Mindsets

Editor’s Note: this is our first post from Tony Depp, a seasoned dating coach who has schooled students in North America, Asia, and Europe for over a decade. He also runs his own blog and has authored two highly-rated books (links below). Here’s Tony! –BT

Approaching women during the day is the go-to for many eminent pickup artists. Tony Depp begins this series by sharing some key mindsets for success.

The first time I approached a girl was in high school. It was terrifying and awful.

Her name was Summer. Every day, like a creepy stalker, I watched her from afar in the school hallway. All that beautiful blonde hair, that perky nose, those ski-jump breasts. I was sixteen years old then, and there were no resources for men. No forums, PUA blogs, YouTube, or online courses. If you sucked with girls, the only thing you had to learn from was your own experience.

So one fine day, I found my balls and rallied the courage to approach her. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something like, “Hi, err… uh, hi. I wanted… umm….” I stood there with my adrenalized heart pounding, lips quivering, sweat forming on my forehead.

And her reply was, “Are you okay?”

I awkwardly turned and fled in shame and embarrassment. For the rest of the school year, I’d see her crossing the hallway from her locker to class, and that familiar adrenaline rush would rise up, internal chatter telling me to stay in my place, to be seen and not heard.

This was my very first attempt at day game. I carried that shame with me for many years before I discovered the pickup community in 2006.

Back then, almost all the information was about how to pick up girls at nighttime, at bars, clubs, and parties. Mystery and Style were the big dogs and they said to hit up the bars, so I did.

For almost two years, I went out seven nights a week, pushing myself to approach women in groups, to be more assertive, witty, entertaining, and confident. I eventually became very good at cold approach pickup, but only in bars.

I’d joined a local PUA (pickup artist) group called The Montreal Lair. On this forum were many men trying to learn how to be successful with women. All of them were focused exclusively on night game, except for one guy – I’ll call him Ricky.

He was a self-proclaimed day-gamer. Back then, day game wasn’t even a thing, but he claimed he was sleeping with a new girl or two each week, simply by complimenting them with a direct opener. Something like, “Hi. I just thought you were sexy and had to meet you. I’m Ricky.”

It was hard to believe. So we met up and I asked him to demonstrate. He said, “Sure thing, bro!” and took me to the nearest intersection. Before long, a pretty girl passed by and Ricky went jogging up to her. She stopped, laughed at his banter, and a few minutes later, he returned with her phone number. I was impressed. But not enough to try it myself – not yet.

This fun, simple game is designed to banish anxiety and work out the kinks in your approaches. All you need is a wingman, a clock, and a woman-laden environment.

Very early in my seduction journey, right after deciding I (finally) wanted to get better with women and (finally) learn how to sleep with them effortlessly, I faced the biggest hurdle of all – getting started. After all, every resource, coach, and seminar I checked out mentioned cold approach as the best skill to learn and improve with women.

It was suggested that I set aside several hours a day several times a week to learn how to approach women, just to get started. However, therein lay the rub – approaching women.

What a scary proposition! After having lost my virginity in my early twenties, then finally having my first girlfriend at 22, I still had no confidence or understanding of what women wanted or how they wanted to be approached.

I felt nervous, afraid; and each time, fear ran through my veins. This is a woman. What if she rejects me? What if she doesn’t like me? How will she feel about me? How will she perceive me? How will I feel about myself if she rejects me?

I started by walking through the streets of my newest home – New York City – where day game opportunities were plentiful and hot women wandered the streets alone every single day. And yet, each time I passed a hot woman that I fancied, I talked myself out of an approach.

The mix of girls you’ve dated and slept with informs your opinions of women. Different girl mixes can lead to very different thoughts about women.

As you make your way through life, and particularly as you make your way through seduction, you will discover different men at varying levels of ‘jaded’.

There are romantically inexperienced men who are incredibly optimistically naïve about women. There are romantically inexperienced men who are incredibly pessimistically naïve about women. Like all views formed from a distance, these are unrealistic views, punctured by the first few experiences with women in the flesh.

Once a man begins to accumulate romantic experience, his views on women shift toward the middle. The optimist discovers women are not as pure as he’d thought; the pessimist discovers women are not so devious as he’d feared.

Yet, from this intermediate middle point, as men accumulate still more sexual and romantic experience, their views diverge again.

All experienced men’s views on women are ‘realistic’. Yet the tenor of the views can differ wildly from man to man. They range from the experienced man who thinks women are sometimes tricky but mostly sweet, to the experienced man who thinks every woman is a siren, luring men who fall off their guards for even a moment to the rocks.

There’s one single, easy way to predict how jaded about women a man with some experience under his belt will be, though: look at the mix of women he’s been with.

A woman senses you only want to hook up with her, and closes herself off to you. Why’d it happen – and how do you prevent this ‘closing off’?

On an article from about half a year ago, Art commented:

“Has anyone noticed how women can sense if you don’t foresee a future relationship and put their guard up/ auto-reject? And then the women you DO want to become intimate with can sense a ‘strings-attached’ neediness, causing an imbalance? I’d love to get some insight on balancing attainability when being handsome yet shy. I get all kinds of signs from women that I’m excited to unlock, yet they can tell if it’s “real” or not very quickly and move on if the vibe isn’t real.”

It's a common scenario. A girl who liked you before, who realizes you don't want her for what she wants or might want with you, and auto-rejects.

Odds are you've seen this plenty. You start to talk to a girl, she's into you, but you realize you don't want anything long-term with her. All of a sudden it's as if she read your mind, and she grows frigid. The magic fades, and she makes her exit.

This is frustrating when you're on a notch hunt. You want to get more women in bed, raise your experience level, and have fun... but you don't necessarily want to commit to every girl who finds her way into your bed.

Yet girls keep realizing it, and keep going cold to you. Is there a way to stop this happening?

Good decisions can get you laid tonight, but mistakes are what provide lessons that make you more successful with women down the road.

Gentlemen,

I hope you enjoyed my posts on decision making and handling wildcards – two very interrelated subjects. Today, I will share some final thoughts. Reading through these posts a second time, I have noticed there is one aspect that may lead to confusion or misunderstanding, and could become detrimental in the long term. I am going to clarify my take on this.

Some situations in field will cause difficulties that require good decisions to be made. The same goes for when you will have to deal with wildcards. You must remain cool-headed and try to find solutions, or simply move on. Decide which of the solutions you would like to stick with.

The latter can become a choice of whether to move on, whether to focus on building more compliance (which, as we discussed, is one of many solutions to lowering the detrimental effects of wildcards), or whether you want to deal with the wildcard. Sometimes the answer is straightforward. Sometimes it isn’t, and different solutions present themselves.

Nevertheless, when discussing these subjects, we have always kept in mind that you must make a decision that either gives you the best chance of getting to bang the girl or avoids wasting time, money, or energy on bad leads.

Negative sexual momentum can spoil your interactions with women. But a good decision-making strategy helps break the trend – and can even reverse it.

Hey, guys. Welcome back. I hope you are enjoying this series on decision making so far. Making good decisions is key if you plan on reaching consistency in your results and increasing your odds of getting that girl.

Sometimes you will be stuck in situations where you will have to make calls, and you had better make the right one — making good or bad calls in these situations means the difference between a lay and no lay.

Today I will add a few more words on decision making, an expansion to my previous post. I will be sharing with you a few examples of mini-reports from the field where I have found myself in tricky situations and been forced to make decisions. I will share both success stories and failures.

As a seducer, your decisions can trip you up… or set you up. How do you weigh the odds and decide whether to stick with a girl or find a better option?

Hey, guys!

Welcome back. So, last week we discussed the importance of cool-headedness and how it relates to better decision making in field, resulting in more lays and better odds of getting that girl. Today, we will discuss decision making itself. I will cover each of the variables I personally take into account when I’m making a decision.

There is an infinite number of variables to be taken into consideration when making decisions, depending on the situation, context, who you are, and your desires. Some situations are truly unique, and you will need to account for additional variables you did not initially take into consideration. For example, if a girl happens to have a boyfriend who turns out to be a gangster, you will have to factor that into your evaluation. Another example that comes to mind is interactions that lead to tricky social situations, such as banging your best friend’s ex – “don’t” is my go-to advice. You have to assess the consequences.

Another situation is double-pulling with a wingman like I do with my friend Pablo Garcia. Sure, we can go tandem, split up, and each leave with a girl, but we don’t see each other often and we get plenty of lays on our own. When we are together, it is because we want to pull together – we just find it so much more fun! However, if I screw up, Pablo is doomed and vice versa. Additionally, if he doesn’t hook, we can double-pull. Same goes for me if I don’t hook. Unless we both hook, we move on.

As you can see, different scenarios will offer new variables to take into consideration. The list I provide here is a starting point, things I think are key to keep in mind in most if not all situations. There is no way to write an article on in-field decision making and take into consideration every potential variable of every potential scenario. However, from this post, you can learn a lot about the overall mindset of decision making to use as you see fit. You can add your own variables to your equations if you wish. In fact, in certain circumstances, I recommend it.