My Juggler Method

Introduction

Words are limited.

There's a Buddhist joke about it. The Master shows a matchbox to a novice disciple and asks: "What is it?" The disciple says: "Why, it's a matchbox!" "No, no, no!", - says the Master, - "Can't you hear? Listen to the word: matchbox, matchbox, matchbox... Now listen to this", - and the Master shakes the matchbox, so his disciple can hear how the matches rattle inside.

I feel like that disciple as I approach the task of explaining the Juggler Method in writing.

Of course it must be taught by example and learned by practice.

But I'm going to write about it all the same.

Just keep in mind that difference I've described above - between the concept and experience. What I'm about to write is the concept.

Enjoy it

Chapter 1

There are 3 fundamental elements to the classic Juggler Method.

Make her interesting.
Reward/Relate.
Escalate.

Let's talk about the first element.

1) Make her interesting.

It absolutely doesn't matter how interesting I am to a woman. What matters is how interesting she is to me. She has to be interesting enough to deserve my attention, and yet I am a gentleman enough to help her to show herself to me in the best possible way.

Hence, "make her interesting".

And the more a woman feels that I make her interesting, the more she realizes what a fascinating guy I am - so I don't have to jump out of my skin to prove my "social value"!

One great thing I've discovered thanks to the Juggler Method is that there are no boring people in the world. Someone may appear boring because I hadn't yet discovered anything unique about him or her. And yet, when I do something to help that person to reveal their uniqueness, suddenly the whole new world opens up to me! Everyone carries a marvelous unexplored universe inside. I like to think of myself as an explorer, a discoverer of the secret, mysterious, fascinating worlds. I'm the inner world adventurer, a kind of spiritual Indiana Jones.

How do I discover the unique things about people?

I ask them series of increasingly personal open-ended questions.

An open-ended question is a question that begins with: What..., Which..., How..., Who..., When..., Where..., or Why...

Such questions make people feel compelled to answer with a well-developed story, sharing their experience, as opposed to just saying "yes" or "no".

What is one thing that would make this evening memorable for you?

Which of your high school teachers did you have a mad crush on?

How do you imagine the ideal romantic situation?

Who is the person that had influenced you the most?

When was the last time you've found something so hilarious you couldn't suppress laughter in public?

Where in the would do you dream of going?

Why had you chosen this college?

Of course there's more to the art of having a meaningful conversation than just asking questions. If I kept peppering a woman with endless questions, the conversation would become incredibly exhausting for both of us, and I would make her feel interrogated.

Here is the proper structure for an elegant conversation:

My question. - Her answer. - My statement. - My question. - Her answer. - My statement. - My question. - Her answer. - My statement. - etc.

The question-answer-statement structure of the conversation helps me to increase rapport. And each statement I make consists of two parts:

a) Reward;
b) Relate.

As I've said before, Reward/Relate is the second fundamental element of the Juggler Method. I will describe it in the next two chapters.

But let me go an extra mile and add the last bit here.

I always speak in the "I" perspective. When I describe my thoughts and feelings, when I share my experiences with people, I use the word "I" instead of "you" as people do quite often for some vague psychological reason. It might seem counterintuitive, but saying "I" definitely helps people to relate to what I'm saying much better.

Chapter 2

One thing I've neglected to mention in the previous chapter (and wrongly so), is the "vacuum".

The "vacuum" is a JM term for a simple and effective way to strongly compel a partner in the interaction to answer the open-ended question. After asking a woman the open-ended question, I make a strong eye contact, and freeze my body. I keep silent, I do not move, and do not break the eye contact until the tension becomes so unbearable to her that she feels obligated to break the silence and just say something.

I usually employ the "vacuum" only in the beginning of my interaction with a woman. Very soon afterwards there's no need for such powerful way of making her talk, because she enjoys the conversation with me, and answers my questions very willingly.

Now let's talk about the second fundamental element of the Juggler Method.

2) Reward/Relate

Let's discuss the Reward.

After a woman answers my question, I reward her for answering it, no matter how brief her answer was. After all, she has made an effort of opening up to me, and this effort is something I had requested from her in the first place by asking my open-ended question. And of course I want her to make even bigger efforts further along in the conversation. By rewarding her for each effort, for each little unique thing she shares with me, I make her feel good about opening up to me, I make her feel appreciated and liked. I sincerely express my appreciation.

Another important thing about the reward is that by giving it I express my approval. I am the man who gives approval without seeking approval from others. I'm the approval-giver. So by rewarding a woman for each effort she makes, I convey the fact that I'm the man in charge.

How do I reward?

When a woman is answering my open-ended question, I listen very carefully and do my best to deduce the very essence of what she is telling me, the important unique quality of her personality that she is revealing to me. Than I simply tell her that I like this unique quality that she has just revealed.

The three things to reward are:

What she says;
How she says it;
What she does while saying it (or while not saying anything at all; this third form of Reward I can actually use even if she doesn't answer my open-ended question!)

For example, a few days ago I've spoken to a young woman in a bookstore. She was wearing a necklace with a tiny pendant. I liked that necklace. I asked her a very simple open-ended question: "How did you get it?" I did the "vacuum", and she told me, "Well, I was just passing by the store window and saw the necklace there, so I stepped in and bought it". I was paying attention to what she was saying, and from her words I could recognize her spontaneity. This was the unique quality I liked and felt like rewarding. So I said to her, "I find you spontaneous, and I admire that about you!"

It's so simple - and it works. I also use another, very elegant and powerful form of reward that greatly shortens the time necessary to build rapport. This type of reward is called Push-Pull. A Push/Pull is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine pushing a woman very slightly on her shoulders, so she takes one step back away from you. Then imagine yourself taking her firmly by the forearms and pulling toward yourself, so close that the two of you share an embrace.

Now think for a moment, how would you do it using just words, without physically pushing her?

This is the Push/Pull. The "Pull" part of the Push-Pull type of Reward brings a woman much closer to me than if I had just rewarded her directly. That's why the Push-Pull helps me to achieve the rapport faster.

"Oh... You see, I would never marry anyone like you. If I were married to you, our household would go broke in less than a week! Actually, I am joking. I like your spontaneity!"

There are also several very important nonverbal rewards.

I reward with a smile. I reward with my laughter if something she says or does is funny.

I reward by touching a woman.

In the next chapter I will tell you a few things on how to Relate to your partner in the interaction.

Chapter 3

Let's talk now about the "Relate" part of the Juggler Method statement.

The first way of relating is Relating to a Topic.

A woman gives me one bit of her unique personal information, to which I relate by giving her one bit of my unique personal information. The topic is the same and we have similar opinions about it. The rapport is established. Nice and easy.

However, if our opinions on that topic were opposite, we would end up hating each other's guts within minutes, despite the fact that we've talked about the same topic.

The solution is this: Relating to an Emotion.

Let's say, the woman gives me a bit of personal information (she adores cats), but instead of relating to the topic and telling her I'm allergic to those vicious furry beasts, I pay attention to the emotion of the adoration she has expressed. I can absolutely relate to adoration. I experience it very regularly.

I adore motorcycles. Especially the one I ride - Ducat Monster.

So when she tells me she adores cats, I say this: "I know exactly what you mean. It's the same with me and my motorcycle. I adore it because it's small, wild, and cute. Come to think of it, there's something of a CAT to my DuCATi!"

She giggles. And lo and behold, the rapport is established.

Sometimes the main emotion embedded in what she is saying is negative. How do I deal with that?
First I relate to the negative emotion she has expressed, and then I switch from the negative emotion to the opposite positive one.

For example, if a woman tells me about something that had frightened her, I tell her about my last visit to a dentist. "One of my best friends is a dentist, but I'm generally scared of them since childhood (in my native country when I was growing up dentists didn't believe in anesthesia). So I went to the dentist and I was shaking. But surprisingly, it wasn't painful at all, and everyone was very nice to me, and my tooth was fixed and didn't hurt anymore. When I left the dental office I felt grateful and relieved!"

I transform the negative emotion of fear to the positive one of relief.

There are various exercises I practice with my private clients during every one-on-one coaching session. Those exercises help my clients to develop solid skills in asking open-ended questions, rewarding and relating. After a few rounds of such exercises a client become so comfortable with the structure of the Juggler Method that he is amazed at how easily a subtle but real personality transformation can be achieved in a human being.

In the next couple of chapters I will share with you a few thoughts about the third fundamental element of the Juggler Method - Escalation.

Chapter 4

In the few earlier chapters we've reviewed two fundamental elements of the method:

Make her interesting;
Reward/Relate.

In this one I'm going to write to you about the third, and probably the most important element: Escalate.

3) Escalate

Very often, communication to my clients before the coaching sessions, I bump into the description of a common problem. Clients tell me: "I seem to be unable to escape the "friendly zone", "my interactions with women never go anywhere", "I run out of things to say", "she is bored and so am I", etc. All those symptoms point to the same disease: lack of escalation.

What is escalation in courtship?

Quite simply, escalation is the continuous, conscious, deliberate act of deepening the rapport with a woman.

Counterintuitively, I believe that the best way to deepen rapport is to break it and make my partner in the conversation invest her effort into building it. That's why the Push/Pull principle is so important.

It's rude not to escalate. When a man refuses to escalate, a woman feels as if he keeps her at a distance by being cold, stuck-up and snobbish. A women wants a man to want to become closer to her. She creates opportunities to do so. A great number of women are conscious about the precise time when they let men escalate and see if men have what it takes. If a man rejects a woman (by not escalating), she feels unappreciated as a female - a very insulting and embarrassing position for her, considering how much effort she invests into expressing her femininity. By escalating I give a woman what she seeks - I confirm her desirability, I validate her status as a female.

I know from the experience that every woman I talk to expects the escalation, sometimes consciously, sometimes without even being aware of it. To see what I mean, try talking to random women anywhere you go - standing in line for movie tickets or waiting to get to a bathroom in a coffee shop, for example, and escalate every time. You'll be surprised: if you begin the interaction in a friendly way, you will find yourself able to escalate very far in most cases.

I think even now as you are just reading this, it rings true, because escalation is the natural, and most importantly, expected way to communicate with women, and having lived in the world for a few years we're all to a certain degree familiar with the phenomenon. If you just relax into it, it will happen automatically.

But, paradoxically, you might have to make a conscious, deliberate effort to relax into it.

Everything in the Juggler Method is about escalation.

Escalation is the reason why I ask a woman series of increasingly personal open-ended questions - and I also combine them with the series of increasingly personal statements.

Escalation is the reason why my body conveys more and more comfort and intimacy in the course of my interaction with a woman.

Escalation is why I kiss her or ask for a date or a phone number - and so on.

Among the number of actions creating the escalation one is particularly important. I'm talking about the touch (scientifically nicknamed kinesthetics or short "Kino").

Quite a few men appear to have a problem with touching women. I used to be very troubled about that - until I've realized that Kino wasn't a problem. It's a solution! (As in "landing the plane with the engine failure isn't a problem... it's a solution").

Kino is the lube that makes the whole machine of courtship run smoothly, without grinding the sprockets. Without Kino, the Juggler Method wouldn't do much for you, it just somehow wouldn't work. Quite simply, it's the touch that makes a woman want to stay in the interaction with you!

There's one thing that I as the instructor have to whisper in my clients' ears again and again as I observe them interacting with women during our in-field practice: "Tooooouuuuuch heeeeer!"

Touch her. How is it done? I guess I 'll have to show you. But the important principle is this: touching must escalate.

Start small - by touching her on the forearm, for example. And then gradually proceed to her shoulder, on the back, on the back of the neck, on the small of her back -- and so on.

One of my favorite variations on Kino is the Hand Kino Escalation: I only touch a woman's hand, and nothing else. I begin with the back of her hand, than later I hold her hand, then I squeeze it and see if she squeezes my hand in return, then I put my fingers between hers, I kiss her wrist softly, etc.

Touch is a reward. If I touch a woman after she says or does something cute or when she opens up to me, it makes her think something like: "Oh... I know why he just touched me. He must have really liked what I've just said. What a sensitive guy! Oh God, I hope he's straight!" Touching is a polite thing to do. We'd all been under-touched, under-caressed in childhood, and we definitely don't get enough of it as adults. By touching a woman I give her what she really needs (and rarely receives from others).

As I said, touching is a Reward - which brings me to another thing I wanted to say: the verbal Reward/Relate element of the Juggler Method is, in fact, also a form of Escalation! It's all connected. What do I achieve by Rewarding a woman and Relating to her experiences? I make her want more of the same, and make her work harder to deserve my Rewards - so she will invest her efforts in building the rapport that I would deliberately undermine again and again by Push/Pull (the indirect Reward), which is very effective way of rapidly increasing the level of the rapport.

Another highly important thing is demonstrating the high value. Traditionally it had been done by bragging, which doesn't really work too well. The Juggler Method offers the alternative: Disqualification (or DQ).

Disqualification means to me enthusiastically revealing my vulnerabilities to a woman I am speaking with. Every time I reveal something that might be perceived as my weakness to a woman, I see and feel how she begins to respect me much more. This is so strange! I think it happens because, as I've said earlier, by revealing my vulnerabilities I actively demonstrate that I'm perfectly comfortable with who I am. Also it raises my value because if I reveal my vulnerabilities so fearlessly, I must be really strong otherwise, must have something to back it up with. And - last but not least - women are so used to men trying to show themselves in the best possible way early in the relationship only to become disappointingly imperfect afterwards that when they realize I don't hesitate to be imperfect in the beginning they think they've discovered a marvel: a genuine man!

Naive creatures, women!

:-)

I'm kidding of course. The Disqualification is a pattern of true sincerity: "Yes, I really AM imperfect and I'm okay with that".

There are several typical situations in which Disqualification comes in handy. One of them is "fight against the Superman".

Courtship and rivalry go hand in hand, and our worst rival is the phantom of the Perfect Man who doesn't even exist. I don't want to be compared to the imaginary superhero because in this comparison I, the real-life man, can't win.

In the next chapter I will tell you much more about the third fundamental element of the Juggler Method: Escalate.

Chapter 5

More about the third and probably most crucial fundamental element of the Juggler Method - Escalate.

Escalation is a continuous process, there must always be the upward vector. As the ancient Chinese master of Martial Arts said to his disciple, "there must be a flame under the pot all the time, otherwise the pot grows cold". I describe the feeling I have when the escalation progresses smoothly as if the continuous river of escalation is streaming through my and her hearts.

However, there are several phases of escalation in the Juggler Method - and each phase if defined by a Turning Point of Escalation.

The pre-escalation phase is the Approach. It's the critical phase, because during this phase many men shoot themselves down. There's even a term coined for the problem: the "Approach Anxiety". In my opinion, the Approach Anxiety is nothing but a confusion of a man whose mind and body have to deal with too many tasks at a time: visually identifying the "target" and potential rival males; coming up with a valid tactic to deal with a possible confrontation; the physical act of approach as such; finding words to begin the interaction; dealing with the possibility of a rejection; body language; positioning next to the target (sitting or standing); in-set logistics (who to talk to first, how to move within the set); former or imaginary negative experiences; etc.

The solution for the so called Approach Anxiety is to remove unnecessary obstructions by giving a full commitment to one task only: the physical act of approach as such. This act is extremely simple and requires minimum effort. I don't confuse myself by thinking of what I'm going to say. I will deal with that after I approach. Instead, I just take the five steps. (Sometimes even the five steps are not necessary. Very often my target stands right next to me, and all I have to do is just turn toward her - this constitutes the Approach).

The first Turning Point of Escalation is the Opening. And here's the biggest secret of the so-called "nightgame" I've ever learned about talking to strangers and turning them into lovers: open with Kino. Kino comes before the words - and will continue throughout the entire interaction. Before I say anything, I touch a woman on the outside of the arm (or on the outside of the leg, this option is more intimate and is of course available only when she is seated) with the back of my hand. I hold the contact for a few moments (because if I remove my hand instantly it would feel to a woman almost as if I pinched her). Only after I've touched a woman, I say something.

As for the verbal part of the Opening, there's a bit of a difference there between the so called "nightgame" (clubs, bars, lounges, etc.) and "daygame" (anywhere else, whether it's day or night). Women in clubs and bars are open to meeting and interacting with strangers because they are in those places precisely to meet and interact with strangers. Women in bookstores, health food markets and coffee shops are somewhat more reserved, so the "daygame" requires a smoother, less obvious opening.

I can think of a hundreds of structures for an improvised verbal openening - and I've tried them all.

But let me share with you my favorite form of the verbal Opening:

The Blank Mind Opening.

Blank Mind Opening is exactly what it sounds like: I clear my mind completely and approach a woman - and then say the very first thing that comes to my mind.

I highly recommend you to experiment with the Blank Mind Opening - you'll be amazed at what clever and witty (and sometimes incredibly goofy) things will come out of your mouth!

Kino + verbal Opening begin the first phase of escalation: Neutral. The Neutral phase of escalation is often wrongly called "Platonic".

It might be irrelevant here, but the term "Platonic Love" comes from Plato's famous philosophical dialog "Symposium" (A MUST reading for any thinking person). In that dialog Plato gives probably the only definition of love in the history of human thought that can be considered as valid. Platonic Love is the complete realization of the unity of souls between the two human beings, in which they both perceive God in each other. This kind of love means complete trust, complete self-sacrifice, complete compassion, complete mutual belonging, and it can occur between two people of any gender as sexual partners or friends. So in the state of Platonic Love sex is an option but not a requirement, therefore essentially the Platonic Love can either take a form of deepest friendship or deepest romantic relationship. Therefore, the Platonic Love is the highest achievable form of friendship AND sexual love equally, the absolute form of love achievable in the material world, and as you can see, it has nothing to do whatsoever with a situation when the two people hardly know each other and make small talk. That's why I'm absolutely against calling the first phase of Escalation "Platonic". It's Neutral, okay?

:-)

During the first moments of the Neutral phase the structure of conversation is usually the least important consideration for me. There's still the inertia of the opening that propels the interaction forward, and it's more than common that for a few moments I get to answer the questions from the set. They are always small talk kind of questions: "Where are you from?", "What brought you here tonight?", "How do you like the place?" etc. If no one in the set asks me those questions, I ask them. And it's also from the very moment I open I begin to use every opportunity to Disqualify myself - eagerly sharing my vulnerabilities and gaining respect for that. I'm going to continue doing it throughout the interaction.

The purpose of the Neutral phase is to make the people comfortable with the idea of me becoming a part of their group. That's why the Neutral phase is extremely important. It's like a graceful dance, when everyone knows that the talk is quite empty, and yet we talk about weather etc. because on the nonverbal level we are taking time to get used to each other.

However, I do not want to get stuck in the Neutral phase. I do my best to keep it very short. That's why I imperceptibly move to asking them very light open-ended questions, and initiate the Question - Answer - Statement structure of the conversation. This structure will continue throughout the whole interaction.

There's one important open-ended question I always ask a woman during the Neutral phase of the escalation if she seems to be on her own. I ask this question because I want her to know I'm not going to make her uncomfortable by being impolite to her companions if they happened to step away for a few minutes. I call it the "Guardian question": "Who are you here with?"

Finally I arrive to the point when a woman I speak with makes a commitment to the interaction by revealing a significant bit of the unique personal information for the first time. And this is when I place the Second Turning Point of Escalation: Statement of Approval. Statement of Approval is, quite simply, the very first significant verbal Reward that I give to a woman. In fact, I've been Rewarding her lightly earlier, and every verbal Reward I will make afterwards will also be a statement of approval, but I call this one the Statement of Approval with the capital letters because it's the very first Reward for the unique personal information a woman has revealed for the first time, and when I Reward her for it, my Reward becomes a Turning Point of Escalation - it increases the speed with which I build the rapport. Statement of Approval begins the second phase of Escalation: Personal.

During the Personal phase Kino is used to deepen the rapport.

From this moment on, I ask a woman series of increasingly personal open-ended questions, and apply the full force of the second fundamental element of the Juggler Method: Reward/Relate (every now and then using the Push/Pull as an indirect Reward). And among my increasingly personal open-ended questions there's one I ask once in every interaction somewhere in first third of the Personal phase. It's a "Relationship Situation Question": What's your relationship situation?"

There are several reasons for asking her: "What's your relationship situation?" One of them is that I am quite sure that there's a good probability of her currently being in a relationship. I want to be the one to bring up the topic in a positive way, otherwise she will do that a bit later negatively (as in "I have a boyfriend so let's just be friends"). I want her to realize that I am aware of the fact that she might have a boyfriend, and that I'm quite comfortable with it. This question also moves the conversation to the topic of the relationships. And it's very easy to make a transition from the topic of the relationship to the topic of human sexuality.

At some point she says or does something that I genuinely find sexy about her. This is when I place the third Turning Point of Escalation: the Statement of Intent (SOI). I tell her something like this: "I like the way you .......... (whatever she has just said or done). I find it sexy about you!" I make sure I articulate the Statement of Intent in such a way that there's no doubts whatsoever she had heard me. And I never hesitate to repeat it is she asks what was it that I just had said. All three words: "I', "you", and "sexy" must be there in one sentence. Use your imagination for now to fill in the blanks.

The SOI leads to one of the two possible outcomes. If a woman accepts it - if she reacts to it favorably in one way or another, or if she hides her reaction, which for me is a sign of acceptance - the rapport grows exponentially (the line shoots upward), creating the third phase of Escalation: Sexual.

During the Sexual phase the purpose of Kino is to give a woman physical pleasure, to make her feel good. A little back rub or neck rub, running fingers through her hair, caressing her tenderly anywhere she wants - now is the time for doing this. I go even more personal with my open-ended questions and my Reward/Relate statements during the Sexual phase of the Escalation. I ask her questions about sex - and I'd like you to warm up with the idea of talking with me openly and unapologetically about human sexuality.

At this point I have to come up with a convenient reason to either move the woman away from the group of her friends - or move her friends away from the woman. And there are a few more important things I do here. I build up sexual tension by creating Sexual Barriers. I impose certain obstacles between me and her - surmountable obstacles, to be sure. Something that seems to prevent us from getting physically closer. This tactic makes a woman want to overcome the obstacles, and she begins to be very active in the escalation.

Essentially the Sexual Barriers tactic is a form of Push/Pull in which the Push is designed in such a way that a woman does her own Pulling. By creating an obstacle I give her a powerful motivation to work on eliminating that obstacle. The barrier I create has to give her an option of climbing over. May be even with a little ladder propped against it somewhere in clear view.

And finally we arrive to the desired destination: Close. There are various forms of Closing:
A number Close - I hand her my cell phone ("Here"), wait until she takes it, and tell her "I want your phone number")
An email close: ("Got a pen and a paper? Wait, I think I do. Here, write your email address please")
A kiss Close ("Close your eyes!" - she complies, knowing exactly what's coming - I kiss her)
An instant date Close ("I'm hungry. Let's walk and find a pizza place nearby. We can sit there for a while and get to know each other better!")
A date close ("Remember you told me you ride horseback? I'd love to join you sometime!")
Two or more of the above together.

One important thing about the Close is that I always stay with a woman for some time after I closed her - and build more rapport. If I don't stick around more, she might think I was only talking to her to "score".

And another important thing - whatever Turning Point I make - Open, SOA, SOI - and especially in the Close - I say and do things casually, nonchalantly, not making a big deal out of them. The less "special" I make my Statement of Intent, for example, or request for a phone number - the higher is the probability for me to get what I want.

And that's the entire structure of the Juggler Method Escalation for you.

I know it might sound somewhat complicated, but when you see it in practice you'll be amazed how easy it is.

And the most important principle of the Juggler Method is this: it's all about having fun.

Chapter 6

There is a notion, unfortunately too popular among many courtship instructors, that in order to master any new skills a man has to get out of his comfort zone. I would not argue with people who hold such opinion, because the opinion of any person is based on the lifetime of experience that particular person had collected, and by pronouncing them wrong I would invalidate the entire lives of those guys.

I however hold a different opinion based on my own experience of teaching various skills - from music to martial arts to creative writing to motorcycling.

I think it is almost impossible to really master any new skill if a student has to deal with the formidable feeling of being out of the comfort zone AND at the same time with the task of mastering the new skill.

That's why I teach differently.

Stay in your comfort zone so you can master the new skill.

Let me give you an example.

Elegant conversational structure is at the very core of the Juggler Method. There is much more to courtship than just words, but verbal part is important.

You can practice and totally master it without getting out of your chair. Go to one of the popular romance chat rooms - for example, on AOL or Yahoo. There are sites like Twenties Love, Thirties Love, and so on. I personally find online conversations with forty- and fifty-something women more enriching, because those women have a lot of emotional experience, and a hell of a lot more sense of humor than some younger chicks, but the choice is yours of course.

When you feel like doing it, invite such woman to exchange instant messages with you. And then practice every element of the conversational structure by having a nice, deep, emotionally meaningful online conversation with her. There are several benefits to such interaction:

You do not have to battle nervousness;
You can always have a justification for delaying your response, and thus can come up with the best open ended question or best way to Reward/Relate;
There is no commitment;
Nothing really romantic is very likely to come out of it, so there is no agenda aside from having a good conversation;
You can practice one conversational element at a time. You can dedicate entire conversation to Disqualification; Push-Pull; Relating; Open-ended questions, Rewarding, and so on;
Getting used to having no agenda over the Internet gives you a habit of having no agenda in a bar or coffee shop;
You can learn how to escalate very well without having a responsibility of having a relationship;
You can become really good at exchanging Internet messages with women - a very useful skill to have, especially considering that phone text messaging becomes increasingly popular, and verbally it's identical to Internet messaging;

Such method of learning the conversational structure will make you so good at the art of conversation that when you practice the Juggler Method later in a nightclub or a bookstore all the best things to say will come to your mind automatically and effortlessly, and you will be able to completely focus on the nonverbal skills - and stay in the comfort zone while doing that.

Your mastery of the conversational structure of the Juggler Method will become your comfort zone for the practice of the nonverbal elements. In this way, you will learn the entire method without ever feeling uncomfortable.

There is another option I would like to introduce to you. I can teach you in-depth every conversational technique of the Juggler Method over the Internet through the series of Virtual Training® sessions. Gmail is very convenient for such form of teaching and learning because it saves all the chats automatically and you will be able to re-read every session as many times as you find necessary to ingrain each technique into your brain. It takes about 8 hours to make all the techniques active and automatic. And you won't have to leave your chair and come to New York to meet me. You may be in Kenya and still learn the entire conversational part of the method.

Please contact me if you feel you might be interested in learning the Juggler Method from me via Virtual Training® sessions.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

But just in case you cannot afford private coaching with me, which is quite expensive actually, in the next part of this book I'll provide you with the examples of my Virtual Training sessions with a private client who agreed to make those sessions public. His real name is replaced with a pen name for privacy sake. And I know that perhaps I am undermining my commercial success by publishing those sessions... but then again, perhaps I am not, because the personality of every client I have worked with was completely unique, and one can only get the basics from the specific challenges faced by "Patrick" from the next six chapters. It is my strong belief that no matter how good one can be with teaching oneself from a book, nothing really can replace a one-on-one coaching with a competent instructor.

Yes, I consider myself very competent.

(Do I make it too obvious that I'm doinmg vicious marketing here?)

And yet, I would like you to judge for yourself. Please be prepared for a bit of mental effort.

So...

Part II

Virtual Training

Chapter 7

DIMITRI: What's up?

PATRICK: Shall we begin?

DIMITRI: Hm, I like the way you grab the bull by the horns. I'm like this too. When I ride my motorcycle I never start in the first gear, I always take off in the second. How often have you ridden a motorcycle?

(This was an example of "Reward-Relate" statement + next open-ended question)

PATRICK: I am not as cool as you are. I have a moped - it's only 50 cc! Not very exciting but it gets me around town!

DIMITRI: Wow dude! Great Disqualification! I knew you were a Natural in disguise! (By the way, I've just Rewarded you).

PATRICK: The fact that that was a DQ didn't occur to me till you told me it was one! Still, I shouldn't get a big head about it! :-)

DIMITRI: That was another great Disqualification. We're getting somewhere, and we're getting there fast! Anyway, here's the deal. Let us establish the rules.

PATRICK: Dude, I am a bit confused about DQ...

DIMITRI: I think you are rather good at it though. You have just Disqualified again! I mean, "I am a bit confused about DQ" is a DQ. :-)

PATRICK: Okay... But what about just accepting a compliment like a confident person by saying, simply, "Thank you" ?

DIMITRI: Precisely Patrick, that's exactly what you do. Thank you for pointing out to me that Disqualification has to begin with "thank you". I tend to explain that stuff rather unsystematically... (What I just did was the proper full Disqualification, beginning with "thank you", as you had suggested!)

Okay... first things first... We shall talk more about Disqualification in due time...

Now the rules. Please do not interrupt me for a while and just read what I am about to write, okay? There is no strict format for our dialog. I am going to say whatever comes to my mind, and I encourage you to say whatever comes to yours. Every time I notice a specific Juggler Method conversational pattern that you use naturally without realizing that it belongs to the Juggler Method, I will point it out to you. In fact, practically everything you say belongs to the Juggler Method, so all I have to do is to assign labels so you can recognize those patterns in your own speech.I am also going to give you certain simple tasks during our dialog. Then I will comment on how you fulfill the tasks. I will also give you the examples of how I would fulfill the same tasks - and I will point out some of my own conversational patterns - just like I already did with the Disqualification in the beginning of our conversation. Deal?

PATRICK: Okay.

DIMITRI: Great. Now, you already know what open-ended questions are all about. So please ask me an open-ended question.

PATRICK: Okay... here comes... What did you do at the weekend that was fun?

DIMITRI: I think after we talked on the phone last time you invested some considerable effort into practicing the art of asking open-ended questions... or you are just catching on very quickly. Either way I respect that about you. It was a damn good open-ended question!

PATRICK: Wow! Thank you!

DIMITRI: No problem. It was sincere. And yet, it was a Reward. I have Rewarded you. So here is my answer to your open-ended question: I was in a car with a friend, we were driving through a snowstorm. Now I want you to reward me for giving you this little bit of personal information.

PATRICK: Okay. Here's my reply: "Wow, that sounds scary! You're brave!"

DIMITRI: Very good! Perfect Reward! Now I would like you to Relate to my experience by sharing with me your own that is similar in some way.

Wow Patrick, this is the mama of all awkward pauses. Dude, you suck at Relating!

PATRICK: LOL

DIMITRI: I am kidding, you are cool, give me a hug.

What I just did is called a Push/Pull. Please go ahead with relate part of the statement.

PATRICK: I've never driven in a snow storm, but I once got caught out in one, on top of a mountain while skiing in the Alps. It was really scary because I had fallen and twisted my knee, and my ski didn't come off.

DIMITRI: Patrick, I'm really amazed at how quickly you are progressing. This was a wonderful Relating! I am especially glad that you have shared your emotions: "that was scary"! It is so great you did that! It is just what you need to do!

PATRICK: Was that a Reward?

DIMITRI: Well, yes, it was, and I am glad you have pointed it out. As I've said to you before, you are catching on very quickly. And yet I was perfectly sincere. You see, the Rewarding and Relating are quite sincere things. We do those things anyway, we just usually are not particularly aware of doing them. Awareness is what we work on now. By the way, this entire dialog we are having now will be available for you on gmail - it's automatically archived.

PATRICK: Cool!

DIMITRI: Ready for the second round?

PATRICK: Ready, steady, GO!

DIMITRI: I really like the way you project emotions even over the instant messenger. this is exactly the skill we work hard to develop in our clients, and you already have that. Okay, ask me a small open-ended question.

PATRICK: How was your day?

DIMITRI: Yes, that is exactly what I hoped to receive. Perfect question. Here's my answer: it was a very tough day. I got into 4 arguments with 4 close friends. Now I would like to be Rewarded.

PATRICK: How do I reward something like that?!

DIMITRI: Exactly my point, you have to be able to reward anything. This is how I would do it, please pay attention.

PATRICK: Hmm! Okay.

DIMITRI: "Wow Dimitri, you are really fair to your friends! Four friends - four arguments. No one was left out. I like that about you!" (The last line is optional).

PATRICK: That's genius dude! I love it! I would never be able to just come up with things like that! How do you think that stuff up on the spot?

DIMITRI: Hahahaha! You are funny!

PATRICK: Why?!

DIMITRI: Well, just take a look.

"That's genius dude! I love it!" - This was the Reward.

"I would never be able to just come up with things like that!" - This was Relating through Disqualification. (Because in fact Disqualification can be used as one of the ways to Relate).

"How do you think that stuff up on the spot?" - this was your next open-ended question. Cool open-ended question, too! We're definitely getting somewhere.

PATRICK: But I'm actually asking YOU! Not the imaginary woman!

DIMITRI: That's the whole point dude, I am teaching you how to talk to real people! Why would I teach you to talk to imaginary women? This would be actually scary... No, the true Juggler Method is natural, it just happens, that's what we are practicing! And that's the answer to your question, too!

PATRICK: I think I got it!

DIMITRI: I think so, too. Good boy. I knew you had it in you. I'm like that myself: a boy genius.

PATRICK: LOL! Was that a Reward/Relate thingy?

DIMITRI: YES.

PATRICK: Cool. I see what you mean now.

DIMITRI: Okay. Let's wrap it up for now on the high point. Here's the assignment for you. I would like you to read our dialog again when you have time, just to refresh it in your mind and to see what exactly we have been practicing together. Deal?

PATRICK: Yep!

DIMITRI: Good. Same time tomorrow.

PATRICK: Definitely.

DIMITRI: Over and out.

PATRICK: Ten-four.

Chapter 8

DIMITRI: Ready?

PATRICK: Oh yes.

DIMITRI: Question, please?

PATRICK: It's really dark out there... were you afraid of the dark when you were a kid?

DIMITRI: Nope, it's not an open-ended question. You will get a "yes" or "no" answer to the one you've asked, and that will be the end of the conversation. My answer is "No". Rephrase it.

PATRICK: When were you most afraid of the dark when you were a kid?!

DIMITRI: Aside from two "when" in one sentence, this is something I can work with. Okay, I remember something. I hated porridge when I was in the nursery school. One day the nurses put me into a dark room to force me to eat that disgusting stuff. I felt insulted because they were stronger and could do that to me. That's the closest I got to being afraid of the dark. (Now I want to be Rewarded).

PATRICK: Here comes. And it didn't break you! You're a tough cookie!

DIMITRI: PERFECT! Stop here, no more Rewards.

PATRICK: That's kind of sexy actually!

DIMITRI: LOL! Well, you can SOI if you want, but... for now your SOI has to contain "I", "you" and "sexy" in one sentence... "I find your unbreakable spirit sexy", this sort of thing.

PATRICK: Yep, I remember...

DIMITRI: Okay, you're getting good at Rewarding, I want you to be able to Relate. So before we go on with the next question, I want you to relate to my answer - BY TELLING ME IN A VERY CONCISE WAY ABOUT YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE OF BEING A TOUGH COOKIE - not about you not wanting to eat porridge, and not necessarily related to your childhood.

PATRICK: Okay.

DIMITRI: Well?

PATRICK: I'm thinking dude!

DIMITRI: WOW!

I'm just kidding. Go ahead, think. I like that about you. (That was a Push/Pull)

PATRICK: Okay, cool - PP another time!

DIMITRI: Deal.

PATRICK: One time I almost had to quit one of my Master's courses because the lecturer was really bad - well I did quit and then I battled the college to get the fees back. It took months of letters and pain, but eventually the president admitted that the teacher wasn't qualified to teach and refunded me the fees! Jesus, it was awful Relating.

DIMITRI: You're getting really good at disqualifying yourself... kinda scary actually... No, your Relating wasn't bad at all. Here's a few "routines" for you, memorize them.

PATRICK: Maybe I'm just not a tough cookie!

DIMITRI: Hey! Stop the DQ! :-)

PATRICK: What?! Routines?! In JM?! I'm shocked!

DIMITRI: Yeah... Welcome to the real world... this is Daaaaark Juggler Method. So here comes:

Yeah... I know exactly what you mean...
I'm like that, too...
I can (totally, absolutely, positively, etc.) relate to that...
I know where you're coming from...
I feel your pain...
Yes, it's like this with me too...

...and so on.

PATRICK: I get the idea!

DIMITRI: I am sure you do! So, there's this sentence in the middle that explains that you're about to share your own experience... Makes the connection between Rewarding and Relating much smoother. Makes sense so far?

PATRICK: Absolutely.

DIMITRI: This kind of sentence, for example: "I know just what you're talking about" follows the Reward. it becomes the beginning of the Relate part.

PATRICK: Yes, I understand!

DIMITRI: It means we're done for today! Please make sure to re-read this dialog when you have a few free minutes, and refresh in your mind what you have learned. Talk later!

PATRICK: Will do! Bye!

Chapter 9

PATRICK: Dimitri, you there?

DIMITRI: Yep! Ready?

PATRICK: Yep!

DIMITRI: Shoot the Q.

PATRICK: What is it like to live in New York?

DIMITRI: It's maddening. A lot of work. I just had to hang up on my girlfriend because I had no time to talk to her, and believe you me, she's not happy about it. (Reward me).

PATRICK: You are such a hardworking man - I respect that about you!

DIMITRI: Good. Now Relate.

PATRICK: I know where you're coming from – I am a student and have to study hard most of my time.

DIMITRI: Good. Next question - more personal. (Make it connected to your last statement by the topic).

PATRICK: You’ve mentioned your girlfriend. What do you think are the most important things to look for in a partner?

DIMITRI: This is only my opinion, I might be wrong. Things like beauty of the soul, self-sufficiency, love, reason, adventurous spirit, idealism. IDEALISM! (R/R)

PATRICK: Wow! I can see that you are a very deep person with very high standards. I find it really attractive! I feel where you're coming from - I think it's the most amazing feeling when you meet someone who has this "beauty of the soul" that you're talking about. I met one of them in the Himalayas in Nepal – and she was so adventurous - it was so much fun! I'm such an idealist too! If I had my way, we'd all live in Heaven!

DIMITRI: Supercool. Next question. Deeper, related to one of your last topics.

PATRICK: Really? Was that good? It feels like I'm just saying what you want to hear, no? Is that the idea?

DIMITRI: You are making me want to build rapport with you. That's a little odd because I know what you are doing, but I do feel much friendlier toward you because of the last exchange! So keep going. The idea is you have to be yourself.

PATRICK: What would you do if you could click your fingers and have your ideal life just happen right now?

DIMITRI: Hmmm... the structure of your question prompts me to say "I would click my fingers" - because you could have put it better - but I know what you mean. I would be flying over Atlantic Ocean in a skycar created by Dr. Moller. (R/R) And keep going without my prompting.

PATRICK: That's amazing - you're such a dreamer! It all sounds so romantic. And you have that spirit of the explorer thing going on too - I'm very much the same - I read a book about the Apollo Astronauts when I was 15 and wanted to be one ever since. I dreamed about what it would be like to be walking on the moon, looking out at the endless blackness and the crescent Earth hanging there... just like Jim Lovell's daydream in Apollo 13.

DIMITRI: Very good. Let's keep going QAS and escalate me until you find something sexy in what I say, then I want you to SOI.

PATRICK: QAS is question answer statement, yeah?

DIMITRI: But how IN BLAZES, Holmes?!

PATRICK: What?!

DIMITRI: Which is another way of saying, yes, you got it right. QAS means question-answer-statement. Duh!

PATRICK: Should I go deeper with a topic already talked about or go on to another you mentioned that I haven't asked you about yet?

DIMITRI: Change the topic entirely.

PATRICK: Sorry about QAS - I only realized it was a stupid question after I sent it...

DIMITRI: Cool Disqualification. Keep going. I apologize for being a jerk. I'm like that every now and then.

PATRICK: Apology accepted! :-) Only joking - I deserved it!

DIMITRI: Okay, so I see I do not have to explain about the Push/Pull anymore, looks like you got it. Took you only three days to catch on. Just kidding, good job, keep on going. (That was a Push/Pull, too).

PATRICK: Dimitri, I take my apology back. You really are a jerk. :-)

DIMITRI: I concur.

PATRICK: I’m just kidding, you’re a cool guy, now give me a hug!

DIMITRI: You didn’t even have to say you were kidding, etc., because the smile is already a Pull.

PATRICK: Gotcha. Okay, so how did you feel when you've been with someone in the past who made you feel some of the things we've been talking about?

DIMITRI: Too vague. Focus the question. Make it more specific

PATRICK: How did you feel in the past when you were in a relationship that made you really feel love and fulfillment?

DIMITRI: This question is quite confusing because it's a bit too long, and because the verb "feel" is used twice. Rephrase it to make it shorter.

PATRICK: What did it feel like to be in love?

DIMITRI: YES! THAT'S THE ONE! I love this question.

PATRICK: But doesn’t asking it mean that I don't know the answer and therefore that I've never been in love and therefore that I'm undesirable?

DIMITRI: No. It means you want to know how it felt in my experience. So, I was in love only once. And I felt that being in love made me suddenly incredibly wise. I kept it secret and somehow it made me feel like a hero. Nothing else mattered.

PATRICK: But I can't honestly relate, because I've never been in love! Make it up?

DIMITRI: You've just related though! Only you did it in the advanced way. It is called “Anti-Relating”. "I can't relate to feeling in love because I had never been in love" is one of the most powerful ways to relate – sincerity is the key! Great job man!

PATRICK: So what? Am I a genius? :-)

DIMITRI: You are, quite simply, a Natural Seducer, buddy. In the best possible sense of the words.

PATRICK: I am laughing.

DIMITRI: Okay, break till later. Re-read the chat in your Gmail archive so you can refresh what you’ve learned. Be cool.

PATRICK: I will. You too.

DIMITRI: Can’t be anything but, can I?

Chapter 10

DIMITRI: Ask me a small open-ended question, and proceed from there.

PATRICK: What's your favorite kind of music?

DIMITRI: It can be classical or not, but it has to be ecstatic. On the other hand, now that I think of it, I love serene music, too. It has the other form of ecstasy in it. I guess what I'm saying is I relate to sincere emotions in music.

PATRICK: Exactly! It doesn't matter whether it's a piano concerto or a Rolling Stones concert. I love that you get it! I really know what you mean. Who cares if it's a Les Paul or a Steinway Concert Grand! What were you listening to the first time music made you cry?

DIMITRI: I do not remember the first time. I have some very vague hint of recollection, but it is almost completely in the fog. I do remember listening to a singer whose voice sounded like my father’s. My relationship with my father at that period was somewhat cold, and hearing that singer's recording suddenly made me cry.

PATRICK: Well it's good to express your emotions. It's actually very courageous to be able to do that. I find that really attractive. I definitely can relate to what you're saying.. at my Grand Uncle's funeral my Mother's choir sang Va Pensiero by Verdi. Every time I hear it now, I feel ...an indescribable joy and sadness at the same time.

DIMITRI: Your RR is very good - almost. "Well it's good to express your emotions. It's actually very courageous to be able to do that." would be a perfect reward - but you made it impersonal, as if you're talking not about me, but in general. Rephrase it to include "I" and "you".

PATRICK: Well I think it's great that you can express your emotions. I think you are very courageous to be able to do it.

DIMITRI: Yes, that's the best! Continue.

PATRICK: Am I aiming for SOI here?

DIMITRI: If that’s what you want, yes.

PATRICK: When was the last time you got totally lost in a book?

DIMITRI: A while ago. To be honest with you, and I feel ashamed to admit it, I rarely get lost in the intellectual kind of stuff. Last time I got lost in something it was probably Harry Potter part 6. Promise not to laugh.

PATRICK: Sorry. I can't promise.

DIMITRI: Good Push.

PATRICK: Just kidding. Come here, give me a hug! Was that a Pull?

DIMITRI: Yes!

PATRICK: Good - I get it now. :-)

DIMITRI: It's not the only form of push-pull obviously; I'm just giving you a primitive example, easy to understand. In most cases you don't have to do the Pull part - your smile and friendly vibe do it! In “The Departed" Matt Damon’s character does it several times. His character’s Push/Pull technique is not particularly subtle, and I wouldn’t call that character an overwhelmingly sincere guy, but when the technique is obvious, it sometimes easier to learn it. Anyway, let’s proceed from Harry Potter 6.

PATRICK: Okay. That's cool that you still have a little kid in you somewhere! I love that about you - so cute. But yeah, I know exactly what you mean, I feel bad sometimes that I can't focus on the tough topics – and yet I have no problems browsing through comic books! I enjoy them! Damn it, this doesn’t bring me any closer to an SOI!

DIMITRI: Well, you could have just said: “That's cool that you still have a little kid in you somewhere! I find it incredibly sexy about you!” or “That's cool that you still have a little kid in you somewhere! For some reason it totally turns me on now... you better stop doing it!” even though the later example strikes me as a little cheesy.

Okay, let me give you a little more theory. There are certain obligatory questions you want to ask in the beginning of the interaction. Together they are called "information gathering ". We talked about that on the phone – remember?

PATRICK: Yes, you told me two or three before - any more?

DIMITRI: "Who are you here with?"

"How do you guys know each other?"

"What are your plans for later tonight?"

"What's your relationship situation?"

"How early do you have to wake up tomorrow?"

"Who's driving you home?"

"How far do you live?"

etc. This sort of questions. When you begin the interaction, you have a choice. You can make small talk, or make something that seems like small talk but helps you to figure out the social situation. Obviously the latter is better. That's why all the “information gathering” questions information must be asked very early in the interaction - instead of saying things like "How do you like this bar?" and "What's the best thing about living in New York?" So - ASK THOSE QUESTIONS!

PATRICK: Good point. I get it

DIMITRI: That’s it for now. You’re making incredibly rapid progress. I really like that about you.

PATRICK: Thanks, but you never know, I might slow down as rapidly.

DIMITRI: Shut up. :-) (Push/Pull) Okay, you better get some rest and re-read this dialog later. Bye.

PATRICK: I will. Bye!

Chapter 11

PATRICK: Any tips on how to ask better questions?

DIMITRI: Yours are very good.

PATRICK: Specifically opening questions?

DIMITRI: How about "What's your name?" - "Who are you here with?" - "What are you plans for later tonight?" - "Who's driving you home?"

PATRICK: Hi, I'm Patrick, what's your name?

DIMITRI: I'm Dimitri, pleasure meeting you! REWARD ME!

PATRICK: What? You haven't answered yet? I didn't receive your answer.

DIMITRI: “I'm Dimitri, pleasure meeting you!” - That's the answer to your question: "What's your name?" REWARD ME!

PATRICK: It's great to meet you too - I like your friendly vibe!

DIMITRI: Brilliant. You did the reverse structure: Relate/Reward - but it's perfectly fine. Now begin gathering information: "Who are you here with?” - etc.

PATRICK: So who are you here with, Dimitri?

DIMITRI: Good. I'm actually on my own here. REWARD/RELATE!

PATRICK: That's cool – no let me change that. I think it's great that you feel comfortable enough with yourself to hang out on your own - so many people don't - but I guess you're just a confident person. I like that about you - I find it sexy actually :-)

DIMITRI: Good! RELATE! (Talk about your self-reliance, not in a bar).

PATRICK: I know where you're coming from... sometimes I find it refreshing to just get away from the group - and go out exploring on your own. I went backpacking around the world on my own for that very reason!

DIMITRI: Perfect. Now Push/Pull me in any way you want. Just for the heck of it!

PATRICK: I bet you're really arrogant too - confident people are like that sometimes...

DIMITRI: Very good! Great Push. Now how would you Pull me?

PATRICK: :-) ?

DIMITRI: Yes, exactly – smile is a Pull. Now Disqualify.

PATRICK: Actually, there were times when I felt really lonely and so not confident when I was traveling alone that I would just sit in a bar on my own and drink and wish I could work up the courage to go talk to some of the other backpackers there...

DIMITRI: Great. Here's another conversational structure for you: placing Sexual Barriers.

PATRICK: Yeah - that's after the SOI, right?

DIMITRI: Yes it is! Let me give you an example I heard from one of my instructors during the Charm School I took as a client. It’s a little too “by the book”, but it is simple, and therefore good for our purposes: "I wish I could cover your whole body with kisses... but we're in a bar and your friends are staring..." I would like you to use this example as a model and give me your own, totally original version of the Sexual Barrier.

PATRICK: I feel so connected to you right now - I just want to grab you and kiss the hell out of you, but may be we shouldn't - we're in a public venue - it wouldn’t be very appropriate.

DIMITRI: Dude, you rock! Okay, I'm outta here. Bye!

PATRICK: Okay, thanks amigo! :-)

Chapter 12

PATRICK: Good day my friend! What's the story?

DIMITRI: Fixing a wrecked bike.

PATRICK: You're a mechanic, too? A multi-talented person! I can't really relate to that - I'm not particularly amazing at anything. Can I combine DQ with relate like that?

DIMITRI: Yes you can. You may also add something along these lines: “I like that a lot about you – “ (Or rephrase it in any way you want). It is important to focus the reward by making your feelings very clear.

PATRICK: Yeah - I was too vague.

DIMITRI: For example, you met my friend Rob Overman, right?

PATRICK: Man, that guy is a lion in the field.

DIMITRI: Agreed. So Rob’s “It tells me a lot about your personality" - focuses the reward in a subtle way.

Keep going, next question.

PATRICK: What's your relationship situation?

DIMITRI: I love this question!

PATRICK: I can tell!

DIMITRI: Well, I share the apartment with my lover, and I try to be loyal to her, I really do, only it doesn’t work. I have an on-and-off relationship with another woman, and something tells me this second relationship is about to be over soon. I am also courting a young and very innocent Russian girl, and I have no idea where this will take me, but I want to explore it because I like her. My romantic life is a mess.

PATRICK: Wow! Well, it certainly seems like you have an exciting love life - you're adventurous and like to explore sexuality - I find that very sexy about you. I feel the same - as far as my desires are concerned, but I again, I can't really relate because I don't have multiple lovers!

DIMITRI: Okay Patrick, let’s stop for a moment. You did everything perfectly well, including the SOI, only I would like you to be able to create longer escalation so you can really connect through emotions before you make you SOI. So let me explain something to you.

PATRICK: I'm all ears.

DIMITRI: Great. So, escalation --

PATRICK: I mean, eyes.

DIMITRI: Hm…Escalation has two important aspects, and both of those aspects have something to do with emotions. Or may be I should say Escalation has quite a few important aspects, but out of all of them we are going to consider only two now. One of them is Relating to her emotions by telling her about your experience of the same emotions. The second aspect of the escalation is a little trickier.

PATRICK: Ok, what is it?

DIMITRI: A woman makes a decision to have sex with a man based on certain emotions she experiences. These emotions are the obligatory condition for her to make that choice. If she does not experience certain specific motions, sex is not likely to happen. Are you with me so far?

PATRICK: Yes.

DIMITRI: So the conclusion is this. If you want a woman to have sex with you, you must give her the emotions you want her to experience, in a certain sequence. You must hand her these emotions on a platter.

PATRICK: Ah... How do I do that? And what is the sequence?

DIMITRI: Well, there are several channels for transferring the emotional states. (By the way, a lot of this material comes from my friend Javier, who is a great dancer and a great expert in psychology). I explain about some of the state-inducing channels during my private coaching sessions. Unfortunately, I would not be able to teach you these techniques very well in this chat, because I would have to show you how I do that. But to give you an example of such channels, you can convey the emotion via the tone of your voice, or through your body language.

PATRICK: I think I understand what you mean. But how would I convey excitement to a woman if I'm not really excited - fake it?

DIMITRI: If you must - yes. FAKE IT! Let me explain about faking it. God is perfect, human beings are not. No matter how hard you try, you cannot be 100 percent successful in anything. You may be 95 percent successful, but there will always be a little bit of failure in each of your success. Don't ever beat yourself up if you are 95 percent sincere because it's the maximum you can achieve.

PATRICK: Okay, point taken.

DIMITRI: And you shouldn’t beat yourself up either if you're 35 percent sincere (usually referred as "faking it") - because we all have good days and bad days.

Well?

PATRICK: What?!

DIMITRI: This was the MAJOR bit of wisdom, wasn’t it?

PATRICK: Which part? I am lost.

DIMITRI: Forget it. No more questions, back to the lesson.

PATRICK: Ah yes. This thing that you said about being 35 percent sincere and not beating myself up – I really liked it about you. It told me a lot about your personality!

DIMITRI: Too late, dude. We’re now enemies forever. Anyway, you must give to a woman certain emotions in a certain sequence. Right now, being on the Instant Messenger, we're only dealing with "How to give her those emotions through words" - separate from the tone of voice and body language.

There are 4 ways of doing that

Direct question;
Indirect question;
Direct statement;
Indirect statement.

Examples of giving her the emotion of freedom:

Direct question: "When was the last time you felt perfectly free?"
Indirect question: "What was the last time something was so funny that you couldn't suppress your laughter and didn’t care if anyone was listening?”
Direct statement: "I feel free every time I breathe fresh air, because it reminds me that I quit smoking and am now free from the addiction! It’s a big thing for me!"
Indirect statement: “I feel great riding my motorcycle as fast as I can along the empty highway, not caring about anything in the whole world!"

Now - what would you like to ask me about the techniques I've just described?

PATRICK: What is the difference between direct and indirect?

DIMITRI: You ask deep questions, my young disciple. In this case the difference is that when you are being indirect you DO NOT NAME the emotion you're giving to a woman. Instead, you describe how this emotion feels, without naming it. For example, instead of saying "I feel free", you describe freedom in some specific details. That's why I personally like indirect statements better. All 4 ways of conveying emotions are good, and yet I personally prefer DIRECT questions and INDIRECT statements. Also known as general questions and specific statements.

PATRICK: Why direct questions?

DIMITRI: Because if you ask her "In what situation did you feel the most relaxed?" - she has a great choice of situations to choose from as opposed to "How often do you take your time enjoying the hot tub?" But it’s my personal choice, you might like indirect questions better - I know many guys who are good with indirect questions.

PATRICK: Right - seems a little advanced for me at this stage - I'm still struggling with coming up with any question at all!

DIMITRI: Good Disqualification! So, what emotions do we need to convey to a beautiful female stranger in order to have sex with her? Let me put you through a little Socratic questioning here.

PATRICK: Okay.

DIMITRI: So do you think a woman is more likely to have sex with you when she feels safe - or when she freaks out because she finds you creeeeeeepy?

PATRICK: The former I believe!

DIMITRI: Cool. So ask me a direct open-ended question that would make me feel safe.

PATRICK: When was the last time you felt really, totally safe and protected?

DIMITRI: Good. This was rather simple, wasn’t it? Now ask me the INDIRECT question about the same emotion.

PATRICK: So I just try to describe the emotion of safety without actually saying the word safe?

DIMITRI: Yes, that’s what you do.

PATRICK: When was the last time you felt like you completely forgot about all the pressures of the world - your job, traffic, kids, deadlines - all that stuff and just felt totally liberated and free? Oops, liberated and free is kinda the same thing.

DIMITRI: Yep, and even though the question itself was very good, but it was a) Direct and b) About the emotion of freedom – not about safety.

PATRICK:Yeah, that was dumb!

DIMITRI: Good Disqualification.

PATRICK: How did you feel when you were in the womb?

DIMITRI: Patrick, I believe you have just demonstrated the quality of a genius. Now make the direct statement along the lines of "I usually feel safe when –“

PATRICK: I feel so safe when I'm in the arms of someone who I care about - I think it's a wonderful feeling.

DIMITRI: Perfect. Now indirect statement along the lines of: "Yeah, I know what you mean. That's how I feel when I curl up in a ball in bed with a good book" (Followed by... "So... what do you like to do in bed?")

PATRICK: LOL!

DIMITRI: That was Rob's style. Very contagious.

PATRICK: Yeah, it's such a sweet feeling - I know why you like it. I love to just climb into bed and feel warm and listen to the wind blowing the rain against the window. Sometimes my cat jumps up on the bed and starts purring in my ear!

DIMITRI: BRILLIANT! So, she feels safe now. But there's safety - and safety. What would you choose - that she feels safe because she has karate black belt 12th level and can tear you in half with her bare hands - or because she feels friendly toward you?

PATRICK: The latter - what's your point?!

DIMITRI: My point is, “friendly” is a good emotion to hand to her. Direct question, please?

PATRICK: What do you like to do with your best friend when you guys hang out?

DIMITRI: Very good! Now indirect question.

PATRICK: Wasn't that indirect - it didn't mention "friendship"?

DIMITRI: Well, okay, it was semi-direct. Now give me totally indirect one along these lines: "When was the first time you realized you wanted to give random gifts of kindness to people around you?"

PATRICK: When did you realize that you wanted to do volunteer work just to help people for the sake of helping them?

DIMITRI: Yes. Or you might ask it like this: "When did you get the closest to volunteering”, etc. - just in case she never actually volunteered. Now give me direct statement.

PATRICK: I feel great when I'm with friends, just hanging out, relaxing and having fun and laughing.

DIMITRI: Yes. Now indirect.

PATRICK: I love spending time with people who care about me and who really get who I am at the deepest level.

DIMITRI: You got it. I think you get the idea of how you can make a woman experience certain emotion through words, so now let's just run through the list of needed emotions very quickly. It doesn’t matter if it’s noun or adjective now. Comfort.

PATRICK: Excitement – fun – humor – desire – fulfillment - pleasure –

DIMTIRI: - adventurous –risky- naughty - curious –

PATRICK: - relaxed –

DIMITRI: In he beginning, yes, but not all the time. Eventually you want her to feel tense in a certain way – freedom -

PATRICK: - loss of inhibitions –

DIMITRI: - thrilled - irresponsible –

PATRICK: - exhilarated -

DIMITRI: - intoxicated with you - in love - desperately craving pleasure (give her a candy and take away at the last moment; then 5 minutes later be about to kiss her - and pull back at the last moment, then later well, you know... and so on) –

PATRICK: - joy, relief --

DIMITRI: No, definitely not relief – sexual tension – aroused - horny –

PATRICK: - madly horny –

DIMITRI: - cock-hungry --

PATRICK: LOL! Cock-hungry!

DIMITRI: And so on. Okay, you get the idea. That was Escalation. Do that to a girl and she won’t find herself capable of saying “no”. All right then, gotta go. Talk tomorrow.

PATRICK: Definitely! Thanks man!

DIMITRI: No problem. Make sure to re-read this chat when you have a few minutes.

This ends Part II of this book.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part III

Effortless Courtship

Chapter 13

There is a man who in his early adolescence has made an unconscious decision to avoid women.

Having avoided women for a certain period of time, he naturally begins to feel deprived of sexual relief and female companionship.

Because he is deprived of those two things, he begins to crave them desperately.

The desperate cravings for sexual relief and female companionship motivates him to approach a woman.

The woman flees the man because he, in his desperation, has come across as a potential aggressor and has sabotaged himself.

At the time when the woman escapes him, he feels much more desperate than before he approached her.

Because the woman's escape and the feeling of extreme despair coincide in time, the man's mind connects the two, and he begins to believe he feels desperate because this particular woman has "rejected" him.

Immediately after the woman is gone, the man feels considerably better.

The absence of the woman and the feeling of calm coincide in time, and the man's mind connects the two: he begins to believe that he feels good when he does not approach women and feels bad when he approaches them.

His earlier choice to avoid women is reinforced by what he wrongly perceives as objective experience.

So the man avoids women for some more time. However, his cravings for sexual relief and female companionship have not been satisfied, and they continues to grow, until the man builds up a strong motivation to approach a woman again.

This time he is more tentative, and simultaneously more aggressive due to his earlier negative experience, and of course his desperation scares the new woman away.

The chain continues, and all the while the man's cravings for sexual relief and female companionship becomes exponentially stronger.

The man suffers.

Millions of such men spend their entire lives in misery, and believing that their misery is the inevitable part of life.

And millions of women live in the fear of men.

The chain of self-reinforcing despair keeps those people in psychological slavery. This chain must be broken.

Chapter 14

One of the most crucial reasons why the chain of despair continues to exist is the notion of a man as a taker.

Women are conditioned to think of men in this way despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and, more importantly, it is also men's attitude toward themselves.

A man thinks that a woman has something he needs and that he must get it from her.

A woman thinks that she has something a man needs and that he would inevitable try to take it away from her.

The behavior of a man who considers himself as a taker reinforces the wrong belief in a woman's mind. He is aggressive and greedy. She doesn't want anything taken away from her and immediately becomes defensive, reinforcing in a man the belief that she indeed must have something that he needs, so he must invest more effort into getting it. He becomes even more aggressive and greedy.

Greed breeds greed, and no one wins.

The notion of a man as a taker is wrong and useless. It must be eliminated and replaced by the opposite notion: men must see themselves as generous, joyful givers.

"I have something a woman craves. I am generously and joyfully giving it to her".

Generosity breeds generosity.

Man's self-perception as a taker is frightening to a woman.

Man's self-perception as a giver is attractive to a woman.

It makes her see herself as a giver, too.

Both sides win.

When I say that a man has something a woman craves, and he generously and joyfully gives it to her, I mean two things.

A man gives to a woman the feeling of sexual relief, which she craves from a man much more intensely than a man craves it from her.

And - much more importantly! - a man gives to a woman the joy of male companionship, which she craves as intensely as the man craves the female companionship from a woman. You might ask: what about those men and women who only want sex from each other?

My answer is this: it never happens.

If there were men and women who only wanted sexual relief, they could achieve it in perfect solitude by pleasing themselves. And in many cases men and women are much better at giving themselves sexual relief than any of the partners they could have.

There's no such thing as "just sex". It's always a combination - in various proportions - of sexual relief and the feeling of companionship with the person of the opposite gender. Somehow a man has what a woman craves and a woman has what a man craves - and by giving those things to each other we become complete.

Chapter 15

A woman craves two things from a man.

She craves to be appreciated as a woman.
She craves to be appreciated as a person.

In a woman's mind, the two things are inseparable and support one another. That's why being appreciated as a woman makes her feel better appreciated as a person, and being appreciated as a person makes her feel more completely appreciated as a woman.

So when a man gives himself to a woman, he must do it with the purpose of satisfying her most fundamental cravings: he must make her feel good as a woman and make her feel good as a person.

Everything related to giving a woman the feeling of sexual relief makes her feel appreciated as a woman.

Everything related to giving a woman the male companionship makes her feel appreciated as a person.

I can say it in many different ways, but they all mean the same thing.

A woman craves to feel appreciated for being sexual and for who she really is.

She craves to be liked for her body and for her soul.

She craves a man to make her body and her soul feel good.

Give a woman what she craves and she will give herself to you.

Chapter 16

If you want to connect with a woman, you must make her feel appreciated as a woman and as a person. It's essential to give her strong feeling that you like her body AND her soul.

To rephrase it, you must make a woman feel LOVED and RESPECTED.

And there's more to it!

It's equally essential that she makes you feel appreciated as a man and as a person. You must feel confident that she likes your body AND your soul.

You should stay with a woman only if she LOVES and RESPECTS you.

It is very simple, isn't it?

If you make her body and soul feel good and she makes your body and soul feel good, the two of you connect on two levels: physical and spiritual.

When I say things like "soul" and "spiritual" I do not mean that you and her must belong to a fanatical, radical sect in order to be together. Not at all. In fact, you do not even have to be religious. By "spiritual" I mean "everything that is there but you cannot touch it": thoughts, hopes, dreams, emotions - things that are quite real but not physical. "Spiritual" is the best word I know to characterize those things. Call it "inner world" if you like.

Here's what happens when either physical or spiritual side or the relationship is neglected.

If you and a woman make each other feel appreciated as human beings but by mutual agreement ignore each other's bodies, you might end up being true friends, but even the friendship in many cases might never be complete because of the lack of physical intimacy. And when forced to make a choice, either you or her might prefer a lover's interests over those of a friend.

If both of you admire each other spiritually, but only one of you makes the other feel physically appreciated, the person whose body is neglected suffers the pangs of unrequited love. It's often referred to as "just friends" situation. In fact, of course, it has very little to do with friendship, because the true friendship must be always fair.

If you tell a woman you like her body, and at the same time make her feel ignored as a person, you're not very likely to have sex with her. Period.

Most women - even the ones who might only be interested in a one-night stand with you - deeply RESENT being used for sex. It makes them see themselves as sexually desperate and destroys their self-respect. Make a woman feel like a non-entity, and it's good-bye.

On the other hand, even if by an accident you do "score" the impersonal sex with a woman (which might happen if she is very drunk, sexually desperate, on the peak of her ovulation, or simply likes you for your looks) - such "victory" would not do much good for you. Because in such situation YOU would be the one who feels used. You would feel like a male slut. It's an awful feeling which can ruin your self-respect and may even cause impotence. If you have sex with a woman without having true heart-to-heart connection with her, I wouldn't even call it sex. You would miss out on the emotional intimacy, which is exactly what makes sex so uniquely pleasurable. After such miserable experience you would feel more frustrated and sexually anxious than before. Trust me.

What you want is the opposite: the marvelous feeling of being in charge of your life and in charge of your relationship with a woman of your choice. You want to feel respected and loved.

That's why it's absolutely necessary to make a woman feel appreciated as a sexual being AND as a spiritual being, and that's why it is equally necessary that she appreciates you as a sexual AND spiritual being as well.

Now I'm going to tell you something very obvious.

To make a woman feel appreciated as a sexual and spiritual being you must FIND OUT who she is as a sexual and spiritual being.

To give a woman a chance to appreciate you as a sexual and spiritual being you must help her to FIND OUT who you are as a sexual and spiritual being.

How do you find out who she is sexually and spiritually, and how do you help her to find out who you are sexually and spiritually?

Both things are very simple. I will tell you about them in detail in one of the following chapters.

Chapter 17

Here's another very powerful reason for finding out as much as possible - and as quickly as possible! - about a woman you are facing: you do not want to get yourself into a relationship with a wrong woman.

You must not spend more time with such woman than it's necessary for figuring out she would be wrong for you.

I am not trying to intrude upon your choice of a romantic partner, I'm not telling you who to choose. But I am telling you that you indeed must choose.

It's crucial to be the chooser, it's crucial to be selective about who you let into your life. If you and a woman are not mutually compatible as both sexual and spiritual beings, then she is not the right woman for you and you are not the right man for her. You'll be better off staying away from each other, to avoid inevitable heartbreak and waste of precious months or possibly years of your lives. By sticking around the wrong woman you would deprive yourself of the chance of meeting your true love, and deprive that fantastic woman, your beloved - who might be right around the corner - of meeting you.

Of course, even if there is such thing as perfection in the universe, it's very rare. Obviously you do not discard someone because their eyes are not of that particular hue of hazel or gray that you had dreamed of as a teenager. Use your common sense.

But if your intuition tells you that something is not right - trust your intuition and immediately bring the issue out in the open.

No compromises.

There's tragic irony in the fact that people stuck in a corrupt relationship tend to deny their unhappiness at any given moment. They get so good at denial they are not even consciously aware of their frustration most of the time. They hope that the situation would somehow change, they do nothing to change it, and in the meantime they get entangled in the emotional mess. Years and sometimes decades later something suddenly jolts them into awakening, and they have to deal with the horrifying realization of their irreparably wrecked destinies.

It's the "butterfly effect", when a single wrong step would lead to a chain of consequences that might turn your life in a very undesirable direction. And at the moment of taking that first step you wouldn't even be conscious where that path might take you in the end.

That's why when you experience strong sexual attraction to a woman you must FIND OUT who she is as a person, and figure out what kind of a relationship you want to have with her, before acting on the impulse.

Chapter 18

How do you greet a woman?

You say "Hello".

Or "Hi!" Or "Hey!"

Or "How do you do?" - if you're in Great Britain. Or "Happy birthday!" - if you're a guest at her birthday party. Or "How do you know our host?" - if she is a guest like yourself.

Or you may say nothing at all and just salute her with the glass of wine or water in your hand. Or wave at her. Or just smile. Or stop smiling if you were smiling. Or nod. Or wink. Or tilt your head and rise your eyebrows, looking at her. Or take off your hat, place it against your heart, and bow. Or close and open your eyes. Or give her a soft playful version of the military salute. Or touch the outside of her upper arm lightly with the back of your hand and hold it there for a moment.

ANYTHING CAN SERVE AS A GREETING.

You can greet a woman in a foreign language. Or even in gibberish. Or in a sign language. Or you can throw a paper airplane at her. Or write a note and hand it to her. Or light her cigarette if you are both smokers. Or explain to her why and how she needs to quit, in a non-patronizing way. Or hand her something she had dropped. Or hand her something she hadn't dropped but you presume she did. Or ask her anything - time, directions, her name.

Or notice something unique about her - the way she looks or behaves, or it could be even the smell of her perfume - then free-associate on what you have noticed, and make a poetic comment or a comical misinterpretation. For example if she wears something that looks like leopard skin, ask her how was the safari.

Or give her an instant nickname and greet her with it: "Hey Squirrel!"

Or figure out form her body language or form the situation what she feels or what she thinks about, and make a comment on that. Or on the weather.

Or show her the cover of the book you're reading.

Or if you want to approach a woman in a bookstore, notice what section of the bookstore she's in, and ask her the simplest question about the theme of that section. If you and she are in "Cooking", ask her: "What do you think about cooking?" If she is in poetry, ask her: "What do you like about poetry?" If she is in "Self-Improvement", ask her "How do you think I can improve myself?"

Or tell her about the great book you've discovered in that store and recommend to read.

Treat the entire world as a bookstore. Notice what "section" of that universal bookstore you've met her in, and ask her a question about the theme of that section. Share the "book" you've found on the "universal shelf". You are that book.

Or erase all the thoughts completely from your mind before approaching her - make it absolutely blank - and when you're already facing her, say the very first thing that comes to your mind. Whatever you say is going to be good.

Or go bold and tell her calmly and confidently that you find her extremely interesting as a woman and would like to find out more about her as a person - and ask her to give you a few minutes for a conversation. (If she is busy, tell her you'd like to be able to speak with her some other time when she finds it convenient, and that you'd like her to give you her phone number.)

There are countless ways to greet a woman, and the particulars are absolutely irrelevant.

If you understand the essence of the greeting, you'll be able to come up with the best situation-specific greeting every time you need one.

The essence of the greeting, its core principle is this:

GREETING IS THE EXPRESSION OF YOUR WISH TO COMMUNICATE.

Whatever the situation, all you need to do is to express your wish to communicate with a woman in any way you find suitable.

No matter what you say or do, the subtext of the greeting, the information you transmit is always the same: "I WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU".

Any other information contained in your greeting either won't register by her mind at all, or may actually interfere with her ability to understand the most important part of your message: "I WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU".

That's why I would not recommend to greet a woman with anything too smart or too complicated. You're a stranger to her yet, and you don't want to confuse her. Keep it simple. Do not try to be too creative.

Other than that, any greeting would do the job, because no matter what you say or do, the only thing you actually say to a woman when you greet her is this: "I WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU".

You may even start speaking with her without any greeting.

Chapter 19

Sometimes after you greet a woman you must change the subject.

It's necessary if you've greeted a woman with anything that is not directly related to who she is or who you are.

Let me explain.

For example, if you greet a woman in a travel section of a bookstore with a question "What do you think of Indonesia?" you do not want to get stuck in the topic of Indonesia or even travel, because the question you've asked was only a humorous excuse for talking with her.

A woman knows immediately that asking her opinion of Indonesia you in fact expressed your wish to communicate. She knows you've approached her to give her your warmth and kindness, and that foreign countries have very little to do with it.

So do not deceive her expectations, and after a brief exchange of small talk boldly change the subject.

There are two subjects you want to talk about.

Who she is as a woman and as a person.
Who you are as a man and as a person.

Whatever you talk about, it's about you and her.

Chapter 20

You need to find out who she is as a woman and as a person, so you can make her feel loved and respected, and so you can be confident that she is the right woman for you.

How do you find out who she is?

You learn to be curious about who she is as a woman and as a person. You ask her to tell you and to show you who she is. You listen and watch. You do your best to understand.

You also need to help a woman to find out who you are as a man and as a person, so she can make you feel loved and respected, and so she can be confident that you are the right man for her.

How do you help her to find out who you are?

You help her to become curious about who you are as a man and as a person. You tell her and show her who you are. You do your best to be understood.

The biggest secret of effective, effortless courtship is this:

CURIOSITY

Remember this: CURIOSITY is the fundamental principle of the human mating dance. When you MASTER THE POWER OF CURIOSITY you will achieve the absolute mastery of courtship. Later I will explain what I mean.

You have probably noticed a few subtleties in the above paragraphs. Those subtleties are not accidental. I choose my words very carefully. I say "you learn to be curious about who she is" instead of "you become curious about who she is". I say "you help a woman to find out who you are" instead of "you let her know who you are". I also say "you help her to become curious about who you are" instead of "you make her curious about who you are".

Why do I need to be so precise?

I say "you learn to be curious about who she is" because even though curiosity is a natural function of the human mind, people - especially men - are mostly curious about the possible effects of the outside circumstances on their own lives. Curiosity about OTHER PEOPLE is often a new skill that needs to be learned.

I say "you help a woman to find out who you are" because she must invest her effort in finding out who you are. If you simply make the information available to her, she might not be interested in processing that information.

I say "you help her to become curious about who you are" because, as a human being, she has the right to choose what she wants, and saying "you make her curious" would imply a certain degree of psychological manipulation, which in courtship should be avoided when possible.

You want to be curious about who she is. You want her to be curious about who you are. How can these two things be achieved?

Let's begin with helping her to get curious about you - because it's easier.

Imagine a man unskilled in courtship. When such man meets a woman he likes, he thinks - mistakenly - than in order to attract that woman he must impress her. So he begins to brag desperately, trying to tell her as quickly as he can everything he believes she might find interesting about him. He talks non-stop, and quickly buries the woman under a huge heap of unsolicited personal information. She is bored.

Even if that woman is polite enough to continue the conversation with the ungraceful man a little longer, there's not much else he can speak with her about. He is not curious about who she is. And since he has already told her everything he finds interesting about himself, the rest of what he speaks about can only make her feel even more bored. Little by little the conversation peters out. Finally she finds an excuse to leave - and never comes back.

With you it's going to be very different.

Here's what you must do:

A) FIND OUT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE ABOUT HER;

B) REVEAL AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE ABOUT YOURSELF.

It might seem to you that the second part contradicts the requirement of helping a woman to find out who you are. In fact, it doesn't. Because you help a woman to find out more about you precisely by revealing as little as possible about who you are.

Let me explain to you the meaning of this apparent paradox. It has something to do with the simple nature of CURIOSITY. We can only be curious about something we know a little about. We are not curious about things that are completely familiar, neither are we curious about things which we know nothing about - because having no knowledge about those things, we are not even aware of their existence.

Think of what you've read two paragraphs above. "Find out as much as possible about her" means your curiosity about her. "Reveal as little as possible about yourself" is the best way to motivate her curiosity about you.

It's good to be a little mysterious when you talk with a woman. It makes her WANT to find out more about you.

Of course I don't mean that you must behave in the exaggeratedly enigmatic manner, or that you should refuse answering her questions at all cost. That would be a ridiculous pretense.

What I mean is this: you tell her only things that absolutely must be told now, and keep the rest for later.

It can be best described as the Three Principles of Personal Storytelling:

When you talk about yourself, be concise;
Begin with the most boring things; gradually progress to reveal increasingly more interesting ones; keep the facts you find truly fascinating about yourself for as much later as you can;
Tell your stories one small bit at a time.

I shall elaborate on each of the three principles.

WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT YOURSELF, BE CONCISE. Don't get entangled in a net of unnecessary, irrelevant details. Think what you want to say before you say it, and let only the most essential things come out of your mouth. Provide two or three sharp, bright details that best characterize the situation you are describing. The rest would be redundant - and boring.

BEGIN WITH THE MOST BORING THINGS; GRADUALLY PROGRESS TO REVEAL INCREASINGLY MORE INTERESTING ONES; KEEP THE FACTS YOU FIND TRULY FASCINATING ABOUT YOURSELF FOR AS MUCH LATER AS YOU CAN. Men who don't know the art of courtship try to entertain and to be spectacular. Women are so used to it that they find it tedious, and simply do not believe such men's tales. A man who does not brag, and who is not afraid to talk about boring topics is rare. A women is not used to having such a man around, so a man who begins the conversation by speaking of boring subjects becomes interesting - effortlessly.

Women also know very well that unwise and insincere men tend to present their best sides early in the courtship, only to turn horribly disappointing soon afterwards. A man who does not do anything to impress a woman is much more impressive to a woman, because she finds him genuine.

Additionally, a man who appears average when he meets a woman, and then blossoms unexpectedly into a rare flower, creates the much more powerful impression.

TELL YOUR STORIES ONE SMALL BIT AT A TIME. Don't force your entire narrative upon a woman. Instead, say what can be said in one short sentence, then shut up, and check her reaction. If she wants you to continue telling your story, do so. If you as much as suspect that she doesn't, change the subject immediately or - better! - use this opportunity to find out more about her. Because finding out about her is more important for the purposes of courtship than finishing your story. You will be able to finish that story later, when you are already a couple. On the other hand, if you choose to finish the story against her will, you might never become a couple. What is more important to you? You are the one who makes the choice.

Keep in mind that giving the information one small bit at a time is what makes any story interesting. And you must deliver those bits in such way that a woman realizes that you only show her the "tip of the iceberg". Delivering a bit of information in a way that shows that there's more to it, and then cutting it off, is what motivates a woman's curiosity.

By following the Three Principles of Personal Storytelling you help a woman to become curious about you, and thus you help her to find out who you are.

What about your curiosity?

It's very similar to the curiosity you motivate in her. Only the process is reversed.

This time around it's your job to discover little unique things about a woman you are interested in. Those things are the small bits of information that would motivate your curiosity about her.

You might discover those unique things in something she says or does, or even in something she wears. In the tone of her voice. In the tiniest subtlety of her expression. In her posture. In the hint of a smile hiding in the corner of her mouth.

It is your task to pay closest attention to details, and to be able to recognize the little unique things that disguise huge revelations. Than you should ask her questions about those unique things.

When you ask a woman about her experiences, make it easy for her not only to tell you who she is, but to show it to you. And when you share your experiences with a woman, use both verbal and nonverbal means of communication. Tell and show. Do not go over the top with the demonstrations, though. Use common sense.

To be understood by a woman, you must make an effort of speaking very clearly and audibly. To understand what she tells you, you must listen attentively, and ask her to repeat what she had said to you in case you suspect you might have misunderstood her words.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part IV

Love

Chapter 21

What is love?

I bet you expect me to utter a love-cannot-be-defined kind of platitude, but I actually do have the answer. In fact, I have more than one, and I find each of them to be true.

Not being a Christian, I however do very much like the famous, phenomenologically pure description of love provided by Paul the Apostle in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

4 Love suffers long, and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

5 Does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

6 Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

7 Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. <...>

Love suffers long, and is kind. Love never fails. Those lines remain in my mind, they have staying power. I would like to believe that the man who wrote those lines was writing them as he experienced love.

I quoted those passages from the Gideons Bible I found in my hotel room.

I do not have the Symposium by Plato at hand where I am now, so I will have to quote it by heart, and yet I think I remember the necessary passage correctly. In that philosophical dialog Socrates defines love as the "desire to give birth into beauty".

I would like to give you my interpretation of that definition.

Notice how important the beauty is. Even on the most materialistic level a man seeks physical beauty in a woman he wishes to impregnate! A woman seeks beauty in the man she wants to be with - only for her the beauty of his body may be secondary, and the beauty of his action takes the first place. She wants to bring a child into a beautiful world - the place where she lives and where her child will live must be beautiful.

As we become more mature and our perception of beauty deepens and becomes less materialistic, we eventually realize that the beauty of a human being is different from that of an inanimate object. A beauty of a piece of furniture, of an automobile, of nature as a whole is defined by their physical appearance as well as their function (for example, ability to accelerate quickly and to move fast is the part of the beauty of an automobile). The beauty of a human being, however, is defined by the soul. Body is irrelevant. A true judge of human beauty estimates the aesthetic qualities of the soul: kindness, courage, discipline, reason, and so on. Such is the true beauty of a human being, the true one-to-ten scale - even though within material reality, unfortunately, the body is often taken into the account.

Where does all beauty in the world has its source? In God. God is pure Beauty. Every single beautiful thing we see or hear, every single beautiful quality of a human soul comes from God, is a reflection of the Absolute Idea of Beauty, which is God.

The true Love therefore is a desire of a soul to unite with God - desire to give birth - and be born - into Beauty.

Soul is God in me. My desire to unite with God is my desire to unite with my true Self. God is who I was before I was conceived. There is God in me and the same God in you. When I look at you I see my true Self. When I love you, when I am loved by you, we see the same God in each other - what we see might be distorted, tarnished by our mundane experience, and yet deep there God is what we see. Tragically, achieving unity with God through unity with each other is almost impossible in the material universe. That is where the terrible longing of being in love comes from.

Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj, like Christ a thousand years earlier, was crucified in 922 for saying, I am God. He described love through a parable.

There was a moth once who lived in a forest. Every night she flew to a clearing where a cabin stood, in which a hermit lived. The hermit spent night after night reading by the light that came from the flame in the lamp. The flame was covered with the glass lampshade. The moth fell in love with the flame. The invisible barrier of the glass lampshade separated the moth from her beloved, the flame. So the moth spent night after night beating her wings against the glass lampshade till morning. Other moths in the forest could not understand such passion. Look at yourself, you are all banged up, who needs love like that, they said laughing to the moth in love. But she never listened to them, and flew to the clearing again as the dusk fell. Then one day as she was beating her wings against the glass, the lampshade shattered. The moth flew straight into the flame, and she became the flame. The perfect unity of the lovers had been achieved.

Writer Alexander Green had apparently found all verbal definitions of love limited. In his novel "Scarlet Sails", a little girl asks her father about love.

- What do you mean - be able to love?

- Like this! - and he would take the little girl into his arms and tenderly kiss her sad eyes, which squinted in satisfaction.

Like this!

Love is an activity, not an emotional state.

I think to love a woman means to take action motivated by my wish to make her happy, on her own terms. She is a human being, she has her own idea of happiness, based on her experience. She might have the wrong idea from my point of view, and I might do something kind to convince her that my idea of happiness would be better for her - and yet ultimately she is the one who has to decide what happiness means for her. She makes the choice what she wants her life to be like.

It is not possible to own a human being.

Attachment is neurotic and destructive. Compassion, emotional generosity, kindness are creative and healthy.

I love a woman, so I want her to be happy. But she chooses her happiness. If she is happy with me, my love is fulfilled. If she is truly happy without me - or with someone other than me - my love is fulfilled.

That is what love is all about.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part V

Destroying the Illusions

Chapter 22

Probably the most dangerous illusion about the courtship that we must dispel is the illusory notion that a man has to do something special to be with a woman he likes.

This wrong notion is rooted so deeply in the psyche of a modern man, that it might take me quite a number of paragraphs to help you see the beautiful truth. And yet it is worth every word.

I will have to begin from afar. Please be patient and I promise you will understand why it is necessary.

The purpose of the society is survival of the species. The society does not care about your personal survival, nor does it care about you as a spiritual individual. In fact, society does not want you to be a spiritual individual, because having a personality would make you unique, and being unique would give you the personal goals that might be far different from the social goal of survival of the species. To be on the safe side, the society wants to tune down your individuality, so you do not jeopardize the survival of the human race by your rebellion. The society survives at your expense.

To be able to tune down your individual traits and make you uniform with everyone else, the society employs the myth of being special, at the same time actively brainwashing you, like everyone else, into being ordinary.

Here is how this tactic can be explained in the simple terms:

What society announces as ordinary is in fact special. What society announces as special is in truth ordinary. Society inverses the truth.

For example, having a thousand one-night stands is a sign of a very ordinary person, and yet the society glorifies it. Sharing your entire life with a single romantic partner and making that life meaningful is indeed something special, and yet society makes it look like it is ordinary and undesirable.

Why am I saying that having a thousand one-night stands is a sign of ordinary person? Because a man who dedicates himself entirely to "scoring" is not capable of living meaningfully. Such man cannot think about anything besides "scoring", and effectively spends his entire life behaving like an animal.

Why do you think the overwhelming majority of Hollywood films is so technically superb yet based on such miserably stupid stories? Clearly it is because the society is aware of the brainwashing, hypnotizing power of the big screen in the dark room, and employs this power to tune down the personalities of each individual member of the audience. If movies can be technically superb, surely they can be creatively superb as well - only it is not to the benefit of the society, and that is why truly brilliant works of film can only be discovered in the tiny, run-down, dilapidated old theaters.

It is not a fault of the particular individual or individuals. There is no conspiracy. The society is self-organizing. It is within each of us.

I was brought up in a totalitarian society, in which people were supposed to live in the identical houses, wear identical clothing, say identical words and have identical thoughts. That society - Soviet Union - is no more. If you look up the photos of modern North Korea, you will get an idea of what my childhood was like. That kind of life was perfectly simple - and perfectly absurd. The society simply TOLD each individual what to think and what to do. The totalitarian society played the "direct game" on me and everyone around me.

Western society, on the other hand, is democratic. It is based on the idea of the individual freedom, and is supported by the free trade. This society cannot tell each person what to think and what to do. It would provoke immediate rebellion.

And yet the Western society still needs to fulfill its function: to tune down each individual mind for the goal of the survival if the species. So instead of telling people what to think and do, the society presents certain bits of information to people in such a way that those bits of information put together can lead to certain predictable and controlled conclusions.

Modern Western society plays the "indirect game" on us.

The result is still the same, we are brainwashed.

Lifestyle modeling plays huge part in the works of the Western society, and advertisement is one of the aspects of the lifestyle modeling.

Let me put it this way: without the flow of information about products for sale our society the way we know it would collapse, and it is advertisement that provides the flow.

Advertisement is everywhere.

Today I saw a poster of the tennis player Marina Sharapova advertising expensive male wristwatch on a bus stop shed. If you are not familiar, Marina is a cute and athletic Siberian girl, and you better believe me, she was not wearing a bra under her undone tennis shirt on that poster.

Put two and two together, silly consumers, and you will know what kind of watch you must own so one day you can be around a fun girl like Marina.

You must own a cool car to be with Marina. You must own a cool house to be with Marina. You must own cool clothes to be with Marina. You must go to a cool gym to be with Marina. You must be a doctor or a lawyer to afford paying for the cool stuff that will make you attractive for Marina.

Sounds familiar?

To put all this in one sentence, ever since you were born, the Western free trade democratic society have been teaching you this:

You must do something special to deserve sexual fulfillment. The way you are, you do not deserve it!

Is it not frightening that we all are given the neurotic belief about one of our fundamental biological necessities?

So the guy works his heart out half his life, climbing up the social ladder, hating himself, and when he gets the cool job and cool house and cool car and so on - he has no idea how to even talk to a girl!

One of my good friends, a church minister, got into a religious dispute with me, insisting that Christ could not possibly experience failure because Christ is God, and God always achieves success.

God achieves success...

My friend is a great guy, and he is tremendously educated in theology, and yet even he measures God by the standards handed to us by the Western free trade society. Success is hurray, failure is boo!

It works both ways, too: a woman must look special to be with a man like Tiger Woods. She has to wear something special, her make-up must be special, her body must look a certain way, she has to pay for plastic surgery and so on. She has to look like Marina.

What a load of nonsense!

Let's zoom in.

Seduction community has all the characteristics of a society. It is based on the principles of the free trade, only like any micro-society within the bigger society, it is somewhat more totalitarian. To the best of my knowledge, the community had been created in the eighties almost single-handedly by the man who has a near-psychotic belief that the only way to get a woman to have sex with him is to hypnotize her. This man has the following approach to life in general: if he wants something from someone, he will hypnotize and manipulate this person into providing that. I think that man came up with the idea of using the NLP to create the community of people who could be hypnotized into purchasing his products for as long as they live, and he cemented his market by creating the community language.

Later of course the creator and ruler of the pick-up community had to deal with quite a few parasites - equally or more talented self-promoters who began to fish in the same marketing pool, feeding on the ever-present sociobiological problems of sexual frustration and gender warfare. It is my strong belief that the pick-up community, directed by the community leaders, is continuously brainwashing the huge army of insecure men for the purpose of creating stable, easy-to-manipulate market for their products and services. The community gives such men the illusory validation and illusory fulfillment, by channeling all their efforts into a vain activity that requires bits of fake knowledge those man otherwise would not need.

The leaders need you to keep "sarging". The leaders don't want you to settle down with a woman, ever. To be sure, what you learn from them will get you laid - but what a classic community-brainwashed PUA does not realize is that he would get laid anyway by just going out there and talking to a woman. In fact, the leaders invest a lot of effort into making the courtship seem very difficult, and they give a lot of false advice because if the man becomes successful and sees that the whole thing is very simple and he did not even need any of the things he paid for - he would never come back to spend more money.

Throw all this junk out of your head!

Understand this:

A MAN DOES NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING SPECIAL IN ORDER TO HAVE SEX WITH A WOMAN HE FINDS ATTRACTIVE!

You already have all those skills. Every single one of them.

You just need to find those skills within yourself. We can help you with that, but we will not make you do anything special, and we will not tell you what success means for you. You are going to have to find out for yourself.

I might be mistaken but I think it was Michelangelo who said, I see the beautiful sculpture in the slab of marble. All I have to do is free it from imprisonment.

One thing that comes to my mind now is that when a woman is being tricked into seeking self-validation through sex with a man who crashed her self-esteem, emotionally blackmailed her, hypnotized, or otherwise manipulated her into having sex with him, then it's technically a rape.

There are way too many women out there who made themselves sexually available to men who messed with their minds. These women's perceptions of the world had been altered and distorted, they had been mentally traumatized by insecure men. Sometimes forever.

I do not hate and do not despise women whose emotional damage expresses itself often in their inability to remain loyal to one man, in their mistrust to men in general. And on the other hand, I do not despise men who are so insecure in their manhood that they need hundreds and thousands of one-night stands to regain the illusion of being in charge.

I pity such men.

I think that carrying a self-imposed label of a PUA, speaking in the community slang, validating oneself by the number of intravaginal penetrations, and many other childish games men choose to play are all symptoms of a deep neurosis. I think truly secure men do not let anyone manipulate their minds. And I also think that truly secure men do not want to have more women in their lives than necessary to make them happy. I think having too many women in one's life leads to unhappiness - directly (by undermining the ability to create deep, truly meaningful connection with anyone and making a man cynical about the very act of communication) and indirectly (by taking away the time that would otherwise will be used much more constructively). I think one loving woman is enough for the lifetime of happiness. I think the true art lies in finding that unique relationship and keeping it alive through the years. And being loyal.

I think having a quickie in a bathroom with a woman I have talked to for a few minutes, and never seeing that woman again will not make any positive change in my life or in hers. It definitely won't make me a better person, and it wouldn't be something to make me respect myself better or to deserve for me the respect of other men. What would make me respect myself is my ability to overcome and eliminate fear, and do what I otherwise wouldn't be able to do (that is, if I allowed myself to succumb to that fear).

It is only to that degree I think what I do now professionally as a courtship instructor makes any sense.

I find it difficult to imagine the men I truly respect being so obsessed with their sexual inferiority complexes that they would entirely give up their spiritual life and dedicate their whole existence to having a steady supply of pussy.

What make a man whose only purpose in life is seeking physical pleasure different from an animal?

Our very humanity is what's at stake.

I might have just made a few enemies, but make no mistake: the so called Inner Game - which is, quite simply, the feeling of self-respect - is what I'm talking about here.

Show me a stronger mind frame than the one I have just shared with you.

Chapter 23

The so-called Approach Anxiety does not exist. It is an illusion, maintained in the minds of thousands of gullible men to make courtship appear difficult to them, so that they purchase more seduction products and services, and sink deeper in their despair.

Let us analyze the problem.

Anxiety is one of the forms of fear. Specifically, it is the fear of the uncertain future.

Approach is the process of moving toward something or someone.

The Approach Anxiety, therefore, must be the fear of the uncertain future related to or triggered by the process of moving toward someone or something.

Before we discuss the true nature of the phenomenon that have been wrongly labeled as the Approach Anxiety, let us talk about fear in general.

It will take a lot of words; the working draft of this article took ten pages in print, but please bear with me. This is a tough illusion to dispel, and yet when it is finally dispelled, I promise that the beauty of the truth will astonish you.

Let us discuss the fear from the point of view of the psychological archetype defined by his ability to face and handle that emotion: the Hero.

What makes the Hero so much different from a coward?

The Hero is intimately familiar with the nature of the fear. The Hero knows certain secrets about fear that a coward does not know. These are the secrets that I am about to reveal to you.

There are two fundamental types of fear:

1) Artificial Fear;

2) Natural Fear.

Let me expand.

1) The Artificial Fear is man-made. It is also known as intimidation, or suspense. This type of fear is usually characterized by dramatic build-up with unexpected leaps to considerably higher levels of intensity.

I would like to give you an example of my encounter with an unsuccessful attempt to create the Artificial Fear.

A few weeks ago I walked up to a group of attractive and friendly women on a street and greeted them. As I usually do, I touched one of the women on the upper arm with the back of my hand as I was making the introduction.

All of a sudden a man appeared out of nowhere, like a troll out of a tobacco-box. Without any proper exchange of pleasantries, he pushed me in the chest, and yelled in my face: Get lost, she is my wife!

The man did not seem very intimidating - if anything, he was amusing - so I stayed. I smiled, offered him my hand for a handshake, and introduced myself. I told him that I would never dare to intrude upon his relationship. The man ignored my hand, he was shaking in fury, yelling incoherently, and splattering me with saliva.

I reached to his shoulder to clarify my friendliness and to pacify him with the touch. The man went berserk. I would not be able to quote his verbal response here: what if there are ladies reading my article? I felt sorry for his wife: she was so attractive, and greeted me so friendly when I approached her. She definitely deserved a better man.

A moment later, two more men appeared synchronously on both sides of me, like hunting velociraptors in Jurassic Park. One of them was flexing his muscles and scowling at me in a rather comical way, the other tried to act like a bully from a Hitchcock movie: he grinned dramatically and told me that if I try to touch his friend one more time, he will kill me.

It was rather funny, so I played along. I immediately touched the guy: You mean, if I touch him like this? You are going to kill me for that?

The movie bully stopped grinning. He wanted to be taken seriously. Walk away, or you are dead, he said. His pal on my other side was puffing himself up, trying to come up with something equally smart to say. The disgruntled husband in front of me was gasping in righteous indignation.

I do not enjoy it when people who have no business telling me what to do give me orders, so I stayed with them a while longer, behaving as friendly as I could. I left only when I grew bored.

And hey, I am still alive.

I must emphasize that from the moment the first man appeared till the moment his friend threatened to kill me only thirty seconds or so had elapsed. In a few paragraphs I will explain why I find it so important.

I do not exactly fit the archetype of the Hero. I have been motivated by fear throughout my life. And yet, during the interaction I had just described, I had experienced no fear whatsoever, despite the fact that my would-be-opponents tried to intimidate me.

What kept me calm was my recently acquired understanding of the nature of Artificial Fear.

Why would someone try to motivate my behavior by fear? - Because this person believes that a man can be easily motivated by fear.

Why does that person believe that a man can be easily motivated by fear? - Because that person himself is easily motivated by fear.

To rephrase it, WHEN SOMEONE TRIES TO INTIMIDATE ME, TO TRIGGER FEAR IN ME, I KNOW THAT HE IS A COWARD. He tries to create Artificial Fear because he is afraid of me. If I feel no fear for a few moments, his fear will take over. And why would I be afraid of someone who is afraid of me? That would be comical.

2) The Natural Fear does not involve the process of intimidation. It is a biologically pre-programmed reaction to a dangerous situation. The crucial characteristic of such dangerous situation is that it happens suddenly and without warning.

Let me give you an example of the Natural Fear from my experience.

About two months ago I was waiting for a traffic light to change, sitting astride my motorcycle, enjoying the quiet peaceful morning and the mastery of my ride. The light turned green, I took off, shifted to the third gear, and was suddenly rammed by a passing Buick that veered off into my lane. No warning.

My bike span around, I flew out of the saddle like a rag doll, and the funniest part was, while it was happening, I felt excited like a kid in a toy store. I did not feel any pain when my thumb broke against the spinning front wheel, and I remember saying loudly WOW as the parked cars were tumbling around me, and thinking, "This is interesting, I feel the pavement even through the leather!" as I was sliding on my back.

Then I jumped up on my feet, saw my thumb bent back in the joint, and set it right without thinking. It did not hurt when I did it. I looked around and saw my bike twisted as if King Kong was playing with it.

Then I got scared. Chilled to the bones.

But it was too late, the dangerous situation was already over, and I had to find a way to comfort the terrified old lady behind the steering wheel of the unscratched Buick, and a bunch of bloodthirsty Mexican construction workers on the corner, clearly disappointed that they had not witnessed death. (I remember flipping a bird at them). I also had to come up with a legal way to get a few thousand dollars to repair my bike.

My point is, the Natural Fear is instantaneous, and more often than not is experienced after the event. And it is quite all right to be afraid when the bad thing had already happened, as long as you can be active enough to handle the consequences.

Before I reveal to you the most essential characteristic of fear, and before I tell you exactly how to achieve total control over fear, I would like to introduce another important concept: that of Resistance.

Here's how you are going to get things done from now on. Remember the following four steps as a model for your behavior.

You want something;
You take action to achieve what you want;
You experience the RESISTANCE;
You take action to overcome the resistance and achieve what you want.

The reason why most people are not as successful in achieving what they want as they could be is because they refuse to face the reality of resistance. They have unrealistic expectations. They choose to believe that it's enough to want something and to take action in order to achieve what they want. So when they encounter resistance, they back off.

Resistance happens.

Resistance happens every time.

Resistance happens whenever you want something, right after you take action to achieve what you want.

Put a book on your desk, try to move it along the surface, and you will experience resistance.

Resistance is inevitable. Resistance is to be expected.

The Universe would fall apart without the Resistance.

It's what you do AFTER the resistance that makes all the difference.

EXPECT RESISTANCE.

When you experience resistance, don't worry about it. It's just the way it's supposed to be, and it cannot be otherwise. Resistance is normal. Resistance is the law of the Universe.

If you do not experience Resistance right after you take action to achieve what you want, it only means that the resistance is delayed, and you will encounter somewhat stronger Resistance after a certain time interval elapses.

Take action to overcome the Resistance, and you will achieve what you want.

What action do you take to overcome Resistance?

If I were training you for a fight against a professional heavyweight boxer, I would tell you that in order to overcome his resistance to your attacks you must punch harder and faster than your opponent, move around him in a random pattern he wouldn't be able to predict, and look for every spot in his upper body you can use as a target.

But I am not training you to be a boxer. Courtship is not about destroying the opponent. It is not about jumping out of the trench and sticking a bayonet in her guts. Courtship is about love. Victory in courtship is achieved by the means of love.

And it is very simple.

Here is my favorite description of the Hero.

Hero: a man brave longer.

That's all there is to it. A non-heroic man can be brave until he meets the resistance to his courage. Then his courage is gone, and he is no longer brave.

The Hero remains brave in the face of resistance - he remains brave just a little longer.

Think of it: most of the truly frightening situations that require action last for a minute or two! Two minutes later it is all over, and there is nothing to fear. And within those two minutes there is probably only a second or two that are truly frightening, the rest is quite tolerable.

The truth about fear:

Fear cannot last long.

Even those unique frightening situations that last hours or days - they do have high and low points of fear, and each high point would last no longer than a couple of minutes, and the truly frightening part of such high point lasts only a second or two - maximum.

In fact, in most situations of the Natural Fear the frightening situation lasts only a split second, and is already over before you begin to experience the fear.

And I have already explained to you that the Artificial Fear is ridiculous in its very essence because it is always being induced by cowards. The Artificial Fear disappears completely when you accept the truth.

The Hero is not a man who is brave throughout his entire life. The Hero is a man who can remain brave for just those extra two seconds within minutes. Then he can relax and not be brave anymore.

There is peace on the other side of the storm.

A hero is also a man who is ready to be brave for that split second anytime in his life. Wake him up at night and he is ready to be brave for a split second.

It is incredibly easy to be a Hero. Only I want you to be a very special kind of the Hero. Not only I want you to be a man who is brave longer, I also want you to be a man who is KIND LONGER.

To explain what I mean, let me show you what happens to a man who does not know the secrets that I am teaching you.

He wants to meet a woman. He takes action: he approaches a woman because he thinks that she has something he must get from her. She resists his approach - not because she is a bad person, but simply because resistance is the universal law. The man has not expected her resistance. He immediately becomes ANGRY, and leaves. He thinks he has been rejected. In fact, he has just sabotaged himself.

And now let me show you exactly how it is going to be for you.

You want to meet a woman. You take action: you approach a woman, knowing very well that you can give her something she craves. You expect her resistance as something perfectly normal. You know her resistance will not bother you. She resists your approach - and she might even expect you to get angry. Instead, you react to her resistance with KINDNESS. She is disarmed by your kindness, and is curious about you. For her you are unlike most men she has ever met. She begins to see you for who you are: the Hero. She wants to find out more about you.

I foresee your question: what if she resists again? And again?

I have a personal rule about a woman's consistent resistance. I would like to share this rule with you.

I call my rule "the rule of 3 + 1".

I would allow a "tough" woman to resist me three times in a row, and I react with increasing kindness to each bit of her resistance. Then I would allow her to resist me ONE MORE TIME, simply to give this relationship an extra chance - and react even more kindly. If after that she resists me again, I politely leave her alone: she is not the right woman for me. Why would I continue wasting my time with her when I can effortlessly meet a woman who has better character?

I would like you to choose your own proportion. Make it "5 + 1" or "7 + 1" or "1 + 1" rule, and always follow your intuition - sometimes you might want to give her a second extra chance. Just remember that you do not have to stay around a woman if it is no fun. There is a great gal somewhere out there for you who can make you really happy.

Please realize that every now and then you will find it pointless to continue a conversation with a woman you have met. This is also normal. The material world is imperfect, and it is wise to expect imperfection in the results of what you do. The notion of a man who can "seduce" any woman in the world is an illusion. I will tell you more about it in one of the following chapters. There are quite a few illusions we must destroy so we can see the truth.

Now let us get back to the illusion of the so-called Approach Anxiety.

I have spent so much ink describing the emotion of fear to you because it is my strong belief that the so-called Approach Anxiety is not even fear.

You can trust me on that. I know what fear is about. The phenomenon known as Approach Anxiety is not that.

Back when I used to have it, it felt very different from fear.

So it should not be called anxiety, either.

Here is my main thesis: the phenomenon popularly called the Approach Anxiety is not anxiety at all. We are dealing with a case of social misinterpretation of a very different type of emotion, which has nothing to do with fear.

The Approach Anxiety is a WRONG LABEL.

Some of the leaders of the seduction community had attempted to justify the wrong label by explaining that in their opinion the so-called Approach Anxiety is a psychobiological response genetically pre-programmed in the ancient tribal society when a man could have been killed for approaching a woman that belonged to the leader of the tribe. I find this explanation false, because according to this very explanation only the descendants of the tribal leaders could have survived to our age, and these descendants by definition could not have such response genetically pre-programmed because their predecessors, the tribal leaders, would not have to deal with the threat of being killed, due to the fact that they were the ones who did all the scaring and murdering.

The leaders of the seduction community also insist that the so-called Approach Anxiety is bound to occur every time a man wants to approach an attractive woman. Practice proves that statement false; I personally know a number of men who have reported no negative emotions at the moment they engage a woman in an interaction. Many of those men have been my private clients or the students of the Charm School. I am one of such men. My friend and co-instructor Rob Overman is a great example of such man.

Let us analyze the phenomenon to find out its true nature.

Think of a man who did not have a chance to learn the simple secrets I am revealing to you in this article, and who therefore believes that he is afraid or anxious to approach women. When such man sees a woman he likes - on a street, in a coffee shop, on a train, in a bar - he immediately feels the strong urge to get to know her. Such urge is perfectly natural. I would like you to notice that it contains the great element of curiosity, which is, as I have mentioned elsewhere, a fundamental underlying emotion of the human mating dance.

Then a marvelous thing happens: the body of that man does its best to prepare him for the ritual. The natural chemicals rush suddenly into his blood stream to tune up his brain; to make him more flirtatious, and more resourceful; to boost his energy level; to make his skin glow; to make him more agile, younger-looking, more attractive, and more vigorous; to guarantee his ability to please a woman. His mind is ready to come up with the best things to say and do, to give the woman the most ingenious reasons why she absolutely must get to know that man. He is bursting, trembling with energy like a tightly loaded spring ready to be released, like a racing car at the start line, like a space rocket seconds before the launch.

What he experiences is a unique and very strong form of SEXUAL TENSION. This tension builds up incredibly fast, so two or three seconds later it reaches the almost unbearable level. The man is ready to approach the woman at his best.

And then this ignorant fool ruins everything. Instead of accepting gratefully the powerful help given to him by his own body, he chooses to misinterpret his extreme sexual tension as something very different: fear.

He chooses to be afraid.

As soon as such choice is made, it is all over.

The mind, eager to be helpful, shifts from "joyful anticipation" to "fight for survival". Instead of helping the man to attract the woman, the mind begins to work hard to come up with the most ingenious reasons why he should not approach her: "May be she is married... may be she does not want to be disturbed just now... may be if I stare at her long enough she will notice me and approach me... may be I should go find a bathroom first and check in a mirror if I have something between my teeth..."

A man can rarely win a fight against his own mind.

He rejects something that could have been his chance for great happiness, and throws it into the garbage.

The spring is never released. The car race is lost at the start. The rocket is never launched.

The tension is never relieved properly, and the man turns his own mind against himself. All the wonderful energy he has built up to approach a woman is now inversed and invested into the feelings of self-contempt and self-loathing. And his hyped-up mind entertains itself now with dozens of great reasons why that man deserves to feel so miserable, why he is inherently unlikable, and why he should never even think of approaching a woman again: "Waste of time... it will only make me feel awful... women are not worth it... I must focus on more important things in my life... the French Existentialists were right, the true human connection is impossible".

He might even blame the woman for acting aloof and being cold-hearted and cruel for not reacting positively to his attempts to make an eye contact.

Such is the behavior of an ignorant man. But you are not him: you know and understand the truth.

The emotion you experience when facing a woman you find attractive is called SEXUAL TENSION. It is a very positive emotion, provided to you as HELP. It is also the same exact emotion you will create in a woman in order to make her welcome the idea of having sex with you.

SEXUAL TENSION is our currency.

In many situations a woman experiences sexual tension later into the interaction, due to certain gender differences in psychology. In some other situations she will experience such tension just when you make eye contact, before you even walk up to her. However, my point is, the tension a woman experiences is the same very tension that so many men choose to mislabel as fear. It has nothing to do with fear.

And now I will tell you how it is going to be for you.

When you see a woman you like, you experience a powerful surge of energy. You let this energy build up until it is nearly overwhelming. But your mind remains calm: you know how to control and direct this energy, the energy of SEXUAL TENSION. You know that the more energy you accumulate during this ecstatic moment, the smarter, the more resourceful, the more attractive it will make you. So you wait. You let the energy grow: you wait three, five, ten seconds if necessary, until the tension reaches its absolute peak.

Then you keep this tension at its peak, and connect to your feelings.

You feel like a loaded spring ready to be released.

You feel like a racing car at the start line, the motor of your heart revving joyfully in the anticipation of the inevitable victory.

You feel like a space rocket moments before the launch, ready to soar, your powerful engines roaring in your chest.

Then you tell yourself: "GO". You unleash yourself. You take the five steps toward the woman, who might make you incredibly happy.

And as soon as you take those steps, THE TENSION IS REPLACED BY THE INTOXICATING FEELING OF RELIEF. All the energy you have accumulated is being channeled into the beautiful mating dance the two of you are about to begin. And you do not have to do anything special: your energy will do the job for you.

After two or three approaches you will get hooked on that feeling of relief. You will begin approaching women just to re-experience the exhilaration.

This is how you are going to approach women from now on.

Chapter 24

It is not possible to prove the reality of the material world.

It is not possible to prove that the material world is not real.

It all comes to making a personal choice.

I choose to believe that the Universe has no being. I find this belief more beautiful than the opposite, I fins it more consistent and more effective.

I foresee your questions: What in the world does this have to do with courtship? If the Universe has no being, what is the point of courtship at all?

Please be patient. I will try my best to communicate my thoughts, and I hope we will understand each other.

There are two major angles of philosophy: materialism and idealism.

Materialism says that the matter is all there is, that there is no such thing as soul, spirit, God, etc. All those things, according to materialism, are he false labels placed upon the instincts, brain chemistry, and physical laws.

Idealism says that not only soul does exist, but soul is the only thing that is real.

Time has no being. The past has no being, it is no more. The future has no being, it is not yet. The present is elusive, and shrinks into non-being.

The space would not be perceptible without time. The space is formed by time. But if time is an illusion, so must be the space.

Space and time are not reality. They are only the grid, the system of conventional coordinates, they are with us like the language we speak. The purpose is to simplify the perception, but unfortunately those things do not serve the purpose. They only make the perception false. But without the grid, everything disappears!

I like idealism. Possibility for the idealism in courtship is what had attracted me to Charisma Arts in the first place. I like the form of courtship in which the soul of a woman is what really counts. At least this is what I think we teach, in the majority of cases. This is what I think makes Charisma Arts absolutely unique.

Idealism in courtship has a few curious implications.

Idealism removes anxiety and fear. When a man knows that he is immortal (because the only thing that is real about him, his soul, has never been born and will never die), he achieves real courage.

According to idealism, there is no real difference between the subject and the object. There is no real difference between me and a woman I am speaking with. Our souls are intimately connected from before we had been born, and they are already more intimately connected than our bodies ever can, sex or no sex. Therefore, no one is a stranger to no one. When I speak to someone, it is God in me speaking to God in the other person. And it is the same God. In reality, I and a woman I speak with are the same thing.

And by the way, there is no difference between me and you, the reader. I am also you, as you are me.

Idealism says that the nature has no reality. Traditional materialistic Western culture has imposed a paradoxical belief in us that nature is intoxicatingly pleasant, while at the same time being dangerous and corrupt. But if we believe that nature is not real, how can it be corrupt - and how can it be so pleasant as to take our mind from infinitely more important things? Therefore, idealism removes the sense of guilt, and replaces it with the true ethics based on compassion and love.

And we do need compassion and love in the courtship. We let it occur without compassion and love way too long.

We can also comfortably get rid of all the theories that treat a human being as a sick animal. Who cares what our cavemen predecessors felt or did in their caves? We are not them. Who had ever managed to prove they existed, in the first place? (And I am talking about deeper, philosophical meaning of the proof, the one that that goes beyond the materialistic science). Why complicate the reality by dragging the past out of its well-forgotten grave? Why not deal with the immediate situation instead?

Idealism presumes that it does not matter how the body looks, true courtships becomes possible on the spiritual level, when the matters of the body are cast away. We can only get close to being happy when the body looses its value, anyway.

We can get rid of all socially imposed notions about ourselves, and finally see a clear picture by pursuing the Truth.

We can see that money is not important, either.

We can finally completely forgive ourselves and the others for the past. In fact, we do not even have anything to forgive because the past had never taken place. It is but a delusion of our mind.

We can choose who we want to be and be who we want to be, without long struggle and gradual progress, because the timeline loses any meaning when there is no past and no future. Why create the time and why wait when all the things we want to achieve are simple and can be achieved instantly?

To achieve contact with someone - REAL contact! - we just need to take off the masks and see the great unity of souls.

Chapter 25

When I am told that some man can seduce any woman he chooses to, I wince.

From that moment on I will have to consider that man a liar. And I sure prefer him to be a liar, because if he is not deceiving himself or others, it means he can only be a rapist.

What I am about to tell you is basic, and yet the illusory notion of the Absolute Seducer is so deeply rooted in the psyche of the modern man that to get rid of it I have to explain the most elementary things.

Any woman has her own ideas of what she wants, who she wants to share her life with, what kind of a man she wants to have a relationship with, what kind of a man she wants to spend her time with, who and for what reason she finds sexually desirable, and so on.

A woman is a human being.

Yes, believe it or not!

Even the most charismatic man in the world may find himself in a situation when a woman he is courting just is not into him.

There are three possible things a man can do when a woman makes it very clear that she does not find him desirable as a romantic partner.

1) A man can accept her will with respect to her as a human being, and treat her as a noble friend would. This is the way of a true man. The true man knows that a woman might yet change her mind, and he knows the importance and power of noble friendship. On the other hand, the true man knows that he would never do things to make a woman feel inferior, and he knows that a woman is responsible for her own choices.

or

2) A man can get upset, walk away, and begin to hate the woman for having rejected him, and to hate himself for being unlikable. This is the way of a victim. Happens too often, unfortunately.

or

3) A man can do something to architect a certain set of circumstances and/or influence the mind of a woman in such ways that her will, even though she has not changed it, is no longer considered valid. Then he finds away to go around what she really wants, and she ends up having sex with him. Then he is gone to pursue another woman. This is the way of the rapist.

Threat of physical violence, lies, mind games, emotional blackmail, psychological manipulation, tricky behavior of various sorts, all these things work in the same way, because they all presume that the will of a woman is irrelevant, and all those things qualify a man who uses them as a rapist.

For example, even a moderately trained hypnotist can probably make a woman have sex with him while she is under the influence of his speech patterns, but the fact that she would not show resistance would not make him less of a rapist. Because he would be doing something to a woman ignoring her will.

From the perspective of the individual will of a woman, using a gun to threaten her and using tricks and gimmicks to fool her into the submission, are more or less the same.

The truth is, the way of the victim and the way of the rapist are related. They are both weak ways. Only the victim is infinitely superior, because at least the victim does not act on his frustration. He is helpless, but he does not ruin lives.

I wonder how many men out there believe that they have changed and finally achieved success in their romantic lives, while in fact they have transformed themselves from victims to rapists. It is a nightmare.

I suspect that the famous seducers of the past were none others that glorified rapists. And I suspect that so are some of the famous seducers of our age.

We should become true men. We should love and respect women. We should make women feel safe with us.

My friend and co-instructor Rob often says, "I do not believe in the Golden Rule; I believe in the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule implies treating the others as we want to be treated; the Platinum Rule means treating the others as they want to be treated."

Make women happy on their own terms.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part VI

Fundamental Principles

Chapter 26

The entire Juggler Method is rooted in a couple of fundamental principles.

Those few principles are rooted in one: the principle of Alpha Nice.

There is a rather widespread notion that Alpha Nice is a Juggler Method tactic for dealing with the aggressive male interference. This notion is partly correct, but too narrow.

Yes, Alpha Nice does work very consistently when, say, our client who wisely chose New York as the location for his one-on-one private coaching or Charm School bootcamp (if you can make it there you'll make it anywhere) has a fascinating conversation with a woman he likes - and discovers suddenly that there is a pissed-off man nearby who had always wanted to talk to that woman exactly the way our client does now, but could not muster up the courage. In this case our client just invites the grumpy dude to join the conversation, and makes friends with him: a kind of graceful and self-assured behavior that prompts that woman swoon over our guy immediately for some magical reason.

Such is the power of Alpha Nice.

But Alpha Nice is bigger than that.

For me the Alpha Nice comes from the realization that there is only one true and ultimate authority over all the matters related to my life: myself.

Say this with me: I am the true and ultimate authority over my life.

Hey, I did not mean that you should say: Dimitri is the true and ultimate authority over his life! When I said I, I meant you. So let us say it again:

I am the true and ultimate authority over my life!

Right. You are the authority.

Just you.

You, and no one else must make choices in your life. You, and no one else should take responsibilities for those choices.

Take charge now. Become the authority over the only thing that matters, a thing that includes all the other things: your life.

And when you see that something in your life needs to be improved, it is your responsibility to make this improvement. Be on it.

If you remember to pay proper respect to your own authority over your life, you will achieve and maintain the ultimate state of self-respect and confidence.

Confidence does not come from success. It is the other way around. Success comes from confidence. Confidence comes from acknowledging and respecting your own authority over your life.

Having the ultimate respect to myself, I am being nice to myself of course. So should you. Tell the self-deprecating, down-putting voices in your mind to shut up.

And now please realize that you cannot be the authority over the life of anyone else, simply because in their life they are the true and ultimate authorities!

So not only you respect yourself as the ultimate authority over your life, but you respect every single person around you for being the ultimate authorities over their lives.

When I respect others as the ultimate authorities over their lives, I feel compelled to be nice to them.

Successful social life can be described as the great conspiracy of the authorities to be nice to each other.

Chapter 27

Anything we do has a goal of self-expression.

The entire modern civilization has been built as a way for the human beings to express themselves. Our houses and roads, our machines and flower gardens, our arts and sports, our languages, our mythologies, our sciences, our selfless urge to reach other planets, even our wars, all those are the means of human self-expression.

And yet, the irony is that our desire to project our minds outward has been continuously punished by the very civilization that owes its existence to that desire.

We have been socially conditioned to repress our emotions, to clam up, to hide our creativity, to adopt the verbal language and the body language of the servitude.

The grade system in out schools, throughout the world, has taught us to conform to a standard of mediocrity and to seek approval. The true knowledge is almost never achieved, having been replaced by the corrupt principle of saying something to please the teacher and examiner. And we either choose to please, and become sickeningly nice, or we get into a trap of aimless rebellion, of being fake-bad boys and fake-bad girls, and lose our identity to the various forms of sociopathic behavior. We had been programmed to self-destruct if we do not obey, and we self-destruct through self-expression, first suppressed and then channeled the wrong way.

The goal of the Juggler Method is to direct both categories of people, the neurotic nice guys and the neurotic rebels, to the path of true self-expression. In some other society in some other time the essence of the method might have been different, but in our increasingly robotized, mechanized society the key to developing the healthy self is connecting to own EMOTIONS and bringing those emotions out there.

The fundamental principle of Self-Expression is rooted in the fundamental principle of Alpha Nice. The ability to express oneself comes from taking charge of own life and taking absolute responsibility for own choices. Fearlessness of the self-expression comes from the state of ultimate authority, achieved through the mastery of Alpha Nice.

From my point of view of the Alpha Nice individual, when something does not seem right, when something bothers me about my condition, I must express it, at least through my words or, preferably, through action. I like it better to speak in the language of action. But the language of words also helps every now and then.

On the other hand, when something feels right, when the truth and kindness triumph, when someone does something brave or talented or cute or simply genuine, I express what I feel about it and give people the gift of my emotional generosity.

All the specific techniques of the Juggler Method branch from the principle of Self-Expression. What I have described two paragraphs above is called Disqualification. What I had described one paragraph above is called the Reward.

When I find something sexy about a woman, I do not hesitate to express that to her, and this is called the Statement of Intent.

When something she says or does reminds me of something else, I freely share my experience with her, and that is what Relating is all about.

But I must emphasize that the principle of Self-Expression goes way beyond the basic conversational skills.

Expressing my emotions, and especially my Alpha Nice state of mind through my posture and body language is unbelievably important.

Expressing my self-respect through my choice of clothes and through grooming is equally important.

Expressing my confidence via the eye contact, expressing my friendliness when it is proper via the confident smile, and expressing the seriousness of my intentions via the I-will-not-back-off kind of vacuum, those are crucial.

I would like to share with you a wonderful short poem by the great American Walt Whitman, from the Leaves of Grass.

Stranger! If you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?

Such are the words of the man who knew the power of the Self-Expression.

So if I want to approach a woman and to talk to her, I express this desire through the action of the Approach. If I want to touch someone I speak with, I do so. When I want to speak the truth, I do.

At the same time, back to the Alpha Nice principle, whatever specific means of self-expression I pursue, I do it in such a way as to not repress the self-expression of the others.

And yet I project myself even further outward. Expressing my desire to be my best Self through my choices and my behavior leads me through the journey of the spiritual growth. Fulfilling my dreams is one of the highest forms of Self-Expression. Being able to sacrifice my ego for the sake of something beyond it is the ultimate Self-Expression.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part VII

From the Journal of a Courtship Instructor

Chapter 28

One of my private clients asked me recently during our one-on-one training session what’s it like to have taught dozens of men how to seduce women. I told him quite sincerely that I had no clue what that would be like.

The truth is, I do not teach men how to seduce women.

I teach men how to be so damn cool that the women they meet would crave to seduce them.

I teach the art of self-respect and the craft of confidence, and I school my students in how to project those qualities outward.

I am proud to say that it took me only a little over a year to figure out what the hell I teach.

What shocks me the most when I think about my past is how frighteningly cool I actually used to be, back when I was a kid, and how easily and imperceptibly I allowed my great human qualities to slip away. By twenty four I knew how to fly airplanes, trained martial artists, composed symphony music, and conducted operas and ballets for living. I was healthy, full of life, driven by my interest in art, and brimming with great expectations. I was popular and surrounded by friends. I had to be very selective with girls because they stalked me everywhere.

And there I was ten years afterwards, stuck in a horribly boring 80 hours a week job which couldn’t even pay my bills, up-to the hairline in debt, a two-to-three-packs-a-day chain smoker, overweight by seventy pounds, lonely and unkept, divorced from the woman whose life I felt I had ruined, vainly trying to drawn my grief in alcohol every night, and watching helplessly how the creative aspirations of my youth were about to be extinguished. My talents and my ambition to become a creative writer were slipping through my fingers. I felt on the verge of emotional and spiritual death.

The change to the worse was so subtle and insidious that I had turned into the opposite of how I saw myself. By the mid-thirties I became my own doppelganger. I knew it, and I knew I would never be able to get myself back.

What I did not know was that all of it was about to change.

I found Charisma Arts.

I’m still trying to figure out what made me sign up for a Charm School in New York (that’s where I live). I can tell you though that back then the cost of the bootcamp seemed to me like a hell of a lot of money, and what’s worse, I did not even had that money, the only way for me to sign up was to go deeper into debt (something I would not advocate). Well, I signed up anyway, not knowing why, not knowing I had just done something that would empower me to resurrect to happiness.

I signed up two weeks before the date, and spent those two weeks trying to talk myself into the commitment to the change. I remember that somehow I expected to have challenging but great time during my bootcamp.

I was wrong.

The bootcamp seemed like a miserable experience. At least, that’s how I felt right after it.

Judge for yourself: I got one married woman’s phone number on the first night of practice; a rather well-known young fashion model rejected my advances very politely during the day game; later on the same day in the same bookstore I number-closed a radiant nineteen year-old girl from Brazil, and on the second night I made out with everyone in a bachelorette party. Unfortunately, the glorious deed seemed to have drained my energy, and I spent the rest of the night sulking in a corner.

One of the instructors who helped me through the camp commented on my ever-unsmiling face. I don’t remember what did I expect to happen during the bootcamp, but I do remember that I felt dissatisfied with my performance. I suspect that the dissatisfaction I felt was quite simply the sign of my overall dissatisfaction with who I was and what my life was like back then.

And I do remember how during the first minutes of the bootcamp I felt a strong intuitive urge to apply for the instructor’s job. Actually, now that I think of it, the first words that came out of my mouth during the bootcamp were, “I want to be an instructor for Charisma Arts”.

I repeated the same words in the end of the Charm School. I wanted partying, adventure, coolness and glamor as legitimate items on the list of my job duties.

My instructor told me to practice at least once a week and come back to see him in about half a year. He sounded very polite and very skeptical.

The problem was, I didn’t feel I had half a year. I was in a “now or never” situation. Even these days as I look back and think about it I do believe that my life would never change and just roll speeding downhill if I hadn’t made a deal with myself.

The deal was that I would practice every day and every night, and come back to the next Charisma Arts bootcamp in New York as a volunteer wingman.

So I started practicing. There was a problem though: my 80 hours a week working schedule. I had to find the way around it.

And I did.

Every morning and every evening on my way to and from work I had to spend an hour on a subway. Normally it would be time to catch up on sleep. I decided to sacrifice that to self-improvement.

So every morning I walked along the train, from a car to a next car, and talked to every woman who seemed receptive and approachable. I recall awakening some of those women so that they could talk to me.

I finished work at midnight every night, and headed to some of the largest bars in New York. I warmed up on my way there, talking to people on the streets and in trains.

In bars, I began with having to have at least one practice interaction per night. Which meant that the earlier I begin, the earlier I would get home, and the more sleep I would have. So most of the time I would open the very first group, lead the conversation quickly to the statement of intent, wish them good night and bail out. Some other times, when I was not feeling it, I had to wait till almost closing time before having my obligatory interaction. On such bad nights I didn’t go home at all, I just went straight back to work and slept there for a couple of hours.

Then I began raising the bar.

Two interactions a night. Three. Four. Then I told myself I would not leave the bar until I get one girl’s phone number or email address – or until the bar is closed (the annoyance of staying yet another night out of bed led me to some spectacular, lightning-fast number closes).

And I was posting on Charisma Arts alumni board several times a day. Every question, every discovery, every doubt and every little triumph, everything went there.

After three weeks of doing that I could number-close and kiss-close quite consistently, and felt I could demonstrate some of the techniques. On the other hand, due to sheer exhaustion the vibe I projected was getting worse and worse. I started freaking girls out on the approach so I began getting blown off much more often than before. I was in a fog. I felt drunk with fatigue. And yet, somehow, I managed to progress.

Here’s what it felt like:

I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got a phone number. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got a phone number. I got blown off. I got blown off. I made out with an ugly girl. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got an email address. I got blown off. I got blown off. I made out with a cute girl. I got blown off. I got blown off. I got laid. I got blown off. I got a phone number. I got laid. I got blown off. I got a phone number. I got a phone number. I got laid. I got a phone number. I got laid. I got laid. I got blown off (who cares?) I got laid. I got an email address.

And so on.

I remember having an incredibly inspiring conversation with a girl who I walked home with, spent a night, and never heard back from, no matter how many times I texted or called her. I remember almost accidentally opening a woman in her late twenties with “Hey, I’d like to make love to you tonight!” and sealing the deal on her couch a few hours afterwards. I remember having my neck licked profusely by an overwhelmingly hot and equally drunk Harvard coed who forced her number into my phone and never picked up the phone when I called her.

Then one day I felt I couldn’t do it anymore. So I decided to go one extra mile and get the job or die. I took a week off work, and put myself through a five days and five nights of non-stop practice.

On the fifth night I demonstrated my skills to the same skeptical instructor who came back to run the Charm School in New York. I opened the set of about five guys and three girls, knife through the butter style. I started talking about various aspects of relationships, and I knew what would happen, and it did: the five guys stood up and left to get their drinks, bored with the topic. The three girls flocked around me, chirping animatedly. I put my arms around the two girls.

I took a quick look back and saw my former instructor goggling, his jaw on the floor.

I got the job.

Six weeks after I went through what seemed like a torture of being a really bad Charm School student, I was teaching my first one. Those were six weeks of insanity, but they paid off.

I got a “10 out of 10” from all the clients of my first bootcamp, so I never had a chance to be an instructor-in-training.

A lot of stuff happened since. I had to reinvent the method to make it fit my personality. As a matter of fact, I had to do that several times, as my character changed drastically more than once. I was a high-energy goofy guy; a clown. A serious deep guy, a la Mr. Darcy from “Pride and Prejudice”. A conversational technician. A philosopher. A too-cool-for-school rebel. A messiah. You may have noticed the changes in the style of the chapters of this book, the ones you have read by now and the ones which I hope you will read ahead. Those chapters were written in the different moments of the last year, and reflect my progress and change.

I’m on the quest of having no fixed form now.

I had a performance crisis when my game crashed and hit the bottom of a deepest pit in April in Vegas; it rose from ashes in May in Boston. Once a well-known instructor from one of the leading rival companies tried to “amog” me in front of my clients; he did not succeed. The other time I pulled three cute girls one by one from a bunch of instructors and clients of another rival company, and my co-instructor Rob cemented that interaction, while one of those guys tried to hover and listen and make notes and what Rob was saying to one of the girls. Get used to it gentlemen, happens all the time. People living in countries as far apart as Morocco, Japan, Chili, and Kenya read my articles on courtship and encouraged me to write more. A guy who saw me in action once introduced me as the “strongest pick-up artist in the world” to his friends in a posh Manhattan high society party filled with stage- and TV celebrities.

I do not think I am the strongest pick up artist in the world. Actually, I do not consider myself a pick-up artist at all.

But these days I am indeed one of the best experts in the world at teaching modern courtship for men. That much I know for sure and can say with certainty.

In one year I taught close to 200 men how to meet and connect with women. I do fail sometimes. But most of the time, I succeed.

By the way, since the day I took a bootcamp as a client, a few things changed in my life. I quit smoking. I dropped fifty pounds, and counting. I work out. I am out of debt. I tripled my income while having cut my working hours by four times. I spend my free time writing stories. I have plenty of designer clothes, and a high-performance motorcycle that I ride to Boston and D.C. to teach my private clients and Charm Schools students. I own a business. And I am in a relationship with an attractive and intelligent woman whom I love and who loves me.

Chapter 29

I was rearranging items in my traveling bag and in a side pocket found a notebook I lost a while ago. The last entries were made in Washington D.C. where I ran a workshop in the early spring.

The notes I made in that notebook were random and chaotic and not very original. There is not much logic there, either. And a lot of things changed in my life since that time. But something in those notes from Washington still strikes the cord with me. I am going to publish those notes here in this little book just in case I lose that notebook again.

Mindless sex with someone I do not care about emphasizes loneliness instead of intimate connection, and I feels used. I am not saying that casual sex is always bad. It might be okay on the condition that you and she are pleased and most importantly you are not ruining lives yours, hers, or that of anyone else. If I were single and saw a great woman I liked who would be suffering in her relationship, i.e. being mistreated, I would remove her from the relationship. Ethical choices are not given to us by our heritage, culture, etc. They are our personal choices. They are something we have to decide for ourselves every time anew.

People who create that notion of playboy lifestyle have unrealistic expectations and not necessarily very smart. Why should I be brainwashed by people whose judgment I can not trust? I would ask myself, who am I, what do I really want?

If I have a doubt, I would test it, I would not dedicate myself to something I were not sure about. No one will punish you if you live playboy lifestyle, but it has the potential to be an addiction. A few months ago I quit smoking because it mad me miserable. Playboy lifestyle is more addictive, it's materialistic and makes people lose who they are. Playboy lifestyle can lead to neurosis, to losing touch with who you are.

What a man really needs is to do is to check his values and follow the path that leads you to the true happiness. Do not do it by the Hollywood standards or any other social standards, this is all much more personal. I am still trying to get rid of a lot of wrong beliefs.

My ideal picture of happiness in my romantic life is to be with one woman I truly like and have a deep spiritual connection, and have kids with her and be their friend, and teach them what I know.

Recommended readings. Plato, because he makes people question their values. Materialistic values were the ones that led people to emptiness of the soul. Socrates was a great psychologist, because he came from the idea that happiness is based on a pure soul. The soul is the one that suffers.

There is a possibility of emptiness and destroying your own soul. If you get hooked on sexual experience you might end up being psychotic. If a guy has the power to pursue material happiness repeatedly, it is never perfect. One's sexual craving can never get completely fulfilled.

I eat it but my stomach is not full, and I feel if I eat more I will get fulfilled. Meanwhile, my soul gets neglected.

There is also a possibility to remove meaning from life. There must be a higher goal than just hedonistic enjoyment. It is a reality that a lot of fulfillment that can come from women, but if a guy is not happy in the first place, no woman will make him feel happy. This is why I do not believe in finding my other half. A man who looks for a woman to complete him is incomplete and all he can expect is a neurotic relationship. We must be complete in order to be with the other person.

I would not be able to handle many women, life is to precious and too short to dedicate it only to sexual pursuits.

Chapter 30

There is a certain disparity in the mating game. A man must initiate it. That gives a woman initial advantage in power. To avoid turning the courtship into a power struggle, a man has to balance the scales. That is why a man must provide a woman with the opportunity to make the next move.

Showing early sexual interest in a woman is the main problem with many of my clients. There is the time to check out her body, but in the majority of cases the approach is not that time.

It works very well for some of my friends and colleagues, but I personally find it counterproductive to immediately emotionally open to a woman I had just met. I do not make myself emotionally available to her before she has deserved it. I open up gradually, and make each of the steps in that process a reward to her for taking a step toward me.

Early in the interaction, avoid bringing irrelevant generic commonalities into it. Oh, I have a good friend who is from Cleveland, too! This is stupid and irritating, and communicates a naive desire to build rapport at any cost.

Disqualify by behavior.

After having sex with a woman for the first time, and in some cases even after having sex with a woman a thousand times, do not mention that sexual encounter next time you talk to her. Talking about it would make her feel put on the spot and guilty for having sex with you, even punished.

Complimenting a very attractive woman on her looks on the approach has the effect of wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, an idiot with zero social skills.

Projecting sexual vibe during the day game approach and asking for a book recommendation is a sure way to trigger a resistance in the majority of the situations. Imagine asking a woman about a good book she can recommend, while clutching a dildo. Same effect. If you go indirect, go nonsexual.

Accept the risks associated with the life you want to live.

The very essence of the courtship: benefit from the accidental.

Chapter 31

Being a good communicator does not necessarily mean that I have to spill the guts to someone I had just met. In fact, it might be easy to punch through the envelope when trying too hard to build the rapport. When a woman asks me a question I do not want to answer, I would rather gracefully avoid answering it. I say things like-

"Well, how about you let me remain a little enigmatic to you for a while?"

"I would rather not go into that yet."

"Let us postpone that. Tell me-"

"It is a little early for us to discuss that, but I promise I will definitely tell you eventually when we get to know each other a little better."

Composure is everything.

Know what you want from the interaction, but be flexible in accepting higher goal midway.

I like to communicate with women who can handle a situation of being approached by a man. My approach is the first test among many I put a woman through during our interaction. On the approach I test and qualify her in how well she handles being approached.

I prefer to take a few moments and figure out the logistics of the group before the approach. I can usually find out a lot about the group or a single person before I even approach them. For example in a bar I find it quite easy to recognize every woman who came to hook up with a guy, in a bookstore or any other day game place it is easy to recognize if a woman would not mind being courted by a man who knows how to behave.

If a woman is comfortable with the approach and receptive right after, it usually takes no effort to seduce her.

I take the initiative to immediately get out of an interaction that clearly leads nowhere. I prefer to leave such interaction as soon as I can do it gracefully.

A man who takes himself seriously is very attractive to most women. A man who takes himself TOO seriously appears ridiculous to most women. When I talk to women who were perfect strangers to me only minutes ago, I subtly make fun of my vulnerabilities, and keep my cool.

Chapter 32

I'll be brief.

Nightgame during the bootcamp. 18th Street Lounge in DC. I open an all-female 7-set. It's one of the girl's birthday. Instead of saying "Happy birthday!" as probably every guy who tried to hit on her said to her tonight, I say: "Cool, means I'm in the right place. I'm your birthday present!" She giggles. I add: "I'm here to do whatever it takes to make you feel great".

I say this loudly, expecting her or one of the girls to be a hoop-maker.

Sure enough, her friend fires off a hoop: "Dance for her!"

I say, "I don't dance, but I'm going to show her a magic trick."

The friend yells out for everyone at the table to hear: "Hey! He's gonna show us a magic trick!"

I get myself next to the birthday girl. I say: "This magic trick is called "the Stolen Kiss". I'm afraid it's not a very good magic trick, but I promise you'll be entertained. Close your eyes."

She does.

I kiss her.

Everybody is stunned. Then they crack up, including the birthday girl who is giving me THE LOOK.

I go: "Actually, I don't know any magic tricks. But I have another kind of present for you. It's a secret I would like to tell you. Lean closer."

She does.

I kiss her. This time she is quite comfortable with the idea of kissing me and is very willing.

Takes about a minute from the approach to the makeout session.

The tactic here is to provoke the hoop from the target or anyone else in proximity, and then use the hoop as the justification for the kiss.

Chapter 33

It's last November, if I'm not mistaken. I run a solo bootcamp in New York, Saturday nightgame, about 2 in the morning, I'm insanely tired, and so are both clients. I and one of the guys are at a bar, he says, I'm done for tonight, but Dee, I wanna see you in action just one more time to have a high note of the night.

But I'm to lazy to look for a good set, so I go after the closest target available: a chick buying drinks a couple of feet away. "Hey, what's up?"

I guess because of being tired, my vibe was a little off, so she got somewhat defensive. The first words from her are: "But I'm here with my friends!"

The rest was automatic. Pure Juggler method, no thinking, just skills working for themselves without any participation of my mind. I say "Cool, why don't you introduce me to them?"

She probably didn't expect that, so she said, "Hm... okay!"

And she takes off and walks across the entire bar. I drag behind her, and the client follows me.

To my horror I realize that the chick heads straight toward a set of about 30 0r 40 people partying at the farthest end of the bar, mostly girls. I say "to my horror" not because I scared of big sets (anyone with a bit of experience knows that those are are the easiest ones), but because large sets are "sticky", and no matter how much I wanna go home I would have to spend another hour there. But the client's wish is above all, so I decide, let me experiment at least. So I think, why don't I escalate not with just one person in the group, but instead escalate my way around the set.

So I shake the first chick's hand rather formally, the other one I touch on the shoulder as I shake her hand, I put my arm around the third one, I give the forth one a hug and kiss her one on the neck (never kiss anyone on the cheek), I turn the fifth one around and kiss her on the lips, and then I make the sixth one stand up, I sit on her stool, pull her on my lap and make out with her. Then I shake her off, stand up and move to the seventh chick.

Except it's not a chick. It's a dude.

And that dude stands up. And stands up. And STANDS UP.

And then he continues to stand up some more. By this time I see that he's about seven feet tall and weights something like three hundred seventy five pounds, all muscle.

And he's not smiling.

It was his girlfriend I had just made out with.

So I go into the well-trained pattern of behavior: when there is a dark male mass towering in front of me, I crack a hearty grin, and generously reach out for a handshake.

- "Hey man, I'm Dimitri!"

- "I don't give a @#$%!"

- "Pardon me?"

Usually they do not repeat but this one does:

- "I said, I don't give a @#$%!"

His voice sounds like a growl of a dog who's about to attack. But I am still not thinking, everything I say is automatic.

- "Hey, I don't give a @#$% either, Dimitri's just what my parents called me. I'd rather be called something else!"

This takes him by surprise.

- "What do you wanna be called?"

This takes ME by surprise.

- "Mmmm...hmmmm... I don't know... aaaa... Andrey!"

An awkward pause, while we both try to balance our fight-or-flight dilemma. I guess it's time for me to say something.

- "By the way, I see you stand up for your women like a soldier... and you look like a soldier... and you have a crew cut like a soldier... I'd bet you're a soldier!"

- "Damn right, I'm a Navy SEAL lieutenant!"

- "Hey man, great to meet you, I'm a Russian Air Force captain! Only I'm in reserve cause I'm not as young as you are."

The guy is totally dumbfounded now. A few seconds later:

- "So you wanted to bomb us, right? You wanted to bomb the Americans?"

This one is easy.

- "No, man. Not to bomb. To shoot down. (I point at my chest) A fighter, not a bomber".

Another long pause. Finally the would-be-murderer in front of me shakes his head.

- "Okay, then".

But I must seal the deal. Nothing better than making a demand in such case.

- "I think it's about time you buy me a drink".

- "Sure. We got vodka. You Russians are into vodka, right?"

- "Yep! By the way, "vodka" means "water" in Russian".

- "HAHAHAHA!"

And he slaps me on the back so hard I barely manage to stand on my feet.

So I sit down next to him and his girlfriend, and then realize the client of mine who I completely forgot about is standing right here, his jaw dropped to the floor. He is invited to join, and we spend the next two hours getting smashed.

What I like the best about that experience is that I cannot even take credit for it. Whatever I did was a pure improvisation, but it was based on the techniques and structures I've learned from Juggler. Can't take credit for it, but would gladly take credit for being a damn good learner and for allowing my mind to solve the problem without me interfering.

Whew... Nothing like a little bragging before going to bed. Always wanted to describe this experience in writing, and always kept forgetting. Now it's done.

I wish I had stuff like that happen more often. I can't boast I'm always like that, though. Sometimes I can't talk my way out of simplest situations. Sometimes the whole bootcamp is one endless "@#$% off" experience. And for mercy's sake don't ask me about what conversation took place between me and a Delaware highway patrolman last Thursday, at about five in the morning, when I accidentally passed him on a motorcycle on my way to meet the private client in DC. Very embarrassing.

Chapter 34

Girls are socially conditioned to think of themselves as buyers on the meat market. I want to reverse the role and make her feel she's a seller.

I prefer to reverse the roles as early as I can.

That's why I open with: "Excuse me... I couldn't help noticing..."

ATTENTION: EXPLICIT MATERIAL

:-)

I pause. She expects me to follow up with a lame line like, you and your friends have great energy, or you guys are having so much fun, etc.

Instead, I say: "For the last ten minutes you were checking out my penis. What's the deal?"

I say it deadpan, then I crack a grin.

I do it because even though it seems like a tough thing to say, it will greatly simplify everything for me in the long run.

Or if I calibrate that she might not be receptive to the hardcore role reversal on the opening, I reverse the roles after about a minute of conversation.

I ask her a simple questions. For example, "What's your racket?" (Whenever I find myself asking a dull question, like "what do you do?" I rephrase it to make it sound interesting).

Let's say, she responds with "I'm a math teacher".

I immediately say: "Oh, that means you have a lot of one-night stands!"

She laughs: "Where the hell did that come from?"

All I have to do now is justify: "Well, as a math teacher you sure appreciate the difference between less and more. Which means, you know that being just friends means being just friends, while being lovers means being lovers AND friends. Hence, you have a lot of one-night stands because you can never resist a higher offer!"

I do not prepare any routines. I just use my imagination to justify the sexual behavior I presume about her.

Or if she goes, "I am a nurse!" I go" "Oh... that means you're into sixty nine!" She laughs and goes, "Why?" I say: "Because as a nurse you're anatomically curious and believe in reciprocation!"

Or she says, "I'm a lawyer", and I say, "Oh... it means you like it in the butt!" She cracks up completely. I aught, too, and then say, "Oh you do, don't you?" She says, "Well, yeah, I kinda do, but how the @#$% is this related to being a lawyer?" And I say, "Well, it's very simple. Because... mmmm... ghm... Actually, I have no clue, I've just made it up. So how old were you when you had your first crush?"

Then I escalate.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part VIII

Inner Game

Chapter 35

What makes me believe that women are attracted to me?

Existential proof. My existence in the material world is due to the fact that my mother had been attracted to my father enough to not only have sex with him but to want to have a child with him.

My existence is the fact I have to deal with rather regularly - like 24 hours a day seven days a week or something - - so it would be hard for me to ignore this most essential proof of the fact of sexual attraction women feel toward men. Going out to meet some people I take a few minutes to meditate on the fact of my existence - which is of course illusory in the idealistic sense - and yet it is important for me to be able to function in the material plane, since the material world is the world of choice and action, and my choices and my actions make me who I am and thus build my soul.

So I connect to the core of my existence and it becomes something like this:

Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am - Descartes)

Sum ergo sum desiderabilis (I am, therefore I am desirable - Demetrius)

My actual existence means that women want me.

For two reasons:

I believe that my existence is not an accident;
I exist in the form of an ordinary human male.

Ordinary human females (including very beautiful ones) need ordinary human males for sex and male companionship. I fit in the category and possess the required characteristics. I have what they need. There is nothing accidental about having a romantic experience - it is an ordinary part of the existence.

But there is more to it.

There is a higher level of connection - to my true Self. When I am connected to my true Self, the illusory fact of my of my birth becomes irrelevant.

What I am saying is sometimes instead of connecting to my EXISTENCE (perception of the illusory reality) I manage to connect to my BEING (true reality). Connecting to my being equals being "in the moment", which means being alive NOW - in this tiny shrinking dot on the imaginary (illusory) timeline between past and present. I know that the more I shrink this dot, the more I am bound to work miracles. I think if one day I manage to shrink this dot real well, I will be able to step off the roof of the Empire State building and fly. (But I suspect at this point such adventure will present itself to me as extremely boring - because the actual fact of being in the moment ABSOLUTELY is the ultimate adventure).

When I do not care about anything that had happened to me before and I do not give a damn about the future, when I am "drunk with now" - the most amazing things occur - because I am truly who I am, because I can take any risk, because there will be no consequences, because I am immortal (death is the event of the future and the future does not exist, therefore the death does not exist) and because I had never been born (birth is the event of the past, the past does not exists, therefore the birth does not exist).

So when I am in the moment, I am the immortal, ever-present being that had never been born and will never die.

I am God.

Being "in the moment" is the way to connect to God - in myself. Being God is the way to go.

As God, I do whatever I want with my world. Being God, I am eternally, endlessly, absolutely beautiful.

Everything in the world is attracted to the beauty of God.

Including women.

Chapter 36

Let me ask a few open-ended questions to help someone with their inner game.

If you had owned a socially valuable object, for example, a really fast and expensive car like Ferrari or Lamborghini, or a really beautiful large piece of real estate like an historic castle in Europe - how proud would have you been of owning it? How much owning such object would contribute to your positive self-image and to your self-esteem? On the scale of one to ten - in the aspect of owning something in your life - how would it make you feel?

If you had achieved something in life that would immediately give you enormous social status - for example, cured a disease that was previously thought incurable, saved the world from hunger - or did something simpler like having acted the lead role in one of the all-time best films - and everyone you met were expressing their respect to you - how proud of your achievement would you have been? In what way having unlimited social respect would contribute to your self-respect? On the scale of one to ten, how would it make you feel?

If your face and body were so perfectly proportionate that you were the absolute representation of human beauty - how confident would it make you? If you were that beautiful, how would your rate your physical appearance on the scale of one to ten?

If you had physical beauty, social respect and the property - and were forced to choose between losing them all and losing your life or your mind - what would you choose to loose?

The conclusion is - you already have something much more valuable than the three assets I have mentioned in my questions.

You have got yourself.

And, with the exception of a few people you would be eager to sacrifice your life or even your soul for, you are your own most valuable thing.

You are the combination of your mind and your body. These two things are worth much more than any motor vehicle or any peace of real estate, much more than any social position, no matter how high it is, and much more than any kind of physical appearance. So treat yourself with much more respect than you would treat a Ferrari, treat yourself with much more respect than any social position would deserve - because you are much more valuable.

And treasure the beauty of your soul much more than you would treasure any kind of physical beauty. You are already a "10", just by the virtue of owning a unique valuable object: yourself. Have an attitude to owing self as if it were a car infinitely more expensive than a Ferrari, a unique prototype. As if you were a masterpiece created by the greatest artist - because that is what you are. Carry yourself with this attitude. Expect the same kind of attitude toward you from others. And be calm and keep your cool in all circumstances. Knowing your absolute worth, you will behave with absolute worth.

This attitude is already there. I had not given it to you. I only have helped you to connect to it by asking my questions.

I am sure you agree that even though people you care about might be the ones you would die for - but you do not own them. It is impossible to own another human being. But you do own yourself (to a maximum degree it is possible to own anything) - and you are not only the most important thing you own, you are the ONLY thing that gets the closest to actually being your property. So own it.

Once you try this mental state out, you will find it very easy to keep it on at all times. And it will express itself in your behavior, your choices, your ways of communicating, and in your relationships.

Chapter 37

One thing that had always bothered me about current situation in courtship is that we always treat hurting the other guy as something inevitable. Well, sometimes it is, I agree, but most of the time it isn't. It bothers me that someone always has to suffer: me or he other guy (and if the other guy suffers, the girl will suffer, too).

Suffering is okay. We live in the world of suffering. And yet, there must be a way to do what we must and yet to avoid causing the unnecessary pain. For me there is a difference between taking a woman out of a wasteland relationship to make her happy - and undermining her imperfect, but fully alive relationship to boost my ego.

I always felt uneasy when I had to explain to my clients that it's "them or the other guy". And I had always intuitively sensed that there must be something within the Juggler Method that could be developed into a mechanism that would help to prevent the unnecessary heartbreak.

Gradually I began to realize that such mechanism lies within Qualification/Disqualification/Sexual Barriers techniques.

I've learned form the experience that high ethical standards work as a powerful aphrodisiac on many attractive women. I remember talking to a Russian supermodel from my home town who I knew when she was a thirteen-year-old kid, and when I told her about my fascination with young Charles Lindbergh's moral beauty, her eyes lit up.

So I deduced that if in my conversation with a woman I make a statement that sticking with my ethical standards are more important to me than having sex with her, no matter how attractive I find her, this might actually serve as a powerful disqualification/sexual barrier. It would work well for my clients who have yet to find that woman they would want to be loyal to.

And since my personal quest is to reject the temptations and to remain loyal to the a woman I want to be with, I allow myself something otherwise not recommended in Juggler Method: I impose the near-impenetrable barriers. If my partner in the interaction chooses to overcome the obstacle, well, there's still a chance for us to be friends. If not - she is out, thank God.

At the same time, the truth is, having been hurt by some other guys taking away my women before, I sincerely do not want to inflict that pain on anyone if I can help it. Laugh at me if you want, but I always think of the other guy.

So it all comes to this:

"I'd like to share with you something I consider important. Please listen. In you I find the interesting and tremendously desirable woman. I would eagerly invite you to spend the night with me, and yet I have to think of the pain I might cause to you and to a man who loves you. I believe in love, and I hate hurting the other guy. Here's the deal: if you think you love your boyfriend, or even if you're going through tough times with him these days but hope to change it in the future, we cannot be anything more than just friends."

And trust me, when I say it, I mean it. No "frame control" here.

I believe that seducers of the past - even the famous ones - when they made the statements that they couldn't care less about the other guys - those seducers had only revealed their clumsiness in seduction. It's like a lousy doctor who cuts out the appendix and leaves the huge ugly scar across the abdomen. Or like bombing out the entire Germany in order to get to one villain in hiding.

I prefer modern technology: fly a few thousand miles, dive on the bastard, and put the missile right up his nostril.

Well, okay, I admit this wasn't a nice analogy, but I hope you understand my point. We need to be neat. Why cause unnecessary suffering if it can be avoided? And we must be selective anyway, so why not to be selective through avoidance of causing the heartbreak?

My rationalization is this: when I deliver my short monologue I trigger her awareness of the wider implications of the situation. I am responsible for my choices and I want her to take responsibility for hers. I would honestly rather prefer to be friends with her - or not to know her at all - than to ruin some guy's life for years, months, or even weeks.

Or forever.

I used to envy the guys who broke my heart by taking my girls away from me and then dumping them after a one-night stand. I wanted to be like those guys.

This has changed. I don't want to be like them anymore. I want to be unlike them. I want to be the opposite of them.

I remember how it felt to be heartbroken. It was awful. And some guys are probably less sensitive than I was, some are more sensitive. A guy might never recover. He might walk through the rest of his life in shock. Or he might kill himself. Or something I do can trigger a domino effect, and cause suffering to a lot of other people - his and her parents, etc.

I don't want to ruin or shorten someone's life for the sake of my split-second pleasure.

At the same time, if a woman consciously checks her relationship in her mind and realizes that there is nothing that holds her there - well, then - and only then, she's a fair game. And then my "Boyfriend Supporter Pattern" will make her respect me and like me more. As I've said before, man's high ethical standards serve as a powerful aphrodisiac for a woman.

Chapter 38

I believe that the refusal to be entertaining is important.

When a man with worse-than-average communication skills meets a woman he finds attractive, he of course wants her to reciprocate. Nothing wrong with that so far. But he neglects the fact that the woman he is interested in had done absolutely nothing to create the attraction in him! He is attracted to her just the way she is, without her investing any commitment into the interaction, just for her looks. By the same token, the self-esteem of that man is relatively low, so he believes that just the way he is he is absolutely unattractive to her. So he figures out what he needs now is to be entertaining.

And he begins telling stories he considers spectacular. Those stories typically include explosions, fast vehicles, money, a doze of violence, and a few sexually explicit moments from his past, real or imaginary.

Sort of like a typical Action/Adventure Hollywood summer blockbuster.

I seriously suspect that most of modern Hollywood screenwriters and directors battle some serious self-esteem issues. It looks like those guys believe that without explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and a few sexually explicit moments their works would be boring. That is why there is almost nothing else in the movie theaters except explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and sex scenes. Such is my theory.

The problem is, the woman whom our guy tells about explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and past sexual experiences, has heard it all before. In fact, if she fits the current social model of female beauty, she has already heard from men who tried to pick her up all about explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and their real or imaginary past sexual experiences, and that might have happened a few thousand times. But that woman is also polite. So she goes, oh, how exciting. Then she yawns.

There might be some exceptions of course. If that attractive woman have been struck with a sudden amnesia, she might not feel familiar with male stories about explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and past sexual experiences, real or imaginary. Or she might be from Siberia where men in such situations talk about vodka and bear hunting. In these two rare cases a woman might actually be impressed, even if slightly confused, as in: Why is this man telling me about all those things?

Then a moment comes when she inevitably asks herself another question: What am I so impressed with? Women check on their emotions at random intervals usually no longer than a minute. Then she answers: Oh, I see! I am so impressed because that man tells me about explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and his sexual experiences, which are probably imaginary. Got it! So I am not actually impressed with him as a person at all. Neither am I impressed with him as a man, because he is obviously trying to entertain me to get into my pants. I am just impressed by his stories. What a drag. But she is also polite, so she goes, oh, how exciting. Then she yawns.

Damn it, sounds like a no-win situation!

Now what if we imagine an alternative reality in which a woman is approached by a man of a very different kind. This new man is normal, and he also has a secret, which tremendously boosts his confidence.

So he walks up to her and starts a conversation. What do you think he talks to her about?

Explosions, fast vehicles, money, violence, and past sexual experiences?

Hell no!

He makes sure to secure her attention, introduces himself calmly, and then says something along these lines:

You know, today is Thursday, and every Thursday morning I do my laundry. Through the week I collect quite a few items I need cleaned. It has become a ritual. Watching them all tumble in the washer give me incredible peace of mind, it tells me the world is still a very safe place. What about you, what makes you feel safe?

And thus it continues. The man escalates subtly, and as he does, he progresses from boring topics to really boring to extremely boring one:

I am addicted to brushing my hair. I actually have a favorite hairbrush I would never share with anyone. Every time I run it through my hair it sends shivers down my spine. Tell me, what has a similar effect on you?

And the woman asks herself: Why do I feel so attracted to this man? He talks about unbelievably boring stuff, and yet I feel like I know him so well. He is so real. I like his lips. What is going on?! This guy is so fascinating. Not his stories, because he sure is not like all those other guys who just try to entertain. The man himself is so interesting. What is his secret? Oh. I get it. It must be chemistry. So this is how it feels to be in love at first sight!

And then our man shifts to the highest gear of escalation, and deploys the heavy artillery of boring:

POLITICS.

Politics works wonders when delivered with the proper vibe:

"I feel particularly fascinated with the female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. I must admit, I do not understand British without the closed captions, but even just by looking at them, those gals totally kick ass. I mean, arse. What a style. I think the Brits should start distributing the videos of their Parliament sessions, now those would raise huge enthusiasm of the electorate!"

And so on, all the way to the weather talk, tell me, what does the shape of that cumulus cloud make you think of?

Definitely not the Action/Adventure genre. Probably more like a Romantic Comedy.

Just the kind of genre that brings men and women together.

Chapter 39

I used to work as an assistant conductor in one of the largest opera theaters in the world.

One of our lead conductors seemed to have lacked every characteristic necessary for being a successful professional musician in any branch of music, to say nothing of being a conductor, which requires the most thorough knowledge of every single element of music.

And yet, he was a conductor, and as a conductor he fared better than anyone in that theater. The instrumentalists in the orchestra and the singers and dancers on stage all trusted and loved him.

That guy and I were friends, having studied conducting from the same professor who we called simply the Maestro. I asked my friend once how did he make it all happen for him. And he told me his story.

In his late teens and early twenties he was a soldier in the Russian Special Forces. Most of his time in the military he was involved in severe physical training, and the considerable everyday part of this training was the exercise of crashing bricks with the head. I suppose, Russian commandos are not required to be able to think much.

Anyway, after having broken one of those bricks, my friend was visited by a very strange idea. He suddenly realized that he did not want to be a commando any more. He wanted to become an opera conductor.

Unfortunately, there was a long wait till he could be discharged.

After his discharge a year later, he went to a conservatory of music and told someone he wanted to become a musician, but had no clue where to start. He didn't know musical notation, had not really have any ear for music, and his voice was rather mediocre.

And yet somehow he emotionally blackmailed his way into the choral conducting and singing class, where he was a dreadful student for the next five years. He found a construction worker job at the opera theater, than gradually made his way up to a position of a prompter. He earned some extra money by copying the opera scores by nights.

Thus he learned by heart every single score in the theater library.

He also became friends with every singer and every instrumentalist in the theater. He asked them questions about the music they performed, and kept a journal where he wrote everything he learned from them. He continued studying choral conducting in the conservatory of music, and every now and then the singers began asking him to conduct during the small group rehearsals. Somehow imperceptibly it became his additional official duty.

Then his five years of study ended - and he immediately went back to the same conservatory of music, only this time he signed up for the classes with the most famous and unapproachable professor there, the Maestro, the genius of conducting who tyrannically ruled one of the best symphony orchestras in Russia. The Maestro hated my friend, but the problem was he just could not get rid of him. My friend was stalking the Maestro and asked and asked and asked endless questions. It went on for another five years.

And then for another two years of the postgraduate studies. All through great pain.

And I forgot to mention that my friend had a wife he loved and two kids. And that one day his wife had enough of this musical obsession, and left him, and took the children with her, and broke his heart.

By that time my friend had left the opera theater where he knew everyone, and found a badly paid job as a conductor in a small-time musical theater, where he worked for two years. It was a small theater indeed, but it was the opportunity to conduct an orchestra every night.

Then one day he got a phone call from the theater where he used to work as a handyman and a prompter. They had a job of an assistant conductor available, would he be interested? Well, it so happened that he was.

And then three years later he got promoted, and became the full time opera conductor.

The quest lasted eighteen years, from the moment he broke that brick against his head.

This is what my friend told me, I might be mediocre at everything, but if there is one thing I know I have mastered, it is WAITING.

It has been ten years since my friend and I had that conversation. He still conducts operas in that theater. Whenever he is not busy performing music all over the world.

Chapter 40

I tried that method first myself in Boston during one of the recent Charm Schools, and it worked very well. I then began teaching it to our clients, and was impressed with how quickly they became the masters of the touch.

The key to this exercise is to never touch a woman more than once on the same spot of her body, unless she is not very receptive and you feel you have to pull back a little.

Here is the sequence of the now notoriously effective Boston Physical Escalation.

Begin by touching a woman with the back of your hand on her forearm, as in classic Juggler Method. Or if she is seated, you can begin by touching her on the outside of her thigh.

Then proceed with the following.

Hand on the shoulder.

Hand on the back below the neck.

Arm around her shoulders.

Hand on the middle of her back.

Hand on the small of her back.

Arm around her waist.

Hold your hand on her neck for some time.

Hand on her buttock.

Kiss.

There are a few additional, optional spots. For example you can rub her shoulders, or her back, or massage her feet if you can reach them without freaking out her friends, or hold her hand, put your hand on he knee, or touch her belly. Add them to main structure to your liking. But even without those additions you will be able to escalate the touch very effectively if you follow the simple main structure I had delineated above.

Please keep in mind that touching should be very well calibrated, and it takes somewhat longer to physically escalate an interaction than to read the description of the Boston Physical Escalation, especially when it is applied for the day game in public places.

Chapter 41

The ultimate mastery in any human craft comes from the opposite side of that craft.

For example, the ultimate mastery of the art of war is winning without fighting. The ultimate mastery in painting comes when the painter rejects his technical skills and paints with his heart.

The ultimate mastery of the art of conversation lies in silence.

The ideal rapport is when the two people gaze at the eyes of each other, not saying a word. The ideal conversation is nonverbal.

We can create a situation when the nonverbal conversation takes place almost immediately after we approach a stranger. All we have to do is just speak your mind, I do not feel like talking at all tonight, and for some reason you seam like a person who I would feel really comfortable being silent with; let us spend a minute or two in silence. Of course she might say no. She is in charge of her reality and has a choice to accept or reject the offer. And yet, she might say yes. In this case, we will not have to waste any effort for building rapport, because the rapport is a given.

Listening while being spoken to is another application of silence. Do not smile. Do not break tension. Tension equals rapport. You do not have to know a lot about many topics. Not knowing is better than knowing for having a conversation. Tel her you do not know much about her area of expertise, and ask her to teach you what you must know. She will be speaking. You will be listening in silence. Just give her a smile and touch her gently to make her feel good about her knowledge and sharing it.

When she asks you a question, ask her how she would answer it. Listen earnestly. Hold her hand.

Less is more. Minimum effort gets maximum result.

Make sure to keep your statements concise. When your statements are short, hers are long and elaborate, allowing you to know more about her. If you violate that principle and make longish statements, you discover her just nodding and saying yes or no.

You want to find out more about her. You want her to WANT to find out more about you. Keep your statements concise, and you will achieve both.

Chapter 42

The innocent is not afraid of the punishment. The stronger is not afraid of the punishment.

Be innocent and act like you are stronger, and there is no way for you to get punished.

Men who feel guilty for having sexual interest in a woman on the approach act defensively, they mentally run away after the approach. Men who feel week on the approach act defensively, they mentally guard themselves after the approach.

Men who accept the fact that there is no guilt in wanting sex, men who realize and believe that they deserve sex simply because they were born into the two-sex species, the ones that know that sex is their right, ARE innocent.

Men who know that as men they ARE stronger, and therefore should act from the position of emotional and physical generosity, such men cannot be afraid of women. They are stronger and therefore project positive attitude and positive expectations.

A woman welcomes a man who acts strong and innocent.

A man who behaves undefended, and demonstrates positive confidence generates natural curiosity in almost any woman.

Chapter 43

Here's a brief list of body language challenges and solutions:

1. Rattlehead

I've noticed that a lot of men who are naturally good conversationalists have a habit of jerking their heads non-stop in a series of fast vigorous moves. I know I do that quite often, to the disastrous results, because this uncontrolled continuous movement is awfully distracting to the people I talk to - women or men.

Rattlehead has two versions:

a) Sharp, fast head movements;

b) Smooth, fast undulating head movements.

A solution: I make sure that my head doesn't move when I speak most of the time. If I need to emphasize something I say with a nod, tilt of my head, or any other head movement, I do my best to make the movement slow and smooth.

2. Torso Lock

For some reason this is a challenge of choice among many slender men. Have you seen a skinny guy who doesn't move his upper body as he walks? Are you one of them? I definitely used to be like this, but I got horribly overweight, and the problem had disappeared. Often such guy is quite relaxed, but because his body doesn't rotate around the natural axis that goes through the spine, he creates an impression of being incredibly tense.

A solution: learn the "fat man walk" a.k.a. "tired man walk". Make it a conscious habit until it becomes completely natural. If you want to see an example, rent "Rain Man" and compare the gait of Charlie Babbit with that of his brother Raymond Babbit when they walk next to each other. Raymond is the guy with the mild case of a torso lock, while Charlie, being relatively slim, exhibits the perfect "fat man walk", creating an impression of total confidence and nonchalant self-sufficiency (a$$hole as he is).

3. Straight Arms Lock

Often comes together with the torso lock. Guys who walk with their arms seemingly attached to the sides of their pants - you know the type. Looks very creepy.

A solution: fling your arms slightly around your body while walking. NOT TOO MUCH! It's a part of the "fat man walk", "Rain Man" is still a good example.

4. Bent Arm Lock

A defense mechanism: the instinctive attempt to protect the chest, belly, throat, or other vital organs. Sometimes isn't apparent as a habit, and suddenly kicks in in the presence of someone intimidating: an overwhelmingly beautiful woman or an overwhelmingly burly or dominating man. In such cases the man who does this this isn't usually aware of doing it. Often disguised as a quasi-comfortable way to hold a drink.

Solutions:

a) Hold your drink from above;

b) Every now and then consciously relax your arm if it tends to creep up toward your chest;

c) Keep your arms behind your back, Bruce Lee style, while talking to tough men and hot women when you and they are standing;

d) Train yourself to keep your arms along the sides of your trousers while talking to people when you and they are standing;

e) This one is the best: use your arms to do something meaningful - for example, touching a woman you are talking to.

5. Fists in the Pockets

EVERYONE does that. It's all James Dean's fault. This is moderately acceptable if it's casual, but holding your hands in your pockets all the time does project the image of insecurity.

Solutions:

a) Just don't do it;

b) Sew your pockets closed (and don't fall into a Bent Arm Lock temptation). Worked for me;

c) Pin your pockets closed while you're out on a proll.

6. Windmill Arms

Excessive gesturing. Has two variations:

a) Wide, smooth, fast movements (that's how you spill your red wine on her white blouse);

b) Sharp, abrupt movements (these convey aggression, and in combination with some body rocking will make you look as if you're feinting in order to punch her in the face);

Solution: treasure your gestures. Only use them to emphasize the most important points of what you're saying. Do it in a smooth, relaxed, slow fashion, as if your hands and arms move through water.

7. Body Rocking

Whether accepted and advocated by somje of the leading "pick-up" companies or not, this often uncontrolled type of movement in reality more often than not conveys nervousness, and effectively irritates the hell out of whoever you're speaking with. I know what I'm talking about 'cause I used to do that for quite a while. This particular quirk has several curious variations:

a) Plain rocking;

b) Undulating snake-like movements of the whole body;

c) Sexual act-like movements while standing (I saw two guys doing it in two ways: 1) smooth, and 2) fast and abrupt. First version looks extremely sleazy, second one is hilarious and very embarrassing. Neither of the guys was aware of doing that!)

Solution: Stand up firmly on your feet, make a conscious effort to be erect (do I really have to say that no pun is intended?)

8. Legs Lock

Walking on the unbending legs. This problem is related to the Torso Lock and Arms Lock, and often accompanies them.

A solution: the "fat man's walk". See "Rain Man".

9. Bent Legs Lock (Squat Walk)

This one is the gem of my collection: walking with the knees permanently half-bent, Groucho Marx style. Often comes together with severe slouch.

Solutions:

a) Five - ten minutes of walking around on the unbending legs (as in Legs Lock) could be a healthy way of becoming aware of the difference - and of the challenge;

b) "fat man's walk".

10. The Hunchback of Notres Dames

Slouching. One of the worst things to have.

Solution: imagine being pulled up by your hair. Hold yourself like that.

11. Frisky Fingers

Tapping on the tabletop or grabbing objects shows her how nervous you are. And yet, if you stop doing this, you will stop being nervous.

Solution: stop doing this!

Move the glass or the ash tray further from you on the table so you cannot reach it. Fold the napkin and place it on the table. Etc.

12. Leg Shake

A lot of guys do it when they sit next to a woman at the table. This fast rhythmical movement not only shakes the table and telegraphs nervousness, but also makes her think that you actually would very much like to use a urinal but are too shy to do so.

Solution: root the heel of your shoe firmly in the floorboards.

Chapter 44

One of the exercises I often practice with my private clients is the conversational exercise that enables my clients to to disarm and channel away any Resistance Phrase if it occurs in a conversation with a woman.

I throw a random "Resistance Phrase" to a client, and request a positive response within a few seconds.

What's a "Resistance Phrase"?

It is a phrase that a woman utters as a form of resistance to the actions or words of a man who escalates the interaction with her.

Examples:

I: Hey, I'm Dimitri. What's your name?

She: I have a boyfriend! (this is the Resistance Phrase)

I: Hey, I'm Dimitri, what's your name?

She: I don't like to be touched. (Resistance Phrase)

I: Hey, I'm Dimitri, what's your name?

She: Don't bother us, we're having girl's talk! (Resistance Phrase)

I: Hey, I'm Dimitri --

She: I don't care! (Resistance Phrase)

Other examples:

"I'm engaged!"

"I'm a lesbian!"

"We are having a conversation here!"

"Go talk to someone else!"

"Please don't bother me!"

"Please go sit somewhere else!"

"Do we know you?"

"Why are you talking to us?"

"We don't know you. You are being rude".

"Why are you asking me? Why don't you ask a sales clerk instead?"

"We are busy. Thanks, though"

"We hadn't seen each other for a long time. Do you mind?"

"Leave us alone!"

"We don't want to talk to you!"

"We don't like you. Please leave NOW!"

"May be you should try your luck with someone else"

"I'm waiting for my boyfriend"

"This room is full of people. Why me?"

"I'm not looking for a boyfriend"

"Please don't even bother"

"Don't talk to me"

"I don't want to talk to anyone right now but please feel free to come back later"

"My boyfriend is coming back and he will kill you"

"Who are you?"

"Take your hand off my arm"

"Go talk to that woman over there. She's available"

"I will not have sex with you, so don't waste your time"

"Don't even think of it"

"You are creepy. Walk away".

"Get out of my face".

"What? Oh... No, no, no!"

"What? -- What? -- What? -- What? -- ..." etc.

"What do you want from us?"

"Ghoyfknik oyg grumbdhum bduh bduh ogh" (Response in gibberish)

"We don't speak English" (said with the perfect New England accent, or with the fake Zimbabvian accent)

"You are very nice... but I don't give a damn"

"Buy me a drink".

"Stop hitting on me".

"I will call security".

"Yes, sure, sure. I've heard it all".

"I like your approach. Now let's see your departure".

"You are ugly".

"You have bad breath".

"You finished? Dismissed".

"All men are dogs".

"Oh no, not another one! What's the matter with them today?"

"Yes, thank you. Now you may leave".

"We'll call you if we need something".

"Excuse ME! Look closer! Do I have "fuck me" written on my forehead?"

"This sit is taken. Go away".

"I'll scream if you say another word"

"Is this all? Do you have anything else to add? I didn't think so". (turns away)

"We are going to a bathroom" (none of them leaves)

"Let's make a deal: you don't talk to us, we don't talk to you. Okay?"

"I'm here with my friends, and you are intruding".

"You are INTERRUPTING!"

"This is very rude!"

"You are not welcome here".

"I am married with ten kids. Get lost".

"I have HIV, okay? Please leave".

"I hate it when people talk to me."

"Will you leave?"

"Have you considered wearing Budweiser as perfume?"

"Don't talk to me"

"Oh, don't start".

"What's that?!" (followed by silence and hard eye contact)

"You are ridiculous! What's the matter with you?"

"Your fly is unzipped"

"What a lousy pick-up line."

'This is a private party. Go over there".

"Would you like a drink? Well, you're not getting one here. Go away".

"No, this is my seat. That one's mine, too."

"Sorry, no drink - no talk".

"I'm from out of town and I leave tonight".

"No chance." (followed by the dismissing gesture)

"BUSY!"

"Oh my God! You're so sweet! F*ck off!"

"So what?"

"Why should I care?"

As you see from my example, and perhaps know from own experience, some women are quite inventive with their Resistance Phrases. It is my opinion that a man who tries to stay in the interaction no matter what would inevitably run a risk of being perceived and perceiving himself as needy. However, a graceful response before leaving politely would make such man impervious to heartbreak.

I would like to encourage you, my reader, to proactive improvising multiple different responses to each of the Resistance Phrases I had provided in this chapter.

I would like to give you an example of what this exercise might look like.

Let's take the most common Resistance Phrase: "I have a boyfriend". I would like to emphasize that I am not talking about the scenario when a woman says "I have a boyfriend" as the response to your question about her relationship situation. I am describing here the event when a girl rubs her having a boyfriend into your face a moment after you said "Hi", or at any other point of a conversation when such information is clearly intended to block the possibility of any escalation.

So...

"I have a boyfriend!" I think the healthy response to this line should come from the psychological place of understanding that a woman might have a number of motivations to say it - and that the motivation is not present in the words.

Since the motivation is not present in the words, I can read any motivation into those words - and that includes the one that would work to my advantage.

Obviously, quite often "I have a boyfriend" line is motivated by the sexual presumption mechanism: a woman presumes that if I talk to her, I am hitting on her. However, I choose to interpret her words as if they were motivated by her desire to seek my approval. I interpret "I have a boyfriend!" similarly to how I would interpret a guy telling me "I have a BMW".

Or, to put it differently, there's always subtext behind words. I operate on a level of the subtext. When a woman says to me "I have a boyfriend!" she might or might not mean "I know that you are making yourself sexually available to me by seeking sex with me but I am not sexually available to you because I am sexually available to another, more dominant man who you should envy and fear" - but I choose to interpret her words as if the subtext were "I want to impress you by boasting that I am socially accepted enough to have a man who is interested in me sexually".

A few examples:

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Why, I'm impressed!"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "No kidding!"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Who would've thought? I mean, duh!"

"I have a boyfriend!"- "Sorry... I'm not sure if I understand the principle..." (Credit - one of my recent clients)

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Hey, we're talking for only thirty seconds and you're already trying to make me jealous!"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "I would be truly surprised if you hadn't!" (Credit: another client)

"I have a boyfriend" - "Define "boyfriend!"

I find it important not to get stuck waiting for her response to my response. Proceed immediately with the I statement and/or Open-Ended Question.

Like this:

"I have a boyfriend!" - "You could sound a little more enthusiastic. So, one thing I enjoy the most is a well-done crusty barbecue with lemon and a flask of brandy by the campfire after a long day of flying. Now let's talk about you. What's your bliss?" (Last week's private client)

"I have a boyfriend!" - "And I have a hamster. Now why don't we quit bragging about our prized possessions and have a normal talk like two intelligent human beings? My idea of fun is making short home movies. What about you?"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Great. It means, you probably won't try to get into my pants too soon. Now as we got sex out of the way, have a normal conversation with me, will you? I like motorcycles and art history. What normal topics do you enjoy talking about?"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "From what you've just said I can deduce that you're either straight or bisexual. Duly noted. But I am not yet ready to talk with you about sex. How about we discuss something less intimate first and see where it can gradually take us?"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Oh, I am happy to oblige by acting shocked and panic-stricken. Such a waste! And yet I suppose I must not let myself sink in misery, I shall endure and press on. So, when it comes to choosing drinks, what are your criteria?"

"I have a boyfriend"- "Yeah, and I guess it makes you a grown-up girl after all. Congratulations. Now that we got that obligatory "boyfriend" line out of the way, a hope still remains one might have a normal talk with you".

"I have a boyfriend!" - "No you don't! Don't get me wrong, I do believe there is a man who finds you attractive and has a relationship with you, but you do not HAVE him. It's impossible to own a human being".

"I have a boyfriend!"- "Thank God, it means you're probably normal. Please do not disappoint me. So --" etc.

"I have a boyfriend!" - "What's new about that? Anyway -- " etc.

"I have a boyfriend!"- "Tragic. I was warned it might happen. So, as I was saying -- " etc.

"I have a boyfriend!" - "It's okay. We'll be discreet." (Credit: Rob; I personally consider this a classic)

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Outstanding! Why don't you give me your phone number while your boyfriend is not around?"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "I'm devastated. By the way, I've spent the entire day today looking for free AOL installation software all over Manhattan, and I couldn't find any. So I expressed my frustration to an AOL manager over the phone, and guess what - I'm getting free Internet access for the next year. What was your day like?"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Point taken. So, as I was saying --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "It's okay. I believe you. You don't have to prove anything to me. Please remind me what the hell was I taking about? Ah yes, I remember --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "I sympathize. But please let me finish. I remember we talked about --"

"I have a boyfriend" -"And I most certainly hope he keeps you active. Yesterday when I was running on a treadmill --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Sorry I forgot my snappy retort to that one... So I guess I'll just have to break down sobbing instead. Boo-hoo! Happy now? Got a Cleanex for me? Anyway --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "I find it sexy about you! By the way --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "I like that about you. Incidentally --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "Hey, you've just trigged a HUGE inferiority complex in me! Who's the best shrink you can recommend? So, as I was saying --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - "That sounds like a high-quality problem. So, as I was saying --"

"I have a boyfriend!" - (I look around, indicating subtle embarrassment, then lean in to her, and whisper in her ear) "You are being very direct. I am not sure if it is appropriate in current circumstances".

And so on.

The point of the exercise is not to memorize all the possible responses, but to develop the natural effortless ability to shrug away any Resistance Phrase and have a choice of either continuing the conversation or cutting it short and leaving. And remember: the Resistance Phrase is the sign of the lack of communicational elegance, so by channeling it away you help your partner in the conversation to be more graceful.

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part IX

How to Begin a Conversation With a Woman

Chapter 45

First thing you want to figure out is one of the two possible mindsets a stranger might be in.

Those two mindsets are sociable and unsociable.

Sociable mindset is often associated with the so called nightgame. Unsociable mindset, correspondingly, with the daygame.

Such association is not entirely correct.

Ever met a haughty, uptight woman who looks sulky and guarded in a middle of otherwise cheerful and happy crowd of people in a bar or a nightclub? It is a night time, all right, but that woman is in a highly unsociable mindset. Yes, she is in that bar, but meeting and communicating with strangers is probably the last thing on her mind. May be she had just learned some extremely unpleasant news. Or she just broke up with her boyfriend. Or she is one of those rare girls who, unfortunately, receives her validation from hurting men. Whatever the reason is, it is quite easy to recognize the unsociable mindset in any person during the nightgame.

A woman immersed in her college homework in a café or the one living in a fictional reality of the last part of Harry Potter series in a bookstore would be a good example of the unsociable mindset of the relatively unsociable mindset during the daygame.

On the other hand, a couple of excitedly laughing bikini-clad girls on the lawn in the middle of New York Central Park or Union Square would be no less open to meeting a charismatic stranger than as though they were in a bar, because they are in the sociable mindset You can recognize that mindset in the daytime by how easy it is to make eye contact with such girls and how animated they are.

Clearly, in most cases bars and clubs are filled with people in a sociable mindset.

The important thing to realize is that sociable and unsociable mindset do not replace each other in people as if by a turn of on-and-off switch. In fact, there is a very gradual scale of sociability from completely unsociable on the verge of autistic to frighteningly sociable when you wish it was not that in-your-face.

The skill of recognizing the sociability level in each particular person before you approach them is incredibly easy to master. Simply give yourself a few moments to observe them, and it will become clear for you how open they might be to interacting with you.

Remember that after you begin the conversation with them, you are in the partial control of their sociability level. You can make that person more sociable by building rapport. You can even choose the form of sociability for them, for example you can lead the conversation in such way that they will become more open to you while ignoring everyone else around them, or you can steer the conversation into acknowledging everyone else and getting them involved also.

It is highly important to assess the sociability level of the person you are about to approach, because the particular method you are going to use to begin the conversation depends almost entirely on how open they are to the idea of having a conversation with you.

Unsociable mindset does not mean anything bad. It simply means that you will have to use the specific technique for opening people in the unsociable mindset. It is not harder to do when you know the principles, it is just different.

Chapter 46

The difference in tactic between beginning a conversation with people in sociable and unsociable mindset is that the unsociable mindset requires one extra step. This step is very simple, but it calls for a bit of explanation.

Quite a bit of explanation.

The problem with the unsociable mindset is that the attention of a person you want to engage is occupied by something other than you.

To be able to begin a conversation with them, you will need to get their attention.

So the extra step when dealing with the people in the unsociable mindset is GETTING THEIR ATTENTION before you begin the interaction.

Correction: you will need to get their attention without scaring them out of their wits.

By far one of the worst things you can do upon approaching a stranger whose mind is focused entirely on some inner reality is to position yourself behind them and touch them veeeryyy liiiightlyyyy on the their neck, next to where the artery goes up toward the brain. Imagine someone doing that to you. Such approach would jolt nearly anyone out of whatever their mind is busy with, but it would take a champion of recovery to have a decent conversation after that.

Second worst way of getting the attention of a busy stranger is this. Place yourself anywhere out of their field of vision but right next to them, as close to their ear as you can, and loudly clear your throat, GHM-GHM! Then watch them hit the ceiling.

I am giving these examples of what not to do so we can figure out what to do.

So it is obvious that you have to make yourself visible before you make yourself audible or kinesthetically sensed. If a person hears you without seeing you first, or if you touch them, especially on some physically vulnerable part of their body before they are aware of their presence, their mind will presume that you present the threat to their life. Unfortunately, we are all animals.

At the same time, even though the goal is to make yourself visible, you should not block their field of vision and their potential escape route. This is why it rarely wise to position yourself directly in front of a woman you had just approached, facing her.

If a woman who is the unsociable mindset is already aware of your presence, and knows that you do not constitute any physical threat, you may safely tough her to get her attention. For example, if you are behind her in a line in a coffee shop, and she saw you getting in the line, it would feel normal if you get her attention by touching her upper arm with the back of your hand. She already knew you were there, her mind had already assessed the possible threat and qualified it as minimal, so she would let you engage her.

However, if a woman is not aware of your presence, first you have to make her aware, and to give her mind a second or two to make sure you are not a threat.

In such case you will have to make yourself visible.

The solution for attraction the attention of someone who is not yet aware of your presence and is in the unsociable mindset is to make them aware of your presence by placing something in their peripheral vision.

The best and most natural thing to place in their peripheral vision is your cock.

Probably not. Just checking if you are paying attention.

The best and most natural thing to place in their peripheral vision is your hand.

A hand is a wonderful communication device. Using only gestures and eye contact, you can charm the pants off a girl whose language you do not speak, as my friend Rob the Irresistible recently proved. And one important thing to consider is that you want to communicate to them that you want to communicate to them. A hand is very good for that.
It all leads me to the specific technique that I had already described in a number of articles.

It would be really easy to show and really hard to explain in words, but I will try.

Do this for me. With your hand palm downward, extend your arm forward until there is about 45-degree angle between your forearm and your upper arm. Then turn your hand palm upward, with your index and middle finger semi-open, and the rest of your fingers relaxed.

I know this is a hell of a way to describe a very natural and commonly used gesture, but how else could I have described it?

Think of it as a I-have-something-to say gesture or a what-do-you-think gesture.

Among us Charisma Arts East Cost guys we call it a hand flip.

A hand flip seems to be a universally human nonverbal signal for engaging another human in an interaction.

The good things about the hand flip is that it replaces the inner question, what the hell do I say to her, with the reassuring inner statement, I know just what to DO. I know that when I see a girl I like I will throw my hand, palm upward, into her peripheral vision, and I know that will open the interaction.

To illustrate that, imagine a situation. You are in a museum, and you see a woman who is examining a huge canvas painted by Rembrandt or Velasquez. To begin a conversation with her, all you have to do is place yourself next to that woman, looking at the painting, than hand flip her, and ask, what do you think?

You can even go completely nonverbal. Hand flip, she makes eye contact, you keep eye contact, she goes, yes? By that time your mind will put some words into your mouth.

If not, I will tell you just what to say in any possible situation.

Chapter 47

Some of the stuff I put in this part of the book might seem a little complex, but it is not. If it appears complex, it is because I suck as a writer. Things I am talking about are not rocket science, nothing esoteric, this is no high level psychology or philosophy, just plain common sense.

So common sense tells me, to help you guys to begin conversations with strangers, with ANY stranger of your choosing, ANY time you want it, in ANY situation, to help you to do that I gotta make it completely safe for you in case something goes terribly wrong.

And I can do just that.

I am going to give you some techniques to fix a screwed-up approach. If you know how to recover and have a conversation no matter what was your first impression like, you will feel pretty safe, I can guarantee you that.

But before I teach you those extremely primitive techniques for making any conversation safe, let me digress a little into an autobiographical story. And as much as I enjoy telling people about me, this story has a point related to the topic of this article, starting conversations with perfect strangers.

The story I am about to tell is a little long.

I came to US roughly seven years ago, hoping to make it big as a creative writer. I had a couple of master degrees in classical music under my belt, I knew how to fly planes, I was good with motorbikes, I had some connections in the high society, I was young, I felt like Tony Montana when he got himself that mansion.

Then I ran out of money.

That was how I found myself one day, six and a half years ago, driving an eighteen-wheeler across Manhattan. My very first day at work as a truck driver.

And by the way, I never had much chance to drive anything on more than two wheels back where I came from. Riding a motorcycle, yes. Flying a plane, OH YES! Driving, no.

So here I am, dragging a fifty-tree-feet long trailer along East Seventeenth, approaching Union Square. And there is some kind of public event on the Union Square, the place is crowded like hell, and a lot of cops around. And there is a police van parked on the left side of my street near the intersection, and another one parked on the left side. And I can see a bunch of blue uniforms inside the vans, and there are some people inside the uniforms.

I tell myself, whatever you do, make sure not to touch the vans with the trailer. As soon as I say that, KABOOM, I hear horrible scraping sound from the left, I freak out, jerk the steering wheel to the right, and hear identical scraping sound from the right. I hit the brakes, stall the engine, and block the entire intersection with the truck.

I look into the left mirror and I see a side and a roof of a police van FALLING OFF.

I look into the right mirror, and by a curious coincidence, I see the same thing happening to the other van.

And interestingly enough, when I get to see the insides of the vans clearly, I realize that all the forty or so police officers I had just deprived of the roofs over their heads happen to be females.

Now imagine for a second twenty girls in a van talking peacefully about, uh, about whatever twenty girl cops might be talking about when they are stuck together in a van for an hour. Britney Spears may be, I have no idea. And then they look around and, hop-la, the wall and the roof is gone! And twenty more of them going through the same experience. Of course the girls got a little, well, a little excited.

I mean, I do not blame them.

I was anxious to see how well they were taking the new experience, so I got out of the truck.

That was a mistake.

I had no lack of women explaining to me why it was a mistake, and you better believe me, I heard them very well. The problem was, I did not speak a lot of English back then.

And all the drivers behind my truck start honking. You know how they do it in New York. Stick your elbow into the horn and hold.

Then my dispatcher calls me on the radio.

The scene reminded me of those climactic moments in Quentin Tarantino movies, when all the good bad guys and bad bad guys are pointing guns at each other from all angles, shouting at the top of their lungs, and then a cell phone rings in a pocket of one of them, that sort of thing.

Heya reader, I know I am pushing my luck here, risking to lose your attention, but it just felt like a perfect moment to have a little cutaway. Seriously though, stay with me, the story does have a relevant point!

So the tension grows, ready to explode, I know I am about to get riddled with bullets.

Then this guy in a three-piece suit shows up, gets the female cops to look at him, and points at the sidewalks. The girls group on both sidewalks and begin chatting among themselves, like nothing happened. The three-piece-suit guy steps toward me, touches my shoulder, and says, are you okay? I nod. I did not even say anything, but he immediately slows down his speech. He ASSUMED I did not speak English!

SUIT GUY: Where. Are. You. From?

ME: Siberia.

SUIT GUY: Everything. Is. Okay. Understand?

ME: Yes.

SUIT GUY: No. One. Is. Hurt. No. One. Goes. To. Jail. Understand?

ME: Yes.

SUIT GUY: This. City. Has. Plenty. Of. Police. Vans. You. Will. Not. Pay. For. The. Ones. You. Wrecked. Understand?

ME: Yes.

SUIT GUY: Welcome. To. America.

ME: Thank. You.

He smiled and walked away.

A few minutes later I was off to deliver my cargo, musing on what I could learn from the experience.

Here is what I learned.

I should not drive trucks.

Okay, I did learn something else, too. Well, the suit guy assessed the situation immediately. He figured out what was going on in my mind, what negative expectations I had that prevented me from functioning rationally. Using only a few words and one touch he neutralized all of my negative expectations by directly addressing them. It was unbelievable how calm I felt less than a minute after being in the midst of a Mexican standoff with forty cops.

Now let me get back to the main topic. What the hell was I talking about? Oh yes, beginning conversations with strangers. Making it safe.

To make it safe you will probably have to have a default bail-out technique. Like, if a conversation goes horribly wrong, you would know what to say to get your ass out of it and to save your face.

First technique. Justify your departure. Instead of saying, uh, mmm, ergh, well, nice seeing you, and walking away, say something like this, hey, I am going to grab a cup of coffee in a Starbucks over there, would you like to join me? No? Too bad. Well, no problem, have a very pleasant afternoon.

Or,

Hey, guess what, my phone is buzzing, and I am afraid I gotta take this call. Very important. It was great having a chat with you, make sure to have a wonderful evening!

This technique works day or night, and the important thing here is that you will feel that you have ended the interaction positively AND on your terms.

Let us proceed.

Using the example of the Suit Guy from my autobiographical story, we can pretty much figure out what might be on the mind of a woman we had approached if we happen to do it not as smoothly as we should have.

Rough, creepy approach is bound to trigger all sort of negative expectations and many questions.

Why has this man approached me? Why is he talking to me? What does he want? Is he hitting on me? Does he want my money?

Now, I am not saying, open in a creepy way and then use this technique. I presume in the ninety nine point nine percent of cases you will not need the default safety measures. But in case accidentally something goes wrong, I would like to think that you would know what to say and do.

So in case you see her totally weirded out by your approach, you might want to INSTANTLY address her negative expectations. More or less directly, HEY! I am not hitting on you, I am not asking for anything, OKAY? My approach has NO REASON. YOU ARE SAFE. Make sure she hears that. Then smile and talk friendly, and guess what, you had just recovered from a botched approach. You just gave yourself a second chance to date that girl.

You may also want to have to have the default answer along the lines of, frankly, there is no special reason why I wanted to talk to you, except may be wishing you a very pleasant afternoon. So here it is, a very pleasant afternoon to you! This is it! See ya!

Of course you may choose to follow up with, actually, I take it back, I am here because I wanted to bang you, but I am a little shy, so I did not know how to bring it up, that is why I wished you a pleasant afternoon instead. I am only joking. I am not that shy. Or may be I am, I do not know. Shy or not shy, I still wanted to bang you. Actually I did not. But I do now. Anyway, I am Dimitri, and you are? Hi Melanie! Tell me, how would you describe your most unexpected romantic experience?

But I am jumping the gun here. What I had just quoted is the famous self-push-pull daygame transitioning technique, patented by Juggler. There will be time to discuss it, but now is not that time.

Chapter 48

Contrast is at the core of charisma.

Emotion versus logic. Positive versus negative. Statement versus question. Feeling versus thought. Yes versus no.

Juggling with the two opposite sides of a statement is at the core of the verbal playfulness. To see what I mean, check one of the paragraphs that describes the self-push-pull technique, near the end of the previous chapter.

Vacuum and Vibe are the two opposite sides of physical charisma.

Both of these sides depend on eye contact, and have eye contact as their fundamental element.

Prolonged eye contact, semi-relaxed face, neck, and body and, of course, friendly smile, this is called Vibe. The overall effect is warm and soft.

Prolonged eye contact, relaxed face, frozen but relaxed neck and body, and no smile, that is called Vacuum. The overall effect is hard and cold.

The true mastery of physical charisma can be achieved by combining the Vibe and the Vacuum in a perfect proportion suitable for a specific situation.

Vacuum and Vibe provide the opportunities for some of the easiest of the conversational openers. These openers are completely nonverbal.

Extend your arm and touch a woman on the upper arm with the back of your hand. When she turns to you, make and keep the eye contact, relax your face, neck and torso, and smile. Wait till she says, "Yes?"

Extend your arm and touch a woman on the upper arm with the back of your hand. When she turns to you, make and keep the eye contact, freeze your neck and torso, relax your face, and DO NOT smile. Wait until she says, "Yes?"

The same can be done without touching her, is the physical logistic does not allow a woman to move away too far. Simply position yourself within her field of vision, keep and eye contact, and either relax your body and smile, or freeze your body and stop smiling. The first word of that conversation will come from her mouth.

Would you like me to tell you how to create a love at first sight?

Love at first sight starts with Vibe and ends with Vacuum. Love at first sight more often than not happens in the social gatherings when people are cheerful and smile a lot. So imagine that you are with your friends, you share fascinating stories, smile and laugh. And then you see a woman who seems to be special. You make eye contact with her, and then your smile fades, while you keep the eye contact, and your face turns from elated to tragic, nearly mournful. What you just did was switching from Vibe to Vacuum. And the effect is the love at first sight.

Or you may do the opposite. Position yourself in the psychologically powerful zone of the room, for example, in a bar it would be one of the places where people seem to pass more often, freeze your body, and do not smile. You will vacuum the entire room. Rob and I practiced that technique a few months ago in Washington, D.C., and the result was beyond our wildest expectations. Male patrons abandoned the place. Bouncers gathered in the corners, whispering to each other and giving us furtive looks. Women started tripping over their feet accidentally-on-purpose, and bumping into us.

When you vacuum the room, choose a woman you like, and make an eye contact with her. When a man does the Vacuum, his eye contact seems to stick. When it becomes nearly unbearable, you should suddenly smile and drawn her in your warm Vibe. That woman will come over to you and begin talking.

As I have said, the combination of Vibe and Vacuum should be used whenever you open a new conversation. Such openings do not have to be nonverbal.

For example, you might do the classic Juggler Method nightgame opener. With your face completely relaxed and non-smiling, make the eye contact, and ask a woman, what is your name? Be hard and cold. But as soon as she gives you her name, overwhelm her with your warmth as you introduce yourself.

I feel it is the time for me to wrap up all the talk about the fundamental principles, and to go into more detail about specific techniques for beginning the conversations with total strangers.

Chapter 49

Come to a dance club a little early. Around 9 or 10 PM, it all depends on the season, really. On a hot summer Saturday night it could be earlier.

You will notice a very special coy, hesitant vibe. The dancefloor is empty. There will probably be two or three girls moving bashfully to the music, a few girls chatting around, holdng on to their defencive drinks, and a bunch of guys in the corners, trying to look cool.

Remember that showing up early is the key.

Dive straight to the dancefloor, and do your baddest. Take up the whole space.

You do not have to be a great dancer, but you do have to unleash yourself. Have fun. Act like there is no one around. In a cool way, obviously.

If you ARE a great dancer, this would help, as long as you are not trying too hard to show off with your skills, as long as you can communicate through movement that you are just having fun.

Be relaxed. Make it about dancing, not just dancing. Find a way to express through the dance that you are sexually comfortable man. IN A SUBTLE WAY, you Michael Jackson impersonators!

Improvise. Make your dancing unpredictable.

If you do this, you will single-handedly transform the vibe of the entire venue.

The girls will be the first to join you on the dance floor. The guys will follow.

As soon as you see people begin to dance, you stop. Go grab a drink.

Because you have already achieved three crucial things. You became the absolute leader for that night, you secured plenty of space for yourself on the dancefloor whenever you feel like dancing again, and, most importantly, every girl in the club bar will try to open you or will indicate unmistakably that she wants to be open by you. Choose a few that you like the best, and run relaxed, casual Juggler Method on them.

There is pretty much NO WAY for you to not get hooked up with a cute girl on that night when you implement such tactic.

Chapter 50

Next time you're out in a bar, club, bookstore, or coffee shop - any female stomping ground - do the following.

Find a woman you feel attracted to and would like to approach.
Observe this woman very carefully.
Notice something very unique about her - it could be something about the way she is dressed, her jewelry, body language, posture, facial expression, make-up, mood, general first impression she has made, anything at all, but it has to be positive and unique. Very often, but not necessarily, it is a really small thing, a barely perceptible detail.
Free-associate on this unique thing. What does it make you think of? For example, the way she rotates her umbrella, does it make you think of a helicopter? That she might take off and fly away? Her wet hair, does it make you think of a swimming pool she had probably just got out of? Or does it make you think of mermaids?
Take those five steps toward her, and share with her what that unique thing about her made you think about.

Hey! I love what you do with that umbrella. I feel you are about to fly away to some distant exotic land. Is that where you come from?

Are you a mermaid?

Be careful not to spill water on the flowers sewn on your shirt. They might blossom, and you will have to look for a vase.

Or any variation that would make your free association more romantic.

This way you have a poetic justification for approaching a woman. And she is not going to think of your approach as unmotivated or strange. You are just making a poetic comment, something that is never perceived as a boring supplicating kind of compliment. Plus, psychologically you have a task you need to fulfill, a goal to accomplish.

Having an agenda in the first moment of interaction actually helps. Only this agenda should not have much to do with sexually pursuing a woman, the agenda is entirely creative or intellectual, to discover the most unique thing, and to come up with the most poetic free association.

In my modest experience this tactic has never failed.

Chapter 51

Open softly.

Being men, we tend to go in very hard when we open sets, almost like we're stepping out of a trench to attack the enemy with a bayonet: we are high energy, eyes shining, arms flailing, trying to say something sharp and b ready to roll with the punches. This is the hard way.

The soft way is the low-energy opening for the sociable environment.

Melt yourself all over them. Slow, sleepy, helpless, with a wide sloe goofy smile, warm like a cow, VERY low energy. Turn yourself into a newborn baby. Go over-the-top physical. Stare them in the eyes lllllloooooowwwwwwlllllllyyyyy, tenderly.

Women love babies. They love kissing babies, love playing with their little cojones. Be a baby on the approach. Be more and more of a baby throughout the interaction, while remaining ulra-masculine man at the same time.

Be like a lost puppy.

Be like water that is soft but penetrates everywhere and knows no obstacles.

And when you want the closing - go 1000 times softer.

This stuff is by far THE FASTEST OPEN-TO-CLOSE TACTIC I know in courtship.

It's the key to instant makeout and instant non-verbal isolation. If you do the soft style properly, you can take a woman you just approached by the hand and lead her to the dark corner.

During one of the bootcamps a client of mine who used to have a bit of a problem with approaches and touching, tried out the soft method.

He went soft into a two-set, melted all over the two women like a sweet ice-cream cone, and kinoed them mercilessly without the slightest protest.

Then I opened another two-set, going soft, and the same client came in, super-soft, I then took one of the two girls by the hand (about half a minute after the approach) and lead her away to the dark corner, soft.

By the time we came back less than ten minutes later, my client number-closed and kiss-closed the other girl.

The woman he was making out with stared at me and said in the voice hoarse with lust and nearly religious awe: "Thank you!"

The way that guy later described his interaction, he hardly said anything at all to that woman. Just pure vibe.

Or I may look at the soft style form a different angle, and say this:

Be a daddy to a baby girl.

Sing her a lullaby (I have a few favorite songs, very soft and tender ones, that I like to whisper/sing to women's ears. Those songs with intensely sensual and somehow intensely innocent lyrics. Just to give her goosebumps.

Or whisper a bedtime story to her ear.

And a lot of touching.

Chapter 52

Not sure if you often encounter this challenge where you live, but in New York City women who know they are attractive had developed a simple and very effective way of keeping themselves relatively unapproachable.

To be more specific, it is a way to keep themselves out of reach of the men who would not know how to deal with the presented challenge. It is a psychological filter of sorts.

I am talking about the situation when a shockingly beautiful woman would wear headphones in any public place, whether it is a subway or coffee shop or art gallery or library or bookstore. Even the usually very effective hand flip might not work with such girl, because she would simply turn away, refusing to acknowledge a man who tries to engage her.

Or how in the world are you supposed to begin a conversation with a girl who is chatting animatedly on her cellular phone?

I suspect that way too many men give up on the girls who defend themselves in such way, and tell themselves that one way they would sure meet a woman who is attractive and yet not so standoffish as to defend herself from being approached by hundreds of strangers every day. How rude of her!

They presume that the girl on the headphones is rude, and that the girl on the phone talks to her boyfriend, so what would be the point of having a conversation with her anyway?

But what if that girl wearing the headphones or talking on the phone were actually a woman of your dreams? What if your very destiny were at stake? What if she, and no one else was there for you to meet and talk, and you are only headphones away from possible happiness? (This would be a very needy mindset, by the way, but still, what if?)

You must have a tactic for that.

And I am going to provide you with more than one.

To begin a conversation with a girl who is listening to her iPod, you may want to touch her on the outside of the upper arm with the back of your hand. In the majority of the situations, she will make eye contact with you, pull out one of her headphones, smile, and say, yes?

This would work even if the woman with the headphones has her eyes closed.

You may do the same with the girl on the phone, but make sure to get a strong eye contact before you touch her – otherwise she will mutter the apology under her breath and remove herself from the contact with you.

Or you may choose to make eye contact with the girl on the phone, and communicate with the sign language. The most effective way of doing that would be to imitate talking on the imaginary phone, and than hang up that imaginary phone. In my experience, when I do that, most women actually tell their friend on the phone, hey, I will call you back in a couple of minutes, and then they hand up! The great part is, if you managed to get them hang up on whoever they were talking to, you definitely get their complete commitment to the conversation.

Which means, a girl on the phone is EASIER to engage into a real conversation!

You may use the same tactic with the woman who wears headphones: simply make the eye contact and then pretend as if you were taking off the imaginary headphones. In most cases, she will smile and do the same with her real ones.

Or if you find the logistics a little more complex, you may chose to make the eye contact, and write her a note on a piece of paper. Something along the lines of, I have something to tell you.

And when she takes off her headphones or lowers her phone, it is up to you if you want to follow up in a direct or indirect way. Indirect would be, you have something on your cheek, actually, you do not, I simply wanted to talk to you. Direct would be, I saw you listening to, well, whatever you were listening to, and suddenly I thought, what if you were a woman of my dreams? So I apologize for interrupting, but I hope you understand, I HAD to interrupt.

She would either laugh and provide you with the commitment you required, or she might smile and say, thank you but I actually have a boyfriend. To which you might say, of course you do! As a matter of fact, I just won a six-figure bet with myself that you would have something like that. But see, having a boyfriend is exactly what makes you so interesting! Why? Well, because the way you said this, you sounded like you know life, and you know what you want from it, and I found it very feminine, and altogether I feel it makes you quite irresistible. Anyway, please tell me, what is it like to be in a perfect relationship?

Because if a woman brings up a topic of her boyfriend, in many cases you may consider yourself lucky: she had just escalated a conversation for you.

Chapter 53

Imagine that you are in a bookstore, and all of a sudden you see a woman you think you might actually like.

The big truth is, she is not there in the middle of the blank white abstract space like one in the Matrix movie. She is surrounded by the environment.

You may use the environment to generate the appropriate opener.

Most likely this girl will be right next to a bookshelf. Bookstores are known for having bookshelves in them.

And the bookshelves in bookstores are usually marked.

There are sections in the bookstores: Fiction, Travel, Arts, Cooking, Fitness, and so on.

To begin a conversation with any woman in a bookstore you may have to just figure out the section of the bookstore that person is in, and then ASK HER A QUESTION or MAKE A STATEMENT FOLLOWED BY A QUESTION related to that section.

If she is in the Music section, you may say, hey, what do you think about jazz? Or you may say, I think have the irrefutable proof that Mozart was almost exactly a century ahead of his time. Because Mozart was born in 1756, and the very first elevator was built in 1857. Anyway, who is your favorite classical composer?

If she is in the Travel section, you may say, what do you think about Japan? Or, my absolute favorite country in the world is Bulgaria. I have an incredible collection of romantic memories from that country. What about you, which place in the world do you consider the most romantic?

And by the way, as I am sure you have noticed, by that moment you have already escalated quite far.

Or you might want to use another form of the universal bookstore opener.

If you are in the bookstore, chances are, you are there to pick up a book.. Imagine you came to a bookstore and found a book you really like. If you have a few more minutes before you have to leave the store, walk around and see if you can find a girl you might like. Then share the book with the girl.

Hey, you seem like the right person to share this book with. Check it out. I am overwhelmed with anticipation, I only flipped through the first few pages, and already cannot wait till I get to the final chapter.

The great thing about the universal bookstore opener is that it works not only in bookstores, but anywhere else.

Think of the entire world as your bookstore. Wen you see a woman you feel you might like, figure out in which section of the universal bookstore you meet her at that moment, and ask her a question or make a statement followed by a question related to that situation.

If she is in the Catching a Cab section of the universal bookstore, you might tell her, hey, it is impossible to catch a cab on that street corner during this time of the year. Let me show you a better place, just half a block away. You will find a line of idling taxis there.

If she is in the I Am Sad section, you might ask her if there is anything you could do to make her feel a little better. May be she wants an ice cream or something.

Or you may share a book with her in the universal bookstore.

You are that book.

Share your life with her by making any statement about yourself.

Chapter 54

To understand the best way to begin a conversation with a woman who is walking fast toward you or in the same direction where you are walking, you have to know a little about the so-called sexual presumption mechanism.

Whenever a man approaches a woman, no matter how smooth or subtle his approach might be, somewhere in the back of that woman’s mind there still might be a pare-programmed set of questions: “Why is this human being approaching me?”, “Why is this human being engaging me in the interaction?”, “What does this human being want from me?”, and so on. If the man does not quickly provide her with the answer, her mind will find the typical answer based on the simplest thing that she can perceive: the gender difference. She identifies the gender of the other human being: a male. And her mind goes: attention, sexual approach.

Next thing, her survival instinct tell her to resist, because in our mind every change is potentially a change to the worst. So if the man does not answer her questions in time (not necessarily verbally – but in one way or another if he does not provide his own answers to her inner questions) almost immediately he will have to face her psychological resistance.

Such resistance might be particularly strong when you deal with a moving target.

Walking with her wherever she goes is the second best strategy. No matter how fast a woman of your dreams is walking, and no matter how busy she seems to you, if she is indeed a woman of your dreams, it is my opinion based on the experience that you must stop her.

And you have to know how to do it without triggering her sexual presumption mechanism and her resistance.

Hope I got your attention by now, because I am going to explain to you exactly how to do it best. And guess what, the rest of this article will be in the "you" perspective, and I don't care if I break a sacred rule by doing this. So what? Sue me.

Anyway, first scenario: as you walk along the street or alley in a park, you notice an interesting woman who walks quickly toward you and is about to pass you.

Imagine what would happen if you tried to stop her by blocking her way – or addressing her while she is still in front of you. If you do not do it confidently enough, she would probably swerve aside, walk around you and speed up, muttering some really dirty words about you. If you are committed enough and jump in front of her with your arms and legs spread like you’re the Vitruvian Man, she will probably stop dead in front of you, but she will be damn scared because by that time she will probably think you’re a sexual predator. All her defenses and shields will be up, alarm blaring, red flags waiving in the air.

Now imagine that instead you let that woman pass. As she passes by you, no matter how focused she is on some inner things, some part of her mind will register a male presence, which means that at the moment when she is closest to you, semi-consciously she is at the moist critical point of the sexual presumption mechanism, her defenses ready to be employed. What you need now is to CONFIRM her sexual presumption, by acknowledging the woman. Turn your head to look at her – not to undress her with your insolent stare – but just to acknowledge her as a passerby in the casual way. She will probably return the gaze briefly, or she won’t, but at this point you more or less confirm her sexual presumption fro her mind.

Then you turn away from her and look straight ahead again. And you keep walking.

Now she is side by side with you. Now she is behind you, you hear her footsteps moving away.

For the woman, the moment has passed. Her mind says, phew, this guy is not going to sexually attack me, thank God. Her defenses go, “false alarm, the threat is gone, it’s okay to rest now”. She walks away, unconsciously satisfies that she does not have to defend herself against the potential sexual aggression any longer.

That’s when you stop and say calmly and confidently, “Excuse me.”

You won’t even have to turn around as you deliver the words. Smile to yourself as you still look ahead. Then you turn around and you will see that she stopped and turned around to face you.

And her defenses were not ready, so there will be no resistance whatsoever. I mean, literally, even if you say, “I’d like to kiss you right now”, it will probably take her up to 10 seconds before she can say “no”. (And if you know a little about Dark Juggler Method, you know how to say or do literally ANYTHING with complete confidence to a total stranger and not only get away with it but get whatever result you might have had in mind in the majority of cases, and be perfectly safe in the psychological and even legal aspects of your performance).

The interesting thing is, since you made her stop and turn around, you got her complete commitment to the interaction, you got her on the platter, from the first moment.

And you don’t have to yell your “Excuse me” either. In fact, an interesting exercise you might want to consider trying and practicing would be stopping several people in the course of the few minutes, no matter even men or women, with the same “excuse me”, saying it each time quieter and quieter, all the way until the last person stops reacting.

When that last person doesn’t stop for you, it is not because they didn’t hear you, it’s because they heard you but their mind didn’t register it as something worthy of their commitment. All you have to do next is to let them take two or three more steps and then raise your voice and say loudly, “never mind!” It will make that person stop like they hit a brick wall and wheel around. And guess what are going to be the first lines coming out of that person’s mouth? “Oh… I’m sorry!” Guilt does not just add to the commitment, but it multiplies it.

Love belongs to the taker.

Now let’s consider the second scenario: a woman is moving in the same direction as yourself and she is already ahead of you.

You might of course wait till she stops at the traffic light.

But then again, you might not want to leave it all to chance. In that latter case, here’s what you do.

You speed up. You might even run if that’s necessary. You overtake her. You keep walking straight ahead faster than she does, until you are a considerable distance ahead of her. Then you slow down and stop, not too abruptly, then turn around and walk toward her.

At the moment when you stop and turn around her defenses will be already up. As you are approaching her, her mind will feel the tension building to almost unbearable degree, and the funniest part is, she might not even be consciously aware of that tension. As you are right next to her, the critical point will reach its peak, this is when all her alarms are blaring and red flags are flying high in the air. You spike it even higher by turning your head toward her and making eye contact. Then you turn away, look straight ahead and keep walking.

Her mind goes, "phew, false alarm". Her defenses go off.

You take a couple more steps and then you stop say calmly, “Excuse me”. Then you turn around.

Chapter 55

I’ve just stepped over the threshold of my house, having spent the last three and a half hours in a saddle of my motorcycle on the way from Boston to New York. I have a few hours left to wash and dry my clothes and to catch a nap, and at three in the morning I hope in a cab to LGA and then on a plane to LAX to give a couple of days of private coaching to a very interesting client and to hang out with Wayne and learn from him.

And yet some unstoppable force seems to drag me to the computer so I can write another article about the first crucial moment of any human interaction – the beginning. Too bad, perhaps.

I believe that, philosophically speaking, the beginning carries 99.9 percent of the informational charge in any interaction. Think of it: the beginning means the difference between the other person not knowing that I even exist - and accepting me as the fact of their life! It’s no less than the difference between being and non-being!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there are two fundamentally different types of opening that I might choose to begin any interaction with a total stranger: either direct or indirect.

Direct means that I let a woman know immediately what the hell I want from her. “Hey, I’d like to speak with you for a few moments!” or “I have a confession to make. I know you might find it very unusual, and I cannot believe I’m even saying this right now, but I feel I must tell you that when I noticed you looking at this bookshelf with such concentration, I felt overwhelmed with the incredibly powerful urge to walk up to you and kiss you”…

(Please remind me to demonstrate that one to you during your bootcamp; works the best in bookstores for some reason).

Indirect means talking in the beginning about something other than what you really want from her. The Universal Bookstore Opener is a typical example of the indirect beginning.

Indirect beginning requires a transitioning. To transition means to throw away the topic that was used to begin the conversation with a woman, and to involve her into a talk about you and her.

I can think of several types of transitioning.

The simplest, and the best one, is the “no transitioning” technique. Instead of trying to smoothly and gradually get from the initial topic to the personal conversation, I just cut off the first topic and go into the emotional I-statement. Something like this: “My book is about the samurai code of honor, and yours?” – “Knitting!” – “Yuck!” – “Hehehe!“ – “You know, some time ago I was on the highway from Boston to New York, and suddenly realize that I nearly ran out of gas. I felt really angry at myself for this stupid blunder. So I took the very first highway exit, and found the gas station. But more importantly, I accidentally discovered a really beautiful small town in Connecticut. Asking you about your book and then seeing your eyes made me think of that story. What about you, what was your recent most unexpected discovery?”

(Actually I’ve just realized that I’ve automatically inserted the Push-Pull into this transitioning. Good, because now I won’t have to explain to you that another form of transitioning would be the transitioning by Push-Pull.

Or sometimes when I open indirectly, I transition via the “why” question. Questions about reasons and motivations are the most powerful ones, because our motivations and reasons lead to our choices, and our choices form our characters and our destinies. So “why” question is bound to make the conversation personal. “Why knitting?” – “Because my mom always wanted me to learn how to knit, and her birthday is next month, so I wanted to give her something I make myself” – and please notice that she does no longer talk about books, she talks about her relationship with her mom. I had transitioned.

Or I can use the “What’s your name?” (vacuum) kind of transitioning - because after she and I know each other’s names, we’re no longer strangers, at least from the superficially social point of view, so it would be appropriate to talk about personal stuff.

There are a few hundred possible transitioning structures, but I guess I will have to keep them all for some other chapter. Bedtime.

Chapter 56

Last weekend’s Charm School gave me thrills. That was the bootcamp when I had done my, by far, absolutely best daygame demonstration, something to tell my grandkids about. It was also during the same daygame session when for the first time in my life a woman I had approached in a bookstore told me to @#$& off before I had a chance to open my mouth. She said that to me several times. To be completely frank, after a while I actually stopped counting how many times she said it. (Among the instructors we call it the “Rainman pattern”, but that’s besides the point).

It was that woman’s beautifully challenging reaction to my approach that had inspired me to write this article.

About a week ago I had the pleasure and honor to spend a couple of days with Juggler, working to help our private client together. It was the private instruction on crack, the inversion of our usual two-to-one ratio: this time it was two instructors, one client. Whenever I meet Juggler, I learn a lot. And probably the most important things I’ve learned this time was the simple practical way of teaching people how to lose the dependency on the outcome in their interactions with women. Wayne explained to me and to our client, that in the crude reality a very considerable part of success in any interaction truly depends on luck, also known as “logistic”. (In fact, the word “luck” means “logistic” in the archaic latinized pre-Gaelic dialect… or may be it doesn’t). Hence - and I am about to reveal to you one of the most powerful things I know about the interpersonal dynamic – hence there is no need to push against the flow, there is no need to try hard, to strive to overcome all the obstacles and break through all the barriers and to talk your way through the impossible resistance and win each interaction at any cost. It means that if I sense as much as a tiny hint of displeasure with the interaction I’m having, I am perfectly entitled to cut that interaction short as soon as I choose, wish that person a very pleasant evening, and leave to chat to someone else instead.

It means freedom.

On the conditions that such philosophy must not be your default justification for not escalating. Meaning, the mindset I’ve just described only applies to men who “get it”, who know what they are doing, who know the difference between not enjoying the interaction for logistical reasons impossible to control versus not being able to create the enjoyable interaction by controlling what can and should be controlled.

And yet – that occurs quite rarely, but what if for one reason or another you feel you absolutely must stay in the interaction longer despite the initially lukewarm reception or outright aggression? In my case it was the presence of the client a few steps away, who was pretending to read a book, and was taking in every word of the interaction. In your case it might be something else. I guess I must give you tools for that.

So, I walk up to a girl and sit next to her, and before I have a chance to open my mouth, she says, “@#$& off!” That’s quite unusual. My first and quite sincere reaction is the perplexed look I give her. And I don’t hold anything back, I’m generous to people, I make sure to keep eye contact and to flood her with my nonverbal bewilderment. Jaw dropped, eyes bulging, and all. Then I tighten the emotional bolt: I turn around to look back as if to see if she was addressing someone else. Then I look back at her. Helplessly. Think Puss in the Boots from Shreck 2.

That’s my tool number one, I figured it out not so long ago, in Toronto. Normally such act breaks the ice and makes the aggressive person smile or even laugh, whether they wanted it or not. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so that time.

So, she keeps the eye contact and fumes. I go: “I beg you pardon?” I say it in the loud and leisurely voice.

This is my tool number two. If someone says something rude, I politely insist that they repeat. Normally they back off and feel a little guilty for being socially ungraceful. Guess what – in the interaction I am describing, this tactic didn’t work. She repeated her words verbatim. I respond with my tool number three, a Reward/Question: “You are being straightforward. I find it refreshing. What’s your name?” (Vacuum).

Guess how she responds?

So I go, “Hm… that’s quite an unusual name. I sure hope you kicked your mom and dad for that! My name is Dimitri. I read books about music and… ”

(This is my technique number three. If I get a rude reaction to my question, I act as if they had answered my question.)

She interrupts, “Didn’t you hear me? I said, @#$& off!” She looks a little offended by the fact that I keep my face on. This promises to be a fun interaction. The problem is, I am running out of ammo. I have to improvise.

So I go, “Oh, I heard you first time. I don’t feel I’ve deserved it, though. Anyway, I hadn’t finished. So, as I was saying, I tend to read about music and film history. What’s your book about?” (Vacuum).

I guess this is my new technique, number four. When I look back on the interaction and analyze it now, I can see a few things. The principle here, demonstrate the authority, but not contempt. If I say as much as, “I think you’re being a little rude”, I would give that girl what she wants: me being hurt, on the platter. But I am not hurt, and guess what, she doesn’t know it, but I’m being paid for every minute of this interaction, while she’s doing it for free. She is an amateur, I’m a pro. Pros rule. So I treat her kindly. I do not tell her she is rude. I tell her calmly my subjective feeling: “I do not feel I’ve deserved that”. Then I make her listen. I ask my question.

She goes, “DUDE, @#$& OFF!” That attracts the attention of another girl sitting nearby. I look at her and smile. She smiles and turns back to her book, still smiling. I turn back to the first girl and revert to my technique number three. I demonstrate enthusiasm and say, “Oh, I see what you mean. Your book is about good manners! Well, I am proud of you, and I am sure you will learn a lot!”

I say it loudly so that the other girl hears my words. Then I turn my attention to that other girl and say to her, loudly: “My new friend here reads a guidebook about manners. So far she had learned only how to say @#$& off. What’s your take on that?”

She looks at me, still smiling. And I can see the words forming in her mind, she’s trying to hold herself from saying it. I look at her and nod as expressively as I can. She cracks up. I crawl away from the rude girl, and sit next to the second girl. We talk for a little while before I go back to my client. All this time the rude girl breathes real deep. I wish her a very pleasant day as I walk away.

This is my technique number five. When everything else fails, I use the rude reaction given to me by one person to justify why I talk to someone else nearby. I’ve learned it from my good friend Javier, who is among the leading members of the Charisma Arts New York posse, and the true master of psychology of human interaction.

Normally the unexpected rude reaction means to me that this person really needs my attention. So I give her or him enough attention to quench the need. Sometimes I forget this simple principle though. For example, a couple of weekend ago in Boston I was demonstrating for a client, and opened a group of two attractive girls and a rather burly guy. I usually I tend to recognize the social situation of pickup and avoid undermining another guy’s effort until and unless I see that he’s not getting anywhere anyway. But I was slightly tired and I didn’t catch the fact that the guy was in the middle of the subtlest moment of escalation. So when I opened him and the girls, he got a little upset. He moved around and positioned himself on the other side of the table. That was a right move in his situation, because by positioning himself in a new place he got the girls to focus on him. And, as I’ve said, I felt a little tired by then because it was the end of the second night of the bootcamp, and I guess that was the reason why I made a rookie mistake. (Most of the mistakes people make are rookie mistakes, have you noticed?) I should have re-engaged the guy immediately, and I focused on the girls instead. As a result I had to work hard to get their commitment, and even though the interaction went okay in the end, it did not go as greatly as it could and should have. Lesson reinforced: even though all rules should be broken, the rule of thumb is to give so much attention to the current attention magnet of the group that his magnetic powers are drained and I become the attention magnet.

Chapter 57

More on troubleshooting.

If a woman I had just approached gives me an out-of-all-proportion negative reaction, I might do the following:

Agree with her emotion.
Reward: presume her high value.
Relate: justify her negative emotional reaction in a plausible way.
End the conversation on the high note and leave.

The main goal of this structure is to leave gracefully and immediately and feel good about it. The secondary goal is to make that woman re-open you and apologize.

The steps can be put in different order.

Example 1

I: Hey, I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes.

She: @#$% off!

I: I can sense your authenticity. But perhaps you've had a tough day. I understand. Please enjoy your evening. Good-bye.

Example 2

I: Excuse me. I felt like introducing myself to you for some reason.

She: Whatever it is, I'm not interested!

I: I see.

She: Leave me alone.

I: Sure. I will not bother you. You that you strike me as a frank and open-hearted person. But perhaps someone had hurt you very recently that's why you chose to hurt me. It's okay. I hope something makes you feel better later tonight.

Example 3

I: How's it going?

She: None of your business. Go away.

I: Had a tough day, right? Hey, I understand. Your words didn't hurt me and you should not feel guilty. I hope you make the most of your evening. Ciao!

When I explained this technique to my friend and private client from Israel, he told me a joke indirectly related to the subject. "How many Jewish moms does it take to change a light bulb? - Oh, it's all right, a Jewish mom will just sit there in the dark, lonely and sad..."

Chapter 58

Increasingly more often than not I find myself surrounded by people who show a lot of respect to me for teaching them something interesting and valuable (and I keep my fingers and TOES crossed hoping they continue to do so; I am hooked on respect). And increasingly more often than not I discover a girl or two hovering in proximity, trying to overhear our conversation.

And I have noticed that the girls who are curious about our topic (human contact in general and how to pick up chicks in particular) tend to be intelligent, emotionally healthy and, in most cases, for some magical reason, attractive, at least to me.

Probably it is so because they understand the simple truth that men who want to learn how to communicate with women have a higher probability of making women around them happy, too. Those girls cannot help but feel respect and admiration to men who want to learn to become better at being worthy of a great woman’s love.

So all I have to do to open one of such hovering girls is to finish the sentence that helped me to make the point, and then turn to her suddenly and say, “Right?”

Usually she laughs and says, “Absolutely!” Then we do the “rock” or “high five” or I open my arms and she hugs me, and then I ask her name. Then she joins our conversation and we talk about relationships.

Or sometimes when I’m in a naughty mood, instead of simply asking “Right?” I choose the dorkiest female name I can come up with, and throw it in, too. So it goes like this:

I: (to the guys) “And you should keep in mind that psychologically, men tend to expand in space and shrink in time, while women tend to shrink in space and expand in time. (to the hovering girl) Right, Gertrude?”

Girl: “Hahaha, I’m not Gertrude!”

I: “Of course you’re not! What’s your name?”

and so on.

And there might be endless variations. “I blame you!” (Credit: Rob); “It’s all your fault!”; “What’s your take on that?”, “What do you think?” etc.

Or if I accidentally (or on purpose) overhear someone’s conversation, I can start talking to them, making it look like they were talking to me in the first place. For example, speaking of Rob: last weekend I witnessed him giving a brilliant demonstration of this technique. He and I were walking down the street in a crowd of people headed to the famous for its nightlife meatpacking district of New York, and suddenly someone behind us says quite loudly, “Yo, what’s up, punk? How are you doing?” Rob reacted immediately, without even looking back, and projecting his voice equally well: “Not bad, man! How about you?” Everybody around us, whoever heard that, looked around. I did the same, and saw a random guy on a cell phone who interrupted his call to shake Rob’s hand appreciatively. Obviously, “Yo, what’s up, punk?” was meant for someone on the other end of the line, but Rob reacted in the split second, to engage a stranger in a tiny but meaningful emotional exchange. Such little emotional exchanges, such flirting with anyone and everyone instantly and effortlessly creates that elusive something that many men so desperately try to imitate, calling it “high social value”.

Sometimes simply saluting a group with a drink is enough to make friends with them.

Sometimes I bluntly point at them and pause, not a trace of smile on my face. When enough tension builds up, I smile and give then “thumbs up”; which tends to open the group. I and Rob argued about that opener for a while and couldn’t come to an agreement. I insist that the “thumbs up” opener qualifies as “lousy”, while Rob prefers to think of it as “retarded”. But that’s exactly the point: the opener doesn’t have to be spectacular. A bad opener is a good opener as long as it does what it supposed to do: open.

Here's another ridiculosuly bad one for you: "Vy govorite po russki? Habla espanol? Parlais-vu francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" - "No, I'm sorry, I do not know any languages" - "That's too bad. Well, let's talk in English, then. What's your name?!"

Or just begin in whatever language you know: "Zdravstvuyte, sudarynya. Ya znayu chto vy vpolne vozmozhno sochtyote moye poyavlenie neozhidannym, no ya ne mog otkazat sebye v vozmozhnosti poznakomit'sya s vami. Kak vas zovut?" - "Oh, I'm sorry I do not understand!" - "Oh thank goodness, you do speak English!" etc.

Or you may even open in gibberish. I did once, on a bet with a client. Worked wonders.

Chapter 59

I’ve learned these few from my friends Wayne and Rob.

Please imagine what I witnessed in LA some time ago. A bookstore. Wayne approaches a bookshelf. There is a girl nearby, reading a book. Wayne picks a book from a shelf, observes the cover, puts the book back. Picks another one, flips through the pages. Turns to the girl, casually.

Wayne: “Is it any good?”

Girl: “Yeah!”

Wayne: “Cool”.

He shuts up and turns away from the girl, but doesn’t move away, and continues checking out the books.

A pause.

Then a little miracle happens (and it happens more or less seven times out of ten; a very consistent little miracle). A girl turns to Wayne and asks: “What’s yours about?”

Then he runs a Juggler Method on her.

Pretty simple, huh?

I like this a lot because I find it elegant and natural. To test if what I believed about the mindset for this approach was true, I asked Wayne, “What happens when a girl just walks away after the first micro-interaction?” Wayne confirmed my belief: “You let her go and find someone else to talk to”. In my opinion, that is as non-needy as it can get.

I also saw Wayne handing a book to a random stranger and saying, “Here. You MUST read this book. It’s the best one for you in the whole store. I insist”.

(I do it somewhat differently, by the way. I tend to point at the book I like, and say: "This one. Definitely this one!" - "Oh yeah?" - "Trust me" But as you see it is essentially the same thing, which is, instead of asking for a book recommendation, giving a book recommendation. Much more macho. And the best part is, such approach works in clothing stores and supermarkets as effectively as in bookstores.)

And here’s Wayne version of beginning the conversation with a girl who’s chatting with someone on the phone: “Sit next to her on the bench - not too close! - and wait till she hangs up. When she hangs up, she is quite likely to tell or ask you something. If she doesn’t, you do”.

Rob contributes to that his trademarked way of dealing with the boring answers. “What’s the book about?” – “Nothing” – “See? You are different from everyone else in this store. Everyone reads about something, and it makes it boring. But you are special because your book is the only one about nothing. I think I like you… so far. You might yet disappoint me… but I hope that you do not. What’s your name?”

dimitri@charismaarts.com

Part X

Beyond the Charm School

Chapter 60

(More vicious marketing).

Charisma Arts weekend bootcamp, known as Charm School, is a highly effective program that in the course of many years helped thousands of men to meet and connect with women. I teach Charm Schools every week, and doing that feels me with the sense of accomplishment.

And yet, there are certain skills in the Juggler Method that do not fit within the structure of the Charm School, simply because neither me nor any other instructor working for the company would be able to teach everything we know in one weekend. These advanced skills are the ones I can only teach one-on-one. Giving my clients the opportunity to master the skills beyond the bootcamp program is the purpose of the private one-on-one instruction with me.

In addition to learning the skills and practicing them in real life situations under my close observation, my private clients receive free study materials not available to the students of the Charm School.

Here’s the list of practical programs that I offer to the clients who are interested in one-on-one instruction with me:

I. Advanced Conversational Techniques:

The 5 Language Patterns
The Structures of the Verbal Humor
Zoom-In Storytelling
Creating Sexual Subtext

II. Approach Marathon

58 Openers
Complex Logistics on the Approach
Transitioning Phase
500 Approaches within 8 Hours (during summer season)

III. Indirect Courtship

IV. High Society Courtship

Advanced DHV by Cultural Interpretation
High Society Dating Principles
Rapport through Catharsis
Conversations on Literature, Theater, Classic Film, Art, Philosophy, and Music

V. Dark Juggler Method

VI. Developing the Romantic Hero Archetype

VII. Individual Lifestyle Plan Builder

VIII. Personal Style

Clothing
Grooming
Body Language
Voice
More

IX. Long-Term Relationships

The Points of Emotional Focus
Fidelity
Power Shift

X. Getting Back Your Ex-

XI. Juggler Method for Creative Writers

XII. Juggler Method for Salary Negotiation

If you feel you might be interested in the private one-on-one training with me, please contact me via email:

dimitri@charismaarts.com