Here's some food for thought, it's been a while since I posted anything.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of happiness.

One of my college psych professors was one of the leading minds in the area of "positive psychology" which is more or less the study of happiness. Most psych work has traditionally studied areas of disorder, sickness, etc... Looking into the positive side of the human experience is more recent, at least from a psych/clinical perspective. And this particular professor had some very interesting things to say about what makes us happy.

A lot of the research shows that things like gratitude, acceptance, self-esteem, having control, etc... are the keys to happiness. That is all sort of on the mental side of things, and I suppose those are learned emotional responses that each of us can train into ourselves to raise our happiness. But that's a topic for another day.

But what about day-to-day application - as in what we actually try to make happen in our lives? I'm interested in actually structuring a life that makes me the happiest. Obviously, a lot of those mental "pieces" are critical but how they play out for each of us as individuals is where the rubber meets the road.

And I guess a good place to start with that is with the question "What makes me happy?"

For most of us, we don't know, or more accurately it seems, we don't know that we don't know. We ascribe a lot of "happiness potential" to things that probably don't make us very happy once they actually occur.

And we just keep fooling ourselves. I do it. You do it. Pretty much everyone does it. It seems to be a natural part of our makeup. And thus it will continue to happen. You'll continue to think expanding your wardrobe will make you happier, I'll continue to think that having a pickup truck instead of an SUV will make me happier, Johnny PUA will think that fucking another 10 girls will make him happier.

So I think the best way to "hack" our way around that brain flaw or whatever you want to call it is to identity the things that we know, and I mean absolutely know, make us happiest and set our actions and our daily behaviors towards achieving those things.

So while that pickup truck might always be in my head as a potential +1 for me on the happiness scale, I know that surfing is a perennial +5 and I just need to structure my life to allow for the most time in the water and basically accept that maybe the truck would make me happier but that I'm not going to do a whole lot about making it happen.

This allows our limited time, effort, and resources to go towards the things that have the highest payoff. Its the pursuit of a guaranteed happiness ROI and not some imagined benefit from something we are just tricking ourselves into thinking we want.

This is more or less applying the 80/20 principle to our personal fulfillment. Only once the high-payoff 20% is completely handled do we pursue the remaining 80%. So only once you have pretty much guaranteed yourself that the small handful of things that you know for a fact contribute to a good quality of life for you, do you pursue everything else.

Now, the hard part, is finding those "Core Happiness Factors" or whatever you want to call it. After all, you have to know what the 20% is composed of before you can resolve to making it happen.

I boiled mine down to 12 things the other day, but even that seems a little much, or a little greedy. I certainly think that 12 should be the limit. But really, I'm unwilling to cross any of them off my list, which is how I know that they are important to me. I can't choose surfing over lifting weights or being my own boss over having good friends, so I just kept them all.

In any case, they give me a path to pursue - my own personal mission statement.

I responded to a few PMs and posted in a couple of journals...and now I'm inspired to post something here...

And its going to be a good old-fashioned Daniel Rant Against a Retarded PUA Myth.

Oh yeah!

Why? I'll tell you exactly why.

A) Because I don't think I've posted anything related to girls/game in a while and we're due.

B) Because something happened to me the other day that provides a nice lesson for us all.

So story time:

A couple of friends and I took out a buddy's boat recently.

Its a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The sun is out. People are enjoying a great weekend day at the beach. We anchor a couple hundred yards off shore next to another boat and are just chilling. My boys start drinking with the people on the other boat, pimping chicks and so on. Life is good.

Well, eventually I want to get wet. I brought a surfboard with me, so I opt to leave my boys to their shenanigans and just bob in the water on the board next to the boat. It super calm so its relaxing to just be in the water.

Here I am, sitting on my board when two chicks in inner-tubes come floating by.

The first one is sitting on top of hers, so that her ass is in the little hole and she can just lounge and drift and enjoy the sun...The second one is lying through the hole, which is more appropriate for kicking and mobility (yes, I think a lot about inner-tube dynamics and the optimal positions for various tube tasks, fuck you).

Anyways, she decides she wants to emulate girl #1's positioning so she tries to get her ass into the hole. Unsuccessfully. She keeps falling off the side.

So I offer to help her. She's basically right next to me and I'm just kind of watching her and I say "Having trouble? Need some help? OK, hold onto me."

And so I help her into her tube.

I suppose now is a good time to tell you that she's a fucking dime piece. Very obviously half-black and half-Asian, very fit, beautifully delicate features, long black hair and quite young. And she also turned out to be very sweet and gentle and feminine....

In other words, she was exactly what Daniel likes.

So after she gets into her tube, she sticks around and talks to me. For a long, long while...as in well over an hour.

She was so very, very into me that I would have had to have been dead to not recognize it. Grazing against me on purpose, asking me all sorts of questions about myself, looking me in the eye like she wanted to see my soul, inquiring about my plans for the night...

And then, after a time, my boys wanted to go so I said "Hey, it was really nice meeting you, but I gotta get going."

To which she replied "Nice meeting you too, but we should hang out tomorrow."

To which I said "Look, you are very cute and I really have enjoyed talking to you...but I have a girlfriend."

To which she got this cute little sad face on and said "Oh, that's really sad."

And then I left. By the time I got home, she had already Facebooked me. I poked around and what do you know, girl is some sort of high-fashion runway model with pics of her strutting her stuff all over her page.

So you know what I did?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Why? Because even though she wasn't there, I have a girlfriend that I care about and that I have committed to and I am a stable, healthy person that keeps his fucking word.

So in case you are dense as diamonds, the myth I am going to rant against: You can game and fuck girls with boyfriends, even if their boyfriends are there! This is a giant load of PUA bullshit and its fucking you up.

OK, obviously there's a disclaimer. Yes, this sort of thing happens. I've even fucked a chick or two that I met while their BF was standing right there. And I've fucked a bunch more who were in relationships with guys I had never met.

But that pales in comparison to the number of girls that FLAT OUT REJECTED ME because they were in a relationship.

Now here's how it goes: Sure, it happens, but it happens when you meet a shitty girl who is in a shitty relationship. Stable people in stable relationships don't cheat and they certainly don't initiate the cheating while their bf/gf is standing right there. This is a red flag that this person is FUCKED.

But that's not even the point I'm trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that Mr. PUA Gooroo/Assclown gives you this message:

Game Is A Magic Weapon And If You Are A Master At It, You Can Get ANY Girl - Even If Her Boyfriend Is Standing Right There.

If you buy into this message, when you go up to a stable girl, in a stable relationship, and FAIL, you will think you did something wrong: You are bad. You are a failure. You will never get the girl.

NO NO NO. Stop right now.

There is nothing wrong with you. That girl is untouchable. She is happy in her relationship. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. So stop beating yourself up.

Stop coming on to forums saying "I gamed this HB7 who was with her boyfriend and she told me to go away. Should I have negged? Should I have SUPER AMOGGED? Should I have crossover reverse DHV'd while doing a Counterstrike Display of Disinterest and turning my body language to the perfect angle of 17.6 degrees from the center which shows that I DON'T GIVE A FUCK???? Help, what did I mess up?"

You didn't mess anything up. Go eat a steak, beat off, and find a new girl.

Stop believing that girls can magically be talked to in a certain way that makes them drop their thongs even if their husband or boyfriend is standing there watching. Because in the vast majority of cases, they can't and that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you. It just means that no matter how well you fit their profile of what they look for, like the Black-Asian Inner-Tube Hottie, there is simply nothing you can do to make things go better.

Do you think Black-Asian Inner-Tube Hottie went home that night and lamented about how she fucked things up with me or do you think she simply said to herself "Too bad he has a gf" and then went on with her life?

OK rant over.

TLDR: Super hottie throws herself at Daniel. Daniel denies her. Uses story to tell you that you can't get girls with bfs in most cases so stop worrying about it.

Here's a PM I got, figured I'd answer it publicly as it sort of turned into my Manifesto on Life and my "Let's Own 2014" motivational post (as an aside, the tough love below is not intended for this one person that PMed me at all. It's general kick in the ass to everyone):
I'd start by not looking for pick-up stuff to do

I know what you are asking but I just can't really justify strictly looking to pick-up chicks in any other case other than going to a bar, club, or other purely "public social" setting and even then, I'd recommend only doing that with your boys and making the girls a part of you guys hanging out and having fun.

Other than that, just hit on them in the course of your day-to-day life or in the context of doing things you'd normally do just for fun (i.e. your hobbies and interests).

There are girls everywhere and you don't really have to change a thing about your life other than having the balls to talk to them when they are in your proximity - and then an extra pair of balls (yes, you will need a total of 4 balls) to express interest and push things forward if they stop and show interest in picking up what you are putting down.

Seriously, unless you live in a very quiet area, you will almost always have girls near you in line, stopped on the street corner where you are, in the elevator with you, sitting with an open seat next to them on the bus, etc... Just focus on those ones. You may never bang 100 girls a year, but for what reason do you really need to do that anyway?

If you learn to express your interest and "play a good game" in those cases, you'll still tax an astonishing number of babes and you'll be a lot happier and more at ease with your life.

Just trust me on this one.

Going out of your way to get girls is pretty pathetic, when you really stop to think about it. I mean what does it say about you if you are constantly going way out of your way (either physically or mentally), in a habitual manner to talk to girls?

Well, I know that Mr. PUA Rockstar Guru tells you it means you are a man that is in control of his own destiny.

That's a clever little twist - and a completely backwards, skewed, and perhaps even mentally/emotionally damaging perspective.

What Mr. PUA Hot Shot Guru didn't tell you is that sure, he may bang fifty 4s and 5s each year (Scientific Fact: No one who has ever actually referred to himself as a PUA has ever fucked a 6 or higher. Ever. It's been proven) but the rest of his life is meaningless and he exists in a constant state of superficial satisfaction, without any real deep fulfillment or joy in the other areas of his life.

So if you ask me, you aren't in control of your destiny. You are actually a slave to either your own desperation for pussy or if you are getting it, you are just obsessed with getting more pussy.

If you are habitually making girls something that changes the way you go about your living your life, you are not in control of your sexuality, your sexuality is in control of you.

I am not aiming that comment at the person that asked me this question btw, it's just a general observation. I've been guilty of it as anyone but the more I look back on the times when I both enjoyed my life to the max and got girls, it always happened fairly "naturally" or in the context of me doing something I loved (traveling, surfing, etc...) OR when I was out at bars/clubs with my best friends having a blast and girls would enter the picture that way.

There wasn't a lot of effort involved or a lot of preoccupation with it. Did I ever bang 50 girls in a year? No. But I put away more than just about anyone I know, hotter ones than anyone I know, who happened to be sweet and sane and non-manipulative and a general pleasure to hang around.

And I managed to accomplish a lot of awesome other things in the mean time. I've probably shoved more "life" into the last four years than most guys will in a lifetime. This is not because I have any special gifts or talents. My life is completely replicable by any normal guy (i.e. anyone reading this right now).

The reason is because I never put any one thing on a pedestal to control my every action. Not girls. Not money. Not self-improvement. Not surfing. Nothing. I try to live every day balanced, so that the sum of all those things is exponentially better than maxing out in any individual one.

Look, I realize that there are probably guys reading this that haven't gotten a decent girl in ages. Maybe ANY girl at all in ages. That's cool. I've been there. My early 20s were filled with dry spells, some lasting nearly a year. Do what I've talked about here and that will all be over with, I promise it.

But, placate me for a moment and answer me this: Even if it wasn't, if you never touched another girl again, never had sex another day in your life... would life still be great?

The answer should be a trumpeting YES. If it's not, you need to open your eyes and practice gratitude for all the wonderful blessings you have, adopt a real abundance mentality that applies to ALL OF LIFE, and stop FREAKING out about sex.

My girlfriend could dump me today, my dick could fall off, and my life with girls could be over, permanently.

And yes, I would be sad (I really love my girlfriend, and my dick) and I'd be overcome with feelings of despair.

But I'd do everything in my power to wake up tomorrow and say "Hey, now I have more money, more time, more mental energy... I can focus on my business. I can surf more. I can help my brother raise my nephew and form closer bonds with family, friends, and have those people fill the sudden void that my dickless state has brought onto me. What an opportunity!"

That's how you need to look at life.

Have hobbies that you love, just for you. In addition to my usual pursuits of getting strong like bull and surfing my brains out, I've been doing a lot of fiction reading and playing a lot chess lately. It's great. Some hobbies should be mental, some should be physical. Some should be social. Some should be solitary times for introversion and maintenance of the self.

Stay physically active, your body is your vehicle on the road to everything else. Care for it.

Build an absurdly fun and meaningful social life. Your phone should be ringing off the hook. You should be getting text messages from all kinds of people. You should be making friends with people who are "different" than you. This includes, above all else, the people who share blood with you. Nothing is more important. If you have troubled family ties, you might want to repair them unless it's absolutely in your best interest not to (abuse, neglect, toxicity cases).

Take your career and finances seriously enough to live comfortable in the middle-class, or slightly more, on a reasonable amount of hours and don't slave away or worry about earning a penny more (unless it genuinely makes you happy of course). If you like to travel, find a way to go "location independent" while still earning (but don't feel obligated to travel just because internet bloggers tell you it's enriching. Do it if you will enjoy it).

Be an authentic, caring person who has passion for the people in his life, the things he does with his time, and the greater world beyond.

A great life, and with it, some pretty great girls (or maybe just one really great one), will follow.

Happy New Year my friends. Make 2014 one to be proud of.