Approaches

For the uninitiated an ‘approach’ is going up to and talking to a ‘set’, which is a girl or group of people that you want to ‘game’, which is talk to, amuse, work and chat-up. One of my goals when taking the Bootcamp was to work on my AA, which stands for ‘Approach Anxiety’ and is the fear of going up and talking to people or chatting them up. I had a pretty severe case of this and I think I really had AP (Approach Phobia). Reading The Game it fascinated me that these guys took time out of their lives to work on this problem, and did THOUSANDS of approaches to banish their AA. In fact this really excited me. Good Lord, I thought, say if my current level is chronic PA then how much AA will I have after say 100 approaches? Probably not much. “I can cure this” I thought. All I have to do is repeatedly go up to and speak to people.

Ahem. Cough cough. Wood. Trees.

“Even by approach number thirty I probably won’t care 20% of what I did at approach one“. Wow. I can just get out there, swallow a bitter pill and plow through this! Imagine being able to go up and talk to anyone. To have no fear of ANYONE. (except dangerous looking people of course). God that would be awesome.

Doing the Bootcamp some of the trainers mentioned they’d done over a thousand approaches. A thousand! These numbers started to turn me on. God if I talked to three women a day in a year I could have approached a thousand women! I’ll have no AA whatsoever by then!

Well my goals have mellowed a bit by then, and I don’t think the numbers game is a long term plan, but at the minute will do me a bit of good. I’d like to do at least a hundred approaches. Not in my life, but in the next few months. To me that’s a huge achievement. Especially for someone who has probably in their life ‘cold’ approached women, goodness, I dunno.. maybe five times? It’s hard to work out.. it happens so rarely I can’t even remember.

But hang on, not all approaches are equal. Let’s focus on two kinds of approaches.
Type A (“The Inner-Game Approach”)
You approach a woman as a confident person. You are not apologetic for talking to her. You are not blabbering nervously or saying stupid things. You do not ‘want her to like you’, you are not in that frame. You take the mindset that you are you, you are funny and cool and nice, you are talking to a girl who looks nice. If she also is a nice person then maybe you’ll click and hit it off. And although you aren’t needy and dependant on the outcome you are totally at ease with the fact that you are attractive to some women and it is perfectly normal for a woman to find you attractive, and that if you were to get it on with this woman this would not be an exceptional, rare event.
Type B (The AA Approach)
You are terrified of approaching. You stare a lot at women in bars but are too shy to speak to them. You constantly drift near them and try to engineer little situations where you can have an excuse to speak to them. If you do ever pluck up the courage you are riddled with nerves and don’t enjoy the situation. You’re doing it because you feel you should, not because you want to. You don’t want to talk to her, you just want s*x or a girlfriend. When you do talk to her you’re jumpy, nervous and say stupid things. You have low self esteem and find it hard to imagine a girl really being attracted to or wanting you. You just hope some woman will see something in you and decide you are her type.

So bearing these two types of approach in mind now I can ask myself again “how many Type A totally cold approaches have I done in my life?“. (by totally cold I mean with no introduction, connection or excuse to talk to her whatsoever)

That’s easy…. no more than ten.

So 1991 (age 16, about time to start) to 2010:     <10
2-day bootcamp in March:                                            13

Result.

So getting back to the 100 approaches it’s a big goal to me. I’m going to keep a record of them on this blog and track how my confidence levels, state, skills and results change over the course of it.

Bootcamp review

Pasted right out of the forum:

********

It was with disbelief that I found myself paying the deposit to Sarge School. 49 quid in advance, 100 on the day. This all started, as it so often does, with 2 factors. The first is being an AFC. The second is reading a book called The Game. I read the book, and though “maybe this can be fixed? What I really need is momentum. I need some training. I need a bootcamp’. After some Googling I found Sarge School’s website and it was the only one I could find. I now realise there are a few more out there offering bootcamps in the UK (pua method, love systems, RSD, puatraining, etc).

I got an email after payment giving me an overview of what was upcoming and giving me all the trainers phone numbers incase I had any questions. Nice touch. I did email one of the trainers and asked the classic question “am I too old and fat to do this and will I stand out like a sore thumb?”. It took a while for a reply but I got one assuring me all would be ok. A few days before the event another mail arrived with very cloak and dagger instructions about where to meet up.

I was totally caking my pants come Friday night but off I went in my nicest jumper and woman-friendly scarf to the designated rendezvous. After a while I noticed some others loitering with intent and all the students twigged and met up with each other. There were 8 of us  total. Er, I think. I think the students can be divided into 2 broad categories. Either a) a bit nerdy and a bit nervous with women but not pathological b) quite jack the lad and wanting to get into PUA to bone lots of hot bitches. Respect. Anyway we all go on ok, were friendly and respectful to each other. I was actually the oldest one there but 2 others were equally as bellyfied and one was ginger, which made me feel loads better (he was a machine, by the way! Major respect). We were met by one of the trainers, Tony T. At first I thought a big issue seller was hassling us. To my shock I realised it was one of the trainers. As a side note, the next day when he turned up in smart clothes and with his body-language and Presence set to ‘On’ he seemed like a millionaire.

Off to the members club (very nice) and we had about 3 hours of lectures. This covered some really basic stuff and provided an excellent way to learn a lot of material at once. In some ways you’re not paying for any “secrets”. There’s nothing they said that isn’t freely available. However what was, in my mind, worth the money, was they said what in their opinion did and did not work, and they stressed the key points. You really were paying your money for those guys to read the dozens of books and summarise it for you. After the lectures the extra wings turned up. They were all friendly, confident guys and they are all “in real life” friends and hang out together. They have a great pack-vibe and a strong sense of brotherhood. Us students were doled out among the wings and off we went. We were going to do “state-building exercises” but Jimmy was hyper that it was too late and we skipped them. I’d have like to have done them as my state was basically a state of crapping my kegs and secondly I wanted to know how I can learn exercises to bring my state up. Never mind no biggie. We all split up. The ratio of students to wings was around 1:1 or even better. At some points I had two wings! They were well assigned as I feel I got on fairly well with them and they realised I was really scared. You’ve got to remember, in the previous 10 years of my life I had done zero approaches. ZERO. I’d had girlfriends and talked to people by accident, but ‘cold approaches’.. ZERO.

It was on. It was going to happen. I was actually going to talk to a female. In a bar. That I didn’t know. Oh f**k. We went into a nice bar and they took one look at the crowd with their razor-sharp RAS and were like ‘2 set over there, 3 set by the bar, 2 set at 9 o’clock, possible 4 set by door’. Holy sh1t. Well I had the prepared line and I just kept going over and over it. Psyching myself up. One of my wings is an NLP trainer and I think NLP’ed me or mildly hypnotized me because some stuff he said made me feel all weird in a good way. We manoevred into position. My hands were shaking. I opened. A 2 set. Then I realised how beautiful one of the girls was. A 9. I did not get a pint on me. I did not get slapped. I did not get screamed at. I was in disbelief. So I just started blabbing on to them. F**k all the ‘build attraction stuff’.. one bit at a time. I was just trying to survive in there man. Don’t make lame jokes. Don’t try a Ross Jeffries creepy pattern. Just talk. Well after what seemed about ten minutes the trainers came up and I introduced them and we all had a great chat. This is turning into a blow by blow account rather than a review so I’ll start being more concise. The other student with me had pretty much soiled all the sets in the bar so we headed off. He had zero problems approaching but could not hook. I think that was because he had no confidence issues but generally had very little to say, about anything. This was one area where I took sudden heart. Well after the bar we went to a night club in central and I opened 4 more sets. Talked to two French tourists and to my utter disbelief one, who I thought was an 8.5/9, actually seemed to dig me and give me IOI’s. I was too chumpy to ask for a phone number or Facebook and just quite while I was ahead. Idiot!

Friday night finished after 12. I was knackered. Exhausted. Bid my wings good night and split. Slept like a baby.

Saturday we met at 11.30 in Covent Garden and went to a nearby location for lectures on day game. We had about 3 hours of lectures. My wing from the night before gave a lecture on self belief and empowerement, and told his own interesting story. He also outlined one of the most powerful visualisation exercises I’ve ever heard. It actually almost made me cry. After than the day-game guy http://krauserpua.wordpress.com gave us a lecture on day game. We were all like ‘you are kidding? we’re go up to girls and say THAT?’. Then we were off! We went to a little alley nearby and had a hilarious 20 minutes practicing on each other, much to the amusement of a WPC who walked past. I personally felt the trainers were gay bitches for not trying to open her as a demonstration. Walking round central london we again split up with a good wing:student ratio and did some day game. To my suprise I found it way harder than night game. It was amazing. Such a rush. And the groups kept running into each other and opening sets together. Me and another student ran up to a 7 set of Japanese tourists and asked them how many marshmallows they could fit in their mouths. Awesome. Some guys got a few numbers. I didn’t, didn’t ask. COCK! I actually talked to a very pretty and sweet young German student who just totally opened up and seemed so interested in me. I then went up, after almost being threatened with a kicking by wing, to a girl who to me looked like (at first glance) a 17 year old Essex slag. In a way it’s good I didn’t get a good look cos I would have psyched myself out but when I got close I realised/learned that: she was 26, she was really intelligent, she was a writer/journalist, she was a 10… just unbelievably gorgeous. Like a model. And I hooked… and blabbered on for a while. And when I left I felt like A MILLION DOLLARS and my wing spied on her and said when she met her friend she was grinning from ear to ear.

After day game finished there was about an hour off and we went to meet up in a pub near Borough for lectures starting at 6. This bit of logistics was a bit of a disaster as the pub was miles away, it was sh1t, it was double booked, etc etc. In the end we actually walked to one of the instructors flat and sat in his front room for the lecture. I dont hold this against them because it wasnt really their fault and Tony T later explained to me that using the ‘unconvential’ venues is what allows them to make the prices so cheap. Oh… and the prices ARE cheap. Just check out the competition.

Lectures were good. TonyT talked about body language and attraction, poise, mindset. Jimmy talked about building attraction. This stuff was gold-dust and new to me. We were all glued to the set. After that the wings turned up again and at around 9 we were all off again for night-game. By this point I was knackered and my nerves were spent but we went up to a bar in central for the night. The bar was much smaller than the club the night before but it was quite leary and the guys seemed to get a lot of sets in. I just chilled and chatted with TonyT for a while, gleaning some quality feedback from him. Opened a few sets by accident (one girl actually talked to me because she said I had such a startled look on my face!). Then got drawn into a 4 set with the trainers and managed to hook like a motherf**ker and talk to some girl for about 30 minutes. However just sank into my old habits of hooking, talking, and creating zero attraction or sexual energy whatsoever. I think we even discussed politics. Jesus. The trainer pushed me for a number close which I didn’t really want to do and I got a ‘hard’ no which really knocked me. However the next day I really thought over it and realised ‘all rejection is feedback’ and I realised exactly what I’d done wrong, whereas before I would have just thought ‘women are bitches’. Anyway, no great loss, she was a bit of a pig.

That was it. Headed off home after midnight on Saturday. Bootcamp over.

All in all I’d say from the 2 days we got about 19 hours of attention. This encompassed about 9 hours of lectures and the rest in night and day game. The wing:student ratio was excellent. The atmosphere was good. The trainers are all mates and created a good camaraderie with us.
The amount of material presented in the lectures was huge. It was worth it alone. Maybe some people might not see the value but to me to have all that  material summarised and force-fed into me is priceless.
During game the trainers consistenly pushed us to open sets. Which is what I was paying my money for. My only criticism was that during the bar game on saturday night I think a few of the trainers at some point forgot that they were there to help students open sets, not to open sets themselves. Although this may be purely an illusion as I’m not sure which of the trainers were there ‘working’ and which had just turned up to see their mates.
A few of the students asked each other if they thought it was expensive. I couldn’t believe this. I mean what the F? You’ve had 19 hours of training for 149 quid? Can you even get a cleaner in London for that? I’ve spent literally thousands of pounds over my life going out and getting pissed and hoping I’ll magically end up pulling, all with no success. Look, even going out with my mates, having some food and getting hammered and getting a cab home is going to cost me 50 quid. So the price of this course has been 3 sh1t sex-less nights plus monster hangovers. To me this area of my life has always been f**ked and my goal was to pay someone to FORCE me to open sets. That happened. I think I opened around 10 sets during the weekend. That alone was worth it. I look at it this way. If this area of my life is not resolved I will turn round in 10 years and be 45, single, no wife, no children, no dog, rich and bitter as f**k and thinking of killing myself or becoming a serial killer to get revenge on women. This area is to me the most important thing in my life. I will throw money at the problem to solve it.

As for criticisms of the weekend then I suppose you could say that the logistics and organisation was a bit haphazard. Sarge School are not a big business thing and are mates. I think maybe they need to structure themselves a bit better and appoint one person in charge and make them the central point of contact and deal with all logistics and communications. To me this wasn’t really a big thing though, as the previous review I’d read had said pretty much the same thing. All the students were pretty unhappy about the poor evening venue on Saturday but again as Tony said, if people want better venues e.g. a hotel conference room, then the prices will have to go up. I think the prices actually ARE going to go up by the way!

I’m keen to do the Advanced Bootcamp but need to GET THE F**K OUT THERE AND GET SOME PRACTICE IN FIRST!!!

And we’re off..

I’m a great believer in building up momentum when you’re trying to get into something new. After reading The Game I thought ‘what I really need is a Bootcamp’. I did a little bit of research and found that there was a company running PUA Bootcamps in London. I thought about it for a day or so but there was really no doubt in my mind that I was doing it.

This problem is the most important thing in my life. THERE’S A F**KING COURSE YOU CAN GO ON TO SOLVE IT!

Oh my god. All those countless wasted years of going to bars with friends. Getting drunk and finding that the cold icy hand of fear was still in my guts. All the thousands and thousands of pounds wasted on booze. My friends totally incapable of providing any practical assistance to me in the matter whatsoever. £149 paltry pounds and some guys will FORCE ME to confront my fears.

I couldn’t book fast enough.

My mate G in Liverpool ‘couldn’t believe’ I’d booked it. Why not? I dont f**k around once I decide to do something.

The bootcamp is done. My next post will be a my review of it lifted off a PUA forum and pasted in. I’ll take the opportunity now to say it was easily the best £149 I have spent in my life. Admittedly a close contentder was the £149 I spent to buy me FIVE sessions with “JingJing” a 22 year old Chinese call girl with model looks, skin like slik and F cup tits. But although it’s a close thing the Sarge School bootcamp wins out due to long term benefits.

I’m a changed man since the bootcamp. I went out THE DAY AFTER on my own in Greenwich and chatted up an 22 year old Austrian drama student on the street and got her Facebook off her. Unbelievable. I was walking on air the whole week after. Some kind of switch got flipped inside. Something has been unleashed. One theory I have is that The Failure made me a broodingly obsessive nerd with  a laser-like focus. A juggernaut of focus. Then you suddenly discover that THERE IS A SYSTEM. YOU CAN LEARN THIS STUFF. So the laser-beam moves onto The Failure… and sparks fly.

I’ll post up the review next.

My Great Experiment

Welcome to my blog. This is post number one. I’ve already revised it three times, this writing this is difficult. In the end I decided just to plough on so here we go..

The subject matter of this blog will be my journey from failure-with-women to not-failure-with-women. Dare I say ‘PUA’? Maybe not, but at least somebody with options.

Options. That’s a word I hear a lot now in ‘the community’. Men want options. Take a look at modern life in London. You commute, you work, you sleep, you repeat. You go out to bars and it doesn’t seem too friendly. You’ve never been that great with women so you just get lashed and talk to your mates. What’s your plan to get a girlfriend? Well for most people in London I’m pretty sure their plan amounts to:

Live normal life, hope will meet someone eventually through work or friends.

Hardly a life of choice and abundance. Ever wondered why the divorce rate is so high?

Time to clarify. This is not a blog about Mr Average trying to become Mr Options. This is about Mr Failure becoming Mr Options. To put a fine point on it the ‘woman’ side of my life has always been a disaster. It started going wrong a long, long time ago. We’re not in “40 Year Old Virgin” territory, I’ve had a few serious relationships with attractive women, but they have been few and far between. Generally the gaps between partners have been measured in multiple years. Most of my life has been sexless except the times when I was in a relationship or in China where there were plenty of “friendly barbershops” for the discerning gentleman.

I was the guy who at sixth form never got within two feet of a girl. Arriving at University I became infatuated with an ugly girl and became her puppy dog for about two years while she screwed everything that moved. The first snog of my life was in third year at University, with the girl who soon after took my virginity. I got my first real girlfriend age twenty four. It lasted two weeks and I dumped her because I couldn’t handle it. Years passed. I went out with another girl I didn’t fancy, who was a bitch, because I had no other options. Lasted seven months including the two month split in the middle where she screwed someone else. Years passed. I was running the “hope to meet someone” plan. Eventually I met a Taiwanese girl when I was doing my Master’s at University and went out with her for a year. Was in love. It was great. I went normal. We split up. Years passed. Realising all I’d done to pull the Taiwenese girl was ‘be myself’ I determined Asian women were the way to go. I coupled this with my desire to work and live abroad and moved to China for work. Being sh1t and lame I managed to not get laid very much there (for free) but to my credit did have a serious relationship for 10 months with a wonderful, beautiful Chinese girl. The second loving relationship of my life.

During this time I noticed a few trends:

Unfancieable

My lack of success with women seemed to make me give off anti-women radar. It seems like I was incapable of attracting any woman. The more I tried the more I revolted them.

Bitter

Continued lack of success, inability to in any way shape who I could end up with, gradually turned me from a loving, funny, sensitive guy into a twisted, bitter, corrupted, poisoned person. I felt like I was constantly struggling with my inner battle between the good and the dark side of the force.

Poisoned

Even if everything else was going OK in my life this failure was making me depressed and full of hate so I couldn’t really enjoy the other stuff.

Sexually frustrated

I’m sure the crime rate is high ‘cos women don’t f**k that much anymore. Anyway sexual frustration is a terrible thing. It makes men go funny.

Hating western women

You try and try to get a woman for years. They don’t want you. You meet a cute Taiwanese girl and just be yourself and she wants you. No alpha behaviours. No cockiness. No self-confidence. You’re just ‘nice’. The sort of thing that sickens Western woman. And you get her, and her magazine-body and loving nature. You love Asian women. You go to China and pull one of the most beautiful and intelligent women you’ve ever known. You develop a deep hatred of Western women. It’s THEM. They’re ‘wrong’. Western women are f**ked up. They’re screwed in the head. Forget them.

Even more unfancieable

And we’re pretty much into the negative feedback cycle here. A few years of this and you become an awful, creepy soulless man. Staring at women, mumbling under your breath. Secretly hating them and lusting after them. When you talk to them your body language reeks of self esteem issues and neediness. The instinctively hate you. Think Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Happiness”.

And ….. STOP.

Late last year I realised this had all ruined a large portion of my life so far and if it continued would ruin the rest of it. Then I read a book called ‘The Game’.

HOLY SH1T.

This book is legendary. A failure with women, just like I was, studies ‘Pick Up Artistry’ and transforms himself into a PUA (Pick-Up Artist).  And drowns in women.

This can be learned?

I read the book with wonder. It all started to become clear why I hadn’t been successful with girls. I realised why they hadn’t gone for me. This was not all just about them. Things started to become clear.

Then I admitted to myself that actually I hadn’t given them that much of a chance. I mean how often had I actually gone up and talked to women? A couple of times in my life. In fact this had become a pathological phobia for me. I’d have rather got in a fight in a bar than approach a girl. I was sick of the bitterness. I was sick of the hate, the frustration. I didn’t want to live like that.

I formulated a plan. It would be my experiment.

I was going to transform myself. I was going to research this stuff and learn all the tricks. I was going to go out and fight through my phobias and actually practice talking to women. I was going to do this in London and I was going to give ‘western women’ a proper go and actually admit for the first time in 10 years that yes, I really want a fit western girlfriend, and then I was going to go talk to some.

“Ego defence mechanism” is a behaviour where people intentionally disqualify themselves to prevent the pain of rejection. I think for most of my life I’ve been behaving like this. I dunno what started it but I’ve always been ‘the joker’ or ‘the weird one’. Revelled in it. Wrap that blanket tighter. If you’re the weird one then you’re never out there so you can never be rejected. If you don’t even talk to women then you don’t give them a chance to reject you.

So…

all that goes.

Time to give myself a fighting chance.

The experiment is this:

Phase A

-research PUA stuff

-wipe the slate clean with women

-give myself a break, learn to like myself and stop deliberately acting weird to disqualify myself and instead give myself a fighting chance

-actually really try and pull women

-give this a go for around eight months

-this is the most important thing in my life as it can make the difference between having a family or dying alone

If I get no success then

Phase B

-Move to a Scandinavian or eastern European country and work there or in a few of them for another year, in the hope that women ‘over there’ are more amenable to me than British ones

If no success then

Phase C

-Move to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore and get Chinese girlfriend. Marry her and have kids.

And so it begins. Watch this space!