How to Ensure Success and Avoid Failure

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve written something on my very own blog right here.  I think this is important enough, and if I can convey my ideas on this subject well enough, I might be able to help a lot of guys along their path.  Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people get stuck .  Maybe they make it part of the way to a happy love life and then stall out or regress.  I’ve even seen guys who never really get off the starting blocks despite years of effort.  As a coach, it’s very important for me to understand what they are doing wrong, and now for the first time I can give you my take, and I hope it’ll help you either to avoid a similar fate or confirm that you are on the right track.

What are the 3 major mistakes that the guys who don’t win the game make?

1.  Wrong role models.

Sometimes I watch videos by other “gurus” or meet them face to face.  There are lots of guys that I respect, some are good teachers, some have a lot of great theoretical knowledge, and some have good game.  However there are a ton of guys who are buddies with the right people, are good marketers, and are basically guys who should NOT be listened to.  Sometimes on these videos you can see the guys in the audience furiously taking down notes.  Big mistake.  If you choose the wrong role model, the best you can hope for is to be as good as them.  In some cases these “gurus” have no skill at all with women and are total losers.

When I first started, my role models were the gurus who had qualities that I lacked and respected, not the ones who had the coolest stories, were the most famous, or who bragged the most.  Which ones could I imagine girls being attracted to?  Which ones had some charisma, presence, or other quality that I valued?  When I started getting better, my role models became guys like Steve and Alex. Guys who I noticed because they had amazing strengths in areas that I had weakness.

So the lesson?  Tune your radar correctly, find role models who are guys that have qualities that you don’t, guys you respect.  Not just guys that brag about bagging HB10s on message boards, or who do the circuit of PUA talks but have no real world skill.

Of course an average role model is better than a bad one.  Too many guys only hang around with guys on the same level as them and think that they can all get better together.  While that is possible, in most cases they will fail.  Being friends with someone 10x better than you is a surefire way to get better in that area of life, whether business, pick up, or anything else.  My role models are accountable for over 50% of my success.

Alex and I soon after we met in 2007.

2.  Wrong approach to feedback.

“What she says doesn’t matter”, “just do what you want and if people don’t like it it’s their problem”.  NO!  Feedback is the only way we get better.  Yes you shouldn’t take everything a girl says to heart, or take each rejection personally, but you should objectively look at all feedback and take on board lessons from every failed interaction/relationship.   If you keep telling stories and people get bored, or keep making certain types of jokes and people don’t laugh, or keep failing at the same points in a seduction, then you need to pay attention to the external feedback and make changes.   If you have someone who can harshly critique you, fantastic.  This could be a wing man, your natural friend, or a particularly honest girl who you try to seduce.

A lot of guys work on their inner game so much that they delude themselves into thinking they are good BEFORE they actually are.  Then if someone doesn’t like anything about them it’s obviously the other person’s fault.  This is a real limiter to making progress.  Don’t let your ego get in the way. Each time you either step up the difficulty of the girls you are going for, or try a new environment, you should expect to be bad to begin with.  Feedback and adjusting is the only way to improve.  Plowing through with a “what she says doesn’t matter” attitude is a recipe for disaster.

90% of the time this means you are doing something wrong and you need to figure out what it is and change it, 10% of the time she is having a bad day etc.  We can’t get better without negative feedback.

3.  Focusing on “game” and being a PUA.  The wrong goal.

Being a PUA is lame.  I said it.  Generally you are hanging around with guys who either are bad with women or were bad with women recently, you won’t have many “normal” friends and generally no female friends.  You are WEIRD…but it’s all for a purpose.  You have your wingman, you do your approaches, and you are going to be this weird guy for a short amount of time while you learn all the skills and catch up on all those years you missed out on.  Years when other guys were getting laid and talking to lots of girls.  You get the skills and then you get out.  You make normal friends – cool guys and (importantly) girls, your “game” becomes natural, just who you are.  You learn skills, travel, and do interesting things, become a man who women should be attracted to naturally.  Guys that think it’s cool to always be a PUA are never going to be in the places where all the hot girls are, are not going to be accepted by her friends and family, and are not going to have the huge benefits that being socially connected brings.

4. …and the obvious ones

Not taking action, not trying new things, not pushing yourself, not leaving the house, and all the things you already know.

I hope that helps guys, it took me a few years of watching guys succeed and fail to find the common threads.  Please comment below, I’ll be reading them all.