Get Over Yourself!

A True Life Story of Overcoming Insecurities and Learning the Lost Art of ChivalryBy Dan Geitzenauer

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Dan Geitzenauer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8221-2

Contents

Dedication.....................................................................viiINTRODUCTION...................................................................1I. THE BEGINNING-FROM BIRTH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL.............................5II. IOWA STATE AND THE COLLEGE EARS..........................................15III. THE BIG MOVE AND LIFE'S LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY.....................29IV. CONQUERING INSECURITIES AND LOW SELF-ESTEEM..............................43V. IMAGE-YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE .....................................51VI. SOCIAL SETTING-DON'T BE THAT GUY.........................................59VII. ... TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION-THE FIRST DATE............................67VIII. THE AFTERMATH AND FUTURE DATES...........................................75IX. SEX-MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR...................................................83X. THE 4 C's: HOW TO MAKE A RELATIONSHIP WORK...............................97CONCLUSION.....................................................................111

Chapter One

THE BEGINNING-FROM BIRTH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL

OK, if you read the introduction, you're probably asking yourself who the hell is this guy and where does he get off thinking that he knows so much? Fair enough, I say; I would be asking the same thing. So let me tell you a little about myself so you can understand where I came from and how I'm the person I am today. I will be frank and honest, and hopefully you will be able to relate to me because my life was just as normal as the next person, with a few exceptions of course!

I grew up in a very small, rural town in Iowa called Fenton. If you've heard of it, I personally know you or know someone who knows you. Trust me, it's that small. By today's standards I think it would fall between a ghost town and a village. The population of the town was between two hundred and three hundred people, and in my school grades K-12 were in one building in the country away from town. Three towns compose the body of the school, and there were about a hundred students in my high school when I attended. There were twenty-nine students in my graduating class. By now you should have a pretty clear idea where I came from.

I was born in 1977 and I have one older brother. My mom and dad are my heroes and idols and to this day still inspire me to be the best person I can be. I grew up with a great group of friends, and we still remain close. I was always scrawny and goofy. I was always considered smart, or you could classify me as a geek. I never felt confident and secure around any of my friends, let alone girls. I have no idea why I was like this, but I guess it was because I was never happy with my self-image. To this day I remember how camera shy I was growing up, and as long as I remember I was always shy around new people, especially girls. To me I was this gangly kid with knock-knees, buck teeth, huge ears, no coordination, and barely any athletic ability. How many of us thought we were like that growing up?

I was always trying to prove myself to my friends because I was very insecure about who I was. I would do things just to try to impress my friends, even if they were wrong; and I ALWAYS spoke my mind and had to have the last word. I was almost always wrong, because I never thought before I spoke. The other great quality I had was that I was ultra-competitive. I always wanted to be right and I always wanted to be the best at everything. This quality did me more harm than good growing up. When it came to girls, forget about it! I had no clue how to behave around them, so I was always the shy, bashful one.

When puberty hit, all hell broke loose. I grew like a weed, and I felt that all of my flaws (which were pretty much everything) got worse; in my eyes I was ugly as sin and had nothing to make up for it. I was completely insecure with who I was, and it was the source of all my self-esteem issues. The only thing I was good at was that I was one of the smarter kids in my class. Every time I had a chance to prove this, I jumped all over it, even if I knew that people were just using me. Most of the time I'd lend my homework to people or let them cheat off me during tests. This was the only way I felt like I was needed, that I was wanted by other people. I also wanted to prove to everyone that I was the smartest and that everyone should cheat off of me!

I stuck out like a sore thumb. If there was a poster boy for insecurity and low self-esteem, I was it. Trust me when I say this: when you have a self-confidence problem, the last thing you want to be is tall. You stick out like no other, and every day I wished I was short so I could get lost in the crowd.

The other thing that I had against me was that while everyone else was buying the in-style clothes, I was stuck with hand-me-downs from my older brother. Also, my family didn't have a lot of money and we didn't exactly pride ourselves on having a high sense of fashion. I never had the fashionable jeans and shoes, and my clothes-coordinating skills were worse than someone who was color blind. I never, ever felt like I fit in anywhere. Now that I look back, it was one of the best things that happened to me, because it taught me something that's really important in life-

"The only thing that matters is that you have clothes on your back, not what's on the back of your clothes."

Thanks Mom and Dad;)

When high school hit, life really sucked. Lucky for me, and I say this with sarcasm, I was a freshman when my older brother was a senior. Of course he had to prove himself around his friends by ridiculing me and picking fights with me every time he saw me in the hallway (we all had a high school bully we had to deal with; mine just happened to be my brother and his cronies). I don't hold a grudge against him; hell, if I had younger brothers, I would have done the same thing. I guess it's the birthright of the older sibling, and unfortunately I was the younger sibling. But it didn't exactly help out my self-esteem problem. Also, during my freshman year not only did I get braces, but also I was the lucky recipient of brand-new glasses! Yep, that's right, four-eyes & metal mouth all at once! Throw in the big ears and zero coordination and my life was a bed of roses! I don't remember how many times I wished that I could just run away and start a new life somewhere else, where no one knew me. Need I say more about my freshman year? It was a year completely devoted to avoiding my brother and avoiding seeing myself in the mirror at all costs.

Like most people, I turned sixteen my sophomore year. And in the great state of Iowa, that meant that I could drive! Well as my luck would have it, instead of picking up my buddies in a nice, sporty new car, what did I get stuck with? The family car! Yep, that's right; an old, ugly, green '81 Pontiac Bonneville. This thing was so big that a Mini Cooper could fit between the wheel base of the car! God bless my parents, though. A lot of people didn't even have a vehicle when they turned sixteen, so in hindsight, I was lucky. Can you begin to picture me and why I had such a low self-esteem?

As high school when on, I finally grew up and filled out, and by the time I was a senior I was one of the biggest, strongest guys in school. I was 6'5" and a little over two hundred pounds. By my senior year, the braces were off, the teeth were fixed, my ears finally were proportionate with my head, and the leg muscles made up for the knock-knees. But I still was very insecure with who I was and I had no idea what to do about it. I remember one day as I was walking to my locker, a freshman who was almost as big as me tried to pick a fight with me in the hallway because everyone knew that I was a coward and he just had to prove to his friends that he was king shit, the alpha male of the freshman class. So instead of whipping his ass like any other senior would do, I just walked away. Word got around and rumors started that I got the shit kicked out of me. This was the first turning point in overcoming my insecurity: no matter what, I HAD to stick up for myself; otherwise people would walk all over me for the rest of my life. When it came to fighting or any type of confrontation, I was definitely one to try to make peace or walk away. I was scared out of my mind in those situations, even though I was almost always the bigger guy. That led to my first lesson in overcoming insecurity:

"There are two kinds of walkers in this world-those who walk to create their own path and those who let others walk over them"

I decided right there that I'd better get walking.

Like any other teenager in high school, I had a million hormones going through me, and I hadn't even kissed a girl by my senior year, let alone run the bases, so to speak. I constantly asked my guy friends for advice on how to ask girls out, and they kept telling me that I needed to get over myself (actually they said grow some balls) and just ask them out. I had a few opportunities, but I always turned them down by making up excuses why I didn't like them to hide my insecurities.

Let me give you a great example of my luck with girls and also the first time I implemented my first lesson in overcoming low self-esteem. When I was a senior in high school, I had the lucky job of being the pizza delivery driver for the local pizza joint. While working there, I developed a crush on a girl I was working with. She was cute and big breasted and had this very laid-back attitude. I was so shy around her and so afraid to ask her out, I couldn't even look her straight in the eye, let alone work up the courage to ask her out. The other little roadblock that got in the way was that she had this asshole boyfriend, some psycho who had a huge anger-management problem.

As Spring rolled around, one of the most significant events was coming up: prom. It's supposed to be the night where all guys get laid and lose their virginity, if they hadn't already done so. Since I had no date, I decided that I was going to sac up and ask this girl out. I did, and to my amazement, she said yes. I had never been so nervous in my life. For a few weeks I was ecstatic with joy and couldn't wait for prom. I had my tux picked out, rehearsed a thousand conversation starters in my head, and even planned how I was going to get my first kiss (yes, it would have been the cheesy lean in and kiss her during the last song of the night).

A few days before prom, a little problem occurred. The girl's boyfriend decided to show up with his friend and confronted me as I was getting into my car to deliver some pizzas. He demanded that I quit talking to his girl and that there was no way in hell that I would be taking her to prom. I had to make a split-second decision. I remembered the freshman locker experience and knew I had to stand up for myself. With my voice quivering (yes, I was scared out of my mind) and standing toe to toe with two guys (luckily I was a lot bigger than both of them), I said to him: "Listen, it's not my problem that your girl wants to go with me and that you treat her like shit." As soon as I said that, I was thinking, "Oh shit, I'm about to get my ass kicked." My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and I wanted to run away so badly, but I knew I couldn't. Just as it was about to go down, my manager came out the door and told me that I had a last-minute delivery and it needed to be taken care of as soon as possible. She could see and sense the tension between us and asked if there was a problem and if she needed to call the police. I said no (I didn't want to be that guy who said call the police), but I did get my chance to run and so I got into my car and went to deliver my pizzas. I was breathing so hard and my heart was pounding so fast, I had to pull over just to calm myself down. As I drove away, the two guys got into their car and I thought for sure they would follow me, but lucky for me they didn't. And that wasn't even the worst part of the story.

When I returned from the deliveries, the girl whom I was going to prom with came right up to me and said that she was very sorry for what happened (apparently we were screaming so loud they could hear it inside). She said that she wouldn't go to prom with me. I was shocked and devastated; just as my self-confidence was rising, it was immediately killed, put to death, and buried six feet under. I didn't even go to my own senior prom that year. How much of a loser was I?

Prom epitomized my high school life; that was it: I went out a loser, no hope for a guy whose high school years were miserable. No girls, no dates, not even a kiss. I absolutely HATED who I was. Does any of this sound familiar?

Chapter Two

IOWA STATE AND THE COLLEGE YEARS

When I decided to go to college, my initial thought was that I wanted to be an engineer. In the state of Iowa, that meant that I would attend Iowa State University. Most of my high school friends also attended there and I was fortunate to be able to room with one of my best friends during my freshman year in college.

This was probably the second of many lessons, more of a reincarnation, in my life (the first being the freshman who tried to pick a fight). What do I mean by that? Well, since I was still a virgin, let alone had never kissed a woman at this point, I knew I had a problem. I knew I needed to do something. So before college, I made the decision that I was going to forget about the old me and focus on developing the new me. The old me was full of insecurities about being a man, where I wanted the new me to be secure with who I was. I felt I finally got my chance to run away and start a new life. No one knew me in college; I could start over. I got rid of my stupid haircut, got contacts for the first time, focused on having a positive attitude, and I made it a point that if I was lucky enough to sit by an attractive woman in any of my classes, I would talk to her about anything. I didn't care how bad or how stupid my questions were. Once that started, my life would never be the same. This was my third lesson in overcoming insecurity: I had to bury the past in order to move forward. Bury the dead or they'll stink up the place, so to speak.

"You have to forget the mistakes you made in the past and forgive yourself for making those mistakes."

If you can't forgive yourself, how can you expect others to forgive you and to move on as well? I had to learn how to move on, to forget about the past, and to start having a positive outlook on life. My motto was to focus on the positives and learn from the negatives.

For most people, college is the time of their lives. A time to get crazy, a time to let loose, a get-out-of-jail free card to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. Most of my friends were lucky enough to do this, but unfortunately for me I had a couple of things that prevented me from doing this.

First of all, I was the poster boy for the DARE program. My mother smoked all my life and I hated it, so all my life I knew I would never, ever do any drug besides alcohol. The other thing that held me back was that I was born with a heart condition that I found out about when I was in high school. At the time it was nothing serious, but one of the consequences was that I couldn't drink alcohol. When I was a junior in college, I had surgery for it and I was cured, so to speak.

There were two serious consequences on my social life that came from my heart condition. First of all, I was always the DD (designated driver), and my friends definitely took advantage of me. I don't know how many times people puked in my car or decided to throw shit out of my car because they thought it was funny. I don't know how many ice-scrapers I went through, but I never had the balls to stand up to my friends for them doing it. Again, I was so insecure with who I was that I never stood up to them. They would just laugh at me and I'd get so pissed! Whenever I got angry, I would get so frustrated that I couldn't even say what I wanted to say. I would just stumble over my words and make more of a fool of myself. At that time I never won any argument, even though God and I both knew we were right. How many of us felt used by their friends? I know I did and it continuously crushed any self-confidence that I had grown.

The other obvious problem was that I wasn't able to drink the liquid courage, the drink that gave people the power to talk to girls, to hit on them, to say whatever they wanted to say and not worry about the consequences. I knew that in order for me to get over my problem, I would have to do it alone, with no help.

On the other hand, there were a couple of positives that came from this. As the DD, I witnessed my friends get so wasted that they would say the stupidest things to girls, and I could see the girls walk away in disgust. I've heard all the lines. I think my favorite of all time is "I may be no Fred Flintstone, but I can sure make your bed rock." Hilarious, but still stupid.

As time went on, I was the fly on the wall, the sober one drinking the water. However, I didn't waste this time completely. I observed and soaked in as much info as I could. I wanted to be the best when it came to hitting on girls, dating, etc. I learned what not to say to women and what not to do, and also, I promised myself that I would never, ever let myself get trashed like my friends. I hoped the day would come when I could drink, and I hoped that day would come sooner than later.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Get Over Yourself!by Dan Geitzenauer Copyright © 2009 by Dan Geitzenauer. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.