Brilliant!

I think this is a huge issue that the community needs to take on much more than it has – you’re the first I’ve heard acknowledge this phase and its important and I’d love to see more discussion of it.

The traditional pickup wisdom is always simply “sarge it out” or “keep going”. While this may work for some people the truth is that this period is not so easily conquered for most of us. There’s this quote “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. This is the case with almost everyone’s first go around with pickup. You try to solve the problem by learning a bunch of theory and techniques and a certain blustery confidence and to your surprise it works! You’re ecstatic and you think that pickup is the best thing ever. But after the initial rush fades, and this can be a very long time (2 years in some cases I’ve seen) you are forced to return to yourself and confront the issues that led you to study pickup in the first place. Chances are you are coming from a fundamentally insecure, small-sense-of-self, low-self-esteem place that you got stuck with as a result of the debilitating social conditioning most young men get unconsciously in high school. And you’re using pickup to run from that. It’s not a bad thing, it just is the case for most of us.

“Graduating” to the next level entails changing the level of thinking. I am just emerging from my dark spot, so it may be too soon for me to say anything about this definitively, but to me the answer is all in knowing yourself.

In my first go round it was all about playing this “cool guy character”, which worked surprisingly well for picking up girls for a while, but ultimately distanced me from myself. I think the community has a disturbing tendency to encourage this, which leads to a lot of really negative narcissistic “I’m such a pimp” behavior. I see people like this all the time and this is, in my opinion, the community’s biggest fault.

Guys, at the end of the day, you are who you are. Even if you have wild success pretending to be someone you’re not, this success will be empty because no one will really know you and you will know yourself less.

The dark place I think you’re talking about, Zip, is when you’re forced to confront that fact. And you can avoid that for years (I suspect even some gurus haven’t yet dealt with it) but if you stay with this community you will go through it.

And you will be a better person on the other side.

Thanks for the post, Zip.

You can pass through my golden gate anytime ;]

I’m an existentialist, and I truly believe that we all are our own islands. Our unique experiences as a living being cannot be shared with anyone else to the fullest extent that you experience it. This is not meant to be nihilistic, rather, empowering.

Though I live on my own island, I’m throwing a BBQ on it. And inviting all the other islands I’ve built bridges to over to shotgun some Bud.

-Zip

Great stuff Zip and thanks for the perspective !

The path to becoming an alpha depends entirely on where you’re starting from, and it’s a path that one must travel alone. Friends can accompany you on the trip, but by definition, the path to becoming an alpha has to start with directing your own life as you see fit, no matter where it might take you.

“It’s dangerous business walking out your front door… “