Elements of personality

There seems to be a transition in my thinking. More and more, it's simply doing what I want and less trying to appear like something I feel I should be.

In my theatre classes, we used something called the theory of elements to determine our playstyle. Fire, water, earth, wind. All of these were explained in terms of a cowboy walking into a saloon.

Fire walks in with zest and flamboyance. He's not afraid of anything because he's faster on the trigger than anyone. Anyone shoot at him, he'll just shoot them first. Balls first, loud, full and sure of himself.

Water walks in like a cyclone that embraces the entire saloon. If he gets shot, he shows and shares the pain with those around him, so they can see that shooting him is a bad thing. He's like a little vortex drawing out the emotion in people.

Earth, ah. The stoic. Earth would simply stand quietly. Walk inside without saying anything. Earth would get shot and look at the gunshots and think "Hm. I appear to have been shot" without changing his demeanor. He's unshakeable but within the confines of himself, where fire is so outside himself.

Wind is the neurotic. His eyes dart from point to point, always looking for dangers, threats, planning, adapting. If someone goes for their gun, he'd outsmart them by always being prepared. Hands fidget, thoughts jump from point to point. Always prepared and always reacting to everything.


These are characters you use on stage, but they have their merit in knowing yourself. I used to be water with a lot of earth and air mixed in. Now I'm starting to become more earth. More grounded in my own choices and less reliant on the outside world to determine my behaviour.

I've got a girl whom allows me to simply be, instead of proving myself all the time. I'm choosing my own path and starting to plan the rest of my career or at least my life path. It's not a sudden epihany, but a slow change creeping in your every day behaviour. I'm not sure if it was actions or thoughts that made me change first. But they're both aligned more now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a superman, but something is changing. I like this.

progress post

Well, a lot of things have happened.

Training has been going well. I'm exercising with an english friend of mine, Chris, whom seems eager to train with me. It's fun. We talk inbetween sets, crack jokes and tease the other when we fail. But it did get me in a rythym. Tuesday is now training day, with 2 hours on that day reserved for exercise.

Results? I could post numbers, but I've seen my strength on certain tasks improve. My muscles are becoming visibly bigger, while my weight is staying the same. I'm losing fat and gaining muscle. People note that I'm walking more upstraight and that I seem more fit.

And in the end, it is always a mental barrier, not a physical one. Train your body well and enough and it will show results. But the mindset needs to change. I still am afraid to see myself becoming a really fit person with a great body. Afraid to accept the challenge, because I feel I might fail and that I could never attain that.

But on the other hand, this issue isn't a problem. Progress is being made. And I can see the glimmer of the self-image that is forming around this fitter, stronger shell. I think I like where this is going.


And what happened beyond sports? A fling with a girl whom still had a boyfriend. Something I feel I should feel guilty over, but I simply could not. We bonded while I tried to give advice to help her failing relationship.

I always considered relationships to be sacred. A promise is a promise. But there is more than simply a word that is given here. A relationship is a living, breathing thing between two people and no matter how often you invoke a word, beating a dead horse will never get it going again.

Not that it worked, she chose her boyfriend over me, in the end. In a way, I'm glad about it. I doubt we would have workd in that way, but the attraction was there. For a few weeks, I was her casanova and she was my secret lover. As dubious as it sounds, I hope she and her boyfriend can get things going again. I hope I taught her more about the world.

She taught me more about women. About the primal part that rests in all of us, about how when both of you open up, being earnest of what you want, sparks start flying. By being a very feminine woman, she allowed me to become more masculine than I previously was. It was strangely liberating and nice to feel how the masculine and the feminine fit together.
Though if this sounds vague to you, maybe it should be. It's about making the other feel safe in a relationship by taking control. It's about proving that you can handle her, so she can give herself fully.

And lastly, old passions returning. I've spent more time reading, I've lost myself in dance again, with women claiming me as a partner as soon I was free. I'm starting to believe there might be a dancer in me, somewhere. 30 sounds like a nice age to discover new talents and growing them.

Good night world.

“Your goal is not to find love, but to remove all barriers which are preventing you from receiving it.”
- Rumi

So true. It's easy to spend all my energy in finding someone to get the love I feel I need from. But it's never about the love they give, but the lack of it that I have for myself.

I'll quit trying for now and just be. There's other avenues that require my presence and energy more.

vulnerability

I've recently stumbled upon the site postmasculine.com which has been awesome in giving a well-needed and broader view in self-development. Starting from the field of pickup, Mark (The writer) indicates that pickup is a way to deal with the symptoms of deeper, usually emotional issues. He also states that game is all fine and dandy, but that men who pursue the notion of "Getting every woman they want" are deeply flawed themselves.

And in a way, he is right. Game is mainly a method of faking that you are awesome to attract women, while it does not change your core being (much). Mark advocates a route that is more like inner game : Improving yourself and your self-image to such an extent that you become attractive instead of faking it.

He gives simple advice for men who want to become more attractive.
- Go to a gym. Get in shape. Enjoy your body and the energy you give it.
- Dress well, show that you care for yourself and present yourself well.
- Practice dealing with women, build attraction, seduce and tease.
- Be vulnerable.

The last one, being vulnerable is very interesting. It doesn't mean telling your date that you have mommy issues and piling all your troubles on them. It does mean that you simply show your true face.

This is a problem with many insecure people, posers and nice guys who would rather keep up a front than showing who they really are.

I've been doing the same. Not only have I created an emotional mask to wear when insecure, tired or just scared to be vulnerable. And I've learned to obfuscate really well, to place a layer of words and reasoning between what I really feel and what I show the world.

A layer that my ex hated, but that only became really visible when a friend showed me where it was and showed displeasure at me keeping that layer there. He asked me to keep the mask off and told me when I was putting it back on.

At the start, it was really awkward, with me slipping into the mask several times. But as time went on, I started to accept that I actually was good enough to just be myself and that I didn't have to add useless conversation just to "earn" my place in it.

The mask isn't gone. You don't lose something like that overnight. But for now I'm trying to be more vulnerable, to open up and to let things hit me, instead of quickly pushing them away and keeping it all neutral. It's scaring me shitless.

Anger

In general, I'm a "nice" guy. It's hard for me to get angry, agressive or even intimidating. I just fall back to a "nice" level of intensity and stick around there.

This is a thing holding me back. I've somehow been brought up to believe that negative emotions are negative, but they're not. They're just emotions that boil up due to something happening. You might as well say that love is great, but lust is wrong. They are all just mental states I experience and I feel. To ignore or deny that is something that is probably a recipe for years of therapy.

And I've noticed that I can get angry. At stupidity. At things that I find unfair. That anger gives tremendous energy to deal with said unfairness, though it's hard to channel it into a constructive avenue.

Still, looking back, the strongest impact I've had on people was when I got angry because of a view or thought they held which was unfair in my opinion. By showing I was angry and using that anger to adress the unfair situation, I somehow changed the world for the better. So cheers to you anger, for we will probably meet again, and this time as friends.


* For those interested, the most lucid moment was when an asian girl kept saying that mothers love their children more than men and that men could not take care of children as their mother could because of this.
I never heard such idiocy in my life. Angrily, I stated that men have feelings too and actually love their children.
I don't think I convinced the asian girl, but a girl sitting close by confessed that she had never thought of it that way. That girl finally got over her hatred of men that night and would eventually become my partner. Thank you anger, for not letting me sit idly.