One of the chief difficulties with entering into the project of self-improvement, as is often (rightly) recommended to men who are hoping to improve their prospects in life, is that constantly working on and thinking about oneself can cause an excess of self-awareness that is often counterproductive.
In the arena of seduction in particular too much self-awareness is a pussy repellent that drives women away. As many men who get into game (myself included) are ex-betas who study up on alpha behaviours to get girls, it is perhaps inevitable that a certain degree of cerebral naval-gazing surrounds the practice.
Realise, though, that even if your natural inclination is towards self-analysis, the archetypal alpha jock from high school who pulled the cheerleader was unlikely to have troubled himself too much with introspection. Therefore you should make an effort limit or conceal this aspect of your persona, at least in the early stages of an interaction.
It’s Just Not Sexy
The truth, gentlemen, is that too much self-awareness just isn’t sexy. However much you might like to think of yourself as a deep and fascinatingly unique character, to girls you will more often than not come across as unconfident and weak.
A classic fictional example of this can be taken from Woody Allen’s movie Crimes and Misdemeanours, which I wrote about in more detail for ROK here in 2014. Here Woody plays Clifford Stern, a classic Allen creation who is beset with fear, neurosis and self-doubt. In the film he falls in love with Mia Farrow’s character Halley Reed, a TV executive, only to lose her to the brash, unthinking alpha Lester (played by Alan Alda).
The are many differences between Clifford and Lester, not least Lester’s higher status as a top-flight producer against Clifford’s struggling would-be documentary-maker, but the most marked in terms of personality is Allen’s crippling self-awareness set against Alda’s careless social dominance.
Get Out Of Your Own Head
Ideally, when you are approaching women you should not be ‘”stuck in your own head.” You should not be considering what she might be thinking about you. Ideally, you should walk up to her without a single thought in your head. Why?
Well, think again about the high school jock. When he approached the cheer leader was he worried her opinion of her? No of course not—it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she wouldn’t have liked him, and even if it had, he wouldn’t have cared because he wouldn’t have had the required level of introspection to get cut up about it. He is able to do this because he lives in the moment, and so should you too.
Remember—the problem many men have is that they second-guess the basis of the rejections they imagine they might get from girls before they’ve even happened. This is not merely counterproductive, it’s actually insane.
So if you are the self-aware type, what should you do? Below are five tips that you might find helpful.
1. Drink Alcohol
Bit of a trick one, this, as I don’t drink alcohol these days, although I used to. But many men do, and with good reason – it temporarily silences those voices in their heads and alleviates their self-awareness.
There are quite a few people serious about gaming who claim that it’s better not to drink if you want to get really good. While I agree with this to a certain extent – and you certainly don’t want to be using alcohol as a crutch of any kind – my view is that as long as you’re not somebody with a propensity towards dependency, a couple of drinks will do no harm and will get you into a social mood, which is all-important.
2. Do Physical Exercise
It’s an obvious one, but it works damn well. After you’ve done some heavy compound weight training, in particular for big muscle groups like the legs, the resultant release of testosterone will make it all but impossible for you to remain in your head for long.
3. Act Without Thinking
It’s easier said than done, but many situations in life don’t need to be considered too painstakingly, as whatever you do will lead to an experience, and experiencing something is always better than stasis. And with that said, it is always better to go for the decision that will make your life more, rather than less, interesting.
So if the decision is whether or not you should approach that girl in Starbucks, then of course the answer is that yes, you should. Whatever interaction you have with her, whether it’s a quick rejection or a coffee that eventually leads to sex and a relationship, you will learn something and your life will have been made more interesting as a result.
For this reason it’s sometimes better not to think too carefully before taking a leap. Simply take a deep breath, think about which option will make for the best story afterwards and go for it.
4. Write Morning Pages
This is a tip from a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In the book, Cameron presents a course to help the aspiring artist or writer unlock their budding creativity. In practice, most people seem to skip all of it and just focus on doing morning pages. These are three pages-worth of freehand, unstructured automatic writing. Yes, that’s right, just sit down at a desk and write for three pages without thinking about it.
The benefit of doing this is that it will clear your subconscious of niggly, annoying thoughts and obsessions, in the short-term at least. By getting them out on the page and leaving them there you’ll free yourself up to enjoy your day without the ‘interference’ of a too-busy self-hectoring mind to bother you.
5. Be A Good Actor
In the end, if you are an extremely self-aware person then that is unlikely to change overnight. Therefore, perhaps the most foolproof short-term fix is to be aware of the problem and to act like you don’t have it. Any given situation you find yourself in, imagine how the alpha jock would act and then do the same thing yourself.
OK, you may not be being congruent to your true self in that instant, but needs must supersede genuineness from time to time. This is about faking it to make it. You can be as self-aware as you like the rest of the day — when you are standing in front of a pretty girl you want to impress, drop the Woody Allen shtick and act from the gut.
Do so enough times and it will become natural, and that will only increase your success rate in both romantic matters and most other social interactions.
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First published on ROK
