Lifestyle: Practical steps to avoid exhaustion

It was a Monday morning. The alarm rang for a good half hour before finally giving up. I instinctively knew that I owed to my then employer and to myself to get my exhausted butt out of this damn bed, but nothing would do. My body was just lying there, as heavy and inert as the Titanic at the bottom of an ocean of dreams.

That day I understood that there was such a thing as a breaking point. My batteries were empty. Like so many other players and womanizers before me, an amazing series of fun nights out and homeruns had seriously affected my sleeping patterns. I was indeed working long hours and, while my colleagues left the office to find some well-deserved rest in the comfort of their blissful family, I took the first cab to meet a pretty German tourist met earlier that week or I was off to some art gallery opening to meet up with my mates and socialize with long-legged wannabe models and buxom PR agents. When week-end came around, a hockey tournament followed by a late night in various clubs around town would be my “free time”. At some point, there was a fair chance the loudest alarm would not be enough to wake me up.

Before you get to that point, let me share with you some of the most typical symptoms what athletes call overtraining. Yes, seduction is top-sport: welcome to the Majors!

When you find yourself literally running from party to party and from date to date right after work, your apartment will usually start showing the first signs. Dirty laundry starts piling up and so do the dishes. More often than not, you merely find the time to shove all the mess in the nearest closet before your date rings the bell. The vicious circle starts when you start going out more so you do not have to spend more time in a messy living room. Also, when you meet a girl and are considering bringing her back to your place, you have mental images of your bedroom looking pretty much like a warzone. It’s time to do something about it.

Your apartment may be showing the first symptoms but pretty soon will be your turn too. Did you push yourself to the limits of exhaustion by going out all night and waking up early for an important business presentation in front of Senior Management? Are you a student skipping class to recover from a late one-nighter with an exchange student? If you do it once, so be it but if this sort of short-term strategy becomes a way of life, you will unavoidably start feeling tired, irritable and lack reactivity and initiative. Your co-workers will start noticing and a growing proportion of your approaches will be greeted with lukewarm enthusiasm or even sheer rejection. As a result, you may start going out even more to figure out why you are losing your mojo. It’s time to do something about it.

You spend less time on your hobbies and favorite sports than you used to. Due to exhaustion and lack of time, you find yourself cancelling appointment with friends and family members. Many young womanizers would rather spend the night with a pretty stranger than have dinner with their brother or best friend, especially if these are married men. It’s highly understandable but if you notice that your social life or hobbies are suffering from chasing women, I’d say it is time to put some balance back in your life. Do something about it.

Going out to bars and clubs is expensive. If your nights out and date are starting to hurt your budget, it is time to put measures in place to start spending less. It’s time to do something about it.

If you recognize yourself in this description, you will also know that in spite of all the experience you do gain whenever you go out and meet women, you also encounter more resistance, moments of doubt or just sheer tiredness. If you are tired mentally and/or physically, you will not fool anyone by speaking louder or faster in a desperate attempt to overcompensate. Before you spiral down in self-doubt and lose your hard-earned confidence, put some order back in your life and put yourself back on track.

So where do you start?

Cleaning up your apartment is a great start. You may hire a cleaning lady if you can afford but I would actually recommend doing it yourself at this point as it is a good exercise and a vibrant metaphor of how you intend to re-organize your life. Your self-image and confidence can be greatly affected both positively and negatively by how clean or messy your place looks and feel. Also, when you invite an attractive girl back to your place, you will not have to worry about her sitting on an old sock or a pizza box.

Restore your sleeping pattern. Sleeping eight hours a night is not negotiable on the long-run. Only 5% of the population can sleep for handful of hours and be productive the next day on a regular basis. Sleep deprivation is the number one cause for accidents at work and depression. If you sleep on regular hours and for long enough periods of time, your energy level will inevitably go up. Wouldn’t that be nice? As a bonus, you will experience more success when you do go out and meet girls. Hence your nights out will be both more entertaining and rewarding. Of course you will spend less time on the field but I am convinced that it is better to spend one or two hours in a bar when you are full of energy than to spend the night dragging yourself from venue to venue for meager results. As a matter of fact, you may very well get four or five solid phone number in a mere hour when you feel energetic so it is worth taking it easy for a few days and coming back on the field as an power player.

Therefore, I do not believe in bootcamps that push you to the limits of exhaustion since a well-balanced and interesting life is one of the first conditions to be successful with women in the long-run. Devote some time to developing your newfound seduction skills, Rome was not made in a day, but do not drop your friends and hobbies or endanger your career just to meet more women. The truth is, seduction is part every social interaction and it is a common mistake to think in binary terms of : “Now I am out to meet women, now I am not”. Make it a part of your life and a part of you. That way you will not hesitate to start up a conversation with a pretty girl at your University or at the Starbucks and you will feel less pressure. Your subjects of conversation and your cultural references will be more diverse and genuine than those of Stakhanovist womanizers. That way, you will develop a more accurate and relevant form of social intelligence that can be a distinct advantage in bars as well as in the rest of your life.

In short, enjoy life, meet girls and have tons of fun but learn how to recognize the point where you start going round in circles, repeating yourself and feeling tired. Be fast to react and put some order back in your priorities because desire and energy are your prime resources in this great game, so don’t waste them.

Jean-Baptiste

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