The Rules of the Game. Neil Strauss

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СКАЧАТЬ thought were possible for a guy like me. And Chad, despite working just as hard, was still a virgin. So I sat down with him one night and tried to figure out why. The reason, we eventually realized, was that we had different strategies for learning.

      Afterward, I began developing the fourteen laws of learning that follow. They apply not just to the game, but to school, work, and hobbies. They are what separate a chump who’s banging his head against the wall in frustration from a champ who’s smoothly ascending to the top of the game. Make sure you understand and can practice each principle before moving on to the next.

1.	Acquire and apply knowledge in small chunks. Some people are perfect preparers. They want to gather every scrap of information on a subject before taking action. And though they seem to be working hard, this is actually a form of procrastination. The best way to learn the game is to take it one step at a time. Just learn what you need to get to the next level. If you can’t approach women, just work on openers. When you master openers, then learn how to continue the conversation. Don’t worry about advanced sexual techniques. You’ll soon get there if you continue to progress by adding one piece at a time as you need it.
2.	There is no such thing as rejection, only feedback. A lot of people get discouraged and give up after a single setback or rejection. They tend to take rejection personally, seeing it as a comment on who they are rather than what it really is: feedback on what they’re doing. Every time you approach a group of people and something goes wrong, you’ve been presented with an opportunity to learn why they responded negatively and what you could have done to prevent that. If you possess the ability to learn from your mistakes, then failure is literally impossible, because each rejection brings you closer to perfection.
3.	It’s never her fault. Who do you blame when something goes wrong during an approach? If you catch yourself saying that a situation was impossible, the guys were jerks, or the woman was just a “bitch,” then you’re wrong. It was your fault. It’s always your fault. And that’s a good thing, because it means you’re in control. So never blame any person or situation. Instead, demonstrate a willingness to examine yourself and accept criticism without taking it personally. Only then can you accurately determine whether there was something you could have done to change the outcome, or if the outcome was truly unavoidable.
4.	Learn actively rather than passively. Just as you can’t learn to play football by watching videos and posting in football news-groups, the only way to learn to attract women is from real-world experience. Anyone can sit in a seminar or buy a DVD and learn the principles, but the guys who win the game are the ones who can apply them.
5.	Don’t rehearse negative outcomes. One of the biggest problems men have when it comes to meeting women is that they rehearse negative scenarios in their minds. Often, these become excuses not to go out and try something new. Instead, get out of the house, make a few approaches, and if any of these scenarios happens to occur in real life, then find out what to do. This isn’t sky-diving: There’s little to no risk of actual harm from being unprepared.
6.	Understand how your mind learns. The psychological field of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) offers a useful four-step model of how the mind learns. It can serve as a yardstick to measure your progress.

       Unconscious incompetence: You’re doing something wrong, and you don’t even know you’re doing it wrong.

       Conscious incompetence: You’re doing something wrong, and you’re aware that you’re doing it wrong, but you haven’t yet fixed the problem.

       Conscious competence: You’ve learned the right way to do it, and you’re doing it correctly with focused attention.

       Unconscious competence: You no longer have to think about something or work on learning it—you automatically do it correctly. In the parlance of the game, this is when you finally become a so-called natural.

7.	Be willing to go through the pain period. This game is not an easy one. You’ll be forced to confront nearly every single thing that defines you—every emotion, every action, every belief. You’ll sometimes be apprehensive about approaching a particular woman, trying a new technique, or changing a behavior. What separates an amateur from a champion is the willingness to push through that fear and do it anyway. Here’s what Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his iron-pumping days, had to say about it: “If you can go through the pain period, you make it to be a champion. If you can’t go through it, forget it. And that’s what most people lack: having the guts—the guts to go in and just say . . . ‘I don’t care what happens.’ ”
8.	Don’t look to friends or family for approval. Not all of your friends and family will understand the journey you’re about to take. They may tell you that they don’t like how you’re changing. They may make fun of you for wanting to improve. That’s okay. It happened to me. It also happened to Oprah: When she lost weight, she lost friends. This surprised her at first, until she learned that her largeness had given them an excuse to feel better about their own bodies. So, when you start attracting women and adventure, your friends may not welcome it—you’ve become a threat to their limiting beliefs and complacency about their own shortcomings. Let it be their problem, not yours.
9.	Be willing to test new ideas, even if they don’t seem logical. Before I learned the game, I considered myself an intelligent and successful person. Yet the logic that had gotten me so far in the world wasn’t getting me anywhere with women. In order to make a change, I had to try some new behaviors, even if they didn’t seem logical. I said things I thought would drive women away, but instead they attracted them. I wore outrageous clothes I thought would get me laughed out of the room, but instead they motivated women to approach me. And that’s when I realized that I’d never really been using logic in the first place—because, as any good scientist knows, before dismissing a new hypothesis, it’s necessary to test it first.
10.	Once something works, figure out how and why it works. There are some men who do great just following these instructions and repeating the routines. But the ones who become superstars are the ones who, after a series of successes, figure out why the routines worked and what made them work. There’s only one rule of pickup, and that rule is: There are no rules, only guidelines. Once you understand the principles behind each idea, you’ll know when to follow the guidelines, when to dismiss them, and when to invent new ones.
11.	If you don’t know what to do, don’t leave. If you run out of material when talking to a woman you’ve just met, you’re not going to learn anything by running away. Stay in the conversation and, if you run out of things to say, push it five, ten, twenty minutes further—even if you have to violate the guidelines and buy her a drink or ask interview questions. It’s the best way to learn something new for next time.
12.	Hang around someone better than yourself. This is the single best way to improve in any area. Your mentor doesn’t have to be the top attraction expert in the world, just someone who has a little more skill than you do. If you don’t know anyone who can fill this role, instead of going out to meet women one night, go out to befriend someone who’s good with СКАЧАТЬ В начало < 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 > В конец