“If a man does not know to what port he is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
- Seneca
I know that most readers want to get down to specific techniques to generate more success with women. However, a major theme behind this blog is that Game can be extrapolated out to other areas of human action. I want to take a look at a foundational aspect of how the typical Alpha/Sigma approaches life, and what we can learn from that.
Watch an alpha or sigma in action – not just in approaching women, but in general as well. They act with purpose. The alpha knows what he wants. Granted, it may be to rut his way through the social scene à la Roissy, but he still knows. The sigma knows what he wants. In fact, the sigma will pursue his desires so completely that it nearly removes him from the socio-sexual herd. The point is that alphas and sigmas know what they want and where they want to be. They don't just drift along in life, hoping that the waves will bring them something. They have a destination, they take the necessary measures to reach it, and they recognize the “favorable wind.”
When I came to understand this, it completely changed the way I approached most things in life. When I was first starting to learn Game, I rarely acted with intent. For example, I would run into a certain girl (we'll call her “Ella”) at the music venues I would frequent. As I had already been improving in my interactions with women, we'd talk, engage in rapport, and. . . nothing would happen. In truth, I approached her like I did most other things in life, indecisively. I was waiting for something to happen. This changed when I had my arse kicked by a natural Alpha friend of mine. He saw me chatting with Ella, saw that she was telegraphing interest, and pulled me aside.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I just stood there. I wasn't sure what he was asking me.
“Do you want her or not?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then stop screwing around and ask her out.”
I reopened, jumped back into rapport, and then closed for a date. It worked.
When watching alphas in action, one notices that they approach life with purpose. I'm not saying they act with a particularly noble, moral, or productive purpose, but they act, nonetheless. Just look at any jobless alpha who's dating a high-tier woman. He desires to do little more than drink beer and sleep with his girlfriend (and her sister), and he gets what he wants.
Deltas, on the other hand, aren't known for their decisiveness. When they get married, it's usually because they are pushed by circumstances or by the woman. When they go out with friends, they don't take the lead, but tag along. When they see an attractive woman at the bar, they have to be goaded into approaching her by their male-support group. You can be running great techniques, but if you don't begin to alter the way you view everything – relationships, women, and yourself – your Game will fall apart the moment you get into a viable relationship.
So how did learning this affect my life?
I first met my fiancee through a group of mutual friends. No one suggested that I talk to her and it wasn't arranged for us to meet. I thought she was attractive, so I approached her. I liked her personality, so I got her number. I wanted our relationship to be a romantic one, so I made that clear very early. My purpose was that I wanted her, and I acted on it. This isn't to say that I was running perfect Game. It was simply a result of learning how to want something.
The fact that you're actually seeking to improve your Game means that you've already recognized the problem and have determined to fix it. Continue in that vein.
1. Start to set goals for yourself in both the short term and the long term. These goals can range from, “I want her,” to, “I want to establish my authority in the office.” For those of you who already have goals and desires, learn to place those at the forefront.
2. Make your goals specific. When you have specific goals or desires, you become more choosy about how you spend your most valuable assets – your time and focus.
3. Stop being fatalistic about your life and relationships. Don't wait on someone else to make things happen in your life. Set your goals and pursue them. Don't be “Evil Guy”.
I'm not advocating the PUA lifestyle. I want to inspire other deltas (and gammas and omegas) to take back their masculinity from a rabidly feminized society. One of the best ways to do this is to pursue the things that you want.
Share your experiences and the goals you're setting below.
22 comments:
Strong post, Gabriel. Well done. That was downright inspiring. It reminds me of something I was telling a kid on the soccer team tonight.
"Don't react, anticipate!"
It also nails the core of Game, which isn't about scoring per se, but rather observing and emulating successful behavior.
Too true. I've drifted for far too long, and it's had majorly bad effects on my life and lifestyle.
It's infuriating now because I dug my own hole. And I am doing my damnedest to dig myself out.
Very well put, one of my own recovering niceguy affirmations, Don't React, Do. Having these goals you work towards often makes you suddenly realize all the other things fall into place. I mean have you ever seen a natural alpha fret about not having a girlfriend, though he is likely often single (though he might be 'seeing' several women) nope. He just does and the fact that he has that confidence and doesn't worry about things outside his immediate drive to get what he's going after. Sort of a sense of Alpha Immediacy
@Vox - Thanks.
@Indy - I know the feeling.
I'll start off by sharing two of my goals.
1. Lose 20 lbs. by June. When you're in a long term relationship, it can be easy to slip back into low Deltahood. I'm drawing up a fitness plan to get back into a daily regimen of cardio and resistance training.
2. I want to move into a bigger place by June. I'm preparing to get married, and I want a bigger place. This is causing me to adjust my finances and work habits accordingly.
One of these days I'm gonna write a book generally on the topic "Lessons Gleaned from the Life of Jesus on Genuine Masculinity."
I mean, he had reformed prostitutes, presumably Hotties, who would DIE for him.
Anyway, a verse from Luke says of Jesus: "And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem."
Thus we see that a man must "set his face," and I concur with Vox's post.
Good idea.. I've been trying to get back into positive routines myself, get back into having productive hobbies...
my latest goals:
1) Get with a weight lifting regimen
in order to
2) gain back muscle i've lost due to a sluggish nature lately
3)get back into the habit of practice martial arts, as it's something I always enjoyed and found challenging
and a few other financial benchmarks I want to reach in the next year, but that's more of a personal nature
I have trouble setting goals, too. I get so caught up in day-to-day life and its stresses that I end up tired and broken. Maybe it's just grad school teaching some old-fashioned work ethic to my lazy, entitled 20-something western ass. Either way, my goals:
1) Complete my exercise plan.
My exercise partner and I started in November. We couldn't run 2 minutes without stopping. Now we run 40, and are working to 60. We've recently added in strength training, but we're as weak as we were unconditioned.
2) Successfully ask out a woman that doesn't feel like a compromise.
I went from not being able to ask out women to being able to ask out women that are less than I want. I don't mean my goals are ridiculous, like a Brazilian supermodel or anything, but I don't want to feel like I've ended up with a particular woman b/c I've failed to be the man I could be.
3) Complete the 'Programmer Competency Matrix.'
I'm a programmer, but I know I'm working below ability. I found a metric online to gauge my skills. I want to finish everything on it.
4) Finish my Android game
I've never had code actually ship. I've had projects start but get outsourced and I've written programs used in-house, but I've never been able to point to code others use in the outside world and say: "That's mine." I want that more than anything else on this list.
Well Done Gabriel. You distilled one of my current driving goals to 3 words "establish authority @ office"
Excellent post, Gabriel.
Is this the part where we all share our goals and then braid each other's hair?
Excellent post, Gabriel.
Is this the part where we all share our goals and then braid each other's hair?
Great post!
My goal is to move from a gamma to at least a Delta. I want to get my wife to respect me. I need to get her off that pedestal and stop apologizing for everything.
Excellent realization eric, but just remember she can only be on a pedestal if you put her there. Sure others around her may dote on her still but the fact that you don't and call her to task on a poor attitude will bring about a change in how she responds to you.
Well done. This kind of Synthesis (Sexual+Social) Game post is what will set this blog apart from the rest of the Game and Improve Yourself blogs on the net.
One technique I have found extremely effective is to write down three or four headers on a piece of paper, for example:
• Health (physical and mental)
• Wealth (work and investments)
• Personal (hobbies and interests)
• Social (family, friends and community)
Then list one or two specific and achievable goals below each. Make these realistic half-yearly or yearly goals, and be as specific as possible. For example, target body weight and BMI for physical health, specific monetary amount or percentage for wealth, etc. Listing three or four incremental steps to each final goal is also good, as it lets you cross them off as you work towards your target.
Tape that sheet of paper to your fridge, look at it -every- -single- -day- when you get up in the morning, and get fucking ruthless. You will reach those goals faster than you thought possible.
Good post, but being too specific in your goals can be detrimental.
There are two goal-setting philosophies - the corporate guy in a defined structured environment, and the entrepreneur.
The corporate guy would set goals like "sell 20% more widgets and improve margin 1% this quarter."
The entrepreneur's goals would be much more fluid and organic, constantly shifting to take full advantage of circumstances.
Don't confuse decisiveness with rigidity. Don't sacrifice virtuosity just to gain an external motivation boost.
Instead, honestly track both your desires and your behavior/progress. The two should evolve and converge over time, but in ways that aren't anticipate-able.
Good post. This blog is starting to get interesting.
I'm not a social creature. The irony is, I like people. Result: I end up trying too hard. My goal is to relax...be centered...
A lot of us are social cripples. Gimps can't run races, social cripples can't run game. I recall way back, someone at VD's place said he got depressed even with the level of social interaction required to go to a grocery store. That comment stood out to me - I was having the same experience. Fought it for years...I come from a line of alcoholics and darn well know why.
This is not a sob story. I've been mightily blessed with a pretty wife, kids I've decided not to sell to China (don't tell them that), an insane Black Russian Terrier and a fine job. But given what I've already mentioned, it's not surprising that I'm always looking for ways to improve my social interactions.
The good thing is much can be overcome. Exercise - check. Been doing that for years. Helps quite a bit, but not a silver bullet. Attitude? TRIED to keep positive...be optimistic. You can only get so far. The catalyst that allowed me to stand up straight was nutrition and supplements. Never went the prescription drug route.
By nutrition I mean diet. I experimented with many...from fruititarian to near-paleo. Get on a clean diet that makes you feel good. Experiment with intermittent fasting or the fast-5 diet.
By supplements I mean amino acids and other brain boosters. Dive into this and experiment. This category was my biggest breakthrough. I have a couple books I can recommend, but there's lots out there. Read as much as you can and be willing to experiment. It will take time.
Once you get a breakthrough, exercise, supplements and attitude all start to build off each other, increasing your momentum.
God speed my brethren!
Good post Gabriel. I'm starting to see potential for this blog.
This is a public service announcement for my fellow social gimps:
If you are so socially crippled you can't even stand up, let alone run this race, forget game and focus on 3 things right now: exercise, diet/nutrition and attitude.
Here's the important part: in my experience the big breakthrough was diet/nutrition. Not only do you need to experiment to find what diet works best for you (include experiments w/intermittent fasting), you need to experiment with amino acids and other brain boosters. I can't overstate the importance of this. Research and experiment. Get on it. I have a couple books I can recommend - there's a lot out there. It will take time. Results can be significant.
Once you've got the breakthrough, let the troika build momentum. Then you can continue on to building up your social life.
Let me say it again: if you become depressed from basic social interaction...you need to dive into experimenting with amino acid and nutrition therapy. Get to it.
God speed!
I'm afraid I have to disagree, JD.
Most people are not self-motivated and have little experience achieving goals, which is why they are not where they want to be or doing what they want to do in the first place. To use your example, entrepreneurship may be the common man's dream, but let's face it - until they wake up and not just decide to but actually *start* changing themselves, 99% of sheeple should work for someone else. Introducing "fluid and organic" at this stage is often detrimental as it allows for vacillation, rationalization, procrastination, and other fudging.
Now, if if a person is already self-motivated and has a history of achievement, then this may not apply, but my experience is that most people need to start with structure, that is to say specific targets that get them started and used to aiming and achieving. Once that happens, then yes, things become more fluid, although even then one must remain focused and vigilant. I have worked freelance, successfully, for the last twenty years, and even with my highly flexible work requirements and schedule I still find that setting specific goals gets me started moving in what I hope is a mostly right direction.
Of course I do not lock myself into my current goals - if I feel the situation has changed significantly, I review and revise. But I feel that one of the worst thing that a person just starting out can do is to set nebulous goals (i.e. desires), because that eliminates the metric element (measurable achievement and improvement) and again, introduces a potential 'fudge factor'.
Establishing a monthly review and tweaking your goals may be a good compromise, but I still recommend writing down current desires as and carefully worded specific goals, because again, it helps get people who are otherwise unused to doing so, off their arses.
So are we going to get the Vox Game story, filled with embarrassing tidbits or was it all too natural once you got a terrible haircut?
Fear not, anony, I'll be gentle.
I don't care about most people. Most people are Hell-bound processed-food-poisoned liberals with room temperature IQs at best. I am describing what one should do if one enjoys optimal psychology, health and info-organization. Because that's what interests me.
Everybody knows the psychological costs of not setting goals. Few understand the psychological negatives to overly specific and rigid goals.
If you had followed my analogy, you would have understood that the more mature and stable the environment, the more specific the goals one can set. I should hope that after 20 years of doing something, you'd be able to set some specific goals about it.
"nebulous goals (i.e. desires), because that eliminates the metric element (measurable achievement and improvement) and again, introduces a potential 'fudge factor'."
This is wrong. Nebulous qualitative goals can be tracked, and usually measured as well. And they are usually the most important.
"I still recommend writing down current desires as and carefully worded specific goals, because again, it helps get people who are otherwise unused to doing so, off their arses"
Totally wrong. Your current desires are not carefully worded specific goals. Instead, they are rooted in the qualitative aspects of your soul. Therefore, if you write them down that way, you are almost guaranteeing you won't hit them, or at least severely limiting the number of ways you could reach them.
@RealMatt it was all natural, being pre-Game, but there will be some explanatory stories, yes. Since Game is merely a recognition of the real, all socio-sexual developments will tend to have a certain similarity to the process Strauss describes.
@Vox I think most semi-well adjusted people naturally have some "Game". I remember flirting with a girl I liked throughout junior high without realizing it. Surprisingly to me, she started to reciprocate once I really entered puberty.
The crushing blow is what ruins people and sends them into the downward spiral towards Gamma and - what is often self-imposed - Omega.
Im learning what i want.
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