I have a love/hate relationship with failure. That is, for the first few years of my journey, failure loved me and I absolutely hated it. It often felt like a dark cloud that would follow me around all the time. But despite all of my disadvantages in dating (5’4″, asian, introvert, lacking social skills, etc), I eventually acquired one thing that helped me overcome all of that — I had a friend who taught me that my biggest weakness wasn’t anything I could see, touch, or observe. It was that I was so afraid of failure with women that I never took the chances necessary for growth, for improvement, and ultimately, for success.

I had spent my whole life overcompensating for imaginary failures with women. I was an honor student, a high school varsity wrestler, a United States Marine Sergeant, and even a homeowner with a 6-figure income at age 23. All because it seemed easier than facing my fears of women. I did everything in my power to avoid it until it got so bad — so lonely — that I found the community.

But still, that fear haunted me.

I remember being in Vegas with that friend and being terrified to approach. Absolutely terrified. I’m not sure if I opened a single set the entire weekend. Women EVERYWHERE and I couldn’t even eek out a simple hello. I couldn’t push past that fear of what might happen if I took a chance. My friend later pulled me aside and told me that failure wasn’t when a set didn’t go well. It was when I gave up and stopped trying. It was when I gave in to the fear and let it win. As Winston Churchill so eloquently put it:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

I took what he said to heart and started to make changes. I remember that weekend so vividly even though it was years ago because that’s when things began to happen. It was my wakeup call. It was my call to action. And to this day, that guy is one of my best friends. I recently got in touch with him and asked him if he would share with you that lesson that changed so much for me, to which he graciously accepted.

Some of you know who this man is. Some of you have seen him in action. To this day he remains not only a great friend but one of the most talented individuals I’ve ever met. And if it wasn’t for his wise advice that summer night in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t be here right now and you wouldn’t be reading this.

Enter Philos:

I bought a video game yesterday called Red Dead Redemption. Even being over a year old, the game is still beautiful. The voice acting is unmatched, and the world is so vast. The game just sucks you in and makes you actually believe that you’re part of the dying wild west around 1911. My favorite level is one of the last, when you finally decide to go capture your old friend Dutch up in the mountains. I could answer any question about RDR because I’ve memorized the instruction manual, read every online review, and even purchased two in-depth player’s guides. The game itself sits atop my coffee table, still in its original packaging. My friends and I have thought about opening it, but what happens if we get shot? What happens if our horse dies? What happens if I finally play that level with Dutch and I can’t capture him? No, instead we sit across the room from the game and talk about it. Sometimes I need to remind Chris not to make eye contact with RDR so it doesn’t think we’re all weird for staring. I mean, honestly though, if RDR really wanted us to play it, it would give us a sign or something. It would smile at us or maybe even unwrap itself and jump into my Ps3. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t like forcing things. If we’re supposed to play it, we will. If it happens, it happens. If not, I’m sure one of the many other games I’ve bought still in their packaging will give us a sign.

***

I’ve been blessed enough to meet some of the community’s gurus and see them in action over the years. They’re amazing, but not for the reasons you might think. In fact, though many of them have extremely different styles, looks, and perspectives on how pick-up should actually be performed, I realized that there’s only really a single glaring difference between any pick-up Guru and the guy who’s never had a real girlfriend.

Fear of failure.

Gurus fail at picking a girl up ALL THE TIME. If they tell you otherwise, they’re either lying to themselves or they’re not approaching enough females anymore. No, all gurus fail often, but it doesn’t matter to them. To them, failure doesn’t mean too much. It’s an opportunity to learn something. It’s a girl having a shitty day. It’s a practical joke from God. Whatever it is, they do not take it personally. They move on, by which I mean in a few seconds, and they try again and again until they get a hit. This is the most powerful thing I’ve learned. Everyone who’s good with girls, from the tattooed mentalist, to the natural leader, to the middle-aged NLP master, to the intelligent looking Clark Kent-type– they all do not mind failure very much. And why should they? It hurts less than a bee sting when it actually happens. I mean think about it, no one’s ever died or had their leg broken by rejection.

But, oh, man –Rejection. God, what a powerful word. There’s so much meaning inside that 10 letter word, isn’t there? But if you could teach yourself to see rejection in a different light with a little cognitive restructuring, your game could improve tremendously…in only a few minutes.

What if we looked at everything enjoyable the way we look at approaching people we don’t know? We would never start a new book, never go see a new movie, and never bake a delicious cake. I know it seems like a ridiculous way to look at things, but it really isn’t. The truth of the matter is approaching girls you don’t know has the same risks as playing a game of Galaga. If your ship explodes while playing Galaga, your friend makes some quip about how you suck at life, and you walk away from the machine to do something else. If you get booed away from a set, your friend makes some quip about how you suck at life, and you walk away from the set to do something else.

IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING!

The only difference is that we have this shitty innate thing called approach anxiety, and the only way past that is to mentally restructure how you view social interactions. The key is to do this vividly. Now here’s the bad news — I can’t teach you exactly how to do this, because for it to be powerful enough to work, it must be totally of your own creation. All I can do is describe what mine is, which embarrassingly many of you will find childish and stupid. It works for me because it’s a vivid and powerful thought process that gets me out of my own head. What I chose to do was build upon the video game imagery from above. So here it is. Welcome to Philos’s mind as he enters a bar.

I close my eyes and imagine I can see my own brain. Soaring above my brain like a bird, I notice all the little electrical messages being sent each way across its surface before suddenly ascending high above one of my cerebrum’s wrinkles and then whipping back around, diving straight towards it. It’s obvious that I’m going to crash into the brain and die, but at the last moment the wrinkle opens and welcomes me inside. Picking up speed, the blue light from all the passing electrical messages make it seem as though I’m diving for the center of some alien, neon blue planet. Eventually I can see the center, miles in front of us. It’s an even brighter light that’s almost blinding. Once there, I realize it’s a only single story building with one door. I enter the door only to discover that it’s empty, save one single pedestal in its center with what looks like a light switch on top. The switch is guarded by plastic cover, which I lift with my left hand.

Holding my breath, I flip the switch with my right hand. Immediately I’m looking through my eyes again and seeing the bar, but I can’t hear anyone talking just yet. Instead, all I can hear are the sounds of an entire arcade/casino powering up for the day. I can hear the “Finish Hims” and the coins falling from the games. Then I notice that I’m no longer looking through my eyes. Instead it’s like I’m viewing my entire body from behind (like a third person shooter). I see a “high score bar” placed at the top right of my field of view and another bar showing that I have three lives at the top left. “Well that won’t do,” I imagine, so I take my controller and push up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. Now the number of lives I have instantly changes to 99.

“Much better,” I think.

“Hey look, she’s cute.” And I walk toward my first set.

Is this childish? yes. Is this retarded? yes. Does it work for some reason really, really, fucking well? Yes. You can use the video game paradigm if that works for you, but create your own visualization. Even though mine only takes about two seconds to play in my head, it’s full of tons more details than I typed here, and that’s the key. Create details that you can sense with all of your senses, not just sight or sound. You must, however, for reasons I don’t have time to get into, visualize the flipping of the switch deep within your mind. You may find it does something amazing. It turns down the volume of your fear. Imagine being able to approach ten times as many sets simply because you learned a stupid little visualization technique. So powerful. I wish more guys knew it.

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”

-Philos

Merry Xmas, all. Hope you are all spending time with family and loved ones. I actually have a present for all of you which I’ll get to in a minute.

But first I wanted to address a question I received via email today that I’m guessing a LOT of you are wondering about:

Hey man, love the blog. I have a question about routines. When I got started I used a bunch of routines for the attraction phase and got decent results out of it. By the end I could get phone numbers on a pretty consistent basis, and some were flaky but some were solid. I wanted to check my skill level without routines so I started using a social opener, and then following it up with relying on my conversation skills off the bat. What I find is that most conversations went well, but some girls would just stand around and give one word input indefinitely. I imagine this is sometimes because they aren’t interested, and sometimes because they are just boring, so in either case I usually just walk away after a minute. Is there something I am missing here? Am I being too quick to judge? If so, what’s the best way to deal with this contingency? -J

There’s actually several variables at work here, J.

The first is that in a cold approach scenario (especially nightclubs), you have to take social value into account. Generall speaking, the bigger the difference in social value (e.g. contextual social status) between you and the girl, the more resistance you’ll face opening the set. Let’s imagine you’re an “8″ on the guy-looks scale (Note: Looks obviously aren’t the end-all-be-all of social value/status but it serves as a good example). Now imagine a girl who would be a “2″ on that same scale. 400 lbs, acne, ugly, maybe disfigured. Even knowing that we are doing cold approach a lot and are therefore more social/open to meeting people, don’t you think there would be some resistance we’d put up towards that girl? Now take that level of resistance you might feel and multiple it by 10. That’s what many girls in nightclubs feel in terms of social pressure when a lower-social-value guy approaches them. That doesn’t mean they always blow the guy off, or even that they won’t “give him a shot,” but it doesn’t change the fact that the social pressure is there.

Now I have no idea what social value you’re coming in with, but it’s important to realize that having the perfect thing to say isn’t going to guarantee a good reaction when you’re dressed poorly, are out of shape, aren’t smiling, smell bad, etc.

In your specific situation, I’m going to assume that since you’re getting decent reactions through routines that you’re a fairly normal/average/well-adjusted guy. That being the case, having some girls give you one-word answers is normal. Like you said, it could be because they’re boring, but it’s more likely because they’re uninterested. Unless girls are physically attracted to you right off the bat, you’re always going to start off an interaction with some level of internal resistance. We all do it — we are resistant to opening up to new people unless there’s a reason.

The key then, is to give her a reason to open up. She may be giving you 1 word answers because of a disparity in social value. She may be stereotyping you or she may not be into you physically. She might even just be having a bad day.

The solution is the same: Change her MOOD (Credit: Tyler Durden).

When you get 1-word answers, your objective is to immediately get more investment because otherwise you’re on a downward-spiraling path to blow out. In order to get more investment we must give her a reason to invest. Logical reasons don’t work for the same reason that the aforementioned 400lbs girl could tell us she’s nice and rich and a really sweet girl and it wouldn’t make us want to invest more in her. We must give her an emotional reason to invest.

In short, you must make her feel “attraction” for you on some level. That doesn’t mean she has to want to take you home with her that moment, but you do need her to associate positive emotions with you.

By far the easiest way to do this is humor.

A lot of gurus in the community like to downplay social skills and humor because they would have you believe that sexuality is all you need. “Just escalate and have intent and everything will be right in the world.” If only it were that easy. That’s like saying you don’t have to have skills to beat Michael Jordan in a 1-on-1 game, you just have to believe you can. Riiiiight.

Humor is one of your most powerful tools in the game because it’s so versatile. It disguises escalation. It changes emotions. It creates attraction. It nullifies tension. It gets you out of damage control/bad situations. It creates rapport and comfort. It exudes confidence.

It took me SO long to figure this out. I literally went the first 2 years in pickup without having a developed sense of humor and it was a painful process. I remember when I started integrating humor into my game because my results doubled almost overnight. I credit a big part of that breakthrough to my wings who are all naturals and really funny guys. Kamouflage especially has such good damage control because he can make a girl laugh at a moment’s notice. It’s hard to be mad at someone when they can make you laugh hysterically on command.

So coming back to your question, the key to working with 1-word answers (e.g., a neutral or negative response) is to provide value, which in most cases is through humor. It doesn’t matter if she gives you a 1-word answer if you can make her laugh off of that answer. You do this by being able to generate humor from very little investment.

One of the key things I teach on boot camps is how to do this. Because then you don’t have to rely on routines anymore. They’re icing on the cake and not the cake itself.

Here’s one drill I teach that will help you develop this ability. I call it the Investment-Value Cycling (IVC) drill.

Step 1: Ask a generic open-ended question that will get a 1-word answer. Ex: “Where are you from?”

Step 2: She will answer predictably with a location/state/country/city/etc. Usually in 1-word form. Ex: Canada. If you are doing this by yourself, then come up with the answer or location yourself. You can probably predict some of the common answers you might get if you ask this question.

Step 3: Your job is to tease her or poke fun of her based on that 1-word answer using stereotypes, sarcasm, satire, etc.

Ex: “oh my god I LOVE Canada. They’re like our little ‘special’ brothers and sisters up north that we have to defend when bullies come around! That’s soo cute. <pinch her cheeks>”

Ex2: “You know, I’ve always wanted to live in an igloo. It just seems so cool. Haha but wait, does your house fall apart when you turn on the heater? That must suck.”

See how this works? Don’t panic if you can’t come up with something right away. When I first started doing these drills, it took me like an hour to come up with a single answer. But you know what? The more I did the drill, the faster I got with it. An hour turned into 30 minutes, which turned into 15, which turned into 5, and then 1, and then 30 seconds, and pretty soon I had an answer in under a second. That’s where you eventually want to get to. I did this exact drill for 15+ hours per week for almost a year. That eventually brought me to the point where I’ve got about a 90% chance that I’ll have something pretty funny to say within 1 second of her answer. That’s not natural talent, that’s synthetically-developed humor through drills and technique.

The last thing to address is stop false-ejecting in night-time environments. Stay in your sets until the girls excuse themselves or ask you to leave. It’s harder, and you’ll blow out of more sets, but you’ll learn WAY more than you will by quitting early every time. Take your lumps like a man and stay in until it’s over. And it ain’t over til the fat lady sings. There have been plenty of times when I ended up taking a girl home whom I almost walked away from at first because it seemed like it was going nowhere the first few minutes. You gain nothing from false ejecting aside for not hurting your ego. But you lose a LOT.

I hope this answers your questions, J.

P.S. I’m actually thinking about compiling a giant PUA FAQ on the site which will break down about 100 of the most common scenarios (like this one) and what to do when you get into them. I’ve never seen anything like this on the internet and I think it’ll be a great resource. If you guys think this might be useful, or if you have your own ideas, please let me know in the comments.

Merry Christmas

Now in the spirit of Christmas (which, ironically, shouldn’t mean anything to me as I’m agnostic), I’ve got some presents for you guys.

From now until Jan 1 (exactly 1 week), not only will my long term training prices stay at their lower rates (they will be going up significantly in 2011), but I will be offering an exclusive deal I’ve never offered before. For 1 week only, sign up for 3 months of Long Term Coaching and get the 4th month for FREE. Now that wouldn’t be a big deal if every month you just got a CD in the mail and got to listen to a few conference calls. Because a 4th month would be EASY to give away. But I bust my ass every month doing personal, 1-on-1 coaching calls with you so a 4th month isn’t easy for me. That’s also why I’m limiting this deal to the first 10 people who sign up. I simply can’t handle doing 1-on-1 work if I get 200 people trying to cash in on this deal. I wish that were only a marketing tactic, but it’s not. My programs aren’t scalable because my first priority is results for students. If you’re wondering what kind of results you can expect from the program, a few of my guys have posted unsolicited reviews on other sites that I happened to find. They’re not testimonials, they’re honest reviews, so you get a pretty balanced look at the good and the bad.

But even if you can’t afford to pay for a full 3-months in the program right now, I would suggest starting with month-to-month as tuition for Long Term Coaching programs is going up in 2011. If you’ve been waiting around on taking that next step towards getting good, yesterday now would be the time to act. Last time around my coaching prices doubled overnight and there were a lot of guys emailing saying they wish they had signed up because now they can’t afford it. Don’t be that guy. My inbox is too full as it is.

As of today, you now have 11 days left in the year 2010. Seems like the year flew by, huh? I know it did for me.

Most of us are probably thinking about New Years, or Christmas, or what our resolutions are going to be for 2011. But don’t wait for January to start doing things. Here are seven things (in no particular order) you can and should do in the next 11 days to close out 2010 with a bang.

1. Ramp up Day Game.

If you’re not doing day game right now, you’re missing one of the best times of the year. Dec, Feb, and the spring/summer months are the best times you’ll ever find for day game. Dec & Feb is good because no one wants to be alone for the holidays or for Valentine’s Day. And the spring/summer months are good because people are out enjoying the weather after the long winter. Even if you’re not a fan of day game, I would recommend ramping it up hard core during these months. And right now there’s the added bonus of most malls being swarmed with attractive girls that are out shopping until midnight. Don’t miss out. (If your next question is, “but Fuji, I don’t know how to do day game,” then I would suggest coaching. For a limited time you can get an hour of 1-on-1 phone coaching for $97. Contact me and mention you want the “2010 phone coaching special.” Regular price: $200.)

2. Watch the lunar eclipse

The December 21 lunar eclipse starts early Tuesday morning (1:33 AM EST) according to CNN. During this time, the full moon will go through a range of dramatic color changes. Bring your cameras. Now guess what you can show that cute girl you’re talking to at the bar next weekend when you need a (plausibly deniable) reason to bring her back to your place? You’re welcome.

3. Organize

Most people wait until January to start doing things. The problem with that is most people’s lives are so disorganized that come January 1st, you can’t even START doing things until you get your life and workspace organized first. Solution: Organize now in order to start off fresh and ready on the 1st. How do you go about this? Funny you should ask. http://lifehacker.com/5714390/organizing-from-the-inside-out-form-a-plan-of-attack-for-lifelong-organization

4. Homework/Drills

It’s freezing outside, a lot of the bars and clubs are empty, and most of us have a decent amount of time off from work. What does that mean to you? Time to catch up on all that homework that you’ve been procrastinating on. That means start analyzing your sticking points. Doing the conversation drills I lectured on during the Americas Tour. Figuring out what’s holding your game back the most. Prioritizing what you’re going to do to fix it. Working on your fashion lookbook. Scheduling a haircut. Rehearsing some new routines. You get the idea. Take advantage of the downtime to really start doing your homework. Field time is important but so is analysis and homework.

5. Online game

Another good use of the down time during the holidays, coupled with the fact that single people seek out dates and mates during the holiday season. I used online game extensively in 2006 and 2007 when I was working on day2s and mid/end game. I needed massive numbers of day2s in order to not care about the outcome and get more experience, and cold approach day2s were hard to come by at the time. I used online game (hotornot/match/POF/etc) to line up multiple dates every week so that no single outcome on a date ever became overly important to me. I didn’t have very many resources at the time, but if I had to do it all over again, I’d definitely look into Bravo’s stuff. He’s a good friend of mine and has some really, really good insights into online game. If you made it to PU Summit 2010 you know what I’m talking about.

6. New Year’s Action Plan

Almost a year ago I wrote a post about why new year’s resolutions were basically worthless and why you should instead be making ACTION PLANS. If you didn’t do it last year or weren’t around to read it, then now is the time. And if you did do it, well, congratulations. I’m sure you’ve seeing the rewards throughout 2010. I know I have. Continue the process for next year. In either case, work on your action plan before Jan 1 so that come the new year, you can stop researching and start DOING.

7. Schedule coaching

Could be pickup coaching, but I don’t necessarily mean that. I mean coaching in general. Is there something you want to get better at in 2011? I hope so. Maybe it’s making more money? Being better at game? Having better style? Being in better shape? If you want to get good at something and you don’t have a VERY clear, concise, and detailed goal on exactly how you’re going to do it, then you’re probably going to want to get coaching.

“Oh sure, Fuji,” you might be thinking, “Easy for you to say since you PROVIDE the coaching.”

Yes, I do. But I’m also a STUDENT to my many coaches. I have a coach for internet marketing. I paid him several thousand dollars a short while ago to help me reach more students with my message. I have a coach for public speaking. Just paid him a grand to have him coach me on my speaking skills. I’m also writing a book. I think I’m a pretty decent writer. But I’m paying a coach another $3,000 to help me with that. And that isn’t even covering the tens of thousands of dollars I spent on pickup coaching during my main learning phase (not to mention what I spent on college).

So yeah, I’m a coach. But when I tell you guys to find coaching, I’m speaking from experience, not from behind the keyboard. I walk the walk.

Don't be a pussy.

Last week I kind of stirred the pot a bit with Part 1 of the Top 10 Myths. If you haven’t read it yet, start there.

This week we’re going to continue with the Top 5. You’ll notice most of the things in this list revolve around the myths created by the marketing and the deification of the ‘gurus’ in the industry. But I won’t spoil it all yet.

Let’s get into it.

 

5. A boot camp or product will instantly solve all of your problems, no matter how bad they may be

Only $299.99, order today!

This one’s going to ruffle some feathers. Yes, it’s true. A boot camp or DVD probably won’t solve all of your problems overnight. Even mine. In fact, mine are designed specifically for long term growth so you might actually experience worse results in the first week or two after taking one of my programs. That’s part of the process. “During the path to greatness, you often get worse before you get better.”

What happens to the basketball player who’s been shooting baskets double-handed underhand (“granny style”) for 10 years when his coach suddenly shows him the ‘correct’ way to shoot? That’s right, he starts missing. A lot. But after a few weeks, he starts to get used to it. And after a month or two, he gets better. And better. And better still. His skills increase exponentially because of the correction in form. That’s what training is supposed to do for you. It’s not supposed to get you instant, overnight fundamental changes in your behavior or sticking points. Sure, it happens sometimes (especially with more superficial sticking points), but core-level change is often where most guys are experiencing problems, and correcting that takes time. Don’t buy into the hype. You should be taking a boot camp to have an expert analyze your sticking points and provide you with a path and a solution to fix them. You should NOT be expecting an overnight, instant fix to all of your problems.

 

4. Coaches are well-adjusted supermen who never get blown out, always have lots of friends, have great social lives, and are good people.

"Trust Me"

I take that last one back, THIS one is going to ruffle even more feathers. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to jump on the ‘let’s hate on the pickup community’ bandwagon that seems to be so popular these days. But I will call it like I see it, and what I see in this case is downright depressing. It’s not that coaches need to be supermen who never get blown out. It’s that they shouldn’t claim or insinuate that they are. I’ve been out with Mystery and Matador multiple times when they get blown out hardcore. But I’ve also been there multiple times when they pull the hottest girl in the club. Sometimes in the same night. Sometimes in the same SET. And they’ve seen me do the same thing. Blowing sets is like missing a shot in basketball. It happens. And anyone who claims otherwise is lying to you. The main problem I have with this myth is that it’s oftentimes perpetuated by the instructors themselves. Don’t buy into the myth of the guru, no matter how convincing it sounds.

The second part of this is the really controversial part. It stems from the fact that if you’re teaching this, you need to understand that you’re a role model to a lot of people, whether you want to be or not. Just the very fact that you’re a coach in this industry means that people are going to look up to you. And that means that it’s your responsibility to lead a life that will set a good example. The problem, of course, is that a LOT of coaches not only don’t take this to heart, but don’t have their own lives together.

I’d say 8-9 out of 10 coaches in this industry are either bad at pickup, bad at coaching, live a horrible life you’d never wish on your worst enemy, or all of the above. 80 to 90 Percent. That’s huge. Let me give you some concrete examples (and no I will not name names, so don’t ask):

• I know a LOT of coaches who have no friends. Like zero. Seriously. I knew a coach who wanted me to drive 2 hours to come help him setup a TV because he had no friends who would help him. Screw pickup, do you want to learn social skills from someone who can’t even make friends?
• I’ve met coaches who get wasted infield during boot camps and neglect students. Coaches who go sarge their own sets and ignore clients who are paying them thousands of dollars. Would you tolerate that kind of behavior from your attorney or surgeon or accountant? I would hope not.
• I’ve met some coaches who can’t pickup a $10 bill on the floor. They can’t close the god-damned front door, much less a girl standing in front of them. I know coaches who tried to get laid for over 6 months and couldn’t close a single girl. And of course they can’t coach, either. But people continue to get conned, and then they come to me with their sob stories.
• There are other instructors out there (some of whom are actually good at pickup) who can’t manage to pull a semi-healthy lifestyle together to save their lives. And no, I’m not talking about El Topo‘s ridiculous sexual debauchery, even though it is disgusting impressive. I’m talking about guys who have mental breakdowns on a regular basis. I’m talking about instructors who seem to live their lives revolving around negativity. I’m talking about “gurus” who are more ‘reactive’ than any “AFC” I’ve ever coached.

I could go on, but you get the point. Don’t assume coaches are the role models you think they are unless you see some evidence for it. And for godssakes, do some research before you take training. I can’t count the number of times I have a student contact me because he just took xyz boot camp and hated it and then found out after the fact that their refund policy stated that they had to sign a complaint form in O-negative blood at exactly twelve midnight with a full moon and a werewolf witness with gold teeth. When you take training, you’re investing in yourself. For most of us, it’s quite a sum of money as well. I probably spent $10-20k on training throughout the years. But luckily I was smart about it and didn’t get ripped off. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

 

3. Looks don’t matter/Looks do matter

This guy is obviously banging that girl on the right

There are two camps here. One says that looks don’t make any difference at all and that a male model has the same exact chance that a 3’4″ troll-looking motherfucker has to attract that “10″ in the club. The other camp says that looks matter so much that you can’t ever be successful at this if you aren’t a male model.

Obviously, both groups are pretty off-base here. Do looks matter?

Sure, to some degree. They matter the way physical strength matters in golf on the driving range. Or the way raw intelligence matters in getting good grades in school (remember: Einstein flunked 9th grade math). On the whole, [god-given/genetic] looks matter to the degree of about 10-20%. Which means that everything else being equal, looks will play a part. And good/bad looks will have a larger impact than normal. But take a guy who’s a 6 on the looks scale but has tight game and put him up against a guy with 9 looks and weak game, and I’ll put my money on the 6 every day of the week.

Let me give you another analogy. Think of looks as the same degree of importance as breast size in a happy, long-term marriage. Sure, extremely small or large (FFF) breasts may be an issue, and nice breasts are certainly appealing to the eye, but in the grand scheme of a 50-year marriage, breast size (assuming in the normal range) is a very minor element. It’s only a really big deal if you are especially hung up on them or if they’re on an extreme end of the scale (e.g. deformity).

Your god given looks are the same.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of yourself or maximize your appearance — after all, even saggy boobs look halfway decent in a good push-up bra. But at the same time, don’t believe either camp when they try to delude you into thinking that looks are either 0% or 100% of the game.

Bottom line, I don’t think there’s anything more succinct than the fact that if a 5’4″ below-average looking Asian guy can get a lot of hot girls, so can you.

 

2. You can get any girl in any situation

Sarge her. Ignore the gun. 5 for 5.

Now on the other hand, this “5 for 5″ bullshit has got to go. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s something that Mystery used to believe in — that he could approach 5 women and start 5 sexual relationships. It’s basically the equivalent of batting 1.0. It’s also about the same likelihood. Namely, damn-near-impossible.

The only way to guarantee 100% consistency is if you can control 100% of the variables in the equation. And in a club with lights, music, her friends, her own life and attitude and disposition… you’ll be lucky if you can control HALF of the variables. Which means that you have a greater than 50% x-factor involved here. That’s why you can’t hook every set. That’s why you can’t get every girl. Because there are always factors present that are out of your control.

That being said, I still advocate that when a set blows up, you ask yourself what you could have done better. Maybe you couldn’t have done anything to actually change the ultimate outcome, but there’s also no way in hell that you did everything perfectly. You DID make mistakes, and you do have things you could have done better, even if it wouldn’t have changed things (hint: it usually would have). But keeping this mindset not only keeps you healthy and sane, but it ensures that you will always be improving.

And finally… the number one myth in the seduction community:

 
 

1. You don’t have to change

I suppose this is loosely related to #6, but I think it deserves to be #1 because it manifests itself in so many different ways and it’s so harmful overall. Think of how many times you’ve heard the following:

All you need is this one routine/method/system and you’ll solve all of your problems!

Stop using routines and techniques, you don’t need that crap, you just have to have strong, masculine intent!

It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly dressed, ugly, out of shape, or drive a shitty car, you can consistently pickup that 10 if you have killer game!

Are you running out of things to say? Then use this routine stack to never run into that problem again!

Q: What do all of these things have in common (aside from being in most sales copy)?

A: They play on your natural desire to believe that you don’t have to change. That you just have to acquire some magic skill/potion/routine/natural game/nimbus and everything will fix itself. You will magically have friends, your clothes will magically be fashionable, you will magically have social skills and be funny, and your life will magically change.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s just not realistic. Most guys who get into this are not attractive men. I don’t mean just physically, either. Most men get into this because they have this gaping hole in their life and they’re here to fix it. And then they get sucked up into all this marketing hype that says that change is superfluous and that all you need is XYZ product/service/whatever.

I’m calling that out for the bullshit that it really is right here and now.

If there’s one “message” that the community should have, it’s this:

“You’ve wanted to change your entire life. You’ve wanted to be someone else. You’ve wanted to be attractive. You’ve finally found the resource that can make that happen. It won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding, beyond your wildest dreams. Welcome to the seduction community.”

Like any community or industry where most of the consumers are after quick-fixes and instant results, the seduction community definitely has its fair share of myths, mistruths, and sometimes outright lies. Some of these are obvious, but many elude even seasoned veterans of this industry. Combine ambiguity and vagueness in content and material, marketing hype, and even intentional misinformation, and what you get is an industry where the average consumer is understandably lost.

Like the spot training myth of the fitness industry, many of these community myths come about as a result of aggressive marketing campaigns and outright dishonest sales copy hype.

Let’s take a look at Part 1 of the Top 10 Worst Myths in the Seduction Community.

 

10. The main purpose of canned routines is to get a reaction/result when talking to women (get attraction, open the set, etc)

It’s not that I don’t like or use canned (e.g. prescripted) routines. It’s that nobody really understands what they’re used for. I wrote a long post about this earlier in the year to address the problem, but I’d bet that most people reading this still think that routines are used to get a result. An opener is used to open the set. A DHV story is used to get attraction. A comfort routine is used to build comfort. Makes sense, right? If only it were that simple. Like most things in pickup, the truth is pretty counter-intuitive. The purpose of routines is to teach you a skill. It’s not to get a result. If that sounds weird or confusing, check out the full length article.

9. DHV Stories

Almost a decade ago, Mystery pioneered this idea of the DHV — a demonstration of higher value. And while it was little more than very sophisicated and subtle supplication, the theory was founded on critical ideas — that women paid more attention to your subtext (what you said between the lines) than your overt communication. We took advantage of this by ‘embedding’ DHVs into our stories to convey attractive qualities about us. Now on some level we eventually realized that we were still in the same boat of trying to impress women, which we know today to be a very ineffective and unattractive mindset. But regardless of what we were doing, the stories seemed to get results, so screw all the naysayers, right?

Not quite.

I’ll be explaining the full details on this phenomenon in a future article coming in the next few weeks, but the basic premise is this: DHV stories don’t actually work as a result of the “embedded” DHV qualities. They work because you’re leading, you are confident, and you’re socially calibrated. What we thought was making them work was all wrong. Stay tuned for the full details on that in a few weeks. For now you’ll have to just trust me on this one.

8. You should never buy a drink or dinner or be nice to a girl

Oooo, this one’s a doozy. This one has been debunked so many damn times, but to this day I still see guys making this mistake. It’s the old, “don’t supplicate to her” rule, and it’s vastly misinterpreted. It’s not that you should never buy a drink (or dinner, or be nice) to/for a girl. It’s that you shouldn’t buy her attention or otherwise try to impress her by buying things for her or being overly nice to her. In other words, treat her like a good friend. If you’re talking to her for an hour and you want to grab a drink, offer her one too. If you invite a girl to dinner (which you shouldn’t do in the first place, but that’s beside the point), pick up the tab when the check comes. It’s called being polite and not being cheap and petty, and if you forget about that, you’ll lose way more attraction for that than you ever would have because of some arbitrary pickup law. In a woman’s mind, there are very few things more unattractive than you being a cheapass. In the same vein, being a jerk to a girl because you don’t want her to think you’re ‘supplicating’ is also ineffective and bad form. (That said, do not buy her a drink if she demands it unless she has a damn good reason.)

7. The One True Way Method

I have to give credit to Savoy for this one from the Magic Bullets ebook. Like football and religion (and well, most everything in a guy’s life), it’s really easy to get into something and pick a favorite ‘team’ and dogmatically follow their advice/path/career as the “One True Way.” Every theist-based religion revolves around this, as does sports, systems of government, programming platforms, operating systems, and countless other things. The problem, of course, is that it creates blind spots inherent in the group think mentality. Simply put, the One True Way fallacy means you follow one system, one guru, one method to the exclusion of all other methods. And we’ve already seen that that that didn’t work so well in the UFC. That’s why everyone in the UFC practices “Mixed Martial Arts” now instead of “boxing” or “karate.”

Pickup is the same way. Every style or methodology has certain strengths and weaknesses. Some apply better to sexually confident men. Others apply better to socially maladjusted men. But no system is ideal for everyone, or it would have to be so vague and open ended that it would be worthless (which is why I teach fundamentals rather than a system). The danger in following the ‘one true way’ is the same as trying it in the UFC — no matter how good you are at your discipline, you’ll eventually plateau (or more likely, get your ass handed to you) when your blind spots start to hold you back. Think of what happens when a boxer gets taken to the ground. Or when a wrestler can’t get in close enough to take down a stand up fighter. The same concept applies to schools of pickup.

6. All you need is Inner Game/Outer Game/Lifestyle/Social Proof/etc.

Similar to the One True Way, a lot of gurus and systems try to oversimplify the complexity of human interactions into a nice, compact, “all you need is X” type of formula. You’ve all heard it before.

“All you need is inner game. You don’t need to go out, you don’t need to change anything, you just have to have inner game. Do my 10 positive affirmations in your mom’s basement where you live and you will be the MAN by next week!”

Riiiiiiight. The same applies to outer game, lifestyle, social proof, or any other concept. It’s just not true. Maybe for a single isolated context it might be correct, but across the board it’s nothing more than a fantasy we’d all like to believe in. Don’t get sucked up into the hype. Run far and run fast from anyone who broadly claims that, ‘All you need to be successful is X.’ Unless of course, that ‘X’ is ‘everything.’

Continued in Part 2 of the Top 10 Myths in the Seduction Community

Agree with these myths? Disagree? Sound off in the comments!

I last covered the idea of bottle service when I showed you guys how to skip the line to get into the club. But today I want to cover a pitfall to bottle service that I just recently noticed. You’d think that the minor celebrity-status that bottle services gives you would be a good thing. After all, bottle service is a big indicator of social proof and status and also guarantees you fast admission and good logistics. But there’s a problem with it that you don’t notice at first. Hell, I buy bottles so rarely that it took me several years to notice the trend. What is the trend?

Bottle Service is Counter Productive to Cold Approach Pick Up.

Nowadays much of the nightlife industry is funded by revenue from bottle service. In many of the vegas clubs, the architecture is specifically setup for it, and there are often more people buying bottles than there are ‘regular’ people in the club. All of a sudden, the extraordinary prices you’re paying to be “VIP” now sometimes gets you something more like, “Somewhat Important Person.”

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The Illusion of Compliance

The real reason that bottle service is counter-productive is because it gives you a false sense of compliance. Make no mistake about it, the status is definitely there when everyone in the venue knows you just dropped a few thousand dollars on that table (or you’re important enough to get it free). In either case, people look at you and see power, status, influence, and respect. Deserved or not, those traits (or the illusion of them) are definitely present.

And therein lies the problem.

A few weeks ago, I was partying in Las Vegas with Kamouflage (who now runs his own company, Smaxter Inc). Kamo is my long-time wing and one of the few gurus in this industry (roughly 4 total) that I consider to be exceptionally skilled at both pickup and coaching — enough so that they serve from time to time as co-instructors at my boot camps and live events. In fact, I’d venture to say that Kamo is probably the most talented pickup artist I’ve EVER seen. Anyone can pickup a girl that likes them. Kamo can pickup a girl who absolutely despises him. Which is great because he tends to piss girls off a lot (I have a hunch that it’s intentional).

Back to the story. So we’re in Vegas with his very well-connected friends and we end up getting comped (e.g., free) bottle service in one of the newest and most exclusive clubs on the strip. That sounds fantastic to me — free bottle service, no need to pay for drinks, a place to sit, good logistics, social proof… it’s looking like a great night. I even randomly run into the always-hilarious Future and the whole Love Systems gang who are running their annual SuperConference Program. (Coincidentally, Future and I served together in the United States Marine Corps at 29 Palms — great guy with great game.)

I return to our table with girls in tow but our friend Jason has beaten me to the punch. There’s already a dozen girls partying with us and we just got here. Not to be outdone, the rest of us head out to sarge and pull more girls. Before you know it we’re hammered from all the free alcohol and we’re having a blast partying with the VIP hosts and a ton of girls. We’re outnumbered by about 4:1 girls:guys but of course we don’t mind. We look and feel like kings. And it’s becoming a self-perpetuating machine. Guys are coming up to us, some who recognize us and some who just want to know what our secret is. Girls are approaching us wanting to know if we’re famous (Sidenote: Ricky likes to tell girls at the table that I’m a Japanese Pop Star so that I’m forced to fake a bad Japanese accent the whole night… not funny. Especially because I don’t speak Japanese. If you’re reading this, Ricky — and I know you are — knock it off).

It sounds like the perfect setup, right? We’re having a blast, making out with girls left and right, partying like rockstars. We even have a multi-million dollar penthouse suite overlooking the strip to pull girls back to. If you looked up “DHV” in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of us. We’ve got insane amounts of status, tons of social proof, pre-selection through the roof…

And none of us pull.

None. Zero. Zip.

A half dozen naturals, instructors, and “gurus” — the best of the best. And with all of the odds stacked in our favor, we come home empty-handed. In LAS VEGAS.

“Must be a fluke.”

“Yeah, definitely a fluke. No worries, though, we had a blast and we’re doing it all over again the next night.”

***

The next night is even crazier. More bottles. More girls. Hotter girls.

…and not a single pull. Again.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

It’s like groundhog’s day. And we’re too trashed to even care.

Monday rolls around and I’m nursing a hangover but trying to think straight.

“How could NONE of us pull two nights in a row like that?”

I start rolling over some stats in my head. Calculating averages over the past few months. You know, ’cause I’m Asian and we’re down with math like that.

It suddenly dawns on me that there’s a trend to the madness but I hadn’t noticed it until now. We literally haven’t pulled (cold approach) the last 4 or 5 times we got bottle service. But between those times, when we were just out doing our thing, pulls were everywhere. We didn’t even keep track of them anymore.

Somehow, we managed to chalk up each bottle-service-based-screw-up to ‘random fluke.’

I started to question how it was possible that excessive social proof could be hurting our game so much. My head was starting to clear and I began to go over our interactions to analyze where we were going wrong.

Suddenly the truth hit me like a freight train.

Bottle Service was making us lazy.

With everything stacked in our favor, we got lazy and complacent. We weren’t running tight game. We were gaming drunk, sloppy, and borderline incoherently. Sure, we had enough of the skills naturalized to still be somewhat effective, but we managed to self-sabotage ourselves enough to counteract every bit of social proof and status we had that night. We made stupid mistakes. We ignored our girls at times (not intentionally). We got drunk enough to unravel even our most naturalized skill sets. We even waited until closing to try to pull (big mistake).

I got up and found Kamo lying down trying not to barf. His face was so blue, he looked like a character from Avatar.

“Yo… you all right?”

“Yeah… man last night was a blast. It was insane.”

“It sure was.”

I told him what I had discovered. He didn’t believe it at first.

“Nah man, that was just a fluke.”

“Think about the last 5 times we got a bottle. What happened?”

I saw the glimmer of realization in his eyes. He knew I was right. We didn’t get bottles often enough to pick up the trend and when we did, the hangovers didn’t help matters.

But the fact was, bottle service was HURTING our results. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to get trashed once in a while and go all out with your best guy friends. But at least know in advance that you’re going to throw away the night in terms of pick up or pulling.

On the normal, average night out, Kamouflage and I still work by the book. We walk into the club, split up, and immediately open our warm up sets to shake off the approach anxiety. We’re dead sober. No time for excuses or stalling. It’s all business in the club. Sometimes friends come up and say hi and we mingle for a minute until we can politely excuse ourselves to continue with the task at hand. We eventually merge our sets or wing for each other when needed. Our wingmanship at this point is near-psychic — we can predict and anticipate each other’s every move. An hour before closing, we seed the pull. Our sets are solid by this point and have already been screened for logistics. Thirty to 45 minutes before closing, we pull. It’s all planned out and it executes like a well-oiled machine.

And then you throw the bottle into the mix. From the start of the night, things are working against us. Perhaps those with better tolerance can make it work, but for us, the first pre-liquor before we head out is the beginning of the end. We walk into the club already a bit tipsy and instead of immediately opening, we wait until the hostess can seat us and take our drink orders. We’re stalling. It’s not our fault, but it doesn’t matter. Stalling is stalling. The bottle finally arrives and we take another drink. By now the anxiety is gone but so is that killer instinct. The alcohol has dulled our calibration. Not enough to blow us out, but enough to reduce our effectiveness.

The temporary social proof of our environment makes us lazy because the status gives us more compliance than we’d normally get with sub-standard execution. It’s all an illusion. Girls will come to the table even when you’ve run somewhat sloppy game because free drinks, VIP status behind the velvet ropes, and hanging out with the ‘popular kids’ definitely sounds appealing to them.  But it effectively becomes our crutch for the night. A crutch which we lean heavily on until it’s too late.

It’s no wonder we didn’t pull that weekend.

A lot of guys get bottles thinking it’s going to help them. That the social proof will make them more attractive to girls and will get them better results. And you know what? Sometimes it does. Especially at the more beginner skill levels, bottle service gives you the illusion of results. But understand that within the realm of pickup and seduction, the table is unlikely to help you in the bigger picture.

At least for us, it made us lazy, complacent, and perhaps worst of all, too drunk to be effective.

That’s why I no longer do bottle service if I’m there to pick up. Free or not.

——————————

P.S. A lot of you guys who have trained with Kamouflage and I know how effective our coaching is. But up until recently, Kamouflage has been mostly inaccessible due to prior commitments. That’s about to change. Kamo has just launched his new blog smaxter.com with tons of content and ideas. And he’s currently working on some stuff that will revolutionize how you learn pickup. Stay tuned. In the mean time, check out his site.

Big thanks to everyone who attended the first annual Global Pickup Conference last week. It was a packed house and the other coaches and I volunteered two free infield sessions on Friday and Monday. It was a crazy event. I spoke on Sunday on “Dominance” and why it’s important in pickup and in life. Look for it on the DVDs when they are released.

The event hosts also presented me with the “best fundamentals” award which was pretty cool, despite it looking like a Mystery-VH1-Medallion. All in all, a great event.

This coming week is the second (and ironically, original) Superconference, the 2010 Dating Conference. Not sure why organizers would pick a domain name that has to be changed every year, but perhaps there’s a method to the madness. In either case, the lineup looks very strong, with speakers including Adam Lyons (who hopefully doesn’t make me look bad as he speaks after me ), BradP, Vin diCarlo, Christian Hudson and Nick Sparks, Entropy, Magic, and others.

If you missed last week’s conference, or if you just want to double up on the massive amount of value being presented at these events, sign up today. Use Code “djfuji2010″ for an additional $15 discount and a free 30-minute LIVE coaching session at the actual event!

I’ll also be offering infield training after the event on Friday and Saturday nights. Price is normally $600/night but event organizers have asked me to discount that so you’ll be able to go infield for nearly a 20% discount! There will only be 3 spots available per night on a first-come, first-serve basis, so make sure you don’t procrastinate on this. Email me to sign up today!

Quick reminder for those of you not on my email list that I’ll be speaking back-to-back at two giant New York City conferences next month. I’ll be speaking alongside some of the biggest names in the industry (Ross Jeffries, BradP, Love Systems, etc.) over three days each weekend and may offer discounted infield training while I’m in the city. If you live on the East Coast, you don’t want to miss this.

NYC Global Pickup Conference

00

The first is New York City’s Global Pickup Conference. Run by the head of probably the biggest lair in NYC, this star-studded event looks pretty badass. Speakers include David Wygant, Vin DiCarlo, Ross Jeffries, El Topo, BradP, and of course your favorite mohawked Asian. The most interesting thing about this event is that it comes with 1 day of infield training included (which I’ll be participating in teaching) and a TON of free goodies. It’s really the first time I’ve ever seen a superconference-type event offer that. Infield training is the gold standard in the development process so this is definitely something you want to take advantage of. It’s a first-year event but I would be highly surprised if this didn’t take off for many years to come. Dates are May 28 – May 31.

Prices are super low for what they’re offering but they’re going up as we get closer to the event, so don’t hold off on this. I’ve arranged with the organizer to get you guys a special deal when you sign up. You’ll get a $15 discount off the already dirt-cheap price and a free 30-minute 1-on-1 video coaching session with me.

Dating Conference 2010

Oddly enough, I’ll ALSO be speaking at another NYC event, and it’s a week later, on June 4-6. Also a first year event, The Dating Conference 2010 also features some big, big names, many of which will speak at both events. But instead of Ross Jeffries, you have Adam Lyons. Instead of Dr. Paul, you have Magic (Side note: If you’re an indian guy reading this and thinking that Indian guys can’t get good at this, you need to meet Magic). There will also be an open bar, lots of goodies and freebies, and perhaps best of all, access to ALL of the video and audio recordings from the event. That means that if you miss a speaker or want to hear his speech again, you will be able to watch it again online and take notes. That’s a HUGE plus, as there’s only so much you can gain from a speech when you only watch it once. There won’t be included infield training, but I will be doing heavily-discounted coaching that weekend that you can take advantage of. The upside to that is that the student-instructor ratios will be lower and thus, you will receive much more individual attention.

Prices for this event are a bit higher but I have also arranged for some cool deals and discounts for you guys. Sign up now using code “djfuji2010″ and get $15 off the ticket price. Then email me and I’ll throw in a free 30-minute 1-on-1 *LIVE coaching session at the actual event! Sign up here

Note: This is the first part in a running series of articles about the use of routines in learning game. For more information on routines, see all articles on routines.

Routines, scripts, lines, things to say. Some love ‘em, some hate ‘em, nearly everyone misunderstands them.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a routine is simply a memorized script of varying length. So in essence, both our kneejerk “fine” response to “how are you?” and a memorized, pre-scripted story are routines. One is simply longer and more complex than the other. Obviously, all of us use routines in one way or another.

Routines (whether yours or someone else’s) can also take the form of being canned, meaning that you’ve practiced them over and over again until you can deliver them well, or Stock, which means they’re generic, off-the-shelf scripts, usually created by others. Both can be very useful tools, especially if you don’t have a lot of natural talent.

Now before we move on, let’s take a quick quiz.

Question: What do you think is the main purpose for routines? What is the main purpose for openers? Now what is the main purpose for attraction routines? Stories?

Think about it for a minute.

…

Ready for the answer? If you said “to open,” “to get attraction,” or “to DHV,” you’re in agreement with most of the community. Unfortunately, you’re still incorrect. That’s short term thinking, and it’s an extremely common mistake.

The correct answer to all of these questions is the same: To teach you a skill.

That’s it.

Not to hook sets, or to open a set, or to get attraction, or to get you laid.

A routine is simply a training wheel to teach you a specific skill—in the same way that training wheels on a bike are designed to teach you to RIDE. In the same way that “floaties” are designed to teach you to become comfortable in the water and to swim. Like training wheels, routines are NOT primarily designed to keep you upright or afloat. The word for that is crutch.

I didn’t understand this concept for a long time. No one ever explained it to me. I was a hard-core Mystery Method guy in the 2005-2006 timeframe and I thought canned routines were the best thing since sliced bread. I thought routines were there to get you laid. Even Mystery still used routines. They had to be the holy grail of pickup, right?

The problem was that I was trying to use the WHAT without understanding the WHY. I was trying to use them for short term gain instead of their more useful long term development.

Routines are MOST useful when used for skill development. Stories, for example, are not primarily designed to create comfort, or attraction, or even to get a result in a set. They are designed to teach you storytelling. Any result you get from their use is secondary. Likewise, banter is designed to teach you humor and playfulness. Push-pull is designed to teach you to be a challenge and to not be predictable and boring. Openers are designed to teach you to engage people and hold court in groups. Oftentimes these routines can get us better results infield, but sometimes they do not. Sometimes they can intentionally blow us out (like the infamous “Shocker” routines from BradP).

And that’s ok.

Because we aren’t using them directly to get better results. We’re using them to teach us the skills that will make us more attractive, and ultimately, more successful.

The main problem a lot of guys have using routines is that they use them for the wrong reasons. Don’t use routines as crutches so you don’t have to learn to think on your feet. Use them as training wheels to teach you the fundamentals.

And conversely, if you’re not naturally talented socially, don’t shy away from routines because you think they’re inauthentic or disingenuous. They’re no more inauthentic than when you tell a story that you’ve told before, or when someone says hello and you response with, “hi.” Not using routines when you lack natural talent is like not practicing free throws when you lack natural basketball ability – namely, stupid. Even Shaq finally started practicing free throws.

Stand up comedians, politicians, public speakers, and basically anyone on a stage learn to speak using routines (unless you’re a former president who just tries to improvise). Only they call them speeches. Sometimes they write their own speeches, and other times they have someone else write them. But the end result is the same – they learn to speak by practicing their speeches. If you want to become good at pick up, you must do the same.

Eventually, you’ll lose the need to use routines. If you’ve been using routines correctly for more than a year and they’re starting to get you diminishing returns, you’re probably at that point. You probably need to start dropping them and teaching yourself how to improvise. That doesn’t mean you’ll always improvise everything 100%, but you want to progress to where you no longer need routines. You’ll no longer have to rely on them. You’ll be able to tell stories on the fly. You’ll be able to banter because you understand the concepts and underlying mechanisms. You’ll be able to open with whatever’s on your mind.

You will become a natural.

And that, gents, is really the goal of all of this. Unconscious competence. To internalize your skill set so much that you no longer think about it. To have such social mastery that at times, you take your own skills for granted because they are executed so effortlessly. That’s what you should be working towards.

Don’t gaze at the trees so long that you lose sight of the forest.

Coming soon: Part 2 in “The Truth About Routines” — Getting Started