The Top Pickup Advice – Part II

I call this group of advice “fix the quick wins” – though some of those are not quick fix. Anyways, make you feel you can accomplish them easily. One thing I realized through studying pickup artists is that I have always ignored the easy but still important things that were totally under my control. I often spent less than 10 min getting ready for a party, immediately after dinner. If I was in a hurry I might not brush my teeth before leaving. Well, only now I understand that girls spend much more time to get ready. Compared to them I was just too careless about my appearance. Who only judge you based on your look and dress? Well… if you don’t fix the basics, you don’t pass the screening to go to the spiritual level.

1. Improve appearance

– Dress, hairstyle, posture, smile, facial expression.

First impression is so important. Films play with it, exaggerate it, but I just did not get it. This is very culturally influenced: in the country where I was raised up (China), it was much less important to dress fashion and practice right body language. Coming to the West, I immediately fit into the nerdy stereotypes. Even in the Netherlands – probably not the example of good taste of fashion.

Girls are attracted to them? Seriously?

2. Get physical!

In my TEDx speech, this was mentioned as one of the 3 most important reasons why Asian guys do not succeed in the Western dating world. We are raised to approach physical contact very differently. I was often wondering, the first date was great, we had dinner, took a walk, had a lot of chat, but why didn’t she want a 2^nd date? The reasons vary, but I think I never sent the right signal. Touching too early and too much will certainly come across as creepy. But no touch at all will be regarded as not sexually interested in her. So, don’t repeat my mistake. Get used to physical contact!

3. Improve testosterone level.

This is scientific: men with more testosterone (the male hormone) have better success rates with women. And the level of testosterone changes depending on your age, your gene, and importantly, the activities you engage. Risky things help to create more testosterone. Competition does as well. And so are sports. That’s simple, right? Take more risk (if you are not sure, always take the risk), take part in competitions, and do sports regularly.

And one more important science: sex helps to generate more testosterone. (It’s a sport, right?) I believe this is the scientific evidence for the PUA advice: you need to start with sex somewhere even if the girl is less attractive. It will help you to understand women better and improve your testosterone.

4. Become humorous spontaneously

Like public speaking, dating is an art to communicate. And humor is one of the best ways to make a connection. It’s not nice to have, but must have. Many girls claim to be attracted to men with good humor. And even in the professional world humor can give you the advantage that serious hard workers do not have.

However, it is hard to become more humorous. I was not a person with good humor. And I try to learn by observing. Recently I started an improv comedy course. Man, it is one of the best ways to become more humorous spontaneously.

5. Know how to flirt.

If you ask her in a flirty way, an absurd question becomes much more playful and fun. And I am a monumental failure on flirting. So, instead of pretending I can five you good examples, watch Craig Ferguson show. Great fun!

These are some concrete things you can do to improve your dating success. And you don’t need to be a pickup artist!!

The Top Pickup Advice – Part I

If you find this blog here, the chances are, you want to improve your romantic life. You might be one of millions of men who are looking for the golden tips and tricks to get instant results. The fast moving modern world is always in search for quick solutions, even if it’s an ancient problem. I was looking for quick solutions as well. Only after a long struggle I stopped believing that there are those silver bullets out there. If there are, then many people will have already used them and soon women will want to develop counter measures to make it harder for men again. And pickup artists won’t claim that you need 6 – 18 months of concentrated effort to become good at dating any more.

Let’s face it, dating skills are like many other professional skills. You need serious effort to truly master them. But this does not mean you should stop searching for accelerated learning methods to get you there faster. I’ve come across many great advices; they range from small things you need to pay attention to to general strategies to approach dating issues. Let me focus on the similarity of dating and formal learning this time.

If you take dating as learning a tough skill, then it is not difficult to understand why below approaches can be effective. All of them are based on interviews with top dating coaches/pickup artists.

1. Make it a habit.

To be truly good at professional skills, such as football, photography, public speaking, you need to make learning a part of your daily life. Seeking all opportunities to practice. For dating, specifically, you can consider:

• Talk to everyone, and practice spontaneous reactions. This makes you more social.
• Talk to as many people as possible and show your interest. This can improve your satisfaction of you life as well.
• Always be disciplined: go out on a regular basis, what to say, how to approach, be clear on what’s the aim of your approach, etc. Discipline is the best way to build a habit. All top pickup artists are quite disciplined in their early development.

2. Make pickup a formal learning.

Set goals; be disciplined on planning; regular check on progress & identify where still falls short. Hardly anyone regards pickup/dating as his studies. It sounds boring and not fun, but it is extremely effective. Romantic relationships should be fun… till you find out that you don’t have skills to enjoy yet. To improve fast why not borrow methods from your studies?

3. Keep a journal / track record.

I never used this method myself. However, I did keep a journal of my Ph.D. research. And I can totally see why it’s useful. What really happened can be very different from what you remember. And your memory can intentionally change things, especially the emotional experiences. Keeping a track record helps you to identify the patterns in your relationships and also make it more objective to review what happened.

4. Get a good wing-man, even better – get a coach.

They fix those things you’ll never realize without looking into the mirror. Just like feedback in Toastmasters (a public speaking club), just like professional athletes all have professional coaches, just like Robert Greene mentioned in his book “Mastery”, to improve fast you need coaching.

Can’t Find Dating Listed Here…

Seems pickup might be considered as a kind of sports, what do you think?