Looks definitely matter. This is a myth in the community that’s always bugged me and I’ve been stating it for years now. I’ve gotten laid a number of times purely on my looks and I don’t even think I’m that great looking. And I always get a kick out of newer guys who get laid a lot because they’re good-looking, but they convince themselves that it was their expert usage of false disqualifiers and comfort transitions that got them laid.

It really is a testament to Style’s book and the marketing in this industry that “being good-looking helps” is still treated as an epiphany or a contentious topic. I mean, Neil probably didn’t even realize it at the time, but the fact that he was a writer for Rolling Stone and wrote best-selling books on Marilyn Manson and Motley Crue probably did more to get him laid than any of his negs or openers. Hell, he still may not even realize it.

But anyway… I digress.

Of course they matter. But in the long-run, they don’t matter that much. Sure, you’ll get more looks and your approaches will be better received, but if you still sound like an idiot or a weirdo when you open your mouth, that all goes out the window. I can’t tell you how many female friends I’ve heard utter the words, “He was so hot, until he started talking.” The fact remains that unlike men, most women won’t just hop into bed with a guy because he’s good-looking, they still need to be charmed and seduced. Looks just give a guy a bigger opportunity.

But really, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of reason to worry about looks that much. A lot of guys like to make a big deal about them and blame them for their failures. I think they’re just making excuses. I see no reason to get hung up on it. As long as you’re dressing well and taking care of yourself, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Like anything else in life, do the best you can with what you’ve got. I’ve seen short, ugly guys get ridiculously hot girls many times. I’ve seen guys who look like male models go home with slop or nothing many times. At the end of the day, it’s just another piece of a much larger puzzle, not the puzzle itself.

All looks are is an advantage. Just like dancing well is an advantage. Having money is an advantage. Living in Manhattan is an advantage. Being a club promoter is an advantage. Having a degree from a good school is an advantage. Playing in a rock band is an advantage. Speaking multiple languages is an advantage. Knowing the owner of a strip club is an advantage. Being a DJ is an advantage… yada yada yada. We could go on forever.

None of them guarantee that you get laid. All it guarantees is that you don’t have to work as hard as the next guy.

The reason I’m making such a big deal in a post about this is because guys tend to always over-estimate this. Over the last year, I dropped about 35 pounds, going from chubby, slightly overweight, and out of shape, to pretty thin and toned. Do I get more looks? Yeah. Do my approaches go better? I guess. But honestly, my results are only slightly better than they were before.

To be honest, the biggest advantage I’ve developed over the last year is language. I’m very good at speaking Spanish now and speak a little bit of Russian and a little Portuguese.

Since being back in the US, any Latina, Russian or Ukrainian I’ve met, I speak 3-4 sentences to them in their native language and it’s pretty much game over from there. MUCH bigger advantage than anything else I’ve found yet. So fuck looks, I’d rather be multilingual.

Personally, I believe very strongly in sex before commitment. You would never buy a car without test driving it. Why would you ever date somebody without sampling the goods? It’s crucial to see if you have any sexual chemistry or not. There have been a few times where I’ve had really great emotional chemistry with a woman and we really liked each other… but when we got into bed, it just didn’t work.

You can read the article and the scientific study here: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/08/23/hook_up_relationships/index.html

Note: Obviously, if a woman forcefully and seriously tells you to stop doing something, she obviously means to stop. This post is about those frustrating murky areas, where she says no, but may just be playing you, teasing you, testing you, or actually rejecting you — yet, you have no idea.

Here’s a very common point of confusion for a lot of guys — the classic conundrum of, “when does no mean no and when does no mean yes?”And to make things even more confusing, what about the times when women say yes when they really mean no?

What the hell is going on here, and what the hell is a guy to do about it?

The problem is that men have always taken the wrong approach toward this issue… and that’s of, “I need to learn X, Y, and Z rules and react accordingly.” The truth is that women are going to say no when they mean yes very often, and will often say, yes when they mean no too. There’s no cut-and-dry way to always know what’s going through her head.

The problem is your mindset.

Here’s what “no” really means. No doesn’t mean no. It doesn’t mean yes either. What “no” means is “how bad do you want it?”

Let me walk you through it. When a woman stops you, whether it’s your approach, your advances, you taking her clothes off, you going for the kiss, etc. she is doing it for one of two reasons: 1) she either wants to do it, but is “testing” you first, or 2) she doesn’t want to and is rejecting you. Most guys work themselves up in a tizzy trying to figure out which is which and what she’s really thinking.

But it doesn’t matter what SHE’S thinking, it matters what YOU’RE thinking.

Let’s take the first option… she’s testing you. Why do women test you? They test you and say “no” even though they mean “yes” because they want to see that you actually like them, that you actually care, that you’re persistent, dependable, and confident. It’s a temperature check… how bad do you want it? How much do you actually like her?

If you really like her, you persist. If you don’t, then you don’t.

Now let’s say she says “no” and she says it meaning to reject you. As we all know, it’s possible to overcome rejection, girls with boyfriends, women who think you’re despicable, and all sorts of other bad things. It’s hard and takes a lot of work. But it’s possible. So let’s say a woman rejects you, again, it’s time to ask yourself, “How bad do I want it?” Is she incredibly hot? Is she really cool? Then try again. If not, then move on.

When a woman says “no,” it’s a temperature check. Stop worrying about WHY she’s saying it, what matters is what you’re going to do about it. If you’re not into her, you’re going to ditch her regardless of why she said it. If you’re really into her, you’ll persist regardless of why she said it.

Stop being so reactive to what she says and start making decisions for yourself.

So here’s the next logical question: “So if I just persist endlessly, won’t I end up raping a girl or something? Isn’t there a limit?” There is. There’s a natural limit.

Let’s say you make an advance and she says “no” to reject you. You persist and she says “no” again, this time more forcefully. The “is she worth it?” scale is going to be tipped heavily towards “she’s not” the more adamantly she rejects you. By the second or third time she says no, for most guys, no matter how much they’re interested in her, he’s going to find that she’s not worth it. Again, it comes back to, “how bad do I want it?” When question reaches the point, “Do I want it enough to force her to do something she doesn’t want to?” I would hope every guy has the integrity to always say “no.”

But either way, it’s still a temperature check. It’s not about why she’s saying it, it’s all about how you’re going to respond to it.

Friend of mine found this T-Shirt for sale on Zazzle.com. I’m tempted to buy like 20 of the “women’s petites” and hand them out to girls the morning after. God knows I’ve had enough girls steal my fucking t-shirts anyway. This way I may as well get something out of it. Hahaha…

But I want to clarify something in a post that I’ve said a couple times in the comments now (since most readers don’t read/post comments).

I was not saying that DISCIPLINE = ATTRACTION. I was simply pointing out, that with few exceptions, everything that MAKES YOU attractive only comes through discipline and work (with a few minor exceptions).

I realize you can be disciplined and work hard on things that DON’T make you attractive. It happens all the time.

But the point of the post was because guys often have the mentality that attractive traits just fall out of the sky. They look at guys around them and get jealous. Or they even use it as an excuse with themselves… “I just wasn’t born a charismatic guy,” or “This fashion stuff just doesn’t work for me.” This is a common tendency and you see it everywhere. Hell, I used to get really frustrated with working out and I even convinced myself that I was genetically incapable of putting on more muscle. It wasn’t until I found the discipline to eat well and count calories that I added 15lbs of it.

So anyway… if anything, these posts are a call to embrace the hard work. None of this stuff is free or easy. Nor should it be.

Over the years, I’ve seen countless amount of guys complain that only guys who are good-looking get hot girls. Or that you have to make a ton of money. Or that you have to have an awesome job. Or that so-and-so is in a rock band, so that doesn’t count.

They never take into account the fact that that guy who is good-looking and in amazing shape, he spent the last eight years in the gym, and an hour in the bathroom grooming himself before he goes out. What were you doing?

Or the guy who is rich and buys tables at clubs, that he worked 80 hours a week for seven years and busted his ass to make that kind of money. Or the guy in the rock band practiced guitar for three hours a day since he was 15. That guy who is so charismatic and natural with women? He’s been taking public speaking courses for six years and majored in PR in college. That amazing dancer has been studying salsa, merengue, and swing for 12 years.

I could go on and on.

The point is, with the exception of height, just about any so-called “advantage” can be (and is) earned through hard work and dedication. There is nothing that is attractive to women that is not earned. Whether it be a nice six-pack, a sharp sense of humor, or an ability to be boldly aggressive with women, these only happen when a man stops for a second and makes a conscious decision, “I’m going to do this,” and then he does it.

The men who have a lot of trouble with women and never seem to improve are the ones who have a large separation between saying, “I’m going to do this,” and actually doing it. They analyze, strategize, write down goals, consult advisers and then never actually take action. Men who do improve their ability with women quickly (or improve at anything quickly) are able to say, “I’m going to do this,” and then immediately do it, without any separation. No procrastination. No over-thinking. They just decide and get it done.

That lack of space between deciding and doing is self-discipline. Everything that attracts a woman comes back to it. It’s pure action and little pontification.

If you’ve read about the concepts of masculinity, self-discipline is the epitome of it. What can be more attractive to a woman than a man who immediately acts on his decisions and is completely bound to his word, his goals and his path? It implies he’s dependable, that he’s strong-willed, and that he’ll inevitably become successful at whatever he does.

Self-discipline can be practiced and it should be. Begin small, and work up. Train it like a muscle. Begin with smaller and easier habits, such as waking up early each morning, not eating junk food, or hitting the gym three times a week. Then start working it up. Inch by inch, eliminate procrastination and waste from your life. Be consciously aware of the moment you choose to do something and the moment you actually do it. How much space is there in between it?

If there’s a lot, then how can you ever be successful with women? You choose to approach her and then let hours go by. You’re on a date and it’s time to kiss her, but it takes you forever to muster up the courage. She wants you to take her home and ravage her, but you’re caught in your head and it’s days later when you finally realize, “I should have done it then and there.”

Self-discipline leads to an attractive lifestyle. It also leads to attractive and aggressive behavior around women. It’s the root of everything that can be attractive in a man.

“Hey Mark!

Just wanted your advice on something. I currently find myself constantly depressed/upset about my game situation and as a result I find myself grumpy and easily annoyed in other areas of life i.e. studying. Im really not sure what to do about it, but the main problem is im still so shit at the game and I just want to get really good. For example, I’ve wanted a girlfriend for about 3-4 months now and I still havent got one…

Im not sure what to do. I normally try to avoid sending PUAs who teach questions because I know how busy you guys get. Its just my current problem is ridicilous and constantly annoys me. Its getting to the point where I worry at night and cant sleep properly…

I hope you can point me in the right directon.”

The short answer is this: take a break. Stop thinking about girls. Stop worrying about girls. Focus on you and your life and your hobbies. Take some “me” time for a month or two and just worry about enjoying yourself again.

Unfortunately, this problem is more common in guys than it should be. I’ve seen dozens go through it and I went through it myself a few years back. I spent a large portion of 2007 completely broke, jobless, living on a friend’s couch, dating 4-5 girls at a time and going out five nights a week. It was about as glamorous and ridiculous as it sounds. But it wasn’t healthy. And I wasn’t very happy.

When guys make the decision to “learn” pick up, and to take it on as a skill-set, this does a few things to us, both good and bad.

The good things that it does is that it allows us to quantify our progress and our results. It allows us to improve ourselves, expand our social lives, practice important skills and traits and measure our success to a certain degree. These are all healthy and fun benefits to entering into this enigmatic world.

But there are negative side-effects as well, all of which have been mentioned numerous times in many places over the years but I feel have never been discussed in-depth. The first is that, by its very nature, treating your social interactions as a skill-set, you implicitly objectify all of your social interactions and the people in them. People cease being only people and become HB’s, obstacles, AMOG’s, cockblocks and sets. The goal isn’t to relate and enjoy, but to dominate, neutralize and close. Joy and humor and conversation become techniques that are practiced and analyzed.

What this does is it removes a lot of the emotional component from our interactions. Humans are wired to be social creatures, we thrive on relating to one another emotionally. This inadvertently shuts us off from a lot of that ability to relate. Over a long enough time, many guys who study and work on pick up reach an odd place where they have made hundreds of acquaintances but very few real connections. As fun as this is, ultimately, it’s not fulfilling in the long-run.

The other thing that objectifying pick up and our social interactions does, by its very nature, is conditions us to seek validation from our interactions. Now, I know there’s a lot said in self help and inner game seminars about NOT seeking validation, but the fact remains that any time you choose to improve a skill-set and work hard on something, you are by definition, validating yourself from your results. It’s a necessary part of the process.

But again, taken to enough of an extreme for a long enough period of time, this can backfire. Because, ironically, one of the LEAST attractive traits is someone who is seeking validation constantly.

This is what happens when guys become too obsessed with pick up. They become addicted to the validation they start receiving from women (whether it’s because they have low self esteem or mommy issues or sex addiction, it doesn’t matter), and as they become addicted to it, it makes them less attractive, causing them to receive less validation. This causes them to seek it even more, which causes them to become even less attractive and again to receive less. It’s a brutal downward spiral, and I often run into guys who fall into this whose results basically plummet to nothing. And of course, this depresses them to no end because they’ve spent the last two years basing their entire identity and seeking all of their validation from their ability to meet and attract women.

It’s a dangerous place to go. Depression ensues and some guys have even attempted suicide (notable one being Mystery himself).

To get back to the email above, this guy is obviously not in such a severe place… but he’s definitely not headed in a good direction. It’s obvious he’s gone overboard and is way beyond the point of taking all of this shit way, way, way too seriously. Anybody who loses sleep at night because he’s not picking up girls enough is not in a good place emotionally, and ironically never going to pick up girls from such a place either.

What’s needed is perspective. Picking up women and your social life is supposed to supplement the other aspects of your life, not dominate them. The most attractive man is a balanced man, the man who sleeps just as well whether there’s a woman next to him or not. It’s another zen-type concept where the guy who is seeking the results the least will be most able to utilize his skills and abilities.

What I always recommend to guys is to back off and focus on their every day life. Take a month and dedicate as a “me” month. Don’t worry about ANYTHING relating to pick up or social status. Sit at home and play video games for a month. Read a few books. Spend time with family and friends. Don’t approach a single woman and don’t beat yourself up for not approaching one either.

The more experienced I get at coaching, the more I realize that this is the answer for a lot of guys’ problems. Hit a plateau in your game and frustrated? Take a break. Not improving at all and getting depressed and angry about it? Take a break. Not attracting the quality or type of girls you’re interested in? Take a break. Focus on you and what you love.

It’s exactly like the classic piece of advice: the best way to meet women is to have better things to do than to meet women.

When a guy takes this break, it does a few things. One, it stops the validation cycle. It helps him to become more self-validated again, not to mention happier. This by itself, will make him much more attractive. It will also bring balance back to his life. He’ll have hobbies and social circles again. So when he DOES go back out and meet women, he’ll not only have something to show for himself, but he’ll have a base of confidence and stability in his life.

And finally, it’ll return perspective that in the grand scheme of things, picking up girls is not so important. It’s a perk and a joy of life, but it is NOT life itself. It’s icing on the cake, not the cake itself. So relax, and don’t make such a big deal out of it. Because I guarantee you that she’s not.

- Jim Manzi

People always complain that I don’t have a model. Well fuck you, here’s my model. The PUA community’s my bitch tonight.

1. Lifestyle — determines the quality if your results
2. Overcoming Anxieties — determines the quantity of your results
3. Calibration — determines the efficiency of your results.

Eat it.

1. Lifestyle — Determines the Quality of your results.

Lifestyle includes your hobbies, your social circles, your career, interests, how good looking you are, your style, your fashion, how much money you have, how successful you are.

The quality of your lifestyle determines the quality of women who will be attracted to you. The unfortunate truth is that PEOPLE (both men and women) rarely, if ever, “date down” in the quality department. Having amazing “game” does very little to change this (we’ll get to that in a minute).

Just like you don’t want to date a frumpy girl who has nothing interesting going for her, really hot women don’t want to date a frumpy guy who has nothing interesting going for him. Good-looking people tend to date one another. Ugly people tend to date one another. Rich people tend to date each other. Poor people tend to date each other. This doesn’t mean you HAVE to be rich and good-looking to score a super hot chick, but it means you have to have SOMETHING going on in this department — amazing hobbies, a slam-dunk career, a wide network of friends who like you, being well-traveled and well-educated, being financially secure, etc. The more you got going on, the better quality you’ll attract.

If you have nothing going on in this department, but you expect to bang models with a bunch of routines you learned off the internet, well you’re in for a long and painful reality-check.

At the same time, having an amazing lifestyle by itself doesn’t mean you’ll get laid all the time either (quantity is explained below). There are a lot of good-looking guys and rich guys who don’t get any women. It just determines the quality of your women.

The good news is that it’s much easier for men to change this than women. Being a “good looking” guy is usually as easy as hitting the gym for 6-12 months, cleaning up your diet, buying cool clothes and grooming yourself well. This may sound like a lot, but when you look at what women have to deal with as far as being good-looking, men definitely have the easier path. Women are very limited genetically in how good-looking they can be. Men have a lot more control. You have control over your career. You have control over your friends and hobbies. So ditch the World of Warcraft and hit the gym.

2. Overcome Anxieties — Determines the Quantity of your results.

Most men don’t get laid or don’t get dates because they’re simply not putting the volume in. At the end of the day, this is purely a numbers game, and in the long-run, the more you get out there, the more you’ll get in terms of results. For many guys, this is really ALL they need to learn to do, as they have the other two fundamentals in order.

Approach Anxiety — cripples your ability to meet new women and even having a shot with them. Crucial to overcome at a very early stage to even have a chance of developing a lifestyle filled with women.

Social Anxiety — fear of being around people or expressing yourself. Commonly known as shyness. Seriously destroys your ability to connect with people quickly and deeply, therefore crippling your chance at connecting with women deeply and quickly.

Sexual Anxiety — fear of intimacy and expressing your sexuality towards women. Prevents you from escalating, being sexually aggressive, making the first move, and also seriously debilitates your ability in bed.

Take a moment and imagine that you are FEARLESS with women. You fear absolutely nothing. No approach scares you. You see a girl, and you go. You don’t even think about it. You feel comfortable saying ANYTHING to anyone at any time. You tell girls exactly how you feel, how much you want to fuck them and while you speak to them (with confident posture and eye contact), you touch them liberally. When you get them alone, you never hesitate to make the first move and you never hesitate to bring them to the bedroom. How would your results sky-rocket? Triple? Five times as many women? I personally can’t even imagine how much pussy I’d be getting.

The quantity of your results is limited by how afraid you are to act.

3. Calibration — determines the efficiency of your results.

This is what is considered by most to be “game” or being “smooth.” How quick are your comebacks? How quickly can you make people feel comfortable around you and like you? How cool are you speaking to large groups of people? How sensitive are you to others emotions and feelings towards you? How able are you to influence those around you?

Calibration determines how efficient you are with women you talk to. A man who is not socially calibrated may need to meet 100 women before he’s able to sleep with one. A man who IS very socially calibrated may only need to meet 5 or 10 before he is able to sleep with one.

All pick up routines, techniques and most theory is just pre-packaged calibration sold to you in ebook form. Some guy somewhere started using a line that worked well for him, so he wrote it down and sold it to you. Now you use it and it may or may not work depending on how well you know when to use it.

Calibration also applies to non-verbal communication… it also applies to recognizing emotions and reaction within yourself. If you’re not aware of your own thoughts and feelings, then you’ll never be able to congruently express them to somebody else.

I argue two things: 1) Overcoming anxiety and 2) calibration.

If you focus on those two things, everything else will fall into place through time and experience. It will all take care of itself. Body language will begin to project strong, confident posture, guys will start to behave dominantly and aggressively, connections will become stronger. I could go on and on… these are all side effects to mastering the two skills above. This raised a discussion on the local Boston board after I gave the talk to the group there. Below is an abridged version of my responses to that discussion:

“If half the stuff doesn’t matter, and we don’t bother to address them, how can we improve ourselves? Like you said, you did a fair amount of “game bashing” at the seminar. But you’re at a level that all your skills learned flows out of you. I’m at a level where I’m thinking this, slipping here, fumbling there. If I adopted the “it doesn’t matter” mantra, I’d never improve, and thus never get laid.

What do you recommend, then, for guys who are starting out?”

I guess I didn’t explain myself well enough in the seminar because that’s not what I meant at all.

Of course you still need to learn things. That’s the calibration part. Learning to be calibrated with women is a huge part of it. But you’re still falling into the (erroneous) mindset that pick up is something that is studied and mastered… it’s not. It’s something that is DONE and PRACTICED. You will never master it. And you will never ever completely know the “right” way to do it. You will just learn what is “better” for you, and this will be learned through experience.

The greatest component of your improvement is going to come from pushing through those moments of “oh shit, I don’t know what to do next,” and trying something, ANYTHING, with the full realization that it probably won’t work the first time. The biggest component of your improvement is directly proportional to how much you can overcome your fear and anxieties with women.

This thread is a perfect example. [Name redacted] is asking a lot of trivial and unimportant questions about shit tests and why girls do them. In the end, the only thing holding him back is the fact he cares so much about shit tests. For whatever reason, they trigger a lot of fear and anxiety in him. If you stop caring about shit tests, they cease to be a factor.

If you stop worrying about exactly what day to follow up and what voicemail to leave, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.
If you stop worrying about whether you’re escalating in the right place or not, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.
If you stop worrying about what exactly to open sets with, then it won’t be a factor anymore. It’s trivial.

This drive to control and understand everything prior to doing it is just a product of our fear to ACTUALLY DO IT. Dude, girls don’t care what you open them with. They don’t care what order you touch them in. They don’t care which day you call them on. Seriously…

What I’m prescribing is the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to pick up. Action without thought is better than thought without action. Follow the 50% Rule; i.e., make sure you’re consistently pushing all of your interactions forward, and then apply the lessons of calibration to them afterward.

AFTER you’ve tried and failed, is when you go back and say, “OK, what could I have done better?” or “Why did she react that way?”

Until that point, any analysis or worrying about what to do is just a product of your fear — fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of sexuality, etc.

So to answer your question, what I do with newbies, is I give them very simple and basic outlines of what to do, and then continually push them to be as aggressive as possible. Once they’ve gone out and tried a bunch of stuff (most of which completely freaks them out), then we take a minute and discuss why it worked or didn’t work. More often than not, their results improve extremely quickly.

———————

I’ve been heavily and deeply influenced by my time overseas the last year. Not only the various cultures and wide array of new experiences, but my time hanging out with various naturals, and now having more experience coaching on my own for the last year and a half. This blog will soon be converted over into a new blog on another domain. All of the material over there will reflect this new perspective on everything. For once, the name I’ve used since I begun coaching, “Practical Pick Up” will finally earn its namesake.

I’m done screwing around with a lot of the horseshit that passes for “theory” in this community. I’m interested in what works… nothing more, nothing less. And for the first time in my life, I think I finally have a strong grasp on the essence of “what works.” It doesn’t involve spirituality, meditation, state pumps, lording clubs, social proof, routines, games, looks, qualification, pacing, letting go of your ego, fast escalation or any of that. These things are all side-effects and/or minor boosts. They should not be your focus.

What DOES work is the systematic identification and destruction of one’s sexual anxieties, followed by practical reflection on which behaviors work and don’t work for you. Not what behaviors work for me. Not which behaviors worked for Neil Strauss or Mystery, but for you.

When the move occurs, I’ll be removing almost all posts on my personal experiences and will definitely be deleting the random posts. To some, the subjects I will write about on the new blog may seem elementary on the surface, but there will be reasons that I will start over from the beginning.

After five years, and over 400 posts, I feel like I’m just now beginning to share what I’m capable of teaching.