Don't be a girl
Everyone here talks about being alpha and lifting weights, but then they start talking about "sexual market value" in the same sentence.
I think judging your "sexual market value" is a poor way of looking at yourself. This is how a girl thinks. She sits around, constantly trying to improve herself, trying to attract guys like some bait on a hook.
As a guy, if you want females, you can't be thinking of yourself as the bait. You are the fish. You are the one searching for the minnow.
Trying to improve your attractiveness to females is somewhat beta behavior IMO. Become fit and strong for yourself. If that gives you the drive and confidence to go get some minnows, great. But never think of yourself as the bait.
Posted Oct 5, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC
021
I have to disagree mostly.
Improving SMV is of course mostly for yourself. It creates confidence and makes you feel better about yourself... for yourself. But that doesn't mean you are improving yourself to become better bait. It means you are gathering better equipment to catch more and better fish.
Judging your own SMV is important. It revolves around self-reflection and only with self-reflecting can you improve yourself. It wasn't untill most of us realized that a woman's reaction to us changed when we improved our SMV that we fully grasped its power.
Like Dave Chappelle said: If we could fuck women in a cardboard box, we wouldn't need a house. There is some truth in that. If we didn't need the SMV to get laid, most of us wouldn't bother. Take what you want from that it but for me it's about realizing that our sexual succes is reliant on the opinion of women and we shouldn't ignore that. It doesn't give them more power. It gives me more power to know what needs to be done to be more succesful.
It's like saying you don't need a good resumé to get a good job because improving is about myself and not what others think. So I just keep my resumé empty and if I land a job, that's good.
Our world revolves around other people, and other peoples opinion shouldn't be an incentive but it is important for our succes. So we strive to be better people for ourselves with the knowledge that other people will see that. Disregarding that factor, imho, is counterproductive.
Again: judging and improving our SMV is not the same as becoming bait. It's imrpoving our gear and equipment to become better fishermen.
I don't think you're reading into OP's post, because it's a fairly complex thought and you seem to be stuck on surface level and this sentence confirms it.
OP is merely distinguishing between those who improve SMV for themselves, and those who improve SMV in order to get better women. The differentiation here is the "in order to." Both men will, by definition, get better women by improving their SMV. But they approach the situation from two differing motives and that is the important part.
The fact that your second sentence is in perfect agreement with OP's post yet you verbally disagree with it means that your critical understand of his point was completely missed.
e:formatting
I disagree with the idea that the motive (to get with women) is not a bad thing, which OP seems to imply.
Improving SMV so that you will be better with women is an excellent incentive. It shouldn't be the only incentive (I agree) but it is still an important one which most of us use to get where we want. And that's not a bad thing in itself.
It's mostly semantics but doing it to get with other women is in some way not different as doing it for yourself and it doesn't change you into the bait.
I'm really seeing a huge fundamental lack of understanding coming from you during these two posts. Let's talk about this.
You mention getting women as a motive, but then you mention getting women as an incentive. Here's a helpful blurb I just found which might better separate the two in your head...
That bit may be arguing semantics concerning intrinsic vs extrinsic motivators (e.g. your wording is incorrect, but your intended meaning I can see). But let's analyze the difference a bit closer.
If we look at the extrinsic (reward-based, e.g. we are doing it in order to get laid) vs intrinsic (self-driven, e.g. we are doing it for yourselves) motivations having achieved the same outcome, they appear to be equal but are actually fundamentally different. And you're absolutely right when you say it "doesn't change you into the bait." It doesn't have to for extrinsic motivating factors to have a negative impact on your psyche.
It's better to analyze this in the context of not getting laid, where we can see the actual differences in thought processes and the effect on the person. If someone is intrinsically motivated to improve (with possibly getting laid being a secondary effect) they will likely continue to improve until they feel sufficiently satisfied. Pair this with TRP values and we get the result of "never stop improving." The question of "but why?" is already answered with this mindset, as it is "for me." Here, success is defined as improvement, while failure is defined as a lack of improvement.
Extrinsically, as in "we are doing this in order to get laid," is focused around the reward and thus we can make a few assumptions using popular psychological theories (notably operant conditioning). First, the behavior and reward are eventually going to approach an equilibrium where we may see an increase in getting laid correlated to an increase in improvement, but the "getting laid" part will always approach something which limits its increase. At that point, improvement will not see an increase in getting laid, and the individual here is likely to taper off improvement as well because the effort will be well beyond the sought reward. And secondly, we can assume that the intended reward is success and a lack of reward is failure, with the reward being getting laid.
This basic differentiation (which you call semantics.... ha) is actually huge in the grand scheme of things. How many beta males have tried to improve themselves but gave up once they realized they weren't seeing results? The issue in reality is that the association curve between improvement and sexual contact is probably logarithmic with x being improvement and y being sexual contact. You have to make huge improvements to see any results, and even if you doubled the initial "huge improvement" your results may not even change. It is crucially important to remain mainly intrinsically motivated when performing self-improvement for this reason. Success is based on you, not external validation (e.g. fucking women).
To bring this around full-circle and ground it in this very specific situation... you are right to say that the results may be the same. But that is after we are already at point B. The final destination is hardly important here, as the important part is always the journey. It is a fundamental breakdown of understanding to suggest that it is a good idea to improve one's self in order to get laid. For someone who has stuck with it and already made the self-improvement, they might not notice a difference. But for the tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of beta males who are seeking out TRP for self-improvement, it is completely foolish and irresponsible to even slightly suggest that they are making the best decision for themselves to make these improvements in order to get laid more in life.
tl;dr: by reinforcing intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation, we can show males the path to personally-defined success rather than externally-validated success, which is a main tenet of TRP.
Thanks for your elaborate reply. I agree, some nuances could've made especially when talking about what extrinsically/intrinsically motivates us. You make a really valid point (self post worthy btw so think about posting it)
There are a couple things I wanted to add which I think isn't looked at in your text and that starts with: the reason most people come to TRP. There are numerous reasons, of course, but most of the time it's because people are simply not succesful with the other sex (be it a break-up, hypergamy, divorce, BP indoctrination, perpetual friendzoning, anti-feminism).
And yes, these are all extrinsic factors (the other sex) that should not be the sole motivator of a person to improve themselves.
However, I think that almost everyone starts out that way, and obtains a shitload of motivation with that in mind (getting laid/getting better with women). It is then up to them to improve and evolve and realize that it goes deeper than just getting laid (and in that you are definitely right).
With regard to OP, my original text was simply meant to prevent disregarding this initial motivation (albeit extrinsical) because it might be an important one for new TRPers. Also, it is much easier (for any person) to have some sort of measure by which to gauge improvement than to say (quite philosophically): you have to improve for yourself.
In the case of SMV, it is inherently linked to succes with women and it's hard to stay motivated without some sort of standard. Think about how hard it would be to keep going to the gym without seeing results (just knowing that you're being healthy). That kind of reinforcement is important for the journey and the progress and if some want to measure their improved SMV/succes as a means to motivate themselves... they can.
And about the endpoint of succes: That is something that is different for everyone. You can not blame a BP virgin to gauge his improvement by the fact that he got laid the last couple of weeks. Does that make his improvement less valid? I don't think so. It's only natural to use some extrinsic motivation to improve yourself. If girls compliment you on your improved physique, that's a good thing. It helps the process. It means you're on the right path. I think it's counterproductive to tell people to think: 'Fuck what that girl thinks, it's about you.'
The point that you're making (i think) is... when some people reach that point where sexual satisfaction is present... what else do they have to motivate them to improve themselves?
I hope, and you hope, they figure that out for themselves along the way. But for the time being, it's not a bad thing to want to improve yourself to get laid. Small successes count, getting laid counts. You know this already but eventually there comes a time where the extrinsic motivation that someone used to improve themselves, gets taken over by the intrinsic motivation. Some faster than others but it usually happens. You start to realize that becoming a better 'you', increases your happiness even without external validation. But you can be the smartest person in the room and when your professor tells you: 'That was an excellent presentation'... you still smile. You can be a male model but it's still nice to hear someone tell you you look good. You don't have to do it for them, but it's not a bad thing if you like what it's doing to them.
As you said, the journey is important and a lot of people come here pretty angry at life, at themselves, at women. Telling everyone to disregard SMV because it's not for yourself but for the ladies is lacking a certain amount of guidance imho.
tl;dr u/cat-tasrophic is a smart guy. listen to him. tl;dr2 extrinsic motivation is what drives many new TRPers and shouldn't be completely disregarded without proper guidance