The classroom was full of young, attractive, open minded women. There was only three other men; one being the teacher. Good ratio, no? Every guys dream. Why then, I asked myself, was there so few guys to be seen?

This was beginners Spanish.

As guys, I think we absolutely HATE the thought of being seen as a beginner/newbie/novice. It implies ineptitude, uncertainty and weakness; the opposite of what we strive for. Most of us would be readier to engage in a fist fight rather than embarrass ourselves.

Based on my awesome powers of observation, it seems to me that women do not have as much of a need to create an appearance of being tough, decisive and strong. This is why they are (generally) more ready to throw themselves into the role of the “beginner”.

A part of me realised (though without putting it into words) something very cool and counter-intuitive; in the pursuit of “mastery”, a person must allow himself to accept the role of the beginner in order to advance.

As completely unnatural as it seems to me, I have been forcing myself to actually embrace the role of the beginner (on a consistent basis) for a month. This has been interesting.

The common experiences I have had in doing so can be likened to being kicked repeatedly in the shins…But mentally. It’s tough. It cuts down ALL false perceptions and over-estimations I have of myself and my current abilities. It “keeps it real”.

So there ARE benefits. God knows I wouldn’t do this stuff there weren’t, but they don’t come instantly. They are longer term benefits; like eating the apples from a tree planted years ago.

My results after a month:
- Greater accumulation of knowledge: More ready to ask for assistance.
- Dramatically enlarged comfort zone: Feeling more capable of doing new/unfamiliar things.
- Easier for people to relate: Not having as much of a “social mask” to maintain makes communication way simpler.
- Open to wider range of experiences.
- Placing less importance on what others think of me.

Does coming back after a month of implementation make me a “master of being a beginner”? Hell no! These are just the first results I am seeing.

It’s interesting though, how I was not even fully aware of these benefits, they just slowly happened. I only fully realised the change after doing something new and thinking “wow, I wouldn’t have even tried that a month ago.”

Muscles get bigger after the fibers are torn during exercise and repaired during rest. They are broken down and rebuilt even better. Seems this is the same concept here.

I think that most people really don’t accept things as they are. They will find something, and then whine and complain about it persistently, but when it comes time to do something about it, they are never the ones that put up their hand to take action. They basically say “I don’t accept this situation” and get upset about it in the hopes that a grown-up will come in and solve their problem for them.

They are the whingers, and are commonly found on comities and internet forums (based on personal experience).

We all know the feeling of what it is like when we are struggling against reality and think “I WISH things weren’t this way”. It feels like there is massive amounts of friction inside, because reality is not going according to the “pretend world” that we make up in our heads.

It is a massive drain of energy. This is because all of our focus/attention/whatever you wish to call it is directed towards this pretend world of “how things should be”, which is completely wasted because you can only take action in the real world.

“Where have I been living in a pretend world?” This is a good question to think about. You may want to quickly jot down a one or two sentence answer on paper.

A person can only take action on something within his influence, and he can only influence something that is real. This line of reason is the key of the whole concept.

The whingers never get anything done because they don’t accept things how they are; they don’t deal in reality.

If you want to open a door, you must first acknowledge that the door is there. You can also complain and say “that door shouldn’t be there so I will just keep on walking,” and then scream about the bump you got on your head until someone else opens the door for you…They both get the desired result, but one method is clearly more useful than the other.

The situation must be accepted before it can be changed.

Now, there may be some possible confusion with the meaning of “acceptance”. It doesn’t mean to passively accept bad stuff that comes your way and learn to live with it; it just means acknowledging reality in order to re-direct it through purposeful action.

Acceptance really is just being honest with yourself. How you are thinking and feeling, why you are acting and reacting in that way…All that intangible stuff that happens inside of you. It is being honest about what you are experiencing on all those different levels.

This is scary. It is scary because self-honesty means that you will probably confront all your bullshit stories, beliefs and ideas made to creatively avoid doing certain things. Acceptance and denial cannot exist together.

It is also scary because you will have to realise that you are the only one responsible for getting things done in your life. This means that every resultant fuck up will be ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT. Conversely, this also means that you will be in control of your life, which I suppose is an OK thing.

“I’ve made it. I am a success. I can relax now. I’ve finally made it.”

These are the words that I hope I never say, and hope I never think.

I get a strange nostalgic feeling when I look back on pictures of how I used to be. It is like I can re-experience how I felt every day, how I approached the world, and what my mindset I had at the time. I remember how I would do something only to get it out of the way in order to go back to relaxing again. I thought that if I could only “become successful”, I could relax for the rest of my life.

The thought “I could relax for the rest of my life” is a bit of an oxymoron though, since one tends to associate the words “life” with periods of energetic activity and “relax” with inactivity. It was like perusing a paradox.

Regardless, this is the path that I originally set out on, and I can honestly say that there has been remarkable progress. I have come to the point in my life where I am genuinely happy doing just about anything. I am happy when I am washing the dishes, I am happy chasing down a tennis ball, I am even kind of happy when I am sad. This is a dangerous time.

It is dangerous because it has become apparent to me that my life, as it is, is very enjoyable. It’s pretty good, and herein lies the danger.

I don’t need anything more in my life to make me happy. I (generally) don’t feel the need to meet the standards of others. I’m pretty good where I am. I’ve made it, right? The temptation right now, is to rest on my laurels.

I fully attribute this underlying good feeling I have to pursuing a purpose; aims that I have set for myself. It is the pursuit that makes me happy, not the idea of reaching the outcome. By being content with stopping where I am now to rest on my laurels, I will no longer be pursuing anything and the good feelings I experience will dry up.

You see this all the time with these businessmen who are motivated to persistently pursue their goals, make their fortune, and then retire. In a few years they will be telling their therapist “I don’t understand. I made it. Why aren’t I happy?”

Keep in mind that I am not saying businessmen are bad people or that pursuing financial goals is evil, I am just illustrating a point that resting on one’s laurels does not lead to happiness. There are two modes in life, progressing or regressing. Growing or dying.

It is so tempting to get caught up in believing in the story that “I have finally made it.” It feels good to indulge in that thought; maybe it doesn’t feel clean, but it feels good. Some things in life feel good initially but they are bad for you in the long-term, like the feeling of eating junk-food. This thought is the junk-food of the mind.

The key, as I am sure you already understand on some level, is to keep pursuing something meaningful; meaningful to you. In order to do this, the story of how awesome you are must be left behind.

This is not modesty.

Two people in my life were basically talking to me about “how much better” I have gotten at tennis. My reply was “I suppose I have improved a bit.” “Oh, he’s modest too!” Something about that response didn’t really click with me. I was not being modest.

Modesty is a moderate estimate of one’s own merits. I was not being moderate; I was being completely accurate (at least in my mind). It was neither an understatement nor overstatement. If someone says I did an awesome job on something and that is what I feel too, I will say “I know.”

The point is that anything else apart from my accurate perception would be a story. We have to choose between the path of buying into a story and the path of continuous improvement. They lead in opposite directions.

It’s a weird feeling when you snap back to reality and realise that you have been day-dreaming for the last half an hour. Maybe it was a story made up in your head of how things could have been, or thinking of what you should have said back then, or something you should be doing. One thought leads to another leading to another and soon you are caught up in an endless loop.

When you think about it, it is such a waste of time and energy. All that aimless thinking each day of the year that could have been put to a more productive use just goes down the drain. The mind’s great ability is to focus, but when in one of these thought loops, your focus is scattered. Never fully where it needs to be, always looking for the next entertaining stimulus.

It all starts with a trigger; one distraction that puts you on a path to many more distractions. This can be visualised as the diagram below.

The three arrow paths (progress) starting off down the bottom, are all going foward in the desired direction. The left and right paths encounter a distraction along the way, which sends them off course into an endless spiral. The unaffected middle path continues onwards while the two that got caught up are left behind.

So the key is to make things more like that unwavering central path and less like those other deviating paths.

Well one interesting idea to do this I happened to learn from meditation. I’ve been meditating for 10 minutes every morning for a few months now, and I really can’t say enough about how benficial it has been for myself.

What surprised me when I first began meditating was the thoughts I had going around in my head. It was amazing to see how random and unrelated they were; I had no control over them. I just watched as they popped up and disapeared…Sort of like the craziest slide show presentation you’ll ever see.

My initial response to these thoughts was something along the lines of “no, these thoughts are bad. I must stop thinking these.” The result of resisting the thoughts I was having (beating myself up) was creating more thoughts. The thoughts of “I’ve got to stop thinking this stuff!”

Well I eventually learnt that the best way to deal with having scattered thoughts was to accept that I was having these thoughts, but not to buy into them. When I say “buying into a thought” what I basically mean (without getting too metaphyical here) is the type of thoughts that you just lose yourself entirely in.

The whole idea is that when you catch yourself in one of those thought loops, you get back on track and don’t beat yourself up. You don’t need to judge or analyse it.

In another article, I will go over a few external methods I have found to reduce the frequency of thought loops.