Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  MISSION 1: Refine Your Identity

  Today we’re going to focus on the most important piece in the game: you.

  In nearly every successful approach, at some point you’ll be asked what you do. If you’ve mastered disqualifiers, your initial response will probably be to tease her for asking “interview questions” and then to claim to be a professional hopscotch player. If she persists, however, you’re going to have to answer truthfully, or else she’ll think you’re hiding something.

  The work question is an opportunity that most people waste. One student used to answer, “I’m an engineer.” Engineering, of course, is a noble pursuit, but he felt like it made him sound boring to women.

  When I asked him what he was working on, he said he was going to school to learn about new mobile phone technology. So we developed a better way for him to answer the question. Now, when women ask him what he does, he responds, “I’m designing the mobile phone of the future.”

  Same occupation, different identity.

  In your Day 11 Briefing, there’s an exercise that will help you refine your identity and articulate what you do in a crisp, compelling manner. Your mission is to fill it out and learn to succinctly express what makes you special without bragging.

  MISSION 2: Approach and Continue

  Approach groups of three or more people that include at least one woman. Use an opener that contains a time constraint and a root.

  When you’re finished with the opener, continue the conversation by adding the following movements and lines:

  1.

  Pretend you’re about to leave, but take no more than one step away.

  2.

  Look back at the group and ask, out of curiosity, “Hey, how do you all know one another?”

  3.

  Be ready to respond with a question or comment. It doesn’t have to be anything clever or complex. If they say they’re friends from work, ask, “So where do you all work?” If they say they’re related, say, “That makes sense. I wonder which one of you is the black sheep.”

  4.

  You may now leave if you wish, with your all-purpose closer, “Nice meeting you.”

  5.

  You may also choose to continue talking to the group if the conversation is going well. If anyone asks what you do, answer with the identity statement you created today. Try to use the statement in at least one of your interactions.

  The task is complete after you have followed steps 1 through 3 with three different groups of people.

  MISSION 3: Master Your Inner Game

  Too many of us have no idea what goes on inside our own heads. We don’t understand our emotions, our passions, our frustrations, our needs, our thinking patterns, and why we sometimes act the way we do. And even when we do understand these things, we often find it difficult to change them.

  One of the best books on this subject is Mastering Your Hidden Self: A Guide to the Huna Way, by an ex-marine named Serge Kahili King.

  Though I recommend reading the entire book, for today’s assignment I asked Stylelife senior coach Thomas Scott McKenzie to prepare a report summarizing its application to attraction. If your inner game needs a new set of rules, this document just may change your life.

  1. What are your primary jobs, hobbies, and/or courses of study? Answer based on how you actually spend your time, not on what you think will please women.

  2. Which of the items you listed above best defines you?

  3. What are the most interesting or adventurous aspects of the job, hobby, or course of study you selected? List each aspect, along with the ways it could affect people.

  4. Now imagine you’re a recruiter for the job, hobby, or course of study you selected. Using the template below, prepare an advertisement to attract people who aren’t involved in the field and know little or nothing about it. Your goal is to make the job or hobby sound important and exciting.

  Become a

  and you can

  Examples: Become an engineer, and you can design the mobile phone of the future. Become a guitarist, and you can tour the world playing rock shows. Become a web designer, and you can help with the images of the world’s biggest corporations.

  5. Now examine the ad line you wrote. Remove adjectives, adverbs, and other unnecessary hype words (such as “exciting,” “biggest,” “best,” “most powerful”). Examine the verbs you used, and make sure they’re exciting and active (“create” is better than “have”; “launch” is better than “do”). Then, using these tips, rewrite your ad line as simply, factually, and powerfully as possible in ten words or less.

  Example: “help with the images of the world’s biggest corporations” could become “reinvent the images of corporations” or even “reinvent the images of Fortune 500 companies.”

  6. Rewrite your answer to question #5 in the first person (begin with the word “I”).

  Examples: I reinvent the images of Fortune 500 companies. I’m designing the mobile phone of the future.

  7. This is your identity statement. Say it out loud until you’re comfortable with it. If you feel it’s uninteresting or inaccurate, rework it until it feels right—or repeat this exercise (starting with question 3) until you have an identity statement that is both truthful and interesting.

  Troubleshooting

  Most of the guidelines of the game are based on perceived relative status, and they change depending on how she feels your status compares to hers at any given time. So if you currently have a high-status position in society, rather than playing it up, play it down. Do exactly the opposite of what’s suggested above. Keep it vague. For example, instead of telling her you’re the head of a major film studio or an award-winning screenwriter, just say that you “work in movies” and let her wring the details out of you if she so desires.

  By Thomas Scott McKenzie

  A man is but the product of his thoughts.

  What he thinks, he becomes.

  — MAHATMA GANDHI

  I am a star. I’m a star, I’m a star, I’m a star.

  I am a big, bright, shining star.

  —DIRK DIGGLER, BOOGIE NIGHTS

  It’s been proven time and time again: Confidence is attractive. Confidence earns the admiration of your coworkers, the respect of your friends, and the interest of women. In fact, it’s safe to say that without confidence, all the seduction techniques known to man will not help you attract the women you desire.

  But many men struggle with this most crucial of characteristics. Difficult childhoods, less-than-model looks, meager bank accounts, dead-end jobs, piece-of-shit cars, receding hairlines, underarm odor, and dating dry spells all reduce worthy men to nervous, timid mice. Even men with rock-hard abs and shiny red convertibles are sometimes unable to look women in the eye and speak with a strong voice, because a domineering mother or ex-wife damaged their self-esteem and confidence.

  Mastering Your Hidden Self: A Guide to the Huna Way by Serge Kahili King offers an antidote to these confidence poisons. King teaches that we are not helpless victims vulnerable to our mind’s tyranny. Instead, we control our minds. We control our emotions. We control our perceptions, our feelings, and our outlook. Harnessing ancient systems, King offers a concrete way to reprogram your mind so that you can stride through life with confidence, energy, and power.

  INTRODUCTION TO HUNA

  In addition to the widely accepted teachings of the world’s great religions and philosophies, a more esoteric body of secret knowledge has been shared by initiates throughout history. Building on both the mundane and the arcane, Huna offers a system of self-improvement that cuts through the confusion of modern life.

  Essentially, Huna states that you are in control of your life, your mind, and your reality. “The most fundamental idea in Huna philosophy is that we each create our own personal experience of reality, by our beliefs, interpretations, actions and reactions, thoughts and feelings,” King writes.

  A corollary to this is that our creative potential is unlimited.
“You can create, in some form or another, anything you can conceive,” King continues. This is why it’s important to replace limiting beliefs based on past dating experiences with unlimited beliefs about the present and future.

  Within the Huna belief system, there are seven main principles.

  1.

  The world is what you think it is: The foundation of Huna, this principle asserts that you create your own personal experience of reality. “By changing your thinking, you can change your world,” King writes.

  2.

  There are no limits: There are no true boundaries between you and your body, you and others, or even you and God. The divisions that we generally recognize are arbitrary constraints placed by limited consciousness.

  3.

  Energy flows where attention goes: When you dwell upon certain thoughts and feelings, you write the plotline for your life. Focus is the fuel for your positive or negative perceptions. So, for example, don’t give some girl who ignored you the power to ruin your day by letting yourself dwell on the incident.

  4.

  Now is the moment of power: At this moment, you are not hindered by any past experiences, and you are not obligated to any future duties (except paying taxes, of course). “You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for a future of your choosing,” King writes. “As you change your mind, you change your experience.”

  5.

  To love is to be happy with: People exist through love, King says, and acknowledging this allows you to exist in a state of happiness with yourself as you are now and as you will become in the future.

  6.

  All power comes from within : If you want to change your reality, you can’t wait for divine intervention. It’s up to you to change your existence. This principle also contains King’s crucial admonition that “no other person can have power over you or your destiny unless you decide to let him or her have it.” For some, this means that it’s time to stop blaming friends, family, work, or society for holding them back from social success and start accepting responsibility.

  7.

  Effectiveness is the measure of truth: Sit in any courtroom, and you’ll realize there are many versions of the truth. In an infinite universe, King writes, there is no absolute truth, only “an effective truth at an individual level of consciousness.” Put simply, do whatever works for you.

  THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF NEGATIVITY

  To improve your inner game, it’s vital that you recognize the detrimental effects of negative thoughts and energy. “Generally speaking, negative attitudes produce inner stress, which translates to physical tension and can affect organs and even cells,” King writes.

  The simplest way to change a negative attitude to a positive one is to be aware of bad thoughts when they appear, then consciously change them to a positive opposite. “You can do this whether or not the apparent facts of the situation seem to warrant it,” King adds.

  THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

  When it comes to the subconscious, the common perception is that it lurks in the recesses of your mind, never to be known until you spend years on a therapist’s couch, only to discover that you’re a helpless victim of some random childhood event.

  King disagrees. He explains that we can, in fact, control our subconscious. “The subconscious is not an unruly, rebellious child, nor does it ever work against your best interests… Whenever the ku [subconscious] seems to be opposing you, it is because it is following previous orders that you either gave it or allowed to remain.”

  A good example of how you can train your subconscious involves changing habits. Mental and physical habits are learned responses stored in your subconscious memory and released by associated stimuli. Huna teaches that the only way to eliminate a bad habit is to give your subconscious a more effective way to deal with the stimuli.

  One strategy is to consider changing your speech habits. Maybe you litter your speech with brain farts and pausers. At some point in your life, perhaps these pausers allowed you extra time to choose your words. Eventually, they became a habit. Instead of accepting this bad habit or trying to quit cold turkey, Huna teaches that we must replace it. “The important point here is that there is no vacuum in the subconscious,” King writes.

  So instead, teach your subconscious to dump your pauser by learning to speak more slowly. Or train yourself to tap your finger against something every time you have the impulse to say “um.”

  Your subconscious wants to help you. It’s just that sometimes the subconscious gets poor training. “Your subconscious never works against what it believes are your best interests,” King writes. “Unfortunately, the assumptions on which those beliefs are based may be very faulty.”

  By interacting with your subconscious, King argues, you can understand your motivations and change the ones that aren’t effective. He provides several strategies for interacting with your subconscious.

  First of all, King suggests that you give it a name. Next, you can try one of two forms of memory search. The first is called a “treasure hunt.” For this activity, simply talk to your subconscious as though you’re chatting with a new pal. Name a memory of something pleasant and see what the subconscious brings back in terms of detail and vividness. Or you can ask your subconscious to return its own favorite memories. Memories you had forgotten will appear, and sensations will come flooding back.

  The second form of memory search is called “trash collecting.” For this activity, ask your subconscious to bring up all its worst memories. Do this enough, and you’ll begin to see patterns. “The memories will follow certain themes that will provide you with clues to areas of limiting beliefs that may be hampering your development,” King writes. “You may find, for instance, that a whole series of ‘worst memories’ in a particular session has a fear-of-rejection theme or a need-to-control theme.” When it comes to women, we’ve all had embarrassing experiences. But if these incidents aren’t properly handled in our subconscious, they can cause us to sabotage our own potential for success.

  EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

  One of King’s main teachings is to stop being a victim to your subconscious, and instead learn to guide and instruct it.

  One way to do this is by striving for what King calls emotional freedom. Stop identifying with “the emotional reactions of your subconscious,” King writes. “When you say, ‘I am angry,’ you are identifying with the subconscious, and you may find it extremely difficult to get rid of the anger.”

  Instead, determine the purpose and origin of a new emotion as soon as it starts. Ask yourself, “Where did this emotion come from? Why am I feeling it right now?”

  These and other questions allow you to discover the sources of your emotions. Even the act of self-examination itself can help you calm down. “The analysis itself tends to drain the emotion of its power because you are diverting the energy of the emotion to the conscious thinking process,” King explains.

  He also prescribes reprogramming as a technique to control your subconscious. “If you want to change the habitual thinking of the subconscious, you must consciously keep the desired pattern in the forefront of your mind until the subconscious has accepted it as a new habit.” This is why affirmations, as silly as they seem sometimes, can directly improve your success with women.

  THE CONSCIOUS MIND

  To truly understand the conscious mind, it’s necessary to understand the nature of will power. The only real ability you have on a conscious level is the power to direct your awareness and attention to a thought or experience. This is what’s meant by “free will.”

  We can’t make a woman like us, make the boss give us a raise, or make that 1974 Ford Pinto start in the morning. “What we can do, however, is to choose to decide how we are going to respond to our experience of life, what we are going to do from this moment forward and in any future moment to change either ourselves or the circumstances,” King writes.

  King defines determination
as “the continuous, conscious directing of attention and awareness toward a given end for a purpose.” And goals are achieved, he continues, “by continuously renewing the decisions or choices made to reach the given end, in spite of apparent obstacles and difficulties.”

  In other words, if one method does not work after repeated attempts, a determined person doesn’t give up. “He tries another, and then another, until he finds one that does work, even if it means he has to change himself.”

  The difference, King concludes, between those with strong will and those with weak will is that the strong decide to continue, while the weak quit. It’s important to remember this when the girl you’ve been talking to all night gives you a fake phone number, or you see a woman who just rejected your approach making out with some stranger. Failures and setbacks are fine. Deciding to quit is not.

  GOALS AND PURPOSES

  King makes a distinction between achieving goals and fulfilling a purpose that is key to your self-improvement journey.

  The difference is that a purpose is “something that will give meaning to your whole life.” A goal simply measures progress toward your purpose—like the concrete results you wrote down for your personal mission statement.

  “Unlike a goal, a purpose is not something you reach but something you do,” King writes. “Goals without purpose are empty of meaning, while having a purpose can give meaning to any goal.”