---
title: Episode 195 I Hate Self Development
episode_number: 195
era: late
source_file: Episode 195 I Hate Self Development.mp3
audio_size_mb: 50.8
duration_sec: 1665.4
duration_min: 27.8
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.998
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T17:11:51Z---

# Episode 195 I Hate Self Development

**Speaker 0:** Close your eyes and let this podcast change your life without you lifting a finger. In this recording, you are going to learn how to unlock your potential, ignite your core confidence, and release your true alpha power for peak self actualization. What a load of bullshit. If you believe that, you will believe anything. This is Tom Torero podcast a 195 called I hate self development. It's a bit of a rant, but I hope it has some use in your daygame and your dating, and you're having sex with very beautiful women. So we begin with a quote from Fight Club. I hope you've watched that movie by now. Tyler says, self improvement is masturbation, now self destruction. That's the answer. Or something like that. But what a cracking quote which has stayed with me for a long time. Self destruction being the answer. How is that possible? And what does he mean by self improvement being masturbation? Well, I still get emails about a video I shot, I think in Russia in 2014. Jesus, I'm an old bastard. And it was called why I hate self development and life coaching. And, yes, like this podcast's title, it's very clickbaity. Therefore, it got a lot of views or a lot of traction with life coaches and people that do this for a living. And I still, to this day, get very interesting emails in my jolly inbox every morning about this topic. Tom, how can you hate self development? How can you hate self improvement? Why don't you tell guys to lift and to read and to meditate and la di da di da? So we shall go back to that video kind of in this podcast and explain what I mean by me hating self development and what Tyler means by self destruction being the real power and the paradoxes in why pickup is actually very different from self development, how they crossover, how they don't, and why guys are so obsessed by self development. How in the last few years, pickup has certainly morphed into just being self development, which you could argue is anti pickup. So that's the topic of today. Thank you for tuning in. This is on iTunes. I forgot to put it on iTunes last week. That was done. Thank you for nagging me. And it's on YouTube. So there we go. We are coming up to episode 200. Can you believe that you're as old as me if you can remember episode a 100 where lots of guys sent in recordings and we celebrated the hundredth podcast, Tom Torero coming in your ears. What we shall do for podcast episode 200, I don't know. I haven't decided. I'll come back to you next week. Right. Time to, shit all over self development or what I see to be the problems with self development. Firstly, it's for the junkies out there. It's for the procrastinators, the guys that have an addiction, not just a dick, but an addiction to going to seminars, watching self help videos on YouTube, reading books about self help, reading inspirational motivational quotes on Facebook and Instagram, maybe even posting motivational and inspirational quotes with pictures of dolphins and sunsets and people standing on tops of mountains. And it's all very woolly. It's all very feel good. It's all very nineteen eighties motivational Tony Robbins ish. And, yeah, what's the problem with that? The answer's in the the statement that it's procrastination. That it's actually killing time. It's keeping you in that woolly good feeling of thinking you're changing your life when actually nothing changes. You're still staring at your phone. You're staring at your laptop. You're sitting in the seminar room. So if it's not applied, obviously, it's useless. You could argue it's damaging because it's it's stopping progress. If you're not changing, you're just sliding backwards. Well, today, let me diss it a step further. Let me have a dig at all those, blogs and videos and Twitter threads that tell you to meditate and to, you know, work twelve hours a day. Just crush it. Never stop working. Lift. Lift while you're working. Meditate while you're lifting. Read books. Read 50 books. Read a 100 books a week. Right? Whilst eating steak and lifting at the same time. And of course, getting on your purpose. I'm sure you've heard that phrase. Just get on your purpose, bro, and chicks will come to you. Right? You forget all this pickup nonsense. There's no such thing as game or game technique, game theory. Just be your best self. If you self actualize, you'll be like a pussy magnet, bro, and girls will just flood through your door. Right? Forget all this creepy going up and talking to girls. That's just low value. Right? Become the best version of yourself, then you can be yourself, and girls will come to you. Have you heard me talking about this before? Yes. It's called the field of dreams. If you've seen that cheesy baseball Kevin Costner movie, I've made a YouTube video on it. Just type in Tom Torero field of dreams, which is the analogy from the movie where he says, build it and they will come. He's talking about a baseball field and then all these ghosts of old legendary baseball players, they come and play. But guys who are talking about meditating, crushing it, and lifting, and eating steak, and getting on your purpose, that's essentially what they're saying. Forget pickup, build it as in value, and they will come. You don't need to talk to girls. They will just come to you. Well, what was pickup initially? What is pickup today? What is my channel and my message and the stuff I do all about? Let's not pretend, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. It's about getting laid. P in V, having sex with hotter girls. Right? So younger, hotter girls, that's game. Why? You could say swiping on Tinder and getting laid with a girl who's not as attractive as you. Perhaps she's your age, a bit older. Bless her. Wouldn't really call that game. Yes. Getting laid. But game is girls that are hotter than you, younger than you, girls technically out of your league. But anyway, I digress. Pickup artistry is about getting laid. So why is it morphed into self development in the last decade? Well, it's more marketable. I would think that's probably the biggest reason. It doesn't sound so suspect because you can tell your mom you're a life coach, you're into self development. But if you said to your mom, you just wanna smash, fit girls, doesn't go down so well in the media. As you know, if you're someone like me who who's on the Internet, the minute you just say, look, I like hot girls. I like having sex. Yeah. For a lot of people, that is not marketable. That is not acceptable. So life coaching, it's very palatable. It also means guys don't need to actually do anything. They don't need to go in field. They don't need to get their hands dirty. But they get that hit, that buzz, that feeling of improving without doing anything. So, yeah, you can get a guy into a cycle of dependency. You can get a guy addicted to this stuff by actually procrastinating, by stopping and doing anything. It's more profitable. There's the cynic in me. But, why has PUA become self development? I think for those reasons. Probably mainly just because it's more socially acceptable. Also, and I've had friends in this situation, when you have a guy who's been into pickup, maybe he had a pickup channel, he's a pickup coach, and he suddenly gets a girlfriend or shock horror, he gets married. What does his bird do? She freaks out, and she says, look. I'll only be with you if you stop this pickup nonsense and you delete all your how to smash girls content. So what does the guy do with the tail between his legs? He does. He rebrands himself for the sake of his bird. You can see who has the frame here as a life coach, and he deletes all his, quote unquote, CD pickup material. So do I need to tell you why that's dodgy? No. But does it happen? Yes. And you can see why the guy doesn't wanna rock the boat. He's, moved on, so to speak. And, let me just have a cup of tea. Hang on. I tweeted a long time ago. I said, pickup is the attempt to fuck hot girls. Self development is doing everything else to avoid having to talk to girls. Now that's a bit cynical and I'm, yes, presenting it as binary, you know, it's either pickup or self development. I'll come on to that at the end of the podcast. But you you get my message, you get my rant. Well, I why I see it as avoidance, but also I see it as a confusion, which is now very confusing to new guys that are googling how to have sex, how to meet girls, how to chat up girls. The first thing they will come across is an article on meditation, on not wanking, on crushing it, on, eating clean, on lifting. Now this is where this podcast gets harsh. Sit down for some Tom Torero real talk. I say pickup is actually the opposite of self development. Let that sink in. So if all those things I just listed are self improvement, which I'm not knocking, they're all good. And when you get into thirties and your forties and your fifties, fuck. Yeah. You wanna have all that sorted so you don't die an early death? All good for your life. But are they good for getting pussy? Because remember, pickup is about getting pussy. Don't pretend that you're in this to change your fashion or your voice. You're in this, my friend. You're listening to this podcast to get laid. Okay? So here's my controversial point. All that self development stuff, I would argue, is the opposite of pussy attraction. If anything, turns girls off. Okay? Think about these qualities that are often mentioned on blogs and on Twitter and on self development videos about being, noble, about being loyal, about being kind, about being respected. Do any of those get a girl's pussy wet? The answer is no. What gets girls' pussies wet? And we're not talking about sugar daddies and providers. What what turns their pussies on? Let's think about dominance. Let's think about adrenaline, guys that take risks, Guys that lead. Guys that don't give a fuck. Bad boy qualities. And that, my friends, is why girls find Ted Bundy. You'll have seen this craze, you know, why are girls just loving the series on Ted Bundy, the serial killer, the rapist, you know, 30 plus murders. They love him. Can't see the qualities of nobility, loyalty, kindness, respect, gentle, family man. No. What creates obsession is these bad boy qualities. Now, of course, I'm not saying you have to be Ted Bundy. I'm not saying you have to be that kind of rock star mentality. But when ACDC went on tour back in the day or any early rock band goes on tour, are they displaying the qualities of nobility, loyalty, kindness, and respect as they're smashing up hotel rooms and trashing tour buses and getting stoned and getting pissed and going on all night as drug fueled benders? Do girls find those characters attractive? Yes. They do. So this is shock horror. This is where it gets controversial. Right? Because the best guys I've winged with, and I've winged with a lot of world class pickup artists. I've lived with them. I've been traveling with them. I've met them. I've seen them game. Are these guys shining examples of self development? Do they have their life sorted out? No. The guys I've seen that are the best or the most attractive with girls have rather fucked up lives, probably myself included. Okay? Messy lives, erratic, weird travel schedules, drinking more than they should, smoking more than they should, getting stoned more than they should, staying up late more than they should, traveling more than they should, saying bye bye to girls shooting the puppy more than they should. Yeah? So think about that. Let that sink in. And this the reason I'm doing this podcast, I should have said at the beginning, is because recently I did a coaching call with a guy, quite a young guy, who had been into pickup a few years ago. Then he had gone down the whole self development route, going to the gym, getting his money sorted, getting more clean-cut, getting more serious. And at the end of the call, it just basically transpired that his results had gone massively down. And when I told him all these stories about some of the shocking wings I had lived with and seen, you know, guys that slept on dirty mattresses, guys with coke habits, guys that heavy drinkers, dabbling in dealing drugs, gamblers, stoners, most of the guys, certainly in that daygame, marble arch house that I write about in below the belt. There's a whole chapter on this. They were unemployed. They didn't get out of bed till after lunch. They wore the same clothes every day. There were lots of dirty mattresses lying around that apartment, that quote unquote penthouse. I speak about a guy I met from Norway who was just such a a Chad. That's what you would call him. But the opposite of noble, loyal, kind, respectful. But he was a fucking pussy magnet. So it's a harsh truth. Yeah? Pickup is dirty. Pickup is painful. You know that being in field is much more painful than being in a seminar. But it's the opposite of being squeaky clean. Another weird paradox is when I tell guys what's more attractive to girls or what's easier to smash a girl in. A van, like I'm in right now, or a swanky Manhattan apartment. Now I've spent time in both. I've had very nice Airbnb's in Tokyo or Manhattan or London or wherever. And I'm I've also been traveling in dirty vans. And in this van, I've smashed girls in both. So what's easier? What creates less ASD, token LMR? Where do you get the fast delays? Where do you get the craziest stories? The answer is in the van. Because if you walk a girl into a swanky Manhattan apartment building or a posh hotel, what does she think? Are you a lover or a potential sugar daddy slash boyfriend slash fiance? This is demonstrated well in the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona. If you haven't seen it, no. It's not a chick flick. It's really good about the truths of game. Lovers, providers, threesomes, bisexual girls, all this good stuff. Little haremes. But in that movie, you see the guy with the swanky New York life and the yacht and the scruffy artistic type who bangs a girl under a tree. I think that's the first bang in the movie. But anyway, I'm just making the point that once again, it can go against you being all bling, being all, you know, chiseled and perfect like a Swedish guy. Swedish guys are very well dressed, I noticed in Stockholm. Life very well put together. I'm sure he meditates and reads 20 books a week. But does he get laid less than that scruffy dealer in a council block in the Southeast Of London? It's shocking. And I'm sure this podcast will get a lot of comments. Why no, it's only high quality guys that get laid and self development is vital and Tom, you're in encouraging filth. But I'm just I'm pointing out the truth. And if you've smashed a lot of birds as a pickup artist, you know this. But perhaps you think, well, it's not very good to say. It's much easier to do articles on fashion and lifting and meditating. You know, what is pickup? What is daygame? It's casual sex. It's promiscuity. This is why it's so funny when guys are online, shaming the promiscuous life, shaming girls that like sex. You know? Shaming girls that upgrade or cheat on their boyfriends and husbands because isn't that what you want? Isn't this why you're listening to the podcast? Do you wanna get laid with her? Right? You wanna same day lay? It's grotty. Same night lays, grotty. Bounce back, is grotty. I don't mean grotty quality of girl. That will often be thrown as a criticism of this topic, this podcast. Well, Tom, you're just talking about cheap sluts. No. Read below the belt and the type of girls that I banged. The reason I have a husky voice today and I sound ill is because I feel ill. And last night or rather today, about 3AM this morning here in Helsinki, I was smashing a bird. The date started yesterday at 9PM, about twenty four hours ago. And with her, we had five, six beers, three or four venues. I was smoking with her. And now once again, I'm not a smoker. I don't buy cigarettes. But with a girl, will I have a cheeky cigarette if she offers? If it makes the bounce easier, do I like a little cigar sometimes with a girl? Yeah. Anyway, we were smoking and drinking and having a good time. It was Saturday night in Helsinki. And, till about half past three, we were smashing, and then I went to bed and I had to be up at 9AM to move the van. I was in her apartment, but I had to move the van. Otherwise, I was gonna get a ticket. So anyway, a lack of sleep, is that a healthy, clean-cut Christian lifestyle? No. Is being a pickup artist gonna make you more promiscuous? You're gonna be on more dates, more late nights, more casual sex, more weird, dodgy situations? Is is that gonna happen? Yes. This is why I say opposite things. And it's puzzling, especially if you've just gotten into pickup in the last few years because they're branded as the same thing. And I would say they're not. Now, here's the caveat. Here's the footnote. I am not against self development. That would be stupid to say. Right? I don't think self development is mutually exclusive to pickup. Because, of course, if you wanna keep going with your health and your pimping, you wanna be a bachelor in your late thirties, forties, fifties, yes. You're gonna have to get your life together. You're gonna have to get your health together. It helps having money so you can travel and do all these things. You don't want to look too scruffy of course. But I would say self development is the antidote, the tonic, the healing, the treatment if you like for being a pickup artist. So they're the opposite things. It's very nice to after having it going on a bender and smashing loads of girls, doing a trip where you're drinking more than you should, you're eating trashy food, then, yeah, you have a week of, being by yourself, concentrating on food and fitness, getting yourself back to, fighting ready. Is that what they say? Match ready. And then go out again, smash loads of girl, do lots of daygame. But is daygame one of these wholesome things that it's built to be? I'd say no. It's a lot of pain. Infield pickup is very messy. It's a mind fuck. I've warned you about this before because of all the rejections and the flakes and the ups and the downs. It's addictive. Right? Daygame, just like any fun thing that gives you a spike of serotonin and an adrenaline, it's addictive, which can be a little bit bad or very bad. It's just like poker. Right? It's not bad in itself. It's what you use it for. I've said before, it's like a knife. Right? You can cut bread with a knife or you can kill someone with a knife. It's just a tool. That game is just a tool. But can it get out of control if you've got an addictive personality? Yes. Is it clinker, wholesome, Christian? No. Alright? What, will decrease your chance of getting laid, but you currently hear a lot about on blogs and YouTube and Twitter. I've made a list of things that sound wholesome and self development y, but I would say they decrease your chance of p and v, getting laid, girls finding you sexually attractive. First of all, being online. So procrastinating. Being a keyboard pickup artist or an anonymous pickup artist. There's lots of these guys that hide behind anonymous profiles. They love critiquing others, especially in fields, and you never even see them. You never see them in action. You never even hear them in action. Just a guy on a blog. And anyway, he's he's often getting angry about the world. He's often getting angry about girls. He's just online all the time. So is that kind of guy gonna have the type of vibe that girls wanna fuck? The answer is no. So what's the solution? Get offline. Don't be angry with girls. Put yourself out there. Film some infields or, you know, walk the walk. Talk is cheap. It will improve your vibe. Number two, which is similar. Being stuck in theory. So you might not be online all the time, but you're just thinking about game. You're reading about game. You're listening to stupid podcasts by Tom Torero, and it's a buffer. Yep. You're stuck in your head. You know all this pickup theory, but does it get you pussy? I would say no. The more theory you're reading, the less chance you are you have of having a carefree, playful, fun, sexy vibe. So think about the solution for that. The next one. Does writing, thinking, talking, worrying about politics and religion and how the world is going to hell in a handcart, does that give you a good vibe? Does being obsessed by this topic and arguing about this topic all day make you more attractive to women or less? Once again, I will leave that with you to decide. The next one. Do women find this attractive? If you are very sensible, if you're if you're a bit of a square, we used to say, if you're bit of a bore, you know, you go you go to bed early, you're vegan, you don't drink, you don't have any fun, you show no emotion, church on a Sunday. Is that more attractive to women or less? Once again, I will leave that up to you. The next one. Being very puritanical, being very sanctimonious, telling everybody that casual sex is wrong. You know? Men shouldn't be doing it. Women certainly shouldn't be doing it. And all women that do respond to daygame are sluts. Okay? So let's shame these sluts. Now, is that gonna get you pussy with those sluts in particular? No. With any girl? No. Because you're raging against girls. What you're doing is you're raging against the secret society. You're raging against not just girls that are upgrading and having sex, but you're raging against guys. It's making you very angry. You might be doing it online. You might be walking around a day game session with this rage and anger inside you. So just think about it. What's that doing to your vibe? Alright? You're really into self development and online politics, but what's it doing to your chance of getting laid? Because I repeat, what's this podcast about? What's this channel, website, PUA thing about? It's about getting laid. Don't kid yourself. Finally, thinking that you are somehow above game. You don't need game. You don't believe in game. You think, well, you can't learn game. Game is just talking. It's just men and women talking. So therefore, get really into self development. Be yourself. Just be natural, you know, because women are gonna flock to you obviously if you lift and meditate. And just let it happen, man. Just hope for the best. That's just classic, game denialism. What you're saying is you don't believe in game theory. Perhaps you don't understand it. You've never used it. Game techniques. It would be the equivalent of saying, well, sales techniques don't exist. Marketing doesn't really exist. What you just need to do is have an amazing product, forget telling anyone about it, forget advertising, forget any, you know, sales hustling. Just just just leave it there and people will come flooding. People will knock on the door. Just be yourself. Okay. Enough ranting. How are doing on the time? Not bad. But it is late, and I haven't slept that much today since the shenanigans of last night. Tomorrow, I am taking a ferry. I'm taking the van over to Estonia for a bit of Estonian hustling because I've got another Finnish flag and I can go into Russia from Estonia. But anyway, that's about me. I will finish this podcast by saying the opposite to what those YouTube channels and blogs and Twitter guys say. I say, relax and live a little. Go and have a beer. Go and have a smoke. Go and eat some ice cream. Read some Hemingway. Read some Hunter s Thompson. Read some Dylan Thomas. Read about the the lives of these men that were womanizers. Yeah? They smoked. They drank. They talked filth. They weren't sanctimonious. They weren't puritanical. They weren't certainly stuck in their head. They were living life. Essentially, were getting their hands dirty. So I say to you, what does skin in the game mean? It means not just getting your hands dirty, but, yeah, getting other parts of your body dirty. Less talk, more walk. I've said this before, but the quote from Emerson says, an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. So if you went out today and spoke to five girls, that's probably better than five months of self development for getting laid. Once again, I'm not dissing self development for looking after yourself and keeping yourself sane. If you wanna, like me, do pick up in your forties and fifties and beyond, you're gonna have to keep everything together. Yeah. So that's for my benefit. But for girls, what turns girls on, the qualities that turn girls on, think about what I said today. Think about how pickup and self development are two very different things. Cue all the angry comments and emails. I know that was a bit early, but we shall leave it there. If you got ideas for podcast 200, let me know. I still haven't decided it might be a live event or it might be a video thing or I might do more mp threes having those sent in. I don't know. But only four more episodes to go before the big 200 but I shall leave it there. Thank you for listening. That was a 195 reminding you why I hate self development. Goodbye.