difference between consumerism and minimalism

consumerism vs. minimalism

There is in most of us an underlying desire to buy cool stuff.

It stems from fears and insecurities, I think, but it is exploited by corporations and advertising. Advertising is designed to get us to desire more, to want to buy, and because it works so well, we end up buying way, way more than we need.

Minimalism is the exact counter to this phenomenon, and for some of us, it’s the answer.

Think of tribal societies, unexposed to consumerism or advertising. They don’t have urges to go out and buy cool new clothes or gadgets or cars or shoes. It’s not that they don’t have desires, but it’s not at the same scale as in our society.

Even in the days before advertising, these kinds of desires for more were not as prevalent. It is advertising and consumerism that have created the desires, or at least magnified them to a hugely exaggerated level. It is extremely effective.

Unfortunately, it means we are always wanting to buy more, and always spending more. Which means we must either get into debt, or work more to earn more. Or both. And today, families must have two wage earners — as opposed to only 50-60 years ago, when there was only one wage earner necessary — in part because we are trying to support a more expensive lifestyle (also because we’re being paid less in real dollars). We’re also more in debt than ever before.

We need to stop and ask ourselves — what is it all for? Why are we working so hard in order to buy so much, to have so much, to be burdened and cluttered by so much?

It’s just too much. Minimalists say, “I’m getting off this merry-go-round. I opt out.”

The minimalist first looks at needs vs. wants — is this a real need, or is it just a desire created by advertising? And if it’s a want, a desire, she doesn’t buy it.

The minimalist slowly learns to let go of desires. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen, gradually, with a conscious effort.

Here’s how I do it:

• Learn to be more conscious of my impulses when I’m ready to buy something.
• Learn to pause, and to breathe, to let the physical desire wane.
• Force myself to wait, if the purchase isn’t an absolute necessity.
• Let myself think about it, and analyze whether it’s something I really need to buy. Often the answer is no.
• Slowly improve upon this, over time, as I always make mistakes.

The minimalist lets go of desires, slowly, so that she buys less and spends less, gets into less debt (or none at all), and as a result, needs to earn less and work less.

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how to imrove my life in 100 days !

60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days.

Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days.

Home

1.  Create a “100 Days to Conquer Clutter Calendar” by penciling in one group of items you plan to declutter every day, for the next 100 days.  Here’s an example:

• Day 1: Declutter Magazines
• Day 2: Declutter DVD’s
• Day 3: Declutter books
• Day 4: Declutter kitchen appliances

2. Live by the mantra: a place for everything and everything in its place. For the next 100 days follow these four rules to keep your house in order:

• If you take it out, put it back.
• If you open it, close it.
• If you throw it down, pick it up.
• If you take it off, hang it up.

3. Walk around your home and identify 100 things you’ve been tolerating; fix one each day. Here are some examples:

• A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.
• A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.
• The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out.
• Happiness

4.  Follow the advice proffered by positive psychologists and write down 5 to 10 things that you’re grateful for, every day.

5. Make a list of 20 small things that you enjoy doing, and make sure that you do at least one of these things every day for the next 100 days. Your list can include things such as the following:

• Eating your lunch outside.
• Calling your best friend to chat.
• Taking the time to sit down and read a novel by your favorite author for a few minutes.

6. Keep a log of your mental chatter, both positive and negative, for ten days. Be as specific as possible:

• How many times do you beat yourself up during the day?
• Do you have feelings of inadequacy?
• Are you constantly thinking critical thoughts of others?
• How many positive thoughts do you have during the day?

Also, make a note of the emotions that accompany these thoughts. Then, for the next 90 days, begin changing your emotions for the better by modifying your mental chatter.

7. For the next 100 days, have a good laugh at least once a day: get one of those calendars that has a different joke for every day of the year, or stop by a web site that features your favorite cartoons.

Learning/Personal Development

8. Choose a book that requires effort and concentration and read a little of it every day, so that you read it from cover to cover in 100 days.

9. Make it a point to learn at least one new thing each day: the name of a flower that grows in your garden, the capital of a far-off country, or the name of a piece of classical music you hear playing in your favorite clothing boutique as you shop. If it’s time for bed and you can’t identify anything you’ve learned that day, take out your dictionary and learn a new word.

10. Stop complaining for the next 100 days. A couple of years back, Will Bowen gave a purple rubber bracelet to each person in his congregation to remind them to stop complaining. “Negative talk produces negative thoughts; negative thoughts produce negative results”, says Bowen. For the next 100 days, whenever you catch yourself complaining about anything, stop yourself.

11. Set your alarm a minute earlier every day for the next 100 days. Then make sure that you get out of bed as soon as your alarm rings, open the windows to let in some sunlight, and do some light stretching. In 100 days you’ll be waking up an hour and forty minutes earlier than you’re waking up now.

12. For the next 100 days, keep Morning Pages, which is a tool suggested by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages are simply three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning.

13. For the next 100 days make it a point to feed your mind with the thoughts, words, and images that are most consistent with who you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to achieve.

Finances

14. Create a spending plan (also known as a budget). Track every cent that you spend for the next 100 days to make sure that you’re sticking to your spending plan.

15. Scour the internet for frugality tips, choose ten of the tips that you find, and apply them for the next 100 days.  Here are some possibilities:

• Go to the grocery store with cash and a calculator instead of using your debit card.
• Take inventory before going to the grocery store to avoid buying repeat items.
• Scale back the cable.
• Ask yourself if you really need a landline telephone.
• Consolidate errands into one trip to save on gas.

Keep track of how much money you save over the next 100 days by applying these tips.

16. For the next 100 days, pay for everything with paper money and keep any change that you receive. Then, put all of your change in a jar and see how much money you can accumulate in 100 days.

17. Don’t buy anything that you don’t absolutely need for 100 days. Use any money you save by doing this to do one of the following:

• Pay down your debt, if you have any.
• Put it toward your six month emergency fund.
• Start setting aside money to invest.

18. Set an hour aside every day for the next 100 days to devote to creating one source of passive income.

Time Management

19. For the next 100 days, take a notebook with you everywhere in order to keep your mind decluttered. Record everything, so that it’s safely stored in one place—out of your head—where you can decide what to do with it later. Include things such as the following:

• Ideas for writing assignments.
• Appointment dates.
• To Do list items

20. Track how you spend your time for 5 days. Use the information that you gather in order to create a time budget: the percentage of your time that you want to devote to each activity that you engage in on a regular basis. This can include things such as:

• Transportation
• Housework
• Leisure
• Income-Generating Activities

Make sure that you stick to your time budget for the remaining 95 days.

21. Identify one low-priority activity which you can stop doing for the next 100 days, and devote that time to a high priority task instead.

22. Identify five ways in which you regularly waste time, and limit the time that you’re going to spend on these activities each day, for the next 100 days. Here are three examples:

• Watch no more than half-an-hour of television a day.
• Spend no more than half-an-hour each day on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon.
• Spend no more than twenty minutes a day playing video games.

23. For the next 100 days, stop multi-tasking; do one thing at a time without distractions.

24. For the next 100 days, plan your day the night before.

25. For the next 100 days, do the most important thing on your To-Do list first, before you do anything else.

26. For the next 14 weeks, conduct a review of each week. During your weekly review, answer the following:

• What did you accomplish?
• What went wrong?
• What went right?

27. For the next 100 days, spend a few minutes at the end of each day organizing your desk, filing papers, and making sure that your work area is clean and orderly, so that you can walk in to a neat desk the next day.

28. Make a list of all of the commitments and social obligations that you have in the next 100 days. Then, take out a red pen and cross out anything that does not truly bring you joy or help move you along the path to achieving your main life goals.

29. For the next 100 days, every time that you switch to a new activity throughout the day stop and ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time at this moment?”

Health

30. Losing a pound of fat requires burning 3500 calories.  If you reduce your caloric intake by 175 calories a day for the next 100 days, you’ll have lost 5 pounds in the next 100 days.

31. For the next 100 days, eat five servings of vegetables every day.

32.  For the next 100 days, eat three servings of fruit of every day.

33. Choose one food that constantly sabotages your efforts to eat healthier—whether it’s the decadent cheesecake from the bakery around the corner, deep-dish pizza, or your favorite potato chips—and go cold turkey for the next 100 days.

34.  For the next 100 days, eat from a smaller plate to help control portion size.

35. For the next 100 days, buy 100% natural juices instead of the kind with added sugar and preservatives.

36. For the next 100 days, instead of carbonated drinks, drink water.

37. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix breakfast meals.

38. Create a list of 20 healthy, easy to fix meals which can be eaten for lunch or dinner.

39. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix snacks.

40. Use your lists of healthy breakfast meals, lunches, dinners, and snacks in order to plan out your meals for the week ahead of time. Do this for the next 14 weeks.

41. For the next 100 days, keep a food log. This will help you to identify where you’re deviating from your planned menu, and where you’re consuming extra calories.

42. For the next 100 days, get at least twenty minutes of daily exercise.

43. Wear a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps, every day, for the next 100 days. Every step you take during the day counts toward the 10,000 steps:

• When you walk to your car.
• When you walk from your desk to the bathroom.
• When you walk over to talk to a co-worker, and so on.

44. Set up a weight chart and post it up in your bathroom. Every week for the next 14 weeks, keep track of the following:

• Your weight.
• Your percentage of body fat.
• Your waist circumference.

45. For the next 100 days, set your watch to beep once an hour, or set up a computer reminder, to make sure that you drink water on a regular basis throughout the day.

46. For the next 100 days, make it a daily ritual to mediate, breath, or visualize every day in order to calm your mind.

Your Relationship

47.   For the next 100 days, actively look for something positive in your partner every day, and write it down.

48. Create a scrapbook of all the things you and your partner do together during the next 100 days. At the end of the 100 days, give your partner the list you created of positive things you observed about them each day, as well as the scrapbook you created.

49. Identify 3 actions that you’re going to take each day, for the next 100 days, in order to strengthen your relationship. These can include the following:

• Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” to your significant other every morning.
• Hug your significant other as soon as you see each other after work.
• Go for a twenty minute walk together every day after dinner; hold hands.

Social

50. Connect with someone new every day for the next 100 days, whether it’s by greeting a neighbor you’ve never spoken to before, following someone new on Twitter, leaving a comment on a blog you’ve never commented on before, and so on.

51. For the next 100 days, make it a point to associate with people you admire, respect and want to be like.

52. For the next 100 days, when someone does or says something that upsets you, take a minute to think over your response instead of answering right away.

53. For the next 100 days, don’t even think of passing judgment until you’ve heard both sides of the story.

54. For the next 100 days do one kind deed for someone every day, however small, even if it’s just sending a silent blessing their way.

55. For the next 100 days, make it a point to give praise and approval to those who deserve it.

56. For the next 100 days, practice active listening. When someone is talking to you, remain focused on what they’re saying, instead of rehearsing in your head what you’re going to say next. Paraphrase what you think you heard them say to make sure that you haven’t misinterpreted them, and encourage them to elaborate on any points you’re still not clear about.

57. Practice empathy for the next 100 days. If you disagree with someone, try to see the world from their perspective; put yourself in their shoes. Be curious about the other person, about their beliefs and their life experience, and about the thinking process that they followed to reach their conclusions.

58. For the next 100 days, stay in your own life and don’t compare yourself to anyone else.

59. For the next 100 days, place the best possible interpretation on the actions of others.

60. For the next 100 days, keep reminding yourself that everyone is doing the best that they can.

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You do not want to be happy all the time

Happiness is transient.  It comes and goes.  

You do not want to be happy all the time.  You'd go crazy.  Are you "happy" when you're seeing a sad movie crying your little eyes out?  Are you "happy" when you are on a roller coaster having the shit scared out of you?

No.  Happiness is a transient emotion that is one of many emotions we experience over the course of our lives.  We don't want to feel it all the time.  We want variety.  From that variety comes contrast and flavor that we like, that makes us content.  

Now, if your question is "contentment", then that would be a different thing.

Some people aren't content unless they are unhappy, or in pain, or high, or killing someone else, or being beaten by someone else.  

Contentment is the ultimate state we seek to be in, not happiness.  Permanenthappiness is frightening, boring and ultimately a dystopia.

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happy quotes

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” 
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

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“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

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“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” 
― Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married

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“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

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“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.” 
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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Tips for happy Life

So I used to want to be liked. Hell, I still do. We all do. We want people to think we’re cool, interesting, and fun. We want attention. Some want more personalized attention, some want everyone to look at and listen to them.

Over the years I’ve become an expert at trying to become interesting. I thought that’s how people would come to like me. And you know what?

It worked.

Interesting obviously means different things to different people, but I held this romanticized notion in my head that if I do all these random, “interesting” things, for some reason there would be more love from the world for me at the end of the tunnel. And there was.

I’ve cooled off a little on this front. But it’s something that I have to work through and get over – because it doesn’t lead to peace.

But it can be a hell of a lot of fun in the meantime.

1) “Are you having a good day?”

“Whatsup?” It’s the most common question/non-question. It’s terrible. It doesn’t start conversations, nor does it show that you care. Nor do people have to think. It’s a loser. No.

You have to break people out of their habitual responses. “Are you having a good day?” requires a yes or no response, which can prompt a “Why?” “Why?” is the secret to getting closer with ANYONE.

Other questions that break people out of habitual patterns:

“Anything good happen/happening today?”

Judgment based on emotion* “You seem ____, what’s going on/up?”

Just not “Whatsup?”

2) Storytelling hacks

Steve Jobs once remarked that those who truly have power in the world are storytellers. Then he started Pixar.

Storytelling is probably the social skill that takes your personality, straps it to a rocket, and then blasts you to being the life of any social situation. And it’s really simple. From bars to friends to dates to interviews, learning how to tell stories will change your life.

98% of people’s stories can be improved with character development. I’m talking recognizing who is important in your story and building up their personalities. How were they feeling? What are they like? Act them out. Shamelessly. Be loud. Be soft. Use gestures. Act and describe characters.

3) Want to be funnier? Watch Standup Comedy

You will start talking, gesturing, and even thinking like your favorite standup comedians. I personally went from being an incredibly shy person to becoming a sort of class clown. In two months. Seriously, I watched comedy everyday and it wore off on me.

This is sort of like the “you are the five people you spend the most time with rule”, except you DECIDE who you spend time with. It’s genius, trust me.

4) Set cues to smile through your day

Arriving to work? Make sure you smile when you walk in. Visualize walking through the door and grinning. Lunch finished? Same thing. This will not only make you happier, but will make everyone around you happier, which will make you happier, and will start a perpetual cycle of positive emotions that will waterfall over your smiling face everyday.

You should do this at least three times a day.

5) Give yourself 1/3 of the time to finish most tasks

You are far more capable than you give yourself credit. For most things (not all – but most – some work should really take time but I leave that to your discretion), imagine you only had a third of the time to finish it. Make that time real. Really feel it. You will.

Watch your creativity, insightfulness, and concentration triple within minutes.

Because you have to get this done, right? If you don’t make the feeling real, then you won’t reap the benefits from this no matter how hard you try. So it’s important to really feel, really believe, and really seed the idea in your head that you must finish in a third of the time. Creatives need deadlines. It makes them more creative.

6) Meditate – in everything you do

Meditate, yes. But be lost in the things you do. And I literally mean take pleasure in washing dishes. Focus on the thing you are doing. Don’t think about what you have to do or how far away you are.

This allows you to be fearless.

This might sound stupid, but yesterday I did 1,000 pushups for the 20X your potential challenge (link). I meditated for almost the entire thing. I didn’t do 1,000 pushups. I did 50X 20 pushups. And it worked. I did 1,000. It didn’t seem crazy when it was happening, only looking back.

Do you think LeBron James thinks in the act of throwing down a dunk “damn, it’s crazy that I can jump this high, I wonder if I’ll be on ESPN tonight”? No! He thinks it seconds after. Not while doing.

Meditate in everything. Take leaps. Watch what you can do.

7) Order spicier food

Or food that you don’t recognize the name of.

8) Walk, bike, or hitchhike wherever you need to go

I just traveled like this around France by myself for the holidays. It was amazing.

It’s much more creative. It’s much healthier. Better for the planet. Better for your social skills. Your world experience. And in the case of hitchhiking, it is simply more fun, you meet more interesting people, and have great fodder for those stories you are going to tell.

9) “Word association”

Run out of things to say? Awkward conversation. Never. Again.

Person talking about their trip to Costa Rica? What do you think of when you think of Costa Rica? Beach? Tan? Surfing? Beer? Palm trees? That one time your friend went and something crazy happened?

The more you do this, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll be able to talk and think of witty things to say on the spot for any situation. It takes practice in the beginning, but is a useful way to never have an awkward silence again.

10) Be interested in history

Look. Where we came from, why we’re here, what our ancestors did, all influence who we are. It’s like learning more about yourself. You weren’t teleported to this earth from a spaceship. You literally sprouted from it. We all did, just like everything else.

The best cure for apathy, depression, etc. is curiosity. You will have a much richer life when you learn the context of where things came from and how.

In fact, the most important thing for learning anything is to be interested. This (by experience) is something you can force, but at the same time it helps to follow things you already like. Learn the history. Who inspired Jimi Hendrix? I don’t know. But if you like the guitar, you sure as hell should.

11) Go into nature

Along the lines of the “you’re human so be interested in human things” track, most of the civilized world has forgotten about nature. Yeah, we see pictures on buzzfeed or whatever, but it’s not the same.

Go camping and don’t bring a phone. Go swimming in a lake. Jump off a waterfall. There are parts of our mind and body that have long been inactive because they have become desensitized.

Go climb a mountain.

12) Do an activity (preferably weird – weightlifting doesn’t count)

And like it. Or learn to like it.

Yoga. Muay Thai. Salsa dancing. Cooking classes. Body weight exercise. Whatever. Experiment if you don’t know what you like. 

I have done/do all of the above and have met a ton of people as well as had a richer life experience and have seen myself do things I never thought I would or could do.

13) Get better at sex

14) Beginner’s Mind

Forget about being interesting. Most of that is done by being interested – in nature, history, capoeira, improving your Spanish, and having better, deeper conversations with people. Be interested.

Meditating helps with this a lot (Beginner’s Mind is a Zen concept), but fundamentally it’s easy to apply. Try not to fall into your conditioned way of seeing the world that thinks, “work at 9, lunch at 12, I have to go to the gym at 6, and then do it all over again.” No. With the meditating in everything you do technique (number six), see what’s in front of you. If you can do this, and can do it well, you won’t have a want for interest. Everything will be interesting.

And to other people, you will be too. But to you, that won’t matter. 

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best dating advice you will ever hear

Think about this for a moment: Why would you ever choose to be with someone who is not excited to be with you?

There’s a grey area in dating many people get hung up on — a grey area where feelings are ambiguous or one person has stronger feelings than the other. This grey area causes real, tangible issues. As a man, a huge question is often whether to be persistent and continue pursuing a woman even when she seems lukewarm or hot/cold on your advances. For women, a common question is what to do with men who make their feelings ambiguous.

“She said she’s not interested, but she still flirts with me, so what do I need to do to get her?”
“Well, I know she likes me, but she didn’t call me back last weekend, what should I do?”
“He treats me well when he’s around, but he’s hardly around. What does that mean?”

Most dating advice exists to “solve” this grey area for people. Say this line. Text her this. Call him this many times. Wear that.

Much of it gets exceedingly analytical, to the point where some men and women actually spend more time analyzing behaviors than actually, you know, behaving.

Frustration with this grey area also drives many people to unnecessary manipulation, drama and game-playing. This is where you get rules about making men pay for this many dates before you can become intimate. Or how men need to transition from attraction phase to comfort phase by qualifying three times before they’re allowed to commence an escalation ladder.

These things may seem clever and exciting to some people who are stuck or frustrated. But this dating advice misses the point. If you’re in the grey area to begin with, you’ve already lost.

Let me ask again: Why would you ever be excited to be with someone who is not excited to be with you? If they’re not happy with you now, what makes you think they’ll be happy to be with you later? Why do you make an effort to convince someone to date you when they make no effort to convince you?

What does that say about you? That you believe you need to convince people to be with you?

You wouldn’t buy a dog that bites you all the time. And you wouldn’t be friends with someone who regularly ditches you. You wouldn’t work a job that doesn’t pay you. Then why the hell are you trying to make a girlfriend out of a woman who doesn’t want to date you? Where’s your self-respect?

The entrepreneur Derek Sivers once wrote a blog post where he said, “If I’m not saying ‘Hell Yeah!’ to something, then I say no.” It served him well in the business world and now I’d like to apply it to the dating world. And because I’m more of a vulgar asshole than Derek is, I’ll christen mine The Law of “Fuck Yes or No.”

The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” states that when you want to get involved with someone new, in whatever capacity, they must inspire you to say “Fuck Yes” in order for you to proceed with them.

The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” also states that when you want to get involved with someone new, in whatever capacity, THEY must respond with a “Fuck Yes” in order for you to proceed with them.

As you can see, The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” implies that both parties must be enthusiastic about the prospect of one another’s company. Why? Because attractive, non-needy, high self-worth people don’t have time for people who they are not excited to be with and who are not excited to be with them.

This may sound a bit idealistic to some. But The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” has many tangible benefits on your dating life:

1. No longer be strung along by people who aren’t that into you. End all of the headaches. End the wishing and hoping. End the disappoint and anger that inevitably follows. Start practicing self-respect. Become the rejector, not the rejected.
2. No longer pursue people you are so-so on for ego purposes. We’ve all been there. We were so-so about somebody, but we went along with it because nothing better was around. And we all have a few we’d like to take back. No more.
3. Consent issues are instantly resolved. If someone is playing games with you, playing hard to get, or pressuring you into doing something you’re unsure about, your answer is now easy. Or as I often like to say in regards to dating, “If you have to ask, then that’s your answer.”
4. Establish strong personal boundaries and enforce them. Maintaining strong boundaries not only makes one more confident and attractive, but also helps to preserve one’s sanity in the long-run.
5. Always know where you stand with the other person. Since you’re now freeing up so much time and energy from people you’re not that into, and people who are not that into you, you now find yourself perpetually in interactions where people’s intentions are clear and enthusiastic. Sweet!

The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” is applicable to dating, sex, relationships, even friendships. You may have absolutely nothing in common with that bartender. But they’re hot and are interested in getting down. Is it a “Fuck Yes!” for sex? It is? Then game on.

Wrapped up in that sweet guy who treats you so well, except goes weeks without calling you and suddenly disappears after a couple drinks and a round of the horizontal polka? Been wondering if he really likes you? Do his excuses of being so busy all the time seem legit? It doesn’t sound like the answer is a “Fuck yes.” Then it’s time to move on.

Making out with a girl at your house and every time you go to take her shirt off she swats your hands away? That is not a “Fuck Yes,” my friend, therefore, it’s a no and you shouldn’t pressure her. The best sex is “Fuck Yes” sex — i.e., both people are shouting “Fuck Yes” as they hop between the sheets together. If she’s not hopping, then there’s no fucking.

(Hint Fellas: This is a great time to ask the girl why she’s not comfortable, and what she’s looking for from you. That, by itself — you know, treating her like a human and empathizing with her — often solves this “problem.”)

Want to date that woman you met last weekend but she keeps ignoring your texts and calls? Not sure what to say or do, especially since she seemed so happy to go out with you when you initially met her? Well, my friend, this is obviously not a “Fuck Yes.” Therefore, it is a “No.” Delete her number and move on.

Fuck Yes or No applies to relationships as well. My girlfriend works with a guy who got married because “it seemed like the right thing to do.” Four years later, he was cheating on his wife every chance he got. The marriage was not a Fuck Yes for him, therefore it should have been a No.

Sometimes The Law of Fuck Yes or No will apply differently on different levels. You may be a “Fuck Yes” for friendship with someone, but mildly excited to have sex with them. Therefore, it’s a no. You may be a “Fuck Yes” on banging someone’s brains out, but a definite “No” on actually spending any time with them. Apply the law to your decision-making as it suits your current needs.

Fuck Yes or No doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be falling in knee-wobbling love at first sight. It doesn’t even mean you have be completely convinced that someone is right for you. You can be “Fuck Yes” about getting to know someone better. You can be “Fuck Yes” about seeing someone again because you think there’s something there. You can be “Fuck Yes” about giving things a few months to pan out and see if you can fix the problems in the relationship.

The point is: both you and the other person need to be fuck yes about something, otherwise you’re just wasting your time.

A common Fuck Yes response from a woman. Flowers and all.

But the real beauty of The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” is that it simplifies the problems you can have in your dating life. When applying the Law of “Fuck Yes or No,” there are really only two problems one can have.

The first problem is people who never feel a “Fuck Yes” for anybody they meet. If you are lukewarm on absolutely everyone you meet, then either your demographics are way off, or you suffer from a lack of vulnerability and are protecting yourself by remaining indifferent and unenthused by all of those around you.

Remember, it’s your job to look for something cool in everyone you meet; it’s not their job to show you. This is life, not a fucking sales convention. Learning to appreciate people you meet is a skill you cultivate. So get on it. This doesn’t mean you have to fall in love with everyone who breathes in your direction. It just means you need to take responsibility for your ability to connect with the people you are meeting.

The second problem is people who never meet others who feel a “Fuck Yes” for them. If all of the people you pursue give you a mild response, or outright rejections, then it’s time to focus on improving yourself. Ask yourself, what is it about yourself that would inspire others to say “Fuck Yes” about you? If the answer is not obvious, then you get to work. Build yourself into a person others would say “Fuck Yes” to.

And this is the ultimate dating advice lesson — man, woman, gay, straight, trans, furry, whatever — the only real dating advice is self improvement. Everything else is a distraction, a futile battle in the grey area, a prolonged ego trip. Because, yes, with the right tools and performance, you may be able to con somebody into sleeping with you, dating you, even marrying you. But you will have won the battle by sacrificing the war, the war of long-term happiness.

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