Assertiveness, Intent, Drive

Here’s some more pop psychology for ya. I never read self-help books or go to seminars. I just watch people and then meditate for hours on what I think’s happening. But I feel it’s pretty accurate. Strap yourself in, this one’s long.

To get shit done, you need these three ingredients: you must possess drive (aka libido), you gotta focus your drive in the form of intent, and then you have to manifest your intent through assertiveness. Let’s start at the end and work backwards.

Assertiveness
You see something you want and you go after it, whether that’s a job position, a girl or a bartender’s attention. Have intent with no assertiveness, and you wind up with zip. So assertiveness takes your intent and puts it into action. Of course, if you lack intent, you won’t be assertive, so intent is a prerequisite.

Too much and you’re aggressive, too little and you’re passive. The aggressor is the bully, the passivist is the doormat, and the assertive guy is in between.

Aggressive people tend to step over the boundaries of passive people, resulting in abuse and manipulation. Assertive people say what they mean and go after what they want, but not in a way that is harmful to others or disrespectful of others’ boundaries. If an assertive person meets an aggressive person, he will defend his boundaries from aggression.

So in the case of the bartender, a passive guy will stand meekly by waiting for the bartender to notice him while everyone else steps around him and gets waited on. The aggressive guy will push and shove everyone out of the way and yell at the bartender for help. The assertive guy will step up to the bar without pushing anyone aside, will focus on the bartender until they lock eyes, and then will make his voice heard in a way that is commanding.

There is no issue of clarity with the aggressive or the assertive guy. The passive guy, however, seems unclear about his intent (this is the perception of others, even if he is clear in his head). And so he is often ignored and passed by. Men don’t respect him and women aren’t captivated by him. Even if he is full of intent, he doesn’t show it, so he is seen as a pussy, someone who doesn’t feel good about himself, wishy washy, lets people take advantage of him, doesn’t feel free to express himself.

Aggressive people don’t have an issue with expressing their desires, but often the trouble is in controlling their emotions. So they explode unexpectedly, seem impulsive and brash. A little bit of this is exciting, but eventually the assertive guy appears more solid since he is in command of his emotions. Other people feel good interacting with assertive men, but they often wind up feeling used and disrespected by aggressive men.

Let’s take this to your interaction with girlies. Shall we?

Let’s say you have full-on intent. Meaning you see a hot girl and you want to fuck her. Now, rather than be assertive, you sit there and don’t approach. Or in another situation, you want to make out with a girl you’re hitting on, but that voice in your head stops you. Or perhaps she’s being a bitch and you don’t put your foot down, instead buckling and letting her be dominant.

Digging deeper, the cause of not approaching is anxiety. So it is with not pulling the trigger. Perhaps fear of loss stops you from letting girls know when they’ve overstepped your boundaries. Maybe you’re scared that your communication skills are subpar and will inadvertently get you into trouble.

Notice in all these cases the underlying theme is anxiety and fear. If you are truly confident and without fear, you will put your intent into action. Yes there may be repercussions. You may be made a fool of, your ego may get bruised, you may get rejected. But you get back on your feet and reassert yourself, or else realize the goal isn’t worth the effort and then redirect your energies.

Sometimes that fear is masquerading as something else. That’s where excuses come from. Guys who don’t approach often have a list of a dozen reasons to support their behavior. Recognizing this internal dialogue and then disidentifying yourself from it is the first step, and then setting this dialogue aside and doing what you want anyway are the next steps.

So what is neediness? If you like a girl, and you assert your intent, but then she tells you she's busy or sick, and then you STILL push to meet up with her, then you've passed assertiveness and have become aggressive. You are now trying to do what YOU want to do in spite of her feelings.

Intent when pushed aggressively is no longer intent, but agenda. You can come across as callous or needy depending on your frame. But either way, it's clear you have an agenda to do what YOU want to do in spite of her.

To help become more assertive, put your intent into clear and decisive action. Take charge. Lead. Take responsibility and risk. Own your intent.

Intent
Intent is your aim or purpose. In legal terms, it’s the state of your mind when you carry out an action.

If you lack intent, even with strong drive, then you probably aren’t trusting of your decision-making process. Or perhaps you feel yourself unworthy of the goal. You have drive, but you aren’t channeling it for a variety of reasons.

Intent is like light. In terms of meeting broads, the newb starts off with a wide beam of intent similar to a floodlight, and then as he progresses that beam turns into a narrowly focused laser.

If you shine a big floodlight on a girl, she'll get annoyed and give you her number to make you go away. It didn't really penetrate. Examples: never going direct, no flirting, nothing dominant, no qualifying. It’s a wide-open aperture, without focus to the beam, really diffuse. This is the newbie. His intent is usually simply to open 10 sets regardless of his attraction to her, not push to the close, whatever happens happens. Not surprisingly, lotsa flakes result.

At the other extreme is the tightest beam of intent, the laser. This guy demands he not only interact with a girl’s better self, but that he FUCKS her better self. He avoids the frames that don't suit his purposes, he never supplicates, he always self-amuses. He is always internally validated. He is clear about his intent to bang her, even if it's just through his subcoms, though remember that it is his assertiveness which is giving his intent clarity.

In the end, what stops most guys from converting drive into intent is lack of trust in one’s faculties. You may not trust yourself, or you may not be giving yourself permission to act with intent. This could be from social conditioning, your religious up-bringing, over-bearing parents, low self-esteem, et cetera. Something is stopping you from fully embracing your drive, and so you flounder in the intent department, conflicted and unsure.

Naturally there is no quick fix here. You need to do all the soul-searching necessary to own your drive fully and believe you’re the shit, before you can ever hope to assert it with chicks.

Drive/Libido
Too much and you’re a horndog. Too little and your interactions lack sexual charge. Horndogs do get laid, but most high-value women will eventually realize they’re being used for their pussies. Some girls don’t mind this, but most need to feel somewhere along the line that you aren’t PURE libido, that you do care about what’s inside, that you respect her as a human being.

Libido has an organic component. If you’re old like me, you may find your drive diminishing. I have to do little tricks like feeling up a girl while I talk to her, or stare at her tits, to get that surge which once controlled all my thoughts.

Libido also has a psychological basis. If you’re depressed, stressed about finances, over-worked, then your drive suffers. Sometimes you can shut those worries out while you interact with girls, but sometimes they’re too over-whelming.

Let’s face it. Libido is all about procreation. Of course, when we fuck girls, we are hoping NOT to procreate, but on a deep evolutionary level sex is sex because the designer of the system wanted us to do it a whole bunch of times in order to continue our species. You can tell yourself you don’t want kids, and take meticulous and irreversible measures to prevent it from happening, but that is the biological reason behind all this.

So to a degree, we are at the mercy of hormones. Even without intent and assertiveness, you can be raging with drive. The result is a guy who sits at his computer whacking off to porn every night, because he is too confused about his intent or too afraid to go out and bring women into his life.

In the end it’s better to have more than less drive, but drive left unchecked will scare away most girls.

The end goal is to channel your libido with clear intent, and then pursue what you desire assertively, but to also balance this drive with things like charisma, romance and giving value.