One of our guys just posted an FR+++ of a virgin 17 yo. in Boston. This was after several weeks of going out regularly but not being able to close it out all the way. I gave him a little advice that I think paid off for him. And that got me thinking a bit deeper about that particular sticking point.
An apparent paradox lies at the heart of current pickup methods. On the one hand, we’re told to persist; try harder; dig three feet farther and you’ll hit gold (Hill); do 1000 more approaches. On the other hand, we’re told NOT to try so hard; come from a frame of abundance; we do not need her. If you put these together, you’d get “try really hard not to try.” This is not an unsolvable paradox, however. It’s a riddle, but there’s a trick to it. And the Buddhists and Daoists discovered it long before we did.
Often, people in the community deal with this by teaching, “Be process-oriented.” Focus on the process, not the goal. This is a good point. A great example of this might be what theApproach teaches. We’re told to focus not on the mechanics of VAC (or if you’re doing MM, the ACS1-3 structure), but on the process of “charging the venue”: having fun, being social, making connections, and screening people. That’s because this is the process that will lead to the goal of getting the girl.
But VAC is itself a process. Constantly monitoring your levels of value, attainability, and compliance is also an activity with a process. Clearly, it would mess you up if you were doing this.
Similarly, wouldn’t you also mess things up if you were constantly monitoring yourself in the process of charging the venue? You’d be continually asking yourself, “Am I having fun now? Am I being social?” etc., and of course, that would tank your game. When you are having fun, you cannot be self-conscious about having fun, or you would not really be having fun. When you are having fun, you are not thinking, “Am I having fun now? Why, yes, I am.” When you’re having fun, you are … having fun! Thinking about whether you’re having fun is not itself fun. So if you’re indeed having fun, you cannot be thinking about whether you’re having fun. Wow, that was fun to write.
This is all to say that what is important is not whether you’re process oriented, but whether you’re SELF-CONSCIOUS. The key is not to focus on having fun, but to be UNSELFCONSCIOUS while having fun. Lose yourself in the process, but don’t focus on the process itself. The key is to LOSE YOURSELF in it.
The problem is: How do you become unselfconscious?
Here’s the answer: Focus on something else.
Figure out what you do when you have fun, and focus on that instead, then before you know it, you’ll be having fun. For example, if you like to play pool in bars, play pool. And focus on playing pool, not on “having fun.” Before you know it, you’ll be having fun without even being conscious of it (as in, you shouldn’t be stopping and asking yourself, “Okay, am I having fun playing pool now?”)
Admittedly, this is easier said than done. But Sebastian did something like this for us when I trained with him in Boston. When we got into the venue, the first thing we did was get comfortable and relax, taking the focus off of the process and the goal, and onto whatever fun thing it was we were doing, which in our case, was just having a good conversation. From there, the energy flowed into talking to new people around us.
Okay, those are small examples. Here’s a biggy. Sometimes, you hit a wall in pickup. You’ve been going out for weeks and weeks, and you’ve gotten lots of day 2s, but it always falls apart in the end. You tell yourself to keep trying. This is good. After all, not only does Napoleon Hill say to persist b/c you could be three feet from gold, but he also says that once the money comes in, it’ll come in like a flood, and you’ll wonder where all the money has been this whole time.
But what is the thing in which you persist? It’s going to have to be something other than the goal and other than the process itself. In the case of pickup, what most guys really need to spend most of their time on is in improving their lives, making themselves more well-rounded, more socialized, more accomplished, more passionate, doing the kind of things they’ve always wanted to do but have been putting off all this time. And then, next thing you know, even before the guy has achieved all of those things, and maybe just when he’s changed his mindset to focusing on these other things instead, he finds the girl of his dreams, and she falls for him.
In this way, the “natural” seducer is unselfconscious (at least the vast majority of the time). He’s just being himself, living his life the way he wants to, and has goals that are more important to him than getting that hot girl. I’m not writing this to boast b/c I sure haven’t completely reached this point myself, but I’m getting there, and I have a good idea now of where it will lead.
Some of you guys are there already (or pretty damn close), so you can correct me if I’m wrong. Please do, actually 
Exactly 3 days before Adventure posted his LR, he also posted an entry about “feeling good doing your own thing” in which he described how good it felt to take on the attitude of being non-needy, which really means that you are happy with yourself even if you never find a girlfriend again. With a little tweaking (like remembering that you still want to put your personality out there) of that mindset, he managed to get a girl just by being his non-needy self: “I did not do anything much other than the usual be confident, ballsy, kino (just as much as she kinoed me), and tease her every so often.” Adventure, I don’t know if you’re aware of this yet, but I really do think that your inner game has advanced, and it’s correcting your subcommunications. From your perspective, you weren’t doing anything different, and from an outer game point of view, maybe you weren’t, but your adjustments in your inner game from your desperate self to your non-needy self would affect your sub-communications so that even if you were to say or do the same things, you’d come across differently in a subtle but crucial way.
You can see this principle of being unselfconscious in Dolly’s highly entertaining and PUA-friendly blog on which the likes of Asian Playboy and Daniel Rose have left extensive comments. Read her “Discovery” post from June 20 in which she finally finds a guy who treats her right and makes her truly happy:
“As much as I have resisted and fought and raged against the idea, it all comes back to that Buddhist koan: to find something stop looking for it.
I stopped looking, put blinders on even, and one night I glanced up and found the man of my dreams sitting next to me.”
The Zen Buddhists talk about it in terms of finding wisdom. The Daoists talk about it in terms of finding happiness. The Confucians talk about it in terms of finding the Way. But it applies just as well to love, sex, and romance.
However, there is a danger to being completely unselfconscious. I hope to post on this in the coming days.
[Edit: Here it is. Know What You Want.]
Wow, that’s a long post. Now, back to work.
Your thoughts?
