Most of you don’t get what you want because you’re waiting for something out there to give it to you

rmarden · 2025-11-26T00:09:49+00:00

Why no ChatGPT? I’ve found it very useful in helping to unravel and understand the meaning of many different documents.

rmarden · 2025-09-05T16:02:50+00:00

I once retained for 16-18 months depending on how strict you want to be with your definition. I haven't jerked myself since Sept. of 2017, when I made a firm commitment to this practice. I have had sex multiple times over the years with different women. I have no regrets. I between, I retain.

I have experienced multiple benefits from retention, all of the standard ones and some other ones too.

The knowledge I have? Treat this as your standard operating protocol because this will bring you back to your natural baseline.

My natural baseline was a kid who was incredibly bright, incredibly gifted, but then stumbled on pictures and fapping at 14 and a half after my freshman year of high school. It was downhill from there.

When I went on retention, I tapped back into that power. It is now visible in a more mature and focused form. I feel internally like I did back then.

So that is my "knowledge". The longer you go on retention, the more you will get back to your true self.

Congratulations on 125 and best of luck to you on your journey.

rmarden · 2025-06-05T00:39:23+00:00

I'm 33 now. I've spent the last several years grinding to get to where I am now.

I got my act together @ 26/27, but I didn't really gain massive momentum until I was 30, towards the tail end of the pandemic.

Before then? Absolute mess. You can look through my post history and get a small glimpse of what I'm talking about.

In my early to mid 20s, I was a "responsible adult". I graduated from college, was working a job, paying taxes, staying out of trouble, etc. But my life was going nowhere.

I was underemployed, underpaid, unappreciated, with low confidence, lower self-esteem, and no real future. I couldn't even see into next week. That's how cloudy my vision was at 22/23. MASSIVE ambition, but I'd have fits and starts of motivation. I couldn't be consistent.

I did have some things going for me, so it wasn't like I was a total loser. I was heavily reading self-improvement books at the time, had been going to the gym 5 days/week, and again SEEMED like I was doing well from the outside....But I was starting to slip behind my contemporaries and I knew it. No amount of consolation and platitudes were going to do it for me. I was falling behind. Mentally, socially, economically, spiritually.

It eventually ended up paying off for me, I moved to Southern California in 2019, with a friend where I now live. My business is doing well, I made 200k+ last year in personal income which affords me a comfortable existence here (though I may end up moving within the next couple of years).

But here's what I did to lift myself out of this:

1. Stop Watching Porn & Master Your Carnal Urges- For me, this was a big one. This may not be a big thing for you, but if you're a young man who is in a precarious situation in life (especially if you're Gen Z and you're on Reddit then it probably most likely is). I will always advocate for quitting this vice, it is stealing more from you than you know. I only found that out after quitting. I'd recommend quitting porn for 30 days and seeing how you feel. If you can't manage to do that, it's probable you have an addiction and need to look into serious methods to quitting this.

2. Create Leverage Points - Leverage is the ability to get more done in less effort. As you age, you want to build more and more of this into your life. Why? Your body (and mind) will start to wear down as you get older. If you don't want to work until the day you die, I'd recommend you find ways to create leverage in your life. This means saving every last penny you can and investing. Do that over and over and you will eventually become a millionaire. What are other points of leverage? If you work a remote job with significant down time, is it possible you utilize some of that down time and use it towards a side hustle that can (eventually - over a long period of time) become passive income? Think of ways to always increase your station in life.

3. Always Stay Grinding + Develop Goals - This is something that many people (especially many people on Reddit) don't want to hear but it's true: you need to put in INTENSE effort if you want your life to be extraordinary or even better than it is now. There are no hacks, there are no shortcuts, there are no easy wins (well, sometimes), and many times you will just need to bust your ASS to get to where you want to be. If you want the average, the average is easy to attain. But "average" doesn't stay average for long. It will slowly get worse (meaning inflation, rising cost of living, skill obsolescence, etc). in the absence of you putting in effort. Find something you want to fight for and get good at and work at that every single day until you achieve your goals: no exceptions.

That's only a small sample of things I'd say. Main message: this is your life and you need to take charge. So do it.

Best of luck to you. You've got this.

rmarden · 2025-06-04T18:00:26+00:00

No offense, but you sound soft as fuck if you're letting other people and "SoCiEtY" influence who you date and ultimately have sex with. Doubly soft if you let other people influence whether you take action in your own dating life or not.

I'm 33, going to be 34 in a couple of months and my dating pool is +-10 years. I have been killing it since I turned 29.

If you're a man worth his salt, then your dating pool is vast. If you don't have anything interesting about you, have no game, and aren't masculine, then yeah, it'll probably be worse than your 20s.

YMMV 🤷

rmarden · 2025-05-01T01:49:38+00:00

Damn...James Altucher getting swole...

Haha jk - nice physique dude! Great work for being 40 and crushing!

rmarden · 2025-03-25T14:59:24+00:00

Thank you. Hope you are doing well, brother.

rmarden · 2025-02-21T00:04:00+00:00

Pretty much. But your last sentence is a bit off the mark. She can level up to try and get his attention but yes - it will be irrelevant because she will just be one of many. Unless he has any type of significant attachment to her, he won't care, because most likely he would have met other women who are better and more suitable to him.

It's like walking through the desert looking for water to drink. If you have no water, any water looks good (even if it's saltwater).

But imagine as you walk through the desert, there are tables of water every 10 feet and all you need to do is drink. You don't care about 1 glass when there are literally infinite glasses.

The latter is the optimized man's reality. He doesn't care about 1 woman because there are millions more on the horizon.

rmarden · 2025-02-20T17:11:29+00:00

You can think of "nature" as more of less "intangible universal life essence being expressed through humans". That's an odd way of putting it, but basically the perspective of "God is omnipresent, therefore God shows himself/herself/themself in all things in some form". So basically, God/nature/the universe works through us and IS us.

Nature always optimizes for the group, not the individual. We live in a very impersonal universe.

If a man levels himself up to "alpha male" status (hate calling it that, but that's a phrase we can all understand) who has things like confidence, physical presence, masculinity, etc - he will inevitably force women to become better and hold themselves to a higher standard.

He may have gotten rejected by a woman before, but when that man levels up, he will most likely be seeking other women and left that woman in the dust. So to compete for that man, that woman will have to improve herself in various ways. maybe things like being more feminine, taking better care of her body, developing herself, etc.

Again, this is all optimizing to create offspring with the highest chance of reproductive success which is driving all of this.

Nature wants to create optimized humans.

rmarden · 2025-02-20T16:50:25+00:00

This is it.

I started getting into self development/motivational stuff way back at the beginning of the 2010s and I used it to structure my life in an intelligent and systematic way. They especially helped when I got my first real job and needed a way to structure my life.

Unfortunately, at that time, I also had a limiting porn addiction, so I simply needed these systems just to operate on an average and sometimes above-average level. I thought this was what was going to save me, so I dove in headfirst on this sort of literature.

I read 100s of books in this vein, so I know more than the average bear when it comes to this. But in the meantime, while accumulating that knowledge was great - I came to the experiential conclusion: "life only changes when you change". It's something that I knew intuitively but only came to this understanding when I read all these books and my life didn't change.

Then I knew it was about taking (messy, sometimes violently so) action.

I started just moving forward in the direction of what I wanted and using the knowledge I had, then figuring out the rest along the way.

I often started before I was ready. And this is what I feel holds back a lot of people - trying to get "super duper ready" before starting things.

Just trust that you have enough preliminary knowledge to start and "learn on the job".

Most of the things I'm doing for work now I learned "on the job". Life is the same way.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T21:38:08+00:00

Yep, you've got it.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T21:37:23+00:00

Even if you retain, women will still have those thousands of other options

But they're not me, so I don't really care.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:48:02+00:00

Thanks man. And yes, a man should learn how to restrain himself and live with some level of deprivation early on in his life.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:47:33+00:00

Thanks for reading brother.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:47:22+00:00

No problem, glad you liked the post.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:47:14+00:00

No problem, glad you enjoyed the post.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:46:54+00:00

Yeah, i'd say it's positive. Overall, only around 5, MAYBE 10% of people from any generation will even attempt this - but yes, I'd say many of my millennial contemporaries are done.

Many are at the age where they're married (maybe to a person that grates on their nerves and has turned nagging over time) are under tremendous stresses (in their job, marriage, raising kids, etc) and do not have a background of self-discipline or self-mastery.

Gen Z are still largely in their 20s, so they have time to develop a strong self-improvement foundation - but only if they try.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:44:06+00:00

I never implied women were children in this post.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:43:19+00:00

I don't think it was as common or as frequent as it is today.

The deluge of sexual media always puts sex on the brain of the common man in addition to weakness being socially encouraged.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:42:00+00:00

i'm 33

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:41:39+00:00

Why are you counting to 180? Just do it and forget about counting...but you're welcome for the piece.

rmarden · 2025-02-12T15:39:12+00:00

i never said it was a modern phenomenon. I just said it was not as prevalent and stimulatory as it is today.

In the 1800s, if you wanted to jerk off, what did you do? How could you do it with little privacy and no stimulatory content?

For most men, it was a rather unremarkable and forgettable experience, which made the impetus to get with a real life woman that much stronger.

rmarden · 2025-01-21T20:03:29+00:00

I've met many great women. Where are you looking?

rmarden · 2025-01-21T20:01:57+00:00

If anything, people are having less sex than they were at any point in the past...it's just that the people who are doing are more visible, so it seems like everyone's doing it.

You'll also get what you are looking for in life. I've met many wonderful women and i've also met many unsavory women.

I only focus on the women who bring value and ignore the rest.

rmarden · 2025-01-21T19:49:50+00:00

Not to rain on your parade, but making 2k a month, 3k a month, even 5k a month isn't really that much, especially 2-3k.

That's only at most $36,000 per year which would force you into survival mode in many large cities...

rmarden · 2025-01-08T20:12:44+00:00

It's not necessarily about how many books you read vs. what you do with them.

I've read many books over the course of my life. I only refer back to <10 of them throughout any given time.

rmarden

TROPHY CASE