy

I don’t like that. For two reasons.

First, it assumes that happiness by self is something that is not possible – or, at least, very difficult to reach.

Second, it places the responsibility for happiness on someone outside the self. Is it really fair to charge another person with the duty of providing happiness in your life?

That other person, be it a man or a woman, is just another human being, with their own flaws and issues – and by becoming our boyfriend / girlfriend, do they really sign up for the job of being the purveyor of happiness to you? Hell no.

It is only a matter of time before we realise that, but if we place that expectation on the person in the first place, there’s only one destination for both of us:

Disappointment and resentment.

I’d like to submit that happiness is something that must stem from the self. That will lead to relationships of mutual growth, rather than co-dependency and fear of loss.

Steven

And why do we want to get better with women? Because if we’re “better with women” then we’ll have better results with women.

If we have better results with women, then we’ll be happy with those results.

If we’re happy with those results, then, theoretically, we should be happy with ourselves.

So to cut a long story short, and to bypass most of the bullshit, let’s cut to the chase here: we thought that one of the sources of our happiness was in the lap of the women we weren’t seeing in our lives.

To put it another way, we got into the game to become happy with ourselves.

Unfortunately, before that could happen, we had to get a lot more unhappy with ourselves, and our lack of “skill” before we were promised such happiness-

(e.g. approaching 100 people to get us used to talking to strangers, then incrementally improving and calibrating our routine or act to get better and better results).

Once these habits were internalised, and became more of an extension of our being THEN we would be happy.

I’m going to ask you to be happy right NOW – no matter what your skill level.

I’m going to ask you to focus on the one thing that actually is happiness for you.

I hate to tell you this, but it has nothing to do with results.

It has everything to do with action.

What I’m talking about is something that I’ve come to realise very recently myself.

You see, I’m not particularly happy with some of the results in my life. Hell, I’m downright pissed off about very specific area’s of my life. But I’m really only unhappy when I’m focused on the results, rather than what I’m doing, right now.

Take socialising, for example.

If I go out with the intention of meeting a bunch of cool people (with the little less obvious intention of making sure those cool people like me), then the entire night I’m focused on my results.

If the results don’t meet my expectations, I have a “bad” night.

On the other hand, if I go out with the intention of having as much independent fun as I possibly can, I am focused on my expression, rather than the results of my expression.

It’s in the doing that I have fun. It’s in the doing that I am expressed. It is in the doing that I am no longer focused on external outcome, but rather internal emotion.

Am I being the way I want in any given moment? Or am I catering my actions to gain a specific result (e.g., to impress somebody, or many bodies)?

Am I following my own desires and creating my own internally satisfying journey, or am I deviating course to check if my actions are giving me the results I’m after?

This tiny change in focus allowed me to experience a greater range of happiness, fulfillment and flow, than any experience I gained from focusing on my results.

Now, don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ll improve your results just by focusing on being in action. Sometimes, the results are not exactly what you were hoping for.

But it’s not reflecting on results that expresses you, it’s the action of expression that does that. And it’s only during that act, that you can actually experience that wonderful feeling of flow.

So get out there and do something, men!

Jonathon