Ignoring What People Say

I recently realized that I get almost as much intellectual pleasure from only playing the game as I do winning. I have observed that many people are content to find one strategy that works and stick with that. This of course is reasonable; if it works why change it? But, while I do enjoy the female attention I get, I also like the challenge I face when I am in a group where I am at the bottom of the ladder. I could be content to confine myself to the groups where success comes easily, and make no mistake I like those groups and their attention, but when I am at the bottom of the ladder I start to wonder how I could climb it.

This is an attitude that seems to bother some people. When I begin to experiment with the rules to determine the way up, people react. It makes them uncomfortable. Often they will give advice. More often they will mock me. The advice is regularly useless, and the mocking stings. We are hard wired to try to fit in and when someone points out my lack of skill I can not help but feel bad. It is price I pay for growth. What intrigues me through, is the advice. I know people mean well by it but I am often surprised at how bad the advice is. There is a strange sense of incongruity about advice from someone who, despite his ability to attract women, cannot maintain a stable relationship. Or relationship advice from someone who has no relationship.

Before I learned game it was not hard to observer the disconnect between what people said to do and what they did. They could not articulate why what they did worked. As a result I simply stopped listening to anyone. It was a frustrating waste of time. I could not attract women or be social on any level, but nothing anyone said worked either. This is still the case. Ignoring what people say has become a way of life. I used to wonder how I could fit in and get accepted and I wished someone would show me. Now I wonder how much I get away with; how well I can play. If I had a single strategy I would be locked in to its limitations. I now have the theory behind most strategies. The acceptance part is now, thankfully, trivial (something I never thought I would say). The limits of what I can do in the game are far more interesting. Now I just want to play.