Inner Game

Primer
Stop Being Such a Fucking Pussy

2nd Edition

Written by Decibel
PUAFieldGuide.com
Preface
What the hell is inner game? Does it exist? Is this all airy fairy bullshit?

To me, inner game is the single most important aspect in your overall ability to get
chicks. It influences everything from your body language to your text game. But even if
your intention isn’t to attract women, I believe it’s worth getting your inner game tight,
simply because life sucks when you have crappy inner game.

So what is it?

Any self-sabotaging belief, thought or action is a reflection of weakness in your inner

game. This can manifest through making excuses not to call a girl you like, to having
fear of approaching really beautiful ladies, to not leaving your house to make new
friends. At the extreme, bad inner game presents with true psychopathology like
depression and anxiety.

We are social and sexual creatures. We were put on this planet to procreate, and over
time we came to realize that living in groups was efficient and beneficial to our
individual survival. In short, all of us are evolutionarily programmed to get along with
one another and to seek out mates. You would think that any inner dialog which
undermines these abilities would be weeded out of existence, and yet many if not
most of us have unproductive beliefs which interfere with our ability to relate to men
and procreate with women. Weird, huh.

My goal in writing this primer is to identify some of the main inner game issues I’ve had
or have come across, and to hopefully guide you in the direction of resolving these. It
is in no way intended to be comprehensive. I will allude to many great books, and you
are urged to go read them. While several problems can get taken care of on your own,
sometimes it’s not a bad idea to seek the advice of a trained professional such as a
psychologist or psychiatrist.

In addition to having come from a place of really bad inner game myself (scarcity
thinking, depression and at times suicidal thought patterns, a ton of limiting beliefs,
fear of talking to people, et cetera, et cetera), I climbed out of my hole and now have
an excellent sense of well-being. I got here by educating myself and then putting this
knowledge into practice. Add to this I’ve worked with many many many dudes, with all
shapes and sizes of inner game problems. Plus, my medical training has included
ample education in psychology.

New to this edition: the fat kid syndrome (chapter 2), seeking validation (chapter 3),
being centered and grounded (chapter 4) and NLP (chapter 7).

If you want more information on pick-up and seduction, download my other free
ebooks at PUA Field Guide.com.

Alright, enough of this jibber jabber. Let’s get it on. Gentlemen, I offer now my Inner
Game Primer, probably the best damn book you've read on the subject.

dB
June 2010

Copyright 2010 © PUA Field Guide

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 WTF?? Why Inner Game Matters

Chapter 2 Static in the Attic: Ego and the Wall

Chapter 3 Outcome Dependence

Chapter 4 Taking Action

Chapter 5 How to Be a Normal Fucking Dude

Chapter 6 You and Chicks

Chapter 7 NLP
Chapter One
WTF??? Why Inner Game Matters
You may be a guy with water-tight inner game. You never hesitate when you see a girl
you want, and you plow successfully each time until you get what you desire. Bravo!
This book’s not for you, fucker.

For the rest of the dudes, for those of us with self-doubt and insecurities, there is work
to be done. This book is for you guys with less than stellar inner game.

What’s the Problem Here?

The problem is that you are wired to perform certain functions on this earth, the most
important of which is to fuck hot girls. The reason behind this critical function is to
ensure the survival of your race...

And in spite of this programming, you are getting in your own way.

Let me emphasize this point. YOU ARE WIRED. It is your fate. It’s not as if some of us
men are supposed to be banging girls, while some of us watch. It’s not like some of us
are entitled to get the hot chicks, while some of us are only intended to get uglies.

The fact is, we are ALL here on this planet to get laid. And we all as men seek out the
chicks with the highest replicative value – in short, hotties – to ensure that our
offspring will be healthy and have a good chance of procreating themselves.
Furthermore, while women are designed to be highly selective, it’s in a man’s nature to
plant his seed anywhere he can. Having sex with a lot of broads is a basic male drive;
for evidence of this, I refer you to research on primate testicle size, which I discuss in
chapter 6.

These are irrefutable facts, whether you accept them or not. Society, your parents, the
movies, whoever, may have stepped in and convinced you otherwise. But that is
simply not the case, so we need to work on exterminating these wrong beliefs and
patterns that stop you from fulfilling the mission you are designed for.
Why Did this Problem Arise?

The fuck should I know? We all came from different places, so our stories will all be
very different.

However, as you spend more time talking to other men, you will likely begin to see
trends. Many of us have anxiety about approaching girls, and this anxiety intensifies
with her hotness. Many of us feel fortunate to have a single chick in our lives, even
though she’s dumpy and drinks too much and probably cheats on us…because we
doubt we could go out and get anything better. Many of us live our lives according to
how our parents thought it should be; their filter of the world has become our filter.

We all have stories behind these common problems. These stories are compilations of
vignettes we witnessed during our childhood and young adult life. We sewed them
together and created our world view. Our culture, our religion and the media may have
helped us embellish these stories. We take bits and pieces from painful break-ups,
from girls who mistreated us in high school, from magazine covers that dictate what
kinds of girls we should be attracted to.

In short, all of us have been bombarded with bullshit. How could this problem not
arise?

Why Do I Need to Identify my Issues?

There are actually names for the things you’re struggling with. Many other guys have
gone through exactly what you’re experiencing, and have worked out solutions.

I never knew there was such a thing as trigger anxiety. I would be talking to a girl,
she’d be into me and vice versa, and yet I couldn’t escalate the interaction physically.
When I asked a friend, he explained that this was a known phenomenon (trigger
anxiety), and told me why it happened (fear of losing the ego validation by risking
rejection). Once I had something with a name that I could identify, I could see when it
was popping up in future interactions, and then take steps to get it handled.

The same was true for approach anxiety. I was told my inability to talk to girls was
simply shyness. But the feelings I experienced were far more profound than what I’d
call shyness. I was dealing with a valid form of anxiety, a mental disorder. You can get
these anxieties handled through desensitization. I went from believing I had shyness
(incurable), to realizing I had an anxiety disorder (curable).

My hope is to help you put labels on these kinds of things. That way, we can
communicate and wrap our brains around these otherwise amorphous inner states.

The Inner Triad: Psyche, Viscera, Penor

1. Psyche
The Psyche is all the stuff going on in your head. I’m talking about Freud's definition
here, subdivided into:

a. Id. These are your unconscious, instinctual drives.

b. Superego. This is your conscience, taking into account social norms and morality.
c. Ego. In addition to the ego I will discuss in chapter 2, this Ego governs the above
two conflicting forces.

2. Viscera
This is your gut, including your heart and your cojones. Most of your emotions are
found here, minus your desire to fuck. That would be your…

3. Penor
Your sex drive. Your desire to dominate women.

Got it? Let's look at some examples of how these three forces interact.

Approach Anxiety
For the most part, this is a visceral response. You see a perfect 10 standing in the
supermarket freezer section, and you unsavorily crap your pants. Your mouth gets dry,
your palms wet. You freeze up. This is a gut reaction.

With will power you can train yourself to repress this feeling; you can force your
Psyche to momentarily dominate over your Viscera. True, a part of approach anxiety is
the Ego trying to protect itself from humiliation, rejection and shame, but the prime
factor of AA is a hard-wired visceral response.
Here, the Penor may make the suggestion to approach, but it has little say when the
Viscera is running the show. Therein lies a big problem. Many guys new to the game
will dampen their visceral reaction and allow their Psyche to push them into sets. But
in the process, the Penor also gets ignored. Let your Penor approach! Own your sex
drive and manifest it from the moment you lock eyes with her.

Gaming
Many guys are out there ‘running game’ instead of trying to fuck women. They
approach tons of girls they aren’t really turned on by, get phone numbers to feed their
egos, run routines and lines void of any sexual chemistry or escalation. It’s almost as if
they don’t want to get laid, but do love the intellectual challenge and ego boost.

Seduction shouldn’t be played like a chess game, though tons of guys intellectualize
the process. Maybe they just feel safer to remove their Viscera altogether from the
process. Yes, gaming can be intellectually challenging, but let’s not lose sight of the
ultimate reason we’re out there: to get pussy.

Go into field HORNY. Get in touch with your drive and listen to it. Get out of your head.
Surprisingly, many guys aren’t listening AT ALL to their Penor when trying to seduce
women…ironic but true.

One-itis
You meet a hot chick and then keep thinking about her. Notice the word thinking.
Nevermind that your gut tells you she isn’t worth the energy. Heck, your Penor may not
have much to do with it; do you really want to connect with this chick on a primal
sexual level, or is it just your ego seeking validation?

One-itis is an obsession, an endless echoing feedback loop of the Psyche. It doesn’t

represent a healthy balance of the triad forces. Extinguish it.

Dominance
Have you ever seen a guy in field do something incredibly ballsy? Like walk up to a girl
and totally take charge physically. This behavior is driven by Penor, Viscera and id.
There is no superego or ego at play.

At times, the ego must step in to avoid incarceration or fist fights. But for many
successful men, escalation commonly involves actions and comments bordering on
social deviance. To become this person, you must dial your ego down - way down –
and set aside what you’ve been taught by social conditioning.

To summarize, next time you find yourself indecisive in field, break things down into
this triad. Figure out how much each of these three forces is contributing to your
actions. Is your Penor being heard or is it being stifled? Are you ignoring your Viscera?
Is your ego dictating what to do?

Analyze the conflict, seek the right balance, then act.

Who are You?

I have come to believe that most people don’t know themselves.

Think about this for a second. If I were to put you in a situation you’ve never been in –
let’s say asking you to risk your life by running into a burning house to save a baby –
would you do it? If not, how would you feel the next day?

Let’s look at a less dramatic example. What if a friend invited you to a party at Hefner’s
mansion, full of A list celebs and supermodels. How comfortable would you feel
working the room, and would you have the confidence to try seducing the hottest
women there?

Sure, it’s one thing to speculate on these adventures, but until you’re actually dropped
into them, it’s impossible to know how you’ll respond and if you have the inner strength
to carry out your desires. So in truth, you can not really fully know yourself until and
unless you live these experiences. When the time comes, will you sacrifice your own
life for the life of another? Will you feel worthy seducing the Playboy bunny or the
movie star?

Most people live well within their comfort zones, and as a result they never find out the
answers to these questions. Their head is a dimly lit attic full of cobwebs and
unopened boxes.

That’s how I felt. But I decided I wanted to know myself in intense detail. I wanted to
open all the attic windows to cast light into the dark corners, clear away the cobwebs,
and open all the boxes to see what was inside. If a situation scared me, I threw myself
head-long into it to see if I had the fortitude. If I found I lacked confidence performing a
task, I kept at it until confidence came, or until I realized it wasn’t worth the energy.
In short, I did everything I could to understand myself: my motivations, my blind spots,
my strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it is possible to learn how to be good with women
without going through this often painful process. But if you stick with it, the reward is
much greater than access to pusspuss…

The reward is truly knowing yourself.

You may think your know yourself. You are a musician, that’s your identity. But remove
your hands so you can no longer play the instrument, and has your identity changed?
Absolutely not. Your identity is what’s deep down, not reliant on fleeting things like
musical ability or video game score.

It’s time for some soul-searching.

Chapter Two
Static in the Attic: Ego and The Wall

Getting to know yourself is not without hurdles, the biggest of which is probably your
ego.

What’s Ego?

You can define ego many different ways. I clump together several concepts into one. It
may be hard to define, but when you see it it’s not hard to recognize.

Let’s say you get a girl home. She won’t have sex with you, but the next day you lie to
your friends and tell them she did. That’s ego.

You’re talking to a hotty and she’s loving your game, but after 10 minutes you’re
overwhelmed with thoughts that you’re not good-looking enough for her, and you eject.
That’s ego.

You try to open 10 sets in a bar, but every time they seem put off by you, and none will
talk to you. You blame it on girls being bitches. That’s ego.

Banging the hottest girl in the least amount of time. Who the fuck cares? Why does
sex in a bar bathroom make you a superstar? If it’s something exciting and fun, then
pursue it. But if you find yourself trying to pull off a glamorous stunt just for bragging
rights, then you are at the mercy of your ego.

Your ego is a powerful voice inside your head. In spite of the strength it wields, ego is
very sensitive to criticism and will do anything it can to protect itself. It will fabricate
lies, both to yourself and others. It’ll concoct scenarios in which a benign action will
result in tremendously bad repercussions, thus stopping you from taking that action.
It’ll misguide your attempts to learn who you really are.

You are not this voice. You are the observer of this voice. If you haven’t read Tolle’s
The Power of Now, this is the time to go buy it. It’s a very complex read, and you may
have to go through it twice. Every page has tons of insight that will change your
perspective on life.

Tolle discusses the “egoic voice.” It is obsessed with the past and future, which are in
fact illusory. All you have is the Now, this very second. Nothing else should concern
you at this moment, except this moment. The ego will try to return your thoughts back
to things other than the present moment, and you may act accordingly.

Your goal then is to recognize this voice when you hear it, and to stop identifying with
it. To become the observer of it, and to then mute it so it no longer interferes with your
life.

The ego is there simply to protect itself. It doesn’t care about you and your growth.
With will power and what Tolle calls consciousness, you can begin a shift in the way
you think.

Example of ego: “That girl’s too hot for me, so I’m not gonna talk to her.”

Solution: Realize that you are making up a false hierarchy in your head, that your
value as a human being is equal to hers. Then realize your ego doesn’t like the pain of
rejection, and will try to convince you to avoid any actions that would risk potential
rejection. Finally, set aside this voice, and take the right action. Talk to the hot girl. If
she turns you down, it’s only the ego that will get bruised. When you beat up the ego
enough, it’ll get knocked down for good.

Example of ego: “I banged a hot girl last night. I’m gonna let everyone know about it
online.”

Solution: Bragging about your sexual conquests to an online forum is a case of ego
gone rampant. You will feel good about yourself as others praise you. All they’re doing
is pumping up your ego. Don’t get me wrong. If you learned something from your
experience and want to help others, that’s not ego. If you hit a milestone in your
progress and want to share this without gloating about it, that’s not ego. If you post all
the things you did wrong, in addition to all the things you did right in an attempt to get
advice, that’s not ego. But bragging for the sake of bragging is ego.

So what’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong is now you have handed greater control over to your ego, which gets
more inflated. The next night when you go out and don’t get laid, you feel that much
more disappointed. The ego falsely amps up your sense of worth and your
expectations. If you make mistakes, the ego won’t let you see them. And if you
succeed, the ego won’t let you enjoy this either; the ego is a big black hole, and is
never satisfied with any gains. It always wants more.

Your goal is to extinguish the ego.

How Do I Get Rid of that Little Fucker?

The first step is to follow the above. Recognize when the ego is speaking. Set that
voice aside before you allow it to control your thoughts, behaviors or speech. Take
action in spite of the voice.

Your comfort zone is there as a service to your ego. When you leave that zone, the
ego risks harm. Therefore the best way to crush the ego is to consistently push
yourself beyond your comfort zone. As you accumulate positive experiences (e.g. girls
accept you), you will feel a sense of reward for your ballsiness. And as you take hits to
your ego (e.g. girls reject you), you will with time stop giving a fuck. It’s win-win.

Ego versus Confidence

The alternative to living under the dictatorship of your ego is to allow your sense of
confidence to govern. If you’re thoroughly confident, you have no desire to seek
validation from outside by bragging; validation comes from within. You don’t need to
make excuses for your missteps because you appreciate your mistakes as an
inevitable ingredient of learning. You judge your interactions objectively, and don’t
exaggerate what should otherwise be a minor error or achievement.

There are two types of confidence: core and situational. Ideally you should have core
confidence in all environments. Examples of situational confidence:

You only feel socially secure when you’re financially successful.

You don’t have the balls to talk to girls unless your wings are around.
You can’t spit game with strangers listening in or watching.
You can’t run game unless you’re in certain venues like loud clubs.
You feel bold gaming 7s and below, but not 8s and above.

Core confidence doesn’t give a fuck about any of that shit.

Your Core

Remember back when I said most people don’t know themselves? I’m speaking
largely here about their core. Who they are. Their identity. What they’re capable of and
why.

Many people confuse their ego and their core. It’s not until you set aside your ego and
examine your core that you really start to figure out who the fuck you are inside.

As I’ve said before, your identity isn’t “I’m a musician.” Your core may be the passion
you feel for music, or your drive to create something beautiful, or a need to
communicate emotionally. A while back I realized I couldn’t distinguish my identity as a
person from my identity as a musician. I stopped composing and performing music for
two years. My plan worked. I found my true identity and cultivated it.

When it comes to women, your core includes your sexuality. You are a sexual being.
Some guys don’t fully embrace this identity. They resist the nature of their core as a
man who desires sex. Instead, these guys harbor shame and reluctance, rather than
taking ownership.

When you go looking for it, you may find your core is hard to find. It may be
surrounded by clutter. Call this mental noise or static. These are all the counter-
productive thoughts and beliefs that form a cloud around your core. Before you can
find your core, you must declutter. You have to rid your mind of all this pointless
chatter.

This noise – some of which is the sound of the ego – is creating a wall between you
and women. Let’s have a look at this noise, this wall, in more detail.

The Wall

You can recognize the wall when you see it. A dude walks up to a girl and makes
meaningless fluff talk that goes nowhere. He uses humor defensively. She might even
be giving him all the signs of interest needed to pull, and yet he makes no effort to
escalate or show real intent.

Once the wall comes down, the fun begins. So why do some guys have walls erected?

1. Social conditioning. We've been hit over the head for so many years by TV, movies
and magazines that men need to conform to a certain code. It's the chode code. Be
respectful and polite, keep a safe distance, take her out on asexual dates. Years of
this programming, but without real-world experience to support its effectiveness, have
convinced us this is the one and only reality.

2. Culture. Some guys have deep cultural and spiritual influences they must combat.
Certain religions try to convince you that sexuality is wrong. It can be not unlike brain-
washing, damaging to personal growth and relationships.

3. Deservedness. She's too hot for you, and if she seems interested, there must be a
catch. Maybe that catch is she's a bar slut, or maybe she has cooties, or whatever.
You play mind games trying to talk yourself out of taking what you deserve. You create
an unfounded rationale as to why a girl probably wouldn't sleep with you: you’re too
short, the wrong ethnicity, inadequate lifestyle, so on and so on. Bullshit, all of it.

4. Germophobia. I have always had a problem with this. Fortunately, it kept me from
getting sick. The downside is it prevented me from going for the makeouts. Like a cold
pool, I've had to force myself to jump in and do it.

5. Too many beat-downs. Many guys have a history of getting their asses kicked
psychologically in relationships. Girls cheating, lying, being flaky or insensitive. All this
has set the stage for ongoing rejection; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You drag past
relationships and interactions into future ones, and in so doing you erect a wall to
reduce the risk of future rejections.

6. Ego. You got a hot girl’s number, and now you can brag to your buddies about it. As
we all know, numbers by themselves are meaningless. But the number is solid gold to
the ego, at least at the moment you get it. Guys with walls are okay with the number.
Guys without walls continue to push the interaction, unafraid. They have no concern
about hurting their own ego. They are guided solely by their desire and by what would
probably be the best thing strategically to close the deal.

Here is how to go about breaking down the wall:

1. Recognize there is a wall. If you aren't making those sexual connections, why is
this? Let's say a guy is chatting up a hot girl and she's into him, but then he ejects. It
wasn't because he didn't like her, or she didn't like him. Something in his head pulled
him out. So if this is a frequent behavior, something is wrong. A wall exists.

2. Diagnose the cause of the wall. It may be one of the above reasons, or it can be
something subtle. You have to do soul-searching to figure out the causes. Whenever a
wing ejects prematurely, I grill him on why. And usually he doesn't have a good reason,
so what he needs to do is have an honest talk with himself to find out why.

3. Address the specific issues. If you're overweight and it's causing you to feel
unworthy, your choices are to lose weight or to accept that you're gonna be heavy and
girls need to deal. But resisting what is while not correcting your limitation isn't an
option.

Limiting Beliefs

Any belief that stops you from achieving success is a limiting belief. These beliefs
collectively form one layer in the cloud of mental noise. Here are some examples:

I’m not rich enough

I’m too short
I’m too fat
I have bad acne
I am too old
My dick’s too small
I’m not good in bed
Girls aren’t attracted to me
I smell
I live with my dad

This list could go on and on. In fact, it is a good idea for you right now to jot down
someplace your own list of limiting beliefs, all the reasons running around your head
why girls may not sleep with you.

Look, some of these beliefs may be based in fact. If you were missing all your arms
and legs, you may find a large percentage of hot girls won’t date you. Believing this in
and of itself is fine. Where it becomes a problem is the part about limiting. If you
believe something about you is unattractive to most women, and you do your best to
attract these same women in spite of that perceived flaw, then the belief is not limiting
you.

The turning point comes when you accept that you are who you are, and to hell with
anyone who won’t accept those things about you that cannot change.

Negative Stereotypes

Each culture and race may have its own set of unique limiting beliefs. Others may
perceive a certain race through stereotypes, and that member may adopt those
criticisms into his own world view. The man then must fight his way out of these
cultural beliefs, in addition to all the other crap that’s inhibiting him.

For example, Indians may have to deal with these stereotypes:

Hairy
Smelly
Eating curry all the time
Subordinate rather than dominate
Labeled as terrorist, taxi driver or IT guy

Black guys often blame their color if things don’t go well. As in, “Fuck, she hates me
cuz I’m black.”

Asian dudes who are short may not be perceived as tough, or capable of defending
women if needed. Other concerns:
Small Penis
Stereotyped as the nerd, gangsta or kung fu master
Not very confident, fun or social
Always losing their women to white guys
Constantly playing video games

I urge you to read the book Blink. Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about race, especially
blacks vs whites, and brings up a number of studies that show how very deeply our
society associates being black with being inferior. When black students were asked to
indicate their race before an exam, their results were lower than when they weren't
(called the priming effect). In another test, the IAT, people frequently associate black
faces with words like evil, bad and hurt. 80% of test-takers made this correlation, even
blacks.
So clearly, our society does in fact have a racial bias towards whites, and it's fairly
pervasive.

That said, we all have potential handicaps. It could be age, race, height or weight. The
issue isn't do girls mostly like tall dudes, or do people generally gravitate towards
whites, because there's evidence that biases exist. The real issue is what are you
gonna make of these facts? They don't have to become handicaps unless you make
them handicaps. Talk with other dudes of your nationality and race, and figure out how
they deal with these limiting beliefs.

Crutches

There is another layer of this mental static, dependence on crutches. In a literal sense,
when you have a strong, pain-free ankle, you can walk confidently on it, right? When
you injure it, you can’t walk as well. To help offload the weight and reduce the pain,
you use crutches to help you get around.

In the beginning, right after an ankle injury, crutches can let you function without
further damaging the foot. But if you rely on them too long, the ankle gets weak and
stiff, and you have long-term problems walking. So you depend on the crutches
indefinitely.

Mental crutches are no different. If you need to have a routine stack to help get you
through the first few minutes of a conversation, without which you wouldn’t even
approach, then stacks are an acceptable crutch. As you become competent at opening
and vibing, you no longer need that stack, and so you discard the crutch.

Likewise, you may not be able to talk to girls unless you have wings around. If you
were to roll solo, you’d sit in a corner and not talk to anyone. Here again, having a
wing is a crutch, but for the time being, it’s giving you the strength to approach. In time,
you should go out by yourself anywhere and still feel confident just being your sociable
self. Again, this is the distinction between core and situational confidence.

One crutch that should be avoided is using alcohol to make you less timid and more
talkative. When learning any skill, being sober is the only way to get it handled fully.
But aside from drinking and doing drugs, there’s nothing wrong with temporarily relying
on crutches.
Excuses

Using excuses to justify inaction is another big layer of your inner static. Rather than
push yourself into a potentially uncomfortable situation, your ego employs the tool of
logically talking you out of action. When the ego wins, it becomes further empowered.

As you acknowledge excuses for what they are, you can disregard them. Don’t justify
or argue with them, don’t try to validate or invalidate them. They are neither good nor
bad. Simply set aside the excuses and then move forward.

Here are some common excuses that might pop up when you consider talking to girls
or escalating:

She’s busy talking to someone

That guy’s her boyfriend
She’s too hot for me
She’s sitting
She’s dancing
I’m not peacocked
She’s too far away
She’s walking the other direction
She’s getting in her car
She’s reading
I have to get up early in the morning
My wing is bored
She isn’t giving me IOIs (indicators of interest)
I’m not in state
I’ll open later

Blind Spots

You may think you’re the biggest playa in the world, but others see that you are
deficient in certain areas. For example, you work the room and hook up with girls. But
your wings ask you later why you always ignore the hottest girls in the room, and pull
the ugliest chicks. Your blind spot here is you not realizing you’re not pushing yourself
to approach the very hottest girls, taking the path of least resistance with the
unattractive chicks while boosting your ego working the room.

To find your blind spots, you need an honest and observant other party to notice them.
Again, if your ego is in the way it’ll stop you from accepting criticism. You’ll become
defensive instead.

Take advice from others, and then try to figure out if the advice is valid or not. If it flies
in the face of everything you’ve experienced, it may not be useful. One thing you may
find is that community guys are far too eager to point out your flaws, to the point your
self-esteem is worse than before you got into the community. So sometimes, you can’t
reasonably accept every bit of criticism people give you.

But if the advice does seem to make sense, then incorporate it. Get rid of your blind
spots as they become apparent.

State

Guys look for that ideal “state” of mind. Being in state means your energy is high,
you’re in a good mood, feeling sociable, having the belief that nothing can get in your
way or bring you down.

In many cases, you can get to this place by pumping yourself up with caffeine and
acting boldly.

Being bold is not the same as being confident. For example if you jump out of an
airplane the first time, you may feel wild and crazy making the leap, but this is
boldness. After 100 jumps, you become calm and collected, channeling your energy
and absorbing the moment; you’ve reached a place of confidence.

Being confident allows you to perform a task without being “in state.” You roll out and
do what needs to be done, even if you’re not in the mood. Lacking state is another
excuse guys use.

Also look at it as a performance. Actors can be having a shitty day, but still give a
powerful and convincing performance. With experience, you should be able to be
seductive and attractive around girls, without having to artificially pump up your energy
level.

Generalizations, Exaggerations and Self-Pity

“Nobody loves me.”

“Girls all think I’m ugly.”
“I can’t get a date to save my life.”

We’re all guilty at some point of making these sweeping, inaccurate statements that
couldn’t possibly be true. Nobody loves you? You mean, you polled every person on
this planet and the results were unanimous: you are unloved. You can’t get a date to
save your life? So you asked every single available attractive woman and not a one
would go on a date with you.

These thoughts come from a place of playing the victim. You don’t necessarily need to
be seeking pity from others, but you are seeking it within yourself. At times, these
thoughts also indicate low self-esteem.

On the surface such belief patterns make no sense. Wouldn’t you rather identify with
the hero, not the victim? The hero is worshiped and respected, after all. So why do we
not identify with the hero, but instead want to play the part of the downtrodden victim?

For one thing, being a victim can get others to take care of you, or will at least garner
empathy. It also permits you to avoid taking on responsibility. If you are a poor hapless
victim, how can you be expected to rise to meet the challenges of life?

Another great benefit of being a victim is you can blame the world for your suffering.
The alternative is tough: taking responsibility for your condition and then doing what
needs to be done to improve it. Accepting blame is not something the ego is fond of,
because it inevitably leads to pain. And so the easy way out is to shift this blame to the
outside. Now, conveniently, if you’re fucked up it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of
parents, teachers, schoolmates, et cetera.

If you’ve had people tell you you’re shit all your life, their voice becomes the one that
you identify with. When those people are no longer around, you take over that role and
keep putting yourself down.
You may then find yourself suffering from the Broken Toy Syndrome.

Broken Toys

“Why would anybody wanna play with a broken toy?”

Plenty of dudes think they’re broken. All fucked up, inside and out. Not worthy or
entitled.

You have two ways of transforming into the person you want to be:
a) Examine what you were, and try to tweak the bad things until they’re fixed.
b) Imagine what you want to be, and start emulating the thoughts and behaviors of
that guy.

Ideally, option B is better. It is a healthy mindset that leads to success, as opposed to

constantly dwelling on your flaws.

The problem arises when you have no clue what that ideal man looks, thinks or
behaves like. Being full of confidence, viewed as sex-worthy by women, owning one’s
intent…these may all be foreign concepts to a guy suffering from low self-esteem, who
has awful social skills, and doubts his own worth. He can’t even begin to fake it,
because that would take far too much speculation.

I think the best compromise if that describes you, is to always be projecting forward
into the ideal person, in every way. His tonality, body language, positive attitude. As
much as you possibly can using your imagination.

Then objectively survey where you may be messing up. All the things from eye contact
to limiting beliefs. If you hear yourself say something pessimistic, make a note not to
allow those words to come out next time. When you realize you aren’t vocally
projecting, force your voice to come out louder. Anytime that negative self-talk starts to
commandeer your brain, become the observer of it and quiet it.

You can do it with persistence and will power.

Resentment and Anger

Oh, the world is such a nasty place. So unfair. People are out to manipulate you. You
can’t trust anyone. Nobody has any integrity.

Some guys have many of these thoughts running around in their head, or buried deep
in their psyche. Many of these were planted there long ago by past relationships with
women.

Very often, the source of this resentment towards women comes from observing how
your mom acted, and then through generalizations and exaggerations, converting that
single relationship into your view of all female encounters.

You may find yourself the victim of an unhealthy pattern. For example, you may see
that you’ve been dating women who act very much like your mom. Or women who
treat you the way your mom treated your dad. Or making assumptions about women
because that’s how your mom conditioned you as a child. You may or may not realize
these patterns are happening, and that the source was your mom.

Resentment may also be directed to your dad. Possibly he mistreated you, but maybe
the bigger problem was he disappointed you as a male role model. And so once again
the blame game occurs. You resent your mom because she fed you a bunch of crappy
advice or was the source of many unhealthy beliefs, and you resent your dad because
he wasn’t there to provide the guidance you needed.

Crazy Mommy, Invisible Daddy

This phenomenon runs rampant among men.

The American family unit has disintegrated. Marriages fail half the time, and in the
other half you probably have a large percentage that is dysfunctional. Tons of single
moms raising boys on their own. Tons of boys who have no clue how to be men, so
they take their cues from TV and movies.

This is a set-up for badness when it comes to passing down manhood to one’s son. As
a result, we have decades of boys being raised by crazy moms, and by dads who
aren’t there.
Invisible Daddy

This is the guy who was supposed to be there telling you to go approach that two-set.
The guy correcting your tonality and body language. The guy telling you to hit the gym
3 days a week and to start dressing in more stylish clothes because hot girls care
about this stuff. Instead, he wasn’t there, and so now here you are a grown adult trying
to get this knowledge.

Where was daddy?

Maybe he bailed out of his relationship with mom. Maybe she booted him out. Maybe
he was physically there, but not present emotionally or in spirit. Maybe he meant well
but never really stepped up as a man to show you how it was done, because maybe
he himself had no clue. Maybe he was drunk all the time or out chasing skirts or at the
office obsessively working.

And so, you had a father who essentially was not there. Cobain summed it up well (as
usual) in “Serve the Servants”:

“I tried hard to have a father but instead I had a dad.”

So when you don’t have a real male role model to guide you, you turn to the next
option, your mom.

Crazy Mommy

Invisible dad may be around, but he doesn’t wear the pants. That role goes to mom.
Mommy is stepping up and trying to raise her son the best she can. When dad fucks
up, there’s mom assuming the masculine role putting dad in his submissive place.
How’s that for fucked up?

Dad tries to assert himself, then mom tests him as is her nature, and then dad buckles,
and then mom is disappointed and forced to be the dad.

So you learn how to be a man from mom. And women, as we all know, are not
generally very good at being men. They like to test their men, but at the end of the day,
they would prefer relaxing into their femininity and letting the man step up and do his
job.

Over time, mommy does what she can to raise us. She gives us information about life
and love. The problem is, it’s largely wrong. We don’t realize it at the time, and hence
we deeply internalize this advice. We take it to the extreme and cling to it for decades,
permitting it to shape our world view.
When I was a kid, I often heard, “Never talk to strangers.” As an adult, I held onto that
warning, and never talked to strangers. Nevermind that the advice was meant to
prevent kidnapping, and didn’t mean I shouldn’t talk to a girl sitting next to me. I had to
force that pattern out of my head, and give myself permission to talk to strangers.
Sounds ridiculous, but this is the kind of bullshit advice that has stuck with tons of
dudes all their lives, much of it implanted by mom.

Another one I got was, “You’re gonna be 8 this year! When are you gonna start acting
like it?!” As if a seven-year-old needs that kind of pressure to grow up. What did I
know? So I thought, “Ok, I guess my childhood is over…better start acting serious.”

Realize that mommy didn’t mean to be crazy. She was doing what she could and had
to do, and since daddy wasn’t present to counter her nutty advice, we had no choice
but to believe it.
This came from a place of love, not indignation or ill-will. She wanted to protect you,
and she did it by imposing her weird, misdirected beliefs on you.

And so, recognizing what mommy was up against, and trying to do the right thing, as
adults we need to forgive her. Like truly deep down appreciate all her stupid advice,
and stop blaming her for the way we turned out. Starting right now.

Stifling

Mumbling, not projecting, not using your hands expressively, not making eye contact
when you speak. These are ways you stifle your own attempts to express yourself.

The reasonable default, of course, is for us to project our core with confidence,
through any manner that best gets the point across. If we’re happy, we might sing. If
we have an opinion, we should tell others what it is. If we see a new fabric on a girl,
we want to touch it.

But we don’t. As kids, we had no issue doing any of these things. Sometimes, we got
in trouble. We were taught not to touch, not to talk to strangers, and to grow up and act
our age. Realizing certain behaviors carried negative consequences, we trained
ourselves to dampen these impulses. Stifling then became our default.

This is a simplistic explanation. Of course, there are many other factors at play such
as low self-esteem.

Taken to its extreme, you may have been punished in the past for succeeding. Let’s
say you studied your ass off for a test, and got an A-. You may have proudly showed
this off to your mommy, only to have been asked, “So why didn’t you get an A?” Or
maybe you told your friend about getting into the community, working hard to break out
of your limiting beliefs and sticking points, only to be taunted, “So why don’t you have
a girlfriend yet?”

As a result, taking chances and acting from our core apparently can have negative
consequences. Whether we fail or we succeed, there seem to be haters around every
corner. Yup, it’s a cruel world.

The problem here is largely that you’re seeking external validation. Those who aren’t
concerned about the approval, acceptance or validation of other people do what their
core dictates. They may filter their drive through things like social intelligence and
strategy so as to get the best results. But they aren’t stifling as a reaction to the
outside world. You see the difference here? Cool.

Fat Kid Syndrome

Children who are obese often have low self-esteem as a result. They wind up feeling
less attractive. But even when they shed the weight and look attractive, sometimes
that chronic feeling has stained their view of themselves. Even when they're finally
skinny, they still identify themselves deep down as fat kids.

It may not be your weight. It can be that you were poor and now have money. It can be
you had acne but now your complexion is alright.

The first step is to recognize you still have a residue on your subconscious that is
difficult to remove. You can tell yourself logically that you're worthy, but getting the
subconscious on board may not be so easy. You may need to seek professional
advice, including hypnotherapy.

One of the biggest layers of your inner static is outcome dependence. It's so huge, I've
separated it into its own chapter...
Chapter Three
Outcome Dependence

There was a great book written by George Leonard called Mastery. It’s a quick read,
so you have no excuse not to go get it. In the book, Leonard emphasizes the need to
always stay focused on the process of mastery, and to not be as concerned with the
outcome.

Process versus Outcome

We have been conditioned to expect outcomes. TV and movies jump from one big
event to the next, and don’t generally spend much time exploring the process that
leads up to these exciting climaxes. We are conditioned to cut to the chase.

We transfer this impatience to the learning process, constantly chomping at the bit,
demanding we see tangible results after investing X amount of time and energy.

The habit becomes to only enjoy these spikes in outcome, and to downplay and not
enjoy the process that got us there. Love of the process is essential, however.

A “good night out” is not always one where you made out with a girl or got laid, but one
in which you had an epiphany or learned something new. These little pieces of the
process are essential on your path to mastery. Even events that seem like failures may
be learning experiences in disguise; as you gain from your mistakes, you improve,
though at the time it may seem like you’re back-tracking or going nowhere.

If you aren’t finding enjoyment in the process, then you’ll wind up miserable and
burned out. Especially in a process as brutal as becoming sociable and good with
girls, you must see the positive in all interactions.

Though you may not realize it, while you remain on a plateau for so many months or
even years, growth is still going on. You don’t recognize it, but it’s happening. As long
as you’re pushing yourself to grow, and are learning from your experiences, in time
you will head towards the results you want. In the end, you must expect and
appreciate the plateau.

Have Respect for the Process, Fucker

I found this quote by jazz legend Charlie Parker:

Master the instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and play.

Any journey to a level of mastery requires the understanding that there will be often
lengthy plateaus where growth is not apparent, followed by unexpected rises in
progress. It’s this appreciation of the process – both during times of growth and times
of apparent stagnation – that keeps guys moving towards their goal.

But most of us probably don’t have that kind of stamina and patience. By nature, we
want shit to materialize quickly and with the smallest amount of energy expenditure
and risk.

Hence the very high turn-over in the community. It’s just too much fucking work for
most. The blow-outs, the rejections, the flakes, your inner dialog constantly talking
trash. What looked like a promise for easy pussy turns into an epic search for the
elusive Holy Grail.

Where many of the dudes who give up falter is in lacking respect for the process. They
see a goal and they pursue it. When that goal doesn’t materialize after a month, half a
year, two years, they surrender in frustration. But as Leonard points out, striving
towards a goal at the expense of enjoyment of the process is bound to fail.

It isn’t easy to always enjoy a process that is so often harsh. Look I’ve been there.
Long dry spells. Times when NO set hooks (if you even have the balls to approach).
Feeling like you aren’t learning anything. It’s tempting to stay home, and many times I
have done just that.

A lot of guys go astray when they get invested in their interactions. This seems
healthy, since nobody wants to be an unemotional robot. But really in terms of
mastery, it’s detrimental. Cold detachment from your sets and keeping a critical
analytical mindset, these are the best ways to learn this skill. Literally being a social
scientist in his lab running experiments.
What if you were training to box, and every time a fighter hit you, you went crying to
mommy because some dude was mean to you. Come on, the dude you’re boxing is
trained to hit you hard in the face, just like that bitch in the club has been trained to
disrespect you. It’s the nature of the beast. Don’t take it personal.

Emotional investment is ultimately healthy, but where guys fuck up is in rewarding a

girl with this investment before she deserves it. Certainly not day 1 or day 2. Maybe a
few weeks into a relationship. But even then, it is reasonable to step back as
objectively as possible and take notes on what’s working and what isn’t. You still need
to be a scientist while in a relationship, so that you can strengthen your relationship
skills. In the end, the process NEVER ends, even when you have apparently met your
goal.

I know guys who meticulously analyze every set at the end of the night. And I know
guys who refuse to do this analysis. The latter group tends to flounder around never
progressing, ultimately pussyless and angry at the game. You wanna be the first guy,
not the second. Here are some ways to get there:

1. Pick apart your sets. All of em. Word by word, if you can remember them. Think
back to how a girl or set responded to something you said or did. Her body language,
her words, the way the friends reacted.

2. When something worked, keep that in your toolbox and try it again to see if it was
just luck or was something meaningful. Fuck community dogma. Be observant of what
is working for you, and don't put too much weight on what other guys say works for
them.

3. Where things didn’t work, come up with a reason why. Maybe you weren’t standing
right, maybe you were too far away to escalate, maybe your wing came in too soon
with the wrong energy level. Realize that for every girl you meet, there’s probably a
player out there who could seduce her. So don’t assume it’s the girl, assume it’s you.

4. Devise solutions to your sticking points. If it’s an issue of having a SP, work around
this by creating a plan for the next time you sense that SP is popping up. And blast
away at that SP til it resolves. To do this, you need to be totally egoless and honest
with yourself. “My sticking point is I didn’t pull the trigger and so the set fizzled out.”
Good, now how are you gonna resolve to fix this the next time it happens?

5. If you said something that blew yourself out, come up with a few alternatives that
would probably have worked better. Ask your wings if you have no idea what could’ve
worked. Because someone out there may have experienced your issue and has
resolved it.

6. If you didn’t say something you should’ve, get that handled too. One night a couple
stunners kept their backs to me after the open. I ejected, but a better tactic would’ve
been calling them out. “Wow, I’m not used to talking to the backs of girls heads! Am I
getting you two in trouble with your boyfriends? Is that it?” Then apply this solution in
future sets and see if it floats or sinks.

Always be respectful that there is a process and that you need to put in the work to get
the results. Disrespecting the process – that is, having the audacity to think you can go
out night after night and make the same errors without introspection or correcting your
course – is like stamping a big red FAIL on your forehead. Don’t be a boner.

Scarcity vs Abundance

Many dudes live in a world controlled by their scarcity mindset. They get into a
relationship with a girl. She may not be that attractive, she may abuse him verbally,
she may cheat on him. However, he overlooks many serious flaws. Even though she
isn’t compatible with him and he isn’t content, they continue this relationship for a long
time.

That is a good example of scarcity. The dude in this case deep down feels he can’t get
anything better. He lacks the skill and confidence to go out and get a new girl, or
realizes it’ll take a lot of work and effort. So he settles.

The results of this way of thinking include neediness, supplicating and fear of loss.

When you’re needy, you call a girl too much, spend too much time thinking about her,
want to see her way more than she wants to see you. You depend on her for validation
and happiness, instead of finding these within.

Supplication means you will almost worship a girl in spite of her treating you
indifferently or like crap. You will buy her stuff, be there for anything she needs, let her
walk all over you.

Having fear of loss telegraphs through speaking cautiously to women. Not challenging
them. Letting them say disrespectful things to you. Apologizing when they flake or
make a mistake. Avoiding conflict. At the opposite end, a man who doesn’t fear losing
a woman will stand up for his own desires, will defend his core beliefs and intentions,
will not suppress his feelings because he thinks she’ll run away. He doesn’t try to
coerce her to stick around, or try to make her feel guilty for how she is. He just accepts
her, and by being a strong man, inspires her to try harder to keep him.

Not surprisingly, women don’t find scarcity behaviors attractive. They may stick with a
guy who is needy and supplicating because sometimes it feeds her ego, but she’s not
viewing him as a real man. Scarcity mentality is decidedly unattractive to women.

A man living with an abundance mentality realizes the planet is absolutely teeming
with hot, intelligent, available women. He never allows girls into his life who don’t meet
his standards, and wouldn’t date a girl he isn’t attracted to.

Whether you actually have an abundance of women is not relevant. The key is in
knowing that there is an abundance of girls out there. If you don’t know this, then at
least pretend that you do for now. With exposure to tons of chicks over a long time,
that knowing will be acquired. But til then, project an abundance way of thinking.

Standards

When guys get into the community, assuming they were chodes like me, they probably
have a low bar. Not necessarily regarding a girl’s physical attractiveness, but I mean
what shenanigans he’s willing to accept from women. As he develops confidence and
skill, his bar rises, a reflection of newly acquired abundance thinking.

If you have girls in your life, or at least adopt the mentality that you have options, then
you will enforce a well-defined set of standards. You will screen girls and reject the
ones that don’t meet those standards. You will call out behavior that doesn’t suit you,
and then the women in your life can choose to conform or else take a hike. Women will
find that attractive, since you will prove yourself a solid man.

The problem becomes for the newb, he likely doesn’t have an abundance of girls in his
life, or even a whiff of abundance mentality, and therefore isn’t willing to walk away
from behavior that isn’t up to par. Beyond that and more importantly, he may have no
earthly idea what his mission, goals, motivations or standards are. And so he appears
wishy-washy to women. They challenge him, he buckles, they move on. He can’t get
out of that loop long enough to gather enough women into his life to develop true
abundance, and so a downward spiral ensues.

A man without an inkling of abundance pussy-foots around…he’s not sure what he’s
willing to accept, he doesn’t assert himself when challenged, he doesn’t telegraph the
vibe that he’s willing to move on if his standards aren’t met.

That shouldn’t be you.

So first, you need to know what your standards are, and how willing you are to bend
your own rules. How about if a girl flakes on you, like totally stands you up? Are you
willing to give her another shot? How many times will you accept her flaking on you?
When you give her an ultimatum, do you mean it? Do you call her out when she
flakes, does she feel you mean it, and does she promise to never flake again?

What is your mission in life, regarding women and otherwise? If a girl comes along
and tries to distract you from this mission, how readily do you stray? Let’s say you
want to train for a marathon, but she little by little manages to interfere with your
training by demanding more of your time. If you are truly committed to this mission,
you will find time for her but without compromising your mission. Once you lose sight
of your mission in order to placate a woman, you will lose her respect and attraction.

Can you comfortably negotiate? In relationships, you can’t always have your way. She
won’t stick around long if you’re solely tending to your own needs. There is an art to
negotiation. If you find yourself compromising too much, you may be with someone
you shouldn’t be.

In the end, having standards boils down to abundance mentality. If you live with
scarcity, you tend to fall into the “beggars can’t be choosers” way of being. And so you
ignore your standards and take whatever comes your way.

Neediness

An offshoot of having scarcity mentality is being needy. Neediness is one of the most
serious offenses you can commit, scaring girls away possibly more than being creepy.

You can manifest neediness in many ways, from subtle to obvious. Calling and texting
a girl too often is one case. Saying things like “I miss you” and “I love you” when she’s
not responsive or ready is another. Being supplicating and getting her whatever she
wants is a more obvious way. Allowing your frame to break and compromising your
beliefs is a more subtle way.

Always be checking in with yourself first. Ask yourself if something you’re about to say
or do goes against what your mission, belief system or nature would otherwise dictate.
Does it feel right in your gut? Do you feel like a man when you say or do it? If not, then
you’re probably going in the direction of neediness.

Check in to see if you may be emotionally investing in the interaction far more than
she is. Look at things like your escalation, your body language, your tonality, your
words. Again, there are cues both subtle and obvious that demonstrate your level of
investment relative to hers.

Fear of Loss

When you feel something of value is in short supply, you fear losing it once there is
even a glimmer that you may gain it. As you chat up a hot chick, you may find yourself
stifling your beliefs and opinions so as to not upset her. You may let her say shit to
blow you off, without standing up for yourself and being assertive.

The underlying fear is that if you say the wrong thing, or you escalate too fast, she’ll
ditch you. Fear of loss is a product of scarcity mentality. When you know something
valuable is very abundant and readily accessible, you stop trying to stifle your core
and you begin letting it shine.

Fear of Failure

A bit different than fear of loss is one’s fear of not performing in set as well as
expected. A guy may have standards he’s placed upon himself, or others may be
looking to him to set an example of how it’s done.

I have heard the saying “you’re only as good as your last set” in the community.
Mystery defined mastery as having “5 for 5,” meaning you are able to seduce five out
of five sets you open. Being able to consistently pull or convert numbers to dates or to
lays is something bantered about often on pick-up forums.

And when you find you can’t perform as well as you predicted, or as others expect of
you, or as you once performed, you lose faith in your ability as a man. You fear failure,
and so you may stop yourself from entering a situation that isn’t stacked in your favor.
You stop taking risks, and you stop growing. This is all a form of ego gratification.

Guys who are confident don’t fear failure. They welcome and embrace failure as part
of the learning process.

Approach Anxiety

Much has been written on this subject. I refer you to my free ebook, Introductory Pick-
Up, for a full explanation (puafieldguide.com).

As with other phobias, social anxiety is not something with a rational explanation or fix.
It’s a deeply held fear of walking up to strangers and talking to them. It becomes
paralyzing. No amount of pushing or bribing will fix it. It takes sheer will power to nut
up and take action in spite of the terror. My ebook provides some strategies.

The main way we handle any phobia, aside from drugs and things like hypnosis, is
through desensitization. If you’re afraid of heights, then you may systematically work
your way up. First, you stand on a ladder. Then you climb some stairs. Then you stand
in an elevator. Then you let the elevator take you up. You keep doing these little
exercises until you get to the point of standing on top of a building without being
anxious.

When it comes to social anxiety, there are many types of exercises designed to build
up your confidence and reduce your fear. Brad P has a series of social anxiety
exercises. I personally went out without much preparation, opening thousands of sets
at night until the anxiety faded.

This can be painful, painful work. Getting over my social anxiety was about as hard as
anything I’ve ever done, including going through my medical training. It takes will
power, endurance, focus and unyielding self-exploration. Not all dudes have the inner
fortitude to suffer through this, and so most drop out before ever getting anywhere.

Giving Value

People love getting stuff for free. They don’t love giving up stuff for nothing. This is the
philosophy behind the concept of having a value-giving mindset. Once you truly adopt
this way of thinking, social interactions become much easier. Here are some
examples:

Approach anxiety, taking value: “I’m gonna practice some of my routines on these
people, assuming I’m not interrupting their conversation.”
Approach anxiety, giving value: “These chicks look kinda bored, I’m gonna fuckin
make their night! They’ll be talking about what a fun dude I am all day tomorrow.”

With the value-giving view of the approach, why would you hesitate? You believe that
by giving these people value, you are sharing a gift and ultimately doing something
positive for them. Not taking anything from them.

Sex, taking value: “I’m gonna try to pull her to my place to fuck her cuz I’m really horny
right now, and I’m gonna look like a stud when I post the lay report online tomorrow.”
Sex, giving value: “I just took a seminar on female orgasms, and I’d love to give this
chick the best sex of her life tonight. I’m so gonna rock her world.”

You can probably see that if a girl senses you’re only using her vagina to masturbate
into, she may not be coming back for seconds. But if you seem like you’re genuinely
looking out for her sexual desires, she will more likely want to return the favor.

Escalation, taking value: “Wow, this girl has a nice body. I’m gonna get my rocks off
feeling her up.”
Escalation, giving value: “I like this chick, and I’m gonna express my appreciation to
her by turning her on with my touch.”

Approval Seeking and the Dancing Monkey

Demonstrate your value to women by being genuinely superb. Be funny and charming
and sweet. If she appreciates you, great. If not, then walk away.

By contrast, don’t seek to get her approval. This is another case of taking value. You
are expecting reciprocation for your efforts. You are dependent on the outcome. When
you give value simply by being a cool dude, you don’t then seek out her approval for it.

At the extreme, when you put on a show hoping to get rewarded, you become the
dancing monkey. Yes, she’ll be amused. But no, it’s not attractive.
The dancing monkey is easy to recognize. He's cracking jokes constantly as opposed
to being self-amused. His body language is wild and over-the-top, not centered and
calm. His responses are reactive, not leading and dominant. His tonality has a nervous
quality, not controlled and confident. Girls may compliment him on his humor, but if he
doesn't down-shift his act, he's not gonna get far.

Seeking Validation

Hot chicks know they're hot. They may have moments of self-doubt, but on a
superficial level they recognize they have tremendous value in the dating market
because of how they appear. Guys hit on them a lot, buy them things, beta themselves
around them, supplicate. Ever since their teen-age years.

The hot chick doesn't need constant reassurance about her beauty, unless she's
insecure. She is internally validated regarding this trait.

What do you do well? Let's take driving. How often do you need to ask friends and
family about your driving skills? Probably never? You are internally validated when it
comes to your ability to drive.

But now how about your social abilities? Can you seduce girls with the same ease and
comfort with which you drive? Most likely not. And so, being unsure about your
competence, you seek out reassurance. This may come in the form of being blunt,
asking a girl, “So how am I doing so far?” Or it may be subtle, such as feeling out her
response after you tell a joke.

Here's the place where guys mess up. If you are looking for reassurance from girls to
help improve your game, this is positive. When certain routines bomb, when your
tonality is off, when you seem iffy suggesting the pull, gathering data from girls and
adjusting your game according to it is one of the best ways to improve. The problem
arises when you take that feedback and incorporate it into your sense of worth. Once
you get emotionally invested in the validation, when your ego is involved and when
you need that validation to feel alright about yourself, then you are moving in the
wrong direction.

As I said before, you need to remain objective, a social scientist. Analyze data and
view it unemotionally to better yourself. Do not attach yourself to it in hopes of making
your ego feel good.
How do you get there?

Not easy. You can tell yourself daily affirmations, but this may only reassure your
conscious mind. NLP (see chapter 7) may help in this regard. Hypnotherapy also helps
bypass the conscious and communicate with the subconscious.

Aside from these methods, you should be genuinely improving yourself as a man.
Itemize the skills you lack, the knowledge you feel compelled to acquire. Do you really
understand female anatomy and orgasm? If not, read everything you can on the
subject. If you're out of shape, go hit the gym. If you lack charisma, go to Toast
Masters or some other program designed to improve communication skills. If your
financial status is a wreck, get to work organizing this. Do anything and everything you
can to make yourself a high-value man, so you no longer have any doubt that you are
the shit. When I help community guys in person, much of my advice centers around
lifestyle modifications.

With all this work, this self-actualization, women would be nuts to not respond
positively. You may actually find yourself feeling sad for girls when they don't give you
a chance.

Next, get out there in the field and talk to tons of women. Get turned down, stood up,
blown out. At first, you may fear rejection, because you are still unsure about your
worth. As you develop internal validation, rejection becomes an absurd concept. If you
offer $200 to a homeless dude, and he doesn't take it, has he rejected you? You tried
to give him value because you thought he'd appreciate it. He didn't. Does this make
you feel less worthy compared to the homeless guy? Nah. His loss.

If a chick turns you down, it may mean: a) you aren't effectively communicating your
worth to her, and b) she's genuinely not appreciative. Work on your ability to broadcast
your value (i.e. outer game), and don't bother with women who don't appreciate you.

With all of the above in place, internal validation will naturally develop.

An offshoot of seeking validation is being apologetic. If you find yourself making up

justifications for the girls you date, your hobbies, the opinions you hold, et cetera, stop
fucking apologizing. You don't owe anybody justification for who you are. If you take a
person to a party and they aren't having fun, oh well, at least you tried. If a girl flakes
on you, she should be doing the apologizing, not you. If you hear yourself repeatedly
seeking forgiveness for your identity or efforts, stop it right now.
Chapter Four
Taking Action

All of the preceding describes crap going on in your head. What you must now do is
learn how to get that shit handled and then move forward.

Giving yourself Permission

A lot of walking up to a random broad and seducing her has to do with you giving
yourself license to act a certain way. The approach alone requires you to let your
guards down and accept possible failure. Many guys are unwilling to allow themselves
this. Their ego is too strong.

But nowhere is this more important than in your push for the close (by which I mean
fucking). Many dudes are constantly fighting an uphill battle just trying to own their
own desires as a man.

You need to first fully embrace your drive and blast away at any self-talk or limiting
beliefs that says you shouldn't behave a certain way. It's unacceptable to suggest a
pull. You don't want people to see you hooking up on a bus. You need a lot of comfort
with a girl to make fucking her okay.

It's your duty to close. And when duty calls, serve admirably. Any soldier sent into
battle must believe in his cause, must be willing to kill or be killed for the greater good.
If a girl is looking at me, expecting me to escalate or to try to pull, I must step up.

But first you need to give yourself permission. To be a man and to do what men have
done since they first stood upright. Women are constantly feeling you out to see that
you are granting yourself this right, because it is your right. By giving yourself
permission, you are thereby giving her permission to follow you there. She will not give
you this authority.

If you aren't going for the close with complete conviction, ask yourself if it is because
you haven't granted yourself permission yet. If so, work on that first.
Entitlement and Worthiness

You will need a healthy sense of entitlement and self-worth before you can fully own
your drive and intent. It always amazes me when I take out a hot girl, and at the end of
the night she doesn’t even have the courtesy to thank me. When you feel entitled,
when you live in a reality where guys pay for everything as part of the game, it may
never cross your mind that you won’t eventually get anything you want.

Reverse the tables. Now you’re the hot girl. How does that feel? It’s now a given that
guys will do anything you want just to spend time with you. You can afford to ignore
texts from guys who don’t meet your standards or whom you barely know. You can go
on a date without taking any money, knowing the dude will take care of everything. You
can say whatever’s on your mind without filtering it, because guys will supplicate in
spite of being insulted and disrespected.

You don’t need to be a chick to possess the belief that you deserve the best. Not just
the hottest girls, but the best of everything life has to offer. If you don’t feel deep down
that you’re entitled to be with the hottest, smartest, richest, greatest women on earth,
you need to search for the cause of this erroneous thinking and root it out.

Your worth is whatever you assign. If you believe you’re a ten, then you’re a ten.
Suddenly, girls must meet your standards. They must prove their worth to you.

Ownership

You have certain fixed traits: your height, your race, your age, your desire for women,
et cetera. Some features, like weight and fashion, can change with effort. But many
cannot.

For those aspects you can’t change, your only option is to take full ownership.
Embrace these things. Become congruent with them.

In particular, many men have a sense of shame when it comes to their sexuality.
Needless to say, this shame leads to hesitation and self-doubt. Even if they can
muster up the courage to take action, women sense incongruence because of the
subcommunicated lack of ownership.

Several exercises can help you take back ownership of your sexuality. If you have
trouble staring at tits and asses, try forcing yourself to do it when you’re out. If you
can’t easily bring up sexually explicit subjects or words, then make it a mission to start
doing this, even if you creep girls out. For example, make it a mission to work in the
word “cock” tonight into every set. When it comes to owning your intentions, be very
clear. Tell girls what you want to or will do to them sexually. Tonight, make it a mission
to tell every girl, “Come on, I'm taking you home with me.”

These exercises may not score you points with the ladies, but they will help to get you
past your sticking point.

Clarity

Women are allowed to be tangential and illogical. Men are not. We are expected to be
clear in our actions and intentions. But a lot of fuckers lack clarity. I was a victim of this
for most of my life. Once I became clear inside and out, I felt much lighter and could
make very direct connections with people very quickly.

There’s a lot involved in what it means to be clear. Let’s pick some of this shit apart.

First, there’s the subconscious. They tell me this is 88% of your mind, so we can safely
state the subconscious has a big say in the things we do. Sometimes it’s obvious
when our subconscious is creating noise in our heads, but often it’s subtle.

For example, many times when I ask a dude to go approach, he’ll first take a sip of his
drink, then hesitate, then give me some reasons why he won’t approach.

Dissecting this, there are two ways this guy is demonstrating lack of clarity. First, he’s
taking a sip. This is his subconscious saying, “I miss my mommy and wish her teets
were here because I’m scared. But instead of having my mommy, I’ll take a sip from
this straw.” It’s a pacifying maneuver intended to alleviate the internal conflict, in this
case the desire to approach coupled with the fear of the approach.

His second sign is his creating logical excuses to not approach. The dude’s attracted
to her, he’s horny, he knows consciously the approach is the right thing to do and he
has never ever regretted any approach he’s ever made. And yet there’s the conscious
mind trying to talk himself out of taking action.

Okay, so in both examples, he isn’t acting and speaking clearly. He has conflict,
incongruence and fear, and is feeling the need to defend himself and assuage himself.
As opposed to a man who is clear with his desires, owns them unabashedly, and does
what he feels is the right thing.

Now, if I were inside this dude’s head, there may be a bunch of noise. Things that he
may be processing, consciously or subconsciously:

“I’m too old.”

“I don’t have money for dates.”
“Mommy was controlling, and I fear this girl might turn out to be like mommy.”
“My last girlfriend cheated on me, and I’m afraid this girl might do the same.”
“This girl is just gonna reject me like the last five girls, so what’s the point?”
“I’m not wearing any peacocking.”
“My breath smells.”

Again, none of this may rise up to your conscious level. It may all be processing
deeper below your level of consciousness, but would certainly be telegraphing out
through your subcoms. And most definitely these beliefs will be delaying you from
taking action or moving your interactions forward. So while we talk about “being in
your head” with negative self-talk, it’s possible to be in your body yet still affected by
these limiting beliefs.

This is all clutter that leads to lack of clarity within. It’s all harmful. The end result is you
not taking full ownership of your intentions. The hotty doesn’t know exactly why and
doesn’t care. Often, she’ll blame herself as undesirable to you. What matters is that
your lack of clarity will create in women a similar lack of clarity. She will get confused
and lose focus. Girls are mirrors of our own inner state, so if chicks seem confused
around you it’s probably because you are confusing them. Your job is to figure out why.

The pickup community is often accused of being misogynistic, treating women like
children. But guess what...there are similarities. So when I want to research how to
talk to women, I can find advice in sources dealing with child rearing.

Here’s a quote I found online:

Children learn best by being given clear, firm and consistent direction from parents
who are clear, firm and consistent in their approach.
Women…kids…same thing. Be clear. Speak with power. Be congruent.

The author of this statement goes on to say, “Firstly, find and maintain clarity within
yourself.” Brilliant. “It is about being plain, obvious and understandable in a clear, short
sentence that explains exactly what you mean. It isn’t about maybe this or maybe
that.” Exactly.

Gather up your potential sources of confusion and get to work:

1. Clearing out the subconscious. You may have repressed negative experiences
involving girls or your mom, and you may be tainting all your interactions before they
even begin. Sometimes you have a clue what’s going on below the surface, but
sometimes those beliefs are so deep that you need to consult a professional to get at
them.

2. Uncluttering the conscious. This is where Tolle comes in. The Power of Now
teaches people how to recognize that egoic voice and then how to distance
themselves from it as the observer. This takes a bit of effort for some, but with practice
it becomes easier to recognize what is unproductive bullshit that can be dismissed.
Pretty much there are thoughts that get you laid, and then there’s everything else. All
that other crap is irrelevant and needs to be quarantined and set aside.

3. Making your words clear. Stop using fillers like “uummmm,” stop punctuating your
remarks with nervous laughs. Before you speak, think about what you want to say and
then create a sentence. There are organizations like Toast Masters that can help you
recognize and break bad habits. Go take those classes.

4. Quit with all the jazz hands and shit. A little gesturing is ok. Excessive sign language
is distracting. Simplify your movements. Use your hands expressively but not
defensively.

5. Recognize pacifying maneuvers and quiet them. Hands in pockets, touching your
face, putting your drink up between your face and hers. These are ways to create an
invisible wall of protection around yourself. Why are you protecting yourself from
something you desire? Does this make sense? Buzzz…unclear.

6. Project. Give yourself permission to speak loudly. You can turn the dial up on your
radio, but you simply aren’t doing it because you’re afraid of being heard. If you wanna
say something, fucking say it. If you’re stifling your voice, you must be unsure about
the message you’re trying to relate. When you have clarity and you need to say
something, you say it so people hear it. If you need to take voice lessons, go off and
take them. However many times it’s not so much a problem with vocal technique, but
more a psychological issue. Believing your voice matters and that you deserve to be
heard, this is the first step needed to speak loudly.

7. Believe in yourself. Be your own salesman. Ain’t nobody else gonna do it for you. If
you believe in a product, you’re gonna sell it with conviction and clarity. If you’re
unsure about the product’s worth, you’re gonna be wishy-washy in your delivery. Self-
affirmations work for some people. There are a bunch of self-help books and videos
around that may move you in the right direction. But ultimately you need to love and
respect yourself fully for this to click.

Being in your Body

Many guys, especially the smart ones, spend most of their time up in their head. They
overthink everything, dwell on the past, speculate about the future. They never really
feel their own body and don’t spend much time in the present moment.

Primarily, girls communicate emotionally. Being in your head is about as far away as
you can get from this form of communication. You won’t sense her emotions, you won’t
respond in the moment appropriately. You might process logically what you’re seeing,
and then try to make decisions accordingly, but when you do react, the moment is
past. It becomes evident you are thinking instead of feeling, that you are not being
present with her.

When you live in your body, you trust your core to respond to the energy it feels
coming from the woman. There is little processing, other than to periodically check in
with yourself to make sure your actions and words are in line with your intentions, and
that what you say is moving the interaction in the direction you want. And though you
permit yourself to be more emotional and less logical, you don’t let your emotions run
away from you.

Some guys drink booze to get out of their heads, but I don’t recommend this as an
adequate substitute to learning how to really get into your body. Exercise, particularly
activities like yoga and boxing, let you feel your body and let the energy flow through
you. While lifting weights and doing cardio are good for your general well-being, they
tend to stimulate you whereas yoga calms your mind.
Anxiety is one reason to stay embedded in your head. When you fear rejection or loss
and you don’t trust in your own faculties, you will try to process everything in hopes of
forming words and actions that might work just right.

The book Blink is a great compilation of studies supporting the importance of shooting
from the hip, going with your instincts in lieu of thoroughly mulling through all available
information to synthesize a well-informed decision.

Being Centered and Grounded

What do these terms mean?

In yoga, they have a phrase, “Find your center.” Many people chase after their goals,
in business and in relationships. They never actually pause and find their center,
because they're obsessed with this external pursuit.

This was my experience in medical school. If you stop and have a look at what you
must sacrifice to get a medical career, you may find yourself unwilling to pursue the
goal. And so you must put on blinders and run forward as aggressively as you can.
Had I paused and gotten in touch with my values, I would have either abandoned this
course, or else reassured myself that my actions were in alignment with my core.

Many people, then, are running around their center, without actually being in their
center.

Being centered may mean feeling tranquil and at peace, having balance in your life,
feeling happy, being present, feeling at one with other people, having a sense of
compassion...among many other qualities. It is a higher level of consciousness.

And as for being grounded?

Let's say you've just pounded a couple cups of cheap coffee, and you're talking a
million miles and minute and bouncing off the walls. Not grounded. Your thoughts are
scattered, you can't remain present and focused, and you're not in touch with the flow
of energy in your body.

When you step up to a girl, find your center and be grounded. Feel your body (literally
and figuratively, whatever gets the job done). But especially feel your lower body,
which is the place of masculine energy. Feel the ground meet your feet. Establish your
center of gravity. Take a deep breath in and feel it move through you. When people
bump into you, stay still. Silence excessive thoughts and movements. Breathe in that
girl and communicate with her from a very primitive place, as men have communicated
with women for ages.

Various methods are available to help get you centered and grounded. Yoga, mixed
martial arts, meditation and breathing exercises, to name a few.

Drive, Intent and Assertiveness

To get shit done, you need these three ingredients: you must possess drive, you gotta
focus your drive in the form of intent, and then you have to manifest your intent
through assertiveness. Aight fuckers, let’s start at the end and work backwards.

Assertiveness
You see something you want and you go after it, whether that’s a job position, a
redhead, or a bartender’s attention. If you possess intent but not assertiveness, then
you wind up with zip. Assertiveness takes your intent and puts it into action. Likewise,
you can’t be assertive without having intent; it’s a prerequisite.

Too much and you’re aggressive, too little and you’re passive. The aggressor is the
bully, the pacifist is the doormat, and the assertive guy is in between.

Aggressive people tend to step over the boundaries of passive people, resulting in
abuse and manipulation. Assertive people say what they mean and go after what they
want, but not in a way that is harmful to others or disrespectful of others’ boundaries. If
an assertive person is confronted by an aggressive person, he will defend his
boundaries from aggression.

So in the case of the bartender, a passive guy will stand meekly by waiting for the
bartender to notice him while everyone else steps around him and gets waited on. The
aggressive guy will shove everyone out of the way and yell at the bartender for help.
The assertive guy will maneuver up to the bar without pushing anyone aside, will focus
on the bartender until they lock eyes, and then will make his voice heard in a way that
is commanding.
There is no lack of clarity with the aggressive or the assertive guy. The passive guy,
however, seems unclear about his intent (this is the perception of others, even if he is
clear in his head). And so he is often ignored and passed by. Men don’t respect him
and women aren’t captivated by him. Even if he is full of intent, he doesn’t show it, so
he is seen as a pussy, someone who doesn’t feel good about himself, wishy washy,
easy to be taken advantage of, not freely expressing himself.

Aggressive people don’t have a problem expressing their desires, but often their
trouble is in controlling their emotions. So they explode unexpectedly, seem
unreasonable, impulsive and brash. A little bit of this is exciting, but eventually the
assertive guy appears more solid since he is in command of his emotions. Other
people feel good interacting with assertive men, but they often wind up feeling used
and disrespected by aggressive men.

Let’s take this to your interaction with girlies. Shall we?

Say you have full-on intent. Meaning you see a hotty and you wanna bang her. Now,
rather than be assertive, you sit there and don’t approach. Or in another situation, you
want to make out with a girl you’re hitting on, but that voice in your head stops you. Or
perhaps she’s being a bitch and you don’t put your foot down, instead buckling and
letting her be dominant.

Digging deeper, the cause of not approaching is anxiety. So it is with not pulling the
trigger. Perhaps fear of loss stops you from letting girls know when they’ve
overstepped your boundaries. Maybe you’re scared that your communication skills are
sub par and will inadvertently get you into trouble.

Notice that in all these cases the underlying theme is anxiety and fear. If you are truly
confident and without fear, you will put your intent into action. Yes there may be
repercussions. You may be made a fool of, your ego may get bruised, you may get
rejected. But you get back on your feet and reassert yourself.

Sometimes that fear is masquerading as something else. That’s where excuses come
from. Guys who don’t approach often have a list of a dozen reasons to support their
behavior. Recognizing this internal dialog and then disidentifying yourself from it is the
first step, followed by setting this dialog aside and then doing what you want in spite of
it.

To help become more assertive, put your intent into clear and decisive action. Take
charge. Lead. Take responsibility and risk. Own your intent. I recommend you read
Your Perfect Right by Alberti and Emmons for more information on assertiveness.

Intent
Intent is your aim or purpose. In legal terms, it’s the state of your mind when you carry
out an action.

If you lack intent, even with strong drive, then you probably aren’t trusting of your
decision-making process. Or perhaps you feel yourself unworthy of the goal. You have
drive, but you aren’t channeling it for a variety of reasons.

Intent is like light. In terms of meeting broads, the newb starts off with a wide beam of
intent similar to a floodlight, and then as he hones his skill with the ladies, that beam
turns into a narrowly focused laser.

If you shine a big floodlight on a girl, she'll get annoyed and give you her number to
make you go away. It didn't really penetrate. Examples: never going direct, no flirting,
nothing dominant, no qualifying. It’s a wide-open aperture, without focus to the beam,
really diffuse. This is the newbie. His intent is simply to open 10 sets regardless of his
attraction to her, not push to the close, whatever happens happens. Not surprisingly,
lotsa flakes result.

At the other extreme is the tightest beam of intent, the laser. This guy demands he not
only interact with a girl’s better self, but that he fucks her better self. He avoids the
frames that don't suit his purposes, he never supplicates, he always self-amuses. He
is always internally validated. He is clear about his intent to bang her, even if it's just
through his subcoms.

In the end, what stops most guys from converting drive into intent is lack of trust in
one’s faculties. When you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t give yourself permission
to act with intent. This could be from social conditioning, your religious up-bringing,
over-bearing parents, low self-esteem, et cetera. Something is stopping you from fully
embracing your drive, and so you flounder in the intent department, conflicted and
unsure.

Naturally there is no quick fix here. You need to do all the soul-searching necessary to
own your drive fully and believe you’re the shit, before you can ever hope to assert it
with chicks.
When you telegraph intent, hit her with it. For example, say you walk up to a hot chick
during the day. You are as direct with her with your subcoms as you can be. So even if
you’re asking a girl about her laptop, your subcoms hopefully express your sexual
desire.

This is hard to do in broad daylight, purely from an inner game standpoint. You might
feel she's gonna laugh at you, grab your nuts and go running down the street jeering
at you. But I've never seen that happen, so it's all in your mind.

I've been doing some boxing with a trainer, and I've felt something similar. When he
asked me to throw a punch at his face, I'd deliberately miss or come short. This was
because I don't want to hit another dude in the face. But then I got past that block and
gave myself permission to let the guy have it hard.

Of course, he's way better than me, so he deflects or avoids every strike. And then my
fear becomes him punching back. And sometimes he does, hitting me in the face.
Naturally, then, I would start to throw the punch while backing away.

When you do throw a punch, for it to hit with force, you need to bring all the energy
from the ground up into your legs and out your arm. To do this, you have to move
FORWARD into your opponent, though your mind might tell you to move back.

Going sexual is pretty much the same thing. You can’t lob grenades of intent. Girls can
hear insecurity it your tonality and body language. Eventually as you keep at it, you will
start owning your intent better, really trying to hit with it.

So that's the ticket. You can't throw a punch effectively if you're afraid of hitting the
other guy, and you can't be worried about what if he strikes back. You can't open a girl
with powerful intent if you are concerned about how she might judge you, and you
can't do it half-ass. Intent isn't meant to be tossed like a grenade as you run for cover;
it's fucking hand-to-hand combat. Yep sometimes your ego will get bruised.

You're a man. You like to fuck. Stopping giving two shits about what people think about
this.

Drive
You can be driven in many parts of your life, but when we’re discussing pick-up, we
mean the sexual type of drive: libido.

Too much and you’re a horndog. Too little and your interactions lack sexual charge.
Horndogs do get laid, but most high-value women will eventually realize they’re being
used for their pussies. Some girls don’t mind this, but most need to feel somewhere
along the line that you aren’t PURE libido, that you do care about what’s inside, that
you respect her as a human being.

Libido has an organic component. If you’re old like me, you may find your drive
diminishing. I have to do little tricks like feeling up a girl while I talk to her, or stare at
her tits, to regain that energy which once controlled all my thoughts. But even then,
forcing your libido probably feels to women something like a person who smiles for the
camera with their mouth but not their eyes: insincere.

Libido also has a psychological basis. If you’re depressed, stressed about finances,
over-worked, then your drive suffers. Sometimes you can shut those worries out while
you interact with girls, but sometimes they’re too over-whelming.

Let’s face it. Libido is all about procreation. Of course, when we fuck girls, we are
hoping NOT to procreate, but on a deep evolutionary level sex is sex because the
designer of the system wanted us to do it a whole bunch of times in order to continue
our species. You can tell yourself you don’t want kids, and take meticulous and
irreversible measures to prevent it from happening, but that is the biological reason
behind all this. So to a degree, we are at the mercy of hormones, which are there to
assure procreation.

Even without intent and assertiveness, you can be raging with drive. The result is a
guy who sits at his computer whacking off to porn every night, because he is too
confused about his intent or too afraid to go out and take action. In the end it’s better
to have more than less drive, but libido left unchecked will scare away most girls.

What is the end goal of all this psychobabble? The end goal is to channel your libido
through sharply focused intent, and then pursue what you desire assertively.

Being Present

Let’s say you’re driving and texting. Your mind is half on the road, half on your text.
You are not fully present with either. You are not present with the cars around you, the
road conditions, your speed, all that crap. And so you miss warning cues, and you get
into an accident or get a ticket. Presence with the road would have helped keep you
out of trouble.

You can’t connect successfully with girls unless you appreciate the fact that they are
emotional creatures. To be present with women – to connect with them deeply –
means being in tune with their emotions from one second to the next. And they do vary
that quickly.

From presence comes calibration. With experience, you develop a sixth sense of
sorts. You can detect on a gut level a woman’s state by hearing her tonality, watching
her body language, or reading between the lines whether it’s in person or via her texts
to you. When you are present with these cues, you can automatically redirect your
game to reflect her state. This is what calibration is. And once you learn to do that, you
can then guide her…both her state, and the overall interaction.

We all have intentions. If I see a hot girl, my intention is to fuck her. If I see a friendly
ug, my intention is to befriend her. If I were to see a hot girl but then wussy out and act
like my intention is to befriend, abruptly changing course later on can prove
unsuccessful. You must know what your intention is with each girl and stay congruent
at all times with that. If your intention is not clear and powerful, girls will lose attraction.

And it’s not even what you’re verbalizing to her that matters most. As we know, the
subcoms are more important. If I walk up to a hottie and she feels that I’m nervous,
then no matter what I say, she will believe my intention is to seduce her; why would I
be nervous if I weren’t attracted to her?

The problem comes when you are plowing towards your intention in spite of her
emotions. When you are not present, you disregard her cues and try to move along
your own agenda. She will not be a willing participant. You are not guiding or leading,
but dragging. That rarely works.

So the art comes with not only being present with yourself and your own intentions,
but knowing how to connect with a girl’s emotions and to then lead her towards your
intention willingly.

Presence can be undermined by things like alcohol, drugs and ADD (attention deficit
disorder). If you have problems with these things, consider professional help.

Be a Target

People try to go through life unrecognized, flying under the radar, staying out of
trouble, not stirring shit up. Some dudes love to make spectacles of themselves or to
create drama. Most guys, though, aren’t like this.
The average guy who comes into the community has the weight of shame, low self-
esteem, a history of sucking with girls, not owning his sexuality, et cetera. They aren’t
standing up, proud of their identity. In fact, they cower. They try to blend into the
background, afraid that others may call them out as defective.

That is why, if this is you, you must turn yourself into a target. You need to draw
attention to yourself. Dress in ways that are totally out of character. Wear too much
jewelry and bizarre accessories. Color your hair oddly. Pierce your nose. And then
speak loudly so everyone notices you.

When I first started this process, I bought a small and fairly ordinary necklace. I
remember walking down a street that day with my new necklace on, paranoid
everyone passing me by was staring at me and judging me.

I didn’t like that feeling, but I knew it was something I needed to experience. So I piled
on shitloads of peacocking. I wore a leopard-skin scarf, a bunch of necklaces,
bracelets and rings, a fake magnetic earring, a bizarre gaudy belt buckle, and 3-inch
platform heels. Yep, I looked weird as fuck, but I also very quickly lost all concern of
what people thought of me. Soon enough I became so comfortable being a target that
people stopped looking at me. I felt normal, so I stopped standing out.

Spinal Tap Theory

There’s a classic 80s mockumentary called This is Spinal Tap. If you haven’t seen it,
close this ebook and go rent it. In one classic scene, the interviewer and the band’s
guitarist are chatting about various amps. The guitarist points to one amp and tells the
interviewer that it goes all the way up past 10, to 11. That way, when you’re rocking out
at 10 and you need that little extra boost of volume, you can kick it up to 11.

When it comes to your sticking points, I recommend doing the same. Let’s say you’re
naturally quiet. In that case, when you go out, make your voice booming. Not just at a
level of 10, but 11. Crank it all the way up to the extreme, absurdly exaggerated. The
results will be annoying for sure. That’s the point.

If you fear people looking at you, make yourself ridiculously peacocked. If you wave
your hands around too much, stuff them in your pockets or keep them behind your
back all night. Do the opposite of what your problem is, and do it to the max. Then,
when you no longer have an issue with projection, or people looking at you, or
whatever the case is, you can dial it back down to the right level.
Chapter Five
Being a Normal Fucking Dude

Sometimes when I’m out with fellas who are acting all weird, I find myself telling them,
“Dude, be normal!” It got me thinking, how does one transform from weird to normal?

Why be Normal?

When any artist starts learning his skill, he must first internalize the fundamentals.
Before he or she can venture out into his or her own unique style, that artist should
become competent or master the style of well-established others. For a guy who isn’t
good with people, learning the fundamentals – i.e. learning how to be normal and fit
into society – should precede him developing his own style of behavior.

Girls want to know you CAN be normal. Not to say you should be ordinary or boring,
but if the situation calls for it, you can act like a normal man. When you demonstrate
this, she feels comfortable and secure.

Evolution and Instincts

Maybe the best place to start when discussing what it means to be a man is what it
means to be a male primate. That is, what are your hard-wired and undeniable drives
and desires, ascertained as best we can from the available science? I refer you here
to Robin Baker’s Sperm Wars for a thorough analysis of how science and sex collide.

As referred to in the introduction of this book, we can tell where human males are on
the monogamy scale by comparison with other monogamous and polygamous
primates. Research examines testes size, relative to size of the animal. The relatively
larger the testes, the more likely that animal will seek out many mates.

Gorillas, for example, keep harems and typically no other male will try to copulate with
his mates. Hence, he has no need for large testicles, and so they are small. Chimps
are a lot more promiscuous, and so the males have larger testes to produce more
sperm, to try to up the odds of winning the sperm war (procreative success) against
other males banging the same females.

By comparison, human males have a relative testes size that falls between the two
extremes, making them lightly polygamous. It seems then we were not designed to be
monogamous, that polygamy is something for which we’re programmed.

We can fight the urge to be polygamous, but most likely this is not in our very primitive
nature.

We also are programmed to seek out beautiful women. Women seek survival value in
a man, demonstrated through his height and broad shoulders, but men mainly seek
out replicative value. He looks for women who are healthy and have a high chance of
carrying a pregnancy to term. Young girls procreate more successfully than old
women, and so men look for features that demonstrate youthfulness. Big eyes, the
placement of the mouth near the chin, blonde hair.

There are also other factors such as breast size and hip-to-waist ratio (roughly 0.7),
which recur throughout the world in various cultures. Obviously, men have hard-wired
cues that turn them on sexually, and these cues most probably are there to indicate
replicative value.

It’s not vain to chase hot girls. It’s totally understandable given the science. You want
to have healthy kids – maybe not logically, but instinctively.

For more eye-opening reading, again you should check out books like Survival of the
Prettiest, Sperm Wars, Mean Genes and Blink.

Congruence

Being congruent means that what you are inside is the same as what you portray. The
stuff within is your inner game, including your confidence, masculinity, belief system
and so on. What you show on the outside can be everything from routines to
aggressiveness to fashion.

So if you look like a rock star but act like a bookworm, you will seem incongruent. Or if
you hold a job of great power, but behave like a child, again this is incongruent. Or let’s
say you act like a non-needy douche, but as soon as she challenges your frame you
buckle and act weak, again incongruent.
You simply can’t fake congruence. You can fake it for now, but all those little signs are
always pouring out. They are the microsecond expressions that flash across your face.
The way you put your hand to your eye without realizing it. The way your feet point.
The subtle variations in vocal pitch that come and go. All that shit combines to let girls
know that something is off. You are not the man you are displaying.

In the end, the only way to be convincingly congruent is to transform into the man you
want to be. A man who is genuinely non-needy, who speaks his mind, who knows what
he wants and who asserts himself with confidence.

This takes practice. Months, sometimes years, of experiencing a bazillion new sets
and reaching far outside one’s comfort zone, until all these characteristics become
internalized. Sorry, ain’t no shortcut here.

Creepiness

As you begin your journey, you may lack congruence. Signs both big and small will
broadcast your anxiety, inexperience and lack of confidence. You may find yourself
smiling too much and inappropriately. You may stare at girls for ten minutes while you
try to overcome your fear of approaching. You may keep your hand on her arm far too
long to be either sensual or normal.

You will, in essence, appear creepy.

Creepiness is fine. It means you are pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. You
may not be clear at all what you should be acting like as you try on a new skin and
adopt various identities to see which one fits best. I commend you for this. Even if girls
get weirded out, keep reassuring yourself that creepiness is a necessary evil when
you’re first learning this skill.

However, you must also recognize that you’re being creepy, and eventually take
measures to stop it. Girls don’t like creepy guys. So in the long run, you must become
comfortable, fun, socially intelligent and confident. You may still experience spikes of
creepiness as you get these things handled, but they should be rare and fleeting.

The other aspect is this: the community is inherently creepy. Going out in packs during
the day to approach chicks, that’s creepy. Posting what you and her talked about
online for strangers to read verbatim, that’s creepy. Dissecting your sexual escapades
and giving tips on how to make chicks squirt, that’s creepy.

Get the fuck over it. Picking up girls is weird as hell. Sometimes, you just gotta accept
the fact that you’re creepy. End of story.

Nervousness

A big reason why guys act weird is their anxiety. Put em in a familiar situation like a
library, and they’re just fine. But pile expectations on their shoulders like having to talk
to people, and they crack.

Nervousness is manifested through all kinds of behaviors: talking too fast, stuttering,
looking around too much, moving too fast, playing with his cell phone or jewelry,
smiling too much, etc etc etc. Not uncommonly, a guy will demonstrate a whole bunch
of these behaviors all at once.

Normal people – unless they’re on coke or something – don’t act this over-stimulated
when they’re in the usual social situations. Walk into any bar and look at the guys
playing pool, or a pack of college kids drinking, and almost always they’re just chilling
and having fun. But put these same guys into stressful situations – maybe a final exam
at college or a job interview – and now their nervous behaviors emerge.

So it’s ok to become nervous when you need that adrenaline to boost your ability to
handle the stress, but it’s not ok to become nervous when all that’s expected of you is
to relax and have fun. Do you see why looking nervous in a social gathering may
seem weird to others? Ok, well, you need to work on extinguishing these behaviors.
And in large part this will mean finding ways to get out of your head, and into your
body. Out of the past and future, and into the present. This is some Eckhart Tolle shit.

Getting out there into the field – even if it just means sitting by yourself in a bar – will
be a main way to get these habits under control. You don’t necessarily have to open
sets, but you should at very least feel comfortable in your own skin sitting in a bar by
yourself, not worrying how others may judge you. So a night out of your house is
NEVER a wasted night, even if you’re just sitting there by yourself feeling
uncomfortable. With time, that feeling will get better.

Next, focus on body language signals that indicate your anxiety. Below, I list a couple
good books on the subject. Read them and then always be cognizant of your own
nervous behaviors. If you can’t recognize them, have a wing call you out until these
habits are broken. It takes a lot of practice for some, and it means being in your head,
but in the end it’s worth it.

Dealing with Dudes

We get really good at talking to girls, but still many of us suck at interacting with guys. I
for one always had more female than male friends, so learning how to interact with
other men took work. Plus, I CAN’T STAND talking about sports, cars, or most of the
usual “guy” things.

First off, you gotta learn that normal dudes respect other dudes. They don’t touch them
in weird ways, they give them plenty of space, they talk in a linear fashion, they make
solid eye contact, they shake hands firmly, they project their voice with confidence,
and they don’t say shit to belittle the other dude. If you stand with your crotch in some
guy’s face, or you grab his thigh while sitting next to him, or make fun of something
he’s wearing…even if he doesn’t kick your ass, he’s probably gonna think you’re
weird.

And needless to say, normal dudes aren’t afraid of other dudes. That’s one big
problem newbs face, the Fear of the Dude. They avoid mixed sets because of some
imaginary fight that might erupt. Or maybe that fear isn’t even well-crystallized, he just
refuses to open because some guy is standing there. So a lot of PUAs start off in a
mindset of intimidation and fear, or feel threatened before a threat is even posed.
Again, can you see how this might be considered weird by others?

Guys are there to help you. Make nice with them. Fear not. If you aren’t sure if he’s
involved with the girl you’re after, clarify it with her. Problem solved.

Calibration

This encompasses a coupla ideas. First, there is calibrating your energy level. So if
you’re in a chill venue and some pick-up artist is doing his magic monkey routine stack
bit, spinning and hooting and high-fiving at level 11, that fucker’s acting weird. Always
calibrate your energy to the venue and to the set. Like a normal dude.

Second, it’s about calibrating your level of interest. If you come in direct, and you fail to
hook, the girls may keep facing each other without showing you much interest.
Continuing to show way more interest than they show back is miscalibrated and
ultimately creepy. Using push-pull, particularly with your body language, is a good way
to offset this.

Both kinds of calibration take mental focus at first to internalize, but with time this
becomes your sixth sense. You automatically adjust your energy level and interest
level according to environmental cues. In so doing, you become more normal.

Push-Pull

While on the subject, let’s talk more about this tactic. If you stand there and fluff with
chicks, you’ll probably wind up going nowhere. Maybe the friend zone, but that’s about
it.

And so we employ the concept of pushing girls away, and pulling them in, both
physically and verbally. Because it creates attraction.

Here’s the rub. New guys are afraid to push. Why? Because there’s this smokin hot
girl talking to him, and if he pushes her too hard, she’s gonna walk away. And being
under the influence of scarcity mindset, that would be equivalent to the walls crashing
down. The ego would not be happy, and so the newb handles each girl with kid gloves.

But what about pulling? Showing intent? Naw, the new guy is afraid of that too. The
thought of walking up to a girl and being direct, stating intent, escalating sexually…this
stuff scares a lot of these guys shitless. And so he tempers his intent, again trying to
protect his ego.

As a result, he does pull, but it’s an anxious pull. He does push, but it’s an anxious
push. Needless to say, his head explodes. Full-on creeper.

Now. I will reiterate that being creepy is perfectly okay as you’re learning the ropes.
You need to get comfy with all these new emotions. Incongruence will happen,
miscalibration will be the norm. You will seem weird. And that’s ok. Accept that some of
the tactics you employ – like push-pull – will not come off smoothly at first. You will
look creepy for now, but with practice, all this gets smoothed out and a normal dude
emerges. A guy not afraid to push because he has a new-found abundance mindset,
and not afraid to pull because he owns his sexuality and isn’t ashamed of telegraphing
it.
Assimilation and Entitlement

Whoa! Hold up fucker! What the hell does that shit mean??

Look, if I am among “my peeps,” whatever that means, I will feel normal. I’m an artsy
guy, so by hanging around other artists, I feel more normal. If I hang out with jocks, I
feel less normal. Assimilation is a big part of feeling normal.

The problem is this: you should feel comfortable in your own skin, regardless of the
company around you. And thus arises the sense of entitlement. Meaning, even though
I am in a bar full of frat boys, I still FEEL normal, because I’m fucking entitled to be in
that bar as much as the frat boys. I may seem out of place, but I will most definitely not
appear weird because I am totally at ease with myself.

When you can’t obtain assimilation, entitlement will keep you looking normal.

Agenda and Intent

Intent is good. Agenda is bad.

When I go out every night, my intent is to meet a lovely lady and get her digits. That’s
cool if it happens, but when I’m talking to chicks I’m not trying to force this result. I’m
not in my head thinking, “ok, should I get the number NOW?? How about…NOW???”

I’m just vibing and enjoying the moment (or not), and then if I like her I go for the
number.

Guys who have agendas look weird. If I see a girl sitting at a bar and I walk up to her
confidently, I am a man full of intent. But if I linger, stare at her for a couple minutes,
walk past her a few times, bump into her as I go for a napkin, but never actually open,
then I’ve revealed a) I have an agenda to get her to notice me, and b) I’m too chicken
shit to talk to her. This is a massive fail.

It’s the same for escalation. If I grab a girl and pull her in for a kiss because she’s said
something to turn me on, that’s intent. If I do the classic awkward arm-around-the-
shoulder in the movie theater, that’s agenda. One’s manly, the other’s weird.
Have intent, not agenda.

Being Real

We hear people say “just be yourself.” Obviously, when you’re socially miscalibrated
and weird, being yourself doesn’t attract women. So this is crappy advice, mostly
given by women who simply have to show and up look pretty to get rewarded.

Because of this, we must learn how to demonstrate high value (be charming and so
on) and not demonstrate low value (pick your nose, start fights, etc). We get our
subcoms handled and project confidence. Then with practice we can relax and “just be
ourselves.” That is, be our better selves.

Being yourself, once you’ve learned how to do it right, is a great goal. But the next
step is being real.

Here’s an example from one night, where I was chatting up a feisty cutie:

Me: Girls tell me guys will lie about anything to sleep with them. That’s why girls don’t
trust dudes in LA.
Her: So, you’re saying I shouldn’t trust you?
Me: No, of course you shouldn’t.
Her: (dumbfounded look) Uhhh…why not?
Me: Because that’s something I should earn. You oughta keep your guards up til you
get to know me better. I respect that.

Clearly not what she expected to hear, which was probably more along the lines of
“yeah, sure you can trust me!” In that moment, I wasn’t interested in bullshit, and
neither was she. Saying “just trust me” is a ploy; saying “don’t trust me…you don’t
even know me” is being real. One smells like a hard sell, the other is genuine and
disarming.

Girls get hit on A LOT. Even the ones who aren’t that attractive, yeah they get gamed
as much as the hot chicks. So with all this exposure to game, they can recognize BS a
mile away, and can easily tell when you’re out there trying to peddle snake oil.

Where being a community guy turns into a liability is when you’re not being genuine,
when you’re running routines that seem contrived, when you’re giving answers that
are too textbook. Guys think they should have “solid game” to win over chicks. Many
times though, that’s exactly what sinks the interaction. Admitting you fucked up your
game is one of the best ways to get attraction. Case in point:

Me: Wow, you have really sexy elbows!

Her: What? I’m wearing sleeves. You can’t even see my elbows!
Me: Yeeeahh…you got me. You’re cute and I just wanted an excuse to say hi.

The more skittish a girl is, the less you should “game” her. Chilling back, vibing, but
still showing intent, will get you in without setting off her “PUA” alarms. These are the
girls who have their arms crossed, or are stabbing their straws into their drinks, or are
calling you out on your pick-up line. Disarming these girls involves push-pull, but here
again let me emphasize you still need to appear genuine with it.

Going back to that night with the feisty girl:

Me: Hmm you smell good.

Her: It’s Yves Saint Laurent.
Me: What’s that? Shampoo?
Her: You’ve never heard of Yves Saint Laurent??!!
Me: Oh, I see, you’re one of those high maintenance chicks.
Her: No, I’m not high maintenance.
Me: Hmmm…let me see again…(pull her hair, bite her neck and earlobe, etc).

This feels in-the-moment and real now, because I’ve internalized the concept of push-
pull. That’s how I’m wired to talk to chicks, but it took tons of trial and error. When I
started out, I needed scripts and lines to get the job done. It worked, but felt a bit fake.

As a caveat I should say that many people don't want a guy who is keeping it real.
Especially in bars/clubs, and especially around LA, what many girls are doing is
comparing facades and then aligning with the most impressive facade.

You may find like I did that when you stay real, guys and girls want nothing to do with
you. As a result, you may get fewer dates and fewer friends. But the people I have had
in my life lately are of exponentially better quality than what I had before. Again, high
risk/high reward.

Some steps you can take to become real…

1. Fake it til you make it. Banter lines and routines are fine for starters. They’ll put you
in the right state of mind. Eventually though, relying on them excessively will put you in
a rut. Get a few lines memorized and make it a mission to try them out for several
nights. Once you rewire your brain, be in the moment and move forward from your
core.

2. Find your core. The number one killer of your inner game, in my opinion, is outer
game. That is, running all sortsa pyrotechnics intended to wow dames, when in reality
what you’re doing is playing hide-and-go-seek with your identity. This is largely
because your ego is running the show. So if this is you, drop all the clutter. But some
guys still can’t speak from their core because there’s too much damn static in the attic,
so recognizing the true inner voice becomes impossible. In addition to decluttering
your outer game, you need to do the same inside your head. There’s no way to be
genuine if you have a buncha crap mucking things up.

3. Obtain an abundance mentality. I push girls away because I honestly don’t give a
fuck. If she’s being too sassy, I’ll call her out on it. But when you’re coming from a
place of scarcity, this isn’t so easy. You walk on eggshells and end up seeming needy
because all you do is pull. How do you get abundance mentality? It’s not necessarily
from having abundance, but from spending enough time in the field to finally recognize
just how many hot girls there are in the world. As you raise your bar of what behaviors
you’re willing to accept, you go from a place of supplicating to a place of screening.
You simply don’t have the time, energy or resources to deal with weirdos...and believe
me there’s a shitload of weird girls out there. Hence, out of necessity, you acquire
abundance mentality.

4. Don’t care too much about the outcome. If you wanna run textbook game, you may
have great success with this. If you instead wanna be real, you’re gonna screw up
some of your interactions. When you care that much about the outcome, you’ll find it
hard to put your nuts on the line and be genuine. This is high-risk, high-reward stuff. It
can either totally bomb your set, or else win her over. Have one eye on the outcome,
just enough to move in that direction, but stop caring so much about getting there.

5. Own it. I’m short. I recognize that being tall is more attractive, so I wear lifts that add
four inches. And when I do, it’s a lot easier for me to gain attraction. This doesn’t mean
I won’t go out in flat shoes, or that I care at all if a girl is taller. I accept my height and
this isn’t a self-esteem issue. The same would hold for my race or any other aspect of
my being that isn’t changeable. What you got, own it. If you can overcome flaws, then
do it. If not, then accept things as they are. It’s ok to hide and exaggerate various
aspects (god knows girls do this all the time…push-up bras, anyone?). What’s not ok
is to let these perceived flaws affect your sense of worth, because once a chick
shatters the illusion and sees you crumble, it’s game over. So if a girl calls me out on
my shoe lifts, I say, “if I didn’t wear them my eyes would be at your chest level, and
then I’d be staring at your tits all night, which is just rude.”

6. Be uncomfortable. Put yourself into awkward situations. Say provocative things that
will likely blow you out. Manhandle girls. It’s all ok. You’ll survive. And with these blow-
outs you’ll move farther outside your comfort zone. Soon enough, you’ll find yourself
comfortable in any situation, which will permit you to be free to say and do what you
feel.

Mission, Passion and the Void

Normal high-value dudes have shit they love to do. They know what their mission in
life is. Mine is to help people. I manifest this not only in my profession, but in the way I
make these ebooks and other resources available for free. I also go out with guys that
need my help, and I don’t charge money for my time. My mission to help others is
pretty clear to see, and I am passionate about this. All this work fulfills me to my core.

What is your mission? Have you even given this any thought?

Women naturally gravitate towards men who are passionate, no matter how lame you
might think that passion is. It may be board games or small dogs. Doesn’t matter. If
she senses you have no mission, no passion, no deeper drive in your life besides
trying to get in her panties, she loses attraction.

Instead of having purpose, many guys have a void within themselves. Rather than
bringing girls into their lives to complement them like icing on a cake, they try to fill in
holes and cover defects with women.

Fucking a bunch of random girls without making any meaningful connections can be
fun, but it can also reflect a desperate desire to fill in the emptiness. Girls aren’t
intended to fill in this void. They don’t feel particularly good when they catch on, and
you are just sticking a band-aid over a wound while still bleeding out.

Don’t look to girls to complete you. This is more of the same rhetoric that TV and films
have propagated, “you complete me.” It may sound romantic, but it’s off-putting and
nauseating. A real man is very much complete when he lives his passion and fulfills his
mission; women enhance his life, but aren’t critical to his sense of worth or validity.

At the extreme, having a void can lead to codependency. I’ll cover this in chapter 6, so
keep your fucking pants on brother.

The Alpha

Call it alpha, call it dominant, call it masculine. You know what it is when you see it. A
man’s man. What is it? How do you get there? First, some definitions:

What does it mean to be masculine? The industry standard here is David Deida’s The
Way of the Superior Man. This is required reading. You have at one end the masculine
polarity, and at the other the feminine polarity. The masculine stays true to his mission,
while the feminine challenges him. Though the woman may test the man, she doesn’t
actually want him to lose her challenges. She wants him to “win,” to prove to her he is
a man, resolute on his mission and passionate about things other than her.

So how is this different from being dominant? The two are not the same. A man can be
dominant, yet not masculine. Let’s say a sleazy guy overwhelms a woman against her
will and rapes her. Dominant? Yes. Masculine? No. Dominance can be a turn on, but it
should be coupled with masculinity.

And what about being alpha? This term has been used to refer to the guy who
possesses all the traits a woman desires in a mate, from a genetic standpoint. He is
assertive, confident, leads men and is preselected by women, and is masculine. He
takes up space and is not hesitant to speak loudly. Other men relinquish their authority
and control over to him.

As I said with congruence, being alpha is something you can’t fake. It’s in your
subcoms and they way you handle men and women. As with congruence, this
behavior takes practice and careful introspection with corrections made as needed.

If you are the “alpha” type, women will tend to gravitate towards you. This is not the
end goal of your game; betas get laid plenty too, just as Nice Guys get pussy every so
often. The community has fixated on the concept of being alpha, but realize it is only
one of many tools you can use to attract chicks.

One thing that may help is to hang out at gyms and observe body builders. A lot of
these guys are seething with hormones, and many of them are pure alphas. Watch
how they interact with each other, watch how they treat girls.

The Fuck are Subcoms?

I’ve mentioned these in passing, and most guys who get into the community become
well-aware of what they are. For a detailed explanation of body language, I refer you
to two very thorough reads:

What Every Body is Saying, by Joe Navarro

The Definitive Book of Body Language, by Allan and Barbara Pease

Read them each cover to cover, then go sit in parks and bars and watch people
interact. Pick up subcommunicated signals, and try to interpret what they mean. In
your own interactions, listen to tonality, watch facial expression and hand gestures.
Become highly observant and start reading them in context of the words you and the
other person are saying. Do they make sense, or are the subcoms somehow not in
keeping with the content of that person’s speech?

Subcoms are HUUUUGE. Both the ones you’re putting out to the world, and the ones
you’re reading off other people. The ability to read and immediately calibrate to
subcoms is one of the greatest skills you can acquire. It’s a sixth sense, a kind of mind
reading.

Whatever your beliefs are, your subcoms will demonstrate. If you get propositioned by
a man, you may seem calm, cool and collected, but if I were to slow down a video tape
of your face, there’s a good chance some quick flash of disgust or contempt will be
detected. Unless you have an amazing poker face, your beliefs are constantly seeping
out via your subcoms. And when you say something that isn’t in keeping with these
signs, people realize you’re incongruent. Of course, this usually isn’t registered
consciously by the observer, but unconsciously they feel something about you isn’t
right.

Power and Love

There are two balancing forces at play in men: your power and your love. Love is not
that hard to understand. You feel affectionate and loving, you care for someone, you
cherish. It may be love towards a total stranger, even a person in a news story on TV.

Power can be a little harder to grasp. There may have been times in your life when
you experienced power. If you ever got into a fight, that desire to do battle was power.
If you ever exercised so hard that you had to stop, and yet still went that extra bit, that
was power. When you’re in bed being a dominant animal, connecting at a purely
sexual level, that’s power.

Tapping into the power of your masculinity can be tough for many guys. Things that
challenge you physically can help. For example, I took up boxing as a way to get in
touch with this energy.

The key is to call upon both forces, love and power, at all times, even if you aren’t
fucking or going into battle. And once you learn what these two forces feel like, the
next skill is in balancing them.
Physical Attractiveness

Some men appear manlier than others. Studies have elucidated various facial and
body features. A big jaw, a prominent eyebrow ridge, strong jaw muscles.

In an interesting study, as described in Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff,

pictures of women were made more feminine (larger eyes, bigger lips, etc), and
photos of men were made more masculine. People were surveyed on their attraction
to these altered photos. The studies found that being hyperfeminine is a good thing;
men like very feminine faces. On the contrary, women like masculine features to a
point, past which point the hypermasculine faces became less attractive.

Other attributes women crave are broad shoulders and a good butt. It’s speculated
that a good ass means you can project your sperm farther during sex. A deep voice
also correlates with attraction.

Height has been shown to be a key feature in numerous studies not only regarding
sexual attraction, but in the business and political worlds. Surveying the CEOs of
Fortune 500 companies, 30% are 6’2” or taller. In the real world of America, only 3.9%
of men are that tall. Clearly, given this huge discrepancy, it can be surmised that
people literally and figuratively look up to tall men.

My point with the above is not to discourage you. If you’re tall and possess the desired
features, you should have an easier go at attracting women. Keep in mind, however,
that inner game is still the most important feature women demand, followed by
physical attractiveness.

If you’re short or not particularly attractive physically, you can either give in and accept
defeat, or you can rise above it and strengthen other areas. In particular you can fall
back on your solid inner game, and work hard to improve your outer game (e.g.
personality, temperament, charm, etc...hmmm, I foresee another ebook).

You may possess a potential handicap, but in the end whether that perceived flaw
becomes a true handicap is completely under your control.

Accountability and Integrity

Real men are accountable. They say they’re gonna do something, and they fuckin do
it. When you hold them accountable, they take full responsibility for their deeds.

Being accountable also means having integrity. Integrity is defined as consistency in

your actions, words, values, et cetera. At the other end, at least philosophically, is
hypocrisy, having beliefs that contradict your actions.

If you waiver from your core, you lack integrity. If you deviate from your beliefs, people
will find it hard to trust you, because you are essentially demonstrating a lack of trust
within yourself. When you trust fully in your own belief system and your values, you
don’t waiver from them.

Needless to say, if you don’t even have a clue what your beliefs are, if your core is
buried behind a thick wall of clutter, none of this applies to you. Before you can strike
others as a man of integrity, you must find your core and then learn to comfortably
embrace it.

Authenticity

Cute chicks are bombarded with pick-up lines and come-ons all their lives. Some men
pretend to be friends first, almost like a wolf in sheep's clothing. A lot of guys use
gimmicks to lure women into bed.

What is often rare is the authentic man, the guy who presents himself without
pretense, in a manner that isn't contrived. A guy who simply states his intentions and
strikes her immediately as honest. He is at ease with himself, which puts her at ease.
He is present and he never apologizes for his desires.

The community, with all its routines and tactics, makes it tempting to hide and avoid
being authentic. Dudes are ashamed or scared to put themselves on the line, or to
open themselves up for inspection. So they masquerade behind online handles, tell
scripted stories to girls that have nothing to do with their lives, and effectively convince
women they are someone they're not.

Though it's scary, you need to be authentic around girls. Chicks have two major
paranoias: being thought of as a slut, and being lied to. As soon as either of these pop
up while dealing with a new man, it is very hard to recover. Never lie to women.
Always be authentic.
Chapter Six
You and Chicks

Alright, time to bring this full circle and talk about how inner game clicks in with your
dealings with broads.

Intentions

“Never be afraid to try something new. Afterall, a lone amateur built the Ark, a team of
experts built the Titanic.”
…Anonymous

I saw this cute quote one day. While it does make sense on one level, its author,
Anonymous, missed a much more profound concept which is this:

Noah was giving value when he constructed the ark; his intention was to save the
planet. He understood it was his responsibility to gather up all the animals in pairs,
then ride out the flood until he could find land and then repopulate the earth.

Contrary to this, the creators of the Titanic were doing nothing more than flexing their
financial muscles, showing off to the world that they could make a behemoth,
something unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The largest passenger ship
on the seas. Out of boastfulness and ego came disaster.

When your intentions are aimed at benefiting others, and when you’re driven to act
from your core (in the case of Noah, a desperate need to survive), good things
happen. People naturally gravitate towards you. When you seek only to benefit
yourself, life ultimately gives you crap.

As you step to a girl, are your desires to give value and turn her on? Or are you self-
serving and only looking for self-gratification? Are you giving or sucking value?

Tight inner game is about walking the earth with a value-giving mindset, not caring if
what you have to offer is accepted by others, or if your actions are rewarded. Avoid the
trap of seeking validation for your deeds, or expecting reciprocation. This will only lead
to resentment if you don’t get the validation or rewards you thought were due.

Be content in simply making others happy. Be a man who serves women. Be Noah,
but sexy.

Paradigms

A paradigm is defined as a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that

constitutes a way of viewing reality. I was talking to an Indian chick one time, and she
thought it was absolutely unacceptable that some strange guy in a bar was talking to
her. In her paradigm, talking to strangers in bars is out of the question. There may be a
cultural reason behind this paradigm.

I have talked about limiting beliefs. Let’s say I believe that tall guys get more and
better-looking tail than short guys. This, some would say, is a limiting belief, because it
is an internal dialogue that might stop me from going after hot girls. On the contrary,
when I put on shoe lifts and my success goes up, that belief becomes an enabling
one. So because this same belief can be interpreted as limiting or enabling, let’s side-
step this judgment call. In either case, we can agree I have a paradigm that includes a
belief about height.

Some girls you game will have deeply entrenched paradigms. A woman who is happily
married may find it unacceptable to date other men. This is her firmly held paradigm.
Then it’s up to you the player to decide if you want to try to work within and against her
paradigm, or to move on.

Of course, that’s an extreme case. Other paradigms include the belief that the man
should pay for everything, or that the man should always lead in the interaction, or that
you shouldn’t have sex on the first date, or that you shouldn’t date outside your race.

You may choose to accept a woman’s paradigm, or you may try to challenge it. I
believe that a man should always lead, and I’m ok with women who maintain a similar
paradigm. I am not, however, okay with the paradigm that sex on the first date is
wrong; whenever a girl demonstrates this paradigm, I will always try to challenge it.

This brings us to paradigm shifts. Before Einstein introduced his concepts, there was a
belief in physics that we had learned all we would ever learn. With Einstein came a
huge shift in thinking. The opposite is paradigm paralysis, where you are unable to
make a shift in your beliefs and so you get stuck in the same thought process. Which
leads us back to limiting beliefs; a lot of new guys in the community suffer from
paradigm paralysis. “I’m not good-looking enough,” “I’m too old,” “I don’t have enough
money.”

And yes, we sometimes forget that girls also have limiting beliefs and suffer from
paradigm paralysis. Probably the most notable example is ASD (anti-slut defense), her
set of beliefs that if she seems too sexually aggressive, society will deem her a slut.
And so she doesn’t pursue what she wants sexually out of fear of being stigmatized. If
you’ve gamed cougars you may find that these women often have undergone a shift,
and no longer suffer from paralysis. We’ll get back to cougars in a sec.

Some girls may subscribe to a given paradigm, but underneath that is a latent
paradigm. When you cause a shift in her beliefs, that latent paradigm rises to the
surface. Many times that initial set of beliefs is what’s called the dominant paradigm,
which is a set of beliefs commonly held by a particular group. An example may be
when a group of girls rolls into a club, they have an unspoken contract that they’ll all
leave together. The dominant paradigm in that group is that going home with a strange
guy is unacceptable. You can still pull that girl by bringing her latent paradigm (it’s okay
to fuck a strange guy in a bar) to the surface.

Alright, so what does all this mean? When you meet a girl who holds a paradigm that
is not in alignment with your own, you will make the determination as to whether you
want to induce a shift or bring to the surface a latent paradigm.

In many cases, trying to induce a shift is simply not worth it. The girl has such
paralysis that a shift will be nearly impossible, or you may have to compromise your
integrity in order to get there.

In other cases, that paradigm is very superficial, and the latent views are simmering
just below the surface. In these cases, with the right game (and your own positive
assumptions), you can induce a shift. An example includes shit tests, such as the
classic, “You can come in, but we’re not having sex tonight.” To the trained ear, the
latent paradigms can be elicited.

So let’s go back to the cougar. What has caused her shift? She now goes out, meets a
guy she wants to bang, and aggressively pursues him. She may open him, do much of
the escalation, drop plenty of explicit suggestions, and contact him the next day.
In my opinion, aside from becoming more accepting of her sexuality, the main cause of
the shift has to do with relative value. Most women begin to lose value after around
age 30. Her appearances start to diminish and she notices she gets hit on less. On top
of this, her sex drive starts to peak during her mid-30s. So the only way she can
satiate her desires is to step up her game. She must undergo a paradigm shift to get
what she wants out of the sexual market.

A man’s value can be measured in many ways: money, status, looks, preselection,
humor. As you make yourself more valuable to women, you will become better able to
induce paradigm shifts. What constitutes a valuable man is something we can hotly
debate, but in my opinion, it mostly involves a combination of his physical
attractiveness and his ability to work with her emotional states. There are other
esoteric factors like pheromones and game.

In the end, all you can do is make yourself as valuable as possible. We can run
through the list: social intelligence, calibration, your subcoms, height, build, escalation,
charisma, so on.

There is some potential for creating a value gradient by trying to lower the girl’s (e.g.
negs), but this is less reliable. Hot women who get hit on a ton typically aren’t too
phased by your negs; this may be good gravy, but the real meat is your own intrinsic
value as a man. Plus, if you become too concerned about relative value, you find
yourself in a reactive mindset. You are constantly analyzing her value and then trying
to calculate your own value relative to hers.

Aside from becoming a valuable man, this has much to do with your ability to
telegraph your value effectively to women. Handing a girl your resume will not suffice.
She needs to feel that you are of high value. Which is why we keep getting back to the
importance of making an emotional connection with women. That connection will serve
as the conduit through which you will use your value to leverage her paradigm shift.

Shit Tests

Shit tests (aka congruence tests) are really in large part the girl testing a guy's
paradigm. Girls like to challenge men; it’s how they can find out quickly if he’s resilient
and secure. She might make fun of what he’s wearing, or demand he buy her
something, or act like a bitch. She seems like a hard-ass, but underneath it she is
attracted.
Here are two dudes:

Dude A: A community newbie. He tells himself affirmations about what a stud he is,
listens to audio tapes, whatever. He goes out with the intention of "number-closing"
and practicing routines. What is his paradigm? On the exterior it might look convincing,
and he might get pussy. But when a woman with a more dominant paradigm enters the
picture, his exterior crumbles. Why? Because he doesn't actually OWN his paradigm,
he's just going through the motions.

Dude B: An experienced player. He bangs a new girl a week, so if he doesn't meet

anyone new tonight, it's no biggy, since he'll find someone tomorrow. He goes out with
the intention of banging the hottest girl in the club, because that's what he usually
does. If this guy is tested, he won't crumble. Because he actually is living the paradigm
Dude A is faking.

As with congruence, you can only fake your way through shit tests for so long.
Eventually, if your inner and outer game don’t match up, girls will sense you struggling
to pass these tests, which in itself is a lose.

Premature Ejectulation

This is a term coined by Adam Lyons, which refers to leaving a set even though things
are going well. When things aren’t going well, it’s natural to want to leave the
discomfort, but why would you bail when she’s into you?

Ejecting from a set in spite of having success is a reflection of the ego trying to
preserve that newly acquired sense of validation. If things are going well in the
interaction, you could easily say or do something to fuck it up. Then all those warm
fuzzies would vanish, and you’re left with a feeling of loss. And so, to preserve this
validation and accomplishment, you leave on a high note.

What I found useful in the past was to announce, “I should get going” or “I really
oughta get back to my friends.” By making that statement (what they call a false time
constraint), that urge to eject was brought up into the open and given a voice. Then,
instead of leaving, I hunkered down and kept chatting.

The first step is to recognize that urge as it starts rising up. Hear that voice, which may
be one of any number of excuses, from “my wing looks bored” to “I need to get up
early in the morning.” Then tell yourself, “No wait, fuck my wing, I wanna get laid” or
whatever would neutralize that urge. And then label that urge “premature ejectulation”
and set it aside.

Trigger Anxiety

Many guys have a fear of pulling the trigger. It rises from the same place that
premature ejectulation comes from: fear of fucking up the interaction and robbing the
ego of those good-time feelings.

If you were to escalate too hard and fast – make out when she’s not ready, touch her
too intimately, all the way to trying to take her clothes off and fucking her – she might
shoot you down. Then, at least in your head, you would not only lose that validation,
but there may be a very real possibility she’ll totally dump you.

Trigger anxiety can lead to sexual anxiety. You may do really well with getting chicks
attracted and comfy with you, but when it comes to seduction, your brain keeps
stopping you. You realize she’s into you, but something won’t let you wrap your mind
around this fact and carry things forward towards sex. Often, girls will give you tests
and token resistance, and even the slightest ones may derail you during the end
game.

So you fail to close the deal. You’re disgusted with yourself. She’s disappointed with
you. Bad times all around.

It’s possible to work through trigger anxiety by having a plan of action. Everything from
a hug, to a kiss, to sex. Don’t just say, “Next time, I’m gonna pull the trigger!” No, have
a very detailed plan of how you’re gonna do it, what you’re gonna say, and how you’ll
react if she tries to stop you.

Step one: Devise a verbal routine or line to use to introduce the escalation. For
example, if a chick says something funny, you can say, “You’re too cute! Come here…”

Step two: Couple that line with the escalation. You may not be able to go right into the
actual desired action. Meaning, if you can’t confidently make out, then step two can be
kissing her shoulder or forehead. If you can’t do a full-on body hug, then go for a side
hug. If you don’t feel able to eat her out, then kiss her belly. Ultimately you may be
able to skip this step and go right for the end goal. In the case above, say “Come
here…” and bring her in for a kiss or hug.
Step three: Have a plan for rejection. If she turns her head when you try getting a
make out, or if she blocks your attempts to take her panties off, be ready with a
response. It may be, “Awww you like playing hard-to-get. That’s cute, but aren’t you a
little too old for that?”

Step four: Repeat in future interactions. Keep doing this same process in every set
you go into, until the anxiety begins to fade.

Step five: Skip much of the above, and go right to the end goal with confidence.

Sexual Anxiety

There are a couple aspects to this. First, some guys are utterly paralyzed by the
thought of banging a girl, well before the opportunity presents itself. It may be so bad
they get nauseated. They may dredge up memories of past encounters that went
poorly, or beliefs their parents instilled in them about sexuality.

Sometimes the issues holding him back seem real but may not be, such as lack of
privacy, fear of getting arrested, anatomical inadequacy, and worry about being judged
by a new partner. When that sexual anxiety begins, he may do things to sabotage the
interaction, such as failing to escalate when her window opens, or may believe her
invitations to sex are just a test (see What’s the Catch??, below).

The second form is a kind of performance anxiety, where a guy gets in his head so
much that he starts to stress out while he’s trying to fuck her. As a result, he becomes
far more preoccupied thinking about his failure in bed than the sexual act itself. This
may ultimately lead to erectile dysfunction; often the guy drinks to quiet his anxiety,
and the alcohol then worsens the problem.

First, realize that good sex for women relates to how you turn her on emotionally. If
you can get her aroused in her head, then your actual technique or dick size or
whatever you’re worried about becomes a distant second. Great lovers know how to
use their hands, mouth and voice in a way that hits. So try to shift the focus away from
the penetrative act, and towards everything else.

Second, the issue in many cases is that of not being present, and having a disconnect
between your head and your dong (psyche vs penor). Rather than being fully present
(“hey there’s a hot babe spread eagle in my bed and I like hot babes!”), the gears start
to grind with self-limiting thoughts. When you’re fully immersed in an activity you enjoy,
you act and speak from your core, without all those crazy thoughts interfering. Become
present. Look at her. Feel her up. Enjoy everything about her. Don’t analyze, just feel.
Shut out those voices.

Third, you could be outcome dependent. Girls care far less about orgasm than guys.
Sure, they love a good orgasm or two or three, but while dudes get frustrated when a
make-out or foreplay doesn’t end in ejaculation, girls will very often be okay with the
foreplay. My point is, don’t feel like you’re disappointing her if you can’t perform. Enjoy
the pre-sex activities. Give her fantastic foreplay, and then see how it goes. If you can’t
bang her, that’s ok for now. If you’re in a long-term relationship, you should be bringing
these concerns up with her, and possibly seeking counseling if you can’t resolve them.

Lastly, you may not be genuinely attracted to the girl. Maybe she said something that
pissed you off. Perhaps she’s not physically up to your standards. The end result, you
just can’t get it up for her. There’s nothing wrong in saying no to a girl you aren’t
feeling it for. Don’t listen to your ego telling you you have to bang a lot of girls, or that
turning down sex is weird. Your cock is your gift to her. If you don’t feel she’s worthy of
it, don’t bring it out.

A great book on sexual technique, The Sex God Method by Daniel Rose, covers much
of this and may help you out.

Here’s a list of some stuff that might help get your anxiety handled:
1. Rule out organic and mental causes, such as stress, alcohol, illness, and
medication side effects. You may need to seek medical advice here.
2. Don’t drink.
3. Get plenty of sleep and exercise.
4. Stop equating loss of erection with loss of manhood. Erections are just a normal
part of life, not an indicator of how much of a man you.
5. Select your partners differently. If your girls want to be fucked hard for hours and
hours, they may not be the right ones for you. They should also be attractive to you,
obviously.
6. Shift the blame away from your own sexuality and towards work stress or whatever
factors are contributing.
7. Don’t whack off so much.
8. Consider erectile dysfunction medications.
9. Take steps to reduce stress in your life. Make a plan to get out of debt. Take up
yoga and meditation. Talk through stressors with friends.
10. Check for feelings of resentment or hostility towards your partner, and then resolve
them. If the issue is guilt (sleeping with other girls behind her back), then do whatever
you need to do to get rid of that guilt.
11. Seek professional help.

What’s the Catch??

As stated above, some guys see pussy on a platter, and think, “Wait, something must
be wrong here. It’s never this easy. What’s the catch??”

Maybe she has an STD, or she’s a slut, or she’s using him for money. Anything he can
imagine as a trap, he will.

Deeper, the problem is one of deservedness. He deserves her, but he doesn’t fully
accept this notion. He resists her advances because he feels he’s a fraud, and so he
creates an exit strategy, a story that shifts the blame to her. Sweet! He has protected
his ego at the expense of not reciprocating her sexual desires. Eventually, it turns into
paranoia; he’s constantly trying to find her defect, waiting for the other shoe to drop,
believing he will discover the ulterior motive or catch.

Buddy, there ain’t no catch. She’s hot and she wants the cock. It’s that simple.

Nice Guy, Bad Guy, Good Guy

The Nice Guy is a big fucking pussy. You know the dude. Go watch almost any
Hollywood rom-com and you’ll see him. Most guys fall into this category. He thinks that
by acting like a friend and buying her crap, she’ll fall in love with him. He ends up
letting her take advantage of his niceness. Unbeknownst to him, many girls suspect
that his niceness is a ploy, that he actually has a self-serving agenda. So even when
he is genuinely trying to be nice, it many times backfires.

The Bad Guy is a douche bag. He mistreats her, doesn’t seem to empathize with her
suffering, is discourteous and sometimes abusive. In spite of this, she sees him as
exciting and unpredictable. The Bad Guy knows how to turn women on, largely by
figuring out their insecurities and weaknesses, and then using those to his advantage.
Women still fall in love with this guy, and keep hoping to change him into something
he’s not. He is full of flaws, they realize, but with effort women hope to fix him.
The Good Guy strikes the right balance. Yes, he is still exciting and takes women on
an emotional journey. Like the Bad Guy, he turns her on and is good in the sack. But
he is always respectful of her emotions and boundaries. He stands up for his beliefs
(unlike the Nice Guy), and won’t allow women to mistreat him. While the Bad Guy will
retaliate out of anger when provoked by a woman, the Good Guy will put her in her
place, very matter of factly. Women don’t view him as flawed, unlike the Bad Guy.
Instead, women realize that they themselves have flaws, and are inspired to fix their
own flaws to meet the standards of the Good Guy.

When it comes to sex, the Bad Guy will fuck her well, and then will leave in the middle
of the night while she’s sleeping. The Good Boy will also show her a great time, but
then will make her breakfast the next morning. The Nice Guy isn’t getting laid, but
when she calls him the next morning after fucking another dude, he’ll race over and
make her breakfast.

Obviously, strive to be the Good Guy. Be attractive, exciting and seductive to women.
Have high standards. Don’t allow girls to mistreat you. Know what your beliefs are and
defend them. Be assertive. Come from a place of abundance. Unfortunately, you can’t
snap your fingers and become the Good Guy. This, for many dudes, will take a ton of
work, lots of trial and error, hundreds of rejections.

Stick with the pain. Work through it. Women love Good Guys. They are rare.

Project Girls

There are Good Women too. And then there are Project Girls. You know, the alcoholic
drug-user who fucks anything with a cock to make herself feel loved. Daddy beat her.
She ran away from home as a kid, yadda yadda yadda. In essence, a low-value chick.

You could do way better than this, but instead you find yourself attracted to her. She
becomes a project. A troubled soul you can tinker with and turn into a Good Woman.
You obsess over her.

You see her as broken. You’re broken. So the two of you have that in common, on a
deep level. You project your flaws into her. You begin work helping her as the Nice
Guy, hoping she will transform and then feel indebted towards and appreciative of your
effort. But you never seem to actually get anywhere in most cases, and she remains
an unending project. Or maybe in time you do fix her up. But now, her value has
exceeded your own, since you’re still broken. So you abandon her, feeling unworthy.
Stop looking for your next project. Leave her alone. You’re better than that. You don’t
have time or energy to deal with these chicks. You’re here to turn yourself into the best
man you can be, one who carefully selects his partners. Don’t align yourself with girls
who will bring you down. Move on.

Two Reasons to Game

Many guys express reservation about speaking honestly with a girl because it could
ruin their chances. And so if the guy is feeling anxious, or is projecting past
relationships into the current one, rather than express his concerns he pushes his
negative feelings deeper. Though this approach wasn’t working long term, it made for
a pretty good band-aid.

Yes, there is sound logic strategically to not being fully honest with people about your
emotions. You won’t get the girl if you look like a pussy. On the other hand, being able
to speak your mind freely is therapeutic, and while it may sink the current interaction,
it’ll help with future girls.

It boils down to having two goals when you game:

The first: it’s about you.

The second: it’s about her.

Things that aren’t challenging to you and which advance the interaction forward, are
about her. Getting the girl. Things that challenge you emotionally and are not intended
to move things along are about you. You can have one without the other, or they can
be compatible.

Examples of saying/doing things that are about you:

“Wow, I’m trying to think of something to say right now but you’re making me super
nervous.”
“I was gonna approach you 10 minutes ago but you’re really hot so I’m actually
intimidated.”
Blowing yourself out on purpose with absurd comments to toughen your skin.
Escalating too hard to get past the anxiety you feel, even though it creeps her out.

Ok, so here’s another one of my famous metaphors…

You are the general commanding an army. Your army is malnourished, tired and
getting sick from dysentery. Should you be focusing your attention on: a) strategies to
win the war, or b) improving the health of your troops?

Seems like a no-brainer. If you let your troops die, you ain’t winning the battle. If you
spend all your energy on tactics, at the expense of providing basic assistance to the
soldiers, then all that energy is mental masturbation.

This is exactly the same with game, though instead of going into combat, you’re trying
to seduce a broad. Here, your inner game is the battalion, sick and on the verge of
collapse.

Say you are feeling a negative emotion in set. Your soldiers are sick. Do you decide to
stifle those emotions because it’s a better tactical decision, or instead do you bring
those emotions to the surface and express them, because doing so will help heal your
inner game?

If your troops are sick, fucking take care of the troops.

Worrying about her – that is, wondering if a certain strategy is the best outer game - in
this case, is a luxury. When your inner game sucks, it should all be about you. As your
inner health improves, you can then shift focus onto her. Once you’ve conquered
whatever is internally stopping you from success, then you can reconsider the best
strategies to win the war.

Always be cognizant of this in field. If a set doesn’t go well, remind yourself, “Well it’s
about me anyways.” If you’re afraid to say or do something, still do it because “it’s
about me.”

The Situation

Sometimes, an exchange you have with a person is a give and take. You give her $10,
now she has $10. I get angry at you and by insulting you, you feel like shit and I feel
better.

But in a lot of interactions, it doesn't work this way. In between you and the girl is the
Situation.

Here's what happened on my drive home once. An asshole thought some old lady was
driving too slow, so he veered into the other lane and cut back in front of her. You can
tell by the way he was looking in his rear view that this little stunt reeeeallly made his
day. The old geez, on the other hand, didn't even seem to realize what had just
happened.

So the Situation was a guy swerving around and trying to teach an old broad a lesson.
What did he get out of it? A whole lot. Made him feel like a true champ. What did she
get out of it? Not a thing. Totally unaffected.
You can take stuff out of a Situation, and put stuff into the Situation.

A girl gives you her number. You feel great, like you just won a prize. She feels
indifferent. Whether you call her or not is probably of no great importance to her, and
yet you plan it all out. How you're gonna do it, when you're gonna do it, you even tell
all your friends about it.

The Situation here was the number exchange. You got a great deal out of it, she got
nothing out of it. She gives her number out like candy and may not even remember
you if you did call her.

Social interactions are made up of these Situations. Sometimes, it is a give and take,
like an exchange of currency. But many times it isn't. You care about the fact that you
made out with her on a date, but she doesn't. You care that she flaked, but she
doesn't.

So the answer to why things seem unfair is not to focus on the girl, but the Situation.
Are you putting more value on the Situation than you should? Don't be the asshole
driver who had his ego stroked when he was glaring in his rear view. Be the geezer
who was oblivious.

A lot of guys are concerned about that sense of rejection when they go out. And yes, if
you have some expectation from the girl, you may feel she is rejecting you. Instead,
realize that a Situation often lies invisibly between you and the girl.

Chauvinism vs Dominance

I recommend a short book called Just FUCK Me! by Eve Kingsley. She is a feminist
who realizes that women just want to be fucked, to fully relinquish their bodies and
emotions in the bedroom.

Overpowering girls sexually is something dudes are not always okay with. Good Guys
and Bad Guys will rise to the occasional and fuck, but Nice Guys worry about over-
stepping her boundaries, seeming disrespectful or chauvinistic. After all, how can you
look at a girl like a piece of meat? She’s a sensitive human being.

Being dominant does not make you disrespectful or a sexist, misogynist or woman-
hater. These can coexist, but they are all independent mindsets. You can still be
dominant and fuck her like a piece of meat, without actually feeling like she is nothing
more than a piece of meat.
Even outside the bedroom, you are expected to lead, to make decisions, to put her in
her place like a child when she misbehaves, to ignore her bullshit. Little by little as you
act like this kind of man, you might start feeling like a bit of a chauvinist pig.

There is a line between dominance and masculinity, and chauvinism. Women are
emotional beings and can’t be relied upon to think logically like a man. Is this a
chauvinistic statement? To me, her emotional way of being is a gift, something men
generally don’t possess. Your gift is to think tangentially and to problem-solve; you are
probably not as intuitive and emotionally present as she is. You each have unique
traits which complement each other. Be in awe of and appreciate her femininity, and
recognize you must bring certain qualities she wasn’t born with. There is nothing
chauvinistic about this.

Lies of the Lover

We can break down your role into two types: the Lover and the Provider. These aren’t
mutually exclusive, they are just stereotypes you can use to help understand
relationships.

The Lover seduces, but doesn’t provide for her. The Provider gives her a home and
family. Neither is good nor bad. The problem arises when you want to be solely the
Lover, and yet you put on the pretense of being the Provider.

This may come in the form of acting monogamous but secretly trying to fuck other
girls. You may promise marriage and a family, though deep down the thought doesn’t
really appeal to you; you aren’t done playing the field.

The hard part is then being a Lover without feeding her lies that you’re a Provider,
making her believe that if you can trick her into thinking you’re a Provider, she’ll invest
more and stick around. Then eventually you do the bait-and-switch, and suddenly she
sees you’re not the Provider you portrayed. She feels distrustful and betrayed.

Be the Lover if that’s who you are. Sleep with other girls, and tell her so. Don’t promise
stability if you don’t mean to give that to her. Let her know up front what your intentions
are. If you’re truly open to being a Provider, let her know with time you’re willing to go
there if things work out that way, but for now all you can offer is a trial period. Before
you can be this honest, it helps to adopt the abundance mentality so you don’t find
yourself lying out of fear of loss.
Trust, Jealousy, Possessiveness

Being jealous is a very natural instinct. Once again, I command you to read Sperm
Wars. There are a ton of great examples in Baker’s book about how men and women
act to diminish the effects of infidelity. The fact that there are so many safeguards to
counter polygamy makes me assume that it’s almost a given. Why would men possess
various kinds of sperm designed to kill and block competitor sperm, if not for the fact
that polygamy is a fact of life?

With scarcity thinking comes the belief that women are hard to acquire. And so when
you get one, you hold onto her tightly. If another dude tries hitting on her, you may
become enraged with her or the guy. You keep a watchful eye on her, drive by her
house, check her cell phone messages and emails. You may give meaning to things
that have no meaning, forcing them to become proof that she’s unfaithful.

Women are not to be possessed like property. Stalking her is unattractive and weird.
Give her space, let her live her life, don’t fly off the handle if dudes hit on her, don’t
make a big deal out of nothing. It only shows your own insecurity and doesn’t assure
she’ll be more faithful.

After you read Sperm Wars, you may have a great deal of difficulty ever trusting a
woman again. It’s a call you’re gonna have to make, case by case, whether to trust a
woman is being faithful. First off, define the terms of the relationship clearly with her. If
you have no desire to be monogamous, then don’t expect her to be either (although
you may be surprised when girls remain faithful to you though you admit you sleep
around). Naturally, always be safe if you do go outside your relationship; don’t bring
diseases back to her. And be honest with all parties involved.

It’s the best you can do. There is no 100% guarantee that women won’t cheat on you
or lie to you. Shit happens. If you find her behavior unacceptable, then move on.

Codependency

When in a relationship, you may develop codependency, an extension of the feeling

that she completes you. You may be overly care-taking, not attending to your own
needs while being excessively attentive to hers.

For example, a parent who cares for his child can fulfill his duties without taking them
to an extreme. When he is codependent, he allows his own needs to be subverted in a
way that’s unhealthy to either party. He may spoil the child when she whines, because
otherwise he feels like a bad dad. So he undermines his beliefs to please the child.
This is dysfunctional parenting.

In codependent relationships, you may minimize or deny your own needs. You don’t
have your demands met, because you instead attend mainly to her desires. Often, you
have a sense of low self-esteem, feeling your needs are not as important as hers. You
remain loyal, you let your feelings be hurt, you compromise your values and beliefs to
win her approval and to sustain the relationship. This pattern often leads to further
abuse by the partner; you become a victim of the relationship.

Men and women can both become the victim of codependency. If you ever wonder
why girls stay with cheating douchebags, codependency is many times the cause.

There are volumes of books and hundreds of websites devoted to this problem. If you
find yourself falling into this pattern, go seek help.

Girls love Boys

In spite of everything I’ve just told you, let me state something to the contrary: not all
girls appreciate Good Guys. Hell, I was a Nice Guy for most my life, and even I got
plenty of fine tail. When I developed myself inside and out, I found that I was no more
attractive to a large chunk of girls.

The fact is, many chicks are just fine dating boys. I know girls who couldn’t handle a
real man. They’d much rather stay in their comfort zone, holding hands over ice cream
sundaes, than being challenged to grow as a woman, or being placed in a
threateningly submissive sexual position. They are not sexually liberated, and become
fearful even when thinking about sex.

In addition, many girls want to parade around a guy just because he’s cute, regardless
of how he makes her feel or how he treats her. Girls have egos, too.

So while I tell you to get your act together and be the best man you can be, in the end
you may find that this simply isn’t good enough for a lot of chicks. You will still see
good-looking douchebags pull and date the hotties that wouldn’t even give you the
time of day.
My goal of this book is not to pump you up with false hopes. Sometimes you will be
trying to sell filet mignon to a bunch of vegetarians. Yes, you may be the best damned
thing on the market, and yet no girl will touch you, and your results don’t tally up like
you think you deserve.

This book was written for you to improve your inner game. Being afraid, being
confused, not knowing yourself, lacking assertiveness…these are crappy ways of
being.

I want you to have a healthy mindset and to be confident, not because that will
necessarily attract girls, but because living this way is fucking awesome.
Chapter Seven
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)

There are a couple aspects to NLP. One is the outer game stuff that involves mirroring
and tools to get rapport. But NLP is also useful for improving your inner game. Here I
refer you to the classic book on the subject, NLP: The New Technology of
Achievement by Andreas and Faulkner.

The following is an overview of this book. If this interests you, read the entire book. It
is full of useful exercises that put these concepts into practice.

Chapter 2
NLP talks about being associated versus dissociated. If you're on an amusement park
ride, you're associated. If you're watching the ride, dissociated. You can use NLP to
'step into' good experiences, or 'step out of' bad experiences. Example, if you have a
phobia, you can train yourself to dissociate, so you become an observer of the
situation.

NLP has several presuppositions:

1. The map is not the territory. We respond to our mental maps rather than the world
(territory) directly.
2. Experience has a structure. Thoughts and memories have patterns. We can change
the patterns so as to neutralize unpleasant experiences and improve good ones.
3. If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it. Start with the
assumption that anything is possible, then let experience dictate what is reality.
4. The mind and body are parts of the same system. One affects the other, so altering
one can affect the other.
5. People already have all the resources they need. Use our mental images, inner
voices and feelings to construct needed thoughts, feelings and skills.
6. You cannot NOT communicate. Everything verbal and nonverbal, even silence, is a
form of communication.
7. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. People will see/hear
what you telegraph, and their response helps us adjust how we communicate.
8. Underlying every behavior is a positive intention. What seems like hurtful or harmful
behavior always has positive intent. Separate these actions from their intent, and add
better choices to the same intent.
9. People are always making the best choices available to them. Based on our
experiences we learn what works and what doesn't, so we behave in a similar fashion
until we learn new and better ways to act.
10. If what you are doing isn't working, do something else. Do anything else.

Chapter 3
Motivation

There are two ways people get motivated: 'away from' and 'toward.' Both have
advantages, and each person tends to use one style preferentially. Away from people
look at their problems, try to find solutions, and thus move away from the problem.
Toward people dream up their ideal goals and then find ways to move towards them.

The book uses an example of an employer who divides his workers into one group of
toward and one of away from people. First he asks the toward group to brainstorm and
come up with all the things the company could be doing better. Then he takes these
ambitions and gives them to the other team, which then figures out what all the short-
comings would be of each goal, and how to problem-solve around them. Always use
this sequence.

The sequence of positive/negative statements is key. People focus on the negative,

and particularly if it follows the positive. So the best way to motivate is to first state the
problem (away from thinking), and then the solution (towards thinking).

Motivation = Negative, then Positive.

The key force behind motivation is our system of values. If we lose sight of values, we
lose motivation.

How we think about an experience will affect our motivation. We can imagine
experiences differently depending on how motivating they are: an activity that is highly
motivating will be pictured in our head with brighter colors, bigger, closer, front and
center, accompanied by sound and words. Things we imagine with little motivational
power are dull, poorly lit, farther away, off-center, silent.

Modalities: images, sounds, words, feelings, smells, tastes.

Submodalities: all aspects of a modality. For example, submodalities of images can
include their color, closeness to you, 3D, lighting.
While modalities are constant, the submodalities that most motivate you are highly
subjective. Discover which submodalities of each modality are stronger motivators.

You can apply the above to self-motivation. If you are a toward person, imagine what
your goal is and picture it with more motivating submodalities. Imagine what you want
to avoid, and use the least motivating submodalities. Example, if you want to eat
better, convert the mental images of cake and candy to dull, poorly lit, off in the
distance; change your image of vegetables to brightly colored and lit, near to you and
center, and associate with sounds and other sensations.
Conversely, if you are an away from person, imagine what the consequences of
inactivity are (boss yelling at you), and enhance the submodalities of that
picture/movie.

Chapter 4
Finding your Mission

Your mission is what excites you to get out of bed day after day. You need to figure out
what your mission is, the values that motivate you, and how to place you on the path
of living your mission.

The lessons from prior chapters are used in realizing your mission:
1. Make a Proposal. Create a little film in your mind's eye demonstrating the mission.
2. Add special effects. Sound, music, etc.
3. Formulate a sentence. Create a mission statement; what do you want to do and
why. Think about people who've realized their missions, and envision yourself as these
people.
4. Include values. What verbal principle guides you.
5. Feel the feeling. Sense the importance of the mission.
6. Step into the Mission Direction. Imagine yourself in the future you are envisioning,
and fully enjoy it.
7. Persist. Cycle through this process.

If you hear yourself giving objections to your mission (and you should):
1. Listen respectfully to the objections.
2. Find the positive intention and deep value behind the objection.
3. Create alternative ways of achieving that value.
4. Agree on the alternative that all of you can accept.

Chapter 5
Achieve your goals

There are 2 ways to reach your goals. The first is full of pitfalls: if you do XYZ, you will
be happy.

Pitfalls with this kind of thinking:

1. The Vacation Life. If only I could retire and spend every day by the pool I'd be
happy. The problem here is you are merely escaping an unfulfilled life.
2. Status-Based Advertising. Are your goals based on deep values, or are they the
ones you've bought into based on what media tells you?
3. If/Then Financial Goals. If I had a lot of money, then I'd be happy. Money is like
breathing. You can hyperventilate, and wind up dizzy and have a cloudy view of reality.
4. Means versus Ends. Are you using tactics to reach your means goals which are
incongruent with your mission? For example, a salesperson who misrepresents a
product to meet a quota.

Your goals should instead be mission-oriented. You should develop the mission and
then take actions that emerge from within you, congruent with the mission. The
mission will create meaningful actions.

To help achieve your goals, emulate various roles. You may need to take on several
roles to get there, including: artist, athlete, fool, hero, leader, sage, warrior. Think of
figures who represent each role, and emulate them in your thought process.

Roles include:
1. Be your own great friend. Have positive, healthy self-talk.
2. Work roles. Figure out if what you do for work fits in with your mission. Work roles
include: mediator, educator, leader, wage slave, counselor.
3. Relationship/family roles. Are your current relationships helpful in your mission?
Does your work interfere with your relationship roles?
4. Citizen roles. Does your mission involve being a citizen in the community, city,
nation and world? Do you have a mission to make the world better?

Your mission unfolding relies on achieving the goals in each of the many roles in your
life. Your values will serve as a set of standards to tell how you are performing your
roles. You may have 3-5 deepest values. Give yourself a grade A-F in each role as it
relates to each of these deep values. When you get all A's, add more values or roles.

Well-formed goal conditions:

1. Select one specific goal. Always frame it in positive language. Instead of 'I want to
try to be less lazy,' your goal is 'I want to be motivated.' The goal should not rely on
other people's behavior.
2. Know when you have achieved your goal. There must be evidence that you've
achieved it. It should ideally be reflected in how others are behaving. Your end-points
should be small steps, not huge ones like owning a house, or vague ones like feeling
happy.
3. Where, when and with whom do you want to achieve your goal?
4. Check the ecology of your goal. How will achieving your goal negatively impact
other areas of your life?

Envision the steps needed to get to the future 'movie' in your mind's eye, and then
chart a course to get there step by step.
Chapter 6
Rapport

There are 3 steps in creating relationships:

1. Determine mutually satisfying goals.
Set goals that involve others, and think of their goals as if they were your own. Always
consider their point of view.

2. Establish and maintain nonverbal rapport.

There are 2 ways to view rapport. First, build it from the start. The second, assume it is
there and then have a loss-of-rapport detection alarm. Or use both approaches.
People who have rapport act similarly. To gain rapport, use the technique of matching/
mirroring/pacing.
Observe the other person's posture, and then slowly change your own to match it. Do
the same for facial expression, rate of breathing, voice tone, tempo and pitch. Sitting
next to someone will build stronger rapport than sitting opposite them, called aligning
yourself.
Align with someone emotionally. When someone demonstrates emotions like anger
and stress, if you accept their state and reflect it back, they will feel you have validated
them, even if you don't agree. Acknowledgment, seen in your verbal and nonverbal
language, will reduce their negative feelings. Then once you are assured they are
receptive to your acknowledgment, move into problem-solving mode. Remember that
an NLP presupposition is: Underlying every behavior is a positive intention. So seek
the positive intention behind their anger and explain it to the person.

3. Produce positive feelings in others.

Take actions which reflect the emotions you want others to associate with you. Your
verbal and nonverbal language must be congruent. Being sincere will assure this. If
there is lack of consistency, people will trust the nonverbal.
LTRs rely on your competence to carry these out over the long term. Rapport skills can
help start a relationship, but by themselves are not sufficient to sustain it. To be
competent, you must provide others the value they want.

Chapter 7
Persuasion Strategies

Persuasion works by first discovering the values of others. You can keep asking 'why
do you feel/want that?' to uncover their core values.

Example:
'I want a treasury note.'
>'What would that do for you?'
'The government is insured.'
>'What's important about being insured?'
'My retirement will be secure.'
Then emphasize the value:
>'So what's really important to you about this investment is that it's secure.'
And now work from that deep value.

Returning to the concept of away from and toward people, you can figure out how to
motivate.
Example:
'I want success.'
'Why? What will success do for you?'
Toward thinking: 'Success will let me travel, raise horses, etc.'
Away from thinking: 'Success will let me quit my job, get out of debt, etc.'

So now, you can determine a person's criteria/values and whether they are toward or
away from thinkers. And your motivation will involve these:
Away from with expense as a criterion...
'If you buy this car you'll avoid further repairs and expense.'
Toward with respect as a criterion...
'If you buy this car you'll get the respect of others.'

People employ 3 main thinking strategies:

1. Visual. These people tend to look up when they're thinking of something. They use
gestures that indicate they're pointing at an imaginary screen. They describe pictures,
images or movies.
2. Auditory. These people look down/left, talk in lists, mumble to themselves, are
monotone, touch their face, use words like said, heard or read.
3. Feelings. These people look down/right, sigh, touch their heart/arm/thigh, use words
about how they feel, grasp or touch.

Your goal is to match their primary thinking strategy. If someone is visual, you say 'I
see where you're coming from.' If auditory, 'I hear what you're saying.' If feeling, 'I can
grasp what you're telling me.'

Use submodalities and away from/toward to further motivate. Example:

'So what do you value in a car?'
'I want a car that makes me feel safe.' (safe is the value, moving toward safety is the
direction, feeling is the strategy)

Motivate by enhancing submodalities.

Example, if you want to motivate someone who is visual and toward...'Let's talk about
how big your plans are and how my contribution can make them bigger and add
dimensions to them.'

Congruence is essential. If you are incongruent, your nonverbal and verbal

communication won't align, and people will listen more to nonverbal. You must have
rapport with yourself.

People have inner voices that are negative, and generally come from somewhere
external to their normal speaking voice. Similar to how you can align yourself with
other people, you should try to align yourself with this negative inner voice.

Exercise to create inner alignment: Listen to your negative voice and where it comes
from. Slowly move that voice into your throat. As this happens, notice how the voice
changes in tonality, volume and words. It will become softer and more friendly. The
words will be less critical and more helpful. Invite the voice to change from You to I,
and to add feel, see, hear, and think. 'You are stupid' should become 'I feel that you
could do better.' Place yourself into a future situation and create this alignment in your
mind.

Make yourself feel good, build rapport with yourself, become more congruent. If you
find yourself daydreaming and it keeps you from working, the incongruent thing to do
is to force yourself to keep working. All that will happen is the daydreaming will come
back, often stronger. Instead, have a dialogue with yourself: “ok, as a reward for
working now, I promise myself to go do (whatever desire is motivating the daydream)
this weekend.”

Congruence comes from paying attention to your goals/value, aligning with your
deepest needs, talking kindly to yourself, and doing things that make you feel good.
You will then have your own full support when you attempt something, and others will
see this before you even say a word.

Chapter 8
Eliminate Fears

NLP teaches the map is not the territory. What you think people feel about you is not
what they actually feel about you. NLP teaches you how to create new perspectives.
You do this through exercises which emphasize association and dissociation.
Associate with positive experiences, dissociate from unpleasant memories.

Exercise: Run a backward movie. First, relive the unpleasant memory. See yourself in
the moment from start to end. Next, quickly run that scene backwards, lasting about 1
1/2 seconds. Place yourself in the moment as it runs, not as an observer, and make
the moment vivid. Repeat several times. Now run the movie in real time and see if the
emotions you felt have lessened.

Exercise: Dissociate from the memory. See yourself in the moment, but now take that
scene and make it less vivid in real time. Make it black and white, be an observer of
the scene, put yourself high above the scene, watch it on a TV, etc.
Now combine dissociation and backward movie. Do this with any phobia, or a
traumatic moment.

The Fast Phobia Technique. Phobias are learned quickly, such as a sudden exposure
to something scary as a child. Therefore, they must be unlearned quickly...
1. Think about something that makes you moderately fearful. Get a little sense of that
fear in you.
2. Put yourself in a movie theater. You will be in the movie, but at the moment before
you are scared.
3. Leave your body, float up to the projection booth, and watch yourself in the
audience watching yourself on the screen.
4. Run the movie on the screen in black and white, still from the POV of the
projectionist. Freeze the screen at the end of the trauma, and hold that image up
there.
5. Step out of the projection booth and into the film. Run the scene backwards, in
color, and fast. This is the giant vacuum cleaner effect...time should feel sucked
backwards quickly. Repeat if needed. Stand and shake your arms, take a breath.
6. Place yourself in the actual fearful setting, and see if the phobia has lessened. From
0-10, you should be at a 2 or less. If not, repeat the technique.

NLP considers 3 perceptual positions:

1. Self.
2. Observer.
3. Other.

If you are having a fight with someone, you can put yourself in your own shoes (self),
as an objective viewer (observer), or the person with whom you're arguing (other).
Putting yourself in the other position, or empathy, makes you better able to see this
position. Actually try to become that person. Before negotiations, Gandhi would take
on the body language and gestures of the person he was about to meet, so as to get a
better sense of other.

Excellence comes from being committed to something in the self position. Wisdom
comes from being able to consciously move back and forth among self, observer and
other positions.

Chapter 9
Build Self-confidence

People have critical voices in their heads. Identify yours by thinking back to a situation
where this voice was making disparaging comments. Experiment with various
tonalities...speed it up, Mickey Mouse, Elmer Fudd, etc. Notice how your emotional
response differs.
Discover your positive intention behind this voice. When you hear the criticism, ask the
voice, 'What's your intention for me? What are you trying to accomplish for me?' Allow
the voice to answer: "I want to protect you. I'm making sure you do what's right. I'm
trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself.' If you don't get a response you like,
keep asking to get the deep value of the statement, as in chapter 7. Agree with and
thank the critical voice for the intention. You and the voice are no longer adversaries.
Now you are allies and can work together to succeed.

Negotiate with your critical voice. Ask the voice, 'If there were ways to get this intention
met which were as good as or better than what you're now doing, would you be
interested in trying them out?' When the voice agrees, move into the creative part.

Come up with many ways to meet the intention, and allow the voice to select 3. In
doing this, you have reframed your inner voice.

You want to negotiate in the positive. Instead of 'Don't think about how badly you can
screw up in the meeting' word it as: 'I wonder how well I'll do in the meeting.'

Change your universals. 'Nobody likes me' is a universal negative statement. Answer
this voice with 'Really - nobody ?' You will then realize these universals are untrue.

Build affirmative self-talk. Use gerunds: instead of 'I feel good' say 'I am feeling good.'
This creates more action into the experience, or associates it with a movie vs just a
picture. Make sure these affirmations are true. If you aren't nice to people, don't say 'I
am nice to people' because some internal voice will snicker (called a boomerang).
Instead, keep it congruent by saying 'I am learning to be nice to people.'

In learning competence, which will give you confidence, there are 4 stages:
1. Unconscious incompetence.
2. Conscious incompetence.
3. Conscious competence.
4. Unconscious competence.

There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. When something doesn't work, that
just means it's a solution to a different problem.

Every behavior is useful in some context. When a solution isn't the right one for that
problem, it just tells you useful information about what else might work. Good
judgment comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgment.

Hopes vs expectations. When someone hopes, there are two pictures: what might
happen, and what might not happen. Hope is seen as doubtful, fuzzy, distant in the
mind's eye. Expectations are solid and real. Negotiate any reluctant parts of your mind
until the hope becomes an expectation. Firmly define the outcome, relax into a
receptive state, then visualize your outcome with submodalities which work for you.
Run the scene through your head, with the expected outcome, with the useful
submodalities to make it vivid.

Chapter 10
Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is an objective and favorable impression of one's self that influences all of
one's experiences.

NLP talks about form and content when discussing self-esteem:

The content of low self-esteem (LSE) is negative. For example, you may imagine
yourself as slouching or moving slowly. The form of the LSE is a very intense mental
image, or seeing yourself in detail, slouching or moving slowly.
The form and content of high self-esteem (HSE) is positive self-image and very
intense submodalities. So seeing yourself well-lit, close-up, colorful, but with good
posture, moving quickly, etc.
In between are mildly HSE, which has a positive content but very mild form. Here, if
you were to intensify the submodalities and keep the content the same, you would
become a very HSE person.
In addition, there are mildly negative self-esteem, which consists of negative self-
image with very mild form. Here, turn the content positive and then intensify the
submodalities.

Being vs Doing
We are human beings, not human doings. Learn to separate what you do from who
you are. Notice your being is fundamentally good, though your actions may require
improvement. This will help resolve many emotions such as regret and shame.
One exercise called The Autobiography involves seeing yourself from the other
perspective, specifically through the eyes of someone who loves you. Seeing yourself
through love enhances your positive traits.

Use 'I' statements. 'I feel wonderful' is better than 'this is a wonderful day.' It
recognizes your individuality, setting yourself apart from other people, things and
concepts. It ensures ownership of your experiences and empowers you to stand up for
your identity. This is a hallmark of HSE.

Codependence is a kind of lack of choice, a pattern of dependence on compulsive

behaviors and on approval from others in an attempt to find safety, self-worth and
identity. LSE leads to fewer choices.

The Swish Pattern

This is an exercise that handles self-defeating behavior and other blocks to self-
esteem, as well as enabling you to see a brighter future.
People with HSE know how to feel good about themselves even if someone else finds
fault with their performance, value and goals. The key difference between successful
and unsuccessful salespeople is their ability to dispassionately react to repeated
rejection of themselves and their product.

NLP teaches you to reprogram your brain, and to respond comfortably to criticism. You
become able to detach from criticism and discover what useful feedback is available.
Otherwise, you respond defensively and don't see the useful information criticism may
contain. By learning how to view this information, you can then decide if you agree or
disagree with the critic, and express this appropriately. This permits you to learn how
the critic views reality, and allows you to better communicate with him in the future.

Chapter 11
Securing a positive mental attitude

One of the NLP practitioners got into a bad accident. As he rehabbed to become
athletic again, he studied how other injured athletes did it. He developed 6
characteristics of solid positive mental attitude:
1. Inner motivation. Use away from and toward directions to think about your goal.
2. Have high standards. Make your goals not just full recovery, but better than pre-
injury state.
3. Chunking down goals. Take small steps. This will make each small improvement a
success, which will help motivate you from day to day.
4. Combine present and future time frames. Don't think too much about the future
goals to the point of discouragement. Experience your present situation fully and get
involved in improving it. Think vividly and fully in the present moment. Think about the
improvements you will make and enjoy those in the present.
5. Get personally involved. Take an active role in your recovery, and avoid thinking of
yourself as a passive participant.
6. Self-to-self comparison. Avoid comparing your progress to others. Look at your own
progress for motivation.

NLP exercises teach how to embrace a positive mental attitude, find your personal
timeline, and then combine these exercises in the Decision Destroyer which
neutralizes past bad decisions.

Chapter 12
Peak performance

NLP has studied what creates a person who performs at their peak, as well as what
causes people to feel powerless.
3 factors existed in powerless people:
1. We live in times of unequal economic and political power.
2. For most people, their perception of this inequality is far greater than it actually is.
3. Most people have a deep identification with their powerlessness. People don't
challenge it; they accept it as inevitable.

Their limitations are not in their capabilities or in the world, but in their beliefs, thoughts
and feelings about themselves.

A crucial characteristic is that peak performers believe in their own success. Use the
Swish pattern for self-empowerment.

NLP uses a form of placebo effect. When people are prepared for an outcome, their
brains will make them better. Decision Destroyer creates a peak performance imprint.

Focus not on getting to what you consider to be the peak of your mountain, expecting
to find happiness there. Building up this expectation will only lead to fleeting
happiness. Instead, be happy even before you reach the summit. Happiness should
not depend on what others do, or what you do or don't have. Instead of letting life
happen to you, manage your experiences.

Experience being in the zone, as peak performers experience. When you're in the
zone or experience Flow, your self disappears into what you're doing, you are free
from concern, free to do anything. You see the big picture, let your creativity go where
it is needed. NLP can put you in a peak performance zone by an exercise: liberating
your perspective for unlimited achievement.
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Decibel has been in the seduction community since 2007, and has twenty
years of experience macking broads. You can download all his free shit
at puafieldguide.com. Books include:

PUA Field Guide. The definitive collection of anything you'll ever need to
know about pickup.

Intermediate Pick-Up. A beginner's guide to the basics, including AA and

attraction.

Text Game Primer. The nuts and bolts of how to run text game, including
his ground-breaking Emotional Investment Scale.

Inner Game Primer: Stop Being Such a Fucking Pussy. You're reading it,
fucker.

dB is the resident keyboard jockey at casanovacrew.com, and has made

several appearances at their seminars. He co-hosts the podcast The J
the Ripper Show with CC's founder, JTR.