Hey guys, it’s time for a quick rewind. Last post, we started talking about Sebastian’s method of behavior modification, called intention mapping. It involves three steps: screening, qualification, and sex/afterglow. Sebastian and I skipped over screening because I was headed to my folks’ place for Thanksgiving vacation, where I wouldn’t have much opportunity to meet (or screen) new people. Well, I’m back in the concrete jungle now and ready to lay it down, so we backtracked and went over screening during our last session. I’m not one to mince words – well, I’m not tonight, since I’m about to head out and need to be quick – so without further preamble, here we go.

Lesson 8 with Sebastian Drake: Behavior Modification – Screening

Having standards that people have to meet before they can become part of your life is a very powerful thing. Obviously, it ensures that you’re surrounded by people who make you happy and enrich your world. It also conveys a number of things about you – that you are accustomed to having women in your life and can afford to be choosy, that you know what you want, that you expect and feel entitled to the best in your life, etc. Additionally, it makes you seem like a challenge, which can be attractive, and it encourages her to invest in the interaction by asking her to put in a little bit of work. People don’t value something that’s super-easy to get.

Interestingly, because people are malleable (as we talked about last post), screening does more than just weed people out who don’t meet your standards. It inspires people to step their game up and meet your standards. Screening modifies behavior.

The way that you screen to modify behavior is: first you screen for a quality, which will often encourage the woman to step up and claim that she has that quality (whether or not that’s usually true for her); then you tell her that you like that about her (similar to the qualification stage, which we discussed last post and which comes later). Remember, screening is the first part of Sebastian’s intention mapping method, which altogether involves: screening - getting a girl to say that she has a quality, then rewarding that; qualification - later telling a girl that she has the quality, then rewarding that; sex/afterglow - reinforcing it in the bedroom. Now let’s talk about how to actually screen.

One obvious way of screening is to simply ask a woman if she has a certain trait. Examples would be “Are you adventurous?” “Can you cook?” and the (pretty blunt) “What do you have going for you besides your looks?” Sebastian taught me another way, the screening statement.

Screening statements can actually be pretty blunt too. You just toss something out there, like “I like the people in my life to be independent, to have their own thing going on and rely on themselves instead of on other people.” Don’t be over-harsh with it, but don’t use weakening words like “It sorta matters to me that someone is…” Link it explicitly to yourself; it shouldn’t be, “It’s good for people to be independent,” but rather “It’s important to me that people be…” or “I like people who are…” Be blunt about this; it feels a little confrontational at first, and this will make you uncomfortable, but learn to own it.

Once you put the statement out there, you just let it hang. Don’t say anything, and absolutely don’t back down from your statement or hedge on it; just calmly look at her and give her the chance to respond. Often she’ll respond by qualifying herself, stating that she is whatever trait you mentioned. Seriously; you’ll be surprised how often it goes down just like this. When she does that, let her know that you think that’s cool about her. “That’s great that you see things that way too, I like that,” or “I think it’s cool that independence matters to you too,” or whatever.

But how to make these bad boys situationally relevant? Well, the good news is that you don’t have to do much. If it stems from her negatively mentioning a trait that you like - let’s say that you’re into independence, and she tells a story about how she didn’t bother going for a run because her jogging partner canceled for the day – you can just say “Hm…” or “Interesting…” then pause, then just drop your screening statement.

It’s that simple. If it’s absolutely unconnected to the conversation altogether, you can still just drop the statement with no apologies. The way to do that is to pause for a second, like something just occurred to you, then break out the statement in a thoughtful way.

This is pretty simple stuff. The key is to avoid being too aggressive with these statements – you don’t want to seem like you’re challenging them or getting in their faces – while still letting them rip with full commitment and no wavering or hedging.

Ok, I gotta run, I’m flinging myself out into the night to try this out some more. I’ll report back with the good stuff. Play nice!

Cheers,
Clark