A young man, overflowing with desire, saw a woman he thought was extremely cute. She was simply walking around and was involved with her own things.
“I should speak to her,” he told himself. “I must meet her!”
But his body would not obey. He stood there, watching her in the corner of his eye, and felt as if he was burning. She eventually left and he cursed himself even more.
Then appeared another woman who was even cuter!
“I should say hi,” he told himself. Yet, he stood like a statue and his body felt as if he was burning. “She is out of my league. She would never go for someone like me!” He never approached and the woman left.
Yet, another woman appeared more beautiful than the first two!
Somehow, he got himself to approach. “Hi!” he sputtered nervously. She was pleasant. He eventually asked for the number to which she said no. Even though he failed, he felt much better that he tried.
“Alas,” he said now realizing the error of his ways.
“Rejection is better than Regret”
“Remember,” said Pook. “Change is gradual. Before, you saw no opportunities. Now, you see them all about you, yet you are too hesitant to take them. You’re slowly becoming more aware.”
“What are you saying?”
“When you find yourself hesitant, always yield to Action. If you see her, do not wait, gawk or wait for a ‘perfect moment’. Action, action, action!”
“Pook, I cannot. You see… I am insecure. I don’t have that confidence!” “You are confusing CAUSE and EFFECT. The CAUSE of your hesitant nature is not because of your insecurity. You have not gotten what you’ve wanted, what you’ve desired. THAT is the cause of your hesitant nature.”
“What?”
“You are caught in the vicious cycle. You are hesitant because you are not used for things going your way. And things will never go your way because you remain hesitant. You see what you want, become hesitant, and the door of opportunity closes. It happens again. And again. And again. With each choice towards Inaction, you reject yourself a little bit more.”
Pook continued. “This is where that cycle of hesitation leads. In your world of Hesitation, you shred off more and more of your manliness until you turn into a full-fledged Nice Guy. Then you seek to remove hesitation by making the approach risk free. Then you start giving gifts, poetry, flowers, and declarations of love. You start to examine and re-examine non-existent signals until they read the way you want them to read. In the end, you place her on the pedestal and throw yourself to her worship.
“If there is a choice between less pain or the possibility of more pain, we default to the less pain. In adolescence, going for a girl and failing made you think everyone else would laugh at you. Whether or not it was true, you thought it was true. This was how you were kept within the cycle.”
“But Pook! How do I get out?”
“By realizing that the choice of Inaction is more painful than Action. Childhood is over. You are the MAN. You must approach. Always default to Action now. From those of us who wasted years in that hesitation mode know that Rejection is always better than Regret. Always.”
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