Hey guys,

Clark here, theApproach’s intern and official “before picture.” This past Thursday, Sebastian hit me with a doozy of a lesson – lots of detailed information to process. I’ll do my best to get the gist of it down here.

Lesson 3 with Sebastian Drake: Command Presence and Nonverbal Communication

Command Presence

First, we discussed what Sebastian calls “command presence,” referring to the vibe that you give off when you approach a woman. Sebastian taught this within the context of approaching a woman walking toward you. You can sum up command presence in one phrase: “Approach like she dropped her wallet.” If a woman drops her wallet and you pick it up, you don’t address her tentatively, as if you’re worried she’ll blow you off. You just say, fairly loudly and with no hesitation, “Hey, you dropped your wallet.” Right? It’s the same way with asking someone for the time, asking them where the nearest subway station is, etc. No hesitation – why would you hesitate? You have something to say that she’s going to want to hear.

That’s the idea here. Approach like she dropped her wallet. Don’t be tentative or meek; it gives the impression that you’re about to say something unpleasant or at least unimportant. When you have to give someone bad news, you approach tentatively and speak softly. Likewise if you have something unimportant to say and know that you’re encroaching on the person’s time without good reason. When you have something positive and important to say, you approach confidently and speak clearly. Before your words even register, the woman is going to judge whether you’re worth her time or not based on the way you approach, so do it well.

When you speak to her, don’t apologize, qualify yourself, or ask for permission. No “just,” as in, “Hey, I just had to say…” No “excuse me.” No “I’m sorry.” You’re not sorry, and you don’t need to be excused. You’re not imposing on her; you’re telling her something important that she’s going to want to hear.

Again: approach like she dropped her wallet. Be warm and friendly, not aggressive but certainly not tentative. Let her know that she caught your eye: “Hey. I saw you over there, and I had to stop you. You are… stunning.” No pussyfooting around. Like you mean it, girly man.

Sebastian also taught me the mechanics of the approach, some nuances regarding timing and how to hold your body and things like that. The way Sebastian taught it, the idea is to actually stop her in her tracks. I can’t fully capture this part of the lesson in writing, but I’ll at least give a summary, and you can do what you will with that. In brief:

Square your shoulders and continue walking more or less toward her. Start speaking when you’re far enough away that, by the time you two are face to face, you’re about halfway done with your statement. This is probably further away than you think. The distance closes quickly; remember that she’s walking too.

At the same time that you start speaking, raise your hand slightly, as if to say “Hold on a second…” This should not seem aggressive. It’s light, almost quizzical, the way you might lift your hand to signal that you need to pause and think something over. Don’t raise your hand too high; Sebastian didn’t give a guideline, but I feel good raising it to about solar plexus level. Don’t make a forceful gesture with your hand, like a single pointing finger or a flat palm (”Halt!”).

Stop when you’re in front of her. You want to be slightly within her “polite zone” (remember dominance), but not too much – she doesn’t know you yet, and women tend not to appreciate strange men getting all up in their grills on the street. Plant your feet – put one foot down quite heavily – to anchor yourself in place and nonverbally communicate that she should stop too. Say what you came to say. Make someone smile; it feels good.

This is important: do not hone in on her. If she starts to veer out of your way, which is a fairly natural thing to do, don’t move to block her path or adjust so that you stay in front of her. That would be creepy, which is just slightly left of what we’re shooting for. Stay with your shoulders squared forward, and turn your head to speak over your shoulder as she walks by.

Nonverbal Communication

Sebastian told me that powerful people do as little as possible to get their point across. A schoolteacher who isn’t in control of his class tries to assert himself by yelling and clapping his hands, which the kids of course ignore. A more powerful teacher will just gaze calmly at a kid speaking out of turn, and the kid will sheepishly apologize. The lesson here is that a powerful person can often get his point across nonverbally. By learning to communicate in this way, you can convey that you are powerful.

Here’s an example from the major literary influence of my childhood, Marvel Comics: the king of the Inhumans, Black Bolt, almost never speaks. He communicates entirely through body language and subtle modulations of his facial expression. Black Bolt is treated as a person of almost godlike eminence and authority, and few would even dream of disobeying him. Why does he never speak? Because his voice is superhumanly powerful - one whisper would vaporize everything for miles around, and a shout would destroy the planet. That’s kinda what we’re going for here: you communicate nonverbally when possible, because you are so powerful that anything more would be overkill.

In this lesson, Sebastian taught me two aspects of nonverbal communication.

Eye Contact

First, we talked about eye contact. Sebastian taught me three different kinds. These are:

Leader’s Eye Contact: this is the default. Use this whenever. Look with your right eye into their right eye. At first I didn’t quite understand this, because I’m not sure that you can really move your eyes independently of each other. I didn’t get how you could look at something just with your right eye. Sebastian said that you sort of line up your right eye with theirs, which I took to mean that you’ll be moving your head a little bit to make that happen. I’m not sure that’s so necessary now. I find that if you just try to look with your right eye, you can sorta feel like you’re doing it, although I’m not sure if you actually are or not. If that’s not what Sebastian means, he’ll correct me and I’ll edit this post to reflect that.

Soft Eye Contact: this is used to convey a powerful feeling of intimacy. Sebastian says to use this if you need to convey attainability (I imagine we’ll talk much more about attainability soon, when we go into Sebastian’s VAC model of attraction), or as a reward once you’re an hour or so into a good interaction. What you do: look at the bridge of her nose. It sounds weird, but Sebastian says that this gives her the feeling that you’re looking directly into both of her eyes. I’m not sure how I feel about this one – if I’m having a powerful, emotional moment with a woman that I like, I actually want to look into her eyes, not just give her the impression that I am. On the other hand, I guess it’s either this or dart back and forth from one eye to the other. This might actually be the closest you can come to staring deeply into someone’s eyes in a sustained way; I’ll have to experiment more with this.

Hard Eye Contact: this is used to deal with aggressive people. Sebastian doesn’t want me to use this too often, and he said that he only taught it to me for the sake of completeness. What you do: pick one of their eyes, and focus on the pupil. Really focus on it, and try to clearly pick out its shape. This causes your eyes to narrow and your face to subtly assume a tighter, more intimidating expression. Sebastian said that this is also useful for negotiating in a dominant, hard-line manner, for instance asking for a discount at a store. “That’ll be $40.” “[Hard eye contact] Can you do better?”

The “Retarded Look”

We are definitely going to need a more politically correct name for this, but until we think of one, I’m just going to call it what Sebastian calls it. The “retarded look” is how you punish bad behavior. Powerful people respond to rude or annoying statements only to the slightest degree, usually nonverbally. After all, any sort of verbal response is actually a reward of a sort, since that’s what the person was trying to elicit from you.

Here’s the idea: don’t respond to rudeness, aggressiveness, or other bad behavior verbally. Instead, just look at the person like he or she is retarded. It’s that simple. Sebastian learned this from women, who do this all the time to shut down guys who say stupid stuff to them. The “retarded look” should convey skepticism and slight amusement, as if you’re puzzled by such bad behavior. You’re not fazed or upset, just surprised and amused that someone would commit such a social faux pas. The reaction should be slight, barely even a reaction at all. Don’t go big with this; that would indicate that whatever was said had an impact on you, enough to elicit a real response.

Here are the mechanics:

Figure out your “retarded look” for yourself; there are plenty of ways to do it. Be careful to avoid the extremes of “too hateful” and “too amused.” Also, like we said before, remember not to go too big. The way I do it is with a little brow-furrow action, a little smirk action, but not too much of either. After a second or so, I sorta squint a bit, as if I’m trying to get a better look at something bizarre that caught my eye.

Hold the look. This is important. Once you start, you can’t break it. Wait until the person “cracks;” this could consist of looking away, muttering something, laughing nervously, anything that indicates they’ve reached a threshold of discomfort. When this happens, you say: “Don’t worry about it.” That’s it. “Don’t worry about it.” Note: NOT “no problem.” There WAS a problem; the person screwed up and committed a social no-no. You just aren’t bothered, so they shouldn’t worry about it. Say it warmly – all is forgiven, no harm done. You can also add “it happens,” which Sebastian likes to do sometimes.

Thoughts:

The command presence stuff seemed complicated when I was drilling it with Sebastian during the lesson. “Approach like she dropped her wallet” I get, and I was already kinda doing that during my daytime approaches, but adding in the mechanics turned me into an uncoordinated mess. It’s not easy to think of all these physical details while also trying to speak confidently and execute the approach smoothly. Man, the things that came out of my mouth: “Oh, uh, excuse me, I’m sorry, I just wanted to apologize over and over and maybe qualify myself before stammering out a weak compliment. Uh, you’re pretty?” It was not good. But weirdly, when I was out on the street and saw an attractive woman, I would go into autopilot and lay it down textbook. Maybe it was because I didn’t have time to think. It was pretty successful, too. I’ve got a coffee date later this week with an extremely hot woman I stopped on the street – possibly hotter than anyone I’ve ever been with or dated, definitely way up there. I also had a nice evening with a pretty, intelligent girl whom I stopped on the street near my house. She’s the subject of my field report, below.

As for the eye contact, it’s hard to say what it’s doing for me because it’s so subtle. My understanding is that leader’s eye contact gives you a powerful, steady gaze, but you can’t exactly measure the results of that. I’ve used soft eye contact in intimate moments, but it’s hard to separate out the marginal effect of the eye contact as opposed to everything else that was going on. Even before this lesson, I tended to make deep eye contact with a woman during these types of moments. I guess this is just a better way of doing that. In the final assessment, this eye contact stuff appears not to be destined to bring enormous changes to my social skill-set. That being said, if I want to be as good as I can be, that means cleaning up even the small details. As Sebastian said, he’s not building me to be above-average; he’s building me to be a Terminator. To that end, I’ll learn eye contact and every other little nuance that he wants to toss my way.

The retarded look was hilarious. A few times, I think I miscalibrated and used it when it wasn’t really called for, which didn’t inflict any undue suffering on the world (I did it to my housemates, and we mess with each other all the time). But in the few times I deployed it correctly, it was textbook – it went exactly the way Sebastian said it would. Give them the look, hold it… hollllldddd itttt… and they crack. “Hey, don’t worry about it.”

Field Report

It’s Saturday. My friend gives me a ride home from a meeting and drops me off near my place. I’m about to turn onto my street when I see a cute girl, maybe twenty feet away, walking in my direction. I veer back onto the main street and stop her. I do this just the way Sebastian showed me – hand out, starting to speak before we close the distance, approaching like she dropped her wallet, etc. I only have a few seconds between seeing her and crossing paths, and I think this helps keep me from over-t­hinking and getting in my own way. I say, “Hey, I saw you over there, and I wanted to tell you that you’re very cute. I’d be pissed at myself if I didn’t stop you and say hi.” She doesn’t light up and grin like a kid being handed a candy apple, the way it sometimes happens with direct approaches, but she’s being friendly, and that’s good enough. Anyway, up close, she’s very attractive – straight brown hair, very full lips, and green eyes that remind me of a cat’s. We chat a little, and it turns out she lives a few streets away and is heading home. I suggest that she come get coffee with me instead.

We go get coffee and the conversation is AWK-ward! It’s not weird or uncomfortable, but it’s just not locking into any sort of groove. I always hesitate to blame anyone but myself for difficulties in an interaction, but in this case it was definitely her. I’m being friendly and interesting (or at least I like to think so), but she’s just not contributing. I find myself doing more storytelling than I usually do, in order to fill the air a little and give her opportunities to jump in. I get a little tired of carrying the conversation and start to let the silences hang a little bit. Nothing wrong with pauses in conversation, after all. At some point I call it out: “Wow, gotta love those ‘I just met you a half-hour ago’ pauses in the conversation.” I make sure to convey that I’m not uncomfortable, just amused by the situation. We have more fun when we get to the topic of her college – she went to William & Mary, which is in colonial Williamsburg, so we joke about her going to frat parties in a bonnet and frock, and stuff like that. I tell her that I have to run because I have a ton of work to do (true), but that we should meet for drinks later in the evening. She’s game, but she says she doesn’t want to get in the way of my work. I tell her I won’t let myself go out if I don’t get it done, and she can be like an incentive for me to do it. We agree to meet at 11, at a bar close to both our places (logistics!).

11 rolls around. I call her and tell her I’m just out of the shower, so she should come meet me at my place and we can leave from there. She comes over, and I tell her to come upstairs with me for a second while I run to my room to grab my wallet. She doesn’t follow me; instead, she stays downstairs and chats with my housemate. Ok, fair enough, she just met me. We head out to the bar, where we have more slightly awkward but enjoyable conversation. She’s a pretty interesting girl and very intelligent. I ask her what kind of music she listens to – this is screening, I guess, although I think of it more as casually getting to know each other with screening as a byproduct. Turns out she’s very into female teen pop singers – this girl graduated from Harvard, and her favorite singers are Kelly Clarkson and Ashlee Simpson. I actually think this is adorable and qualify* her on it. We talk about music for a little bit; I’m pretty knowledgeable in this area and play music myself, so this line of conversation unearths some value for her to see.

Things are going well, but again, I have no feeling that the interaction is clicking. I can’t really tell if it’s on or not. In that situation, I just assume that it is. As last call approaches, I suggest that we go somewhere else. She asks where, and I say we should watch a movie at my place. She says sure, which leads me to suspect that it must be on despite the ambivalent signals from her. As we walk back, we pass a Tibetan craft shop, and I talk about my meditation practice a little bit.

Back at my place, we put Fight Club into the DVD player and settle in on the couch. I’m kind of choding out – I’m pretty sure that she’s into me at this point, so I have no excuse for not just escalating and making it happen early on. But about twenty minutes in, she mentions that she’s cold, and I just put my arm around her and pull her in so that we can both get warm from body heat. Within a minute or two, we’re making out. We stop paying attention to the movie – which is actually too bad, because she’s never seen it and really should. It’s one of the defining movies of our generation. I feel a little bad about that. No I don’t. Anyway, we head upstairs – and that’s where I’m lowering the curtains on this tale, you dirty little voyeurs.

Lessons learned:

Command presence totally works. All the various little mechanics are hard to process consciously, but they click into place on their own if you don’t have time to think and have to act fast.

A somewhat awkward interaction does not mean that she’s not attracted to you. In the absence of indications that she’s not interested, you might as well proceed as if she is. In this interaction, it really didn’t seem to be “on” in terms of overt indications – she didn’t open hard when I approached, she wasn’t comfortable coming briefly to my room before we went out, and the conversation didn’t really flow that well. And yet, in spite of all that, it was on, and we had a great evening. It would have been a shame if I’d benched myself early on a hunch.

Thanks for reading. Take care, guys.

 

Cheers,

Clark

 

 

 

*Qualifying: letting a woman know that you like a quality of hers, something she said, or something she did. Instead of just showing a woman unconditional interest, which is a pretty clear sign that you’re interested for shallow reasons, you convey interest only when she actually wins it. It makes the interaction more genuine and rooted in something more substantial than looks or the desire for sex. It also makes you more attractive by establishing that you’re a non-needy person with real standards, not a fawning supplicant.