Inner Game

Strewn about the coffee table are the remnants of Chinese food. I lean back on the couch with my stomach ready to burst.

“Ah, General Gao, you were a bloodthirsty foe, but your chicken is delectable!”

There is only one more thing needed to win this battle. I deploy a flanking maneuver and grab the golden crusted cookie. With zero resistance I am able to subdue the cookie and steal its secret message. It contains one of the most profound fortunes I’ve ever read.

“You cannot be anything if you want to be everything.”

I hold the message closer and read it several more times, trying to absorb the meaning. My thoughts begin to swirl into a storm of emotion and introspection. What does it all mean?

It’s about passion.

There has been a shift in the seduction community lately. Many well known pick-up artists are not only moving away from routine based game towards more natural game, but are now moving towards what I call “lifestyle game.” They are starting to adapt the thinking that what is really seductive about a man is the way he leads his life. It is essentially his lifestyle that attracts women and not all the different tactics and techniques that pick-up artists are known for.

So how do you lead a seductive lifestyle? Easy. You have to be passionate about something. You need to have a driving force in your life. A purpose for living.

A few movie quotes come to mind in this regard. One is from one of my favorite movies, Adaptation.

“There are too many ideas and too many people. And too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” - Susan Orlean

This is almost the same thing that the cookie told me! If you don’t have a focus, a passion, then you end up all over the place, never really accomplishing anything in life.

Remember the movie City Slickers? There is one scene where Curly tells Mitch that he knows the secret of life.

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.

In the end of the movie we find out that the one thing, the secret of life, is different for everyone. That one thing is whatever you care most about in your life.

As for myself, there are so many things in my life that I enjoy doing and so many things that I want to accomplish. Surprisingly, this is a problem. There are too many directions I want to go and too many things I want to do that it is making it difficult for me to get anywhere at all. There is no focus. There is no real passion.

So what is my one thing? What is my passion? I have no idea. I know what I enjoy and I know what my interests are but I’m not too sure which of these I am truly passionate about. Even worse, what if my passion is something that I don’t even know about yet? Maybe my passion is to be a circus juggler or a rodeo cowboy, who knows, it could be anything!

Figuring out your passion in life is not something to take lightly. It’s not something you can just pick out of a hat or decide on a whim. This is going to have to take some serious thought and effort. If I figure it out I’ll let you know.

I’m sitting down at lunch eating my bowl of soup while reading the paper, when in walks a beautiful young woman. She reminds me of a younger Eva Mendes. She is stunning.

She sits down at the table next to me. I continue reading my paper while glancing at her every now and then. I begin to notice her glancing in my direction. I should say something.

She glances over again. Is she looking at me? What else could she be looking at? I’m the only one sitting on this side of her. Maybe she is attracted to me. Maybe she wants me to talk to her. I really should talk to her.

I continue reading my newspaper. I am not sure what I am thinking. What do I have to lose. This whole situation is the reason why I study seduction in the first place. After all, what good is it to call myself a seduction artist when I can’t even talk to a beautiful woman who keeps looking at me. I’m going to say something. I’m going to talk to her right now.

I turn my head towards her. She looks over at me and smiles. My mouth drops open as I am about to speak. Nothing comes out.

She’s still looking at me, waiting. My mind is blank. Somehow I’ve forgotten the concept of language. I close my mouth and just smile back, as I turn my head back towards the newspaper.

I can feel her disappointment. I can feel my disappointment. All I had to do was say something, say anything. It would have been better than nothing. I know better than this. It is time for another change in my game.

From this day forth I will make it my goal to talk to one new woman each day. I don’t have to get into a long involved conversation with them, I just need to say something; I just need to anything!

The time and place for seduction is not two nights a week at some bar or club. The time for seduction is ANY TIME. The place for seduction is EVERYWHERE.

I finish my soup and get up to leave. As I’m exiting the store, another young woman is walking in. I stop and hold the door for her.

As she walks in I say, “Hi.”

“Hi.” she replies with a smile.

I continue on back to work feeling better already.

I was recently watching a video of Zan on YouTube where he gives a talk to the Project San Fransisco seduction lair. After seeing this, I was blown away by how profound his insights were.

Zan basically talks about how a lot of men who join the seduction community are ones who grew up without a male role model; how there was no one to give us direction; and how our fathers were absent in this regard. We are basically the first generation of uninstructed men.

This is an interesting topic to me for personal reasons. I was raised by a single mom for most of my childhood. My father left my mom and I at an early age. I believe I was around five years old when he left.

Even if my father did stick around I doubt it would have done any good. He was an alcoholic and was abusive towards my mother. Certainly not a positive male role model. In fact, my only memory of him is of that familiar cliche we always see on television. That of the mother and father fighting in the kitchen and the child crouched on top of the stairs crying.

So, as Zan puts it, my positive male role model was absent. The person who was supposed to teach me about women was never there. I feel this might be true for a lot of the guys who come into the pick-up artist community.

If I remember correctly, in the book The Game by Neil Strauss, the idea of lacking a positive male role model is illustrated through the character and real life pick-up artist Mystery. Strauss writes about Mystery’s hatred towards his father, which caused him emotional damage and low self esteem. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Mystery had set out on his own in an attempt to become good with women.

Also, in a recent blog post by Sean Newman, he mentions that he was a mamma’s boy growing up. He says that though he got loving advice from his mom and sisters, it wasn’t the type of advice that was useful for meeting women. I think Sean says it best with the following: “Because as much as mama loves you, she can’t teach you how to be more of a confident MAN around women.”

There is a great article called, How Boys Learn to be Men by James Dobson, that addresses the influence of fathers on young males. In the article, Dobson mentions some of the ideas of leading Sociologists and Psychologists:

“Sociologist Peter Karl believes that because boys spend up to 80 percent of their time with women, they don’t know how to act as men when they grow up. When that happens, the relationship between the sexes is directly affected. Men become helpless and more and more like big kids.”

“Dr. William Pollock, Harvard psychologist and author of Real Boys, concludes that divorce is difficult for children of both sexes but it is devastating for males. He says the basic problem is the lack of discipline and supervision in the father’s absence and his unavailability to teach what it means to be a man. Pollock also believes fathers are crucial in helping boys to manage their emotions. As we have seen, without the guidance and direction of a father, a boy’s frustration often leads to varieties of violence and other antisocial behavior.”

However, in an interview with Peggy Drexler, author of Raising Boys Without Men, she claims that young males raised by single mom’s can turn out to be perfectly fine.

“In her new book, Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men (Rodale Books), Drexler demonstrates through nearly a decade of research that boys who are raised in single-mother homes are just as likely to develop into happy, healthy adults as boys raised in households with both a mother and a father.”

Though I tend to agree with Drexler’s view that boys raised by single moms can turn out to be happy and healthy, she doesn’t address the issue of these same boys becoming the type of man who can be comfortable meeting women. After all, I was raised by a single mom and my life has been pretty good. I’m happy, I’m healthy, I have a good career, and a great group of friends. One thing that I don’t have (or didn’t have) is the knowledge to be successful in meeting and attracting women.

Of course, this whole theory about pick-up artists lacking male role models is completely speculative. It certainly is interesting to think about though. Perhaps I’ll do some more research on this topic. I’d love to hear comments on this if anyone has had similar experiences or insights into this theory.

Did you know that 92% of Americans will fail to meet their New Year’s resolutions? Of those, a whopping 45% will fail by the end of January! According to a national survey it’s true and it happens every year. Sure, it’s a bit unsettling but you may be wondering why this has anything to do with seduction. Well, seduction involves making a lot of changes in your life in order to attract women and what better time to start then with some New Year’s resolutions.

Over the last week I have read tons of posts on seduction message boards and blogs that all contain resolutions. Most of these resolutions are ones that would change the person into a better pick-up artist. Some people have said that they want to approach 1,000 women (including me….ahem). Some people want to learn how to dance, take karate, bench 300 pounds or have sex with a woman at least once a week. Some people make lists of dozens of things they want to accomplish, but most will never succeed.

One thread on the Don Juan Discussion board is having people resolve to approaching 3-7 days a week over the course of three years! To me this is an unrealistic time frame for such a commitment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on these guys, I hope they prove me wrong.

Now I’m not just posting to rant about people’s resolutions. I actually have a plan to implement the fundamentals of seduction into my life without making these massive commitments. I will do this using Steve Pavlina’s 30 Day Trial model.

Steve Pavlina’s 30 days to success article is based on the 30 day trial concept you get with most shareware software. Basically, you try a program out for 30 days to see if you want to buy it. The nice thing about the 30 day trial is that you’re not committed to buying it once the trial is over. If you don’t like it after 30 days then you can stop using it. If you do like it then you can shell out the money and you own it for life.

Pavlina explains that this concept can also apply to implementing personal habits like quitting TV or becoming a vegetarian. This concept is much more effective than making a resolution for the whole year. I think Steve says it best in the following quote:

We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.

But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore.

Of course, the whole point to the 30 day trial is that once you’ve completed the 30 days, chances are that whatever it is you are doing will continue to be a habit afterwards. This is what I will do to implement my seduction habits over the course of the year. Each month I will pick one fundamental of seduction that I want to implement and do it for 30 days straight under no obligation to continue. With this method, I hope to internalize a good amount of the fundamentals by the end of the year.

I already did one 30 day trial with my December Blitz mission based on approaching as many women as I could in one month. Though it was a bit daunting at first I started getting into a good routine by the end of the month. Now that I’m actually accustomed to going out and approaching on a regular basis I plan to keep on doing it for the rest of the year.

So what am I going to implement for January? I’m going to give up alcohol for the rest of the month. Yes, I know, it is not a direct seduction technique, however it is something that has seriously hindered my game in the past. If I can get this alcohol thing under control, even if it is just for a month then I feel my game will become much more solid in the long run.

Good luck to everyone else with their own resolutions. Don’t become part of that 92%!