AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

[AnalyticalEngine]

Building a social life

I'm starting to realize the mistake I've been making my entire life, which is being way too passive about who I make friends with. This is an easy trap to fall into as an introvert where you simply wait around like a lost puppy and hope someone else approaches you and becomes your friend. Then when this approach inevitably fails because the people who approach you all are leading with what they want out of a relationship, you adopt the Loser Mindset and turn passive aggressive about all the social norms that are being forced onto you.

But in reality, this is exactly the opposite strategy that you want if you want to be weird and have a social life. The weirder you are and the less normative of people you want to meet, the more YOU have to be the one to show interest in people and take all the steps to build the relationship. This may seem obvious, but if you're used to being in the Introvert/Loser Mindset trap, it's a complete paradigm shift.

You can get away with being in the Introvert/Loser Mindset if you're content with average peers or you never move out of town. But cultivating an intentional social life outside of talking to your neighbors about Sally's gymnastic lessons requires that you take initiative and pursue people rather than expecting them to pursue you.

Some tasks for me to take my social skills to the next level:
1. Plan a get together at my house with new people
2. Start a meetup group instead of just going to existing ones (thanks to @mountainFrugal's drink and draw group for inspiring this)
3. Start actively choosing who to talk to at meetups instead of hoping I come across as interesting enough for other people to approach me

[grundomatic]

This is not quite what you are talking about, but a little over a year ago people I knew were cutting others out of their lives for (guess the reason). I had to stop and think if I needed all of my friends to have the exact same views that I did. It was the first time I can remember consciously thinking about choosing friends based on anything other than common hobby, fun to be around, good conversations, availability, etc. I decided to truly embrace the postmodern value of diversity and not cut anybody off. The irony is that most of those people would be appalled or at least very surprised if I openly talked about cutting people off for (other reasons).

Uh oh, having wrote that out I'm now spinning out of control thinking about how I have not pursued "membership" in some groups due to certain values. Given limited time and social energy, one has to make judgements...how am I deciding what matters?

Right now it seems like I just seek compatibility in the interface with friends/potential friends. Example time. Almost all my friends spend more money than I do. The ones I spend time with are the ones that make it easy to do so without spending a lot every time we meet. We meet at someone's house and it's about the games/interaction, rather than meeting at a restaurant/bar and it being about the price/rarity of our toys. If I'm unaffected by their spending, what should I care? Same goes for almost all of their other choices. EREers (or even wannabes) don't have the luxury of being able to readily find lots of people just like them nearby, so I take any common ground I can find. Fortunately for me, having some mainstream interests makes this easier. From there, overlaps can be found. One friend is into games, cats, and beer. Then as we got know each other things like yoga, plants, skills, investing, personal development, and more have come up. Now a best friend. Thanks, games and beer.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@grundomatic - That all makes sense. It seems like settling for whatever friends are in your social role (as worker, consumer, family member, bar customer) is a Kegan3 tactic. Trying to actively find and filter friends based on an identity or need is a Kegan4 tactic. Depending on your other skills, there may be less of a need to grow past whatever Kegan default you find yourself in.

For example, if you are an introvert but content with your default social role, you may never move past the Kegan3 relationship style. (Staying in one place and being friends with neighbors and family members.) The less default you are, the more you have to "level up" relationship skills.

I think there's a common tendency to give up socially if the skills seem too hard to build, thus you can easily end up as a lone wolf. But is that an aptitude preference or merely a failure mode?

I'm start to realize there are some activities that are easier as a lone wolf and some that are easier in a group. Because I've moved so much in my life, I basically gave up putting energy into relationships without realizing that's what I was doing. And because pursuing ERE is "weird," you're not getting those automatic free Kegan3 normie friends you get if you just keep plotting along with the default lifestyle.

Maintaining relationships is a lot like maintaining health. It takes work and you can easily lose social capital without putting active effort into it.

My thinking on this has shifted a bit after reading a theory that proposed the human ability to think rationally actually originally evolved as a social manipulation tactic. After all, you don't have to fight people if you can rationally talk them to your side. This got me introspecting on how I do, contrary to how I like to see myself, often use rational logic at my first interpersonal tactic when dealing with others. But that might actually be a limitation in many circumstances. For example, there's this guy at the PD who was a SWAT negotiator and interrogator. That guy's social skills are next level. He's able to read the room and spin things into his narrative in a way that feels authentic even though you know he's practiced doing this a bunch.

So sticking to what I've done for my entire life thus far is probably limiting me and I need to push myself in new directions if I want to build more social capital and relationships than what I have now.

There's this guy at the PD who worked as a SWAT negotiator and an interrogator. That guy's social skills are next level. He's really good at reading people then responding in a charismatic way. Watching him in action makes me realize what a useful skill that is.

[ertyu]

One of the limitations of ERE is that the system, natively, views relationships in terms of their usefulness -- "social capital." rather than in terms of genuine connectedness, acceptance, and closeness. I'd much rather take the latter over the former and focus my skills on how to be a good friend -- vs on how to be charismatic or persuasive. Some kinds of relationships are inherently meaningful to me, others are not. I could, for example, be getting help with fixing up my rundown apartment in my country of origin. I know very well who I need to pretend to be. But that would come at the cost of authenticity and integrity.

[grundomatic]

@ertyu
Pretending to be someone you aren't in order to get something from someone would feel icky to me too, I get that. I think this may just be a semantics thing. If I think of playing games with my friends last night in terms of reverse fish bone diagrams of outcomes, I'd say my 0th order goal was pleasant interactions with other people, and there were other goals as well. Insofar as they provided these, one could say they were "useful" to me. This doesn't feel icky, however, as I know I must be providing reciprocal value otherwise I wouldn't be invited back. It does seem strange to think about relationships this way, but since ERE is a lifestyle design tool, I think it's okay to apply it to all aspects of one's life. It's not like desired and undesired outcomes go away just because other people are involved. It should go without saying that reasonable ethics need to be applied--ie valuing people as subjects with inherent value and not just as objects for one's use. There are plenty of "users" in the world not applying systems theory to their relationships. I don't think the ERE framework should take the fall for poor ethics.

In my careers of sales, management, and teaching, being charismatic and persuasive has been very useful. Is it bad that I'm well-liked by the students and can persuade them behave and learn? Was it bad to persuade someone to buy a decent bike they would enjoy? In my personal life, am I bad for persuading the group to take turns cooking instead of ordering take-out? Bad for persuading family to save money? Certain skills shouldn't take the fall for poor ethics either.

If someone wants to work on being charismatic and persuasive, seek connections with people that have influence, and put those things together to make the local community a better place (whatever that means to them), I don't see how that is somehow less desirable than some other goal.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Indeed, @grundomatic captures what I mean. Pretending to be someone you're not just to get something is awful and unfulfilling. It's a strategy to be deployed only when you have no other options (ie, at a bad job you can't quit.) When you have better options, that's to be avoided.

My goal here is to be more cognizant of how I'm coming across and if that image is the image I want. That is, if I am wearing a cheap conference t-shirt to an event, is that image how I want people to see me? Or if I spend a bit more time cultivating a style that matches the identity I want to signal, will that better align with how I want to come across? Do I want people to see me as a 30-year-old loser? A wealthy professional? Friendly? Cold? I may be coming across in a way I don't want to come across through sheer ignorance. I'm always going to come across as some way; I may as well make sure my intentions and the audience align.

Likewise, many social groups may not be a good fit for me, but if I am broadcasting the right social signal, I am more likely to attract people who are like-minded and I can cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with them. But these people may not even realize I exist unless I seek them out and broadcast that I want to build a relationship with them.

So it helps to be proactive in thinking about how you want to be seen and who you want to be seen by. And then if you lack the skills to accomplish that, as I believe I currently do, it's helpful to take steps to close the gap.

I think if you can do this successfully, you can find a way to communicate yourself authentically to broader audiences and find more people who you can form healthy, authentic relationships with because they understand what you want and you understand what they want.

[jacob]

There seems to be a tension in the difference between attributes (e.g. charisma) one HAS and attributes one IS. The latter is seen as genuine and the former is seen as potentially fake. This difference may be resolved differently depending on who it exists in (oneself or others, or certain others).

Is there a difference between someone who IS charismatic and someone who HAS charisma because they learned "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? Someone who is naturally a good seller and someone who is using sales techniques on you? Does it change insofar you can spot the difference?

[7Wannabe5]

Yeah, but there's also a level at which your "authentic" morning breath could benefit from the the skill/habit upgrade of tooth brushing. How do you feel in the company of somebody whose social behavior is, for intance, "charming" vs. "sullen?"

[grundomatic]

There seems to be a tension in the difference between attributes (e.g. charisma) one HAS and attributes one IS. The latter is seen as genuine and the former is seen as potentially fake. This difference may be resolved differently depending on who it exists in (oneself or others, or certain others).

I think I see what you mean with that last part. I have some friends that I've observed respond appropriately in social situations, but something felt "off". "It's like they read about how to socialize", I thought to myself. Confirmed some time later when looking at their bookcase. "Good for them, shoring up weaknesses", is what I remember thinking.

Compare that to when I was running a restaurant and trying to hold the management team of multiple stores together while the franchise owner kept burning through the people that we reported to. As an NF, my management philosophy is to take care of the people that take care of your business, which (to me) implies actually knowing your people. This new boss comes in day one sweating me about tiny operational details, and I express my discontent for him for not managing like I would, essentially. Next time in, he tries to connect with me over some superficial stories, and I remember thinking "F*ck this guy, it's like he learned to manage people from a book."

Is there a difference between someone who IS charismatic and someone who HAS charisma because they learned "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? Someone who is naturally a good seller and someone who is using sales techniques on you? Does it change insofar you can spot the difference?

I'd hypothesize that there is only a difference if the person that is learning to HAVE charisma hasn't integrated it into their being yet. If they practice it until it becomes second nature, I don't see why it should be any different. It seems that higher level users will be able to tell the difference while it remains an alien process. The stigma from doing this probably comes from the fact that most people aren't working on this stuff past adolescence, with everyone settling in to their default level, which of course seems authentic. "Why wouldn't you just be yourself?", a higher level user might ask, without even realizing they had to learn it too, even if it was unconsciously and it was integrated much quicker.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Some of the dilemma is that learning to "win friends and influence people" can be an emotional hangup if you've had issues with it in the past. What I mean by this is that we all have to learn everything. Natural aptitude exists insofar as it makes you learn faster, but if you're born on a deserted island, you're not going to know how to socialize any more than you spontaneously learn algebra. Being good at both algebra and socializing are both skills you have to learn, but your aptitude may make it easier to learn one faster than the other. Viewed from this angle, no one is innately good at socializing, and therefore there is no shame in learning how to do it better.

The problem is that people tend to like others who are just like them, so if you're an outside, it feels like lying through your teeth to make people like you because you're pretending to be like them when you're not. This can be a source of emotional distress if you've been socially punished for this your whole life, ie, people have always viewed you as an outsider and treated you accordingly. The more average you are (consumerist, straight, married, white/same race as the group, has kids, average personality, "right" gender for an activity, "right" religious beliefs etc), the easier it is to relate to people on your native OS, to the point you may not even perceive the social things you are doing as a skill. But it is something you'd have learned at some point, just in the same way that even Eisenstein wasn't born knowing algebra.

So if you are non-normative but want to have social success, you either have to go find your tribe/fellow niche audience or get good at translating your experience into normie via charisma. But again, it's not going to feel that straightforward if it's a pain point for you. Failure to process the pain or learn the skills leads to social alienation.

It can also be a problem if you learn to get so good at normie charisma that you no longer signal your niche group status to others who share the niche group. That's when you enter "I've been masking my whole life and no longer know who I am" territory.

What I'm trying to do is learn all of the skills and then strategically deploy them instead of refusing to play the game and then feeling hurt when I lose. So this includes things like learning to find more niche people, getting good at translating my experience into normie so I can talk about that instead of pretending to care about TheCurrentThing, knowing what it is I even want out of the interaction, making it win/win for everyone, etc. I think if you can pull this off, you can come across as authentically because you're able to actually share how you feel with others, which can be hard to do when your experience isn't average and therefore not that innately relatable.

[Ego]

What I'm trying to do is learn all of the skills and then strategically deploy them instead of refusing to play the game and then feeling hurt when I lose.

Someone smart once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."

See also: https://thefortyeightlawsofpower-blog.t ... nhappy-and



In my experience, those with a great deal of charisma do not require charisma in their friends. They are happy to share their charisma with those who show enthusiasm for whatever it is they are discussing.

[grundomatic]

@AE
Right on. What you wrote expressed my sentiment better than I did. I think learning the social skills you mentioned is a worthwhile endeavor. I read this and thought it was timely: https://metamoderna.org/the-painful-dan ... entiation/
A quote from the article:

The tragedy of the matter is that this increasing dividuation also en­tails a corresponding difficulty for each of these unique souls to find ways to really match their inner drives, hopes, motives, ethics, skills and distin­ctive gifts with the world around them. If you identify as a farmer, a family mem­ber and a good Christian, these identities are relati­vely simple to act upon and it is rather easy to have them accommo­dated by your social surr­oun­dings. If you instead become a vegan whose greatest talent is to write poetry and criticize soc­iety, your family members and collea­gues are less likely to be as accomm­odating.

@Ego
I'd like to continue the discussion in your Contagion thread.

[ertyu]

I have also made conscious effort to learn how to communicate in a way that ensures I have relationships that are satisfying to me. I don't think that acquiring communication skills necessarily makes you inauthentic. Communication skills can be developed in the service of being *more* authentic -- which i define as living in congruence with your nature and your values.

This isn't as simple as it sounds. First of all, you need to be brutally honest with yourself about what your nature and your values are, and not shy away from the answers. You need to accept what you can't change (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) and change what you can (does one find that one tends to get defensive or macho when one is afraid of vulnerability, for instance? does one look down on people who dare to be vulnerable because one hasn't squared with one's own fear of being vulnerable and authentic? has one picked up dysfunctional patterns of dealing with oneself and others that one wants to reshape? etc)

Communication skills can be developed in the service of developing a deep and authentic relationship with the self, and deep and authentic relationships with others. If mutual material assistance comes out of those relationships, alright. But life is too short to make one's relationships shallow and instrumental. I would rather talk and get to know "Jason" rather than an instance of ENTP [switch names and types as applicable]. I would rather have a friend to shoot the shit with and get into Deep Meaningful Discussions (TM) with, rather than a node of "social capital." That's what I mean when I say that to me, this aspect of ERE (as originally conceived) is limited and limiting. Luckily, no one prevents me or anyone else from tacking on any further skills and ideologies to it as I see fit -- no one is limited to only working on what the little green book contains. While I'm not religious, some might find an incompleteness in the lack of religious elements in ERE -- and have accounted for that by incorporating their version of God in their web of goals. So this isn't me dissing on the og system in any way; more like, the social aspect is a place where I definitely need to do my own work to adapt the system to my own needs.

[AnalyticalEngine]

October 2022 Review

Gonna get back into the habit of doing these reviews consistently again to hold myself accountable. Right now, I feel like I'm going in too many directions at once, and it's caused me to crash the last week of the month and not do anything again. I need to prioritize better.

Money
Money continues to be something I pay minimal attention to, although my investments have been basically a wash all year due to the market. This is an area I need to put more effort into because the autopilot is keeping me locked to the job. I have more than enough money to live on and my savings are robust, but the nitpicking is required to actually be aware enough of your finances that you can do something other than salaryman.

Fitness
Ran a 10k for the first time in my life. It was the longest I've ever ran, so that's an impressive milestone given my previous fitness level was slug. However, I made the mistake of overcommitting to activities, getting behind on sleep, getting too exhausted to work out, reverting to caffeine consumption, and then the caffeine consumption brought back all the issues I had before quitting caffeine (anxiety, insomnia, blood sugar issues, etc). Then I gave it up again and had to deal with withdrawal symptoms for a few days. Nevertheless, I am back on my normal sleep schedule, so it's time to put the gym in my schedule again.

My plan going forward is cardio 2x/week and weights 2x/week.

Diet
Another area I need to put more focus in. I've been struggling with the autopilot eating out habit that I need to curb. I think the mistake that I'm making is trying to make my diet at home too perfect rather than something that's easy to do. Ie, eating kale and lentils that take me an hour to cook instead of having some meals I can prepare in 15-min. I'm going to focus on adopting the eat at home habit first, even if it's spaghetti and ice cream for every meal, then work to make that system optimal for health and wealth.

Drawing and Writing
Did all the Inktober prompts with the drawing MMG and got my novel plotted out for NaNoWriMo. Doing Inktober was actually pretty hard and I feel burned out on drawing now. I really want to do NaNoWriMo in Nov but I'm afraid that the time commitment is going to make the burn out worse/take away time I need to spend on diet/exercise. But I'm also frustrated that all these other things I'm doing in my life keep distracting me from writing.

Social
This is probably the area of greatest improvement for me. I went on a weekend trip to visit someone out of town, I'm doing the police department one evening every week, my civics class one evening every week, DnD on the weekends, and I found a sci-fi book group that seems like it's finally a good fit for me. This is on top of other miscellaneous meetups. I'm actually completely exhausted here because these are a lot of activities. But I think it's been good to force me out of my comfort zone and try new things.

One thing I'm learning from this is that I need to "escalate" friendships better. That is, you meet someone at book club you think could be your friend, you then need to think about how you can invite them to coffee or something. This seems more challenging than just going to meetups because you want to make sure you know the other person well enough that your offer doesn't come across as weird.

Making new friends in your 30s is difficult because everyone else is so consumed with work and children, but this really just means I need to put more thought/effort into it than I did when I accumulated free friends at school and work.

Work
Working from home continues to be insanely easy compared to working in the office. I have no commute and I'm free to do other things like chores during work downtime instead of needing to look busy. Although if I am honest, I still miss the office routine and feeling more connected to society. Working from home and pursuing ERE is pretty isolating because you have to put more effort into designing your lifestyle vs just accepting the out-of-the-box salaryman lifestyle. So I feel like I'm understimulated/not being challenged enough.

Material Possessions
I've been redoing my wardrobe as I realized I was coming across like a tech conference slug. This has been expensive. Finding clothes that fit you, look nice, and convey the image you want conveyed isn't that easy. I'm still figuring out how I like to look in styles other than bitcoin shirt. Thrifting is a good solution to this, but it requires you know how you want to look and what items you're missing from your wardrobe in advance so you can pick up good finds when you find them.

I might try to pre-organize outfits in a few categories (casual, business casual, formal, sports, winter, summer, etc) then go shopping for things I'm missing in each category at Goodwill.

I've been organizing my house but it's been a slow process due to everything else I have on my plate. I'm trying to figure out if something like 30-minutes-a-day is optimal to keep everything clean and organized or if there's another method to track cleaning and maintenance.

Thoughts on Life
I'm starting to internalize the realization that your present actions determine your future. I can see how the things I did at 22 lead up to where I'm at now (such as spending time on video games gave me certain friends at the expense of others). This sounds obvious but I think it's hard to really internalize it until you get older. I'm trying to keep in mind how I want to look in 10 more years and what present-me needs to do to make that happen.

[shaz]

Congratulations on completing the 10k!

[mountainFrugal]

I am also stoked on your 10K! Good work.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Thanks guys! Although I have to admit, after running it, I've eased up on running a bit because it was hurting my joints. Now I'm exploring other forms of cardio that don't hurt quite as much.

[jacob]

Joints take 6 months of building up. Muscles are faster at 1 month. Cardio is even faster at 2 weeks. I'm using "diminishing return scaling" and talking about "notably better", not "95%+".

IOW, use it or lose it. When it comes to running, you either need to keep it up or rebuild it slower than you feel like insofar you neglected it. So don't neglect it.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@Jacob - Thanks for the tip, that makes sense. I probably build up the cardio and the muscle then from other actives that outpaced the joint development, thus leading to the pain when running. I've only been at this about a year, so that's probably why. I suppose I should slow down until it stops hurting then but not give it up.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I went back and forth on if I should write this post or if I should post in the Darknet ERE thread. In the end, I decided to post it here because it felt more personal.

The two personal things I've been dancing around in this journal and in other threads that you all have probably deduced if you read between the lines are my gender (cis female) and my sexual orientation (lesbian). They're two things that have majorly impacted my attempt at building a social life I've been hesitant to talk directly about here because I've gotten negative reactions from people in my life that I've told before. Indeed, when I talk about masking or feeling alienated, what I'm talking about is that I often pass as straight (despite not looking feminine/having short hair/diving a Subaru/insert lesbian stereotype here) but never bother to correct people because I am afraid of how people are going to react to me telling them that I'm gay.

A lot of this stems from the fact I was raised in a very conservative, culty religious environment as a kid (Mormonism) that went on and on about how being homosexual is a massive sin and seeing other gay people in my life disavowed by everyone for being "evil" and having their lives ruined over it.

And it's made worse by the fact that being gay is seen as a political identity instead of just something you experience, and I actually disagree with a lot of the politics by the contemporary LGBT community. For example, I've been told I can't be gay because I "support the police" (what people hear when I say I have an interest in criminal justice), etc etc, all of which is frankly ridiculous but it's harder to escape when you're in a marginalized community because people inside of the community get more defensive about perceiving they're being attacked due to past trauma.

However, what I've realized while trying to come to terms with how to deal with all of this over the past year is that when you're such a minority, you have to put your own experience first or else you start to feel like you don't exist. If I never tell people I'm gay because I pass as straight, then yeah, I might not have to deal with overt homophobia, but I'm still neglecting everything about myself and it's easy to start believing that "people like me" "can't do FI/ERE/insert anything here." Then you just stop trying because you assume that you're such an outlier that it's impossible for you to succeed or be understood as yourself or have any shred of personal happiness.

But I've been trying to unlearn that attitude and be more open with people about who I am, what I experience, and what I want out of life, and I feel like this journal would benefit from me sharing my actual experience instead of the politically correct, filtered version. Especially since I now know a decent of amount of people here from MMG, the anonymity about my experience isn't serving as much of a purpose at this point anyway.

Plus there might be more people like me lurking on the forms thinking they can't do ERE for the same reasons that I struggle with, so I'm hoping that my story can widen the perception of what's possible.