Fail Upwards

Today I'm going to change things up a bit and discuss something I have been thinking about a lot after I... sort of stumbled across it. Although it's in no way original it has been a great help to my night game.

The Wink.

Now then, let's say you see a girl in a bar or club who is either across the room, already in a conversation, busy dancing, in the middle of a bunch of people, or any number of other possible situations. If you happen to make eye contact with a girl you are interested in talking to, giving her a wink is a great way to show confidence and even invite an approach from her.

In my experience... -50% of the time the wink will either go unnoticed or she will take in a negative way and not respond, in which case you have risked and lost nothing. -25% of the time the wink will be taken in a positive way and she may look away and smile or give some other indicator of interest (IOI) and in this case you have gained significant status in her eyes for when you later get a chance to approach her with any opener you may have. -25% of the time she will actually approach me.

The story of my friday night on the 17th of Feb, 2012.

To warm up I usually ask random people for the time or directions to somewhere and if I can get a short discussion out of it I go for it. The more attractive I find the woman the harder it is to decide to make the approach, I usually do one of these followed by asking one person, or a group of people, what three of their first impressions of me are. On this friday I walked down Granville street and do my warm up while at the same time encouraging the two guys with me to ask certain people for the time, Filip calls this game "go,", which fits great.

On one of my "3 opinion" approaches I had my first real blow off, hurrah!

As I saw these two pretty girls walking towards me who were obviously headed out clubbing, I said "hey" loud enough for them to clearly hear it but I waited until they were about 5 feet in front of me. When I stopped, with all my weight on my back foot and a little out of their path of course, I made sure I had eye contact and started in quickly with "what's the first three things you think of when you see me?" This immediately brought a look to the blonde's face that pretty clearly indicated she had no interest in humouring me and turned back to walk after her friend without even slowing down or saying anything. At this point I believe I said "Or walk away, that works too." Not my finest hour. Hahaha

Now, her negative reaction could be because she was approached several times already on Granville, had a shitty day, just broke up with her boyfriend, had just dropped an ice cream at mcdonalds, who wouldn't be annoyed at those things? All I can control and analyze is my actions. I believe my problems were simple but major. Saying "hey" to get her attention only 5 feet from me while we were both walking at a medium pace doesn't give her a lot of time to react and check to see how confident I am in interrupting her walk. Also by not letting her stop after I had eye contact with her and before I started talking again I think I seemed over eager and therefore less confident.

First thing to think of when you're about to approach someone, "Slow down."

As I was walking by Adrenaline tattoo and clothing I saw a very cute, kind of short, blonde girl inside and decided to go in to a) say hi to her and hopefully make a direct approach and b) see if I could find a new belt and buckle that would be a little more interesting than what I had.

Once inside I approached her but chickened out of the direct approach and instead asked her to show me some belt buckles, we had a great little discussion about music as I'm in a band and she's in school for music business. During discussion I failed to show interest sexually or put myself out there and I believe this put me in the "friend zone" at best within the first minute of us talking. After I bought my belt and buckle I tried to correct by going direct, I said "the real reason I came in here was because I thought you were cute and wanted to say hi." She seemed flattered, I asked for her phone number so that I could give her some comments on the music she was recommending I check out but she said she doesn't check her texts so i should facebook her. Of course her facebook account is hidden so I can't add her, oh well maybe I will get to connect with her on another visit down there.

Again, I didn't put myself out there and was quickly categorized as an interesting customer or possibly a friend. On the plus side, I attempted to "qualify" her by saying I appreciated her opinions on music, but disagreed with a few of them openly.

Later at the Cellar, down one wingman, I saw a very cute, thin, dark skinned girl standing with what looked like her friends in a sort of no-mans-land between the bar and dance floor. I walked up to her and asked

Me: '"What kind of business meeting she was there for and what do you do?" Her: "I'm a prostitute" Me: "Oh awesome, do you enjoy it?" Her: "I love it!" Me: "Well great, that sounds like an awesome job" Her: "I'm not really a prostitute" Me: "I know. What do you do?" Her: "I'm a med student"

Right around this point is when "white shirt guy" joins the show. She's involved in the conversation with me, she's laughing, she's turned towards me and she's even leaning in to hear what I have to say more clearly. White shirt guy is standing on her other side and says :

WSG: "Who the fuck is this guy?" Me: "Is that your boyfriend?" Her: "No, I don't even know him" WSG: "I'm going to have to fucking smash this guy!"

Now was my most confident moment of the night. I pretty quickly realized that this guy was standing near her because he was waiting to get the confidence, or some kind of situational topic, to talk to her and since I had beaten him to it he was now standing by as I actually gained interest from her. Without even looking at him I continued to ask her what she did for fun, what made her want to be a med student, etc, while sharing stories that related to her answers from my own life. A minute or two later I decided I would find my wingman and see how he was doing, I promised to catch up with her later.

Lesson from this, don't let other people affect your mood or mess up your confidence. I deserve the interest of others and won't apologize for interacting with people I'm interested in and improving their day in some way.

I then convinced two girls studying to be librarians that I was a male stripper at a club like Brandi's called Brandon's. I think one of them still believes that. That was me practicing my high status humor. If something is funny to me and I can continue to make it more and more unbelievable without them figuring out that I'm joking, all the funnier!

Also with the librarians, one of them with whom I had generated good attraction and rapport dragged me out onto the dance floor when LMFAO's Sexy and I Know It came on. I actually danced without feeling incredibly self conscious, good times.

Lesson from dancing: Nobody is watching you dance, they're all too busy thinking about what people think of their dancing.

Last fun observation of the night was near the bar, there were two girls seperated by one guy who was obviously hitting on the one on the right. Her friend, on the left, was obviously bored and checking her phone facing away from her friend and the first guy. I decided I would go try to cheer her up with some fun conversation and act as the guy's wingman at the same time. Before I could get to her another guy had slid his way up to the bar who was wearing, I shit you not, a black feather boa and... I believe a fedora with his white collared shirt and silver chain showing.

Me: "Hey man, is that a feather boa?" Him: "Yeah, it's called pea-cocked!" Me: "Oh, I know. It seems a little 'mysterious' if you know what I mean." nudge nudge with the elbow Him: "Haha, yeah man."

That's when I walked away laughing.

I came back a few minutes later and he was gone. I asked the girls about it.

Me: "Hey, was that guy hitting on you like... Really hard?" Girl1: "Yeah, but we kind of thought he was gay." 

Lesson I took away from this... Only peacock or wear loud clothing if you have the personality to back it up and ideally maybe a few friends with you so you don't seem like such a shark.

Yesterday I was invited to a seminar at Social Fluency to see how their program changes lives.

After hearing out them from Pickup Podcast's interview with Devon Ash and hearing that they were located in vancouver I found out that they have one iteration of their 6 week program left to play out before they move offices to San Francisco for an undetermined amount of time. That, combined with the obvious practical usefulness of their material motivated me to invest in my social stock. It'll be on the rise soon ;)

Tomorrow is the first day in the rest of my life. I'm not hoping for the best, I'm planning for it as best I can.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

So after listening to many hours of good advice from AJ and Jordan and www.pickuppodcast.com as well as tips from many of their guests on "text game" as they call it, as well as online dating tips I have already got one an online message record of about 1/4. That is Pretty goddamn exciting at my early stage of progress.

During my experiences approaching women and attempting to even have a decent conversation I seem to be encountering the same problem over and over. They don't seem very interested in what I have to say, they always seem to show negative body language and obviously the conversations don't last very long.

I think I need to try out a more direct approach. Something along the lines of "Hey, I saw you from over there [point], saw you and thought you were cute, wanted to say hi so... Hi"

Shit yeah! Today I got my first legitimate number after beginning my social education.

Okay, so it wasn't what pickup artists might call a proper "Number Close" but I feel that this was a success, and this early on I'll take all the successes I can get. Kind of letting down the idea of a fail blog already, but I'm okay with that!

Wandering around the local mall today before I went to get some food on my diet's Cheat Day" (for information on the "Slow Card Diet" see Tim Ferriss' book called "The 4 Hour Body") I saw two cute girls working at the counter of a salon and decided to go say hi before I could talk myself out of it. Finally following Mystery's 3 second rule, one of my favourite pieces of advice he has.

I walked up, said hi. Asked her opinion of my hair, told her a funny story about the last time I'd had my hair cut at some local barber shop. She laughed at the right things and then I encouraged her to talk about her hair as she had mentioned she had recently cut off 45cm of her hair and it was now a mohawk. Turns out she's in hair dresser school and I asked questions and listened to her talk about how much fun it was and how the girls all did the more reserved haircuts so she had decided to go all out and go for the seldom seen female-mohawk.

After talking for what was probably 5 minutes, mostly about her, I asked if it was possible to get a cut at the school she was at. She said yes. I asked her how I could get in touch if I wanted to drop by. She offered that she could give me her cell number and I could coordinate that way when my hair had grown out a bit and I wanted to come in for a proper haircut.

About 5 minutes later I texted her, starting out with a funny nickname then thanking her for her advice and saying I thought it was only fair she have my number so when I take her up on her offer of a haircut she would remember me. Number exchange done and I feel that this could be a great opportunity to practice some "text game" as it could be called and play around with some methods and possibly get the chance to know her a bit better on an actual date as she was displaying interest when we talked and genuinely seemed to be having a good time talking to me.

So true, I did not cold approach her on the street and get a number close, and there was a pre tense of work involved but I feel that I may be able to make something out of this number, if only as a learning experience.

There could be a fail to learn from in this yet.

My name is John, I live in Vancouver, B.C. I have never been completely clueless socially but I have never really gone out of my way to meet people and now that I'm getting close to 30 years old I would like to reassert myself as a social person so that I can be surrounded by successful and fun people who will enhance my life in exchange for me doing the same for them.

The point of my posts here will be simply to notate my progress as a newly discovered social person.

I will endever to update this tumblr when I make progress with approaches, conversations, connections and relationships as well as with any sources I can regarding education so that any people reading this can learn from the sources I find most valuable as well as from my mistakes... Speaking of which.

The idea of "Failing Upwards" is usually associated with incompetence being rewarded. In my discussions and interactions with others I will Undoubtably fail often and my goal is to learn from those failures so as to not repeat the same mistakes time and time again. I believe this is possible through learning from good sources (which I will be posting favourites of as I come across new ones) and then talking to enough people to gain decent "calibration" skills, in other words the ability to know when it is appropriate to escalate an interaction and when it's time to politely move on.

Hopefully by me crashing and burning, essentially "failing up," you will be able to learn from my mistakes as well and begin surrounding yourself with the people you've always wanted to be involved with without having to fail so many times yourself.

We'll see how it goes and just hope that we don't get slapped too often.