This is my long overdue review of Authentic Man Program's Power of Appreciation (AMP's POA). I think the reason it was so overdue is because it was so awesome, I rushed into trying this stuff and had great success and posted a few field reports, then I just sort of coasted, enjoyed what I learned, and moved on.

After going through POA, I had a string of one night stands and now I am in a relationship (which I need to write a post on soon). Surrendered My Nervousness + Opened my Heart = Best Date Ever is a date I had right after the POA program.

Recently I posted an article on not giving up your power to guru's. SDH followed up with some steps on how regular friends, even AFC's, can help each other attain their goals. In my post, lots of guys commented that getting advice from regular friends is a bad idea and, from their perspective, I completely agree. It's obvious. It is almost the same analogy as the Guru, taking full advice from one source is almost always a bad idea—except Guru's at least tend to know what they are talking about. The trick is to develop a filter for good advice. It comes down to knowing yourself.

Something rather ironic occurred to me recently. After the Ideagasms fiasco, after seeing more and more guru's as fakes—like what "The Game" did with TylerDurden. I started to objectively think and observe how Guru's really are. I started to notice the some of the more successful Pick Up Guru's are guys with amazing flash game—they can do a 15-minute song and dance, or "wing" you very well, but they talk very little about true seduction.

I know this may come as a surprise, only 10 months ago I was all up on their philosophies, but as time went on, I feel they started slipping more and more into a real cult. Now, they really fell. Read little article on cults to get an idea…

Right now, I am reading this amazing and inspirational book called "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. Now, if that name sounds familiar to you, it may because the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was based on him. He is the little 8 year old who won national chess championships. What most people do not know is that Josh is also a World Champion Martial Artist of Tai Chi. How often is a person a Champion Chess Player and also a Champion at Tai Chi, all before they are 25 or so?

The crucial ingredient is the right group of friends to help us along. I am writing this post as a part shout-out, part vital lesson of life. More often than not, the only people who can give you accurate and useful advice are your close friends and family, or someone who has known you for awhile and has a lot of experience. But, most importantly, no great speaker, guru, or figurehead can just look at you for 2 days, much less 5 minutes, and give you the kind of advice, the kind of direction catered to just you in your life.

The self-help community has been around since our mom's nagged us to wash our face and brush our teeth every night. Or, maybe it started with religion and rituals. There is something about being given advice or being told what to do that can equally annoy us and empower us. It all depends on how we are told what to do. My guess is, our Mom's caring-worry wasn't the most effective, but perhaps Tony Robbin's passionate tale about bodily acid motivated us to take action; ironically, one idea is obvious, the other is totally out of left field.

I just wanted to make a quick update. I upgraded the blog host from Hostmonster to SimpleHelix. I felt it was going way to slow over at Hostmonster and SimpleHelix seems a lot faster.

I would describe Hostmonster as an all you can eat buffet (as SDH puts it). You get everything there, but the quality isn't the greatest. SimpleHelix is more like a 3 or 4 star restaurant---its not a dedicated server, but its rated real high and costs a bit more.

Hopefully this works out better!

In the mean time, a comment and post made by SPG got delayed in transferring over, but everything is back to normal. This was actually quite a process to go through so I thought I'd just mention it.

LATE.

I would consider myself a student of Dr. Paul for the past two years however I had an interesting ride. I remember following Dr. Paul's model and seeing it as very complete, sound, and structured. For a scientific guy like myself, it was perfect.

I wanted to share a recent newsletter form Authentic Man Program, AMP, talking about Bryan's recent break up and how it relates to my last post Spiritual vs. Structured Inner Game