9 Things You Can Do To Improve Your ‘Game’

image - Flickr / Nathan Congleton
image – Flickr / Nathan Congleton

1. Stop allowing yourself cop-outs

It can be easy to make excuses if you see someone you’re attracted to and you don’t feel you’re good enough for them. Oftentimes, this thinking leaves people too nervous to initiate a conversation! People try to rationalize it, controlled by the possibility of rejection rather than allowing the opportunity for success. As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You miss out when you’re terrified of failure to even try. Emotions mess you up and those feelings cannot be trusted. Reject the notion that anyone is out of your league, or that you should abandon the desire to try before you put in any effort in case they’re “just not that into you.” Why surrender to your fear before you endeavor to cultivate attraction? The thought that if someone doesn’t approach you it is equal to them being uninterested is lazy and lackadaisical. Always pursue what you want, and invest the effort that success demands.

2. Get over the fear of rejection

You’re going to get turned down. Who doesn’t fail when just starting to hone a new skill? Fail, fail, and fail again until you get it right. Even the best get turned down, though usually through no fault of their own. It’s not always about you; sometimes your target is just unavailable, emotionally or otherwise. However, if it is your fault, you must accept it and learn from it. Each time you fail, assess what happened then analyze everything with painstaking meticulousness. Figure out what you’re doing wrong and change methods accordingly. Failing many times will rid you of the fear of rejection, which allows you to appear more confident; to speak with more credence, and in time the possibility of failure will rarely enter your mind. Failure is more essential to my success than most imagine. Failing means you practiced and practice leads to proficiency.

3. Figure out and ditch limiting beliefs


People often sabotage themselves without realizing it. The only one telling yourself you aren’t good looking enough, aren’t charismatic enough, aren’t good enough for the person you desire is most likely you. Abysmal self-confidence is an inescapable and overt blemish one has to deal with before you can push forward. As cheesy as it may sound, reading books like Nathaniel Branden’s “Six Pillars of Self-Esteem” can help you get over self-destructive views.

Learning to love yourself is the best thing you can do for all your future targets, as it is absolutely necessary to be happy with the person you are before you can accept love from another person. Imbuing your own happiness and acceptance is essential to being able to inspire happiness and affection from others. As Stephen Chbosky so exquisitely put it, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Devoting time to being truly happy with yourself is one of the most altruistic things you can do for your partner. To make an honest appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses takes nerve and an incredible amount of self-awareness and honestly, but nothing can help you grow more.

4. Cultivate conversational skills

Making eye contact, smiling when you enter a room or when you initiate a conversation may seem trivial, but they are crucial to the establishment of conversational finesse. Ridding yourself of speech disfluency with fillers such as “like…uh….um….” are also critical.

Learn to think about what you are going to say before you say it and speak when you have things of value to add to the conversation. Expand your horizons – make sure you know what was happening in the news, what is currently favored in pop-culture, and make yourself aware of your surroundings so you can engage in discussions about what good restaurants or coffee shops nearby. To some people, these skills come naturally, but you can also foster them and become a dazzling conversationalist able to inspire awe in any target at any moment.

5. Demonstrate your value

To preface this, I’ll say it is important to find the line between showing your worth, and coming off as an egotistical maniac.

When you’re trying to seduce someone, especially someone with a high social caliber it is imperative to display your authority and notability. After all, if you are chasing someone who has thousands upon thousands of people to choose from how else can you stand out? First surround yourself with people of value. But don’t stop there; try to help others increase their values. Being nurturing and altruistic via your actions does more than many words could.

Invite targets out to events in which you hold value. If they’re into music and you perform, invite them to a show. If you’re both athletically-oriented, invite them to your team’s home game. Tailor each event to the target you’re seducing. While you’re there, keep the conversation on them – everyone’s favorite subject is himself or herself. Also make sure you are adding things into the conversation that non-overtly display your value. Show that you are a worthy addition to their social circle.

6. Create a brand for yourself

Create a persona, one that will be noticed and known without having been introduced. Make sure everything from social media posts to how you conduct yourself during every outing is in line with the brand you’re creating. Sculpt a strong image and make sure to stick to your brand. Don’t walk out of the house looking like you picked your outfit off the floor or like you haven’t had the time to groom yourself in days. Don’t get sloshed and make a fool of yourself in public. Keep people around you who have value, and thus portraying your own. Construct your own archetype and embody it fully 24/7, and you will be applauded and recognized for it.

7. Avoid one-itis and have your own shit going on

It’s easy to get stuck on one person. The term in the Pick-Up-Artist-universe for being overly into one person is called “one-itis”. It can be easy to fall into, so you have to be mindful of it. It’s helpful to remember that no target has something you can’t live without.

There’s about 6.5 billion people in the world, why become infatuated with one, especially if you’re not sure they return the feeling? Never get stuck on just one person who hasn’t done anything to deserve the affection. Being in contact with a lot of members of your preferred sex(es) – not necessarily targets – helps keep one-itis at bay as well.

It’s also important to have your own life. Sitting around contacting your target all day is not only going to creep them out and turn them off, it’s going to make it look like you don’t have your own shit going on. Go out and live your life same as you would before you met them, and if it works out great! If not, you won’t lose anything you can’t recover from.

8. Learn from the best

There is a sea of pick-up artists and wannabes on the Internet willing to take your money in exchange for regurgitating information they learned from the experts. Ignore them all and instead go straight to the source.

Take the time to read works by Robert Greene to Casanova and Helen Fisher. If you want to learn about neuro-linguistic programming go to the sources, Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

Another good read is Introducing NLP by Joseph O’Connor and John Seymour, which I recommend to any budding seducer. To learn about body language read works by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins, as well as books by C. Kellogg and Julius Fast.

It is also worth your time to watch and read works by Derren Brown on mentalism. Read books on marketing (what is seduction if not marketing yourself?), the psychology of persuasion, human nature, evolution and natural selection, and even strategies of war – because as the philosopher Pat Benatar once said, “Love is a battlefield.” Build your body of knowledge from the best to allow yourself the best opportunity for success.

9. Put in the work

This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: you will not get anywhere just by sitting around reading books and watching seminars. Take action by going out every day and forging connections with people. Incredible things happen to those who are willing to work for success. Work everyday to shape and cast yourself into a person you are happy with, confidence is worthy of that effort.

If you take nothing else from this article, understand this: there is a tremendously prodigious difference between having game and playing games. Learning how to create attraction, communicate better, and using those things to gain the attention of the person you are interested in is different than deceiving, manipulating, or lying to them. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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