GAME
A short introduction to the
current state of game and self help,
according to yours truly.
COCPORN <cocporn@gmail.com>
http://www.cocporn.com
References
The information herein is a result of many discussions
on the FreePUA forum. Obviously, it is highly influenced
by outside sources, most notably:
- Rob Brinded
- PJ Eby
- David Berceli
- Peter Levine
- Thomas Hanna
If you stick to the stuff taught by these guys,
you'll be OK. This is an attempt to condense
and combine.
Purpose
This is a slide deck created for people
new to FreePUA, or new to game in general.
It is supposed to be a living document, and once
it reaches maturity, I will explain the slides with a
narrative track to make it more accessible.
How to navigate:
In the lower right corner, there are arrows. Use
the arrow keys to move between slides. Often, you can
move down to drill further into slides on the same
topic.
Shift in paradigm
From "What" (which pickup line to use)
To "How" (how will I perform it)
To "Whom" (who is it that does/says it)
Why does it matter?
Game 0.5 beta
- Learn routines
- Routines are designed to create attraction
- Attraction gets you laid
The premise is flawed, attraction doesn't get you laid.
(You can also easily get laid without attraction.)
Game 1.0
- You learn dominant and screening behavior
- You can learn to cognitively keep body posture
- You can learn to cognitively pace your voice.
- You can do vocal training.
- You can work on building state.
- You can push yourself out of your comfort zone.
- You can fake it 'til you make it.
None of these techniques are necessarily really recommended.
This works for "naturally successful" people who are clueless. It doesn't work for "naturally struggling" people, who make up most of the pickup community. These are the "average frustrated chumps". Game 1.0 just isn't for them.
Problems with Game 1.0
- Burnout, traumatization
- Lack of positive feedback
- A lot of really misleading material
- Easy to get worse, not better
- Incredibly hard to find the real problems and roots
- You cannot fake being relaxed
- Modelling problems
- Hard or impossible to model internal state
- Modelling is hard in general
- You cannot model muscle tonicity
It matters because...
...chances are...
...you cannot effectively reach
a desired end state
through cognitive processing/learning
and modelling alone...
Symptoms...
...that you're doing it wrong...
...or need to do exercises outside
mainstream/classical game,
go beyond "Game 1.0".
Cognitive social interruption
- Trying to fix broken social processes with cognitive thinking
- This is "being in your head"
- This is not the same as thinking
- Thinking in a social situation is obviously a good thing
- Just not about the social situation itself
- Being in SE will free up your cognitive power, not bind it
- It is, however, different from SE (social engagement)
Push motivation
- You are actively pushing yourself
- Pushing is "always" a sign that something is wrong
- There is pain involved with social interaction
Emotional spikes
- You get frequent emotional spikes
- These pull you out of SE
- They demand that you rationalize your behavior...
- ...or face the "fact" that there's something actually wrong
State building
- You need to actively "build state"
- To kill conscious processing
- To create pull motivation
- To force yourself into SE
Why doesn't it work?
Overriding the natural engagement
process cognitively, broken or not,
doesn't work because there isn't a
natural way to communicate from the
cognitive structures of your brain to the
emotional structures of the brain...
...that most people know about.
This includes the following:
- Affirmations
- Visualizations
- "Passion"
- Motivational slogans
- Comfort zone pushing
If you can get any of these to work
for your particular problem, Game 1.0
might be more than enough for you, because
it is a sure sign that you are "naturally successful".
However, if you are naturally successful, you'll
find that most these things are unnecessary.
They are ways for people who are naturally successful to try to communicate how they think to naturally struggling people...
...and it never works.
Top down vs bottom up
Traditional literature and training
often takes a top down approach to
change work.
The idea is that if you understand something
intellectually, change will naturally come.
As we saw in previous slides, this is
often not the case. And it is highly discouraging
to understand something that has no measurable
effect on your actual problem.
Catering to the Intellect (CTTI)
Most courses and information are like this,
and they fall under
the fallacy of Catering To The Intellect.
You cannot argue with it,
because it is true.
However, more often than not,
it has no power
to change you.
This is an example of top down learning.
Examples of CTTI
"Women are turned on by confidence."
This is true.
You cannot argue with it.
However:
- It doesn't make you confident
- It doesn't give you a path to becoming confident
- It is catering to your intellect
More examples of CTTI
"It's not what you say, it's how you say it."
"Be relaxed."
"Your body language is important."
"Have an abundance mentality."
Bottom up approach
- Bypasses the cognitive circuits
- Your cognitive understanding follows your emotions
...not the other way around.
This is done starting with somatics and doyletics.
SE (social engagement)
In a sense, you can say that SE is the same as
"state"; it is the absence of internal conflicts that
push you into fight, flight or freeze.
High functioning in SE is an end goal.
Preferably without drugs, alcohol,
state building, etc, as these are all the same active
components in different disguises.
The bridge
[Coming: Quick discussion of the bridge
between the emotional realm and the cognitive,
compare to PJ Eby's discussion on horses and
monkeys.]
The polyvagal theory
[Coming: A quick introduction to
Porges' polyvagal theory.]
Tracer bullets
If your target is moving, or if you don't know all the factors, you use tracer bullets—little phosphorous rounds intermixed
with real rounds in your gun. As you fire, you can actually
see the tracer bullets. And where they are landing
is where the actual bullets are landing. If you're not quite on target—because you can see if you're not on target—you can adjust your position.
Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer
Tracer bullets
This is an implementation technique. Firing off a tracer bullet
basically means that you focus on the whole vertical in
the pyramid instead of delving on a specific layer. In other
words, instead of spending three weeks doing TRE before
going out doing outer game, one could envision a week
going by as follows:
Example implementation
Here is an example breakdown of doing
a partial vertical sweep.
This will allow you to quickly diagnose in which
layers problems arise, and adjust your approach
accordingly.
Pyramid
Notes on the pyramid
- Follow the green arrow from bottom to top
- The significance of the different parts correspond to
- ...roughly the area it makes out on the pyramid
- ...the closer to the ground the more important
[PLEASE HELP WITH LINKS TO MATERIAL HERE]
Preferably material that is already hosted on FreePUA.
Somatics and doyletics
We already covered these in previous slides,
included for completeness.
Exercise
Regular exercise has plenty of benefits in
addition to making you look better. Some of these
include:
- Better sleep
- Higher baseline energy
- Higher testosterone levels
There seems to be plenty of people on FreePUA
following the 5x5-program.
Energetics
Doing energy work will increase your presence,
give you an "aura".
Typical exercises include:
- Qi Gong
- EFT/TAT
- Chinese energetics
Intention
Intentions are often synonymous with natural aggression.
Natural aggression is a term used by Levine in Waking the
Tiger, and is more a "go getter"-attitude than anything
related to being "mean" or unpleasant as a person.
PJ Eby discusses "pull motivation", which seems to be yet
another way to describe the same phenomenon.
Part of manifesting your intention is
being present. This can be achieved through:
- Meditation
- Other techniques for mindfulnes
Cognitive restructuring
Necessary cognitive restructuring should
always be done after doing somatics and
doyletics, as problems you now consider
cognitive will vanish like dew before morning sun.
This part, however, typically includes things like:
- Mindsets
- World view
- Philosophy
Appearance
This includes:
- Working out
- Grooming
- Style in terms of clothing
Outer game
This is the part of your game
that lifts the "good parts" of game 1.0.
Typical components worth adopting are:
- Dominance
- Screening
- Attainability
- Statement of intent
- Handling of logistics
- Sexual framing
Somatics
Somatics provides concrete exercises
to clean up "ambient noise" in your extended
nervous system, often referred to as
muscle tonicity.
This can in many ways be looked at
as your subconscious mind.
Concrete techniques
These are tried and tested techniques
for addressing somatic issues:
- TRE
- Code of the Natural
TRE
(Trauma Releasing Exercise)
The Revolutionary
Trauma Release Process
David Berceli
Waking the Tiger
Peter Levine
Somatics
Thomas Hanna
Code of the Natural (COTN)
Check out the original Code of the Natural ebook.
Doyletics
Doyletics allows you to pinpoint
exact experiences, and translate memories
stored within the body through
the amygdala to memories
stored in neo-cortex.
In other words, the process translates
emotional spikes into cognitive memories.
Concrete techniques
The Doyletic Speed Trace is a concrete
technique to address specific doylic memories
and turn them into cognitive memories.
The Doyletic Speed Trace
This is a quick introduction to the
Doyletic Speed Trace
Read more about Doyletics.
Execution
Ask yourself:
Do I have a problem?
If the answer is:
Yes.
Do the following:
Do you know what it is?
If you know what the problem is
and how it relates to the pyramid,
address that issue with the recommended
material.
Do you not know?
The larger the area covered by the
problem on the pyramid, the bigger
the chance you will address it by doing
the corresponding exercise.
The closer to the bottom the technique is,
the bigger the chance you will address
the corresponding problem with the
exercise.
In other words...
If in doubt, start with somatics and
doyletics. They are quick fixes in a lot
of situations.
If you get nothing from somatics and
doyletics, make sure you're doing it correctly
before moving on.
Resources
These are the "best in class" resources for all
exercises and stages in the pyramid.
If you don't have a personal preference, or
if you're stuck, start here.
Energetics
Take a qi gong class.
Intention
PJ Eby's "Mmm"-test.
Cognitive restructuring
First, read and understand PJ Eby's
Thinking Things Done.
It might save you the hassle of doing
cognitive restructuring at all.
Failing that:
-
The Way of the Superior Man, David Deida
- [SUGGESTIONS NEEDED]
Appearance
[SUGGESTIONS NEEDED]
Outer game
Mark Mason - Models
Sexual framing techniques?
[PLEASE CONTRIBUTE WITH YOUR FAVORITE OUTER GAME MATERIAL]
Meta
How is FreePUA different from
other forums?
About forums
If you are on a forum, realise that all you can ever do
on a forum is discuss theory.
It does not make sense to be "anti theory"
and belong to a forum.
FreePUA
FreePUA has by evolution become a forum
that focuses on:
- Drills
- Unifying theory
In other words; you will find concrete techniques
that can be applied outside of field work, and the
theory on why these drills work.
Often, the theory is at a hypothetical state. However,
the drills presented and recommended are often tried
and tested by numerous members on the board.
Contribution
FreePUA accepts all kinds of contributions
in terms of posts. There are forums for most
topics, and if you find one is missing, request it.
However, often the most helpful
contributions are testing posted techniques (drills)
and reporting back how it works for you.
The end
Any feedback on this is greatly appreciated.
GAME
By COCPORN