This second half is about emotional and mental fitness, and as with the first one, is about how to replace toxic beta behavior with healthy behavior. Not necessarily super-duper Alpha behavior, but at least behavior that isn't toxic, that isn't going to actively repel women (and men, for that matter). The remainder of this post is quoted in full, with only very light editing by me (mostly to remove jargon and replace it with words that are in more common usage, or the removal of the occasional rude word.) Because of that, I'm not marking them in italics or blockquotes for the remainder of this post; it's just all quoted.
The toxic beta lives on an emotional roller coaster which goes from anxious repression to emotional outbursts which can accumulate into rage and then despair. A toxic beta is effectively out of balance emotionally and which is why they are so obnoxious to people around them and especially to women.
I have a couple of ideas of why this is so, and my guess is that a toxic beta was a boy who was just a little more emotionally sensitive and a bit smarter than the average boy, then experienced some combination of the following factors: an equally toxic beta father or father figure, raised by women alone, bullied rather heavily, socially awkward and had trouble knowing how to act, overweight or possessed some other physical trait that made him overly self-conscious. I don't think it is any one thing, but rather a combination of several influences and events beyond which slowly turns a boy who might have some tendencies towards being toxic into a full-blown worst kind of beta in adulthood. If you suspect you are a toxic beta you'll probably find this list or events like this to be still painful in your memory. Take that same boy and surround him with strong, but patient men, and have him enter into a masculine profession or the military, and he'd probably turn out ... well, at least a mostly nice-guy beta, which is orders of magnitude better than the toxic kind.
After a lifetime of toxic reinforcement how does a man turn things around? I suggest for one month swinging the pendulum far in the opposite direction. Almost like an emotional detox, the beta needs to completely turn around for a time and get off the emotional roller coaster. I suggest one month of practicing the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. The first step is to get yourself a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. This is the place to start because it isn’t a philosophical abstract but instead a portrait of an Emperor and how he lives out the philosophy in his daily life. It’s also a good read.
As for a definition of Stoicism I’m going straight to the dictionary: the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.
From dictionary.com: a philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. Stoics believed that people should strictly restrain their emotions in order to attain happiness and wisdom; hence, they refused to demonstrate either joy or sorrow.
What are the practical applications of this for today's world?
- Drop all snarky, flippant, and silly comments and voices about people and things. Its fine to tell an actually joke, but stop trying to be cute and funny all of the darn time. Witty remarks are useful, but you need to take a break for a bit.
- This month drop all online forum debates, especially when you are really emotionally invested. Go silent in your profiles unless it’s reassuring a community you are OK, ONLY if they ask.
- Stay away from social media unless you have to get on it for a specific reason. Social media is a hotbed of emotional flame wars.
- When in groups of friends and families and a hot-button topic comes up in which you'd typically dive into (and of course wow the ladies with your stellar command of minutia!) keep your mouth shut and simply watch and listen to the participants instead.
- Stop watching any and all reality TV shows in which there's a lot of screaming and emotional manipulation going on to get a rise out of the audience.
- Stay away from news stories which you know act as a trigger for you to instantly get upset about.
- Try to schedule some time, even if it's just most of a single day to go somewhere solitary and quiet in the outdoors. When there make an effort to quiet your mind, drop the internal debates about politics, religion, etc., going on in there and instead focus on good things in life that you’ve been blessed with. This can be done multiple times if needed.
- If you have a wife or girlfriend don't be baited by the typical arguments you two have this month, and be aware of what you say before you say it if things get heated. Instead show them love as it covers a multitude of sins, and patience as you realize you have probably been just as guilty as them in emotional manipulation.
- Kindly tell your female friends (especially that one you really want to date) to unburden their emotions on someone else. Don't be rude, but be firm.
- If someone emotionally vomits all over you, tries to get an emotional rise out of you, engage you in a rhetorical argument, or tells stupid and silly jokes, simply grunt in reply. I'm serious here, grunt. Don't get baited in; don't tell them all about how you are now a quiet Stoic. The responses you get from this will be eye opening to say the least, and are sometimes quite funny. Just be sure to keep a straight face. Please practice your grunt now.
If after one month you feel you need to continue in stoicism and introspection then go ahead and do it for up to six months. Sometimes you need a reset to get yourself out of a behavioral pattern. I stopped trying to date, and concentrated on working out and just thinking about life for several months before I got back into it and found success. Sometimes a man just has to step back for a while and re-evaluate his life in order to improve his actions. It can take time.
On the other hand, if after a time of introspection you find that you are becoming more upset, emotional, depressed, or even suicidal, then please seek professional help. Sometimes the shock of leaving trying to leave this toxic behavior behind, especially if there has been childhood abuse, can be overwhelming for a man, and in that case he will need more that just a good friend and introspection. It's not a statistical quirk that causes suicide rates for men to be higher than for women and you need to take care of yourself.
I think Stoicism is one of the greatest philosophies of Man, and it can be especially helpful for men when they get out of balance, but the point to this post isn't to create philosophers or hermits. And I don't think that repressing joy in vain hopes of philosophical happiness is a good idea. A man should be able to have a good belly laugh with his friends, be of cheerful spirit, and show deep love and affection for his children and wife. Don't think at a funeral of a friend or family member you can't cry, even Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. Stoicism is a tool, not a straightjacket to use to turn you into Spock. After practicing it this month, take the positive elements from it and work them into your life. Wouldn't you like to be known as the guy who is cool under pressure? The man in the extended family who can be relied upon to be sober-minded and reliable when there's an emergency? An employee or businessman known to be fair and evenhanded even when chaos swirls around him?
The anti-beta conclusion on Emotional aspect of life: You can't stop yourself from having emotions, but you can control your actions in response to them.
There is no man on the planet more intellectually dishonest than a toxic beta, as even an Omega has enough self-awareness to avoid being a buffoon at social event and will instead stay at home and play computer games. Everything from a toxic beta is a con or a presented image because behind that shell is a scared, miserable boy who uses whatever tools are at his disposal to build the Beta Delusion Bubble. The Gamma Delusion Bubble shields the Gamma from somehow and some way ever being wrong about anything, as there is no being wrong about "something", there is only being a wrong "person". His identity is so tied up in his opinions about everything, including himself, that any slip-up is a catastrophe which must be avoided at all costs.
The second-most terrifying statement for a toxic beta is to admit that he doesn’t know something. He constantly speaks of having knowledge in areas he most certainly does not. Being ignorant for a beta is being discredited as a person, so they will do what is in their power to bluff, obfuscate, and redirect people so others don't see their ignorance. If you wish to escape the life of a toxic beta you must learn the statement, "I don;'t know" and use it when it is appropriate.
I must unfortunately take a moment to explain to the binary-thinking betas that no, you do not go from being a know-it-all to blurting out "I don't know" at the start of nearly every conversation, feel the need to explain all of the time now about how you don't know something, and talk about how proud you are about not to knowing things. You may laugh at this, but I know this behavior pattern well, and there are some out there who will do this exact thing thinking they are improving their situation, until it obviously doesn't work and they blame this post for their failures.
In simple practice you say this when needed and you honestly don't know about the topic at hand. While at first glance it seems easy enough if you are a beta, it is difficult in reality. It's challenging because typically you've already hung yourself on your own ignorance in a conversation by saying way more than you should have, and by the time you are challenged on a point, having to say you don't know part of it means your entire argument might collapse. Think about this for a moment. If you are saying so much that if someone challenges a point, and by admitting that you don't know about something in which you are pontificating about, it destroys what you are saying, where was your first error? It was BSing in the first place. Stop making definitive statements about things if you can't back them up with logic or evidence, unless it is clearly a subjective opinion of little matter.
Examples of subjective opinions of little matter: favorite color, sports teams, movies you like, the hottest actress. You don't have to know why you have a favorite sports team or why you like green over blue, it doesn't matter. On the other hand if you think we should use gold as a currency rather than fiat, you'd better know all about the subject before trying to tell people how the monetary system should be run. Gammas do not want to admit ignorance, they want to appear intelligent, so they overreach their arguments and then feel they can't backtrack an inch.
The most terrifying statement for a toxic beta is admitting he is wrong about something. You must start to take responsibility for your words and actions if you want to stop being beta. Once again, this is exceedingly difficult if you are not used to doing it. Do you realize the power there is in the words: "I am wrong"? These aren’t words of weakness but of power, first, because you speak the truth, and second, because this truth allows you room for correction. In other words, if you never admit you are wrong, you can never correct your thinking.
Instead of trying to bluff when asked if you know something about what you've stated, say this instead: "You make a good point, I don't know." They may leave it at that and let it go, which means you just got off easy. If they push the point and destroy your shoddy argument, you now have to take the beating like a man. Don't whine, don't ask for mercy, do'’t lie, don't get snarky, and don't disappear, TAKE IT. Then, when they are finished demolishing your ill-conceived statements, you should reply: "I was wrong. I didn't think that through very well and it turns out you were right." Sucks doesn't it? Think of it this way, you picked a fight with someone tougher than you and you got a bloody nose. Now, are you going to go run home to mommy crying or are you going to train harder for the next fight? If you want to know what separates a toxic beta from a healthy regular guy in the mental aspect of life it is this response right here. A normal knows when he is beaten and will submit, but a beta knows he is beaten and then lies incessantly to himself and others about the loss because he cannot admit defeat.
This is why toxic betas hate and fear Alphas so much, as an Alpha will not relent and will keep beating someone (in a physical fight, rhetoric, or dialectic) until the other submits or it is clear to everyone that he has defeated the opponent. Everyone else in the hierarchy will submit or be destroyed, but the toxic beta will never admit defeat and so the Alpha will keep throwing punches until onlookers literally start to beg the poor beta to stop making a fool of himself. His appeals will get more hysterical, more emotional and the Alpha will take the hysteria, form it into a club, and splatter the beta's proverbial brains all over the pavement to the eventual horror (or in some cases, snickers), of the crowd.
In an online environment, he can act like a buffoon forever until he disappears or is banned from a site for his actions; in real life eventually the he is socked in the nose or worse when he plays this sort of game with an Alpha one too many times. I think all boys have witnessed this at least once: some little twerp mouths off to the leader of the group of boys (not a bully, but the de facto leader), and the next thing the twerp knows is he has a black eye and is running to women for protection from the "bully". Don't mistake this for defending bullies, I hate bullies, this is a kid being a smart-aleck towards another boy in an attempt to undermine his status, who pays for it, but then won't accept his status after being put in his place. Since most adults never get into any physical confrontation the most common scenario you'll see is the toxic beta mouth off to a man of higher status, the higher-status man turns around, looks them in the eye, and challenges them. The beta will generally turn pale and try to leave the situation, or he will lie about the challenge in the first place.
Let me clarify the challenge in the male hierarchy. It goes on all the time and is a natural part of life as a man. In fact, it’s healthy, as men are much more efficient as a group when the order is more or less defined. If a regular Joe challenges the Alpha, he gets smacked around a little, then gets back in line. The toxic beta challenges the Alpha and doesn't get back in line, instead he lies about the challenge, insults the Alpha's character, tries to humor his way out of it, whines when he gets smacked, swears hatred towards the Alpha, and derides anyone who makes him feel bad or sides with the Alpha. He does anything and everything to lie about not being beaten. This is why in Bizarro Beta World they will sometimes claim to be Alphas, because in their minds they are never beaten when everyone else sees a sorry sack of a man who is thoroughly and completed beaten, but won't admit defeat. This isn't a Rocky Balboa-type desire to never quit, which would be admirable, but rather, it would be like Rocky, after being beaten senseless by Clubber Lang then running around the ring talking about his gloves not being on right, he didn't hear the bell, Lang being a hateful and racist fighter, then pretending the fight never happened while cracking lame jokes about boxing being a stupid sport. That Rocky would be loathsome and worthy of no respect.
This is it, this is the pivot point in which you can go from the toxic mentality to the healthy mentality and perhaps even eventually beyond, which is admitting you are wrong and that you don't know things. Once again, don't just breeze through this point, but live it. Accept it. It is much more difficult than the average beta can even imagine and it will be terribly painful adjustment. It is shedding the skin of protective dishonesty, without which you will be more vulnerable to start with, but eventually much stronger. Some of you reading this post won't be able to make this journey with us. I can hear the wheels spinning now: "I’m not really like that… he's full of crap and wishes he was an Alpha… I don't agree with something he wrote so it's all invalid… this is just out-of-control masculinity… he's not being Christ like in his attitude…", and so on. To you I offer no consolation, only this advice: Enjoy your life as a beta. I don't mean this as an insult, but rather don't obsess over your inability to go beyond what you are, and let it ruin you completely. Don't let "what could have been" be a cloud over your existence, but rather take what you've been given and make the most of it.
I have sympathy here for the beta attempting to cross this chasm on what looks like a frayed rope bridge, but it must be done, and it will be painful at times. Be prepared for the other betas you meet online and in person to pounce on your admittance to not knowing something, or to being wrong. Some of them will try to shout it like headline news. They will seize upon it, they will remember it, and they will try to use it against you, possibly forever. They are contemptible and you will find, as you leave being toxic, that you will have to leave your toxic friends and acquaintances behind. A very righteous anger will grow in you against men who cannot forgive, cannot forget, and lie all of the time about themselves while always being ready to point out the slightest flaws in others. The fists that ball up in your hands at this behavior are normal, and good. Men should be outraged at this conduct; you should be furious that a liar uses good (admittance of wrong) to do evil in order to make themselves look better.
The good news is that everyone but other toxic betas understands this and will respect you more for taking this step. Women will admire you much more, and even a low status everyman will silently nod his head, be your friend, and have respect for you when you own up to your intellectual shortcomings. This is normal behavior for men who are not toxic betas. Don't expect a parade for this behavior, though, or even a pat on the back very often, just don't be surprised when someone appreciates your candor and gives you respect for it. What you are doing is moving from a world of darkness and lies into the light of truth. Believe me, it is a much better world. It is so much better that you cannot imagine it while you are still a beta.
If you are ready to make this leap, then don't just think about it, act upon it. Look for the next legitimate opportunity to admit you don't know something when asked, admit that you are truly ignorant about the subject, and admit that you are wrong (using those very words!) when shown to be so. It probably won't take very long to find the opportunity.
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