Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  6.

  Understand how your mind learns. The psychological field of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) offers a useful four-step model of how the mind learns. It can serve as a yardstick to measure your progress.

  Unconscious incompetence: You’re doing something wrong, and you don’t even know you’re doing it wrong.

  Conscious incompetence: You’re doing something wrong, and you’re aware that you’re doing it wrong, but you haven’t yet fixed the problem.

  Conscious competence: You’ve learned the right way to do it, and you’re doing it correctly with focused attention.

  Unconscious competence: You no longer have to think about something or work on learning it—you automatically do it correctly. In the parlance of the game, this is when you finally become a so-called natural.

  7.

  Be willing to go through the pain period. This game is not an easy one. You’ll be forced to confront nearly every single thing that defines you—every emotion, every action, every belief. You’ll sometimes be apprehensive about approaching a particular woman, trying a new technique, or changing a behavior. What separates an amateur from a champion is the willingness to push through that fear and do it anyway. Here’s what Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his iron-pumping days, had to say about it: “If you can go through the pain period, you make it to be a champion. If you can’t go through it, forget it. And that’s what most people lack: having the guts—the guts to go in and just say… ‘I don’t care what happens.’”

  8.

  Don’t look to friends or family for approval. Not all of your friends and family will understand the journey you’re about to take. They may tell you that they don’t like how you’re changing. They may make fun of you for wanting to improve. That’s okay. It happened to me. It also happened to Oprah: When she lost weight, she lost friends. This surprised her at first, until she learned that her largeness had given them an excuse to feel better about their own bodies. So, when you start attracting women and adventure, your friends may not welcome it—you’ve become a threat to their limiting beliefs and complacency about their own shortcomings. Let it be their problem, not yours.

  9.

  Be willing to test new ideas, even if they don’t seem logical. Before I learned the game, I considered myself an intelligent and successful person. Yet the logic that had gotten me so far in the world wasn’t getting me anywhere with women. In order to make a change, I had to try some new behaviors, even if they didn’t seem logical. I said things I thought would drive women away, but instead they attracted them. I wore outrageous clothes I thought would get me laughed out of the room, but instead they motivated women to approach me. And that’s when I realized that I’d never really been using logic in the first place—because, as any good scientist knows, before dismissing a new hypothesis, it’s necessary to test it first.

  10.

  Once something works, figure out how and why it works. There are some men who do great just following these instructions and repeating the routines. But the ones who become superstars are the ones who, after a series of successes, figure out why the routines worked and what made them work. There’s only one rule of pickup, and that rule is: There are no rules, only guidelines. Once you understand the principles behind each idea, you’ll know when to follow the guidelines, when to dismiss them, and when to invent new ones.

  11.

  If you don’t know what to do, don’t leave. If you run out of material when talking to a woman you’ve just met, you’re not going to learn anything by running away. Stay in the conversation and, if you run out of things to say, push it five, ten, twenty minutes further—even if you have to violate the guidelines and buy her a drink or ask interview questions. It’s the best way to learn something new for next time.

  12.

  Hang around someone better than yourself. This is the single best way to improve in any area. Your mentor doesn’t have to be the top attraction expert in the world, just someone who has a little more skill than you do. If you don’t know anyone who can fill this role, instead of going out to meet women one night, go out to befriend someone who’s good with women.

  13.

  Make sure that your ratio of effort to results is increasing. When learning a new way of doing something, most people get worse at the task before getting better. That’s normal. But you’d be surprised by the number of people who keep putting more work into something after this transition period, even though their results stay the same or barely improve. So make sure you’re increasing not just your knowledge but also your results. If you’re not, then take a break, review these rules, examine what you’re doing, and push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

  14.

  Finish what you begin. Most people can accomplish just about anything within the realm of possibility. Despite this, they never realize their dreams. Either they quit before they reach their goals (and always with a seemingly good reason for doing so), or they don’t change their strategy when something’s not working. Roughly 19 out of 20 people who start reading this book won’t stick with the program until the end. Don’t be one of those people. Simply by not giving up, you’ll already be in the top 5 percent of men out there.

  MISSION 1: It’s Opposite Day

  The focus of today’s lesson is disqualification—one of the most counterintuitive techniques in the Stylelife Challenge. Forget everything you know about attracting women, because the goal of disqualification is to meet women and tell them you don’t want to date them.

  This is going to be the most difficult day of the Challenge so far—but also the most rewarding. To find out what it’s all about, read your Day 10 Briefing and fill out the worksheet describing your ideal woman.

  MISSION 2: Play Hard to Get

  Your mission today is to make three approaches using one of the openers you’ve learned or created.

  During the first approach, add a disqualifier from today’s reading material.

  For the second approach, use a different disqualifier.

  Afterward, take a short break and think of a third potential way to disqualify her. Write it below:

  Now make your third approach and, during the opener, use the disqualifier you just invented.

  It’s not the having, it’s the getting.

  —ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  I recently went to a party in Colorado with six friends. Three of the guys spent the night with women; three didn’t. As we discussed it the next morning, we discovered that the difference between the unsuccessful guys and the successful guys boiled down to one thing: lack of neediness.

  The guys who went home alone were too available. The successful guys all played hard to get. They weren’t afraid to walk away from the woman they were attracted to, talk to other people at the party, and create the impression that if she didn’t act soon, she’d lose her chance. They understood a basic tenet of human nature: The harder we have to work for something, the more we value it.

  Thus the lesson for today: In every interaction, be the person giving validation, not the one needing it.

  One of the quickest and most playful ways to accomplish this is through disqualification. To disqualify a woman, demonstrate early in an interaction that you’re not interested in her. Even though you may be chasing her, disqualification turns the tables and makes her want to chase you. For example, telling a woman with blonde hair that for some reason you’ve only dated brunettes disqualifies her as a potential girlfriend.

  If the concept sounds odd, consider this: Beautiful women are constantly approached by men. They assume that nearly every guy wants to sleep with them. So when you take yourself out of the dating pool in a confident way, you immediately stand out—after all, most people want what they can’t have.

  Another advantage is that disqualifying a woman in a group can help you win over her friends, who are used to repelling the steady stream of men vying for her attention.

  Finally, disqualification helps build trust because it demonstrates tha
t you’re not solely motivated by the desire to sleep with her. By waiting before showing interest, you give her an opportunity to win you over with her charm, personality, and intelligence.

  Not every relationship requires disqualification. Sometimes the feelings are mutual, and two people are attracted to each other right away. Also, if you’re dealing with a woman whose confidence in her appeal is very low, you may want to avoid teasing her, since she’s constantly disqualifying herself in her mind anyway.

  Once you get comfortable using disqualifiers, you’ll realize that they’re not such a foreign, complex, counterintuitive concept at all, but in fact the bedrock of flirting.

  Most disqualifiers are meant to be playful. Others are used to demonstrate that you have high standards and won’t date or sleep with just anyone. However, a disqualifier should never be hostile, critical, judgmental, or condescending. There’s a fine line between flirting and hurting. And disqualification is never intended to be mean or insulting. So say these with a smile on your face and laughter in your voice, as if you were good-naturedly picking on a younger sibling.

  Screening

  Women test men. They do so for many reasons: because they want to select the best potential mate from among many suitors; because they’ve been hurt in the past and don’t want to make the same mistakes again; because they want confirmation that you authentically possess the qualities that attract them. Throughout your interactions with most women, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, they’re putting you on the spot to see how you’ll react.

  These tests range from flirtatious teasing (such as telling a man he’s too young or too old for her) to serious interview questions (such as asking a man why he and his last girlfriend broke up). Men normally sit there answering the questions like they’re on a game show, hoping that if they accumulate enough points, she’ll choose them. What they don’t realize is that they’re losing points simply by submitting to the test.

  Screening allows you to flip the script and see if the woman you’re interested in meets your standards. Before doing this, it’s important to know exactly what your standards are.

  Take a moment to imagine your ideal woman. Then list below five specific criteria you would like her to possess. Consider such qualities as personality, looks, upbringing, values, interests, knowledge, and life experience.

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  Now list five deal breakers. Qualities that might prevent you from dating someone could include manipulativeness, narcissism, smoking, drinking, drug use, jealousy, pets you’re allergic to, and emotional baggage.

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  Keep in mind that this is just an exercise. When dating, remain open to the unexpected. If you’re looking for someone who fits this bill exactly, you might overlook an even better match when she appears but doesn’t meet your preset criteria.

  In the meantime, this list will provide you with endless criteria for disqualification. On the simplest level, you can ask what her favorite films are and then act as if her answer is a deal breaker. “You actually liked that? That’s it. I’m going home. Nice meeting you.”

  If you want someone who’s adventurous, ask her: “What’s the wildest, craziest thing you’ve ever done?” When she answers, disqualify her by saying, with a smile, “That’s great. You and my grandma would really get along.”

  There’s an endless list of potential criteria to screen her on, from her dancing skills to her preferred ice cream flavor to her lack of an Olympic gold medal (because you only date women with Olympic gold medals, so she’d better hurry up and get one).

  The point of screening is never to make a woman feel bad about herself but to set yourself apart from the hordes of men who will sleep with anyone indiscriminately.

  Push-Pull

  The opposite of disqualification is qualification, or acceptance. When used together, these two techniques are very powerful.

  If she says or does something good, give her a positive, accepting statement (“I like your attitude”); if she says something that could be perceived as negative, tease her with a disqualifier (“Note to self: Do not date this girl”).

  Taking control of an interaction by alternating back and forth between these two poles—punishment and reward, validation and invalidation, approval and disapproval, qualification and disqualification, push and pull—is one of the key ways to amplify attraction.

  Like everything else in the game, push-pull should be doled out humorously and not cruelly. One way to make the process fun is to put her on a point system: Give her points for good behavior and subtract points for bad behavior. If you want to push it further, tell her that she can claim rewards at certain point thresholds: At forty points she gets to touch your bicep, at eighty she gets the first three digits of your phone number.

  Perhaps the most fun form of push-pull is inventing a relationship prematurely. Tell her with a laugh that you’re going to make her your girlfriend—on Fridays only—or joke that you’re going to marry her on the spot. Then, moments later, pretend to be upset by something she just said or did and change the status of the relationship. Tell her you’re demoting her to your Tuesday girlfriend, or you’re filing for divorce and she can keep the cat.

  10 More Ways to Disqualify

  Disqualification can take myriad forms. Here are a few more to help with today’s field assignment.

  Remember, if you say these with a smile and a sense of humor, you’ll come off as a great flirt. If you say them seriously, or as though you mean it, you’re just an asshole.

  Save her from you. Often, trying to drive someone away is the best way to get her to chase you. Tell her you’re the kind of guy her mother warned her about. Or say, “A good girl like you should probably be talking to a nice boy like that one over there.” Not only does this make you seem fun and dangerous, but it inspires her to live up to that reputation as well.

  Give yourself a monetary value. This can be done by pretending it’s a privilege to talk to you or touch you. If she takes your hand, pull it away and joke, smiling, “Hey now, hands off the merchandise. That’ll be forty dollars.”

  Put her in the friend zone. This is something women often do with men, but men rarely do with women. It can be done flirtatiously (by telling her she’s like the little sister you never had), or more seriously, by telling her she’d make a great friend.

  Go over the top. Exaggerate her greatness and pretend to be an awestruck admirer. If you say this in a wry, superior way, you’ll actually end up conveying the opposite.

  Reverse roles. Everything she doesn’t want a guy to do, jokingly accuse her of doing to you. Tell her to give her obvious pickup lines a rest, to stop treating you like a mindless piece of meat, to quit trying to get you drunk and take advantage of you because you’re not that kind of guy. The more unlikely the scenario, the more effective your accusations.

  Employ her. Jokingly offer to hire her as your assistant, your web designer, or some other job she’d never do. Then, of course, fire her moments later.

  Be the snob. All those immature things the popular girls in school may have said to you, you may now say to her. Examples include: “Uhh, whatever,” “Not so much,” and “Yeah, you would say that.”

  Be the authority figure. The annoying things your parents and teachers told you are also fair game. Playfully tell her she’s starting to get on your nerves, she’s in big trouble, or she’s just earned herself detention.

  Make her compete. Threaten to leave to talk to your friends, the waitress, or those “more interesting girls over there.”

  Challenge her: Tell her you’re not sure yet if she’s cool enough, adventurous enough, or mature enough to hang out with you.

  The list is endless. Any line a guy might use to hit on her, you should say the opposite. And anything she might say to a guy who’s hitting on her, you can say to
her instead.

  It’s that easy.

  Performance Notes

  For most of you, disqualifiers won’t come easy—not because they’re difficult, but because they go against everything you’ve been raised to say around women you like.

  Tone is everything. Except for when you’re actually screening someone to see if she meets your relationship criteria, most disqualifiers should be delivered playfully. If you appear serious or upset when you accuse her of hitting on you or not being cool enough for you, she’ll think you’re a psycho.

  Most disqualifiers should also be delivered casually and offhand, as if you’re not seeking or expecting a reaction. If it’s obvious you’re just using the dis-qualifer for effect, it loses its power and becomes just another form of neediness.

  Though being rich, successful, and good-looking is normally a good thing when it comes to the game, it isn’t with most disqualifiers. The point of the disqualifier is to raise your status to her level or above. But if she thinks your status is already far above hers, then most of these comments will make you sound obnoxiously arrogant rather than playfully cocky. So evaluate the situation before getting too hardcore with the material.

  Finally, if you dish it out, be prepared to take it. She may respond to your disqualifier with a sharp comment of her own. If she does, don’t panic. This a good thing. It’s called flirting. Just be prepared with an even more clever retort to fire back. If you’re stuck for an answer, just nod your head, smile, and say, “Respect,” as if she’s met your approval.