The Soccer Field

A lot of people talk about inner game and outer game as if they are separate entities but the two are connected. Imagine a soccer field where one goal represents inner game and the other goal represents outer game. Your game will make the most progress when the soccer ball is kicked back and forth from one goal to the other. Having the ball kicked around in the mid-field won’t do anything. Instead you must score goals in the inner game as well as the outer game. The two feed off each other and are synergistic.

The same analogy of the soccer field can be used to understand the relationship between material and outer game. Material is at one end and the sets you’ve done are another. The best way to get better is to kick the soccer ball back and forth between the two. If you’re only scoring goals in material then you’re not going to get anywhere. Likewise if you only score goals by going out and socializing you will improve your social skills but will have less of an understanding of the theory behind what you’re doing. Instead you must kick the soccer ball in the outer game goal and then have your team drive it back to the material goal. If you happen to score 5 straight goals in material you must counter that by scoring five straight goals in the outer game. Basically what I’m trying to say her is that you don’t want one team to blow out the other. You don’t want to become the Patriots! We want some balance, or a tie between the teams.

Ideally we want a high scoring tie but in the long run its best to lighten up on the material and focus on being in the field. When people first find the community they consume everything they can get their hands on. The ratio of material/sets is high in the introductory phase to the community. The next phase is growth and this is when the ratio of material to sets should be about even. This is where people will make the most strides in their game. Finally people reach the point where most of their time is spent in-field and relatively little time is spent consuming material. Eventually the vast majority of material becomes highly redundant but new gems can still be found by creative PUAs.

Phases of Growth

If you dedicate time, study and practice to “pickup” you’re going to get better and better. However, personal growth when it comes to seduction moves at an entirely different rate than many other things in life. As an analogy seduction is often compared to sports. However, our improvement at playing sports grows at a fairly linear rate while our pickup skills grow in a much more cyclical fashion. When in comes to seduction sometimes we make huge leaps in short amounts of time.

The reason for this is because developing social skills is much more complex than learning to, say, hit a tennis ball. For one, inner game is much more important for pickup compared to athletics. Sports are dominantly an outer game activity and while confidence and inner game are important for them too on the whole it is a much more mechanical activity. The general principle is that the more mechanical an activity the more linear the process of getting better at it.

In addition, each individual has their own unique growth rate when learning a new activity. Not only is growth at mechanical activities more linear but the variability of the growth rate is less from person to person. When it comes to pickup usually what happens is that your skills seems to flatten out and then poof you make a huge jump in a short period of time. You do learn little things every time you go out but on the whole growth is stepwise. More specifically, inner game rises in a cyclical manner while outer game grows in a more linear manner.

Inner game growth is very similar to personal growth and maturity as a whole. People grow in cycles and its usually the result of new experiences in life. When major changes happen and people are exposed to something new thats when much of the growth occurs. And, just when you think your inner game couldn’t get any better you make yet another leap. The process never ends and thats one of the exciting things about life. However, inner game growth alone isn’t going to make one a great seducer. It is only when combined with outer game that you are going to see results.

Climbing the Self-Employment Ladder

We’re all familiar with the corporate ladder but we should also keep in mind the self-employment ladder. Like the corporate ladder we can improve our position and gradually rise to better occupations. Unlike the corporate ladder we’re not dealing with a bureaucracy and don’t need to network with people within a specific organization. Climbing the corporate ladder involves establishing close ties within an organization while the self-employment ladder involves the strength of weak ties outside of your business.

Imagine two mountains, one being the self-employment ladder and the other being the corporate ladder. We may climb one or the other or we may “zig zag” to the top of one. Within the corporate ladder we may climb the ladder with just one organization or we may bounce from one company to the other while constantly seeking a better position. By keeping this picture in mind it allows use to open up our options for employment as well as possible roads to take. Becoming self-employed is an accomplishment in itself but we shouldn’t stop there. We can always imagine our business earning more profit or picture ourselves in an entirely different business altogether. Most people that start small businesses ultimately “fail” but at the very least they will learn from the experience. They may climb up the ladder but then fall off the ladder. Then they might do it all over again and succeed in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th try. Climbing the self-employment ladder has a “yo-yo” effect while the corporate ladder is more linear.

If we want to be self-employed we have to start somewhere and sometimes this involves being at the bottom. Robert Kiyosaki classifies people into four camps: employees, self-employed, business owners and investors. Lets take the latter three and lump them into the self-employment ladder. In this case the self-employed would be at the bottom, followed by the business owners and the investors at the top. Kiyosaki talks a lot about how important it is to be at the right side of the cashflow quandrant but there is still value in being in the self-employment category. Most people don’t become business owners right away and do so as a result of climbing the self-employment ladder.

Power, Courtship and Relationship Management

Brent of absolutepowerdating.com is perhaps the most well known for discussing the concept of power as applied to dating. He says that the person who has the power in the relationship ends up being the most happy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t exert much power in your dating lives as long as you have the edge, that is, have at least slightly more power than the other.

As an experiment imagine two tennis balls apart from each other and horizontal. The tennis balls represent a male and a female in the courtship process. When one tennis ball moves closer to the other it represents one party pursuing the other.

I first heard about the tennis ball analogy while listening to a talk by Wayne Elise (Juggler). The talk wasn’t about power theory but I quickly realized how the concept and analogy of the tennis ball could be extended to include it. Wayne’s talk was about how the goal of a courtship is to have both balls moving towards each other.

Traditionally and stereotypically the male tennis ball was moving towards the female tennis ball in an attempt to wine and dine her. David D then came along with the “solution” of cocky/funny but what that did was distant the male tennis ball. In other words, the ball moved backwards instead of forward and was trying to get the female to chase the guy. Having the female chase the guy might be an improvement over the traditional model but ideally both parties should be pursuing each other. That is the foundation for a successful courtship process.

The tennis ball analogy can now be supplemented by incorporating power theory into it. Both balls should be moving toward each other but ideally the female ball should move slightly more than the male ball. That is, both the male and the female should be moving towards each other but the female should be making slightly larger steps than the male.

Power theory can be applied in many different ways. For example when it comes to text messaging there should be a fairly equal exchange of text messages. You don’t want to be the one sending a lot of texts to her with little reciprocation and vice versa. If you send a lot of texts w/o receiving anything in return its basically the same as trying to wine and dine her. At the same time, however, its just as bad if you receive texts from her w/o replying because if you’re interested in her you want to appear attainable. Attainability is a concept in the VAC model (value, attainability and compliance).

To maintain the edge in the text exchange you want to make it seem like she is slightly more invested in the exchange than you. Variables in text messaging include the separation in time between text messages, the number of text messages and the amount of interest that is shown in each text. Generally speaking you want to try and mirror the separation, number and interest while simultaneously letting her text you back quicker, send more texts and also show showing you more interest than you show her.

Power theory can be applied in many different ways and in all aspects of life. Just keep the basic tennis ball analogy in mind and take it from there.