As I've been revamping and clarifying my cirriculum over the last few months, I've been thinking long and hard about what really gets attraction. I think a lot of the techniques in the community work for reasons other than why they are explained to work. But it wasn't until I sat in on the first couple of hours of Brad P's workshop a few weeks ago in Vegas that I realized how important just being ballsy was.
The ability to withstand social pressure and remain calm in unusual situations requires balls. It requires having the intestinal fortitude to do things that push you outside of your comfort zone and that might result in negative social feedback. Years and years ago TD said something about Erik and Neil that I've always kept in mind. He said that Erik had a blindspot to negative social feedback. Meaning that he can't see when things are going bad. I noticed this when he picked up a stripper one night after she had told me she hated him. To this day still one of the most impressive things I've seen but he couldn't tell she didn't like him at first. Neil on the other hand has an extreme sensitivity to social pressure which is why all of his stuff is about reaching the " Hook point" as quickly as possible, and avoiding bad reactions. Seeing their conflicting blindspots explains partially why they are able to work so well together. What it doesn't address is most guys. Most guys are not going to be blind to negative social feedback and if they adopt Neil's belief that they should avoid negative feedback at all costs they're gonna stop going out in the first month. A phenomena that happens pretty frequently after "Fantasy Camp" style bootcamps without follow up.
The reason I bring this up is that not enough emphasis is placed on simply having balls. In putting yourself in a situation where you might fail and pushing it as far as you can. A lot of people would say I'm a pretty ballsy guy as I do really ridiculous things in set and escalate faster and harder than almost anyone else. To me it's not a big deal because I've accepted rejection as a part of the game. As my Pimp buddy Big Zee says " Being able to handle rejection makes you a man."
So how do you develop balls? By doing shit that makes you uncomfortable. The same way that girls have comfort thresholds, guys have comfort thresholds. A few years back telling a girl I just met to get that I was gonna do horribly dirty things to her would have freaked me out. So would stopping girls on the street or interrupting girls on their cell phones in a mall. Now I think those are normal approaches( I'm brought back to reality when students refuse to do them, but to me it's easy) But the point is you have to be able to bump your own comfort thresholds back. If you are terrified of talking to a strange woman go up say hi and leave. Do that 50 times and it will be MUCH less scary then push a little bit farther until you're getting kicked out of your favorite bar in Dallas for bringing another girl into the bathroom. A lot of the time just being ballsy and willing to try something out of the ordinary is enough.
Go out and develop your balls, do something everyday that makes you feel scared socially. The more you do it the easier it gets and then you'll develop actual confidence. Confidence is the result of pushing yourself and accomplishing goals. In the book Flow the author talks about how we are not having a peak experience unless we are pushing ourselves to our limit within a task that is accomplishable. That's why I love game because you can challenge yourself with a very achievable goal. But it takes balls to achieve it.
S
Monday, May 05, 2008
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Awesome post. Flow was an awesome book, so is Creativity by the same author. I don't know if enough people mention this, but you posting your f'up reports, and the blowouts you experience, are actually one of the most helpful things I come across. I'd done well before the community, and in wanting to learn things to refine my game I kept hearing all the marketing stuff about how amazing these guys were and they got 10's all the time, and those unrealistic expectations damaged my game more than the information was helping my game. After watching the Holy Grail video with Mystery, my game actually skyrocketed. Not just because, just as the Inner Game Of Tennis describes, that the best way to learn is to watch something good repeatedly (there were two good sets from the all white party), but watching Mystery be human made it easier for me to just go out and have fun.
ReplyDeleteThanks again.
I think you're right on, bro. It seems a lot, if not all, of the attraction switches have some flavor of balls in them [figuratively, of course].
ReplyDeleteLike, leader of men - you gotta have balls to lead a group; emoting - again, you gotta have balls to sit there and be able to admit having feelings, and then describing them such that the other person/people can relate; pre-selection - that's obvious..if you don't have male genitalia, not too many women are going to want you lol; protector of loved ones - kind of like being a leader, you have to have the balls to stand up to whatever the danger/threat is to protect those close to you; etc.
One thing you said that I wanted to stress [because it really struck a chord with me] is about doing something out of your comfort zone EVERY DAY. I'll be pretty ballsy a fair amount of times, but if it's not a consistent thing, then you [can] still fall back into the same parameters of the old comfort levels..I know I do. I'm definitely going to remind myself to push things, regardless of it being big-scale or small-scale, because they'll all add to the total push of the threshold.
This blog has become my favorite resource for learning the game. Another GREAT post. thanks
ReplyDeleteBy the way, after being inspired by this, I have started my ball bag enhancement campaign today but doing my first daytime street app.. Felt horrible... AWESOME
ReplyDeleteI read the Venusian Arts Manual half the stuff they say to do just was out of my comfort zone.
ReplyDeleteApproach Kissing kino. The works.
I like the thought that me trying to push the boundaries will pay off in the long run. Gives me great hope and what not. Thanks for the post. Hope to hear more about having balls.
Sinn, I think that you would find that naturals have blindspots to negative social feedback and they literally don't recognise it. This is what gets them the girl in the end because they are just so persistant about it and so unfazed that it becomes attractive. I've tried to adopt a blindspot to negative social feedback and although it was very hard at the beginning (I was incongruent), its paying off now. As you say, ignorance is a very underused tool.
ReplyDeleteSoCute
so where's the line between ignoring negative social feedback and coming across needy/try hard?
ReplyDeletefor instance when a girl doesn't answer your call, it's been said it's best not to call her again until she calls you first. so that would be the opposite of ignoring negative social feedback. what's the difference?
"so where's the line between ignoring negative social feedback and coming across needy/try hard?"
ReplyDeleteYup. No one wants to end up in Mysterys headspace.
I think the answer is this.
Neil avoids pain by having every preparation possible. Mystery avoids pain by pretending it's not there.
So, avoiding pain is not the answer. Facing it in INCREMENTS, is, I believe. You'll develop emotional modulation capability, this is what we had to do as children anyways. We HATED some activity, and cried about it, until we learned to accept the discomfort of it.
I stress increments, because, I've seen guys go off the deep end overdoing this.
Like a muscle needs to rest after a period of 'discomfort'....so does the unconscious, or whatever you want to call it.
so, you stress yourself, do the scary activity, then rest for a day, and let some 'emotional muscle' build.
If you don't, I can gaurantee a depression. I've seen it a few times on mASF.
And Depression is basically the mind FORCING you to rest. Just as getting physically sick forces you to rest your body if you push it too hard.