Building Equity

A few weeks ago an anonymous GC reader made a very simple request:

“Can you write an article on leadership?”

Yes, certainly; I’m very happy to oblige. Leadership is a quality coveted by men the world over. It’s not only the ability to lead individual men and women, but the ability to compel larger groups to work harder and achieve more than they ever would on their own.

Similar to improving your skill with women, there is a common misconception about leadership that it’s just something people are born with and can never be learned. But today I’m going to break down leadership, and show that it can be learned by anyone... anyone willing to put in the time and effort to learn it, of course.

Note from Chase: this is a guest post on creating and implementing a habit, by Robert King, director and instructor at PUA London.

Habits are the brain's own productivity mechanism. The brain converts conscious actions, consistently repeated, into unconscious habits. The brain turns conscious actions into unconscious habits to free up future resources and will power for other tasks and actions.

The only downside to this process is that it can be extremely difficult to break bad habits or to create new ones. Once positive habits have been ingrained into the unconscious they are EXTREMELY beneficial, though.

To create a new habit, we first engage in a new activity, and the brain works very hard to process all the new information. The brain looks for patterns and tries to understand the new action. As soon as it understands how the task works, this behaviour starts becoming automatic, and the mental activity required to do the task decreases.

Think about how much brain power you used when first learning how to drive. Compare that now to when you drive; probably the vast majority of your driving is done on autopilot.

Let's talk about creating habits, which are crucial to getting success, especially in all things self-development.

Growing up, I had two uncles on my mother's side of the family, both of them married to my mother's sisters. These two uncles were on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to how the family felt about them: one of them was beloved and could do no wrong, while the other was thought of as a rascal.

Never mind the fact that the beloved uncle spent more time playing video games and guitar than he did with his wife and kids, or that the rascal was the consummate family man. Even before these men married into the family, their impressions were set in stone.

What does it take to impress a girlfriend's family? It certainly isn't many of the things you'd think would be it.

It isn't your job - that can win you some points, but they're often grudging points.

It isn't how good your conversation is, either.

In fact, it's something very different from what a lot of men seem to think it is.

I'm going to take a bit of a tangent from the usual here to discuss the topic of time efficiency and ways that you can make your social life (and the rest of your life) much more efficient.

This article is in answer to K's comment here that asks:

“Hey Chase!

Thank you so much for this website. It is truthfully the only comprehensive "how to live life" site that takes a logical approach to everything. I especially enjoyed the "Are you smart post". The difference between hard working and smart is truly all important. It would be amazing if you could get a post up here about how to be incredibly time efficient, so that we can learn how to really maximize the effectiveness of our work.

Thanks again,

K”

K's referencing the article "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way," in which we examined some research done on children praised as "smart" compared to children praised as "hard working" from an early age. The findings were that the children praised as "smart" early on shied away from hard problems later in life out of fear of failing and proving themselves "not smart," while children praised as "hard working" early on dove into hard problems later in life in with zest to show how "hard working" they really were.

In this article, I want to turn the spotlight onto the topics of hard limits, autopilot, and also revisit some of what we discussed in the article on ego depletion - so we can talk about how one becomes truly time efficient.

Guys have been asking for a while on here for a piece on fashion for men. So I guess that makes this one a long time coming.

Fashion's important. How important? It's pretty important. It's not make or break always... but you know the saying: clothes make the man.

What you wear doesn't just define you as cool, sexy, or stylish. It also subconsciously affects how other people feel toward you.

Wear clothes that make you look amazing, and people will feel like you're amazing. Wear clothes that make you look different, and people will view you as different (good or bad as that may be).

Wear clothes that make you look ordinary, on the other hand, and people will view you as just that: ordinary. Boring. Not particularly noteworthy.

They'll hardly even notice you.

And thus, we have our focus on fashion: getting noticed, in a positive way. But not like what we discussed in the article on peacocking... the truly fashionable man picks clothes that fit him so well people don't even see the individual clothing items all that much.

Instead, they just look at the man himself and say "wow."

“Why don't people just give me money?”

That's what a friend of mine once lamented, frustrated at how hard a time he was having running business and making things work as well as he thought they should.

It stems from a mindset that most people have to some extent: X just happens to people. It's a focus on events.

Events are an easy thing for the human mind to seize on:

• Climbing Mt. Everest
• Diving in the Mediterranean
• Getting married on a hilltop
• Selling a business for millions of dollars
• Sleeping with some beautiful girl
• Becoming famous and getting on TV

Most people look at the people doing these things and say, “God, that person is lucky! Why can't I have that happen to ME?”

The hard thing to do though is the thing that's also the more correct thing, and the thing that actually works: focusing not on events, but on process, instead.

In the comment section of the article on how to have a sexy walk, Matt remarked:

“Excellent article, my brother! Would love to see a post about direct/indirect pick ups specifically at the gym. Seems like a great place for day game, girls at the gym are obviously some of the hottest you'll see out in the day cause they're fit and healthy... but it's a challenging proposition. Many are listening to iPods, plugged into their music and workout. Whenever I talk to a girl at the gym I feel like I'm "disrupting" her workout.

Matt”

One of the very first places I picked up from when I was brand new to cold approach was the gym. In that case, it was a girl who worked at the gym who I sort of knew from class (I was in university at the time), but hadn't spoken to before, and I took the gym as my opportunity to do so - and then to have her drive me to get some food, and set up a proper date.

You might think gym pickup is inordinately hard simply because there are so many big muscular guys there, or because the women look so good (and there are so few of them), or because it's so brightly lit and obvious, or because since everyone else is focused on putting weights in the air and treadmill tread behind them, and that you're really going to stick out when you approach.

But in fact, there are certain advantages to meeting girls in the gym for a socially savvy man, not the least of which is the fact that most of those guys who are working out so hard there are doing so because they have no idea how to get women.

So there's not actually as much competition as you think. And in certain ways, even the environment itself can work to your benefit.

In this post, we'll take a close look at the dos and don'ts of gym pickup, along with the how-tos for opening and game at the gym.