be a better person Archives - Page 2 of 11

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Stop Hating My Body?

October 16, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 85 Comments

Hello. I came to you because of an online friend. I have struggled with anorexia since I was 12. I’m almost 14 now. I came here because people won’t take me seriously because of my age.

I also struggle with depression and severe anxiety, neither of which help with my case. I am about 5’2 and weigh approx. 113 pounds. I used to weigh only 98, but after treatments and therapy my weight has been increasing.

I find it very hard to reach out to people because of this. When my anxiety kicks in, it’s practically impossible. I just switched schools because I couldn’t face returning to my peers after they knew about my disorder. I need some help, because if I can’t find ways to cope with how my body looks, I’ll most likely drop out of school again.

After gaining weight in therapy, I’ve felt so horrible about how I look. Most of my peers are 3 or 4 inches taller than me and weigh 10 or 20 pounds less. I need some help with overcoming these feelings and not letting my anxiety get the best of me.

Stranger in The Mirror

[Read more…]

5 Ways You Sabotage Your Love Life

May 18, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 506 Comments

One of the most important things I can teach people about dating is simple: dating success is 80% attitude and 20% skill and presentation. No matter how good looking you may be or how suave you may think you are, a shitty attitude is going to sabotage your success and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Behind every hot man is a line of people who are absolutely sick of his shit.

One of the things that people rarely seem to understand is how your attitude and beliefs color everything you do. Like the elephant and the mahout, what you believe controls what you perceive. When you believe that women, for example, are hypergamous bitches who are obsessed with status, you’re going to see everything as being a shit test. When you think that women only date men who are $Quality_You_Don’t_Have, you’re going to sabotage your own love life by missing out on the women who dig what you have to offer; you will literally miss every single signal and indication that they send you.

Let’s look at some of the most common self-limiting beliefs that men have that sabotage their love-lives.

[Read more…]

The 5 Things You Need To Do To Fix Your Life

February 16, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 18 Comments

There’s a truism when it comes to dating: the problems you have in your dating life are a reflection of the problems you have in your daily life.

One of key aspects to the NerdLove approach to dating is that the key to having more success in your social life – whether it’s more sex, more dates or just finding an amazing relationship – is to become a better, more interesting, more authentic person. It’s trying to get there that’s the problem. This is one of the reasons why people like to toss out platitudes like “just be yourself” as dating advice – it sounds like a profound and meaningful answer that covers up the real answer of “I really don’t know what to tell you”.

"Or you just didn't offer the right blood sacrifice to Nyarlathotep." — Or “you just didn’t offer the right blood sacrifice to Nyarlathotep.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to self-improvement, most advice tends to focus on the surface issues and quick fixes. This is why pick-up artistry is so appealing; it offers magic bullet solutions and push-button answers to dating. But dealing with the surface issues is like giving a house a fresh coat of paint; it may look nicer on the outside, but the foundation problems are going to make everything worse.

There are no quick fixes when it comes to self-improvement; if you want a better life, you have to dig deep and put in the work. But there are ways to make the process easier, less stressful and get you the lasting results you actually want.

[Read more…]

The (Positive) Value of Anger

February 9, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 92 Comments

Valentine’s Day (or as I like to call it, the Day of Lover’s Obligation) is coming up this week, and if you’re single or otherwise just wanting to go out to eat, odds are you’re pretty frustrated. In fact, with the world seemingly contriving to constantly rub your nose in your singleness, odds are high that you may be a bit angry.

Good.

See, normally, I’d give my usual rant about how Valentine’s is a completely invented holiday that ultimately is about horny werewolves rather than romantic love but instead, I want to do something different. You see, rather than encouraging people to swallow their resentment (or at least not write another hot take about the annoyance of being single on a day when all the happy couples are canoodling in your face), I want to teach you how to channel and use that anger. Because quite frankly, we’ve been sold a load of shit when it comes to anger. Yeah, we get told that anger is the path to the Dark Side, but that’s by the same people who insist that only Sith use absolutes which is in and of itself an absolute and let’s be honest: how well did that work for them?

And hey, while you're at it, make the emotionally stunted, socially awkward virgin live alone with the ONLY woman of his species he's ever met besides his mother in one of the most romantic places in the universe and forbid him from so much as jerking it. — Hey, you know what’s a great idea? Take a guy with a traumatic childhood that leaves him stunted emotionally and refuse to give him the tools to process his feelings because he shouldn’t be feeling them in the first place. And then give him a laser sword and telekinetic powers.

But the Sith aren’t any better about anger either. Giving into inchoate rage is even less productive than trying to choke it down.

Instead, I’m going to teach you how to use your anger… the right way.

[Read more…]

How To Improve Your Willpower

January 19, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 32 Comments

Every year we go through a familiar ritual that culminates with a failure of willpower. Everyone makes promises about how they’re going to do something better in the new year and then promptly forgets all about it before the month is even over. In fact, right now, I’m watching the usual influx of New Years gym memberships filter out after clogging the treadmills and weight machines for three weeks. Similarly, people are giving up on their promises to quit smoking, to eat better, to flirt more, to learn a new language – all of those self-improvement regimens that were supposed to make them better people in 2015.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING JUDGE ME!" — “DON’T YOU FUCKING JUDGE ME!”

It’s not that they don’t sincerely intend to do better. It’s all because they lack the willpower.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that they’re weak or bad people. Most of us don’t realize that willpower is a finite resource. When you run out of willpower you fall into a state known as “ego-depletion” – it becomes incredibly difficult, almost impossible even, to control your impulses. This is why it’s so easy to let your resolution to hit the gym five times a week slip to three… then to two… then to “haven’t been in two months”. This is why when you’ve had a long day, all you want to do is collapse on the couch and zone out to a Castle marathon on Netflix. It’s why diets notoriously don’t work. You reach the limits of your willpower and your ability to resist the siren call of pizza evaporates into thin air like Green Lantern’s ring running out of power.