Wow, what a weekend! I have never seen so many men gathered in one room before in my life!!!

If you were late to the party, Johnny Wolf and Vince “Hollywood” Kelvin hosted the first ever Los Angeles PUA Summit at the Roosevelt hotel this past weekend. No less than 16 pick-up and dating gurus came in to share their wisdom with the audience and I got to say, it was a blast!

SATURDAY 08/25

8:49 a.m.: I open my eyes and look at the clock. Oh shit! I’m late! I was supposed to be at the Roosevelt by 7:45 a.m. to help out with registration. I take a quick shower, throw on some clothes and off I go. (more…)

A lot of people I’ve talked to don’t always understand Vin DiCarlo’s or theApproach’s precedence concept very well.  Precedence is very important in your ability to sustain healthy relationships.  Precedence is the art of managing the right expectations no matter the relationship.  If you’ve read Robert Cialdini’s ”Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion” (referred to in my previous post),  you’ll recognize that precedence is based on the idea of consistency:  people want to behave in ways consistent to what they have committed to previously.  By understanding precedence, managing relationships becomes effortless. 

Precedence starts with you knowing what you want out of your relationships with people.  Be honest with yourself.  Are you looking for a friend, a business partner, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a fuck buddy, or a one-night stand?  Once you know how you want that person in your life, how are you communicating that to the other person and more importantly, how are you conditioning them to willingly continue to fulfill that role in your life?

It is important to realize that precedence is created from the very moment you meet a person.  Everything you do in the interaction with that person creates little rules in his or her mind on what they can expect out of you and vice versa.  This is one of the many reasons why it is so difficult for people to get out of the friend’s zone.  The friend you are now trying to attract romantically got used to a certain behavior from you.  If you want to become more than “just friends,” you need to alter your behavior enough to change his or her perception of you and create a new precedence.

Precedence is set in two stages: 
A.  Communicating your expectations
B.  Enforcing/Reinforcing your expectations

A.  Communicationg your expectations 

You can communicate your expectations: (1) overtly or (2) covertly. 

1.  Setting precedence overtly means that you verbalize your expectations through:

• Statements and Storytelling:  If you are familiar with Charisma Art’s Juggler Method, the Statement of Intent (SOI) is the perfect example of verbalizing overtly what you want out of people.  A statement like “I find [insert quality] very sexy in you” (for guys to use) or “I think that makes you hot” (for girls to use) indicates that you wish to start flirting and hope to establish sexual relationship with that person. 
   
  In relationships, some couples like to sit down and lay out verbal rules on what they both agree to accept and tolerate from each other.  This works very well and if you notice, corporations do the same thing when they hire you.  The first thing they teach you during new employee orientation is what is acceptable and what is not.
   
  If you are looking to have healthy multiple long-term relationships, Vin DiCarlo emphasized in his Dating Diablo program that “you must set a precedence of seeing other women from the get go.” 
    
  Kids are actually very good at creating precedence with verbal statements.  When they want something, they will say “I want my toy” and cry until they get it.  The crying reinforces the idea that they expect to get what they want.  In the end, many parents will bend to their kids’ will at the first sound of “I want…” in fear of dealing with the hassle of the kids crying.
   
  At a more advanced level, your statements would be incorporated within stories.  Telling a story on how you loved your ex-girfriend for being hard working in her career would show that you value ambition in a woman.  If your interlocutors relate your story back to themselves, they are admitting to having the same qualities.
   
• Screening Questions:  Screening questions are a more subtle way to verbalize your intent.  You can screen people for qualities you want in a person, based on the role you want them to fill in your life.  Let’s say you are looking for a romantic relationship and you want your partner to be caring, adventurous and independent.  You can ask questions such as: 
  - So would you consider yourself adventurous?
  - If you are adventurous, does that means you are also independent?
  - Interesting… are you more independent or are you more caring?  etc.
   
  If the person responds positively to your screening questions, you can now expect them to display the qualities they affirmed to possess around you.  theApproach calls this process Intention Mapping.

2.  Setting precedence covertly means that you express your expectations and intent through your behavior. 

A great example would be:  kisses on the cheeks.  When you kiss a girl on the cheeks during the first meet-up, she’ll remember that this is how you are.  The next time she sees you, she will come to expect and accept kisses on the cheeks from you.  However, if you start with a hug and switch to kisses on the cheeks later on, she’ll wonder if there’s a different intent behind the change.  If you get her used to kisses on the cheeks, you can also decide not to give her kisses on the cheeks to indicate that she did something to displease you.

Your beginning behavior towards a person creates precedence and your continued behavior reinforces the precedence you have already set.  This is a positive feedback loop.

B.  Enforcing/Reinforcing your expectations 

Now that you understand how to create precedence, you need to learn how to maintain good precedence.  Good precedence depends on how consistent your behavior aligns with the mutually-agreed expectations you have set.  The basic philosophy is:  reward good behavior and punish bad ones.  Surprisingly, a lot of people I have talked to misunderstand this line.  You should reward the behavior that reinforces the precedence and punish the ones that goes against it.  However, note that  “punishing bad behavior” also does not literally imply that you should confront someone and exert some form of punishment when they do something bad.  This is not the case at all! 

When you are in a fight, arguing only amplifies the negative topic.  Arguing sets up an antagonistic dynamic of “you vs. me.” It becomes a destructive power struggle of who is right and who is wrong.  As much as you want to work things out with your friends, lovers and partners, arguing is probably the least effective way to change someone’s behavior.  A friend of my roommate’s once said:

In my marriage, it really doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong in the end.  What matters is that you come together, see things from the same point of view and realize that you love each other.

Most of the time, arguing makes the other person feels unappreciated and bitter, which makes them associate the negative feelings to you.  Think about it.  After a fight, do you really remember what or why you argued in the first place?  Probably not.  As human beings, we are emotional creatures.  Emotions are stronger than facts.  We remember moments, not dates and times.  As such, the more you argue, the more a person will feel how much they don’t like you.

Rewarding good behavior and punishing bad ones is a conditioning process inspired by *gasp* animal training.  You want to reward and encourage the behavior you want while ignoring the ones you do not like.  The best form of reward is giving someone attention and affection.  You can do that physically with a hug, a kiss, even sex, or verbally with a compliment like “That’s so kind/sweet/thoughtful of you”.  A simple “I like that” (a la Juggler Method) can work just as well.  Reversely, the best form of punishment is asserting your position and ignoring the bad behavior.  Amy Sutherland wrote an entire article for the New York Times on how applying this principle helped her marriage.  Take a look:  ”What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.” 

How does this apply in dating when your partner did something that you don’t like? 

Well let’s take a scenario of someone arriving late for a date.  Let’s assume that you agreed with your lover to meet at 3 pm to carpool and drive to the beach.  You are there, waiting for her.  You call her and she says she’s heading your way but you hear noise in the background.  You find out she actually hasn’t left the teashop she was hanging out at with her friends.  After 15 minutes of waiting, you call again.  She barely has left the teashop.  After a total of 45 minutes of wait, she arrives.  How do you apply the philosophy of “rewarding good behavior and punishing bad ones”?

The first thing you want to decide on is which precedence you want to enforce:  are you wanting her to be honest with you, or are you wanting her to arrive on time?

If you wanted to enforce her being more honest with you, you would say:  “Honey, I’m glad you finally got here but you should let me know next time if you are running late.  This way, I can run some errands and buy us food before leaving.  That would have saved us some time” and not ”Honey, why didn’t you tell me you were running late.  I was waiting for 45 minutes.  I could have bought us some food while waiting for you.”

Here is what you want to notice:

• I respond calmly because my internal emotional state is independent from external factors.  This is what Vin DiCarlo calls “warm dominance.”  If I had to use an imagery, you want to be like a bamboo tree.  No matter how hard the wind blows, you bend with it but you stay rooted where you are.  If you allow external factors to easily affect your emotional state, people know how to take advantage of you (and that’s unattractive).
• I reframed her undesirable behavior into something constructive.  I reinforce honesty by encouraging her to talk more to me and I give her a mutually beneficial incentive do so.  The more you respond to her in similar fashions, the more she will value honesty with you.
• Since I understand the concept of compliance ratio in attraction, I will ask her to invest more of herself in me by gradually asking for bigger favors throughout the date to make up for the long wait she put me through.
• Keeping my composure allows me to keep the mood focused around having fun together to build complicity.
• I would probably not give her excessive physical affection her right away (retract my attention from her back to neutral) to indicate that she did do something to displease me.  I will slowly show her more affection later on as she earns it back.

How would you correct a previously set precedence? 

If you want to change a precedence, all you need to do is to encourage the new set of behavior and provides new incentives for adopting the new set of behavior.  If you do it without pinpointing to the other person that there is a change in direction/preference, the transition should happen smoothly (even though not immediately).

That all, folks!  I hope I gave you guys a better understanding of precedence.  Have fun out there and bring love to the world   As usual, I look forward to your comments.  Oddly, it really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside ^^

In the VAC model of attraction, the first concept that is taught in bootcamps is the idea of value.  Everything starts with value.  What I like about that concept is that value can be interpreted as broad or as narrow as I want.  As a person who wants to lead a happy and successful life, value can be translated as:  what do I have going on for myself?  As an individual who likes to charm others, what are the tangible and intangible qualities that make me attractive?  If I think in business terms and consider myself a product I am trying to promote, what are my features and functions?  In conversations, am I being interesting?

Technically speaking, you can differentiate universal value (think of general attractive traits such as ambition, passion, intelligence, leadership, dominance, sexuality, humor…) from specific value (think of wealth, being of a certain class/race/group, being of a certain physical shape…) but for our current purpose, it doesn’t matter.  Universal value allows you to attract the broadest range of people, whereas specific value only appeals to a certain group of people. 

Anyway, the most common “mistake” I see in the men that just entered the Community is that they do not recognize how much they have going for themselves.  Most of the guys I have met actually have a pretty interesting life, but they don’t see it.  Instead, they are stuck in noticing what they do NOT have and constantly compare themselves to their ideal self.  Rather than finding ways to display their already attractive traits in the best manner possible, they focus on what other things they need to do to become even more attractive.  I’ll be honest.  I was stuck in that place for a while.  Sebastian from theApproach had to remind me more than a few times to take a hard look at myself and realize that I am ALREADY attractive.

As such, it is only natural for me to ask new guys that I meet in the Community the most important question:  why would anyone be lucky to be with you?  It’s funny to see guys give me blank stares to that question.  I really don’t mean to make them feel uncomfortable, but really…  who are you?  What do you like about yourself?  Do you even like yourself?  What makes you unique?  These questions are not meant to be hard, but a little bit of introspection can definitely accelerate your gains in confidence.  Each seduction company of good reputation will have some sort of confidence or identity exercise.  For example, Dan “Social HitchHiker” from Charisma Arts has a great article that addresses just that.  Neil “Style” Strauss wrote a piece on “Who Are You And What Do You Want?” and asks his StyleLife Academy students to go through a Mission Statement mission that incorporates the following questions:

1. What are your current jobs, hobbies, and/or courses of study? Focus your answers on how you spend your time, not on what you think will please women.
2. Select one of the answers to the question above and write it down here.
3. Given the hobby, job or course of study, what are the most interesting, adventurous things you are or will be working on or studying that impact other people most? In what way does or will it affect them? List them all, whether they impact everyone in the world or just a small subset of people like elderly geography teachers in Cook County.
4. Now imagine that you are a recruiter for that job or hobby. And you want to prepare an advertisement to attract people to that position–people who are not involved in the field and know little or nothing about it. You want to do this by selling them on the importance of the job they will be doing. Keep in mind your answers to the question above, but state the impact in such a way that it will affect the broadest number of people possible. Make sure, however that the answer is truthful.
5. Now examine the sales line you wrote. Remove adjectives, adverbs, and other unnecessary hype words that appeal to emotion rather than stating fact (words such as “exciting”, “biggest”, “best”, “most powerful”, and so on). If possible, replace the hype words and the noun they modify with facts. Now examine the verb or verbs you use, and make sure that they are exciting and active (such as “create” or “launch” or “tour” rather than “have” or “do”). Now restate your sales line only as simply, factually, and powerfully as possible in under 10 words.
6. Now write down your answer to question 5 here. Then say it out loud preceded by the word “I”:
7. This is your identity statement. Say it out loud until you are comfortable with it. If you do not feel that it is both interesting and accurate, rework your sales line until you do.
8. Return to question #3. Select another item that you listed as an answer to question #2. Repeat this exercise until you have come up with an identity statement for up to four of the most interesting jobs, hobbies, or qualities you listed to question #2.
9. List your final identity statements here. Begin each with the word I, followed by the sales line.
10. YOUR IDENTITY:  Examine your identity statements from question #9. You should have from one to four statements there. 
    - Put a star next to the statement that is the most interesting to people outside of the field. 
    - Put a star next to the statement that is the most interesting to women in particular.
    - Put a star next to the statement that is the most accurate.
    - Put a star next to the statement that most reflects the way you spend your time each day.

I personally use a list that attempts to define both your identity and your self-perception:

1. List some of your qualities and uniqueness.
2. What ideals do you stand for?
3. What do you want to stand for?
4. How do you believe people, especially women, perceive you?
5. How would you like people to perceive you before interacting with you?
6. How would you like people to perceive you after interacting with you for the first time?
7. Do you have an archetypical character you’d like to be like – perhaps a celebrity or fictional character?  If so, who is it?
8. Notice the difference between your current self (question 2) and your ideal self (question 3). List a few behaviors you have to adopt, and note the behaviors you have to change or overcome.
9. Come up with 1-3 things/stories for which you are proud of yourself. You will be asked to share those during the bootcamp.

The interesting part is that I have some internet forum guys who doubt the usefulness of this type of inner game excercise.  They tell me that their ability to answer these types of questions do not guarantee an improvement to their confidence in approaching women.  They are right.  Answering these questions really doesn’t guarantee anything, but I think they are missing the point here.  These exercises are not so much meant to help them create a strong sense of identity or self-awareness as much as they are to get them to realize that their value is not based on what others think of them.  It is about self-determinism.  It is only one of the 3 facets of mastery (identity, beliefs and actions).  As David X would say: 

Who the fuck cares what they say?  The most important person in this relationship is ME.

Vin DiCarlo describes that as warm dominance:

Warm dominance means your livelihood and general feeling of well-being is independent of her behaviors and decisions.

This is the very core of natural and direct game.  Even though value is based on perception (in the sense that people sees you a certain way based on their own perception of reality), your inherent value as an individual does not change no matter the situation.  Once you can comfortably accept your strengths and weaknesses, there is no need to impress, entertain or convince others to like you.  As described by Charisma Arts, your mind becomes free to “assume attraction.”  People can choose to like you for who you are as you are now.  If you want to improve your attractiveness factor, all you need to do is communicate who you are well with the tools at your disposition (non-verbal communication – body language, tonality, fashion - and mastery of language – wit, humor, intelligence - etc).

Now, let’s stop a moment and consider another dilemma.  I have met guys who actually have a hard time answering these inner game questions.  It’s not because they are indecisive, but they truly don’t know what they like.  They were once either very sheltered, they are extremely introverted or they lack life experience.  To those people, all I have to say is:  get out of the house!  Put yourself out there.  Expose yourself to new things.  Get a life.  You will not learn about yourself by musing at home.

Here is  an example of my current week’s outing schedule:

• Tuesday:  Comedy show at the Hollywood Improv
• Wednesday:  Eating fire class with Fire Groove
• Thursday:  Asian Playboy seminar with the SoCal Lair, Yelp.com party, hang out with friends at the Four Seasons hotel then the Roosevelt hotel (I saw Lindsey Lohan!) in Hollywood
• Friday:  Histerica Dance Benefit Performance at the Open Fist Theatre
• Saturday:  Brewery Art Walk and Create Fixate
• Sunday:  Morning hike with Hike the Geek and… ?

Obviously, my week is not always this busy and fun.  I don’t necessarily attend all these functions either.  My plans are constantly subject to change but I try to always do something new.  I bet you’ll say:  “But this has nothing to do with meeting women!”  Sure it does.  I have the potential of meeting people all the time by going to the places I am curious about… and it always gives me something to talk about when I strike a conversation with women.  Can you see where my value comes from? 

[ Live an interesting life ] 
All the value you have derive from your past experience and achievements.

So after you can honestly answer ”who are you?”, the question becomes: 
do you like yourself?