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

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.

Recently stumbled across an amazing post by my friend Chase Amante. I don’t generally advocate guys spend a lot of time on pickup forums because of the horrible signal-to-noise ratio and inherent keyboard jockeyism taking place, but every once in a while I come across stuff that is absolutely golden.

When it comes to reading (pickup stuff or otherwise) I tend to be a very critical thinker. When I come across new ideas I’ll read with an open mind, absorb the content, and then filter it through what I call an exceptions list. It’s something we do in computer programming. Basically I take the claims made in the article and I compare them to my experiences to see if I can find exceptions. The more exceptions and contradictions I find, the less I trust the content and author. Conversely, the more things that I find resonates with my experiences, the more weight I tend to place on the ideas I don’t have experience with.

Because the “pickup” industry is largely unregulated, I often find that the quality of advice or instruction is scattered, at best. Some posts are amazingly accurate and well-written, while others are nothing more than, for lack of a better term, “mental masturbation.” The problem is that when you’re new to the industry, you can’t tell the signal from the noise. Some of the craziest-sounding stuff actually turns out to be brilliant, while some of the stuff that sounds legitimate ends up being written by a 40-year-old virgin. To the inexperienced, everyone can sound convincing over the internet.

So thus my love-hate relationship with forum posts. But every once in a blue moon I stumble across a post and think, “wow this guy knows what he’s talking about.” And then sometimes that person surprises me again with a repeat performance. And then again. And then again. While extraordinarily rare, when this happens I make it a point to meet the author. The first time it ever happened, that man happened to go by the name of “Mystery.” Like him or not, no one can deny that his ideas have revolutionized the industry like no other.

I had another one of those rare moments recently when I come across an author whose insight rivaled those of the previous authors I had met. I took note and met him. He was the real deal.

That man was Chase Amante.

Chase is one of the few guys in the community whose online posts make me realize how bad of a writer I am. His ability to break down, motivate, and encourage people with nothing more than an internet connection continues to astound me.

So I take great pleasure in sharing some of his wisdom with you today. Chase has graciously allowed me to re-post this article on my blog. In it he talks about what it takes to be successful, finding your passions, and following your dreams. It’s only a 5 minute read, but it’s some deep stuff and it’s one of the best articles I’ve EVER read in my going-on-5-years in this industry.

Enjoy.

Backstory: A member of the forum was dissatisfied with his inability to make friends or achieve consistent results. He felt that people didn’t like being around him despite his occasional successes with women. This is Chase’s response.

Note: I have removed certain identifying details to preserve confidentiality

…

I’ll clarify a bit.

The things I got good at, I got good at because I wanted to BE those things.

e.g., I started working on my writing because I said to myself, “I want to be a good writer and I want people to read my stuff and like it, so I’m going to start writing short stories to practice my writing ability and get my writing in shape.”  I got into music because I wanted people to hear my music and play it in the clubs and I wanted to send a message out to all my old (perceived) enemies that I was better and stronger than them and make them regret ending up on my bad side (not the best reason, but it sufficed), so I spent a lot of time working on making beats and writing lyrics.

The actual learning process for those things (and everything else I got good at) was hard work and not always fun.  In fact, OFTEN not fun.  But it was fueled by my desire to achieve something.

I once heard some great advice about body-building, that helped me out of a rut in lifting at the time (don’t lift so much anymore, but at the time this was useful).  I’d be in the gym all the time, 3 days a week, but I didn’t WANT to be there, and I was forcing myself through my workouts and not making any progress.  I’d plateaued.  But the advice I heard changed that.

It was, “Don’t concentrate on how hard the work you’re doing is; that’ll just discourage you.  Think instead about where you want to be, and what you want to achieve.  That will inspire you.”

And it did.

The instant I started thinking of how great it would be when my arms were bigger, when my chest was bigger, when my legs were bigger, that made my workouts SO much easier, than when I was thinking working out was just something I had to do to not lose what I had.

That is advice you must apply to everything you seek to do.

I hear men all the time who say things like, “Don’t do something just to get girls.  Do it for YOU.”

Know what I think of that?  It’s feelgood malarky.  Somewhere along the line, as men do things, they grow to truly love them, I’ll give you that.

But for most men with a sex drive, women are their inspirations to take things up.  Tell me a guy working as a lifeguard is doing it purely because he loves saving drowning old men, and not because he’s hoping to win over some cuties in bikinis, and I’ll tell you you’re lying.  Tell me a guy who’s a talented performer at anything didn’t get into it at least in part because of all the women it would bring him.  It’s all about mating when you boil things down to the basics.

There is a large population of eunuchs in India, but to my knowledge not a whole lot of them are exceptionally talented athletes or performers or writers or anything else.  Because they can’t mate, they lack the drive to put in the work to become exceptional at anything.  And it really is all about the work you put in.

The drive to become great is the drive to out-compete other males and differentiate oneself in a competitive mating environment.  When I was in school, I used to struggle to talk to girls.  But let them hear me belt out a freestyle battle and tear a couple of people down, and they’d be surrounding me with puppy dog eyes wanting to know everything about me.

Check out this (phenomenal, in my opinion) study on the crime-genius connection:  it charts the productivity of both criminals and geniuses over their lifetimes:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/MES/pdf/JRP2003.pdf

What the chart ends up looking like is that productivity peaks at 30, then declines steeply thereafter.  Just as most men are settling into married life and raising families, their productivity (and, we might infer, their motivation to be productive — attracting mates) drops precipitously.

The findings are summarized by this short excerpt:

“Both crime and genius are expressions of young men’s proximate competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.”

I’d argue that, in fact, that function is just as important today.  Men who become more talented and successful than others attract both higher qualities and higher quantities of mates, and I’ve seen this in a variety of men.  Personally, I don’t know any man I’d consider truly exceptional who has any real problems with quality or quantity of women.  And conversely, I don’t know any man I’d consider average who has any real SUCCESS with quality or quantity of women.

You should not take up new hobbies JUST to get girls.  But it’s likely going to be part of your motivation, so no sense trying to hide from it.  That said, pick stuff that interests you or that will help you achieve objectives you have.

You asked how I came across my interests and hobbies.  Well, there is a part of me that’s inclined to them, for sure.  I wrote my first book when I was ten; and I used to make up songs when I was a little kid.  I was fascinated by people and conducted my first “social experiment” when I was twelve (I took off my glasses and wore a coat with the local football team on it to see if my reception by my classmates, who at the time thought of me as the nerdiest kid in school, would change — it did, and even after I went back to my old gear, the change lasted, strangely enough — people just began seeing me differently and treating me differently).  Some people are inclined towards sports.  Some towards the arts.  Others toward relationships and people.  Some to all of those, or to something else completely different.  Let your inclinations steer your interests.

But that said, getting good at something is a LOT of hard work.  I began working on writing and basketball shooting the summer after high school.  I wasn’t going to college, I had no friends, no girlfriend, no job, and no direction in life at all.  I had no idea what I was going to do with my life… I felt empty and purposeless.  So I let my dreams take over; I was reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft at the time and watching a lot of Sixers basketball, back when they went to the finals against the world-class Lakers and Allen Iverson was the scoring champ of the NBA.  I wanted to be a famous, revered writer, and I wanted to be the best player in the NBA.  So all I did was write and play basketball by myself, all day long.  A year later, I was a vastly improved writer, and vastly improved at basketball, too.  I’d never made a basket before that summer, but a year later I could make all kinds of crazy shots (still couldn’t play actual GAMES for shit, but that was only because I had trained by myself, rather than for games).

And my writing went from Bs and Cs in high school to A+ when I entered college, with the teacher asking me to volunteer (as she had no one else) because, she said, she wanted the class to see my writing.  I wrote the first draft for my first novel that semester, before turning my interest from writing to rap.  Then it was because I wanted to become a famous, well-known rap artist.  And I was thorough in how I did it; I watched the other wanna-be rappers, and learned from their mistakes and vowed not to repeat them.  I didn’t want to be tryhard; I wanted to be real.  I wanted people to say, “You know, Chase isn’t like all those posers who think they’re the shit; his stuff is LEGIT.”  And I forced myself to slave away at music, and I forced myself to stay the course when I put my first website online and people came back making fun of my then-crappy music and silly presentation.  I shook the haters off, went back, got better, and came back vastly improved and victorious.

It was hard work, all of it.

Writing one crappy story after another, and knowing they were amateurish, but continuing to write anyway and trying to find ways to refine my ability to write better.

Shooting basketballs in 100+ degree Pennsylvania heat with perspiration dripping down my chest, 100+ and missing basket after basket and getting pissed off and frustrated but refusing to go back inside until I hit more.

Rapping lyrics over a beat over and over and over again, and getting angry beyond belief that I kept running out of breath, or kept stumbling over my words, or kept building up too much saliva in my mouth and choking over it.

Going out night after night after night and never getting so much as a kiss from a girl, and coming home empty handed feeling like a failure, and continuing to go back out again the next night.

I wish I had the kind of drive and ambition that most of my friends have. They are genuinely excited, dynamic people, and I think if I had the kind of energy and motivation they have, I could be 10 times as good at the things I do than I am.

Because I burn out, I wear out, I get frustrated, and I’m really a pretty lazy guy by nature.

But I have one thing that keeps me in the running with all of my ambitious, dynamic, motivated friends, for whom most of what they do seems to come so easily, where for me it’s always been a challenge:

I will push myself to the limit.  I will take myself down the road past the point of no-return and keep going anyway.

I never save anything for the swim back.

I sometimes feel like an outsider who’s infiltrated the ranks of the elite when I spend time with my friends.  Here are all these people living unbelievable lifestyles, adventuring around the world, doing crazy things, skydiving, racing cars, making tons of money, with this lust and passion for life that I can only understand intellectually.  But I want to be as good as they are at what they do, so I do the things they do, sometimes not quite as good as them, sometimes better, and they think of me as like them, or even crazier / wilder / more talented than they are.  My lust is not for the adventure itself, like it is for them, but rather for what I can learn from that adventure, and how I can improve myself by having had that experience.

I spent most of my life ruled by my fears, and the only way I overcame them was by doing the most dangerous things I could think of, physically, mentally, or emotionally, to break their hold on me.

You have some things about you that remind me in some ways of myself.

You have a lot of the same kind of stubborn, blockheaded determination I’ve always prided myself on and that I saw as something that differentiated me from nearly everyone else.  And like you, I was never all that good at following advice, at least not until age 23 or so (and even then, I listened only to a select few people whose advice I really trusted, and even then I listened to them probably only 50% of the time).  And like me, you claim to not care what people think.

The (conventionally) coolest kid in school wrote this in my high school yearbook, senior year:  “You don’t care what anyone thinks, but I think you’re the MAN!” before leaving me his home phone (these were back in the days when cells were still uncommon… damn I’m showing my age) and telling me we had to hang that summer.  I never did call him, even though I thought he was a really cool dude (finally did hang with him a few years back, incidentally — still a cool dude)… I was deathly afraid of the phone in those days.  Point is, people my whole life have told me I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, and they think that is so cool.  And I feed into it too; I love telling people I don’t care what anyone thinks.

I’ll step outside of myself for a moment and say that, the truth is, the people who say they don’t care what people think care more than anyone else.

If you didn’t care what people thought, you wouldn’t be on here telling people how many approaches you’ve done, how many lays you’ve had, or posting pictures of your girlfriend — would you?  No… a guy who didn’t give a fuck about what people thought about him wouldn’t do any of that.  You care, just like I do, and just like everyone else who posts actively on this board does.

Anyway… putting my old skin back on.  Of course *I* don’t care what anyone thinks haha

Regarding your last question, I am a dreamer.  And I’m a big believer in chasing your dreams.

When I wanted to be a famous writer, and a famous basketball player, I wrote my heart out and played my heart out, until my dreams changed.

When I wanted to become the best salesman in the district and the next big rap artist, I sold my heart out and rapped my heart out until my dreams changed again.

When I wanted to become a world-class pickup artist, I went out by myself and talked to one person after another after another, and talked to one girl after another after another, until my dreams began to change again.

So how I found my hobbies was simple:  I followed my dreams.

Most people dream dreams and never take action on them.  I’m leaving the country now, with no plans, no set path to follow, and no idea of what’s to come.  Because, for now, that is my dream.  And someday my dream will change again, and I will embark on a different path.

You like movies.  I love the movie “Collateral”, with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise.  What I love about it is how Tom Cruise comes into Jamie Foxx’s life for one night and makes a gigantic impact.  He makes Jamie Foxx realize that he has this dream he’s been holding onto for twelve years or more and has never taken action on.  Never taken the first step.

What are your dreams, [name removed]?  Answer that, and you’ll know what you need to start working on.

Best,

Chase

Photo by EuphoriaLuv

So I’m addicted to the new TV show Flash Forward, about something that causes the entire world to black out for 2 minutes while seeing a vision of their lives 6 months in the future. It’s a really, really good show so far – if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d highly recommend it. Just remember that it’s like lays potato chips – you can’t have just one. You’ve been warned.

One of the things in particular that struck me about the show was the really progressive interracial and gay relationships between various characters. There’s both a blasian (Black + Asian) and lesbian+interracial relationship, both of which are pretty rare, especially in Hollywood. Some are even saying that it’s the first-ever on-screen romance between an Asian man and Black woman. Kudos to ABC for having the balls to break stereotypes like that.

More specifically, Korean-American actor John Cho (of Harold and Kumar fame) plays an FBI agent who is engaged to hottie Gabrielle Union (Bad Boys II). The whole black-girl-with-asian-guy thing has become WAY more common over the last few years (I have my theories on that), although it’s still a pretty rare thing to see overall. I’ve dated several black girls (okay, mostly half black), and you do see a lot of double takes when you’re out in public.

This brings me to an important point – Asian (including Indian) men generally have a harder time dating (especially interracially) than any other ethnic group. That’s why the ‘blasian’ relationship from the show was such a big deal. Hell, it’s getting to the point where Asian guys are even having trouble dating Asian women [PDF].

But why? Asian women certainly don’t seem to have a problem with dating, interracially or otherwise. What’s causing this discrepancy and how do we fix it?

Let me start off by saying I don’t normally focus much on interracial dating and the whole ‘Asian’ thing because I don’t see it as being that big of a deal. It’s no different than any other disqualifier.

Yeah, I said it. It’s a disqualifier. All you militant-asian-pride-malcolm-x-types, that’s your cue to start flaming and ranting.

Being Asian in America (and much of western society) is a disqualifier. Same with being short. Or having a round face. Or being introverted. Come to think of it, if I really wanted to feel sorry for myself, it’d certainly be understandable… considering that I am all of these things.

Yup, Asian, short, round-faced, and introverted. What a combination, huh?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with being asian. I’m very proud of my ethnic and cultural background. But I also don’t bury my head in the sand and delude myself when there are dozens of studies done that show that in the western dating scene (and much of the non-asian world in general), being Asian is not an advantage. Blame it on the media, or on cultural programming, or evolutionary psychology, or any number of factors, but the facts are the facts. Don’t believe me? Let’s do a quick google search to see what we can find…

“Caucasian females are least likely to date Asian men…”

–blackstate.com, 2008 U.S. Census Results

“…in 75 percent of Asian-white marriages, the husband is white.”

–interracialdatingcentral.com

“Asian American men are the least preferred mate for Caucasian women.”

–University of California, Irvine Case Study

“But statistically the one man in America no one wants a triple X throwdown with is sideshow William Hung, actor John Cho and a multitude of their Asian American male counterparts.”

–cintrawilson.com

“The researchers, after controlling for all other attributes (height, weight, attractiveness, etc.), calculated how much extra income (relative to the income of the average online male dater, $62,500) a man would need to overcome the racial barrier. …For equal success with a white woman, an African-American needs to earn an additional $154,000; a Hispanic man needs $77,000; an Asian needs $247,000.”

–Tierney, J., http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/single-female-seeking-same-race-male/)

“…our main finding is that Asians generally receive lower ratings than men of other races. In fact, when we run the regressions separately for each race, we find that even Asian women find white, black, and Hispanic men to be more attractive than Asian men. Given that Asian men were the group that other races expressed strongest preference against, and that Asian women expressed the least preference against other races, the results in Table 6 suggest that attractiveness may play an important role in the determination of racial preferences, especially those against Asian men.”

(Fisman, R., Iyengar, S., et al., Columbia University, “Racial Preferences in Dating”, 2007)

If you’re an asian guy reading this, you probably didn’t need those studies to confirm what we’ve all thought pretty much our entire lives:

Dating is f*cking hard for Asian guys.

It’s true. But here’s the thing– crying about it helps NO ONE. That’s why I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking or talking about this issue. Do I have to approach things differently being Asian? Sure, but it’s really minor. 95% of “game” is the same no matter how old, tall, or what color you are.

Dating is really no different than any other skill. And it’s simply that. A skill.

Look at it this way: Many of us either came to America or had parents or grandparents that did. That means a whole lot of Asians are bilingual or don’t speak English as their mother tongue. Now go to any high school in America and look at the racial demographics of the Advanced Placement/Honors English course. Notice anything? Perhaps the disproportionately high percentage of Asian kids in that class, many of whom learned English as a second or third language?

Now imagine if those kids would be sitting in that class if their parents had let them give up on ever getting A’s in English because they didn’t grow up speaking it. Unlikely.

What I’m getting at is that the hardships you were born with or had growing up mean relatively little in terms of achieving success. Otherwise Asians wouldn’t be good at academics in a foreign country where they didn’t grow up speaking the language. That’s a BIG barrier to success but it’s hardly even noticeable among academic success with Asians and Asian Americans. Our culture hasn’t let that hold us back. If anything, the culture has stressed that you should do whatever it takes to overcome those obstacles. Now take this same attitude and apply it to dating (or any other skill), and what you’ll find is that a simple shift in emphasis and mindset makes a world of difference.

If you want to be successful at this or anything else in life, the key is to acknowledge your situation, then to systematically enhance and highlight your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses.

For most Asian guys who are interested in bettering their dating lives (whether interracially or not), you’ll likely have some similar sticking points due to cultural upbringing. Here are the common ones:

• Dominance. Going after what you want in life and expecting to get it. Asking for what you want.
• Leading & Taking Risks. Directly related to dominance.
• Playful. Teasing, fun, and having a good sense of humor.
• Kinesthetic: Being comfortable with physical contact and touching
• Emotionally Expressive. Being expressive facially and with body language and tonality
• Sexuality. Being comfortable expressing your sexuality

If there’s enough interest, I’ll address each of these points in-depth in a future article. Leave me a comment if you’re interested.

So let’s talk action. Take out a sheet of paper right now. Make two vertical columns, and label the left side “strengths” and the right side “weaknesses.” Now write down 10 of each.

Now turn the sheet over and for each strength, write 3 ways you can enhance or take advantage of them. For weaknesses, write 3 ACTIONABLE TASKS you can do to correct the weakness or minimize its effect.

When you’re done, you’ll have a list of 30 actionable things to do. This is your action to-do list. Every week, work on one or two of these items. Stay consistent with it. Hold yourself accountable.

At the end of every month, write down your progress with your task list.

12 months from now, look back on your original list and do the entire drill all over again. I’d be willing to bet that if you stayed with it, looking back on those 12 months will be an eye-opener. Without even realizing it, you’ll have achieved a lot more success than you ever thought possible.

Earlier today my friend Dan sent me a link / also here to a really sad story about George Sodini, a 48-year-old-man who took his own life after killing several people and injuring many more at an LA Fitness Gym in Pittsburgh.

“Sure that’s sad and all,” you might say, “but what does that have to do with me?”

The thing is, Sodini had more in common with a lot of us than we’d like to believe. Most psychologists are saying he wasn’t a deranged serial killer who lacked any moral compass. Nor was he a psychotic lunatic that spent his days sniffing glue and eating paint.

No, George Sodini was simply an AFC. An Average, Frustrated, Chump. A very lonely, depressed, AFC. Note: For those of you who aren’t regular readers here, “AFC” is simply the term we use in the dating coaching community to describe a frustrated individual who is tired of being single. It is not meant to be disparaging.

Maybe Sodini was older and more lonely and more psychotic than most of us, but I suspect not. I suspect that he simply lacked one thing. The one thing that this community gave me when I found it.

Hope.

Hope, and the idea that society was wholly incorrect and that I did not in fact have to just accept that I would always remain at the bottom of the social pecking order.

I’m no psychologist, but I’ll bet that Sodini was less of a psycho and more a man who had simply given up because it seemed hopeless. Most of us can certainly relate to that feeling. He recounts his feelings and plans on his blog (I have a cached copy if that link to abcnews gets taken down), and I can’t help but think that all of this sounds very familiar. A computer programmer who doesn’t believe in himself and lacks the social skills to meet and attract women. That hits a bit too close to home. It’s disturbing because I’d like to believe that someone who could cause this much destruction is a monster who has nothing in common with me.

December 24, 2008:

“Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29). No shit! Over eighteen years ago. And did it maybe only 50-75 times in my life. Getting to think that a woman now would just, uh, get in the way of things. Isolated. I have extra money and enjoy traveling, too, wtih my 25-30 days of vacation. LA was the best! But going alone is not too fun. Invited to a party on Christmas day tomorrow. Seems about 15-25 people will actually show. I like her parties; I can meet new people and talk. Got the next 8 days off. I should have exit plan done and practiced by then. I know nothing will change, no matter how hard I try or what goals I set.”

That doesn’t sound like the rantings of a psychotic lunatic hell-bent on revenge. Rather, it sounds more like the field reports and journals that get posted to our forums every day.

I remember feeling those pangs of unrequited love and crying my eyes out at the thought that there was nothing I could do about it. I remember being lonely. I remembering being depressed. I remember it like it was yesterday.

And perhaps if any one of us had not found the support of the community to help us through this part of our lives, maybe we would have turned out just like Sodini.

Don’t get me wrong. What he did was a horrific, awful act that all of us — me especially — wish we could have prevented. But the thing is, I think this was preventable, and not by shooting him before he shot those people, either. I think this was avoidable because I’ve had guys just like Sodini in my workshops and seminars. Because I’ve had guys who have told me through tears that they were on the verge of suicide — actually standing on a bridge about to jump off — and that were it not for the community, they would have done it.

And we’ve all been at Lair Meetings where there are 100 guys that are all feeling these same things. Hell, I might have been another Sodini had I not found the community. So instead of judging this man and disassociating ourselves from his plight, let us instead seek to understand and make sure that this never happens again.

“Result is I am learning basics by trial and error in my 40s, followed by discouragement. Seems odd, but that’s true. Writing all this is helping me justify my plan and to see the futility of continuing. Too embarrassed to tell anyone this, at almost 50 one is expected to just know these things.” –George Sodini

As individuals, we see guys like Sodini all the time. He could be your friend. Your brother. Your co-worker. Your son. Your “wingman.” But oftentimes we see the warning signs and we ignore them. Or we dismiss it as “angst,” or “he just needs to relax and be himself.” Even those of us who are actively seeking to improve our dating and relationship lives sometimes see the Sodini’s of the world and think, “not my problem.” I’ve been plenty guilty of that myself, and I’m a coach. But as the famous saying goes (arguably credited to English philosopher Edmund Burke), “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

So the next time you come across someone like Sodini, resist the temptation to look down upon him. And if you’re realizing this feeling of despair and hopelessness describes you, do not be afraid to seek help. Society will have you believe that this makes you a kook, a nutjob, and potentially a criminal. But I can tell you for a fact that all of us have felt that at some time or another. There is no shame in asking for help or in being proactive about improving your dating or relationship life. On the contrary, bottling all of that up only causes it to fester into hate or rage, and we’ve just seen the long term effects of that.

This is why I take my job very seriously. Some people may mock that belief, saying that it’s not that serious– that we’re just teaching guys how to get laid. But I vehemently disagree. I believe that as coaches, gurus, and instructors, we are not merely dating coaches. We are LIFE coaches. We are people who not only need to be able to holistically change and improve a person’s life, but we also need to lead by example.

And so in addition to this being a call to action for individuals and for society as a whole, it is also a call to action for fellow coaches and instructors. It is a call to action to genuinely CARE about your students and to really understand just how much we can change and influence someone’s life. In my opinion, that is not a task to be taken lightly.

Finally, for those of you who are struggling with this self-improvement process and possibly becoming discouraged, keep your head up and don’t ever give up. Because the rewards are worth it. They’re worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears you put into this. Just remember that ultimately, it’s up to you. You and you alone are responsible for your life and your destiny. Dream big and go after it. Don’t wait around for luck or chance or for the shining white knight. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Shallow men believe in luck; wise and strong men believe in cause and effect!”

I’m sitting on a bumpy train watching the sun disappear into the horizon, having just finished training with a client. Working with him made me realize that success truly is “reserved for those willing to pay its price.” (So says Sun Tzu). I get a lot of clients who are trying to stack a few routines on top of a bland, humorless personality, a generic lifestyle, and little to no experience or confidence with the opposite sex. Worse yet, they are trying to do this on a part time basis, sometimes opening only a few sets per week. This is not the formula for achieving success in your social and romantic life. In fact, it’s not the formula for achieving success in ANY part of your life.

It’s interesting that most of us get into this with dreams of grandeur and delusions of infallible gurus who never get blown out. I know I did. I didn’t join the community to improve my conversational skills, or to realize self actualization, or even to become a more attractive man. I joined for a much simpler reason:

To Not Be Lonely.

Being lonely sucks because most of the time it’s a pain that you keep a secret. It’s embarrassing and you can’t talk about it. I couldn’t tell my family and friends that I was lonely. Well, I suppose I could, but it would have humiliated me. I couldn’t even really tell MYSELF that I was lonely because I didn’t want to face the facts that I was. So I ignored the problem, hoping it’d go away. But every Friday or Saturday night, when all my friends were out on dates or hanging out with girlfriends or wives, I was home trying to distract myself from this miserable reality I lived in. Trying to convince myself that I didn’t need women in my life, that I was just going to “focus on my career.”

Right.

So despite the fact that my life is very, very different today, I haven’t forgotten what that felt like. That’s what kept me going when I encountered resistance, plateaus, or roadblocks along the way in my journey. Every time I felt that gripping fear which feels like a vice has been placed on your chest, I thought back to what loneliness felt like. And I never wanted to feel that feeling again.

Somewhere along the way, nearly everyone who’s gotten good at this realizes that even though we may have begun this journey in order to not be lonely, or to get more girls, or to lose our virginity, or whatever the specific reason, what actually brings us success is becoming attractive through self improvement.

In order to GET attraction from women, you must BE attractive. Ahh, the illusive obvious.

But what does that really mean? What does ‘be attractive’ mean?

It means that you must possess the qualities, traits, beliefs, and characteristics that people (and especially women) find attractive. It does NOT mean learning to “trick” women into thinking you are attractive when it’s really all an illusion. Even if you manage to make that work, you won’t keep women around once they realize who you really are.

Thus, we want to become more attractive through self improvement. Self improvement is more than just watching Tony Robbins and reading The Power of Now. It’s improving all aspects of yourself. It’s being well rounded. It’s being attractive. At first we do this to attract women. But midway through the process, we start to realize that we are actually doing this for OURSELVES. We are becoming better men, and attraction from women is merely a bonus to that.

An esteemed colleague and former mentor of mine once taught me that being well rounded in terms of attraction comes down to three core elements: Tactical Game, Inner Game, and Lifestyle.

Tactical game is knowing what to do, what to say, and how, when, and where to say or do it.

Inner game is your internal beliefs, your inner dialogue, your confidence, your sense of self esteem.

Lifestyle is how you live your life, what you do with your time, the company that you keep, the dreams and goals you have, and the interests and hobbies you pursue.

Together, these elements make up the attraction trifecta. Put together correctly, it also makes you well-rounded.

Being well rounded is important because it inherently limits your weaknesses and synergistically enhances your strengths. Just like in MMA, the “one trick pony” individual will always lose to the well-rounded fighter.

But what does that mean??

It means that an extremely important and overlooked part of this journey is continually working on YOURSELF. Constantly pushing your comfort zones. Always looking for new challenges. Setting new goals all the time.

It means that you do more than go to nightclubs every weekend and read pick up forums at work. As Mystery always says, “this is about building a life.” It is about surrounding yourself with good, positive people who are also working on themselves. It is about trying new things and expanding your horizons. It is about facing your fears and learning new skils. It is about making connections with people and forming both sexual and non-sexual relationships. And it is about becoming a better person.

Carpe Diem (Seize the day).