You can watch listen on your favourite podcast platform, or scroll even further to read the written version.

Soundcloud

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Amazon Audible:

If you want to overcome Nice Guy Syndrome, boost your social confidence and communication skills, and live with integrity this year, complete this questionnaire and get free resources customized to your answers

Why You Rely on Approval Instead of Trusting Yourself

If you find yourself often hesitating before you make a decision or take an action, not because you don’t know what to do exactly, but you’re worried about how other people might react, or you feel like you need some sort of signal from the outside world before you can move forward, then you don’t want to miss today’s episode.

Today, we’re going to explore why nice guys and people pleasers often freeze and end up following the lead of others instead of making decisions for themselves. Why this happens and what it means.

So if you find yourself having to check with others before you move forward on a decision, or you procrastinate on something simple because you just weren’t sure how it was going to land with other people, we often ask for advice rather than feedback, like you ask for people’s advice on the idea you haven’t acted on, rather than feedback on the idea you have acted on. Then this one’s for you.

What Is Green Light Syndrome?

Basically, you’re afraid of going first. You’re afraid of initiating, taking an action that doesn’t come with some sort of signal of approval and validation before you do it. This is something that I’ve dubbed green light syndrome.

Maybe you’re hesitant to initiate sex, not because you don’t want to, but you’re scared that she might reject you. Maybe you’re hesitant to go for the promotion, not because you don’t want the job, but because nobody said that you were right for the role, and nobody said you should apply for it.

When it comes to dinner or getting something to eat, you might know what you want to eat, but you frame it as a question, like, what do you guys want to eat? So you can’t just put the idea out there and take the risk that other people would disagree.

Confident men don’t do this. They make the decision and then they deal with the consequences. You’re trying to deal with the consequences before making the decision.

Learning to Move Without Approval

But by the end of this episode, hopefully you’ll understand why it is you’ve got that vague sense of waiting for approval before you can take action and make a decision, and how to transition into someone who can go forward and take that risk and lead with initiative and know what they really want.

I’m going to talk about going on a yellow light, that idea of going forward without first getting approval, without first getting validation that your idea is okay. That’s one of my favorite topics, because in my own nice guy recovery journey, this was one of the main symptoms that I suffered from.

My Experience With Following Instead of Leading

I remember arriving at university to do my communications degree, and sitting in one of the papers, one of the lectures, just sitting in the hall, just going, why the fuck am I here? And it represented my whole life, this kind of path of least resistance, where I just went where I was encouraged to go, like the road was laid out in front of me by someone else.

The idea of kind of paving my own path, it just never occurred to me, but it was very subtle. I was just kind of following other people’s lead, asking for permission a lot, paying attention to signals of what I should and shouldn’t do, and the idea of being a leader and going on my own just didn’t occur to me.

It was upon later reflection that I realized I was just really scared of getting it wrong, whatever that means. I was so scared of it I didn’t even consider what it meant, but I knew it had something to do with rejection, something to do with hurting people’s feelings, something to do with being the odd one out, and I just didn’t want to go anywhere near that, thinking it would be some sort of disastrous consequence.

From Waiting to Taking Action

These days, fast forward to now, I basically do whatever I think is the right thing to do. Quite often, when I do have active disapproval before I’ve taken action, I do it anyway. I don’t always get it right, but I’m able to clean up the mess, and I’ve got this freedom of choice now where I get to call the shots, rather than waiting for the scraps from other people’s tables.

And this is nothing special about me. You can learn this, and I hope to teach it to you today.

The Cost of Waiting for Permission

So there’s one particular story from my life that really encapsulates this, and this was in my early 20s. I went through a sexual and romantic drought that lasted four and a half years.

Now, if you’re a virgin and you go four and a half years without sex, it’s not really that much suffering, but I’d just come from my first proper sexual relationship. So to go from two and a half years of a full-blown relationship into nothing at all for four and a half years, while all my friends were flourishing socially, at least it appeared so to me, was devastating.

It was on my mind all the time. I was absolutely haunted by it. There wasn’t a fucking night that went by that I didn’t lie in bed with frustration, stress, thinking about it, which eventually morphed into loneliness and a great, dreadful fear about the future. This idea like this is never going to happen for me. No dates, no kisses, no promising text messages, certainly no sex, just nothing.

The Illusion of No Opportunities

I was one of the original incels, but unlike the modern version that stay at home and bash on the keyboard and hate on women, I was out there every fucking weekend, going to parties, going to clubs, trying, and yet nothing was happening.

The worst about this that I only realized much later on is I did have opportunities. The story in my head was that nobody liked me and that there were no chances. That was not true. The reason it felt that way is because I couldn’t see any green lights.

So while I was surrounded by available women who, if I had just taken a few risks, a few of them would have responded and reciprocated, I was waiting for them to lead. I was waiting for them to do everything, because that was the only green light I could trust.

Paralysis in the Moment

I was so scared of accidentally crossing the line, of doing something that they thought was offensive, disgusting, or assault, that I couldn’t take any steps at all. I couldn’t even reach out and hold a girl’s hand. I couldn’t even tell a girl I was attracted to her; to me that felt like already crossing the line.

And unless I got super enthusiastic responses from women, I just saw everything as kind of a red light. I saw them all as uninterested, unless they were so blatantly interested that even I couldn’t deny it, and that was pretty rare.

So I’d be sitting next to a girl. She’s laughing at my jokes, she’s touching my arm, she’s watching my mouth while I talk. The vibes are there, and I’m just sitting there, just waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for exactly.

I know I’m getting more agitated as time passes. I can start to see her become agitated as time passes, and I haven’t done anything in real life. She actually has made moves, so she already has initiated, and she’s not getting a response from me, because whatever she did was too subtle for me to take as a green light.

And eventually the window of opportunity would close, she would move on. And this happened probably hundreds of times.

The Real Problem

So I’d go home thinking she didn’t like me or I screwed it up somehow. The dark truth I didn’t want to face was I didn’t initiate. I didn’t take the risk of her saying no, I didn’t put myself out there for potential humiliation and embarrassment, and because I didn’t, there was no opportunity for us to connect.

You know, you have to walk into that potential risk for anything to happen, and I just refused.

Sitting on the Bench

It’s like playing a game of soccer. There’s no chance of winning a game of soccer if you can’t walk onto the field. That’s the minimum requirement. Now, you’re not guaranteed to have a good game, but you can’t play at all if you’re not on the field.

So I was sitting on the bench, kind of waiting for the game to happen to me, but feeling like I wasn’t allowed to play.

How This Showed Up in My Career

So it wasn’t just my romantic life where this happened. In my career, for example, I just took whatever jobs people offered me. I didn’t seek, I didn’t even go looking. I would just wait until someone said, I’ve got some work for you. And I ended up doing all sorts of crap, most of it really unenjoyable and not suited to my talents.

Landscaping, for example, I’m not much of a handyman, and here I am digging holes and laying paving just because my brother got me the job. That was just symbolic of my whole life. I’m just waiting for someone else to lead, waiting for someone else to invite me, waiting for someone else to go, yeah, you should do that.

And then I’d just do it thoughtlessly, mindlessly. I’d be grateful for the opportunity. The idea of me going, you know what, what do I want? I’m just going to go back that, take a risk—it just didn’t occur to me.

The Story I Told Myself

One of the things I refused to accept at the time, or maybe it’s better to say I was blind to it, is that confident people didn’t behave like me.

See, I thought of myself as a good person for this waiting, this green light syndrome. I self-justified it as being a decent person who didn’t want to harm anybody else. I didn’t want to go for the promotion in case somebody else was going for it. I didn’t want to hurt their career, you know. I didn’t want to ask the girl out in case it made her feel uncomfortable, or somebody else was interested in her, and so on.

So I made a big, noble story about how I’m this easygoing guy who sacrifices what he wants so that other people can have a good life. And that makes me a good person.

It was one way to kind of sleep at night, you know, when you’re sexless for four years in your early 20s, and your career sucks, and your health is going down the shithole, and your social life is just getting more and more scarce, and your life’s kind of falling apart. You need a story to kind of live with this.

And my story was basically, I’m the victim hero. I’m the one who has the shit life so that other people can have a good one. And I kind of clung to that, because I didn’t see any other way out of this without being a selfish bastard.

Misjudging Confident People

And so I was kind of stuck by my value system at the time. And the other people I saw making moves, taking risks, and so on, I had a story about how they were bad people or that it didn’t relate to me.

I couldn’t be like that, that they were selfish or they were willing to hurt others, or that they were just sort of crazy risk-takers, and I couldn’t relate to any of the reasoning that I projected onto them for the things that they were doing.

The idea that they were just confident leaders who were willing to initiate, that the world needs people like this so otherwise fucking nothing gets done—you know, that didn’t occur to me. I was too attached to my story about how I’m a good guy for not going first.

Avoiding Consequences

What I didn’t want to acknowledge is that these guys are going first, they’re taking the risk, and they’re accepting the consequences.

I did not accept the consequences. You know, the idea that I might get actually rejected, or that I might get mocked and embarrassed, or that people might go, what are you doing? This is stupid. Nobody does this—I couldn’t risk that happening.

I could only simulate it in my head. And if there’s any chance of it happening, I couldn’t make this thing get off the ground.

Seeing Everything as Red

I basically perceived any uncertainty as a red light, a pre-red light. I would kind of simulate things going wrong and assume that that was the only available option because I wasn’t seeing a green light.

But the only thing that stopped me from thinking something was going to be red is if I saw really obvious green—encouragement, approval, validation, support from others.

If I didn’t see any of that, I didn’t say, hey, this is uncertain. I said, this is bad.

You know, there is this very dichotomy. It’s either definite green or it must be red. There’s no yellow, there’s no let’s see what happens in between.

Breaking the Pattern

But one day, I learned to take some risks. One day I learned to go on my own, do some things that nobody else was doing, and in doing so, I broke the spell of this green light syndrome.

I started to realize I don’t need permission or encouragement. I don’t need to see anybody else doing it. I can just go ahead with this, that this is my fucking life, and most importantly, that nobody else out there knows what the fuck they’re doing.

There is no right way to live. Nobody has this shit figured out.

Seeing Through the Illusion

I started to realize that all these people I’m jealous of are also doing this thing, that they might look like they’re making moves and taking initiative, but they’re just following cultural norms, that they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do and they’ve been encouraged to do.

So it looks like they’re taking initiative, but they’re actually just following.

I might have looked like I was taking initiative to other people. I got a new job, or joined a band, or whatever, might have looked to people like this guy’s making moves. They didn’t see the fact that I was invited to do this and encouraged to do that, and I wouldn’t have gone near it otherwise.

But I started to see through this delusion that everybody else has got shit sorted, and that gave me the courage to start making some moves.

What We’re Going to Break Down

And today we’re going to break this all down so that you can figure out how to find that courage for yourself and start making some fucking moves.

What Is Green Light Syndrome? (Examples)

So what is this thing that I call green light syndrome? Let’s break it down. I think the best way to look at it is the examples.

Do you ever say yes when you really want to say no because other people have said yes, and because it seems like the normal thing to do is say yes?

Have you ever felt responsible for how other people feel about your decisions, that somehow your decisions must manage how they feel, like how I went to university so that my parents would feel proud of me?

Do you find yourself asking people what do you want in the thing that you’re about to collaborate on, even though you already know what you want, right? So you might ask them, like, what do you want for dinner, even though you know you want to eat pizza already, but you don’t say, I want to eat pizza. You say, what do you want? And that you’re willing to drop whatever you’ve decided you want just like that if they say something different.

Do you find yourself avoiding trying something just because you’re unsure about how someone might react to it? You’re not even guaranteed to get a bad reaction. You just might get a bad reaction, and that’s enough for you to not even start a thing.

Do you find yourself needing reassurance before you make a decision, rather than just acting on it, like you need some sort of committee approval before you can move forward with something?

Do you find that you often stay quiet and not say what you really think until you hear somebody else say the same thing and feel like you have a supportive crew for your side of the argument?

Here’s a big one. Do you ever change your decision because of the way someone reacted to it, like it seemed like a good idea, and then someone gets upset, and that actually becomes feedback for your decision, which you then change, as if them being upset is somehow proof that you’ve done something wrong?

I guess that’s one way of categorizing it. Do you think of other people being upset as evidence that you’ve done something wrong?

Have you ever avoided making a move because you weren’t 100% sure that it would go well, that it would be welcomed?

Do you often let other people call the shots just so you’re not responsible for the decision? I’d see this often with partners, the guy’s just always sort of referring to his partner. She calls all the shots. She decides everything, and he just follows along.

Do you feel guilty and selfish and ashamed when you prioritize yourself? Even the thought of prioritizing yourself comes with guilt and shame, like you’ve done something wrong, just for even thinking that. And yet you have double standards, where you encourage other people to do this all the time. You encourage everybody else to put themselves first, even at a sacrifice to you, even if it hurts you when they do this. You encourage them to do it, but you’re not allowed to do it yourself.

Do you often find yourself overthinking what appears to be a very simple decision, just because you’re so afraid of getting it wrong? You might even call it perfectionism in your head, but when you watch your behavior, you’ll see you’re not really doing anything, and you’re certainly not doing it perfectly, because there’s just great fear of it being wrong, even though you’re not really sure what wrong means.

In essence, do you find yourself waiting for a signal before you’re allowed to do or say whatever it is you want, and if you don’t get that signal, you just wait.

Green light syndrome, in essence, is the waiting, this need to get a signal from someone else or some sort of external force that says, yes, it’s okay. You are not going to get this wrong. This is an okay thing to do.

You want approval. You want other people to be happy with it. You want validation. Other people say it’s a good idea that meets society standards. You want proof of concept that this is a successful thing that other people have done before you, it’s guaranteed to go well, a validation of goodness, that this is a moral thing that many people will admire you for and respect you for.

And if you don’t see any of that, you act as if you’re at a red light. You stop, you freeze, and you’re just waiting. You wait at that red light forever, you just feel like you can’t move.

Why We Become This Way

Let’s have a look at why we’re like this.

First and foremost, this isn’t just people pleasers and nice guys. Almost every human, except for the most psychopathic, has some sense of social vigilance when they’re going to make decisions, right? They have some sort of checking-in process of what’s the likely repercussions of me doing this.

Now this is a spectrum. There’s the people who give it a brief consideration, decide it’s the right thing to do, do it anyway. And then there’s green light syndrome at the other end, which is, unless I get full-blown pre-approval and encouragement, I’m not fucking moving.

And everyone’s kind of at any given time in between.

You’ll notice that some things that a lot of people don’t need a green light for, like getting a driver’s license. And the reason for this is they see everybody else driving a car. It’s so pre-approved in society that they don’t feel like it’s risky to go and learn to drive a car, and yet it’s quite an intense thing to learn to drive a car, very uncomfortable, very unfamiliar, lots of risk, and yet almost everybody goes and gets their license at quite a young age.

So it’s a great example of something getting a green light so thoroughly that you have no self-doubt.

And then you’ve got other things that very few people do—start a business, for example—because they get no green lights. In fact, they often get discouragement. They get a lot of fear around it. They’re surrounded by people who haven’t done it. They’ve seen a lot of people be unsuccessful with it, or at least they think they’ve seen that, so very few people start a business compared to the amount of people who actually want to start a business.

I mean, you think about how many people would go into business for themselves if it was guaranteed to go well, and everybody thought it was a great idea, and they had some sort of guaranteed paycheck. Most people would do it. They’ll do what they feel like doing for a living. And yet, very few people do—a tiny percentage of people are entrepreneurs.

But I’m talking to the people at the extreme end of the spectrum, the green light syndrome people who really struggle to make any kind of bold, counterintuitive move without first getting a big old pat on the back from society and from the people they look up to.

Conditioning and Learned Signals

I think the reason we’re like this is mostly what’s called conditioning.

So if you’re not familiar with that term in psychology, it’s basically a reward and punishment system of training human behavior. It’s famous for Pavlov testing it on dogs, making them respond to a bell by thinking they’re going to get food, making them salivate.

We start to get signals that indicate potential reward or punishment, to the point where the signals themselves can move us even though we’re not getting a reward or a punishment.

Take electrotherapy, for example. If I give you an electric shock every time you reach for a cookie, and when I give you an electric shock, that’s a red light. So you red light, electric shock. After a while, I don’t need to give you an electric shock. I’ll just give you the red light. Just the red light alone will be enough for you to not reach for the cookie, as if you’re going to get a shock.

That’s conditioning.

So I anchor a sense of punishment or reward to a signal that isn’t actually punishment or reward.

How Childhood Shapes It

So one way to look at green light syndrome is that you’ve been conditioned as a child to see certain things as signals of punishment or reward, without them actually being genuinely attached.

For you, there’s no difference.

Someone frowns at you, for example. For you, that’s associated with having a withdrawal of love, because that was the signal you got from your mum right before she withdrew love when you were being inconvenient emotionally as a child.

So now you react with a very visceral, almost traumatic response to someone frowning at you when you’re talking, even though nothing bad has actually happened. You got a red light, or what appears to be a red light, but they’re not punching you in the face. They might be frowning because they agree with you, but you don’t see that.

This is conditioning.

You know, as kids, we’re dogs. Our brain is half developed at best. We don’t even start properly developing until we hit puberty. We’re just basic functions before then. And so kids are very malleable, very responsive to reward and punishment conditioning.

And so by the time you can even think critically and go what the fuck is really going on here, you’ve already been programmed.

The Rulebook You Built

Okay, so this goes way back to a time where you didn’t even have the mental faculties to push back on any kind of manipulation. You were just an open sponge that could be programmed like a computer with no firewall. Anything could get in.

What Green Light Syndrome Looks Like

So what is this thing that I call green light syndrome? Let’s break it down. I think the best way to look at it is the examples.

Do you ever say yes when you really want to say no because other people have said yes, and because it seems like the normal thing to do is say yes?

Have you ever felt responsible for how other people feel about your decisions, that somehow your decisions must manage how they feel, like how I went to university so that my parents would feel proud of me?

Do you find yourself asking people, what do you want in the thing that you’re about to collaborate on, even though you already know what you want, right? So you might ask them, like, what do you want for dinner, even though you know you want to eat pizza already, but you don’t say, I want to eat pizza. You say, what do you want? And that you’re willing to drop whatever you’ve decided you want just like that if they say something different.

Do you find yourself avoiding trying something just because you’re unsure about how someone might react to it? You’re not even guaranteed to get a bad reaction. You just might get a bad reaction, and that’s enough for you to not even start a thing.

Do you find yourself needing reassurance before you make a decision, rather than just acting on it, like you need some sort of committee approval before you can move forward with something?

Do you find that you often stay quiet and not say what you really think until you hear somebody else say the same thing and feel like you have a supportive crew for your side of the argument?

Here’s a big one. Do you ever change your decision because of the way someone reacted to it, like it seemed like a good idea, and then someone gets upset, and that actually becomes feedback for your decision, which you then change, as if them being upset is somehow proof that you’ve done something wrong?

I guess that’s one way of categorizing it. Do you think of other people being upset as evidence that you’ve done something wrong?

Have you ever avoided making a move because you weren’t 100% sure that it would go well, that it would be welcomed?

Do you often let other people call the shots just so you’re not responsible for the decision? I’d see this often with partners, the guy’s just always sort of referring to his partner. She calls all the shots. She decides everything, and he just follows along.

Do you feel guilty and selfish and ashamed when you prioritize yourself? Even the thought of prioritizing yourself comes with guilt and shame, like you’ve done something wrong, just for even thinking that. And yet you have double standards, where you encourage other people to do this all the time. You encourage everybody else to put themselves first, even at, like, a sacrifice to you, even if it hurts you when they do this. You encourage them to do it, but you’re not allowed to do it yourself.

Do you often find yourself overthinking what appears to be a very simple decision, just because you’re so afraid of getting it wrong? You might even call it perfectionism in your head, but when you watch your behavior, you’ll see you’re not really doing anything, and you’re certainly not doing it perfectly, because there’s just great fear of it being wrong, even though you’re not really sure what wrong means.

In essence, do you find yourself waiting for a signal before you’re allowed to do or say whatever it is you want, and if you don’t get that signal, you just wait.

Green light syndrome, in essence, is the waiting, this need to get a signal from someone else or some sort of external force that says, yes, it’s okay. You are not going to get this wrong. This is an okay thing to do.

You want approval. You want other people to be happy with it. You want validation. Other people say it’s a good idea that meets society standards. You want proof of concept that this is a successful thing that other people have done before you, it’s guaranteed to go well, a validation of goodness, that this is a moral thing, that many people will admire you for and respect you for.

And if you don’t see any of that, you act as if you’re at a red light. You stop, you freeze, and you’re just waiting. You wait at that red light forever, you just feel like you can’t move.

Why We’re Like This

Let’s have a look at why we’re like this.

First and foremost, this isn’t just people pleasers and nice guys. Almost every human, except for the most psychopathic, has some sense of social vigilance when they’re going to make decisions, right? They have some sort of checking-in process of what’s the likely repercussions of me doing this.

Now this is a spectrum. There’s the people who give it a brief consideration, decide it’s the right thing to do, do it anyway. And then there’s green light syndrome at the other end, which is, unless I get full-blown pre-approval and encouragement, I’m not fucking moving. And everyone’s kind of at any given time in between.

You’ll notice that some things that a lot of people don’t need a green light for, like getting a driver’s license. And the reason for this is they see everybody else driving a car. It’s so pre-approved in society that they don’t feel like it’s risky to go and learn to drive a car, and yet, it’s quite an intense thing to learn to drive a car, very uncomfortable, very unfamiliar, lots of risk, and yet, almost everybody goes and gets their license at quite a young age.

So it’s a great example of kind of something getting a green light so thoroughly that you have no self-doubt.

And then you’ve got other things that very few people do, start a business, for example, because they get no green lights. In fact, they often get discouragement. They get a lot of fear around it. They’re surrounded by people who haven’t done it. They’ve seen a lot of people be unsuccessful with it, or at least they think they’ve seen that, so very few people start a business compared to the amount of people who actually want to start a business.

I mean, you think about how many people would go into business for themselves if it was guaranteed to go well, and everybody thought it was a great idea, and they had some sort of guaranteed paycheck, most people would do it. They’ll do what they feel like doing for a living. And yet, very few people do. A tiny percentage of people are entrepreneurs.

But I’m talking to the people at the extreme end of the spectrum, the green light syndrome people who really struggle to make any kind of bold, counterintuitive move without first getting a big old pat on the back from society and from the people they look up to.

Conditioning

I think the reason we’re like this is mostly what’s called conditioning.

So if you’re not familiar with that term in psychology, it’s basically a reward and punishment system of training human behavior. It’s famous for Pavlov testing it on dogs, making them respond to a bell by thinking they’re going to get food, making them salivate.

We start to get signals that indicate potential reward or punishment, to the point where the signals themselves can move us even though we’re not getting a reward or a punishment.

Take electrotherapy, for example. If I give you an electric shock every time you, I don’t know, reach for a cookie. And when I give you an electric shock, i.e. a red light. So you red light, electric shock. After a while, I don’t need to give you an electric shock. I’ll just give you the red light. Just the red light, enough will be enough for you to not reach for the cookie, as if you’re going to get a shock.

That’s conditioning.

So I anchor a sense of punishment or reward to a signal that isn’t actually punishment or reward.

So one way to look at green light syndrome is that you’ve been conditioned as a child to see certain things as signals of punishment or reward, without them actually being genuinely attached.

For you, there’s no difference. Someone frowns at you, for example, for you, that’s associated with having a withdrawal of love, because that was the signal you got from your mum right before she withdrew love when you were being inconvenient emotionally as a child.

So now you react with a very visceral, traumatic response to someone frowning at you when you’re talking, even though nothing bad has actually happened. You got a red light, or what appears to be a red light, but they’re not punching you in the face. They might be frowning because they agree with you, but you don’t see that, right?

This is conditioning.

You know, as kids, we’re dogs, our brain is half developed at best. We don’t even start properly developing until we hit puberty. You know, we’re just basic functions before then. And so kids are very malleable, very, very responsive to reward and punishment conditioning.

And so by the time you can even think critically and go, what the fuck is really going on here, you’ve already been programmed.

Programmed Before You Could Question It

Okay, so this goes way back to a time where you didn’t even have the mental faculties to push back on any kind of manipulation. You were just an open sponge that could be programmed like a computer with no firewall. Anything could get in.

And if you’ve got green light syndrome, somebody got in and fucked with you, right? Somebody taught you that you have to get a signal from the outside before you’re allowed to act. It could be strictness, it could be unpredictability, but something told you that you going out on your own and making shit up and taking the initiative was a very fucking bad idea. It ended with some sort of punishment, usually an emotional punishment, perhaps even a physical one.

And so now when you see a sign that you might be taking initiative due to the reactions you’re getting from the outside world, or the lack of positive reinforcement you’re getting, which can also be a problem, because when you tell a child good job too many times, they start to go, okay, so that’s what good is. They can’t figure it out for themselves.

You know, I’m really working on this myself as a parent at the moment. It’s so fucking hard because I’m so proud of my kid all the time. Like, I’m definitely not being objective. She draws a straight line. I’m like, oh my God, that’s the best line ever drawn. I can’t help it, you know.

I’m trying to stop saying that’s such a good painting, or you’re so good at that. I keep failing at this. I’m trying to ask her, like, well, what do you think about it? How do you feel about it? Because I want her to be self-directed when it comes to deciding what’s right and wrong and what’s good and bad.

But I had both. When I was a child, I got conditioned, like if I tried to do something that wasn’t approved of, like I had to get permission for fucking every move that I made. I had very strict parenting. They adjusted as they got older, but I got the strict version, so I couldn’t just take the initiative. I couldn’t even, like, turn on the TV without permission. Like, nothing could happen without getting a yes beforehand.

And also, I got a lot of positive reinforcement, but not necessarily in a helpful way. I kind of had to keep going to get validation. Like, look how well I did. Is this good? It is good, yay. Rather than them going, well, you decide what’s good. You choose for yourself.

Now they did a shift into this model later. Unfortunately, the damage was already done.

Hypervigilance and the Rulebook

So because you’ve got this kind of conditioning where you’re looking to avoid punishment and get reward, you start to become hypervigilant. You start to believe that the world works with all these very subtle signs, that there’s a kind of wind that blows before the storm, and you’ve got to be carefully feeling out that wind. You’ve got to be looking for all these pre-approval or pre-rejection signals to prevent the actual disaster from happening or to make the good thing happen.

So you start to read people and read your environment. You start to profile what’s good and bad according to your culture, your society that you’re in, the family you’re in, what your friends approve of, and so on. You start to build up a kind of rulebook, what’s allowed and what’s not, what you should, you know, what you can do without having to worry too much and what is very risky to do.

None of this is based on objective success. None of this is based on what’s best for you and what would create a good life. It’s all based essentially on approval and validation from others. Though, for you, it will actually feel like you’re making survival decisions.

It’s going to be a mixture of environmental and contextual. So there’ll be the kind of what’s cool, for example, in high school, what’s good as a Christian living in Louisiana, you’re going to have these kind of almost societal, cultural rulebooks in your head based on what generally people you know generally do, and that’ll all have a kind of pre-approval green light, right?

So those are things you feel safe doing because you’ve seen everybody else do it, like getting a driver’s license. You’ve seen everybody else do it. You’ve never seen anybody get punished for doing it. It generally gets rewarded. And so you just kind of gravitate, those are the, like, it’s kind of like the paddock that you’re in. These are things within the fence. This is the grass you’re allowed to eat because everyone else is eating it.

But this will always be tempered by your in-the-moment context, like, who are you with right now? What are their preferences, what’s the situation you’re in? And sometimes this changes the rulebook. There might be things that are really fine, you can do this with your family anytime, but you go to somebody else’s house and you just throw that rulebook out, and you’re like, let’s wait and see what these guys are okay with, you know?

So in your own house, you might just go into the fridge and help yourself to food. You go to someone else’s house, you’ll sit there starving until somebody offers you something to eat. You won’t even ask, right?

So you’re always going to be hypervigilant to what these context rules are, and very, very careful about not breaking those rules.

Waiting for Instructions

So you’re basically just constantly waiting for a signal. You’re waiting for instructions. You aim to be told how to do it and when to do it. You’re not even really sure what you want. You just know that you want to play by the rules. You want to make sure whatever it is you do, the reaction is good, even if that means compromising your own values, or doing something you don’t even like or find boring, or just occasionally doing something you like, but just by coincidence, it happens to line up with what’s okay.

It’s a very limited way of being, but it’s a safe way of being, isn’t it? This is all just about emotional safety.

It very quickly became an instinctual thing for you, didn’t it? It’s not like you sit there doing a pros and cons analysis, costs and benefits, reviewing all the rules consciously. It’s more like a gut instinct thing. If you don’t feel safe, you just kind of freeze.

You’ve got this hypervigilance, this radar starts pinging. You get a sense of what’s cool, and then you do it.

The Chameleon Effect

I used to notice this with my sense of humor, like I was always talking about this. I was like, the funny guy in my group. Might be hard to believe now, but I used to be hilarious, and what nobody saw, it looked like I’m just joking around, having a good time with, like, great timing and a witty sense of humor.

But in here was just gears turning. I was just constantly scanning, assessing, profiling what’s going to be funny for this group at this time, for this person. And if you were to actually track me over different situations and different people, you’d see different types of humor happening. When I was around a certain group of friends, I’d say really sick, twisted, fucked-up jokes, because that’s what tickled them.

But if I was with my parents, for example, I’d make sort of witty, sophisticated, intellectual pun-type jokes. And if I was at my university, I made a lot of sarcastic comments. Like I was actually using different styles of humor that I’d carefully curated depending on my audience and developed through sort of very careful trial-and-error testing.

Again, that would be green light, like I wouldn’t make a sick joke unless I saw someone else make a sick joke and get a laugh and realize, oh, that’s what works here, and then I would do it.

So it was really like gut feeling. I was watching this happen. It was happening too fast for me to really be consciously making decisions. It was just this kind of sociopath, say, this chameleon effect. I’d just fill the vessel. I was like a gas. I’d just take the shape of whatever the vessel was, but I’d never leak outside the vessel. I’d always stay in the right shape.

And that’s what green light syndrome is, is I’m not going to do anything that might be perceived as a red light.

So it’d be kind of ironic. I’d be in a group making really sick, twisted jokes. It might look like I’m really controversial and really offensive, but what you don’t see is I have very carefully mapped out the safety of this and realized this is completely safe for me. I’m not doing anything dangerous. Everyone watching finds this funny.

So it might look like I’m a big risk-taker, I’m really confident, but actually, I’m playing it safe, and I think this is maybe why I didn’t get feedback that I’m doing this, because it didn’t look like I was doing it.

Looking Bold While Playing Safe

You know, when I played in a band, people would be like, whoa. Not many people play in a band, takes a bit of balls to get up on stage, so on, so forth. They don’t see I was invited to go play in this band that I wanted to play in a band for so long, but I couldn’t reach out to anybody. I was just sitting there with my instrument.

And even the band, like I was a guitar player, and they said, we need a bass player. I’m just like, all right, bass it is. It just so happened to be lucky that I actually ended up enjoying playing bass.

But that was very much green light syndrome. I wasn’t like, no, it’s guitar or nothing. I’ll start my own band. I was like, whatever you guys need. I’ll play fucking tuba if that’s what you need. Just please let me be part of the group, right?

There’s a kind of desperate safety there, but from the outside, it would have looked like I was a risk-taker, which is why nobody sat me down and said, bro, fucking you need to lead.

Why Anything Outside Green Felt Red

One of the main reasons we’re like this is because anything that isn’t green got a red, however it is we received it growing up. When we stepped out of line, it hurt.

A lot of it would just be love withdrawal. We’d just get a very cold emotional response for doing something that wasn’t lined up and convenient, and within the rules, we’d get ostracized.

You know, if you’re the weird kid at school doing unusual things, you know you don’t get to fit in, even though the people in the cool group are going to end up being the losers when they’re adults, and you being the one who has weird ideas will end up being the entrepreneur. You don’t get that reaction when you’re little, and that’s the thing. Like, the world of a kid is really brutal. There’s not a lot of gray, it’s just black and white.

So you’re either in or you’re out. There isn’t kind of like a lot of niches that you can go find like you can as an adult. So if you didn’t go green, you got red, and red was very real. It was vicious.

Yeah, parents were unstable. Maybe you even got beaten or abused. At the very least, you were made to feel awful, and at school you got ostracized, or you saw others get ostracized for taking these risks, and vicariously you felt their pain and went, fuck that. I don’t want that to happen to me.

And they’re very real punishments for breaking the rules. And so as far as you saw, there was just green and red. You’re in or you’re out.

This yellow idea, this nuance of like, hey, just because no one else thinks it’s cool doesn’t mean you can’t do it, like that just wasn’t available to you as a kid.

And so you learned very quickly, green or nothing. Everything outside of green feels very dangerous, even though, if you look at it, even just objectively at all, you can see there’s no reason to think that.

Why Yellow Feels Like Red

For example, going up and asking a girl out, and she says no, there’s nobody who’s ever gone to hospital for that. That is not inherently dangerous, that doesn’t even last emotionally, you’re fine.

But if the one time you did it at school, like me, you get humiliated in front of everyone, and it’s like the gossip for a whole year. Yeah, fuck doing that again, right? So it seems like very much a red, but you’re living in a world where the rules don’t even make sense.

So this is why yellow light feels like red.

There’s yellow, there’s a thing where, like, it’s not clearly established that something bad is going to happen, but because it’s not clearly established that something good is going to happen, it gets put in the bad category, like, it’s good or it’s bad, not it’s good, it’s neutral and bad. There’s just two categories, and this is your main problem, because you are treating all the yellows like a red. You don’t even know that they’re yellows.

We’re going to talk about this soon.

So the real problem is stopping on a yellow. Stopping on a red is fine. Red means don’t go, and there are objective reds in our life, but a vast majority of things that stop us are not red, but we can’t feel the difference.

And today I want to start opening your mind to the possibility of going on a yellow light, or an amber light, depending what fucking country you’re from.

What a Real Red Light Looks Like

Let me give you some examples of red lights.

So this is when you actually can’t go any further. Now notice, most of these will first require you to take a risk, and then you’ll get the red reaction. The red reaction doesn’t come before you act. But there are some examples where it has.

Anything that requires cooperation and the other person has directly rejected it.

So for example, if I go ask a girl out and she doesn’t want to be with me, she says, no, I’m not interested. I should stop there. That is a red light. It is not encouragement to keep going, even if she is playing games. I shouldn’t be with someone who plays games like that. So it’s a red either way.

And it’s ironic how many guys get this wrong, like they have green light syndrome, but they’ll also step over the line with a red when they get drunk or something. It’s ridiculous, right?

So if something requires the other person’s full cooperation and consent to move forward and they say no, that’s a red, but notice, you have to ask them first to get that red. You can’t guess that it’s a red.

Something that has a strong, unbiased test that flops terribly, like you put out a new product with a really good marketing campaign and a test and absolutely nobody buys it. That’s a red light. That’s saying this is not a good business idea. Notice, you have to go and test the product to get that feedback. You can’t guess that people will react this way to it.

Another red light is you’ve given it your all physically, and you literally can’t go any further. So let’s say you’re doing pull ups at the gym, and you get to six and a half and your legs are kicking and you’re about to pass out because of the lactic acid buildup. Yeah, that’s a red light. Being scared of doing pull ups because people are watching, that’s not a red light. You have to start doing pull ups to actually get to the limit.

So there are physical limits, but you have to get there to know what they are.

Something that’s against the law or very strongly monitored and punished in a very objective way. So this might be a red light that you get without having to breach it. Like you just know that crossing a border without a passport is just a terrible idea, right? You know that getting into a fight with a police officer is just a terrible idea. You don’t need to go and try it. This has been red lighted in society so strongly that it’s not worth doing.

Now, this is not the same as people being embarrassed or humiliated because people didn’t like their idea. Okay, they’re not breaking the law. They didn’t actually get punished. If they just ignored the haters, nothing would have happened to them. This is the kind of red light where, even if you ignore it, something happens to you.

So you can pretend you don’t care what the haters think about you not using your passport and you end up in prison anyway, right? Like it doesn’t need your cooperation, whereas people hating your video on YouTube, you turn the comments off, it disappears, right?

Something that has a high kill rate, something that objectively harms people and wounds them much more than they are successful, like BASE jumping, right? Or getting into street fights or running blindfolded across a highway. This is not the same as something that’s just a little bit dangerous and comes with some injuries and some risk. There’s something that’s just stupid, that could be a red light.

That doesn’t mean you can’t go BASE jumping, it just means it’s an incredible risk.

Something that’s a breach of your work contract, and you know would lead to instant dismissal. So something that would actually deprive you of income in a seriously harmful way, not just something that’s scary to do because you might get into debt or might not go well, but something where, like you’ve signed up to something and it’s just a breach of the contract.

And of course, something that’s an undeniable breach of your core values, something that compromises you morally, something that you know you would regret for the rest of your life.

And you know this because you’ve done it before, and you regret doing it. You know this because you’ve seen other people do it, and it was horrible to you. You can’t imagine ever being a person who does it, like murder and rape, stealing from a friend.

But most of the time, this will actually be something that you figured out because you got it wrong. You did something and you went, I feel horrible about doing that. I’ve decided that that’s wrong, even if other people approved of it.

Like maybe you scammed some people with some marketing thing, and you made a lot of money, and everybody’s like, man, you’re so rich, it’s awesome, but you feel bad about how you got that rich. That’s a breach of your values.

So those are some examples of red lights.

And what I want you to notice is, while there’s probably more things we could put on that list, the list isn’t much bigger than that in total. That after those few things, pretty much everything else is open to interpretation.

What a Yellow Light Actually Looks Like

So let’s have a look now at what yellow lights look like, because this is the kind of thing I want you to be able to move forward on. This is where you’re stuck.

An example of a yellow light is, nobody else has done this. Nobody else has gone first, paved the way, shown that it’s safe now.

A red light is lots of other people have done it, and it went very badly for every single one of them, you know, like jumping off cliffs, for example. But you might have a new idea that there’s really no objective reason to think it’s particularly dangerous, but you don’t see anybody else doing it.

You know, it’s like when I first went to a salsa dance class. It’s not that nobody else was doing salsa, but none of my friends were. Nobody I knew was doing it. I didn’t have permission from my social group that it’s okay for one of us to do it. That’s a yellow light.

There’s no sign that you’re going to get a good reaction to this.

Another similar yellow light is that nobody has succeeded with this approach yet, that this thing you’re doing does not yet have kind of validated success rates, or it already has a low success rate, but people haven’t really put their back into it.

Or you might have a business idea that a couple of people have tried and failed, but you can also see that maybe it’s the way they ran the business, that that doesn’t actually say the product’s bad, but no one says the product’s good either.

You haven’t been asked or invited or encouraged to do this thing. You don’t have permission to do it. Nobody said you can’t do it. Nobody said you must not do it. And even that’s not necessarily a red light. In fact, it’s often not a red light. It’s just a yellow, but no one’s saying you should do it. Nobody’s saying it’s a great idea.

Let’s say you decide out of nowhere that you want to play the violin, and nobody else has ever said you should try the violin, or have you considered being a musician, or I really wish you would play some more music. Nobody said anything like that. You haven’t been nudged by anybody. It’s just your own spontaneous idea. That’s a yellow light.

Misreading Signals in the Moment

Ambiguous body language is one of the main ones that affects us in the moment of making decisions.

You know, should I tell this joke? Should I keep telling the story? Should I go for what I want with this person?

Things like yawning, frowning, blank face or disinterested looking face, somebody being quite serious. None of these things are red lights.

A red light is somebody saying no, stop, or I’ll punch you in the face, right? Like that’s a red light. Or I reject you entirely. Never talk to me again. That’s a red light.

But someone just going like… that’s not actually a red light, it’s yellow.

I remember learning this one. I used to go and approach strangers, primarily women on the street, and I’d go to them and say, look, I wanted to come and say hi. I think you’re really cute, or you’re gorgeous.

And 90% of the time, the first five seconds, their face was just like…

And I used to take that as a rejection. I’d be like, sorry, have a good day, bye. For the first like 30 times.

And then somebody told me, hey, just wait a bit. They haven’t actually said no yet. They haven’t left yet. This isn’t necessarily a rejection.

So I stayed.

And more than half the time, after five seconds, they would actually smile.

And so that first frowning shit that I was seeing was them processing. That was their kind of fucked up face, because this had never happened to them before, and their brain was kind of misfiring, having a meltdown.

They’re going through all sorts of stuff in that first five seconds, like, is this for real? Is this guy scamming me? Is this a prank? Why is he saying this? Who is this guy? Do I even like it? What the fuck is going on?

That’s a lot to process, especially for someone who’s never experienced this before.

And so I just had to wait for them to get through this.

A lot of it was them just being suspicious, like, what the fuck is this guy up to?

And then after a certain period of time, they’d see that I was genuine and there’s no hidden agenda, and that’s when they’d be like, oh, I actually like this. This is nice, right?

I mean, any salesperson who’s ever approached you has seen you make this face as you try to figure out, like, what the fuck is this guy up to, and trying to figure out if it’s in your best interest to keep talking.

But it’s not the same as you saying no. You saying not interested and walking away, that’s a no.

When “No” Is Actually No

I’ve even had girls where I went up and talked to them on the street, and they just kept walking.

I learned very quickly you don’t chase, right? That’s a creepy thing to do. So I just stand still and keep talking as they walk away.

And again, about half the time, they could get up to five meters away, I mean, I’m like shouting at this point, and they’ll turn around and come back to talk to me, because it took them like 10 steps to figure out what the fuck was going on, and they just stayed with their program flight path until the information managed to register in their brain.

So even them walking away wasn’t actually a red light.

But if you chase them, it turns into a red light real quick.

So I learned quickly, like it’s a yellow. I’ll let them keep going, but I’m not going to stop. That’s the safe thing, the respectful thing, but also the powerful thing to do.

Other People’s Reactions Are Not Red Lights

Sometimes it’s the edges of a red light.

You might see disagreement, mockery, people whispering to each other and rolling their eyes. Things that look like rejection and disapproval may, in fact, be those things.

Somebody getting upset with your idea, you might take this as a red light.

When I first told my friends that I wanted to start my own business, I got a really discouraging reaction, like really bad, surprisingly bad.

But that’s not the same as evidence that my idea was wrong.

Okay, that’s not the same as evidence that my business was going to fail.

That was just some people being upset.

This is maybe the main one for you guys.

Keep in mind, somebody else being upset is a yellow light, not a red.

Now, if that person’s upset because you’re directly trying to get something from them, and they’ve said no already, and you keep going, that is a red light.

I hopefully don’t need to tell people this, but sometimes you gotta make the obvious obvious.

So if you ask a girl out, she says, I’m not interested, don’t keep fucking asking. Walk away. Talk to somebody else. Say thank you for your time. Have a great night and move on.

If you want to sell something to somebody, and they’re like, I don’t want to buy this. Go, okay, have a good day. Move on.

Those are red lights.

But if you go like, hey, I want to start this business, and your mom’s like, in this economy? Oh, that’s a terrible idea. That’s not a red light.

She’s not your fucking customer.

This product hasn’t been tried or tested yet. This is not information that’s at all relevant.

You can tell your friends, you know, I’m going to start doing salsa dancing. They’re like, why, are you gay now?

That doesn’t mean salsa dancing is bad. It doesn’t even mean that it’s gay. It doesn’t even mean that being gay is bad.

This is just them having an opinion about what you’re doing that has nothing to do with them.

That is not valid information.

Most of you have been held back your whole life because somebody got upset by your idea, even though it had nothing to fucking do with them.

They can just stay right out of it.

Why You Should Act Before You Ask

People have a very hard time staying out of other people’s business.

If you are somebody’s opinion on something, they almost always give it, even though the most honest thing that a person can say when it’s not directly related to them is, I don’t know, it’s your life. Do whatever you think is right.

Notice how fucking rare it is for people to say that, right?

So when you go about, and this is why I think you should take action first and then get feedback, not talk about your ideas before you take an action, it’s because most people’s feedback and reaction to your ideas is going to be biased, opinionated, invalid, and negative.

Very few of you will be surrounded by encouraging people.

In fact, if you are, you wouldn’t really be listening to this, because you’d be living your best life surrounded by supportive people.

Most people with green light syndrome, quite ironically, end up surrounded by discouraging people, or they become codependent with people who do give them a lot of green lights, but for their own agenda.

By doing everything your partner wants and getting a lot of approval for that doesn’t actually mean you’re living your best life.

Yellow Means Discomfort, Not Danger

But yellow light means you’re going to upset people, not harm them.

They don’t even need to be involved with this.

You know, if your friend gets offended that you want to go and move to another country, that doesn’t actually hurt him. He’s not being forced to move to the other country. He’s not even being forced to be your friend, right?

This is a yellow light, not a red.

Another yellow light is it just feels uncomfortable, especially unfamiliar. It feels new. It feels like you don’t really know what you’re doing. It feels like you’re a stranger in a strange land.

This is not bad. That’s what every new thing feels like.

And new is not synonymous with bad, quite the opposite, really, isn’t it?

So if you feel really uncomfortable and unsure of yourself, like you show up to the martial arts class, let’s say you go to jiu jitsu for the first time, and you just get absolutely fucking smoked because you have no idea what you’re doing, hey, that’s everybody’s first time. It’s everybody’s first 10 times, right?

There is no beginner at jiu jitsu who’s good at it. None really.

All of them get gassed out. All of them have zero technique. All of them have sore shoulders and elbows afterwards.

That’s normal. That’s not a red light.

Now, if you go to the jiu jitsu class and everyone there is super aggressive, and they bully you, and one of them permanently injures you just in a playful roll, that’s a red light.

But if you’re just tired and sore and confused at the end of it, that’s just a yellow.

All right? That just means, hey, I’m not sure about this yet.

Unpopular Doesn’t Mean Wrong (Continued)

Have you noticed that there’s a lot of things that a lot of people do that are actually really stupid?

Drinking alcohol. Nearly everyone you know does it, terribly bad for you, right? There’s like basically no gains in doing it. You can have a much better life without it.

But nearly everyone does it. Does that mean it’s good? No.

So not drinking will actually get bad reactions. I can tell you from experience that when you stop drinking around drinking people, they get really offended. It’s weird how sensitive alcoholics are about people leaving the tribe.

So you’re going to get a bad reaction to something. It’s going to be unpopular. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to do.

In fact, most of the things that are objectively the healthiest, smartest, kindest things to do are in the minority.

You look at the way the majority of people behave, it’s kind of selfish, kind of insecure, needy and greedy.

Very few people act confidently. Very few people are objectively healthy.

We now live in a world where most people are objectively obese with all sorts of health conditions, and so being healthy and confident and doing what’s good for high quality life is going to be unusual.

It’s going to be in the abnormal category, and this often means it’s going to be in the unpopular category.

When Progress Doesn’t Come Fast

Another yellow light is that your first attempts are not immediately rewarded, that you don’t crush it straight out of the gate. You don’t get approval or success.

Let’s say you start a band. Every band you know that’s really famous and really good, their first few gigs sucked. Maybe the first few albums flopped, certainly the first few songs.

Other than some of these kind of pop stars that were groomed by pedos from birth, most bands sucked for years before anybody heard of them, right?

And so if you’re doing something new that’s good for you, there’s a really good chance you’re going to suck for a while, and probably a lot longer than you really were ready for.

I started playing chess like six years ago, and I still kind of suck. You know, it’s been a really long time now. I am slowly getting better. I can see that, but it wasn’t anywhere near the accelerated rate that I was hoping for.

But that’s not a red light. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t play chess. There’s plenty of rewarding reasons to play chess, even if I never get good at it.

So just not being good at something immediately doesn’t mean stop doing it.

Though a lot of you listening to this, watching this, you will have a trail of lost hobbies and interests behind you, because they didn’t kick off immediately, right?

I’ve got so many behind me that it’s actually scary to think about.

I think I could have been a good actor. I think I could have been a great musician. I think I probably even could have been a really good fighter, like a martial artist.

But this is all just a list of hobbies and interests that I gave up on quickly or compromised in some way to fit in because it didn’t go well right away.

When Your Environment Doesn’t Support You

You know, I might have already talked about this one, but it’s not the kind of things your friends usually do.

So not just talking about unpopular stuff, but stuff that your particular circle, it’s like a breach of the cultural norms.

Might be your whole country, or might just be your circle of friends or your workplace.

It’ll be something that nobody you know does, but you might know that other people in other groups do it, right?

Like I said, when I quit drinking, nobody I knew was quitting drinking, it was just me.

When I started a business, nobody I knew was starting a business, but I knew that other people around the world did this clearly.

Well, I mean, we all worked for somebody, didn’t we?

In fact, I knew that there were people just outside of my circle doing it.

You know, the father of one of my friends was a great entrepreneur, and he was the only one who encouraged me outside of my own family when I wanted to start my own business.

So he was one step removed. His children didn’t encourage me, and my close friends didn’t.

But just one step outside of the circle, there were people doing what I wanted to do.

And so you might think that because my immediate circle and my immediate nation or my immediate church thinks that this is unusual and nobody else does that, but I can see plenty of other people around the world do it.

That’s a yellow light.

Risk Isn’t the Same as Danger

Something’s dangerous, but not life threatening, right?

Contact sports, starting a business, approaching a beautiful girl in the middle of a cafe.

These things might seem to have some kind of risk beyond just playing the super safe life, but the risk isn’t particularly high.

Like most people who play rugby get injured. In fact, pretty much all of them get injured, but very few die from playing rugby, right?

It’s not that dangerous. It’s just a little bit rough.

It’s even the same with martial arts. Like most people who do martial arts are going to sustain an injury, maybe even a concussion, but die from it, probably not.

Probably no more at risk doing martial arts than you are driving in a car, which you have no fucking problem doing, right?

Getting in a car is like the most dangerous thing you can probably do. Like if heart disease doesn’t kill you, a motor accident will, right, statistically.

And yet you treat all these other things as if they’re more dangerous.

So just because something comes with a bit of pain and a bit of risk, just because you know if you go and approach 1000 women, maybe one of them will slap you or throw her drink in your face.

I mean, it never happened to me, but it could happen. I know it happened to somebody else.

But still, the ratios we’re talking like less than 1% of the time.

So it’s not that dangerous, but the risk is there.

That’s a yellow light.

You’re allowed to get a bit hurt. Life is rough, man. This shit, this body is designed to take a bit of a fucking hammering, right?

We’re not fragile little things. We’re flexible organisms.

We can get by missing organs, missing limbs. We can get by blind and deaf.

We’re designed to take a bit of a fucking battery.

I think, as Hunter S Thompson was talking about, like, if you go to your grave all perfect and undamaged, then you haven’t really lived.

It’s like a rental car, put it through its paces. Don’t be so precious with the fucking thing.

But all this great stuff that you want to do with your life, there’s going to be some risk there.

I mean, I have been punched in the face from being confrontational.

Now it’s less than 0.01% of the confrontational conversations I’ve had, so the risk is not that high, but there is some risk of violence if you’re going to be confrontational.

That being said, I also got punched in the face when I wasn’t confrontational.

In fact, I got punched way more being a passive nice guy than I did being a confrontational person who stands up for himself.

So what is the risk really?

Authority Isn’t Always a Red Light

Another yellow light is your boss or an authority figure doesn’t approve, but it’s not actually technically a breach of your contract.

You know, a police officer might be grumpy at you, but that doesn’t mean you’re breaking the law.

This is one that often catches people.

An authority figure says no, you shouldn’t, but if you look at the actual legal requirements, they can’t say that, or at least they have no authority to stop you.

I remember first testing this at university.

I’d be in a lecture, and I’d be bored, and I’d be like, you know, I can just walk out of this lecture. I still get my degree.

The lecturer doesn’t want me to, and he might send me a grumpy email, but that’s it.

So often other people, an authority figure saying no doesn’t mean you can’t. It doesn’t mean it’s a red light.

And this particularly applies when it comes to authority.

If a police officer says you must do this or you can’t do that, ask them to cite the legislation.

Are they just saying that because it makes you easier to manage, or are they legally entitled to make you do this?

Because this comes down to things like the Milgram experiment, the Nazi soldiers and everything.

You’ve got to be able to say no to authority when you know that what they’re saying is not legitimate and not good.

But if you think no to authority is a red light, I can never do that, then you’re the kind of person who can be convinced to do a genocide.

What Yellow Really Means

So notice that all of these yellow things, they’re uncomfortable.

They might get what you feel is a bad reaction.

They might not go to plan.

There might be some pain and loss and confusion along the way.

But that’s not the same as a red light.

These are not definite stop situations.

And there’s so many opportunities waiting for you on the other side of these yellow lights.

If you go through this intersection, there’s a whole fucking world waiting for you there.

You know, getting through the first couple of years of starting my business was fucking hard. It sucked.

I was doing 90 hour weeks. I didn’t know what I was doing. Most of the shit I did didn’t work.

But now, like when I go and hang out with people who are lifelong employees, and they can’t even choose what days off they have, I’m so glad I got through that couple of years.

It’s the same.

I’m married to the girl of my dreams. I’ve got a wonderful daughter.

And this is all because I went and got rejected by thousands of women.

If I hadn’t done that, I would have never had the balls to initiate with her.

So there’s a lot of great things waiting for you on the other side of yellows.

And sitting in a green light feels safe, but it’s such a restricted existence that I guarantee you that life sucks.

It sucks.

There’s very little you can do on a green light.

There’s very few things in life where you just get a big, easy win.

Most shit, you got to go out and earn and take some risks and take a few hits.

And if you’re not willing to do that, you miss out terribly.

Transition: How to Go on a Yellow Light

If this is all sounding like you, there’s a quiz I’ve got in the comments or the description of this podcast, that nice guy syndrome.

Fill it out, and I’ll be able to give you some personalized, custom feedback on how you can break through this for yourself.

All right, let’s transition now to talking about how to deal with this.

How can we learn to go on a yellow light?

Because even if you agree with everything I’ve said so far, you’re probably still scared to make these moves.

As a concept, it sounds like a good idea, but in real life, when rubber hits the road, you freeze and panic.

So how do we get over this?

How did I get over this?

What It Feels Like to Go on a Yellow

The key you’ve always got to keep in mind is you’re going to go on a yellow light.

I love this analogy. I’ve used it so often.

It’s like you’re driving up to the intersection. The light’s yellow.

You don’t know if you should stop or not. You’re probably not going to crash, but you’re cutting it close.

And you whip through the intersection anyway.

That’s what it’s going to feel like emotionally.

It’s going to feel dangerous, risky.

It’s going to feel like you’re going to get disapproval for doing this. People are going to honk at you.

You got to understand, you are not running a red light.

Okay, there’s a big difference.

Very few things in life are a red light.

And if you think a lot of things are, then you’re misjudging these, and you gotta start seeing that difference.

You feel like you’re acting without enough information.

You’re not ready just yet.

You’re going too early.

That you’re breaking some sort of unwritten rules, or maybe even written rules.

That you’re being a bad person, even though you can’t objectively point to any real harm that you’re doing besides offending people.

Or going against what they feel is best for you.

So you’re not actually harming anybody, but it kind of feels like you are.

Feels like you’re maybe being selfish.

Like you’re not being considerate enough of other people and what their needs are.

Or that you’re being foolish.

Like you’re doing something that’s just obviously stupid.

That it’s ridiculous that you’re even trying to do this.

These are the kind of feelings you’re going to have.

Recognizing the Signs

Really like when I first started approaching women, none of my friends were doing it.

They’d get drunk and dance near girls in a nightclub, or start texting girls off an app or something.

But just going up to a girl and saying hi, nobody did that.

So when I first did it, I was just out on my own in the wilderness, being watched and judged.

It was very, very uncomfortable.

You know, and that’s just from what my friends were saying.

Then I had to get the girls’ reactions.

The first few times I did it, it was an absolute crash and burn.

And so there was really no encouragement.

There’s no signs like, hey, you’re on track. This is a good idea. Things are going to work out.

There’s no sign of that.

But there was also no sign that said stop.

There was no sign saying this is not going anywhere. This is terrible.

It’s just this is hard.

That was it.

I came to understand like if something feels hard and difficult and really uncomfortable, but I’m not really doing any harm and I’m not being stopped, and I am seeing some glimpse of progress over time, then I should keep going.

Even though nothing emotionally is telling me to keep going.

The kind of data from the outside world is.

So you won’t see red light evidence, but you will see yellow lights.

You will just get the sense that you’re not being encouraged, that you’re kind of out in the wilderness, cutting a path through the forest.

Nobody’s following you. Nobody agrees with you.

You just kind of have to keep going until you hit a wall or it breaks through into success of some kind.

Start Small

The key here is to start really small.

This is the secret.

You don’t have to jump off a cliff.

You can just jump down one step.

All right, that step is as significant as any big move, because what you’re really doing is doing something that doesn’t have a green light.

It doesn’t matter how big it is.

The fact that you’re going on any sort of yellow light is what matters here.

This is an emotional progression, not something that can be measured from the outside.

So you don’t have to do the advanced kind of stuff that I do with my clients.

You can just tiptoe into this thing.

And that will start a momentum of mindset shifting that will escalate over time.

In fact, as you keep doing this at a small level, you never have to do some big heroic move.

That’s not how the game is played anyway.

The Five Types of Yellow Lights

There are about five different types of yellow lights that you’re going to have to work through.

I want to call them out, because you’ll recognize them when they’re happening.

First one is, I just call confusion.

You don’t know enough yet.

All right, this is the “I don’t know how” kind of barrier.

You might have a vague sense of maybe the first move, but you just don’t know how to succeed in this thing.

You don’t know how it works.

You might not know where to park the car to go to the class.

Like it’s just a confusing mess.

That’s a classic yellow light where you have to start before you know.

Seems impossible, but the truth is you can wing it.

The next one is the leadership yellow light.

There’s no sign that this has been done before.

You’re not following anybody.

Nobody else has succeeded, or nobody else in your group does it.

So this kind of thing of having to go first without anybody else demonstrating it can be done.

The third type would be the rejection risk yellow light.

The sense that not only do you not have encouragement or permission or pre approval, but there’s a moderate to fair risk that you’re going to get pushed back.

Right, that the thing you’re doing you’ve seen has a risk of rejection.

You’ve seen other people get rejected, or you just understand that something like this has a low success rate.

Or at least anything less than 100% success rate.

The fourth one is just the basic discomfort yellow light.

You feel that it’s unfamiliar.

You feel nervous about doing it.

You feel a sense that it’s going to be difficult, like a hassle.

That kind of stoppage internally.

And the last one I’ve got on my list here is one of the most devious, which is the delay yellow light.

The very reasonable justification that this could be done another time.

That you don’t have to do it now.

You know, it could be put off till later.

How to Handle Confusion

So I’m gonna give you some practical tips to get through each of these five.

But the confusion one, basically, you just wing it at a very small level.

You just show up and see what happens.

For most of these things that you want to do, there’s a kind of showing up move that you can think of.

Let’s say you want to start exercising.

You can just show up to the gym.

You don’t even know how gym memberships work.

You don’t even know what hours they’re open.

But you know where the gym is and where to park the car, and that’s all you’ve got.

So you just show up.

You go to the front desk, and you’ll be like, I’m new. How does this work?

Maybe they say, oh, you can have a free trial.

And you just go on.

You’re seeing all these big buff people and these intimidating looking pieces of machinery, and you’re like, fuck. What the fuck is going on?

Just go have a fiddle around.

Just potter around.

Go watch some people on the machines.

Maybe when someone’s finished, go try it.

See what happens.

Go lift a couple of weights, put them back down again.

Just be a newbie who is just fucking feeling things out.

That’s how you want to write a book.

And you’re like, I don’t even know how people write books.

Just start writing about something.

Knowing that you could delete this page, throw it away.

Just go and put words onto paper for the first time.

Just get a feel for the idea.

That’s how you deal with confusion.

Just show up and do a little bit, just totally winging it.

All right.

That experience will give you feedback, even if it goes terribly badly.

You show up to the gym, they’re closed for renovations.

Like, fuck. I don’t get anywhere with that.

So okay, well, at least you know where it is.

You know when they’ll be open.

Your next move is planned for you.

A Serious Invitation to Coaching

If this post resonated with you, there’s a reason.

Most men who end up working with me aren’t looking for motivation, hacks, or surface-level confidence. They’re tired of circling the same problems with information overwhelm but not implementing successful changes.

They know what they should do. They’re just not consistently doing it.

Coaching is not for everyone. It’s not therapy, it’s not cheerleading, and it’s not about “fixing” you. 

It’s a structured, honest working relationship focused on behaviour change, taking responsibility for yourself, and improving the way you make decisions—especially the ones you keep avoiding.

This work is for you if:

• You’re functional and capable, but something fundamental still isn’t working.
• You’re done with intellectualizing your patterns and want them to actually change.
• You’re willing to be challenged, not reassured.
• You’re prepared to take responsibility for your choices instead of waiting to feel ready.

I’ve spent years making these mistakes myself and over a decade helping others stop repeating them. The difference coaching makes is not insight—it’s traction.

What working together looks like

• Clear diagnosis of where you’re self-sabotaging (not just why)
• Practical, uncomfortable actions that build real confidence
• Direct feedback when you drift back into old patterns
• A focus on integrity, not image or performance

If we work together, it will be because it makes sense—not because you were persuaded.

A no-pressure first session

I offer a free initial trial coaching session with no obligation to continue.

You can use it to see how I work, ask hard questions, and decide whether this is something you want to commit to.

If it’s not a fit, that’s fine. If it is, we’ll be clear about what comes next.

👉 Apply for an initial coaching session here

I only work with 8 clients at a time, and only with those prepared to take this seriously. I have 5 intro session spaces available each month – you may need to go onto a waitlist.

Dan Munro

If you’re looking for reassurance of your victim-story, this isn’t it. If you’re ready to change how you actually live, let’s stop messing around.