So, if you want to be attractive, and not simply entertaining, you must evolve your social skills as well as your sense of who you are to a point of complete congruence.
RULE:
Your identity can be high-value or low-value, or anything in between – and the value of your identity is something that you cultivate based on how entitled you think you are to have a dominant impact on your social environment, and how well you think you can handle both the good and bad reactions that go along with that.
Whether you realize it or not, there’s an idea in your mind about how much success you deserve out of life – or how much value you’re entitled to cultivate as the “guy” who you identify yourself as being. How much success you think that you’re entitled to have with women is a part of that self-concept as well.
Entitlement is a multi-layered concept, in the sense that feeling entitled to success with women is tied to feeling entitled to success in life. Many people note that the best part of studying to become good with women that is their drive for female companionship motivates them to become a better person. The confidence that they develop to get girls winds up extending into all other areas of their lives.
A guy who feels confident with women is the same guy who feels entitled to start conversations, to say what’s on his mind, to be the centre of attention, to socialize with other charismatic people, to dictate the vibe of interactions, to set the trends of what’s cool, and to express his personality freely.
His sense of being entitled doesn’t make him obnoxious or a conversation tyrant. Rather, it makes him confident that when he takes on a high-value identity people will enjoy it – like when a musician takes the stage and everyone likes it because he offers value.
RULE:
A high-value guy with a strong sense of who he is basically has free run with women (with people in general, actually). By most people’s standards, it’s almost absurd to see how quickly women respond to this kind of confidence.
When a woman meets a guy who feels completely confident to talk to her, joke around with her, tell stories, and generally lead the interaction, she responds well automatically. He’s in.
But if a guy isn’t comfortable doing these things, she usually blows him off. That’s why the way that women respond to you (how much value you have) starts from your identity.
So where does your identity come from?
It’s crucial to realize that your self-concept is always evolving through your interaction with the world – often in reaction to the social feedback that you get from other people.
Let’s say that you try to take on a more high-value role and you’re accepted for it. All of a sudden, your identity is reinforced as being of higher value.
But let’s say that you try to take on a more high-value role and you’re not accepted for it (maybe people make fun of you). Suddenly you realize that you shouldn’t try anymore, and your identity winds up holding you back in the future.
As human beings, we are hardwired to be social. And as social creatures, we are always engaged in the process of eliciting social feedback, which influences us to react by adapting our identity for better or worse.
DEFINITION: “SOCIAL FEEDBACK” OR “PINGING”
Our minds exist in a state of perpetual “pinging” with the people around us.
What that means, is that our minds are continually engaged in a sub-process of cross-referencing and validating our knowledge with the knowledge of others.
Through this subtle and constant process, our minds elicit “social feedback,” ranging from the most exceedingly subtle sub-communications to the most blatantly obvious responses – all of which are continually shaping and re-shaping our ideas about who we are and the world that we live in.
Whether you realize it or not, your interpretation of reality is very subjective, and massively influenced by the feedback that you get from your social environment.
That’s why for a person visiting a foreign land, there might be an experience of what is known as “culture shock,” where they feel a surreal disconnection from their environment. And likewise, for a person isolated too long from society, there might be lapses in sanity, where they can no longer relate themselves to the social norm.
We can conceptualize social feedback as a mirror through which the ways we act are cross-referenced and validated.
Because of social feedback, we have an idea of how to act “normal” – to recognize our status and how to act in a way that aligns with that.
Through our interaction with the world, we gain some concept of the behaviours that signify who people are, what roles they play, and their social value within a group.
On both a conscious and subconscious level, we have an idea of what a guy of high status and a guy of low status looks like.
We’ve all seen people of both high status and low status. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, our minds recognize the differences and responds emotionally.
So here is why social feedback is important.
RULE:
If in the ongoing process of “pinging” you get social feedback that tells you your status is increasing or diminishing, your mind will feel social pressure to react by assuming the identity that you understand to be most suitable to the situation at the time.
As social creatures, we are adaptive. If we’re in an environment where we have or lack status, we will feel it, and feel pressured to step into the behaviours that our minds recognize as being suitable to the role.
It’s for that reason that a girl from a small town where she’s popular will often take on a totally different persona when she’s in a larger town where she doesn’t know anybody and pretty girls are everywhere in sight. Her confidence will change, the types of jokes that she’ll laugh at will change, and the types of people who she’s willing to hang around with will change as well.
Now, before we go too far down this path, it has to be understood that all people react to social pressure differently. Some people react very obviously while others don’t react at all. It depends on a concept in their minds called their “entitlement criterion.”
DEFINITION: “ENTITLEMENT-CRITERION”
Your “entitlement-criterion” is the criterion that you think you need to meet in order to feel allowed to take on a high-value identity, and act in a way that women find attractive.
Depending on how your mind is wired, your entitlement-criterion will be made up of one or several of the following:
Superficial social standards: When you think that you’ve met the typically unrealistic standards of social conditioning (looking good, making money, having success, owning nice things, etc…)
Alliances: When you have guaranteed acceptance because of alliances (being friends with high-status people, having a hot girlfriend, having a lot of friend around, etc…)
Competencies: When you have anything that makes people want something from you (having access to something exclusive, having knowledge or expertise that people want to learn from, having entertaining jokes or stories or skills that engage people for a period of time, etc…)
Role-plays: When a temporary circumstance calls for you to assume a role that doesn’t reflect who you normally think you are (being the teacher in a teacher/student situation, being in a respected or professional role, being surrounded only by people of lesser status so filling the role of high-value by default, etc…)
Identity: When you have an internal belief of entitlement as being a part of who you are.
When your entitlement-criterion is met, your mind tells you “You are now allowed to take on all the subtle high-value behaviours that you’ve recognized in others.”
Your mind communicates this by the emotional state that it gives you. This phenomenon is often called “going into state.”
Being in state is a powerful experience. Often, the thing that literally addicts guys to improving with women is the state that they get out of it.
When you’re in state, the world is your oyster. Your mind quiets, and everything you do just works. Your humour hits, your stories rock, and people follow your lead. The guy who is the most in state usually has the strongest “magnet” of attention — so to speak.
There are different ways of thinking about why state has this impact, but a cogent explanation comes down to this: State is a reflection of identity, and your identity is a reflection of social value. Therefore, whoever is the most in-state must be the person with the highest social value.
Beyond that, as a part of human nature there is inherent value in people expressing their personality from a place of authenticity.
Your personality is a reflection of your life experiences. There is something to be learned from that. Your choices of humour or style, for example, are reflections of the way that you make sense of the world and the emotions that you want to evoke in it.
When you’re in state, you are expressing your personality without all the impurities of agenda. You are not trying to impress or persuade or conform. Your communication is more real, so to speak. People value that.
It’s often said that when you’re in state you are most connected to your authentic self. You aren’t reacting to how you think other people want you to be. You’re just expressing your personality and sharing your energy with people, and they can feel that you’re only offering value because you’re above needing a reaction from them.
For all of these reasons, being in state implies social value.
