Do Regular Guys Influence You?

[Rage]

Not sure if you guys think about this or are affected by this as I am; but have been wondering about this quite a lot lately and I think that it’s significant and worth talking about.

I’ve found myself lately (but also in the recent past as well) doing something time and again which is… limiting how much time I spend with other guys and being aware of the guys that I spend time with.

First off to describe myself I have a number of guy friends … but make it a point that I don’t kick it with anyone too frequently and spend the majority of my time myself and on my projects. Other guy friends that I have, many of them are into the same hobbies of mine (business and weightlifting) and are ambitious guys and into bettering themselves and improving themselves, being a part of something bigger, creating a name for themselves etc. (so if it’s a guy that sits around and watches TV all day yeah I don’t hang out with guys like that all that much).

For the sake of my pickup, for myself I’ve been curbing the amount of time I spend even with these friends because I feel that their paradigms and behavior around women might affect me. The key thing I've been doing here is limiting the time spent with people who don’t share the same paradigms/experience with women that I do.

Love the guys I'm good friends with, but too much time spent with them and I feel parts of them rubbing off on me… which is bad in that I want the good parts rubbing off on me and not the bad parts. I’ve got a number of guy friends who are cool at the gym, but I’ll usually just say what's up and a friendly word or two and then go on with my workout. This is because the guys at the gym, in relation to all the women at the gym, are doing what I don’t wanna do… they don’t have the same paradigm I do … they’re cool dudes, really improvement-oriented ambitious guys, but they look at the hot girls and can’t stop staring and are like “man she's so hot, oh my god I think she looked at me, man I wish I could get a girl like that”…

What do you guys do?

Any of you still kick it at length with regular guys? That are stuck being “nice guy” or “too shy to talk to girl” guy or “can talk but can’t stop talking about himself” guy?

I don’t, I find myself spending time with girls, occasionally with a good guy friend and rest of the time happily on my own.

Have noticed that whenever I do kick it with regular guys for a while I get a bit unnerved that the lack of masculinity may rub off on me… I even feel it in watching videos of powerlifting guys I follow and just in everyday conversation.

Only prudent thing I can think to do for myself is keep doing what I'm doing now: limit the time spent with regular guys, keep meeting new girls, and find a few friends who are endeavoring to be players and are about that masculine “guy that gets women” life.

Curious as to what you guys think.

Cheers,

Gem

 

[Thedoctor]

Gem,

I'm actually very selective with who I spend my time with these days. I'll give just about anyone a chance. Everyone has different goals and ambitions and interests. The only thing that is important to me is: Typically, how do I feel after I leave my interaction with this person:

Do I feel better?
Do I feel worse?
Or do I feel neutral?

It seems strange to me that people keep friends around that only steal value and energy. That makes for a very one-sided relationship. Any self-respecting person will not tolerate this.

It's useful to know what motivates them to spend their spare time the way they do. For instance, if a friend is a gym rat, I'd try to figure out why:
Is he looking to compete?
Is he looking to feel better / be healthier?
Or.....is he just insecure.?

You can see how the last one changes the entire perspective of this person. So, to me, it's important to figure out a person's motivations, which often determines if they will try to add or steal value.

-John

 

[Rage]

Hey John,

Great thoughts; I kind of feel as though I never began realizing this stuff/wouldn’t have been really able to realize this stuff till I worked on bettering myself.

I think that you have to know yourself pretty well first to then be able to turn and look at the people influencing you and how they are influencing you and why you choose to keep them in your life or should continue to do so or not do so.

Something that kind of blew my mind when I first heard, but is true is that everyday people tend to have the friends that they have from random chance and occurrence.

We’re all on this site and friends through a shared hobby. For even relatively improvement oriented guys you’d ask them and they'd think that yeah that’s the norm, that most people meet through their common hobbies common interests. But in fact a great many people aren’t working to become great at anything don’t have any hobbies that they're deliberately obsessively working at to be great at, and the friends that they end up meeting are through chance and random occurrence.

Friends and couples too; “how’d you meet?” Through school or college or work or church …

I like what you suggest about seeing how you feel; haven’t looked at it that way in a while (kind of reminds of How to Win Friends and Influences’ principles), have been thinking stemming off of that what sort of imprint am I leaving with people I'm interacting with are they talking to me and coming away from it feeling better and good about themselves, gaining value from me? A wise question to ask yourself time and again evidently

I had kind of originally asked my thread inquiring as to whether specifically related to game I might be getting affected.

I’m still not sure if spending a little extra time with guys with average game can influence you and make you less good with your game … from what I’ve observed consistently approaching and spending some time with average guys can have some slight effect but as long as I'm not spending too too much time with the regular guys I can be all right.

 

[Smith]

Gem,

Humans are sponge. You are basically the combination of all the influences around you, i.e. your parents, your friends, your religion...etc.
So I do think it's important to know what kind of people you surround yourself with.

I’m still not sure if spending a little extra time with guys with average game can influence you and make you less good with your game … from what I’ve observed consistently approaching and spending some time with average guys can have some slight effect but as long as I'm not spending too too much time with the regular guys I can be all right.

This depends. Are you spending time with these guys to meet women? or are you spending time with these guys to go to the gym or doing other activities?

Sometimes, you will meet guys that have skewed mindsets about women and relationships, but they're actually great guys who are good at other areas in life and who you can be friends with.
I think you can still hang out with these guys, but you need to be conscious of how they influence you when it comes to seduction and life. Watch out if they start to complain about women or even try to show you things you know that's not your reality. When they start doing this, that's when you remove yourself from them in that moment or you try to change the topic. When my friends start to bitch to me about women, I stop listen to them because it's always the same problem and they simply don't understand things from women's point of view. Then when they realize I'm not feeding their complaint, they start to shut up too and change the subject.

How about guys with average game but they are on the same journey to become better? I think you should definitely hangout with these guys.

Of course, find friends who are on the same page as you is better, but over time, as you evolved to the best version of yourself, you'll tend to attract people like that around you, then your 'old' friends who are still in that same place will be left behind, because you simply won't click with them anymore.