pos69sum

no offense - but this website is more for people who are looking for someone to talk to because they are confused about relationships or a breakup, or are depressed and need a sympathetic ear. there is a book list, which is ok - but i'm looking for sites with specific programs, and a forum with people who are really interested in actively pursuing personal growth, wealth accumulation, developing an active social life. maybe such sites don't exist, although i doubt it - there seems to be a site for everything on the internet. i've found a few - but maybe someone here can recommend something really good. i'm a software developer - but my field is not important. when i mentioned i'm interested in improving my career, i'm more interested in general advice about personal finance, wealth management, and cultivating business relationships.

Does anyone know of any good self improvement websites? I'm interested in websites that are focused on helping people improve their careers, finances, and social lives.

I was extremely depressed between the months of Jan and Feb of 2006 after I broke up with my ex. I've been getting better - I've been going to therapy which helps a lot, I've made some new friends, dating new people, focusing on my career,etc. I've made a lot of progress. I don't consider myself depressed anymore, I'm starting to really have some fun. The problem: I was nearly catatonic w depression for those two months. During this time I appeared normal to other people in terms of my personal hygeine, although maybe a little sad looking. My condo, however, went to all hell. I stopped cleaning, I lost my cleaning lady's email address and never bothered to contact her. There are clothes everywhere, garbage all over the floor, papers everywhere. The kitchen and bathroom and absolutely horrendous - I'm almost embarrassed to call my cleaning lady again - the bathroom is so bad I almost would feel embarrassed to have her clean up the mess. My bedroom is the absolute worst. I have a pile of mail for six months, mostly junk but there are some importannt pieces of mail in there that I have to sift through. Help me, can't motivate myself to clean. I have some kind of mental block about this. I've taken multiple days off of work *just to clean*, and then I didn't do anything but watch tv all day. Just thinking of the amount of work that needs to be done - it's really several days worth of cleaning - paralyzes me and I can't even start. But just letting it sit makes me more and more depressed every day. I've also tried breaking it up - i.e., just clean one hour each day - but what happens is I last for a few days, but then something comes up at work, I come home totally exhausted and just want to relax when I get home and I let it go again. What is wrong with me that I can't clean this place? I have a mental block about this - I feel like I might be crazy. Certainly living in garbage is enough to drive someone crazy after a time. I can't bring anybody home because I'm embarrassed. Help me get motivated. I can't do any work at home or concentrate on anything because of the mess! Help, has anyone ever experienced this?

have you ever had that sinking feeling when dating someone that you know you are headed for heartbreak but don't know what to do about it? you know you are making mistake after mistake, but feel powerless to stop it? like there's some script that you are following which you already know will end in disaster? it will be over before you realize it, and you will be suffering over it for longer than it existed. the only thing i can think of that's even vaguely comforting about this situation is the thought that, if i do this enough, it will eventually desensitize me to rejection. maybe if i don't care anymore, something good will happen. but then you think about all those years you waited for something to happen, and you realize that you may remain like this for the rest of your life.

it's only fun until the inevitable games and horrible feeling of rejection.

have you gone out with her? is she aware of how you feel? if i was in your shoes i'd probably try to arrange a date with her, and try to seduce her into my bedroom.

99% of the time - not repairable. but this is a valluable learning experience, move on and don't let it happen again.

i'm working on it. doesn't mean that the process isn't frustrating. thanks for listening.

there's a difference between 'selective' and 'automatically assume the worst even though he has not given you a concrete indication'. 'selective' assumes that they enter into communication with an open mind, i do not feel this is the case. i feel like you are automatically assumed to be either a player or loser, and it's up to you to fight yourself out of that preconception. this type of thinking just makes things incredibly difficult for everyone.

just kiss her!!

i am totally not a sales guy, it took all of a couple week's experience when i was going through different jobs after college to teach me that. you are correct, it is just something that does not come natural to me. i might try this, though.

i'm a great boyfriend, but i have the hardest time getting to that point. it is this whole business of having to basically ingratiate yourself to someone you don't even know that is most probably not even worth it, that i can't handle. and people's ignorant assumptions that, if you are not in a relationship, then something must be wrong with you. i believe in personal development. i have been reading books on the subject for years - subjects like psychology, personal finance, career success. i'm in therapy too. i know that the 'game' is basically all within yourself. my theory is that from day one, people screw each other over so much in the dating game that 99.9 percent of people are so apprehensive when they meet someone new, so they resort to games and attitude again because it's the only thing they know that will give them even a small measure of control over the situation. women hold men in such contempt these days that they are constantly 'testing' them, making them jump through these enormous hoops, to see if they are really 'boyfriend material', another 'player', or another 'nice guy'. men naturally become defensive about this and develop 'player' attitudes or just drop out of the game altogether - and everyone becomes more and more jaded.

yes drinking usually makes you say what you're really thinking

tell her 'it's just not gonna work between us. we're too different'. then watch her change her tune and come running.

this is why i hate being single - i just cannot handle the bullsh** people throw around, the games, the attitude. i hate it. and i hate the fact that you can't even get away from it. if i say, ok i am going to put myself out there and meet women, i have just enough success to make it seem like i'm not totally hopeless - but ultimately i screw it up somehow and get my ego shredded by shallow manipulative women. and if i say, screw it, i'm just going to focus on work and my hobbies, i can never stick to it. either this type of lifestyle just becomes too miserable and lonely, and i go out looking to meet women again - or, i just happen to meet someone that blows me away and wakes me up out of my apathy. and then, of course, my ego gets shredded even worse because i don't have very much experience and she interprets this as a sign of weakness and i wind up alone again. the past two weeks have been a real roller coaster. i met someone at a club last week and asked for her digits. since the place was closing soon, she told me to meet her there in a week, we can hang out and get to know each other, and then she'd give me her number. i went back to the club a week later, she was there, we hung out for a few hours, but then she left abruptly and i never got her number. what the hell! so i decide to focus on this other girl - i was on a dating site, started talking to a girl, had a date set up for a few days later, proceeded to talk to her on the phone a lot. then she starts playings games - today was the first time a phone message was not returned. this means that it's over as far as i'm concerned. but it still sucks, because i really thought she had potential. so today, i'm completely demoralized. i decide to go back to myspace, which i haven't logged onto in a long time, to message my one and only myspace crush. she's the only person who left nice messages for my pics and we've emailed each other goofy notes a couple times over the past year, i've never tried to initiate anything with her before but often thought of her. i send her a message saying 'hi would you like to talk on yahoo messenger sometime? my screen name is ...'. now, i can see her sending me a message back saying 'let's just keep our talk on myspace' or possibly even ignoring it - but she drops me as a friend and turns her profile to 'private'! what the hell did i do to get this treatment? i hate this. i hate that i have no choice but to work my way through a long string of these horrible demoralizing episodes before i meet someone that i just 'click' with. i read some sites the other day about developing your 'game' - the whole idea of going out of your way to develop seemingly artificial character traits, memorize 'routines', etc. just seems incredibly depressing to me. please tell me it will get better. right now i just want to move to alaska and live in an igloo for the rest of my life.

i was late 20s when i realized that the 'not looking for strategy' was a load of BS. work on yourself, your career, your social life, etc. so that you are *always* ready for it - i.e., you are a complete person with a full life, with many things to offer a prospective partner.

it's better to be open about how you feel, even if you get rejected - than to hold those feelings inside and just be frustrated for a long time.

it felt necessary because i never got to say those things to her. she seemed so cold at the end that i think there's a good chance she's going to not even care. i never posted about the time a couple of weeks ago when she was contacting me and trying to reestablish a relationship between us where i was like her ' * * * * * boy that she would cry to whenever she got lonely or was having problems w her current guy'. i promptly told her to leave me alone. towards the end there was nothing good about her. she was downright vindictive. the majority of the time, like 90 percent of the time i feel like i'm over it, and i only wish her the best. it's only when i focus on the sh***y way she ended it that i get mad. it's so incongruous to how the rest of the relationship was.

not only are you 'different' not 'better' than the new guy, you met at different times in your lives. you can't compare yourself with this new guy.

i'm not sure you should be dating when it's obvious you're still not completely over your ex. it's not fair to your new girlfriend.

she hasn't responded. i dunno ... the last couple of times we talked she basically acted very nonchalant, like she didn't really care at all about me, so i think there's actually a good chance she'll read that and just laugh at how much of a dork i am. yeah in the future i will vent here. when i wrote that i was thinking 'i know i'm breaking nc, but this has to be said.' now i'm thinking i should have refrained, but i still think it had to be said.

stupid series of im's i sent her this afternoon. i totally regret this, but i was just feeling too angry. 3:51:40 PM me: you were so mean to me at the end. when i wanted to just talk and say goodbye you made fun of me and smoked weed. you are a horrible person 3:54:15 PM me: why would you be so mean to me? what did i ever do to you? i tried my best with you. 3:55:29 PM me: here i am in shock because my girlfriend of six years ia breaking up, and alll you do is make fun of me and tell me to smoke up. what kind of a monster are you. 3:57:03 PM me: and you didn't even break up nicely. you had to rub it in my face that a. not only were you basically cheating on me but also, b. that you were also thinking of going out with some more guys you met online. that's the worst way to break up with someone. you are horrible. 3:58:57 PM me: remember when i said 'just tell me and i'll go talk to m parents' 4:00:10 PM me: did you go home and think about how i broke up w you before and get mad about that? 4:01:50 PM me: you are a horrible person. i find it funny that you pretend like you are a this good christian person. you lied about so many things, your smoking and drug use, you lied about loving me - when that was obviously a joke because you turned around and started flirting with everybody. 4:03:13 PM me: you're just lazy, and mentally inept. you have no plans to work or go to school. you're just looking for someone to take care of you. i wish you would have just admitted that. it would have saved us a lot of heartache. 4:03:55 PM me: remember we drove off from candace's and you were like 'well now you see how poor people live'? how judgemental are you. even i wasn't thinking mean * * * * like that. 4:08:47 PM me: here i was - working hard, planning for the day when i can be with my girl, and the entire relationship was based on a lie. you didn't care about me. you just wanted someone to take care of you. i waited for you for years, i tried really hard to make it right. i'm glad i never married you because then i would have married a horrible liar who didn't even love me. 4:09:41 PM me: do you know how many times i thought that our relationship was just too hard? too many times. but i never gave up, because i cared about you. and you were just using me. 4:10:41 PM me: i'm better than you. and i'm better than whoever you will meet in your stupid life, as you look for someone to take care of you. i was the one that was true to you. 4:12:22 PM me: now i don't care about you any more. 4:12:22 PM me: you want someone to take care of you? fix your face and learn how to talk intelligently.

er. the above was a long rambling essay my therapist john made me write. thought i'd post it here to archive it. might be interesting to come back to it later.

this is necessary in order for you to regain a sense of yourself, and eventually love someone else in the same way. you will not forget the good times, given enough time you will be able to look back on it fondly, mistakes and all.

It's now a little more than a month since everything happened. I feel like a totally different person than the one I was two weeks ago, and I feel like a totally different person than the one I was a couple of months ago. It's weird how something like this can just shake up everything you thought you knew about yourself. I don't know what will happen to me anymore from day to day, which is exciting and liberating and scary at the same time. This is what has been dealt to me, I can either wallow in this situation indefinitely, or use it as a springboard from which to make myself a better person. I know about the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I know that they can occur in a different order, and that they tend to blur into one another, but I think for the most part I am now at the depression stage. If you take into account that I'm trying to get over a six year relationship, that's actually pretty good progress. I spent the first day in denial, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was crying all the time, walking around in a daze, every thought of her would set me off and I'd be nearly incapacitated by feelings of grief. This kind of phased into the 'anger' stage, if you can call it that. I've never been very good at being angry or hating people, she was a very special person to me at one point in my life, I just hope she finds whatever it is that she's looking for. And if she has turned into a petty and immature person that probably doesn't give a damn about me anymore, then I can appreciate what we had together for what it was, accept that people change, and turn my attention to getting myself together again. I did the best I could at the time, what more could I ask of myself? The thing about the depression stage is, it can go on for a long time unless you check yourself. I was a depressed person before I even met her, and I was depressed even when we were together. In college I had a falling out with a person that I thought I was the one for me, and I used it as an excuse to mess my life up even more than it was at the time with drugs and apathy. What a joke that was, am I going to waste another five years letting this ruin me? If I am not going to kill myself, and I choose to live - then I want to really start living my life for a change, instead of what I have always done - which is focusing obsessively on one thing, like my ex, or whatever's coming up due in graduate school, or being a teenage delinquent. Those things have always just been a coping mechanism and a distractions from the real issue, which is - what is the source of this this buried self hatred, that sabotages your relationships with other people, causes you to retreat from the world, and tempers even your happiest times with the unspoken thought that this is just a fluke, this is not the real you, you will never be loved because you just don't deserve it? During the first couple of weeks in January I just could not function at work, I'd sit in my cube and obsessively email people from the online personals, as if I was in any way ready to date anybody again. For the life of me I just cannot fall asleep at night, I've turned into a huge insomniac. Most nights I stay up til 3 or 4 in the morning, I'd get up at 7 just in time to make it to work, bringing my razor to work so I can shave in the bathroom. I started smoking again, after quitting for four years, I'm still smoking - I really need to quit again, but I'm afraid it'll lead to me eating and drinking even more than I do right now. I was *almost* in really good shape when it happened. I haven't been to the gym since New Year's, I really need to get on that, maybe it'll help with the insomnia, but I'm trying to go easy on myself right now. Today I eat a large pizza and drink a six pack of beer - just cereal and coffee, soup for dinner. I've been playing a lot of guitar, learning new songs, really delving into the minor scales and finding new melodies in them. Thank God for music, it has always been a sustaining force in my life. One question that continually comes up - will I ever find anyone else to love? And even if I do, will I repeat the same mistakes, or make new mistakes? And its corollary - since nothing in this world is permanent, why is it that people are so fixated on this ridiculous notion that love is forever, or that there is someone out there for everybody? Isn't it true that countless people have died alone throughout the ages, proving the lie to this theory? It is entirely possible that I will be one of these people who never manages to find the person I was destined for in this world - maybe there is no such person. What does it say about our society that we need this type of collective delusion in order to make sense of our lives? And yet, I have no answers, I'm just trying to be productive, maintain a positive attitude most of the time around other people, be more social, and get back to who I really am as a person. Even if I manage to become the most self actualized person I can be, does that guarantee that I'll be able to manifest some type of love in my life? I know that you have to love yourself in order to truly love another person, but does that mean you're going to meet someone that you have uncontrollable chemistry with? My supervisors at work had expressed concern over a project I had let slide due to all the crap that was going on in my personal life. I think this was the thing that initially jolted me out of my stupor. I have been working a lot of overtime, I think I'm just about caught up at work, it's been good a good experience for me - last week I turned in my status report and realized this was my best week yet at my new job. I'm a software engineer, by the way, it's really good that I'm starting to connect again with what it is that got me into this business in the first place, and got me to the where I am currently, namely a driving interest in technology, honest intellectual inquiry, and a love of logic. I've been so caught up the past few years with getting ahead that I had lost sight of all that. I've also had a few interesting experiences the past month - I've been emailing with a few women from the online personals, nothing has come of it as of yet, which is probably good because I'm still in bad shape emotionally, and my apartment is a total pig sty. I've also had a few drunken nights of debauchery with people from my shyness support group. Yeah, I'm in a shyness support group now. So this is me as of February 2006. Mid 30's, not old really, but I frequently worry that time is running out for me to accomplish truly great things with my life, and that I've wasted so much time feeling sorry for myself. I'm making good money for the first time ever, own my own home, have a good job and a Master's degree. I am gaining weight again, but she used to tell me how handsome I was, and I look much younger than I actually am. My shyness support group leader, Selena, actually demanded to see my ID when she found out I wasn't 25 last week at the bar. I can shred on the guitar too, and I have a pretty good if sardonic sense of humor. I go to work and get lost in my little world of coding and deadlines, go to therapy, go to my guitar lessons, obsess about guitar gear and things like sweep picking, spend hours recording stupid guitar tracks that aren't even good enough to be included in this hypothetical album that I've been thinking about since I was a teenager, read the news on the internet, download pirated software and movies, mess around with Unix shell scripts, post on various web forums, snipe eBay auctions, go to my shyness group, and plot ways of meeting available women. So, what have I learned? This relationship failed because I simply did not have the emotional resources to deal with all of the problems and issues that surrounded it, I was inexperienced, dishonest with myself and made poor choices. Most of all, this relationship failed because I have poor self esteem, and if I do not do something now to eliminate my poor self esteem I will continue to have problems in my relationships and continue to be unhappy in life, as it is the source of all negative thoughts, and your thoughts determine your reality. Self esteem is basically a measurement of how much you like yourself, and I just do not like myself, never have. Since you cannot love anyone more than you love yourself, how much love was I able to bring to the table in this relationship? Hardly any. You cannot give away what you do not have. I asked Sophie once what my best quality was, and she said 'you're brilliant'. I asked Sophie once what my worst quality was, and she said 'your shyness and insecurity'. When I asked her why, she said, 'because it hides all of your good qualities'. When I look at pictures of myself, I look different than the image I have of myself in my mind. The person I see seems like he is struggling to become something better than what he is, I always thought I was able to 'fake' it better but you can see all the pain and confusion I'm feeling clear as day on my face. It's really frustrating to think that after all these years, and after trying for so long, I'm still basically a depressed person. My therapist John asked me to journal about why I'm not able to 'let myself off the hook'. By 'let myself off the hook' he means, when are you going to stop punishing yourself for things that happened in your past? I was a lousy son, I'm not going to reiterate my story yet again but I was basically a delinquent growing up, I was a gifted child but an underachiever until much later in life. It's weird that I still feel a kind of residual guilt about messing up my grades when I was in high school, but it's there. Why am I stuck on this point of 'letting myself off the hook'? I need to let this go if I want to become the person I have always had in mind - this is the thing that keeps holding me back despite all of the effort I've put into making myself better and trying to figure out my problems. Low self esteem is the thing in my character that keeps me at my 'comfort level', or level of success and happiness that I feel like I'm entitled to, and does not allow me to break out of this comfort level through mechanisms such as self sabotage (ex., blowing off an important school project until the last minute, even though you have an A in the class and it's easy for you, oversleeping and missing the alarm in the morning and arriving at work an hour late). Last year I asked myself, why is it that I am at a certain level of success and feeling relatively good about my progress, and then I do something totally out of the blue that totally ruins a perfect record? Well this is why: because I do not like myself, because I feel subconsciously that I only 'deserve' so much love or success or whatever, and not an ounce more. My self hatred has held me back from truly expressing myself to Sophia, from making friends in the past, from succeeding in school, from achieving more than I have in my career, and from doing everything in life I've always wanted to do. Not being able to let myself off the hook is what makes me regress to being an insecure and guilt ridden teenager when I'm around my parents. Even writing this journal entry was something that I had to force myself to do, as if it is too buried and deep seated of an issue to think about, as if my subconscious mind does not want me to sort these things out once and for all, because it would not know how look at the world without a filter of self hatred. I feel like if I could only 'let myself off the hook', a lot of the guilt, self loathing, depression, apathy, and delusions that I experience in my life would disappear, and I'd finally have some clarity. Where does this feeling of guilt come from and why is it such a deep rooted part of my personality? Lack of self esteem is due to negative criticism during early childhood and being raised with the concept of conditional approval by your parents, versus unconditional approval. My parents expected a lot from me since I was the oldest and because I was the most gifted, and yet they only showed me love when I did something they approved of, such as getting an A in a subject. I felt that it was not fair that they seemed to show unconditional love and acceptance to my brothers, who did not seem to have the same burden as I did of having to live up to a certain standard of success as determined by my parents, but were simply free to grow up as regular kids. There was a part of me that rebelled against this role in my family. I did not want it, because I felt like a robot, because the affection that I gained by doing something deemed worthy of approval did not seem genuine, because I did not like studying and being alone all the time, or feeling different from other people. What I should have done was embraced this role, and ran with it - and showed them an entirely new definition of what excellence means. In the end I would have been much better off, and happier, but there is no way a teenage kid is ever going to realize certain things until he's older and has had certain life experiences. My rebelling against this role in my family led to my first failures growing up, which led to withholding of affection on the part of my parents, which led to even more rebellious behaviour on my part, which led to reduced expectations on the part of my parents. My feelings of alienation began to increase as I got older and squandered more and more of the opportunities I had growing up, I always felt out of control growing up. I began to think that maybe I was just no good at anything, and that I wasn't worthy of having friends or being loved, and just stopped trying. It was a miracle that I got into grad school and started applying myself at work about six years ago, when I first met Sophie. Something about meeting her spurred me to try at something for the first time since I was a teenager, and the results were startling to me and everyone else. She helped me to realize that I could achieve anything I set my mind to, many years after everyone else had given up on me. Now I am up against the boundaries of my current 'comfort level', I need to obliterate this low self esteem if I am ever going to be able to move on to a higher level of success and love in my life. Temporary setbacks like my recent breakup will continue to have devastating effects on my life, sending me into tailspins because I lack the ability to look at situations objectively for what they are instead of seeing them as negative reflections upon myself. I will continue to be alone, never really connecting to friends, never being 'together' enough to keep a relationship together. I feel like I have been blessed to meet a person that would have such a profound effect on me at that particular point in my life, but now I need to learn to create a positive self regard within myself, without the artificial crutch of a Sophia in my life. This is going to be really difficult, I don't even know where to begin to do something about this inner voice inside me held over from early childhood, constantly belittling myself, punishing myself for things that happened a long time ago, making me feel unloveable and ugly. Constantly repeating 'I like myself' just seems silly, and hardly effective treatment for something in my subconscious which has been developing for a lifetime. And just what is it that I'm somehow unwilling to 'let myself off the hook' for? Let's really break it down: 1. Being a lousy son, getting crappy grades in school and only getting into good colleges due to my ability to score highly on standardized tests, never caring about making my parents proud of me, going out of my way to disappoint people. And later, guilt over not being there due to my social anxiety disorder. 2. Doing horribly in sports as a child - at the time I thought this was just due to me being a lousy athlete, but I later found out it was most probably due to poor eyesight that did not get diagnosed until later in life (and I thought I was just lousy at shooting a free throw). This made me feel emasculated, and embarrassed, especially around my dad. 3. Being such a weird loner type kid - I always had a hard time making friends growing up, it seemed like the people I made friends with were always wild kids with at least some interesting personal quirks, like being ADD or something. Maybe these types of people were the only type of people my low self esteem would deem appropriate for me to associate with. 4. Being weird especially around girls - I could not maintain a friendship with a guy friend my age, I was completely and utterly lost when it came to girls, this only exacerbated my low self esteem, in fact the two things sort of fed off each other. -and that's basically it. I won't let myself off the hook for basically being a screw up when I was growing up, not making my parents proud of me, and being a weird loner around other kids. It's strange that when I put it that way, they don't seem like compelling enough reasons to base a lifetime of unhappiness around.