Your Future Self Will Suck Too (Unless You Do Something About It Now)

Darius Belejevas's picture

by Darius Belejevas
Saturday, 26 September 2015
It s Thursday afternoon, you planned on hitting the streets (or was it bars?) to c
hat up some girls, but as the day is coming to a close and you feel the daily st
resses are taking their toll on you, you find yourself thinking how maybe today
is not the best day to do it, after all:
I had a stressful day.
I need to wake up early tomorrow.
I don t feel like my best self, and surely it won t be as effective
do-something
You even start bargaining with yourself:
Hey, you know what, I better hit the gym after work, eat a healthy meal
eaning to improve my physique for some time now. Here s my chance.

I ve been m

Or
I could stay at work for a little while longer and cover some of tomorrow s tasks.
This way tomorrow I ll have an easier day and feel so much more energetic to go ou
t and meet women.
Then it hits you
Yes! Tomorrow I will feel so much more like it, I will have a good night s sleep, w
ake up earlier, get myself ready and sexy, and I ll even talk to twice as many wom
en for skipping today. Yes, tomorrow!
So you go home. You didn t stay at work to finish tomorrow s tasks nor did you hit t
he gym on your way back. Instead of a healthy meal you grabbed an XL combo meal
at a fast food joint and stayed up late watching re-runs of The Office .
And yet for some reason you kind of feel good about yourself. After all, tomorro
w you will make it all worth it!
When Tomorrow

Never Comes

Friday morning comes, you re feeling excited about your afternoon s commitment
it wi
ll be so much fun and finally you will start putting into practice what you ve bee
n reading about for so long now.
You get yourself ready for the upcoming day, you don t really have time to groom y
ourself solidly because you overslept a bit and it s time for work, but that s fine.
Well, it was fine until you realized that the traffic is moving even slower tod
ay Lazy bastards Come on Move!
After lunch your boss calls you into his office to ask what happened and why you
were late. He seems displeased at your explanation about the traffic, but says
it s okay, he gets it. Phew Then he starts giving you shit about yesterday s report a
nd how you ll need to re-do it today.
As the work day is coming to an end, you feel tired again, stressed out, and all
you think about is going home, grabbing some more feel-good food on your way ba
ck, maybe even a few beers, and chilling watching those same sitcoms.

But wait, you planned on hitting the streets this evening. It s Friday after all a
nd you really want to get better with women! Heck, not just practice, you promis
ed yourself to practice twice as hard today!
And then it begins again
You know what, tomorrow I won t have to work. I can start earlier and do an even be
tter job. And after all, I did a good freaking good job today at work and deserv
e to take a break!
.........
Now, as you were reading this story, did you see yourself in it, your own excuse
s and rationalizations, or did you find it silly and so obviously unbelievable
h
ow can someone be so obviously delusional and fool themselves?
In either case, nearly all of us are extremely adept at fooling ourselves
in you
r case it might not be getting better with women, but something else like a busi
ness project, starting an exercise regimen or diet, or maybe quitting smoking.
And unfortunately, so many of us fall into the trap of putting the pressure of d
oing the right thing on our future self instead of taking responsibility for it
now.
Alek wrote a great piece on how to get yourself motivated to act when you re alrea
dy out in the field but don t feel motivated to actually practice. Today I would l
ike to talk about what happens before you get there, how to stop sabotaging and
fooling yourself, and actually put yourself in the position where you re able to p
ractice your social arts and get better with our pretty ladies.
Your Future-Self is not a Superhuman (Actually, He s Kind of an Asshole)
One of the reasons why we make this mistake of assuming that tomorrow or next we
ek, or next month, we will act in situations that we know are good for us, but t
hat for various reasons we don t feel like doing it today (or now) is because by d
efault we tend to imagine an idealized world when thinking about the future:
Researchers asked a whole bunch of people to predict, How many times per week (on
average) will you exercise in the next month? Then they asked another group of pe
ople the same question, with one important preface: In an ideal world, how many t
imes per week will you exercise in the next month? The two groups showed no diffe
rences in their estimates people were, by default, answering the question in an ide
al world even when they had been asked to predict their actual, not ideal, behavi
or.
.........
The experimenters decided they had to give these optimists a reality check, so th
ey invited them back two weeks later to report how many times they had actually
exercised. Not surprisingly, this number was lower than predicted. People had ma
de their predictions for an ideal world, but lived through two weeks in the real
world.
We highly overestimate how our future-self will be able to handle those same sit
uations and because we know that tomorrow, or next week, we will have a chance t
o make up for slipping up and skipping practice today, we convince ourselves tha
t it s only fair to let ourselves off the hook now.

Even when confronted with factual evidence

Well, I ve been saying I ll do it for the
last month now and haven t actually acted on it , we still tend to imagine that next
time the stars will align, all traffic lights will turn green, and we will some
how feel more inclined, even eager, to act on something that we dread today.
But the truth is

it s almost never the case.

The next problem is that psychologically we tend to view our future-self as some
one else: someone more confident, more motivated, and more energetic
a superhuma
n. He ll have no problem talking to girls and practicing escalating and isolating.
As a result, we have no trouble outsourcing our less than enjoyable tasks, those t
hat require us to leave our comfort zones and daily routines that we re so used to
by now.
But once again, when we think about it consciously and rationally it s easy to see
the logical fallacy here.
Unless you re currently affected by external, temporary factor (maybe a hangover?)
your current state, how you feel, and how you re inclined to act now are the best
predictors of how you will feel and act in the future.
But the issue with this type of thinking doesn t stop there
Let s say that external, temporary factor is not negative, but positive
you ve read
a motivating article or a field report on Girls Chase, maybe you just spent time
imagining and visualizing your goals, how you go out and approach women, how yo
u re having tons of fun doing it and amuse yourself
now you re eager, beating your h
ands into your chest That s it, I m doing it!!! Raaaaaaaawwwwrrr .
Except you re stuck at the office to complete a big project before the deadline or
preparing for an exam and actually will be spending the next two or three days
sleeping in the office/the library to prepare, because after all, you re a man on
a mission with goals larger than life.
So in this super-motivated state you convince yourself that right after that dea
dline you will go out and meet women and do all those other crazy things you ve re
ad about.
Yeah probably not. This is where the asshole part comes into play. You see, our fut
ure-self is not only NOT a superhuman, but sometimes has the emotional memory of
a goldfish
Yeah, I kind of feel tired and what was all that fuss about going out
and practicing? Feels like a chore
Or in other words, just because we plan something and promise ourselves to act o
n it in the future doesn t necessarily mean that our future-self will be inclined
to act on these plans (just as you don t right now when you re not getting that life
-affirming rush of motivation).
I know that some men tend to hold a grudge on women for sometimes flaking on pla
ns, but the truth is, not following up every once in a while is simply human. Th
at s not to say that it s an admirable quality, it s not, but hey
who s perfect?
What to Do Instead
At this point we ve spent a lot of time discussing the issue of counting on our fu
ture selves to make our lives better and why it rarely works. Does this mean tha
t if right now you find yourself procrastinating on going out and practicing get
ting better with women you re doomed to live a sad and lonely life, forever and ev

er?
Not at all!
You see, the fact that you re here, reading this article on a site dedicated to ge
tting better with women and improving yourself means that you really do have des
ire to do so. This desire for something (whether that s a better love life, better
body, more confidence, etc.) is the prime mover and shaker for our behavior.
Secondly, when talking about the issue itself, we need to understand that this a
ll is by no means absolute just because you re putting something off today doesn t m
ean that you ll never do it for certain, it simply means that you need to be smart
on how you go about it to put the odds in your favor again.
The rest of this article will focus on doing that. I would, however, like to str
ess that different strategies will work better for different people, so experime
nt to see what gets you going and discard the rest!
And the first technique is actually not a technique at all AWARENESS.
I know, awareness lately has been becoming a sort of buzz-word, supposedly a mir
acle cure (and I ve been referring to it a lot in my articles too) it s not. What it
is, however, is an essential tool to enable other strategies to work simply bec
ause unless you re able to notice and act-on your own BS self-talk, you re very unli
kely to make the necessary changes.
The intro to this article describes some of the more popular ways we rationalize
and delude ourselves. Simply being aware that this is happening is a big step i
n overcoming the issues that arise from that type of thinking.
How to Modify Your Behavior to Act Now
Let s start with strategies that will help us to take action in the short-term, wi
thout postponing it to the future.
Man Up! You Need to Stop Being Such a Pussy!

Vs.

You re Alright

The most common response when we realize that we are trying to talk ourselves (u
sually unconsciously) out of something that is good for us, for example going ou
t and meeting women, is to be hard on ourselves, guilt ourselves into action
Stop
being such a pussy! What s wrong with you!
And in a way it makes so much sense, it s so intuitive and logical, I mean really
if only you stopped being so soft on yourself, surely you could force yourself i
nto action?
Well, not necessarily
When we guilt ourselves after failing to take action (or indulge in something we
know shouldn t), we feel bad.
Well, that s the point! You make yourself feel like a loser after missing an opport
unity to talk to this girl, so you stop being such a pussy in the future! Duh!
do-something
Except our brains work in peculiar ways and often feeling bad because of self-gu
ilt, which will lead to giving into temptation of staying home altogether, playi
ng video games or calling your ex, because it s a promise of an easy dopamine rush

.
For example, there s a study that discusses the effects of guilt when failing to d
rink less:
The limit violation, rather than excessive drinking per se or negative consequenc
es related to excessive drinking (e.g. a hangover) is the critical factor in the
experience of guilt and remorse. Failing at self-control, rather than the resul
ts of losing control, may be more likely to lead to distress (see, e.g. Norcross
, Ratzin, & Payne, 1989; Polivy & Herman, 1999). This is especially likely to ha
ppen if the drinker attributes the limit violation to a personal weakness or fai
lure.
.........
They then drink more alcohol to cope with the resultant negative affective state.
In this way, there is a negative and reciprocal relationship between emotional
distress and the self-regulation of alcohol intake.
In other words, trying to guilt yourself after failing to take action will often
lead to counter-productive results.
A better, more productive alternative is to actually cut yourself some slack. He
lp yourself remove the guilt from not taking action.
For example,
Remind yourself that every single man who ever got great with women have procras
tinated, failed to approach, got scared, rationalized and evaded, and once or tw
ice had one-itis
every single one
and most still occasionally find themselves in
such situations. The difference is that over time they focused on doing better.
It s not the failures to act that define how good you ll get, it s the times when you
do act that help you get better. Don t be so hard on yourself.
That said, there is an underlining brilliance in the simplicity of focusing simp
ly on taking action. Which brings us to our next point.
Start Small
One of the reasons why sometimes taking action feels so difficult is that we men
tally take a bigger bite than we can chew:
Focusing on same day/night pulls when you ve barely done any approaching.
Wondering about relationship dynamics before you ve even slept with a particular g
irl.
Or
Trying to start a perfect diet when you ve never even tried counting macros/calori
es and restricting types of food.
Etc.
Once again, this might sound reasonable
after all, your end goal is not to rack
up thousands of approaches, it is to sleep with beautiful women (maybe start a r
elationship), so why the hell would you not focus on that?
Because when you re starting out at something (anything), chances are you ll suck at

it and that s fine as long as you focus on the fundamentals, take action, and pra
ctice. It s pretty much a fool-proof way to get better (not necessarily world-clas
s, but definitely enough to get results).
The problem is when the skill forces you to push your boundaries or change your
behaviors. Then taking action and practicing becomes something that we need to s
pend our precious willpower/self-control on.
As a result, when we put pressure to do everything right and have everything fig
ured out it becomes exponentially more difficult to even start; to do anything a
t all. More often than not, we just go screw this! I ll do it next time and don t do a
nything.
For example,
If you re struggling with making a habit out of approaching, maybe instead of a lo
fty goal of I ll approach 30 women every day! start with a I ll approach one woman ever
y day .
This applies every other aspect of seduction too
g verbal techniques, body language, etc.

escalation, isolation, improvin

Getting there slower is better than not getting there at all because you re too bu
sy trying to be perfect from the start.
Note: What exactly small is will vary from person to person, for some just asking
for the time will get their blood rushing and that s small enough, for others appr
oaching is a no-brainer already adjust to something that you can do without putt
ing too much pressure on yourself but it still should push your comfort zones.
Use Three Miracle Cures

Of Self-Control

There are no magic bullets when it comes to changing your behavior. No argument
here.
Yet, if I were to tell you that there are certain techniques that if practiced reg
ularly can reduce your stress, increase your tolerance for discomfort, help you
delay short-term gratification, focus on tasks longer and with more clarity, and
overall help you do the right thing more easily all scientifically proven (prop
erly) and with countless other health and mental benefits
You d probably think

Sooo that s 9 payments of 49.95$ or 449.95$?

Nope, absolutely free too.

Okay, enough with the teasing, I m talking about few daily behaviors that we take
for granted and often ignore:
Exercising
Start working out is one of the most popular advices for newbies and ev
en though it s usually meant to help them improve their physique and appearance, t
he other, mental, benefits are actually much more helpful
yup, you re more likely
to stick with your goals if you exercise regularly.
Meditation Reduced anxiety, calm, outcome independence, etc., etc. Meditation is
truly one of the few things that we could really call a brain hacking technique.
Relaxing No, I m not talking about chilling and watching Adventure Time , smoking a j
oint, and having a pizza. Instead, think of it as a lite version of meditation.
You lay down for 10 to 20 minutes, close your eyes or focus on a single point, f
ocus on part of your body (toes, feet, legs, buttocks, torso, etc.) and let them

relax. The extra benefit of relaxing is feeling rested

we re more likely to make
the right decisions that are good for us when we re feeling rested compared to sle
ep-deprived states.
Ideally, all of these should be part of your daily routine, but even taking 10 o
r 20 minutes before going out or before you need to make an important decision (
i.e., if you ll going out) will help you re-focus and will make it much more stres
sful to do the thing that will lead to your long-term goals.
How to Make Sure Your Future Self Stays with the Plan
But let s say right now you re actually stuck in an uninhabited island with only a l
aptop (and Wi-Fi?) and won t be back for another week or so.
How can you help your future-self stick with the goals you made today?
Pre-commit
One of the most effective tricks you can do to make sure that your future-self a
cts in a way you want him to now is to pre-commit:
Want to start meeting women? Give a buddy a generous sum of money (just enough s
o it really hurts if you don t follow through) and tell him not to give it back un
til approached a certain amount of women, or asked them out, or whatever you re st
ruggling with. If you don t have a friend you can trust with something so importan
t, there are online services like Stickk.com that essential do the same.
Want to hit the gym (you know, to get all the amazing bonuses from exercising)?
Buy a yearly membership or make arrangements to go with a friend and that whenev
er one of you skips, he has to pay up or do something embarrassing.
Want to dress better? Throw out/donate your old, unfitting clothes (it s scary whe
n you realize that s like half your wardrobe. Hehe).
You get the drill put your future-self in a position where not following up is m
ore painful than doing it. And yes, turns out we can be that simple.
Adjust Your Environment
The people who surround are extremely influential in your life. We all like to t
hink that we re strong and independent, and that other people don t affect us, but i
t couldn t be further from the truth.
If you constantly hang out with guys who are in committed relationships or could
n t care less about getting better with women, you will often find yourself sippin
g beer in a bar, talking shit, and by the end of the night you realized that you
haven t talked with a single girl there.
do-something
Even if you go out alone, it will be much more difficult to push your comfort zo
nes and practice if you know that 3 of your best friends right now are playing b
oard games and drinking beer at home you will have this inner struggle Ah I don t fe
el like it tonight, maybe I should join them
On the other hand, I dare you to befriend and regularly hang out with naturals a
nd not get better. Rather quickly your how can I approach that group of sexy girl
s? will transform to how can I NOT approach that group of sexy girls?!

That said, this is not the time to blame your friends

just because they have dif
ferent priorities and goals than you doesn t make them any better or worse it s your
job to surround yourself with like-minded people, not to change them.
Make it a priority to do so and your future-self will be much more inclined and
even eager to follow up with your goals.
Finishing Thoughts
I d like to finish with giving credit where it s due. This article is very much insp
ired by the book The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonical, one of the best book
s on behavior I ve ever read (highly recommended if you would like to see more sci
entific reasoning to some of the principles explained in this article).
It s absolutely amazing in what counter-intuitive ways
behavior and how simple choices and mental tricks can
en doing actions that will lead to our long-term goals
whining about how everything sucks and how hard it is

we and others influence our

mean the difference betwe
versus laying in our bed,
to change.

And of course, I m sure that while reading this you recognized that the strategies
and techniques go well beyond seduction and getting better with women they can
be applied to all areas of our lives.
Cheers,
Darius
--------------------------At Ease in Your Skin: Key to Being a Great Natural Flirt
Ethan Fierre's picture
by Ethan Fierre
Monday, 21 September 2015
natural flirtYou don t have to be a master of observation to realize most guys fla
t out suck when it comes to flirting. And this isn t even necessarily because they
don t know all the right techniques. The reason for it is actually much more fund
amental.
What is this fundamental reason, you ask?
Only this: more often than not, we repress our emotions and act too stiff or too
mechanical.
Just imagine what a terrific flirt you could be
.

IF you didn t repress your emotions

Why do we repress them?

Out of fear of failure and public humiliation if efforts fall flat, or *gasp!* a
girl snubbing you. Repress them, and snubs and failures seem easier to shrug off
.
But imagine what it d be like to be completely comfortable flirting with even the h
ottest girls you meet.
What would you have to do to be that guy? That s what we ll be covering today.
Flirting Tech

Guys can go about learning how to flirt with girls all wrong: they try and learn
all the tactics they can, while ignoring the core of what they NEED to do if th
ey are to be successful attracting the opposite sex.
Yes, honing specific techniques for flirting makes a lot of sense, but those tec
hniques will often fall flat unless you are, first and foremost, able to express
your feelings naturally.
Otherwise, you re likely to come off either inexperienced, or like a caricature.
The first step to expressing yourself naturally is to change the way you view fl
irting... and by extension, seduction.
Step #1: The Reframe
Instead of solely viewing flirting as a tactic for seducing women, what if inste
ad you viewed it as the natural response to feeling attracted to a woman (at lea
st, natural for a man who s not repressed by anxiety)?
When we re relaxed and uninhibited, our feelings are naturally communicated to tho
se around us through our behavior. When you re uninhibited and you re angry, depress
ed, offended, or thrilled to see someone, your behavior makes those feelings cle
ar.
Flirting is just a special case of this. It s only when anxiety makes you feel lik
e you need to hide how you feel that flirting becomes awkward and forced.
This is all once again not to say there aren t useful things to be learned from ob
jective descriptions of flirting. There is much that can be learned from a techn
ical behavioristic viewpoint, most significantly:
how to have a bigger impact on the women you meet,
how to attract more women with targeted approaches,
and how to increase your overall efficiency.
We have loads of articles on here that look at flirting from a behavioristic per
spective:
How to be playful
How to touch her
Flying under the radar
How to use eye contact
Leaning in, wry smiles, pulling her into you
Yet if we really think about it, this type of advice is not really addressing th
e core issue that most people who click on articles like these are trying to res
olve.
Practicing the right type of touch to use, getting down sexy facial expressions,
learning how to stimulate women with implicit sexual humor, etc., will help the
beginner of course! at the very least you won t be sending mixed signals any more
(which, when coupled with being inexperienced, alarms girls more often than it
intrigues them).

However, I think lists of behaviors explaining the technical aspects of flirting

should be studied as DESCRIPTIONS of how a person would naturally express their
interest in a woman if they were open and uninhibited, NOT as a guide for how y
ou should ideally act.
This distinction is subtle, so let me explain. The latter way of seeing things i
mplicitly identifies overt signs of attraction to be atypical (based in the doma
in of conscious acting ) and perhaps even inherently risky, while the former experi
ences them to be the natural default.
This brings me to one of the best pieces of advice for flirting I ve ever received
: Don t make flirting a thing different from other things.
You may realize that what I m saying is that being witty, using implications, and
setting chase frames is simply the normal expression of a guy communicating his
sexual interest. The wise man does not pedestalize these as difficult to learn s
kills, but instead views them simply as the objective description of how an unin
hibited man flirts.
If I m attracted to a woman, I naturally stand closer to her than if I wasn t. If I
feel like we are really connecting, I might lean in and joke in a low voice that
only the two of us can hear. And certain kinds of touching just feel natural as
well.
Flirting behavior is not a code to be broken or a game plan to be strategized bu
t a natural side-effect of you feeling attracted and connected to someone.
Step #2: Becoming a Natural
Since the main obstacle we re dealing with is the repression of all our emotions o
ut of fear that some of them may appear inappropriate, the number one thing you
can do to reduce and then control the degree that you self-police yourself is to
practice expressing your emotions in many different scenarios every day. Be wil
ling to accept unpleasant and embarrassing feelings that you normally would repr
ess into ambivalence.
At being invited to the party, do you experience a feeling of desperation underl
ying your gratitude?
Do you feel a bit hostile towards that secretary who told you that their boss wa
s not in for the third time in a row?
Do you feel annoyed at a teacher or boss for shrugging off your input that you t
hought was more than praiseworthy?
Whenever you feel it would be inappropriate for you to express your feelings, yo
u should figure out why. This way, instead of repressing all your emotions becau
se you re afraid that some of them may be inappropriate, you are analyzing the soc
ial appropriateness and inappropriateness of them, which will give you the confi
dence to SELECT which emotions to repress, instead of implementing a blanket str
ategy where you repress all of them irrespectively.
Here is how you do this on a practical level:
Techniques for Selective Expression
Practice expressing your emotions in many different scenarios every day. Put you
rself in situations that challenge you, like taking a public speaking course, mo
ving to a foreign country, or talking to more girls on your way to class or work

. The external situation isn t so important, it s more a matter of your commitment t

o being honest with yourself that will make the difference in the long term.
Amplify your emotions. Slowly
rself into expressing how you
feelings so you get used to a
felt to me like exaggerating
e repressed).

turn up the volume on your emoting as you ease you

feel to a greater degree. Perhaps exaggerate your
wider scope (when I first started doing this, what
my feelings was, upon later reflection, still quit

Reflect on ambiguous feelings. Practicing this may also encourage you to deal wi
th some emotional baggage and train you to interpret your emotions more clearly.
Step #3: Relax
Understand that good flirting is more a relaxing into sort of thing than a stepping
up sort of thing. If you can do this, the next time you read or hear something a
bout flirting behavior ( use implicit sexual humor , establish an us vs. them dynamic )
ou won t be thinking This just isn t me, but, This is how people in my culture act when
they feel a certain way about someone. It s totally appropriate that I feel this
way, and when I do, this is how I will act so people will be able to know how I m
feeling.
natural flirt
There are likely some objections you may have to my argument, so let me address
those:
Objection #1:

What about negative emotions?

At this point you may object: If I were to show my real emotions, wouldn t that sca
re girls away? Not everything I feel is positive. Some of the emotions I feel ar
e toxic. Do I want to enhance those too?
The answer to this is of course yes, toxic emotions will scare girls away, and n
o, you don t want to enhance those feelings. However, unless you re able to be open
about these emotions, they re going to fester and you re not likely to get over them
in the first place.
Any sensible person can let go of fatalism, cruelty, hostility, self-doubt, etc.
(Hector s written a nice article about dealing with anger that covers in more det
ail ways to deal with negative emotions). But if in the short term you are unabl
e to, it ll regardless save you a lot of time and pain if you don t try and mask the
m from your partners, as that way you avoid them cropping up later on in the rel
ationship after you re both more emotionally attached and vulnerable to each other
.
But don t worry: most girls don t really care if you re a beacon of confidence. It s oka
y to be nervous and a little self-conscious.
Actually, the first girls you will attract will likely be into you because you a
re a little awkward. There are a lot of girls out there who love awkward, nervou
s guys, as they themselves are awkward, nervous girls, or they see potential in
you and think you might be a good long-term investment.
After some more experience however, your values will change and you will grow mo
re confident. And when that happens, you will find that the types of women that
interest you has changed as well; you re now interested in women who match your ne
w values, experience level, and increased level of confidence.

Pretty cool how that works, eh? The way men and women get together will start to
seem like an imperfect but somewhat logical system.
This vision of leveling up through experience will motivate you to
yourself out there. However, what you need to do TODAY if you want
vision a reality is start practicing amplifying and analyzing your
sounds simple, but it s actually one of the most beneficial things
yourself.

keep putting
to make that
emotions. It
you can do for

Focus In On What You Do & How You Feel

What helped me focus was for years I kept a journal where I tracked my daily act
ivities, how my emotions changed throughout the day, and what I thought I could
do better the next day (this has extra benefits beyond just getting more in touc
h with your emotions too).
This helped me enormously in finding out my true unadulterated feelings about th
ings, and nowadays I have the awareness to quickly recognize things like I feel s
lightly jealous right now. Why is this? or I have been starting to snap at people
a bit today what s the problem?
Or even more difficult to admit to yourself: I ve been working on this dream for ye
ars and it s not progressing as I hoped. Would dropping it now be the reasonable t
hing to do, or should I continue on? I know I ll never be able to measure all the
variables here, so how do each of these options feel to me and what will I choos
e to do so I can move on with my life, enjoying the satisfaction of being decisi
ve even with difficult, open-ended decisions?
Objection #2:

Won t this way of looking at things encourage guys to be lazy?

Another objection you may have is that this way of looking at flirting may encou
rage guys to get lazy, or to delude themselves that they don t have to improve. Th
is is a good objection, and it deserves some attention.
I don t want to validate you guys who already are pretty in tune with your emotion
s and aren t plagued by a blanket self-dampening of your emotions. You guys are li
ke farmers who have successfully sown a garden. However, that garden may still n
eed some tending be it overrun with unprofitable weeds that suffocate your crop
yield (unbeneficial habits) or it be simply in need of a bit of pruning. Or even
more, you may want to start introducing a new hydroponic growth system (e.g. ge
tting involved in a social circle with more experienced people) or plant seeds m
ore resistant to frost (learn to be more persistent).
The all-important thing to remember here is that feeling comfortable with being
attracted to someone is not the same as feeling complacent, and actually is a pr
erequisite to effective flirting.
natural flirt
Free to Feel
The benefits of being honest about your emotions are enormous. Not only are you
in touch with how you feel and things like flirting and approaching women you re a
ttracted to just feel like the natural, appropriate thing to do, but there s also
a huge social benefit as well: you will get a reputation as an honest person who
speaks his mind (speaking your mind is obviously difficult if you aren t able to
acknowledge your mind s emotional content to begin with).

This means that when you tell someone that you want them to come to your party,
they will know that you actually want them to come and you aren t just saying it.
With some of my friends and acquaintances, I just can never be sure if what they r
e communicating is really what they mean. Largely because they haven t learned to
be discerning of their own emotional states, they feel the need to be positive a
ll the time, and will say what they think I want to hear instead of how they act
ually feel. But they don t realize that doing so, though perhaps better than const
antly complaining and being a total downer, is not what people really want to he
ar. What non-egotists usually want to hear is how you actually feel!
I have found that people who are at the top of social ladders as well as those w
ho legitimately don t play that game and aren t trying to prove anything or use you
appreciate this type of openness enormously.
Of course, also being able to mask your emotions is an equally useful skill
but
it s a skill that becomes a prison unless you have the capacity to acknowledge and
express how you re really feeling in the first place.
Ethan Fierre
--------------------3 Ways to Train Up Social Aptitude
Chase Amante's picture
by Chase Amante
Thursday, 20 August 2015
social aptitudeYou re at a night school class you share with a pretty girl you ve ha
d your eye on. The semester s only halfway through, yet you have a feeling this gi
rl likes you, and you like her too. You ve chatted a few times, and sometimes you
sit near her or next to her, but not always.
One evening, your class lets out and she takes a long time to gather her belongi
ngs. Coincidentally (or not), two of you head out at the same time. You strike u
p a conversation with her on the way out, and she s responsive, but the conversati
on quickly stalls out. She seems happy but nervous. You feel like she s waiting fo
r something. Then you think how awkward it would be if you asked her out and she
said no, and now you ve got to keep coming back to this class and it d really suck
if there was an awkward vibe between you and this girl you like.
So, you tell her well, anyway, you guess you d better get going, and you peel off
and head to your car. On the way home, you kick yourself for not asking her out.
There are some men out there this kind of thing never happens to if they get a s
hot with a girl, they take it. They can t even understand why this would even be a
problem for guys.
For most guys though, this is something they ve had happen once or twice (or thric
e... or four times... or more times).
The difference between the man this doesn t happen to, and the man it does, quite
often, comes down to a difference in their general and specific social aptitudes
.
social aptitude
Social aptitude, pragmatically defined, is the ability to get into social situat
ions, get what you want out of them, and get out of them with minimal negative r
ipple effects on the rest of your life / socializing / social standing in the ev
ent things don t go as you d hoped.

The man with high social aptitude can ask the girl out in the above situation be
cause he knows a few things:
He knows how to put himself in a position to ask her out
He knows what to say and do to actually ask her out
He knows how to save face for both of them if she says no
He may or may not consciously realize he knows them, yet throw him into this sit
uation and he runs it more or less smoothly, regardless of the outcome. None of
the stuttering or mumbling or deer-in-the-headlights reactions of the man who do
esn t know these things yet.
How you develop social aptitude is interesting; because you may have a high degr
ee of aptitude in some settings and a low aptitude in others.
There is, however, an overall measure of social aptitude that, as you improve yo
ur base-level, general social aptitude, raises your scores across the board, in
all kinds of situations.
How Do You Know You Need This?
In 2011, I teamed up with a couple of business partners with exceptionally high
natural social aptitudes that d been reinforced over the years with a lot of consc
ious practice and study. I was already pretty talented at this point in my own r
ight at all things social, but these guys were the absolute cream of the crop. A
nd they quickly ran circles around me.
I got gypped, hoodwinked, bamboozled, outmanned, outmatched, and outclassed ever
y which way around these guys. School was in session, and I barely hung on. Ulti
mately, I got my clock cleaned I lost a lot of money and went through a lot of d
rama.
In the end though, after countless days and nights of situations where I just ha
d no idea what the correct call to make was, I discovered I d evolved, and began o
perating on their level.
It wasn t the first time I d had an experience like this I felt the same way when I
first started going to parties with people in 2005, and I felt it when I started
rolling with a party crowd in San Diego in 2007, and I felt it when I began min
gling with a crowd of higher class and wealthier people in 2008. Each time I fel
t like a novice again, totally out of my depth, and whatever training I d had prio
r didn t seem to amount to spit.
To me, that s the single biggest indicator you have growing to do in your present
social aptitude: finding yourself in situations where you re completely out of you
r element and don t know what to do.
Most people retreat from situations like this, and insulate themselves in the li
ttle bubbles of their comfort zones, returning to the safe spaces of social grou
ps they know and social situations for which they ve already mapped the terrain.
Yet, if you want to grow beyond that bubble, discomfort and failure must be your
good friends.
Do You Need Game If You Have Aptitude?
In many ways, game (as in the ability to do well with girls) is just a measure of
social aptitude, which is why you ll notice that the men who most fluidly navigate

social situations also tend to be the men who most fluidly navigate women into
bed.
social aptitude
Learning game is just another way of learning some targeted aspects of social ap
titude.
A guy with elite-level social aptitude probably doesn t need to sit down and figur
e out how to respond to a girl not texting him back. His instincts kick in and h
e s got it.
Or, a guy who has a great deal of medium-specific aptitude (he spends all day on
his phone and is a text message pro)... he may not need to think about it at al
l either. He just responds automatically and gets his desired result.
The kind of aptitude I m going to talk about learning today is general social apti
tude... just the overall comfort and intuition about all manner of social situat
ions.
Learning game is the shortcut to aptitude in specific dating- and sex- and relat
ionship-related areas.
Developing a great overall social aptitude is how you give yourself immense flex
ibility in even totally novel social situations... romantic or otherwise.
social aptitude
There are three (3) ways I know of to reliably build social aptitude:
Enter challenging social situations
Associate with socially superior people
Study well (and put to practice)
The first two are what you might call organic
and learn naturally/automatically.

learning

get yourself some exposure

The third is focused learning, or book learning (I ll actually recommend film and
television here, though books can be informative too), with the practice part se
rving to translate theory into actual.
#1: Enter Challenging Social Situations
If you re going this route, you will actively seek out situations in which you don t
know which way is up. The more confused and adrift you feel, the better. Most p
eople won t do this because it doesn t feel so good, and the ego takes a beating.
Cold approach pickup, when you re new, is one such kind of situation.
You re walking up to strangers, engaging them in conversation, and trying to lead
that conversation somewhere. Rarely does it go quite as planned, and all manner
of unpredictable things arise to throw a monkey wrench into your interactions. Y
our first few months doing it can feel like it s you against the world.
Socializing with cooler people than you re used to socializing with is another such
situation. Or any kind of group that is insular and doesn t immediately accept you
you could even be the cool guy hanging out with the computer programmers and ge
tting a frosty reception from these chaps.

Other examples of challenging social situations you might enter:

Taking on a sales job, either face-to-face or over the phone
Joining a class that requires showing off , like acting or modeling
Sneaking into places you aren t allowed, like a nightclub VIP section
Going for quick pulls with women, or intimacy in unusual locations
Working groups of people to meet one specific girl
Becoming a manager at your job (or in your own business)
Becoming a teacher responsible for a group of students
Traveling and staying in hostels with other travelers
Spending longer periods of time in foreign cultures
... and so on and so forth.
Any kind of situation that will genuinely s-t-r-e-t-c-h your social acumen will
do.
Now, there s a catch, and that s this: you must strive to improve and come out on to
p in your new, challenging social situation.
social aptitude
You need to be able to put the male competitive instinct to work here, and not b
e the guy who finds himself in a challenging social situation and just gives up
and mopes.
By doing this by taking figure this scene out and get a handle on it as your objec
tive you force yourself to adapt to this new challenge.
What s so good about this is that process of adaptation requires you to figure out
certain social abilities you hadn t previously trained up well enough to immediat
ely succeed in the environment:
Sales trains you to close and qualify, to handle objections, persuade someone wi
thout triggering their defense mechanisms against being sold to, and more
Teaching trains you to explain things extremely clearly, understand what student
s do and do not understand both about the subject matter and the world, manage d
isruptions, and the like
Pulling quickly or to unusual locations trains you to see past women s logical obj
ections and address the emotion underneath, to think on the fly and be adaptable
under social pressure, to manage another person s emotions and keep her calm enou
gh yet excited enough while you mentally run through a list of social chess move
s, etc.
Being a boss trains you to understand how best to motivate individual people to
perform well and up-to-standard, how to manage multiple people who work better o
r worse together, how to maintain morale, and so on
You get the drift. Each different challenge you set for yourself trains up anoth
er aspect of your general social aptitude which then translates to increasingly
higher aptitude and stronger social calibration in all manner of scenarios.
#2: Associate with Socially Superior People
Socially superior... that sounds like a pretty highfalutin term, eh?
We re not talking snobs with trust funds here (necessarily; though, we might be).
Instead, we re talking about anyone who is more socially savvy than you are:

If you re a social hermit, this is just about anybody who actually goes out on a F
riday or Saturday night.
If you ve been doing cold approach but neglecting social circle, this is anyone wh
o does well in attractive or high value social circles.
If you re doing well in high value social circles, this is anyone doing well in a
higher value social circle.
Note that high value here is relative (as value always is); like we discussed in t
he article on male authority, different men have different value levels in diffe
rent situations.
For instance, a guy may be super high value at work, with HOTSHOT written all over
him, but drag him along to that barbecue your buddies are hosting this weekend
and suddenly he s uncharacteristically awkward. This d be the case of a guy who s deve
loped high domain aptitude (at work) but still needs work on his overall social
aptitude (everywhere outside of work).
You see this with some guys who are heavy into pickup, too. I ve met guys who are
terrific at picking up girls one-on-one, but put them into social situations wit
h lots of people and they re lost at sea. It s another case of high domain aptitude,
yet more work needed on aptitude overall.
My recommendation, that I ve made in multiple articles, is that you try to make fr
iends with as many high caliber people from different backgrounds as you can. No
t only will you get to learn from people who are your social superiors in differ
ent ways, but they ll often drag you along into new and unfamiliar social situatio
ns too, so you get to bang out #1 and #2 in one fell swoop.
It s kind of a 2-for-1 deal, like Tuesday night at Cold Stone Creamery.
How do you identify people who are socially superior ? Confidence is the chief trai
t. Charisma is the next one after this. If someone is both confident and charism
atic, they re usually worth getting to know, and learning from if they re better tha
n you.
social aptitude
How do you make friends with them? That s beyond the scope of this article; howeve
r, check out these:
How to Make Friends? The Master Key to New Friendships
Dating Narcissistic and Egotistical Women
How to Master Anything
Like with #1, the key here is you must have learning switched on around them; you
must be studying what these people do, how they do it, then emulating things you
notice they do.
For instance, I learned deep diving by watching several of my socially superior
friends / girlfriends use probing questions to find out juicy details from peopl
e, get them qualifying themselves, and rapidly obtaining the upper hand socially
. I learned chase framing in part from spending time around a pal with incredibl
e sexual humor he used to great effect with women. Without associating with peop
le with a greater social aptitude than I had at the time, and studying what they
did and how they did it, I may never have learned these things that are now a k
ey part of how I interact with others (and pick up girls!).
#3: Study Well (and Put to Practice)

Films and television shows can be great teachers too, if you pay attention to th
e right things.
Guys who are total novices socially often try to focus on saying the same words
an actor uses or simulating the process he uses in a movie to get a woman in bed
. These usually aren t worth paying too much attention to, though, because these a
spects are reliant on how adept the screenwriter is at depicting a true-to-life
pickup, and most screenwriters aren t super experienced at picking up women.
Instead, when going this route, the thing to focus on is the actor himself.
That s things like:
His facial expressions
His body language
How he walks
How he talks
His comic timing when he says something witty
How he says something witty
is it goofy (likely not) or seductive (likely)?
How he touches the women he interacts with (or the men dominance)
How he moves through the scene
How his countenance changes depending on the social situation
This stuff is the stuff you want to study. Especially the last one
studying how
an actor varies his interaction style depending on the situation is especially i
nformative:
Does he lean in with a pretty girl, yet lean back coolly when threatened by enem
ies?
Does he slap a man on the back and laugh when he busts his stones (releasing the
tension), yet with a woman he teases her and just stares at her and waits to se
e what she ll do? Or, alternately, maybe he teases her and just keeps the interact
ion rolling after, never giving her the chance to respond?
Does he pursue different women differently the shy girl vs. the confident one, f
or instance?
The next step is going out and emulating what you ve learned in real life, because
it s nothing but useless book learning (or, in this case, movie learning) if you re
not using it out there.
This may mean you re acting a little too much like whatever character/actor s impres
sed you the most lately, but that s okay
it ll even out as you get more familiar wit
h doing those things, then start adding your own touch to them and integrating t
hem into your default behavior.
social aptitude
What films/actors should you study? That s a big topic I won t get into here, althou
gh we do have an article series by Ricardus on movie seductions that are worth c
hecking out:
Epic Movie Seductions: Part I
Epic Movie Seductions: Part II
Epic Movie Seductions: Part III
... as well as his two-parter on the California Pimp:
The Legend of California Pimp Part I
The Legend of California Pimp Part II
... and we also have a bunch of threads on the forum about these as well:

Help! Being Charismatic

Favorite Manly Movie
Sexy Mannerisms For Men?
Clint Eastwood as the edgy guy
porn actors as seduction models
Recommend Me Some Series and/or Movies
What Emulating James Bond Actually Means
Tv Shows / Movies to enhance seduction skills?
Movie Question: Flick Where Girl Does Lots of Stuff for Guy?
(probably more forum threads I missed in my quick look for these, too)
There s plenty of material out there you can study for edges if you look.
Which Social Aptitude Builder Do You Choose?
Well, most guys will probably start with #3, because that s easiest on a number of
levels: it doesn t require going out or interacting with other people to start, t
he edges you get from it are easier to tease out (this guy s walk, that guy s manner
isms, etc... tougher to soak these up as quickly when you re watching a guy out in
real life), plus you don t have to put the time into finding a challenging new so
cial situation or making friends with a guy who ll be able to teach you a thing or
two socially.
However, I suggest you try to incorporate all three of these approaches to your
aptitude bar-raising if becoming super socially talented is a priority for you.
#1 and #2 may have a slower start than #3, but they are deeper forms of learning,
most often; a movie only shows you an excerpt of the man s behavior, but when you re
watching him in person, or you re navigating the full situation yourself, you lea
rn it all.
If you can combine the three ways to raise your social aptitude:
Enter challenging social situations
Associate with socially superior people
Study well (and put to practice)
... then not only will you level up a lot faster, in a lot of different directio
ns, but I guarantee, after the initial man, this is tough/draining acclimation per
iod you endure with any situation or individual you re barely keeping up with soci
ally, you ll discover you start gaining some new social superpowers, and then it b
ecomes downright fun.
Ciao,
Chase
-------------------------------