I was seeing a girl for a couple months over Christmas, nothing serious just casually hooking up once a week or whatever. She used to text me every single day and I got bored of it and stopped responding as much and let it fizzle out. The last time we spoke was about four weeks ago when we were both out in different bars and she text me, I think I was tagged in a status on FB so she knew I was out. We talked about meeting up later in the night but it didn't work out so we just said goodnight, have fun etc.

Anyway I walked past her Friday, she said "hey, how are you?" with a big smile, I responded "hey, not bad, you?" and that was it. We were both with friends so carried on walking. I just noticed now that she unfriended me on FB. We were definitely still friends on it Wednesday or Thursday because I remember seeing a status she put up so she obviously did it Friday.

I don't give a ****, just think it's weird and childish. No real point to this post other than bitches be crazy.

my guess is she really liked you, and was hurt that you didn't like her as much / got bored and stopped putting in effort to see her. then after your halfhearted response to seeing her on friday she got more upset and decided she needed to not see/hear about you completely. but yeah...bitches be crazy.

I think that would be fine too as long as the text is 100% about inviting her out to have fun and has nothing to do with meeting up with him



My advice is simply based on what I see. I see people wanting to be happy and not knowing how. People looking for happiness in all kinds of things outside of themselves, wanting to connect with others, wanting to have meaningful relationships, etc and believing that when they acquire these things, then they will be happy. That just isn't how it works despite the fact that we've all been told that is how it works our whole life by most people, society, TV, etc. Happiness comes from within and can only be accessed by shedding the layers of beliefs and ideas you have that are stopping you from accessing it right now. Beliefs that you need something in order to make you happy rather than just being happy and having that thing. This is why people get something they think will make them happy and then a few days, weeks, months, years later....they realize they aren't happy with it anymore and often find they're more miserable than before they got it.

Most people don't know what they want, they go through life believing then need to get married and have kids and get a great job and a house and 20 other things before they can be happy. The problem with that is that no one was born wanting these things, it's been pushed on everyone from the day you were born by society, family, friends etc. Ideas and concepts that aren't your own, adopted and accepted by you bc you see everyone else following that same path or similar so it must be right and people don't even question this sometimes for their whole life....they end up getting all the things they're told will make them happy but it's a fleeting happiness bc it's based on attachment to something outside yourself.

If we look at the current dating/relationship model in society, it's clearly broken. Monogamy is just an idea, it isn't real outside of our agreement as a society that it is. It also doesn't work as can be seen by the fact most relationships end before marriage, divorce rates, infidelity, and people staying in unhappy marriages bc they have kids or bc of their religion, or so they won't upset their parents/family. The current models are broken and the solution we've been given by society is simply to try to do something that doesn't work, better than everyone else....really?

Relationships that actually work are based on happiness and unattachment, meaning people who get together that were happy already, not needing to fill some void they believed they had through a relationship with another person, and no desire to control the other person or change them into something else. In fact, they encourage the other person to be more of who they are, even if that means that the relationship itself ends. A truly happy person doesn't need someone else to make them complete and fulfilled and a truly happy person gives others in their life the freedom to choose their own path even if that is at the cost of the relationship bc holding that other person down restricts both people.

How does all this play out in society as we know it today. We have men thinking they need to impress women, court them, show them how well they can/will treat them, and only after doing these things will the woman even consider having sex with them or getting into a relationship with them and thinking that every relationship is supposed to progress towards marriage or it was a failure. We have women wanting to get laid just as much as men want to but being forced to hide this fact from society except for a small % of liberated women who do as they like and ignore what people say. Women thinking they need to get married or they're worthless, that no one wants them or to be with them if they can't find a good man, that they will never make it in the world wo a man. And men and women both thinking if they don't find someone they will die old and alone and unhappy.

The truth is if you're truly happy, whether you die old and alone or with someone else, if you're happy then you're happy...it has nothing to do with anyone or any thing outside yourself.

Also regarding thinking everything is a game....it kinda is. There's things that work and things that don't work. Most people are doing what doesn't work bc they see everyone else doing the same thing and they're too scared to try something different.

It's not so much that it's a game as much as when you realize that every human being is programmed to believe what they believe about society, you just understand that everyone is basically on autopilot. So when you behave like every other guy that every single woman meets on a daily basis, she will have no choice but to treat you like that last 100 guys that hit on her.

However, when you step back, give her room to be interested in you wo being needy and looking for your own self worth in whether some girl likes you or will have sex with you or will date you. When you're not so eager to have a 2 hour convo over text with her and she can barely get ahold of you and when she does meet up with you, you're always happy and carefree and honest and get to the point and you're comfortable with yourself, your sexuality, and love yourself. She has rarely if ever met a guy like this, now she has no choice but to treat you differently than every other guy she meets.

Is that a game? Maybe, really though it's just understanding people are programmed to be a certain way and learning how to separate yourself from the crowd and stand out in a positive way and inspire people to be happy and live excellent lives.

Really good posts man. Spot on with everything.

yeah, that was inspiring to read. one question though--how do you know that everyone has the ability to choose to be happy? is it possible that someone's brain chemistry can be a certain way that's just too powerful and forces the person to look at things negatively?

also, if anyone can just be happy no matter what, and it has nothing to do with anything outside of one's self--then what is the point of staying healthy, becoming financially stable, cultivating friendships, going out and trying to get laid, etc. etc. etc.? Surely all these external factors do affect the ease or difficulty with which it is for one to be happy?

Because happiness is your natural state from the time you were born. There's plenty of books about this and how the mind works but the easiest way to explain it is this.

From the time you're a child you are exploring the world and taking feedback from the world, you're cultivating a belief system that tells you who you are, what your identity in this world is, based solely off the feedback the world gives you. So when your parents give you a name and tell you that you're this kind of child and your teachers tell you some things about you and your friends tell you some things, you start to believe it all and you accept it as your identity. Some of these things will be positive and some negative. You will do certain behaviors and a parent or teacher may yell at you for doing that thing which will teach you to generate and associate a negative emotion with that behavior and similar behaviors. As you pile on more beliefs and more layers of negative emotions onto this identity you start to believe this is who you are, this is what you do, and you start formulating opinions about your own self worth based on these beliefs and emotions.

As you grow into an adult you continue interacting with society and certain interactions trigger these negative emotions in you that you gathered as a child. Your subconscious mind is triggered to remember this story of what happened as a child, you have the negative emotion, and you reinforce the negative belief about yourself in the current moment and your behavior or the next action you take or don't take out of fear, is a result of all this. It all happens in an instant and it all happens on a subconscious level so you don't even consciously recognize it happening most of the time.

So now you're living your life as an adult, thinking you're making all these choices and what is actually happening is, you're being triggered to remember and access experiences from the past subconsciously, you're recreating them in your body emotionally and in your mind through subconscious thought/belief and you're living into them in the current moment....which means you're carrying around all this past emotional baggage with you everywhere you go until you learn to let it all go. Most people live their life this way and are walking around unconscious 95%+ of the day thinking they're making free will, conscious decisions when they're actually making unconscious, emotional decisions...and then consciously telling themselves a story about it after the fact which will always fall in line with the subconscious story they told themselves when they were a child and originated this belief.

The good news is you can change all this by changing your beliefs. I'd highly recommend anyone who's interested in this info start reading up on how our minds work on a conscious and subconscious level, the power of belief, etc. I'll write up more later on how you can do all this but it will go much faster for many people if they understand the process of what's happening bc a lot of people need to know why or they refuse to believe something, it's just the way many peoples minds are programmed to work.


As for the point of staying healthy, financial stability, relationships, sex, etc...

Well you need to stay healthy to stay alive, and if you respect and appreciate life you will do this, it's part of your survival instinct.

Financial stability, beyond needing to sustain yourself in society much of what you believe about money and finances isn't true, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have it or don't deserve it. You are here on earth to create your vision of what you want your life to look like, if that requires you making more money then do it, if that doesn't then don't....but make sure you know and question what you actually want, dream about, feel passionate about being and doing....and what you've been told you should want/need by society bc most of the things you've been told you should want/need you don't actually want or need....again this doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't have them though.

Relationships, technically you don't need them to sustain life, however we live in a society and if you don't choose to spend your life meditating in a cave you will have to interact with people so it's good to figure out the best way of doing that. The best relationships are built on mutual giving, collaboration, inspiration, and unconditional love...which simply means you inspire people to be the best version of themselves wo demanding anything back from them. That doesn't mean you just let people walk all over you, you can give to someone and realize they aren't in a place to appreciate what you have to offer and choose to not continue wasting your time and energy in a place where it isn't well received. That's unconditional love, you move on and allow that person to be who they are while understanding it isn't their fault that they're programmed the way they are and they simply don't know what they don't know.

Sex, it's a biologically programmed desire to perpetuate the existence of the species, but you don't need it. You've been lead to believe you do need it and getting lots of sex from hot girls makes you the man, validates you, makes you high value, etc.... All BS, none of that is true, you simply don't need it. It's fun, it feels great, and you want it...but that is just a physical response your nervous system is programmed to go through. Again, that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't have it...and doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't have lots of it, that's up to you. But if you approach sex as if it is something you need then you will get very little of it as I'm sure many people here can already attest to as can I from past experience. The key to having lots of sex is giving up your need for it, and just have it. Again, you have to reprogram your mind to do this.

LucidDream for president

Lucid,

Your psuedo science is nice but being happy isnt just a simple belief change for everyone. The mind is incredibly complex and depression and other mental disorders are not always simple perspective/belief problems. Telling people that are depressed to be happy is incredibly unhelpful and demeaning.

A quick google search suggests there's a significant genetic influence on happiness fwiw

I've always found it more useful (and correct when dealing with other people not luciddream's abstractions) to think of it as a happiness band where your environment, how you change that and your own attitudes influence if you reach the upper or lower levels of that band

Also, you know, almost all of us are hardwired to crave connection, loneliness is horrible for us, even physically. You can't just will yourself to be happy with 0 connection

Lucid is right about a lot of things, but not >EVERYONE< can become happy just by changing their beliefs, there are a billion factors that can change the course, there's really not a single 100% recipe for anything regarding cognition/neurology.

That said I think his advice is very solid and most people could benefit from restructuring their lives around healthier core beliefs

A Complaint Free World - Will Bowen
A MUST read for a positive mindset change.

I like this.

Lucid,

FYI one of the largest studies ever done on the linkage between genetics and happiness was published not long ago. The meat of the study was outside of my comprehension but the layman synopsis was that genetics does play a role in happiness (which logically makes sense IMO).

Yep i agree. And not everyones upper limit that can be acheieved through self reflection and belief changes will put them into the 'happiness' zone. Sometimes professional help or therapy is needed, and for some there may not be any modern ways to make them happy.

To say happiness is easy or requires a relatively simple change anyone can do is simply not true.

Neither of my parents, their parents, or their parents parents were ever happy for an extended period of time in their adult lives (all in emotional or physically abusive relationships), so genetically, I've got my work cut out for me!

You're already connected to everything. At a quantum level you exist as nothing more than a giant wave of potential, you aren't actually separate from anything in the universe. It's only the belief you hold that you are that makes you crave connection and believe you don't already have it or that you need it...however you do already have it and it's impossible for you to not be connected already. Similar to the belief that you are a separate body/mind with an identity while this is nothing more than a perception of reality that you accepted and adopted from the time you were born...on a quantum level however this whole perception is seen through.

Your existence as that wave of potential means that anything you can imagine is possible(we live in a probabilistic universe). However, your belief as well as collective belief about what you imagine will affect the manifestation of that into reality while at a quantum level, all possibilities exist until a measurement is taken by conscious observer.

Examples: double slit experiment, Schrodinger's Cat

Yeah, I agree with all that. The thing is I don't think realizing that that's correct intellectually and even cultivating related attitudes in your daily life will be good enough to overcome the need for human interaction.

Eg if you take 100 humans who honestly dedicate their life to achieving what you describe and then after 30 years of preparing you put them in an isolation cell for a year, I think almost all of them will feel miserable due to the lack of human connection.

Since there's no way to prove it I could be wrong, but I doubt it. If you volunteer we could make a prop bet out of it ^^

Herein lies your issue. You don't believe it's possible, so for you it isn't and your reality will manifest accordingly. Just change your belief about it. Now I'm not saying it's a simple process or a complex process, it's different for everyone, again based on their current beliefs and perceptions about reality.

The best way to think of it is that most people think they "need to have connection, need to get connection, want connection" rather than realize they already have connection and already are connected. These are very subtle mindset shifts and when you recognize how everyone has been brainwashed into believing they are a separate identity outside the whole(the universe/absolute reality/etc)...they are constantly seeking to validate this belief through other, however in absolute reality there is no other, there is only the whole, only connection.

As for proving it, many people over time in far eastern cultures have undergone this process for long periods of time. I accept that I live in a modern society and have an internal pull within my being to be in this society and transcend the limiting ideas that have been placed upon us since birth within this society while remaining connected with people on a social level. I'm not here to prove any of this right or wrong with any absolute certainty but simply express ideas and methods I've used to shape my life and mindsets that have benefited me and put me in touch with a deeper understanding of who/what I am. Beyond that you can take what I say and use it for your benefit it makes sense to you or discard it if it doesn't, everyone draws their own conclusions from their own life experiences in due time...I'm simply posting a process that I'm going through and has benefited me and others around me.

I mostly agree with you and it's a good thing you share that viewpoint here. However, like most people who are very invested in an idea, you take it slightly too far (imo).

Obvious example, no matter how much I believe I can fly and change my believe about not being able to fly, gravity will catch up with me if I make the jump. Of course believing you can fly is a great motivational tool when it leads you to build an airplane, but that doesn't mean it's literally true that a belief change is all you need to overcome gravity.

If you put social animals in isolation, they will suffer (or at least die faster). This is true even for insects. All I'm saying is that powerful as the ideas you post in this thread are, they aren't enough and can never be enough to *completely* overcome that animal part of us.

I feel like lucid is simply regurgitating **** he heard from a source that blew his mind at the time.

Reminds me of college kids who have taken a class on buddhism and have solved everything.

Yeah,it reminds me of when I knew it all,got drunk and laid regularly,and had all the money I needed.

Then I had to go into the real world.

Nice in theory,not so much in practice

It's never gonna be about me convincing you....it's always gonna be about you convincing yourself

The main takeaway from Lucid's posts is to stop looking for happiness via external means. Your car, job, girlfriend, etc. These things are just fleeting, and if you aren't happy before buying a new car or getting a new girlfriend, then you will be back in the same spot after the novelty of the new item has worn off.

Society is not helpful. It tells us that something is wrong with us if we don't follow the normal blueprint: stable job, get married, have kids, etc. Society also places a large importance on material items. I saw a recent study that says our happiness goes up as we earn more money until $70k, but beyond that there is no additional increase in happiness. This tells me that we just need the means to be able to pursue our passions and comfortably take care of the necessities.

As far as relationships, I think we can all agree that there are happy and unhappy single people, and happy and unhappy people in relationships. Thus, it's obviously not the relationship itself that is providing happiness.

Lucid says that we need to change our mindset to not care so much about any one girl we are pursuing, but I think this is more the result of changes in your life rather than attempting to change your mindset.

When I am actively going out with friends, pursuing a different hobby I enjoy on different days, and going on a date every now and then, I naturally don't care that much about any one interaction with a girl. Rather than sitting on my ass trying to decipher what a text means or deciding what to say next, I'm busy living my own life.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've been in a brand new city where I knew no one and wasn't going out and doing anything (which was my fault b/c it's incredibly easy to find stuff to do with the resources we have these days), and whenever I met a new girl, it was like she became my new obsession. I knew it was counter-productive to obsess so much, but I couldn't help it b/c I had nothing else going on.

The point being, that the best advice is probably just to build a life around yourself that you love. Go out and do things that you love doing and find friends you enjoy being around who challenge you. I think you'll discover that A. You don't care as much about whether or not you're in a relationship. If you find yourself in one, great, but if not, who cares b/c you're enjoying life and B. If you do decide you want a relationship, your interactions will be more authentic and less needy b/c you will be sub-communicating that you have an active, balanced life and that you're looking for a partner to complement this life, rather than complete it.

This isn't a bad description of me tbh hehe

Yes and no. Once again it's just not that simple. One of my professors @ social psych released some best-selling books about how the strive to surpass mediocracy is what makes a lot of people depressed, the whole self-actualization circlejerk that's going around. He argues a lot of people would be happier if they just found something simple (and at times even boring) and used their lives on that, a lot of people get stressed out feeling like they don't accomplish their true potential, when in reality the belief that you have to achieve some kind of grand feat is what's keeping a lot of people from appreciating what they have.
I know that it's not really what you're saying, but I still think it's a point that's worth outlining, especially wrt some of the things Lucid was talking about.

EDIT:
But I really liked your post, I think there are a lot of good points to be found in what you said, especially wrt building a life about what you love, the only problem with it is that most people aren't aware of what they love, they THINK they love things/want things, but it's mainly because they've been encouraged to do it their whole life, that's also why so many well-educated, well-paid people get depressed - it turns out getting that job they've been pursuing for 10 years isn't really the solution to their problems