Escaping the Pick-Up Paradigm - Insight #1

[Zenterus]

I've been on a journey to transcend my pickup artist conditioning, after being entrenched in it for nearly 10 years.

I've spoken about this venture of mine in various posts in the past, but I've since realized that killing my pickup tendencies and beliefs is going to be a much harder dragon to slay than I anticipated.

Therefore, I decided to take it more seriously and devote a good chunk of my time getting to the root cause of it all and unwiring the paradigm at its core.

[Big thanks to @Emerald as well for giving me some advice on the matter in private.]

That's what this series of posts is going to be about:  Transcending Pick Up.

-----

I got flaked on 5-6 times back to back this last week and a half, which has been extremely painful because I had very high interest in a few of those women.

In fact, pickup has been difficult ever since I moved to my current city about a year ago. The women here are a lot more flakey and require more time investment over text than what I'm used to or comfortable with.

This has been a blessing in disguise, though, because the turmotulous nature of the dating game here has really forced me to face myself.

Anyway.. I was in pain yesterday, man. Had a shitty day at work, I got flaked on 3 times back to back and I was just frustrated.

Before going home, I pass by the cannabis store and get myself some edibles. I'm getting high tonight and plan on swimming through the big pool of pain I feel, until I find the drain at the bottom.

I only take a bite, though. These edibles are so strong, that when I last ate the whole thing, I awoke to Solipsism. They aint no joke, man. So, as you can imagine, that one bite was enough to inspire some insight. 

I open ChatGPT and instruct it to ask me back-to-back shadow work questions, each going deeper than the one before, with little fluff and empathetic mirroring. I want to go deep.

Worked like a charm.

What the line of questioning helped me to realize was that growing up I always felt insignificant. I used to get bullied by my classmates and even some of my own friends. 

I felt invisible to girls and my home life wasn't very pleasant, as my mom was working 12 hour days nearly 7 days a week to support my sisters and I,  since my dad had abandoned us for another woman.

The only thing that helped me feel significant in any way was my ability to draw very well.

The recognition that my creative talents earned me, motivated me to cultivate that skill to a very high level, but it still wasn't enough to get the admiration of the girls I liked neither the respect of other men who i deemed to be "cool."

And that's the deeper need that pickup fulfilled for me.

Through pick up -- and personal development as a whole -- I became significant, different, special, one of a kind. I could attract beautiful women into my life and build sexual abundance like no other man I knew could and I would do it through the most unconventional path that most men would be afraid to undertake.

I became significant to the women I would date, to the men within my social circle that bore witness to my sudden transformation and, finally, to myself as I finally became one of the *cool* guys in my eyes, finally.

It was never about the sex, or the access, or the reputation. 

I just wanted to matter. I just wanted to be admired for something. Recognized by my peers and seen as important.

I sat down with this insight for a few minutes. 

Then, I asked myself, how could I fulfill this need outside of pickup?

The following answers came to mind:

1. Join or build a community of like minded individuals and find my own tribe through that.

2. Develop valuable skills or create something unique to me that will benefit the world at large.

3. Prioritize myself to myself. Build a relationship with myself that's founded under the premise of "I matter the most to me." Invest in me and do things that excite me and make me feel passionate.

I immediately took steps.

I am going to a kickboxing class today. I've always been interested in martial arts -- an interest rooted in the fact that I used to get bullied, I admit. Through this class, I will not only join a like minded community, but I will also be challenged in a new and exciting way and will develop a skill that could benefit the people that I love (knowing that I can protect them if shit ever goes down).

Additionally, I will be creating my own Meetup.com event. One around the subject of mindfulness, creativity and vulnerability. I will not share my full concept here though

Lastly, I am continuing my efforts to learn a new language I've been trying to learn for the longest time, starting next week.

------ BONUS INSIGHTS -------

1. The steps I outlined above have always been of interest to me. The reason that I never went though with any of them to the max was because I was afraid of packing up my schedule and not being able to date as much. But considering how unfulfilling the game is these last few years, I find it crazy how much I resisted making the necessary lifestyle changes. It really reveals how deep the pulls of one's identity go, even when the identity no longer serves the individual positively.

2. I tend to interact with women from an egoic place rather than a genuine desire to connect and that is where all my fuck ups with dating stem from. When a man interacts with the world from a genuine intent to connect; he doesn't manipulate, he doesn't overpursue, he doesn't try to "get her to chase," or do any of the pickup tactics that we're taught. He just expresses himself (without needing to impress) and lets chemistry flourish naturally over time with no rush. 

I've picked up recently that whenever I have a genuine vibe going on with a woman and I try to use a pickup tactic on her, it immediately kills the vibe. At my level, I dont need these behaviours anymore. I am enough, I am attractive. All I really have to do is just show up, be myself and only pursue women who I have high genuine interest in and who I have the most chemistry with. From there, text them, build the vibe over text (no push pulls or stupid fucking techniques, just genuine fun convo) for a couple days, qualify her on things I like about her and then ask her out. 

Done. It's that simple. Yet pickup has overcomplicated this process for me and made me feel like I have to do more. Like I have to leave her on 'read' sometimes, or that I have to do x, y and z or whatever. 

Has that worked at some point in my life? Yes. But it is no longer applicable nor needed as the man I am now and my current relationship goals. And even when I've done those things successfully, the women have never been the type that I'd want to commit to long term, no matter how beautiful they might have been. 

Ultimately, a woman that chases a man who is distant, rejects her, makes her feel insecure or whatever, is not a quality woman.

A quality girl knows her value so she will only go for men she has genuine chemistry with and who she feels reciprocative consistent effort from. 

I dont need to build attraction. I am attraction already. From there, its just about building rapport and connection.

What this means for the future is that I need less leads but higher quality ones. Rather than collecting 10 numbers/instagrams per week, I should bring that number down to about 2-3 exceptionally high quality leads. That means, again, women that I'm truly highly attracted to, who I have genuine good chemistry and compatibility with and just invest in these women over other low quality leads.

This will require a strong discernment from me and a resistance to a "lead acquisition" frame in which I just go out and seek as much abundance as I can rather than connection.

But, now that I'm slowly making some changes in my life, I dont think that will be too challenging to maintain.

 

More insights to come.

 

 

[LastThursday]

Reading that, just a couple or three ideas come to my mind. This is not meant to be advice per se, just what I might tell myself if I was in your situation:

1. Slowly build up a friendship group that has a mix of men and women.  Learn to be comfortable with just being friends with women, no agenda.

2. The "I want to be recognised" pattern is extremely common. It is code for: "I want to be loved for being me". I find that this is also code for "I want to be loved in very specific ways". Very often people will love you, but just not in the way you want. It can be very hard to recognise and then accept other people's love: the way they express it. Also, apart from immediate family, people will only love you if you provide value to them. This sounds negative, or transactional, but it can also be extremely simple and joyful to do. Work it out. Even just being present can be enough.

3.  When starting a new phase in life, it will always feel unsettling. It's can be like throwing dice and hoping for sixes. It can feel like you're losing control or are not sure of what is coming next. It is a very good exercise to live with the ambiguity and uncertainty and not force things too much, just let it happen. It is also an excellent time to actually choose who you want to be, and how you want to live for the next chunk of your life, there is a lot of freedom and joy in that.