Day 20 : Radical Honesty & Craziness

The Day

I’m going to brush over the theory and facts quickly, as I want to get to the important part of today. And yes, I am going to make it educational, and I guarantee that everyone reading this will learn something to do (or not) out of it.

The morning was a daygame seminar portion with HG & Wizard. Some stuff about framing, public relations and learning game. I’m sure the other Rockstars will cover it in more detail.

We then went out for daygame. I winged with Vishal mostly, and again, he’ll cover it in his blog posts. There weren’t any particularly large takeaways for me today, but I did try to make more of an effort to learn about a girl and use more SOIs in set.

But this brings me to the core of today: radical honesty.

It began with a Council session comprised of Soul and Jeff. All the issues were brought to the table: what we liked about Project Rockstar, what we didn’t, what the instructors saw in us, and what we saw in each other. It was awesome, and also private. So don’t ask me to share.

What I will share though, is my experience from about 2:30pm-5:30pm this afternoon, and following the theme of the day, I will be radically honest about it. I won’t mention who the instructor is (everyone involved in Stockholm knows who it is, and it was NOT a Love Systems instructor, it was one of the UK-based coaches who volunteered to be here), but it was a prime example of how NOT to act and how to turn a shaky thinslice into one that makes people want to eject you from their social group immediately.

In case anyone hasn’t read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, a thinslice is something akin to a first impression you get of a person. Beyond that though, the thinslice can change over time as humans are dynamic creatures whose physique, appearance, social status and personality changes over time.

Let me demonstrate this through a progression of events involving this particular instructor:

Thursday Night: He invites me to open a set with him. I do. He proceeds to ignore me, not introduce me and just game the girls. I didn’t think much of it at the time and actually chalked it up more to the fact that the set was lost because I didn’t engage one of the girls and mini-isolate her. And plus, Soul had told me that he was someone worth learning from so I kept an open mind.

Friday, lunch: He and another instructor arrived, pissed, angry, and annoyed that we were “late”. This makes no sense as the Council session had ended at 2:10pm, it was 2:30pm and Soul had said to go grab lunch and meet up with everyone later. Heck, I even apologised and explained the situation to him.

Friday, enroute to daygame: He asked me about my sticking points. I told him it was sexual intent. He started to break things down, and offer critique and mostly impractical feedback from a technical perspective, but the fact remains- every instructor I’ve talked to has told me that it’s a problem for me, but no-one (apart from Soul and Mr M) has given me any actionable items to work with. This particular instructor then started to qualify himself, something along the lines of “yeah, I’ve been good with girls for a few years.”

Friday, daygame: We walked with the instructor for a bit, then after a long set, Vishal and I wandered off and did our own thing.

Friday, hotel lobby: We were supposed to meet up with everyone else at the hotel lobby, at 4:00pm. And so we waited. The instructor “debriefed” us, but no particularly constructive feedback was given. He asked if I was OK as I had looked “knackered” yesterday – WTF!?! But wait, there’s more. He then came over and asked if he could “pick my brain” about affiliate marketing, and proceeded to ask a series of questions which could only be described as value-draining. For those of you with skill in an area, this is like someone coming up to you, requesting your time and resources and offering nothing in return. What made it worse, was when it was clear that I wasn’t talking to him he proceeded to then do the same thing to Vishal.

Friday, 4:30pm: I went out with Vishal to do sets as no-one else had showed up. The instructor sent Vishal into a set where he couldn’t tell if the girl was hot or not, then proceeded to go himself into a set where the girl was stunning. I hate it when instructors do this – not give a shit about the students and the quality of their interactions and just go after the girls who are attractive themselves. Watching him in set, I got a really bad thinslice too. Something about the way he used his phone as a prop, overplaying the tourist card and the sort… it just came off as fake and unauthentic.

After, I told Soul that I wanted to switch groups and we walked off. I tried an approach, and even though my composure was fine, the girl could tell that I was in a draining emotional state. Rather than drag down the energy of my group, and worse, approach girls from a place of taking value, I decided to return to my hotel to rest up.

The sum total of all these thinslices and experiences, coupled with being emotionally tired over the past couple of weeks, resulted in a really bad, disgusting feeling within me. I felt terrible and physically sick. Beyond that, I am (as I write this) feeling pissed off. There are a ton of stunningly beautiful women out there on the streets of Stockholm, and I am here in my hotel room having to emotionally recover because some instructor decided to be a emotionally value-draining dick.

I have a rule for my social circles: if someone crosses a set of boundaries three times, they are set aside or unceremoniously cut. In the course of two days, this particular instructor has managed that. I will not be working with him for the remainder of Project Rockstar.

The Night

I headed back to my hotel to take a nap and rest up for night game. Had a very quick takeout dinner, and then a small “breakout” session with Vishal and Josh as we discussed the concepts of self-image and supernova. It has finally started to dawn on me the changes that are being made to my life and my own self-image as a result of Project Rockstar. The rest of the world will continue on for the duration of Rockstar, and more than likely, people’s lives will have remained fairly static over these eight weeks. Mine however, has been set in a new direction, and a chain of events is unfolding where the end simply cannot be the same or even remotely similar to the beginning.

We headed over to the Scandic Anglais to meet everyone else. After saying hi, Josh, Vishal and I open a set. For a warmup it was alright. There was a technical glitch with Vishal blowing Josh and myself out of set (he’s high energy), but we all learnt a bit about winging.

I then ran a two set with Jeff – it didn’t really go anywhere, but I learnt that I need to push physical escalation more, and to be more conversationally dominant in set.

Vishal and I opened a two set of older women. Mine was lovely – Arabic-Swedish and a great smile and figure to match. I played around a bit with faster physical escalation, but it was hard because the Scandic has much more of a conversational lounge feel to it rather than a high-energy club. I felt that this girl was ready to go home, but I had no idea how to make this happen – at this point it was only 10pm, everyone (including the women) wanted to go clubbing… and the set ended up fizzling.

I then spent some time winging Josh with his girl, who was most definitely ready to go home with him… I even bounced with them over to another bar, and offered to jump on the grenade with the girl’s very unattractive friend. A number of things happened which made it fall to pieces, but I’ll let Josh cover that if he wants to. I ended up leaving and then running into Alex outside a club (tried to get in but couldn’t), and subsequently into Jeff, Adam and Josh after that. Enroute to the club where we chatted up two adorable blonde Swedish girls using a functional opener and just teasing… and with some rapid sexual talk from Josh they brought us into the club with them. To be fair, Josh facilitated them getting us in, but he did steal my target once we were in the club

Walked around the club a bit – it was full of gorgeous women. I talked a bit with some of the mentors and coaches and Soul, and found myself back in set with one of the blondes we had brought in. I was testing for physical escalation but while she was happy to stay and talk and banter, I couldn’t escalate beyond moving her around by her hips. I ended up number-closing her, and Bugsy tried to up the physical escalation by putting her arm around me and having her kiss me, but he hadn’t witnessed the whole set and it was miscalibrated. This particular girl was down to escalate either later in the night, or continue a relatively normal conversation and go on a date the next day. Pushing the escalation too much blew out the set, but hey… it’s a learning process.

After that we left the club to do streetlight game with Soul. I winged Micha on a number of sets. In fact, I think this is one of the first times I’ve winged Micha, and man it was different. He has this Romantic-Viking thing going on where he comes off as extremely charming… whereas I tend to be more break-rapport in set.

Soul spotted an adorable blonde girl walking, and sent me after her. I opened, direct, talked with her a bit about Stockholm, and with Soul yelling out “qualify!”, “touch her hair!”, “kiss her!” in the background proceed to charm her, get her number and kiss her in all of five minutes. Following this set Soul explained to me the difference between physical escalation during attraction and during qualification. I’ll cover this in my takeaways below.

Tired and cold, we bounced back to my hotel and enroute witnessed Soul undergo what he calls “rapport ploughing”. This is where he logistically and conversationally bombards the girl with smooth talk and interesting conversation, until she relents and offers up herself to his charms.

We met up with Micha and his friend at the hotel, then headed to Sturehof, a combination bar-restaurant-club. Soul and I chilled for a while inside, and outside Vishal, Alex and Micha were working a three set of girls. As the restaurant closed (1am or so) we found them outside. Vishal’s girl was an absolute stunner, and she was completely enamored by him.

I saw a cute Asian girl walk past and I chased after her. Opened direct, built attraction, and began to qualify her. I suggested meeting up on Saturday, but she had other plans. Given that I’m leaving Stockholm early on Sunday, I ended up just taking her facebook. In retrospect, the number would have been better just for practice, but whatever.

Alex went home at this point, and the remaining craziness of the night began.

As we were crossing the street in search of late-night food, Vishal pulled in a girl who was wandering across the road. She was older, likely in her thirties, and she fell into his charms. She then followed us around for a bit… it was funny. She kept on wanting to go back to our hotel with us. We all picked this up as a sign that she was down-to-spitroast. We passed Bugsy at one point and he gave us this quizzical look as he worked out what was happening. In the end though, Vishal (not the girl) put up last minute resistance and he sent the girl into a cab on her way home… much to the chagrin of Micha and myself who turned around and were like “hey, where’d she go?”

We found ourselves in McDonald’s warming ourselves up from the cold Stockholm night. A fight broke out between ten or so people in McDonald’s, and the police were called in to break it up. We somehow ended up sitting next to these two crazy Swedish girls and their boyfriends. The girls kept on trying to imitate British and Australian accents, and we just chatted with the guys. Micha ended up number-closing one of the girls – I hope he follows up with her. Both girls had the most gorgeous set of legs and matching physiques EVER.

Leaving McDonald’s and heading back to the hotel, I talked with Vishal about the events of the night and even though none of us had spent the night with a girl in Stockholm, we had had a phenomenal time. We are high on life

Learnings

• Rapid conversational escalation into sexual topics. The way to do this, is to get comfortable using dominant phrases and questions on sexual or sensual topics. Turn it into what Soul calls a Mastery Topic, and be comfortable with it. Vishal has a different twist on this, which is using sensual language and description (especially about touch and physical sensations, e.g., “as the water gently glides down your leg, bringing each part of you alive”).
• Faster physical escalation is most definitely possible during streetgame and daygame.
• Attraction and qualification during daygame look different. Attraction is sort of leaning back, teasing the girl, breaking rapport (for me anyway). Qualification is about intense eye contact, getting close to her, and making her blush. Something akin to the Robbie Williams stare (credit: TD and Soul).
• I need to work more on my SOIs, compliments and leading conversations towards building commonalities and connection.
• I need to ask Soul and Mr M more about logistical escalation. Soul offered some advice in that doing whatever it takes to create logistical maneuvering is what it takes – inviting the girl for a drink at yours before going out clubbing, or inviting her for coffee or whatever… anything that advances your interaction logistically is useful.
• It’s time to take another look at sexual framing. I think Sheriff is going to cover this back in London too.
• Flakes. Soul gave us a whole lecture on why we were number-closing 9s and 10s but getting flaked on almost 100%. I’ll write something up once I’ve broken it down (perhaps tomorrow’s entry).
• I still need to slow down a lot more when talking.
• Off-field practice was awesome. We need to do more of it.
• Winging. When there is no conversational catch, and no passive attraction can be built, then it is best to apply the “what is more awkward is less awkward” principle and just talk to the other girl with cold reads, statements or questions.
• My conversational repertoire could be better. While I have Soul’s basic outline for attraction and rapport-based conversation, I am still stalling out at times. I need to expand my mastery topics.
• I have a new set of immediate sticking points/leverage points to work on: SOIs and compliments, which I’ll handle by practicing first and then injecting them more and more into sets infield. Sexual vibe, which I’ll explore using some change techniques I know, and this will also address some of the issues I have with sexual intent. Sexual conversation, which I mentioned above. Mastery topics for daygame.
• Resistance level to opening. This is a concept that we’ve observed and will develop more. Watching the instructors, they have a very low level of resistance to opening sets with low probabilities or that are logistically harder. I can feel my own resistance threshold lowering as I progress through Rockstar. I expect that within the next couple of weeks it will level out completely.

- Aaron P