Playing a Different Game Part 2
Discovering how one's perception affects status narratives
This is part 2 of 3 of a series on understanding the creation of internal status narratives.
In part 1 of this series, we explored what a status narrative is and how convictions form and support them. In part 2, we are now exploring the process of how these convictions are formed in the first place. It is necessary to understand convictions if we want to start exercising agency over what makes us feel success and failure. This information should be especially useful for low status men who are stuck in a pessimistic rut where everything they do seems to count as a loss. While I still have yet to master the process myself, I can still explain it in the hopes that others will be able to find it useful too.
As stated in the previous article of this series, status narratives must be supported by convictions. Convictions are those especially strong beliefs which seem true no matter what. You know the sky is blue because you have seen it countless times throughout your life. You may, however, only believe your car will start running in the morning. The nature of the mind, then, is to base status narratives more off of what you know rather than what you merely believe. Mere beliefs are cheap and easily squashed. Convictions are not.
Weak beliefs can evolve into convictions over time, and this is exactly what we will exploring. The process is long arduous, but if we become conscious of it, we can begin guiding it for our benefit. There are some important rules to be aware of, though. Firstly, the intellectual mind is the gatekeeper of this process and always requires evidence to build up a belief. Do not expect to use the information in this series to convince yourself of obviously fase things, like that failing is actually succeeding or that being undesireable by women is what you really wanted. That is the path to GAMMA-like cognitive dissonance and the intellectual faculties simply wont allow any new convictions to form due to the lack of evidence. Secondly, any kind of blatant self-deception that denies your true desires will also fail to integrate into a new status narrative. We will be discussing the importance of desire more in part 3.
So, if we want to create a new status narrative to replace an old one, we must be firmly grounded in reality. Unfortunately, that is not as straightforward as it might seem. The first issue is the fallibility of the intellect. The intellect is the gatekeeper of the conviction process, but it is prone to all sorts of biases and cognitive distortions. This can seriously affect what qualifies as acceptable conviction-building evidence to the intellectual mind. Practically, this means people tend to misuse their intellect by adopting a false objectivity around why and how events in their life happen. This kind of outlook is called a pessimistic explanatory style. It can and will turn all of your genuine successes into the product random chance while all your mistakes are entirely your own fault. This is the kind of mentality myself and others have observed in the minds of low status men and it is a huge reason why people stay stuck in the same old behavioral rut. Without a good deal of metacognitive insight, you may not even realize you are a victim of this mentality. You may think you are being objective and ruthlessly honest when the opposite is true.
Lets go through some more concrete examples of how this false objectivity leads to self-sabotage:
You are a mediocre looking guy with underdeveloped game skills and lower self-awareness and you fail to ask a girl out
The pessimistic explanation: “This just means I have inferior genes, I am probably destined to get stuck with girls I am not actually attracted to.”
The honest explanation: “I do not know exactly why she rejected me.”
People tend to over extrapolate when the honest answer is a simple admission of ignorance. Because the intellectual mind is fallible, it can easily allow these overly pessimistic thoughts to count as evidence towards a conviction. Many unnecessary and false convictions are created this way.
Your friendship with someone fails after you two have a mutual disagreement. You both know why you disagree and there is very little ambiguity.
The pessimistic explanation: “It was my fault we are no longer friends. I could have said something different. This is my fault for being so socially inept.”
The honest explanation: “We are just incompatible people.”
The honest explanation often is not very satisfying. At least with pessimistic explanations, there is the sick pleasure of self-pity and sulking. There are also many times the honest explanation will not be so obvious. In that case, it is important to accept that you simply do not know the correct the answer.
The second issue is the direction of our attention. The intellect may be fallible, but it may also not be receiving the necessary information. It is no wonder, then, that when we focus on our attention on what is irrelevant or harmful, that we tend to develop damaging convictions. There may be plenty of good things that come from what seems like a negative situation, but if we are not trained to see it, we could miss out on lots of opportunities and important truths.
In my estimation, there are multiple attributes that affect the nature and quality of someone’s attention:
Metacognition: the ability to understand one’s thought processes and patterns
Past conditioning: the tendencies impressed upon you by other people or circumstances
Intelligence: those who are more intelligent can consume and process more data from an observation at once
Luckily, there are ways to improve the first two attributes:
Metascripting: this method of journaling is powerful not only for permanent habit change but also for developing a deep understanding of your own motivations, though processes, and patterns. It is an excellent tool for developing metacognition and for examining and/or breaking past conditioning.
Affirmation Confirmations: A vital exercise for shifting your convictions in a deliberate and targeted way. Involves writing down or remembering a particular skill or characteristic you want to develop and then reminding yourself to find proof of you acting in the way you desire. Repeating this process enough times can activate the nervous system’s inherent neuroplasticity and actually make it easier to develop skills and attributes. This method deserves its own post.
When our attention is sharp and we can focus it properly, we are much more likely to develop the correct convictions. It is important to become aware of this process so that you can dispose of the convictions that cause you despair and embrace the ones that let you make progress.
In the next part of this series, we will be uncovering the vital importance of desire.
Man, this a lot of word, yo.
Can I just:
Do > observe result > correct > do?