I've been taking improv classes here in SF recently.

The original reason I signed up for classes was that coming out of Rockstar I realised that my ability to generate teases and make random, meaningless conversation was pretty bad. I've been working on it through some game-related techniques that Mr M and Dahunter came up with, but I'd heard improv suggested as a way to basically learn to pull stuff out of thin air, so I thought I'd give it a spin.

After two 3-hour classes (with a bunch more to go), here's what I've learnt, and how I can see it relating to pickup.

• Improv games and state. Improv games are the best "state builder" and the ultimate way to make sure you're in the moment, bar none. In two classes I've already learnt close to 20 different games, and they all involve generating material on-the-fly, usually while taking up physical and auditory space. Great for getting into state, and less weird than running around the club half-naked making animal noises.
• There is no preparation. Going into an improv "performance", the natural tendency is to have in mind some sort of outcome or progression for the act about to unfold. Part of improv class is retraining your brain to resist this temptation and to go in without preparation. This after all, is the basis of improvisation. Applied to pickup, this would be the mindset of "OK, I've spent time learning and practicing and understand at a conscious and unconscious level what I need to do. Now I just need to go in with no preparation and do it." Great mindset to have.
• The power of the stage. On stage, you are in character - anything is possible. Your character can do things that we "cannot" in the "real world". The character can fuck up, can make mistakes, can talk about leather whips and whipped cream, can pretend he's a girl or that she's a guy. The character can do anything. This is a way to capture an experience of social freedom that most people cannot do in the "real world". It creates realistic reference experiences that can be carried over into normal social interactions - it varies your normal everyday range of social behaviour.
• Deep breath is a line of dialogue that the audience writes. I saw this demonstrated in class the other day and it was pure awesomeness. Whenever someone says something and you don't want to respond - you don't have to. You just take a deep breath and let the statement sit. People watching will create a dialogue in their own minds. I see this being very applicable to pickup… the person you are talking to fills in your silence for you.
• Statements over questions. My improv instructor told us that amongst his pet peeves are improvisers who only use questions - this places the onus of the performance on the other people on-stage. The funny thing is that he also said "you know, in normal social interactions you can get away with asking questions, but it improv you can't." I found that kind of ironic given the standard Community advice of statements over questions.
• Your presence is an offer. In improv, this means that everything you do - your walk, your body language, your simple presence on stage is an offer that other improvisers can use to act on. In pickup, this means that your subcommunications are putting out all sorts of messages that people can choose to respond to. Sure, in the social world people are not incentivised the way they are on an improv stage to interact with you, but it is important nonetheless.
• Yes, and. I remember reading in a couple of places the power of "yes, and" in social interactions. Honestly, I am starting to think that its power is overrated. The problem with "yes, and" applied to pickup is that it lets the other person heavily influence the frame. You have to implicitly (or explicitly) agree to what they say, and carry it forward. It also reeks of trying for rapport. I can see it being used in a couple of different ways. If you say something, then turn to the girl with an expectation of a response and start her off with "this is the part where you say yes, and…" then she has to accept your statement and frame. A more useful structure to use for yourself, would be "yes, reframe" - negating her offer or statement and flipping it around to a meaning that you want.
• Improv games for attraction and comfort. If you have compliance early on then you can throw in an improv game to build attraction - I suggest something like the one-word-story, the bang game, or the give-and-receive gifts game. I can also see how improv can be used for killer amounts of comfort, because to play them you are essentially forced to go into rapport with the other person at a physiological level.

In addition to learning about improv, I've been applying some of the SCM principles I learnt during Rockstar. Here are some initial thoughts about how SCM works in an environment such as an improv class.

• Make yourself stand out in some way. Whether it's through extraordinary skill in the task at hand, remembering everyone's name, or dressing a cut above everyone else, standing out is good. It makes people remember you.
• 1-on-1 time. Climbing a social tree (or building one) is all about face time. Have little snippets of conversation with everyone individually, remember things about them and bring them up as callback in conversation later on.
• No material. Don't use Community material. Tease for sure and be playful, but mostly just be a cool, chill guy.
• Alignment. Aligning with the instructor and TA gives you an edge of authority.
• Timing. I'm finding that I don't really get this yet but I feel that it's important. Before class, during breaks, after short exercises and after class are probably the best times to build rapport and connections with people. It feels to me that the interactions during these times are forced, but that's probably just how it's going to be. Using situational comments to start conversations, like "so how's your week been?" or cold reads like "you look like a Bay Area girl."
• Adopting stage personalities. I think it was Mystery or someone who said that an actor has the ability to adopt the identity of whoever he portrays or screen. It works the same way in certain classes, like improv. Whatever roles you choose to portray on stage carry over into the real world and in that particular social circle, even though people know they are simply part of the show.
• Contact closes. I am thinking facebook is the best, safest initial route early on in class. Numbers and inviting people out to events (especially if you're inviting specific people rather than the entire class) must come later with more deep and wide rapport.

- whim

After being back in San Francisco for a few days, I've decided that the nature of this blog is to change.

I'm embarking on what I consider to be the next chapter of my life, one that will be remarkably different yet similar to the previous, and while I still want to document it I feel that it is something best done in private as it deviates largely from only pickup and social dynamics.

I will post the occasional field report and insight gleaned, but for the most part, I am deciding to keep those in my personal journal rather than publicly out here on the Internet.

- whim

So I wrote a summary to Project Rockstar about a week ago. A lot has changed since then - most of it in my own reflection of myself. Below is how I feel about Project Rockstar as it comes to an end, given all that has transpired.

The initial premise of Project Rockstar was to develop our social skills to the point where we were cold approach masters, and to be well on our way to becoming social masters (in the area of social circles and connectors). It was also envisioned that we would develop automated e-commerce businesses to free up our time to pursue our social aspirations. We were also supposed to be put on a rigorous fitness and health regime to shape us into peak physicality. In total, these things covered the three main areas of life - health, wealth, relationships. The endgame for all this is the concept of Supernova - to have so much gravitational pull in our lives, that things just happen. Women, wealth, connectors and good things are all drawn in of their own accord.

Those were the expectations. Mr M said to us in the beginning that by week six of Project Rockstar we would find ourselves with better cold approach game than the instructors teaching us.

Reality has turned out differently.

Relationships
In the area of social circle mastery, we've been given a roadmap, and a bunch of high-level principles to apply to our lives. This is something that can't really be taught in an in-field format. It's a matter of learning the knowledge and tools, and then it's entirely up to us to apply them to our lives. And apply we will.

In the area of social skills and cold approach, I cannot help but to feel somewhat disappointed - both at myself, and at the way the scheduling worked out with various instructors for the relationships part of the Project. Last year, Rockstar was run on a "one instructor per day" basis, and it was up to the instructors to determine what happened throughout the given day. This year, we were anywhere and everywhere, with business, health, wealth creation, pickup theory and mini-seminars scheduled all throughout. The result of this was less field time in the beginning, and as a result, less hand-on instruction. Coupled with a hectic travel schedule and a lot of time and nights out spent approach coaching meant less cold approach instruction overall.

At the moment, none of us are focussed on cold approach. To a large extent, we're just sick of it. We see the potential in things beyond game, and realise that cold approaching for the rest of your life is not the way to go for everyone. But, for the sake of closure, if I were to assess each remaining Rockstars' game as things are, it would break down like this. Micha's game *has* surpassed that of the instructors. The man is a beast, and he is unstoppable. To anyone who has seen him infield in the past couple of weeks, this is plainly obvious. Alex's game has made exponential jumps in the past couple of weeks - it is like everything just clicked for him and his inner expression of self is constantly shining through (and Alex is one happy and cheerful dude).

As for me… I find it difficult to be the most objective of people when thinking about myself, but I'll try anyhow I don't actually feel that my game has improved that much. All the so-named "crazy" things that I've done over the course of Project Rockstar, were things that I had done before - like one-minute kiss closes or holding court in a large six-set or opening and number-closing a bunch of girls during daygame. Sure, I did a lot more of them throughout Rockstar. And I feel that my consistency has gone up… but I'm not seeing a stark contrast in where I was before as compared to where I am now. What I have discovered, is where the gaps are in my game. I now know I am pretty weak at teasing and playing the role of the happy asshole, whereas pre-Rockstar I thought I was pretty good at it. I now know that emotional openness is something that I can develop, whereas before I was happy to just let it be.

A lot of the deep, buried inner game issues that surfaced over the course of Project Rockstar (especially in the final couple of weeks) are on their way to being handled. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can accept myself for who I am, and this excites me - because it is the precursor for the next step. I now have an understanding of why I am the way I am, and how the mechanism that makes me tick actually works. This opens up a world of possibilities, and the potential to explore new experiences that I have never considered before (like finding a girl and falling in love). I know however, that there is still a long way to go… but things are progressing. Even today, being out with Bugsy and then talking with Alex, I found yet another piece of the puzzle.

The feeling coming out of all of this is that I know where I need to be going in terms of pure, technical game, and have a plan for what I need to do post-Rockstar. About a week ago I was incredibly frustrated that I had come into Rockstar with expectations, and walked away without hitting them. Now… I am fine with that. It took a lot of discussion with Mr M and Dr Yen and the other Rockstars (especially Micha and Alex) for me to realise that there are really multiple sides to everything, and that there is inherently nothing wrong with being who you naturally are - there is no need to constantly "fix" things. The other realisation I had of not always needing to be constantly happy was *huge*… and is the foundation for a healthier feeling of self-acceptance.

Wealth
In the area of business I am walking away with more than I could ever dream of. I thought I would be learning how to build another six-figure business from scratch. Instead, I now have a plan for a multi-million dollar online empire, and a plan for ongoing wealth creation and preservation that I can take and start implementing. Over the past couple of days, we have taken the process of what Braddock and Mr M did with Social Circle Mastery and applied it to business and wealth. We all know where to go and what to do, now it's just a matter of doing it. On top of this, we have a number of high-level principles that we can apply to the way we do business to make it congruent with both ourselves and with the way that the business world actually works. I walk away with the feeling that I will never have to worry about money again for the rest of my life - I have a blueprint for success, and enough reference experiences to know that if I was financially wiped out tomorrow, I'd be back and kicking ass within three months if not three weeks.

Health
The health arena of Project Rockstar was less-than-ideal. I believe that I spent about two-and-a-half of the six weeks sick, and the first six weeks living in less-than-hygienic conditions. We did no regular exercise plan (I reverted to my own exercise regime after three weeks), and we ate out most of the time. The one takeaway that I received was the green drink supplement that London Hunk recommended - that is something I will continue taking in my everyday life, as it really does increase energy levels throughout the day.

Supernova
If I picture my life as an emerging supernova, I can start to see things coming together. I know where I am and where I'm headed in all areas of my life, and I've received mentoring and training in everything that I need to get there. The rest is up to me.

Learnings
This being probably my last "official" Project Rockstar post, I thought I'd write a brief summary of the things I've learnt… about game, about business, and about myself.

Outer Game

• Everything about outer game is a skill that can be learnt.
• The power of off-field practice. If it's good enough for Olympic athletes… it's good enough for us.
• Being a happy asshole is an attractive trait, if not THE attractive trait.
• The magic daygame formula: humour + value + relate.
• Logistics and emotional management (inserting qualification and comfort where needed) are everything when it comes to dating. Men and women are biologically driven to have sex - it's up to you to structure the conditions that let this happen.
• Learn to be comfortable talking about sex. Become a sexual master.
• Always approach. You never know what will happen. You always regret not approaching, you never regret approaching.
• Soul's duck analogy and the secret to his smoothness. Be the duck gliding across the water, but paddling furiously underneath.

Inner Game and Myself

• Happiness is a myth.
• People are fucked up. Find the one thing that makes them amazing and appreciate it.
• Learn to live with paradoxes.
• Self-acceptance is the precursor to growth.
• Accept that there are just some things in your life that you want for no reason at all.
• The Alex Lesson. Learn to love yourself.
• The power of daily rituals.
• Your life is the sum of your experiences. Do things outside of your comfort zone, and seek out new experiences.
• The value of variety. At the very basic level, this keeps you sane.
• There is no need to lie. Talk to girls you genuinely find attractive.
• You only need to bat 30/100 to score the girl.
• Find your boundaries and enforce them at all costs.
• The magic of teaching others, and how it changes the way your brain perceives the world.
• Mentors, knowledge and experience.
• Recognise your own dark side and revel in it.

Social Circle Mastery

• Be a good guy.
• Navy Seals and Powerpuff Girls.
• Have integrity.
• When you've made it, help pull others up. Paradoxically, don't help others if they don't want help.

Wealth

• Passive income is everything (it took us 7 weeks of mentoring and a 12 hours of masterminding to figure this out).

Thank You
This is also the place to say thank you to everyone involved in Rockstar.

First of all the Rockstars themselves.

Claude - we didn't get to talk much man, but I sense you're happy with where you've been and where you're headed.

Vishal - being told by you that I'm an asshole is probably one one of the highest compliments I've ever received. Underneath everything, I know that you're a good guy - don't let people tell you otherwise.

Josh - thanks for the long talks over lunch, and for always having that other perspective on things. I appreciate it more than the confines of the English language can express.

Micha - thank you for showing me how to be a Viking caveman, and for showing me a different way of being.

Alex - dude, if you're not Le Président in ten years I'm going to be disappointed. We make love to le women… yah?

To our manager Conor - let's hug it out, bitch

To the instructors.

Dr Yen - thank you for making me realise that everyone has different paths and different ways of living. And for helping me find the motivation to move on and continue on the journey. We never got to see your "applied sexual mastery" videos… maybe one day.

Soul - for taking care of us in Stockholm and Vegas, and for helping me through some of the lowest emotional points of the past five years of my life. It's good to know, that end of the journey, there's a life of Swedish blondes and spitroasts that awaits.

London Playboy - for encouragement, for pushing me beyond my comfort zone, and for always remaining positive. And for getting us hooked on stripper game.

5.0 - thanks for showing us what it's like on the high-end of things, and for opening our eyes to what's possible when you go from good to great.

Vercetti - for taking the time to help us become more in touch with our physical selves. I'll see you at the next San Francisco bootcamp… right?

Keychain - your story from Rockstar last year inspired us all to be here. Without you, we would not have had the opportunities that we have been given, or the experiences that went along with them. Thank you.

Sheriff - for discussing life and game with me in Thai while we were in Vegas, and for teaching us breakthrough comfort. Sorry I didn't make it through your whole bootcamp - having swine flu kinda sucks. p.s. still waiting for those notes!

Paladin - thank you for putting Rockstar into perspective, and for teaching me the value of appreciating others.

Freedom, Daxx, the DRH, Curran, Magnus - for the encouraging talks and insights into the way you live your lives.

Alex S & Wizard - thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to head in-field with us and show us a good time.

Bugsy - for sharing your own story with me, and for having the patience to listen to mine (I know, I can be annoying at times). For being always positive and upbeat, and showing me a different way of being.

To the Love Systems crew and approach coaches from Vegas, thank you for the crazy adventures and Red Bull. I hope I see a bunch of you Stateside in the future!

To all the LSS and London Community guys - fantastic to meet a bunch of you in person, it's been quite a trip.

To everyone who's been reading the blog, and has followed along the ups and downs and highs and lows. Thank you for reading, and writing. It means a ton to me.

To our other mentors, London Hunk, Jeff, Bao, Kunal, Julian, Aidan, Thomas, Andrew, Jamie - thank you all.

To all the English, German, Swedish, European and American and other girls I've met over the past two months - I apologise for confusing a bunch of you, and am sorry I will not be around to get to know the rest of you better.

To Adam Brown, for listening without judgement, and for helping me work out stuff that I could not have worked out alone. Trying to work out what goes on in my head tends to make people's brains explode - I applaud your courage in doing so… and I am looking forward to the book.

And a special thank you to Mr M for making this all happen. You've made me take a hard look at the way I live my life and realise that there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and shown me what the next level is - for this, I am eternally grateful. Oh, and you can…

- whim

Monday
What a day. We started off at 2 in the afternoon with an NLP and coaching session with Thomas O'Duffy (http://www.lifechanging.ie/).

He gave us some very awesome advice, condensed from his years of studying NLP and psychology and human performance, and distilled into what he recognises as "the best of the best".

What I like about his approach is that he recognises that a lot of people in the NLP community are actually pretty messed up - NLP promises a lot but most of the time it fails to deliver. And those that usually model certain members of the NLP community end up as messed up as those they follow. Sounding familiar? It's almost like the seduction Community in some ways.

Thomas gave us two very powerful pieces to implement daily.

One is a ritual of four questions, to ask ourselves on a day-to-day basis. They are:

1. What have I appreciated and enjoyed the most in the past day?
2. What have I done really exquisitely?
3. How have I improved?
4. Based on today, how can I do things better tomorrow?

He also gave us the notion of a morning ritual, which is a concept from the book The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz. In case you are wondering, here is the morning ritual I will be using post-Rockstar. It is based on the morning ritual I used to have pre-Rockstar, and modified using insights I've learnt along the way:

1. Wake up.
2. Drink 500mL of water.
3. Steam and essential oils.
4. Exercise and stretches. Either 15min of cardio followed by stretching or a yoga routine. Vercetti's posture, movement and vocal projection tuning ritual.
5. Yen's PC muscle exercises.
6. Chi packing.
7. Get changed.
8. Morning shake (use a blender). This stuff is awesome. Ingredients: 1/2 pack frozen acai, 1/2 cup frozen blueberries, 1 cup milk, 1 frozen banana, 2 tablespoons hemp protein powder, 1 teaspoon bee pollen, 1 teaspoon flax seed, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence, pinch of sea salt.
9. Circle of Excellence exercise.
10. (optional) 1 hour of business or self-development reading.
11. (optional) 30 minutes of language learning.
12. (optional) 30 minutes of neural net training in some skill.
13. Most important business task of the day.

Thomas also worked with us on individual aspects and issues that we had. For me it was better understanding my issues with emotional openness and emotional connect. What I found was that my issue is not so much emotional openness, it's more that I tend to strip out emotions from memories very quickly, and file them away without emotions attached.

Thomas showed me how to reverse the process of emotional nullification that I use, and how to use it to open up emotions in select memories and in the present. I've been playing with it and it is pretty fucking cool. As with most things, this is an ability that I will craft and use over time, and get better at controlling. If there was one single thing that I walk away from Rockstar grateful for, it is this.

We spent the early evening working on some business and game tasks and then… all of a sudden, there's a knock on my hotel door. It's Micha. And Vishal. WTF.

He's back. And he brought his Porsche.

We hop in and go in search of food. We end up in Leceister Square eating Mexican food, and driving to South London to drop Micha off at his girl's house. This is where it gets weird. We were stopped just outside where we were dropping off Micha by the police (for "erratic driving"). They pulled each of us aside and started asking questions… it was pretty funny to watch. Studying social dynamics and pickup gives you a unique insight into human communication - you start to recognise things that people do in specific contexts, and how you may do similar things to others where you are navigating through an interaction. For example, the police officer kept on trying to use state break questions on us. Multiple times. Unsuccessfully. It was kinda funny to see them all talk to each other afterwards and be like "WTF we didn't charge them for anything?"

And so ended Monday night.

Tuesday
The last official day of Project Rockstar.

We started with a morning session on inner game with Magnus. He covered a model that he created that leads to acceptance of self and alignment across multiple levels.

We then had closing talks with Mr M, Dr Yen, Bugsy and Freedom of Speech. Mr M plugged in some gaps in our phone/text game knowledge, and day 2 and SCM knowledge. Dr Yen and Freedom of Speech gave us some ideas about how to take what we had learnt in Rockstar and integrate it into our lives moving forward. Personally, I am fucking excited and can't wait to get the chance to start sitting down and formulating my goals and plans for the next couple of years.

And of course… to end it all off, we ended up at a strip club. This was my *first ever* time to a strip club. It was actually a pretty neutral experience (as you would expect from me no less). I wasn't overly impressed, or overly unimpressed - it just simply was. Watching Mr M, Freedom and Vishal run verbal game on the strippers though was fucking amazing. These guys are phenomenal at it, and I think it's something I'd like to look more into in the future. I did have a huge realisation though (again, as you would expect from me). I now understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an interaction where the person who is talking to you is not being genuine but is saying all the right things. Over the course of Rockstar, I've approached multiple girls and lied through my teeth because I was vetoed into set or doing a demo or whatnot. As we got closer to the end of Rockstar, I found that I just wasn't able to do it anymore - it really ate me up inside to approach someone and take value by delivering a fake compliment. Sitting there in the strip club, having strippers who are obviously bored, ask all the usual rapport questions and try to make conversation… it was fucking annoying, and really didn't give me anything but a negative feeling. I am making a promise to myself to never do this to girls ever again.

And so ends Project Rockstar.

- whim

So I wrote a few days ago about how we were taught standup comedy as part of Project Rockstar.

Here's what we came up with…

Alex

Conor

Me

- whim