Let's Get ScrubbingSelf-Improvement

If You Want To Change The Outcome, Change the Variables

Awhile back I made a post about how maybe the key to finding the right person, was to become the right person. Upon being shared with the OkCupid subReddit, it quickly became apparent that it was a more controversial perspective than what I had assumed. In my mind, it seemed to make sense that if we want certain qualities from our partner in life than it would be fair to suggest that we would do well to provide those qualities to others.

Maybe the very controversial nature of the post is precisely the nerve I needed to hit with people, whether they’ll accept it or not.

A lot of them clung to this idea that what I was arguing was that in order to find love or acceptance, we have to conform to other people.

That wasn’t it at all.

Becoming the right person for others is not about molding ourselves into a new identity just so people will love us – at least that wasn’t the intention. We should love who we are. We should never sacrifice our identity for the shallow acceptance of others.

But evolving and growing as a person to better ourselves is a good thing and change can be beneficial – not just for ourselves but in our perception by others.

Confronting our personal baggage, our mental health, our physical health, or dealing with our obsession with an ex and stepping outside our comfort zone is uncomfortable.

It’s a lot easier to grasp onto the idea that I’m just arguing we should pretend to be something we aren’t rather than face the discomfort that continuing to do whatever we’re doing with unfavorable results is likely to just continue resulting in those same disappointing results.

If you input variables of shit into an equation it will spit shit as an output. Your dating life is going to struggle if you keep catching others in the shit crossfire.

But, it is helluva lot less uncomfortable to try and gloss over the shit than come to terms with the idea that maybe the person we like to believe is the best version of ourselves isn’t actually the best version of ourselves no matter how much “self-love” we spin the person in the mirror to have.



And frankly, you can only gloss over the shit in your life for so long and expecting people to just deal with that shit because “that’s who you are” is expecting people to be right for you without putting in the effort to be better for them.

Sometimes the truth is just uncomfortable.

It is a lot easier for a guy that’s 175 pounds overweight to just dismiss his obesity and tell himself that the “right person will accept him despite his weight” rather than consider that maybe living his best life doesn’t involve looking in the mirror at someone 175 pounds overweight.

It is a lot easier to just say “she should have just given me a chance because I just needed some time” than confront the idea that we let our obsession with an ex leak into a new relationship.

It is a lot easier to blame our student loan problems entirely on colleges rather than at least partially accept that maybe we didn’t account for desiring a career in a field that isn’t in demand. Underwater basket weaving might have seemed fulfilling to you, but it doesn’t pay enough to justify the 6 figures you leveraged against that education. Or maybe it is easier to blame our debt entirely on anything other than the fact we choose to live a life beyond our means.

It is a lot easier to just keep flipping burgers and blame all our money problems on other people than it is to take our financial lives into our own hands.

It is a lot easier to just say “I can’t afford to go on that vacation I’ve always dreamed of going on” than it is to say “I’m going to sacrifice a donut and pop every morning until I’ve saved up $1000”.

It is a lot easier to say “the problem is my co-workers...my boss…my job…the corporate culture these days” as we jump from job to job to job in hopes of finding a career that fulfills us rather than maybe for once considering the problem with the workplace could be…ourselves.

But it’s never our fault.

With love, we say, “I just haven’t found the right person” and “all of these women are all just crazy” after going on streaks of failed dates rather than face the fact that maybe there is something about us that we could benefit to change. Sometimes we just look at everything in life through a dreary filter and we wonder why people are getting turned away, oblivious that out our negativity is contagious. If we want to be with happy people, we have to start by seeking happiness.

Change isn’t always a bad thing, but it is often an uncomfortable change. Otherwise, a post telling people they need to change wouldn’t resonate so differently for so many people.

The fact of the matter is, whether it is with dating or anything else in life, if you keep plugging in 3+2+3 you’re always going to get 8 and if you want a different result you have to change the variables.

Maybe you add another 4 to that equation and realize you don’t like the result of 12 either – there’s nothing wrong with that and you should be proud of taking a chance at switching up the equation to see if it yields different results.

Some people wake up every day, go to work, head directly home, smash their ass against the couch cushion and go to bed when their Netflix binge session is over. There is nothing wrong with that, but each of those is a variable we control that is going to likely result in the same outcomes in our daily lives. Often, we are okay with that because that expected result is the comfort zone in which resides our safety. Switching it up and just slightly changing to schedule (even just once a week to do something new) radically redefines the variables.

Taking an art class you expect to hate might result in you just reinforcing you absolutely hate it.

Been there, done that.

But, you know what, I was no longer the guy that goes home and plays Call of Duty every night anymore after that. Now I was the guy that goes home and plays Call of Duty and totally also went to an art class one time.

I gave a painting class I completely expected to hate a try and come to find out…yeah, I entirely hated it. But I also met a couple of really cool people I still run into and as much as I hated painting, that added a lot of value giving it a try. I ended up sitting one night over dinner bonding with a girl who enjoyed pottery and I remember we just laughed over the absurdity of me in an art class and my shitty little portrait, but she was so intrigued that I even gave it a chance.

Give new things in life a chance, change the variables, and maybe you’ll be giving yourself new chances.


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Landon

Hi, I spewed out all the shit you just read! I like long walks on the beach (but I'm mostly surrounded by cornfields), challenging the status quo of the dating scene, fucking all the rules of dating and encouraging men to live their best life. When I'm not trying to keep the lights on around here and raise two little girls, you can find me drinking and partying - you know the key Wallstreet success...ballin'.

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