My fourth one-to-one with Wisdom and Suave saw me out in Old St again on Friday night. It ended up being a very interesting session but not for the reasons I would have expected. During and just after the session I felt that it was an awful night and I felt pretty down but the day after I started to think over what happened in more detail, work out why what happened did happen and in conclusion I now feel that the session has led me to a great insight regarding the nature of ‘state’.

The session started as per normal and the first thing that surprised me was that my AA returned with a vengeance. I was really struggling to open and hesitating a lot. The next eventful thing which happened was that at some point I encountered my first ever State-Crash. I don’t really know what happened but for some reason my state just dropped and spiralled out of control. I felt despair and unhapiness and great discomfort. I started to feel really removed from my surroundings and for a few minutes I thought I was going to actually quit and go home.

What saved the day? Two things: first off I made the conscious decision that I was not going to be defeated. Secondly Johnny made the inspired suggestion that I switch and we roleplay that I was in fact teaching him and Suave how to open. Holy Fu.ck on Steriods! This is a seriously powerful training tool. Within minutes I was deep in the roleplay. I’m not someone uncomfortable with acting or roleplay and I let it totally take over me. I became convinced I was training Johnny and Suave. They started acting like students and asking me little questions. I’ve taken on board a lot of theory since March and found it easy, even enjoyable to talk to them as if they were students and try and reframe the situation to their advantage.

Me: Accept that you feel fear. This is perfect. Any fool can approach when in state so being in state is useless to us. We need to train approaching when feeling fear. See the approach as a ten second interaction. All you have to do is go up, open, then whatever happens you have crossed off another number. We simply repeat this 200 times before worrying about anything beyond it. This approach is one tiny brick in a road you are walking on

Johnny: What if I don’t want to do it, because I’m scared?

Me: Nobody wants to approach. Everyone is scared. Just make the decision whether you are willing to suffer to get where you want to go or whether you are not willing to suffer. If you are not willing then give up. Period. Once you make the decision you just simply have to do it. Get up. Go over. Get blown out. Leave. One down. Done.

I did this more and more and it slowly brain washed me. At one point Johnny timidly asked I could do a demo for their benefit. I was the teacher. I was the PUA-Trainer. At that point I felt totally brainwashed. Up and off I went and opened a 2-set that I’d previously described as “bitchy blondes”. As I said to my ‘students’ afterwards you should never try and guess what type of girls they are, as in fact they ended up being pretty nice. I continued and opened a mixed two set of Japanese which then self-merged into a big woman-heavy set. On the way back I opened another set by the bar just for fun. I honestly felt like I was doing a demonstration. An amazingly productive frame.

On the way back I felt some scrap of acheivement. I’d dug myself out of a state-hole in the only way possible: head on conflict. I’d got a lot of IODs from some sets but they were all done in the sweetest way and I ejected with grace and charm, but this was no big deal and I wrote it off as symptomatic of my internal state which was not great.

Total sets opened: 10. Considering I suffered a state-crash I’m pretty pleased with this.

Lessons learned

State

The next day I mulled all this over and came up on a revelation:

State is a fickle mistress.

One time she’s here, it’s great.. next minute.. Poof! She’s gone. You can’t just ask her to be happy because you feel like it. You have to work on it. You have to show her positive stimuli to make her happy. Once she is happy you have to keep her happy. If she flounces off in a sulk into a room marked ‘depression’ then the only way to get her out is to plow on. Keep doing the things you would do if you were in state and use these as positive stimuli to lure her out of the ‘depression’ room.

Another way to think of it is that your state is an animal which is only half under your control. I now like to imagine a room in my brain which has a dozen or so dog baskets scattered all over the floor. Each basket bears a label describing a different emotional state e.g. ‘happiness’, ‘sadness’, ‘depression’, ‘anxiety’. My state-monster is in fact a little pug puppy, wandering round wherever it pleases. There is another person in the room and he is the ‘controller’. He’s the conscious part of my brain, the top-level process (the rider of the elephant). He can’t scold or frighten the puppy and he can’t touch it, but he can provide positive stimuli to lure the little bugger into the right basket.

Once I accepted this visualization of the way my moods and my state worked everything seems so much easier to deal with. If you’re feeling down then don’t wallow in it.. plow through it. Lure that puppy out of the basket. Fight your current state. You don’t have to accept it. Change it.

Some women are boring

“If a woman isn’t interested then I’m not adding enough value”. Bullsh1t. Some women are just plain boring. Black holes. Nothing to say, nothing to contribute. No interests, no thoughts, nothing. I always thought that I was boring them and that was why the conversations sucked. Now I come to the awesome realization that I am on general a more interesting and conversational person than 95% of all women I meet. Wow. And I’m being serious.

I opened a 2 set of Brazilians in this session and told Suave I thought they were boring and I actually couldn’t be bothered to talk to them. A nice frame to have. Only an AFC thinks any beautiful woman is worthwhile.

Women have terrible conversational skills

So you think women have great social skills? In a way. But what they can’t do is run a stimulating conversation. Give them the reins for a second and they’ll be straight in with stuff that is pure AFC. “Where do you live?”, “What do you do?”. Do not let women control the conversation. They will make it boring and then blame you.