(blog post) (mods - TONS of theory here, it's not a LR)
MOST of us learn from an early age that “we should not talk with strangers”. I don’t know about other countries but where I come from, Israel, this makes some sense. When I was a little boy one of my neighbours, a teenager, was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists. He was walking in the neighborhood when a car stopped next to him and he was convinced somehow to enter the vehicle. His mutilated body was found in a cave a few months later.
But children are kidnapped everywhere, not only in Israel. Just out of the top of my head I remember the media frenzy surrounding the English girl who disappeared in Spain a few years back, and before that the story of a young teenager from Utah who vanished one night out of her own bed to be found months later when she was able to escape her captures. And these are just the more “famous” cases. There are dozens each year.
And so we grow-up learning that “talking with strangers” is something that we should avoid. The word “stranger” itself is rooted in the word “strange” which is a synonym to “crazy” and “grotesque”. Social conditioning dictates that we should not talk to people who we do not know.
But we are social creatures – we strive for human contact and interpersonal communication. And so whenever we have a chance to talk with strangers, whenever given the permission to do so, we jump on the opportunity. Our waitresses, hairdressers, taxi drivers and mailmen are all legitimate targets for small talk. Why? Simply because the nature of the interaction with these people gives us a “step in the door” and allows us to initiate a conversation. So we burst through that door and chat them up. The simplest excuse is all we need and off we go into a conversation with a person who we first met just seconds earlier.
And so coming up to complete strangers and striking up a conversation with them is the weirdest thing. At times just the thought of doing it seems to me like complete maddens. Why would I walk up to a random girl who doesn’t know me at all and start talking with her? Surely she will think that I’m mad…. or that I’m trying to sell her something, or con her, or worse. At other times – chatting up with strangers seems to me like the most natural social activity possible.
How is it possible that the same action would sometimes feel difficult, almost impossible, and at other times, completely acceptable?
This has to do with our state of mind, our mood and immediate and past experience. While past experiences and social conditioning take years to fix and change, our state of mind and immediate experience are aspects of ours lives that we have complete control over. Instead of boring theory, I will illustrate this with a story.
I woke up in Budapest after a night of heavy partying and drinking. I slept for no more than three hours, and I didn’t sleep more than that in each of the previous five nights. I was exhausted from a three day trip with my parents, from Budapest to Krakow and back, covering in three days what most people would cover in ten.
I jumped out of bed and checked out of the hostel. I had a meeting with a friend a couple of hours later and I was eager to travel around Budapest, my former home, until my flight late that night.
I first went to visit my favorite local restaurant in which I haven’t been to for more than 8 months. Before that I visited the place maybe three times in the past three years. And yet the waiter, who still remembers me, has brought the ketshup bottle to the table as soon as he saw me enter the place. Nice. I lived in Budapest for about six years and ate at this place at least twice a week.
After the meal I stepped out to the street which at the time was being used as a set for shooting “Die Hard V”. In front of me was standing a girl I haven’t seen in five or six years, someone who studied with me in college while I was living there. We spoke for fifteen minutes and exchanged Facebook details. She, too, was not living in Budapest for years. After graduation she moved to Oslo and only recently returned. It was nice bumping into her like that.
I went to meet my friend at the Octagon, the local meeting place. We went into the Burger King and started talking when AGAIN a friend from college, who I also haven’t seen in six years, walks by. I stop him and we hug. He just arrived by train from his native county of Serbia after not being in Budapest for years… Again – we talk for a while and exchanged Facebook details. I go back to my other friend.
A couple of hours later the friend drops me at the Szechenyi Bathes, one of my favorite places in the whole fucking world. It is a huge Bath / Spa complex with outdoor and indoor pools, with many different bathes and saunas, set in a beautiful early 20′s century Neo-Baroque style building. I always imagine Nazis having orgies there in the 40′s. The place also hosts dance parties in the summer that start around 10 pm and last all night long. I visit it every single time I’m in town.
The place is literally swarming with both locals and tourists. It’s my first time there since my new found confidence and knowledge of game, so I’m pretty excited. I hire a changing booth for myself as it only adds a few dollars to the entry fee and set my mind on trying to pull someone into it.
I go out to the pool and into the water. It’s early July, the weather is beautiful, I have the whole summer ahead of me. What else can I ask for? But although I spent two hours talking with my friend, I wasn’t really in a good state. We mostly talked about business and about my Ex, which depressed me. I wasn’t really in a good mood… despite the weather and all. But I knew that if I’ll stick with the program and start chatting people up – I’ll get into it.
I see two very attractive blondes sitting at the edge of the pool and I swing in their direction. I sit next to them and try to chat them up. They’re Norwegian medical students and are pretty cold. We talk for a minute and the conversation dies off.
Suddenly another blonde shows up. I ask her if she’s with the Norwegians but it turns out that she’s Ukrainian on an organized trip with her parents. She’s just 19 and extremely hot. We talk for ten minutes and she leaves. I went from a one minute conversation, to a ten minutes conversation… I’m feeling better and moving in the right direction.
I go out of one pool and into another. It has a large Jacuzzi in the middle of it so I sit there. I again start chatting with some girl. She’s from Holland and like all Dutch girls is extremely friendly. She has an OK face but I have no idea how her body looks like because it is submerged under water. We talk and talk and talk and before we know it – it has been two hours. Because I had no idea how she really looked like, body wise, I didn’t know if I was attracted to her at all. So I didn’t initiate any kino and the interaction had no sexual tension. I told the girl that I must leave soon and that we should go out and exchange details. We went out of the pool and….. fuck. She’s hot. very hot.
We walk towards my changing booth, which would have been perfect for seriously dirty-almost-in-public-middle-of-the-day-sex-with-a-complete-stranger. I opened the door and went in, to take out my phone. I had just a few seconds to think how to try to pull it off. Thinking, thinking , thinking … nothing. We exchange details and then leave outside again and kiss goodbye. She walks back to her friends.
Fuck! Sex in that booth would have been epic…
I look at the large public clock and decide I have a few more minutes to do one more set. I walk into the pool, turn around and start talking to two girls in Hebrew, thinking that they were Israeli. It turns out that they are Italian. Because I’m completely warmed up – totally in state, almost high even – I get them laughing within seconds. We have a great conversation but after ten minutes it’s really time to leave.
I go out and take a metro back to the city center, to take my backpack from the hostel and meet my friend again so he could drive me to the airport. On the way to the hostel I see a really hot chick that I would have loved to approach. But I didn’t, instead choding out. “FUCK!” I’m mad at myself. All these months of “training” and I still get cold feet. As I walk I tell myself that the next time a girl smiles at me I’m going to….. I didn’t even finish the thought and see a cute girl sitting with her friend, in a nearby outside terrace of a coffee shop. I look at her and smile. She smiles back.
Wham! Without any hesitation I walk over to her, taking out my cell phone:
- “Hey… listen. My name is David. You’re cute. I’m on my way to the airport but I’ll be back in a few weeks, we can meet some place and get to know each other.”
The girl looks at her friend, who turned out to be a much older cousin. They start laughing. The cute girl says OK and starts punching her digits on my phone while the cousin starts drilling me with questions. “Where are you from?” “You don’t have a girlfriend?” ”What do you do?”
I start answering her but also say that what a I do doesn’t really matter. I could be an unemployed writer with no money but still the best guy in the world. The cousin looks me over and starts smiling: “Yes, I agree”. I won her over within seconds.
I shake their hands, tell the girl that I’ll be in touch and continue walking to the hostel. The whole thing took less than three minutes.
Later, in the airport – I do the same thing again. At the security line I see a cute girl and later in the duty free area I approach her. Within minutes we exchange Facebook details. God, this is easy.
AND WHY WOULDN’T IT BE?
My brain now tells me that it is OK to talk with strangers, walk up to them and say “Hey, what’s up?”. I have given my brain proof that not only that this is normal but that it is fun too and that people actually appreciate and enjoy it. I changed my state of mind and immediate experience to override my social conditioning - my habit of NOT talking with strangers for years. At this point I’m totally “in state” and could approach anyone with no anxiety what-so-ever.
I cannot change my long term social conditioning so easily, that takes months, and that’s why every day we need to go over the process again and again, almost from scratch. I can control my day to day mood and I have gotten myself into state by simply forcing myself to do that first approach, so many hours earlier, in the pool, with those Norwegians. Slowly I’ve build Social Momentum and I’m now probably the most social and friendly guy in the entire fucking city.
No alcohol needed. No bullshit opinion openers. No hesitation. I’m not in a dark bar… it’s a freaking airport and it’s not even dark outside. But so what? My brain now knows – talking with strangers is NORMAL. Even a “hey… how are you?” works just fine.
At the gate, again, I see a cute girl. When we start boarding the flight to Bucharest I walk over to her and ask what is the best way to get from the Bucharest airport to the city center.
- “My father is coming to pick me up…. we can give you a ride almost to the center and from there you can take a taxi”.
- “Wow, thanks! Are all Romanian people nice as you?”
- “No…. they’re not.”
The girl is cool. We sit next to each other in the plane and chat for the entire flight. She’s a filmmaker and it turns out that the assistant director of Die Hard V is her boyfriend. But never mind him, I’m getting a free ride from the airport and made a new friend.
I arrived to the X hostel around 12:30 AM, where Aaron was waiting for me in the last five days. The taxi drops me outside of the hostel. I know it’s the right place because the Van of Victory is parked right outside of it. A few guys are sitting in the hangout area. They see me coming and start yelling:
- “It’s the other van guy!!!! We’ve been waiting for you and heard so much about you. Come, we’re going on a pub crawl!”
They then push a beer in my hand and show me my bunk-bed.
I’ve already number and Facebook closed four girls today and the night didn’t even start yet. I throw my backpack on my bed, a bed which I’ll end up not using even once in the next three days. The day’s Social Momentum will carry me to three more nights of Bucharesti shenanigans… and for three more months after that.
Such is the power of Social Momentum. Have trust in “the system”. Start chatting up with people, no matter who. That will get you into a talkative good mood – good state as they call it – and from there on – everything is possible.
And so we went on the pub crawl, the night which holds the origins of 007 Game.
Continues here:
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