It’s been a while since you’ve been to your friend’s house, and you can’t remember the room number. You wrack your brain to recollect the correct floor, jump in the elevator, and head to the room you suspect is his.
When you go to open the door, you hear the rumblings of a huge party. There must be at least 30 people inside. The door is slightly ajar. You glance in, and realize none of the faces appear familiar.
Is this the right place?
You call him, text him, but no response.
After what feels like 20 minutes, waiting is no longer an option. As you take a step inside, everyone turns to stare. Your eyes dart about the room, looking for some sort of familiarity.
At least you’re in the right place, and you find your friend in the corner. He’s hosting an impromptu party. Organized by another friend, and neither of you know more than a handful of people.
Let’s jump in and have some fun!
Would you feel confident in this situation?
Let’s talk about how we can develop a level of confidence where you feel completely comfortable in ANY environment.
But first, as an addendum to my last article, I realized why I was in that funk last week. The day after I wrote it, I fell deathly ill. Sore, tired, sick, with a sore throat and cough, it was the sickest I’ve been in a long time, with the bacterial firestorm brewing inside me manifesting as some weird lonesome malaise.
It’s funny how much your physiology can pull you down into lower levels of conscious thought. I couldn’t force myself out of the funk. The problem was that it wasn’t a mental issue, but my body was literally burnt out from non stop traveling, partying, and working for 3 months straight.
So I’m consciously disengaging and forcing myself to chill out, read a bit, and relax more without forcing any productivity.
The result is an evolution back towards the self development arena. I had been so focused on my business research the last 4-5 months that anything else took the back seat. But with most of my ventures in motion, I’ve freed up a lot of mental energy. Moving forward it’s less about research, and mostly just a matter of scaling.
If anyone is interested in my current personal development materials, I’ll be watching Tony Robbins’ Fortune Management, rereading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and brushing up on the vocab with Charles Harrington Elser’s Verbal Advantage.
Feel free to join in, should be a nice mix of new concepts leading towards me being even more awesome.
Today, I’d like to answer a letter I recently received from a former client regarding the old situational vs. core confidence dilemma.
Whatsup Brad!
My behaviours and values are sometimes changing depending on my environment, or mostly the people im with. When im in a bar with loud music on the weekend Im always fun and charismatic and do really well with what you taught me. I feel and believe im high value and dont need anything from anyone, everyone wants to be involved. In contrast, I was at chilled after partys a couple of times the past month and I just dont feel that way. I feel like im in spectator mode. Sometimes even in normal day to day situations its like this. I even know that this is ridiculous and theres nothing stopping me being awesome all the time, but im finding it difficult to believe im high value day to day. I know It’ll come eventually as I keep going out but I’d be interested to hear what you think.
Thanks,
Rick-
This is a classic instance of situational confidence. Because the student has been going out a lot, and taken a bootcamp focusing mostly on that same environment, his confidence in one situation is much stronger than in others.
This leads to a lot of situational confidence in this environment. But in new situations, because he isn’t used to meeting people at parties or during the day, there is a dearth of confidence.
First I’ll explain how to get more confidence in specific new environments, and then how to move towards an overall CORE confidence in everything you do.
How to Work a Party
One of the big drives I have to continually go out to clubs is that there is always a level of variability every night out. No matter how many times I’ve been to the same venue, there is a high probability that I will encounter a new scenario that I haven’t experienced before.
This is less likely to happen on the initial approach though. That first five minutes of meeting a girl in a night club becomes fairly consistent over time. Go in hard, be loud, have a good tone of voice, and eye contact per usual.
How is an afterparty different?
The biggest difference actually makes this environment EASIER to meet new people. Because the party is at someone’s house, there is an assumed level of value just because you are there, and you don’t need to approach as hard as you would in the club.
This can be challenging at times. It’s funny how when you start off meeting new people, the hardest part is learning how to quickly convey value. But then, once you get the skill of cold approaching down, how to tackle the “warm approach” becomes hazy.
When it’s a warm approach you don’t need to convey as much value at the start. Also, there are instant commonalities to talk about.
Who do you know there? How did you meet them? These types of questions are easy to fall back on, and great conversation starters. From there, vibe like normal and let the conversation flow.
The other factor that makes this environment different than a night club is that internally you might feel that there is a larger chance of embarrassment in the party environment. You can’t burn a few sets as warm ups like you can in the club, but just like during the day, warm up sets aren’t necessary because you don’t need to be as ON when talking in this situation.
Again, the value is already assumed, you have inherent social proof just by being at the party. Just go up with a smile, say hi, and ask whom they know there, then transition into whatever comes out of that.
This is getting towards the crux of my teaching philosophy. Most guys that attend my program aren’t socially uncalibrated weirds, they are usually very well put together guys that do great in certain social situations, but are looking for a more effective way to meet women.
So through teaching a few tweaks to how to approach, (outer game) you can smoothly meet ANYONE, and then through getting more reference experiences, you develop even MORE confidence, (inner game) those outer game techniques become internalized, and you feel comfortable in that environment.
But truth be told, there are countless places were you can meet women: after parties, on the street, at a concert, dinner parties, coffee shops…
Remember that for ANY environment, before anyone even acknowledges you, you need the other person to realize that you have value to them.
In a nightclub this is done through approaching STRONG. But in other situations, when you already have the value, the way you start the conversation is less important.
So first think about the stimulus in the environment compared to how much value you have, and use the two to determine how to approach.
Once that aspect is handled, the conversation is IDENTICAL to any other. With the value conveyed, it’s just a matter of flowing, yet still keeping a pressure towards moving things forward, leading, having fun, self amusing, and all the other things we constantly talk about at RSD.
How to Develop Core Confidence
Well, because of the manifold situations that could happen in your day to day life, you can never truly get enough experience to cover every situation where you might meet a girl.
I remember when Tyler, Mike, and I were in Miami. Tyler says to me, “Alright dude. Mike grab the camera, let’s go hit up South Beach and get some footage!”
Now, being from Wisconsin, I didn’t have ANY experience meeting women on the beach. It didn’t help that I’m being filmed during the day with a hidden camera next to girls wearing bikinis, AND with my boss watching me do all this. There was definitely a low level anxiety.
I go up to the first girl on the beach. She’s real cute, and laying out by herself. I sit down, and she pretends to not speak English.
Gross.
Then I go up to 2 girls lying on a blanket reading books. I sit down, and all of a sudden…
I remember how cool I am.
It hooks. They’re totally fun, and I grab their number to meet up later on that night.
Too bad the camera’s sound didn’t work, heh…
But the bigger learning lesson was the fact that once I got over the initial hurdle of approaching, MILLIONS of reference points kicked in. It’s just that first approach threshold that is different in different scenarios.
Can you ever reach a point where you are comfortable in EVERY situation?!
I’m envious of guys that are just naturally like this. The approach machines that have such a high sex drive that they will literally approach ANYTHING even if the chance of it working out is slim to none.
I’ve never been like this, although every year that goes by, I get better at it.
What has helped?
I would say a few things.
The technique I’ve taken since the beginning is to get as much experience in whatever environment is most conducive to my lifestyle, and slowly the experience and confidence spills over into all areas.
I’ve literally had so much success in night time situations, and the level of abundance that I walk around with due to the constant texts, facebook messages is a constant reminder that there are already a lot of great women in my life.
No matter how random and unorthodox the situation is for me to meet a new girl, in the back of my head, there is always the assumption that this girl would be winning if I went up to talk to her.
Another big part of this is that I have been all over the world, met a wide variety of girls in a vast number of very different places. And through seeing consistent patterns, it allows me to feel more comfortable when it’s not a normal situation. I know on a deep level that as long as you maintain that high value frame, and keep it fun, it’s highly likely to go well.
Action Plan
So how can you move towards this core confidence? How to feel comfortable being social in any environment?
Just like my examples, the big take away is to just get out there and HAVE more experiences. Keep going out at night, build the abundance.
But also push yourself to approach in situations where you aren’t as comfortable, so you can start seeing the higher level consistencies, as well as gain valuable reference points in new situations.
The way to analyze the situation is to look at your value, look at the other stimulus (external value) in the environment, and crank up the amount of value and fun you need to trump the situation.
And again, after the interaction starts, converse as usual like any other time.
Alright time to get back to the vocab training, today’s word:
gran·dil·o·quent/granˈdiləkwənt/–
Adjective: Pompous or extravagant in language, style, or manner, esp. in a way that is intended to impress.
Haha, nice. Enjoy your weekend!
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