through that fear and do it anyway. Here’s what Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his iron-pumping days, had to say about it: “If you can go through the pain period, you make it to be a champion. If you can’t go through it, forget it. And that’s what most people lack: having the guts—the guts to go in and just say . . . ‘I don’t care what happens.’ ”
8.
Don’t look to friends or family for approval. Not all of your friends and family will understand the journey you’re about to take. They may tell you that they don’t like how you’re changing. They may make fun of you for wanting to improve. That’s okay. It happened to me. It also happened to Oprah: When she lost weight, she lost friends. This surprised her at first, until she learned that her largeness had given them an excuse to feel better about their own bodies. So, when you start attracting women and adventure, your friends may not welcome it—you’ve become a threat to their limiting beliefs and complacency about their own shortcomings. Let it be their problem, not yours.
9.
Be willing to test new ideas, even if they don’t seem logical. Before I learned the game, I considered myself an intelligent and successful person. Yet the logic that had gotten me so far in the world wasn’t getting me anywhere with women. In order to make a change, I had to try some new behaviors, even if they didn’t seem logical. I said things I thought would drive women away, but instead they attracted them. I wore outrageous clothes I thought would get me laughed out of the room, but instead they motivated women to approach me. And that’s when I realized that I’d never really been using logic in the first place—because, as any good scientist knows, before dismissing a new hypothesis, it’s necessary to test it first.
10.
Once something works, figure out how and why it works. There are some men who do great just following these instructions and repeating the routines. But the ones who become superstars are the ones who, after a series of successes, figure out why the routines worked and what made them work. There’s only one rule of pickup, and that rule is: There are no rules, only guidelines. Once you understand the principles behind each idea, you’ll know when to follow the guidelines, when to dismiss them, and when to invent new ones.
11.
If you don’t know what to do, don’t leave. If you run out of material when talking to a woman you’ve just met, you’re not going to learn anything by running away. Stay in the conversation and, if you run out of things to say, push it five, ten, twenty minutes further—even if you have to violate the guidelines and buy her a drink or ask interview questions. It’s the best way to learn something new for next time.
12.
Hang around someone better than yourself. This is the single best way to improve in any area. Your mentor doesn’t have to be the top attraction expert in the world, just someone who has a little more skill than you do. If you don’t know anyone who can fill this role, instead of going out to meet women one night, go out to befriend someone who’s good with women.
13.
Make sure that your ratio of effort to results is increasing. When learning a new way of doing something, most people get worse at the task before getting better. That’s normal. But you’d be surprised by the number of people who keep putting more work into something after this transition period, even though their results stay the same or barely improve. So make sure you’re increasing not just your knowledge but also your results. If you’re not, then take a break, review these rules, examine what you’re doing, and push yourself beyond your comfort zone.
14.
Finish what you begin. Most people can accomplish just about anything within the realm of possibility. Despite this, they never realize their dreams. Either they quit before they reach their goals (and always with a seemingly good reason for doing so), or they don’t change their strategy when something’s not working. Roughly 19 out of 20 people who start reading this book won’t stick with the program until the end. Don’t be one of those people. Simply by not giving up, you’ll already be in the top 5 percent of men out there.
DAY
MISSION 1: It’s Opposite Day
The focus of today’s lesson is disqualification—one of the most counterintuitive techniques in the Stylelife Challenge. Forget everything you know about attracting women, because the goal of disqualification is to meet women and tell them you don’t want to date them.
This is going to be the most difficult day of the Challenge so far—but also the most rewarding. To find out what it’s all about, read your Day 10 Briefing and fill out the worksheet describing your ideal woman.
MISSION 2: Play Hard to Get
Your mission today is to make three approaches using one of the openers you’ve learned or created.
During the first approach, add a disqualifier from today’s reading material.
For the second approach, use a different disqualifier.
Afterward, take a short break and think of a third potential way to disqualify her. Write it below:
Now make your third approach and, during the opener, use the disqualifier you just invented.
DAY 10 BRIEFING
THE POWER OF NO
It’s not the having, it’s the getting.
—ELIZABETH TAYLOR
I recently went to a party in Colorado with six friends. Three of the guys spent the night with women; three didn’t. As we discussed it the next morning, we discovered that the difference between the unsuccessful guys and the successful guys boiled down to one thing: lack of neediness.
The guys who went home alone were too available. The successful guys all played hard to get. They weren’t afraid to walk away from the woman they were attracted to, talk to other people at the party, and create the impression that if she didn’t act soon, she’d lose her chance. They understood a basic tenet of human nature: The harder we have to work for something, the more we value it.
Thus the lesson for today: In every interaction, be the person giving validation, not the one needing it.
One of the quickest and most playful ways to accomplish this is through disqualification. To disqualify a woman, demonstrate early in an interaction that you’re not interested in her. Even though you may be chasing her, disqualification turns the tables and makes her want to chase you. For example, telling a woman with blonde hair that for some reason you’ve only dated brunettes disqualifies her as a potential girlfriend.
If the concept sounds odd, consider this: Beautiful women are constantly approached by men. They assume that nearly every guy wants to sleep with them. So when you take yourself out of the dating pool in a confident way, you immediately stand out—after all, most people want what they can’t have.
Another advantage is that disqualifying a woman in a group can help you win over her friends, who are used to repelling the steady stream of men vying for her attention.
Finally, disqualification helps build trust because it demonstrates that you’re not solely motivated by
