Pickup

Lately I've been noticing a fair amount of guys discussing difficulty approaching women while looking smooth and effortless. Some of the time, they're ending up not approaching girls they like at all, because they can't find the "right angle" or they're waiting for the "right moment," and that moment never comes.

Approaching girls is a bit of an art, but how to approach a girl is not - that you can boil down to distinct bits, pieces, and learnable, repeatable steps.

However, it's also a topic that's shrouded in a lot of general, generic advice and scads of "Just do this [hard-sounding thing] and the girl is yours!"

Before we get into the mechanics on how to approach a girl, a few articles to recommend checking out if you haven't already done so (or, are in need of a refresher):

• Overcoming Approach Anxiety (combatting nervousness prior to approaching)

• Move Faster (a basic but under-discussed tenet of good game)

• Reactions vs. Results (a mistake loads of men make - confusing reactions from women for results with women)

• How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need (a broad overview of the mentality you'll need to have and the situations you'll run into in the modern dating environment)

• The Law of Least Effort and Sprezzatura (the big impact that the appearance of effort has on how attractive you are to women and the kind of results you get)

We'll be using and referring to these principles here - if you're vague or unfamiliar with any of them, make sure you give these a look.

That in mind, let's get you armed up with a process for approaching that takes advantage of the situation and the environment and has you meeting girls as easily as possible, as smoothly as possible, and with the best end point possible (the girls you meet wanting to meet up with you again and exchanging contact details with you - or better).

And we'll do all that with the 4 big mistakes that men make when approaching - and the 10 steps to take to have a near-perfect approach.

Today I want to talk about a strange and confusing topic for a lot of guys - namely, getting mixed signals from a girl.

You know what mixed signals are: one moment, she's flirty and warm with you, and you get excited, thinking you're getting somewhere with her. The next moment, she's cool and aloof - and you're really not sure what happened.

Then, out of nowhere - BAM! You're back get warm, flirty behavior from her.

So does that mean she likes you, or does that mean she doesn't?

In 2001, I set foot inside a nightclub, just off the seashore in Ocean City, Maryland, for the first time in my life. It was senior week, the week after graduation from high school, and I was 18 years old... and my efforts to get my life on track were sputtering out. I'd tried everything else I could think of to learn social skills, to make friends, to get girls; but none of it had worked. I was liked, in my way - most of my classmates thought I was cool, or a curiosity... something of a high school legend. But I had no friends to speak of. I kept everyone at arm's length, fearful of substantial social interaction. I didn't even know how to hold a conversation with people. And unlike almost everyone else in my graduating class, I wasn't going to college come summer's end.

No one understood why one of the best students in school wouldn't go to college, with no job, and no backup plan, but how could they. They had their normal lives. Friends, girlfriends, parties, fun. Walking into a nightclub alone - an environment I'd never been in in my life - and walking out with a girl was my last resort. While the rest of my classmates drank and laughed and talked and partied with their friends and hookups and paramours, I struck out into the night on my own, driven and determined, on one last, hubristic, quixotic quest that was only ever going to end one way.

One of the older pieces of writing of mine still floating around on the Internet is a newsletter I wrote for theApproach back in 2007 called "Becoming a Great Storyteller." Because I already wrote something on it back then, and because much of the emphasis I've placed on Girls Chase is on getting others to tell you their stories more than it is to get you telling yours, I never took the time to get a proper treatment up for how to tell a story.

If you've read through the other articles on this site, you've no doubt come across some of the more story-driven pieces here - one of the more classic examples of this being "Can't Stop Thinking About Her?" Storytelling is a key component of most things involving people - whether that's writing, teaching, or speaking; building connections with others, delivering speeches at political rallies, or shouting on high from the pulpit.

The best actors are storytellers.

The best bosses are storytellers.

The best authors are storytellers.

The best seducers are storytellers.

The best salesmen are storytellers.

The most powerful, compelling, magnetizing people from all walks of life are storytellers.

And if you'd like to join their ranks, to hold that candle up that flickers light onto the damp and dusty walls of intrigue and enchantment and fantasy and allure, to attract the minds of those trapped in lives of boredom and normality and sameness and deliver them a wake up call that snaps them at once to attention, then, to do that, you must know how to tell a story.

In the comments section of "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way," on how viewing and talking about yourself as smart actually impedes progress in your endeavors, a reader named Al made the following request:

“Great Article, Chase this is an invaluable mindset for so many areas of life. I want to see an article on how to tell good anecdotes and speak about yourself. I know this goes against deep diving and LOLE but when conversations do start to become a question and answer session i often struggle to make an insightful or interesting comment.”

Al's right - while there's a great deal on this site about how to get other people talking to you, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot about how to talk about yourself.

So, in order to change that, I've put together a two-part article series on the subject: the first on talking about yourself, and the second on telling great stories.

Let's kick this two-parter off then, and have a look at how you ought to go about talking about yourself with women to achieve maximal results.

In the comments on "Your Mental Model is Flawed," M asked the following question about cologne:

“Speaking of expensive cologne...is it worth the investment? Right now my only scent is my deodorant, lol.”

I gave a quick response, but I've been wanting to do a piece on male scent for a while now. I spent a great deal of time diving into this to figure out what the "ideal" scent for men was... was it a cologne? A body spray? An aftershave? Was it pheromones? Something else? What scent gets you the best results with women?

They all propose to turn you into a man irresistible to women, of course... but most of it's just noise to be tuned out. There had to be, I felt certain, a specific solution out there somewhere to the question of what scent women like best.

Today's article chronicles my own intermittent investigation - spanning perhaps 15 years - into the phenomenon of male scent, and takes a look at what the research on scent has to say.

And my guess is, if you're accustomed to the standard advice thrown liberally about in Western society, you'll be in for a bit of a surprise.

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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.

In "Book Excerpts: Get Girls in Bed (Without a Bed)," I mention a number of different places you can escalate to intimacy with women without being in bed at your home or her home, and a few of the details on doing so. However, guys have continued to ask about how exactly to pull this off... which I understand. If you've never taken a girl anywhere other than your bedchambers, taking her on a bench or a back alley somewhere can feel rather daunting.

You may also even wonder that one thing many a man who's never done something yet with a woman will wonder: "Is she even going to go for this?"

Well, if that sounds like you, then fret no more, for this article is all about answering how to handle those outré sex logistics problems: how do you "get her to agree" to "weird" logistics for sex, how do you set the mood, and how do you actually, you know, physically do it?