I'm looking for a program about inner game. Has anybody tried Carlos Xuma's Ultimate Inner Game Program?

I don't know about Carlos Xuma's product but try "Models: The Comprehensive Guide... i forget the rest", having read alot of stuff on pick-up i think its a refreshing alternative yet expands on the relevant ideas. Technically its an inner/outer game product.

Also "The Four Elements of Game" by Rob Judge and Zach Bauer. Between the two i went over all the positive things i've ever read that was produced by the pick-up industry. Sorry about your intial question though.

I was seriously unimpressed by Carlos Xuma's stuff. It's really rehashed tony robbins stuff. Seriously a pretty blatant retread of personal power stuff, with more examples about women.

The best and only inner game seminar I could find myself recommending to people is David D's "Man Transformations." Although like most of his stuff, it's long-winded and pretty dry. I actually liked his "Deep Inner Game" product as well, although that's even MORE dry and boring. Great info though.

I plan on recording an "inner game" seminar of my own some time in the first half of next year.

If anyone asked me 6 months about Xuma stuff I'd strongly encourage anyone to run for it. Now, I'd say, first get yourself a copy of Models and join G3

Are you familiar with Xuma's programs and style? If you like his stuff you'll probably love this one. If you don't like or know any of his other programs you may not get much from this. This is one of Carlos' best programs but it is already from 2008. There's a lot of similarity between Carlos and Mark's stuff regarding ideas like vulnerability, iirc, a quote from Carlos "the best topics for rapport are the areas of pain in your life" However, most of this stuff comes in later programs, from 2010.

As Jon said, he borrows a lot from Robbins. Also from Tolle, Richard Carlson, Carnegie, Cialdini, Barry Schartwz (the paradox of choice) and several other authors. In fact, most of the stuff in the program is not original - it never is and he makes it clear, so you must judge the program on its contents. He goes on about teverything you'd expect on an inner game, habits, social skills, lifestyle, emotional intelligence, etc... Carlos has a lot of strong ideas (about life, sports, martial arts, masculinity) and he makes no qualms in pushing that stuff on to you.

This stuff worked well for me because I had a very small comfort zone (meaning that I was very uncomfortable doing lines and routines), had lots of free time to listen to his stuff over and over and I'm prone to intellectualizing. It was also a form of avoidance for me, as I have postponed doing stuff to "work on myself" - and yes, Carlos warns about this.

There is a lot of resemblance in Mark's and Carlos approaches regarding the fundamental aspects of game, eg: vulnerability, growing your comfort zone by going one step at a time, building a strong lifestyle and foundation, many of the exercises I've found in G3. Where they diverge is that Carlos keeps on feeding our desire for new stuff and new techniques, even when he declares that you don't really need it. He makes it more complicated even though he keeps on telling that this stuff is straightforward. He also seems faithfull to many of the community paradigms that Mark has abondoned. Case in point: texting. Carlos would give you a list of pretty smart texts and how to use them - in another program.

What I get from Mark's blog and products, and haven't seen anywhere else, is that being yourself is all there is and you can accomplish that by honest living, honest action and honest communication. And that is almost all you need to get on track. Ok, perhaps you need a structured path, in which case you should join the G3 while it is still cheap and follow the exercises or you need to get rid of you emotional baggage (read Glover's Nice Guy and other seminal works.)

I must say am not sure that I'd be so appreciative of Mark's stuff if I hadn't spent almost 3 years studying this stuff, mostly David D's (except for the Man Transformations) and Carlos'. And to be fair, David and particularly Carlos helped me get me a long way: I am now a fairly happy guy, have interesting stuff going on in my life, get girls fairly easily and grew my comfort zone, among other benefits. I'm now looking my fears and emotional baggage in the eye and this is fairly exciting.

In other words, your mileage may vary. If you are really serious about checking his stuff take a look at his videos on youtube or try listening to some of his stuff before you commit yourself. His stuff is great but you must find out if this is the best use of your time and energy.

(08-23-2011 02:26 PM)Mark Wrote:  The best and only inner game seminar I could find myself recommending to people is David D's "Man Transformations." Although like most of his stuff, it's long-winded and pretty dry. I actually liked his "Deep Inner Game" product as well, although that's even MORE dry and boring. Great info though.

I plan on recording an "inner game" seminar of my own some time in the first half of next year.

I've started Man Transformation a bunch of times. I really want to go through it, but 20 DVDs? Really? Sigh. One of these months...

The good thing about David D is that he tends to focus on his strengths as a marketer, organizer, and interviewer, and puts together a good cast of people with different, complementary perspectives for all his products.

Aside: The name Man Transformation always makes me laugh because it makes me think of sex-change operations. (Just the title though - the content does look good...)

(08-23-2011 02:26 PM)Mark Wrote:  I plan on recording an "inner game" seminar of my own some time in the first half of next year.

Mark, what kind of knowledge or training do you have to be able to give advice about inner game? Don't get me wrong, I like your stuff, I think it's the most honest and helpful stuff out there BUT inner game belongs to the psicological field and I've seen SO MANY gurus giving advice about inner game without the proper education for it. Maybe just Dr. Paul is the only guy in the community with a degree in psychology and to be honest I didn't understand anything from "Deep Inner Game". Some times I ask myself, why do I dedicate so much time, effort and suffering to get good with women? And to be honest again I think this is kind of an obssesion, there must be something wrong with us to spend so much energy just to get laid with as many women as we can.
The other day I was walking down the street and I saw a couple of nerds holding hands, and they LOOKED happy, it seemed that they accepted each other in the way they are and couldn't care less about what people could think about them. Whereas us are thinking about getting laid with hotter women one day after another, that's a lot of need for validation, trying to prove something to somebody or maybe to ourselves and as I can admit some anger toward women. I really think that to belong to this community we have to be somewhat fucked up, it's not only about getting laid, there's a lot of murky stuff underneath of our seek for sex. So, how can somebody that belongs to this community give HEALTHY advice about inner game? I doubt that any shrink would aprove our obssesion with women.
How do you explain to a fish that he's wet?

(08-24-2011 10:22 AM)Leo Wrote:  The other day I was walking down the street and I saw a couple of nerds holding hands, and they LOOKED happy, it seemed that they accepted each other in the way they are and couldn't care less about what people could think about them. Whereas us are thinking about getting laid with hotter women one day after another, that's a lot of need for validation, trying to prove something to somebody or maybe to ourselves and as I can admit some anger toward women. I really think that to belong to this community we have to be somewhat fucked up, it's not only about getting laid, there's a lot of murky stuff underneath of our seek for sex. So, how can somebody that belongs to this community give HEALTHY advice about inner game? I doubt that any shrink would aprove our obssesion with women.
How do you explain to a fish that he's wet?

Wow man, thats really some profound shit! I'm actually really stunned by what you said cuz it really makes alot of sense. I've noticed that there are so many people that are also happy with their relationship while they might not have the most attractive partner. When i get over this stunned silence, i'll try and provide my two-cents

(08-24-2011 10:22 AM)Leo Wrote:  

(08-23-2011 02:26 PM)Mark Wrote:  I plan on recording an "inner game" seminar of my own some time in the first half of next year.

Mark, what kind of knowledge or training do you have to be able to give advice about inner game? Don't get me wrong, I like your stuff, I think it's the most honest and helpful stuff out there BUT inner game belongs to the psicological field and I've seen SO MANY gurus giving advice about inner game without the proper education for it. Maybe just Dr. Paul is the only guy in the community with a degree in psychology and to be honest I didn't understand anything from "Deep Inner Game". Some times I ask myself, why do I dedicate so much time, effort and suffering to get good with women? And to be honest again I think this is kind of an obssesion, there must be something wrong with us to spend so much energy just to get laid with as many women as we can.
The other day I was walking down the street and I saw a couple of nerds holding hands, and they LOOKED happy, it seemed that they accepted each other in the way they are and couldn't care less about what people could think about them. Whereas us are thinking about getting laid with hotter women one day after another, that's a lot of need for validation, trying to prove something to somebody or maybe to ourselves and as I can admit some anger toward women. I really think that to belong to this community we have to be somewhat fucked up, it's not only about getting laid, there's a lot of murky stuff underneath of our seek for sex. So, how can somebody that belongs to this community give HEALTHY advice about inner game? I doubt that any shrink would aprove our obssesion with women.
How do you explain to a fish that he's wet?

Well, as you know, that's all stuff I agree with and have said in the past. I guess my response would be that it takes a fish who's jumped out of the water to tell a fish in the water that he's wet.

If that makes sense.

There's something to be said about being someone who's lived through it and come out the other end. Your average shrink cannot relate. And the other thing is, psychology itself doesn't answer everything. People are different. People's sex drives vary, people have neuroses that play out in different ways. Some people want one wife and to have missionary sex their entire lives. Some people want to fuck 300 strangers, be tied up in rubber and spanked in public. As long as it's consensual and not compulsive behavior, then psychology doesn't have a whole lot to say about that difference. People vary widely. Their preferences do as well.

Anyway... to answer your question, the psychology of attraction, sex, relationships and especially masculinity are still all very underdeveloped. Nobody started studying attraction until just a couple decades ago, and they're just NOW starting to get anywhere with sexual desire and habits. And hell, academia can't even decide if the word "masculinity" has a definitive meaning yet -- they've been arguing about it for close to 40 years.

So when it comes to giving actionable life-changing advice... much of the science itself is still not there. Hell, even Dr. Paul's stuff is all stuff he made up himself. There's a reason for that.

Self help industries have an interesting relationship with academics. The advantage of academics is that they test everything, they prove everything, and they're peer-reviewed, so they get the truth... eventually. The problem with academics is that it's slow and it's not very creative. Answers to some of these questions we all struggle with on this board may not be answered by psychologist definitively for another 80 years.

The advantage self help industries have is that they're fast and dynamic, they're creative, and they're more concerned with application. A placebo effect is perfectly acceptable in self help -- it gets the job done, after all, right? But it's worthless in academics. As a result, for all of its garbage and nonsense, self help advice often precedes the science by quite a bit. Hell, psychology is just now getting around to proving stuff self help gurus were talking about 30-40 years ago. Stuff about happiness as related to experience, how expectations shape behavior, how perception effects performance. This is all stuff just coming out in studies this decade that guys like Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale were talking about decades ago.

But the problem is that self help is not regulated or peer-reviewed. So you have to sift through a lot of bullshit, frauds and nonsense to get to the good-stuff.

So there are my qualifications: I've lived it, I've helped other guys live it (told fish that they're wet), and I like to think that I'm some of the "good stuff" that guys find their way to.

Yeah, gotta admit, I find David D so boring that I think i made it 10 minutes into Man Transformation. That guy is a human roofie.