The Rudest Book Ever PDF

 THE RUDEST BOOK EVER Shwetabh Gangwar is a novelist, public speaker, professional problem-solver, and has over two million followers on YouTube. He dedicatedly solves people’s problems sent to him on his Instagram, and makes videos on as many as he can. He defines it as the p...

 THE RUDEST BOOK EVER Shwetabh Gangwar is a novelist, public speaker, professional problem-solver, and has over two million followers on YouTube. He dedicatedly solves people’s problems sent to him on his Instagram, and makes videos on as many as he can. He defines it as the purpose of his life and what truly brings him meaning. First published by Westland Publications Private Limited, in 2019 1st Floor, A Block, East Wing, Plot No. 40, SP Infocity, Dr MGR Salai, Perungudi, Kandanchavadi, Chennai 600096 Westland, the Westland logo are the trademarks of Westland Publications Private Limited, or its affiliates. Copyright © Shwetabh Gangwar, 2019 ISBN: 9789388754439 The views and opinions expressed in this work are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him, and the publisher is in no way liable for the same. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. I dedicate this book to the two people I admire the most in my life— my mom and my wifey. I thank my mom for her indomitable strength that protected the child I was. That protection allowed me to shape the individual in me. I thank my wife for her strong determination and values in life, which influence that individual to become better.  CONTENTS A SMALL YET IMPORTANT INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE YOU ARE A PRODUCT CHAPTER TWO YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO BE SPECIAL CHAPTER THREE WHAT REJECTIONS DO TO US CHAPTER FOUR PEOPLE ARE WEIRD CHAPTER FIVE DO FAILURES MESS YOU UP? CHAPTER SIX FINDING LOVE CAN BE A PAIN IN THE ASS CHAPTER SEVEN HOW YOUR SELF DIES CHAPTER EIGHT SCREW HAPPINESS CHAPTER NINE CHOOSE SATISFACTION, NOT HAPPINESS CHAPTER TEN SCREW PLEASING PEOPLE CHAPTER ELEVEN YOU ARE A NATION CHAPTER TWELVE SCREW YOUR HEROES CHAPTER THIRTEEN ADMIRE, NEVER FOLLOW CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE PIECES OF SHIT ONLINE CHAPTER FIFTEEN DON’T SUCK-UP IN A RELATIONSHIP CHAPTER SIXTEEN LEARNING HOW TO THINK CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A FEW SIMPLE THINGS TO NEVER FORGET  A SMALL YET IMPORTANT INTRODUCTION This book is a collection of perspectives. It’s not about one fucking thing. This book does not mean to teach. It is written to make you think, which is why the charged language, the book title, and the harsh approach. Although the book does preach a whole lot, all I want from you is to think about it. Essentially, this book is about freeing your mind from all the bullshit you have unknowingly attached yourself to and are suffering from—ranging from ideas of happiness to people in your life. It will rip into everything. Because this book is about freeing you, it talks about a lot of things from your life. Whenever you disagree with something, write down in detail why, what is your reasoning behind it, and pray to God while reading your reasoning that it doesn’t sound like, I disagree because my feelings don’t like it.  CHAPTER ONE YOU ARE A PRODUCT Hey, buddy, how are you doing? Aren’t you glad that you bought this book! Well, we are going to go on a journey together. And as long as you are reading this book, I will be your friend. The only case in which this doesn’t apply is if you illegally downloaded this book, in which case, fuck you. This book is about insanely practical ideas to free you from all bullshit. Let me start by saying this: a lot of this was supposed to be your parents’ job. I am not gonna say anything bad about your parents. All I am saying is: if people were products, then what we see around us are really shitty ones. So, clearly, parents are royally fucking up their jobs. Let me give you an introduction of the world you have been brought into: The world doesn’t give a flying fuck about you. This world is a place full of people that will come in the form of friends, lovers and well-wishers; in the form of emotional adhesives, neatly packaged dreams and aspirational lollipops; in the form of saviours, fixers and salespersons. We are gonna talk about them all. Anyway, when the time comes, a lot of them will take complete advantage of you, rid you of your emotional innocence and turn your world upside down. It will most definitely happen, history tells you that, no matter who you are or what you do—rich, talented, genius, pretty, strong, powerful, polite, kind, or careful. So, do you feel prepared? Let’s start with you. You are a product. You are a product with hope attached to it. What does that mean? It means that, one day, you are meant to become this awesome, functional unit capable of choosing jobs, careers, relationships, environments and economies on your own volition—that’s the hope. The better the choices, the better the product you are—that’s the simple law on the basis of which the world judges you.  So, here are a few things about you: A person is not born ready. A person has to be made ready. The person is emotional in nature. The person does not know how to learn in the beginning; it knows how to absorb, which means it learns whatever it absorbs from its surroundings. I am talking about when you were a kid. The person has to learn how to learn. The person can think, but does not know how to think, which is why it cannot learn how to learn. This may be confusing, but it will become clear later in the book. A person’s emotional responses to different experiences create interpretations of those experiences, which the person assumes to be true. Therefore, emotional responses become one of the earliest teachers of the person. ‘Emotional responses’ is a garbage teacher, because as a kid, the emotional intelligence is underdeveloped. Because the person learns by absorption, the parents and surroundings become the other teachers. Instead of teaching the person how to think, parents and surroundings teach what to think—thereby becoming terrible teachers themselves. Teaching what to think stops the product from learning how to think and since the person doesn’t learn how to think, it grows up to be confused and clueless regarding how to deal with this world. In conclusion, the product is very likely to be screwed. The product is you. NOBODY IS BORN AN IDIOT You may have said this on many occasions in your life: people are fucking idiots. But nobody is born an idiot—we unknowingly choose to be idiots because we are not taught the methodologies of how to think. When devoid of this knowledge, people unconsciously view what they have learned from parents, surroundings and emotional responses as factual learnings. As you grow older and life becomes harder, without the ability of ‘how to think’, one naturally falls back on what one knows—which strengthens these ‘factual’ learnings even more, so much so that at a certain age, they can become unchangeable ideas, biases, prejudices and practices that the individual can no longer abandon. Now, you may be thinking, what the fuck is he talking about? Factual learnings? How to think? What to think? Here is an example: imagine growing up in a place where you only interacted with people of one group. Now, also imagine this group of people having a very strict, single-belief system, strict ideologies and strict doctrines on morality, how to live your life, what’s decent and what’s not. Now, on top of that, also imagine that they have notions which are not so kind about people of other groups, or other belief systems, or even about women. When you teach the children to think exactly like that, it would be called teaching somebody: what to think. Makes sense? If you are growing up with such teachings, those would be called factual learnings, because they may appear factual to you, but aren’t necessarily so. They are based on fear and ignorance. So, with time, when they are not corrected by verification, these factual learnings become factual truths to people. Factual truths means they are incontestable to those who believe them, and they most probably will die by them. And once you believe something that strongly, you become its avid defender. Once we become defenders, we become groups. Once we become groups, we disagree with other groups, and fight, and vote, and celebrate, and denigrate on behalf of whichever ideas align most closely to our ‘factual’ truths. THE TYPES OF PRODUCTS AROUND YOU Based on people who are taught how to think and people who are taught what to think, these are the results: A person brought up on what to think tends to follow ideas, ideologies and ways of living that echo a relationship with familiarity. We do so, because we feel safe with familiarity. Whatever is familiar to you is known to you well. So, you’re most comfortable with it. A person brought up on how to think tends to question, filter and may abandon ideas, ideologies and ways of living that echo a relationship with familiarity. Familiarity, although safe, does not guarantee soundness. A person brought up on what to think tends to feel threatened by alien ideas, things, or people, which may end up pushing them more towards what they know and are familiar with. A person brought up on how to think, when confronted by alien ideas or people, takes an interest in understanding and figuring them out. At the same time, they also inspect the first impressions their mind created. They are not threatened, because practising how to think over the years creates curiosity and an investigative attitude. Therefore, any person, thing or idea that is alien becomes food for thought. A person brought up on what to think inclines towards asking for solutions for their problems, instead of thinking and finding out things by themselves. This explains the insatiable need for self-help books, the lack of self-reliance, and the explosion of ‘clever’ people online, teaching people how to be successful, to be a man, a millionaire, a strong woman, smart, clever, slick, handsome and beautiful all at once. The person who knows how to think will try to find solutions for their problems by thinking on their own, using methods of reasoning, with consideration to mental harmony and bringing smoothness in the functioning of their life. To expand the scope of their knowledge, however, they will read books, watch videos and consume all available information. They seek knowledge because knowledge contains perspectives. And the cultivation of how to think requires a collection of as many varied perspectives as one can gather. Lastly, a person who wasn’t brought up on ‘what to think’ still functions just the same as people who were taught what to think. It happens because one can be deprived of parental guidance, but that is only one of the teachers. The other teachers, such as surroundings and their emotional responses, still teach them ‘what to think’. Basically, ‘how to think’ cannot be self-taught during the developmental years of  a person. You may cite a few exceptions, but this book isn’t about exceptional people, it’s about people. YOUR PARENTS PROBABLY MESSED UP Why are parents largely producing products that are unprepared to face the challenges of this world? It is a very important question, also a fantastic one. It is both important and fantastic because it sits on the assumptions that: All parents want to be parents in the first place. People who become parents are mentally prepared to be parents. People who become parents are mentally fit to be parents. Do you know how many reasons there are for having a child? One can become a parent because the guy forgot to pull out, or the girl —out of some ancient, primitive urge—commanded the guy to not pull out, or he believed he had pulled out but the result said otherwise. People have babies because they like babies, or because they have recently been feeling a sense of incompleteness, or because they hope it will make their lives purposeful again. People have babies because they have reached the age society has deemed right to have a baby. People have babies because it appears to be a viable strategy to save their marriage, or because one of the partners wants to have a baby, and the other complies. People have babies so the baby can grow up to fulfil the unfulfilled dreams of either of the parents. There is a great chance that you might have been born from one of those reasons. Ideally speaking, there should be a strategy. You are bringing a fucking life into this world, and that person is gonna grow and contribute in many ways to this world. They are gonna vote, follow ideologies, make people money—which is what a job is—find love, marry, and do a lot of other things, like write shitty poetry in their teens. If they are not a responsible person, they are gonna be hurting a lot of people. And if they grow up to be a douchebag, you are indirectly responsible for hurting all the people that douche is going to hurt. If they grow up to be a follower of ideologies that talk about dividing people, then the parents too are responsible for creating one more follower. WHY SO MANY SHITTY PRODUCTS? The question is: how much forethought goes in the minds of parents before having a baby about the baby? If the prime motivation is: A baby is a cute little thing that will change our lives, well, that is not good enough. There is a high possibility that you’re gonna be creating another moron on this planet. A kid ain’t gonna figure shit out by themselves. If they are not gonna be able to, then somebody will use that and make them their follower. And that somebody will probably not give as much of a shit about the kid as the parents would. Unfortunately, this is what happens in most cases. People learn shitty ideas from surroundings, parents and their own underdeveloped emotional intelligence. And with this, they enter this world. Now, there is a thing called responsible motivation, which sounds like: We are creating a human—are we mentally fit and prepared to create a person for whom we will be solely responsible? If not, shall we now start to upgrade our thoughts, perceptions, perspectives, create multiple storages of knowledge—which in time will cater to the young person’s curiosities and impact the overall development of its personality? ‘Responsible motivation’ means parents realising that they will have one of the strongest influences while the foundation of the personality of the child is being laid. And, to prepare the child, the parents will have to prepare themselves first. Unfortunately, parents on this planet aren’t so big on this one. SHOULD ALL PARENTS BE GENIUSES THEN? Fuck no, I am not saying that. I realise parents have shit to do. They have jobs, their relationship, finances to manage, and a house to take care of. I realise that they also have to watch television, talk about politics, buy more stuff, make room for the baby, drink tea, fight and argue, battle ageing, wrinkles, receding hairlines, declining morning erections, buy even more stuff, satisfy their parents, satisfy their bosses, satisfy their respective partners, say goodbye to their dreams, accept existential insignificance, and so on and so forth. Yes, there is a hint of sarcasm above. In many cases, people don’t think they need to learn anything because they assume they already know everything—a very dangerous assumption that comes from a frightening absence of self-awareness. So, they believe they are qualified to teach their kid anything there is to know in this world. Here’s the truth: most parents don’t have their shit figured out because nobody taught them how to think when they were growing up. In short, they are not philosophers. PERFECT PARENTS ONLY EXIST IN MOVIES Ideally, the perfect parents would be: Very wise. Aware of the child’s emotional struggles as it grows. Aware of the nature of lessons to give with every phase in the child’s life. Equipped with the sensitivity and command over ideas to present them in a way which prevents practical ideas from being misused. Careful not to over-instruct, which is a form of controlling, thereby obstructing the natural growth of curiosity, learning and exploration of self. Curious about the inclinations of the child. Aware of when to let the child get hurt and when to intervene. This means they are not simply sharing ideas and information, they are doing so while considering the impact, need, urgency, application, mood, temperament and learning curve of the individual. For this, people would have to be fucking philosophers, which they are not, regardless of whether they have degrees in philosophy or not. Therefore, such perfect parents exist as exceptions and in movies. THE DUMB GOAL OF SHITTY PARENTING In reality, what we usually get is the widely practised style of parenting, which is: Protect the child from accidentally killing themselves, getting killed or  hurting themselves. Keep them fed and loved and try to discipline them. Educate them, and to get them an education. Teach them what’s right and wrong by distributing punishment and love—punishment when the child messes up or pisses off the parents, and love when the child is being responsible, or depending on the mood of the parent. Aspire that they will one day become capable and take care of themselves. The last point is the main focus. You should be educated, they say. What the fuck does that actually mean? Getting a degree. Now, a degree is not a bad thing. The motivation behind getting a degree, however, is what’s important. For them the motivation is a job, which has three categories: good job, bad job and great job. They want you to get a great job, therefore the degree should come from the best of institutions. Goddamn, my kid got selected to the best school, I am so happy, I am an awesome parent. So, the objective of education is not for you to become a fine, thinking person, but to become someone who earns very well. They realise that rich people have a better life; you will be treated pretty well by your family members, the society that surrounds you and by members of the opposite sex. So it’s not entirely unreasonable for them to want you to become a person of status. What’s utterly stupid about it is that it takes care of the status part only, not the person. In the phrase ‘a person of status’, you need the development of both. Status is a socially engineered identity that tends to replace the individual identity. So, status must not dictate who the person is. The person must dictate what to do with the status in accordance with how they feel about that status. Take all the high-achieving people who hate their jobs or professions. Despite money, achievements and success, they are miserable doing what they do. It happens because a sense of meaning and satisfaction does not come from status; such things are deeper and more personal than that. Your parents wanted to prepare you to be one of the best products for this world. In action, what they end up doing is: prepare you technically, academically and skill-wise to be the best product for the race, like a car. The human element is barely accounted for. The goal of most parents is for their child to become capable of achieving great success. If that goal is achieved, in their minds, they are the best parents. What’s fucked up about it is, in case you do achieve success, they assume that they have somehow prepared you to deal with the world as well—which is utter bullshit. Now, if you are one of those people whose parents never forced you to do anything, they didn’t push you to achieve success, or anything of that sort, they let you do whatever you wanted—I am not saying parents who push their kids are evil. What I am saying is: it is the responsibility of parents to help you grow both into a capable working person and a capable thinking one. Did they do that? PARENTS ARE EXPERTS IN ACTING Learning of any kind that involves zero investment of your thinking produces only imitation. To create ideas and better yourself, you have to take the information and apply your own mind. When parenting is not coming from the parents’ own mind, their own ideas and their own thinking, it becomes an imitation of whatever they have learned. What that means is, they could be playing a character of what they believe a parent is. The character could be of a strict parent, of a genius person who knows everything, or of a person who is very brave and heroic. It could be anything. But when this happens, it becomes harder for the kid to find their parent approachable and figure them out. There is love, but the relationship is between the kid and a character, not the actual person. There are several reasons for parents to do this. One reason could be: playing a role gives them the comfort of hiding all their personal trials and tribulations from you. Just because somebody is older doesn’t mean they have figured out life. In most cases, older people are children who have aged. Stop attaching maturity, wisdom, enlightenment to ageing. He is old, hence he must be wise is one of the stupidest notions we take for granted. Another reason is pride. In cases where the parents’ sole focus is on the kid becoming capable, the character they play also becomes the one that expects only brilliance and exceptional performances from the kid. In playing this character, the kid becomes a reflection of their ego. The kid’s emotional and personal growth is hardly ever addressed. There is love, but it is shown in demands of accomplishments and excellence. In this case, what is missing is the responsibility of helping that kid become the individual they are meant to be. Another reason why most parents don’t care to break out of these stupid, empty shells of characters is, they don’t even consider that the kid’s personality is getting shaped by things that hurt them, influence them and amaze them. The reason for that is, they don’t see them as people yet. They see them as kids who must be doing harmless, innocent kids’ stuff. No wonder they are shocked beyond belief when they find out their kid was doing some adult stuff. You were smoking and drinking? You are having sexual relations already? But you are so young! The moment a kid touches the age of thirteen, parents should break out of their stupid characters and start looking at their kid as an inexperienced adult. What it means is, they are now thinking of doing everything that adults do. In conclusion, parenting is largely coming from imitating whatever people learn from the culture in their surroundings. This basically means that whatever parents do is coming from a degree of cluelessness with regards to what to actually do. No wonder you enter adulthood completely clueless. The point of having a brain should be to minimise error, not having to deal with it endlessly. But you were never taught the mechanisms which would prepare you to protect yourself and understand the errors that produce bothersome situations, hurt and pain. You are left to deal with all of it by yourself. As a result, you’re a grown person now, on your own, having to deal with the world telling you your self-worth and net worth; adjusting your self-esteem as you make sense of rejections from people you desire; filling yourself with insecurities and ideas from comparing yourself to god-knows- what standards; and lastly, triggering negative emotions as a response to failures, heartbreaks and denial of wishes. Yes, you are doing that to yourself, the world is doing that to you, and it does that to everybody. So, without wasting time, let’s concern ourselves with arming you with better means, methods and mechanisms to deflect and deal with shit that has happened to you, is happening to you and will happen to you.  CHAPTER TWO YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO BE SPECIAL Let’s be clear about something: The idea of being special excites almost all of us—to varying degrees, depending upon the individual. It’s perfectly normal. Be honest: you know you have fantasised about standing out in certain situations; played and replayed different scenarios of the same meetings and interactions in your mind with you as the centre of attention and master of the perfect dialogue. You have imagined scenarios in which you are born as somebody blessed with what you believe will make you fulfilled. You have wished that, one day, everybody around you would tell you that you are amazing, and treat you like you are amazing. And you have daydreamed about people you want to impress, please and attract instantly wanting to be your friend and lover after meeting you because you’re so impressive. Lastly, who hasn’t dreamt about having millions of dollars! THIS IS HOW YOU BECOME SPECIAL According to you, ‘specialness’ is being born special, being told you are special, being treated like you are special, and being rich. Unfortunately, all of that has nothing to do with specialness. Let’s first define what specialness is. During your childhood, there are chances you may have experienced one of these three things: a) you were told you are special, b) you were told you are not special, or c) there was no mention of you being special or un-special at all. If you were told by your parents that you are special, kindly rinse your mind of that idea immediately. If you were told you are not special, then, no, your parents aren’t geniuses; that, too, is completely wrong. Lastly, if there was no mention of specialness in your household, chances are you are still seeking it. And since all of us are seeking it in either assuming if I do this, it will make me special, or wishing if only I had this, I would have been special, you need to understand that specialness is earned. If you were asked, what were the moments in which you felt special, you might think of the time when people laughed at your joke, applauded some effort, or when your post on social media got more likes than usual—that would be much closer to the truth for the generation today. Such moments contain all elements of wanting acceptance and approval from others, not of specialness. Here’s a very simple example of specialness: I felt it when I achieved that. ‘That’, is anything that created a considerable amount of self-belief in you, and made you believe for the first time that you are capable. We all assume we are capable, because nobody would like to believe otherwise. But it remains theoretical until you have achieved something that not only becomes a reference point for yourself in the future—I was able to achieve this, this is who I am— but also proves to yourself that you have what it takes to be capable—I believe I can achieve anything I put my mind to. Specialness is the badge of realisation you earn. It may seem very simple to you, but this thinking can change the course of your life. Any achievement dictates you have created or mastered something. This means that not only did you gain in terms of knowledge, but you built habits of discipline, hard work, prioritising and focusing—habits that will serve you in almost all aspects of life. On top of that, achievements create immense self-belief; I can do it because I have done it before is an amazing thought to have at the back of your mind, guiding you. Also, achievements are rewarded with more opportunities, and give you status in the eyes of society. Now, imagine setting this up in the mind of a child, instead of telling them out of bias that they are special, or out of spite that they are not. Not mentioning it at all is equally bad, as it simply avoids addressing a want already growing inside the mind of that person. No matter what you tell them, they will at some point chase after the need to feel special. If you can give it a definition, redirect it, and set them up to earn what they already want, you will have saved them years of confusion, embarrassment, self-imposed feelings of inferiority, foolish pursuits and a focus on weaknesses. You will instead have given them an attitude that will serve them for a lifetime. However, specialness cannot be achieved for life from a single event. It has the property of very soon becoming a thing of the past. A badge earned at fifteen decorates the honour you earned at age fifteen only, not twenty, or twenty-five. To feel special, you ought to be ready and feel ready for all the battles, not just one. Also, ‘achievements’ does not necessarily mean trophies won in tournaments or contests. Achievements can be personal as well; for example, learning a new language, which has the same consequences of something won on stage. It will give you knowledge, self-belief, useful habits, it will create opportunities and give you status in the eyes of people. Any achievement—personal or public—is a thing of uniqueness. Therefore, making a sandwich or an omelette is not considered as an achievement— although some may beg to differ for the sake of trolling. Even the act of making sandwiches or omelettes every day for the rest of your life cannot be considered an achievement, unless you have the written testimony of world- class sandwich experts that your sandwich is way better than any sandwich made elsewhere, in which case, your sandwich shall be referred to as the sandwich, not a sandwich, and will be inducted as an achievement. THIS IS HOW YOU DON’T BECOME SPECIAL You need to make it completely clear in your mind that others recognising you, giving you attention, a moment of their time, is not you being treated as somebody special. You translate that into specialness because you hardly ever feel good about yourself. This means you have never consciously devised a way to make yourself feel better. It’s the burden of feeling inadequate in your mind that makes normal acts of kindness from others seem like special acts, which they are not. Guys say, ‘You are special’, to girls they are trying to have sex with. The point is, if you rely on others to feel special, then that may become the norm in your life, then a habit and, after that, a crippling need. Appreciate their kindness, of course, in cases where there was no motive behind the words. And if there was one, you can appreciate the sentiment, take inspiration from it, if it’s work related, and be aware of their motives. Whatever the case may be, the right to feel special must be earned and must only be yours to give. It shouldn’t belong to others because: The world might not share their opinion. Having practical expectations from the world will make you more self- reliant and less reliant on the good words of others. This will save you from constantly trying to please people and feeling miserable when  you fail. If you need somebody else to tell you that you are special, then you have not done anything to earn it in your own mind. OTHERS CAN NEVER MAKE YOU FEEL SPECIAL FOR LONG There are people who, despite having achieved, learned, and progressed a lot in their lives, have no sense of specialness in their minds. It happens because they did it all to prove something to somebody—it could be their parents, society, teachers. It was fuelled by pressure, competition, culture, and everything else but their own selves. Their lives to this day function on the principle that achievements and better performances are means to please those whom they have deemed gods. If they are pleased by me, then I am special. This is how their lives work: Whatever I do, I do to prove to the world that I can do it. Basically, to be accepted by the world. Soon afterwards, the ‘world’ is replaced by people who become the ideal models of behaviour and performance, models you look up to. Therefore—Whatever I do, I must do it better to impress them. The idea then becomes to please them until you become them, and have their blessing and assurance that you have become what they would like you to be. If you are living this life, flip the script, which means: Whatever I do, I do it for myself, because I want to prove to myself I can do it, recognising that whatever you do in turn impacts the world. Because whatever I do impacts the world, I shall and must become better, so I can impact the world for the better. Those who hold prizes, positions and power are sources to learn from —and nothing else. You know nothing about their lives except for their abilities. Admire the fact that they have those abilities, and leave it at that. When they appreciate you, single you out, congratulate you and welcome your efforts, you must understand that it is a normal, deserved reaction to your praiseworthy actions, not acts of benevolence from higher beings. You can appreciate that treatment, and make sure to in turn pass it on to others. But if you label it as something that makes you special, then that high of feeling special becomes dependent on that pat on the back, a compliment, a word of admiration to feel good about yourself. By doing that, you are silently setting yourself up to be crushed mentally the day you hear the opposite of those words, the day it’s not a pat on the back but a backhanded comment, not a compliment but an unpleasant remark, not a word of admiration but a rejection of your performance. This is a relationship between a master and servant, neither of whom is special without the other; the master relies on the servant’s presence for his special status, the servant on the master’s words of kindness. The truth about most people who have achieved a lot but depend on the praise of others to feel special is, you are already special. Nobody ever taught you to think from this point of view. Nobody taught you what specialness actually is. And nobody taught the same to those who haven’t achieved much either. Specialness, in essence, does not require anybody but the individual. One can simply close their eyes and ask themselves, Why am I special? What have I done in my life?, and get a clear answer. In case you feel dissatisfied, then you have the option to earn it. Nobody gives it to you, you have to take it. But that’s the hard part, earning it. It is to escape from this answer that we look for specialness in love, appreciative comments, and attention through social media or friends. It is because we know we aren’t special in our own eyes, that we at least want to be told by others that we are in theirs. Once you realise this, your specialness is taken away from the approval and acceptance of others and handed exclusively to the self. Specialness then becomes a collection of skills, and feeling special is the sensation felt on upgrading in life after having mastered a skill.  CHAPTER THREE WHAT REJECTIONS DO TO US Side note: This is an intro chapter about rejections. We are warming ourselves up for a ride. One of the most important things we are going to do from now on is talk about foundational principles. What the fuck does that mean? Well, it’s basically re-considering your perceptions of things, or creating perceptions of things if you don’t have any. You get hurt about things and start doing extremely stupid shit because a lot of times you are looking at it the wrong way. Perceptions matter, my friend, the way you look at something matters a lot. If you can see things a certain way, that gives you the ability to avoid pointless suffering from it—why wouldn’t you want that! So, without further ado, let’s begin. Rejections are a part of life. You are going to get rejected by those you desire, and you will not always get a fair shot in the competition. People are motivated by various factors to make decisions to the detriment of your happiness or prosperity. The point is, on many occasions, it won’t have anything to do with you. This is a big world we live in, with a lot of people. You’re just one of them. And sadly, the world doesn’t revolve around you, which kinda leaves you with very bad odds. Now, because we know rejections are a part of life and happen every single day to somebody, we need to have a way of looking at rejections that helps us overcome them easily, and not be scared into a little hole by them. Our first foundational principle is: Rejections are normal. It might be very late for you to start seeing it in this way because you may have already spent a lot of years being psychologically mauled by rejections, failures and losses. Don’t worry, we will talk about everything. For now, start re-writing your perception of rejections of any kind with these three words: rejections are normal. Rejections are a commonly found species of ancient beasts that get everyone in all fields of life. As mentioned before, it may have nothing to do with you when it happens, but because you are a self-important, self-loving son of a gun, you think from your ego instead of your rational mind and make it all about yourself. You act as if you’re the only one it has happened to. Therefore, once again, rejections are normal—start seeing it this way. They happen to everybody. REJECTIONS DURING TEEN YEARS ARE THE WORST Although rejections continue throughout your lifetime, they tend to have a brutal effect in the initial years, a time when you are a little too passionate, too hopeful and a little too entitled. It might have been in your early years of schooling, when a teacher you really wanted to be noticed by somehow always moved past you as if you were an unwanted ad. Or, it could have been a person you liked, or a person with authority or charisma. The sensation felt from that experience was, Am I invisible to them? Your mind is unable to come up with any rational explanation for such behaviour from others, and you’re too embarrassed to open up to your parents about it. In case you do, chances are they see it as an opportunity to fill your mind with complete nonsense: Something is wrong with that person for not realising how great you are, so screw that person for not seeing that. Of course, your perception can’t agree with screw them, it goes in direct contradiction to the fact that you like them and wish to be liked by them in return. You have given them value, in your mind. Therefore, what you end up feeling in the absence of a sensible explanation for what is happening is —Something is wrong with me. As time goes by, these sensations double, triple and start to multiply. You haven’t been selected for a school activity, a debate, a play, the sports team; the ‘cool’ senior students don’t seem to take a shine to you; and most devastating of all, your crush, the really pretty one or the popular one, those whom everybody seems to be interested in and talks about, doesn’t notice you at all either, even though you are crushing it in the contest of staring at them. That’s when the voice starts to become louder: Maybe something is wrong with me. From this, the conclusion your underdeveloped brain draws is: I am not special. As discussed earlier, you haven’t the slightest clue of what being special means either.  These are the developmental years of the perceptions and personality of a person, and the only tool at hand is an underdeveloped brain. Without guidance, the response to being rejected is rarely going to be mature. A heartbreak, opportunity lost and isolation may make you feel it’s the end of the world. So, depending on your fearfulness, fearlessness, strength, weakness, you make a decision about what to do with this voice saying: I am not special. In short, you get screwed because you haven’t been told that rejections are fucking normal, mate. Your mind doesn’t really know how to process emotions productively either. The results could be really disastrous. BEING MOTIVATED BY REJECTION IS NOT REALLY A GOOD IDEA Of the many outcomes of rejections, three of the results could be: I am going to accept that I am a loser. The world doesn’t notice me; therefore, I will become successful to be noticed. I will show them. I will prove to them I am superior/better/above them all, and they are going to regret not choosing me. I am going to declare that the world is unfair; basically a shitty place, and devote myself to blaming, hating and spreading toxicity. You may think the second point is quite powerful—Kudos to that kid. Well, not really. That person is going to be successful only so they can prove to others that they are a somebody. And, in that pursuit, they will most probably chase success blindly, ignoring what they actually want to do, because their prime motivation isn’t to be self-satisfied, but to satisfy others. And here’s the fatal flaw behind this motivation: the desire to prove something to others requires that these ‘others’ actually care, which they don’t. You are the only one invested in what becomes of you. And the only thing they are interested in, is what becomes of them. Also, in the likelihood that the person choosing option two is not able to achieve that success, what option do they have but to become more bitter, more sad? And let’s assume they do achieve that success, what are the chances that these ‘others’ would be satisfied? What if those you want to prove your superiority to become more successful than you? Should you shave your head out of frustration at this point?  This thinking goes completely against the idea of knowing how to think because, at some point, you will be forced towards introspection by your own mind and age, and such choices and pursuits serve as the prime ingredients for an existential crisis. This may, with time, also create a bitter, meaningless outlook on what you do, because what you have built is a personality that relies heavily on proving itself to others. The self is mostly or entirely clueless, because the mind has been trained to look towards those you respect to give you satisfaction. Those who are able to find out what they want to do in life chase after greatness to prove to themselves that they are great at what they do. With time, they realise they don’t need anybody’s approval, as doing what they want to do gives them purpose, and fulfilling that purpose gives them satisfaction and a meaningful life.  CHAPTER FOUR PEOPLE ARE WEIRD Side note: We will be talking about our second foundational principle here, which has to do with your general perception of people. Why do we need a general perception for people? Well, because we get rejected by them all the time, and it hurts a lot in many cases. That’s what this chapter is about; so hold on to your sweet seatbelts and shift the gears of your reasoning to the maximum as this foundational principle is called: ‘People are weird’. Yes, that’s how I want you to start seeing people from now on. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PEOPLE? To understand how to deal with something, you need to first figure out what it is you’re dealing with. Your understanding of that thing builds a perception of it in your mind, and based on that perception, you build expectations. This is not very complicated; you do this with almost everything. You have strong perceptions about animals—a lion is dangerous, so is a crocodile. And this perception influences your expectations from them. You expect a lion or crocodile to attack you, and therefore you act accordingly. Similarly, a domesticated dog is perceived differently by you, hence your expectations from that animal are friendliness and playful behaviour, and you act in accordance with those expectations. Now comes humans: What is your perception of them? Let’s think of a few adjectives you may have heard or used for people: people are stupid, morons, idiots, selfish, untrustworthy, unreliable, calculative, assholes, trash, the list goes on in all spectrums. There are two problems with the above. One, these are too specific; and two, because they are too specific, you don’t really believe them. You have seen people perform acts of amazing selflessness. You have seen, at a professional fighting event, two warriors beat the living crap out of each other, and after the fight, hug each other, congratulate each other and show respect for each other. The theory that people are garbage flies right out of the window after witnessing that. But you don’t believe people are amazing creatures either. You have been hurt, mistreated, wronged, judged and cheated by people. You have heard, read and watched multiple stories of others getting hurt by people. And you have been warned by people you trust to look out for yourself and not blindly believe in people. In the midst of all of this, what to really think? Are people too complicated? For convenience, one could just leave it at that. Is that what you believe? The truth is, you have never really thought about it. You may say, People are complicated, or agree with that because it seems like the most logical answer. That’s the difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘understanding’. You know a lot of sensible things, but the reason why you don’t apply them is because you don’t understand them. To understand something, it must come from the reasoning of your own mind. Knowledge can be borrowed, but you can’t borrow understanding. Once you reach a conclusion derived from your thinking, it is called a realisation. And once you realise something, your perception changes about it once and for all. And that perception remains locked down until another realisation impacts it—that’s the process of learning and growing. YOU ARE CONFUSED When it comes to people, the right answer is, I don’t know. You, sir or madam, don’t have one perception of people in general, you are confused. It is entirely possible that there isn’t a day when you aren’t defining what people are. It could be conversations in which you are giving advice to someone you care about. It could be a discussion on how people think or behave in different situations. It could even be a debate on the state of the world caused by the people in it. And these definitions of people change regularly depending on the context, mood and bias of the individual. People become ‘great’, if it is a beautiful story warming the heart of the listeners and storyteller. People are ‘stupid’, when someone you firmly oppose gets elected. People are ‘assholes’, when someone you trusted screws you over.  So, it’s understandable why it must be hard for you to pick one perception of people with conviction, and have it consistently serve you in changing situations. As mentioned before, you can’t put your entire belief in ‘people are stupid’ or ‘people are amazing’— both are too specific. They don’t inspire believability if you want to see people in a realistic way. The one we are left with is, ‘people are complicated’. The problem with that is, although it is sensible, it isn’t personal; it sounds like we are defining machinery we don’t know much about. It’s complicated. It makes people seem more distant, secretive and difficult to understand. Why not try people are weird? Weird is one of the most fantastic words humans have come up with. It is neither a fully positive nor negative term. People on the internet often call themselves weird, almost as if they are paying a compliment to themselves, which shows it has connotations of positivity and self-acceptance in it. At the same time, it has the property of strangeness to it, which gives space for people to act oddly at times. People act strange ‘coz they are weird. It also has the property of fun, allowing people to act silly without judgement. Lastly, ‘weird’ has the same sense of mystery that ‘complicated’ does, but without that wall of impossible penetration. Let’s test all of the above in scenarios involving rejection: I don’t know why they don’t want to be friends with me. I guess people are fucking stupid. It doesn’t make sense unless you actually believe they are missing out because you’re so amazing and awesome. This would come from self- assumed superiority, arrogance, self-obsession and a disregard for others’ opinions when they don’t agree with your plans. She doesn’t want to be with me because she is amazing. This doesn’t make sense either, because saying this would be concluding that you are inferior. It involves self-degradation, murder of self-belief, self- esteem and self-worth. They don’t want to be my friends because people are complicated. It actually doesn’t help at all on an emotional level, because the two parts of the sentence feel completely unrelated to each other. One sounds like something that affects you, and the other an unemotional fact. They don’t want to be my friends, because, well, people are weird. This leaves room for an actual reason to exist which, perhaps, is currently unknown to you. It allows for doubt to fill the space instead of assumptions from ego or hurt. Frankly, you don’t have all the facts to make any assumptions, judgements, or conclusions. By saying people are weird, you allow the experience to not affect your ego. Let it go, man, people are weird; you don’t have to understand them, nor blame anyone. The truth is, you don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on in their lives, what kind of a person they are, what their motivations are behind forming relationships. You don’t know anything about them. You tried, and that’s great. Always remember: your job is not to understand people, but to understand and take care of yourself. What we have understood so far is: We need a general attitude towards rejections in life, rejections are normal, they happen. In terms of rejections from people, it becomes: rejections are a normal thing, and I don’t have to take them personally, because people are weird. Who knows what’s going on in their heads—it’s not my job to find out. WHY THINKING PEOPLE ARE WEIRD IS AWESOME Why is having the perception ‘people are weird’ necessary for your growth? For one, having a perception to fall back on is better than having no perception at all, and much better than having delusional perceptions. To understand why this perception is better, we have to go back to the statement at the beginning of this chapter. Your perception of something creates expectations from them. Where does this perception come from? In one word, data. Your perception of lions comes from data about lions. They are predators who wouldn’t differentiate between a baby and a man in terms of food; they lack empathy, are territorial and fierce hunters. Your expectations come from a perception about lions which is formed by factual behavioural data about them.  What about people you want to be friends with or desire romantically? Your expectations from them come from a perception which has no real data backing it. You are getting hurt, disappointed and affected by rejections from people you have no data about. What you have is impressions of them, first impressions to be precise, which is debatable data, or unreliable data, to say the least. Here’s how it happens in your mind, stepwise: You notice a person, and you think, Hmm. The ‘hmm’ can be caused by multiple reasons: they are physically attractive, appear to be warm, friendly, fatherly, kind, intelligent, knowledgeable, mature, wild, fun, crazy and awesome to you. These first impressions are registered in your mind, creating an attraction towards them in a friendly way, or a romantic way, or in a purely attention- and approval-seeking way. From these first impressions emerge expectations: I would like to be friends with them, I would like them to take me under their wing, I want them to notice me and like me, I want them to think I am cool, I want them to be mine, I want them to assure me I am capable, I want them to assure me I am sane, fun, valuable, too. These expectations further push the first impressions into conclusions about them in your mind—they are perfect beings, or something very close to that. This is a very important stage. The truth is, there is no actual data to support all these claims, only impressions created in the first moments of interaction with these people and from what others say or feel about them. Therefore, your response should be: They may seem this way, but I don’t fucking know. Instead of doing that, your brain starts a brilliant new process called idealisation, which involves your imagination. When you start to idealise them, they begin to appear more special to you; you focus more on them and your expectations from them strengthen. You have already accepted without proof or confirmation that they are what your first impressions tell you. Now, you are running scenarios of them accepting you and becoming your friends, and you are making plans with them in your mind.  You get hurt when none of that happens. In case it does happen, in the long run, let’s say, after years, you realise they are completely different from what you believed they were. Now they are completely human to you, which means regular, ordinary people with plenty of flaws, insecurities, and unimpressive accounts to their life’s story. Your excitement about them is over. The process repeats with new people. BECOME MORE LOGICAL, LESS EMOTIONAL Here are four concrete points you need to remember very clearly to avoid the above from happening again: 1. Data is king. Knowledge about something, anything, comes from data— remind yourself of this. I am not going to expect anything from them. I know practically nothing about their life. I am going to observe and wait for real data to show up. Waiting means that you allow yourself time to calm down from your initial excitement. I am not going to judge them based on rumours about them, nor buy into the hype around them. There is a possibility that you might not even get real data about them unless you are working closely with them. Real data is any pattern of behaviour and thought that backs a person’s actions, not words. People say a lot of shit to sound amazing. The sentiment behind what they say could very well be to sound thoughtful, caring and kind on purpose. But what people say and what they do are quite often two separate things. Therefore, don’t outright buy the nice-sounding bullshit they say. Observe whether it reflects in their choices as well. Choices, specifically, reveal the thought process of that person because, in making any choice, a person is also rejecting the other available options. Real data is found in the choices they make, not what they say they would like to make. Fuck what they would like to do, focus on what people actually do. 2. First impressions are horseshit. Make a conscious effort to dissolve the first impressions your brain is making of people. First impressions don’t come from data, but from how you perceive the world—which relies solely on your level of intelligence and knowledge. So let’s talk about your intelligence. Do you have a history of figuring out people accurately? Do you claim it takes you no time to find out who’s who? Or do you have a tendency to trust people too soon, forming completely wrong perceptions and ideas about them and realising later it was horseshit? It is entirely possible you’re too hopeful, too naive and a believer in people, a believer in the goodness in people. Two things you need to consider: Whoever you are, or however you try to appear in front of people, manipulates your perception of people as well. For example, I am nice, therefore others must be nice as well. Whatever you believe in does not change the practical reality that people are not you. If you are nice—good for you—that is by no means a guarantee that people will not be themselves. The point is, do not rely on your intelligence to make assumptions about people if it isn’t considering the practical reality outside of you. Once you remove those general assumptions that your mind takes for granted, and the first impressions, what you are left with is, I don’t know—which is the most intellectual place to be in regarding all matters of life. 3. People are fucking weird. With people are weird in general as your foundational principle, you avoid falling for the assumptions your mind takes for granted, as well as first impressions. You stop seeing them as impressive, perfect, special beings. They are not. Nobody is. Instead, your outlook is slight uncertainty. You invite caution in your life and a healthy level of scepticism. You keep your trust in the back-pocket, but at the same time you aren’t judgemental, negative or dismissive of people. Like we said before, I am not going to judge them based on rumours, nor am I going to buy into the hype around them. I simply don’t know. 4. We live in a world of marketing, advertising and sales. Anybody can sell you anything—having no real data creates that opportunity. The first impression is bullshit because it comes from a lack of data. Why not entertain the possibility that it is salesmanship until proven otherwise! You don’t, because thinking along those lines might feel unkind and unfair. You want to give the other person a chance because you like them from your first impressions. Another reason why you don’t consider that somebody might be selling bullshit to you is because of our very ignorant perception of bad people, which comes from an oversimplified division of good and bad.  A bad person, in your mind, is one who is manipulative, calculative, lying, scheming, Machiavellian, sociopathic, or a criminal mastermind, basically somebody who has the word ‘bad’ written all over them. That’s what watching fucking movies and TV shows have taught you. So, you avoid considering that with a person who is making you feel good. What you need to realise is that ‘bad’ people, basically those who are going to screw you over, unlike in movies and TV shows, don’t announce to the world that they are bad. People who are going to be good to you as well as people with self- serving motives or ‘bad’ motives, both know a single unbendable fact: there is only one route to gaining your trust and coming into your life—by being nice to you and making you feel good. In the beginning, they were great. Therefore, until you have real data, the perception ‘they are weird’, which essentially means, I don’t know them at all, helps you avoid falling into traps that take years of your life away and teach you nothing new. The next time you meet someone who forms a great first impression in your eyes, never forget, people are fucking weird. So screw the first impression no matter what they do professionally. Accept that we live in a world of marketing, so screw what they are selling—charm, looks, profundity, it doesn’t matter. And always keep an eye out for real data. That is what will end the practice of you thinking that any person who makes you feel good in the beginning is special.  CHAPTER FIVE DO FAILURES MESS YOU UP? Side note: If you are an achiever in life, this chapter is not for you. The second chapter about specialness was more than enough. This is strictly for those who are confused, battling the fear of failure, and those who have yet to achieve something. In this chapter, we will expand on the foundational principle Rejections are normal in the direction of failure, the fear of failure, and how winning is done. HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH FAILURE Rejections are normal. Without a foundational principle on how to see failure and rejection, whenever you don’t succeed in something you care about, the first thoughts are: I am a fucking idiot, I am nothing, I am a loser, I don’t deserve anything, I deserve to die. In many cases, these feelings are accompanied by fear of your parents’ wrath, friends’ judgement, people’s disappointment. How am I going to tell my parents? Everybody is going to think I am a loser. I am good for nothing because my friends got through. Everybody is going to move on, and I will be stuck here forever. Some of the worst outcomes are: You become so afraid of failing again that you find excuses to back out and not sign up for any competition, challenge or opportunity with the same risk involved. You stick to one place. You don’t change your job, as if you have married the workplace. Changing jobs feels like a new challenge; it involves a new environment, new people, new tasks, and the word ‘new’ brings a strong feeling of uncertainty to you. It’s a maybe to you  —maybe I will fail there, maybe I will not perform well there, maybe I will have to act differently there, maybe I will have to learn different things there. And the focus in all those maybes is on the worst possibility: It won’t work out. You convince yourself that you are mediocre. Your mind looks only for safe options now, and your part-time job is to scare other people into looking at the world like you do. Mediocrity is safe. As a coping mechanism, you treat it as if it’s a matter of choice. I am a cool guy who never studies and always fails in exams, that’s my thing. You think people are laughing with you, when in reality, they are laughing at you, which you only realise once they have all moved on in their lives, and you are left with limited options considering the consistent track record in failing. This chain of self-harm needs to be broken with the knowledge that failures, losses and rejections are normal, and a solution that directs all those highly powerful negative emotions into something useful. To understand that, you need to first understand how winning is done the right way. HOW WINNING IS DONE MENTALLY It starts with a question: You wanna do this, right? This may seem like a very simple question, but, my friend, there is a difference between wanting to do something and having to do something. Most people in this world are doing what they do not because they want to, but because they have to. Having to do something becomes a duty you have to fulfil. Wanting to do something is a choice. Therefore, to win, the very first thing you need to clarify in your mind is, do you really wanna do this? When it’s a choice, there is an ownership of doing that thing. You want to do it. You are not doing it because somebody else is on your ass, you will get fired if you don’t, you will have a bad report as an employee—all of these mean you don’t care much. You don’t mind having fun and stalling the work, because you have the idea that you can do it at the last minute. Here’s a very simple thing, if you don’t care, if you don’t take what you do seriously, then forget about winning, ever. So, decide right now in your mind, do you wanna fucking do this or not? That’s the first step. One might ask, and quite reasonably so, Why don’t you wait until you have figured out what you want to do, and do that? The problem with this question is, it comes with the privilege of being able to afford to wait, which a large part of this world can’t. The laws that govern their circumstances simply state: you have to do something right now. So, the three possible answers to the question Do you wanna do this?, are: yes, no, I don’t know. The answers, no, and I don’t know, occupy a great many people. The argument they make is, we are not successful because of our lack of interest in the thing. I have no interest in what I do. It doesn’t motivate me. In short, you are not successful because you don’t know what to do. This is a highly misplaced argument because it assumes that everybody who is successful must be deeply in love with what they do. That is a quarter of the truth, which means it is 75 per cent bullshit. People are successful for a number of reasons: A hunger for money, status, power; A hunger to avoid poverty, desperation and conditions you wouldn’t want to go back to ever again; A hunger to prove in your own eyes that you are capable (which would be the concept of being special); A hunger to provide for those whom you love and are dependent on you. Success is a matter of choice—it doesn’t matter what the hunger is. Once you have made that choice, once you have made it a want, we enter the second step: how you see winning. There are two types of winning that we see in this world: the traditional winning and the real winning. What traditional winning looks like: this is basically how society crowns a winner. The results of any competition declare a winner and the losers. Society celebrates the winner and ignores the losers—that’s the common practice you grew up seeing. Nobody gives a fuck about the loser, so losing becomes a thing to be sad about. The winner is loved and appreciated by all, therefore winning becomes a certification of potential. How real winning works: one wins after having failed time after time. The essence behind real winning is not giving up, no matter what badges and medals society is handing out. When it comes to your ‘heroes’ and those who define success and hard work for you, you see them the same way. These people are your heroes because they display an impressive standard of consistent hard work, and through that hard work have achieved expertise in their fields. And that is why you love to fixate on and romanticise how many times they failed, lost and were rejected. You are hugely understanding and forgiving of their failures and mistakes. You believe in them because you know they are not the type to give up. So, in your story, the traditional sense of winning applies. In the stories of those you admire, winning has everything to do with a never-give-up spirit, excelling in a skill, and doing so by hard work. Why don’t you apply the same to your story as well? The only reason why you are still stuck with traditional winning is because you grew up seeing it, and because society treats it as the most important thing. But you won’t make it very far with the traditional sense of winning because: It’s short sighted. It’s focused only on an event, the results of an exam, a competition. It appeals to the need for instant gratification. I won this, I won something, now I am important, a winner, and special. Winning is not a single event, it’s a continuing process. There are plenty of people scratching their heads, wondering, I used to be at the top of my class and now I am nowhere, what happened! You got happy with those wins and lost track of what comes after and what happened before. As long as you feel insanely happy about winning, you’re going to feel intolerably miserable with losses. As a result, it might become hard to avoid being permanently afraid and unsure after failure, or become cocky and overconfident after a win. HOW WINNING IS DONE PRACTICALLY You want to be special. This specialness is not about being superficial, it is about being capable. Earn specialness by becoming capable. Once you have decided to become capable, start seeing whatever you are doing as a challenge. The mindset of looking at things as challenges appeals directly to your ego. Whether you feel you are interested in it or not becomes unimportant. Your hunger to become capable is far greater than how the challenges make you feel. Once you have understood and accepted the concept of specialness, your focus deviates from traditional winning. Real winning requires your focus on neither winning nor losing, but upon learning. You start seeing whatever you are learning from the point of view of utility, opportunity and ability. Take whatever you are learning right now, whatever you are currently doing with your life, and ask the questions below from these three points of view. Utility asks you: what’s the use of what you are learning? In how many areas, fields of study and practices can it be implemented? How much self- belief does this learning generate in you? How much self-value does it provide? Does it have value in the long term, in the market? And lastly, at what point does whatever you are learning start to have real utility in terms of success? Basically, where do you stand right now? Thinking in terms of utility makes you realise that there is a real world out there, away from your frog-well, with real competition, and the trophies you may be collecting are mere indicators that you are on the right path, but you haven’t actually won. Opportunity asks you: how can you use what you are learning? How many doors will it open for you? In how many ways can you capitalise on this skill? How many opportunities does it have in the marketplace? What’s the full potential of this skill if learned until you are an expert? Where is the geographic hub for opportunities for this skill? Thinking in terms of opportunity gives you ambition. Ambition gives you seriousness. With ambitious goals, the nature of its utility in your mind is revised and reset as well. Ability asks you: how well can you do what you are learning? Do you have a natural talent for this? Are you able to learn this faster than others? Are you slower than others? If yes, then despite being slower, are you able to beat the competition or stand on par by working harder than them? Success cares about nothing but results. Are you able to think creatively, which means can you create new opportunities from the existing ones? Are you able to think cleverly? Thinking in terms of abilities makes you aware of where you stand right now and where your ambition requires you to be standing. Once you start seeing winning from these points of view, you get clarity and a vision. Now we move to the third step: how to see failures. HOW REAL WINNERS SEE FAILURES Make the fact that failures, rejections and losses are normal a foundational principle upon which your brain works. Real winning is a journey. Despite knowing this, people tend to give up the entire prospect of winning at the first sight of failure. One of the big reasons is that, in your mind, you have certain qualifiers. They could be getting into this college, gaining that skill by a specific time, reaching there or becoming this at a certain age. These are deadlines and milestones in your plan that you have to achieve to give yourself enough believability that you can pull this off. And once you fail in one of those things, you give up the entire venture altogether. The truth is, there is a huge possibility that you’re going to fail a lot, again and again, in almost all of those qualifiers. The reason why you need to stop taking them so seriously is because they are coming from your mind, which tells you how things should happen, not reality, which shows you how things actually do happen. When the plan isn’t working, whatever negative conclusions you may draw also come from your mind. You need to understand that these failures can only change the path of the journey, not the direction. For example, if you wanted to get a degree, but you’re upset because it’s not going to be from the prestigious university you hoped to get into, then you’re still stuck with the traditional mindset of winning. Focus on learning, which would suggest that you get a degree from wherever that subject is taught. As long as you’re alive and functioning, the chance of getting back on top and amongst the greatest exists. It depends exclusively on your own dedication to build masterful skills in it. If you decide that you want it, then nobody can stop you. The only downside of failing is that your path may become longer, but you’re not dying in the next five years. You have the time, so focus on building that skill no matter where you are. And that’s how winning is done, it’s not about which college you went to, which trophies you won at age fifteen; it’s about where you stand, what your capabilities are, and what you can show when the opportunities come. Success depends entirely on your preparation. So believe that it’s going to be a journey, and there are going to be plenty of failures, and that’s all right. But at the end, you win by becoming too good to be ignored. FAILURES TEACH YOU HOW TO WIN THE WAR Once you have adopted ‘failures are normal’ as the foundational principle in real winning, when you fail, you do not emotionally punch yourself. Your emotions are focused less on feeling miserable and more on conducting an investigation. You recognise that, although failures are normal, that does not mean they are nothing. Real winning requires the minimisation of losses to the best of your control. What is the investigation? First, you take ownership of the failure. It’s very different from acting as if you have been stung by failure. Both are similar realisations, but come from different points of view. The first makes you responsible, the other a victim. Instead of finding tendencies, people and relationships to blame, you make yourself fully responsible for that failure. This is step one of the investigation. I deserve this. Whatever impact this failure causes, I deserve and take responsibility for it. Once you take ownership, it becomes your fuck-up. You are not a victim, it didn’t happen to you, you caused it. Once you own it, everything before that failure comes into scrutiny, all those people, relationships and tendencies that could have taken the blame; they all have to go under the surgeon’s knife. After ownership begins assessment: Why did I fail? Assessment produces findings about your abilities, habits, relationships and the people in your life. For example, what was your approach going into the competition— serious or lazy? Did your approach include following a plan, routine, daily rituals backed by strict discipline? Or was it just counting the months left and convincing yourself of bullshit like you’ve still got it under control? If your approach was serious, then should you have worked for more hours a day? What state of mind did you have the entire time? Was your focus clouded by emotional entanglements? Were you busy in the consumption of short-term pleasures? Or were you desperately running after getting laid or finding true love? Whatever your findings are, for the sake of success, you learn and incorporate them into your life as changes to be made. If you want success, there are going to be huge adjustments, and current relationships will have to go through negotiations. The findings might tell you that certain relationships aren’t even deserving of negotiations. They need to go. You need to take back control of your life. You need to recognise the mistakes and readjust your approach and mindset fully and immediately to avoid failures in the future to the best of your control. And this is why failures are important— they teach you everything you need to win the war.  CHAPTER SIX FINDING LOVE CAN BE A PAIN IN THE ASS Side note: In this chapter, we’re gonna talk about rejections from those we desire romantically. Of course, this will be done while keeping in place our foundational principle, Rejections are normal. We are going to be talking about how to find the right person, how to avoid dating the wrong people, and probably almost everything else relationship-related. Let’s see how we fare in this journey of ours. Here we go. WHY DID THEY REJECT ME? Now, after reading a little you may think, is this chapter just for guys? Nope. But it is very important to address specifically what teenage guys learn from rejections. Once that’s done with, it’s everybody we are talking about. The first rejection from people you like tends to happen at a very young age, let’s say around ten. At that time, you might think a combination of a few things: An inspection into self: I am poor, I am not cool, I am not good- looking, I am way cooler. An inspection of the systems concerned: Dating is stupid, feelings are stupid, love is stupid. An inspection of the sex involved: Girls are stupid, guys are stupid, guys are clueless, guys don’t know what they want, girls are complicated, what do girls want, I don’t understand them, nobody can understand them. The point is, our observations at that age are simple and not very impactful. But, as you grow older, rejections become more hurtful, which puts a greater emphasis on the question: Why did they reject me? Your brain answers: They want something I don’t have, which—although accurate—still does not answer, What is it that I don’t have? And this opens the gates to theories. Straight teenage guys tend to receive information like: They want money, free transportation, expensive dates, gifts, excitement which comes from an expensive lifestyle, muscles, height, sex, perfect facial symmetry, popularity, rude behaviour, lies, jerks, rough sex, big dicks, fun, dumb guys, etc. This is what the mind of a teenager gets exposed to when trying to understand and find out why girls are not dating him! And the sources to this ‘knowledge’ are: Dumb friends of the same age. Older guys, with age being the only credibility behind their information. Anecdotal evidence from guys who were cheated on and left for somebody better. Guys with a sales pitch regarding why having sex and ditching girls is the best lifestyle because girls by nature are untrustworthy and confused creatures. Watching some girls around them making choices to cheat and choose specifically richer or physically wholesome guys, and having random sexual escapades from time to time, and because such choices are so bold, they capture all the attention, muting the actions of girls who aren’t doing that. People on the internet opportunistic enough to realise and capitalise on the insecurities, frustration and lack of knowledge of guys who got rejected or left by some girl. And because their business model runs on their customers feeling frustrated, they make sure it doesn’t go away. Therefore, they push you further towards victimhood, as you already feel a sense of having been wronged; instead of healing the wound, they deepen the hurt by making sure you don’t forget how you were wronged by a girl; and furthermore, they sell ideas or courses on how to become a man, a jerk, a bad boy who will from now on get any  woman he wants. In short, what happened will never happen to you again. However, what they teach has no basis in understanding women or people in general from different perspectives; it is highly short- lived; and it takes you further away from the possibility of building fruitful relationships with women. After all, they care about their profit more than your personal growth. And since most rejected, confused teenage boys hear and notice all this, the generalisations are convenient and easier to believe. Therefore, in cases where the why did they reject me is not clearly stated, one gravitates towards conclusions from the above to cope with the rejection. After all, blaming something is much easier than applying common sense. YOU ARE STUPID AS FUCK IN YOUR TEENAGE YEARS What you need to understand is: In your teenage years, the brain is underdeveloped; basically, you are stupid as fuck. Because you are stupid as fuck, you are gathering information about love, romance, and relationships from movies, television shows and the internet, all of which are selling what you want to see. You don’t know you are stupid as fuck because you think you are an adult. You think that because, to you, your brain is functioning properly to the best of your knowledge, and also because, legally, an adult means somebody who is eighteen years old—which is absolute fucking nonsense. You remain considerably dumb until twenty-five to twenty-six. That’s when adulthood actually begins—adulthood meaning the development of sensibility. Because you think of yourself as an adult, you fail to see the girls are as stupid as fuck too, which they are because they are teenagers or in their early twenties as well. Because you fail to realise that these girls are not adult beings, your theories on girls become your views on women in general. And because these views on women appear as core realities and  ‘women psychology’ to you, the answers for why I get rejected drop a hydrogen bomb on your self-esteem. From all of this, rejection from women can cause you to conclude: To get girls, I will have to become a jerk, an asshole, a playboy, a fuckboi, or whatever the new term is, and that is the only reason why I am unable to get a girlfriend. WE ARE MOSTLY SURROUNDED BY MORONS AS WELL The truth is, you are confused, hurting from the rejection, and still can’t stop thinking about that person. What you ought to be looking for is perspectives on your situation. Now comes another huge problem: How to correctly seek help. To a lot of people, even though this is a matter of great personal importance, seeking help is seen as a weak option. Your ego doesn’t allow you to openly seek help regarding rejection out of a fear of exposing your vulnerabilities. Therefore, what you rely on is unsolicited advice. What does that mean? It’s somebody giving you advice because they have heard you’re going through some shit. They have no actual data or details about your problem, just an idea. The problem with unsolicited advice is that it lacks the seriousness required to solve your problem. Firstly, in order to actually solve your problem, a person would have to have a helpful perspective. Secondly, they would require personal details about you to figure out an appropriate solution for you that addresses what you want, the reality of the world, and the bullshit you might be telling yourself. A person giving you unsolicited help ignores almost all of this. They give you information that is based on what they think, what they want to do, and what they probably do. They are mostly interested in how their advice makes them look like in your eyes. Their focus is on the impression they are making, not the solution. They might actually not even care, because the gravity of the situation has not been communicated to them. So, unsolicited advice, more often than not, turns out to be useless. Your loved ones, on the other hand, are even worse; chances are they might say, You are special, you will get a better girl/boy next time. And even if nobody says that to you, your own mind will lead you to it after a while. After all, we refuse to accept we don’t deserve the best for ourselves in the spirit of self-importance. Your friends might also slander the person who rejected you: They didn’t deserve you. I never liked them. I always had a bad feeling about them. To make you happy, they will denigrate the person who rejected you and raise you to sainthood. They bullshit, which is why these statements don’t really make sense to you on a personal level. The truth is, the reason why you liked that person is because they are special in your mind; and you remain hurt because they don’t like you back. We don’t often get many insightful, helpful perspectives from people around us. Those who do are lucky. So, instead of only focusing on how to deal with rejections, we should look at the source of the problem: What are the influences that shape your ideas of the kind of person you want to date, and the kind of relationship you want? If we can sort out the sources of our expectations, then maybe we can save ourselves from this self-repeating cycle of bad relationships, falling for the wrong people, and getting hurt by rejections. YOU ARE BEING BULLSHITTED EVERYDAY In the absence of perspectives, a criteria and foundational principles, what you are learning comes from garbage sources only meant to appeal to your fantasies. These sources include endless streams of movies, TV shows, content creators who qualify as reality TV actors, traditional celebrities, models, vloggers, lifestyle bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram influencers, pop stars, and this star and that star on whichever fucking two-bit app you spend your time on. Their objective is not to teach you or talk about the harsh realities of life. Their objective is to provide entertainment, set unachievable standards and get you hooked on a lifestyle that you cannot afford nor sustain. And this is why you watch them and simultaneously compare your life to theirs: I wish my life was like that. We are living in the age of modern advertising in which humans are the products. When you buy, you are buying who they are, how they live, who they date, who their friends are, what they wear and what they do. You want a relationship like the one you saw in a movie. You want a girlfriend like the guys you follow online have. You want friends like those people you watch on YouTube have. You want a lifestyle like the people you follow on social media. You want pictures like the couple you follow on Instagram. You want your boyfriend to do cute things like that YouTuber’s boyfriend does, because to you, they seem real. All of it seems real. You want the truth? They know what you like. It is because they know what you like that they have millions and millions of followers, which earns them millions of dollars. You are one of the millions of followers they have. They don’t know you. Your reality is not a movie. Girlfriends from movies don’t fucking exist, which is why they are called fictional characters. Your friends are not going to be a group of extremely good-looking people who have funny things to say every five seconds. You cannot have that lifestyle because such lifestyles do not exist. What exists is the fact that you love watching fantasy. That lifestyle is as real as Lord of the Rings. Those gorgeous photographs have been Photoshopped, chosen over hundreds of frames of the same bullshit idea that they want to sell you. Your boyfriend exists in reality, not for a manufactured reality in which your relationship is scripted, choreographed and edited for people to watch. You know nothing about their reality. Therefore, stop comparing yourself to people you have never met and have no real data about. The most dominant idea in your mind after having been recruited to support these online products is that you deserve to have the kind of life they do. You think so because you are an emotional fool. Unless you can detach yourself from emotions or control your emotions, you will remain an emotional fool; it takes years to become emotionally intelligent. So, these people become your sources of acquiring knowledge about love, relationships, dating, socialising, lifestyle and self. And your demands are now assumptions of what will make you happy based on what you have been told makes others happy. For example, for guys, one such demand is the girls they see online, girls hanging around the internet celebrities you think are your bros, buddies and family. The catch is: they are unbelievably attractive in every single frame of the video. You are fascinated by how they dress, their makeup, their bodies. It is this nonsense that gives birth to the idea of the fantasy girlfriend or fantasy partner that you want to have in your life. You have been told, shown and convinced that it exists. And this becomes your criteria for a future partner: that fantasy person. And just like that, you detach yourself from reality, realistic possibilities, realistic outcomes, your shot at stability, your shot at maximum personal development, and in many cases your shot at a great career, your shot at self- awareness, and your shot at evading and minimising traumatic experiences. YOU ARE CHASING AFTER A FANTASY PERSON Since millions and millions of people are chasing a fantasy in the real world, what we have are millions of delusional people who are playing fantasy characters, which is taking them farther away from who they really are. Without any introspection or strong belief in their fantasy persona, they can’t wrap their heads around why they can’t meet that person they are meant to be with; why does every person they date end up being a jerk, cheater, liar, asshole, uncaring, boring, different, controlling, or manipulative at the end. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with people! Everything is wrong with you. You are a delusional fool who keeps deciding to date fantasy characters. And despite the rejections or bad relationships, that does not stop. There are only two outcomes from these fantasy relationships: after a course of time, either they are going to be assholes to you, or you are going to be that way to them, precisely because relationships are a thing of reality, not fantasy. Since we are on the subject of the fantasy partner, let’s review your choices: from all your rejections, the messages you didn’t get replies to, the requests that weren’t accepted, the people you were instantly attracted to, was there ever a variety in these pursuits? Or did all these people fill the same condition of being that fantasy person? The conditions for fantasy girlfriend being: She has a great dress sense and hairstyle. She looks hot in her pictures. She seems to be able to form full sentences with practically no grammatical errors, which is an indication that she is smart. And, most importantly, how her body looks from different angles, seated or standing. Your fantasy is equal parts porn, re-creations of movie scenes of dates and social activities, and of course the assumption that this person will never leave you. The most common conditions for fantasy boyfriend are: He looks presentable and is attractive. He is doing something in his life that makes him appear competent. He forms full sentences with practically no grammatical errors, which is an indication that he is smart. He charmingly challenges you, which creates excitement, unpredictability and the desire to win his approval. Your fantasy is equal parts clever male protagonists from movies, relationship dynamics from movies, and the assumption that you’re the special one for him—which he will convince you that you are, and then use that validation to make you compromise your principles for whatever ideas he has. This happens commonly with both guys and girls who are playing fantasy characters and wanting to date fantasy characters—whatever your silly influences are. And when the same guys get dumped by these fantasy girls, they struggle to understand why. Well, she found a better fantasy character. What happened was that, over time, your relationship entered reality, which means, to her, you became boring, repetitive and real, just like her actual life. And none of that is movie-like at all. PICK-UP ARTISTS ARE HUMAN GARBAGE When rejections like this continue to happen, frustration, anger and hurt accrue in your mind, accompanied by doubt about your own self. At that moment, instead of asking yourself, What am I running after? You ask, Why am I unsuccessful at getting girls? Still no self-awareness, but plenty of motivation to keep going at it. At this stage, enter dating gurus and pick-up artists. These are people who have suffered equal or more rejections than you, some of which impaled their egos so much that it forced them to make ‘getting girls’ a quest in their lives to prove to themselves they are ‘the man’. They usually like to refer to themselves as ‘alphas’ to massage their highly sensitive egos, which also acts as their G-spot during sex. What it means is that they climax immediately upon hearing a girl refer to them as alpha or its variations, such as master, daddy, which basically means they are their father. This is nothing but a crippling need to be validated by an impressionable girl with daddy issues living in a fantasy world. And these guys desperately require the reiteration of the terms alphas, master or daddy from girls to compensate for the rejections by girls in their past. From that, you can naturally see how they never fully recovered from their past rejections, and now are teaching you how to recover from your rejections by becoming like them, which means as pathetically obsessed with girls as they are—because it’s somehow a competition now, and you need to win. What they teach you is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the type of person you are choosing; on the contrary, you are right to do that. This becomes a reinforcement to choose the same type of girls that resemble your fantasy girlfriend. After learning this, instead of questioning your choices, you become more and more enthused to chase after the same type, because now, hope has arisen in you. The doubt which could have benefitted you by making you step towards a realistic analysis of your choices is now erased by the idea that you could be with those girls one day. After all, these type of girls are your fantasies, why wouldn’t you be biased towards believing you can have them! And that alone causes the delay in finding who you are, because you have now enrolled yourself into becoming somebody you are not. REJECTIONS MEAN JACK-SHIT How should you sensibly see rejections from those you desire? The truth is, you don’t have real data on why you got rejected. In the absence of any data, you let your insecurities fill in all the reasons why you got rejected. What you’re supposed to do is, leave it at: you don’t have any real data. You don’t know why. Stop making it personal because you have nothing better to do. You don’t know the nature of their wants, why they want what they want, their influences, degree of intelligence, degree of experience, who they think they are, who they actually are, and if they know who they actually are. You don’t have any data. Therefore, rejection from people should mean jack-shit to you. Have you ever rejected someone romantically? Even if it required as little effort as swiping your finger, think of how much thought and time went behind it. What were the parameters you were considering behind accepting or rejecting? How stupidly vague, impersonal, and shallow were those parameters? That’s how much thought goes behind rejecting someone. Not much. How can you take a rejection personally when it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to happen? Do you think your whole existence can be understood, judged and adequately summarised in a matter of seconds? Fuck, no! Being rejected by someone is not a statement on you. You have no data, you cannot have that data. For you to know, you would have to be able to read their minds. There is a possibility that they have no idea what they are looking for in a relationship and from a partner; they are probably just following their instincts. Or let’s say they do know what they’re looking for: there is a possibility they have no idea whether it is good for them or not. What matters is, do you know what you are looking for? And more importantly, whatever you are looking for—do you know with certainty that it is good for you? HOW TO LOOK FOR THE RIGHT PERSON Who are you? The answer to this decides what type of person you would want to bring into your life. The truth is, the more you know yourself, the more power you have to make a better choice. After all, you can employ that knowledge about yourself—What kind of a person would be best suited for who I am—and then look for only such people. Now, in all fairness, nobody expects you to know yourself a hundred per cent. You’re changing with time and experiences, and discovering new things about yourself. So, to make even a half-decent choice, the answer to ‘who are you’ should be somewhere between where you are right now and where you want to be; in short, somewhere between reality and aspiration. That would be the ideal situation. What’s the reality? Most people have no idea nor any inclination to find out who they are. What they have is either a completely crazy idea about themselves—a fantasy character—or an aspirational idea about themselves which doesn’t take practical reality into account. An example of the first type is, I am a fucking stud: this moron thinks he is no less than James Bond and girls should be dying at his feet. Another example is, I am a queen: this moron thinks she is royalty or one of the members from the Kardashian clan. The problem is, a lot of people really believe their fantasy characters. And because they believe in them so much, they are working on making them real on a daily basis. An example of the second type is, I am a genius at what I do, and the world will one day know about me: these are people who are so detached from their practical reality that even though they are absolute shit in what they do, instead of accepting their current reality, they think the opposite. Now, imagine what kind of partners such people would be looking for? They have no self-awareness, so what they look for is either attraction or validation of the bullshit they tell themselves. I deserve the hottest person. I deserve a really rich guy. I deserve a person who will blindly believe in me. When rejected, people who live in a fantasy world think their fantasy character needs more work. I am not tall, I am not muscular, I am not charismatic, I don’t look like that famous person, I don’t look like that model on Instagram, I don’t have that