(2) Intermediate

I had a conversation the other night over dinner with a friend of mine. He confessed to me that he'd had a moment in university where he'd failed a class, and it made him seriously question his smarts. Before that, he'd always had an easy time in classes, always been at the top of his class, and viewed himself as smarter than 99.9% of people. But after... he'd spent the next 10 years or so trying to figure out, if he isn't smarter than everybody else, then what's so special about him?

We talked some more, and he made some comment later about me being "smart." There it was again... this notion of "smarts." And I said this to my friend:

"You know, when people call me 'smart,' I actually find it mildly insulting."

"Well, I'm sorry for 'insulting' you, Chase!" he said, half in jest. And I took a moment to try and define why it is that I feel like "smart" is an insult - and then I realized it.

The feeling for me is that when someone calls me "smart," they're taking away all my credit for having worked hard. It's similar to someone calling you "lucky," or "handsome," or "naturally gifted," or anything else that serves to make it sound like you didn't actually DO anything to get whatever it is you got... you just happened into it by a roll of the dice, or a winning of the genetic jackpot.

I realized something else in that moment though, too - a lot of the things my friend was struggling with, that I didn't struggle with, these mindsets, these limiting beliefs - were coming from the fact that he saw some people as smarter than others, and some people not as smart, and that because of this, what they could accomplish was set in stone.

It's a totally different way of looking at the world from how I look at it, and other people who look first to "hard work," and not much at all to "smarts."

So we talked about this, him and I, and I explained why the answer to the question "Are you smart?" has a lot less to do with your results and success rates than you might think, and why thinking that smarts are essential places a ceiling on your accomplishments - regardless of whether you're brilliant, above average, or square in the middle.

Let's have a look at why.

It's the holiday season, and that means one thing: time to pick up girls out shopping!

If you don't have much experience picking up women who are out shopping for shoes or shellfish, you might think this is rather hard... I mean, walking up to some girl in the middle of a well-lit store and just... hitting on her? Isn't that obvious?

Actually, there are a number of more-or-less smooth ways of going about running pickups in shopping areas, whether malls or shops or grocery stores. A bit of a sense of humor and a good handle on indirect game helps; while you can use direct openers out shopping, they often come off a bit too strong.

Mostly, what you'll be focused on creating in a shopping environment is a feeling of fate, fortune, or destiny... you and the girl met because you simply had to meet. It was written in the stars.

Today, we'll talk about how you go about creating that feeling, and help you bring some holiday cheer into the lives of some beautiful, lonely women out in the wide world.

Note from Chase: Eric is one of the members of the new Girls Chase forum who showed up on the scene with a bang. Offering sage advice to many of the beginner and intermediate-level members, he's quickly demonstrated both an intuitive grasp of a lot of the more advanced concepts in seduction, and a solid and developing ability to break down those concepts into understandable chunks. He asked me if I might be interested in letting him write a few things for the site - I told him I'd be honored. Here's Eric, with his debut article.

In case you aren't quite acquainted with me, I'm a frequent member of the site as well as on the new forum (which is doing quite well - we have a great community thus far). You've probably seen me replying to posts on the blog here in the comments section as "Anon."

Earlier this week I went through a few questions on our forums, and I stumbled across one in particular from a student of the game. I was about to go more in-depth, but I realized to properly explain it, it was going to take a proper write-up, and I thought the answer I had to give would benefit a lot more guys than just whoever reads that forum post.

I wanted to put it on the blog.

I briefly explained the concept a little on the forums, in a response that focused on getting your conversation into "automatic," and the reception was, essentially, this:

“Wow, the insights here are incredible. All the things you said, just these behavioral changes seem so simple, but I can see it working. Is there a certain guide to doing just that? How to make normal conversation or “autopilot” conversation be able to turn on a girl?”

I sent a message to Chase wondering if I should write some stuff up, if that'd be something he'd be open to and something he'd have, and he gave me the go ahead.

Thus, this post - on the other side of effort: efficiency in seduction.

Early in my seduction career, I studied everything I could from the guys I considered the "top guys" who'd come before me. But I especially focused on the guys who really good were but who didn't know how to market themselves... essentially, the hidden gems of seduction.

What I realized was that the mainstream school of thought on picking up women was almost as dogmatic as mainstream society itself; while mainstream society believed in:

• Be nice to women
• Take things slow
• Just be yourself
• Pay for dates
• No sex until the third date

The pickup community at the time I entered also had its own tenets, chiefly:

• Follow the 3-second rule of approaching
  
• Seductions must unfold over 7+ hours
• You must be impressive and show higher value
  
• You must follow a "method" - certain steps and procedures, routines, etc.
• Fast seductions were "fools mates" and only happened with "easy" women

Which to me seemed a definite step up and an improvement from what mainstream society preaches, but... it still seemed a bit too limiting and contrived.

Why do you need some complicated procedure to "show your value" to women? Why do you have to go through some whole song and dance just to get girls?

I ended up searching out unconventional teachers and older guys in the community who'd largely vanished from the main forums and hang outs, convinced I could learn the things from them that the rest of the devotees of the social and seductive arts seemed not to know.

And by and large, I did.

And one of the greatest lessons I learned from these studies was how to find out the answer to the question "what does she want?" using a forgotten technique its originator called "eliciting values."

I'm going to teach you that technique today.

Whether you're working your way through college or a master's program or you're taking adult education classes on the side in another language or a new skill you'd like to get down, you've probably run into girls in class you liked at some point or another.

Heck, maybe even in most of the classes you've taken you've run into a few!

And if you have, you've probably also run into the scenario common to most guys who've had cute girls in their classes:

1. Spot pretty girl in class
2. Try and sit near pretty girl
3. Try to make eye contact with her
4. Maybe exchange a few words
5. Try and work together with her, maybe on a project
6. Try and impress her in class - telling jokes, say, or knowing all the answers
7. Eventually it seems like maybe she likes you - but then nothing happens

You can easily spend one semester after another doing this, always feeling like girls like you, and never getting anywhere with them. And that's frustrating.

If you've ever sat there admiring some beautiful girl in class, then never made a move, you know what I'm talking about. She made class a lot more interesting and exciting to attend... but that was about it. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually meet these pretty girls in class and date them?

A lot of the advice out there centers on getting you flirting with girls in class... eye contact, teasing, and all that jazz. To me though, that's a big waste of time. ANYBODY can flirt with a girl in one of his classes... what we want to get you doing is asking them OUT.

So let's get you asking them out.

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.

Most of the time, you walk about the world meeting ordinary people living ordinary lives who leave little of an impression on you. That's life.

But, every now and again, you see someone, or run into someone, who strikes you a certain way. You can't quite put your finger on what exactly that something is - the individual has a certain degree of intensity about him, you think; or a piercing gaze. He might not be charismatic; and he might not be sexy or sensual. But he's definitely got something.

This is a post about that "something;" about how to be edgy. Edge is a particularly difficult thing to learn, and teach, because it entails a specific rawness about oneself that most people simply lack. And that rawness is difficult to emulate when you don't have it... perhaps more difficult than being sexual, more than being charismatic, more difficult than almost anything else.

And while it is necessary for you to transcend into the higher levels of success with women, it isn't a magic bullet; you'll meet plenty of men with edges who still struggle with girls, too. It's a component, and a vital one, but it isn't all that good on its own.

Adrian commented the following recently over on the post about indirect game:

“Chase,

Great to hear from you! Cultivating an "edge" is something you often talk about. That said, my understanding of what exactly constitute this "edge" is still rather spotty. To me, cultivating an "edge" is a movement along the "disarming and friendly" model towards the "bad-boy/don't-give-a-shit" model. Considering being warm and welcoming an integral factor in your process, how does cultivating an "edge" fit into it? Furthermore, during your journey in developing "edge" to your character, what are some specific areas/mindsets you worked on?

Many thanks,
A”

All right Adrian, let's talk about it. We've talked about being a sexy man plenty on here, and the vibes and nuances that go along with that.

Now let's talk about being edgy itself, and how that's different from sexy... and just how combining edginess with sexiness turns you into a very compelling character, to everyone you encounter.