Confidence to fail?
As the resident confidence speaker I thought it appropriate to muse on the word I have dedicated so much time to in my career to date. It comes up in every session and seminar “How do I improve my confidence?”
I recently hit the town with an old school friend. The topic of discussion invariably seems to slide back to my line of work on nights like these and consequently, women. Elbows propped against the wooden bar, taking one more hearty gulp of his third Wild Turkey of the evening, he tilted his head profoundly towards the sea of locals and offered me his two cents “See, you’ve got the chat, you know how to talk to girls”. My curiosity (and I can’t deny, my ego) were aroused. “How do you mean?” “You know, you’ve just got the confidence, your just one of those confident guys. That’s why you can just talk to them, you’ve got the confidence”.
It sounds like a superpower “You’ve got the CONFIDENCE!” But what does it really come down to? Men talk about it like it’s the Harry Potter scar, an inherent birthright that only the chosen are born with. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this kind of “confidence gene” theory. What does it really come down to? Well, after that night I figured it out. What makes a confident person different from my non-approaching school friend? Why am I willing to approach any set he points out while he lingers by the fruit machines? Then it hit me. Confident people are WILLING TO FAIL. That’s right, UNSHAKEABILITY. It’s one of the biggest internal indicators of confidence. Hey, my batting average isn’t 100%. After years of approach success, I still get nerves. I still get blown out. But here’s the thing: I step up the plate! And if I step up enough, I’m bound to hit a few home runs. And guess what? Every time I step up to the plate, I get better. I can anticipate curveballs; I know how to handle it if a woman throws a test my way that I’ve seen before. But in the beginning you’ve got to be ready to strike out. Confident guys are aware that mastery of anything, be it your finances, sports, or approaching women, is all about being prepared for an onslaught of setbacks. But they don’t let it faze them. A confident guys’ ego isn’t gonna be shattered just because some ice queen in a nightclub shot him down. In fact, he’s the opposite. He doesn’t proclaim to the heavens “Oh lord, what’s wrong with me? Why, oh why did this one woman in the whole world reject my advances?” The confident man dusts himself off and gets ready for the next pitch.
I’ll leave you with a short anonymous story from an old client of mine. He came to me for a one-on-one session on a Friday morning and started: “Last night I had the worst blow out I’ve ever had in my entire life”, suddenly I’m listening…he went on “I walked up to a girl at a bus stop, asked her a simple question about where to go out that night, and she replied ‘Look will you just f**k off!’” At this point I was stunned, knowing how seldom such reactions occur. What was important to me at this point was not why he got that reaction (and you’ll have guessed already that such a reaction was far more to do with her own issues than him), but how he dealt with it. He then said “I did what you said and didn’t give up, so I asked her if she was ok….she said ‘well if you’re not going to f**k off then I am’, and she went”. LOL! Pretty bad right? Well do you know what my client said to me at that point? He said something I never expected from him, “After that happened I felt amazing! I had the gift of the worst possible scenario happening to me, after that I was invincible, and went and had one of the best nights I’ve had all year!”
Confident guys don’t start by knowing how to bat. They simply start by stepping up to the plate.
One great piece of advice i received is that ‘success breeds confidence’. The way i’ve been building up my confidence is to choose a small area i want to improve on (And this applies to anything in life, not just pick up), and practice that area until i’ve mastered it. If i’m prepared to fail enough times and change my approach, i will succeed and that then makes me confident. I’ve now done enough approaches that i KNOW i can open successfully 90% of the time so i don’t have to worry about being confident, i am confident based on past success. Still had to go through the pain of failure to get there though!
About a week and a half ago, before I’d even heard of PUA, I would take every failure at approaching a girl as something inherent in my nature. Quite often (at least, with a few drinks down me) I could work up the confidence to approach a girl or a two-set, but 90% of the time it didn’t work, this would get me down for a lot of the night, and my only comfort would be to believe that I’m just a rather quirky individual with whom not many are compatible.
Now a blow out is to me almost as exciting as succeeding. I can take a look at what I did wrong, learn and improve, as well as tell myself that at least I tried, which makes me better than 90% of the guys here who stand and appreciate but do nothing. No matter what the outcome of any approach its an opportunity to improve myself.
Obviously this is easier to say than do, but this is the mindset I have been trying to get myself into, and in less than seven days I’ve seen results!
Gabriel
Heres a little story about failure and confidence, it may seem irrelevant to Pick-Up at the start but please hang in there! When I was 16 I started to become interested in sleight-of-hand magic. When I first started doing card tricks I would often accidentally drop the deck, shuffle the deck and inadvertently lose a chosen card or just generally fail to perform the tricks properly. There was a definite stage at the start of my hobby where I wasn’t the ‘magic-man’ that I kinda wanted to be known around my school as, but instead a “crap Paul Daniels” (quote from Jimmy Anderton in year 9!) There was a lot of failure but after practise and getting used to audiences I slowly became better and better. I even got to the stage of performing at a special ceremony when my old headmaster retired. The lesson I learnt from this hobby (and everyone will know who has a hobby) is that theres no way that you can jump in there and expect to be a master at it immediately. The failures I did experience were never wasted; If I failed to perform a card trick it always meant that I would practise it more until it was smooth and looked good. It’s absolutely the same with pick-up; theres a stage at the start of PU, the stage Im going through at the moment, where there are times when the interaction doesn’t go so well (and I kinda feel like the 16 yr old kid dropping his deck of cards whilst his classmates look on). But failing, as I mentioned, always meant it made me want to improve and then try again with more confidence because I knew what I did wrong the first time and I knew that I wouldn’t make that mistake again. So in my humble opinion not only does success breed confidence, as another person has stated above, but I kinda feel that ‘failure breeds confidence’ (just as Matt’s client experienced). If I failed a card trick, I wouldn’t fail it a second time. If I failed in a 2-set, I wouldn’t fail it a second time around. My point is failure is not something to be afraid of, try and accept that it will happen- and when it does just analyse what went wrong and you’le realise that in most cases it was your fault, and guess what? Thats a good thing, because it means it’s something YOU can change and it means the same problem wont happen the second time!
When i was younger, my mum used to tell me stories about what my grandfather used to say to her when she was little:
“Don’t ever be afraid of anyone standing in front of you… Even if you’re standing in front of the jury, they’re still human, they all go to the toilet, eat the same food as you and have the same problems as you”
My grandfather was a self made Millionaire who had properties in Chelsea and was killer with women! I remember seeing pictures of his girlfriends a few years ago and they were HB10′s of the 1960′s without a doubt.
Looking at his background, it’s no coincidence that he had that lifestyle, because he wasn’t afraid. He was literally fearless and as a result, made a lot of friends and was considered a leader in his group. He even knew the Kray Brother’s who for those of you who don’t know, were the East Ends most dangerous gangsters!
Now that is Social Proof and Pre Selection you definitely can’t mess with :)
Confidence to me, is my whole Game! It has taken me over a year to become confident, but I can tell in my pick-ups that it was worth the work. My favorite opener now is “Hi, can I ask you a question? Can you take a compliment from a complete stranger? Me too! You go first!” I realized that this said in the right tone of voice, body language, will breed endless results! Inner Game is an often overlooked aspect of the Community, it’s refreshing to see someone posting about it!
Confidence to me is success. If I have a test at school and get a score A then i will get more success.
If i pick up women and get number and kiss close then i feel i get more confident. I get success.
And by way. That girl had her bitch shield raised up to high. Either shes having a bad day or she is just tired of guys treating her like shit.
Woooow, excelent piece of work, specially the last example, the one with your client, really inspiring, and lot to do with an issue i have, like you say, i step out on the plate, and i hit, and hit, and hit one home run after another, but i start to got scared, cause im afraid to hurt my own ego, to say “oh god, why this girl in the whole world blew me off!” Lol, not at that extreme but just remembering something in your post LOL, but i like that attitude, in fact it could be like a motivator, you know, like if it is a video game;
receptive girl: 10 points
number close: 20 points
kiss close: 30 points
Fclose: 50 points
The worst case scenario: 1000 points!!!
priceless!!! cause that´s right, you got the worst case scenario, from there, every possible response is just taking you up and up, and like a coment, is true, im more impressed from a guy that got rejected and instantly go confidently to open another set than from a guy that have one close after another, why? cause the other guy steped out of the plate!!!
Great post!
POKER
Again another great article by the PUA training guys.
Their are a million and one answers for how to gain confidence, let me give my views,
OK
The analogy is to “step up to the plate” and keep trying! Fair play, I can see this working, but my views on confidence, center around an old saying I first heard when I was 16….
“HE WHO FAILS TO PLAN, PLANS TO FAIL!”
Its a powerfull statement!
Now lets look at this phrase
If your asked to LITERALLY step up on a baseball field and bat and you know you have a month until the date. What do you do?
Do you continue on with your life for a month and just wait for the day to arrive?
OR
do you read baseball books, watch videos of the greats, eat properly, work out, practice swinging the bat in your back garden in a mirror to make sure your technique is spot on?
WHich way do you think would be more successfull?Of course the second method because he has planned ahead and prepared himself,made himself the best he could be for when hes asked to go out to bat!
Now, Lets look at this in the context of women and “gaming”. If we continually “step up to the plate” without preparation and get rejected time after time, this will eventually eat away at your confidence. Just as a football team who gets beat match after match you will also experience a loss in confidence.
Now if we plan what we are going to do before we step up to the plate and “game” some girls what will be the outcome?
We will get MORE positive responses and to steal your phrase “SUCCESS BREEDS CONFIDENCE”
How do we plan before we go out gaming?
read and watch PUA material, work out, eat well, practice in a mirror, study communication and body language in a mirror, work on your fashion style and work towards becoming your ideal self! Then when you have achieved this, you have also acheived CONGRUENCE!
Now that you have prepared yourself, you will maximise your chances of becoming a great Man/PUA. Will you still get rejections? Who knows. Probably. But I can tell you that you won’t get as many rejections as you would have if you didn’t take the time to prepare yourself.
What do you do when you get a rejection? You guessed it…
STEP UP TO THE PLATE, AGAIN
Even the greatest baseball players strike out from time to time,but not as much as someone who doesn’t know how to bat!!
Cheers,
Noel
Hey guys! Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. You’ve contributed some great stuff to whats already there.
Nice post from Noel, you have picked up on something i use in all my seminars…COMPETENCE = CONFIDENCE. A massive part of building confidence is building your skill-set so that you are congruent with what it is you are portraying. There are two things I will say however:
1. Many people are prone to waiting till their skill-set is ‘perfect’ before they take action. You have to get out there and do it, no matter what level you are at. This is not like preparing for an exam, where the month before you do a ton of revision before you enter the examination room. In fact, this is one exam you get to resit as many times as you like! My point? If you got the chance to take exactly the same exam twice, what would be more important: revising tons beforehand, or going in there, finding out all the questions, and then taking it again having prepared your answers for the questions you KNOW are going to come up? Which brings me on to my second point:
2. The best preparation you can get, is the activity itself. Aristotle said: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by doing”. This couldn’t be more true here. I’m not saying don’t do your homework in between classes, im just saying make sure you turn up to school, because thats where the real learning takes place. I really do believe you can learn more in one hour of talking to people than a year of reading books.
Keep posting my friends, ive really enjoyed your comments so far!
Matthew
you are right!!
with my method it is dangerous to fall into the TRAP of revising “too much” instead of getting straight out there!
I would advise people to give themselves TIME FRAMES to study the skills, so they don’t fall into the trap of too much theory and and not enough practical!
Really fasinating subject. And I think you are on the money! I look forward to reading more of your posts as I think you are a great coach and someone I would learn from!
Cheers Matthew
This is the perfect thing to hear before this Saturday night! I get it now, fail FORWARD to success!
What made things easier for me eventually was my ‘frame of mind’
Coming from a martial arts background and teaching martial arts on a weekly bases. I’ve begun to understand the importance of ‘frame of mind’ and your use of ‘emotions’.
Generally in a confrontation, you will get nerves and adrenaline kicking in which prepares you for a physical confrontation. So what martial arts teaches you to do, is to make you relax. We do this in numerous ways, mainly live sparring and drills.
Eventually, what you begin to realise is that ability doesn’t come from just turning up to the gym and practicing. But you’re positive attitude and your visualisation skills… Mainly, frame of mind!
In pick up terms, if you’re in set and your frame of mind is such that you’re a friendly guy out to make female friends. Chances are, your approaches will be far easier because you’ve taken the pressure of yourself by taking away the idea that you’re trying to pick a girl up… The cool thing about this is, you pick a girl up by being friendly and sociable, and it goes hand in hand :)
The best frame of mind i like to use is to be interested. If i’m talking to a person on the street, i will make a conscious effort to actively want to get to know more about that person. And you will then start to find that conversation topics like what school she went to, what she does for a living, what her favourite colour etc. naturally starts to spring up.
You then start to realise that you had it in you all along to be a good conversationalist ;)
I honestly believe that none of us are bad conversationalists. The problem is is we are all too in our heads and think too much into it. The key is to let go!
Let go of your emotions and let things happen… A very common theme in Chinese philosophy :)
Hi Chaps
I don’t believe confidence is the issue. If you aim for confidence you will take a long time to get there.
Onder’s point above is a great, I’d like to expand my own thoughts on it.
We are ‘shaken’ by the world due to our attachment to phisical parts of our reality. Our true essence, our soul if you like, has the capacity to move gracefully through reality like water through a stream, but in becoming attached to the ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ we get caught, and this creates eddies in our consciousness.
The key is to aim for something higher. When we aim for a higher purpose, all the levels of reality below that purpose become alligned to allow us to reach our higher goal. In fact, the goal we seek is always unreacheable, because our very attachment to reaching it is a wall to our achievement.
How did AFC adam get great at getting laid? He wanted a large social group around him at all times, and he wanted to be able to contribute in a positive way to the people in the group. One of these ways was through sex, but just one. (I believe this is correct, if not please let me know).
Adam, if you read this, has your capacity for increasing your social group increased since you began aiming for a higher goal than that? Perhaps since you descided to focus more efforts into training?
The mechanism for achieving our goals is as such:
- Silence your mind
- Intend a higher goal, through which your lower goal would have to be fulfilled.
- Allow the universe to handle the details.
My higher goal is to focus myself into the present moment, through inner peace, and to help others to do the same. Sex is one of the most glorious ways to do this, plus bad sex/ no sex is one of the main causes for our attachment to reality; for eddies in our natural flow.
As such I wish great sex for everyone I meet, from the attractive girls in bars to the old ladies in woolworths to drunken larger swillers vomiting on streetlamps. Let them all enjoy the magnificence of a gratifying sex life.
And when I talk to a girl I simply stay focussed in the moment, and silently wish her great sex. I intend for us to have sex, and I allow her to qualify for that, whilst I lead physically, to make the journey easier for her.
Most importantly, I recognise that she may chose to go have great sex with someone else, and that is an equally good outcome, because my goal is higher then simply ‘getting laid’ – it is to awaken the sexual fredom within the people around me.
When this is your intention, you no longer have to be worried about ‘saying the right thing’ or ‘being confident’ – such things are not a part of your higher goal, but they will happen automatically as the universe arranges itself to help you reach your higher.. and higher…
Any thoughts on this? These are new thoughts to me and I’m waiting to see ow they develope.
That was an absolutely fantastic article. Read it, people. Then read it again.
I had a similar epiphany a while back, after I realised that I’d been waiting for confidence to come BEFORE I was willing to put myself out there. This wasn’t just in game, but in almost every aspect of life. I realised that I’d been expecting confidence to come first.
And I think a lot of people have the same point of view. It reminds me of people who always avoid the scariest rides or the fastest rollercoasters when you go to a theme park. Their thinking is: “I don’t want to go on that, because I’m too scared to go on it at the moment.” But really you should go on a ride not just in spite of being afraid, but because you’re afraid. Where would the thrill be if you weren’t scared before doing it? And where would the satisfaction of completing it be if it was all so easy?
Since then I’ve tried to push myself and consequently landed myself in a lot of silly situations, culminating in me doing the highest bungee jump of a bridge that you can pay to do – which terrified me. And after a while, it does change your attitude.
So to return to my original point, the realisation I had was that confidence actually comes last. Confidence follows success, and to get success you have to be willing to put yourself out there, be willing to go outside your comfort zone, and be willing to fail. Confidence doesn’t come to you, you have to go out and get it.
Oh, as a side note, I heard that song “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” the other day. Remember that? It’s got a line in it that I thought was great to implement in your life. “Do something that scares you every day.” Cheesy song, but great advice!
“Frame of mind” is key in the art of PU! There is no denying that.
But if I went into a martial arts ring with a great frame of mind, I would still get my ass kicked because I know nothing about martial arts. So I need a skill set before I enter a martial arts ring.
Just as a PUA, I think you need to have skills before you enter, your style, body language etc. Then when you go in to “game” use your frame of mind technique once your skill set is at a level confident enough to go in.
I really think confidence is such a complex issue, with a lot of different aspects attached. I completely agree with what love plus and Onder say but I also think that confidence is more complex than just “frame of mind.” But once your in set, I totally agree the most important thing is frame of mind, but there are more aspects to it.
Cheers, Noel
Thans Noel, great point about the skills dude, frame of mind isn’t everything when you look at it that way.
What do you think about the concept that we have a certain in-built ability to attract girls? Does a frame of mind allow this to naturally flow out? Any martial art similarities?
Also, what if you were fighting for the good of your friends, rather than for your own glory, any change do you think…
Thanks for the feedback, peace
Again I agree with you Love plus!
We all have an inherent ability to attract and seduce women from an evolutionary stance. If we didn’t then no one would reproduce, right?
People say that us males are a
“Generation of men raised by our mothers”
and I think what this gets at is that we have LEARNED what our mothers tell us (to be nice guys etc) which is distant from our inherent ability to attract women. That and hollywood soceity etc have taught us material different from our “natural god given ability”.
Now the question you’re getting at is can we unlearn what soceity has told us and get in touch with our evolutionary side of raw animal instinct through the use of our state of mind? The answer…..
I don’t know (lol)
two schools of thought
Yes, we can get in touch with our evolutionary side through state of mind, its present in our genes and what we need to do is let it out. Just like if we are attacked, our fight or flight response comes out and we defend ourselves
the other is
No, we have learned from soceity and people that we are “nice guys”, not good with women, etc. It can’t be unlearned.
Think about the way once you learn to ride a bike, you know how to do it for the rest of your life, or how we are currently typing in english, can we unlearn how to type? So can we unlearn what soceity has told us? The essence of PU is to learn new skills which over ride our previous skills which made us bad with women…
These are two arguments, both making very valid points. At this current moment in time, i don’t know the answer and I’ll admit that. If anyone does have thoughts on it, let us know, its interesting. What do you think Love plus?
I like your style man, you know a lot!
Cheers, Noel
I think this is a great demonstration of our power to frame events the way we choose. This client had the possibility to feel miserable to feel sorry for him self to feel like a failure and never try again. Instead he chose to frame it differently. He experienced the worst case and had maybe a feeling of relief… at least he experienced that it didn’t emotionally strike him and as often the fear of what might happened is worse than what actually happens.
I didn’t experience anything nearly as bad but something I will remember likewise. When I opened a 1 set at daytime she asked me whether I always chat up strangers and I said something like only 99% of the time. She didn’t even show the slightest sign of a smile. She told me she can’t right now care for other people’s issues (I used the JGF opener) because her lunch break will soon be over and she has to go now. I was quite disappointed and asked my wingman what I did wrong and he replied nothing. It is perfectly normal to speak to strangers, we’re a social species and he reminded me that in other situations like on campus I would do that all the time and just assume it is appropriate. It was the girl who had a problem with being approached by strangers; it was her who reacted inappropriately not me. It had nothing to do what I did right or wrong. So from this moment on I understood that we all have our own issues and instead of considering a girl’s rejection as your own failure simple recognise it as what it is, a rejection of your approach based on her own issues.
The difference between a martial art and Pick up is that Martial arts requires physical conditioning and getting your body and muscle memory to react and behave naturally to unnatural movements.
With Pick up however, it is a ‘soft skill’ meaning it is something which we all already do naturally. Like body language and verbal communication. So the only thing we need to use is our minds to help direct us in a certain way.
So as an example. If you want to act non needy, you need to first think in a way where you’re not viewing a woman as someone you want to pick up or actually interested in. Doing that, your body language and verbal communication will follow naturally. You lean back and you time constraint…
Frame of Mind is so so important guys…
“Be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind” ;)
I think confidence is a difficult subject to talk about; however, a couple of comments have really caught and tackled the subject well. I really enjoyed Onder’s, Love Plus’s and Noel’s, you guys really gave me some insights into how people perceive confidence. That’s why I have hung back in making this post; I didn’t want to crash an already great party. However, that would be clichéd as this post is on confidence so here goes.
When ever I think of confidence I think of a quote by Emerson: “insist on yourself; never imitate”. I think this simple quote holds the real key to confidence. I think confidence is a by product of human fears. If we where not naturally afraid of certain situations there would be no need for confidence. So surely this comes back to approach anxiety — once we distance ourselves from the situation we are more able to forget about what other people think. We are ‘insisting on ourselves’. When we approach we shouldn’t need confidence as we should have no reason to worry about rejection.
Instead of trying to build up bags of confidence we should instead get down to the underlying motivations, our primordial and socially conditioned fears. I have found that the people who get labelled as having the most ’confidence’ are the ones with the least to fear. Distance yourself from your reality and self actualise. Lets get back to basics and look at out motivations for why we do what we do. This may all sound a bit Dr Phil, but it does work.
I look forward to you all shooting me down in flames. ;-). Lol.
Have a good week guys,
JonDoe.
So essentially what you are saying is if you eliminate fear, we eliminate a need for confidence?
Thats my take on your post, is that right man?
If it is, I think you have a point
My last post was meant for JonDoe.
Cheers, Noel
Total confidence is no fear of rejection. Many of the top pua’s tell me they have no approach anxiety, because they have been rejected that many times their brain realises its unharmful and doesn’t care anymore. But the positive way they have learnt from there mistakes has allowed them to move forward.
I did a fantastic exercise with Beckster. He told me to go for an instant number close. I quickly got used to being blown out and realised I could easily deal with the emotions.
But to my amazement some of the time I didn’t get blown out. It then felt a million times easier to go for a number when I’d been in set for five minutes with a positive vibe, since I new I could do it from scratch.
Matt…you never cease to amaze me. You have a gift of telling me things I already know in a way that makes me start to believe them.
Genius
-D