Fundamentals

Get alert, tune yourself in, and EXPECT the women you see to signal or approach you. Do this, and your fundamentals improve… and women actually do respond a lot more.

A year or so ago, I was talking to Ricardus (remember him?) and he mentioned a day when he went around feeling like the sexiest man in town. He just put it in his head: "I am the most attractive man in this city," and as he went about his day, women's heads turned. Ultimately a random cute girl approached him and struck up a conversation with him.

And when he told me about that, I thought, "Oh yeah, I do that too."

Most of my content focuses on 'outer game', because I think that's just generally easier for guys to focus on, and that the 'inner game' will catch up once the outer game's tight.

But there's a converse to this too: even once your outer game is solid, and your fundamentals are great, you can still slack off a lot when you're not in the right headspace.

Try this: wherever you are, right now:

• Remember the last pretty girl who gave you a look when you were out somewhere. What did her face look like? Her body? What sort of signs of interest did she give you?

• Remember the last time you felt like you were on top of the world. Was it just after you got out of the gym? Just grabbed a number from a new girl or rolled in the hay with one? Had some other kind of victory?

• Remember that when a man walks and acts in a confident way, everyone around him views him as a confident man. Perception is reality, in this case

• Now, with those three things in mind, remind yourself that you are actually a pretty desirable guy

What happens to your fundamentals when you do this?

Do you straighten your posture up more?

Puff your chest out a bit?

Give your head a more confident tilt?

Open your eyes a bit wider, and become more alert?

Most likely you did these things, plus a host of other small things.

And all those small things add up together to make you stand out in a noticeable way from all the other people around you.

You may have noticed, but a LOT of couples look really similar to each other, facially. Is there an element of attraction related to facial similarity?

Send this article to anyone you know who thinks "You can't get a good-looking woman unless you're genetically blessed with natural good looks yourself!" to really blow his mind.

There's an interesting phenomenon I've paid some attention to over the years: the phenomenon of romantic couples looking facially quite similar to one another.

I first started paying attention to it when I noticed how different different people's assessments are of what is attractive. There's a thread on our forum where guys post pictures of their dream lays... any man who goes through that list is going to see some women he agrees with, and some women he says, "What? That's your dream shag?!"

Seriously, you should scroll through that list... you'll be surprised. Here's just a sample of what different men from the Boards rate as their dream girls to go to bed with:

The dream lays of various different guys. Which ones are your dream lays?

What I began to notice over the years was oftentimes when a guy told me some girl was really hot, and I looked at her and thought, "Whoa... that girl is not really attractive at all," I could take a look at the girl, then take a look at the guy, and I'd discover they actually had a great deal of facial similarity. Similar eyes, similar nose, similar mouth, similar jawline.

And it would click: "Ahhhh... that's why he likes her. She looks like him."

When I'd look at celebrities, and scratch my head over why a wealthy, famous guy with his pick of nearly any woman he wants would choose as his wife some of the total dogs a lot of male celebrities seem to pick (in my tastes), I'd realize those dogs were, in fact, very facially similar to the male partner himself.

At the same time, from time to time, I'll notice couples whose faces are almost total opposites. This intrigued me too. I see it a lot less than the "dead similar" couples, but I do see it.

And as I saw all this, I started to formulate a theory, that gave me a better understanding of human mate choice matching.

This theory made me even more confident (as if I was confident enough) in my own pickups as well... because it helped me realize a few things about what kinds of girls were likely to be most receptive to me, and what kinds of girls I was likely to get on with best myself.

Manly does not mean malodorous. Well-groomed does not mean weak. These grooming issues tip the scales between success and failure with women.

Grooming isn’t a town in Wyoming. Grooming is what you, as a man, should be doing to attract the sexiest women possible.

When I teach in-person at live bootcamps, one of the most annoying aspects of my job is when a man shows up with very obvious grooming deficiencies. So today, I’m going to point out the top grooming blind spots for men.

Does Grooming Matter?

Most of these mistakes are so clear to me it is almost painful. Why should I have to tell the guy he’s making these basic grooming mistakes? Does he not have self-respect?

I’m not talking about fashion mistakes. That’s a different subject. I’m talking about grooming — keeping your look clean and tidy as though you care about yourself.

Most men are clueless when it comes to fashion, too, and they use “game” as an excuse not to learn about it.

“But with game, I thought it doesn’t matter what you wear,” they say to me.

No, you need to groom yourself properly, and learn about fashion. It's a very important part of fundamentals.

How can one gain more control over how his interactions with women play out? How do you increase your odds of attracting women? Add meaning to your movement.

In my previous article, I described contextual mirroring. In this article, I will give another example of seduction, explaining how it exists as more than just a vague set of concepts and relationships between ideas.

It’s important to know that seduction has an end goal. There is nothing worse than spending time to get good at something only to realize your goal is too vague to improve, and you can’t change your results.

With seduction, it is almost inevitable that most will come to that conclusion. So today, I will reveal two concrete changes that will hopefully shake your world at its foundations. You’ll come away understanding seduction is not only real but excessively powerful, even though you may be unaware of this fact and have never truly understood what you are capable of.

How can one gain more control over how his interactions with women play out? Let’s talk about a less-visible yet hugely impactful factor that will bring concrete changes.

When it comes to seduction, you may be limited in the things you can change regarding your initial impressions with girls. You can smile, act confident, use verbal routines, and improve your fashion and  body language.

However, no matter how much you try to change what you are doing or look like, you remain relatively the same person as where you started.

So the question I’ll address in this article is: are there concrete changes you can make to consistently increase your odds of seducing a girl? If so, how do you learn what to do?

Your body language says loads about you. These seductive mannerisms let women know instinctively that you’re a cool, sexy guy – who’s probably good in bed, too.

To become better with women, you need consistent behaviors. If your behaviors are always insular (meaning you only interact with a few people), her read of you will be different than if you are open and can talk smoothly with everyone.

Consistent behaviors serve as the bedrock upon which a woman sets her level of comfort with you. It helps set up everything else you do with your technique, social proof, or verbalizations.

Some behaviors are obvious, but others are harder to piece together when you are just starting. I want to describe several behaviors you want to embody, so you’ll have an idea of what to work on and why girls’ reactions will change — in your favor.

Not all men are born lady killers. Lucky for us, the seduction community has proven time and again that even YOU can get hot girls by focusing on what you can control.

Because most guys haven’t had success "just being themselves," they think verbal game is the only essential skill in seduction. There’s no possibility that a girl may be waiting to meet a guy who looks like you, right? You’re not good looking, or tall, or rich. There’s zero chance that she may be single, bored, lonely, or horny, and you’re just her type at the right time and place?

It’s the men who don’t try often enough who are the first to cry “Only looks matter!” They have inner-game issues related to their self-image (e.g., I’m ugly). So, I get them to record audio of their approaches with their phones, and unsurprisingly, their conversations are boring: no emotion, no insights, just surface level small talk. Then they wonder why they’re getting phone numbers, but not dates. It must be because they’re so ugly, they figure.

I also get these eccentric guys. They show up dressed like bums, or clowns, with nose hairs jutting out, loose, dirty clothing, or fashion from 1996 hip hop culture. They never run out of things to say, and their conversations are anything but boring. They also believe they’re the most handsome of all men. They have astronomical self-esteem. But the women don’t want anything to do with them because they feel embarrassed being seen with these guys.

So as a coach, I quickly slot men into categories:

• Take the guy shopping (do a makeover)

• He needs grooming

• He must learn how to talk to women (female psychology)

• He needs inner-game confidence coaching (lacks self-esteem)

• He needs to tweak his fundamentals (body language, mindset, opening, etc.)

And so forth.

Every man can improve himself. But he has to believe it’s possible and be willing to put in the effort.

As far as these low-self-esteem cases, the one thing they have in common is that they’re “not enough.” They’re just not good enough (in their minds) to get the hot girls. They’re not good-looking enough, and they just don’t know what to say. They think if they could correct one of those issues, then everything would turn around for them.

That’s what they tell themselves, anyway. If they were better looking and had game, everything would work out. Well, isn’t that why we’re learning this stuff? Because we’re not all born handsome and witty?

It’s how I used to think, too: I wasn’t good enough for hot girls. I was too short, too fat, too skinny, too young, too old, too plain, and I had to talk myself attractive. Once I discovered the pickup community, it was like being handed a magic wand. All I had to do was practice these tactics and techniques, so I’d finally know exactly what to say to girls. Now, almost 14 years later, I still have no idea what to say to girls to get them to like me. But I’m a lot more confident, and women like that trait.

Here’s the truth about “Game.” As a science, it was made for average, frustrated chumps. Not good-looking, social geniuses.

We’ve learned:

• Maximizing your physical attractiveness by going to the gym, dressing better, improving posture, body language, eye contact, and vocal tonality.

• Female psychology, or what sort of behaviors are attractive to women: confidence, humor, bravery, ambition, social freedom, sexual liberation, being non-judgmental, etc.

• Increasing the number of women you meet, through cold approach at night and during the day, social circle, and online dating sites