Learning to meet and strike up interesting, attractive conversations with women is a skill.
It’s not hard to find very good clear information about the skills needed - how to build attraction, how to kiss a girl, how to take and follow up a phone number.
But there’s a relative lack of good information on how to actually acquire these skills. Beyond ‘go out and practice’, there’s little solid and practical advice on how to learn and implement them.
So today I’m going to tell you about one particularly useful technique I used.
Focusing on Failure
When asked to name the most useful skill a pass receiver could have, Otto Graham (one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time) said: “A damn short memory”.
What did he mean? He meant the ability to instantly forget about a pass that was badly fumbled. The ability to make a small adjustment, and then let the ‘error’ part of trial and error go, rather than beating yourself up about having made a mistake, or focussing massively on the ‘failure’.
There’s an over-emphasis in The Community on ’sticking points’ - areas where you’re tackling a specific weakness in your skill set. Trying to change specific points is great, but many guys lose sight of the real goal.
Learning to pick up women isn’t about eradicating all the ‘mistakes’ you make - it’s about amplifying everything that you do right. It’s about focusing on the attractive parts of who you are and what you do, not about being endlessly worried about getting some part ‘wrong’.
If a guy’s been playing his failures in his mind over and over again to try and get rid of them, then when he sees the woman of his dreams, what goes through his mind? Is he reminded of his previous successes? Does he get a boost of confidence and self-esteem that’s instantly attractive?
Of course not. His mind dredges up all his blow outs. All the times he was rejected. If he gets the courage to approach at all, he’s nervous, and it shows - what better way to kill attraction?
Making the Glass Delusionally Full
Here’s a simple trick for getting out of this habit. Having tried it, I was blown away by the results.
Every night when I came home after going out to meet women, I’d write an insanely positive entry in my journal. “She punched me and threw a drink over me” became “I had a refreshing time after I spiked a girl’s emotions”. “I kissed a fat girl” became “I ran some really solid comfort and qualifying material on a girl with low self-esteem”.
I simply refused to write down anything negative. If anything I couldn’t spin positively happened, I just wouldn’t write it down.
Why?
Two reasons.
Firstly: it focuses you absolutely on what works. I’d start to see patterns in what I was doing that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. As a joke, I tried to kiss a girl I’d only met 30 seconds previously. It worked. So I tried it again. It didn’t work but got me a positive reaction. Fast escalation thus became part of my arsenal, even though previously I’d always been told it was wrong - apparently it fitted with me, and my personality.
Secondly it builds up all the right and most helpful memories in your head. There’s some pretty compelling evidence now that when your brain retrieves most memories, it deletes the old and creates a new one. If you start to consciously retrieve certain memories, and put a positive spin on them, they start to be remembered that way - as positive times you interacted with women, rather than negative ones.
Keeping focussed on your successes, and not allowing yourself to consciously register ‘failures’ as anything other than signals you might benefit from making a small adjustment will put you on the fast track for getting great results. And what’s more, it’ll help keep the whole process a lot of fun - a vital component in giving you the consistency you need in meeting your goals.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
This is something I’m definitely going to try. For years I’ve been afraid of being overly positive because I’ve been afraid that I might be kidding myself. But that ‘realistic’ approach hasn’t been working for me. So this year it’s all about being insanely positive.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I never thought about it but this is actually a great idea!!!
My journal on the lounge is filled with me bashing myself. I will try that from now on.