Sometimes it’s hard to see mistakes in ourselves but we can see it clearer in someone else.
What do you see men doing over and over without realizing it is holding them back?
Are we causing ourselves more worry fear anxiety stress and pressure than we have to?
Or, what COULD some guys easily do that would help them move forward, but they aren’t?
Comments
Prioritizing being with someone who they’re miserable with over being alone
Firmly within the top 5 pieces of advice I’d give my future son to avoid potentially fucking his life up at a young age especially
Choosing the wrong women.
Avoiding being single due to loneliness.
Avoiding reflecting on past mistakes due to discomfort.
Either trying too hard or not trying hard enough.
Bring afraid to switch jobs, being a job puppet and thinking loyalty is gonna get them the big bucks
Today?
Chasing the perks that come along with pursuing purpose (wife, family, money, house, etc…) as the end goal itself.
Listening to their friends who are in similar or worse situations than they are instead of listening to wiser or more experienced friends who are where they want to be.
Putting all their emotional eggs in one basket. Men need to have more relationships outside of the Relationship they have with their romantic partner.
Holding on to a toxic gf. I used to do this myself.
Inaction is an action against yourself. Get off your ass and take steps towards getting the things you want in life. Talk to the girl. Hit the gym. Work harder.
Thinking that constant stories about absurdly unlikely events in their past make them look cool and strong and not make them look like insecure liars
Letting their dick lead the way.
I can’t count how many guys I know that have put pussy before progress. It’s actually quite baffling to me to see 30+ year old men act like horny teenagers on a regular basis.
I love sex as much as the next person, but not enough to ruin my life over it.
Being their own worst enemy.
They aren’t taking the time to take care of themselves. They need respect and treat their bodies better than they treat their trucks and cars. They’ll spend all this time on superfluous bullshit instead of exercising, meditating, or self care.
Better hygiene. Get a mani pedi, as someone who stands on concrete 12-15 hours most days and uses knives all day, trust me, you look and feel better. Also smell good, the amount of compliments I get for having a nice cologne(WITHOUT SPRAYING TOO MUCH) is nuts.
Not managing money well
I think a lot of people, both men and women are just too passive in their lives. You are never going to get the life you want unless you work at it. I’m not saying you can achieve any goal just by trying and working towards it, but I am saying you definitely won’t achieve those goals if you don’t try and work towards them.
If you want to be in a good relationship, you have to put effort into making yourself attractive, meeting people, dating people, and put effort into the relationship. Dating is a competition. If you don’t try to win, you will lose. Being in a relationship takes effort. It shouldn’t be painful, or even hard, necessarily, but it takes effort to be with someone and to make them happy and to make sure you’re happy.
If you want a promotion or a better job, you have to work to get it. No one is going to just hand you more money. Work hard, sell yourself, and tell management you want a promotion. Apply to other jobs. Get other offers. Force their hand.
If you hate your living situation, move. If you hate how people treat you, don’t put up with it. If you hate your relationship, end it. You are the only person who is in charge of your life. I’m not saying these things are easy. They can be super fucking hard. But you have to do it, or you’ll just be a passenger in a life that you don’t want.
When it comes to nerdy stuff, chasing the sort of street cred that basically comes down to them being some carbon copy of comic book guy. I get mental health issues play a part in this, but sometimes it’s just so draining to see the same bs you saw when you were a teenager over and over again.
Avoiding their difficult feelings. Either that or actively dismissing them or fighting them.
It’s not easy to do, but learning to receive your feelings with warmth and care is an important skill.
Your feelings are important messengers. No, they aren’t always accurate about what’s happening in the present, and, yes, we’ve all seen people who become their feelings and this can lead to toxic or even abusive outcomes.
This isn’t what I’m talking about. You are not your feelings, but your feelings are important guests who need to be welcomed with warmth and care and love. Have a conversation with them and see what they are actually trying to tell you.
They usually have more to do with your past, your needs, or a boundary. Learn from them. Avoiding them only keeps you stuck (and actually increases their control over you).
Letting an $19.57 sundress cost them thousands in child support.
Wasting their late teens early 20’s on gaming and fruitless persuits of pleasure… These things catch up to you in your 30’s & 40’s and that regret outweighs the fruitless persuits… If you’re between 15 and 25 and reading this… Take it from an ex gamer, don’t do it!! Spend every waking moment building wealth or finding out how to
It drives me crazy to watch guys who struggle with dating listen to some blackpill idiot who is just feeding their confirmation bias, instead of guys who have successful dating lives and are actually trying to help. For most women, it really is about confidence. It’s not about your height, bank account, or the hair on your head. It might be because you stink though. Shower and take care of your hygiene.
Procrastination. Not practicing self discipline, control, care. Worrying about having a relationship when they can barely take care of themselves.
when dieting or whatever, they just eat plain pasta or chicken… what the hell, man? what’s up with that… have you heard about spices?
Focusing too much on work and earning money, to the point that they neglect many other important parts of life. I get it, we live under capitalism, we all need money to live and we want nice things and experiences, but money is just one part of life. And past a certain point, more money and more career success doesn’t really improve your actual quality of life. You need to make time for your friends, your family, for finding and keeping a romantic partner if you want one, for being outside in nature sometimes, and for indulging in hobbies that make you happy. I’ve met guys that are so hyper-focused on grinding at work that it seems compulsive and sad to me, they are missing out on so much else.
Thinking they’re going to figure things out socially and finally understand everything.
Was that woman interested in me? What did I do wrong in that situation? What’s the best way to ask this woman out? Is that person in my league? Why did that person react that way?
There’s often not enough information and predictability in the world for you to know the answers to these questions. The way to build more understanding, and marginally increase your confidence in your assessment of individual situations, is to keep going and keep living your life without knowing. What you’ll realize is that everybody else is getting by without understanding the exact thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the people they interact with.
There are rarely foolproof ways of getting the answers even if you’re bent on getting them. If you’re wondering if you’re in a woman’s “league,” you can ask her out, but you still might not find out the answer. She might turn you down for personal reasons that have nothing to do with you. Or she might go out with you because she likes the activity you proposed and thinks she’ll have a good time, even though she’s skeptical about being attracted to you.
Over time, you’ll improve your judgment and sharpen your perception, but you’ll still be operating with a large degree of uncertainty, because people are complex, and you have a limited amount of information about them. The important thing now is to get more comfortable with it and better at gracefully handling the different possibilities when your judgment is wrong, so you can enjoy your life now and build a library of experience that you can learn from later.
Not acknowledging or working on their emotional needs. Whether that be actively addressing their issues in therapy, or even just acknowledging that they have feelings at all.
relationships or life in general?
I can’t stand seeing a man stay with a cheating woman. I don’t care if you been together a year or 30. Couldn’t even fathom staying with a cheating woman. I don’t care how many kids we have either.
One big mistake is accepting the friendzone. You can’t negotiate attraction.
Horrible style choices.
Being too defensive. You’re gonna be wrong so many times in your life. Learn to do it gracefully.
Trust me, you get more wisdom, growth, and respect by admitting you were wrong than by trying to weasel out by coming up with some technically correct way you could be considered right.
Drinking.
Putting too much pressure on romantic relationships for emotional and social satisfaction rather than expanding their social circle to get some of the same needs met. And I say “some” because obviously friends can’t do EVERTHING a romantic partner can, but it helps a lot having friends to take the pressure off finding a romantic partner. Women can sense when a man is desperate for an emotional outlet and it’s usually a turnoff.
Also, expanding your social circle has the side effect of increasing your chances of meeting a romantic partner organically without even really trying. But that shouldn’t be your main goal.
And I mean IRL social circle. Social media doesn’t count.
Putting themselves down.
Not realizing that women are just humans. They tend to put them on a pedestal or to treat them badly and nothing in between.
You know they are just as horny but that doesn’t mean that they will sleep with someone that doesn’t see them as a person.
People who are overcompetitive. There is a time and place for being competitive, but if you HAVE to win a throwaway argument/conversation or some rec league game, then eventually people aren’t going to want to hang out with you anymore and/or it’s going to get you into trouble.
Treating women like sex toys before even attempting to treat them like humans deserving of care and respect.
Very often, if you treat women like humans deserving of care and respect first, many will often want to be your sex toy later-but your have to truly respect them and not just pretend.
Wearing backward baseball caps.
Changing their personalities, hobbies, etc according to what some Youtube grifter tells them.
Knowing what “women want”. No, you don’t, neither do them. They don’t share a hive mind controlled remotely.
If you are a sensitive man don’t try to become a hearthless stoic: Find some woman that is into men like you.
Listen to what the woman you are talking, says.
You can increase the chances with women in one hour: Take a shower, shave/maintain your beard. That will put you leagues above the average guy. Extra point if you are not attached to your haircut and clothes and yiu change them into something that fits you.
No one wants to hear how you are the best at everything.
Trying to have a girlfriend for fear of being alone, throwing themselves into horrible partners.
Try too hard, think too hard, work too hard with regard to women.
Sleeping with hmmm
Just because you have a beard doesn’t mean you don’t shave your neck, you still shave your neck
Some stuff I haven’t read yet but see soooo many guys doing or not doing:
Ended up more like general life advice but so many friends and colleagues I know complain about theirife and I see these things going wrong every time.
That losing their cool is normal and justified. It rarely is.
Prioritizing or putting on a pedestal.
Not taking care of themselves
Sticking in a miserable relationship because she lets you have sex with her sometimes. Gaining weight and not making the changes to lose it. And the biggest one, not doing their fair share in a shared household.
Knowing how to take their foot off the gas when pursuing a woman. Some guys think that if they keep pursuing and pursuing, she’ll eventually give in. Like, no bro, youre just being annoying. You have to let her think about you and decide to invite you in.
Paying attention to grifters on social media
Being assholes to their wives/not carrying their share of domestic responsibilities.
Trying too hard to get with the hot girl even though the shy average girl is a freak in the sheets while the other one will just try and get her pleasure and either be disappointed or just leave you hanging afterwards.
Ego lifting in the gym. Everyone can tell you aren’t doing them correctly and we laugh at you because of it. No one is impressed and you are just cheating yourself out of actual gains.
Not noticing when a woman is flirting with them. Look, if she is trying to get you alone she is trying to either mug you or make out with you.
Not doing things they enjoy because of societal pressure. And not like go commit murder, but don’t worry about ordering a fruity drink at the bar. The ones that will judge you don’t have anything better going on in their lives anyway.
Having kids with women when they don’t want kids but the wife wants it or spending like morons usually on stupid stuff like vehicles. In their 20s I saw a lot of guys putting up with terrible women because the alternative of being alone wasn’t possible for them, but in their 30s they have stopped that.
Relationships with emotionally abusive women.
Dating women who are obsessed with getting attention online
Unless the guy is also obsessed with getting attention, then you are just wasting your time dating attention addicted women
They are completely undatable in the long run and will reek havoc on your life
They think women think like men. They don’t. You can’t see a woman do something, think “why would I choose to do that” and then assume her motive was what yours would have been. Women just think differently and they are mystifying and confusing, if you don’t know that.
This is true in many areas, such as communication and friendships and decision making but nowhere is it more true than with sexuality. Male and female sexuality are nooooothing alike. They are so different that they don’t make sense to each other. You have to actually study female sexuality like its an academic study. There is a system there but it’s a totally different system from men’s.
Wearing white socks and black shoes
believing everything a woman tells them because “she wouldn’t lie to me”
When people allow their ego to dictate the course of their life or how their treat or deal with others. Fear of change, fear of how other people live, greed, irreverence and things like that. It’s a human thing though. Not just men. Instead of reason we all let emotion choose for us at times. It rarely goes well. Even well intentioned emotional choices often end poorly. Let your brother stay with you for a while or give a co-worker a ride home because their car broke. Those things can slip into servitude quickly. Which is bad for you and the other person. Just as ambition can turn into domination or greed. It’s good to take stock of where you are, how you got there, where you want to be and look back on the choices you made. Why you made them. What those choices got you. Sometimes we can’t see the forest through the trees so reflection helps you do that. It helps avoid the trap of letting ego dictate your life. What you don’t see in the moment we can with the wisdom of hindsight.
Dressing with a little care and taste will open so many personal and professional doors
This guy I work with regularly leaves work early because he has a custody battle with his baby mama. He also regularly brags about some bimbos he sleeps with.
Cooking pasta all the way through and dumping the sauce on top. Cook it 1 min from al dente and finish cooking it IN the sauce with very low heat. The sauce will adhere better. Add some pasta water to thicken and flavour the sauce, and/or add butter off the heat for yet more flavour and a glossy sheen.
Probably not what you meant but I’m sticking to it.
Dropping the selfish ego when faced by truth especially from a woman who genuinely cares and loves them. Easy to say but hard to do. Yet it will make everything a lot easier, I tell you man.
since I’ve been seeing alot of mention about worry/fear/something-is-missing stuff…here’s the tool I work with:
Path of Virtue
all free/not spam/no ads/no signup ..it’s just about men who want to think clearer
Perhaps just create a Dragon Match specific to role playing D&D
Trying to assert respect but never admitting wrong.
Nope when a person never admits wrong my respect for them drops
Too many young men falling into the manosphere. It’s depressing, and wouldn’t happen if they’d think critically for five seconds.
Toxic masculinity is just toxic. Life is too short to waste time with assholes.
Not living within their means but living outside their ego.
Don’t buy shtuff that doesn’t benefit you. The things you buy to impress others WILL NOT make you better. They care for three seconds and their day moves on while. Buy things that make you better skill-wise, mentally and happy within your own space. Those have longer personal value. If course you can spoil yourself every blue moon but within means and reason
Something that really matters or hurts today, probably won’t nearly as much or at all two years later. Don’t end your life or waste too much time over it…