The Tao of P.U.- Simplicity
While most of my understanding of game and what I teach comes from psychology, and while I’m not the most spiritual person, I can’t ignore the profound wisdom I’ve found from Taoism. Specifically from a little book called “The Tao of Pooh” which explains Taoism in comparison to Winnie the Pooh. After reading it I was amazed to see just how much it not only relates to life but also to Pick Up. That’s why I’m going to begin a short series of blog posts based on the Tao of P.U. (pick up).
Taoism is simply a particular way of appreciating, learning from, and working with whatever happens in every day life. The natural result of this is happiness. Taoist understanding changes what others might percieve to be negative into something positive. It also shows how everything in life teaches us valuable lessons and by learning these lessons all will go well. When you let go of arrogance, complexity, and anything else in the way you learn a simple and childlike secret: life is fun.
Easily one can see just how useful having this mindset is in every PU. To appreciate and learn from every set and every experience with women and be completely at ease and comfortable while doing so makes playing this game fun. This fun allows you to really be in state and to ooze positivity to those around you. So fun in fact that our attitude towards PU, and even life, becomes child like and stress free. Happiness and pleasure are suddenly found in the simplest of things and we begin to shed all our negative mindsets and qualities to become our “true” selves. If you think about it you already have everything you need, you really do possess all the right qualities, the problem is you possess to many bad ones that need to be discarded. Really understand this point, it’s not about adding anything to you, it’s only about letting go. However when your ego or arrogance gets in the way we begin trying to force things, take things to seriously, and make things overly complex which leads to frusteration.
Alright so this all sounds great so far but how do we begin to think, live, and meet women in this way of being? Well step one is to keep things simple.
Simplicity creates the ability to enjoy the simple and quiet, the natural and plain, to do things spontaneously and have them work out. When you’re keeping things simple you can do the silliest things, even things that might not make any real sense, but somehow they just seem to turn out right. This is especially true for PU.
The science of PU is incredibly…and I mean INCREDIBLY….complex. This is both a blessing and a curse though. On one hand it’s good to understand the science and know it on an intellectual level, but when it comes to acting on it, to do the pick up itself, it’s always best to just keep it simple and stay simpleminded. There’s no way to keep track of every complex step and even if you try it’ll almost always end in failure. Instead staying simpleminded and just doing what feels right in the moment from experience, without complicating things, allows for a much more natural and successful interaction. Keep in mind that being simpleminded does not mean being stupid. It just means that while you might have the knowledge you don’t overthink things. There’s an old saying in the community that smart guys usually have the most trouble with women and the more dumb guys are usually the naturals. I don’t think it has to do with smart or dumb though, it really is just who stays simpleminded.
Another key concept is by trying so hard to demonstrate attractive qualities in all these complex ways you end up not only qualifying yourself to the girl and raising her value, not only end up investing in the girl more and more which makes you make bad decisions, but you also only get the girl seeing these attractive qualities on a purely intellectual level with no real feelings behind it. Instead you can just keep things simple SHOW these attractive qualities. There’s a world of difference between telling a girl all these long and complex DHV stories about how you know so many people and are preselected, and just having girls in your life that you bring out, or else creating social proof and preselection there that she can see.
So now for the first time I want to give you guys some homework and in the nature of this post I’m going to keep it simple. Go out to meet women and try to stay simpleminded. For example when you see a girl just say the first thing that comes to mind whatever it may be, “hi” for example. Instead of trying to do all these complex pick up moves try and just appreciate the interaction for whatever it is and just go with the flow of it while doing whatever feels right at the time. Finally if you catch yourself having complex thoughts, analyzing things that really don’t matter, or feeling anxious or stressed, either focus on something around you and appreciate it’s simple beauty or else simply decide what you should do and just do it. For example if your thinking “Oh my god I have so many finals coming up. How am I going to get it all done! I could study from 12-5 but then I might not absorb it all. I should probably take breaks but it also depends on which chapter I’m studying and…” just switch it to “Hmmm…I’m gonna study now”.
I’d really appreciate hearing how this homework goes for everyone so do this for one week and then please comment here on what you’ve found (good or bad).
Hope this helps,
-Psych
(Anyone in the states who’s interested in doing one on one training please send an e-mail to Psych@puatraining.com)
yeh psych is the best writer IMO.
PU should always be simple. And you do learn life lessons every single day. It’s all part of the experience. But spirituality I feel is an integral part of becoming a happy person and good with women. To me, it’s becoming transparent and connecting to the world. Cheers
-Briddick
Psych,
Good points all around. Nonetheless, I wonder, when do you bring the complex machinery – the so-called, p.u. artistry?
Doesn’t pick-up artistry exist mostly because simple-minded, common-sensical approaches do not work?
Of course, it’s always hard to know “why” but I believe I had my heart broken many times because I was simple-minded.
Hey Psyche, nice post. I am new to the community this year, but this is a really unique view to hear and very helpful to me. I have had a keen interest in taoism since a very early age so this puts some real perspective on the subject for me. The art of non-ado… at this point I am still emptying myself of all the old afc bull, and I am far from making anything appear effortless, but this gives me some perspective on where I want to end up. Nice work.
I am rather mentally crippled with a cocktail of mental problems so i may be too crippled for PUA.
or maybe mental problems are compensations for a lack of something thats needed? ie love/affection/cuddles/social connections etc???
AnlamK:
Some great points I’m glad you brought up! Honestly I’ve gone through all the “complex machinery”, I can literally break down any social interaction to an insane degree and intellectually know more complex stuff then I’ll ever need. However this is NOT pick up artistry. When I game I need to be in the moment and perform simple actions that bring me to my goal. Yea you can break down how to draw a picture by color schemes and proper shapes, but the art is to simply make a beautiful painting.
All the complex things are great to know and to try out doing, however the problem is that they are all intellectual ideas that can be left on the intellectual level. Just food for your brain as opposed to something with real meaning. While someone is analyzing all the complexities of how to open just the right way and trying to micromanage the conversation, I’m simply going up and having fun while showing the girl a good time.
To sum up, keep it simple and learn the lessons you get from experience. I promise the simplest answer you come across will usually be right. Don’t take my word for it though, try the homework and report back what happens!
Hi I aslo have read this book and enjoyed it, and use a similar teqnique. However althought it makes it easy for me to talk to any woman and have fun and put them at ease I pften end up with friends instead of bed partners any ideas?.
wow,
one thing i hate is a cold hearted nasty guy,
and coldhearted guys can be attractive to girls,
this is the only problem which ive had with trying to become a PUA,
but the more i look into PUAs the more I am finding people who just wanna give a positive vibe out.
I love Toaism,
and your a legend Psych!!
:)
i liked what you said about life is fun,
and I heard a cool quote recently:
there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way –
The Buddha
Psych,
It’s helpful to rely on a discussion that one commonly encounters in philosophy. We can distinguish between knowledge-that and knowledge-how.
Knowledge-that is the knowledge of a particular proposition (or fact). Knowing that the sky is blue, knowing that water quenches thirst etc.
Knowledge-how is the knowledge about how to do a certain thing. Knowledge of how to drive, how to swim, how to write etc.
(Granted, the distinction is not always there or very clear. For instance, knowledge-that of mathematics and know-how of mathematics are not all that distinct – you need to know a lot of mathematics before you can do some math but more importantly, vice versa.)
I think PU is a more matter of knowledge-how than knowledge-that. I have seen videos on YouTube where people open with “I wanna f*** your butt cheeks” and establish a fairly robust connection with the target.
Perhaps, more importantly, if you read PUA literature, you’ll see contradicting advice. I have seen PUAs tell their students not to praise the target so readily and then I have seen people pick up women by approaching them and telling them “you are the most amazing women I have seen…”
I think you can explain the data in the following way.
(1) PU isn’t a strictly deterministic process. Every time you approach a girl, there is a probability of success and failure. Your goal is to maximize the probability of success, which can never reach 1 – in light of the assumption that it’s not deterministic. Thus, even the sloppiest pick up (small chance of success) can give a good result because hey, improbable things do occur in life, contrary to people’s natural intuitions about it. On the other hand, the smoothest pick up can fail – again since, improbable things do occur in life.
So, a fair test of any method/idea is to apply it over and over again. Thus, you’ll get a good understanding of how well it works. (Tour estimate of the probability of success becomes closer to its actual probability the more data you have.)
(2) As I mentioned, PU is knowledge-how and not knowledge-that. And this does allow some unorthodox methods to work.
I’m a table tennis player at the club level. And every now and then, I’ll see a very unorthodox player (with ugly swings and what not) take out a player whose technique is better.
Same thing with PU. Sometimes, a really unorthodox technique will actually work – and it could be the case, I’m not too sure, as in table tennis, some people will perform better with their unorthodox techniques than adopting the standard PU lore – though again, poor technique in table tennis will saturate your development pretty fast.
(3) This last point perhaps has been the hardest for me to figure out. I think PU is not perhaps a matter of what you say or do but more a matter of how you say it or do it. A skillful PUA will win the target even with a particularly bad opener as in the case of “I wanna f*** butt cheeks”. On the other hand, you could say all the things you are supposed to say and still botch because you didn’t say them in the right way (by right way, I mean the tone of voice, intonation and things of that nature). (Of course, within some limitations.)
Okay enough digression…
Psych, you also write that “what I teach comes from psychology” – can you give me some references?
So far, the only psychologist I know who works on attraction is Eli J. Finkel of Northwestern University – see here: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli-finkel/ . (I especially recommend the digestable Nature coverage of his work: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli-finkel/documents/NatureFeature.pdf )
Though I am most definitely NOT a “spiritual” guy (whatever that truly means) myself, I found the principles in the Tao of Pooh and its sequel the Te of Piglet to be wonderfully applicable not only to pick up but to life in general.
Its great to see PUAs branching out and embracing different schools of thought and integrating them into their P.U. skill-set.
Keep it up.
this post is fantastic i always had hi conflict with people i thought that if i learned PU i would naturally become an arrogant jerk as being a pua is a lot of power but thanks to this post i fiannly understand that the secret to happyness is simplicity
My favourite post without a doubt, I’ve shot myself in the foot so hard trying to be extroverted yet analytical and tactical, which are of course process that force you to be introverted – which is either a very difficult thing to pull of, or completely impossible. Much better to be in a positive state where you can be spontaneous I’ve discovered.
- Greg
Amazing post, Psych. Make me realize and find the cure how every time I get into the field, I got an exploding headache and stuff. I think too much… Thanks for this post man, I’ll try to put it into practice as fast as I could. Cheers and keep up the good work!!
Best pal,
Steven ;)