My New Car is Here!

My next step at advancing my outer game is here: my new (used) Corvette has arrived in Seattle. Now is the time to trash my old car and find a really cheap used car to supplement my travels. Yeah, baby! It's hot, too: 2001, red convertible, tan interior, with new tires to boot. Beautiful!

Pickup is Life-giving

Alright, I have to admit that I've done pretty poorly in my pickup game. Almost 30 days have past and I haven't done even one real #close. I have been studying lots of material but not really doing anything with it, and also given the amount of material I read, I forget it all on the spot. What I am going to do is start taking notes and running basic patterns on girls from ASF with a touch of MM and C&F. I just need a basic algorithm from hello to #close, and if I can get that I'll be set.

My major problem, I think, is my mental health. I'm not just lacking confidence, but I'm also plagued by horrible headaches that reduce my energy levels and happiness quotient. I've started into Lexapro to counter these headaches, but the side effects have been difficult to deal with thus far. However, I have to admit that within 48 hours I did notice some relief on the headaches, so I am going to continue to use them and see if they can help me.

At the same time, I'm going to be reading books on CBT and self-confidence. Confidence is key, and it's something I severely lack. Lack of confidence is a huge sign of weakness, and girls aren't attracted to weak men. So I'm going to continue to dive into CBT material to help fix my own thought patterns, and at the same time I'm going to go out and attempt pickup on girls to help improve my energy levels.

There is nothing more exciting than a successful pickup, even if it's just a #close.

Prizing

I think one of the most valuable lessons I've learned recently is prizing. Historically I would always view a hot woman as the prize: you chase her, you get her, you win her. Then she's yours to bang and pat yourself on the back for seducing a hot girl. I suppose that mentality was programmed into my brain after years of movies where the guy would chase the girl.

Thank God there is a community to help me rewrite my brain against this horrible way of thinking. Rather, the more attractive method of getting women is prizing yourself, which makes a whole lot more sense. I look at myself and realize, well shit, I'm a fantastic guy! I've got a great body that I'm turning into a big, cut form over the next few months. I'm a good looking guy (and will only get better looking as I age, thank you God for the great genetic advantage). I make good money, I have a really nice dick, and I have an awesome car. To top it off, I'm a genuinely nice person at my core who really just wants a solid LTR to accompany him along the journey for however long necessary.

So why would I see a hot girl and think she's the great person to get? I'm the one she should be after! I'm the one she wants! I'm the one that will make her happier than all her previous jerk boyfriends.

The only problem I have with this prizing is that I don't fully believe it yet because I lack experience. I haven't had sex with dozens of women and had the time to carefully craft my sexual abilities, nor have I learned the best ways to make a woman feel amazing. I think once I get these abilities under my belt through some serious gaming, I should be in a great position to really prize myself above all other guys in the room.

Game on. This whole game is changing my life, and I love it. I just wish I had more time to practice! But hell, I will make the time.

It's not Fair!

My roommate is an AFC yet his girlfriend is this totally hot Eastern European girl with a tight body who cooks for him. He's got bad breath, is about five years older, and doesn't have nearly the humor or imagination I have. And on his initial dates with his girlfriend, he asked her what she wanted to do and gave her a set of options rather than being the alpha male.

So why in the hell does he have a stable girlfriend and I do not? What did I do wrong?

The answer is confidence and luck. He picked a girl who was at the right stage in her life for a long term relationship, and to top it off she gave him a chance. My one-itis never gave me a chance and burned me because of it. Fuck her--I'm money and she doesn't realize it. Some day she will be sorry, just like all my previous girlfriends. Their fucking loss. Once I'm a PUA and can get any girl I want, I will exact my revenge on women everywhere. Never again will I fall under the control of any one girl, and never again will I allow a girl to abuse me emotionally or mentally. Fuck them all: women are easily the most dangerous creature on the planet.

GMail Chat is the IT-list

Wow, Gmail integrating chat directly into the web client was an amazing move. I haven't signed onto AIM since! Sorry that this has nothing to do with Chivalry Lost, but it's incredible. Now you can chat with me directly (vanwilderpua at gmail). Google is fucking amazing.

On the Subject of Fakeness

For a long time I've been pursuing friends who are real: genuine, honest people who are true to themselves and their word. However I've met a whole lot of people who I would consider un-real, and they piss me off. After thinking about it even more, I've started to question that maybe I am the one who is un-real. If all of these people I know who I think are fake are actually enjoying life a lot more than I am (happiness is key!), maybe I am the one doing something wrong?

I've halted on gaming right now to focus on improving self-confidence (which is the core of inner gaming), and so I'm going through Robert Anthony's eBook on "Total Self-Confidence". It got great reviews on Amazon.com, along with Think and Grow Rich. The basic idea is similar to NLP and reframing: if you can change the way you think, you can change the way you act and are perceived. If you can understand your thought patterns and learn to rewire them, you can truly achieve happiness and confidence. That's my goal for now: confidence and happiness. Women are a nice fringe benefit of confidence, but they aren't my primary goal here.

Falling Down

A friend of mine was visiting me this weekend, and we spent probably half the time talking about women. For some reason, we always talk about that. Always. And it's depressing because we're always upset about it. I've told him about the game and the community and how it will make my life so much better, although I haven't had any success yet.

We got to talking about why I started playing the game, and I mentioned that one of my main reasons to play was to prevent myself from settling with a suboptimal mate. I know I'm an awesome guy, but because of my torn history I never seem to value myself high enough around women (or around men, it seems). So although I'm a great guy and everyone agrees, I don't have the confidence necessary to find a girl who's perfect for me. In reality this results in unhappy relationships where I'm too much of a wuss to break out. This happened to me numerous times before and I would see it recurring indefinitely until I had a horrible marriage.

So, in that sense, it was good that I got into this whole game. At the same time, I feel really sorry for all the guys out there who don't know that they can improve their situation in life. There are millions of nice guys who were programmed to kiss girls' asses, even though that strategy does not work in the real world. We were watching the movie Falling Down, and the lead character Bill (Michael Douglas) was your typical AFC: nice guy, works for a living, pays his taxes. But he's divorced and his wife won't let him see his kid. All he wants to do is see his daughter on her birthday, but because of his social problems he cannot.

At the end of the film, right before he is shot by the cop, he says "I did everything I was supposed to do," and he's the bad guy. His life is the AFC gone to the extreme, but after having seen the movie with my new eyes I'm glad I'm not going to end up like him. I know plenty of guys who are completely fed up with life already (in their early 20s) because they are so depressed and angry that they have to struggle so hard with women and people in general, and I'm so glad that there is a way to help these people. Once I help myself, I want to start helping others.

I just need to help myself first. That's the hardest part.

Sales is Hard!

Gaming can be really hard on RAFCs. You read a few patterns, hopefully remember them, have a few good stories to tell, and then run off into the wild and start opening up girls. But when you're out there in the field, you may forget everything you learned and resort to AFCness. I'm finding myself doing that a lot when talking to girls: I just want to "be myself" and talk like the boring guy I always become in front of beautiful girls.

But I know that I have to stick with it. This component of my life is completely lacking, and 2006 is the year when I fix all of that. Onward!

"Split-Second Syndrome"

I'm going to drop another quotation from the book Blink because it's a great line about split-second decisions and how we need to practice a lot to tweak our instincts. This is actually a paraphrasing of sentences about police officers:

[An AFC] goes to the scene as quickly as possible. He sees the [hot girl]. There is no time for thought. He acts. That scenario requires that mistakes be accepted as unavoidable. In the end, both of these perspectives are defeatist. They accept as a given the fact that once any critical incident is in motion, there is nothing that can be done to stop or control it. And when our instinctive reactions are involved, that view is all too common. But that assumption is wrong. Our unconscious thinking is, in no one critical respect, no different from our conscious thinking: in both, we are able to develop our rapid decision making with training and experience.

The author then tells a story of a security group that trains bodyguards. In each act, the bodyguard is shot from a different angle. By the fourth or fifth time they get shot in simulation, they are alright. Then they train the bodyguard to take on a ferocious dog. At first the heart rate is 175, and they can't see straight. The second or third time, it's 120, and then it's 110, and they can function.

What does this mean for us, RAFCs? It means that when you get that pang of fear in your stomach when you see a pretty girl on a night out, it's probably because you haven't talked with enough girls yet that night. So I would recommend myself that I open up at least four sets every night before starting real sarging. I guess this is difficult for me because I still end up usually opening 1 or 2 sets. But I'm working on it, and dammit I have commited myself to figuring this out -- no matter what.

I wonder if I can carry around a portable heart rate meter (I could always have a wingman measure my pulse). It would be neat to actually measure this data as it's coming back.

This is all encouraging information for us RAFCs who still fear each woman they open. David DeAngelo says that once you've done this enough, you eventually start to "see the matrix" like Neo did. When you can see all the data, you can essentially read people's minds and predict the future. I hope to be in that position some day soon. Whatever it takes so I will never have one-itis again -- except for my wife some day!

Time To Sarge

OK, I'm getting sick of reading. I've been watching/listening to hours of David DeAngelo material, I've just downloaded a few more gigabytes of text, audio, and video from various gurus such as Swinggcat, David X, and Mystery. When does it all end?

So to get past all this crap, I'm going to sarge tonight with some friends. Of course I don't use the term sarge, but it's more like we're meeting women. Watch out, U. District: we're coming at you. My goal is to get at least 3 #closes and, if possible, 1 *close. That's pretty pathetic for higher ranking RAFCs and lower PUAs, but for me that would be enormous.

I've been working out a lot and I'm starting to get lean: holding at 14% body fat and 190 lbs, but within a month I should be around 10% BF and 188 lbs (hopefully). I'll have my new car by then and hopefully I will have reframed myself through hypnosis: this is, of course, the most important part. I'm going to start keeping track of my successes in a spreadsheet, but since I have had 0 successes so far, I have nothing to keep track of. Much like I keep track of my weight and body fat in a database, I'm going to also track my #closes, *closes, and f-closes. I'll take pictures of the women, write notes about them, and track my progress with colorful little charts.

The important thing is that I stop spending my nights inside, find some wingmen, and start hitting the streets. This is the weekend when it starts. Let's go!

All You Need is Love

It's funny how true these words are. It's so simple, so fundamental, and so accurate.

What's not funny is that it's the only thing I lack. Love. No amount of money, looks, muscle, or prizes can replace something as basic as love.

Life's a bitch, so I say bitch-slap it.

Depression

Depression is an interesting human phenomenon: it's completely unattractive to females, and since their attraction to men can prevent a depressed man from having sex, he in turn becomes more depressed, possibly to the point of suicide. Isn't that horrible? Nature really wants to weed out those who don't have their heads on straight. Even as I type this, all I want to do is go home and crawl underneath the sheets. I know that later tonight I will be feeling fine, but this constant fear of women and lack of confidence is like a virus that's tearing apart my brain. And the worst part is that it only makes itself worse by realizing that it exists. I'm trying to exercise the demons, so to speak, but it's a difficult quest. I wish I could just meet a magical hypnotherapist who could put me into a trance and begin to untie the knots inside my head.

Power

David D advocates not giving up your power when you meet a new girl (or anyone, really). So if you meet a new girl and say, "You're so beautiful, let me buy you a drink," etc. you've essentially given up your bargaining chip over her. Or if a girl starts whining and complaining, and you succumb to her fits, you again are surrendering your power over her. This is amazing but true, but it's good to hear about it from his research.

For the longest time on this blog I was pining for my catalyst, the one-itis that started it all in me. She became my Helen of Troy. When I see her now, I still get a rush of emotion because of all the negative associations I have with her, but I'm not thinking about her much anymore. Why? Because I analyzed her from a logical point of view: she has no job, no passion, no dedication, no sympathy, and to top it off, she treats me horribly, even as a friend. Compare her with me: I'm dedicated, passionate, gainfully employed, caring, and I treat people as I would like to be treated. In short, she's the loser, and I am the winner. I just feel like a loser because I don't have girls hitting on me all the time. (This will change over the next few months, of course)

It's just amazing how someone of such high value (such as myself) could feel inferior to someone of relatively low value. She's funny and very attractive, and she can be nice, but overall she doesn't have her life together and she's now leeching off her current boyfriend. Hey, that's great: gold-diggers need suckers who will support them. The poor bastard doesn't realize that he's just picked up some dead weight in exchange for sex.

But I am very happy that I started into this whole game because it has begun to change my perspective. I never qualified girls before; I would just be happy that an attractive girl was talking to me. I always would succumb to a girl's fits to appease them, and in general I would do anything it took to make them happy. I didn't realize that what I was doing was living in their realities, not my own. I was letting myself be controlled by an external force. No wonder they never were attracted to me!

Remember This

There's a lot of stuff you learn in the game of pickup, but there are also a lot of life-enhancing tricks that will improve your game immediately. All of the books on pickup talk about this, but it's absolutely true and you really need to follow the guidelines:

• Work out. You don't need to pump iron five days/week or run ten miles/day, but you should be hitting the gym consistently each week. Women love strong men, but it's more important to be cut and lean than to be big but fat. So if you can't put on muscle to save your life, get your body fat below 10%, do pushups, pullups, and situps.
• Clean your teeth! Keep them clean! Get braces/invisalign to straighten them up. Smile is very important in pickup. A good smile is very sexy, and a bad smile can be the difference between success and failure. If your game is good enough, it won't matter, but early on, it helps. I'm working on this because I need braces again. (sigh)
• Dress nicely. You don't need to wear Armani suits every day, but dress well. Buy a couple $50 pairs of jeans, get some nice quality t-shirts (or even some tight funny t-shirts, but still good looking--tight t-shirts are key when you're cut or big).
• Keep your apartment and bedroom clean and organized. Nothing says you're at a loss for control of your life if your bedroom is always a mess. It makes a big difference to sleep in a clean room each night.
• Always have a bottle of (sparkling) wine at home in case you invite girls over.
• Always know of a nice coffee/tea/hookah place where you can spend 30 minutes with someone to get to know them.
• Get a life and be passionate about something. When you want to suck a girl into your reality, you want to make sure it's a good place to be. Learn to play golf or the guitar, or go rock climbing or fly airplanes. Do something that makes your life better and women will be interested. I know this is hard to understand when you can't get women, but it goes hand in hand. Once you are better at pickup, you will start to integrate pickup into your life rather than having pickup be your life. So after 6-12 months of hardcore pickup, get back to doing what you want to do.
  
• Keep yourself well-groomed. If you're shaggy and messy, it's unattractive in general, unless a slightly unshaven face is your thing. For us white guys it's not. Keep your hair nice, and if you are balding, keep it short but look clean. I am majorly balding but I keep my hair shaved really close so it looks good.
• Always keep in your pocket a pen, paper, and condoms.
• Keep a prop in your pocket if you can perform some magic tricks with coins. It's fun stuff in a conversation, no matter how juvenile it may be.

I'm signing up with a personal trainer now. It's expensive ($600/month) but I get 3 hours/week with this guy, and he really kicks ass. He'll get my diet underway and I'll start dropping fat but gaining muscle. I figure six months of training is enough to make me big and cut. It's a lot of money but consider the long-term implications of being tall, handsome, and ripped. Not only do you get to eat more, you also get chicks swooning over you. Few men (<5%) have the dedication to make themselves truly physically amazing.

I've reached the point of studying pickup where I'm thinking about it all the time. Every day I'm reading more and listening to more, but I'm not practicing as much. I hope to get more practice going soon, but I want to mention that pickup should not become your life permanently. It may take several months (if not a year or two) to become really good at it, assuming you practice 4-5 times/week, but after you've become confident, you need to get back to life and integrate your skills into your daily routines. Then when you're out golfing, dancing, or driving your car, you can use what you've learned and pickup girls while enjoying your existence.

Alrighty, enough preaching for me. I'm hoping to sarge in the U. District tonight. Game on!