How To Learn Game

Are you doomed to spend the rest of your life always having to work on little aspects of your game? Or will there come a point where you can just finally “be you” and still get all the girls you want?

“Something is definitely off here.”

I remember thinking this to myself often when I first started immersing myself in “pick up culture”. Something was off. Maybe you’ve noticed..

I played basketball my whole life, all the way through college. In the sport, like all others, it’s common knowledge that you don’t try to master every skill you can – you specialize. There are point guards, and shooting guards, power forwards and centers.Everyone masters the same basic fundamental skills, and then you specialize, reaching “master” levels in one or two specific areas.

Dating, game, pick-up, seduction?all of it is a skill too, but as I immersed myself in the culture and looked around, what I saw was a misguided approach almost everywhere.

It still looks that way.

Ever wonder how you can spend a good deal of time and energy working on something only to see no verifiable results in it? You come in thinking you just need to work on one or two things to get the girl you want, and a few months later, you’re convinced everything needs work, every skill needs to be mastered. You need to be the best at opening. You need to be the best at flirting. You need to be the best at bantering, storytelling, escalating, seducing. The list begins to resemble 613 commandments. Here’s what I’m getting at:

The game of “game” is NEW.

It’s a new skill guys (and girls) have been learning for only a couple decades. The “training” has not yet been optimized. Not even close. In a century-old sport like basketball, or a 1,200 year old sport like soccer, the training to become skilled is much smarter. And nearly every sport has come to the same conclusion:

Master the fundamentals, then learn your strengths so you know where to specialize.

This is why you see Steve Nash running the point and shooting 3-pointers today, not posting up in the paint and wrestling for rebounds. He’s molded his skills to his strengths. When I look at the pick-up community, I see a bunch of guys who are clueless as to what their strengths are, so they spend their valuable time trying to master everything. Let’s just be real here since I know no other way:

If you’re a tall guy, opening groups (and single girls) is going to be easier for you.

It just is. Your height is a strength so use it. Become fantastic at opening all kinds of groups of people, and even learn how to build some strong attraction and hooks off the open. Get good enough at the other stuff, but master your strength. If you’re quick on the draw with your words, then make your flirting/banter game awesome. Have awesome, hilarious, buying-temperature spiking lines to use in all kinds of situations.

Have that as your main, go-to attraction tool. Get good enough at the other stuff, but master your strength.

Maybe you’re a really good storyteller. So get your “story rolodex” together, know your transitions and hooks and realizations, and tell her the best damn stories she’s ever heard (by the way, you do this by not having the most interesting stories, but sharing them in the most interesting way). Get really calibrated with it too, knowing when to make a 6-minute story a 20-second story, and vice-versa.

Get good enough at the other stuff, but master your strength.

If you try to go on mastering everything, you’ll get “vaguely decent” at all of them but even more convinced of your own make-believe inadequacies. Do you think Steve Nash thinks less of himself because his sky-hook isn’t great? Beckham because he had no left foot?

This is most obvious in the community when it comes to Opening. An inordinate amount of time is spent on learning the skill of opening when it’s not really a skill at all. All you do is say something, loud enough, and get someone else’s attention and BAM?you now know how to open. It’s insane to me the amount of time people spend talking about opening. Opening will not get you “solid numbers”.

Opening will not get you laid.

Opening will not get you an amazing girlfriend.

It’s (usually) necessary for those things to happen which is why you simply must get GOOD ENOUGH at it. But then you move on to the much more important skills that will get you solid numbers, laid and an amazing girlfriend – bantering skills, conversational skills, rapport skills, seduction skills and so on. You get good enough at all of those, mastering the fundamentals, and then you make an honest assessment of yourself and you decide..

“Which of these things do I really love? Which ones do I think I’m really naturally good at? Which one is my true strength?”

Decide to zoom in on that one and get unreal at it.

My greatest strength at the beginning was storytelling, so after I got the fundamentals down (which should take you anywhere from 1-6 months for most), I started reading all kinds of books on storytelling, wrote a ton, and consciously worked on all the little details that make a great storyteller into my conversations until they became internalized and girls started telling me how much they loved to hear me tell them stories. At that point, my game was at a point most guys would have been extremely pleased with.

Got all the fundamentals down pat, getting most of the girls I wanted and telling stories like we’re at a bonfire. But it just so happens than I’m an obsessive maniac, and decided to master another skill – my bantering and flirting. I went to work on that for months and now can spit rounds of banter lines at you off the dome like my name is Supernatural.

And then it was the seduction skills, the sex skills and right now, it’s the deep rapport skills (which are probably the hardest, by the way, because you have to make yourself truly vulnerable first for that kind of deep bond to be formed).

I think about it like Kobe now.

Born with the talent and potential, he mastered the fundamentals, become an incredible slasher, and since?he continues to add a new specific skill every off-season. Fadeaways. Post game. Footwork. Making fun of reporters. He doesn’t stop. I do it this way because this is what I love, it’s my vocational calling, it’s where I’m headed. But for you to get the girl of your dreams, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BECOME THE KOBE BRYANT OF GAME.

I would go as far say saying that if you truly master the fundamentals of game (that’s the communications and the sub communications), and then really play to your strengths?.99% of all girls are fair-game to you.

Your greatest obstacle at that point will simply be access.

So DON’T DO IT.

Don’t get caught making the same mistake so many others have, mis-investing your time and energy on skills that you only need to get “good enough” at. Get good enough at them, nail your fundamentals down and then move on to the important stuff: mastering your unique strengths.

There’s a scene in “Crazy, Stupid, Love” where Ryan Gosling says to Steve Carell, “Just play to your strengths bud. That’s all any of us can do.”

How right he was.

You can learn more about his book, Make Women Want You, by clicking here.