"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!