Self Help Application Challenge

Hey guys,

Time for a little personal shit. I'm doing pretty awful in school right now. I'm completely failing one class (to a horrible extent) and hopefully getting C's in all the other classes if I manage to do extremely well as the semester winds down. The thing that bugs me most about this is that this is not a problem of me understanding the material, nor is it a problem of me having the desire... I actually enjoy most of my classes, so homework isn't that big a deal. The problem lies entirely in execution.

If I had to break it down, I'd say there's three aspects of execution that I had trouble with:

1. Organization
This was a huge one. The class I'm failing was due to a bunch of stupid mistakes, like reading a chapter but not writing out the two required questions for the homework. Probably the biggest issue.

2. Clarifying and Remembering priorities.
This began to be an issue about half way through the semester. I forgot about my initial goals of doing exceptionally well at school, and began to make decisions based on other things. This led to a loss of momentum for me, which created problems with my...

3.Self Discipline
Once I lost that momentum, the next step would have been to use self-discipline to pull myself out of the hole and get back on track. I found myself thinking about priorities and making efforts to reorganize myself, but not following through because "I don't feel like it" or "I'll do it later" or "there's plenty of time".

Without that momentum backing me, I lacked the self discipline to say "fuck it, ACT NOW."

A lot of this stuff ties directly into empowering your inner-man, but that's for different articles.

Anyways, the second thing that really bugs me about this stuff is that I don't have any excuse for being bad at ANY of these things. Not ONLY do I read about them for fun, but the classes I'm taking (Art and Science of Management, The Art of the New, Psychology of Learning, and Entrepreneurial Communication and Influence)all relate DIRECTLY to these three issues. I probably have more information on how to deal with these three issues in my own room than many of my peers have seen in their entire lives.

The problem, again, lies in Execution and Application. I have the information, now I need to start USING it. Yes, I'm busy, but I can take one to two hours or so every day in the morning to read one chapter from a self help book, answer the questions it asks, and apply the material.  I'll write about my experiences here.

The book I'm starting with is 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris. I'm using this book because I think it addresses all the issues I've mentioned above from a short term perspective.  This is important because I only have about two weeks left of the semester.

The book is specified towards business, but I'm going to apply it in the context school.

I began this earlier today, then realized it was rather silly to be doingsomething so applicable to my blog and NOT be writing about it.

I started with Chapter Three, again, I'm applying these principles to school... and I think I even misinterpeted some of the questions to make them relevant.  But that's not the point, it's about taking action and applying his principles so that I don't fuck up again.  I'll post up the questions and answers from that chapter in a seperate post.

Need your Feedback

I don't know if anybody actually reads the blog... but either way I'm going to ask for some feedback.

I have a bunch of half written articles in the works, and I'm wondering which topics you guys would find interesting enough for me to finish. Leave me a comment and lemme know.

1.Core Vs. Ego, how to tell the difference.

2.How to be more likable

3.Community phrases we need to stop using, and their English equivalents.

4.Back to Basics, How to be a Man (Tough love post)

5.Things you don't talk about at the dinner table (a post on how to use sensitive and offensive topics as a way to get closer to someone)

6.How to have an Excellent Conversation with a Complete Stranger

7.How to be Compelling

8.College Game: Meet to Lay

9. The Wiseman (post on how to create a vibe of mystery, authority, and wisdom)

10.The Truth Thus Far (a list of principles in life which I have found to be overwhelmingly true and effective)

11. The Frame Snap Back: What it is and How to Avoid it

12. The Incredible Adaptability of Women

13. "Lusional Confidence"... The Alternative to Delusionsal Confidence

14. An Expansion of any of the Previous Articles I've Written

Response to Damien: How to Run Connection Game

This is one of those posts where you start writing your response, then you realize it should really be an article in its own right. It's in response to Damiens Excellent article : Skip Attraction - and still get the girl.

Fucking awesome article man. I've had some thoughts floating around in my head lately about this... would love to get your collaboration on this shit.

I never ever followed ACS model but I did notice that my club interactions pretty much followed it spot on... and I thought maybe Mr. E was right about that being the model for how interactions between male and female work.

But then I started doing daygame and I realized that my interactions would follow all sorts of weird patterns, but most commonly as I started getting deeper and deeper into the connection shit, it would be CSA.

So, it's not really Attraction that's necessary to start with in a club... it's attention.

The other interesting conclusion I came to from these observations was that Connection had NO bearing on attraction whatsoever. Listening to a girl, did not, as some community members advocate (and yes, I actually saw a post by an instructor an another forum advocating this position), kill attraction. Nor did it, as I originally thought, and you posit in this article, create attraction.

Rather, it just created an intense desire to be around you. And yet, there was attraction created in these interactions. The sexual tension was there, and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

At first, I thought it was the tiny bits of "attraction" material I was throwing in. My listening allowed me to see exactly when she was getting bored, and so I would throw in a bit of fun to keep the interaction positive, and then go back to active listening. It was this process that made me include the actual step of "acting" in my active listening model... something that most active listening ironically doesn't include.

However, I soon realized that again, I wasn't responding to lack of ATTRACTION in the girl, but lack of attention, and that this was what would build up when I would throw these fun bits in. While there where small BT spikes when I would do this, it wasn't nearly enough to justify the massive attraction that I was generating from these girls.

Additionally, there were TONS of guys in the so called "friends zone" that had great connection with girls, but absolutely no attraction from them. What was I doing that I was able to have SEX with all my friends, while they couldn't...

I soon realized that while my typical pattern was CSA, the guys stuck in the friend zone would typically attempt to do CAS. They'd get really close to the girl, then they'd start to test the waters to see if she liked them, and try to do attractive things to impress her, then they'd "make a move" and if she didn't respond well, they'd "realize" that they had no chance, and that would be it.

So here's the insight:
It's the SEDUCTION which creates attraction. Specifically, Sexuality and Escalation. All the massive attraction gains I was getting came from when I introduced these two elements. ESPECIALLY when the girl realized that I was unapologetic about these things, and that it was just part of who I was. This is why Shock and Awe works so well, and also why a makeout will ALWAYS be more intense the more she rejects your kiss... she sees that you are unapologetic about your sexuality and escalation, and that your identity is not reactive to what she does.

Finally came the last piece. I found that when I had this massive connection built, EVEN when I then built massive attraction through escalation, the girl would still be scared to have sex. Luckily, through my active listening process, I was able to determine exactly WHY she was scared, and through the fourth step: Act, I was able to correct it.

I began to notice a pattern of three objections, that, if dealt with before hand, would eliminate 90% of lmr when using the CSA model:

1. This makes me a slut.
2. I'll get attached, and you won't.
3. You'll get attached, and I won't.

As long as you can answer these three objections (the answers all depend on what you want from the relationship with the girl) you'll have dealt with all the problems associated with running connection centered game. You'll still get the odd lmr associated with social conditioning, rape victims, etc, but 90% will be gone.

And that's connection game in a nut shell.