This is a guest post by Dr. Asian Rake, who is a dating consultant and an ex-professor at a top research university. Currently based in Singapore, he guides select clients to improve their lifestyles.
(Model credit: Luvian from XiuRen)
The last article I wrote for this site detailed the kind and amount of physical touch you apply when flirting with an “Asian” woman. It quickly became apparent, however, that this assumed a lot of familiarity and experience with physical touch in general and was already a higher-level teaching.
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So in this article, I’m going to return to the fundamentals. In this case, we’re going to look at the proper mindset and attitude you ought to have while socializing.
My examples will be drawn from night-time interactions. But the principles and attitudes apply just the same to day-time settings, such as coffee shops, shopping malls, and city streets.
The first step to socializing is actually getting yourself out of the complacent comfort of your own home and into a place where there are people. Seems quite simple. But it can be hard to do and requires dedication and discipline. Until you’ve developed the habit of going out on weekends on a regular basis, you will probably need that initial push to leave the comfort of your home and go to a place that is conducive to flirting with women.
But this push will only be necessary until you’ve developed the habit, which for me, was about 3-4 months of consistently going out for at least two nights a week. For day game, decide how much you want and can devote to this and work this into your weekly schedule.
I still clearly remember having my mentor remind me over the phone when I was first starting out, “Dude, it’s Friday night. Get out there!” Not too long thereafter, this changed to, “Dude, it’s Thursday night. Get out there!” I no longer needed the push to go out on Fridays and Saturdays. I had already scheduled it into my weekly routine.
In my first couple of months, I even had to do community service for running a red light (I pleaded for community service rather than paying a fine, the cheap grad student that I was, lol) for 4 hours every Friday and Saturday until midnight. I was pretty exhausted on those nights. But guess what? I stuck with my routine and still put in at least an hour, and sometimes two, every one of those nights. I even wrote pages of analysis after having spent just one hour in a club socializing. It would have been easy just to use the community service as an excuse for not going out, but I didn’t. And that took determination. But once it became a habit, I actually really missed going out.
It’s a lot like going out to the gym and doing regular workouts. When you first start out, it takes discipline to hit the weights. You have to push yourself to go. But once you work it into your schedule and start seeing progress, you begin to look forward to your workout. I hit the gym three times a week and have a pretty rigorous workout with a trainer. I often travel for weeks at a time, so it interrupts my progress, but whenever I miss a workout, even on vacation, I feel it in my muscles. I can feel myself getting flabby and slow. I can feel my muscles atrophying. And I can’t wait to get back to the gym. Actually, a major factor in my hotel choices these days, right after price and location, is the quality of the fitness center.
Here’s a crucial but often overlooked distinction: This “clocking in” mentality is fine for getting yourself TO the venue. But once you’re there, drop that right away. You should not be thinking of this as “work” while you’re IN the venue.
When you’re IN the venue, you should be having fun.
If you are thinking, “Oh damn, I’ve been standing around talking to my friends for an hour now and haven’t done a single approach yet. I better get out there and get to work. I better clock in and make a dent on my thousand approaches. Okay, let’s see… (scanning the room) where are the targets?…,” then you have already tainted your approach. You’re already fighting an uphill battle. If you carry this mentality into an interaction, you WILL be sucking value rather than giving it.
The fatal mistake here was that you weren’t having fun in the first place.
What to do instead?
Keep reading to find the cure for your woes.
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As my good friend Sebastian, the founder of theapproach.com, likes to drill into people:
1. Have fun!
2. Make other people have fun.
3. Then see if that hot girl really meets your standards.
4. And remember to manage the logistics.
That’s really all that should be going on when you’re in-field.
Notice that this article is only about the first step: Have fun!
So the question is, how do you have fun in the crowded, dark, loud setting of a nightclub?
I will tell you a secret to getting on the “first-class seat in the express flight” to elite game:
If you do not yet enjoy clubbing, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in a club.
If you do not yet enjoy shopping malls, then it will be very hard to for you to meet and attract women in a shopping mall.
If you do not yet enjoy cafes and bookstores, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in cafes and bookstores.
If you do not yet enjoy bars, then it will be very hard for you to meet and attract women in bars.
So, what lesson can we derive from this?
Learn to enjoy the environment of the venue for it’s own sake, not just as a place to meet women. Otherwise, you will very likely not be having fun, and hence, you will not be projecting a good vibe, and hence, all your sub-communications will be off, and hence, you will be severely tainting every interaction you start there.
One of the first things I learned from my friend, Christian Hudson, the founder of thesocialman.com, was how to have fun in bars and clubs. I naturally enjoy bars so that was easier. But how to have fun in very loud clubs with music that I didn’t particularly care for and with nowhere to sit unless you’ve purchased a table with very expensive bottle service? Well, that took a lot longer to figure out. But once I did, my game in clubs skyrocketed.
People have different ways of having fun in clubs, bars, cafes, bookstores, shopping malls, heck, even supermarkets. So I’m not going to tell you how to have fun. That’s something you have to figure out for yourself. I can, though, tell you how *I* have fun in the bar and club environment, since that’s the one that is most foreign to most guys starting out.
To be truly outcome-independent in a bar or club, you must be completely content with yourself and enjoying your time without having to chat up a single cute girl.
Whoa! What are you saying, Dr. Asian Rake? Are you saying that I should go to a club and not talk to a single girl? Not do a single approach? How on earth am I going to amass my thousand approaches like this?
If you are not yet able to have fun in a bar or club all by yourself and not purposely “cold approaching” a single girl then … YES. The first order of business for you is to learn to enjoy yourself in the venue for its own sake.
A big turning point for me was learning how to sit at a bar by myself, not talking to a single “set,” simply soaking in the ambience, savoring my martini, and chilling out. Sure, I talked to people. I talked to the bartender. I talked to the nice couple next to me. I talked to the older women on the other side who were enjoying a night out of wine tasting. But I never considered any of these interactions to be “sets.”
Then, I learned to have fun on my own in a loud dance club. I learned that I can stand at the bar with a drink, soaking in the ambience with a smile on my face, staring into space, letting myself fall into trance with the beats… all by myself. Sure, I talked to people, very briefly of course, as it was a loud club. I talked to the bartender. I clinked glasses with the group next to me. When the alpha male there saw I was alone, he invited me into their group and poured me a drink. Then a group of three girls started eyeing me, I walked over and clinked glasses with them. Then, one of them started asking me the buying questions (where are you from, etc.). There were nights when I sat at the bar of a big club all by myself, just chilling, and three separate women directly and aggressively propositioned me. It was all the vibe, conveying passive value and good body language and positioning.
Not too long ago, I sat at the bar of a huge dance club all by myself. I was just sitting there, enjoying the ambience and staring into space. It was 4AM. A guy sat next to me, chatting to a girl on the other side of him. She was wearing a tight dress that showed off her long legs. She had silky long black hair that framed a perfect doll-like face. She looked over at me. We locked eyes. She was talking to the guy while looking at me. The guy had his back to me and kept talking to her. I walked over to her other side and planted myself at the bar. I said, “Hey,” and smiled. Turns out the guy was her boyfriend, but they’d only been going out for a month. He looked scared and came over. I kinda felt sorry for him. This girl was way out of his league. She asked for my number. And then they left. On my way home after 5 in the morning, the sun was rising. And she phoned me…
You see, all this started because I was having fun all by myself. My energy was all coming from within. I didn’t need anybody to make me happy. I was perfectly happy just chilling out with my drink. I wasn’t seeking anything. I was just … being. This is what it means to have a vibe that offers value. You are the party.
My fun these days when I go out is independent of any girl’s reaction.
It’s dependent on me and me alone. I remind myself, “If I don’t meet a single hot girl tonight, I’m still going to have fun because my purpose tonight is not to meet girls; it is to have fun!”
Go out there and have fun tonight!
Peace and love, Dr. Asian Rake.
Written by Editorial Staff