Being Yourself vs Being the "Man"

[Zen]

For some of us, as I'm careful not to generalize, we do not initially encompass certain "man" traits such as speaking less/slow,being sexy, sprezzatura etc. Thanks to Chases's insights however, I assume most of us look back at our "old-selves" and cringe a bit. Lesson(s) learned. Immediately, we model our personalities to an external source to implement "man" traits.

I remember reading a fellow member's thread on authenticity and acting. Although "acting" may be a fairly crass term to describe this, the fact remains that we are modeling our personality to an unnatural source. That said, I am not criticizing this. I'm sure many of you, including myself, saw positive reactions to our change. The important process here is finding the right balance. Here I will briefly discuss the lessons I learned, it may or may not reflect your experiences.

When I first stumbled onto Chases's websites, I saw immense flaws in my character. Almost everything that Chase advocated not to do, I've been doing for my whole life. Consequently, I went through an immense change in just a few months. This change stemmed from a fundamental change in beliefs as well as awareness that Chases's insights taught me. That summer, when I went home from college, I became a real man. I was more proactive and saw more results than I ever did.

The fact remains, however, that I was meta aware of my consciousness and actions all the time. I was putting conscious effort to maintain my persona. A testimony to this was my avoidance of alcohol; I know many discuss avoiding alcohol when going out as it ruins your game, but more so for me, I was avoiding alcohol so that my "new" persona could stay intact. Simply put, I was being unnatural.

Flash to a couple months later, now, after a bumpy semester at college, I believe I transitioned to a new, perhaps better phase. Perhaps I took Chases's article on how "just be yourself" is the worst advice ever too seriously and rationalized my significant change that way. Nevertheless, my natural intuition seemed to tell me that this way of living, consciously modeling my personality from an unnatural source, as something unhealthy and unsustainable.

Thus when I came back home for winter break, I began to accept all my truths, good and bad (though more bad than good) and just really coming in terms with myself wholly; not simply saying "hey this trait of mine is bad so I should change it". I went through a phase of being myself, which felt simultaneously painful and enlightening, with the sole aims of truly embracing the essence of my character.

By recognizing yourself to a full extent, not just logically but emotionally, I believe then it is the right time to implement the "man" traits as described. Because truly, I find that I cannot connect with people if I'm not fundamentally natural. Nowadays, I "try" to be natural (slightly ironic); for example, many of things I literally forbade myself to do during the summer but felt that it was a natural behavior, I let it out now. Vulnerability, as Chase teaches, is an important and intrinsic tool of human connection. People love not the perfections but the edges of one's character. During summer, by modeling my personality from an unnatural source, I was being too perfect - it all felt too unnatural.

The lesson is this: Be yourself, embrace your flaws, truly emotionally come into terms with it first. I believe too many people try so hard to implement these "man" traits that they lose all their vulnerability - an important connection tool as discussed. Once you act natural, project a natural vibe, that doesn't mean you lose all awareness of these traits. They're still all in that big head of yours . For example, I'm of the ilk of talking too much; with the knowledge that chase has given me and my understanding of social dynamics, my intuition naturally informs me whether I should say the thing that is naturally popping into my head or not. Innately, i would say the thing, but by understanding the trait of talking less, I resist the temptation while being natural.Thus by being aware of these traits while fully embracing your innate character, you exude an aura of naturalness while encompassing knowledge of certain traits that make you a powerful man. The synergy of both perspectives conglomerate into the goldilocks balance between your natural essence and your desired traits.

Final words, I know many of us are intrigued by the concept of pick up. It is after all a paradigm shift, and once a paradigm shifts, the world will never seem the same. Thus great power comes great responsibility; the responsibility of being yourself.

Here's to being the man we all desire to be while maintaining the natural essence of our being.

-Zen

 

[Rasui]

Another thing Chase is always advocating is balance in all things, and it sounds like you've found that. Initially you went too far the other way, which is very common, and now you've dialed it back to a comfortable medium.

 

[Garrett]

Zen,

This is actually shocking because I've gone through the EXACT same thing! Check out my post on Embracing Emotions under the Off Topic category, it's quite similar and you can definitely relate!

Chase, if you read this, I don't mean this as an insult, but your article about not being yourself may need some revision because people tend to take this to the extreme and go stoic and then they give up or they finally reach an epiphany where they understand that yes, you need to be yourself, otherwise you won't come off as natural. Your interpretation of being yourself is that people are okay with who they are and don't want to improve/are complainers. On the contrary, most people assume that being yourself means that you can improve and make adjustments (fixer), but be natural in who you are and embrace your emotions/who you are within. Chase, seeing as a lot of people really buy into your teachings, myself included, we take that post about not being yourself really personally, thus causing us to behave unnaturally/extreme. I'd be one to assume that I may have interpretted your post incorrectly, but if others are going through the same thing, then maybe it's something to consider, Chase. Perhaps if you defined your view of being yourself, others would understand that you are coming from a different perspective on what most people understand it to mean? In fact, because of that post, I almost never came back to Girls Chase because of the hell I went through. I couldn't build connections with people, I felt stoic, unproductive, emotionless, extreme, robotic, just terrible!

I always like to improve myself in any way possible, but i'm still myself (balanced). For example, I accept that maybe I haven't mastered spezzatura, and sometimes I slip up. I'm okay with that though because I'm working at it in a natural way. Some days my posture may be a bit slouched, some days I'll walk a little fast. Before I used to think about these things all the time, now if I slip up I'll think, "Try to slow down the movements a little bit" if I catch myself moving too quickly. I think the post makes people monitor everything they do to an extreme level, thus reflecting some extreme views that were presented in the post. We close off our emotions/vulnerability and that hinders seductions because the girls don't feel as connected when we're trying to come off as these perfect sexy men. I'm open to hearing if I'm at fault in my interpretation, and will accept that. I just feel that the post is extreme as it causes people to go off the deep end. Lastly, I think it's good that people practice these things, like walking around at home to get the walk down, or going on youtube to find deep voice exercises, but in order to come off as natural, you have to be yourself and not worry about these things too much when you are talking to people. Unless you are a great conversationalist or generally experienced, it's hard to multitask those things while simultaneously engaging in a deep conversation with a girl. You don't feel connected because you're not even listening to them, you're worried about how straight your posture is or if your voice is too high.

Just something to think about,
Garrett

 

[Little Jester]

I think I missed the article of chase you guys are talking about, but I come from a different perspective, so I don't fully agree with this thread.

I believe in change when you want to change. I don't believe the best thing you can become is yourself. I believe the best thing you can become is a better version of yourself. You upgrade yourself by learning new behaviors. The only way to do that for me personally is to act it out and keep acting till I learn (Until I make it my own). And I believe that is what Chase also advocates too, if I read between the lines. But I could be wrong.

But like OP says, we shouldn't generalize. We're all coming from different angles and what works for someone to improve his life, may not work for someone else. So if you found that getting in touch with yourself actually 'fixes' you, I'll have to congratulate you. To show you the other side, if I get in touch with myself (which I have been for 10 long boring years), I end up being a cold and ignoring bastard with no social life to speak off. That's me. I don't talk a lot. I don't take action when it involves other people. I only take action for myself. Try to fit success in business and finding a nice girl (goals I put up for myself after 10 years), and you know you are in trouble .. I need to expand my horizons and not go back to the basic 'me'. And since I accepted that, I"ve been making progress. Quite the opposite of what this thread is about imo.

But it's great to hear whenever someone finds something that works for them. So cheers!

Edit: I realize maybe you guys are talking about having lost touch with yourself when you start upgrading and then figure you're expanding so much energy to be not you, that you have to go back and balance that a bit more. Maybe what I'm doing is working from my basic self, never losing touch with that, but looking for new ways to improve from that point and simply only learn.... Can't put my finger on it to explain it better. But that's what I think

 

[Garrett]

Little Jester,

I'm advocating the same thing you are saying, about becoming the best you that you can be. My perspective is that yeah, you can act it out until it becomes authentic. For example, when my family used to criticize me/insult me as a 'joke' (I don't find that humor very funny because it just puts people down to build yourself up), I used to get really hurt and sometimes get pissed at them. Now I naturallyignore it (I had to practice for a while) and don't enforce their behavior and I've noticed it decline a bit now which is a nice change .

Also, after working on my walk for a while, it did get better and now I naturally move my arms forward when I walk (still working on shoulder swagger). My smile is naturally the sexy one now too!

When you have a lot of commitments and are studying to get into Medical School, like myself, it's pretty draining to worry about all of that stuff and have energy to study too. I mean yeah, you could go out and be like, "I'm just going to focus on posture till I master that, then I'll get my walk down." I think that's what I'm going to start doing now because worrying about all of them (walk, talk, smile etc.) at once is too much.

The reason I was arguing with Chase's article was because I think people should be themselves but become the best version of themselves they can be (max their potential). When trying to get to that level, I'm saying don't take it extreme and mask emotions/vulnerability or else you'll fail and be miserable. I think that the way the article was worded made me feel that I'm not okay with who I am at the core, when really I am, I just need to tweak some of my habits to get to where I want to be. When you feel like you aren't okay at your core, you feel miserable and go stoic/extreme and fail over time. It's best to be yourself, worry about one thing at a time, and gradually build up fundamentals instead of tackling them all at once. Be okay with who you are, but have the rationality to determine what needs fixing and where you could improve. In other words, be balanced. Another tip with fundamentals is, if you try to tackle them all at once, you'll be good at walking and talking, but you won't be great because it's too much to worry about. If you spend, say 3 weeks working on posture, you'll have great, natural posture, so you won't have to think about it anymore, then move on. One at a time seems better because it's not much energy to focus on, but everyone has their own unique style that works for them!

PS* I wasn't trying to bash Chase, I was trying to provide some constructive criticism, whether it's right or wrong, I'm not the judge of that. To me it feels right, but I'm open to being wrong. I think Chase is great at what he does, and as a student of his teachings, I wanted to provide some insight!

Cheers,
Garrett

 

[Little Jester]

Yeah exactly what I thought during my edit .

I suppose when you start reading GC and want to do it all at the same time, you put in a lot of effort and a lot of energy and end up burned out and not having learned much. This is because you haven't taken it little by little indeed. So you lose touch with your true self and unable to relate to it. You're just running with what was written, but don't completely understand why that works and really have to force yourself.

What you want to do is focus on one, two, max 3 new things; learn about them, relate it back to yourself and to what you want to achieve. Only then you move on.

Anyway, I'm curious about that article. Anyone have a link?

 

[Garrett]

https://www.girlschase.com/content/just- ... -known-man

^ Link for the article

Enjoy!
Garrett

 

[Whizzy]

The reason it feels so unnatural is just because you've spent your whole life using other methods/doing other things. Think of it this way, how does a newbie at a gym feel versus somebody who has been lifting for 10+ years in the gym? New things dont feel natural until they become habit. That being said don't force the changes since too much at one time is unhealthy as well. Baby steps until you are used to it then feel free to take leaps

 

[Garrett]

The reason it feels so unnatural is just because you've spent your whole life using other methods/doing other things. Think of it this way, how does a newbie at a gym feel versus somebody who has been lifting for 10+ years in the gym? New things dont feel natural until they become habit. That being said don't force the changes since too much at one time is unhealthy as well. Baby steps until you are used to it then feel free to take leaps

Whizzy, you summed things up well.

I've been really thinking about this and this is what I feel...

When you go out, you should be yourself. When you are at home, devote some time everyday to working on your fundamentals. That way you can go out and be yourself, but the 'yourself' you are portraying will gradually be incorporating all the mastered fundamentals in a way that appears natural and you won't have to feel stoic and monitor yourself all the time. Just go out and be you, and improve in your spare time and eventually it'll become ingrained behavior when you meet girls!

Let me know your thoughts guys, I was thinking about this because I've noticed how people aren't taking to well to me lately, and I've been making some wonky decisions due to my temporary stoic nature. It's a lot easier and a more efficient use of energy to consciously devote time to practicing these things at home on your own everyday, and eventually it'll become second nature .

Cheers,
Garrett

 

[Zen]

Good discussion guys. I'd like to add a couple of things:

First off, let us not take anything away from Chase. Without his generosity to share his insights, we may very well still be shooting in the wind when it comes to women. His philosophy has empowered us to become the man we've always dreamed about so for that Chase, I thank you. This thread is simply about the different ways, in this case from my point of view, of how one implements Chases's teachings. Neither is right or wrong.

With that said, I would like to move onto the next point. Through reading the responses above and giving it much thought, I arrived to the conclusion that the "problem" stems from trusting yourself. By rejecting the core essence of your being and fronting a character from an unnatural source, no matter whether given time it will habituate or not, we begin to doubt our own intuition. I think it is fair to say that confidence stems from trusting your abilities, and thus to trust your abilities you must trust your intuition. Therefore by approaching Chases's teachings with a mentality like "my innate traits are bad therefore I should reject them", one can enter onto a dangerous path. By fully neglecting ourselves (even though some of us are "bad" relative to Chases's teachings, but truly we aren't that bad), we begin to mistrust our intuition. By mistrusting our intuition we consequently lose confidence in our intrinsic selves. Thus the point of balance arrives. We must be responsible to being our core essence while being aware and striving to improve by cultivating the "man" traits without the sentiment of neglecting our "previous" character, no matter how cringey it may've been.

To end in note, I'm nobody to assume this model for everyone. I understand everyone is different and have different mental models (thanks chase!), and this is only a representation of the way my mental model interprets this idea.

-Zen

 

[Light]

Hey guys,

This is an interesting topic, and I would like to share my view. It will be short, sweet and enlightening.

This whole discussion is based on the thinking that "I am who I am, and how I am.", and that taking on traits that goes against your intuition can be a torment.

However, I don't see things this way. The way I see it is this:
-We are all the living beings born with all the traits in us. By taking on traits that we favour least, is the same as getting out of our comfort zone in order to "Grow".

Note the key word here is "Grow".

I do not see it as "Being Myself vs Being the Man".
I see it as "Being Myself, Grow, and Becoming the Man".

This "Man" is a mature improved state of your original self, who knows when to use what traits at what time, and is comfortable in doing so.

Thanks for listening.

 

[Whizzy]

That's a great way of putting things Light

 

[Chase]

I'll second Light here, fellas... interesting thread.

The problem with "just be yourself" advice is that people hear it, and automatically say, "Oh, okay... I can just relax! I don't have to DO anything... being me is enough!"

I actually DO want to inspire a little extremism. It's a good thing. It's like trying to break a nice guy out of being too nice. If you tell him, "You can still be nice; you just have to be a little firmer!" (which, mind you, is actually the truth), what he's going to hear is, "It's okay, just keep doing what you're doing! Make a few tiny tweaks!"

He's never going to learn where the boundaries are. He'll never know the limits. He won't know what's possible, and what isn't. He'll continue playing it safe, and he'll continue coming up short.

When you're new, you need to go to extremes. It's how you learn the limits. As a natural part of that learning, you then rein yourself back in and achieve more of a balance.

When I was learning pickup, I first tried to be not nice at all, and very challenging. I'd get a lot of interest from girls, then it'd blow up in my face and they'd go into auto-rejection. So I looked at that, and I said, "Maybe I'm already too high value, and I need to rein in the challenging." So I pretty much stopped challenging women altogether, and suddenly they had very little interest in me.

Those were two extremes. One too challenging, the other not challenging at all.

Next, I looked around and said, "Okay, this sucks. If I'm too challenging, women hate me. And if I don't challenge at all, women hardly notice me. I need to challenge a little bit... enough to inspire attraction... and then I need to knock it off and get real." So I did that, and my results skyrocketed, far beyond what I'd had when either I challenged a lot, or when I challenged not at all.

Change is hard. Some things about yourself you cannot change. Most things you can. You will be conscious of the ones you're trying to change until they become automated and natural.

I used to scowl all the time, and look very angry and scary. People were afraid of me. It felt very unnatural to change this. I didn't like it. It made me feel weaker, and robbed me of a lot of my intimidation power that I used to keep men from challenging me in dangerous areas and with dangerous people. But after a number of months, it stopped feeling unnatural, and it began to feel natural. My brain adopted this as the "new" natural, and scowling became a tool that I simply used in dangerous situations to communicate to potential attackers or opponents that they would be facing an angry opponent rather than a frightened one.

I used to be depressed all the time too, and fighting this was probably the most unnatural feeling I've ever had. It took me a year and a half to fully overcome it, after a decade of being in it so deep that much of the time even suicide seemed like too much work. I'm glad I changed that about myself though. I've had one incident, lasting about an hour, of deep depression since then - I woke up in the middle of the night after an amazing week and suddenly was bowled over with awful thoughts and terrible feelings - I'm convinced the apartment I was living in was haunted at the time (friends and girlfriends who stayed there also reported nightmares and suicidal feelings, when, like me, they never had these) - and it was a bizarre reminder of the hopelessness I used to feel everyday. I'd forgotten what that felt like, and I am such a different person now that it's almost startling. I can still relate to the old me, but barely. He and I would communicate past each other if we tried to convince one another of the errors of our ways, me telling him to snap out of it, and him telling me it's a lost cause.

You should never try to change things that at least some part of you does not REALLY believe you should. I've had people try to talk me out of my emotions, for instance, but often these were people trying to take advantage of me in some way, such as to bring me somewhere they could easily rob me or to pull a con on me. Be skeptical of people who are telling you to change. That includes me. Don't accept anything I or anyone else says without sitting down and thinking to yourself, "Does this make sense, and do I want to do it?"

Also remember that we probably have very different life objectives. Similar in the way that humans basically more or less all want to survive, and eat good food, and not be too stressed out, and have sex with attractive members of the opposite sex, and be recognized as good people and important people and people who contribute to the good of society overall. But aside from those basic objective foundations, our secondary and tertiary goals likely branch out in different directions.

So, take advice with a grain of salt. But don't be afraid of going too far before reining yourself back in, so long as the costs aren't too great to bear. The only way you learn the limits is by going over them.

Chase

 

[Garrett]

Chase,

I agree with everything you've said man! I really thought about it, and you've mentioned something that none of us have, and it's quite important. I was feeling that in my subconscious but you brought it to conscious attention, something you do quite well I might add. You have to go a bit extreme to find out where the boundaries lie.

The truth is, the genuine guy is basically a nice guy with a few tweaks as Chase mentioned. The thing is, if you take a nice guy and tell him that, he won't truly understand and actually change until he becomes an ass hole. Take me for example. I always felt wrong when I followed the girl's lead, went shopping with them, did nice things for them before the date, texted them endlessly. Chase explained why these things were wrong clearly and concisely, so I understood why I was feeling wrong for doing them. Then I became an ass hole and drove most of the people in my life, including family, away from me. They became quite cold and distant. That's when I realized that I was going too far, and I started acting more naturally/myself, but this version of myself was an improvement. I don't text girls to get into conversation (sometimes I do with girl 'friends' but the goal is always to get them out), I don't ever follow the girl's lead, I work on my terms and ensure it's manageable for the girl, I blame myself first whenever something goes wrong, I constantly try to make tweaks when I'm aware of something, and I try to be aware as much as possible. These are some of the ways that I've improved, but when I go out or am in any social situation, I act like who I am now. When time frees up, I will continue working on my fundamentals like posture, eye contact, voice, walk etc. I feel that if you are very busy, it's not the best idea to try this 'experiment' of going to the extreme because it takes a lot of mental energy that you need to perform optimally at your job, school work, or whatever your current goal is. Once things settle down, I definitely suggest you try to work on these things because you will get results, but you have to put the time and work in to get to where you want to be. At the beginning it's a lot of hard work and energy, and over time it improves and becomes more natural .

Also, I'm planning on buying your book, Chase, and when I was checking out your videos on Baiting and Most Guys in Conversation. I noticed that you come across as a cool guy, and all of the things you mention like talk with a deep voice, with your hands, clearly pronouncing your words, open eye stare for a hint of edge, the way you dress etc you do, but it's subtle and not very noticeable from conscious attention, especially from most guys who were observing you. I feel that girls would pick up on it more, but even still, it comes off natural so it's a good thing . It comes across as natural, and often when you go to extremes, it's going to feel unnatural. Once you get into that territory; however, you'll know how much to adjust the knob, thus exuding a sexy, yet natural vibe. In order to find balance, one must develop a true understanding of both ends of the spectrum.

Cheers,
Garrett

 

[Zen]

Gents,

Stumbled onto this gem that is highly relevant to this conversation. Urbanist game is a great inspiration who documents his pick ups and journey of self-development; in this talk he invites Hailey Quinn, a female perspective into pick up. Video is about 20 minutes long, give it a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VedS4kanoIA

- Zen

 

[Whizzy]

If you're not pushing yourself and your boundaries then you're really not going anywhere

 

[Garrett]

Fox,

As you're probably aware by now, you're definitely not alone on this. I had the exact same thing happen to me. I finally realized that I couldn't live like that anymore, especially with so much on my plate right now, so once summer comes around I'm going to spend more time on fundamentals.

What I do currently is I spend 20 minutes a day (10 minutes walking around with good posture and practicing my walk, 5 minutes on speech, and 5 minutes on peripheral vision/edgy staring. Although I'm probably not going to make much progress, it's better than doing nothing, and once summer comes around and I master my goal to workout (I have 4 months off), I'm then going to master these fundamentals and spend a lot of time working on fitting the bad boy mould with a heart of gold.

Sometimes you need to take a step back when you're experimenting with your behaviour. If you're having a mental breakdown, you've probably come to the realization that perhaps you are going too far. It should come off as natural, so when you go out you should be yourself, and you want to aim to behave naturally, but noticeably sexy . For example, when I walk around at school, I'm finding that more recently, I'm getting people moving out of my way and walking around me. I keep walking and they eventually steer clear. The cool thing is, I'm not even trying! At first my family was asking me why I was walking the way I was, but eventually I toned it down and made adjustments. Look at the video of Chase as he tries to advertise his products. Notice how he comes off natural, but you can TELL that he's applying everything he advocates on his site? Intense eye contact, slow, pronounced speech, hands moving as he speaks, deep, clear voice, stubble, slow movements, peacocking with his cool pendant/jacket. I'm sure there are more traits to describe, I'm just stating what I saw. The thing is, you could barely tell he was doing it, it looked natural as if that was the mould he fit into. He worked at this in order to come off as natural and subconsciously, it's attractive to women.

Sometimes we have to go to the extremes in order to determine where the balance lies...

Cheers,
Garrett

 

[Chase]

Hunt,

Wanted to come weigh in here on a few things.

Glad this is a thread, I had nervous breakdown the other day about this, really kicked my ass.

First off - sorry to hear that, those totally blow. I only ever had one - within a few days of first getting to college, after I'd spent a year learning sales and going to a few parties and I thought I'd remade my social skills, only to get to university and realize I still had no idea how to talk to people, make friends, or get girls - but it was good to go through. From what limited knowledge of breakdowns I have, it seems they're essentially a "reset" of your expectations when those have gotten too outlandish - your brain's basically letting go of expectations that are too hard to reach right now, and accepting more realistic ones for the time being. Of course, you can always raise the bar back up later, once you get to that point.

Like Zen was saying in his first post, the changes Chase advocates feel forced and seem unnatural/unsustainable. I do feel like I'm "acting" when I'm out with girls, and then feel like complete crap when none take an interest in me, because not even my persona reels them in. Feels like a double personality rejection.

I went through periods like this when I was new to pickup. Haven't thought about that in a long time. There was about 3 or 4 months where I was going hardcore and implementing so many changes in early 2006 that it was an emotional vortex for me... I felt like I was trying to be this entirely different person, and I'd write a field report every other day about how this was too hard and it wasn't working and I didn't think I could learn pickup and maybe it worked for other people but it clearly didn't work for me. At one point, guys were writing that they were getting tired of hearing my bitching. Seems like ages ago...

There isn't anything special you can do to get through it. You just have to keep getting back on the saddle and going out and trying again. It's like joining the Marines... the first few weeks, guys are suffering from mental and emotional and physical exhaustion, and guys are snapping, and guys are saying "I can't do this" and "this isn't me" and they're washing out or begging to be let out. Guys are pissing in their pants because they don't know the right way to ask to go to the bathroom and the CO keeps telling them "no." But by the end of your 13 weeks though (or so I'm told by every Marine I know), everything's completely different, you've earned the respect of your CO and your fellow recruits, everybody's brothers, you're joking around and enjoying yourself amidst the work, and you ARE a Marine.

No real shortcut to that... you've just got to tough it out, get through the hard shit that is reinventing yourself, accepting that the world is not the delicate rosebud you thought it was, and figuring out how to cut it in this newer and harsher reality. But once you get through it, suddenly, all those other clueless civilians sitting around dreaming about how special they are and how sweet the world is look like cream puffs to you because you KNOW how to hack it and get results, while they sit around hoping and wishing and praying and dreaming.

You've just got to do it. Keep getting back on the saddle. Your brain will learn the patterns. Give it some time.

As to make it not seem like "acting", I read Chase's post and he said it took him a year and a half to overcome depression. That's a damn long time. Depression was his normal thinking, and then it wasn't. So I feel that a mindset of rushing and wanting to fast forward to success hinders here. We read all these guys who've had success with Chase's advice and we really want to get to that success, but we're NOT going to naturally be the "Man" for a damn long time!

It depends on the guy and where he's at and where he's coming from. I've seen guys who had most of the pieces already, and they just needed one tweak here or there and then all of a sudden they were flying, pulling off crazy things. I've seen other guys who basically came in with zero social skills, zero social intuition, zero ability to understand other people whatsoever, but they went at it like machines, struggled for a long time, and after sometimes years of paying their dues, they came out on the other end with impressive skill sets and results most guys with better natural social abilities than those guys began with would envy.

Generally speaking, if you have "normal" social abilities (e.g., you can talk to people, you can fairly well pick up on who likes you and who doesn't in social settings, you have an okay sense for when you've messed up and when things are going well, even if you don't know exactly why, etc.), your progress will be steady if you're going out regularly enough and meeting enough new women (I recommend aiming for meeting 40 new women a week if you want to progress at a decent pace; in my first year of really active picking up, I went out 3 to 4 nights a week and met somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 new women, though has gone down quite a bit in subsequent years as I've targeted better and didn't require as much approaching of randoms to get superior results).

You won't be a pickup master in 6 months. That's like taking up kung-fu and thinking you'll be ass-kicking 15-year veteran black belts by year's end. It's just too complex an arena.

However, you can be a guy who's pulling off some crazy pickups here and there by the end of his first year. You almost certainly won't have consistency - that generally takes years to develop - but you'll be getting a lot of variation. Lots of crappy nights, and then a superstar night in there where you pick up the hottest girl in the club. Then you think you're the man, but the next 8 nights you go out you get nothing. Then you meet some gorgeous girl in the shopping mall and a week later she's your girlfriend. Crazy stuff like that.

Your brain needs to adjust to the variation, because when you start out, every night feels like do or die.

You have a great day or night, you're on top of the mountain.

You have a fruitless/dispiriting/disheartening day or night, you feel like the lowest of the low.

Eventually you realize this how it goes in this arena, and it isn't until you realize that that you're able to start building up consistency. So long as you're expecting, somewhere in your subconscious, that every time you set foot outside the house it needs to be magic, you'll suffer from ups and downs. But no matter how much you try and tell yourself that, it takes time for your brain to learn it.

Some time back, I played the "fake" stock market on a website that let you invest 1 million fake dollars in whatever stocks you chose. I wanted to see if I could learn to be a daytrader. I'd read all kinds of things on how you absolutely cannot let the day-to-day variation affect you emotionally, but despite that, whenever I'd have stocks go up I'd think, "Yes! I am a daytrading SAVANT!" And when I'd have stocks dip, I'd think, "Damnit... where'd my mojo go?"

There was a comparison of the results of the mutual fund managers who were active throughout both the '80s and '90s. They plotted them according to their results in the '80s, bottom earners on the far left, top earners on the far right. Graph for the '90s? All over the place; static. How good a guy did throughout the '80s had zero impact on how he performed in the '90s; an indication that success as a mutual fund manager was completely random.

There's a lot in pickup that makes it a lot less random - improving your fundamentals, improving your game, getting better logistics, learning how to screen and target more accurately, finding venues that have the kinds of girls you like where they are the most receptive to you, and a lot more. But there's still a large degree of randomness, and the brain HATES randomness with a passion. It freaks out over it, melts down over it, and simply cannot tolerate it. It wants to find the patterns in everything, and some things simply don't have patterns at the scale its accustomed to looking for them at. Pickup is one of those things that will cause most guys' brains to melt down at first before the brain starts to get a handle on the patterns that are actually at play here and sheds some of its more unrealistic expectations (like: every girl I talk to must love me! or I should be able to pick up every single night, even if I only talk to 4 girls a night!).

Even after successes with cold approaching, where I've gotten intimate fast with girls I just met, it still hasn't sunk into my head that the random girl standing by the door could very well be my next girlfriend.

That one takes years, and it takes repeated instances of this happening. The brain doesn't believe in anything until it's experienced it, repeatedly. You can logically believe something, but the primitive parts of your brain (the ones that control fear, excitement, etc.) will dismiss and override your logic every time until they have proof to back it up. The only thing you can do here is soldier on and keep forcing yourself to swing at the baseball until you've hit a couple of homeruns and your primitive brain realizes that you CAN do it... then you start to get excited.

Don't focus on the feeling; focus on amassing the experiences, and the feeling will come.

Also, I am theorizing that keeping your new traits on at all times helps make them sink in faster. For instance, I live with my parents still so I act much less masculine than I do with girlfriends. Well, then when I go out and come home after a hard night of approach anxiety, I feel hurt about putting on an "act" just to get girls, and that it's not who I really am. I'm turning what I'm learning on and off, rather than keeping it on everyday for a year so it becomes a normal part of me. In Chase's article on depression, he said everytime he slipped back into the depression he had to catch himself. Maybe that needs to be done for adopting new traits? A guy will feel like he's faking if he's having to swap between multiple different behaviors.

Big answer on this one: YES!.

There is a quote from somewhere in Asia I remember and have always kept in mind since my late teens, but I cannot for the life of me recall where it's from. At first I thought it was the Book of the Samurai, but I took a browse back through there but it isn't in there. Confucius has a similar one, but it isn't quite the same. No matter. Anyway, the quote, at least as I have always remembered it, is this:

Even when you are completely alone, sit always as though you are entertaining an honored guest.

To me, this is the essence of self-improvement. If you aren't doing it even when you're alone, it's fake, and it isn't going to stick.

If you want to make yourself into a new man, it starts with what you do when it just you in an empty room with nobody there but you and your reflection in the mirror and those four walls and a door around you, and it ends with everybody else in the world you'll meet after that.

And then, pushing to find boundaries gives a feeling of progress. Humans need progression to be happy, or so I read from Tony Robbins, we need to grow. Finding boundaries does that, and when I'm finding out new things I feel pretty good. Like I didn't read on GirlsChase that kissing a girl on the first date but not escalating further causes them not to accept a second date, or just plain disappear. With a string of failures, I learned this and feel pretty awesome about knowing this now!

Absolutely. Continued growth / self-expansion / working toward the future is just about the only thing that makes people truly happy. Reflecting on the past can give boosts of nostalgia, frequently followed by sorrowful longing for what once was; enjoying the present only lasts for a moment, then vanishes.

But the future... in the future, there lies your true happiness.

I've seen a number of studies showing that the greatest enjoyment one gets is out of the anticipation far more than the thing itself. It isn't the carrot held in front of it the donkey enjoys, once finally getting it... that lasts but a moment. It's just a whisper. What he really enjoys is all the anticipation, struggling, and striving to get that carrot he endures, and his dreams of someday achieving it.

Chase