Not much of a secret really, people just dont talk about it. Especially not on the forum. Now you may find something similar everywhere imaginable but mainly those are just bits and pieces and may be difficult to relate to PU.
I will try to write a post on this as comprehensible as possible.
A little background story.
When people start out as PUAs, we are bad, really really bad and who can blame us, we just started. And still some people possess a mentality that makes them progress faster or slower despite how much their practice. I have seen people with massive amounts of field hours that still havent got the first bit of what PU really is, and I have seen people who are in their first month and have a better understanding than many experienced people. I was curious of why that is and how to improve faster.
As we go out in field, we are bombarded by scary things, girls, bitchshields, routines, inner game, frame control, bodylanguage etc etc. Naturally we feel a bit less confident than we normally do.
Everytime we learn a new move or line or whatever, we get a confidenceboost and try out our new toy on everything that moves. We are completely in control until we meet that girl who just doesnt work like the others. We are once again faced with a new situation, the game we build our confidence on is not working anymore. We desperately push it harder but she aint buying our shit. What to do what to do what to do?
So our confidence drops. We start making excuses, she was a bitch, or she was boring or her tshirt was the wrong color.
Still our knowledge of the PUA world grows, we chooses a path and stick to it. People who still use that old method we used to love are stupid and weak right?
Worst case scenario, we start posting things like, just be yourself or just man up.

No offense guys.
So we move on to another type of girl and our game is still bad. There is always a new type of girl to be beaten by. Our confidence does enjoy the rollercoaster but we ourselves arent that amused. We just wanna get confident and use the game we know and love to great success.
Now this should feel familiar to some of you if not all. If you dont recognize yourself, you probably arent getting enough practice with enough different sets. Or you are always going for the same type of girl.
So what is the problem here? Anyone?
The problem is that the player in this scenario is basing his confidence on his ability to game. Not only to game but on his proficiency with game. That is, game as he defines it. His confidence rests on his ability to use what he knows on targets who takes the bait. Is there any better way to make sure you are gonna be disappointed?
As I have said in some earlier posts, our confidence rests on one of many pillars representing skills or abilities we have. Like sarging or being smart or whatever. If one pillar crumbles, we rely on the second highest one and if that isnt applicable in the situation, we feel weak and uninteresting.
The player in this scenario has choosen to build up the wrong kind of pillar. The reasons being:
A. He limits the pillar to knowledge he already has.
B. He limits the pillar to specific situations.
C. He judges himself on past victories instead of looking forwards.
This pillar is weak and shatters if he comes across: New knowledge that goes against what he believes, a new situation, a period of few victories.
His confidence will also be limited to the PUA world.
What I have come to realize is that the ones who develop fast is the ones who dont have this kind of limitations. The ones who base their confidence on the ability to learn.
I will act like a selfabsorbed bastard and take myself as an example. I build my confidence on my ability to think fast, absorb information, learn and adapt.
I adjust to a new situation while I am in it. Of course the more knowledge you have, the easier it is but it is not all there is to it.
An example, last weekend, I was at a party and I met a nice hot girl (dont bother me about the HB number) and we were chatting and talking about more or less everything. As I am a bit damaged by the PUA world I automatically notice minor signals and read the vibe pretty well so I see that she seems interested. I dont follow my regular pattern since I had another girl in mind really and was just hanging with this one while I let the other one amuse herself best she could. Anyways, she asks me, shall we have a drink, to which I respond, damn right, we are getting a drink. As I walk her to the bar, an AFC comes up to the girl asking her if he can buy her a drink, I give him a look and he just says, oh sorry I can see that you are already buying her a drink. Now any PUA would tell me, NO, dont buy the girl a drink!
Which is exactly what I did. I adapted to the situation. Sure enough I bought the girl a drink, she did not ask for it, I didnt ask if I could, I just did, no biggie. That was what worked at the moment. Later on, she bought me a drink. Yada yada, kissclose, timebridge etc etc, you know the story.
See what I did? Without the limitations of rules and with the ability to adapt and learn as I go, I was able to feel confident in a situation most PUAs would search their memory banks for a way out of.
The reason that people with this mentality learns faster is that they go into more unknown situations and stay in because the can adapt far enough to not be blown out immediately.
They also learn more because they are not afraid of being wrong. A limited pillar is damaged if you are proven wrong or is forced to reevaluate your own capability with what you already know.
Most people hate being wrong, I love being wrong, it means that I have learned, and not only learned something similar to what I already know but something completely different. My world has grown much larger with the new knowledge.
As soon as I find something that I dont immediately understand how it fits into my world, I ponder it until I can fit it in somewhere. I never just let anything go (yes probably a syndrome or something).
Interestingly enough, most of the people that are learning fast have this kind of open mind. Some PUAs who proclaim that confidence and balls is the only way are limiting themselves to what they already know. Why, because they can not admit that they are wrong. That would mean that they submit and that damages their confidence or alphaness or whatever, and that is what they build their confidence on so it is a downwards spiral. So they just stick to what they already believe and use that. Not saying that it doesnt work, just saying that they dont widen their perspectives and limit themselves needlessly.
I hope this post was comprehensible and that someone could learn something from it!
Ezo