Oh my god, she’s thinking to herself. Another boring conversation.

She starts to answer with the same thing she’s said ten thousand times.

She’s getting bored to tears. But then…

You bust on her.  All of a sudden she’s having fun again.

Here’s some banter you can use to make almost any conversation fun and playful.

Got your own favorite banter? Share it in the comments.

She Tells You Where She’s From – “Oh no, a [location] girl? You guys are trouble.”  When she asks why, “[location] girls are all brats” or “They’re always hitting on me. They’re really grabby.”

Artist, painter, sculptor – “Oh my god, you’re not going to ask to draw me naked, are you?  I’m not falling for that again!”

Musician, poet, writer – “So where do you get your inspiration for writing?  Do you need someone to break your heart?  Because I’m really good at that.”

Finance – “Oh my god, are you a rich girl?!  Because I’ve been looking for a rich girl so I can stay home all day and sit on the couch, eat potato chips and watch TV.”

Student – “Oh my god, are you cutting classes right now?”

Cashiers

“I’ll take 17 cups of coffee.”

“I’ll take a large coffee.  And put a little extra love in it for me!”

“I’ll take a massage and a warm bath.

“So what do they pay you here, like $10,000 a week?  No? That’s too bad. I was going to ask you out. But I’m looking for a rich girl.”

You run into her again – “That’s so cute, are you following me?”  The ‘that’s so cute’ part is important.

Talking about the weather – “Oh my god, I am hiring you as my meteorologist.”   Or “What’s with this horrible weather?  You did something to anger God, didn’t you?”

How are you? You say “Hi, How are you?” She says good.  And then asks how you are.  You say “Oh my god, I thought you’d never ask! “

She’s carrying a shopping bag or says she went shopping – “What did you get me?” When she starts to answer cut her off and say “No wait, just surprise me with it later.”

You look in her shopping cart – “Spaghetti sauce? Again? That’s the fifth time this week!”

Women’s Clothing Section – Hold up an article of women’s clothing (dress, high-heels, etc).  “What do you think, is this me?  Does it match my eyes?”

She spills a drink or does something stupid – “I can’t take you anywhwere.  Go wait in the car.  This is why you can’t have nice things.”

You’re In line in front of her – “You’re not trying to cut in front of me are you?  Because I’m pretty tough” Or if you’re in line behind her: “I’m not trying to cut in front of you.  I wouldn’t do that.  You look pretty tough.”

She Tells You Her Name and it’s Strange – “Oh my god, you’re the fourth [her name] I’ve met today!”

At work

“They’re working you to the bone.  Do they chain you to your desk at night?”

“Do they ever let you out of here? “

“Admit it, you don’t do any work around here.”

“Stop flirting with me and get back to work!”

It’s been said that if you have an interesting enough life, that you almost don’t need any pickup skills.

I don’t totally agree with that. If you are completely unable to take initiative, you’ll be debilitated in any environment.

But in some ways it still holds true.

You attract people into your life by your passions and interests.  In many ways, it’s what you do that attracts people into your life, not who you are.

Ever have a friend who just always had something fun planned?  He’s the go-to guy when you want to have fun.

Being that guy should be your objective.  You want to be the expert in finding fun things to do.

Going out regularly with the objective to improve your skills is important, but if that’s all you’re doing, your life will quickly become vapid.

If you’re doing fun things, you can always invite someone along, however scary it may be at first.

Instead of giving you specific tips about what you should be doing for fun, here’s a thought experiment for you.

Let’s say you already had the woman of your dreams (or multiple women, whatever you’re looking for).  She was yours and madly in love with you.

What would you do now?  What kind of activities would you engage in if you weren’t worried about meeting women?

Start to engage in those activities now!

You can even take this one step further and pretend you’d conquered all of your dreams.

What if you were a billionaire?  What if you had written the perfect album, or the great American novel?

What kind of things would you do for fun?  What hobbies and interests would you take up?

Share it in the comments!

One of the most worthwhile lessons I’ve learned in achieving many of my dreams is that it doesn’t make life complete. It just shows me that exactly what I have: the moment right in front of me.

Having ambition is important.  It’s what drives me. Doing creative things is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

But I often have to remind myself to enjoy this moment right in front of me because it’s the only one I know I have for sure.

I see this incredibly cute blond girl.  She glances over at me and back at the tracks.

Is she into me, I wonder to myself.

I look around the platform and notice some other cuties wandering around, looking at subway maps, walking by.

I glance back over at her and she’s looking at me again.

Okay, she is definitely looking at me.

I walk casually walk over and stand next to her. She notices my presence.

I tap her on the arm.

“If you’re gonna look at a guy like that, you should probably say hi.”

She turns and smiles. “Hi,” she says.

We start to talk. And it’s on like crazy. We get on the train together when it comes.

There’s an electricity between us.

“Are you a hard worker?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Let me see your hand.”  She gives me her hand.

I start to feel her palms. “Hmmm. No calluses. I don’t think you’re a very hard worker.”

“I type a lot,” she says.

“Okay, let’s try your finger tips. Hmm… still no calluses.” I say as I start to feel her finger tips.

I don’t stop.

“Okay, I think you just want to feel my hand,” she says with a smile.

“Hmm…,” I say, looking into her eyes. “I think you want me to feel your hand.”

Picking up on when women are giving me eye contact hasn’t been my forte. I thought it was because I wasn’t getting much eye contact.

But part of the issue is that I don’t realize soon enough when they do give me eye contact.

When guys are getting good at this stuff but aren’t that great yet, it’s harder for them to pick up on signals of interest.

Because they don’t make the move that much, they practically need to be welcomed by trumpets.

As you start to take initiative more, you start to pick up on more subtle signals with women and know better when to make the move.

For me, I’m going to start assuming interest a lot sooner, even with the first glance. I think I’ve been waiting too long.

As I take initiative immediately, I suspect I’ll begin to get more sensitive when women are giving me eye contact.

But something is off now.

It’s her body language.

Her arms are folded and she’s turned away.  Her legs are crossed but in the opposite direction, away from me.

Whenever a girl does this, it’s imperative what you do next.

Call her out on it.

“Man, you have such closed body language,” I say to her as I mimic with my body exactly what she’s doing.

“Sorry!!!” she says.  Immediately she turns and faces me 100%. Her knees are practically pointing toward me out from under the short skirt she’s wearing.

She stares into my eyes with puppy dog eyes.

If you let something like bad body language go on too long, she’ll convince herself emotionally that she’s not into you.

However, if you call it out, it’s a show of dominance and social perceptiveness.

For more on Calling it Out, check out When In Doubt, Call It Out.

I’m sitting in the park at a table with my client as he explains what is keeping him from approaching women.

He a works in a restaurant and doesn’t have a college degree.

This bothers him.

“Every time I go to approach a woman, I think about the fact that I don’t have a college degree and it stops me from approaching her.”

“The best guys I know,” I tell him, “do not have college degrees. In fact, they’re not what you would call typically book smart. They’re emotionally smart.”

“Does that make you feel better?” I ask him.

“Yeah, it does.”

“Well, guess what?” I inform him. “You’re still going to get approach anxiety.”

Approach anxiety is not something you can think away.

I could tell you the best thing in the world. It may give you a bit more confidence, but when you go to approach a woman, your body will still react.

Approach anxiety, as well as confidence, is somatic. It’s in your body.

In 1923, a psychologist named Édouard Claparède did an experiment. A patient of his had short term memory loss.

Every single day when he went to see this patient, he would have to introduce himself again because she didn’t recognize his face or know who he was.

One day he hid a pin in the palm of his hand. This time, when he introduced himself and shook her hand, he pricked her hand with the pin.

The next day he went back to visit her again. She still did not recognize him. So, as usual, he introduced himself.

But this time, she would not shake his hand.

Even from one single bad experience, your body remembers.

This information is not stored in the same part of your brain as the one you use for reading, talking, reasoning, and recalling specific events.

It is stored in the core of your brain which regulates fear, jealousy, and sexual attraction, and controls basic bodily functions like hunger and breathing.

You can’t think your way past approach anxiety. It happens automatically and involuntarily.

Even the excuses you get when you feel approach anxiety are manifestations of your base fear.

The only way to get past approach anxiety is physically with your body.

By doing physical exercises, over and over, you teach your body to get past approach anxiety.

Not in the mood to think about pickup?  Even better. Just take some sort of physical action.

Feeling tired, out of sorts, and in a bad mood?  It’s not a problem, as long as you are out there moving your body.

As you take physical action, you start to build a new memory in your body, one that remembers positive experiences with attractive women.

As you teach your body, over and over, that there really is nothing to be afraid of, you start to gain physical confidence.

That’s what she’s attracted to. She’s not attracted to your pensive contemplation. She wants your body.

It gnaws away at you.

Living in New York City, you see gorgeous women all the time.

When I first moved to New York, I joked with my friend from home that you don’t even need to turn your head when you see a cute girl because another one is bound to walk into your field of vision.

On the way to work you see them. At lunchtime. At the gym. On the way home.

It should be a man’s paradise.

But what if I told you it’s not?

What if I told you that seeing all of these gorgeous women every day can actually kill your confidence?

As I’ve talked about before, the most important aspect of being great with women is being able to take initiative socially.  A guy who’s great with women takes initiative with them.

But there’s a misconception about this. Guys have this idea that when you’re good with women, you are constantly approaching, interacting, and closing.

This is not true.

Even logistically, there is no way I would make it anywhere if I interacted with every girl I was attracted to.

But beyond that, if you have any kind of anxiety, to try to approach women all the time puts a terrible pressure on yourself. I experienced this when I first learned how to approach women.  I felt like I should be doing it all the time.

And I began to feel anxiety all day.

And worse, when I didn’t approach women all the time, I felt like a failure.  Every time I saw a hot girl and didn’t approach her, I felt like I was doing something wrong.

I felt like I should approach her. And with the number of hot girls there are in New York City, I was shoulding all over myself every day.

I would start to feel failure at every opportunity I didn’t take. And it started to kill my confidence.

So how do you not put so much pressure on yourself to approach every woman you see, and still grow and challenge yourself?

With my mentoring students, I recommend that they go out for 30-45 minutes a day and that they do all their work during that time.

Instead of putting pressure on yourself all day, give yourself a limited time to do this every day, and focus during that time.

The rest of the time you should just chill out or, at most, start to incorporate a few of the things you’ve learned if it gives you very little anxiety.

Ideally as you get better at this, you will be able to approach women anytime anywhere. But to put pressure on yourself to do that at the beginning could easily backfire.

If you’re dealing with any kind of anxiety during approaching, you don’t want that anxiety over taking your day and your life.

This is a little bit like going to the gym and weight lifting.

You don’t actually build muscle when you’re doing your weight lifting. You build muscle over the next 24-48 hours as your body heals the microtears in the muscle you got from your workout.

If you tried to lift weights five times a day, you would hurt yourself and you would never get stronger.

The most important thing is that you are taking initiative and that you do have a plan laid out for yourself.

Give yourself achievable goals. Ease into it.

And during those times when you aren’t approaching, sit back and know that you are improving.

And watch your confidence grow.

Massive in its proportion, this book holds billions of words on its razor-thin pages.

It is the Book of Not Approaching.

Turn page after page and you will find this vast, endless book filled with one thing:

Excuses.

There is always a reason why you shouldn’t approach her. Always some excuse dangling.

Your mind has brilliantly written this book.  It is exhaustive, familiar, and each excuse is indexed for near instantaneous reference.

There are many excuses, some odd (I don’t like the shirt I’m wearing), some deep (What is the momentary pleasure of sex really worth anyway?) and some just stupid (She’ll think I’m trying to steal her laptop.)

But there is one excuse that conjures up the demons from hell.  One excuse so powerful, all the other excuses in the book cower in fear and kneel before it.

This excuse: I’ll start Tomorrow.

This one word, Tomorrow, carries such force, that it can slay an entire year’s worth of planning in one swift blow.

It is the most dangerous word.

It is a spell cast by the Devil himself, a trick he played on us long ago.

For tomorrow never comes. And you never make the move.

You see a cute girl sitting in a cafe and think about approaching her. But you don’t. At least not… today.

There is always a reason why you shouldn’t take action right now.

I need to learn some more first. I feel too tired right now. I need to start going to the gym first. I’m not in the mood today. I haven’t warmed up.

And the next day it’s the same.

On and on, you get older by the day, your desire muted more and more until one day you find yourself an elderly man thinking about what could have been.

Do something.  Anything.  Start somewhere.  Even if it means simply walking across the room and standing next to this girl.

Even if it means simply going out for a walk in a neighborhood where you might see some women.

Make a plan for yourself and stick to it, a plan that starts off with something manageable, something you know you can do every day.

Take some kind of pro-active movement instead of letting the sands of time sweep you away.

A thousand years from now, you’ll be lying in a grave, a corpse barely recognizable.  There will be nothing, perhaps this earth long abandoned by its inhabitants.

But you’ll have one thing: you’ll have lived your life a man.  And by your side, a page torn from the book. And from that page a single line is erased: I’ll start Tomorrow.

Because you’ll have done it.  You may not have taken the full action that you wanted to take. And it wasn’t always well-received.

But you’ll rest in peace knowing that you took some kind of action.

That you fought the sands of time.

And spit in the face of the Devil himself.

And maybe, just maybe…

You’ll meet a hot chick as well.

(Thanks to John!)