[Today is the forty-second in a series on daily and weekly beliefs that improve my life and may improve yours, in no particular order. See the introduction to the series and the value of flexibility in beliefs for background.]
People commonly believe that beautiful women have better lives than everybody else and that they have access to more valuable things. I came across that belief a lot when I used to go out dancing a lot. The evidence seemed overwhelming — they automatically get invited to the best parties, they get past the doorpeople, men buy them drinks if the club doesn’t already give them, and so on. In regular life, studies show attractive people get paid more, get promoted more, and so on.
Sounds great if you’re a beautiful woman, but what if you aren’t?
Before today’s belief shows you what you can get, let me first poke a few holes in the old belief.
Interlude: Beauty alone doesn’t make life rewarding. Everyone gets emotional reward the same way, and it requires effort.
First, I’m not so sure how much the free drinks and invitations improve their lives. Sure, they get the pleasure of luxury and maybe even some happiness, but getting something through something you were born with and didn’t put your own effort into deprives you of the chance to feel emotional reward for it.
I wrote recently about the difference between pleasure, happiness, and reward. Living a life without reward turns pleasure and happiness into distraction from the lack of meaning, value, importance, and purpose (MVIP) from lack of reward.
Second, most of the models, dancers, and other beautiful women I met worked hard for what they got too, and they felt reward from their efforts, so beauty doesn’t prevent you from feeling reward. Not contributing your own effort does. Nor does being beautiful mean that’s what got you what you got.
Anyway, today’s belief is not about beauty. It’s about how anyone can get what the mainstream believes beautiful women get.
A model to live like beautiful people do: Charisma gets you everything beauty could, and you can develop as much charisma as you want.
I noticed when I went out that my guy friends could get more people past doorpeople than beautiful women could. And those guys weren’t beautiful women.
So what got them in?
My friends weren’t rich. They didn’t come from special families.
They had charisma. They had social skills. I didn’t, but I found I could copy them and, with practice, get better. The most common searches to my site are to my social skills exercises so people know they can improve.
Two experiences that drove this belief home for me were
- When using the skills I learned from my charismatic friends helped get me into business school.
- One time when a bouncer told me to go inside and have fun, almost pushing me in, despite not being on any list nor knowing anyone and there being a long line. I had just been having fun with him and he decided the place would be better with me in it than not. I’m far from a beautiful woman myself.
When I use this belief
I use this belief when I think anyone anywhere has an easier time than me, or that anyone has life handed to them on a silver platter. I don’t begrudge anyone any so-called “privilege” that I don’t have because things like money you didn’t earn, connections your family got you, beauty you were born, or whatever with may get someone pleasure or even some happiness, but rich, complex emotional reward still requires your effort.
And that’s where MVIP comes from.
What this belief replaces
This belief replaces enviously wishing I was somebody else, powerlessly feeling like a victim of fate, with the ability to do something about it. It reinforces the importance of social skills and responsibility.
Where this belief leads
This belief leads to learning charisma and other social skills, which brings better relationships, better business, more fun, more ability to do complex things that require teams, and so on.
It also gets you into clubs.
People will call you beautiful too, appreciating that you helped them remember beauty isn’t purely visual.
I talked with a hot girl today, and she told me straight out that she got hired to a clerk job at a vitamin shop by a manager that wanted to hit on her every day, all day. She even said she got a job doing security at an office building where all she did was sign in horny guys all day who were happy to see her at the door, even though the chances of her saving them in an emergency were slim to none. She’s made enough money to travel the world, and I did feel tons of envy.
What does your model breaking try to tell me? That working hard on my social skills will be more rewarding in the long run? Or that she isn’t fulfilled by her life getting tons of attention and easy favors thrown at her? I take this as a hard pill to swallow.
I know the feeling. Someone with no more going for them than you or I have gets opportunities to make money, get access to places, and so on through nothing more than an accident of birth.
It took me a while, but I learned I could get what a beautiful woman could. I couldn’t just smile and get it. I had to work at developing social skills, but those social skills got me what she gets. Not exactly the same, but I could get a lot. I learned it from seeing people getting stuff that beautiful people couldn’t, even in places like New York City clubs, which value beauty and female more than most places.
That’s the main point. That regular people can get what others get, through charisma and other social skills.
You can’t stop society from valuing beauty and females in situations like you described. But you can create value others recognize.
Pingback: Men, women, attraction, and power » Joshua Spodek