Hey guys. It’s Clark, mild-mannered theApproach intern, giving you the rundown from my second lesson in attractiveness training and social dynamics (or “pickup,” as the kids say) with Sebastian Drake. Like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to share with mankind, I’m placing life and limb – nay, my very soul – in peril to seize the secrets of social supremacy from the stronghold of the masters. I hear this sort of thing usually ends with the hero chained to a rock while enormous, predatory birds feast on his entrails, so I sure hope you guys are getting something out of it.

Ok, now that I’ve come down from my crack high, let’s cut the crap and get to…

Lesson 2 with Sebastian Drake: Body Language and Beliefs

High-Status Body Language

Continuing with our mission to crank up my passive value traits, Sebastian and I turned to the subject of body language. According to Sebastian, here’s how you set your body language in order to hold yourself like a high-status, elite man:

Stand straight. Bring your shoulders out and back as far as you can. Push out your chest as far as it can go. Suck your stomach in as much as you can. Raise your chin into the air. All this stuff should be exaggerated; this isn’t how the final product will look, this is just the prep stage.

Take the deepest breath you can. Hold it for a second, then let it out and allow your body to relax while still holding a looser, less extreme version of the position you’d assumed before. Your shoulders are held back, rather than hunched forward; your chest is broad and pushed slightly outward; your stomach is held in a bit; your spine is straight and your head is tilted somewhat upward.

This will feel weird for a little while, but the more I walk around like this, the more natural it feels and the more able I am to relax into it. By far the weirdest part for me is holding my head high, with my chin up and my nose in the air. Sebastian says that you can see this behavior “out in the wild” by observing the way that some very rich, high-society people hold their heads. Standing with good body language and your chin up will make you look taller, since most people slouch quite a bit more than they realize.

The chin thing feels particularly odd because Sebastian, recognizing that my head will probably drop over time without my noticing it, is having me hold it absurdly high for now, beyond where it should really be. So I’m walking all over town looking like a… what’s the word I’m searching for… moron. That’s ok. This isn’t about kicking ass; this is about drilling something until I internalize it. I can calibrate it down to the appropriate level later. Actually, even the appropriate level feels pretty weird, although Sebastian assures me I look awesome.

As I walk around this way, I haven’t gotten any weird looks. In fact, I’ve gotten some glances, the good kind, from attractive women on the street. Maybe this actually does look good.

Setting Your Beliefs to Reflect Your High-Status Reality

Beliefs are important to your social success. While you can train yourself to look and speak like a high-status guy, you can’t pull it off fully without also thinking and feeling like one. There are plenty of reasons for this, but to give just one: there are very subtle, unconscious behaviors and mannerisms, which Sebastian calls “micro-nonverbals,” that convey a lot about your thoughts, mood, and beliefs about yourself. One of many examples is the unconscious movement of the muscles around your eyes. This explains why looking into someone’s eyes can reveal so much, despite the fact that they’re basically just squishy balls of jelly. You can’t “fake” your micro-nonverbals the way you can imitate, say, the walk of a high-status man. Only the correct beliefs can help you here.*

That being said, Sebastian isn’t huge on “inner game” as a substitute for learning and internalizing strong social skills. The way he sees it, visualizing golden light in your heart chakra or repeating “I’m a 10!” or whatever won’t amount to much if, the first time the man approaches a woman, she blows him out like a candle because his mannerisms and vibe are just as creepy as they’ve always been.

I can see what Sebastian’s saying. I was a confident guy with high self-esteem and a positive attitude before I got into any of this stuff, and yet I was only decent socially. This was because I lacked excellent social skills, and for all my confidence and success in most areas of my life, I couldn’t delude myself into believing that I was a social ninja when I knew that I wasn’t. Even if I could, this fragile belief would have shattered against the brick wall of reality on my very first approach.

Our behaviors and beliefs are either reinforced or undermined by the external feedback they elicit; let’s use this instead of fighting it. Instead of trying to bootstrap ourselves up to awesomeness by creating deluded beliefs that clash with external reality, let’s actually get fairly awesome and then simply make sure our beliefs accurately reflect this awesomeness. Let’s take on the attributes of a high-status man, from his individual actions through his habitual mannerisms to his innermost qualities. At this point, it makes sense to believe “I’m the man. I’m elite, high-value, and unbelievably attractive,” because you actually are. The problem is that, sometimes, your beliefs don’t keep pace with your value.

Sebastian thinks that most people don’t fully believe in themselves – even guys like me who are doing pretty well overall – because we compare ourselves to our imagined ideal selves. I could be smarter, I could be stronger, I could eat better, I could read more, I could learn more languages and give more to charity, etc. We berate and judge ourselves for every inch of difference between ourselves and the person we believe we could ultimately be. This is a mistake. The desire for self-improvement is great, but we’re not competing with our ideal selves – not for women, not for anything. To the extent that we’re competing for women at all, it’s with the other guys around us. It’s time, Sebastian said, for me to realize just how high-status I already am.

Sebastian told me (rather charitably, I think) that I’m already a very high-status guy, maybe top 5% (”Partly because you’re good, partly because so many people are so bad.” Uh… thanks?). The problem is that I don’t believe I’m as high-status as I am. It’s time to “recognize that I’m already in the top 5% of guys, give myself a license to act like the top 5% of guys act, and expect to get what the top 5% of guys get.” Along those lines, Sebastian gave me an exercise to perform. When I find myself in an area with a lot of guys around, I should try to count the number of guys whom a woman would choose, based on initial impression alone, over me.

I did this exercise, and it took a sledgehammer to my limiting beliefs. Turns out I am kinda money – who knew? Armed with Sebastian’s tweaks to my body language, some decent grooming, and an ok sense of style, I was very often at or near the top in terms of the initial impression I gave (by the way, looks-wise, I’m decent but nothing extraordinary). Sometimes there would be a strikingly good-looking dude hanging out; sometimes there would be guys whom a woman might choose based on personal taste (say, a hipster dude or a thugged-out guy or something). But like Sebastian said, there are a lot of chodey-looking guys out there, and this means you can really stand out if you just step it up a little. Dress well, carry yourself well, keep yourself groomed, and boom – you convey high value without having to do anything.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Clark