Let’s say you’re standing in a bar talking with a girl. Where do you put your hands? How do you stand?
Put your hands to your sides. If you keep your arms at a 90 degree angle, it looks stiff. If you cross your arms, you block your heart. It’s defensive and closed. If you put your hands in your pocket, that’s also defensive.
However, if you keep your hands to your sides, it looks natural and RELAXED.
Relaxed = confidence.
It might feel uncomfortable having your hands at your sides at first. It’s like you want to do something with your hands. Try this trick.
Press your middle finger and thumb together.
It’s a trick that’s been around for awhile, and it works. It gives your hands something to do. It eliminates any nervous ticks. And it forces you to stand still and calm.
Same thing goes when you hold your drink. It’s not recommended to drink while you’re out approaching. You want your mind to be as clear as possible. Would you play chess when you’re buzzed? But let’s say you do order a beer or a glass of water or something. If you’re standing, how do you hold your drink?
Again, relax your arm. Don’t hold your drink in a way that blocks your heart. And don’t hold your arm at a 90 degree angle. It’s stiff. Hold your drink with your arm extended to your side. It’s more open. It’s relaxed. And you look the opposite of insecure… you look right at home.
When standing, the same idea of relaxation applies. Don’t stand with your weight perfectly distributed on your right and left foot.
DON’T stand like this – stiff
This makes you look like a stiff square. Instead, lean most of your weight on one foot, like in the picture below.
DO stand like this – relaxed
Again, it makes you look more natural and relaxed.
I wrote up a post about body language here. I’ve got a lot more tricks and tips there.
But whenever you’re in doubt, remember to relax. Keep your drink and your hands to your sides. When you relax, it makes the woman you’re talking with feel relaxed, too. You can’t seduce her unless she’s relaxed.
This is such a simple technique, but a lot of guys don’t do it.
Ready for it?
Walk away.
Simple as that.
You can do this when you approach a woman. And you can do it when you’re on a day 2 with her.
Tell me if you’ve ever felt this way when you’re on a Day 2 with her.
You walk into a local shop together to look around, and you feel like you have to be attached to her hip every step of the way.
Ever done that before? I know I have.
Yikes.
Luckily, you don’t have to do that. In fact, DON’T.
Walk away. Give her a little space. Check out something that catches your eye, then rejoin her.
You’ll be WAAAAAAAAY more attractive if you do.
Same exact thing on the approach.
God knows I’ve made this mistake. Tell me if it sounds familiar.
You see a hot girl with a friend or two walking to a bar. You stop them, and you stand perfectly square across from the hot one, with your feet planted in the cement like you were a statue and you deliver your entire opener to her, completely ignoring the other girls.
Then you wonder why the hot girl is looking for an escape, and why her friends are trying to drag her away.
Okay, so obviously ignoring the friends = bad. Make eye contact with every person in the group. Wanna keep everyone’s attention? Hello eye contact.
And then of course, don’t plant your feet into the pavement. What, are you a tree now? And don’t have your body perfectly square to one girl.
Walk away.
Have your feet and your body face away from her, as if you’re about to leave. Better yet, stand side by side with one of the girls.
Ahhhhh. Much better. And much friendlier.
After you deliver your opener, walk away if you have to. You can always notice something else, like their ring, and continue the conversation with something like the ring routine.
Or if you run into them again, you can say hi. No longer strangers. Nice.
And of course, if you walk away, there’s a good chance they’ll want to reengage you.
Why?
There’s something about walking away that creates attraction.
You don’t have to be the most incredibly polite person the world has ever seen. You can be a normal human being. And walk away.
We pursue that which retreats. The negative space creates attraction. A negative pole draws in the positive. Giving her that space makes her feel more comfortable, and it allows her to come to you.
“And because she’s served with all the attentions due to a god by a lover who is not pretending otherwise but is truly in the throes of love, and because she’s disposed to be a friend of the man who’s serving her (even if she… initially rejects the lover)… she lets the man spend time with her. It is a decree of fate, you see, that bad is never friends with bad, while good cannot fail to be friends with good. Now that she allows her lover to talk and spend time with her, and the man’s good will is close at hand, the girl is amazed by it as she realizes that all the friendship she has… is nothing compared to that of this friend who’s inspired by a god.
After the lover has spent some time doing this, staying near the girl (even touching her… on occasions), then the spring… named ‘Desire’… begins to flow mightily in the lover and is partly absorbed by her, and when she is filled, it overflows and runs away outside her. Think how a breeze or an echo bounces back from a smooth solid object to its source; that is how the stream of beauty goes back to the beautiful girl and sets her aflutter. It enters through her eyes, which are its natural route to the soul; there it waters the passages for the wings, starts the wings growing, and fills the soul of the loved one with love in return. Then the girl is in love, but has no idea what she loves. She does not understand, and cannot explain, what has happened to her. It is as if she had caught an eye disease from someone else, but could not identify the cause; she does not realize that she is seeing herself in the lover as in a mirror. So when the lover is near, the girl’s pain is relieved just as the lover’s is, and when they are apart she yearns as much as she is yearned for, because she has a mirror image of love in him–‘back love’– though she neither speaks nor thinks of it as love, but as friendship. Still, her desire is nearly the same as her lover’s, though weaker: he wants to see, touch, kiss, and lie down with her; and of course, as you might expect, she acts on these desires soon after they occur..
Meanwhile… swelling with desire, confused, she hugs her lover and kisses him in delight at his great good will. And whenever they are lying together she’s completely unable, for her own part, to deny the lover any favor he might beg to have… Now if victory goes to the better elements in both their minds… their life here below is one of bliss and shared understanding.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to learn this learn this lesson. I’m still learning it. It’s a mindset. And it’s huge.
When you’re picking her up, get ego out of the way.
What does that mean?
Get “I’m so awesome” depending on her liking you out of your head. And get “I suck” depending on her scoffing you out of your head.
As if you want to be liked by her SO MUCH. Who’s she to be the judge of you? You know who you are. Be the one who likes HER first. Don’t wait for her to like you.
After all, who cares what she thinks of you? Like yourself. That’s all you need. Then you can worry about liking her.
What is it about ego that trips us up? Maybe it makes us focused on how we look on the outside, rather than who we really are from the inside. Not sure.
Just give her feeling good. Not in order to be liked. Not to kiss her ass. But, just to give. No strings attached. Not to get a trophy. Not to “get” her. Just to spread the good “spirit” you feel within to the world. ‘Cause it’s overflowing anyway.
We all want to feel important. But just as a gentleman lets a woman enter a building first, and lets her come first in bed, let her feel this first during a pickup. Give feeling good to her.
Here’s an article Neil Strauss wrote. It’s from his website www.neilstrauss.com. Through his experience he found there’s one, and only one, way to breakup. It’s so excellent I posted it verbatim below. He wrote it July 1, 2011:
How to Breakup
A few weeks ago, in the Comments section, I promised to write a full post on how to break up with a girlfriend or boyfriend.
After learning The Game, I became great at getting into relationships. But I never learned how to get out of them. As a result, I ended up spending as long trying to get out of some relationships as I actually spent in them. A few of these situations became ugly: I remember a cast member of The Pick-Up Artist driving me to an ex-girlfriend’s house who was drunk, had a gun in her hand, and was threatening to kill herself.
So, through trial and error—mostly error—I came to learn that there is one, and only one, way to break up. This doesn’t mean that there will be no tears and no pain, but it does guarantee there will be less than any other method.
Step One
Be Decisive: A lot of people are wishy-washy about ending a relationship. They think they want to break up, then as soon as there’s a little distance or drama or a bad date, they panic, worry that they made a mistake, and get back together again. This can drag on for months, sometimes years. So, first, make sure this is something you really want to do, that this really is the wrong person or relationship for you or that this person is psychologically incapable of having a healthy relationship.
Step Two
Communicate Directly and In Person: Next, sit down with them in person. I advise listing their good qualities first to them, not because you need to build up their self-esteem, but because they’re probably going to know what’s coming after you say the word “but” and this gives them a little time to prepare themselves emotionally. Even if it isn’t a shock to them—in fact, even if it’s something they want too–the human ego is such that being the person who breaks up is much easier than being the one broken up with. (At least initially, but more on that later.) Afterward, answer any and all questions as gently and honestly as possible. It’s okay if you shed some tears yourself in the process. This next point applies to a specific few of you, but, no, you are not allowed to have sex “one last time” after breaking up.
Step Three
Give A Grace Period: Tell your now-ex that you can’t see each other after today, but you will be available by phone or text any time he or she wants to call, to ask questions, or even to yell at you for the next week or two weeks. If you are living with the person, then obviously you will have to also allow a week or two for you or them to move out or find a new place. If one of you can avoid the house during this process, this is preferable. Either way, in this period, don’t be an asshole and start going on dates. You’ve waited this long; you can wait another week or two.
Step Four
End Communication: Explain also in your initial discussion that after the two-week grace period ends, then a no-contact rule will go into effect until you both have fully let go. Tell them that if they call or text after that, as hard as it’s going to be for you, you’re not going to respond so that you can allow yourself and her to move on. Remember that every time you communicate with an ex in the throes of a breakup, it resets the clock on their (and often your) recovery time.
Step Five
Stick To It: This is the most difficult part of the whole process. Often, even if you want them to leave, as soon as they actually move on—not just leave, but stop having strong feelings for you—most people experience the pain and separation anxiety of the loss. This is when many people get weak, start to obsess about the person they broke up with, and try to win them back. (Men tend to do this more than women—my pet theory is that it equates in the subconscious to the fear of losing one’s mother’s love as a child). Some people like to repeat the words of the Sting song in their head: “If you love someone, set them free.”
In addition, not only are you not allowed to have direct communication at this stage, but passive contact is also forbidden. This means, no checking their Facebook and Twitter feeds or profiles. It’s always best that neither of you knows what the other is doing: don’t be an emotional masochist.
Step Six
Be Aware of the Process: According to the Kubler-Ross model of grief, expect the person to go through the following stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. For most people, the bargaining phase is the most difficult to not give in to: often, the other person will invent some highly plausible pretext (something they left at your house, important work advice they need, etc.) to talk to you again. Stay steadfast, and if it’s something they absolutely need or can’t figure out without you, determine a way for them to get it that doesn’t involve either of you speaking or seeing each other.
Step Seven
Move On: First of all, not everyone is capable or wants to be friends with their ex’s. But when is it right to get back in contact with an ex if you do want to be friends with them? There are different theories on this: some say when you’re both in a new relationship, others say it takes half the time you dated someone to get over them. But the right time is simply when you stop thinking about when the right time is to get in contact with them—and so do they. The right time is when neither of you has anything you need, want, or expect emotionally from the other person. Then, for the first time, when a real friendship develops, you can both honestly accept and express your responsibility for what went wrong in the relationship, rather than blaming the other person.
There’s a lot of stuff out there on how to be more successful with women. Where do you begin? I’ve gone through a lot of it, and not all of it is created equal. I made a my personal list of what I think is the best, what’s okay, and what I liked the least. You can find it here.
For now, here’s a quick overview of how to cut through all the crap.
First, start with an overview:
Double Your Dating ebook, David DeAngelo – Great overview on attraction.
The Game, Neil Strauss – Inspires you for what’s possible with women.
Mystery Method, Mystery – The theory and big picture behind that possibility. Watch VH-1 Pickup Artist on Amazon if you want to see the theory in action.
Second, PRACTICE. These products will help you do just that.
Rules of the Game, Neil Strauss – forces you to get out into the field… but only for 30 days
Charismatic Conversations, Lance Mason – THE BEST to help you get success. This product emphasizes the attract stage. Later on, I’d recommend Zero Drama Dating & 60 Minute Seductions for seduction and dating multiple women.
30/30 Club, Brad P – picks up where Rules of The Game left off. It will take you to mastery level. Forces you to make 30 approaches per month for 1 year. Online coaches to help you along the way. You get every one of his products, including his fashion stuff.
Third, while you’re out practicing, especially with the help of the 30/30 Club, you’ll have time to work on your sexual skills and inner-game. In my opinion, these are some of the best products to help you do just that.
Sex:
Sexual Mastery, Alex Allan
Give Women Wild Screaming Orgasms, Hot Phone Sex, Advanced Sexual Hypnosis, David Shade – in that order.
Secrets of Sensual Lovemaking, Tom Leonardi
How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time, Nora Hayden
Inner-Game/Masculinity:
Inner Game
Way of the Superior Man, David Deida
How to Want What You Have, Timothy Miller
Awareness, Anthony DeMello
Masculinity
No More Mr. Nice Guy, Robert Glover
Iron John, Robert Bly
Being the Strong Man A Woman Wants, Elliot Katz
Skills
When I Say No I Feel Guilty, Manuel J. Smith – great on assertiveness.
How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie – great on general social skills.
Finally, there are three big areas of life to get together: health, wealth, and relationships. As your success with women increases, here are some products to help you get the two other areas of life under control, too.
Health: p90x, Tony Horton & Beachbody
Wealth:
Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki
MarketAmerica.com, JR Ridinger
Ultimately, the change will happen not through products, but PRACTICE. Practice is the best “product” you can get. And it’s free.
Let’s talk about “Last Minute Resistance” for a sec.
There’s a myth about this.
The myth is you have to deal with a woman’s last minute resistance to having sex with you right before sex.
Of course getting that last minute resistance does happen.
But if you deal with last minute resistance EARLIER in your game, by eliminating the word “slut” from your vocabulary, you won’t have to deal with the resistance so late.
Often times her resistance has to do with not feeling comfortable enough having sex after meeting you so soon.
She doesn’t want to be seen as a “slut.” If she resists, it makes her feel like she’s not being slutty.
She needs to feel like it “just happened”…
you’re not going to judge her…
her friends aren’t going to judge her…
you’re not going to never call her again…
you’re not going to broadcast the news over the internet.
So, make it clear having sex is AWESOME! It DOES NOT EQUAL slut. And take the decision-making process out of her hands. YOU take the lead, so she doesn’t have to take responsibility for it. Make it so that she can tell her friends “it just happened” or “it was his fault.”
Most important, make it clear earlier during your comfort-building conversation you respect women who are adventurous, spontaneous, who love sex. Plant that seed early on and she’ll be less likely to resist sex later on at the last minute.
When you’re NON-JUDGMENTAL, you AVOID last minute resistance, and you make her feel comfortable with sex.
But that’s not the only reason you should eliminate the word “slut” from your vocabulary.
Honest-to-God the whole concept is…
Bullshit.
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.
BULLSHIT!
There’s no equivalent word for a man. I mean the word is derogatory. It’s an insult for women. What word is there in our language to insult men for sleeping with lots of women?
What’s that you say?
Male slut? Pimp? Ladies’ Man?
Compliments. All of ’em.
Why? Why is it a compliment for men to sleep with lots of women but it’s wrong for women to have that same freedom?
In logic, when two premises collide like this, it’s called inconsistency. Inconsistency is an invalid argument.
Language is funny. You can actually create a reality out of language.
What do I mean?
Man and woman having sex. Sheer fact. Nothing good, nothing bad about it.
Then you apply the word “slut” to the woman.
All of a sudden, it makes a woman feel uneasy, nervous, guilty… basically like shit… for something that’s…
JUST FUCKING SEX!
A FACT of life… that BOTH the man and woman are doing.
A fact of life that’s creative, pleasurable, brings life into the world, binds people together, loving.
A fact of life that’s GORGEOUS.
Slut = moralistic judgment based on a human construction, not reality.
The word “slut” is bullshit. The sooner you get rid of that thinking, the sooner women will want to fuck your brains out.
Make her feel safe. A no-slut zone does just that.
Cocky-funny, for those of you who don’t know, is the technique David DeAngelo made famous in his ebook “Double Your Dating.” The idea isn’t to kiss girls’ asses. It’s to play a certain character. A guy who’s cocky, and pushes the girl away, playfully.
Basically, it’s banter. But it’s magic when it comes to creating sexual tension.
Totally counter-intuitive, because you’d think being the perfect gentleman and being super-nice and perfect attracts chicks. Uh-uh. The reality is pushing her away, being the cocky guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously is what attracts women.
Especially when you first approach women. Banter. Within the first two sentences. You wouldn’t think it works. It’s scary because you think you’re being mean or something. But believe you me. It’s magic.
If you want to see cocky-funny in action, check out Han Solo with Leia, especially in Empire Strikes Back.
Or Rhett with Scarlett in Gone With the Wind.
Sexual tension, pulling her in and pushing her away and believing you’re the catch, is the key to creating attraction with women.
This insight was a game changer for me. I learned it during a seminar at my Venusian Arts Coaching Training Program.
The idea is simple. Instead of out right criticizing someone, follow this “formula” instead.
First, praise. Sincerely. That means finding a positive detail about someone and praising it. A generic “yeah, yeah that’s good” won’t cut it. An honest-to-God detail you saw that you truly admired will. What if you can’t find a good detail? You CAN. There’s ALWAYS good to be found.
Second, correct. Now you can point out what it is that could be improved on.
Finally, praise again. Don’t end on a negative note. End on a positive note.
Most people just out right criticize each other, and find fault, instead of considering how it might make that person feel. Outright criticism puts a person on the defensive, feeds arguments, hurts feelings, and just plain breeds negativity.
But if you find the good in a person–genuinely–then gently point out what could be “corrected,” and finally emphasize the good again, it makes it more likely you or me or any one of us will listen to the “correction.” And, maybe best of all, it forces us to see the good (not just the bad) in each other.
Inevitably, we’ll have conflicts with our women. This technique is one great way to dealing with those. Agree or praise, then assert your view. Keep agreeing or praising, and gently asserting. It defuses negativity, allows a person to be “heard,” which in turn allows you to be heard.
In that way, it’s a great way of dealing not with just women, but with conflicts in general.
It’s easy just to tear down. But in the long run, it’s so much simpler to be on a person’s side.
Yet the pickup community LOVES it. Holy moly. It’s like their religion.
Listen to how they use it to explain approach anxiety.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, our ancestors used to live in caves and in small communities. If you approached a woman back then and it went badly, you were ostracized. A gene for approach anxiety was created in the body of all men. That’s why today we experience approach anxiety, even though we no longer live in caves or small communities. The End.
Does anyone else see what a load of CRAP this is?
First of all, the first humans originated in the open air and deserts of Africa, not in caves.
The first humans weren’t in caves. Photo Credit: worldofweirdthings.com
But even that’s not 100% fact. Just speculation based on where bones have been found and on genetic deduction.
Second, which ancestors? Australopithecus afarensis? Homo habilis? Homo erectus? Homo heidelbergensis?
Let me pause here and say there is evidence the first homo sapien population was riskily (if that’s a word) small.
One theory says our population may have fallen as low as 10,000 people because of drought, famine, and epidemics. The theory is based on how little diversity we have in our genes compared to our nearest cousins, the primates.
Based on genetic deduction, apparently our gene pool had shrank so low that when our species expanded again, all descendants carried copies of the same limited amount of genes. That’s why they say we may have descended from a founding population of only 50 people.
I love this idea, even if it’s speculation. It shows how all of us humans have so much more IN COMMON than we have differences. That smokin’ hot woman over there? Part of our close-knit family of humanity. Nice.
And it’s also true that the population of modern humans living on this planet boggles.
But to say all men now carry a gene for approach anxiety as a result?
HAHAHAHA!
Don’t make me laugh.
That leads to the third thing.
Third, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to have a gene for approach anxiety.
Why?
Genes are simply a long sequence of nucleotides.
I’m about to geek out on you here, so watch out.
There are only four nucleotides, identified by the letters A, T, C, and G. There are thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of nucleotides in a gene and in a particular order: AATCCGGCATT and so on. I got this all from Harvard geneticist R.C. Lewontin (p. 46-50 of “Biology as Ideology”).
The long sequence serves two functions.
First, it’s a BLUEPRINT. Other long molecules copy the original sequence of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s. These molecules are the amino acids of a protein. They in turn make up our cells, tissues, enzymes, hormones.
A fascinating view of genes. Photo Credit: virtualmedicalcentre.com
Cool, right?
Second, genes turn on and off the production of proteins. For example, if a lactose enters the body, the gene will turn on the production of a certain protein to break down the lactose and use it as a source of energy.
Therefore, GENES ARE JUST A BLUEPRINT THAT ALLOW THE BODY TO MANUFACTURE PROTEIN!
That’s it.
So where the HELL is approach anxiety to be found?
Or the gene for alcoholism, artistic talent, homosexuality, “being good with women,” or whatever vice or virtue people try to imagine there’s a gene for?
Fourth, let’s say there was a gene for approach anxiety. There’s not, but let’s just imagine for shits and giggles.
Can you explain to me how we would ever be able to get over the anxiety? Wouldn’t that mean that we’re then determined forever and ever to have approach anxiety? Does that mean CHOICE or environment or practice or has no role anymore in shaping our destiny?
I mean, entire CULTURES of people lack approach anxiety, so how could ALL men have a gene for approach anxiety?
Example.
I live in the beautiful state of Maine in the northeast, so not the best example. Granted. Here, people have a reputation for keeping to themselves (even though not everyone here is like that).
But people from the Midwest have told me that people there tend to be far friendlier and outgoing and have less problem approaching strangers.
The same thing goes for Cuban culture. My father, who’s visited twice, used to tell me stories about how he had trouble getting to his destination on time because Cubans would approach him on his walk and stop him just to strike up a friendly conversation. Strangers aren’t “strangers” to Cubans, but friends first.
Cubans. Photo Credit: lacertilia.com
Fifth, if our ancestors lived in such small tribes, why would they have the need to approach a woman? If you live in a small enough community, wouldn’t everyone pretty much know each other already? And didn’t many of these small tribes have arranged marriages?
The whole approach anxiety thing comes from the fact you’re approaching a complete STRANGER to “court” but who might reject you. That happens in a large environment with lots of strangers and with no such thing as arranged marriages. Namely, OUR modern, industrialized culture in the West.
I’m almost done with my rant. One more thing.
The problem with evolutionary psychology is none of us were there 200,000 years ago (approximate date of earliest Homo sapiens in Africa). So talking about it like it’s the cause of our problems today must forever be called bullshit.
Worse, if we’re not careful, we’ll project our modern prejudices into biology, and pass it off as science. What I mean is, if there’s a gene for approach anxiety, there can also be a gene for warfare, sexual inequality, racism, class, and capitalist greed. These are cultural prejudices, NOT biological facts.
Personally, evolutionary psychology had never helped me understand my own approach anxiety on any meaningful level.
Okay, I’m done.
So, why is approaching women so hard?
Well, she doesn’t know you yet. As a result, she often (not always) has a “guard” up. It’s VERY intimidating.
