I used to be a shark. Do you remember me? At the bars….the clubs… parties…at the festivals… Gliding through the crowd, scanning, scanning. No eye contact with the other guys, just a critical, objectifying, cold eyed gaze, looking for…
Women. HOT women, to be exact.
Yeah, I used to be that guy. My eyes would rest on one woman after the other, before dismissing her and moving on to the next. What about her? Nah, her hair looks kind of stringy. Next…
Hmm, now THIS girl is cute… oh, her ass is kind of fat. Next. Other men weren’t fellow human beings; they were “obstacles”, “competition” or “cockblocks”.
Today I notice these guys precisely by how little they notice me. Tight, contracted, critical gaze. Looking to “get” the next “hot women”. Fact is, a man just doesn’t show up this way unless if he’s looking to fill a gaping need.
Yep…that’s “sharking”. And those were some dark days, my friend, because on the inside, I was suffering. And yet when I finally realized that I would *never* be fulfilled by something outside Myself, I stopped. I mean, who cares how many hot women I get if I still felt empty on the inside?
It’s like trying to keep a bucket riddled with holes full of water….it’s a lot of work!
So, here’s a quick check to see if you’ve been “Sharking”:
Q: Do you barely make eye contact with other men at social events? Are they more like just objects in your awareness, potential obstructions from you meeting the girls you want?
Q: No matter how much success you enjoy with women, when you get really honest with yourself, you know it will never be enough…that you’re trying to fill some kind of hole inside…
Q: Do you immediately scan whatever social event you’re at, evaluate the attractiveness of all the available women, and if there are no women you find immediately attractive, you get bored/anxious and want to leave…
If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, chances are that you, like me, are attached to some kind of need for validation.
Since that time I’ve discovered how powerful Appreciation is. It’s the second level of our Inner Game Training Model and when I discovered it for myself it was like the warm light of the sun glittering into what used to be dark, gloomy, gray waters. If this sounds like just some happy-go-lucky word then you just don’t get it yet.
Without full and complete Appreciation for you’re at and who you’re with, in every given moment, you are, to some degree, suffering.
But when I *am* Appreciating…what a difference! The whole world, including women, seems to open to me. In letting go of my attachment to things going a certain way, I am free to enjoy myself, independent of the external circumstances. Paradoxically, the women who see me having fun, celebrating them and everyone else are getting “turned on”, and are now putting their attention on ME.
Besides, who needs to shark when all the fish are coming to you?
Exercise: Next time you’re at a party or social event, practice smiling and making real contact with EVERYONE you meet, guys and girls, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Find something you can appreciate about each of them. And notice what kind of a difference it makes in the quality of your interactions, and of your evening.
How ironic,I was the same way.I actually wrote a post about this same topic on another PU forum.
Firstly, you have more chance of geittng hit by a car or killed by a coconut falling on your head than geittng attacked by a shark. A shark isn’t going to pick you by what colour your boogie board is. Usually they attack people who have just gone to the toilet or are simply the unlucky ones. I think Mythbusters found that sharks are not attracted to certain colours but they tend to bite the colour yellow more once they do attack. Dont worry about them though, they aren’t an issue! Just pick a cool bodyboard!
Great article. I do get bored when there are NO women in the venue though. I’ll work on this appreciation concept.