(4) Advanced

If you're the kind of hard-nosed, stubborn-headed realist I am, things like visualization usually sound like some kind of hippie-ish New Age flimflam to you the first 10 or 12 times you hear about them. That's how it was for me anyway, and I'd always laugh a little and shake my head dismissively when I'd hear people talking about "the power of visualization."

But the more I studied successful people, the more I kept running into things like visualization, meditation, and taking time out of your day to focus on what you want. Cases in point:

• Henry Ford would take time out of his day to clear his thoughts and imagine the kind of company he wanted to build and the benefits it would provide to people

• Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla - both rivals and peerless inventors, and both professed visualizers who imagined their inventions succeeding

• Tiger Woods visualizes how the golf ball will move and where it will stop before he ever hits it

• Arnold Schwarzenegger, before he spent much time bodybuilding and again once he started, spent time visualizing what it would feel like to win Mr. Universe, and began acting like he'd won it already a few years before he actually did

• Jim Carrey, feeling broken down and beaten by his lack of success in Tinseltown, wrote himself a check for $10 million for "acting services rendered," dated it for 10 years later, Thanksgiving 1995, and stuffed it in his wallet so he'd never forget it. 10 years later, just before Thanksgiving 1995, he was told he'd be paid $10 million for the film Dumb and Dumber, and he buried the check, now falling apart and in pieces, with his father - it had been both of their dreams that he'd find success

Even Albert Einstein first hit upon the theory of relativity while visualizing it, and Steve Jobs talks about blocking out the outside noise to focus on the inner voice in his 2005 Stanford commencement address.

I read about Olympic skiers and world class tennis players visualizing the slopes or the game. I read about martial artists visualizing a bout before it began. Business builders visualizing what their business would one day look like, years before it showed any signs of ever getting there back when everyone else thought they were crazy.

And I thought, this isn't just some hippie New Age junk. There's something to this, and I'm not doing it, which means I'm missing out on it.

One of the most annoying, horrible, and downright irritating situations you'll ever run into socially is someone suddenly inveighing against you with emotionally-charged, finger-pointing, judgmental arguments.

These attacks are usually unexpected when you run into them, and they'll frequently catch you off guard. They can be confusing to know how to respond to if you're more accustomed to calm, cool-headed debates about the merits and drawbacks of a specific subject - then suddenly here's someone sandblasting you with hatred and unadulterated emotion. I'm sure you've experienced it at some point or another:

“People like you are the lowest kinds of people there are! You think you can just take whatever you want and not have to suffer the consequences! You think of no one but yourself!”

Suddenly, you're so deeply on the defensive trying to prove these accusations levied against you are untrue, that you end up effectively putting your hands up and saying, "Whoa, hey, stop, that's not true at all!"

Morality attacks also usually have a powerful communal effect, with any bystanders to the argument usually feeling either a) swept up in the argument and equally enraged and emboldened, or b) so afraid of being castigated themselves that they either just agree out of fear, or they remain quiet and let things unfold, not wanting to get in the way of an onrushing freight train.

That means that when someone starts hitting you with moral superiority, you need to be quick on your feet to not get quickly cast out as whatever you're being labeled as - and the way to do that, of course, is fighting fire with fire: you must use moral superiority right back.

“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.

We went pretty deep into the metaphysical with yesterday's article, so now let's come back up for some air. Let's talk about how to turn a girl on.

Men who haven't mastered or worked on their sexy side yet have been missing out - you have tremendous power in your ability to make a woman weak in the knees (for you). Once you have the ability to turn girls on at will, you'll find their hearts beating faster, their breaths coming quicker, and their smiles spreading wider, just by being in your presence.

You'll find that sex happens a lot faster, more consistently, and more passionately, too.

When it comes to creating arousal and desire in a woman, we can break this down into three levels, or tiers:

1. Excitation,
2. Anticipation, and
3. Satiation

To create the fullest, richest degree of arousal in a girl, you must make absolutely sure you hit each one of these tiers.

So what do these three tiers - excitation, anticipation, and satiation - entail?

That's what we'll discuss today.

content="Black and white thinking is a potent tool for decision making and influencing – but it has a dark side you need to be aware of as well.">

In "Your Mental Model is Flawed," Lu asks a great question:

“Chase, I like your analysis of how there is no black and white between what is good and what is evil, because both are seen in different lights by separate cultures, societies, and individuals.

However, do you think having this "black and white" mentality is good for other areas, such as leadership? I feel like in moving your interactions forward with women, or in business, you're either going to do something, or you aren't. A gray area when it comes to leading, I believe, would be a sign of indecisiveness.

A response on how you have become a leader, not just with women but in all areas would be greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work!”

Black and white thinking's a fascinating topic. The psychological tool of black/white thinking is extremely powerful, though it rests normally on an incomplete view of the world. However, it's somewhat essential at some degree to progress and motivation in anyone.

Understanding something like black and white thinking, the question really does become, "How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go?"

Particularly if you really want to wrap your head around why people do it and why it has such a powerful hold on people's minds, you'll find the rabbit hole on this one goes rather deep.

And the truth with black and white thinking is, even the most fair-minded of individuals employes it to some degree to get anything in his life accomplished other than simply lie in bed.

I've been wanting and meaning to write an article on how to be non-judgmental on here for some time. However, I simply hadn't had quite the right angle to come at the piece with... hadn't, that was, until I did some digging into the depths of social psychology and came up with a gem.

Lots of people have asked for such an article; here was M, a little over a month ago, on the post on being a challenge to women:

“One other question: could you please write a post sometime on how to be non-judgmental and more constructive and encouraging? Many times I find myself thinking during a conversation, "Hmm, your career path/school/etc. sounds pretty dismal...why are you so unambitious? Not really sure what I can say that would be both encouraging and true." The conversation of course shuts down pretty fast after that. But I know that there IS something both encouraging and true I could say, and if I didn't have that thought in the way, I would probably be able to relate to the person and think to say it.

Best,
M”

Learning how to be non-judgmental is a powerful addition to the mental tools of any seducer - heck, any salesperson, business owner, employer, employee, teacher, student, parent, child, or friend. Being non-judgmental opens doors and unlocks verdant gardens of opportunity forever shut away and cordoned off from those less tolerant minds of the world.

Yet, it seems like such a painfully difficult thing to become... there are studies that show that even self-professed egalitarian individuals still have under-the-radar gut judgmental reactions (good or bad) to people of different races or creeds... which they then promptly rein back in.

So what is this whole non-judgmental thing really about? Can you ever truly be free of judgment... or is it all just self-delusion?

I have some interesting answers for you in this post; and a lot of it starts with a little thing called actor-observer bias.

content="In the modern West, many men have forgotten their traditions on how to be aggressive and bring the things they want into their lives.">

As a youth, I always used to envy those men around me who acted with such directness, certainty, and speed, without any hesitation or hint of self-doubt. Growing up, I found myself defined more by inaction - by being a watcher, an observer - than by any action I took. I think most people are defined like this... stuck watching from the bleachers and the sidelines while the aggressive go-getter action-takers dominate life.

So I can understand and empathize when guys write in asking how to be more aggressive, like Wolf did in the article on being hard to please:

“Hi Chase, how can I be more aggressive in my life? I think about just being extra ballsy but I think a lot about the consequences so I end up not being aggressive. How can I be more aggressive?”

Some of this ties into what we discussed in "Threats and Opportunities;" the more focused on threats you are - when the focus is aligned in a certain way - the more you tend to retreat back from confrontation and aggressive action that might possibly end in rejection or worse.

But there's another side to this, too - and that's the inherent differences between those born aggressive, and those not so naturally inclined.