Category Archives: Quotes

The Six Human Needs

Gotta share this awesome insight from Tony Robbins.

Tony Robbins Shallow Hal

Tony Robbins listening to Shallow Hal.

It not only helps with inner-game, it helps with relating with anyone, including… hot chicks. The idea: every human person has six basic human needs.

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The Six Human Needs: Certainty-Uncertainty; Importance-Connection; Giving-Growing

Now, before I dig into these, I’ve gotta share the story how Tony came up with the idea with you. ‘Cause it’s kinda cool.

How Tony Discovered This Idea

Tony had everything: riches, beautiful wife, world-leaders and world-class athletes seeking his help.

Tony Robbins On Stage

Tony was on top of the world but still felt despair.

But one day, before he was to board a plane to help another millionaire through some issues he was having, Tony felt like complete shit. He was like, “how am I gonna  help another when I’m having issues of my own?”

Oh, you’re asking why he was feeling like shit? Just discovered he had a tumor in his brain. Yeah, that’ll dampen your mood. All of a sudden, all the success in the world meant nothing. Because he wasn’t certain he was even going to live.

So, before he left for the airport, he went into the shower trying to figure out how he could shake off this funk he was in. He thought about what was really going on that was paralyzing him. Then he started thinking about what made all the people he met and helped who felt sad across the world from diverse cultures. A pattern emerged.

And he had an aha moment.

Aha Moment

Then he had an aha moment.

He realized everyone, no matter who they are, have six basic needs in common. And if these needs aren’t met, a person won’t feel happy. He could have everything in the world. If one of these are missing, he still won’t feel fulfilled.

Not all the needs were created equally, though. The last two needs are the most important. The first four have to do with ego-needs. The last two have to do with spiritual-needs.

Different people prefer the first four in different orders and in different combinations. They make the ego happy. But it’s the last two we need to be fulfilled (according to this idea at least).

Here they are:

First Two Needs: Certainty and Uncertainty

First, we need security…

Certainty and Uncertainty white pickett fence southern lagniappe

The symbol of security. We all need it.

…and we also need insecurity.

Certainty and Uncertainty Chaos

Chaos. We all need a little unpredictability, too.

Security has to do with knowing you have shelter, food on the table, health. You need basic, survival needs to be met. It’s almost like the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs 1

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The need for security/insecurity seem to correspond to Maslow’s “Basic Needs.”

At the same time, if we have too much security or certainty or predictability, things get boring. So, we also need insecurity as well.

We need variety and surprise to keep us awake, alert, adventurous.

We need both. We need both uncertainty and certainty.

Second Two Needs: Significance and Connection

Second, we need to feel important

Importance and Connection kind-of-a-big-deal

The Anchor Man feeling pretty damn significant. But it’s a need we all have: to feel important.

…and we also need to feel a sense of connection.

Importance and Connection

But there’s so much significance and individuation we can take. We also need a sense of connection, too.

The way philosopher William James put it: the deepest principle in human nature is to feel important.

William James Quote Deepest Principle

The needs for importance/connection (or love) seems to correspond to something philosopher William James once observed about human nature: all of us have a need to be appreciated.

Some examples: Look at us puas. A lot of us who got into pickup wanted to feel important. Tell me if you can relate. Part of us wanted to learn how to attract any woman we want because really we want to feel loved, or even important or appreciated.

Other examples: People who want to be famous want to feel important. People who want to win and get awards want to feel important. Achilles in Homer’s Illiad who chose a short life over a long life wanting glory over an anonymous life as a farmer wanted to be important. Celebrities, millionaires, people with high status, politicians and so forth who have distinguished themselves in some way were probably driven by this need for esteem.

Still more examples: Guys who get into gangs and threaten some poor victim at gun point. Gives them a rush of power. And importance.

Here’re some others: People who brag. People who put down others.

And even people who say please and thank-you and show kindness to each other. They’re all ways to make others or one’s self feel important.

We all need appreciation, acknowledgment, respect, praise, to feel important. Without it, we feel insignificant, like we don’t matter, like we have no value.

However, if we feel TOO important and feel TOO distinguished and TOO individuated, problems also arise.

For example, you’ll hear celebrities talk about how lonely they feel. They can’t even go out into a grocery store without being adulated. They lose a sense of connection.

michael-jackson in disguise

Michael Jackson in disguise. He had so much significance and individuation he felt separated from the world. He’d express feeling loneliness and a longing for connection.

Or a person might be so filled with self-importance, he acts like a prick and treats everyone like garbage. Again, those who murder another for attention and power take this need too far.

Basically, when we feel the distinctiveness of our individual self too much, we lose connection with other human beings. We become separate selves, and that takes us away from love and empathy.

So, that’s the fourth human need. We need love, that feeling of human connection, of empathy, of relationship. This balances out our need to feel important.

Conversely, if we’ve lost too much of ourselves in a relationship and we feel like we have no voice or identity, we need to feel important or a sense of individuation or identity to balance this fourth need out, too.

Again, the first four needs are more like ego or personality needs. They feel good. Different people prefer one of these four needs more than others. One might want to feel important the most. Another might want security the most.

Either way, let’s say we get everything our ego wishes for. Well, according to Tony, we still won’t feel a deeper fulfillment. We could still feel a darkness. And that’s where the last two needs come in.

They’re primary essential. They’re needs of the spirit. They’re what bring fulfillment. Even if we fill the first four needs and have accomplished a shit load, if we don’t meet these last two needs, we’ll still feel lost, unfulfilled, even depressed.

Third Two Needs: Giving and Growing

The last two needs is the need to give…

Actor Robin Williams Helps Build Homes

Giving: we all have a need to contribute. Here Robin Williams is giving to a community by building homes with Habitat For Humanity.

and the need to grow.

Giving and Growing buddha quote love and understanding

And we have a need to grow.

Growing means: learning, improving, becoming more and more aware. Aware of yourself as in the old Socratic saying “know thyself,” sifting away the clouds of ignorance. Awareness is probably the real goal of all spiritualities, religions, sciences, philosophies. If these don’t help us to grow in awareness, they’re useless.

Giving means: showing love, kindness, respect to all life, to your friends, to your enemies. Contributing. Helping others. Serving a greater good than yourself.

There’s an old story about Michael J. Fox. Before he learned he had Parkinsons, he had the fanciest car, the nicest house, money, status, fame. But he said he was unhappy. It wasn’t until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and began contributing to a cause larger than himself that he snapped out of his unhappiness, and felt like his life had meaning.

michael j fox in congress

Michael J. Fox once said he didn’t feel a sense of fulfillment until he was making a contribution to society. He said he didn’t get that sense of fulfillment from fame and fortune alone.

There’s something about contributing and loving that breaks us out of the shell of the ego. The shell that the Buddha once said causes all of suffering. Serving a purpose higher than ourselves breaks us from these shackles. That’s one reason why as a pua it’s so important to give back and to always leave a woman better off than your found her, you know treat everyone you come across with love and respect.

But Tony doesn’t stop there. He takes all this a step further. He says you can divide all human experience into four classes…

The Four Classes of Experience: Despair To Happiness

The first class, fulfillment and happiness, is when you meet all six needs. The second class isn’t bad. It’s when you’re feeling pain, but you’re about to make a breakthrough in life, or a transformation. It’s kind of like growing pains. Being in a cocoon before bursting free. But the third and fourth classes is where unhappiness lie.

Here they are:

First Class Experience: you do things that feel good, that are good for you, serves others, and serves the greater good.

Experience First Teaching

The First Class of Experience: feeling good and serving a greater good. Robin Williams’s character from “Dead Poets” society loved teaching and it also served a greater good.

Second Class Experience: you do things that feel bad, but are good for you, serves others, and serves the greater good.

Experience Second Abu

Second Class Experience: painful lessons, growing pains, and doing the right thing even though you don’t want to. Here, Abu from Disney’s Aladdin didn’t want to give his bread away, but he did anyway.

Third Class Experience: you do things that feel good, but they’re not good for you, they don’t serve others, and they don’t serve the greater good.

Experience Third large_junkfood

Third Class Experience: doing what feels good, but not serving a greater good.

Fourth Class Experience: you do things that feel bad, and they’re not good for you, don’t serve others, and don’t serve the greater good.

Experience Fourth Crack

Fourth Class Experience: Doing stuff that doesn’t really feel good and doesn’t serve a greater good either.

Okay, okay, you’re saying. What the hell does this have to do with attracting and succeeding with women? Like I said at the beginning of this, this not only helps with inner-game but also in how to have kick-ass relations with anyone, including women.

How This All Relates To Attracting Women

‘Cause the ultimate attractive man doesn’t sit on the couch munching Doritos and playing video games all day. He makes giving and and growing his priority. He does things that put him into the first and second class of experience.

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Yes, this is here for eye candy. But the words are relevant, too. Right?

And here’s the cool thing. If you feel good from within, you naturally emit good feeling, and you can give “feeling good” to others. When she feels “feeling good” around you, she feels pleasure and links pleasurable feelings with you. And we’re all attracted to pleasure, right? You might even say attracting women really starts from within, from getting your inner-game together.

The other four needs teaches us about outer-game. That is, if you were to consciously meet her first four “ego” needs, you’d draw her to the pleasurable feelings she’s feeling around you.

For example, make her feel important (appreciate her) AND honestly connect with her. Give her a sense of safety, security, protection AND unpredictability, like surprising her, sweeping her off her feet, making her laugh.

What about meeting her two “spiritual” needs?

Well, she can only walk through that door herself. That’s something only we ourselves can do.

Conclusion

Anyway, those are the six human needs. Again, the last two needs can strengthen our inner game. The first four human needs can help us look beyond a women’s physical beauty, and connect to the human being inside her.

If you want to learn more about the spiritual (or “inner-game”) needs of growing and giving I’d recommend these two phenomenal books: “Awareness & The Way To Love,” by Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello, and “How To Want What You Have,” by psychologist Timothy Miller.

As for how to meet a woman’s first four needs, that’s what game is all about.

Flirt and play-fight to meet her need for unpredictability. Build comfort and BE (not just demo) the DHV switch of a protector and survivor to meet her need for security or survival.

Qualify and appreciate her to meet her need to feel acknowledged. Create an emotional connection with her to meet her need for connection.

And let me ask you with these last three questions:

  • What’s something you love to do that helps your growth and serves a greater good?
  • How can you start giving and showing more love to others, rather than just serving the ego?
  • What’s something you hate to do but helps your growth and serves a greater good?
  • What’s something you love to do that doesn’t help your growth or serve a greater good?

Together, you and I, if we can weed out what’s not serving our growth and what’s not serving others… and if we can do more of what serves the greater good… we’ll be on the path towards that first-class kind of experience Tony was talking about.

Then maybe we can share the light we feel inside with any beautiful women we meet might along our way.

Here’s a Ted Talk where Tony talks about these needs. Check it out (about 22 min):

Quote In Response to Elliot Rodger

Elliot Rodger. Credit: http://media.independent.com

Apparently, Elliot Rodger (that 22-year-old who went on the killing spree) was a failed pickup artist. He posted on PUAHate. In fact, I’ve heard PUAHate has been shut down because he was posting about taking revenge on women, and guys were cheering him on.

To a certain extent, I can empathize with Elliot. I’ve gotten rejected by women a lot. I’ve felt like an outsider and alone. It feels rotten.

But here’s the big question. What would prevent you and I from becoming an Elliot?

I think it has to do with a huge lesson I learned from Mystery and Neil Strauss. If something goes wrong in an interaction with a woman, it’s never the woman’s fault. It’s always our fault. It’s not that the girl is a bitch or a snob or a slut. She just responds to our skill level. Improve your skill level, watch your success rate improve.

Isn’t that what Jesus taught? Everyone was about to stone that woman for cheating on her husband. He asked them to look at themselves and see their own sin before condemning the sin in others.

Ultimately, that’s what pickup is about. It’s less about “getting” women (although attracting women is awesome). It’s more about looking at yourself in the process to become a better man.

Well, how do you improve your skill level, you ask? Lemme share this quote:

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Elliot may have given up, then blamed the outside world for his failures, rather than looking to himself. I can understand his hurt. But blaming seems to blind us, while looking to ourselves wakes us. That’s the big lesson I’m taking from this terrible tragedy.

Quote – Wayne Dyer

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From a higher place – peace. Ego aside.

I came across this passage the other day. Struck me. Wanted to share with you.

“Your highest self only wants you to be at peace. It does not judge, compare or demand that you defeat anyone, or be better than anyone. It only wants you to be at peace. Whenever you are about to act, ask yourself this question: “Is what I am about to say or do going to bring me peace?” If the answer is yes, then go with it and you will be allowing yourself the wisdom of your highest self. If the answer is no, then remind yourself that it is your ego at work.

“The ego promotes turmoil because it wants to substantiate your separateness from everyone, including God. It will push you in the direction of judgment and comparison, and cause you to insist on being right and best. You know your highest self by listening to the voice that only wants you to be at peace.” – Wayne Dyer, “Manifest Your Destiny,” p. 21.

Getting ego out of the way helps you get along with any person you meet. Including women.

Quote – Plato: The Desire for Immortality

For among animals the principle is the same as with us, and mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal. And this is possible in one way only: reproduction, because it always leaves behind a new young one in place of the old.

…it is for the sake of immortality that everything shows this zeal, which is Love.

Look, if you will, how human beings seek honor… wanting to be famous and ‘to lay glory immortal forever’

I believe that anyone will do anything for the sake of immortal virtue and the glorious fame that follows; and the better the people, the more they will do, for they are all in love with immortality. – Plato, Symposium 207d – 208e

Everyone wants to feel important. She has that same vulnerable human need just like you.

Creating Desire in Women: Quote – Plato

“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.”

– Plato, Phaedrus, 255a – 256a

Men are like Fire, Women are like Water

“Men are like fire–quick to ignite and quick to extinguish. Women are like water–slow to boil but keep on boiling” – a Taoist expression as quoted by Sex Coach Kim Amami, from July/August 2012 Playboy

We’ll be better lovers if we can learn to prolong our arousal.

How?

Relax the muscles around the groin, and breathe out the tension. The tenser we are around the groin, the closer we get pushed over the edge. The more relaxed we are, the longer we’ll last.

Getting Picked up…From A Woman’s Point of View

This comes from “Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping,” by Elisabeth Eaves.

Listen to what she says about how it might feel like to get picked up… from a woman’s point of view.

…occasionally strangers started to talk to me for no apparent reason… my usual reaction was embarrassment for having drawn attention and annoyance that my daydreaming or reading had been interrupted…

…I didn’t understand his attention. I still thought myself invisible to the world of strangers and adults…

The next year… I started to put things together…

…I broke into a jog because I was running late and wanted to get to the school where my friends would be.

A carful of boys suddenly came careening around the bend… As it passed a young man with shaggy hair bellowed out the window: “Fabulous set of tah-tahs, baby!”

I slowed to a walk and looked behind me, trying to fathom whom he was talking to, but there was no one else around. I realized, slowly, that it must have been me. I kept walking up toward the school, thinking about what he had said. I had never heard the term “tah-tahs” before. It sounded like a stupid, babyish word… But I knew instinctively what he was talking about…

Before then I had thought that effort or at least some sort of consciousness on my part might lead to sexual attention. Now I realized that I–my head, that is, my brain, my thoughts–had nothing to do with it. I looked down at my white turtleneck and pink jeans and saw my body in a new light. It was an object of interest to others that was entirely independent from who I was. And now my body became a new kind of object of interest to me. I had done nothing to achieve it. I couldn’t escape it. Yet it had clearly made those boys–or were they grown men?–behave the way they had. I felt like a child who had been handed a heavy sword and told to learn how to use it before she cut off her foot. Some time after the car had gone by, when I had put this all together, I laughed with a mixture of flattered pride and disbelief.

The incident… united my internal and external sexual worlds. I was familiar, after all, with sex, in the sense you can be familiar with anything you read about in a book… I thought about sex frequently… and I masturbated often. But up until the day at the bus stop I had not connected what went on in my head with tangible experience. Having sex was a goal, but in the abstract, in the same way I thought I might someday be a lawyer. I had assumed there were many hurdles between me and it. I had not yet discerned the link between my private thoughts and the way others saw me. And then suddenly it became clear that there were no hurdles at all. Sex was there for the taking. It was up to me.

It was a revelation… boys were now sexually available to me… I started to become dimly aware of an unwritten sexual rule book. I was stunned when I discovered that boys and girls were expected to behave differently. It violated my sense of fair play.

Here’s some things I took away from this.

1. Beauty is superficial. Don’t be interested in a woman just because she was dealt a good pair of cards. Be interested in her person. Let her earn your interest. Ways to do this: Qualify her. Neg/Banter with her.

2. This woman was shocked to learn that she didn’t have to work to get sex. All she had to do was look good. Be different. Desire her if she has a brain or a positive outlook, not just because she looks good.

3. Women are as sexual and horny (if not more) than us. She wants sex. There’s outdated, unwritten rules that makes it more difficult for women to be as sexually free as us. Don’t play by those unwritten rules. Let the sexual animal in her come out to play.

4. Oh, and it probably does feel like an interruption when we talk to her. That’s okay. Have an interesting topic of conversation prepared. You could also call this “DHV.” If she seems cool, let your interest be known based on that, and invite her out.

3 Things Girls Look For

3 things girls look for most in a man: a great smile, to be made to laugh, to feel a connection.
~Mystery, from a Fall 1998 post.

From: Mystery’s Field Reports from 1998-2006, gotten as a bonus with the book “Revelations” from Venusianarts.com. The Reports were written before Mystery invented The Mystery Method while he was learning about women.

In this quote, he was still figuring out how to be successful with women. During a game called “Hot Seat” with some girls at a party, they said this to him. It gave him an “aha” moment.