Life With Soul

The Dip in graph form

Hey guys, I’m passing over to Collin B, one of our awesome Project Rockstars from this year, for his thoughts on making it through The Dip in his progress throughout Rockstar.

Great post – a lot of people in the world need to heed these words, especially in those tough times when it seems like you’re not getting to where you want to be.

Jeremy Soul

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Early in Rockstar Soul taught us about a U- shaped mood curve. When you’re learning a new skill, you’re very excited at first. But as you try to implement what you’ve learned, you actually get worse results than before because you’re consciously thinking about the new information so much. At the very bottom of the curve, your mood is very low, you may question if it’s worth it, and many people quit. But once you make it through the bottom of the curve, the turning point where everything “clicks”, you start experiencing better results, the mood starts going up again. And as you move along the curve, you start feeling the excitement again, and having much more fun, which makes the curve skyrocket even higher, and at a faster rate.

This diagram that Soul shared with us has proven to be very true. Not just in game, Chase shared a similar concept when starting a new business, he called it getting through “the dip”. I can see different Rockstars at different points of the curve. Personally I have made it through the bottom of the curve when everything came together, and now when I go out I am having fun again, and my results are improving drastically every single night I go out. It’s a great place to be. What I didn’t understand is that I have been getting better and moving forward since the very beginning, even though at times I felt I was moving backwards because my results were getting worse. Really I was just progressing along the curve like I was supposed to. Now I know that this is normal and just a part of the process. You HAVE to go through the dip in order to make it work.

The problem is a lot of people don’t make it through because as they move along the curve, their mood is dropping and they are having less fun, which makes it more difficult to stay motivated. But we should realize that this drop in mood is a good thing. That means you’re making progress and you’re almost there. That means you just have to stick it out a little bit longer and you’ll make it through the bottom of the dip, everything will click, and you will start the rising portion of the curve, where you’re having a blast and feel invincible and soon your mood and results will shoot up much higher than you ever thought they could be.

In game, and in life in general, everyone seems to always be looking for a shortcut. A “magic bullet” or a pill where they just wake up one day and suddenly they are great with women. But you can’t cheat this curve. I don’t have very fond memories of being in London. I was on the first half of the curve, and it sucked. It was tough, and I was way out of my comfort zone. I was getting no results. I was experiencing painful rejections out in public in the middle of the day. I was getting humiliated at night by getting blown out repeatedly. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but this was all forward progress. I HAD to go through those painful, embarrassing moments to come out the other end a different person. There is no way around this. There is no shortcut, no trick I could have learned to get to the point where I have gotten now. The only way is to man up and go through the painful times and stay with it long enough to make it past the dip. After enough blowouts, I just stopped caring about the outcome. That’s when I started seeing flashes of the rising curve.

The reason I’m posting this is because before Rockstar I never stuck with it long enough to make it through the dip, to the fun part. I tried to make it work, but after a few harsh rejections and some uncomfortable feelings I would quit. It seemed pointless to me – I was having less fun and getting worse results, so why should I keep trying? I expected instant results and fun times. I didn’t know about the U curve.

But now looking back, I can see a few moments where I was ALMOST there, if I had just pushed through a little bit longer I would have made it to the other side. I wish I knew about this back then, because life after the dip is full of excitement and positive feelings. It’s such a liberating feeling to be able to go up and talk to any woman you want, at any time. If anyone reading this can relate, keep moving along – you’re probably almost there!

Collin