Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  Emotional Connection

  This is the home of rapport and abstract concepts like chemistry. It’s about possessing qualities that make people feel excited, connected, comfortable, and understood around you, as if they’ve just met a best friend or soulmate. Rate yourself on your success in finding commonalities with strangers, creating deep rapport with people, being in touch with your feelings, listening closely to others; and on criteria such as compassion, positivity selflessness, and empathy.

  RATING:_______________

  SUGGESTION FOR IMPROVEMENT: Fear, insecurity, and lack of self-awareness block the ability to emotionally connect with others. Try to spend part of each day communicating, sensing, and existing with an open heart and through your deepest feelings—whatever that means to you. Drop any pretensions, masks, and walls that separate you from others. If you disagree with people, rather than trying to make your point, empathize with what they’re feeling. If you’re not the type to meditate, then step outside your comfort zone, go to a class or retreat, and try it.

  Goals

  As discussed on Day 1, goals are defined not by what you do but by your ambitions and what you’re capable of doing. Rate yourself on the clarity of your goals, dreams, and hunger for life. You can measure your potential to achieve them by determining if you possess traits like stability, efficiency, perseverance, and the ability to learn quickly.

  RATING:_______________

  SUGGESTION FOR IMPROVEMENT: Review the goals you set for yourself on Day 2. On a separate sheet of paper, write an actual timeline for achieving each goal, with definite benchmarks. Make sure you include any financial requirements or potential complications in your calculations. Adjust this schedule every year based on new insights, information, and accomplishments—and live by it.

  Authenticity

  An authentic person is happy with himself and embraces even his imperfections. Rate yourself on your congruence—the alignment between the face you show to the world and what you’re really like on the inside. Keep in mind that having contradictory sides to your personality doesn’t make you incongruent. Having a duality, contradiction, or complications can make you more rich and compelling as a person. But being phony, insincere, or disingenuous does not.

  RATING:_______________

  SUGGESTION FOR IMPROVEMENT: On a piece of paper, write down the qualities you try to portray to the world. Next to each, add a 1 to 10 rating for how closely that quality matches who you really are deep inside. For any quality you rated under a 7, write down the obstacle that prevents it from being true. For example, if you want others to think of you as confident, but you rated your actual feelings of confidence as a 5, then your obstacle is insecurity. If the trait is financial success, then the obstacle is your lack of wealth. Work to remove that obstacle. Sources of help can include self-improvement books, seminars, therapy, or life changes such as a new job, hobby, or social circle. This will not be a short or easy road, but you won’t regret taking it.

  Self-Worth

  This may be the single most important attribute here, and the wellspring from which most of the others flow. Rate yourself on your sense of confidence and worthiness, as well as your lack of fears and insecurities about yourself. Examine your willingness to take up space as you move through the world, how well you accept compliments, how comfortable you are when other people pay attention to you, and how much you deserve the devotion of a woman of the highest caliber. Do you truly believe that you’re entitled to the best the world has to offer?

  RATING:_______________

  SUGGESTION FOR IMPROVEMENT: In the end (and you’re only one day away), self-worth is what the Stylelife Challenge has been all about. Don’t stop learning and improving after Day 30. Continue to examine yourself rigorously, work on your shortcomings, eliminate sticking points, raise the bar for yourself, and develop relationships with positive-minded people. As you experience more and more success, you will recognize, embrace, and exude more and more self-worth.

  Total Score (all eight categories)________

  L.A.S. V.E.G.A.S. score (total points divided by 8)________

  In the months to come, your long-term mission is to boost your L.A.S. V.E.G.A.S. score. It’s much less work to attract the best when you truly are the best.

  MISSION 1: Party Time

  You’re too busy to handle a big mission today. After all, you have a dinner party to throw. Refer to your Day 24 Briefing if you need any help making the final preparations and arrangements.

  If you weren’t able to invite any women to the party—or you’re not sure whether enough people are going to show up—set aside a few hours earlier in the day to make approaches.

  Go to a nearby location such as a mall, café, or other area where women gather. Make as many approaches as possible. As soon as you hit the hook point with a woman or group you like, give yourself a time constraint and invite them to your dinner party. If you go home without having recruited any extra guests, don’t cancel your party. It’s a great opportunity to strengthen your social circle and leadership skills.

  Once party time comes around, don’t panic if the guests roll in late. It’ll all work out great. Enjoy it. Make sure the woman you’re interested in is comfortable, but don’t pay too much attention to her at the expense of being a generous and enchanting host. Make sure everyone’s glasses are always full.

  After dinner, if all is going well with your date, ask her to stay behind and help clean up. If your party is at a restaurant or public location, have a second place in mind to go afterward—an interesting bar, lounge, or event on your calendar. If you both drove there, suggest taking one car. This way, you can have some alone time with her.

  Consider having this kind of party every week or every month, so that you can begin building a lifestyle that consistently attracts the kind of women you deserve to be dating.

  MISSION 2: Congratulate Yourself

  Congratulations. You made it to the final day of the Stylelife Challenge.

  If you’ve performed all the previous assignments and feel you’ve improved yourself in any way this month, then you are a winner. Some people go through their whole lives in darkness.

  If you got a date, be proud of yourself for meeting the Challenge objective. If you’d like to share the experience or get feedback on it, describe the details of your approach and date in the Stylelife winner’s circle: www.stylelife.com/challenge.

  If you didn’t get a date, despite completing every mission, then you get an additional assignment today. Go to www.stylelife.com/challenge and listen to the audio lesson titled “Works in Progress.” You may find a solution there to whatever held you back.

  MISSION 3: Commit to Greatness

  So what are you going to do on Day 31 and all the days after that?

  Look at how much you improved in a month. Now just imagine the results you could get if you committed to the game for another month, two months, three.

  There’s still a lot left to learn: what to do on the date; the fundamentals of attraction; techniques of arousal; crossing the physical divide; handling different environments; turning friends into lovers; being more fun; manufacturing chemistry; applying persuasion; leadership; group dynamics; isolation; kissing; winging; body language speed-reading; inner-circle sexual techniques; and hundreds of great routines and advanced concepts. Everything you’ve learned so far is only the beginning.

  The art of social dynamics is much like working out: If you stop going to the gym, your muscles begin to dissipate and return to their former size. So your penultimate mission is to go to www.stylelife.com/Day31 to receive a game plan for the future.

  This may be the end of the road on the Stylelife Challenge, but it’s the beginning of a new journey.

  I’ll see you on that journey.

  MISSION 4: Into the Looking Glass

  Your final task: Look at yourself in the mirror.

  Who do you see?

  Even though I spent years undergoing an intensive campaign
to improve myself, sometimes I’d look in the mirror and see the guy who was never popular and never had a date in high school looking back at me. Despite appearing and acting completely different, I still sometimes saw the world through his eyes.

  Similarly, some Challengers I’ve met went through radical transformations. They looked cool, had good jobs, dated amazing women, and were fun to be around. But when they looked in the mirror, they saw the person they used to be.

  So if you don’t love, value, and appreciate the guy looking back at you in the mirror, then it’s time to change your lenses. I’m not going to ask you to see your true self in the mirror; few of us have that kind of perspective. But instead of seeing the old you in the looking glass, try seeing the person you’re becoming. You’re going to like him a lot more.

  Remember, perception is reality. And when you see yourself as a guy who’s socially awkward, you’ll act that way and others will treat you that way—no matter what your external appearance and value may be.

  But when you see the fun, positive, confident, graceful, socially savvy person you’re becoming in the mirror, and consequently start seeing the world through his eyes, people will respond a lot differently to you—because you’ve just fought the hardest battle and won. You beat your old programming.

  So clean up and take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Reflect back to when you examined yourself in the mirror on Day 4 and think about everything you’ve learned and accomplished since then.

  Be aware of your posture, smile, and energy as you look in the mirror. Recall your most successful approach and the way the woman genuinely enjoyed you. Once you see your best self confidently beaming back at you—the guy who any woman would love to be around—take a mental snapshot of that guy. And carry that photograph in your head wherever you go. Because that guy is you.

  Welcome to your new reality.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Stylelife Challenge is the result of lessons from thousands of approaches, years of camaraderie with the master pickup artists from The Game, feedback from students around the world, hundreds of books and research papers, and the contributions of the Stylelife Academy coaching team.

  There are two contributors, in particular, who deserve special recognition. You’ve met them already in your briefings:

  Don Diego Garcia is a San Francisco–based Stylelife Senior Coach with a heart of gold. He has written scores of the most highly regarded missions and ebooks in recent memory, positively influenced the lives of thousands of students, and helped proofread this book.

  Thomas Scott McKenzie is a Midwest-based Stylelife Senior Coach and ace author. He has written for many journals and magazines, from the profound (Tin House) to the profane (Stuff). In addition to contributing to the briefings, he also helped edit the original multimedia Stylelife Challenge materials into these narrow pages.

  Thanks also to Dessi, Haze, Organizer, Masters, Julia Caulder, Maddash, DJ, and especially Phoenix and Rourke for helping out behind the scenes on the earliest incarnation of the Challenge. Stylelife Coaches Evolve, Tommy D, Gypsy, and Bravo also helped make this book possible. The Challenger known as Exception deserves credit for the Village People opener mentioned on Day 18. And Rourke and Michal Gregus also contributed material.

  Special thanks also to the seduction gurus who have influenced my life and this book with their teachings, and camaraderie. They include Mystery, now a star of stage and screen; David DeAngelo, who has branched out into the business world; Ross Jeffries, the father of the movement that spawned this madness; Swinggcat, the wizard behind the curtain; and Juggler, a great writer and, now, a married man.

  Then there are two men whose names I cannot mention. They are part of a future book. But I owe the idea for the Stylelife Challenge to them. You’ll read about them then. But I’d feel remiss if I didn’t give them their due. So thanks to… those two guys.

  The proofreading team consisted of many of the aforementioned characters, along with Anna G., Ersin Pertan, M the G, Todd Strauss, Dr. M. J., Nicole Renee, Aimee Moss, Kelly Gurwitz, Lauren, Evelyn Ng, and Sarah Dowling. Soa Cho and Kristine Harlan did the fact-checking and research, unearthing psychological and scientific papers supporting everything from the time constraint to the L.A.S. V.E.G.A.S. attributes to approaching with a smile. Thanks also to Drew Huskey and Neel Vora for organizing the core street teams.

  My most enthusiastic contrafibularities go to the world-class HarperCollins construction team: Carrie Kania, Michael Morrison, David Roth-Ey, Lisa Gallagher, Rachel Romano, Chase Bodine, Cassie Jones, Brittany Hamblin, Michael Signorelli, and Cal Morgan, the fastest editor in the East. Thanks also to Judith Regan, who originally suggested turning the Challenge into a book.

  Finally, I’d like to thank you for completing the Challenge and taking control of your reality. The only thing better than hearing the success stories is seeing the before and after photos. You guys are putting Body for Life to shame. Respect.

  THE ROUTINES COLLECTION

  THE FOLLOWING PAGES HAVE BEEN ADDED

  TO THIS COMPENDIUM WITH EXTREME MISGIVINGS.

  THEY CONTAIN ABOMINABLE WORDS. CHEESY WORDS. FALSE WORDS.

  WORDS FROWNED ON BY MEN AND WOMEN ALIKE. THEY HAVE BEEN

  MISINTERPRETED, MISUSED, AND CONDEMNED. THEY HAVE TURNED

  THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO RELY ON THEM INTO BAD THEATER.

  YET EVERY ONE OF THEM HAS LED ME TO SCORES OF FRIENDSHIPS,

  RELATIONSHIPS, AND MUTUAL GOOD TIMES.

  SO YOU DECIDE: IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A REAL RELATIONSHIP

  IF IT STARTS WITH A MEMORIZED, SCRIPTED ROUTINE?

  IN MY EXPERIENCE, YES. BUT I DARE NOT TELL ANYONE THAT. THEY

  WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT THESE WORDS ARE JUST TOOLS THAT

  ENABLE THE BEARER TO LIFT ONE OF THE HEAVIEST OBSTACLES IN

  THE WORLD: PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE TO TRUSTING A STRANGER.

  IF YOU HAVE THE NATURAL STRENGTH TO OVERCOME THAT

  RESISTANCE YOURSELF, THEN YOU DON’T NEED THESE. IF YOU ARE

  STILL LEARNING, AND YOU’VE ALREADY GONE THROUGH THE

  MATERIAL IN THE STYLELIFE CHALLENGE, THEN HERE ARE A FEW

  MORE EXERCISES TO HELP BUILD YOUR SOCIAL MUSCLES.

  JUST REMEMBER THAT THESE ARE ONLY TRAINING WHEELS.

  BECAUSE THE SECRET OF THE GAME IS THAT THE BETTER

  YOU ARE AT IT, THE LESS YOU HAVE TO USE IT.

  THE ROUTINES COLLECTION CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE TWO-PART KISS OPENER

  THE LOVE VERSUS IN-LOVE OPENER

  THE ALBINO GARY COLEMAN OPENER

  THE SPELLS OPENER

  THE CAT PEOPLE COLD READ

  THE FACEBOOK STALKER OPENER

  OPENER GRAB BAG

  NAME MNEMONICS

  BLOOD-STROLOGY

  THE FIVE QUESTIONS BET

  THE AMAZING TABLE PSYCHIC

  THE LYING GAME

  THE FAT BASTARD CHALLENGE

  STYLE’S EV

  THE SECRET SELF ROUTINE

  THE NANCY FRIDAY FANTASY ELICITATION

  THE SEVEN-MINUTE DATE

  THE QUADRUPLE HAND TEST

  STYLE’S KISS CLOSE

  THE LAST-MINUTE-TENSION ELEVATOR

  THE DOUBLE DATE THREESOME

  EPILOGUE: A NOTE TO FEMALE READERS

  INTRODUCTION

  There is no such thing as a pickup line.

  But there are pickup scripts.

  What’s a script?

  It’s a text, with stage directions, that if carried out properly achieves a consistent effect wherever and whenever it’s performed.

  The idea of a script may be off-putting to many people. To some men, it seems insincere: they’d rather just be naturally seductive without having to resort to canned material. To some women, it seems fake: they’ve learned through experience to sort through potential suitors and quickly make a binary decision about each—yes or no. And the idea that men can fake the qualities that elicit a yes short-circ
uits this entire evaluation system.

  So I urge you not to use the following scripts. Instead, make up openers, stories, and gambits that are true and interesting to you.

  However, before coming up with your own material, you might want to look these over anyway. Because they work. And they helped transform me from a guy who was too scared to speak to women into a guy who had experiences that, even in his wildest fantasies, he never imagined were possible.

  One of the most interesting things about the so-called seduction community is that it functions like an international laboratory. Every routine that follows is something I’ve done myself scores of times with success. And only afterward did I share it in the seduction forums, where tens of thousands of men all over the world tried them out within days. Their feedback quickly made it possible to identify which routines were universally effective.

  Even as I became more successful and natural in my approaches—able to say pretty much whatever was on my mind—I still found these routines valuable as fulcrums to move to the next stage of an interaction before the conversation hit a lull. Other times, even when I was in a relationship, they proved useful simply to liven up a boring dinner party or to win over a business contact.

  The best of the best are included here (all in updated, improved versions)—except, of course, for the routines that were included verbatim in The Game (such as the Jealous Girlfriend Opener, the Best Friends Test, the Cube, the Evolution Phase Shift, and the Dual Induction Massage).

  Because I’ve shared variations of these routines over the years, I wanted to make sure they hadn’t become too widespread before publishing them. So I put together a street team of students from around the world to test the material. Before each routine, I’ve listed the results of their approaches, including the difficulty level (how easy or challenging the material was), the saturation level (how often students were accused of using game), and the success rate (how often the routine achieved its intended effect).