Reader: RH

QUESTION: My wife has been saying that I am suffocating her attention wise. I need to stop being so needy. I need to cool it and stop seeking her attention and approval. However, I also though need to keep her interested in me. I need to develop my masculinity further. How can I hit the next level and be the man I want to be?

ANSWER: Hi RH,

• Find a Purpose or Outlet for your energy: For me, I felt completely lost. I had tried to be like all my other friends to it in, I had tried drink to hide my true feelings and none of it was working. I tried a list of things to see what I enjoyed doing and got nowhere until I tried blogging. You need to do the same. Sit down and write an honest list of what you enjoy in lie. Not what others tell you to enjoy or what you THINK you should like to fit in, just write a list of things that YOU enjoy. It could be juggling, the guitar, writing, rock climbing, poetry or whatever. The thing is that you can honestly say it is something that you want to do. You may need to try all of the list to see what resonates with you but eventually something will click and you will enjoy it.This serves two purposes. First, it gives you something to enjoy, to spend time doing something instead of mopping about so you feel more confident, you feel like you have meaning and you have something to focus your energies on. Secondly, it takes your attention away from the story that you are currently living. By focusing on something new, you change the story of ‘angry, depressed guy’ to ‘guy looking for his calling’. I know it sounds very new age and ‘out there’ but since I found the joys of blogging and helping people, I can feel better about myself as I know I am doing something I want to in my life and it is something that gives me pleasure – I’m no longer trying to please others or live my life for them. The anger is there as you feel out of control and without purpose. Start trying things and see how it affects you. You don’t need money. You can see your local youth centres for events on, start reading good books at the local library, visit museums, your local council will have free events on and so on. Look to use your outward anger and turn it inside as energy to become the best version of you that you can be.

• Look at your life and see what makes you attractive. Are you good at sports? Great on the guitar? Whatever it is, pick it and use it as a confidence mechanism and a conversation starter. Work on developing these and look to add new things to your list. You can never be complete, keep adding new things to take yourself to the next level!

• You need to go out more so pick some social settings. If you don’t know many people, like I do, you can use meetup.com, which is a site where you can join social groups in all sorts of areas like archery, music, rock climbing etc. Pick one or more and join them. Get back into just been social and talking to people. Normally these are to meet girls! but this will just show you how to do things for yourself, have a creative outlet for the energy that you’d normally just focus on your wife and having different interests will allow you to spend time away from each other (on your own islands) and make you stronger together when you return to visit!).

• Go to the gym. Women love a great body so this one is a no brainer. However, the gym also really helps you. Lifting weights etc will give you confidence, it will get you to take care of yourself and eat better as you see your body improve and want more, it will also more importantly show you where your limits are and how amazing it feels as you surpass them the next time. You teach your body and mind that you can do it and it forces your limitations back so you can do more the next time. This transfers over to women and you can build up your women skills like you’d do in a gym. Normally a better body helps you to pull but with your wife, it will help you develop your confidence so you don’t need to get it from her, working out will make you mentally stronger and will help build your masculinity back up to help you act more like the man you used to be and a better one eventually.

• Go to the gym: I have never felt better physically as well as mentally since I started at the gym. Yes, working out gives you muscles but it also gives you confidence within yourself and also it is a good method to release anger from outside into pushing, pressing and lifting weights. When I come out of the gym, I feel calm as I have left the majority of my problems behind in the gym. A good starting training programme would be something like Stronglifts.com (a lot you can do at home) or you could google bodyweight exercises like pushups, pullups, body weight rows and the like. Just hit ‘bodyweight exercises’ into google and you’ll find heaps.

• If you can afford it, get some new clothes. It doesn’t have to be much. Anything new will be a boost to your motivation. Google fashion tips for whatever your body style. Stick to dark colours of jeans, but tops that fit, not baggy (you may have to go a size smaller than you normally buy). Show off yourself dude – you deserve the best. Show your wife the man you are and show her why she fell in love with you again.

• Learn how to meditate (I use a headspace app on my iphone). Meditation teaches you how to calm your mind, ignore your anxiety and doubts and it slowly allows you to control your mind rather than your mind control you. By meditating you learn how to eliminate the noise in your mind. Its basically when you sit and try and just let thoughts happen and instead o fighting them, just accept them as they come and let them go. It really helps, as I know from personal experience, to calm the mind, let issues slowly lose their strength as you stop fighting them and just accept them and it leaves you calm and relaxed. There are a lot of ways to meditate and even a minute or two a day can really help. I’d advise googling how to meditate and picking the option that best suits you. I use an iphone app called Headspace. They have a website too I think that may show ways you can do it online if you don’t have an iphone.

• Go to RSDNation.com and check out there awesome site. Don’t bother with the forum as there are a lot of bullshitters and fakes in there but the instructor videos and articles are awesome. You may find you relate better to some than others but its OK. There stuff is awesome. It is not all about puling girls, there is a lot on there too about how to become more manly, more true to the real you and show your real masculinity.

• Consider CBT: CBT is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Its a type of talking treatment where you have a chance to talk to non judging expert, with no family pressure, and she helps you to reframe your thoughts, deal with issues and so on. In some places you will need to be referred to a doctor but a lot of places offer free treatment but for free it would be better coming via your doctor. I have used CBT for repetitive thoughts I had (I have OCD) and it really helps. You sit in a room and basically just chat. You say how you feel and she offers insights into where this may stem from, what you can do differently and so on. Just talking about it can really help. It allows you to organise the thoughts in your head, let out some of the anger you have been holding inside you, get someone else’s opinion and so on.

• Lay off alcohol and drugs. It may seem like a good thing at the time to forget about your issues but they rarely help and instead will screw up your mind and make you think poorly. Instead try to eat good, real food, drink plenty of water, exercise, read good books, watch little TV but only stuff you really enjoy, start taking up new hobbies and volunteer etc. What we need is for you to break the habits and bad lifestyle choices you may have been living. Albert Einstein once said that ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’. Therefore, we need you to do something different and really snap you out of your pain and change your life for the better. Listen to the interview with Elliott again for some ideas.

• Use NLG guys as role models. Something that really helped me was acting like guys from films – one of the reasons why I started the site. Watch guys who are Next Level Guys and copy the good things into your life and reject what doesn’t work for you. Read some of the articles I have on the site for ideas on what you can do. Oh and recommend topics for me to write about or films you want to see written about. I love hearing from my readers.

• Real happiness will come but it will take work. Don’t pretend anymore. By pretending to be happy, you are creating a false sense of identity. You need to do as you feel the real you and from your gut. If you are unhappy then say so. If someone angers you (calmly) say so. If someone wants you to do something and you don’t want to, say why and say no to them. Stop pretending. Listen to the real Aaron inside. Your gut will tell you what you really think and feel. You only get one chance at this life mate and I want you to have the best life possibly. you may have made mistakes but you can change. Right now if you want. Look up Brent Smith (lifestyle coach) on youtube (he also does a free coaching thing on sundays but I can’t remember where but google will say). Brent explains about how we carry pain etc by the story we accept about ourselves. We believe this story and a lot of times it is completely wrong but we live it anyway. Brent ascertains that we can change our story and therefore our lives as soon as we want to. His stuff is good, check him out.

• It took me ages to ‘jump in’ and blog, hell even longer to post audio interviews! You seen some of the negative remarks I got? I would never have posted that (or even asked Elliott to record it) a while ago. I used to be terrified of everything and my life but I took baby steps. I started small. I got better with women by being sociable and chatting to everyone (cashiers, postmen, guys at my work, girls I didn’t fancy and did and so on) and slowly I got more confident and more social and it made me better with women in effect (see RSDNation.com if you want to get better with women, its an awesome site). Fear will come always. Your brain has three sections. One of the sections is the lowest section of the brain that has a basic job to keep you safe and alive. However, it hasn’t really evolved since the caveman days. It still thinks there is snakes and lions everywhere, it doesn’t understand that, for example, rejection from a girl is nowhere near the same as being chased from a lion. It just wants to keep you safe. you therefore need to show it PROOF, not thoughts, PROOF that you can do these things and stay safe and then the fear will lessen a bit. You do a bit more and it will lessen even more and so on. Then your comfort zone will be expanded and you will become even more badass till you reach the limits of your comfort zone and then you repeat the technique. I have details about this sort of stuff on the site. By keeping pushing your limits, you will improve more and more and in turn this will make you more attractive to your wife but more importantly it will make you a happier person and more manly.

I could go on here but I think that this is plenty to be getting on with. You don’t need money for pretty much any of this. Send me an email in and let me know how you are getting on or ask a friend or a family member if you can report to them to keep you accountable and taking action (google accountability partner). Feel free to send me an email anytime mate. You took the first step, now take the next one and the next etc towards becoming the next level version of yourself.
Keep reading the articles and please comment on them and let me know what you think.

Would you be OK with me turning this into an article on the site? I would obviously hide your name and email address and a few details but I eel that this could really help a lot of other people. Let me know if you are OK with it.

Hope this helps mate and I look forward to hearing from you.