Pickup: How to Manage Negative Experiences? + Additional Questions

[ZenSwift]

(Inb4 just telling me to just do more approaches.)

 

The worst part about game is not during, but the day after when my mind starts to reflect and it starts to become an echo chamber of the worst sets. Sets where I get bullied, sets where women are just being immature with the way they reject me, etc.  As time goes on, I naturally recover, but I honestly would like to recover within a couple minutes rather than having it distract me from my work for the entire next day. 

What are your best techniques to process these experiences and quickly move on?

 

 

Context

I've overcome a lot of hurdles as of recent. I had some really bad nights, but I chose to keep going and do more approaches. I will not stop approaching because I know I am headed on a trajectory of personal development and growth. Last night I managed to do 42 approaches towards women in 27 sets with women in it (so I would run approaches on multiple women in a group for example. I don't count approaches to just men.)

No matter how tough it is, I won't tap out. I am aware of the learning curve of pickup being very high, very brutal and extremely emotionally difficult. Sure, I have had thoughts of quitting, but I wouldn't be able to become the teacher people need me to be if I back down, so I wont. 

At this point, I'm getting pretty good at just surrendering to the gauntlet of approaching. Most of these problems out here are just solved by doing more approaches as Leo says. 

 

Additional Ruminations and Questions

Leo says: "Stick it out to the end of the night"

• I do not see the practicality of staying in the last hour of the club when I have not even yet built the skill of doing solid approaches, building rapport, and establishing premise. Until I learn how to hold a good set on a consistent basis, I see no need to stay out in the last hour.  Plus, in the last hour, it gets incredibly aggressive and most people already have paired up. 

Leo Says: "Clear Your Mind As You Approach"

• What do you mean by "clearing your mind", I need to hold at least set of openers in my mind, I'll then say the opener that holds the most congruence, I will then immediately clear my mind such that I can calibrate to the conversation. 

How do you find better wings?

• Game global is kind of a crap source for my city. At this point, I feel like I need to just focus on my life purpose so that I can earn the money to move to Vegas or something where the whole nightlife is better. Yet at the same time, I still see it as practical to still do game in the city I'm in in the mean time. Since game takes a long time to develop, I don't see it as wise to shelf doing game for a while. Yet at the same time, survival is knocking at the door, and waking up at 5AM would be a whole lot better than waking up at 10AM to facilitate a pickup lifestyle. (I am unemployed ATM, so I do have my time to myself, but if I ever need to run to the store or something before it closes, I will have to interrupt my routines throughout my day.)
• I thought about just looking at the guys in the club that have game and then turning them into my clubbing buddies, but I have an extremely tough time to build rapport with these people that appear to be "high value men" that have good game. If I plan to go down that road more, I need to shift my approach, still have to figure this out. 

I notice that I avoid physical escalation because I am aware that my hands are always cold as fuck. My body in general seems to operate at a colder temperature on the surface of my skin. I tried to dance to warm my body up, which works, but I would need to to that periodically throughout the night. I am considering using a heat pack in my back pocket to warm my hands up lmao. 

I am always holding water because otherwise my throat would get dry as fuck where it's rough to speak because it's such a loud club that I go to. That also makes one of my hands tied and also makes it cold lol. Does holding that water sub communicate an unwanted perception of me being sober? Is holding an object holding be back from physical escalation? (I don't think so)

I'm noticing that I have siloed my life so much that I find it hard to talk to people outside my few niche interests. I need to consume more popular media in the social matrix to be able to create conversations that people can relate to more. I need to find great sources of news/tabloids to help facilitate this. It's such a pain in the ass to have to carry 100% of the conversation, for men AND women, but that just be how it is.

When I do the random sentence string practice routine (From the video how to be funny), I find that all of my sentence strings start to silo around my own life, self improvement, and empowering self talk. Which makes me think that I'm doing  the practice routine incorrectly. Where a better approach to that exercise would be to try to make it as random as possible such that you train your mind to free-associate random topics. Thoughts on that?

Edited February 5, 2023 by ZenSwift

[Raze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHfAMh6Edm4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwcuLLBUBiA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhJXF6E7mw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hOwNudcVgI

 

[NoSelfSelf]

Yeah i know that it sucks...mind is making sure for you to stay in comfort zone and not ever do that again or soon after...if you are grateful for the good moments you had and keep answering to that negative voice with i dont care,i did what i wanted to do, no regrets it will slowly stop...

There is a whole process beforehand(the nights out) to keep destroying the negative expectations and replacing with what you gonna do and say etc.with no expectations..

[Vrubel]

On 05/02/2023 at 10:36 PM, ZenSwift said:

Sets where I get bullied, sets where women are just being immature with the way they reject me, etc. 

Getting bullied?

This is not normal.  A women will never bully a men that approaches her, from an evolutionary point of view this kind of behavior could get her killed.

[NoSelfSelf]

@Vrubel Its natural for people to bully you if you show any kind of weakness they will attack its super normal...if hes in a process it will happen...

[Vrubel]

58 minutes ago, NoSelfSelf said:

@Vrubel Its natural for people to bully you if you show any kind of weakness they will attack its super normal...if hes in a process it will happen...

Oke but it's still a sign of something fundamentally wrong. A grown man should not get bullied.

@ZenSwift When starting out you have to deal with a lot of cringy ass fuck ups before you slowly correct yourself and get better. But being bullied should not be part of it, your priority now should be eliminating this phenomenon. Also night game is the most low-stakes thing ever, everybody does all kinds of dumb and crazy shit and the next day it's all forgotten. You're way too tense and uptight, try taking a microdose of LSD when going out.  

[NoSelfSelf]

@Vrubel i dont get the point you are making ,like there should be no wars no world hunger but its happening and here is the forum to get the info...

[Vrubel]

@NoSelfSelf I am saying it's not a normal phenomenon in cold-approach. So there is something foundationally wrong that needs to be fixed. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Vrubel

[Optimized Life]

why are you not also doing day game though? 

I think you definitely learn fastest if you do both.

I find that I learn the most from day game, everything is more lucid.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Optimized Life

[Leo Gura]

Focus on the positives. On the fact that you took action and the lessons you learned. Feeling bad about sets is silly. Every set is just a lesson.

You should not be beating yourself up for any set. Only examining them for ways to improve for next time.

Ideally, when you approach your mind is so clear and free that you don't even hold a set of openers. Up as a newbie you can have some material memorized. Nothing too long or complex. Keep your lines simple. Usually every night I will experiment with one new canned opener, just to see how it plays out. That one opener is easy to memorize and spit out. I keep a list of all my clever openers on my phone and look it over as I drive to the club. In the car I will repeat the opener 20-50 times out loud just as vocal warm up. By then it will get stuck in your mind.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Leo Gura

[ZenSwift]

On 2/7/2023 at 3:56 AM, Vrubel said:

Getting bullied?

This is not normal.  A women will never bully a men that approaches her, from an evolutionary point of view this kind of behavior could get her killed.

Out of approximately 200 approaches I got bullied once. Don't worry, it's not very common. It just is a pain in the ass to shake off because it is a hot button for me because of a trauma for being bullied my entire life. Perhaps it's an opportunity to do some shadow work on, and that girl just created the perfect experience to reflect on. The energy of the set triggered me, and I should have set a quick boundary and left before it went super down hill. 

 

Like I had another set that night where a girl straight up said I'm too short for her, and I feel no emotional negativity to that because of how secure I am about that part of myself. (I'm 5'3")

 

On 2/7/2023 at 3:17 AM, NoSelfSelf said:

Yeah i know that it sucks...mind is making sure for you to stay in comfort zone and not ever do that again or soon after...if you are grateful for the good moments you had and keep answering to that negative voice with i dont care,i did what i wanted to do, no regrets it will slowly stop...

I worried that when I worded it like that it would give off that kind of vibe. This is not how I frame it. I do not have a negative self talk like this. Just had it hit me a little harder that day because of a trauma button and also I just had my employment plans uprooted so I don't know where my next income source is from. So I was a less grounded at the time. As I write this, I am a lot more grounded as I had a few days to process it and sleeping on it desensitizes it. Plus doing HIT workouts desensitizing it helps plenty. 

 

On 2/7/2023 at 3:17 AM, NoSelfSelf said:

There is a whole process beforehand(the nights out) to keep destroying the negative expectations and replacing with what you gonna do and say etc.with no expectations..

Yeah I'm noticing that I need to first feel the sting of a negative experience before I learn how to react to it. I am not one to think fast in the moment.

On 2/7/2023 at 5:51 AM, Vrubel said:

try taking a microdose of LSD when going out.  

As beneficial as going to a club on a psychedelic seems, I think that any negative blowouts will massively throw the entire trip. Even a micro dose. I think it would be a very bad idea for me to do psychedelics in the club. And MDMA I have very little interest in doing. Only curious in doing MDMA in combination with DMT.

On 2/7/2023 at 7:24 AM, Optimized Life said:

why are you not also doing day game though? 

I think you definitely learn fastest if you do both.

I find that I learn the most from day game, everything is more lucid.

I'm entertaining the idea to transition fully into day game for the next while. As my productivity would massively benefit from an earlier sleep schedule. According to my new wing, the malls are packed with hot girls at certain times.

 

On 2/7/2023 at 9:19 AM, Leo Gura said:

Focus on the positives. On the fact that you took action and the lessons you learned. Feeling bad about sets is silly. Every set is just a lesson.

You should not be beating yourself up for any set. Only examining them for ways to improve for next time.

Ideally, when you approach your mind is so clear and free that you don't even hold a set of openers. Up as a newbie you can have some material memorized. Nothing too long or complex. Keep your lines simple. Usually every night I will experiment with one new canned opener, just to see how it plays out. That one opener is easy to memorize and spit out. I keep a list of all my clever openers on my phone and look it over as I drive to the club. In the car I will repeat the opener 20-50 times out loud just as vocal warm up. By then it will get stuck in your mind.

I always appreciate your insight Leo, thank you. I appreciate the idea of saying it 20-50 times out loud, makes total sense.

Every set really do be a lesson out here.

I think focusing more on acceptance of what happened will help me a lot. I notice that I need to pay attention more to accepting what happened, processing the emotion, use my notes/learnings from "How to forgive anyone who hurt you" video if required, and also just try to remain more objective and curious about what happened, what could be done differently, and move on.

[Vrubel]

47 minutes ago, ZenSwift said:

It just is a pain in the ass to shake off because it is a hot button for me because of a trauma for being bullied my entire life. Perhaps it's an opportunity to do some shadow work on, and that girl just created the perfect experience to reflect on.

I would say standing your ground, being audacious and cheeky is a foundational part of cold approach, especially when starting out and you have to unwire the meek nice guy programming. Later it will be so natural to you, you won't even think about it. 

Also, men are inherently powerful as only they have the ability to confront and fight other men. I am not saying you should fight or do other stupid things. But it is good to cultivate a certain aura where people can feel off you that if they cross you, they are in a world of trouble. I am talking about something subtle and inherently masculine, not about being aggressive or angry. Having some experience with confrontation and standing your ground will certainly grow you here. 

1 hour ago, ZenSwift said:

Like I had another set that night where a girl straight up said I'm too short for her, and I feel no emotional negativity to that because of how secure I am about that part of myself. (I'm 5'3")

Good, I am also very short but I never even get shit tests from girls on this fact because I think they can feel that I completely own this aspect of myself. Some of the world's greatest leaders were very short guys.

 

1 hour ago, ZenSwift said:

As beneficial as going to a club on a psychedelic seems, I think that any negative blowouts will massively throw the entire trip. Even a micro dose. I think it would be a very bad idea for me to do psychedelics in the club. And MDMA I have very little interest in doing. Only curious in doing MDMA in combination with DMT.

I understand you, that's actually a good reason to not do it.  A microdose of LSD for example won't help you during day game because the anxiety will just eat you up. But in a loud obnoxious club it helps a lot because there is a general atmosphere of partying and not giving a fuck. For me, it's like having a superpower but I also understand your concerns. 
 

1 hour ago, ZenSwift said:

I'm entertaining the idea to transition fully into day game for the next while. As my productivity would massively benefit from an earlier sleep schedule. According to my new wing, the malls are packed with hot girls at certain times.

Good! but beware if you have problems "managing bad experiences" day game will be even harder. Even though the reaction of girls will be generally friendlier. Approaching girls during the day is a whole other setting than a loud nightclub where everybody is drunk and does stupid shit. Not saying you should avoid it but a good dose "of not giving a fuck" is required. Especially when starting out.

 

 

[Ulax]

On 07/02/2023 at 11:56 AM, Vrubel said:

Getting bullied?

This is not normal.  A women will never bully a men that approaches her, from an evolutionary point of view this kind of behavior could get her killed.

@Vrubel Guess I just met a lot of women who wanted to be killed when I started to game lmao

Also its easy to mix up getting bullied with getting shit tested. 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Ulax

[Ulax]

@ZenSwift Here are my recommendations:

- Make your goals process oriented rather than results oriented (I.e. im gonna do 20 approaches working on eye contact > I'm going to do 10 approach where I hook). This makes your goals within your control.

- Write field reports. Most of the top guys all seem to field report. And it makes you more likely to spot your blind spots in game.

^ Recommendations for field reporting

- Find ways to destress. Game is fucking stressful. Find some way in your life to destress. I.e. if you have the money get a membership to a nice gym where they have things like a sauna. RSD julien recommends stuff like that in his products.

- Make a strategy for your game. I.e. make a plan of action. When i was gaming in my last phase, i used the system of goal setting described in AG hedyan's ebook 'The system'. I found it very useful, and noticed it gave a lot more structure and stability to my progress, especially compared to my peers in game, who often seemed pretty haphazard in their progress and commitment to the process.

- Find some way of working on your inner game. Maybe something like PSTEC could help with that. I've heard from plenty of pickup dudes that PSTEC has helped them. You can find some click tracks online. Its sort of a combo of NLP and hypnosis.

I've put a variety of stuff up here, no need to implement all at once. 

 

Edit: Also, regarding free association. Maybe this could help:
 

randomwordgenerator.com

Set a timer and speak for two minutes rapid fire, aka pausing as little as possible around each word generated. Do this for like 5 topics.

Maybe this vid too: 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Ulax

[Vrubel]

38 minutes ago, Ulax said:

@Vrubel Guess I just met a lot of women who wanted to be killed when I started to game lmao

Also its easy to mix up getting bullied with getting shit tested. 

 

You're right. Bullying is not the right word here then. A shit test means the girl is interested which is very positive. I had a girl once grab my chin and say to me that I am an obnoxious creep haha. Out of insecurity I took that seriously, only later realizing it was a shit test I failed. But that's something completely different than real bullying. Real bullying is malicious emotional abuse.   

@ZenSwift Is there a chance you interpret shit-tests and "hard" rejections as bullying due to your trauma? 

[Ulax]

Just now, Vrubel said:

You're right. Bullying is not the right word here then. A shit test means the girl is interested which is very positive. I had a girl once grab my chin and say to me that I am an obnoxious creep haha. Out of insecurity I took that seriously, only later realizing it was a shit test I failed. But that's something completely different than real bullying. Real bullying is malicious emotional abuse.   

@Vrubel I like your distinction dude.

And damn that was a harsh shit test ahaha, at least i think it would be for me.

 

[Vrubel]

Nah, she grabbed my chin, which was a sexy/tantalizing move. Context and vibe matters a lot, I was just dumb.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Vrubel

[spiritual memes]

31 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

I had a girl once grab my chin and say to me that I am an obnoxious creep haha.

Jeez thats not very nice. I woulda thrown hands... which is probably why I'm not very good with women...