Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These

“That is so corny,” she says to me and turns around and walks away.

Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.

None of my openers are working today.

Nothing is sticking.

I’ve been slogging from store to store in the bitter New York City cold.

God, I’m a champ.

It’s like I can hear the Rocky theme song playing in the background. This is the beginning of my montage and girls are laughing at me and throwing drinks in my face.

Today sucks.

When things are going well it’s easy to feel like I’m king of the world.

Nobody has to tell me to keep up the good work after I connect with someone in a brilliant way or put a huge smile on a girl’s face.

It’s the other days when things are more difficult. Those are the days when I need to reach back and remember how things were.

Pickup Takes Emotional Energy and Can Be Emotionally Draining

I still remember the very first night I went out and approached women. I was lucky enough to have someone coaching me. I could not have done it without a coach.

But just the same, it felt like I’d been through a heavyweight title fight emotionally.

Yeah, I won, I came out on top, but it was one of the most emotionally draining nights of my life.

Even if I had the physical energy to go out six nights a week for four hours, the emotional drain for an introverted guy would have been too much at the beginning. There are a lot of emotions to deal with.

So I started with one approach a day.

When I got rejected or embarrassed it used to be a shock to my system. It affected me in every way: emotionally, intellectually, physically, and particularly–my motivation.

When I walked away from a rough rejection, the first thing I wanted to do was question EVERYTHING. I must be doing SOMETHING wrong.

It took a long time for me to get comfortable and not take it so personally.

Long Term Goals Smooth Out The Highs and The Lows

When you do pickup, you’ll have good days and bad days.

There will be days when everything seems to fall into place and days when you feel like you’re back at square one.

You’ll have great, wonderful interactions and others where it doesn’t go so well.

Having long term goals helps smooth that out.

On the bad days, you can know that with every approach you are improving, no matter what the outcome.

You have a vision of where you’re going.

Learning to deal with the challenging interactions can provide just as much growth, if not more, than the positive interacitons.

Focus On Different Aspects of Your Approach

Having goals also allows you to focus on different aspects of pickup.

For me there was a time period where for two months I focused only on body language.

Another few months I focused on physical escalation. Another on just banter.

A little while ago, I reached a point where I decided I needed to retool my banter and attract game.

I was trying out something completely new and different and it felt like I was back in kindergarten again.

My pickups weren’t working at first.

I was creeping girls out as if it were the first time I ever did pickup.

I felt really frustrated.

But I was able to keep it up and make huge breakthroughs, all because I had the end goal in mind.

I needed to allow myself to feel like I was back in kindergarten so that I could learn a new skill.

Having long term goals allowed me to go back to square one and master new skills.

Write Down Your Goals

Lance Mason talks about goal setting and how you should make your goals as specific as possible and write it down.

Want to have sex with a supermodel? Write it down.

Want to be able to walk into a club and walk out with the sexiest girl in 45 minutes? Write that goal down.

Want a girlfriend who’s hot, into poetry, and knows how to bake cinnamon crullers? Write it down.

It’s amazing how “the universe” provides when you ask for it specifically. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all part of the “the secret.”)

But more than that, pickup is about you getting comfortable with yourself doing things you were never able to do before.

It’s about you being as comfortable around a super attractive girl you just met as you are around your younger bratty sister.

Becoming confident happens in the smallest of increments, often unnoticeable to you.

Setting up long term goals gives you the strength, motivation and long term persistence to become that confident person you always wanted to be.

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posted in Embarrassment and Rejection, Self-Improvement Strategies