Mailbag - Friday, March 13, 2009 12:16 - 4 Comments

Mailbag! (3/13/09)

So I’ve been accumulating a lot of questions through comments and emails recently, enough that it’d take hours to sit down and reply to them all. So I’ve decided to answer them publicly.

If you have questions you want answered, pickup-related or otherwise, serious or humorous, personal or philosophical, anything, feel free to email them to me at: entropy@practicalpickup.com or leave it as a comment to this post.

Could you possibly tell us what you learned from those 2 naturals? Could you interview them?

- Anonymous

My first natural friend — the one who helped me get good exceedingly fast — had more dominance than anyone I’ve ever met. His frame and inner game was generally impenetrable. As a result, him going direct was just lethal. No matter how the girl reacted, he wouldn’t back down or be phased.

The second one I met about a year ago. Most of the deep comfort and connection stuff you read about from me was inspired by him. When I met him, the stuff he talked about I couldn’t even fathom before (getting girls to cry tears of joy while talking to him, etc.).

The first one I have lost touch with as he moved to Florida a year or two ago. The second one I still keep in periodic email contact with, although we don’t talk about pick up much anymore.

The first one I doubt I could ever interview. The second one, I have about 75-100 pages worth of email exchange on the subject of pickup with that I may do something with one day (he’s given me permission). These were all long emails (some as long as 20 pages) and very involved. It’s advanced content, but the content of those emails trumps most products I’ve ever seen. Many of the “new” ideas that I’ve had on this blog were inspired by him.

Is it healthy to take rejection and roll it off and laugh about it? Or to take it and work on yourself to get better ?

- Broken Dreams NYC

Ideally, the answer would be both. We all get rejected, so we all need to deal with it. I would say in the moment you get rejected, it’s never bad to laugh it off. Getting rejected sucks, and anything you can do to keep your spirits up in the moment is worthwhile.

I think down the road you need to analyze the situation and fix whatever caused the rejection. What I typically do and tell students is wait until the next day. For instance, if you go out Friday night, I wait until Saturday to think about all my sets and analyze everything or journal/write field reports. Sleeping on it detaches your emotions from it and gives you perspective. There are a lot of times that I would be upset about bombing with some girl and then I’d wake up the next day and not care anymore and actually be able to objectively figure out what I did wrong.

You wrote: “Some guys are simply horrible at instituting new behaviors. They don’t know how to change themselves. Other guys are horribly un-disciplined. A lot of guys don’t hold themselves to high standards, or have poor beliefs about themselves.”

Ok, that’s me. Is there an answer beyond “get some balls?”

- Pure Win

Yes. There is something fundamental, deep down, and probably emotional, that’s holding you back. Starting probing yourself for WHY you don’t want to improve, why you believe shitty stuff about yourself, why you don’t push yourself. I guarantee it’s a deep, underlying emotional issue that you haven’t resolved. Look into therapy if you have trouble.

How do you handle mixed sets? I have read various things on approaching mixed sets, and it appears some folks take the go directly to the girl vs. befriend everyone and then work the target angle. Personally, I prefer to approach the target and then work on the friends. And pointers for working mixed sets?

Keep up the killer posts!
- TR

Well, I don’t really know the “official” way to do mixed sets, but I’ll tell you how I do them.

- If there are more guys then girls, I approach and befriend the guys first and find out how they all know each other.
- If there are more girls than guys and the guys look like a bunch of pushovers — i.e., dorky work friends who have no chance at dating any of the girls — I approach the girls directly. I’ve noticed in these situations, when girls are with what you would call “beta” (I fucking hate that term) males, if you approach confidently and dominate the conversation, these guys will just kind of slink into the background. They don’t really need to be befriend other than for logistical reasons.
- If there are more girls than guys, but the guys don’t look like pussies — i.e., if he looks like he could actually be fucking at least one of the girls — I may approach the girls or him (depends on situation I guess), but I make a point to befriend him and figure out his logistical situation within the group. For instance, if he’s obviously gaming one girl, I’ll respect him by going for the other.

Mixed sets make a lot of guys nervous. The truth is, 90% of guys are harmless as long as you’re respectful to them. Often all it takes is a handshake and introduction to disarm an AMOG.

Guys who are shorter or smaller are going to always have a harder time with other guys. If you’re a bigger guy, you’ll just about never get AMOG’d, ever.