A side effect of – and an exercise in – Your Story Isn’t About You is to release your judgement of strangers.

You can quickly realise just how much smarter and more thoughtful most folks are. Yeah, even the ones you disagree with. Especially them, since you have such low opinions of them already.

What people do – it makes sense to them.

“Hey… aren’t you judging people for being judgemental? And didn’t you just send an email blasting ‘the commies’ a few hours ago?”

Why, yes, I did.

Of course I criticise commies. They want to create a system with less wealth, less freedom and less equality. They hate capitalism – fine, it has its flaws, but their system is worse by every measure.

So that’s self-defence.

But, sure, I judge folks for being judgemental too.

Doesn’t that make me a hypocrite?

Yes. Obviously. But keep listening, because nowhere did I say that no one should ever be judgemental ever. If someone is being stupid and dangerous, I’ll shame them for that.

The lesson from Your Story Isn’t About You isn’t to never judge anyone for anything. It’s that judgement always comes with a price, and you’d be a lot happier and more successful if you stopped paying it.

Judge less. Not never – less.

That’s the lesson.

If you refuse to learn from hypocrites, I understand. Good luck getting far while refusing to learn from anyone though. I hope those pointless principles keep you warm as you push everyone else away.

Ah, dangit, I’m judging again.

Oh well.

Here’s how you can get your free copy of Your Story Isn’t About You:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

The commies sure do shriek about a lot, huh?

And one of the frequent ear-bleeders they belt out through megaphones and keyboards is:

“Check your privilege!!!”

They say this as though they have no privilege themselves.

And they act as though men are all princes born into wealth and superpowers, whose complaints don’t get worse than the occasional stubbed toe.

They’re wrong about all that. No surprises there – being commies, they’re wrong about a lot. Hey, I’m sympathetic to the goals of socialists. I just wonder when they’ll learn the evidence overwhelmingly points away from communism as the best way to achieve them.

But I’m not one to denounce any group as being entirely useless.

Let’s take their advice (demands?) and check in with our privileges.

Maybe the commies would like to join us? After all, hair dye and vegan diets are luxuries few folks through history have been able to enjoy.

Checking…

Checking…

Yep, I have privilege. A lot of it. I’m better off than a black slave girl from colonial America by so many different metrics.

I don’t say that flippantly. I’m grateful for the wealth and freedom I can enjoy.

Part of that is because I can empathise with the plight of others. Not fully understand them – no one can fully understand another’s struggle – but I get how that would suck.

It’s easy to empathise when you read, reread and apply Your Story Isn’t About You.

It has a way of taking the blinders off and really getting in someone else’s perspective.

Commies don’t think that I, being a Western man who likes capitalism, can do that. But they think replacing small businesses with big government is an improvement, so what do they know?

If you’d like to join me on my journey of feelings and understanding, here’s your link:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

An uncomfortable but inspiring exercise:

Imagine being a ghost at your own funeral.

How awful would that be? Seeing all your loved ones, hearts breaking and grieving as they send your remains off to eternity.

Being able to see and hear them, but not touch them, not even deliver a final word of comfort…

The value of this exercise is, if you do it right, you’d give anything for just one more day. Anything.

Then you can return to the present moment, where you still have time.

Struggle with gratitude? That will sort you out real quick. If you can’t imagine being grateful for every breath, then you will be after this funeral meditation.

Another benefit of this morbid exercise in stoicism?

Seeing that the world will go on without you.

Your story will continue without you.

Now, without you around, your story will be different. And how happy it is and how long it goes for depend on your legacy.

If you moved people, then your story will continue through them – and through the folks they inspire in turn.

It doesn’t end with your death.

Thank God for that. It keeps it from being a short story.

And this frame of mind will help you complete the exercises in Your Story Isn’t About You – my practical guide to combating Failures of Sentience.

Failures of Sentience are moments of anti-stoicism, where your weakness, selfishness and cruelty bubble through to hurt you and those around you.

They’re really no good.

And every time you do one, your legacy wilts and your story grows a little shorter, darker and sadder.

But overcoming them is easier than you might think. In fact, a lot of it comes down to what you don’t do.

Focusing on a few of these for a few weeks will make you feel better and be better.

Master all of them and you’ll be exceptionally sane, stable and spiffy.

Download your free copy when you sign up here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

I remember in my teen years seeing a tennis racquet advertising itself as being 23% more comfortable.

Oh, how I laughed and laughed…

That’s such a specific number – too specific for such a subjective experience. Also, it’s more compared to what?

I assume it meant something like 23% more padding or whatever, but that’s not what it said.

So be sceptical of my claim that you can be 44% more stoic.

I mean, I did measure it. It’s not like I made up that percentage. But still…

Here’s how I calculated 44%:

I was reading an article on stoicism – the philosophy of chads and emperors. It included nine principles of stoicism – nine concepts that, if you mastered, would greatly enrich your life.

And the lives of those around you.

Of those nine, Your Story Isn’t About You emphatically trains you in four of these principles.

Like how to release a lot of your fear and anger.

And why you shouldn’t blame anyone else for your lot in life.

The importance of relationships.

Cooperation as a high ideal.

Do the maths – those four out of the nine principles make up 44% of the lot. You can’t improve on any of those while stuck in your own perspective, failing to see the world as others do. It’s easy to isolate yourself and play the victim as you forget that you can, in fact, remember to imagine yourself as someone else.

I didn’t write Your Story Isn’t About You as a stoic text but… well, it’s right there in the title. That’s a damn stoic take on life, isn’t it?

Maybe that’s why it’s so transformative. Reading, rereading and applying it trains you to spot your own Failures of Sentience – which are also some of your failures of stoicism.

The other 56% of stoicism is up to you.

Actually… wouldn’t 100% of stoicism be “up to you…”?

Oh well. Learn more about the 44% I can help you with here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

You might not know it, but you have a process you go through when you make a purchase.

For example, you might need to see the product, talk to someone (a salesperson, your partner, yourself) about it, then feel it with your hands.

In that order.

People have different processes, but they’re often something similar to that.

“Not me!” you might say. “Why would I need to touch it? I make all my buying decisions based on logic!”

Yeah and so does everyone.

But there have been times when you didn’t make a purchase, even when it made sense for you to buy it. Something just felt off about it.

Or that time you looked at dozen interchangeable options for something unimportant, then picked whatever. How did you choose that particular whatever? At random? Unlikely. Based on a gut feeling or the design of the box? Yeah, exactly.

Logic is a key factor in a purchase. No vegan is going to buy a steak, no matter what else is going on.

But logic alone isn’t enough. You also have to get a feel for it, sound it out and see how it looks.

It’s worth learning your purchasing strategy.

Especially if you’re in sales – because then you won’t mistake your strategy for everyone else’s.

You might have a process like I described above. The potential customer in front of you might need to talk it through in their mind, touch the product and then visualise it fitting in with their stuff at home.

Those are different strategies. If you try to sell to them the way you like to be sold to, you’ll fumble.

Even if it “makes sense” for them to buy.

It pays to be able to see the salient issue in sales (the sale-ient issue?). What drives your customer? How do they see the world?

You won’t see those answers through the fog of your own delusions.

How you think isn’t how everyone else thinks. You know that to be true, intellectually, but it’s easy to forget that in the moment. It’s easy to fall into bad habits of thought and project like crazy.

Until, that is, you read, reread and apply Your Story Isn’t About You.

That doesn’t solve the problem, but it makes it a lot harder to delude yourself. You’ll recognise quite a few ways you fail to see people as they are, instead of as you are.

This lack of self-awareness is rampant in society and especially on social media.

That’s why I give Your Story Isn’t About You at no charge.

Here’s more info about it:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Why don’t we let children vote in elections?

Because they’re not smart, mature or experienced enough for the responsibility.

Fair enough. There’s no real mystery there.

But…

… if it’s not discrimination for its own sake…

… if it’s because of the way children think…

why do we let adults who think like children vote?

Seriously. Plenty of adults resent anyone more successful than they are – being petulant and mainlining copium by saying how they must have cheated their way into success.

Other adults take every criticism and rejection personally. They walk around ready to be petty and throw tantrums at the slightest “insult” – even if it was good feedback. You know – professional, true and exactly what they needed to hear.

Then there are those who don’t seem to have mastered theory of mind yet. They project like wild, spending every moment deep in the assumption that everyone thinks like them.

Honestly?

Plenty of pre-teens are smarter and wiser than folks like this.

That’s why I wrote Your Story Isn’t About You. I used to make those mistakes – and plenty more besides. If I’d had a guide like this when I was younger, I would have skipped a lot of misery and pain.

All of that pain being my own creations, of course.

I was petty, jealous, confused, weak and unhappy.

Figuring out how I was thinking like a child was a big part in me turning that around.

Because we all have moments where we revert – where gravity takes over and pulls us down into naiveté and stupidity.

Children are too petty, emotional and judgemental to have a grasp on the issues.

But are you really any better than they are?

Are you actively deceiving yourself, every day? If you think you aren’t… how can you be sure?

These childish patterns of thought can linger, sabotaging you in strange ways.

The best way to bring them to the surface is by reading, rereading and applying Your Story Isn’t About You. Once you do that with a few dozen symptoms of such solipsistic thinking, you won’t be able to overlook it in yourself.

And you can get your copy using the link in the footer of every email I send.

Do you need to subscribe to my list? If so, you can do that here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

It’s a classic game. Folks must have marvelled at this intriguing phenomenon for generations but, thanks to social media, now everyone can play along from at home.

Ask a young woman how attractive she and her friends are on a scale from 1 to 10.

A common answer?

“We’re all tens.”

Queue the mockery, right? That goes against how men see the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if DiCaprio rated himself an 8.5.

Men like precision and honesty. Knowing you’re a 6 tells you your standing in the world – and how to improve. Giving yourself a perfect ten is an obvious lie. It’s cringeworthy and deranged.

… at least, it is if you’re a guy.

When a woman says she and her friends are all tens, it comes from a different place.

A truly beautiful thing about the feminine mind is the ability to see what’s truly beautiful in those she loves. Thank God, right? That’s how a woman is able to look at a man, see past the scars and love handles, and say he’s the most handsome dude she’s ever been with.

Of course, this can express itself in unhealthy ways. If an average woman feels as though she’s a ten, that can be from her healthy confidence… or a raging narcissism that’s utterly intolerant of the slightest whiff of imperfection.

An example of this in action? The start of Barbie, where anything real or short of perfect was so unthinkable that they refused to face it. They saw Margot Robbie as flawed and ugly because her heels touched the ground.

Margot Robbie.

And if an average girl thinks she deserves a sought-after man – or any man, really – just because she thinks she’s a ten…

But that’s the shadow of this feminine virtue. The ability to see something flawed as perfect might be deluded but, guys, where would we be without such optimistic ladies around?

Besides, you can’t point the finger. Not if you think women should (or already secretly do) think like men.

Or you dismiss something as unimportant because it doesn’t matter to you.

Or if you have simple answers to complex questions. Like, say, you think society would be better if it followed a creed you could fit on a bumper sticker.

Or you think you can psychoanalyse someone off a single tweet.

Face it, you’re just as deluded – but without the adorable femininity to justify it.

Self-deception is human. You can’t free yourself from it. But every lie you tell yourself weakens and paralyses you. It leaves you broken, flawed and blind.

Only the truth can set you free, yet you willingly turn away from it.

The first step to facing it is to admit Your Story Isn’t About You – which is also the name of my guide to recognising your own blind spots.

It includes dozens of sections.

That’s dozens of ways you’re letting yourself miss what’s in front of you.

It’s why I recommend folks read, reread and apply it. Fixing any of these will stop you thinking you’re a ten when you’re really not – and will stop you judging others for that same mistake.

Download it from this page:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

People skills are sometimes called soft skills.

As opposed to hard skills like technical proficiencies.

Soft skills are fuzzy, amorphous and… well… soft.

You might think you need to BE soft to use them.

As in, in touch with your emotions, high on empathy, stuff like that.

Sure, that stuff can help. Obviously. As far as strategies go, it’s a winning one.

Or is it…?

See,  the problem with warm fuzzies is that they can come and go. Logic is the same across the universe, but your good vibes to your fellow folks can disappear if you’ve eaten too little, eaten too much, gotten stressed, worked too little, been distracted lately, been not distracted enough lately or just from how the way they part their hair reminds you of your ex’s new partner.

Even if you know it’s ridiculous, that might not help you in the moment.

As for empathy?

It’s easy for empaths to lose themselves in other people’s lives and problems.

This gives anyone with a cooler, more stoic disposition an advantage sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier to see someone else’s point of view when you’re indifferent to them. It allows you to be clean and clinical, hearing what they’re saying without dragging your issues into things.

You want the other person to feel a connection with you.

The simplest, most reliable way is to first feel a connection with them.

Or, if you want a connection that stands out – one they remember – then you go for something different.

You talk with them, listen, and then you show you understand them:

“Oh, so it’s like X…?”

People are starved of recognition. Sometimes, something as trivial as “Oh, you garden because you like being outside?” does the trick.

You’ll often need a bigger deductive leap than that, though.

That’s where getting outside your perspective and into theirs is helpful. No warm and fuzzies needed – just paying attention and avoiding Failures of Sentience.

That’s how Your Story Isn’t About You can open up new strategies for you. If it involves people, it can help, so read, reread and apply it.

antipater.page/ysiay

I’ve been promoting Your Story Isn’t About You lately – my free guide to avoiding Failures of Sentience. An objection you might have is:

“Look, I take your point. Remembering that others think differently from ourselves is useful. Treating others as sovereign minds with their own valid perspectives is fundamental to respect and learning. But I don’t see how I can learn something like that from a book.”

It’s a fair point, hypothetical objector. No one ever learned anything from reading, so I won’t learn anything from your objection.

Haha, ain’t I funny.

Jokes aside though, because I want to address this. If I were claiming to teach you empathy and theory of mind from a 40-something page guide then, yeah, you’d be right – that’s too much to get from just reading. You already know these things though. I’m simply showing you how you can use what you already have.

Failures of Sentience are like limiters on a rental truck. If you want to go faster, you don’t need to build a new engine – you just need to take out the thing holding you back.

But I wonder where this objection comes from. Have you been let down by other self-improvement guides in the past, making you question all others? If so, I wonder how useful that strategy is. Doubting everything that can make you stronger, smarter and wiser sounds like a strange approach.

You don’t see how you can learn such a skill from a guide like this? How can you learn anything with an attitude like that?

Or maybe it’s deeper than that. Some folks fear change. Is that what this is?

It’s not like you can find this information out there – I went looking for it and couldn’t find anything quite like Your Story Isn’t About You. It’s a unique upgrade for your brain, just waiting for you to read, reread and apply it.

You can read it all in one sitting in however long it takes you to read 14,000 words. Or you could focus on a couple of chapters a day, spending a few moments daily for a few weeks. That’s all it would take for potentially a lifetime of clearer thinking and better decisions.

Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? Worst case, a month from now you’ll have probably forgotten about this guide. Best case? Everything seems so much easier, freer and more hopeful.

The only folks I don’t recommend this guide to are unwilling or unable to read, reread and apply the lessons. To everyone else, I say get your hands on it:

antipater.page/ysiay

Ahh, the modern era – home to many wonders of technology and culture. And what could be more wondrous than when a fair maiden receives a photo of a gentleman’s unconcealed pelvic area, right in her inbox.

… so to speak.

It’s a fascinating phenomenon. It leaves folks scratching their skulls, wondering what is wrong with these men. Why would they think that sending unasked for photos of their junk would work? Has it ever?

The common explanation is it’s a Failure of Sentience. These men, so the explanation goes, would love to receive an unsolicited pelvic portrait from a woman. So they mistakenly think that women would want the same, failing to put themselves in their shoes.

I’ve been banging on about Failures of Sentience a lot.

But, believe it or otherwise, that’s not what’s happening here. That explanation sounds reasonable but it’s generally not the case.

I’m going to depart from the theme of the week and say it isn’t about a failure to recognise that others think differently from you.

Here’s what’s really going on:

An awful chef figures that since a pinch of salt makes a meal delicious, then a bucket of salt must be even better.

Likewise, plenty of men know that a bit of boldness is attractive, so they go the whole hog.

… again, so to speak.

They don’t think women sit around hoping for unsolicited pelvic portraits. They do think it’ll shock and impress the women into sinful thoughts of desire, though.

Having said that, this specific behaviour might not be caused by Failures of Sentience, but I bet cash to croissants that they suffer from it elsewhere.

It takes a lot of character and wisdom to avoid Failures of Sentience – more than it takes to avoid sending junk snaps to strangers.

Seeing dumb manure is like cutting into a lasange. Below the surface, you know there are more layers bubbling away.

That’s why I recommend Your Story Isn’t About You as a general remedy to bad decisions. It gets at the root cause of a lot of them.

And you can’t fault the price.

So be sure to read, reread and apply it:

antipater.page/ysiay