Step 2: Practice
being close-minded and hard to get along with.
The last thing
you want to do at this point is be open to people and easy to get along
with. Very frequently when you are in a trying to meet people mode
you will force yourself to be open-minded against all your better instincts
and you will make a valiant but doomed and short-lived effort to find
something interesting about every person you meet or to see the good
in each individual.
Not only do you
hate doing this but it's also incredibly disadvantageous to you. The
truth is there is absolutely nothing interesting at all about most people
and while there may be some good in many people this aspect of their
personality is usually obscured by the fact they're so annoying and
even if you were to see the good in that person you wouldn't care anyway
because they're not the least bit interesting. Running around being
open to people is a surefire way to attract more of them into your life
with the horrifying result that you will spend more and more of
your time surrounded by them clamoring to be as boring and irritating
as possible in your presence. You know this! You have gone to
parties, been nice to some pathetic boring person you felt sorry for
and then realized you would never ever ever be able to detach them from
your side no matter how long they talked about septic tanks! This
is what you got for being nice! Normally you would never stoop to
this kind of behavior but when you feel impelled to meet people, this
is exactly the kind of thing you will sink to. Don't do it! Resist your
impulse to be nice! Being easy to get along with will make people
like you! People that like you will want to spend time with you!
This is exactly what is causing all your problems as outlined in your
rant above. You hate it when that happens. You don't want to spend
time with people that like you! You want to spend time with people you
like! Big difference. You would never stumble into this trap of
being easy to get along with, it's against your nature, except that
you are temporarily people to hang out with impaired. And that situation
creates this powerful subconscious drive to force people to like you
so you will have someone to hang out with. This is perfectly understandable
and you can't completely control this primeval urge. But you do need
to combat it. Remember, the more successfully you repress your urge
to be liked, the more successfully you will not meet people.
Sudden
Training Exercise
You didn't think
you'd get to hang around absorbing the finer points of the esoteric
philosophy of not meeting people forever, did you? Of course you did,
but you don't. This is like the Marines, there is only so much drill
and then you have to get out there with the live ammunition and risk
your life for no good reason. Here's how to risk yours.
Go to a party by
yourself. Count the number of people in attendance that you've never
met. See how many of them you can avoid being pleasant to. Don't set
the bar too high for yourself, this is an initial training exercise.
Party pleasantries may slip out, particularly in conjunction with all
that nerve-soothing alcohol you're imbibing. Give yourself points if
you can just exercise some self-control and restrain yourself from being
nice to everyone out of nervousness.
Absolutely positively
under no circumstances are you allowed to scan the room nervously while
telling yourself that you have to meet someone during the evening. No!
No! No meeting people. Now, given that there are people in attendance
that you don't know and that you have to practice your newly acquired
not being nice to people skills, it may occur at some point that you
will need to talk to some of them. That's fine. It may even happen that
some of them are accidentally kind of okay and you semi-enjoy not being
all that nice to them. That's fine. This kind of shit happens. There's
nothing you can do about it. Fun is not necessarily entirely avoidable
under the no meeting people plan. As long as you are not purposely
nice to them in order to get them to like you, you pass the training
exercise.
Go up to as many
people as possible during the evening, particularly once you are kind
of drunk, and say things to them without any intention whatsoever of
meeting them, getting them to like you, forming a relationship with
them later, hanging out with them, impressing them, or any other type
of reasonable social goal other than clearly and firmly establishing
that you don't have to meet any of them, and the mere fact that you
have spoken to them does not obligate you in any way to spend the rest
of your miserable life pretending you know them somehow. If they don't
like you - good! That's a group of people you'll never have to fucking
deal with again. At the end of the evening, or more likely the next
morning, drink a cup of coffee in a bathrobe while doing a series of
complicated calculations of the number of people from the night before
that you'll never ever ever have to spend any time with again if you
don't want to. Once you have calculated the number write it down on
a piece of paper. Then lose the piece of paper because you are absent-minded.
If there is someone
from the night before that you do want to spend more time with because
well, you can't help it, you just do, that's fine. That person doesn't
count. They are obviously not the regular kind of person you would
ordinarily be forced to meet because they are not boring and stupid
and annoying, so accidentally meeting them obviously doesn't count.
You can call up people that don't count as much as you want. It isn't
like you actually met them because they aren't like regular people that
you have to meet. So you can actually spend as much time with them as
you want, because spending time with someone you like is almost the
same as spending time with yourself, except with somebody else there.
If it turns out
after you have called them that you don't like them, then move them
over to the list of people that you haven't met and won't ever speak
to again. Your goal is basically to put every single person on the planet
on the I don't ever have to speak to you side of the list except for
the 30 or so people that you are going to spend the entire rest of your
life with god willing. But whatever you do, don't call anyone because
you think they liked you. No! That's the same as meeting people and
we have already established that we are opposed to that. That's like
being open to new people coming into your life. No! You're not open.
You're close-minded, grumpy, and hard to get along with.
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