Do you bring value or take it????

[Braddock]

This is from my blog.........

As Dennis Miller use to say, "I don't mean to go on a rant here but....."


I’m on the plane heading home. I love flying out of L.A. at night. It’s unreal how big this city is. This weekend was a blast. It was a grind going for 5 days straight, but if I sound like I’m complaining I’m not.

Wed and Thurs Dahunter and I taught our class and it went really well. I talked to the guy the day after and he said we changed his life!!! That’s the best feeling ever. He picked up the info really quick and was kicking ass by the second night. It was cool to watch. He said when he got home he went out that night and had like 5 make outs and could have slept with several girls.

The first night we went to one of the best clubs in L.A. I know a girl who is kind of a socialite out here and she hooked us up. She’s an L.A. 10 so all of the club promoters kiss her ass. She made one call and we were in. Nice to know people.

If you ever want to see how quickly the human mind can resort to it’s darker recesses just study the club promoters outside of an exclusive club in L.A. No offense if you are one and I’m sure I could write this on a million different jobs, it applies to most people.

I don’t completely blame promoters for acting like dicks, because they have the same feeling a celebrity has at times. People don’t talk to “you” they talk to the club promoter that they need something from. They don’t think you are cool, because of your intrinsic value as a human being, they think you are cool because of what you can do for them. I personally can identify with the feeling of contempt that this can create, because you see a side of people you never knew existed. It’s like that line out of that song by Mike Jones….. “Back then they didn’t want me, now I’m hot, they all on me.”

People can have no cooth when they need something and have no idea how desperate selfish they look. They ask for something without bringing any value to you in return and then if you can’t give them that value or just say no, they shut off the fake smile and the charm and move on to the next person they think can help them meet their needs. These vampires like you right now, but the second that your one piece of leverage is gone or they have extracted all the value they can from you, they will move on to the next body to suck blood from without so much as a thanks and when you need help they are nowhere to be found.

I think a healthy person looks at this for what it is. We are all the vampire at times and we are all the leverage holder at times. The best way to handle these situations is to not attach much, if any, identity value to either of these roles and work toward always bringing value in as many relationships as you can, so you don’t have to be the vampire quite as often or if life forces you to be the vampire, you have brought so much value in the past that you are not seen as a desperate value leech. If you have value to exchange then you aren’t the one constantly begging or desperately fighting for the scraps that fall off the table of those that do retain the value that you desire.

However, if you ever find yourself in a short lived or situational setting where you are the value holder, don’t let it go to your head. Don’t assume that because you have something that people want or need that it makes you better than others. Don’t get me wrong, I think you should try to set up as many of these situations in your life as possible, because they do make life easier and they seem to attract more and more opportunities just like this, but they do not make you better intrinsically than others.


The club promoters that I met this weekend seemed to really buy into their own bullshit. I’m willing to bet that those guys have little to no value outside of that venue and only have this limited value even here on specific nights. However, for 3 hours per night they are GOD!!! They decide whether you get to play in that club or not. I can see why they are dicks. Everyone wants what they control and everyone pretends to like them in order to obtain access. However, what I found hilarious is how much they seemed to really believe that they were somebody. They really thought that gate keeper role they play a couple nights per week is who they really are at their core!!!!! LOLOLOLOL This same asshole may have no education, live paycheck to paycheck, no solid relationships in his life, and sleep on his friends couch, but because he controls a list 3 nights a week he has attached a deep sense of self to that one piece of value he controls.

I always wonder if people like him walk around in their normal life acting like they are better than people. Does he walk around treating everyone like he is better than them???? I hope not, but sadly I assume he does. I was in a frat for a while in college and I remember it being split in half. Half the guys were cool as fuck and saw the frat for what it was. A great place to meet a ton of friends, drink tons of beer, have parties with tons of girls, and network for later in life. The other half of the guys were complete dick sucks who thought they were cool because they were in that frat. They attached a deep identity meaning to the fucking letters on the outside of the door of our house!!! LOLOLOL How fucking retarded. They would talk differently to people who weren’t in a certain frat and treat them like shit and they would suck the dicks of guys in certain frats that they considered cool!!!!????

I can understand you having more or less respect for this company or that company or that team or this team or this athlete or that athlete or this doctor or that doctor, because of the work they put into earning that title.

I have mad respect for Michael Jordan and might even talk to him a little different than I would most people because I was excited to meet him. If I met John Stockton……not so much. But being picked to join a frat during rush week is not a title that you earned and it’s not a value that should help you flesh out your core identity. It’s merely a group you belong to that. The people in that group enjoy you and you enjoy most of them.

If you joined a certain frat so you could jerk yourself off and tell yourself and each other how cool you are and how much better your frat is than that one than you are fucking up bad!!!

Hell, even titles you earn mean little to nothing in regard to how you should value yourself and definitely not how you should treat others. This doesn’t mean you should go around kissing peoples ass or even going all Dale Carnegie on them. I personally don’t think you should give people any more respect than they’ve earned, if you’ve ever given a girl more respect than she’s earned than you know how this can blow up in your face! But, this does not mean that I treat people like shit or with disrespect.

The frat boy who is delusional about how cool he is because of what frat he is in and the club promoter who thinks he is God, are equally disgusting to me.

Attaching identity meaning to random sources of value set you on a slippery slope to an addiction you can never satisfy. It will be your frat, then money, then women, then cars, bla bla bla.

I’m not saying all these things are bad. I personally want tons of money, tons of options with women, high status, and great relationships, but not because they will create an identity that I desperately cling to no matter what. No, I want them because they are all tools to help me develop a fun interesting lifestyle that I want. With or without them my identity and core values are unchanged. With them my life is closer aligned to what I want my life to look like, but if I couldn’t have them for any number of reasons then I’m still me. My internal value and identity are maintained at all cost.

This lesson has taken me years to learn and I learned it the hard way. I thought if I had a hot girlfriend then that’s “who I was” or if I was a great athlete or if I hung out with certain people, or if I made this group of people happy or if my parents liked what I was doing, then that was me. That’s all bullshit. Not because it doesn’t matter who you surround yourself with. The company you keep can make or break your life, but they also should not be what you draw your core value from.

The main point here is this, if you ever find yourself in a position like the club promoter just realize that it’s merely a tool. It’s merely a value that you have obtained and a great one at that. Learn how to use it to help you meet other ends. Use it to help you obtain shitloads of win win situations in your life. Use it to create great connections in your life that you couldn’t acquire otherwise. Crush the social leeches that use you as a win for them loss for you and find the people who are willing to make a value trade with you. Like I said though, it’s just a tool. Use it as such. Don’t attach internal meaning to external values.

This is why rock stars and celebrities end up killing themselves. They buy into their own bullshit. They have attached all their internal meaning to this star they have become. At their core they know they are just people and that at the end of the day all that shit is just a hat they wear. It’s not who they are at their core. But if you don’t know that, then you just will constantly be trying to fill a bucket with a massive fucking hole in it.

Go become the baddest mother fucker you can. Be and do everything you ever wanted to do. Go at it like you will fucking die in 6 months, but don’t attach your entire identity to external events, possessions, or people trophies I.E. “I have this girl on my arm so now I’m somebody.” Do all this shit because you really just want it in your life. I want it for me, but not to define me.

Alright, enough Gandhi shit from me for one day………


Sha boy…………………Braddock