When people talk about inner game they refer to two different things.

The first is confidence. Obviously confidence is attractive, so people try to study inner game to get confident. I think this is basically a waste of time. If you are doing something and feel no confidence whatsoever, it's probably a good sign. It means you are pushing your comfort zone. Keep doing it, you get confident. This is true whether you succeed or fail. You can get blown out 1000 times in a row, but guess what, that will just reduce your anxiety because you will be acclimated to rejection. On the other hand, worrying about how confident you are moment to moment will just make your anxiety worse. Better to focus on other things and enjoy increased confidence as a side effect of taking action.

The second is getting rid of ideas that get in your way, such as: "quality" women don't have sex to early or women only care about money or women don't like guys who are short. Getting rid of these beliefs is something that is seriously worth working on on a conscious level.

I won't get into it right now because I'd like to do a very serious Inner Game product next year based on psychological research as well as theory... but I'll make a couple points:

1. Anxiety is never reduced, only adapted. This is subtle and nitpicky, but I think a lot of us guys with massive anxiety are mislead by the "reduce your anxiety" angle. I know I was.

2. There is a "confidence threshold" where basically anyone below that threshold in confidence will actually be worse off and lose self-esteem when faced with certain degrees or frequencies of rejection.

3. One thing that I believe strongly that no other pick up company presents is that inner game isn't an amorphous bunch of ideas, but an actual cause/effect chain of internal mechanisms. Awareness -> Emotions -> Beliefs -> Perceptions -> Confidence -> Behavior -> Experience.

The glaring problem of all "inner game" material out there is that it doesn't address or train people through this chain of mechanisms. For example, telling a guy like Pedals2Medals over and over that Indian men can be attractive and that it's a shitty belief to believe otherwise is pointless until you train him to have the proper awareness to recognize how his emotional processes lead him to that belief. This is why therapy is great for guys like him, because therapy hammers one Awareness and Emotions. This is why eastern spirituality often crosses over into Self Help, because eastern spirituality hammers on Awareness, which then often (but not always) leads to beneficial changes down the line.

I think these things should all consciously be developed, in order.

I think the biggest problem with current "inner game" material and even most self help is that it's not presented in a usable format. It's stuff like The Blueprint where Tyler just rambles on and on about all of these things for 20 hours without ever putting them in order and explaining how they all affect one another or how they should be pursued.

Anyway... VERY excited to get more into this type of stuff...

EDIT: I said I wasn't "going to get into it" and here I just wrote a page. Typical...

(10-07-2011 04:53 AM)Mark Wrote:  1. Anxiety is never reduced, only adapted. This is subtle and nitpicky, but I think a lot of us guys with massive anxiety are mislead by the "reduce your anxiety" angle. I know I was.

Hmm. I am not so sure I get this. There are definitely things (when it comes to women and in life in general) that used to give me more anxiety then they do now. I used to have a lot of anxiety about asking for numbers, but now it's almost automatic. I agree that in general its also important to develop a better response to anxiety.

Quote:2. There is a "confidence threshold" where basically anyone below that threshold in confidence will actually be worse off and lose self-esteem when faced with certain degrees or frequencies of rejection.

yeah that makes perfect sense. I have seen this. I guess if you beat yourself up about rejection enough, the expereince can get so awful subjectively that it becomes a downward spiral, whereas if you have a relatively minor level of negative emotional reaction to rejection, you can get an upward spiral.

Quote:3. One thing that I believe strongly that no other pick up company presents is that inner game isn't an amorphous bunch of ideas, but an actual cause/effect chain of internal mechanisms. Awareness -> Emotions -> Beliefs -> Perceptions -> Confidence -> Behavior -> Experience.

yep.

Quote:I think the biggest problem with current "inner game" material and even most self help is that it's not presented in a usable format. It's stuff like The Blueprint where Tyler just rambles on and on about all of these things for 20 hours without ever putting them in order and explaining how they all affect one another or how they should be pursued.

This is true. It's funny that TD cribs from Tony Robbins so much, but ignores the cleverest thing Tony Robbins does - makes you work on stuff bit by bit over thirty days, in a structured way. (Funny side note is the hilarious out of date 1980s fad dieting he gets to halfway through Personal Power).

1. Anxiety is never reduced, only adapted. This is subtle and nitpicky, but I think a lot of us guys with massive anxiety are mislead by the "reduce your anxiety" angle. I know I was.

When I was working on my self-discipline It didn't really become that much easier. It just became easier to put myself to action and ignore the part that said "oh man I want to rest a bit". I can really see a link with other areas here.

The funny thing is that if you can just accept the fact that you're having anxiety, the battle is for the most part already over.

3. One thing that I believe strongly that no other pick up company presents is that inner game isn't an amorphous bunch of ideas, but an actual cause/effect chain of internal mechanisms. Awareness -> Emotions -> Beliefs -> Perceptions -> Confidence -> Behavior -> Experience.

it's funny because now that I see myself as a confident person, I actually follow this pattern all the time. Meditation also helped me a lot to objectively look at my emotions and ignore inner conflicts.

Re: Anxiety. The science shows that the physiological responses to anxiety never become much less in someone, even despite desensitization. What changes is the person's sub-conscious and conscious interpretations of those changes.

So for instance, Michael Jordan was nervous as hell for every game-winning shot he took. Just as nervous as the biggest choke-artist in sports. Physiologically, their responses are identical. What was different about Jordan was that his mental machinery processed his anxiety extremely well. Others aren't as lucky (or disciplined... or both). Learning to channel anxiety well happens by building confidence, which is a whole conundrum unto itself.

Someone who harnesses anxiety successfully will feel a surge of adrenaline and excitement. Someone who doesn't will feel stifled, paralyzed and afraid (obviously).

Re: people not handling rejection. Excessive anxiety comes from trauma early in our lives. The earlier and more severe the trauma, the more stifling the anxiety. The idea with getting blown out a bunch and "getting used to" rejection is that you feel the pain and realize it isn't that bad. Well, there are some people where it REALLY IS that bad. And therefore it leaves them worse off than when they started. These are extreme cases. Although, generally, the more anxiety one has, the worse they'll be at handling rejection (predictably).

Unfortunately, these traumas "imprinted" themselves onto our psyche's and removing them completely is more or less impossible. Or at least, no one has figured out how yet. Rather, the goal is to become aware of them, and process them effectively, and build better emotional habits on top of them.

What crazyhorse experienced is exactly correct and typical for someone who "re-wires" themselves to handle their anxiety effectively... I still feel my approach anxiety and my sexual anxiety when I'm in a club or in bed with a girl. It's just that my experience and confidence allow me to behave differently now. Whereas my anxiety used to overwhelm me, now it's subtle. It used to scream in my ear, now it's like background noise. Obnoxious background noise. I've built newer, positive habits on top of my old negative ones. But the old negative ones are still down there. If you really pay attention, you'll feel this too.

In pick up, the analogy often used up until this point with anxiety has always been something like weightlifting. You get in the gym and work on it until you build up to it over time. 100 approaches destroys approach anxiety better than 50 approaches which is better than 10 approaches. The reality is that some guys largely "overcome" their AA within 10-20 approaches. And some guys still struggle with it after going out and approaching for years and years.

A better analogy is probably something like dyslexia. If you've got it, you're hosed. It never goes away. All you can do is train your mind over time to work around it or build habits over it. That's the best you can do.

So in a way, you could say that most of us are here because we're emotionally-handicapped in some way. But then again, I've been saying that for years.

(10-07-2011 06:56 AM)Mark Wrote:  Re: Anxiety. The science shows that the physiological responses to anxiety never become much less in someone, even despite desensitization. What changes is the person's sub-conscious and conscious interpretations of those changes.

So for instance, Michael Jordan was nervous as hell for every game-winning shot he took. Just as nervous as the biggest choke-artist in sports. Physiologically, their responses are identical. What was different about Jordan was that his mental machinery processed his anxiety extremely well. Others aren't as lucky (or disciplined... or both). Learning to channel anxiety well happens by building confidence, which is a whole conundrum unto itself.

Someone who harnesses anxiety successfully will feel a surge of adrenaline and excitement. Someone who doesn't will feel stifled, paralyzed and afraid (obviously).

Re: people not handling rejection. Excessive anxiety comes from trauma early in our lives. The earlier and more severe the trauma, the more stifling the anxiety. The idea with getting blown out a bunch and "getting used to" rejection is that you feel the pain and realize it isn't that bad. Well, there are some people where it REALLY IS that bad. And therefore it leaves them worse off than when they started. These are extreme cases. Although, generally, the more anxiety one has, the worse they'll be at handling rejection (predictably).

Unfortunately, these traumas "imprinted" themselves onto our psyche's and removing them completely is more or less impossible. Or at least, no one has figured out how yet. Rather, the goal is to become aware of them, and process them effectively, and build better emotional habits on top of them.

What crazyhorse experienced is exactly correct and typical for someone who "re-wires" themselves to handle their anxiety effectively... I still feel my approach anxiety and my sexual anxiety when I'm in a club or in bed with a girl. It's just that my experience and confidence allow me to behave differently now. Whereas my anxiety used to overwhelm me, now it's subtle. It used to scream in my ear, now it's like background noise. Obnoxious background noise. I've built newer, positive habits on top of my old negative ones. But the old negative ones are still down there. If you really pay attention, you'll feel this too.

In pick up, the analogy often used up until this point with anxiety has always been something like weightlifting. You get in the gym and work on it until you build up to it over time. 100 approaches destroys approach anxiety better than 50 approaches which is better than 10 approaches. The reality is that some guys largely "overcome" their AA within 10-20 approaches. And some guys still struggle with it after going out and approaching for years and years.

A better analogy is probably something like dyslexia. If you've got it, you're hosed. It never goes away. All you can do is train your mind over time to work around it or build habits over it. That's the best you can do.

So in a way, you could say that most of us are here because we're emotionally-handicapped in some way. But then again, I've been saying that for years.

Mark what about the idea that u have different anxiety levels different days? Like, some days I have almost no anxiety approaching girls or talking to strangers, then other days im very "in my head" and feel reactive which makes me more anxious ?

Yes. It's like anything else. Everyone has "off" days where it feels like they can't do anything. Other days you feel unstoppable.

Diet, fitness, stress levels, job satisfaction, social life, etc. all influence anxiety levels as well.

MartinRiggs Wrote:  Mark what about the idea that u have different anxiety levels different days? Like, some days I have almost no anxiety approaching girls or talking to strangers, then other days im very "in my head" and feel reactive which makes me more anxious ?

Do u have days when u don't feel like working? Do u have days when u feel lazy? Do u have days when u are hyperactive?

Do u question why u feel that way or do u accept it? Why is talking to girls any different?

We are humans, not machines. Everyday is not meant to be the same. If it were, you would crave excitement and we'll be back where we are.

Hey Mark, can you post some "further reading" on the subject? Would definitely be interested in exploring the psychological work behind some of the stuff you mentioned.

"59 Seconds" by Richard Wiseman
"What's Stopping You?" by Robert Kelsey and Luke Johnson
"Nerve" by Taylor Clark

...are all good places to start.