Limiting Beliefs and Approaching SHBs

So last night, I went out with some people for sLICK's birthday. We went out directly from sLICK's place, so I was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He gave me a light-up pendant to wear. That pendant got me opened at least twice during the course of the night - I definitely should peacock more.

We headed to Faneuil Hall, and went to dinner. sLICK showed up late because he was busy opening street sets. The guy approaches like a frigging madman. He even used all of the cheesy openers from The Pickup Artist. He managed to get the hostess' number - he is truly an inspiration to watch.

After that, we went to one of the bars in Faneuil Hall. It was almost midnight at this point, and things were going strong. There were seven of us at this point - sLICK, Grim, Seven, Durus, Talker, Urnes Beast, and me. sLICK opened a girl in line by asking where we could find older women. She said, "so you are looking for cougars?" They bantered for a while - she seemed instantly attracted. Once we were inside, he was getting opened left and right.

I opened a few sets. One girl I opened downstairs, but she was heading upstairs. She invited me to come up, and I did. We found her friends, and I started talking to her. There appeared to be a lot of attraction - she was returning kino pretty heavily. I isolated, and at what seemed like an appropriate moment (we were talking about places to hang out near me), I went for the number close. She gave me a BF objection. She said that she was sorry for leading me on, and that she was flattered that guys are still interested. She said that she should get back to her friends (awkward), and the interaction ended. Not sure what I could have done differently in that one.

I had one other set that lasted for a while. I opened a mixed 3-set with a single girl and a couple. Turns out that the couple were friends visiting from out of town. We talked about a bunch of random things - at one point the conversation went to karaoke. The friend heard and jumped in - I should have pulled her into the conversation and befriended her, but I focused on the target. I also missed an opportunity to shift into comfort. The target refused to guess what my favorite karaoke song was. I said "this is personal. You need to tell me something personal about yourself." I then failed to follow up appropriately on that one. A few minutes later, the conversation got stale, and she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

We bounced to another venue, which was crowded and loud. I don't do well at those venues, but I opened a few sets. Should have opened more. sLICK was a madman. I think that I opened six or seven sets over the course of the night. Not really enough, especially because I haven't had a stellar night yet this weekend.

In the end, we headed back to sLICK's place, and debriefed before everyone headed home. Everyone had lots of great advice and tips. It was a late night - I didn't get to bed until like 4:30. I need to get on a more regular sleep schedule (I have been going to bed far too late).

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I realized something important. There are a lot of sets that I'm afraid to open. I don't talk to 9s and 10s - somehow I think that they are special or different. I open mostly 6-8s, and I probably don't even open as many 8s as I should. For some reason, I don't even notice the 9s and 10s - I just discount them and move on. I would be telling myself, "there isn't much to approach." Then I would see sLICK approach a SHB and have a stellar interaction. This seems like it is a form of AA - I don't think that these girls are any more difficult to talk to than anyone else. The last time that I opened a 9, she was friendly, and reacted to me as well as any other girl would (I approached her because there was exactly one set in the bar, and she was in it). I shouldn't be choding out like this any more. From now on, each night I am going to approach at least one set that I perceive as being "completely out of my league." Hopefully this will get rid of that limiting belief.

So I did manage to isolate one girl, which means that I am succeeding at my process goals. It wasn't hard - I just told her that the place we were was noisy and crowded, and moved her elsewhere. Worked like a charm. Now I need to befriend the obstacles before I isolate.

Isolationism

So I think that my current sticking point is that I don't effectively isolate. I lock in, and then keep running the set without moving the target. I often run the set for quite some time, but I am unable to get the compliance/attraction that I am going for. I think that it comes down to me not isolating.

The other night, I noticed that after we bounced to a new venue, my target was significantly more compliant. I have also noticed that all of my makeouts came after I actively isolated. The act of isolating seems to build attraction.

Last night, I ran a set for about 45 minutes, and got a number close, but I couldn't get "sufficient" attraction despite kino escalation. When I come back to it, she was around her friends (who were guys), and not only were they a distraction, but they probably inhibited her as well. Had I isolated, I probably could have escalated as well.

I had another set that probably ran 30 minutes or so. Her friends were a significant distraction, and eventually pulled her away. I think that isolating helps to eliminate some of the distractions, and gets the girl more focused on you.

The moral of the story is that I need to isolate. I think that I have achieved my goal of going out alone, so I can move on to a new challenge.

My new goal is to actively isolate at least 15 girls. It doesn't count if the friends go somewhere else - I need to move her. Or rather, I'll say that I need to attempt to move 15 girls. This is about improving the process, instead of worrying about the outcome.

Inconsistency

One of the things that bothers me the most is how inconsistent I am. When I'm on, I'm fucking ON. Nothing can touch me - I attract women even when I'm not trying. Last Thursday, I went to an improv show, and managed to get a kiss and a number from the girl sitting next to me (I fucked up the bounce, but that's another story). Some of the other guys in my improv class noticed, and were seriously impressed. Not that I care what anyone else thinks, but I couldn't have done that just a few months ago.

And when I'm off, well, I can open ten sets and not really hook any of them. I keep going, but it still gets to me. I get mad at the world, at my friends, at other guys, at my family. It affects my performance at work, and all of my other interactions. On some level, I know that its just in my head, and will pass, but its hard nonetheless. That's the problem with natural game. Its all about what's going on inside, and when the inside is a little bit off, so is the outside.

The interesting thing is that it permeates through my life. When I'm doing well in field, I'm also a happy, social person. When I'm not, I'm probably in my shell and avoiding interactions as much as possible. I think that the solution is that I need to focus more on inner game. I've been doing some meditation, and I think that it helps a lot. Let's see what else I can find...

Going Out Alone in a New State

So tonight, I decided to go out alone. In NYC. I've been working on going out alone, but I had never gone out alone in a state that I don't live in. Needless to say, it was hard. I asked one of the New York lair guys for recommendations for a place to go out, and went to one of the places that he recommended (I actually used this as my indirect opener today, and others corroborated). So I rolled up to a pretty cool hotel. I waited in a pretty long line - when I got to the front, the doorman told me that they weren't letting in solo guys for a couple of hours. I just sort of stared at him for a while - he asked if I was willing to make a deal. He proposed $40, and I asked him to go lower. He dropped to $20, which I was willing to pay. I wonder whether I could have gotten him lower, or to let me in for free. Regardless, it wasn't a huge deal, especially because a few months ago I wouldn't have even thought that I could have gotten in. I probably would have slunk home with my tail between my legs. One of the cool things about cold approaches is that it has made me more resistant to shit tests of all kinds. Hopefully this wasn't hard.

The bar was on the top floor of the hotel, which was pretty cool. There was a great view of the whole city from up there.

The first approach wasn't hard. As usual, I got it away with pretty quickly, opening a set of cougars. They were pretty nice, and were even cool with me being out by myself. I ejected after a few minutes (probably should have stayed in longer).

But the other sets weren't cool in the same way. I think it was more that I wasn't comfortable with it. They could sense that I was insecure, and didn't respond well. A lot of sets blew out before I really got anywhere with them. I could feel my state waning as the night went on. Whenever this happened, I would meditate for a few minutes, which usually calmed me down.

However, I soldiered on and did all of my approaches. I think that I did about ten, and even opened a guy who was by himself in the bar. It is pretty easy to open guys - I should do it more (and recruit them as a wing).

I think that the key is to befriend guys in the club. There were a number of other people who were cold approaching girls. I should have met some guys who were making cold approaches, and suggested that we team up. You just can't go at it alone.

Lessons Learned
1) Approach some guy sets so that you aren't there all alone.
2) Own your identity. Its yours, you worked hard for it, and you should be proud of it.
3) Meditation in the club works pretty well.
4) Gaming solo in a strange city isn't so bad.

K-Closes

For a long time, I've been sitting atop a plateau. I have been able to open and hold a set for progressively longer, but building attraction was kind of a SP. A lot of times, I could tell that the girl wasn't attracted to me. If I got a number, it would flake. I stopped getting numbers, and went back to the fundamentals. I focused on strengthening my interactions, and on worrying more about the process than the outcome.

However, in the past week, I feel like I have made some progress. As evidence, I have gotten 3 K-Closes in the past week or so. And there was one more situation where I could have had one, but didn't take the opportunity (it was a friend of a friend, and I wasn't really sure I wanted to play that). Not entirely sure what is going on, but it definitely a welcome change. A few things have changed, so I can't really isolate the root cause.

Here is what I have been doing differently:

1) Not caring. I really could take or leave pretty much any set out there. Zen and the art of pickup. When I go out, I approach myself into state. I think that shooting for ten approaches in a night is not at all unreasonable, and over time it desensitizes you to blowouts and reduces outcome dependence.
2) Meditation. I've been meditating on the shuttle to and from work. I think that it makes me more relaxed and more confident.
3) Kino. I think that my kino is more natural, and I am more confident with it. I sense the girl's escalation invitations, and take them.

The sum of it all is that I think I have just been a more confident person. People can sense that instantly. At work, people I don't know say hi to me in the halls. I still have a long ways to go, but I think that I'm on the right track. I see what they say about inner game being the only game.

A couple of months ago, I took a bootcamp with some local guys. While on the bootcamp, I hit a high that enabled me to score my first in-club makeout. That high faded quickly and I was back to pretty much where I started. But I had seen what was possible, and that gave me hope. Over time (and through much hard work), I feel like I have gradually worked my way back to that point, until I'm right on the cusp of hitting it again. But this time, its for real.

This summer is going to be great. Rock on.

Life Lessons From The Field

Going out sarging a lot has taught me some important life lessons, which extend far beyond pickup.

Judgment
The first is that people are too judgmental. When I went back to visit my family, it was interesting to hear how they talked about their friends. Now, I wouldn't say that my family is particularly judgmental; they are all pretty open-minded. But still, I was surprised to hear some of their criticisms of other people. I try to put myself in other peoples' shoes, and think about how they feel. Regardless, each person's life is just that, his or her life, and he or she has the power to make the decisions that he or she feels fit to make.

I've talked to a lot of people of varied backgrounds (at least 5-600 over the past four months), and it is amazing how much difference and variety exists. But that difference is what makes us human; we should embrace it. Don't criticize people who make decisions that are different from yours. They have different reasoning and motivation, and will come up with a different solution to the same problem. Maybe it isn't the solution that you would have reached; in fact, maybe it is better. And, so long as it doesn't affect you, its none of your business.

The only thing that I criticize is hypocrisy. There are plenty of hypocrits out there, or people who say things and don't follow through. That still bothers me - maybe I need to work on letting go of that.

Jealousy and the Abundance Mentality
The second is that you need to let go of all jealousy for other people. This is more of the abundance mentality; there is plenty of success for everyone to achieve beyond his wildest dreams. However, it seems almost nature to be jealous of other peoples' accomplishments. If your buddy experiences success, you feel a twinge of jealousy. This isn't healthy, and you have to get over it. I have been working hard - maybe one day I will rid myself of it.

On a related note, everyone progresses at his or her own pace. In the community, there are guys out there who have success a lot faster than others. Some people were "senior" by the time that they had been in the community for as long as I have, and some hadn't yet had their first lay. Some of the best guys took the longest to improve, and others came in with mad skills and were semi-naturals. Some guys write their first LR two days after joining the community, and some take months or even years. I have been learning to accept that, and to not worry about how anyone else is doing. I just worry about how I'm doing - am I meeting my goals, and progressing?

Mastery
I recently read the book Mastery, by George Leonard. He talks about "The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment" - I would highly recommend it to everyone (TD recommended it on his blog). One interesting thing is that he talks about teaching. When you teach someone who progresses slowly, you learn more than when you teach someone who progresses quickly. You get to see every stage of learning and sticking point, nothing is skipped or obscured. In the end, even the slow learner has plenty of time to achieve mastery at just about anything he puts his mind to. Even if it takes me five years to get good at this, what is that? Plenty of guys didn't get into this until they were five years older than I am.

The thing that seems to make you good is how much you want it, and how hard you are willing to push. I'm willing to push pretty damn hard, and I know that excellence will come if I let it.

True Change and Going Out Alone

So when I first got into this, I messaged back and forth with a wise member of the community. He told me that, in order to get good at this, I had to be willing to let myself change. I didn't know what this meant at the time. Now I think I do. I don't think that has truly happened yet.

Last night, I went out by myself, thinking that my wings would show up. I spent 2.5 hours solo in the field before a few stragglers wandered in. Over that time, I opened 10 sets solo. I've gone out by myself before, but this is only the second time that I've gone out completely by myself. It was an enlightening experience.

I'm proud to say that I opened the first set within about 30 seconds of the time that I entered the first venue. It wasn't the first set that I saw, but it was the second or the third. I ran it for a while. I think that I ejected - can't remember why. At that first venue, I opened five sets. None of them completely blew out, but none lasted for more than 10-15 minutes. I think that I ejected from a few prematurely. A lot of them happened to be 2-sets (this wasn't intentional - I guess that a lot of the people in the club were 2-sets). I need to get better at managing logistics for 2-sets. I opened a mixed 2-set for fun - they did happen to be together, but they were nice.

I bounced to a second venue, which was about a 10-15 minute walk away. During the walk, my state started to crash. I started to get frustrated that I've thrown myself at this for the past four months, and all that I have to show for it is a few makeouts with drunk chicks. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I had a mission, and that it was up to me to accomplish it. When you don't have wings around, the success or failure is yours; it all comes from within.

At the second venue, I continued to open. It went ok, but I had one particularly harsh blowout where the girls said that they were had to leave, and then went to another part of the club. They weren't that cute, but it did kind of get to me, probably because it was my eighth set, and I hadn't really had a good one yet. I probably came across as creepy - not completely sure why. Maybe I'm not completely comfortable with going out by myself. I opened a guy who was standing by himself, and we talked for a little while. His friends came back (2 girls, probably 6 and 8), but I didn't integrate them into the conversation. After a while I ejected.

At this point, the second state crash occurred. I stood by myself for about 20 minutes. One of my wings told me that he was bailing; the others were still MIA. I went downstairs, and then back upstairs. I decided that I still had one more set to open. If it blew out, so be it. A 2-set was standing by the stairs, so I opened it. It hooked. I think that I ran that set for 20-25 minutes. The problem (for now, at least) was that it was a 2-set, so I didn't really know how to proceed. My wings finally showed up, and one came in. The girls went to get drinks.

After that, I decided that I was done for the night. I opened one more set (friends of the bachelorette, who was really cute for a change), but it didn't hold for too long. At 1, the club closed, and I decided to go home. My wings stayed out, but I'm pretty sick of staying out until 3 am. I walked home, which was fun. Gave me some time to reflect.

So what have I learned? It is valuable to go out alone, but hard. Not hard because approaching sets is any harder, but because its the only thing you can do. No shooting the shit with your friends, unless they are new friends you just met that night. Your options are either:

1) Open sets
2) Stand around by yourself

During daygame, you can go shopping or shoot the shit with hired guns (I guess you can do the latter here), but during nightgame you don't have the options.

To be honest, being out by myself didn't really faze me - I get asked about it in a decent percentage of the sets. I tell them that I am out by myself, and that I might eventually meet up with some friends, but its too hard to coordinate. Eventually, I will get to the point where I admit that I'm by myself, and that's it. No qualification or justification needed.

I think that the hardest thing about solo nightgame is that there is no one to pump you up when your state crashes. Complete self-validation, independence from wings. This is all about you. I think that the guys who have truly succeeded hit this point. Its kind of scary, to think that the thing that leads to consistent success is the thing that most people are afraid to face.

I'm a loner, so it worries me that I'm going out alone. I tend to do stuff by myself, and it takes me longer than I could because I'm too proud to ask for help. I feel like I need to do this with others, get support. But maybe I really do need to go at it alone with some frequency. Once I have broken the dependency on others, I can use their support without guilt.

So I think that I'm going to change my default mission a bit. When I'm out alone, I need to open two guy-sets. These can either be solo guys, guys who are in guy-groups, or guys in a mixed set. My goal is to befriend the guys - learn how to be a leader of men. Maybe I can even find some wings in-field. Note that this is in addition to my 10-set goal, although time spent in guy sets does allow me to subtract from my goal.

This is hard. I'm frustrated. I feel like I've come farther than I had imagined (I went by myself to two hard venues, and had mostly normal conversations with eleven groups of people), but it isn't far enough. I want mastery, and it scares me that I don't know how to get there.

Let me define mastery. I want to be able to attract pretty much any girl that I talk to. I want to have the option to escalate with her. Every night that I'm out, I want to have the option of a strong number-close or pull.

And why do I want this? Girls are fun, girls are nice. I want to have more girls in my life. But maybe that's too externally validated. I'm going to try this again.

My goal is to be able to go out, and to truly not care. I can talk to a 10+, and not think about the outcome at all. I don't care whether I take her home - my only goal is to have fun. So my true goal is to have fun in 100% of the sets I open. The rest of the shit should figure itself out.

Alright, enough KJing for now. Time to go hunting.

Choding Out

So I am visiting my family in Baltimore, and headed out to DC last night to see a friend. We went to a bar to go to an Indian Birthday Party (meaning that everyone there was Indian). It was actually for a friend of a friend of a friend, so neither I nor the friend I came with actually knew anyone. I talked to some of the people there, but it felt pretty strange being the only white guys at the party. Although Indians seem to like Jews, so we had some cred.

In the end, I pretty much choded out. I did one cold approach at the bar, just so that I could feel better about myself. I approached a large mixed set, and talked to a girl who was wearing red (and therefore caught my eye). She wasn't terribly friendly, but it could also have been that I wasn't warmed up (she also had a boyfriend).

There really weren't many people to approach (there were a lot of 1:1 mixed sets), so I slunk back to the social circle group. The Indian girl I had been talking immediately before that was impressed - we had been talking about who at the bar might be right for me, and I used that as an excuse to push myself into an approach. I think that the Indian girl liked me, but I didn't find her terribly attractive. The logistics were also bad. I think that something could have happened if I had isolated her from the group. We stuck around until the bar closed at 2, then went home.

I had been hoping to go out to some bars in Adams Morgan, but that didn't happen. There's always next time.

KJing in Field

I have been thinking a lot about KJing recently, particularly in-field KJing. A lot of guys like to go out and talk theory while they are in the field. When I'm out with my best wings, we don't talk theory in the field. In fact, we don't talk much at all. The only talking is a little bit of encouragement pre- and post- approach (eg. "Good job, that was awesome" when someone tries a ballsy approach and gets blown out).

What we do is go out and open sets. If someone isn't opening sets, we push him to start opening. There is no standing around and talking for an hour about the "nuances" of pickup. I like that shit as much as anyone else (actually, its fascinating), but it wastes good time where I could be improving.

Lately, I have noticed this change as I spend more time "out." I'm not sure that I'm getting better results for the increased sarging time. I've been thinking about why this is the case.

In my short time in the community, I have seen too many guys who "have it all figured out" but aren't getting much in the results department. A lot of these guys have been in the community for a long time, but haven't done much. They go out a couple of times a week, and open a couple of sets each time. They give their wings copious "advice," which is arbitrarily conceived and pushes the guy out of state (if he ever got there in the first place).

With that said, I have one wing who has really impressed me recently. He has been going out for a long time, and seemed to have relatively few results over that period. Some of the guys in the community wrote him off... However, he has been pushing himself, and going out every day. I have seen him make some solid approaches recently, and if he keeps it up he is going to get good. I think that he has gotten much more comfortable with approaching women and talking to them.

I don't mean to be harsh - I just have yet to hear of a guy who "figured it all out" and used that conscious knowledge to become a master. I think that it usually happens in the other direction. The guys who are good seem to be (at first) fairly light on theory, and fairly heavy on actual fieldwork. They go out and push themselves over and over again. Gradually, they improve, and figure out what is working (this is by looking at patterns over hundreds of approaches). Once they get a system working, they go back and put it into words. Without the practice, those words mean zip.

There is an exception - guys who learn a system. However, I don't think that the system is what is making them good. Rather, they get good by repeating that system ad infinitum. Over time, they make it their own, and they learn its nuances. They figure out the little things that you can't quite explain. Mastery ensues.

I'm also not going to write off professional help; its important to get coaching. Proper instruction can drastically decrease the learning course. However, it takes a good coach to identify the true points for improvement; a mediocre coach can't distinguish the symptoms from the root causes. You still have to practice - its just that you will practice the right things.

What I am knocking is the conception is the belief that conscious knowledge leads to mastery. TD talks about this a fair amount, and I think he's dead on.

So, because I've gotten a bit burned out recently and need a slight change of direction, I'm going to reiterate my plan and regroup.

My goal is progressive desensitization. I want to be able to approach any woman at any time and get her interested/attracted.

In order to do that, I need to increase my approach rate. Every time that I go out sarging, I will set a high but reachable goal for the mission. The default mission will be to make at least ten approaches. The only exception to this is when I hook a set and it runs long enough that I don't have time to make ten approaches. Considering that there are about three hours in a sarging night, I will reduce the approach count by one for each set that runs past half an hour (half an hour spent winging counts as well). If there aren't ten approaches in the venue, I will sarge it out and then go home or bounce (this is another problem - I spend too much time in field for the results that I'm getting).

As a corrolary, wings are there for support, and not as a crutch/excuse/distraction. I will not talk to my wings about theory, unless we are finished with our approaches for the night. In that case, we should consider that going home may be a better use of our time.

Finally, at least 30% of my sarging will be solo sarging. I need to break wing dependency. I should be able to run and hold a set either with or without wings.

Apathy

So today after work I went out day gaming at the mall, followed by some night game with a wing. I wasn't feeling 100%, but I soldiered on anyways.

At the mall, our goal was to open 3 sets direct with a reboot opener. None of them went all that well - one I managed to plow on with. I think that the key to opening direct is to start plowing IMMEDIATELY. You can't give the girl a chance to escape (if she wants to leave, that's fine, but a lot of girls won't stick around unless you start talking immediately). Overall, I opened 4 or 5 direct, and another 1 or 2 indirect as warmup.

As an aside, I think that I want to do like ten direct approaches one of these days. In a week, I'm going to give one of my wings $200 at the beginning of a weekend. At the end of the weekend, he will give me back the money if I do 20 direct approaches over the course of the following two days. If not, all of the money is his.

I then went out to some bars for night game. I kept opening attractive sets and hooking fairly well, but I lost interest as soon as there was a distraction. I was really tired, and just didn't feel 100%. Decided to call it a night. My wing was cool with that - he's super awesome.

Oh yeah - we opened some sets at Mickey Ds. I'm going to write a FR on that for the contest.

I think that going out so much makes it harder to stay focused. I really like going out and pushing myself ultra hard - it is difficult to do that when you go out all the time. I might cut back to five days a week when I get through day 21 (today is day 15).

Day 14

Tonight I went out with some guys from the lair and a friend who happened to be in town. The friend isn't exactly a natural, but he doesn't seem to have any problems with women, either.

We were gaming chicks, and the friend figured it out after a while. He actually seemed to think it was amusing. The funny thing was that his advice for what to do sounded a lot like what the gurus tell us.

My overall conclusion is that a lot of the stuff out there is just common sense.

Failure and Despair

So today was my 13th straight day of approaches. It hurts. I got off work early today, so I headed down to the mall to meet up with my wing (let's call him White_Russian, or WR). I was unable to open any sets until he showed up. Our goal was to do two direct approaches today. The first said "I have to go" when I opened her direct. I should have kept plowing. The second threw out the BF objection immediately. Mission Accomplished. It wasn't pretty, but I met the goal. WR did too. We headed out.

I tried to go out by myself tonight. I went to a street where there are a lot of bars, and found one that was crowded. I opened the door and walked in. Then I realized that I was tired as fuck, and that I just wanted to go home and go to bed. So I left. I know it's weak, but there's always another day. Right now, I need sleep.

This is the pain period. I want to stop, but I have to go on. 30 days to excellence. My head is fuzzy from fatigue. I WILL SUCCEED. Excellence is inevitable. I have never wanted anything quite so much as this. I don't know the last time I worked so hard at anything.

Going Direct During Daygame

So one of my wings and I have been day gaming consistently for about a week (we go out nearly every day), and have been trying to work out a logistical opener. The opener is "Hey. Do you know where Fire and Ice is?" Then, I say "some friends are coming to town, and I'm looking for somewhere to take them to dinner."

I've probably opened 30-40 sets with this, and while it consistently stops moving sets for a minute or two, it is difficult to transition to normal conversation. Sometimes the girl seems really interested, but there isn't a logical place to go. I usually ask her name, we shake hands, and the set ends. Sometimes, I am able to transition to normal conversation, but this has only happened 2 or 3 times.

We have been ruminating on how to get to the next step, and I noticed that a lot of my buddies have had success with opening direct. The problem with opening direct during the day is that it is a bit too polarizing. It spikes BT, but scares some people off. My wing had a brilliant idea - why not pull a reset. Basically, you ask the girl the logistical opener, and when she starts to answer, you say "Actually, I don't care. I just wanted to come over and talk to you." If you want a good example of this, some of the Pickup 101 videos show this sort of opener.

Tonight, we decided to each pull off one of those. I choded around for a while, and opened a few sets without transitioning. Then a really cute asian girl passed me, and I decided to go for it. She didn't know where Fire and Ice is, so I transitioned to the direct line.

Bang. Instant attraction. I pretty much choded out at this point, and she drove the conversation from there. She even asked me for my business card. I think that I was so shocked it worked that I came across a bit strange in the interaction, but it was a first step.

This shit works. I can see why Smallville gets the results he does.

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Another thing we have been trying is turning PU into a game. Each day, you have a bonus move that you need to pull off. Every set that you open scores one point, and every set that you use the bonus move on scores an additional point (it could be transitioning, or resetting to direct). Each person needs to score 15 point. This is a lot of fun, and it forces you to open lots of sets. You stop scanning for girls who meet your threshold (which inevitably gets you out of state when you see the perfect girl), and go for it every time possible. Before you know it, you're truly in state, and have crossed the indifference threshold.