Hello fellow PUA's.

I've been browsing the posts on this forum for a while and finally decided to become a part of this great community. I am 30 years old, live in New York, and am in the process of transforming from an AFC to a PUA. I wouldn't call myself a complete newbie, as I've been reading PUA material and practicing the techniques on and off for several years now, but also definitely nowhere near reaching my full potential. It is my goal to practice game in a systematic way, as part of a community, and spend time reflecting on it via writing.

Ever since I started taking this stuff more seriously, I have been growing as a person in ways I previously thought were impossible. Where I once interacted with cute girls as if I were conducting a job interview, I now confidently joke around, make the girl laugh, and introduce flirting and Kino from the start of the interaction. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of the Game, but the few small, simple strategies that I have employed have opened up a world of inner confidence that I never knew existed.

Living in New York, I am constantly seeing attractive women. In the subway, at Whole Foods, walking down the street, at the bodega on the corner. As all of you know, it is extremely frustrating to feel powerless around beautiful women. I used to sit on the subway on my ride home, and glance over at the cute girl sitting across from me, the whole time feeling frustration build up inside me because, damnit, WHY AM I NOT WITH THIS GIRL? Inevitably I would sit quietly and get out at my stop, not having said anything. Every time this happened, a little piece of me died. I'd feel the opposite of expansive confidence. I'd feel like I was shrinking in on myself. What a horrible way to feel.

Every now and then I would get the balls to open my mouth and utter a few words to one of these girls. This was before I knew any funny canned openers. In these cases, more often than not, to my complete and utter surprise, the girls would respond and before I knew it we were engaged in conversation. Sometimes I would ask for a number at the end of the interaction, sometimes I would just get off the train and say "have a nice day." In either case, every time I dared to open my mouth, I left the train (or grocery checkout line, etc..) feeling like I was on top of the world. You guys all know the feeling: it is the feeling of conquering your fears, of doing something you previously thought you could not do. This is the definition of personal growth. It happens at the gym when you give your muscles more weight than they are used to. They HAVE to grow to accommodate the increasing strain being placed on them. The same thing happens with your personality when you leave your comfort zone and open up that cute girl standing next to you on the subway platform.

I don't claim to open up every girl I think is cute, or even to open up only the most attractive women. But I do open up far more women, and with far less anxiety, than I did 6 months ago. As Paul Janka put it in Attraction Formula, "game is a muscle that needs to be exercised" (or something like that).

In the brief time period I have starting taking game more seriously, I've come across several insights related to the techniques I've been using and I would like to share the most important one here. This might seem like simple common sense to the more experienced PUA's here, but for me, and I'm sure for others new to PU, coming to this realizations was like "seeing the matrix" for the first time.

1. Whenever a girl asks me what I do, I ALWAYS answer with "I'm an underwear model" or "I run an underwear modeling consultancy" or some derivation thereof (Thank you Gambler for this).

Simple enough, right? But the power of this simple strategy lies not in the words, but in understanding the mechanics behind WHY it works:

When you answer the inevitable "so, what do you do" by saying you are an underwear model (or any other funny “game” answer), you are in effect setting up "bumpers" along which the conversation has to travel. I'm sure many of you remember bumper bowling at birthday parties when you were young kids. Remember what those bumpers are there for? To ensure that the ball stays out of the gutter and knocks down as many pins as possible.

So, when you start off a conversation with a playful and flirty response, you are laying down the bumpers and establishing a flirtatious and playful path that the conversation must follow. In essence you eliminate the possibility of having a non-flirtatious conversation. The takeaway here is that it is possible to direct a conversation the way YOU want it to flow. Again, a simple and common sense insight looking back on it, but definitely not something that jumps our as obvious for most guys.

For any of you having doubts about the power, legitimacy, or effectiveness of game, think about this: There are people whose job it is to sell things. These people spend time training themselves in techniques that increase their effectiveness as salespeople. Have you ever been sold something that you didn't really want by an exceptionally good salesperson?

There are people whose job it is to negotiate the release of hostages, or to negotiate favorable terms on multi-billion dollar business deals. These people spend loads of time training themselves in techniques that make them effective hostage and business negotiators.

These examples I just mentioned rely on training oneself to understand the dynamics of human interaction. You ended up buying that worthless chachki from that exceptionally good salesman because he knew how to move past your objections in a logical way so that in the end, you just couldn't say no. Same goes for the negotiators.

Why should it come as any surprise that someone could train themselves to be exceptionally effective at talking to and attracting women? This is also based on understanding the principles of social interaction. The techniques used are slightly different, because the end goals are different, but the mechanics are the same.

One of the biggest things I've taken away from all the reading and field practice is that social interaction is something that can be broken down, analyzed, studied, understood, and mastered. Social interactions all follow a pattern -- and if you study that pattern and learn what kinds of things to say, and when to say them, you can begin to see the pattern and guide the interaction in the way you want it to go.

For example, you can begin to recognize the point at which a girl gets “hooked” into a conversation, and when you learn what types of things lead to the hook point, you can simply introduce those into your conversation and “voila” the girl is interested in talking to you!

If social interaction didn't follow patterns or couldn't be mastered, salespeople, negotiators, and charismatic leaders would all be out of work.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it! If anyone wants to go sarging in NYC just let me know!