Alphathree
Senior Don Juan
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2005
- Messages
- 405
- Reaction score
- 1
REALMS OF CONFIDENCE
You walk into a pub and see a perfect 10, all jazzed up and sitting by herself. You are paralyzed with fear. You can't approach.
But it is not the perfect 10 alone that scares you. It is your current social context. If she walked into your bedroom unexpectedly, you might be caught off-guard, but you would not feel that same paralysis. You'd address her: "Hi. What's your name, and what are you doing in my bedroom?"
Removing the fear of approach is all about owning your reality. Owning your reality is all about context: where are you, have you been here before, do you know the ins-and-outs of this place, do you know a lot of the people here, do they respect you? And so on.
I'm not a big guy and I only know the basics of weight lifting, so I feel very out-of-place in a gym. I don't know anyone there and I generally feel outclassed. My odds of approaching a hot girl and being successful in that state are pretty low. I sabotage myself before I begin.
But I know dancing. If I'm at a bar that I've been to fifty times before, I know all of the people there, and I'm one of the best dancers there, I own that reality. It's ALL MINE. I have no problem approaching hot girls over and over again.
I've realized that the much-sought-after Universal Confidence (confidence regardless of context) is hard to come by. Instead, the trick seems to be to expand your realms of confidence. Meet more people. Get more skills. Make sure you are confident in every social context you are likely to encounter each day.
POWERLESS ZONES
It seems that in some places, everyone lacks power. In a local pub, the regulars have power and the new people don't. But in a grocery store or a shopping mall, there is very little social power to go around because the participants in that social experience are more or less randomly chosen.
In these powerless zones, I try to lead by example, to violate the laws of social power conservation and make power from nothing. It's hard, because it feels like everyone else is 'sucking' energy from you.
A WOMAN IS AN ARMY. WILL YOU FIGHT HER ALONE?
Last week on MSN, a girl opened me with: "I don't have much time, so you better make this quick and it better be good."
As soon as she said that, I imagined myself, a small and timid warrior, looking upward at this monsterous woman who was tapping her foot and looking at her watch. I had entered her reality and it was over.
One of the reasons I don't like these 'cold' encounters, online or in real life, is that one man is no match for a woman. No amount of verbal trickery or rippled abs will get her if the context of your encounter doesn't include your army. Your army fights for you.
Your army is your friends, your hobbies, your beliefs, the context of your encounter, your social status. A man's army is what fights the woman. A man alone stands no chance.
When you engage a women in battle, let your army do most of the fighting for you. You are simply the General, giving commands and tweaking the tactics as you see fit.
If you don't have an army, it's time to start recruiting.
You walk into a pub and see a perfect 10, all jazzed up and sitting by herself. You are paralyzed with fear. You can't approach.
But it is not the perfect 10 alone that scares you. It is your current social context. If she walked into your bedroom unexpectedly, you might be caught off-guard, but you would not feel that same paralysis. You'd address her: "Hi. What's your name, and what are you doing in my bedroom?"
Removing the fear of approach is all about owning your reality. Owning your reality is all about context: where are you, have you been here before, do you know the ins-and-outs of this place, do you know a lot of the people here, do they respect you? And so on.
I'm not a big guy and I only know the basics of weight lifting, so I feel very out-of-place in a gym. I don't know anyone there and I generally feel outclassed. My odds of approaching a hot girl and being successful in that state are pretty low. I sabotage myself before I begin.
But I know dancing. If I'm at a bar that I've been to fifty times before, I know all of the people there, and I'm one of the best dancers there, I own that reality. It's ALL MINE. I have no problem approaching hot girls over and over again.
I've realized that the much-sought-after Universal Confidence (confidence regardless of context) is hard to come by. Instead, the trick seems to be to expand your realms of confidence. Meet more people. Get more skills. Make sure you are confident in every social context you are likely to encounter each day.
POWERLESS ZONES
It seems that in some places, everyone lacks power. In a local pub, the regulars have power and the new people don't. But in a grocery store or a shopping mall, there is very little social power to go around because the participants in that social experience are more or less randomly chosen.
In these powerless zones, I try to lead by example, to violate the laws of social power conservation and make power from nothing. It's hard, because it feels like everyone else is 'sucking' energy from you.
A WOMAN IS AN ARMY. WILL YOU FIGHT HER ALONE?
Last week on MSN, a girl opened me with: "I don't have much time, so you better make this quick and it better be good."
As soon as she said that, I imagined myself, a small and timid warrior, looking upward at this monsterous woman who was tapping her foot and looking at her watch. I had entered her reality and it was over.
One of the reasons I don't like these 'cold' encounters, online or in real life, is that one man is no match for a woman. No amount of verbal trickery or rippled abs will get her if the context of your encounter doesn't include your army. Your army fights for you.
Your army is your friends, your hobbies, your beliefs, the context of your encounter, your social status. A man's army is what fights the woman. A man alone stands no chance.
When you engage a women in battle, let your army do most of the fighting for you. You are simply the General, giving commands and tweaking the tactics as you see fit.
If you don't have an army, it's time to start recruiting.
