Am I Progressing?

Sometimes I ask myself whether I'm progressing at all. Not after the good nights, but after the frustrating nights where nothing goes right. I think the most telling thing is that the frustrating nights now are a lot better than the frustrating nights from even a few months ago.

So I guess the answer is YES. Not even, "I guess," but "Hells Yeah." Sure, the improvement comes a lot more slowly than I would have liked, but then again we all want to get into this and be pulling chicks left and right by the next week. It does happen from time to time, but for most of us, it takes real work over a period of months or years. Kind of like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill, but the boulder doesn't roll quite back to where it started. Maybe you get a few millimeters on some days, and centimeters or inches on others. That's ok - you appreciate something more if it takes forever to achieve. Plus, you have plenty of opportunities to reevaluate, and figure out whether it is what you really wanted.

Getting exactly what you want can sometimes even be a bad thing ;-)

Identifying with Sticking Points

I realized something interesting recently - I was failing to get better because I had identified with my sticking points. They became part of me, and I used them as an excuse to fail. If I screwed up in a set, it was because of my sticking point. If I didn't go out, it was because of my sticking point. If I got railed up the ass by a Himalayan dwarf, well, you can guess what I would have blamed... ;-)

In my case, the sticking point was something identified by a well-known pickup instructor. He told me that I was try-hard. It's true - I was try-hard, but it wasn't something I could do much about. Unlike outer game sticking points, you can't really tell someone how to fix inner game sticking points. The only thing you can do is to give them a bunch of silly exercises and affirmations that may or may not work. But, in the end, inner game issues must resolve themselves - you can't push through them like outer game issues.

I assumed that continuing to go out would fix the problem. When, six months later the same instructor told me the same thing, I took it like a death sentence. I was try-hard. That was just who I was. Girls were going to continue to hate me because I was try-hard. Never mind that I was still getting laid occasionally, and that I wasn't even going out as much as I had previously. Also disregard that some of the other try-hard guys were having decent results with women. I was try hard. I was going to die.

So, when you go to the doctor, and he tells you that you are going to die, a bunch of things flash through your head. At first, you are in denial, and you grieve, and blah blah blah. But, eventually, you accept your fate and move on. This is sort of what I did, but in the wrong way. I was try-hard. If I wasn't ever going to succeed, at least I knew why. It wasn't that I was ugly, or stupid, or even awkward. It was that I was try-hard.

I actually pretty much stopped going out for a few months. I was busy with other things, but that wasn't really a good excuse. When I did go out, I could barely bring myself to approach. But that was ok, I was try-hard. Girls didn't want to sleep with me because I was try-hard. And you get the point.

And I didn't get better. My social skills actually atrophied, to the point where I felt like it was a lot harder to carry on a conversation with a complete stranger. Furthermore, guys who did worse in-set than me were getting better results. And then it hit me.

IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT!

I'm going to repeat that

IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT!

Whether or not I was try-hard didn't matter. There is no way to directly fix try-hard, so I shouldn't be focusing on it. I should only be focusing on doing the things that will get me results. The only way to get past that was to keep pushing myself. In face, appearing try-hard was actually a symptom of not pushing myself. I was going out, talking to girls, and but not really pushing my boundaries. And this was the problem, and not whatever "try-hard" is.

So I've been focusing on going out, pushing my boundaries, and not worrying about anything intangible. And I really feel a lot better about game and my progress.

This is not to say that you shouldn't focus on your sticking points, or your inner game issues. Just don't identify with them, and allow them to continue to hold you back.