Grow Your Game

Imagine that pickup, outer game, is like the leaves of the tree… what people experience on the surface.

It’s extremely helpful for most men to learn the outer game skills (Doing). Sometimes you guys just need something to get started with (”just tell me what to do and I’ll give it a shot”). Sometimes it’s at least a place to start by practicing the traits and appearance of the “alpha male” in hopes of eventually becoming (Being) him. Over time this can help to shift you on an internal level and eventually bring you to a place of mastery. It’s the “fake-it-till-you-make-it” approach, or, as we call it at AMP, the “Top/Down Approach.”

The limitation of this approach goes something like this:

Guy A has a breakthrough with women. Guys B, C, and D enviously study his behaviors in hopes of getting the same results. In a lot of ways this is healthy role modeling, except that, in no time, these guys are just mimicking his external behaviors (the Doing) without exploring what actually shifted in Guy A’s perspectives such that his new actions arose naturally (the Being). It’s like they’re trying to staple the leaves of some other guy’s tree onto their tree…without addressing the roots that gave rise to those leaves in the first place.

I know men who do incredible things with women and don’t have a bunch of funny stories to tell, no magic tricks or nothing. Some of them don’t say a word. There’s no cookie cutter mold for you to fit into to “succeed with women”.

That’s the difference between Top/Down & Bottom/Up (Inner Game) development. In the Bottom/Up approach, which is what AMP focuses on, we shift who we’re Being, and our own unique behaviors (the Doing) arise naturally, as an authentic expression of who we are.

Both can be effective, especially when practiced in tandem.

A Realization

One unhealthy thing I see again and again is men worrying far too much about their appearance.

But I’m not talking about what they look like physically – it’s more important than that.

Men worry about giving an ‘appearance’ that they’re not ‘too interested’ in a girl. They try to learn how to say things in a certain way and they even learn things to say to make themselves look ‘disinterested’.

They’re not trying to let go of their need for approval. They’re just trying to gloss over it. The difference is huge.

If you’re trying to pretend on the outside that you don’t need a woman’s approval, while you’re desperate for it on the inside, you’re being inauthentic – you’re tying to present a fake reality. Women are really sensitive to this, so you’re screwed! They can feel it!

I remember when I was getting started, I was desperate for women’s approval. It didn’t matter how I said something, it didn’t matter what I said, and it didn’t matter how much I pretended I didn’t want their approval – they could always feel it. And unless they were as needy as I was (or more!), it was a no-go.

Making a Change

What I really wanted was healthy, non-needy women. To do that, I had to purge my own neediness – I had to remove my burning need for women’s approval. I had to become authentically whole, not just well-practiced at trying to convey some alien persona.

So how the hell do you do that?

Well, I didn’t have to do it alone. I had a fantastic coach, and he gave me a pretty far-out assignment:

I had to practice being fully in love with my life, even if no woman ever found me attractive again.

That was a lot to take on! No woman EVER finding me attractive … again? But I was ready to try anything, so I went with it. I took the task on fully, with all my energy. I stopped approaching and dating women, and just sat in the fire of my need, fully feeling and burning through all my attachments. I stopped resisting it, like I always had, and just allowed myself to feel it fully.

And you know what? It wasn’t that bad.

There was a feeling of exhilarating freedom that arose from fully embracing my own neediness. The more I embraced it, the less of a grip it had on me. And after a few months, and some deep emotional releases, I found myself on the other side of a neediness, an insecurity, that had been running my life for as long as I could remember.

Women who I had been absolutely desperate to date in the past – and who didn’t want to date me – were now experiencing me completely differently. They’d say “Wow, you feel good!”. They became open to me, more than ever before, energetically, emotionally, and sexually.

It’s not that I was doing anything differently. It wasn’t some new gimmick I’d learned. I’d done the work INSIDE MYSELF to remove my neediness, and now they were throwing themselves at me!

Best of all: I wasn’t putting up any appearance. I was simply being my new self.

First Steps

Let me share with you one of our concepts that’ll help you to make the change. It’s the second level of our Inner Game Training Model, and when I first discovered it, it was like the warm light of the sun in what were formerly gloomy, gray, dark waters. I call it ‘Appreciation’.

I used to go to parties, and be a SHARK. I’d walk around looking from woman to woman – this girl is kinda cute … but she’s got a fat ass. Next. Other guys stopped being humans: they were “obstacles”, “competition” or “cockblocks”.

I can spot these guys today by how little they seem to notice me. They’ve got a tight, contracted and critical gaze. They’re trying to ‘get’ the next ‘hot chick’. In reality, only men with a deep and gaping need come across this way.

The confident, authentic men are Appreciating.

Next time you’re at a party of social event, practice smiling and making real contact with absolutely everyone you meet. Guys, girls, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Find something to appreciate about each.

Notice how the whole world seems to open up to you. You let yourself go of the attachment of things going a certain way, and you free yourself up to enjoying yourself. But also notice: the women who see you having fun, celebrating them and everyone else, are getting ‘turned on’, and are starting to notice YOU.

Who needs to shark when the fish are all coming to you?