A Bit of an Esoteric Reflection on Change

I know that sometimes in this community, there is a great deal of haste among aspiring retainers - you see it in their questions, their probing of anybody who is on a long streak. Exactly when will I get the benefits, exactly how will they manifest? And I understand the reasoning behind that, it’s easy to spend time on the internet nowadays and feel as if everything is some long-con. While big companies fight for your attention, there are trolls out there who want to rob you of your time, and most of all your precious energy, so that you can remain in the cycle of frustration, while they derive pleasure from inflicting that upon you.

Lately, though, I’ve realised that true change is often predicated on an initial leap of faith, because ultimately, you cannot change your life without altering your state of being. There are enough men on here who go on long streaks and report that nothing has changed within them, and I have discovered my personal truth behind why that is. Essentially, you must change either the nature of your thoughts, or the quality of them, if you want to meaningfully alter your life. Retention will optimise your physical being, but if you think the same at the end of this process as you did at the beginning, you will interpret everything that happens in your life through the same lens, and so, even if people are behaving entirely different around you, filtering that through your old way of thinking will somehow lead you to the same conclusions.

Don’t get me wrong, everything is interlinked, and just as your mind changes your body, so too is it true that your body changes your mind, and so retention is symbiotic in developing and expanding your mental horizons. But I did want to offer my view on how important it is to develop your mental momentum, because I think that there’s a minority of men in this community who live the same life on day 100 as they did on day 0, their thoughts travel in the same direction, and they’re desperate to prove themselves right about how retention doesn’t work.

I err on the side of thinking that whether you believe that retention works or not, you’re probably right. And, surprisingly, that’s a mentality that extends so far out into the world that your attitude towards it may very well determine the course of your entire life. Do you believe you can? Yeah, you’re right. The best starting point along this journey is to open your mind up to all possibilities, and see where the world takes you. After all, if the old way was working for you, you’d never have wanted to change in the first place. Just as you learn to refuse those treacherous urges, be mindful of errant and traitorous thoughts, too.