(1) Beginner

When you meet new people, should you trust your first impressions about them? How can you tell whether new “friends” are genuine – or out to use you?

You will have many friends in this life. Many will come, most will go. I can count on my fingers the number of true friends I have, and I suspect that with most, we will eventually no longer need each other, want each other, or respect each other.

It’s easy for a friendship to dissolve.

The more I see, the easier it becomes for me to ditch a friend who acts up. I have raised my standards of behavior, not only because I know that those closest to me influence me more than I realize, and I don’t want to be held back by poisonous people, but also because I would prefer not to put someone in a position to be able to betray me.

You will be surprised at the closeness of the bonds you will form with the most random of people you meet. Before you meet them, everyone is a stranger. Even if you are introduced to someone, they’re a stranger — doubly so if you tend to meet people randomly like I do.

Those introduced to you through social circles have an impetus to be nice to you, as you have been vetted by their friends and they assume you are an ally. They will be on their best behavior.

Random people are a bit more… well, random. Sometimes, they will show you their true selves the moment you meet them, since they owe you nothing and have no act to put on. Other times, especially if they’re more skilled, they will put on their best face the moment you meet them. Why? They may want to use you. Sometimes it’s because they’re polite and high value, but you’d be unwise to count on this — you’ll meet more sharks than saints.

So how do you screen out those who wish to use you — or even harm you — for their own benefit?

Trust them the first time they reveal themselves. Trust your first impression.

Commenting on my article about 12 common unsexy nice guy traits, a reader named Colin writes:

“Your article stings and hurts [f]or one reason...which is #8 on this list [don't have any interests or passions]. That's me. That's the reason I'm a mid-30s virgin and am too scared to try any relationships with women. I have a well paying job, own my house, have good relationships with my parents, and behave the way in my "nice guy" mind an attractive guy should be. But I have no passion. I hate and avoid competitive things, because I feel so bad about myself when I fail. I never played sports as a kid for that reason. I'm sort of a wuss, really. #8 is KILLING me. Girls I like have passions. Guys they are with have passions. Why should they like a wuss like me who avoids passionate things? At least it makes sense to me. I even have a girls number and I'm too afraid to call her for fear of exposing my wuss, passionless self. That and the fact that I don't socialize with any friends...don't really have any at that. I realized long ago I had no hobbies other than masturbating, and so I started taking up guitar. But even that's wuss because that's not competitive. At least not the way I play. I'm lost and I don't know how to get around this, no matter what I read. I need specific help.”

We've had a lot of guys ask the "How to be passionate?" question over the years. Most of the advice out there is ephemeral - you've got to search for what you're passionate about! they tell you. Makes for a nice sound bite, and while it is true, it is also pretty useless, as far as advice goes.

We're going to nail it down for you today, and give you some practical tips you can use to immediately get the 'passion' area of your life handled.

Because, well, everything's better with passion. Until you reach the point where everything's better with Zen... however, that's a discussion for another day.

Today, let's put the magnifying glass on passion, and see how to add it into your life even when it seems like it isn't there.

With the right mix of practices both before you go out and while you’re already out, you can keep yourself in a proper social and seductive state.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed what “state” is and how it worked. We also mentioned a few caveats to keep in mind regarding state as a tool for seduction. Today we will discuss how to get in state and how to manage it in field.

Here are a couple articles that supplement what I’ll be covering today:

• What Men Who Get Laid Do Before a Night Out

• Picking Up Women When You’re Feeling Low Energy

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.