Lesson 8

Lesson 8

Never expect any thanks in this life.

This lesson is taken from the movie Alfie (2004) I personally recommend it, its one of the best PUA related movies.

Ok so it sounds fair enough to just say never expect any thanks in this life, but just saying it is too easy and will not really have a major impact in our lives unless we take a minute to think about it.

So first of all: why should we not expect thanks from people if we do something for them?
I would say you could find a million reasons, but I find the following particularly important:

1) Because you can never control other people's reactions. In order to avoid being disappointed, never set your expectations too high.

2) Because by expecting something from someone else you surrender control over your emotions to the other person. I have suffered from this all my life and I know many of you may have too. Have you ever founded yourself, as I mentioned in one of my first posts "how to gain confidence and self belief" emotionally floating on a roaring sea? Like you have no control and the exterior happenings just roll you around like waves would roll a boat in a storm? One of the things that prevent you from loosing the emotional frame is by being in the command seat and doing things because you know they are right.
Now, never let social feedback dictate your actions, and never ignore social feedback. Thats the paradox we have to live in.

3) Because if the sense of worth for your actions is dependent in the value other people give them, your frame is subject to the frame of the receiver, and that makes your frame weaker.
Part of being a leader is knowing whats best for the team, and in all situations you will find yourself in a team setup, in which you need to know how to make things work so that you and the other people in the team benefit. I'll post about leadership later on, as im working o a real guide on how to be a respected leader. But what concerns us here is the frame hierarchy in a group dynamic.
In order for you to be the leader of the team, your frame has to be stronger than the rest. The frames of the people in your team, and in the potencial opposite team, have to be subject to your frame in order for you to win.
So in practice that means that you can't expect validation from the people around you, because as the leader you are the one that is supposed to validate the actions of other people, in the measure in which they are beneficiary to the objective of the team.
Lets use an example to clear the doubts: say you are the president of The United States.
This is a great example, as the president is democratically elected and is supposed to be the leader, but also is supposed to respond to the people of his country. So there is a dynamic in which the voters are the ones that have the ultimate power over the president, but the president none the less has to lead those voters as any leader has to.
So, if you are the president, and I'm a voter, you can't be expecting me to thank you all the time can you? You as the president you can't get down on yourself because people are not writing you thanks letters and quit, you have to lead. If the president one day came to the stage and was like you ungrateful people, all I do for you and you don't even take the time to write ma a thanks letter... would that make him look like he was in control of he's frame, or in desperate need for validation?

Another example. Say I bring roses to my girlfriends house and her cat just died and she's sad about that. If I expect a reaction, in this case thanks but any reaction, and I don't get what I was expecting, I will feel that my action of buying and bringing those flowers was not appreciated, when in fact it's just the cats death that made her less expressive, but she actually appreciates those flowers even more now that she is sad, and they provide  a sense of relief she is too troubled to express.

4) Because if you do things expecting a reaction, especially thanks, you will be doing then with an agenda, an outcome dependancy. That is felt by other people, and woman are particularly sensitive to this kind of attitude.
I  addition, it is just a very weak, needy place to come from, and we do it all the time without even thinking about it.

This lesson is a particularization of Eckhart Tolle's being in the now teaching, from his classic book The Power of Now, which i recommend reading, in the sense that being in the now implies not expecting anything from the future, therefore not expecting any reaction in the future, therefore not expecting any thanks in the future.

Eckhart Tolle

So we could extend this lesson to be named never expect any reactions for your actions, work with what is presented to you in the moment, and learn and train yourself to be good at improvisation, because as my drama teachers used to tell me, life is a big improvisation act, so learn to master the craft.

Thats it for today. I hope you have found value in this, next week we'll be talking about lesson 9, the last in this series, and I'm proud to announce that its been a success, so I have decided to expand this to the next level. I have received mails from many of you asking me about personal situations, and im glad to give you free advice, so I have opened an email address: projectbuenosaires2013@gmail.com, and you can send me your questions there, I'll respond in the next 24 to 48 hours depending on the complexity of the question. Also, sometimes I receive requests to explain in more detail things in my posts or suggestions about topics to write about. I'll be taking suggestions and requests on post topics at the same address.
Lastly, I'm in twitter, you can look me up as @projectbsas, and there I'll be announcing new posts, new videos and more.



Jason