A Happy New Year to all, and thanks to everyone for supporting me over the last one.
Thought I’d start 2012 with a bit of a hot potato. What stops a guy from approaching? The more astute readers will notice that I didn’t categorize it immediately as approach anxiety as I do not believe that it is as simple as that.

You see, I see many students who are quick to say, “I do not get approach anxiety,” but then don’t approach anyway, citing some other excuse to not go and open. Common ones are “I’m tired”, “She’s walking too fast,”and my favourite, “She’s not hot enough.””She’s too young” also comes up but that’s an entirely different blog.
Therein lies the age old philosophical argument between instructors of, is this a legitimate excuse, or AA in disguise?

Because when guys start off practising game, it feels normal and acceptable to have a modicum of approach anxiety. Which is a feeling of tension or apprehension which kicks in just before an approach which irrationally rationalises the possibility of being rejected.Obviously.
This is fascinating when you think about it. Millions of years of evolution and we as a species have had to endure hostile conditions, predators and disease, and have have developed the feeling of anxiety, to warn us and help us to survive.Yet, the very same feeling of threat and danger kicks in before we go and talk to a girl.

What the hell is at threat here?I mean, logically, surely we all know that the vast majority of girls are not going to kill, maim, infect or devour us (in a bad way), so what is the anxiety set to serve?
Well it protects against a threat to the ego. The Male Ego.

The Male Ego works, on the most basic level, if I do X, then this makes me more of a man; if I fail, I am less of a man.So rejection tarnishes the ego. Not really cutting edge news.
But we are willing to accept a little tarnishing in the acquisition of skills and call it a learning curve. So when we start out, it is much easier to accept the odd knock of the ego.

The problem emerges when the skills become more solid and we start to look for markers of success.Then negative outcomes or rejections seem to hit harder as we adopt an ethos of “I have the skills so I should have succeeded” blah, blah, blah less of a man.

The natural reaction to this is to establish comfort zones, that is people will game or interact only in ways or environments which they are completely confident in their abilities, unwilling to risk rejection. This is terribly inhibiting to personal growth and indeed evolving one’s game.

It also results in the aforementioned resistance to approaching whilst denying approach anxiety. Call it Approach Apathy if you will. It’s just another way of protecting the ego. Incidentally the most extreme example of this that I have heard is, “I know that I can get any girl I like so I won’t even bother to approach.”That doesn’t even make any sense.
There are wider implications to this. There is an infectious state that occurs especially when you are with a group of people who are collectively not approaching. It becomes more difficult to approach when your friends around you have the reluctance to approach (or push their game), and it seems that the common denominator is to not be rejected. The idea of “not being rejected” becomes more important than the possible benefits of approaching and hooking up. Conversely, it seems easier to approach if those around you are also approaching and indeed getting success and rejections, as the concept of rejection seems less potent. Socially Proofed Rejection as it were.

We end up catching a cheeky dose of outcome dependence where we avoid approaching challenging sets to avoid rejection and/or only approach “sure things”or DTFs (you know the people who would go home with a garden tool and thus require very little game to close), to garner the evidence that we are indeed, pimp. Afraid to find out that it may not be true. We need to accept that as humans we are imperfect, and at every stage are capable of having swag-tastic awesome interactions, as well as epic blowouts of mass destruction.

So how do you become an Approach Machine? What do the best approachers have in common?

COMPLETE INDIFFERENCE TO REJECTION!!!

In fact the word “rejection! should not exist in our vocabulary. Learn to love getting blown out. Appreciate that experiences that go spectacularly wrong are more valuable (and arguably fun) than those that go spectacularly right. Hell, reprogram your markers of success in terms of the number of spectacular blow outs that you get. Try and get blown out deliberately; it’s actually quite hard. Even if you are quite advanced in the game, just like trying to lift a heavier weight to grow more muscle, you need to challenge yourself and risk losing to grow more.Your strength is not just about your awesome outcomes, it is about your tenacity to keep going through bad ones.
Here’s a little inspiration that sums it up quite well.

Until the next one.

Stay classy,

Shamwow.

It’s been a while since the last one. Today I want to talk about calibration, a topic constantly referred to in pickup, but never really properly addressed. More specifically, social calibration. This is effectively the skill of being attuned to your social environment to judge how others feel and react to the situation, and thus enables you to make the most appropriate decisions to maximise your outcomes.

Now social calibration is extremely hard to teach. Most people have varying degrees of social calibration and individually it may vary from situation to situation. The amount it varies would depend on many factors including social experience, lifestyle and personality. It should be said that we feel more confident when we receive more evidence of our own social calibration to a particular environment. This is why people tend to have venues of preference; one guy may feel more calibrated in coffee shops, whereas someone else may be more at home in a club. We tend to gravitate towards environments where our sense of social calibration is highest.

Now for the most part, when people talk about social calibration in pickup, the knee-jerk solution is………..anyone….Bueller……

SPEND MORE TIME IN THE FIELD!!!!!

And as much as that is a fair comment, it is not entirely helpful. What do you do in the field? How do you know if you are uncalibrated? How do you know if you are improving?

Now a lot of people gauge socially uncalibrated responses as those which are weird, awkward or creepy. As a result, many people see social calibration as an absence of weird, awkward or creepy responses.

This then creates an altogether different and more hideous beast from within. There is a middle ground, a Calibration Purgatory if you will, which exists somewhere between the darkest depths of social retardedness and actual social calibration, where many reside comfortably. And this is the Competition for Social Status.

The most subtle uncalibrated behaviours tend to exist because individuals are competing for a place in the hierarchy of social status. For example, AMOGging, putting others down to try and increase status or NEGging, flat out being rude (because they think it’s being cool), bitchiness and trying to force rapport. Aggressive and competitive behaviours also fall into this category, and also project neediness and dependence on the outcome. These are uncalibrated because they all refuse to take into account what others are feeling and/or create negativity largely to fulfill self-centered needs.

So what are we aiming for to reach Actual Social Calibration? Well if you study individuals who are successful professionally and socially, a number of qualities tend to stand out. They are non-competitive, non-judgemental, have no agenda and seem to add value to everyone. It has been suggested that selfless generosity is the key.

So here are a few things that you can do to avoid getting stuck in Calibration Purgatory.

1. Social Versatility.
Aim to immerse yourself in as many different social situations as you can. One thing I see is that some students only hang out with their Pick-Up wings (mmm wings..) and as a result “the community” defines their social behaviour, resulting in interactions and self-esteem defined by “closes” and the slow descent into narcissism. Expanding one’s repertoire gives us a more broad experience with which to base our experiences of people’s behaviour.It’s also more fun.

2.Treat everyone as equals.

Look, we want to be the high value men that we are, but that’s no excuse to belittle people with it. The goal here is to ADD VALUE (the old chestnut), and make everyone around you feel good. If anyone is down, bring them up. This also enables you to connect with everyone. Make others interact and get involved with your conversation, instead of making it just about yourself.

3.Be non-discriminatory.

A massive potential politically incorrect hot potato.However, many people discriminate to some extent, and it takes a big man to know how he does, and a bigger man to do something about it.Here’s one.Would you treat a hot girl differently to her more overweight friend?Discrimination leads to judgement. Judgement leads to competition. And competition seeks hierarchy.

4. Aim to make everyone feel at ease.

This is where weird, awkward and creepy, those ubiquitous pantomime characters, can be stamped out. Firstly, avoid the Calibration Purgatory option, where the situation becomes weird and you carry on regardless. This just makes it worse, but hey if your’re gonna go down, go down in a Blaze of Glory. Well no.

If your aim is to make everyone feel at ease, the odd challenging situation will come up anyway (which is part of the point) and you learn to deal with them. This will be minimised if everyone is already upbeat, having a good time and already connecting.

Ultimately, a Socially Calibrated person is highly attractive, and projects a potent marker of social success.

Well that’s my take on it . Any Qs E me.

Stay classy.

Shamwow.

Comfort Topics:

At our bootcamps, we teach guys a method to keep a conversation going forever. Even with this powerful tool, the most common problem I see for a guy coming back to me without a number or without the girl is very simply “I ran out of stuff to say.”

Relating, the skill of building rapport through conversation, is where you’ll spend about 80% of the time in a solid pick up. Basically, if you can build rapport with somebody, you can do just about anything with them while you do. Any objection, any ‘I’m not ready,’ any ‘I have a boyfriend,’ is actually little more than a way of saying ‘We don’t have enough rapport yet.’

Relating is essentially the act of finding things you have in common with somebody. It’s discovering that you have similar world views, similar experiences, that you’re on the same page. It’s everything from bloods and crypts giving each other their secret signal to husbands and wives finishing each other’s sentences.

We relate naturally to people we’re friends with. The reason being, most people we’ve known for a while we have a history with. We’ve shared experiences and have old jokes with them. We know the same people, we’ve seen the same movies, we’ve gotten too drunk together that night neither of us remembers. We have all this to talk about, to reference, to relate to. But when we meet a random girl for the first time at a bar, we have none of this.

One of the easiest ways I find to discover common experiences is to steer the conversation towards relatable topics- topics that most women find interesting, have experience with, and, most importantly topics we can share perspectives, opinions, and views on. While down the line you’ll want to find out what makes your special flower unique, starting with some common ground will easily help you to build up to the deeper stuff.

Here are five of my favorite relatable topics. You’ll find it hard to find the girl who doesn’t find at least one of these to be something she’s interested or passionate about.

Fashion

Honestly, if you know what Katy Perry nail polish and Michael Kors watches look like, you may never need another opener again. It happens to be a huge interest of mine, so I could chat about why Zac Posen is just ripping off old-styles with new cuts and how tired I am of Tori Burch flats for hours. Fashion is the lifeblood of so many women, it’s on the front of their magazines, it’s the identity by which they convey their selves to the world. If you can talk fashion, you can instantly hold the undivided attention of the hottest girls in the room and laugh as other guys watch aghast wondering what magic ability you possess.

Further studies: Nylon, W, Vogue, Elle, Instyle, Harper’s Bazzar- all about $10 subscriptions and worth a thousand times the price.

Gossip/Entertainment

If you know that Lonely Boy and Blaire hooked up a few weeks ago and why this is super important, you are now officially blessed with the ability to get about 60% of the women in the continental US to talk for about three hours straight without a breath. (I mean, how could she do that to Serena, seriously?) There’s a reason gossip rags still sell at every supermarket counter and why soap operas are still on the air after all this time. I constantly talk about my celebrity crushes (Emma Stone and Mila Kunis), my hope to now make Mila mine now that Macaulay Culkin is out of the picture, and how cool I think it is that Lindsay Lohan wrote ‘fuck you’ on the fingernails when she went to court. And if you’re unsure as to whether this works, try telling the next girl you’re talking to for a few minutes that you ‘want your pink shirt back,’ and just thank me later.

Further studies: E entertainment television, Perezhilton.com, thesuperficial.com, TMZ

Food

Earlier this year, our instructor Alex was rated this year as one of the top ten pick up artists in the world. About half the time I overhear him chatting with girls he’s talking about cupcakes, how hungry he is, or what the best burger in New York actually is (he says corner bistro, I say Shake Shack). The man is hungry all the time. It’s probably one of his greatest gifts, because girls are dieting most of the time anyway and generally damn near starving. Add in the fact that chocolate triggers most of the same hormones that sex does and you’ve got yourself a damn good topic of conversation. So, go out hungry. Know what’s good in your city, and once the two of you hit something you’ve both been meaning to try you have your date already created for you. Or better yet, just go get it right then if it’s open, and eat it back at your place ;)

Further studies: Yelp, food column of your local newspaper

Nightlife

You’re out. It’s late. You’re by definition somewhere, at some location. And chances are you’re around people who also go out. So, talk about it. What’s your favorite place to go out? Have you been to that new hotel rooftop with the pool? Or that new beer garden? For women, going out is when they strut their stuff, show off their best outfits, break in their new shoes, meet guys and hang with their girls. Going out is about social status, so if you can understand what’s hot and why, you can start to relate on it. It also helps to find people you might know in common that might overlap in terms of your social scene- a commonality that essentially turns a cold approach into a warmly introduced one. I should mention here, that this tends to work in cities where there is a big bar, lounge, and club scene, but as long as you can talk about what’s new and happening around your area, you should be fine. Chat about all the cool, trendy places you’ve been (and if you haven’t, find out where they are and go there, which ones disappointed you, and all the ones you still want to go to. Find a place you’d want to go together, and you’re well on your way to a second meeting. Or, better yet, a perfect location to bounce to.

Further studies: Yelp, Guestofaguest.com, eventful.com, going.com, but more than anything good old fashioned word of mouth.

Relationships

If you’re reading this, you have an interest in relationships. Maybe you’re looking for one, or a lot of them, but you’ve taken an active interest in learning about attraction and connection. Pick up about any women’s magazine and you’ll see rather quickly that a lot of the information advertised to women is centered around dating and guys. The exact stuff you’ve learned about dating makes for an easy topic with most women- how does she meet guys she likes? What’s her worst date? What does she do to attrct guys and what do guys do that attract her? What do they do wrong? What makes a guy become Mr. Right? You’ll find that girls know a lot more than you ever imagined they would about the exact world you’re studying- from push/pull and teasing to building commonalities. Most girls are better at pick up than most guys will ever get, the same girl you’re talking to might have a thing or two to teach you herself.

Further studies: Cosmopolitan, Maxim, PUAtraining blog, AFCadam’s Twitter account, Okcupid blog, He’s just not that into you, Sex and the City, Men are from Mars Women are from Venus, the Rules

Obviously, these aren’t the only ones, but they’re tested and deliver results- mostly because they hinge on female interests. And if you don’t know about any or most of these topics, don’t be afraid to study up on one- learning and life experience are the backbones of great conversation.

Best,

Sax.