Visions Of Your Future

crystal ball in hands
Gaze Into My Crystal Ball…

Something happened a couple of days ago that jarred my memory, yet again, and made me think of something that someone told me. I really wish I could remember who it was that told me what I’m about to tell you, I want to give credit where credit is due, but alas, I can’t remember who it was. Oh well, suffice it to say, it was something that I heard from someone back in high school.

What this guy told was so profound, and so true, that I would say it’s damn near prophetic. What I’m about to tell you Men, if you heed it and understand it, you will literally be able to see into the future. I’m not kidding.

Here’s the prophecy:

The girl you are with now? Want to know what she will look like in ten years? Look at her mother.

Like I said, I remember hearing this when I was a young lad back in high school. For some strange reason it stuck in my head, to this very day.

I remember the first time I thought about this little gem, I was eighteen and was dating a sixteen year old girl. She was sexy, cute, funny, and yes, she had a gorgeous body. She was my first “real” girlfriend, and she was my first sexual experience. She also ended up being my oneitis.

I remember one day while I was sitting with her, I looked over at her mother. Out of shape, fat, all sorts of health problems. It was all there. I remember thinking to myself, “god I hope that doesn’t happen to my girl.”

Fast forward 25 years…

I ran into that old girlfriend in 2015, not too long after I got divorced. We got caught up on each other’s lives. And guess what?

She turned out looking exactly like her mother.

Let’s move on to more recent times shall we?

My ex-wife had two girls from her first marriage. Those girls lived with their father. When I met and married my ex-wife, these girls were teenagers. The oldest one was 16 when I met her and she had just received her drivers license. She would come around occasionally to show off her driving skills and her car that she busted her ass to earn. She looked almost exactly like her mother. By that I mean facially. Her eyes, nose, teeth, smile, hair color, all of it. It was so uncanny because her father was literally not in her, at least not physically. She was definitely her mother’s daughter. If either she had been older, or her mother been younger, they could have passed off as sisters instead of mother and daughter. They could have almost been identical twins.

The years go by, I get divorced, and I haven’t talked to my ex-wife in a few years, and the same could be said about her daughters. Well, just a couple of months ago, the oldest daughter contacted me on Facebook. I have nothing against her. What happened between me and her mother had nothing to do with her, so we chatted for about an hour or so. I learned that she was in the military, had been married and divorced twice, and had two children of her own. Two girls. If memory serves me correctly, she’s either 28 now or 29.

I saw pictures of her on Facebook the other day. Not just headshots, but full body shots. Can you guess who she looks like now?

If you said her mother, you would be absolutely correct.

When I looked at her, it was like seeing what her mother looked like when she would have been 28 or 29. It was so eerie that it gave me goosebumps. Not only the physicality, yes the oldest daughter has put on a bunch of weight, just like her mother, but even the amount of tattoos. She almost as tatted up as her mother.

You need to understand something.

The oldest daughter and her mother had a falling out about a year before I filed for divorce. They hadn’t spoke in a long time. The oldest hadn’t seen her mother in years until she got her drivers license. There’s a lot of history and details going on here that I’m not going to go into. Suffice it to say, there’s issues between mom and the oldest. When the oldest and I talked not too long ago, she asked me if I had talked to my ex, her mother. I told her I hadn’t talked to her in almost three years. She said that it had been almost as long for her.

Their issues are so bad and run so deep, my ex-wife, her mother, hasn’t even seen or met her grandchildren. She knows of them, she knows they exist, but she hasn’t met them or talked to them or held them in her arms. She literally knows nothing about them. And that’s the way that the oldest daughter wants to keep it.

When I was back in college studying psychology, the big emphasis was the Nurture side of things in the equation of Nature vs Nurture. Nature was acknowledged, but was more or less summarily dismissed as not being as important as Nurture.

When I saw those photos the other day, when it gave me chills, it’s because Nature was showing up. I can’t scientifically prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but I know what I saw and I know what I know.

The oldest is going down the exact same road as her mother. Same mistakes in men. Same mistakes in marriage. Same mistakes in body modification. She even has the same temperment, outlook on life, and mannerisms as her mother. And yet she hardly knows her mother. She barely interacted with her mother growing up. Her mom and dad got divorced when she was young, like 7 or 8, and her mother had little interaction with her after the divorce.

She has the same tonality as her mother. She even uses phrases that her mother used. And she never heard her mother say them.

History repeats itself indeed.

Guys, want to know what your girl is going to look like in ten years? Look at her mother.

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Regrets And Opportunities

black and white man young lonely

I have to start with a couple of stories before I get to my point. I would imagine that by the time I get to my point, you, Dear Reader, will have gotten the point. Let’s get going shall we?

Back in 2004 I met a woman online. This was before “swipe apps” and dating sites were really just starting to become a thing. If my memory serves me correctly, I met this woman on MySpace.

She and I begin a dialogue, which turns to checking out each others pictures, which turns into both of us sending each other more recent pictures, which turns into flirty texting, which turns into phone calls, which turns into Skype calls, which turns into both of us deciding to meet in Vegas for a weekend getaway.

This woman lived in Seattle and I lived and still currently live, in Salt Lake City. We both figured that Vegas would be a good “middle ground” and would also be neutral territory. Besides, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

Fun thing happened when I went to get on the airplane to go to Vegas. She was already on the flight. Her flight from Seattle had a layover in Salt Lake, and was my flight as well. So there we both were.

It definitely made it easier logistically. Now neither one of us was going to arrive before the other. There was no need to contact the other person to find out where they were at, figure where to meet them, so on and so forth.

It was a great weekend to be sure.

Now, let’s fast forward a little bit. This woman and I continued our “romance” for about another 3 or 4 months. She ended up catching a flight to Salt Lake and stayed with me for a weekend, and I ultimately did the same thing and ended up spending a weekend in Seattle. I’ve never been to Seattle before my visit with her, it’s a beautiful city.

So now let’s fast forward to 2005. Seattle gal is a thing of the past, and enter Delaware Woman. Meeting her was pretty much the same thing as Seattle gal, so I’ll not bore you with those details. I believe it was in August, September, or maybe October of 2005 that I caught a flight to Delaware to meet this particular woman. Delaware is beautiful as well, and up to that time, I had never been there before either.

What I remember most about both of those amazing women (besides personal details and intimacies that I’m not going to share with you) is travelling around with them and the travelling I did to get to them.

Could I have met women closer to me? Of course. In fact, I was doing that as well as pursuing these two women. Just because these women were in completely different states from me wasn’t a reason that I couldn’t meet them.

I wasn’t kidding myself and they were not kidding themselves as to the status of our respective “relationships.” I wasn’t going to uproot and move either to Seattle or Delaware, and they weren’t going to uproot and come live in Utah. But that wasn’t going to stop us from having adventures.

Here’s my point:

I don’t regret meeting these two wonderful women. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heart beat. I don’t regret that it took longer to meet them than if they had lived closer to me. I don’t regret the money that I spent to get to them.

The things that I do regret are the chances that I never took. The opportunities that I have missed out on because of hesitation or fear. Those are my regrets.

I don’t regret getting married in 2009 only to get divorced in 2015. I don’t regret that that particular relationship was the hardest relationship that I’ve had to date. Yes, marriage and relationships can be work, but when it’s fairly constant work, there’s more going on there than at first glance.

I don’t regret dating a woman who is twenty years younger than me. You would be surprised to find out just how much we had in common despite our age difference.

I don’t regret that I’m single again. There’s things that I am doing now that I would have not had the time, the energy, or the motivation to do those things if I was in a relationship.

I don’t regret that I told my Mother goodbye hours before she died. We both knew it was coming and inevitable. We both said what needed to be said to each other.

I only regret a few things.

I regret that I never went up and talked to a woman that I knew in school. Her name was Suzanne. She was stunning. She had the most piercing blue eyes that I have ever seen. I wish that I had had the balls and just gone up and talked to her and asked her out. Even if she had blown me out and told me no, that would have been okay. At least I would have known.

I regret that I never kissed another woman named Shannon. The worst part of that one is the fact that I knew, I fucking knew, she was in to me. She told me she was. And like a complete dumbass, I did nothing with that information. I was too chickenshit at the time.

You might see a pattern here. It has to do with women. I don’t regret the jobs I did or didn’t take. I don’t regret the money that I have or haven’t spent. I don’t regret the stuff I did or didn’t buy.

I regret not taking the chances with these women when I could have, and the opportunities that I have missed out on. I regret not knowing what kind of memories I could have made with them. I regret not knowing who and what those people were about. That’s what I regret. All because of fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of not doing it “right.” Fear of failure. And even in some cases, fear of success.

When it’s your turn to die, when you are lying on your deathbed, what are you going to regret? I know I won’t regret not spending more time at the office doing someone else’s work to make them more money. I won’t regret taking the chance on approaching and meeting someone new, and they aren’t interested in what I’m offering them. At least there, I’ll know. And if it doesn’t work out the way that I had wanted it to? Oh well, things don’t always go the way you wanted them to, but at least I tried.

And for that, I have no regrets.

P.S. If another opportunity presents itself, and I have to hop onboard another airplane to fly to another part of the country, or another part of the world to meet someone new and see what that’s like, what do you think I’ll do?

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Go Big Or Go Home

photo of mountain peak

There are some maxims or adages that I live by. Now granted my maxims aren’t necessarily original, and they aren’t set in stone. They aren’t meant to limit but to help me expand my life.

Today I’m going to talk about one that I call “Go Big or Go Home.” Sure you’ve all heard that one before, and maybe you know what it means, but let me ask you this:

Do you put “Go Big or Go Home” into practice in your life? You may say the words a hundred times or more, and you may even hear it ten times more than that, but do you actually put them into practice?

Here’s a couple of examples from my own experience that have worked out extremely well:

  1. Met a woman not too long ago, realized that I was attracted to her, started the flirting and the banter up and escalated the talk towards sex and sensuality really quick. Maybe two or three minutes quick. Why not? Go big or go home right? Can you see the benefit of doing this, and doing it quickly? a) It sets the tone quick and right up front. b) It will keep you from the friendzone. c) It will polarize her. I’ve found that women fall into 3 categories: 1. They are interested in you. 2. They are not interested in you. 3. They could be interested in you. Polarizing them gets the maybe’s into either the interested or not interested groups real quick. d) You don’t waste time when you’re going after what you want. e) I’ve gotten what I wanted more often than not.
  2. When you do Go Big or Go Home, you tend to stand out. With women, with Men, with people in general, doesn’t matter where you are and what you are doing, you stand out. I’m on the short end of the bell curve when it comes to my height, it can be an obstacle for sure, but I don’t let it get in my way. I just push and work that much harder for the results that I want. Most people that have met me in real life don’t realize how short I am until I mention it. Usually they think I’m taller than I actually am. That’s because I “carry” myself as much taller. It’s go big or go home baby.

When I was younger, I tried doing the blending in thing. Tried not rocking the boat. Tried to be “humble.” Where did that get me? Nowhere. Just miserable is all. So I gave it up and figured if this is the only life that I get to have, I might as well live it as I want to. So I got bold, loud, brash.

What happened? Well I pissed a lot of people off in the beginning. Most of them knew me in my “prior life,” and they didn’t like what I was becoming. That was because I wasn’t doing what they wanted me to do anymore. Needless to say, I lost some “friends.” Oh well.

What did I gain though? I enjoy my life far more thoroughly now. The people that show up in my life know me how I am and they accept it, it’s all they know. They are “with the program.” The people that show up now are far more “alive” than the earlier crowd. They are willing to do things the old crowd wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. They are willing to push the envelope with me and beside me. Why not? Seriously, what’s the worst thing that can happen?

The people I’ve met, the friends that I’ve made, they are fiercely loyal to me. I have no doubt that they have my six and would take a bullet for me. That’s because they know that I have their six and would take a bullet for them.

What ever you choose to do and put out there, that’s what people are going to see and come to expect from you. And more often than not, not only will they expect it from you, they’ll accept it too. You would be surprised to find out the shit you can get away with if you only just go big or go home.

Whatever you believe about yourself is true. Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours. Instead of having limiting beliefs, what if you believed that you are bigger than you think you are?

Life became much more intense, much more engaging, and a helluva lot more fun when I decided to go big or go home. I’m not attached to outcomes so much anymore, I’m more interested in what will happen. It’s like doing science experiments minus the lab setting. Crazy and cool shit happens if you let it and push for it.

What’s stopping you from going big or going home? What’s the worst that can happen? Face that fear. So you lose the girl. So you lose the job. So you don’t get the raise. So you don’t get the promotion. So what? As long as whatever it is doesn’t actually kill you, so fucking what?

You’re not going to get the results you want by walking on eggshells. You won’t get anything other than misery by blending in and not rocking the boat.

So what are you going to do about it?

 

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