Mindsets

A reader on the article about girls with boyfriends writes in with a sentiment I’ve noticed popping up increasingly often on GirlsChase.com:

“But what really saddens me is the feminist undertone that lurks all around this thinking that on the other side look like male dominance. And the question is: Why is it men that have to become perfect? Why is there no such a need for women? Leadership, selfish genes, everything I already know. But I want a higher standpoint. Why are men the only ones that have to step up, and not women?”

This is one that in fact I’ve answered repeatedly in the comments sections of various articles... but I realize not everyone reads those, they’re kind of hard to search / keep track of, and new people roll in and wonder the same things, especially if there isn’t a single place strictly for answering a particular question. So it’s time for it to get a dedicated article.

Why don’t women have to improve? Why don’t women have to step it up? How come they get a free pass... while men have all this pressure to “be perfect”?

It doesn’t seem very fair.

The fact is though, there is TONS of pressure on women to step it up and be perfect – including, indirectly, on this site.

However, this is a men’s site for men, and asking GC to write chastisingly-worded “You better shape up your act, ladies – or else!” articles for women misses the point – that we are here to instruct men who want to up their results, rather than to be just another shrill voice haranguing those who don’t want to “follow the rules” and tell them that they’d better get their acts in gear.

Any guy who has ever set his foot on a forum devoted to the study of seduction or who has purchased a book on the topic is likely to be familiar with the expressions “outer game” and “inner game”. He will know that “outer game” advice consists of learning new behaviors, while “inner game” advice is all about restructuring your cognition, or, in plain English, information processing and thought patterns.

However, not everybody knows that this is a kind of therapy that psychologists have been studying for decades and that they call “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” (commonly abbreviated CBT).

Its name indicates that it builds on the earlier method of pure cognitive therapy (CT) and also on behavior therapy (BT). Both psychologists and aspiring seducers have been discussing which therapy is more effective, but, at least among the psychologists, there is more or less agreement that the combination of CT (“inner game”) and BT (“outer game”) is more effective than either alone.

This should not be surprising; if you approach a problem from multiple angles you are more likely to solve it.

This first article in the new series I am kicking off on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will address the CT part and teach you how to systematically challenge and defeat negative though patterns and unproductive beliefs.

Nearly everybody has something to work with here; there are very few people who are totally free from what are commonly known as “issues”.

One of our discussion forum members started a thread asking whether, when surrounded by women decrying the slut label, he should be truthful to himself and state that there’s a good reason behind this label, or whether he should tell women like this what they want to hear (and what he probably needs to say if he wants to sleep with them): that he thinks such a label is totally unreasonable... even if this is being untruthful to himself.

That’s an interesting question, but one I think that the answer to (supposing your goal is to become a real “knock her socks off” ladies man) is a fairly simple “fake it till you make it.”

That is to say, you may think she’s a “slut” now... but once you’ve got a significantly larger amount of sexual experience under your belt, you’re probably not going to care one way or the other about what label fits her best. So might as well just act like you’re already there and get the girl in the meantime. You’ll be glad you did later.

But that raised an interesting question for me: why is that newer guys and less experienced guys or, alternately, bitter guys (not necessarily the same as new/inexperienced guys), use the “slut” label on women... while more experienced guys who’ve made their peace with women’s sexuality don’t really care?

Four friends gathered together at a bar for a drink after work. As they sipped down their beers, the conversation drifted to talk of women... and their myriad troubles with them.

“I can’t get girls, bros,” sighed the good-looking man forlornly. “And it’s because – of course! – they only want to date guys with money.” He looked around at his friends, waiting for a response.

“Hmph,” said the wealthy man, responding. “You think you’ve got it bad? I can’t get girls because they only want to date guys who are tall!”

“Pssh, that’s nothing,” said the tall man. “The reason I can’t get girls is because they only ever get with guys who are white.”

“That sucks, but you know what the worst is?” said the average-looking white man. “The worst is that girls only want to be seen with guys who are good-looking.”

A while back Chase wrote a fantastic piece on confidence called “Does Confidence Equal Success? Actually… No.” What made it a fantastic piece was its flying in the face of the conventional wisdom of people trying to give you advice with women telling you to “Just be confident!”

Now is confidence near the top of the list of things women find extremely attractive in men? Absolutely. But can you feign confidence? Absolutely not. Even if you fool a girl for a minute or two, girls can always sniff out a mere veneer of confidence from a mile away.

And as Chase rightly points out in his post, that’s where most guys go wrong. You can’t just fake confidence. Confidence actually has to come from somewhere – either from past successes or a solid foundation of belief, process, and efficacy in other areas of your life.

So how does one develop confidence? How do you get to be like those guys who can just go up to girls in the middle of a town square and just start joking around with them? How do you become one of those guys who are unfazed by rejection who and maintains a deep belief in themselves? I’ve been re-reading Steven Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” along with some other materials that I have found truly valuable during my own journey.

It is entirely doable. And today I’m going to show you exactly how.

So you realized something about yourself recently: you realized that life is slipping you by while you sit back afraid to take it by the horns. Well it’s time to turn that new outlook to your advantage!

Where you were once convinced by all the lines and ideologies that told you it was better to numb yourself from the fear of life and its uncertainty, now you know better and feel differently about things. Hidden in this new struggle is strength, and if you know why it exists and where, you might be able to figure out your own struggle a little faster.

And that’s why this article is here: to give you a start on finding strength in that struggle and your newfound connection with fears you never had before.

For the first time in a long time you feel a twang of fear, and you know it matters, and that makes more difference than you know.

When I first read about the Law of Least Effort, it was as if everything suddenly made sense. I thought that learning about expending effort would put me leagues ahead of other men, as I knew that I didn’t have to act all crazy and get into these long-winded conversations to get with girls; I could just be like all those cool guys who had women chasing and crawling all over them.

Unfortunately, I took the definition of the Law of Least Effort a bit too literally.

I started expending next to no effort in an attempt to not appear try-hard. However, when you expend hardly any effort, you aren’t going to get any results.

Rather than achieving what I was setting off to do, I became a closed off and virtual unknown to women. I’d go out and see attractive woman, thinking that things would be so much better if I had them chasing me and carrying the conversation all on their own. I thought that by sitting around and doing next to nothing women would flock to me and up my cool factor exponentially.

After all – I was effortless, wasn’t I?

But women rarely approached me. When you’re risk averse and don’t put forward any effort, you won’t gain anything.

It turns out that I was missing one vital point of the Law of Least Effort. You must expend as little effort as possible while still achieving what you’ve set out to do.