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People use affirmation statements like, "I am a winner" to make themselves feel better and promote better behavior. One of the intriguing things about certain affirmation phrases is that they can make people feel worse. For example, "Everyday, in everyway, I am getting better" can lead to people developing unhealthy mental fixations and unrealistic pictures of success. The end result is they become more depressed and less likely to fulfill their own goals.
Watch your resolutions!
The steps to eliminate this problem are simple though:
1.) Set realistic, obtainable goals.
2.) Have a guide that is backward planned. Where do you want to be in one year? Tomorrow?
3.) Don't focus on the negatives. Many people who plan this focus on things they don't like about themselves. Focus on improving.
4.) Don't beat yourself up. Set aside specific times to do things to make them become routine. Set aside a certain time to work out, to learn an instrument, etc. to improve, but focus on the improvements, not the failures.
5.) Keep a journal. Start off with where you are at now and then look at where you are at in two months by lookinga the journal. If you're working out, for example, take off your shirt, weigh yourself, and record your lifts and aerobic times. You might be impressed at how far you can go in just three months.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Intrigue based game from a mystery writer
Gayle Trent has a quick article on how to improve the quality of your characters in novel writing. Of course, this applies to pick-up as well. To quote the infamous Ross Jeffries, the problem with the average guy is he "spurts from the heart and shoots from the c***." Meaning that most guys, when they meet a girl they like, start immediately telling the girl everything about themselves. She doesn't have to work for it, so there's absolutely no intrigue created by this.
Revealing small tidbits about your characters as you go along helps engage your readers. We know how important that is in dropping clues and red herrings, but it's also an excellent way to have your readers identify with your characters -- even the villains. This is especially important in a mystery because it isn't until the end of the story (hopefully) that the reader figures out who is truly the villain.The ability to insinuate personal qualities that are attractive about yourself is the entire art of DHV'ing. If you give it away too soon without the audience working for it, then the show is over. Much like using magic as a personal attractor, your ability to convey personality by giving a piece at a time while the audience works for it is what seperates the people who use intrigue game effectively versus those fail.
Using magick for pick-up
There's a company that actually dedicates the magic craft to pick-up. There's an introduction that is up here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4559351/Puma-Skills-Manual
A few of their PUA videos can be found here:
The first thing that I like is these guys use very practical magic tricks. If you have ever screened through books on magic tricks, you might find one or two tricks that can work in a bar setting. This cuts down on all that searching and shows you how to have really simple, easy magic tricks that can help convey personality.
The reading is important because they talk about some major problems you should avoid with the pick-up:
1.) Do not open with the magic trick. Doing tricks for girls to impress them is a major DLV. You also don't want to get a reputation as "that guy".
2.) Like anything else in pick-up whether it's humor (evil clown vs. dancing monkey), intelligence (sophisticated man vs. boring bookworm), or magic (intriguing man vs. bar magician), you should calibrate magic tricks to the level of effort your audience is putting in. If they work hard, a good magic trick is certainly useful, particularly if you are in a group setting and want to control the crowd.
3.) Running routines is a good complement to what we call "intrigue-based" game. Here's the link:
http://www.pumaskills.com/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4559351/Puma-Skills-Manual
A few of their PUA videos can be found here:
The first thing that I like is these guys use very practical magic tricks. If you have ever screened through books on magic tricks, you might find one or two tricks that can work in a bar setting. This cuts down on all that searching and shows you how to have really simple, easy magic tricks that can help convey personality.
The reading is important because they talk about some major problems you should avoid with the pick-up:
1.) Do not open with the magic trick. Doing tricks for girls to impress them is a major DLV. You also don't want to get a reputation as "that guy".
2.) Like anything else in pick-up whether it's humor (evil clown vs. dancing monkey), intelligence (sophisticated man vs. boring bookworm), or magic (intriguing man vs. bar magician), you should calibrate magic tricks to the level of effort your audience is putting in. If they work hard, a good magic trick is certainly useful, particularly if you are in a group setting and want to control the crowd.
3.) Running routines is a good complement to what we call "intrigue-based" game. Here's the link:
http://www.pumaskills.com/
The Science of Gullibility
How People Get Duped (Audio Link):
This is an audio report from NPR with author Stephen Greenspan, who wrote The Annals of Gullibility. There are some interesting tid-bits from the point of showing what makes a person skeptical about these types of schemes. The biggest factor is based off a quip that Eric Hoffer made: "When people are free to do as they please, they often imitate each other." (Paraphrased).
Take the infamous (dot)com crash. The main factor influencing the bubble that developed in the first place was the tendency of people to see and hear that online investments were going up and up and up, and so people who didn't buy them were considered foolish. You can spot this on most pages of books, on advertisements, and many other places. A typical book that is any good will have four pages of paper telling you just how good that book is. Then there's an acknowledgement at the beginning that tells you how good that book is. Finally, a person will write a preface vouching even further that the book is REALLY that good.
In the case where multiple people are vouching for the effectiveness of something, it actually seems foolish to pass it up, regardless of the fact that there may be very good logical evidence to counter that assumption. I like this book because outside of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, this is a subject most people have not touched on.
So, you wonder how this relates to seduction? Not all that much really, but this is the importance of social proofing and pre-selection. The strongest thing that vouches for you is NOT what actually exists, your money, your job, your personaltiy, but the fact that other people act as if you have it. Many of the famous seducers in Robert Greene's Art of Sedution were masters of manipulating this, and scammers are masters of manipulation in this as well.
A lengthy prelude about the book can be obtained on Shermer's e-skeptic website:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-12-23.html#feature
This is an audio report from NPR with author Stephen Greenspan, who wrote The Annals of Gullibility. There are some interesting tid-bits from the point of showing what makes a person skeptical about these types of schemes. The biggest factor is based off a quip that Eric Hoffer made: "When people are free to do as they please, they often imitate each other." (Paraphrased).
Take the infamous (dot)com crash. The main factor influencing the bubble that developed in the first place was the tendency of people to see and hear that online investments were going up and up and up, and so people who didn't buy them were considered foolish. You can spot this on most pages of books, on advertisements, and many other places. A typical book that is any good will have four pages of paper telling you just how good that book is. Then there's an acknowledgement at the beginning that tells you how good that book is. Finally, a person will write a preface vouching even further that the book is REALLY that good.
In the case where multiple people are vouching for the effectiveness of something, it actually seems foolish to pass it up, regardless of the fact that there may be very good logical evidence to counter that assumption. I like this book because outside of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, this is a subject most people have not touched on.
So, you wonder how this relates to seduction? Not all that much really, but this is the importance of social proofing and pre-selection. The strongest thing that vouches for you is NOT what actually exists, your money, your job, your personaltiy, but the fact that other people act as if you have it. Many of the famous seducers in Robert Greene's Art of Sedution were masters of manipulating this, and scammers are masters of manipulation in this as well.
A lengthy prelude about the book can be obtained on Shermer's e-skeptic website:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-12-23.html#feature
Friday, January 9, 2009
Can Intelligence Keep You From Getting Laid?
Intelligence is an attribute you often see come up in female discussions about what type of men they are after. "I want someone who is intelligent," is a common description that women either post in personal ads or say in person. Yet, a paradox immediately confronts us.
I can immediately think of plenty of idiots who get laid regularly. Conversely, I can also think of tons of intelligent men who don't. Immediately, this objection can be brushed aside. People with lower intelligence pay less attention to social programming and conditioning, and social conditioning teaches men how to fail miserably with women. That's how the phrase "AFC" came about, the average man is frustrated, and the frustration is largely due to the fact that intellectually, many men can't understand why following all the advice and doing what they are supposed to do isn't bringing them the results they want.
However, there are more serious objections to this idea. For example, ever been to a science convention? Or a sci-fi convention? How about a Mensa meeting? All of those have tons of incredibly intelligent men, and everyone of those places looks like a gigantic cock farm. There is a skit with Triumph the Insult Comic where he goes to a convention and sees a woman. He says, "Holy hell, a woman here. You have your virtual pick of the lot. Ten thousand men, all of whom have no idea how to please you." If women are trying to pick up intelligent men, it would seem obvious they would hang out in places that have intelligent men. This observation bears no fruition, unfortunately.
Intelligence is something that only attracts women in a VERY specific way. You can't use intelligence as an axe to bludgeon women with; it works best like a scaple, only small, precision based applications will help you. There are numerous problems with using intelligence to DHV, let's see how we can help eliminate some of the bigger pitfalls of this.
1.) Any attempt to use intelligence means you are seeking approval: Mehow talks a bit about how to DHV using intelligence. A key distinction that he makes is the "evil clown" vs. the "dancing monkey." Like using intelligence, using humor to subcommunicate attractive qualities will fail miserably if you come off like you are seeking rapport with the women. Mehow's distinction lies in the fact that a good PUA will come off like he is having more fun telling the jokes and making fun of people in the group than the audience does watching him do it. The exact combination is called "Cocky/Funny" or CnF, pioneered by David DeAngelo.
2.) Using intelligence can indicate you are socially uncalibrated: Face it, where are you at when you use this? If you bring up your opinion on existential philosophy and the Dadaist movement while at a club, you come off as a pretty weird guy.
3.) Intelligence can make people feel intimidated: If you are more intelligent than the people you are talking to, they will feel too timid to say anything. No one wants to look foolish or ill-informed. By being intelligent, you make them self-conscious of saying or doing anything stupid, thus making it very difficult to vibe.
How to avoid these problems
The easiest way to avoid these problems and pitfalls is to use the following strategies:
1.) Indicate genuine interest in the other person's contribution: In one of Ben Franklin's many letters to himself, he has one about how not to make an ass of himself at a party. Essentially, he says to talk less and to indicate more interest in what the other person is saying. Given his intelligence probably exceeded that of yours, it's good advice. If someone makes a statement and you qualify it, they will feel more comfortable around you.
2.) Hedge your statements: If you make statements like, "The pig can have an orgasm for thirty minutes", it shows a couple of things. First, what the hell are you reading in your free time? Second, the statement is blatantly showing that you know something they don't. We'll revise this statement a couple of ways to make it more palatable. First, hedge the statement with something like, "I read something really weird today. I found out that pigs can have an orgasm for thirty minutes. But it didn't say if it was the male pig or the female pig. What do you think?"
You have added that you *read* this interesting factoid somewhere else, thus not making it seem as if it was universal knowledge. If you state facts without hedging the statement with stuff like, "I think I heard", "I might have seen somewhere", etc., you give direct statements that make it seem as if this is things everyone should know.
3.) Give some situational relevancy to what you say: The statement "I read something today that was really weird" adds some situational relevancy to what you are saying. This doesn't apply to just saying things that are intellectual, it applies to any statement where people might think you are bragging or bringing up irrelevant topics.
4.) Go somewhere with it: The final piece to that is to go somewhere with it. Why were you making that statement? In this case, the follow-up is whether or not it was the male pig or the female pig. If she says female pig, you can follow-up with, "What? That's so sexist. Even across species, women still band together." Or if it's male, "What? You know how many sandwiches you'd have to make me if I had a thirty minute orgasm?"
5.) Make sure it's information worth being shared: This one is the "who didn't know this?" part of the blog, but make sure the information is actually emotionally stimulating. If it wouldn't be included in a book like "Why do Men Have Nipples?" or "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" it probably isn't worth sharing. Your ideas on what the best race car is probably won't titillate many women.
Overall, the structure looks like this:
1.) Situational Relevance: You have a reason for bringing it up so it does not come off like you are bragging.
2.) Emotional Relevance: The information is interesting or has enough value to warrant bringing it up.
3.) It has some follow-up: You need follow-up to vibe or to help qualify the woman.
I can immediately think of plenty of idiots who get laid regularly. Conversely, I can also think of tons of intelligent men who don't. Immediately, this objection can be brushed aside. People with lower intelligence pay less attention to social programming and conditioning, and social conditioning teaches men how to fail miserably with women. That's how the phrase "AFC" came about, the average man is frustrated, and the frustration is largely due to the fact that intellectually, many men can't understand why following all the advice and doing what they are supposed to do isn't bringing them the results they want.
However, there are more serious objections to this idea. For example, ever been to a science convention? Or a sci-fi convention? How about a Mensa meeting? All of those have tons of incredibly intelligent men, and everyone of those places looks like a gigantic cock farm. There is a skit with Triumph the Insult Comic where he goes to a convention and sees a woman. He says, "Holy hell, a woman here. You have your virtual pick of the lot. Ten thousand men, all of whom have no idea how to please you." If women are trying to pick up intelligent men, it would seem obvious they would hang out in places that have intelligent men. This observation bears no fruition, unfortunately.
Intelligence is something that only attracts women in a VERY specific way. You can't use intelligence as an axe to bludgeon women with; it works best like a scaple, only small, precision based applications will help you. There are numerous problems with using intelligence to DHV, let's see how we can help eliminate some of the bigger pitfalls of this.
1.) Any attempt to use intelligence means you are seeking approval: Mehow talks a bit about how to DHV using intelligence. A key distinction that he makes is the "evil clown" vs. the "dancing monkey." Like using intelligence, using humor to subcommunicate attractive qualities will fail miserably if you come off like you are seeking rapport with the women. Mehow's distinction lies in the fact that a good PUA will come off like he is having more fun telling the jokes and making fun of people in the group than the audience does watching him do it. The exact combination is called "Cocky/Funny" or CnF, pioneered by David DeAngelo.
2.) Using intelligence can indicate you are socially uncalibrated: Face it, where are you at when you use this? If you bring up your opinion on existential philosophy and the Dadaist movement while at a club, you come off as a pretty weird guy.
3.) Intelligence can make people feel intimidated: If you are more intelligent than the people you are talking to, they will feel too timid to say anything. No one wants to look foolish or ill-informed. By being intelligent, you make them self-conscious of saying or doing anything stupid, thus making it very difficult to vibe.
How to avoid these problems
The easiest way to avoid these problems and pitfalls is to use the following strategies:
1.) Indicate genuine interest in the other person's contribution: In one of Ben Franklin's many letters to himself, he has one about how not to make an ass of himself at a party. Essentially, he says to talk less and to indicate more interest in what the other person is saying. Given his intelligence probably exceeded that of yours, it's good advice. If someone makes a statement and you qualify it, they will feel more comfortable around you.
2.) Hedge your statements: If you make statements like, "The pig can have an orgasm for thirty minutes", it shows a couple of things. First, what the hell are you reading in your free time? Second, the statement is blatantly showing that you know something they don't. We'll revise this statement a couple of ways to make it more palatable. First, hedge the statement with something like, "I read something really weird today. I found out that pigs can have an orgasm for thirty minutes. But it didn't say if it was the male pig or the female pig. What do you think?"
You have added that you *read* this interesting factoid somewhere else, thus not making it seem as if it was universal knowledge. If you state facts without hedging the statement with stuff like, "I think I heard", "I might have seen somewhere", etc., you give direct statements that make it seem as if this is things everyone should know.
3.) Give some situational relevancy to what you say: The statement "I read something today that was really weird" adds some situational relevancy to what you are saying. This doesn't apply to just saying things that are intellectual, it applies to any statement where people might think you are bragging or bringing up irrelevant topics.
4.) Go somewhere with it: The final piece to that is to go somewhere with it. Why were you making that statement? In this case, the follow-up is whether or not it was the male pig or the female pig. If she says female pig, you can follow-up with, "What? That's so sexist. Even across species, women still band together." Or if it's male, "What? You know how many sandwiches you'd have to make me if I had a thirty minute orgasm?"
5.) Make sure it's information worth being shared: This one is the "who didn't know this?" part of the blog, but make sure the information is actually emotionally stimulating. If it wouldn't be included in a book like "Why do Men Have Nipples?" or "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" it probably isn't worth sharing. Your ideas on what the best race car is probably won't titillate many women.
Overall, the structure looks like this:
1.) Situational Relevance: You have a reason for bringing it up so it does not come off like you are bragging.
2.) Emotional Relevance: The information is interesting or has enough value to warrant bringing it up.
3.) It has some follow-up: You need follow-up to vibe or to help qualify the woman.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Sexual Stragies that Men and Women Pursue:
Scientific Article by David M. Buss on Sexual Strategies
I'll cull this down to the interesting stuff. Simply put, men and women have two options for pursuing mates. They can either pursue long-term mates or short-term mates. Interestingly, the friends know the strategies and tactics that they use and there is a high accuracy rate between them.
Men and women who want a sexual partner pursue the same strategies. Women prefer three qualities when seeking a short-term partner. Attractiveness, sexual availability, and social dominance. Men initiated touch, dressed better, and were reported to have had sex more often. Women did the same. Also, they would derogatively refer to rivals on the same scale. Men called attention to a lack of rivals attractiveness or sexual abilities. Women called other women "frigid" or insinuated they didn't have sex.
I'll cull this down to the interesting stuff. Simply put, men and women have two options for pursuing mates. They can either pursue long-term mates or short-term mates. Interestingly, the friends know the strategies and tactics that they use and there is a high accuracy rate between them.
Men and women who want a sexual partner pursue the same strategies. Women prefer three qualities when seeking a short-term partner. Attractiveness, sexual availability, and social dominance. Men initiated touch, dressed better, and were reported to have had sex more often. Women did the same. Also, they would derogatively refer to rivals on the same scale. Men called attention to a lack of rivals attractiveness or sexual abilities. Women called other women "frigid" or insinuated they didn't have sex.
Psychology, why your pick-up line might not work
The community often talks about "Congruency". Congruency is a way of saying that your spoken words and conscious actions match your subconscious behavior. To test it, try saying, "I love you" while clenching your fists and jaw hard, and breathing shallow. Doesn't sound very sincere does it?
Psychologists studying emotions gave a name to this phenomenon:
In short, a poorly delivered line lacks any emotional kick to it because the girl doesn't believe it. It simply isn't real.
Another interesting tidbit is on why we experience fear of rejection even if it has been years since that event:
Psychologists studying emotions gave a name to this phenomenon:
The Law of Apparent Reality
Whatever seems real to us, can elicit an emotional response. In other words how we appraise or interpret a situation governs the emotion we feel (compare with laws 11 & 12). The reason poor movies, plays or books don't engage us emotionally is because, in some sense, we fail to detect truth. Similarly it's difficult to get emotional about things that aren't obvious, right in front of us. For example grief may not strike when we are told about the death of loved one, but only once it becomes real to us in some way - say when we pick up the phone to call them, forgetting they are gone.
In short, a poorly delivered line lacks any emotional kick to it because the girl doesn't believe it. It simply isn't real.
Another interesting tidbit is on why we experience fear of rejection even if it has been years since that event:
8. The Law of Conservation of Emotional Momentum
Time doesn't heal all wounds - or if it does, it only does so indirectly. Events can retain their emotional power over the years unless we re-experience and re-evaluate them. It's this re-experiencing and consequent re-definition that reduces the emotional charge of an event. This is why events that haven't been re-evaluated - say, failing an exam or being rejected by a potential lover - retain their emotional power across the decades.
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