I'm trying to use Andy's kickass slight edge article to reverse these behaviors, and I'm finding it tricky to break this down into discreet, measurable goals. Here are some ideas I have for discreet sub-goals:
- Be very emotionally expressive while playing video games while my roommate is around. This means get excited, yell at the TV, celebrate, get mad, etc. I currently suppress all of this so as not to "annoy" my roommate.
- Whistle/sing at full volume when my roommate is home, with no sense of "holding myself back" at all
- When someone asks if I want to do something that I don't really want to do (e.g., my roommate asking if I want to watch a movie), say no, confidently and not apologetically
- My brother gave me a Trump hat. I don't necessarily like Trump (I don't want this to turn into a political discussion), but my roommate is very liberal, so I want to get comfortable wearing the hat around him. A baby-step toward this would be watching conservative YouTube videos around him (e.g., Jordan Peterson). I'm very afraid that he'd get actively angry and/or not want to be friends anymore if he thought I was a Trump supporter.
- Get comfortable saying "fuck" around my parents. I was raised Christian, so this would be pretty hard, since I would expect a not-so-great reaction from them. But I'm an adult so they shouldn't get to control what language I'm allowed to use anymore.
- Say politically incorrect things around my politically-correct friends (e.g., "gay", "retard")
Additionally, some of these are logistically hard to practice. That is, for some of them I'm at the mercy of a specific event arising (e.g., someone asking if I want to do something I don't want to do), and then I basically get one shot at successfully acting how I'm trying to act in that scenario. I miss the days when my main goal was hitting on one girl a day, because there were basically an infinite stream of opportunities, so if I chickened out, I could just immediately try again. But with something like learning to say "no" to people, that opportunity arises maybe...once a week? So if I chicken out in the moment (which is likely), I gotta wait another week to try again, and when the opportunity arises again, it'll probably catch me off guard and I won't be likely to take advantage of it.
Also, has anyone dealt with and successfully overcome this kind of "nice guy" stuff before? I've been reading a lot of "theory" about it (lots of books and stuff), but I want to actually start translating this into discreet action steps.
For anyone else trying to improve in this area, I highly recommend the book Not Nice: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Nice-Pleasin ... NrPXRydWU=