The networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatedly so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals, because they have a stake in it.

– Seth Godin

I wouldn’t call myself an introvert, but I am definitely a not-extrovert. I am reasonably good at meeting new people, but only for the same reasons that I am reasonably good at building websites or playing chess: I’ve treated it as a problem that can be solved through directed thinking and deliberate effort.

As a geek, I see getting one’s social life off the ground not as a lottery, but as a knowledge activity. Clearly there are wrong ways to go about meeting people, which means that there must be right ways to go about it too. I don’t believe in premeditated interactions — the only script I offer is “Hi”, with the rest left as an exercise to the reader — but there is a lot to be said for foundational knowledge: cultivating the right attitude, managing your expectations, embracing rejection, setting goals, and so on. Ultimately, problems in your social life are just like any other kinds of problems: they can be identified, characterized, and worked on.

One of the most common questions I get asked by social skydivers, both male and female, is: Where the heck do you meet people?

In fact, having recently moved halfway around the world — from Montreal to Berlin — it’s a question I’ve had to ask myself. But even though I arrived here less than three months ago, I’ve already started to weave my way into the fabric of Berlin life. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some really interesting people and have enjoyed getting to know them.

In this article, I’ll share with you the approach I’ve taken, including a list of the specific events and activities that I find most useful for bringing me into contact with the kinds of people I want to get to know.

Developing the Right Approach

Before I list my favourite places to meet people, I’ll start by outlining the principles I use to come up with these ideas in the first place. Using these guidelines, you’ll be able to tweak my later list of suggestions to fit your own tastes.

• Who can you help? Not just in a humanitarian sense, but in any sense that involves enabling other people to achieve their goals. For example, if you’re a geek working at a startup looking for Ruby programmers, why not visit your local Ruby group and spread the word? If you speak French and English fluently, why not go to a language exchange group and help other people become fluent too?
• Go open source. Don’t try to copyright your connections. The best way to build your social life is by giving things away, including your knowledge, your time, and your support.
• It’s not about meeting people, it’s about building things. Or learning things. Or teaching things. Shared pursuits are the ultimate social lubricant. When you have a common goal, you don’t have to try to meet people, it just happens. If you actually care about the interest that brought you together, you will need each other to advance.
• Be flexible. Remember the Weird Idea Radar? Turns out this is more than just a tool for discovering your passion — it’s also a great way to meet people. If you want to maximize your social potential, then you’re going to have to be open-minded. If you’re wondering whether some group is really your kind of thing, do it. If looking at their website makes you wonder if you’ll be the only person who shows up at the next meeting, do it. If you’re unsure whether you even know enough about the subject matter to talk about it, DO IT! Be willing to act on uncertainty. I’ve discovered some of my favourite interest groups by plowing through my initial hesitations.
• Be creative. Meeting people requires a capacity for original thinking. You should always be thinking of ways in which you can offer value to others, not as an entertainment monkey of course, but as a volunteer, a connector, and an enabler.
• Be an initiator. A lot of people wait for others to make the first move. I’d be lying to pretend I’m not guilty of this myself at times. I know there are at least a few people I should know a lot better than I do right now, but I’ve been waiting for them to inaugurate our friendship. And I can tell they’re probably waiting for me to do the same. But building social connections is not a game of chess — in a stalemate, both people lose.
• It won’t happen overnight. Allow for at least a few months before you expect to start connecting with people outside of the groups that brought you together. This is especially true if the group meets only once or twice a month.

Where to Meet People

With the above principles in mind, here are some of my favourite places to meet people:

• Philosophy groups. The more focussed, the better. You needn’t be a diehard adherent to the group’s philosophy to participate. For example, I’d hardly call myself an Objectivist, but I am a fan of Ayn Rand’s work. So I got involved in the Montreal Objectivist Club over a year ago and remained a member right up until I left for Berlin. Good food and great discussions which never failed to challenge my way of thinking.
• Couch surfing. CouchSurfing is a travel community that helps people wander the world by making it easy to find, and share, crash space. While this is particularly useful if you’ve just arrived in a new city, it’s also a great opportunity for locals. CS’ers organize regular parties and other events, and travelers are a fascinating bunch to get to know. I attended some CS events in Montreal. My polyglot buddy Benny travels the world acquiring new languages, and uses CS as a key part of building his social life in foreign places.
• Expat forums. This is also not limited to out-of-towners. Most people on expat forums are keen to mix with locals. In Berlin, I’ve made ample use of Germany’s most popular English-speaking expat forum and I’ve found many Germans present at the gatherings I attend.
• Meditation groups. You needn’t be New Age to sit quietly in a room with other people. I’m an atheist, but I find meditation to be a great way to relax and refocus.
• Language exchange groups. To language junkies, the benefits here are obvious. But even if you’re monolingual, you can still use your mother tongue to help others learn the language. It was through attending a language exchange group in Berlin that I met Lijit founder Stan James. He’s a brilliant guy to converse with, and we’ve parlayed our interest in German into discussions about startups, social media, the paradox of choice, “procrastiflation” (the idea that the likelihood of completing a task decreases exponentially with every day you put it off), and various other geeky subjects.
• Coworking. Coworking means sharing an office space with other people who would otherwise be working from home too. This is a great way to meet people who share the social challenges of self-employment. Coworking environments often bring together people with complementary skill sets — graphic designers, web developers, photographers, marketers, copywriters, etc. — which tends to create lots of opportunities for everyone involved.
• Take your online activities into meatspace. I did this a couple years ago with online poker. I started participating in real-life tournaments and met lots of people who were equally passionate about the game. Recently, I’ve replaced the time I normally spend playing go online with going out two nights a week to my favourite go clubs in Berlin.
• Toolchains are social objects. People love getting together and talking about the tools they use to build things. I’ve attended many different programming language groups in Montreal and more recently attended an Ubuntu BBQ in Berlin.
• Political change groups. I’m cheating a bit here, because I haven’t yet done this one myself. But I will soon be on my way to Vancouver and I am really looking forward to participating in ChangeCamp, which its website describes as “an open community and a set of tools and ideas designed to give citizens and governments the ability to work collaboratively in new ways to make change and to better address real-world challenges in our communities.” Wordy, but intriguing.

If you’re serious about getting your social life moving, I would encourage you to try every one of these suggestions, even if they seem a bit outside your range of interests. In the worst case, it might cost you an evening. But trying something that doesn’t work is never a waste of time if it brings you closer to finding something that does.

Exercises

So now that you have some ideas for developing the right attitude to building your social life, and several examples of where to meet interesting people, how do you put these ideas to work? Here are three ways to get started:

1. 30-day challenge. Make a commitment that, for the next 30 days, you will go to some kind of event or activity at least two nights a week. Be willing to stretch your definition of a good time if you have to. The priority is to get out of your house. I did this from the moment I arrived in Berlin (but more like four or five nights a week) and it is the main reason why I feel connected to this city, rather than feeling like an outsider who has a hard time breaking through.
2. Initiate, Initiate, Initiate. Make a list, either in your head or written down, of all the people with whom you have wanted to initiate a get-together (e.g. to hang out outside the gatherings where you normally see them), but have been too shy to do it. Then do it! Try for a minimum of at least three people to get started.
3. Where do you meet people? Add a comment below to share the specific activities that have worked best for you. While suggestions like “user groups” or “taking a course” are useful, it’s easy to overlook exactly what those might be. So the more detailed your suggestions, the better.

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If you got the skin to be rejected 800 times in a row, 801 is gonna be a crazy play.

– Social Media Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, describing the Hot Girl Rule (~45:10)

Having travelled and moved around a lot in the past several years, I’ve been through a number of social resets. I like exploring the world, so my reasons for moving have a lot less to do with jobs, family, and other social connections, and a lot more to do with adventure. I am addicted to culture shock.

But my reasons for starting over have not always involved relocation. Sometimes I’ve just fallen out with a few key people and find myself, socially speaking, back at square one.

This is not an easy place to be. I think I spent my first year in Montreal just feeling sorry for myself: Why is it so hard to meet people? Why can’t I just find a girl who loves me? Why can’t there be someone out there who worries about me?

It was around that time, a little over four years ago, that I realized that self-pity is self-destruction. The reason it was so hard to meet people was because all I did was sit on my own ass and whine — to myself — about how hard it was to meet people. The reason I was single for the first year I lived in Montreal was because I rarely went out. Except maybe for a walk to contemplate how lonely I was.

Having been through this experience many times, I eventually forced myself to adapt. Blaming the world for problems I created was just not a long-term option. I realized that this feeling that “nobody cares” wasn’t what caused my loneliness. Far from it. In fact, it was only by truly understanding that nobody cares that I was able to finally make sense of my social life issues, and figure out how to solve them.

Why Meeting People Is Hard

Building your social life is a lot like building a business. The currencies are different, but the mechanics are similar.

The startup entrepreneur starts out in a war against indifference. But those that succeed at attracting customers do well because they know this: Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your architecture. Nobody cares about your website. Nobody cares that you’ve reached Inbox Zero. Nobody has even heard of the event at which you won that award. Nobody knows that you have something for sale. And even if they do, they probably still don’t care.

And the same principle applies for startup socialites as well: Nobody cares.

Nobody knows that you exist. Nobody wants to meet you. Nobody cares that you are interesting to talk to. Nobody is going to coax you out of hiding. And that bikini-clad babe who just moved in next door? Borrow some sugar? Bottle of wine? Night of unbelievable sex?

Uh, no.

“Nobody cares” is not meant to be cynical or patronizing. Rather, it is a natural byproduct of the scale of humanity. In business, your potential customers just have so much stuff to choose from that they can’t possibly notice more than the tiniest fraction of what is out there. They might not even realize that they “need” what you are selling, and even if they’re aware of their need, they may not understand that your product fulfills it.

In social spheres, the barriers to entry aren’t nearly as high, but there are similar forces — and similar filters — to contend with. Overcoming loneliness means fully accepting that these forces exist and working with them, instead of against them.

So how does “nobody cares” translate from a reality check for entrepreneurs to a wake up call for expanding your social life? Here are some thoughts:

• Don’t buy the rhetoric that “it’s hard to meet people” where you live. Those are the words of an energy vampire. That’s like a business owner saying “it’s hard to find customers in this city.” Of course it’s hard. It’s hard to find customers in any city. Welcome to Planet Earth. Population: 6.7 billion. Retaining one’s sanity here requires an unconcern for the vast majority of things. And — by default at least — that includes you.
• 80% of businesses fail. Which means that 80% of the time, indifference wins. If you’re hitting it off with more than 20% — even 10% — of the people you make contact with, I have only two questions for you: 1. How are your writing skills? 2. Wanna write a guest post?
• Get out of your house. Nobody cares. And if you’re staying at home, taking long baths to “think” about things, and repeatedly promising yourself that tomorrow is The Day that you are really going to crank it up, then they will keep not caring.
• Salespeople are the masters of rejection. They spend most of their day getting brushed off by people that don’t care. And they make a hell of a good living at it too. If you’re willing to expose yourself to massive rejection, you win.
• We buy products for the same reason that we choose friends and lovers: they make us feel better and do better. Social success isn’t about you kicking ass, it’s about helping other people kick ass. So consider: What do you know that you can share with others? What can you help other people be better at? What do you want to see changed in the world, and where might you find others that want the same thing?
• Be honest: How many people where you live even know that you exist? 50? 100? Maybe 150? What about as a percentage of your city’s population? 0.00005%? Unless you live in a smaller place, cracking even 1% is almost impossible. An entrepreneur who doesn’t advertise his product would not get depressed if nobody bought it. And yet a lot of people do get depressed when they don’t “advertise” themselves (by going out, meeting people, talking to strangers, etc.) and nobody comes knocking.

Ultimately, if you are in a social rut, I am there with you. I know what loneliness is like and I know there is a way out. Nobody cares does not mean that nobody will care. It’s just a reminder that there are forces and filters that, while helping us cope with information overload, also make us invisible to each other. And the way to social savviness is not to ignore them, but to incorporate them into your action plan.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I’ve moved a lot. And a few months ago I moved again, to Berlin. But unlike when I moved to Montreal, this time I wasted no time waiting for the world to come to me. I have built an active social life since arriving here. I’ve met some brilliant and interesting people. I will write more about this later this week, including the specific places I go and the activities I participate in that have exposed me to a wide variety of people who have been fun getting to know.

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It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.

– Author Unknown

If your primary goal in life is to meet an amazing woman, you probably won’t.

Setting out on a mission to find a girlfriend is like starting a company to get rich: It focusses you on the wrong things and you eventually realize that the game you’re playing isn’t worth winning.

When money is your center of gravity, you make decisions based on dollars rather than sense. Instead of being a Merchant of Wow, you become a Merchant of Ow, building boring, ugly, and painful things, hoping you might flip before you flop. By trading passion for profit you confine yourself to mediocrity, blazing a trail to unhappiness and unwealth as you sink ever deeper into spiritual overdraft.

Likewise, when you make women your focal point, you let go of your I. Instead of asking what you want most in life, you ask what women want most in life: What traits do women find attractive in a man? What kind of social events do hot women go to? What kind of hobbies do women consider sexy? What should I say to a girl when I approach her? Will she be turned off if I do XYZ?

Questions are like shovels: they unearth the truth. But when you ask questions like these, you dig your own grave.

There Is No Secret

In How to Meet Women Without Really Trying, I suggested that the best way to meet women is by talking to them. This advice is so simple that it’s almost impossible to understand.

I’ve experienced the entire spectrum of success with women, from being a chess-playing, virgin, overweight cookie monster in high school all the way to where I am now, where I don’t even think about meeting girls anymore and It Just Happens. I know how easy–and, more importantly, how hard–it is to accept and apply the idea of meeting girls by talking to them.

What do I mean by “talk” to women? What do you say? What’s the best opener? What do you say after that? Where do you meet them? How do you get them interested in you? How do you ask for their number? How can you possibly meet hot girls without using magic potions and super sekrit seduction techniques?

To demystify the mechanics of making a connection, I’ll describe exactly how I met the girl I’m currently dating. I’ll include some philosophical context to paint the bigger picture that led to us finding, meeting, and connecting with each other.

This story is only coincidentally about seduction. It’s really more a tale of me just living my life, and how that inevitably leads to meeting charming and beautiful creatures.

Shared Interests Are Everything

I never go out to meet girls anymore. The success or failure of my social engagements is never measured by how many approaches I did (ugh), how many numbers I walked away with (ugh!), or how many kisses I got (UGH!@#*!).

Every activity I’m involved in is fueled by self-interest. For example, I organize a personal growth group in Montreal because I want to surround myself with like-minded, positive people, and create an environment that promotes the conscious pursuit of happiness. The more I care about that goal, the better the group gets. I’m helping organize BarCamp Canada, a geek conference coming up later this year, because I’m interested in helping smart people talk to others about what they’re working on. And every article on this blog is, first and foremost, a letter written to myself. Writing helps me crystallize my thoughts and make sense of my experiences. I use my content to build traffic, rather than letting traffic build my content.

The natural consequence of defining your own hierarchy of values and pursuing them to your utmost ability is that you meet people who share those interests. For example, by stepping up to volunteer for BarCamp, I’ve created the opportunity to work with smart hackers. My choice to start a personal growth group has resulted in forming friendships with some hot girls and cool guys. From there I get invited to parties and other social events, which leads to meeting more interesting people. And, of course, starting this blog has added a whole new dimension to my world.

Which brings me to how I met Mary.

Seduction Secret #172: Live Your Own Life

Mary was yet another girl I crossed paths with while doing something that mattered to me.

You may remember that a few months ago I did a 30-day trial on learning to cook. Since I started from almost zero, I had to make regular trips to a funky little kitchen boutique nearby for crockery and cookware.

I was in there a few times a week during the challenge. The girls that worked there were really sweet and we started talking more and more. My requests for kitchen advice eventually led to discussions about the rest of our lives. I told them about 30 sleeps and how I was learning to cook, and we all got more interested in each other.

There was one girl in particular there who caught my eye. She had dark hair, a pretty face, a gorgeous body, and radiated an irresistibly feminine sparkle. We never got around to exchanging names, though I couldn’t help but make a mental note of her.

Eventually, I completed the 30-day challenge and my culinary needs died down. Time passed. Life went on. I didn’t get around to the store much anymore, but I kept bumping into that cute girl around the neighbourhood.

Girl Approaches Guy, Film at 11

One day I got an email from a reader of my blog. She told me that my articles inspired her. She confessed a little embarrassment to be writing me out of the blue, but said she had just read my article How to Get a Life and found it really interesting. One of the points I make in that article is how powerful it can be to just email someone you want to get in touch with. That’s exactly what made her decide to email me.

But it wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the email that I finally put two and two together.

“I hope you haven’t stopped cooking!” she said. Signed Mary.

Opportunity Will Knock

When opportunity knocks, you either answer the door, or you light up your internet connection and spank away your sorrows. So a few days later, I invited her out to a social gathering and things took off from there.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that pursuing your goals will make the women you desire chase after you. In most cases, you’ll have to make the first move. But shared interests plant the seeds for a healthy social life, and a healthy social life plants the seeds for a healthy sex life. 99% of the girls you meet will never end up in your bedroom, and that’s fine. Mary is the one girl I did connect with out of the dozens and dozens (and dozens) that I didn’t.

You don’t need pickup skills to meet girls; you need goals that have absolutely nothing to do with girls. Attracting worthwhile women into your life happens only when you throw the entire force of your existence into creating a life that matters.

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Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

– Chuang Tzu

95% of everything you’ll ever need to know about meeting women can be summed up in four words: Go with the flow. Instead of trying to meet girls, focus entirely on yourself. Create a life that’s interesting and worthwhile to you, not because that’s an attractive quality to women, but because it’s your life and you are all you have. If you can’t live your own adventure, you’ll never be happy.

Funnily enough, doing things to impress women is pretty unimpressive. Neediness will bury you. The only way to attract the types of girls that actually belong in your life is to direct all your energy into being a world-class chef, rock star computer geek, champion race car driver, or whatever else lights your fire.

And then just talk to the people that show up on your path. Whether that path is the sidewalk on the way to the grocery store, the poker table, the front row of the audience at your show, or a bar or club that you’d be going to anyway, even if you already had a girlfriend. No matter what you do, there will be people all around you. The guy who asks, “Where’s a good place to meet girls?”, assumes that he can’t say hi to the gorgeous girl picking tomatoes beside him at the grocery store, or that he can’t walk up to a girl in a room full of seated people and just start talking to her.

Believe it or not, you can. It’s not the situation that stops you. It’s your ego that stops you. Getting rejected by a girl poses a serious threat to who you think you are. But here’s a little secret: If you’re constantly getting rejected, you’re constantly getting laid.

Fear of Rejection

You can’t do anything to change what a girl thinks of you. The moment you try to change someone’s opinion of you, you’ve conceded to their reality, instead of living life on your own terms and letting social polarity work out the details. The vast majority of guys who think they have no idea how to meet girls are really just making excuses for having a lethal fear of rejection.

How do you meet girls? By talking to them.

If you have the balls to talk to girls anywhere, anytime, you’ve nailed down a crucial 20% of the secret to attracting women that belong in your life. The other 80%, of course, is to be doing something so interesting with your life that women become an enjoyable diversion, rather than the foundation of your happiness. If you don’t respect yourself enough to approach girls that appeal to you, and find it hard to ignore being laughed at sometimes by the sexually frustrated masses, then you’re going to have to settle for whatever girl decides to allow you to have sex with her.

There Is No Try

The girls I meet are interested in me right away. If they aren’t, I’m not going to try and change their minds. In fact, I usually don’t even respond to anything less than a smile. If her reaction was anything but warm and receptive, I’m already talking to someone else. No hard feelings, but at the same time, life is too short to waste on the Nos. If Montreal weren’t full of astoundingly beautiful women, I might have to reconsider my wholesale approach. Thankfully, natural, high-fashion beauty is available here in bulk.

In fact, these days, I get approached more and more. The most recent example of this was New Year’s Eve. I was out with my buddy Yas, partying it up, when this girl came up to us and asked for a light. My buddy started talking to her really interestedly. A few minutes later, we all walked back inside. As I walked towards the dance floor, the girl grabs me from behind and pulls me over to introduce me to her friend. Here we go again…

This seemed pretty fun, so I stayed tuned in for several minutes. Then a good song came on so I headed to the dance floor once again. I noticed that the girl didn’t join me, but it didn’t matter either way. The Now moment is the only moment that counts, especially when it comes to social interactions.

During the next hour or two, I met a bunch of other people, and lost track of my buddy. This happens just about every time I go out to large social gatherings with friends. It’s also why I can have such a great time, even when I go out on my own.

By midnight, I was on the dance floor, dancing with these girls I had met outside about 20 minutes earlier. When the New Year hit, the girl who approached me and my buddy earlier finds me on the dance floor to come wish me Happy New Year–with a kiss.

We start dancing, and she ends up inviting me to her place afterwards. Rather, she didn’t invite me, but was saying things like, “Yeah, when you come to our place later on…” Hmmm, okay.

But apparently that kiss was a commitment. This girl eventually starts getting possessive towards me. She gets visibly jealous seeing me talk to other girls. Fast forward to a couple hours later, and I’m outside talking to a couple dudes about Quebec’s equivalent of Woodstock, how awesome Montreal girls are, and various other things, when this girl taps me from behind.

“Bye Brad. We’re leaving.” Whoa, she’s pissed now.

“Okay, have a good night!” I reply, with a goodbye cheek-to-cheek. And back to the conversation…

The more people you meet, the more you’ll see patterns emerge, and the less you’ll take it personally when things go sour. Sometimes the drama takes a few days, weeks, months, or even years to unfold, but it all boils down to the same ego-based insecurities. And it’s no big deal. Just go with the flow, and be thankful when you find things out up front.

No one is good or evil. We’re all just a bunch of egos passing judgement on other egos, to help keep our own ego intact. Strange but true.

Self-Created Problems

A guy who gets both legs amputated has a walking problem. A guy who loses his front teeth in a hockey fight has a dental problem. A guy who says, “I can’t approach that girl! What if she rejects me!?” does not have a problem meeting women. He’s created the problem in his head, but it isn’t real. So at any moment, you can delete this self-destruction from your life.

What do you say to a hot girl when you see her? Anything you want. Even asking that kind of question is just an excuse to not be alive, out there in the world, making yourself vulnerable, speaking your truth, and living with the consequences.

If there’s anything good about self-inflicted misery, it’s that only you can change it, and the present moment is always giving you permission to let go.

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This article talks a lot about my philosophy of success with women in general, so even if you have no interest in meeting girls online, you may still find it helpful.

I’ve already written about the pros and cons of online dating. One of the things I talked about in that article was the myth that there are no quality women online. There are loads of extremely beautiful women on online dating sites. But I haven’t yet said anything about how I met these girls.

Tim, a 30 sleeps reader, writes:

I’d love to pick your brain a bit about online dating. I just started my match.com account. Any wise jedi tips would be appreciated. I am curious:

How much importance do you place on the picture and profile you put up there?

Did you follow what seems to be community logic and just be an asshole online?

What kind of emails did you send out? My initial emails teased the girl about something in her profile, then gave her a question to answer. So far (this is like week 2) that seems to work, although I get less responses from hotter girls.

Finally, did you run any controlled experiments, like sending out the same emails with a different profile, etc? Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear from you!

Tim

Great questions Tim. I’m going to offer a general introduction to meeting women online, while making sure to address these specific questions along the way.

Is Online Dating Right for You?

The first thing I like to ask before I try to solve any problem is: Do I need to solve this problem?

So before we talk too much about the ins and outs of online romance, the first question should be: Is online dating right for you? When it comes to meeting girls, is online dating the most valuable use of your time? In my opinion, probably not.

I don’t consider online dating to be the ideal way to meet women anymore. It’s inefficient, one-dimensional, and yet another distraction (all that instant messaging) in a world where we need no more distractions. And if it’s not the ideal use of my time for that purpose, then it’s a waste of my time. The absolute best, most mentally healthy, character-building and efficient way to meet women is to start social skydiving and build your social and love life up from there, to create a lifestyle that suits you. SS’ing changed me in a profoundly beneficial and lasting way that goes way beyond just women. Online dating changed me somewhat, but on nowhere near the same level that real life risk-taking did.

In my opinion, online dating is appropriate only for guys who have a lethal amount of approach anxiety. If you’ve never done SS’ing before, you might think that includes you. It probably doesn’t. Here’s how to verify if you truly have a life-threatening fear of talking to strangers, rather than the standard Oh-my-God-talking-to-women-is-fucking-impossible fear that is the default for 90% of men worldwide, multi-millionaires and world leaders included:

1. Go out with a buddy to a social gathering where there will be a lot of women.
2. Give your buddy $100. Don’t bet that amount; give him the money.
3. Tell him that you get your $100 back if, and only if, you say “Hi” to at least one girl that you don’t know.
4. If you get your $100 back, give yourself a huge pat on the back for living dangerously, forget online dating, and continue your pursuit of standing up for your own truth even in the face of overwhelming social pressure.
5. If you don’t get your $100 back, join Lavalife, Match.com, or Plentyoffish right now and use the rest of the advice in this article to help get you on your way.

Creating Your Profile

Okay, so now you’re out a hundred bucks, you’ve proven to yourself that you’d rather be dead than say hi to a girl you don’t know, and you’ve registered with an online dating site. It’s time to create your online dating profile.

When it comes to having an intimate relationship with someone, looks are just as important as personality. For this reason, your photo will be the centerpiece of your profile. You want to use a photo that is you looking your best, but only to the extent that you can actually look that good in real life when you make the effort. I always used self-shot photos, which a lot of online daters do, because it gave me more control in creating a good, but realistic, photo.

Keep it simple. Ignore seduction theories about including social proof and breathtaking adventure in your photos as a way to make you look more attractive. Don’t waste your time on girls that are wooed by ego-driven variables like that. If you have a really good photo of you with your friends, so be it, but don’t try to engineer a Kodak moment just to get a girl’s attention. If you use a photo with many people in it, make very clear which one is you. It’s funny, but I’ve seen several girls’ profiles where I was left wondering who’s who.

Strong writing skills are helpful. I’ve been riding the wave of my linguistic pride for the better part of my adult life. With online dating, I think this proved useful in catching the eye of girls that interested me. It’s worth investing a chunk of time to create a well-written summary of who you are and what you’re about. This includes knowing exactly what type of relationship and girl you’re looking for, and being clear about what you want in your profile. If hard drug usage is a deal breaker, say so. If you’re interested primarily in girls of a certain age or ethnicity, let it be known. If you want a bisexual girl who’s open to threesomes with other girls, the truth will set you free.

Remember, social polarity exists online too. Your particular desires and interests may annoy or even repulse some girls, but who cares? Happiness in life is all about enjoying the company of Yeses, not catering to the Noes. You’ll be that much more attractive–and noticeable–to women that fit your criteria and they’ll appreciate your directness. I’m not suggesting you go into disgusting detail about your dolphin-related fetishes, just that your profile be clear enough to exclude the kind of women you’re unlikely to be interested in.

Interacting with Women Online

So, you’ve got a photo of you looking your best, and you’ve fashioned an authentic snippet that tells the online dating world what you’re about. Oh, and your friend has $100 of your money burning a hole in his pocket. Now what?

First, when searching through profiles, always get a photo. The one and only time that I failed to do this, it was a complete disaster. The sites I’ve used allow you to filter your search to include only profiles that have a photo.

Next, message only girls that live within a 30-45 minute commute of you. Long-distance relationships are a symptom of a scarcity mindset. In fact, a big factor for me in choosing a place to live is that I have to be attracted to the women that live there. If you’re living in a city where you claim that there are no high-quality, attractive women, start by addressing that problem before creating yourself the new problem of having a relationship with someone that lives a $5000 plane fare away.

As for Tim’s question about being an asshole online: If you have to ask, the answer is no. Just be yourself and live with the consequences. Authenticity is the currency of seduction. You don’t need to hide behind a cocky funny, alpha male character to impress women. Veracity, charisma, and an unshakeable sense of self-worth are the byproducts of living life on purpose, and those are the attributes that will win the hearts and minds of your target audience.

There’s a reason why I write articles on everything from finding your passion and landing your dream job, to achieving the impossible and how to flood your life with beautiful women. It’s because all of these subjects are tightly intertwined. A discussion of flooding your life with beautiful women is incomplete without also talking about how to create a fulfilling life that goes way beyond any particular girl.

You cannot be a passionless, burger flipping, rat racer and an alpha male at the same time. Sure, there are many “gastronomical engineers” that get laid by beautiful women, but truly happy, healthy relationships require that each person involved be independently happy and healthy. In my opinion, that means living a life that inspires you, challenges you, and gives you a sustainable outlet for creative self-expression.

Since social polarity exists just as much online as in real life, it doesn’t matter what you say in your messages, as long as it comes from your heart instead of your joystick. What’s most important is that all the time you spend not-online-dating is invested in the creation of your ideal life. If your happiness is made or broken by a girl, she’ll find out soon enough, and when she does, you’ll get hurt. And by “hurt”, I mean that when she drops the breakup bomb, you’ll feel the nuclear winter in the depths of your soul.

After sending out several dozen messages to women whose photo and profile I like, I’d usually get a tiny handful of responses. I often spent about a week or two interacting with each girl online and on the phone before meeting. One of the great things about online dating is that the girl gets to know your personality before she gets to know your body, so make the most of it. Instant messaging also allowed me to be considerably more congruent than I would have been under social pressure, at least at that point in my life.

I know that my approach was much slower than what a lot of the online dating “experts” would recommend, but my success rate with the women I met from dating sites was insane. I was consistently meeting high-quality, beautiful women, and in the few years that I spent doing this, I probably hit it off with about 80% of the girls I met face-to-face.

Controlled Experimentation

Online dating sites would seem like an ideal testbed for social experimentation. You can try tons of different techniques and there’s almost none of the risk of embarrassment like there is when trying stuff out in real life. But my advice for running social experiments online is: Don’t do it.

Experimentation implies outcome dependence. It means you’re trying to see “what works and what doesn’t”, as if finely-tuned tricks and techniques are what you need to have great relationships with women. Trying a technique is, by definition, an authenticity leak. The key to success with women is not to try to be someone that a woman would be attracted to, but to live your own adventure and let her join your for the ride, if she wants to. I’m living proof that you don’t need any of those poisonous, reaction-seeking, social robotics to meet the girl of your dreams.

(For anyone who looks at my photo and thinks nature gave me a helping hand, I’m going to try and track down a photo of me when I was 17 or 18 years old, 50 pounds heavier than I am now, a two-and-a-half-chinned, shabby ass, chess-playing virgin bum, so you can see how huge of a difference you can make if you focus on making the most of your DNA. Almost anyone who needs a helping hand in the looks department can add at least two or three points to their physical appearance if they make a concerted effort to do so. Making the transition from a needy, pathetic, reaction-seeking, dick slave to an authentic, purpose-driven, self-led man is worth at least a couple points on its own.)

So, Tim, I hope this article answers your questions about meeting women online and then some. It’s impossible for me to talk about this subject without also addressing issues that have nothing to do with women. It’s also hard for me to be completely honest without also sounding a bit harsh in some places. A lot of guys are looking for attraction techniques instead of focussing on following their own lead and letting social polarity sort out the details.

The good news is that you’re on this road at all. Opinion openers, cocky funny, group theory, social proof, and all those other halloween masks were a useful, albeit unnecessary, stepping stone on my own path to self-actualization. The even better news is that, whether online or offline, an honest individuality grown from living an intentional life allows you to break all the rules that the “canned game” gurus try to teach you.

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I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure… It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security.

– William Orville Douglas

The vast majority of guys that I’ve ever known–probably at least 90%–will do almost anything to get laid. They’ll sleep with girls they aren’t attracted to, they’ll get into a “serious relationship” with a girl they aren’t in love with, and they’ll tell that same girl “I love you” if it increases their chances of being allowed to get more sex out of her.

They’ll scratch and claw their way through a relationship with an energy vampire. But they won’t hang on until the bitter end. Nope, they’ll hang on way beyond that. They’ll put up with mind-boggling amounts of nagging and disrespect as long as the girl at least occasionally puts out, where “occasionally” is somewhere between every few days and every few months.

I can think of some examples of things guys put up with that are so perverse that I literally cannot publish them on this blog.

The relationships you have with women, whether casual or serious, are a reflection of what’s going on inside you. The kinds of things you put up with from women–disrespect, nagging, arguing, and so forth–are likely the same issues that show up in other areas of your life.

The most important quality you need to have happy and healthy relationships with women (or anyone, for that matter) is leadership. A great leader isn’t someone who bosses people around and micromanages others to avoid doing the heavy lifting themselves (like, say, your boss at work). A great leader is someone who inspires the people around them and motivates them to do better. A great leader paves a yellow brick road to adventure that others feel eager and privileged to follow.

Being the leader in a relationship means, first and foremost, living an interesting, purposeful life that extends beyond any one woman or relationship. It means deciding what you want to do with your life and doing it, and letting others come along for the ride, if they’re interested. In a romantic relationship, it also means gaining respect and trust from your partner through practicing unconditional love and radical honesty, while being willing to walk away before things get messy.

Live an Interesting Life

In the book The Game (which, incidentally, is one of my favourite books of all time), the author Neil Strauss (aka “Style”) talks about guys who dropped out of school and even quit their jobs to pursue picking up women full-time. I even knew a couple guys like that myself, who would say things like, “I need to get this stuff (i.e. women) sorted out first, before I can move onto worrying about what I want to do with my life.”

That is painfully ass backwards. What woman of quality would want to associate with a guy who has nothing better to do with his time than pickup women?

Having a clearly defined purpose in life means focusing a great deal of energy every day on activities that align with your needs, desires, talents, and skills, and allow you to serve the greater good, if that’s important to you. Living a life of purpose is certainly not a prerequisite to getting laid, but it is absolutely crucial if you want to have happy, healthy relationships.

50/50 is the Wrong Balance

In any romantic relationship, there is always one person who is at least slightly more “into it” than the other. Instead of the balance of interest being 50/50, I’ve seen some relationships where it’s more like 80/20, 90/10, or even 100/0.

Ideally, you want the balance to be around 60/40, where you’re the 40.

Why?

High-quality, beautiful women get hit on constantly. For a girl to not cheat on a guy, she has to say “No”–either literally or implicitly–about 5-10 times per day. To an even vaguely attractive woman, most men are pathetically easy to sleep with, regardless of either person’s relationship situation. If women didn’t have their “bitch shield” to ward off these constant attempts at their forbidden fruit, they’d never have a moment of peace.

Women want to be with men that are hard to pin down. They want to chase. They want a challenge. They want to know that their man is strong enough in his own position that he is willing to walk away if she disrespects him. If you’re unwilling to leave a woman who treats you like crap, you’re totally screwed. Needless to say, most men are totally screwed.

This 60/40 thing is not a “nuclear attraction secret”. It’s not a “clever tip” that just any guy can use to trick women into chasing him. It’s not a PUA skill you can work on. Rather, it’s the natural byproduct of living a life that matters to you. When you spend the majority of your time doing work that you really believe in, when you’re building to change the world, that leadership drive, passion, and integrity will carry over into your relationships.

In the Beginning

Being the leader in a relationship starts even before you meet a girl. It involves having the right mindset for bringing an amazing woman into your life.

Screen early, screen often. Instead of trying to chase women or “pickup chicks”, become a polarity detector. Stop worrying about what you say when you meet women and instead make yourself vulnerable, focus on having fun, and give your attention to only those whose company you enjoy. Authenticity is the currency of seduction.

When you find someone you’d like to get to know better, forget about trying to “play the situation right”. The right time to call a girl is whenever you feel like calling her. A good idea for a first date is whatever activity you enjoy. Bring her into your reality and show her what it’s like to be part of your world.

Tell the Truth

We’ve all heard it a million times: Honesty is everything in a relationship. But few couples tell each other the truth. Even when they do, they often leave out the important bits.

If you don’t want a serious relationship with the girl, tell her that right away. If you’re seeing other women, let her know before you have sex with her. If you cheated on her, confess immediately. If you want to go out with your buddies tonight, just do it.

Telling the truth can be difficult. Keep these two things in mind:

1. Don’t argue about it. You won’t solve a problem by arguing about it, because neither side actually listens to the other in an argument. People argue to make themselves heard. That’s why arguments usually involve a lot of yelling. :)
2. Don’t qualify yourself. You don’t need to explain yourself for wanting to go out with your friends. You don’t need to rationalize your dedication to your work. Obviously, some discretion is required here, because there are some things for which justifying your reasons is healthy part of the communication. But in many cases, particularly when it’s something to do with how you choose to live your life, the truth speaks for itself.

Being the leader in a relationship means having a deep trust that flows in both directions. It means having the courage to tell your partner the truth and live with the consequences, even if that puts the relationship at risk.

Be Willing to Walk Away

If you tell your buddy about a bad relationship experience you’re having, you’ll often hear things like, “Oh man, that is brutal! I’d dump that @#!@^ in a heartbeat!” Of course, only about 5% of such guys would actually follow through on their own advice.

A willingness to walk away is critical to keeping a relationship healthy. If you aren’t willing–as demonstrated through your actions, not your words–to walk away from a sour situation, you are truly toast. (Suddenly, I think back to those perverse examples I hinted at in the intro. Ugh, BRUTAL.)

But how do you develop the courage to leave an unhealthy relationship especially when, *gasp*, you haven’t already got another girl lined up? Here’s what works for me:

• Have something better to do. Just a reiteration of the first section, because doing something meaningful with your life is a critical component to happy, healthy relationships, whether casual or serious.
• Social skydiving. When you condition yourself to feel the fear and do it anyway, talking to strangers opens many social and sexual doorways. Proving to yourself that you can meet people in a matter of days by simply taking action is critical to living in the abundance mindset.
• You probably don’t know her that well anyway. It takes a long, long time to really get to know a girl–at least a year or two to scratch the surface. Have you seen what she’s like when she’s drunk in a club around other guys? How does she act when she gets hit on? Has she been there for you during really tough times in your life? Sure, you have an intense, almost physically abusive sex life now, but what will it be like in six months?
• Confront your own insecurities. The extent to which you cling to a girl is entirely a reflection of how you feel about yourself.
• She is NOT your soul mate. She’s different than all the other girls. There’s something about her that’s just…I don’t know…really amazing. I feel like I can just tell her…anything. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. *Yawn*. While there’s no doubt that you and your girl may have had something special when you first met, the only thing that matters is how she treats you right now. If things start going south, realize that there are other options. Tens of millions, in fact.

Being the leader in your relationship is not about bossing your girlfriend around or cracking the proverbial whip. It doesn’t mean hanging your belly out on the sofa, watching football, and calling to your “servant” to bring you more peanuts and beer.

It’s an approach to life that starts even before you first meet a girl. It’s about blazing your own trail through the world and letting the right woman join you for the ride. It involves forging deep trust through unconditional love and radical honesty. It means not worrying about impressing girls or figuring out how to get them to like you and instead making yourself vulnerable and authentic.

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Any website that allows people to communicate with each other is a dating website. While it may serve other primary functions, and may even include a signup notice indicating that the site is not meant for that purpose, it all comes down to screwing. In fact, I’ll know 30 sleeps has “made it” when members start hooking up with each other.

While you may never have used a “real” dating website, you’re probably already a member of several sites that ostensibly fill other needs. For a period of a few years, I met women almost exclusively through online dating. During this time I probably sent a couple hundred virtual “smiles”, received a couple dozen responses, dated about a dozen women, and had long(ish)-term relationships with perhaps three or four.

Since almost every Internet user is related to online dating in some way, having either considered doing it, or already given it a whirl, I’d like to talk a bit about the slings and arrows of keyboard seduction.

Advantages of Online Dating

Markus Frind, founder of the free online dating site PlentyOfFish.com is the highest earning Google Adsense publisher, pulling in $300,000/month. As of September 2006, PoF was reportedly receiving up to 500 million page views per month.

People obviously love looking for romance online. Here’s what I liked about it:

• Pimp your personality. Online dating is great for “outgoing introverts”. If you lead an interesting life but are a little shy around strangers, it can be a lot easier to get to know someone mouse-to-mouse.
• High success rate. Of the women I met in person, my success rate was probably 90%. I attribute this to usually spending a week or two chatting online (and sometimes on the phone) with them before meeting, and including in my profile a photo that actually looked like me, instead of being misleading. I’ve heard horror stories of people meeting someone who looked totally different from the picture in their profile, because the photo was a couple decades old.
• Subvert approach anxiety. Approach anxiety is the mother of sexual frustration. If you’re an involuntary virgin over the age of 18, it’s likely because you’re choosing to succumb to the fear of talking to strangers. Meeting women online gave me the false courage to talk to absolutely any hot girl with no fear.
• Easier to handle rejection. Getting rejected online usually just means not getting a response when you signal your virtual interest. Even if the fallout occurs after you start chatting, you can always tell yourself that she doesn’t even know you. Either scenario pales in comparison to approaching a girl in real life and getting looked at like an alien from another planet (at least, until you get used to it).
• Meet people before you travel. If you’re planning a trip or moving to another city, you can make virtual connections before you get there. I did this before backpacking through Europe several years ago, and it seriously spiced up the adventure.
• Sooth the language barrier. I live in Montreal. Before I became fluent in French, I found getting to know a French-speaking girl online much easier than in a loud nightclub.

Disadvantages of Online Dating

For a while I thought meeting women online was great. By having the non-courage to send smiles to even the hottest online princesses, experience informed me as to just how high a standard I could live up to. I literally did things I didn’t realize were possible.

But the system had flaws. Here’s what broke me down:

• The online scene. It’s not uncommon for the person you’re chatting up online to be chatting up several other people at the same time. If you meet someone and get serious, there’s this urge to check when they were last online. But the mere act of checking this throws the what-were-you-doing-on-the-site question right back at you. The whole online thing can take on a life of its own.
• Stunted social skills. While subverting approach anxiety is handy to a point, life is infinitely better when you choose to stop being a victim of social conditioning and make yourself vulnerable by talking to strangers.
• Coming up with “the story”. This wouldn’t bother me at all anymore, but when I was involved in online dating, I was absolutely mortified of anyone knowing that I met a girl on the Internet. When I would start dating a girl, one of the first orders of business was agreeing upon an explanation for how we met.
• Yet another distraction. Polling, the act of constantly checking dating sites to see if you’ve got new messages, is an energy vampire.
• More time spent in the Great Indoors. Personally, I already spend 8-12 hours a day in front of a computer, so I don’t like spending my after hours flirting in cyberspace.
• Not dangerous enough. Taking the risk of getting out of your house and meeting people is pee-your-pants scary. That’s exactly why it’s so fun. As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Misconceptions

A lot of people are quick to dismiss meeting someone on the Internet. And while I ultimately scrapped the idea myself, it was for none of the following reasons:

• “People you meet online are weird.” While I’ve heard many women report being virtually harassed by creepy guys online, my experience with online beauties is that they’re no weirder than women I meet in real life. I mean that in a good way. Sort of.
• “There are no quality men/women online.” If there’s one thing I can’t complain about, it’s the quality of the women I met online. I never understood why many amazingly beautiful women bother going digital, but they do.
• “Online dating is more efficient than meeting people in real life.” If you’ve ever done any social skydiving, you know this just isn’t true. In a single night of dedicated socializing, you can meet a dozen women without even breaking a sweat. And you’ll quickly figure out if you’re meant for each other, instead of sinking days, weeks, or even months into your potential love interest on MSN.
• “Cybersex is disgusting!” Well, actually, this isn’t a myth.

Online dating isn’t for everyone, but almost everyone is a member of at least a few sites that are used for that purpose, whether they’re meant to be or not. Where there are people talking to each other, there are people meeting each other. You can run from it, but you can’t hide. I think it pays to be open-minded about meeting people through websites, even though I ultimately kicked the habit. It has its plusses and quirks, and there are a lot of untruths floating around about Internet romance, but love is love, whether it starts with a simple hello or a mouse click.

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You’re out a party one night and you meet this amazing girl. She’s every flavour of feminine you desire: tall, thin, athletic, beautiful, articulate, charismatic. When she smiles, you feel it in your chest. After spending the night ping-ponging the sexual tension, you exchange contact info and a second date is almost assured.

Sure enough, a few days later, after splitting a bottle of wine in a trendy neighbourhood lounge, she’s back at your place. A conversation on your couch eventually becomes a kiss. As your lips paint each other’s faces with affection, your hand slides down to her waist, tracing a gentle journey over her delicate figure.

Suddenly, she pulls back and the kiss is no more. She looks at you silently. It is not a look of playful affection, but rather one of awkward apology and regret.

“I’m sorry”, she says fadingly.

“Why?”, you wonder aloud.

Her next four words flatten you: “I have a boyfriend.”

Diagnosis: Frustration

Why is it that most guys seem unhappy with women? Either they’re single and frustrated or in a relationship and…more frustrated. She likes to hang out with her guy “friends” and that drives you insane. You’re out with her at a club and she’s dancing with some guy, and she doesn’t seem to mind that his arm is around her. You’ve been together for two years, but not had sex in four months. This thread of bitterness and resentment seems to weave its way into all your relationships. “Sheesh, it’s always something“, you tell yourself.

Does it have to be this way? Are all women crazy? Is there any hope of ever finding that “special someone”? Is it possible to go from continual frustration in your relationships to continual bliss?

In my own experience, I’m one of the only guys I know who isn’t constantly complaining about women. I don’t refer to them as “stupid” or “bitches”. I dare say I’m even happy in my outlook.

But I wasn’t always like this, to say the least. I used to be bitter and doubting of the sanity of the entire female species. But after a string of coarse romances and brutal breakups, I started realizing that I must share at least some fault in this constant stream of bad experiences. In fact, maybe I was approaching things from the wrong angle altogether.

About a year ago, I changed my view of women and relationships entirely, and I feel much happier for it. I took full responsibility for my unhappiness. I was constantly imposing false expectations on the women I was with, was relying far too much on them as my source of happiness, and would often get so tied up in a girl that the rest of my life would fall behind.

Expectation Is the Mother of Disappointment

Consider the following scenarios:

• You break up with your girlfriend. The next day she has a new boyfriend.
• Your girlfriend’s been acting aloof lately. You haven’t had sex in months. She confesses that she cheated on you with a good friend of yours.
• You’ve been on a few dates with this amazing girl you met recently. The last time you were together, you spent the night at her place in constant lustful embrace. You’re scheduled to go out for dinner on Saturday. On Friday, she tells you she thinks you’re better as friends.

What do they all have in common?

First, they are completely normal. These scenarios–and thousands more involving lies, deceit, infidelity, fighting, and other forms of intrigue–are being played out all day long around the world. Second, when it happens to you, you’ll say “I can’t believe she did that. What a f@$%# b@#%!”

The single biggest mistake most guys make with women is to see girls for what they want them to be, rather than for who they are. Instead of projecting onto a woman what you think she should be like, tune into the signals emitted by her actions, and use that to form your own judgement of the quality of her character.

If she cheated on her last boyfriend to meet you, take the hint. If she spends half the conversation talking about all the guy “friends” she hangs out with, and you think you’ll be able to get her to spend time only with you, don’t blame the brick wall for making your head hurt.

Whenever a woman does something that you “can’t believe”, realize that in the broad spectrum of human experience, your situation is neither unbelievable nor particularly unique, whether she cheated on you with your best friend or a zoo animal.

Of course, being human means having emotions, and it’s hard not to be extremely angry at infidelity. But by fully accepting the reality you’ve been dealt, and seeing it in a universal context, you will moderate your emotional reaction and recover more quickly than through the harmful and blurry lenses of denial, resentment, and disbelief.

Don’t Rely on Women for Happiness

Relying on women to feel “truly happy” is an unhealthy way to live. I believe that lifelong monogamy is one of the many fairy tales imposed upon us through social conditioning. A much more sane approach, for me, has been to fully accept the ephemeral nature of relationships, and let women flow into and out of my life in a natural way.

Not relying on women for your happiness implies several things:

• High standards. When you derive your happiness from things that you can control like, say, the contribution you make the world, instead of depending on female approval, your standards automatically go way up. You shift from being needy and validation-seeking to being the one doing the qualifying. When you see a girl you want to approach, your attitude changes from “What if she thinks I’m creepy?” to “Hm, I wonder if this girl’s as awesome as she looks…”
• Willingness to walk away. While a lot of guys will tell their buddies they’d “never take that kind of crap from a girl”, the reality is that most guys will say and do almost anything to get laid, especially by women of particular beauty. For the same reasons, they often find it almost impossible to dump a girl, short of having already found another one. When you make the fundamental shift to deriving happiness from self-validation, this desperation melts away.
• Breaking up is no big deal. I’ve had some painful breakups. Even after adopting the model of reality I’m currently describing, I still get stung from time to time. Getting hurt is human. But some people act like a breakup is the end of the world, as if you have to “pick up the pieces of your life and start all over again”. But making your relationship so central to your life to begin with is a recipe for disaster.

Be Your Own Force of Nature

If you find your relationships to be a constant source of disappointment, the first question to ask yourself has nothing to do with women at all: What do you want to do with your life? This isn’t merely a career question, it’s an inquiry into the very essence of who you are. Once you know the answer to this, you’ll know a lot more about the kind of woman you want.

Be the center of your own universe. Have your own mission in life and allow others to come along for the ride, if they’re interested. For example, my mission right now is to help others grow. The heart-centered pursuit of this objective has taken on a life of its own. 30 sleeps is not even two months old and is already growing way faster than I anticipated. I’ve received loads of positive feedback from readers and users around the world and tens of thousands of unique visitors in the last three weeks.

While women have flowed into and out of my life this summer, 30zzz has proven to be a lasting adventure.

The Power of Now

I’ve talked about acceptance, but how do you learn to accept? I mentioned being willing to walk away, but how do you really let go?

The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, is an excellent book for understanding the “how” of everything I’ve said in this article. It does a great job explaining how much we are controlled by our ego and how, through surrender, we can eliminate the source of so much pain and suffering. It even includes an entire chapter on “enlightened relationships”.

I read this book a couple months ago and found it invaluable in my social skydiving adventures. It also helped me realize that you can fully accept reality without merely resigning yourself to your circumstances. While the subtitle is “A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, don’t let that scare you off. Think of it as a manual on how to find the “off switch” on your own mind, and so be able to eliminate many negative thought patterns.

The single biggest cause of suffering in relationships is false expectations, seeing the other person for what you want them to be, rather than letting their actions speak to who they are underneath. False hopes inevitably lead to disappointment, and disappointment to bitterness and resentment. Unfortunately, we’re often so “addicted” to the other person at this point that it feels impossible to let go, and the downward spiral continues.

If this sounds like you, start by taking full responsibility for the situation. What is causing your frustration and what adjustments can you make to avoid those troubles to begin with? What worked for me was learning to see things as they are, and living my life to suit.

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In Part I of this two-part series, I discussed my own discovery of, and initial experiences in, the seduction community.

In this article, I’ll talk more about a typical night in the field, the experiences I had with some of the women I met while sarging, and mix in some lessons I learned about women that I am able to believe only because I experienced them. I’ll end with a summary of my own thoughts on being a Pickup Artist, the approach I now take to meeting and connecting with women of exceptional quality, and let you draw your own conclusions about whether this lifestyle is for you.

Field Reports

A “field report” is a detailed written account of a PUA’s social adventures: openers used, body language, tonality, the exact words exchanged, subtle response signals observed, “kino” (physical) escalation, social logistics, and everything in between.

For all the time I spent reading field reports, I never wrote one. First, I was often so full of adrenaline and had so many interactions that I could barely reconstruct the finer details of things the day after. Second, I was lazy. Third, this level of social analysis, while demonstrably effective, came at a price. I’ll get into that later.

A typical night out usually involved me and one wingman. We would usually choose spots that offered many venues to choose from, so that when the action dried up in one, we could easily “bounce” to another.

We never drank. The PUA work ethic required clear and quick thinking. Every social situation was a puzzle of imperfect information, and it was up to us to resolve the situational dynamics in our favour. Interacting with women wasn’t just an interesting challenge, it was a mental martial art.

Though our nights were alcohol-free, we knew all about AA. Approach Anxiety was a PUA’s worst enemy. The first one was always the most difficult. We’d usually need to warm up, giving ourselves permission to get completely blown out by a few sets early on in exchange for heightened social calibration. This lifestyle was all about failing your way forward.

Eventually, we’d find our groove and enter the social flow. Different guys had different objectives in the field. Mine was usually just a phone number or two. I never wanted to be that “bar makeout guy” or rack up sexual victories.

At the end of the night, me and my wing would exchange war stories, distilling our experiences into lessons to be applied the next time around.

A (Weird) Dating Story

In a span of a few months, I met a lot of women and had my share of fun dates. But, there was one story in particular which taught me a couple of interesting lessons: the exotic tea girl.

She was a gorgeous, high-fashion brunette. We had a day2 at a downtown cafe. It was short and sweet, included ample amounts of good conversation and laughter, but, despite the positive vibe, I wasn’t sure where things were going or if I’d even see her again.

But I did. A few days later we ended up sat across a tiny table across from each other, flirting over a bottle of red wine in a trendy neighbourhood lounge.

That’s when I found out she had a boyfriend.

Lesson #1: It doesn’t matter if she has a boyfriend.

Every PUA has his own moral code. “Avoid girls with boyfriends” is around the top of my list. In this case I made an exception because, as she explained it, theirs was a long-distance relationship whose contract included a clause to “not hold each other back”, an amendment presumably made for situations just like this.

An hour or two later we ended up back at my place. We eventually moved from the couch to the bed. She stayed the night.

But we never had sex.

We didn’t even kiss.

Lesson #2: Assume nothing.

To this day, I’m not sure how that happened, but it did. In retrospect, I realized this was merely one instance of a broader truth: you can take nothing for granted with women. In all fairness, I’m sure women would say the same of men.

Pros and Cons

Have you ever noticed that there’s something strange about a lot of sargers? It’s as if you look at a guy, and you can just TELL that something is missing.

– Style, author of The Game

I continued learning pickup for several months. I spent countless hours in the field, met hundreds of strangers, weaved my way into many social circles, and got a solid handle on my love life.

There were many positive things this lifestyle taught me, including:

• Meeting women is easy. I learned that if I was willing to push beyond the pain of rejection, I got results. My initial goal had been to simply keep getting the type of women I was getting previously, but without having to do online dating. I am now fully confident that I can switch from insane workaholic blogger entrepreneur mode to serial dater in about a week. (If only I could learn to better balance the two… :)
• People don’t bite. Really. The world is full of friendly strangers.
• Women are awesome. Like most guys, I’ve had some bad experiences with women. I used to get bitter about it. I used to think all women were crazy. Learning pickup gave me insights into our biological machinery and allowed me to mentally record and observe behavioural patterns. Also, knowing how easy it was to meet people made it much easier for me to walk away from a relationship gone sour.
• Women are the shyer gender. Women are just as horny as guys. They love sex just as much as we do, if not more. But a woman generally won’t go for what she wants, at least not directly. Our social conditioning dictates that the guy has to make the first move.
• Social conditioning is at least as powerful as religion. Approaching people you don’t know is “creepy”. Being out alone at social gatherings is “weird”. A woman who gives her number out to a guy in front of her friends risks being labelled a “slut”. Social conditioning owns our collective asses.

But there were downsides too, including:

• Guys turning into Social Robots. Though I was never much into “canned material”, a lot of guys I hung out with were. I remember talking with a couple of girls at the pub, when my wing came in and literally spit out almost every line that Style wrote about in The Game. And this was from a guy who had been into pickup for years. Was this what “success with women” meant? Ugh.
• People know about The Game. Not only was using prepared lines creepy and plastic, it was also surprisingly likely that you’d run into girls that had already heard them. Yet another reason I preferred to play it natural.
• There’s a lot of misogyny. A lot of guys into pickup have good intentions. They’re just horny intellectual types who enjoy geeking out on seduction. They’re into “alternative lifestyles” and they’re honest about it. But there’s also a pervasive attitude of resentment and dishonesty towards women among a certain segment. While Sturgeon’s Law accounts for this, it’s still hard to ignore.
• You become reaction-seeking. Our internal states were often dependent on positive responses. One bad blowout could throw us off for the whole night.
• You live a double life. I hated having a significant chunk of my life that I couldn’t talk about, for fear of giving people the wrong impression.

Life Beyond Pickup

Pickup is great for guys who don’t know the first thing about talking to women, want to develop their social skills, and want to learn how to put their best foot forward in the spotlight of female attention. The canned and highly structured approach provides a functional scaffolding for learning to make your life as juicy as you want it to be.

But, though I first set foot on this territory just nine months ago, I decided a few months back that it wasn’t for me. I still occasionally participate in online discussions, but I’ve dropped the micromanagerial approach to social interaction. While it got results, it wasn’t addressing the underlying issues.

I realized my biggest hangup had nothing to do with knowing what to say, learning how to manipulate social dynamics, or knowing when to kiss. I didn’t need to hone my kino escalation skills, or learn to entertain her with cold reading instead of interview-style questioning. The real problem was that I actually cared what people thought of me, and that held me back from going out and creating massive opportunity.

I went into this already having decent social skills and fashion sense; all I needed now was to get the hell out of my own way and talk to people everywhere I went.

I’ve spent the last few months turning the focus inward, learning to let go of the ego and live fully in the now. I don’t use “openers” anymore. I have no “kiss-close” routines. I don’t have an arsenal of responses to counter a woman’s “shit tests”. I don’t even process any negative input a girl throws my way. I feel like I’ve reached a new level of being, where I get high simply off exchanging energy with people, regardless of their reactions. I waste no time anymore reading up on the latest attraction technology, yet my results are better than ever.

So, if you have extreme social anxiety or feel awkward interacting with women, the seduction community may be what you’re looking for. But if you’re already a cool guy feeling caged in by shyness, then the secret is that there is no secret. Just get out of your house and start saying hi to people. Accept that you might get blown out by the first few dozen women you talk to, but don’t let it slow you down, and you’ll be well on your way to meeting the girl of your dreams.

Read Part I, Seduction for Smart People: Should You Become a “Pickup Artist”? – Part I

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Though this blog is intended to cover a wide range of life hacking topics in the realm of health, wealth, and relationships, for both men and women, there’s at least one more subject I want to cover while we’re still on the theme of getting better with women.

When it comes to pursuing something that interests me, I have only two settings: Full Steam or Off. I have a rage to master. When I get into something, I go deep. I spent four years obsessed with chess, trying to become the next Bobby Fischer. I spent a year studying and playing Poker almost non-stop. When I got into Ruby on Rails software consulting, I sent out 80 CVs in two weeks to start drumming up business at a rate that would satisfy me.

Late last year, I read a book called The Game and a new passion emerged. I decided to take a more structured and scientific approach to meeting beautiful women.

I wanted to become a Pickup Artist.

What follows is a description of my own experiences walking this path. I want to relate to you what I liked and disliked about it, and invite you to draw your own conclusions about whether getting involved in the “seduction community” would be right for you. If you’re already aware of, or involved in this community, then I hope you’ll find it interesting to compare and contrast my experiences with your own.

What is a Pickup Artist?

A Pickup Artist, or “PUA” for short, is a guy who is skilled in the art of attracting and seducing beautiful women–a sort of dating ninja.

There are many schools of thought on seduction, from using NLP and hypnosis to cast your coital spells, to applying a deep understanding of social dynamics and high-octane attraction techniques as a way to amplify your animal magnetism.

An entire online movement has formed around guys wanting to get better with women, and there is no shortage of companies ready to collect your Visa number in exchange for the secret to sexual nirvana.

The Motivation

Before I got into The Game, I was already pretty good with women. I’d had my share of fun and adventure with women of unique beauty and interest. I’d had relationships with women in both Europe and Canada, including a few that spoke no English whatsoever.

So why change anything?

My biggest peeve was online dating. I’d been using that as my main form of meeting people, but eventually lost interest. As a computer geek, I was already spending enough time in front of my computer. I wanted to flirt in three dimensions.

I knew that meeting my ideal woman would require some way of flooding my life with opportunities to meet them, but I had no idea how to make it happen. The seduction community naturally caught my interest. I was intrigued by the idea of taking a concerted, goal-centric approach to my love life, learning how to connect with exactly the kind of women I wanted, and being able to choose my own adventures.

After doing some more reading–mostly online–my curiosity intensified. Was it really this easy to meet women? How far could I take this? Could I use this knowledge to expand my social life as well? I was ready to get out of my house and into the field, to start taking action and measuring the results.

The Game is Played in the Field

The seduction community calls it “sarging”: the act of meeting women by way of cold approach. To me, it was like social skydiving.

I made friends with guys who were into this stuff and went out with them almost every night of the week, and during the day sometimes too. Malls, bookstores, nightclubs, pharmacies, clothing stores, libraries, parks, lounges, pubs–anywhere there were large numbers of attractive women.

I was completely terrified at first. I’m a sort of shy extrovert: I can be very social and engaging around people I already know, but talking to strangers was way outside my comfort zone.

My first couple of nights “sarging” were pathetic. I couldn’t bring myself to approach. It was like a self-induced repression. I knew I wanted to open up, but my fragile little ego kept protecting me from rejection. By the third day, my inability to start a conversation was becoming increasingly frustrating. Finally, I decided to give my buddy $100 and force myself to earn it back, $20 per approach.

And then something amazing happened.

Overcoming the Fear

Risking something tangible–money–gave me the impetus to overcome my fear. I summoned up the courage to start talking to people I didn’t know. I noticed one particularly striking girl walking towards me along a busy shopping street in downtown Montreal, and managed to strike up a conversation with her about–of all things–exotic teas. About 10 minutes later, I ended the conversation on a high note and walked away with her phone number.

That night, at a local student bar, I got two more phone numbers: one from an athletic Vancouver girl who told me to put her number in my phone, then another from a bubbly American blonde who went to find my buddy so that she could find me to…tell me to put her number in my phone!

This particular aspect of PUAdom was completely life-changing. It was as if all I needed to do was make a habit of saying “Hi” and my love life would be taken care of. It was only my third day in the field and I’d managed to hit if off, most notably, with at least one girl I would have previously considered “unapproachable” and walked away with her phone number right in the middle of a busy shopping street.

This part of the PUA experience was so positive for me that I continue to meet new people this way to this day. (But I don’t “sarge” anymore; I’ll expand on this in an upcoming article.)

The PUA Lexicon

The pickup world has a vocabulary all its own: openers, false time constraints, bouncing, false takeaways, number-close, kiss-close, lay reports, buying temperature, vibing, last-minute resistance, DHVs, DLVs, and so on. It wasn’t just a knowledge base, it was a whole new technology.

A group of people with a woman in it was now a “set”. A woman was now a “target” and her friends were the “obstacles”. A date was now a “day2″. I no longer wanted a girlfriend, I wanted an “LTR” (Long-Term Relationship).

While I understood that the terminology made it much easier to discuss pickup with other guys, it still messed with my head in some ways. Not only did I feel strange referring to human beings in such cardboard terms, but I almost never had a non-pickup conversation with the PUAs I hung out with. Instead of chilling out and having a good time, I was now constantly calculating the social logistics.

Read Part II, Seduction for Smart People: Should You Become a “Pickup Artist”? – Part II

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