Socializing

As we go deeper into certainty, we look at three more aspects: extension (the follow through after a decision), perfect uncertainty, and faith.

Welcome to Part 4, guys. If you missed the previous articles in this series, here they are.

• Part 1: The Triumvirate of Certainty

• Part 2: How to Develop Certainty

• Part 3: Appearing Certain

Understand the Triumvirate of Uncertainty. Nail down your certainty by improving your morality, your knowledge of women, and socializing. Figure out what you want from others, then learn how to demonstrate these certainties in your verbal and non-verbal expressions. That will cover most situations where you must take the lead.

But the question I raised in Part 3 remains: do you ever really know where you’re going? Are you ever truly certain about anything?

The answer to that question gives us two possibilities.

1. If one can ever be truly certain about anything, how do I get there?

2. If one can never be truly certain about anything, how do I lead decisively?

If we’re stuck with inevitable uncertainty, we can still succeed, because for women, appearance trumps substance. If it looks like it works and actually works, who cares what it’s made of? Practicality wins. Thus the answer here, if certainty is impossible, is that you don’t fake it until you make it; you fake it because there’s no other option that works.

Even if you make the wrong play, say the wrong thing, make the wrong facial expression, or time some move with a girl or a follower incorrectly, you can still stumble forward without missing a beat, and succeed. Most of my seductions are rough. Like fighting, love and sex are messy. The better your training and experience, and the better your fundamentals, the more smooth and error-free you are. But you can’t always prevent error, especially with wildcards like jealous guy friends or cockblocking girlfriends, or a resentful member of your social circle. See, that’s all perfect execution. But this series is about perfect certainty, not perfect execution.

And now, to answer the question. Can you ever be 100% certain about anything, including what you want, what you know, and what you think you ought to do?

I have three answers, starting with the most practical answer.

You won’t always be certain. But you need to be able to at least appear certain, when you are in leader-follower (or male-female) situations that demand certainty.

You might have it in your head that you are certain about something, and being certain will help demonstrate certainty. But if your certainty isn’t visible, people will not be fully sold on your certainty, and thus not follow you as wholeheartedly. In seduction, even the slightest error can have her questioning your sincerity, confidence, and any other facet of your personality.

In the first article of this series, we covered the three types of certainty (certainty of knowledge, desire, and morality), then we detailed how to become certain in part 2, and now we will cover how to demonstrate certainty.

You never want to explain yourself to a woman’s tough questions. Yet to brush them off, you need the right tactics – and the right mentality.

We’ve talked about tough questions (which fall under the umbrella of ‘tests’) before. I’ve given you some ways to answer these well, as well as a formula to know how to respond to such challenges (i.e., status and respect). And, perhaps most importantly of all, I cautioned you never to explain yourself to women.

Today we’ll talk about a few specific varieties of challenging questions you can receive (from both men and women... though we’ll focus mainly on questions from women today). That variety is tough questions; questions that put you on the spot, in a not-so-helpful-to-your-cause sort of way.

We’ll talk about brushing these questions off. But there’s going to be a twist to how we do this; we don’t want to do a brush off in a way that looks like we are trying not to answer. That’s because if you evade someone’s questions (for too long), it seems like you’re frightened, or have something to hide.

So instead, we want to brush tough questions off in a way that either blows up the question, or lets us answer it on more favorable terms.

To be able to lead – whether men, women, or both – you must be certain. And to be certain, you must have three (3) elements in place.

Two candidates are about to give their speeches for president of the Interfraternity Council. The IFC is the board that governs all the fraternities on campus. It controls how and when rush proceeds (the process by which fraternities and sororities recruit members) and deals with disciplinary action.

It's not that important of a position, since at this school, they're quite liberal with control, but it's still a position. And men, well, they like titles. It makes them feel important. They respect them. Women? They yearn for men with position. It gets them wet.

So these two men want it.

The first candidate is the former vice president and has been given the opportunity to speak first.

“Hey guys! As you know, I was vice president for the past year and hopefully have lived up to the duties given to that position. As you saw, I tried to reestablish the philanthropic duties of vice president and actually held a fundraiser, something no vice president in recent memory has done. Also, I oversaw a judicial board hearing and carried it out quickly and efficiently, another duty of vice president that hasn’t been fulfilled in recent years. I’ve seen how the executive board works. I’ve worked with the president closely, helped him facilitate almost every duty of the council, seen how all the paperwork gets dealt with, and have even met with administrators in an effort to better understand what the school wants from us.

I hope that you’ve noticed my hard work and dedication and will do me the honor of voting me in as president of the council. Thank you very much!”

How do you handle conversation in a group… especially when there’s a girl you like and want to talk to there? With 3-second eye contact, quality face time, and more.

Ideally, you’d like to be able to meet a girl one-on-one, hit it off with her, and run through the courtship free of distractions or interruptions. You know, that’s like meet her on the street... or in the café... or in the bar... or waiting for the train... and she’s allll by herself. All yours, from the moment you walk up.

In reality, you’ll get this some of the time. But if you’re waiting for only girls you can meet in isolation, you’ll pass up a lot of pretty girls who might otherwise have available to you. Girls you did not approach because they were with other people, and you didn’t want to have to deal with a group conversation.

It is a little dicier handling group conversations. However, there are upsides too. The biggest of which is, like the old ‘group theory’ of yesteryear PUA, once she sees you win over her group of friends, suddenly it becomes a lot easier for her to show attraction to you and agree to move forward with you (assuming she does like you). Effectively managing a conversation with multiple people involved, while also showing interest in and proceeding things forward with one specific girl in the group, shows a lot of good, attractive qualities about you. Leadership, confidence, social savvy, influence, ability to build a private world with her even as you charm everyone else... all these are on display as you work your way deftly through a group conversation situation, if you’re doing it right.

In this article, I’m going to give you some tips on doing it right, to better put you in that ‘successful group conversationalist’ bin.

Psychopaths have tremendous social acumen, but can be very harmful to those closest to them. Here are the 8 signs your friend is one.

They are everywhere. They work with you. They’re in your social circle. They might even be a family member.

Hell, you may even be one.

Psychopaths are everywhere.

Okay, they’re not everywhere. There’s no way to know for sure, but current estimates are that 1% of the population are psychopaths.

And psychopaths are people, except they lack sympathy. Sympathy, not empathy. That’s the big distinction I think needs clarification. If they lacked empathy, they would have a very hard time fitting in with people and manipulating them, since they’d have no idea how those people felt. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that people on the autism spectrum lack empathy. A common factor in autistic people is they regularly have no clue how others feel in a conversation, and they cannot read the most basic of social cues (which are communicated via facial expressions, body language, voice tonality, etc.).

By lacking sympathy, however, psychopaths lack the ability to actually be concerned about you. They lack the emotional response necessary to think “I feel scared for him if he makes this bad decision, so I’ll save him from it” or “He’ll be hurt if I do this to him, so I won’t do it to him.” To conceptually understand something is not even in the same universe as emotionally understanding something. The latter is infinitely more clear.

They may be able to conceptually understand that you might not like it if they bone your girlfriend, but they won’t feel the potential of regret when they consider the possibility of you finding out and being heartbroken.

You can see how this might be potentially dangerous to date a psychopath or have one as a friend. They do not have Nature’s control mechanism of sympathy that serves to prevent mass tragedies in the human species.

Their only concern is what they can get from you, how much it will cost them, and... that’s it, really.

They aren’t fundamentally evil or malicious, but they do have the capacity to be more cruel and malicious than the average person. Given the right conditions, they will strike without a second thought.

It’s imperative, then, that you learn how to spot a psychopath so you can make more informed decisions on what role you want them to play in your life.

How much should you care what others think? Everyone cares at least a little. The key is that the reactions of others can tell you what to modify in yourself.

I’ve always seen the opinions of others as a paradox.

We’ve all heard people say they don’t care what anyone thinks of them.

Well, that’s sort of impossible. If you didn’t care what people thought of you, you would never take time to cater your reputation or really even talk to people in general, since their opinion of you is a non-issue.

Obviously the spirit of this mantra of “no fucks given” is meant to combat the neuroticism that leads to the criticism or hate of others keeping you from pursuing what you want to pursue, but there is something to be said about learning from criticism.

Criticism, and even hate, can highlight possible areas of improvement, especially in regards to how you communicate your thoughts and ideas, either verbally or non-verbally.

In other words, if someone dislikes what you say or do, many times it’s how you come off doing it, not necessarily what you actually did.

And if we completely ignore the criticisms of others, we are missing out on possible improvements, no?

For instance, the advice of a mentor or teacher is criticism, but it comes from a place of compassion. He wants you to see how he sees your flaws, because he wants you to fix them, since it’s your desire to become better.