It's not technically necessary, but cold approach is not best for the hottest girls because they get approached so often. For them, it helps a lot to offer social value and to stack the logistics in your favor.
For example, I know a guy in Vegas who's slept with over 1000 girls. How did he do it? Not from cold approach. He did by building an elite social circle such that he's able to get free tables at any nightclub in Vegas. He can get a $5000 table for free any night. Then he just pulls girls into the table. Plus he gets invited to all the elite after parties. For example, he is friends with Zedd, so after Zedd performs at the club, Zedd invites 100 of the hottest girls to a private $20,000 hotel suite. He also invites 10 guys. That's where the real game happens. Imagine how easy it is to get laid when you are sitting in a $20,000 suite with a private pool next to Zedd with 100 of the hottest girls and a tray of cocaine.
That's elite level social circle game. That's how you get the hottest girls consistently.
It took this guy 7 years of 4 hours per day building his social circle to reach this elite level.
A lot of getting laid is simply social position and favorable logistics.
But you don't need anything like this to get laid with cute girls. I am just telling you what the pinnacle of game looks like. The pinnacle of game is that your social position is so good all you have to do is say Hi and the girl goes home with you. If you want that, YES, you'll have to work your ass off to build it.
Then again, I pulled an Instagram model thru cold approach dressed as a homeless guy outside the club at 4:30am. It's just not consistent. That Instagram model told me she was at Zedd's afterparty. Fortunately Zedd only has one dick

You should be happy to pull twice a month when you first start learning game.
I told you it's a lot harder than you think.
I am telling you the results of the best guys in the world. They are the Michael Jordans of their sport.

I don't even know if I would call myself intermediate.
There are many variables involved: how often you go out, how long you stay out, how hard you hit it, your health, your logistics situation, time of the year, what city you live in, your skill level, your personality type, the quality of girls you're trying to pull, your ethics, luck, what your goals are, how much momentum you've built up, your emotional state, etc. So there's not going to be any clear number. It will vary a lot from guy to guy.
A bad month is zero.
But also, I don't measure my results based on quantity of girls I sleep with. That's a pretty foolish measure. I would rather sleep with 1 amazing girl than 10 below average ones. But even that is still not the right measure because the skills developed and life experiences gained are more important. I measure my results based on how much it grows me internally. This way if I have a month where I get zero girls, I still see it as part of my overall success and I don't quit. Whereas most guys would just quit.

What's funny is that many normies can be pretty happy with life.
If your ambitions are low it's not hard to be happy. Get a stable job, go to church, have some kids, watch Netflix, play video games, eat junk food, drink beer, watch porn, go to football games, hang out with your dumb likeminded friends, hate-watch your opposing political party. Live unconsciously. Life is pretty good.
Ironically, strong religion and strong family are some of the best predictors of happiness.

The solution here is not some deep metaphysical point. This is a healthy fear which is communicating a valid message to you: "Be extra careful. Don't be foolish or sloppy. Take precautions."
Fear is there to help you avoid needless horrible suffering.

It's all good stuff, but for serious intellectual understanding books are irreplaceable. You will rarely get that same depth in a talk, even my talks.

Emotions are largely unconscious, automatic habits of the body-mind system to help it survive. So long as you are in that body you will have automatic emotions that arise and hijack your consciousness as part of your survival programming. It doesn't matter whether you intellectually understand that all is one.
For the same reason that I get hungry, thirsty, horny, etc.

Love of life is not an luxury. Either you proactively cultivate it or you will become a bitter, jaded zombie.

Tough situation. I've been there. I had to cut contact with my dad entirely for over a decade now. His influence on my life was just too toxic.
You have to make a judgment call as to whether having him in your life is a constant source of toxicity and holds back your evolution. If it is, then you should have a serious talk with him about that, and if he still continues unchanged then you can cut him off. But before you do that, you can consider just limiting your contact with him and see if that helps eliminate most of the toxicity, If so, then just keep a healthy distance with only sporadic contact.
The key question for you should be: Can you live the vast majority of your life and still actualize yourself while in contact with him? If the answer is yes, then try not cutting him off entirely and working through some of it with him. But if the answer no, then have that serious talk and cut him off if he refuse to change.
As a good rule of thumb, let's say 5-10% of your time you can sacrifice to dealing with negative bullshit from friends and family. Consider that charity work. But if it goes over 5-10%, cut that person off.
This is really a matter of learning how to set and enforce boundaries with people. Which is all about getting clear with yourself what you're willing to stand for and what is important to you. Define your boundaries clearly and communicate them explicitly to people. If they keep crossing your reasonable boundaries, that's on them. Don't feel guilty about enforcing your boundaries if they were clearly communicated and then repeatedly crossed.

Because you are imagining all others. There exists nothing but you. Reality begins and ends with your experience. There is no "outside". Your consciousness is Absolute.
There is no world. And there are no beings to populate it.
You are imagining perspectives and POV in order to construct a notion of finite self and other. The very notion of a perspective or POV is an illusion. Without this illusion you would be all alone.
It works just like a dream. And you are the sole dreamer. The only problem is that you do not want to accept this. So you keep on dreaming. The cost of dreaming is endless confusion.

If you become sufficiently conscious you will clearly see that there is nothing outside your consciousness.
It's not a guess or a belief. Your awareness simply penetrates through all of reality -- with no other to be found.
Think of it as turning the lights up so bright that nothing at all is invisible to you and your gaze reaches infinitely far.
It is completely obvious at that point that nothing could ever exist outside yourself.

It's not a good teaching for several reasons:
1) Everything is Mind. You're never escaping mind. There is technically no such thing as no-mind.
2) Even people who have supposedly reached no-mind still think. Which paints a false picture of what no-mind refers to.
3) God-realization and awakening can be had with a fully active mind and thoughts, and in fact it's useful and important for the mind to contemplate and make some sense of God.
4) The mind can technically be used to grasp the Absolute. But this mind has to be fueled properly with psychedelics so it becomes a transhuman mind.
5) Mind is not what prevent awakening. Your state of consciousness prevents awakening. The key is not to shut off the mind but to raise one's state of consciousness. Which can be done by shutting off the mind but not necessarily. If you raise your state without shutting off the mind, it works just as well, and perhaps even better.
6) An empty mind works well in a mediation retreat setting, but doesn't work so well in a complex world of survival which intellectual problems exist.
7) An empty mind can still be ignorant and wrong and full of dogma and bad believes and opinions. You cannot solve intellectual problems by just shutting off the mind. This is like sticking your head in the sand.
- - - - - -
By no-mind what they basically mean is a meditative state free of thoughts. A still mind for a certain period of time, in contrast to monkey-mind.

This.
The whole teaching of "no-self" is problematic in this regard. The mind can get so stuck on the notion of no-self that it becomes blind to the fact that all is the God Self.
The correct teaching is not no-self, it is God Self. Even though, of course, God has no self.
I feel that neo-Advaita and Buddhist style teachings can get people stuck in no-self.

"You're kinda hot/cute. Let's grab a drink. I know a good place. What days are you free this week? How about Tues at 8pm?"
Don't just suggest a vague "sometime". You need to grill her in-person on her schedule and set a concrete day and time that works for her. This will triple your results.
Don't call it a "date".

If you are building a family consciously, have at it. That's a valid path of development.
Most people just fuck and have kids like animals.

"So what are you up to?"
"Talking to a cute girl."
"You hit on all the cute girls here?"
"Only you baby. You're my one, I promise. I'm just a shy virgin "
- - - - 
Learn frame control!

What am I dishonest about? I said my intention is a relationship if the girl is relationship material.
There is no need to explicitly state this when you start dating. It comes out naturally. If I want to make her my gf I will say so, but not too soon.
You can reframe it verbally to her face.
"Where is your sense of humor, girl? You leave it at home?"
Of course this will prolly blow up the set. But I would say this as the set is blowing up anyway.
Sometimes you say things not to please the girl but just to hold your frame. Your frame should be that you are funny and cool and if she doesn't like it she is the weird one, her loss.

Yes, it's a hamster wheel, but at least in this case you're investing in your life and creating something personally meaningful. Of course this is not some ultimate solution to life, but it's way better than what most people are doing -- which is pissing their life away.
The ultimate solution is found within spirituality by discovering BEING and learning to bask in it via something like Satisfaction Meditation (see video).
BEING is the end of the road.

Your inner game is lacking. Developing a rock solid inner game is the key. Psychedelics, meditation, awakening is very helpful for this. Your happiness and mood has to be decoupled from external events and people. That means when you're out you're happy doing whatever you're doing just because you appreciate the beauty of consciousness.
Your happiness cannot be coupled to any kind of external result or needing to get something from someone, and certainly not to any reaction from girls. It shouldn't matter to you what girls do or say. Learn to love the present moment more than any girl.

This is something that happend to me yesterday that I will never be able to forget. This was one of the most transformational experiences of my life and keep in mind that I have done LSD, Mushrooms, DMT and 5 MeO in high doses. I have had profound spiritual experiences with psychedelics and especially with 5 MeO. For me these experiences are deeply existensial and life changing. I read a few reports about people dying and going to the other side using high doses of ketamine that literally shut off the brain completely. Found this interesting article today on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/hecmsp/researchers_think_a_khole_might_actually_be_the/. Anyways let's get to the report.
Keep in mind that my experience isn't really what most people will experience on ketamine and I think that is due to the intensive spiritual work that I have done in the past. I have been experimenting with mind altering substances for years with good integration for the purpose of understanding reality as it is. Also been doing plenty of spiritual work and verifying Leos spiritual content.
I started by dividing 600 mg of ketamine into four lines for insufflation. Then I snorted one line every 30 secondes or so for better absorption. After completeing all lines I started to feel my consciosuness expanding in a very intersting way. I could compare this feeling to the comeup of an LSD trip where everything starts to breathe and colors gets more vibrant. After a few minutes I started to lose attachment to my surroundings and things started to feel part of me. It felt like I was my imagining my phone and everything around me. Slowly I got to a level where I couldn't understand who I was anymore and my vision just exploded into infinite geometrical patterns. My ego then started to panic and looking around for any leads to get grounded in the experiences but it was too late. I was long gone! I lost all awareness of my body, I did not know who I was and where I was, and I was this melting intelligent energy. I was pure being in a world of constantly changing patterns and stripes of geometrical patterns. I had no sense of time, whether of past present or future, so I could say I was in a roller-coaster ride in a multidimensional giant fractal for infinity and beyond.

This went on and on and on and on and on... This was the scariest place I have ever visited in my life, even worse than than the one I experienced on a high dose of Salvia. I was being killed in an infinite ways and there was no way to understand what was going on. I did not even know what earth was or that I was even a human. All I knew was infinity and pure beingness. This kept on for a good while before I gave up totally and that was the moment where I was transported into the mind of God. I realized that I am the creator of the entire Universe and that everything and everyone is just really me. My memories then started to come back to me and I became conscious that I was creating all of the things/people I thought were seperate from me like my friends and house. I was this powerful pure energy circulating for infinity and a sense of oneness pervaded me. There is no secret to hide or anything to fear because really all is one. How could I be so stupid? I grew up in a religious family where I was told that God is this seperate entity that judges the bad and rewarding the good but in that moment I was literally it. That was a very unbelievable feeling! Everytime I wanted to deny this power, God took me on an infnite journey to show me who I really am until I gave up completely. This was one of the most powerful moments of my entire life. Then I decided to divide myself into different energies (souls) to experience life from different perspective and slowly I started to imagine my hands. It felt like I was watching a hand for the very first time of my life and its was so beautiful. Look at these fingers, what an elegant creation! I then became this entity in a physical body but I was still conscious of what I have just experienced. Life is really crazy and beautiful. Take care of this amazing gift that you gifted yourself. Simply enjoy the ride! You are me and I am you. Seperation is an illusion. Hope you enjoyed this quick report. ?

A man's self-esteem does depend on how well women respond to him.
If you suck with girls that can't but tank your self-esteem. Just like if he cannot hold onto a job, that will tank a man's self-esteem.
And if a girl is never approached by men, that will also tank her self-esteem. People want to feel sexually desirable.

Take this free 10-min attachment style assessment and report your results below.
The 4 options are:
Anxious Avoidant Disorganized Secure More info here: https://www.actualized.org/insights/whats-your-attachment-style

I don't sleep with wasted girls.
Most girls have one or two drinks before having sex. This is normal social convention. I would rather girls were totally sober if it was up to me. If I'm pulling a girl I actually discourage her from drinking more because I don't like her drunk.
When you got game, having girls drunk is not an advantage. It often creates needless problems.
But most people are not good at building their own state while sober. They drink to let loose and get playful. This is how most people have sex. They use alcohol because they haven't taken the time to master inner game.

Because a woman's sexual value peaks early and is displayed externally. Women are also extremely social. This strategy allows women to play the buyer role while guys play the seller role.
Women have to be much choosier because they are only looking for one guy. Guys are looking to sleep with dozens of women.
It's fundamentally asymmetrical. A guy's survival is enhanced from sleeping around, a woman's survival is threatened. The one who needs sex less has the higher leverage. Women need it less. Unless the guy is sleeping with multiple women. So the hottest women implicitly want men who sleep with lots of women. The more women a guy sleeps with, the more attracted she gets to him. The hottest women are attracted to guys with crazy sexual abundance because hot women have crazy sexual abundance.

To me career and LP is more important. Dating is like the dessert for getting your life together. But don't wait too long. You can still socialize a bit on the weekends just so that you're not stuck at zero on that front for years.