I was having an interesting chat with one of my wings recently. He said that I was unusual in the way that I stuck with learning, and practicing even when I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted. He said that from his time in the community most guys will get disillusioned and quit. He put it stronger by saying that most guys just can’t deal with getting emotionally pummeled on a regular basis from all of the rejections. So they quit before ever getting to the point where they actually start to “get it”, and they never really see consistent positive results.
So I described to him my motivation to keep going. It wasn’t a strong desire to have sex with swimsuit models, although who wouldn’t want that. Yes, wanting hotter women was a factor, but not the factor which kept me going. My emotional leverage was actually comprised almost entirely of negative feelings. I was so completely miserable that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life that way.
For a long time I came off creepy using too much NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming.) I used a lot of canned game, peacocked far too much a lot of the time, and eventually I did start seeing some good responses, but It took me a long time before those smiles, and laughs turned into me actually dating or sleeping with the girls that I was meeting.
I had to recognize the little victories, such as; disarming the AMOG, or getting a girl to laugh or listen to me longer than normal. I also had to shut out the pummeling from my mind, and had to stay focused on what was working, and what I was learning from each interaction. I kept a journal, and would often be seen vigorously writing in my moleskin about the girl I just met.
- What we spoke about.
- What I did right
- Which language patterns did I use
- She was totally into me when I did the trust test
- What I could have done better and can improve upon next time. NOT what I did WRONG!
- and so on
There were times, perhaps after a few months of thinking positively, where I would get disillusioned myself. Thinking such things as, “It doesn’t work.. yeah girls like me socially as a friend, but they are still not sexually attracted to me.. it works for some guys because they are better looking!” Then I would want to quit. I would start thinking negatively about my self image again. Aarrrgh.. I wanted to scream!
So what stopped me from giving up? I had such strong emotional leverage that I wouldn’t allow myself to stop trying. I didn’t want to go back to feeling completely shitty about myself. So I forced negative thoughts to the back of my mind.. forced a smile, and kept chipping away at it. I had ups and downs.
Over the years I’ve had this conversation with many friends who have far more life experience than I do, about the concept of emotional growth through pain. Anyone who has been through difficult times, and recovered from it will most likely agree that there is some merit to the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Granted my motivational strategy was to the most part moving away from a place of strong emotional pain. Anthony Robbins
Their theory is that if you only move away from pain then you may fall into the trap of wanting to replace it so badly that you don’t take the time to define where you actually want to be. Which can lead to landing in another painful situation, and therefore just bouncing around life that way. Of course they were talking in more general terms of goal getting, and making positive life changes.
Another key component of staying on track was creating a healthy Review Process. What I mean by this is that you have a choice when learning. You can either replay all the things that went wrong, and loop through all the embarrassing things you did in the interaction.. or you can externalize the review process and replay it like you are analytically watching an educational story in your mind. Rewarding yourself for the things that you did right no matter how small, and noticing where you can improve next time.
To summarize the two points that I’m making in this article:
- Find your way to have strong emotional leverage on yourself. Whether that’s moving away from pain, moving towards pleasure, or a combination thereof. One book which helps people create this for getting into the best physical shape is, Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength
by Bill Phillips. I would say that 80% of the book is purely to help the reader create a strong motivational strategy to help them stick with the program. The system itself is solid advice on exercise, and eating right. It works but it’s nothing new, just sound practice taken from successful bodybuilders in the 80’s. By the time you get to the actual fitness program, having done your part during the motivational strategy primer, you are far more likely to reap the rewards from sticking with it.
- Adopt a Healthy Review Process. This will help to minimize negative self talk, and help to stop you from reinforcing negative beliefs. Do this right and you will actually start to create positive reinforcement for yourself.
To learn anything to a good level it often takes years. It’s a fundamental principle of existence that to achieve anything of real value in life you have to be willing to put in the effort, and really work at it. You also have to be prepared to fail… a lot! The most successful people have a different viewpoint of failure, they call it learning how to be successful. Hmm.. I wonder if such people have already adopted a healthy review process?
I like this post. It's nice to know that people who are successful at this stuff have faced a lot of rejection in the past, and I presume, still do. Some of the seduction materials out there set up the authors to be people who went from being largely unsuccessful with women to being successful 100% of the time. It seems from this post like I should not become discouraged by being rejected, as though it were a sign of my own faults, but rather a sign that at least I am trying the techniques and should continue to hone them.
I have not met, nor have I heard of, anyone so skilled with these techniques or skills that they never get rejected. A lot of people just don't mention their rejections. There are those two visible extremes in the experiences of men with women, the super-skilled, all-powerful guys who can get any girl they want, and the men who get seriously frustrated by the process and withdraw from meeting women and trying to do so. Indeed, the second of these two types is in fact more realistic than the first type. Yet, because of the discouragement of men in the second category, those guys are less-often heard about. After all, these guys choose not to mention their own loneliness, a fact about them which they perceive to be embarrassing. The first type, the players, if you call them that, is a media construction as well as a way that some men talk about their swollen egos. And of course, it's much easier to talk about successes than failures. When people reveal their failures, they open themselves up to criticism, and for people who already don't feel super-confident around others, they avoid the added criticism of the people to whom they would be revealing their so-called “failures” in the love department. At least that's what I see, but correct me if I am wrong.
Furthermore, many PUA techniques seem to find ways to avert rejection; however, the techniques do not avert rejection with success but rather teach guys to leave spots before guys get rejected. That is, when a conversation goes south, one leaves the group or ends it rapidly rather than trying to push through and make the conversation work and get a woman's number. So the systems have their own built-in mechanisms to move away from rejection. That is probably a good thing.
Thank you for your consciousness J-Dogg ! For every breakthrough that happened a breakdown happened.
Its refreshing to hear about this stuff, while at the same time relating to woman.
Peace Ryan
Dont be fooled man. The percentage for “the knowing” pua's are high like 99% to 100% because they know how to handle logistics. Every author talks about that 1% that is having a bad day, or other problems. I only said 99% because of other peoples experiences I read on the books.
But I believe that 100% of the girls I approach will go in my favor because your beliefs effect every interaction and your whole life.
If you want to believe that 70% will go good for you then that is what you will get 70%. Otherwise u will think something is out of order.
I just want to make you aware of where you are putting your “knowing”.
If Knowing that you can't get any girl matters, then knowing that you can get any girl matters.
This issue has been BY FAR my single biggest sticking point.. I hate to say it, but I'd probably be way farther along then I am now- I just HATED approaching becuase the thought of a possible rejection.
Anyways, lately I've been busting through this finally and here are some things that helped me out..
1) Having a wing – having someone to go out with who is learning just like you is great.. basically its a good reminder you're not alone!
2) Getting rejected.. I've been rejected so much that I know I can handle it. In a wierd way, its given me a certain level of confidence. I've learned that its not going to kill me. Plus, I remind myself that any 'rejection' isn't personal or permanent – hell the girl doesn't really know who you are from 5 or 10 minutes of conversationl, plus we can all think a scenario when a 'no' has turned into a 'yes' later… I take a 'no' to mean 'no at this point in time'
3) Going direct – I recently had the experience of walking straight up to a girl I thought was hot and telling her flat out that I thought she was cute and wanted to see what she was like… she was working, but when i suggested she get back to work, she told me she could stay and talk, and she was playing with her hair the whole time… now I actually lost that set- didn't get the number… I think I made the mistake of trying ot build too much comfort when I should've flirted and been more playful before hand.. but strangely enough, I walked away from that interaction with TONS of confidence. Though I didn't get the number, I was able to LEARN from the experience, analyze it objectively and develop a different gameplan for next time. Most importantly, I respected myself becuase it took balls and I didn't back down.
4) Student frame – when I go out, I have the mindset of “I'm here to learn, not to get any one girl”
Anyways, those are just a couple things that helped me- I couldn't agree more with having emotional leverage and a postive review process – those are key.. even if it seems fake to talk to yourself positively at first about an interaction – keep doing it, and it will become a habit.
Very good article!
As Will_Soh said above as well, it's good to see that other people also fail or face difficulties when they learn this art. Most mPUA's only talk about their successes, which makes you think they never failed (=had a learning opportunity). Just like Tony Clink said: ” The fact is, even the best PUAs lose more times than they score. Can you imagine batting .500? (…) Believe me, it's not going to happen.” Or Ross Jeffries: “The difference between winners and losers is that losers don't fail enough.”
The article also reminded me of another problem that I have, namely a fear of success. When things go in the right direction with a beautiful women, I often cut myself off and prevent myself from being successful and 'winning' (I have the same when playing sports 1-on-1). It's like a fear of being the best, because then there is the (social) pressure to stay at the top, and you have to work for it constantly. Furthermore, things could only go worse from that point. Being average is much easier, and you can continue dreaming about the things you could achieve and how nice life will get when you finally get there.
Well, this article is very inspiring. Thnx!
Thanks for this article, J-dog. Your site is really unique compared to other gurus – the advice here is a lot more practical, things I feel like I can really use. While more routines are always helpful, the stuff about 'how to learn,' 'how to get yourself in a good mindset' and 'how to keep yourself motivated' are a much bigger help to me personally – I've felt like a bit of a slow learner because, while I practice approaching women often, I feel that I don't make a lot of progress becoming the kind of man that women are attracted to.
I often forget that just a while ago I couldn't summon the courage to walk up to a pretty girl and say 'hi'!
I'm going to go back to keeping a journal detailing each set I run with notes about what did and didn't work. I think that will be a big motivator for me!
It's great that I've been getting such great feedback from everyone lately, as I'm still trying to find the right balance of topics to write about.
YES! It's very important (as with business and other areas of life) to reflect on all the accomplishments, small and large alike, that you've made over time.
Keeping a journal can definitely help with this. When running my engineering business it seemed like I was always fighting fires, and battling to just keep everything on track. I made daily action item lists in my business journal, and every couple of months I would look back through the pages to review. I was often amazed at how much I had accomplished.
Keep it up!
As they say theres no such thing as failure only feedback.I believe your doing an amazing things here JDog bringing all walks of life together to better themselves! finding your site very informative and helpful man! thers a respectfulness about your articles and literature thats jumps of page.! which is quite rare man! just my 2 dollars worth ! keep it real 🙂
Hey Smooth.. there's another great article idea for how inner game affects outward communication, and other's perceptions of you.. how to command respect, while being respectful of others… and 2 dollars worth of thoughts.. nice! lol
I'm reading this post for the second time and I think I now actually get it.
I believe I sort of have a review process, but I'm not sure it helps.
Let me explain.
For example, I interact in different social situations (no matter with whom) and I later realize what mistakes I made. But – I don't seem to encounter similar situations again.
However – one conclusion based on my mistakes is to NEVER postpone something that could further our connection for later. For example if I had the chance to spend another 15 minutes with a girl, I used to think I could meet her another time.
Big mistake!
First, that another time might not come at all. Second, the emotional state she was when we met will not be the same.
Another conclusion I made, based on this post, is to use the negative emotions, instead of trying to dumb them down (with escapism, movies or whatever).
Cheers man,
Yavor