Archetype Four: “The Scattered Self-Improver”
I can’t help liking this guy. He’s ambitious and is always juggling a few different projects. He’s always learning new things and works out almost every day. He might sing karaoke, study martial arts, attend motivational seminars, volunteer for good causes, learn different languages, and train his dog to do tricks.
In his free time, he might create 3-D animations, or build a boat. Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yes. He also likes to think of himself as a “pickup artist.”
This guy appears to have an interesting, rich life. The challenge lies in his inherent superficiality. The reason, strangely enough, is the same as with the previous archetype: fear of reality.
The difference is that while the Brainwashed guy is hindered by what society and the media tell him is the “best,” the Scattered Self-Improver is constantly trying to distract himself.
He goes out on a lot of first dates. He rarely gets a second date: he seems to lose interest in that woman, or he can’t find time to see her again, or (more often than not) she finds his lifestyle overwhelming and feels intimidated by his well-rounded greatness.
Even when he gets to have a relationship with a woman, it hardly lasts longer than a few weeks.
A solution? Tone it down. Less is more. We cannot be all things at once. Sacrifice the numbers for the sake of depth. Make choices.
Over the last few years, I’ve worked with hundreds of men on improving and in many cases, radically transforming their romantic lives. At least a half of these men were born in the 1960s or earlier.
I measure the success of what I do by what my students consider their personal breakthroughs. I’m proud to say that my success rate, when it comes to helping men achieve a greater level of success with women, is over 90 percent.
I never expect to have absolute success in all cases: I know how life works and do not suffer from obsessive perfectionism. I’m pleased with the somewhat imperfect consistency of the results of my teaching.
So before I wrap up this chapter, let me share with you a few successful case studies (since I get to choose whom I tell you about, I guess I will just brag about the most interesting ones). The names of the characters in these stories, and certain personal details, are changed for the sake of their privacy.
Gene, a resident ofLondonand a professional magazine editor, recently came to visit me inNew York. He was a 57-year-old widower and a father of three adult children.
We spent five days together a period of intensive training, during which I got Gene to observe me in action as I approached dozens of women in bookstores, museums, shopping centers, coffee houses, parks, and in the streets. After that, it was Gene’s turn to show me what he can do.
Most of the women Gene met during those days were considerably younger than he was. Gene was painfully shy during the first couple of days, and we shared a few dramatic moments when our teacher/student relationship was tested by fire and ice. Eventually, he managed to open up, and after the third day of training on things began to go much better for him. In the beginning, he learned to approach women and open conversations with the simplest “excuse me.”
By the end of his training with me he could consistently get phone numbers, using the elegant, hard-to refuse tactic: “I’d like you to have my phone number… and I want yours, of course”. Gene sent a gentlemanly text message “I’m glad I met you” to each of the women whose numbers he got, invited the ones who responded to meet him later on the same day, went out with one of the youngest of those women, ended up making out in her place, and was an hour late for our final night training session in a bar.
Today, several months after Gene and I met, he is dating a woman in her thirties a journalist like himself. From what I understand, Gene is not planning to marry her, and yet he speaks of her as a hopefully permanent romantic partner.
Another example would be Robert, 46 years old and African American, who lives inChicagoand works in the medical field. The challenge he faced was of a different sort: he was dating a very attractive woman in her early twenties, and yet he suffered from a nagging sense that he didn’t deserve to be with someone like her.
My work with Robert began to feel closer to that of a therapist than a courtship instructor but I don’t really do therapy, so instead I chose to address my new friend’s self-doubts by “reconnecting” him with womankind through field practice.
Robert and I spent a couple of days chatting with every attractive young woman we could find inChicago, in every place we could think of: bookstores, shopping malls, coffee houses, a bus terminal, even inside a Catholic temple.
I enjoyed seeing young women attracted to Robert wherever we went, and noticed how he began to blossom in the awareness of his masculine charm.
Robert had no approach anxiety and was a naturally great communicator. In the Art Institute of Chicago he approached an attractive young blonde, started a conversation about a surrealist painting she was observing, and ended up cruising the museum with her, his arm around her waist. To match him, I found a girl for myself.
Each time Robert and I passed each other with our beautiful companions, we exchanged conspiratorial nods or winks… until the girls figured us out and started laughing.
Then we made the introduction. The four of us had dinner together, and agreed to meet again later. After that, Robert and I discussed the events of the last two days, sharing a six-pack of Guinness in my hotel room. Robert told me that he began to see women’s ready interest in him as something to be expected.
My job was pretty much done. We ended up celebrating on a Saturday night in a bar on top of Water Tower. The girls from the Art Institute were there with us.
My final example is Andrew, 41, a software engineer of Japanese descent fromToronto. He’s one of my favorite students, because he had a number of significant challenges to overcome yet he was determined to keep working on himself until he had achieved a new lifestyle, image, pattern of behaviors, and a new self-perception.
It took a while. When Andrew and I first met, he was overweight, slouching, and dreadfully dressed with non-existent conversational skills, a high-pitched voice, a gloomy disposition, and a terribly negative belief that “Asian men don’t get many chicks.” He had a great talent for triggering instant resistance in every woman he tried to approach.
By this point, he was pretty desperate. He hated his job, his apartment, and his body. It was obvious to me that the guy was not ready to get to the actual dating he had to take certain measures first, to prepare himself.
Before I began actually teaching him, I sent him back home with a few bits of advice: to throw away the coat that gave his shoulders sloping rounded shape, and to get instead a classic jacket that would underline the angular look a man’s shoulders must have; to get rid of the pleated corporate khaki pants he was wearing, and spend a couple hundred dollars on decent jeans. For the full measure, I threw in the mandate to get in shape and stand up straight.
When Andrew came back three months later, he was twenty pounds lighter (a result of a karate class he signed up for), and stood two inches taller thanks to his improved posture. He was dressed more stylishly, as well. Yes, these were definite improvements. We spent a day working on the way he moved. We didn’t approach a single woman that day; that part of the process would come later.
After he returned to Toronto, we started our weekly Yahoo Messenger sessions and over the next four months I taught him conversational skills. We started with the basics that Andrew confessed made him feel back in the elementary school again: we had to do it, because in Andrew’s speech even simple concise statements and elementary questions needed to be cleaned up.
We progressed through complex statements to my favorite simple and fun-to-learn verbal improvisation skills like 4-corner flirting, compliments and teasing, dynamic statement of intent, topical and emotional pivoting, free association, and eliciting erotic fantasies, and a few others.
Over time, Andrew developed the necessary “conversational comfort zone” he needed to feel confident enough to approach women. He came back toNew Yorkagain, and that’s when we finally began to test his skills in the field. I am very happy to say that Andrew has turned out to become an even greater ladies man than yours truly.
He found a much better job, and he’s taking voice lessons. When I met him again a few weeks ago, he radiated confidence and charm. He ended up getting back together with his ex-girlfriend, and the two of them are much tighter than before. Click here for Part 1.
