(outlink) How to Become an Early Riser

Just found an article on How to Become an Early Riser.

Basic technique: Always get up at the same time, and only go to bed when you're dead tired.

Now, if it was easy to get up at the same time (and I had no social life), ...

Tyler Durden's Pop Quiz

Out reading other blogs, I found a reference to Tyler's pop quiz, and I just had to take it.

Here's the archived and active thread.

Quoting:

1) You are talking to three girls at a table. You like the one furthest in. They like you, but the girl you want probably wouldn't jump out from her seat to talk to you yet. How do you get her to come talk to you?

2) You're talking to a group of girls, and they are all in love with you. If you ask one for her phone number the others might get upset. What do you do?

3) You are gaming a 2set with a wing. Your girl wants to venue change with you, but your wing's girl does not. What do you do?

4) You're gaming a group of girls, and one of the girls gets upset. Really upset. She won't calm down, and her friends want to leave. What do you do?

5) You're gaming a girl and she's attracted. You're about a minute and a half in, and her friend is freaking out because her mom has arrived to pick them both up. She's leaving with her friend, and you want her phone number but know its too early and it will be a weak close. What do you do?

Interesting scenarios. I've not yet peeked at the other answers - I'll start by doing my own. I suggest you start by doing your own, too, before you peek at any answers. (All of these are targetted influence towards a seduction situation with the implied goal of getting laid, standard fast seduction style. It's slightly off my goal of finding a permanent partner, but good mind exercise nevertheless :)

1. Focus attention on the other girls, make them have a good time, body language away from the "target", keep her inside the conversation but only just, like you're doing it only to be polite. Only show interest in her as she actually shows she is interesting, rather than presuming she is based on just looks. If she doesn't quickly come out to talk to you, take away your attention/interest again.

2. "Hey, you guys are cool. We have to hang out some day. But you're too many. I need one of you to be my contact point. I'll take the number of (look back and forth several times, like I can't decide) YOU!" (lock gaze at one). (slight pause) (to the others, in a kidding tone) Is she trustworthy?"

3. Suggest a short-term venue change ("We'll go check out XYZ and meet you again later"), then coordinate by phone afterwards.

4. (Assuming she's not upset at me - I've never had a girl end up really upset with me, just with others or the world in general) Tell the friends that I'll take care of it, isolate the upset girl, talk her down - I can always talk an upset girl down (and almost always an upset guy). Depending on her frame of mind, there are several outcomes.

One is that I spent several hours talking with her and helping her fix her immediate emotional problems, setting her up for handling the problems further on, either by contact with me or with another counsellor. Then I either send her home or we rejoin the group (I've had this type of thing include rejoining and splitting from the group several times, too - going into the group lessens the tension, then re-isolating allows further therapy work.)

Another is that it's just a short term thing, I spend five minutes with her, and we rejoin the group.

If the issues are not fixable now, she'll have to venue change, probably going home to sleep. There's three options: Either I get her to pick the friend she wants to go with, and I tell that friend that HBUpset needs her, or HBUpset wants to go home alone (and I help get her a taxi), or HBUpset wants to have me along to help her. (The latter means I've got an ethics problem at my hands, as I've started counselling her and she'll most likely want to sleep with me. Icky.)

I've also had a wing take an overall upset girl off my hands, but that's happened only once. Normally, I just take care of them.

A sidenote is that dealing with an emotionally upset girl and returning her to her group as a happy person is a tremendous DHV (display higher value). It will make all the girls in the group interested in you. Really interested in you.

5. (For the sake of discussion, I'll pretend I'm interested in the age bracket of girls that has mothers come pick 'em up.)

If the attraction is really high, the following should work: Give her a good bye hug. Hold. Move over, give a quick kiss on the lips. If she goes french, you're in, if not, pull her towards you in another hug and comment something to her ("It's been nice meeting you, too bad it's so short"), move out to do another kiss on the lips - if your body language/attraction is right, this on should go to a tounge kiss. Then try to game off that, either just using it as social proof in the situation you are in, or go something like "We're going much too fast. Quick, give me your phone number, and we'll keep from calling each other for hours and hours, giving this relationship time to settle down and go at a decent pace."


NOTE: The above is hypothetical. I do not get 1.5 minute attraction spikes; attraction towards me increase with time/comfort.

Aren't there some things that can't be explained?

I was recently asked "Aren't there some things that can't be explained" by a spiritual friend. My answer may help you understand that background of science, and of this blog:

To me, the question of "are there some things that can't be explained" doesn't really make sense. There's some things that trivially can't be explained - for instance, I just threw a coin. As of this moment and all the future, nobody can explain why that particular toin coss resulted in tails rather than heads. Before I threw it, nobody could know that it would land as tails rather than heads.

I believe there's a lot of similar effects in relationships, and most everything else. Things that are essentially random, outside our ability to measure. I believe that's probably fundamental to the universe.

On the other hand, I also know there's a lot of a structure to most things in our universe. For instance, the coin I tossed had very little chance of landing on its edge.

That's a kind of structure.

I believe we can find structure in a lot of things, and that knowing about these structures is useful. There are some structures to human relationships - patterns we can see in them, where they tend to work particular ways.

Of course, we can never predict exactly how a particular relationship will work out - but we may know a bit about what heads, tails, and edge would be for it...

(outlink) Want photographic memory?

Photographic (eidetic) memory has been something I've wanted for a long while. I've played with various aspects of it from time to time - for instance, closing my eyes and then counting the numbers of windows on a house I just saw - and while I got better, I never got it to fully stick. Hopefully, the eidetic memory puzzle game can enhance memory.

On what I am

I've just had one of my friends read this blog and conclude that I'm an asshole, that I view women as things. I feel that's a long distance from who I am and how I see the world. I care about everybody I meet, and I get sad by having somebody interpret me that way.

So - how am I from my point of view?

I'm grounded in science. At one level, my view of the world is that people are similar, work according to rules, a series of chemical reactions that are similar. That worldview is simple, systematic, and the view I mostly run this blog from. The blog is targetted to the seduction.player/therapist community - and for that community, I believe that view is the most effective. An interaction between a man and a woman is a seduction, for an interation to result in a relationship, each person needs to do the "right" thing. Each person needs to follow (consciously or unconsciously) the techniques for influence, for amping sexual attraction, for feeling closer to another person and making that person feel closer to him or her self.

But - viewing that perspective as the whole of me? I view each person I interact with as an individual. I view each person as somebody I want to have a good time, as somebody I want to improve the life of, as somebody I hope I can leave something of value with. And, ultimately, I hope to find somebody I can share my life with, and that in sharing that life I can make that person have a better life.

I once spent about three years having sex at text message away, never letting anybody close, just being a player - and yet, I did whatever I could to make each of the people I "played" know where they had me, know what I could give them, and to the best of my ability I helped them find somebody else that could fill more of their needs.

Yes, I walk up to people and talk to them. I try to make them have a good time, but I'll admit I've also tested out how rude I can be - and still have them have a good time. I've yet to have them dislike it when I'm rude - only when I try to be polite and nice. And the only cases I've ended up in bed with somebody after this has been when somebody has pulled *me* to bed - almost literally.

I've got a good relationship with everybody I've done anything with since I started doing this systematically. To the best of my knowledge, I've not hurt anybody, and I've cared for everybody involved. I've given my love when I could - when the person I've been with has been interested in anything more, when it could work with more between us.

I don't know what more I can do. Sure, I've learned the skills, and I'm still learning them - but - isn't the issue what I do with my skills? If I use them to the best of all I meet - to the best of my ability - can't I still be a good person, even with skills?

(outlink) FitDay - diet/exercise log

Everybody that's serious about exercise/nutrition has toyed with keeping a log - maybe just at the idea level, afraid of how much work it would be, but we at least know it's one of those things we "should" do. Fortunately, there's ways to make it easier. FitDay is a software package for tracking all aspects of what you eat and how you exercise. They've got a free online version, though the PC version is probably worth the buy. It's got automatic completion of everything, which makes it really convenient to keep the log - the online version mostly help you do calculations etc, and doesn't give the extreme help in making the actual logging task easier.

(outlink) The Marketing Playbook

Marketing. Somehow, that's the same as influence and seduction. And yet, few of us has taken the time to investigate it.

Here's a blog to get you started: Marketing Playbook

Making your own style

There are several places to start. One is to get a book on colour theory for different facial types. Professional makeup books have sections on this, as do complete image books. I've got one called "Presenting Yourself - For Men", which made one of my friends guess that I was gay.

Another place to start is to play with matching. See what colours match up, try out every outfit you can from your wardrobe (there always something given to us by some relative that we never felt comfortable using - can various stuff be matched up?), go to a garage sale and pick up everything that looks like it could be fun - and spend some time just playing in front of a mirror. Be vain. Spend hours trying combinations, see what's an improvement - keep a journal, if you like, saying "Hmm, this combination was OK, but it's missing XYZ".

A third is to start looking - really looking - at people in the street. Notice those that are stylish. What's making them stylish? Which colours do they match up? Which colour combinations are outrageous but they just make them work? Why?

It takes time to get used to this. Style won't come overnight. Andif you let yourself play with it for a while, just getting better and better, style WILL come. You'll be naturally able to match up things and make them You.

Advice for somebody starting weight training

Get somebody to train you in the correct form for the exercises. It's easy to use too much weight - and get no effect - or too little weight - and get no effect. And get somebody GOOD. Most trainers don't know what they are doing, and give dangerous advice. (Some advice on spotting a bad trainer below.)

Apart from that: If you get no progress after a while, exercise less often. You may need to go down to exercising each body part once a week (if you're a hard gainer.)

Eat enough protein. Get enough sleep. Take a good basic food supplement (vitamin and mineral supplement). Maybe supplement with ZMA (look this up rather than just taking my word as gospel.)

Exercises should be done slowly, and with a reasonable range of reps (5 to 12 per set is usually a good target).

Exercises should be only be done to failure very occasionally - maybe once every three months.


Over to spotting a bad trainer:

One exercise that's good for spotting bad trainers is the squat. Some common problems: Advising you to use heel blocks (raising the heels). That can be dangerous for the knees (it cause extra wear on the kneecap and the lower back), and the trainer should at least be AWARE of that.

Using Smith machines for the squat is considered (by many) to block the movement the body should go through. Whether this is dangerous is disputed; there's good arguments that Smith squats are an OK exercise if form is perfect, but Smith machines are often used to "simplify" the exercise for those that have bad form, which none of those studying it seem to think is a good idea. The trainer should be aware of this, too.

The back should be STRAIGHT throughout the exercise, and the upper body compressed (filled lungs and the muscles around them tightened). Many trainers will neglect to tell you to compress the upper body, or will tell you to push your chest forwards.

The normal form for the squat is down until your tighs are parallell to the ground. More is bad for your knees; less lose effect. Your trainer should tell you this (though there may be reasons to shorten the squat, and your trainer might tell you that, too.)

To get good form, you usually need to look at some distant object.

And your trainer should tell you that form is very, very, very important in the squat. My best trainer has actually forbidden me from running the squat for the moment; he thinks I need to increase upper body strength before going back to it, to avoid training in bad form.

(outlink) How to fall out of love

This is a question that I often get asked, and Donald Robertson just published the article How to fall out of love: Psychotherapeutic Treatment for Love in the Days of Yore.

I've just read through the conclusion, and it looks good. It miss seeral parts that I find important, though. On the psychotherapeutic side, the most imporant one is to split your love into different roles, and handling them separately. Your dreams of a future might be one part, her in the role as an ex might be another, as sex partner, as friend, as ... - heck, I had to remove one ex from the role of pupil to stop thinking about her, and that's a role she should never have been in...

(outlink) Psychology Self Help Articles

While checking out background on self esttem, I found an interesting self help article collection over on www.more-selfesteem.com.

These aren't just on self-esteem, though the brunt is.

(outlinks) Queendom tests

OK, guilty as charged: I spent 30 minutes browsing today. Maybe I should do it more often.

As I was browsing, I came across a site full of personality tests. The following are free and relevant for this blog:

• Assertiveness Test
  
• Anxiety Test
  
• Commitment Readiness Test
  
• Communications Skills Test
  
• Exercise Myths Test (what do you know about exercise?)
  
• Fitness Knowledge Test
  
• Nutrition Quotient Test (nutrition knowledge)
  


Just for fun, though - the tests are a bit simplistic...

(outlink) So maybe there's more to say - Charisma and Social Structure

There might be some more to the persuation section here, anyway: Just found a book on "Charisma and Social Structure that looks interesting. That's a link to an online variant, you can buy the paper version by following a link from that page.

Note that the publisher there is a vanity publisher (author pays), so this is even less reviewed than a common book. For highest likelihood of quality science background, peer reviewed journals is the way to go. People publish in books because they can't get things into the peer reviewed journals.

(outlink) And there we had all of persuation covered...

OK, now it looks like I could almost just drop the persuation/influence side of this blog. AMAZING site: ChangingMinds.org - with the tagline Changing minds and persuasion -- How we change what others think, believe, feel and do.

Over 1600 pages covering different aspects of influence, including academic theories of behaviour/influence, body language, leadership styles, closing techniques, ...

I'm just sitting here, stunned.