Coping With Fear, Failure and Imperfection in Your Dating Life

© 2006 Kephra Rubin

This article is for all you out there using the book "Kill The Crap™ In Dating: For Men" and hopes to address the fears I'm seeing you guys coping with. I'd have to write another book to show you how to Kill The Crap™ In Fear, and I will, but while that's still in the works, my hopes is to show you a different perspective on what you might be calling "hard times".

The bottom line is I'm seeing amazing success, and so are you. Yet, for some reason, shortly after you've seen your success, I see a lot of you trip up. It's usually over something small, and it's usually not a big deal at all. The sad thing is that I see it effect, not all of you, but a lot of you in a negative way. This is what frustrates me though; I see a guy go from zero to hero, from no dates to four a week and then he comes to me crying about ONE girl he didn't get. He's depressed now because a specific girl didn't flock to him but he's not jumping for joy that he's actually got that many options that when a girl DOESN'T want him… he's shocked. You go from being surprised a girl likes you to being surprised a girl doesn't like you. I mean what the hell.

I'm just going to jump right into this, if you haven't read Kill The Crap In Dating: For Men, get a copy here, read it, then go out and get some success and then meet me back here for the rest of the article.

Issues we'll deal with today

1: The Pursuit of perfection.

The pursuit of perfection is something that people do to hide the fact that they're too afraid to really try.

2: The fear of failure.

The fear of failure is sometimes just that, but often times it's actually a fear of success.

3: Coping with imperfection

We build ourselves up with success, and then haunt ourselves with our failures. It's time to realize that perfection IS being a little fucked up.

All right, so let's get started here:

Fear, failure, and imperfection. I think one of the main reasons some have such a hard time with this stuff is that you simply don't do everything I'm telling you to. Let's see, STOP WORRYING about perfection and start focusing on simply what you want for yourself and how to get it… that's one. Another one is keeping a journal. It sounds like a small thing that doesn't amount to much. I can't speak for everyone that has purchased the book, but for everyone that has signed up for the free dating advice questions, not one of you has kept a journal. Journals are a track record so you can keep tabs on your successes and failures. It will help you to see patterns in your personality that you may like or dislike and help you enhance or eliminate them. You really need to keep a journal.

(About the dating advice questions: You have to read the book to get the dating advice questions. I hid a code in the pages to make sure people read the WHOLE book before they go asking me questions that are answered in the book already.)

Look, failure sucks, I understand this, most people don't really care that failure helps us grow; they care about what failure FEELS like. Failure feels like somebody's got their hand in your stomach and they're twisting things around, it's uncomfortable and quickly we can turn on ourselves when it hits.

I've seen some great victories, for those of you who remember Tom, Eric and Craig, these are all guys that showed a rather impressive understanding of what they read in the book and resulted in an amazing change in their dating lives. Tom, who chased after the same girl till he was at his wits end, only to finally reach a level where he was basically dating who ever he felt like dating. Eric, who had one girl friend from the time he was born till the time he was 20, a girl he didn't even like, now suddenly has about 8 girls AFTER him in the course of only a couple of months. To Craig, a guy who made excuses about everything under the sun and simply could not think for himself, a guy who created a fake persona to hide his weaknesses who's now in a polygamous situation with several women.

I personally have seen great accomplishments among all of you who have read this book, but your own opinions of yourself have me concerned. It's like in the presence of a 100 successes, one failure can completely destroy your belief in yourself. Which takes us to my next concern… perhaps there is no belief in yourself.

Somewhere in our society, maybe in how we are raised or how our peers treat us, we start believing that if we are not perfect, we are not worth anything. Here in lies why I feel there is such an importance behind keeping a journal. When you remember clearly every success and what was involved in those successes it's not always so easy to shoot yourself down.

The journal will help, but there are bigger issues going on here, possibly these issues are what brought you to killthecrap.com in the first place. You see the techniques working, right in front of your eyes, and yet you excuse them. You meet a girl "yeah but she was a little tipsy at the club that night" and you excuse it. You get in good with some hot chick and what do you say? "I got lucky." None of this is luck. This book didn't MAKE you go out and attempt what it tells you to attempt. Okay? It didn't sprout two fuckin' legs and walk your ass into the club or where ever you had the last time of your life. You did. You. Kill The Crap In Dating: For Men didn't put in a good word for you with whatever girl you hooked up with. Kill The Crap In Dating: For Men didn't play wingman for you; it wasn't there for moral support while you were out there facing rejection, getting rejected and standing up for yourself out there. You were. You had your own back, and when you had your own back, when you stood up for yourself… everything worked. Yet, in our every day lives… standing up for ourselves still seems impossible. I'm convinced that somehow you all started believing you're not SUPPOSED to be happy, relaxed and focused. We think, for whatever reason, that simply enjoying yourself around women is not a reality. Well guess what, you've already changed that reality by going out and making such a difference in your life. The reality you thought was real isn't.

Perhaps that's where the fear comes from?

A woman once said to me "Sometimes it's easier to be in the wrong reality then in no reality while you search for the right one." Kind of confusing… I joke with her about it all the time but she just keeps backing up the whole "BLONDE" cliché. Basically, she was telling me it could be less stressful and scary to be in an abusive relationship then to be alone while you search for yourself. Apparently feeling lost is worse then a bruised eye. So should we all get together and point at the abused blonde chick and say "awwww… how sad" Or… should we stop, and sympathize. I've seen you all allow yourself to be completely walked on by women, only to turn around and walk on them at the instant that you felt a little "power" over them. I've seen abuse myself, in many forms, acted on me as well as seeing it acted on others. Verbal, physical, mental, the list goes on and on and I've seen every one of you eat one form of abuse or another up with a spoon.

WHY?

Yes, the book taught you things that you would have never thought of on your own. But are you going to kick yourself for knowing how to speak English or how to do math? People taught you these things, yet it doesn't bother you. Only in dating does it bother you, why? You can take whatever you want from the lessons you learn, but what I'd hope all of you would take from these lessons is that in the end YOU deserve more. You deserve better then even what you offer yourself sometimes. You need to look in the mirror and see what I'm seeing, because you know what? I'm getting pretty tired of being the only one seeing it.

Believe me, I've been there, I've sat in front of the mirror, I've looked myself in the eyes and I've asked "What's wrong with me?" I've also been on the other end of that spectrum as well, doing so well with women that I became high and mighty, shooting down the people around me and basically being an arrogant jackass to the point that when I finally did get rejected by a girl, everything I had built myself up to-came crashing down. That's when I'd just fall back, get depressed and then look in the mirror and ask myself "What's wrong with me?" all over again.

The book is 261 pages long, yet I find it still isn't enough to convey every lesson you must learn. That's what the dating questions are for, that's why I even email YOU and see how YOU'RE doing when you sign up for them. Just in case you're afraid or embarrassed to talk. There's only so much I can do though. At some point you have to start doing it yourself.

In the end, it all comes down to self worth. Fear, I've felt fear my whole damn life, but I have never stopped fighting to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Failure? Sometimes I fail so many times in a row I honestly start to wonder what the hell's going on. That's where the difference comes in handy though, my music, books, articles, blogs etc. all remind me how long of a fight it's been and it's because of remembering my past and where I come from that I push forward to tomorrow. I see my successes and I see that the past perhaps I'm ashamed of, the rocky journey it was has taken me to a better today. It was painful, yet I can't imagine my life without it, and don't want a life without it. Yesterday justifies today, and today creates tomorrow. If yesterday you fail, today you eat a pint of rocky road ice cream and tomorrow you walk around in your bathrobe crying… what is that?

Perspective. Perspective is the key to coping, handling and conquering fear, failure and self-doubt. Always keep things in perspective. How does today relate to yesterday, how does it stack up with what you hope tomorrow to be?

While I was making my first album, there was one song in particular that I just could not seem to finish. Price of Freedom had gone through over 45 different choruses and still I didn't like any of them. I was frustrated and confused, pissed off and afraid I might not finish my album. Do you know that everyone I talked to said the same thing? "Well if you haven't figured it out by now it probably just wasn't meant to be."

I forget the exact number, I went through so many, but right around chorus number 55 I found one that I liked, finished the song and sent the album off to be manufactured. Actually, I put myself in debt to send it off to be manufactured, lol, but that's another story. On number 45 everyone tells me to quit, and around 55 I succeed. Well what if I did quit at 45? I didn't know if I was going to find a chorus. I'm not psychic; I have no idea what's coming tomorrow. Granted I can plan for what I'd like tomorrow to look like, I can't guarantee any of it though. I ask again, what if I had quit?

I made the album before I wrote my book. Well, if I didn't finish Price of Freedom, maybe I never would have finished the album. If I never finished the album, there'd be no reason for the website. If I didn't have the website, I wouldn't have been able to start posting blogs about what was going on in my life. If it wasn't for all the responses I got I probably wouldn't have kept talking. I would have started to share what I was learning about how dating really works. If I never posted the blogs, I would have never known how well the ideas worked for other people. I never would have written the book. Nothing would have happened. I'd probably still be stuck in a crappy ass job too.

So looking back, finishing Price Of Freedom seems like a pretty damn good idea. Just like looking back, saying what you said to that one girl was a pretty damn good idea. Looking back everything makes sense. Looking forward we all seem to get so damn confused. The reason for that is simple, we try so hard to make the perfect decision, we don't make the right decision. Realize, the more things change the more they stay the same. Life is pretty cyclical and the same shit seems to happen over and over with slight little twists here and there. The point is that 75% of the time, yesterday is pretty much going to look like tomorrow with just a few little things changed. So if yesterday made sense, so does tomorrow.

If tomorrow makes sense, then your goals make sense. It doesn't matter how small OR how great those goals are, provided they are your goals, your real goals. Not goals to satisfy anyone else or show off to the rest of the world, or to prove to someone you're not a loser after all… goals that are there because they are what you deserve, what you've earned.

All that is needed is action, observation, question, assessment and analysis. You're afraid? Fine. Look at the damn situation in front of your face. Okay, Suzy Que Fuckinstien is sleeping with your best friend and talking to you like you're her one and only. Relax, calm down, look around you. Observe. What you'll find, is that's how she is with EVERYBODY… it's not just you. The joke isn't on you, it never was. She's just doing what she's always done, and she's gotten good at it. Question. What hurt so much about it? Why were you so heart broken that the girl didn't think you were special? Was it because you normally don't feel special but for a little while she made you feel different? What's the bigger problem here? The girl… or you? Analyze… why the hell do you care? Because she came to you easy and made you feel powerful, nothing like the loser you normally make yourself feel like. Assess, what's best for you? What do you want? It's definitely not Fuckenstein or Slutzilla or Dracu-prudish-thighs either for that matter… so if you can't be with those girls… who the hell cares? Accept the fact that you weren't really all that interested any damn way, it wasn't pivotal, and no matter how much of a loser you think you LOOK like… most people really just don't care. Even when they're making fun of you, they're not thinking about YOU. They're just using you as a way to think about themselves. You can change, people can forget what they thought about you and people can accept… but they will never do these things first. You will. You will change, you will forget all the bullshit you convinced yourself of, you will stop talking negatively at yourself and you will move forward. You will start seeing what's in the real world and not what's trapped in your head. Success will be success. Failure will be failure and you'll learn from both, there will be no excuses. Action, what are you going to do now? You're going to take everything you learned and make a better decision this time. You're going to use your analysis of the situation to behave differently next time, something more like yourself, which will in turn attract someone more like what you want.

Regardless of what you look like, someone will always be attracted to you. How you behave will dictate who is DRAWN to you.

The truth is, what I've found in my life and the lives of the people I've spoken with, NO act is pivotal. Everything you do takes effort and constant work to get where you want to get. There will never be a time in your life where you say "wow I got it." And all of a sudden everything goes right for you. No, you're always going to trip on something. What will change though, is you, and how you behave when it happens.

Imperfection. Imperfection is not being the same thing every day. Imperfection is doing things differently each time. Variety is imperfection. Variety is interesting to everyone. Life varies, and nothing, not even two parts off of the same assembly line are exactly the same. Therefore, a fight to fit in and be the same like everyone else is a fight you will never win. Imperfection IS perfection.

Worry less about your image, worry less about how you'll look if you make a mistake and concern yourself more with how you will feel deep inside if you let yourself down. Trust me, the punishment you can dish out on yourself will always far outweigh the punishment of the world.

And that's coming from someone who's been beaten, molested and abused as well as stolen from and lied to from the time that he was born till he was fifteen, homeless at 18 and broke and mildly famous at 24. You can always punish yourself more. Sometimes, you will punish yourself more, limit your life more then anyone ever could.

Why?

If you ask me, I think the answers to most complicated questions always end up being simple. Sometimes when life takes all of the control and decision out of the equation and forces you into a situation, you'll blindly grasp on to anything that you can manipulate just to feel like you have some kind of idea of where you stand in this world. Even if that manipulation is to your own detriment, at least it was something you chose. If you chose your life, your life is yours. Some people will simply take whatever they can get.

Finding your place can be difficult. Still, chasing after things that make you feel terrible does not help you in any way. You have to simply observe what is happening in your life, based on the actions you have displayed and ask yourself if what you're getting is what you want. If it's not, then you must adapt.

Okay, that's a lot of information for now. The important stuff to remember is that in the end, often our failures cause us to do more damage to ourselves then anything we fear others would do to us.

So do the best you can to sit back from time to time and just look at your life, have a means to look back on your life, and have the bravery to look forward to guide your life and things will go your way. Individual "victories" and "proof" that you're not a loser aren't really that important. It's the grand scheme, the scope of everything that is in your life that matters.

Oh, and in case you couldn't tell, women LOVE guys that can see the bigger picture, keep their cool, and act based on what's around them.

I just made you an even sexier bitch and you didn't even know it.

All right, if you're reading this and feel like I really have a solid grasp of what's holding YOU back, then make sure you've got a copy of Kill The Crap In Dating: For Men of your own, read the WHOLE book and then use the code and instructions I hid inside it to get yourself 15 free dating questions that I will personally answer.

Talk to you soon,
Kephra