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Original discussion thread: http://www.fastseduction.com/discussion/fs?action=9&boardid=2&read=101796&fid=146
They are all thinking too hard.
The myth is that if you think of everything, and are well prepared for every possible problem that can come up, then you can easily make problems go away, and you will have a smooth path to getting laid.
This is a myth.
It NEVER goes that way.
You can't predict what will happen.
Cold approach pickup is a bumpy road. You can't control every little factor. It's useless to try. Go read some LRs, you'll see that all kinds of unexpected stuff comes up.
All that planning and thinking, it just makes pickup harder.
It just makes you panic when something unexpected happens.
It just gives you a shocked look on your face that girls and cockblockers can see.
You'd be better off going in with no expectations. You'd be better off expecting the unexpected. You'd be better off becoming so ballsy that nothing can throw you off.
You can't plan your way around everything. You can't think your way through every problem before the problem even happens. You have to respond in real time, not think it out hours in advance.
I'm going to outline all the negative consequences of thinking too much, and then give you a better way to go about things.
When you think too much, you look like you're thinking. This prevents you from looking like you're having a good time. When you're thinking really hard, you're in low state. Low state turns girls off. Thinking hard is a low state activity.
When you're thinking too hard, you're not paying attention to your surroundings. Girls could be throwing you eye contact all over the place, you'd never see it.
When you're thinking too hard, you're not listening to the person you're talking to. A woman knows when you're listening and when you're not. Thinking really hard about pickup prevents you from listening to women.
Thinking too hard makes you come across as weird in general.
There are times in learning pickup when you should do some thinking, but it's not all the time. The BEGINNING of a pickup is a time to not be thinking so hard, and that's what I want to go over with you.
PROCEDURES.
That's the answer.
When you follow those same procedures every time you go out, you will do them without thinking much. This will free up some CPU in your brain to listen, respond, observe, and be in the moment.
What procedure you should follow varies depending on how long you've been in the game and how things are coming along. But I'll give you a typical beginner procedure to get you started.
Using 2 pre-tested openers takes out a lot of thinking, because newbies tend to sit there thinking “What opener should I use?” That is really bad for your game.
3- Don't try to be smooth when you transition, just plow right into the next thing. You're new at this. You're not gonna be smooth. It's not gonna happen. Better to be slightly random and abrupt because it shows leadership skills. Start talking about whatever YOU want to talk about, and the girls will follow your lead.
You don't need permission to change the subject, you don't need an opening or a hint or a sign, just take charge and go for it.
This is an ultra simple plan. There's no thinking about what to open with. There's no thinking about “what should I say next?” There's no thinking “How do I get into the next thing I want to say???”
And those are the main questions that cause students to think too hard.
That should get you through the first 5 or 10 minutes, and then maybe you can take a minute to think it over and decide where you want to take it next.
When you become more advanced, you can get into all the nuances of natural conversation, interaction, and calibration...but if you try to do all that when you're a beginner, you'll be thinking too hard and you'll look like a stuttering, confused mess.
That plan we just talked about is a procedure.
Here's another simple procedure-
Do 3 warm up approaches, disregard the outcome of those warmup approaches, then do 10 real approaches. Then go home.
Do that every night you go out.
You'll learn a lot more if you do things this way because it leads to more TAKING ACTION.
Sometimes thinking can be strongest opposition to taking action. It's not that easy to do both at the same time. I have to say the guys who do the best at pickup are those who take action the most. The guys who think all the time just rot their brain away with a bunch of hypothetical pickup theory.
I've seen thousands of guys who are beginners at pickup. There's one problem every single one of them have. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
The only way to stop thinking so hard is to follow the same procedures every time.
1- Choose 2 pre-tested openers for your entire night. Only do these 2 openers. Do not do situational, direct, or any untested openers. If you start busting out untested stuff, you're introducing an extraneous variable that can confuse you later when you're trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.
2- Use a stack. A stack is a batch of conversational material that you've done before, and you do it in the same order every time. You can improv on the stack, or change it as you go, but know it well enough that you can begin each piece without thinking too hard.