Hey everyone, I’m Clark. I’m the new guy.

Through a combination of raw persistence and judicious lying on my resume, I’ve found my way to an internship here at theApproach. I’m going to be working personally with Sebastian to help him out as he does what he does: helping men develop the qualities and skills to be incredibly attractive to women. I’m very excited to be a part of this. Being lonely sucks, and women are so wonderful – it’s stupid and senseless that so many good guys are unable to let women see how great they are because their social skills aren’t up to the task. Working with men, quality men who deserve amazing women in their lives, to improve their social and romantic lives is something that I really believe in. Calling it “pickup” doesn’t come close to conveying what this is to me and what it can mean for men and women.*

While I’m getting everything off my chest, and before we all start to gently cry together, I should mention that I’m also here to yoink some of that mojo for myself. One huge perk of this internship is that Sebastian will be training me personally. To quote a Mr. Erik von Markovik: don’t hate.

Here’s how this works: I’m going to blog my progress and serve as a “floor model” for what theApproach is capable of doing with regular guys like me. I’m wearing multiple hats here: guinea pig for Sebastian to test and refine his new material and methods, real-life demo for the work that theApproach is doing and the results they can achieve, and conduit for some free material that Sebastian wants to get out there. Hopefully, someday soon we’ll look at this blog as the chronicle of Clark’s miraculous transformation – from nice, normal guy with decent social skills to nice, normal guy with the charisma of fifty atomic-powered James Bonds. Let’s get sexy, people.

Without further ado…

Lesson 1 with Sebastian Drake: Passive Value; Universal vs. Specific Value; Dominance

Passive Value

We began by talking about what Sebastian calls passive value. That’s value that you just have, value that flows from the way you carry yourself and the personal qualities you possess. Once you’ve acquired passive value, it shines through to the people around you without your having to deliberately demonstrate it. This is a pretty sweet deal, because having to constantly demonstrate your value using active techniques is a lot of work. It’s easier, more powerful, and more enjoyable (I think so, anyway) to move, speak, think, and feel like a high-value man. In other words, it’s better to be high value then to demonstrate high value, and this passive value is learnable.

Universal vs. Specific Value

Next, we broke down value into two categories: universal value and specific value. Universal value consists of the traits that about 95% of women find attractive. Most of these are pretty intuitive – physical health, confidence, intelligence, empathy, leadership, etc. It sounds basic, but people don’t go far enough with this stuff. Improving the areas where you’re weak can drastically improve your social success. Beyond that, jacking up these elements of universal value to extreme levels is supposed to open up whole new realities of elite social ridiculousness.

Specific value is value that some woman find attractive and others find unattractive. For this reason, it’s a double-edged sword, and you have to think about what you really want before you decide to take some on. Are you mostly into goth girls? Then by all means, goth yourself up – go ahead and take on that specific value. Your success rate will go way up with your local Pale Maidens of Dusk, but you’ll lose ground with just about everyone else. Decide if the tradeoff is worth it, then do your thing.

By the way, if you’re a punk and she does ballet, don’t despair. You can overcome having the wrong type of specific value for a girl by having a massive payload of universal value, which will more than compensate. With enough universal value, you’ll be such a bad mofo that it won’t matter that she’s a (marine biologist/head cheerleader/CEO) and you’re a (hobo/mental patient/first-year dental student).

Dominance

After laying out the concepts of universal and specific value, Sebastian told me that our initial mission was to boost the hell out of my universal value traits. We started with dominance, which was to be my focus until our next lesson. According to Sebastian, dominance is one of the few universal value traits that the mainstream doesn’t acknowledge as universally attractive. He also let me know that we were not going for aggression, heavy-handedness, or rudeness. We were shooting for high-status dominance: the warm, positive assertiveness of a man who is unafraid to take up space in the world.

My mission for the next five days: slightly breach the “polite zone” of everyone I meet. Stand just a little closer than social norms dictate. Be unafraid to invade space, the way a boss is unafraid to just cheerily stroll into an employee’s office and lean over his shoulder to scrutinize his work. When shaking hands with someone, warmly touch her right arm with my left hand, Bill Clinton-style. When asking the maitre d’ of a restaurant for a table, plant my hands on his little podium and lean over it, like he’s an old buddy. Assume the level of easy familiarity that people would accord to family, a friend, or a lover.

Notes on the experience:

The hardest thing about the dominance exercise was remembering to do it. I would totally forget to breach space and smack myself in the forehead when I remembered ten seconds after the interaction was over. This happened less as time passed, and by today I was breaching space in every interaction, with good results. It’s like Sebastian says - people like interacting with a confident, high-status guy. It’s the ones who furtively hang back, who act like they need something or that they have something to hide, who give folks the creeps. It felt liberating, actually, to stop acting as if there were invisible fences walling people off from one another. This isn’t to say that I was getting all up in everyone’s grills - just that I felt a little less constrained, a little freer to connect with people and to move boldly through the world. Give it a try; it feels good.

Field Report

Thursday

After scarfing down burgers with Sebastian and saying goodbye, I hop on the T to head home. On the train, I see a gorgeous woman about forty feet away, in a different car. I look at her; she looks at me. I man up and walk over to her, go direct.** When I introduce myself and shake her hand, I do the Bill Clinton Arm Touch. This is the first time I’m running the assignment Sebastian gave me, and it feels awk-ward! She doesn’t seem to mind, though - we have a pleasant but pretty fluff-heavy conversation as we get off the train. I get her e-mail address (she’s visiting from Amsterdam for a week and doesn’t have a phone), but this doesn’t seem like a promising interaction in terms of follow-up. Oh well, it was nice enough, and it’s good to stay social and keep talking to people. I also had my first taste of the uncomfortable vibe that comes from breaching someone’s polite zone when you’re not used to it. I think this was just the feeling of my social programming reasserting itself, trying to put me back in line. I ignored it, and not only did I become more comfortable over the next few days, but the responses to my dominant behavior became much more positive.

Saturday

I’ve just finished a big test, and I’m walking down the stairs to leave the test building when a very cute girl comes up alongside me - Asian, with long hair and pretty serious curves. I open about the test, and we chat about it as we walk out of the building into the rain. When we get to the street, I ask, “Which way are you headed? I’m going this way.” Her: “Oh, I’m going that way [pointing the other way]. I’m gonna hit the gym.” Me: “Ok. Hey, do you know a good coffee shop around here?” Her: “Sure, there are a couple.” Me: “Great. I’ll tell you what: why don’t you put the gym on hold and come have coffee with me?” Her: “Ok.” And off we go.

We get to an Au Bon Pain and chat as she has tea and I have coffee and a croissant. It’s a fun, bantery conversation, and we actually learn quite a bit about each other. She’s funny and interesting; I like her. The vibe is that it’s pretty on. At some point, I mention that I need to buy a few suits, and I ask her if she has good fashion sense. She says she does, and I reply that she should come be my shopping buddy… right now. Let’s go to Newbury St. At first, she’s against it and mentions that she has work to get done. Then, she suggests that we get a drink first. Well, does she know any nearby bars? She does.

One drink becomes two becomes three (her idea), and soon we’re sitting next to each other in a booth. I find some excuse (can’t remember what) to grab her hand and hold it. She calls me on it, and I completely agree with her. “Yup, and now I’m gonna do this,” and wrap my arm around her shoulders and bring her in (dominance!). She says something like, “Oh, you just want to make out with me.” I respond, in a jokingly-hurt voice, “Hey, I don’t just want to make out with you…” and she giggles. Give it a few seconds to let the tension build, then we’re making out.

We make out and talk for a little while longer. I have to run to meet some friends for dinner, and I tell her I’ll give her a call. I end up calling her at about 1:30 AM. I suggest hanging out at her place. She thinks about it and sounds pretty indecisive, then tells she me she needs to call me back. A few minutes later, I answer the phone and she tells me, “I asked my friend what to do, and she says it’s a bad idea and you shouldn’t come over.” Me: “Ok… but you want me to.” Her: “Well, yeah.” Me: “So you want me to. And I want to. So wouldn’t it be silly not to?” Her: “Hm… yeah. Ok, come over.” I do. It’s nice. We have Thai food the next day.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Thanks for reading, guys. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Cheers,
Clark

 

 

*As a quick aside, sorry about the heteronormative perspective, my LGBT and/or socially-conscious readers. We just happen to be guys who like women, and so that’s what we know. Who knows how this pickup (or whatever better term someone eventually thinks of) stuff will expand and evolve over time? Everyone deserves a chance at companionship that brings them joy. So say I, anyway.

**Most people reading this probably don’t need it, but when I use “pickup” terminology (which will be sparingly), I’ll star it and give a little definition below. Like so. “Going direct” - walking up to a woman you find attractive and telling her so, warmly and confidently conveying your interest in getting to know her better. The classic form is some variation of, “Hi, I saw you and just had to come talk to you. I think you’re really cute.”