Resenhas - Models

Itaron 08/08/2023

It's way more than a self-help book. It's a guide to understand our masculinity and accept ourselves.

depp0 31/07/2022

Um verdadeiro guia social
Não há aquelas dicas rápidas e bastante aleatórias aqui. Mark Manson nos propõe uma ideologia, nos ensina a como se comporta com as mulheres e ter VERDADEIROS relacionamentos. Chega a ser óbvio diversas partes, mas é um óbvio muito ignorado
A grande chave do livro é essa, não cair em besteiras por aí, seja você mesmo e crie uma relação profunda. Por que se você não for fazer isso nem vale a pena
Pontos interessantes abordados no livro (uma espécie de resumo mesmo para eu recapitular o que foi abordado aqui e não esquecer)
Fisicalidade: Se há algum elemento essencial, é esse. Não tenha medo de tocar de forma como se você estivesse usando sinais de pontuação, só que na vida real
Presença: Não é questão de ser rico, mas ter o comportamento, lábia e presença que um estereótipo de rico tem, entende? Ou seja, ter estilo próprio, *firmeza*. Uma frase dita por alguém assim é muito mais poderosa. Olhe sempre para cima, ombros alinhados ao pescoço, peito estufado, voz alta e "vindo do peito"
Carência: Mostrar carência = fudeu. Você tem tem ser extremamente independente. E a melhor dica para isso é você realmente ser independente, invista em si mesmo ao máximo. Para não ser carente também, é necessário mostrar que você não tem medo da rejeição. E realmente não tem que ter medo, pois isso só ajudará mais ainda a achar a mulher certa. Que ela me rejeite, melhor para mim que vou poupar de um relacionamento ruim. Rejeição é essencial. Fod4-se o que vão pensar, serei minha essência que quer meu bem, não minha voz sabotadora (claro que há limites)
Vulnerabilidade: Fale as coisas mais profundas sobre você, aborde sobre tópicos reais. Fale sobre seus sonhos. Se abra e faça ela se abrir, cave ela
Agressividade: É excelente ser agressivo e ousado, provocar, tentar coisas, etc
Investimento: Para gerar atração, é necessário investir menos que ela, mas deixar claro que ela o atrai (vulnerabilidade)

Tente o que puder
Se algo der errado, se pergunte as coisas positivas disso... E se for um presente?

tbllanco 29/11/2020

Excelente e prático
Livro muito bem escrito, não é prolixo, evita temas comumente abordados por outros autores que na verdade são apenas band-aids, e não resolvem o problema de fato, e foca na raiz, nos ensina como ser vulnerável nas relações, e como isso faz com que tenhamos relações mais inteligentes, de forma geral, mais profundas e transparentes.

marselss 02/08/2020

Honestidade e vulnerabilidade
O mágico da obra é a forma como trata a importância da honestidade e vulnerabilidade nas relações. A visão de escolher e direcionar a atenção ao que dá resultado, ao 80/20.

Moitta 30/07/2018

Models
Emerson once wrote, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” Seduction is the interplay of emotions. Your movement, or lack of movement, reflects and alters emotions, not the words. Words are the side effect. Sex is the side effect. The game is emotions, emotions through movement. If you learn anything from this book, let that be it.


Neediness is when a man places a higher priority on others’ perceptions of him than his perception of himself.


A needy man’s actions and words will therefore be primarily motivated by impressing and winning approval from others. Non-neediness is when a man places a higher priority on his own perception of himself than the perceptions of others. A non-needy man’s actions and words will therefore be primarily motivated by embodying his own values and desires. Neediness, therefore, infiltrates all behaviors because it is what inspires and instigates all behaviors. A lack of neediness also infiltrates all behaviors for the same reason.


The high-status man displays non-neediness. The low-status man displays neediness.


Women have evolved a sexuality that is more psychological than physical, and that psychological need is rooted in the need for security and connection. This is why status is based on behavior and not simply assets. A man who is rich in assets has greater potential to make a woman feel secure and comfortable, but if his behavior implies that he won’t, then she won’t be attracted to him. A physically fit man will imply greater fitness for her children, but again, if his behavior implies he will be incapable or incompetent in raising them, then she will not be attracted to him.


Because men value sex more than women at the beginning of a relationship, and sexual opportunities are scarcer for men than women, women tend to be less invested and more confident early in on the interaction. When a man approaches her and induces her to become as invested in him as he is in her, this is the process of seduction. Sex occurs as a natural side effect of this process.


Seduction is the process by which a man induces a woman to become as invested in him as he is in her.

The first story is an example of why it’s important to continue to invest in oneself even as life changes occur and the relationship goes on. It’s the only long-term solution to keep long-term relationships stable and happy.

Because, ironically, that is what women want you to be: a man who wants to be who he wants to be.


You are what attracts (or repels) others — not the words, not the strategies. If you aren’t happy with the results you get, then it’s time to improve you.


The only real dating advice is self-improvement. Work on yourself. Conquer your anxieties. Resolve your shame. Take care of yourself and those who are important to you. Love yourself. Otherwise no, one else will.


But other men overcompensate. It’s so hard for them to let go of what others think of them and to stand up for themselves. So they go the complete opposite direction and decide to only care about themselves. They become narcissistic and self-serving, they view their relationships as vehicles to get specific benefits and are unconcerned with the needs of the person they’re with. Needy men only know how to care about what others want, even if it harms themselves. Non-needy men look for that intersection where they can get both their own needs and their partner’s needs met. Narcissistic men overcompensate and decide to only pursue getting their own needs met. Narcissistic men usually do this by conjuring up all sorts of false beliefs about the inferiority or difference of women — how women are incapable of rationality, how they’re “hypergamous,” how they manipulate men, how women are destined to be dominated and controlled. It’s all bullshit, but these men use it as a justification for their overcompensation to put them at ease in their own self-absorption.


But the narcissist’s façade is weak and transparent. The truth is that the man’s narcissism is wielded as a sort of shield to protect the sensitive neediness underneath. See, narcissistic men are still desperate for the approval of others. They’ve just taken a counterintuitive route to getting it: their own self-aggrandizement. Whereas a needy man will play at being meek and unimportant in order to get approval from others, the narcissist proclaims his own greatness to get approval from others. When a woman becomes merely another conquest, a number, something to treat like a trophy or a toy, it can be extremely easy to assert yourself around them, to prioritize your own values and beliefs over theirs, to risk rejection around them, and to dominate any perspective they might have — all attractive confident traits, merely expressed in horrible ways.


Roy went from being needy to overcompensating with narcissism. He went from worshipping women with no respect for himself to worshipping himself with no respect for women. The key to non-neediness is to have both: respect for both oneself and for women.


The only permanent way to attract and date more women and more attractive women is to become more attractive yourself. And the way a man becomes more attractive himself is by investing in himself, in becoming less needy.


Vulnerability is the path of true human connection and becoming a truly attractive person. As psychologist Robert Glover once said, “Humans are attracted to each other’s rough edges.” Show your rough edges.


But opening yourself up to vulnerability, training yourself to become comfortable with your emotions, with your faults, and with expressing yourself without inhibitions doesn’t happen overnight.


When undertaking any emotional shift or change in behavior, there’s going to be an initial “pain period.” The pain period typically happens in the beginning of the change and forming a new habit. It’s the period of greatest resistance and discomfort and the period in which most people give up. Whether it’s bodybuilding, learning a new language or starting a new job, there’s going to be an awkward and difficult period where you’re going to struggle, fail at times, and most of all, feel vulnerable. Most people absolutely hate this feeling and avoid it as much as possible. Being vulnerable hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s difficult. And as a result, these people don’t learn new things or improve the old ones.


And I can tell you right now, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. You’re going to come up with rationalizations about how you don’t really have to do that, do you? How I don’t know what I’m talking about. How you’re too busy or you will get to it later. You’ll plan ahead, procrastinate and then re-plan and then procrastinate again, and then decide you need to read this book a couple more times — all because you’re scared to death of simply being vulnerable. Maybe you’ve already been through this. Maybe you’ve already spent months or years avoiding taking action because you’re afraid of the consequences. Maybe you’ve put off that career change, that wardrobe upgrade, joining that dating site. Maybe you’ve missed opportunities with women who liked you because you were too afraid to make a move. Maybe you convinced yourself that you needed to “know how” first. Maybe you convinced yourself that you needed to see someone else do it first. These are all forms of avoidance. And they all come from a deep-seated neediness, and that neediness can only be cured through making yourself more vulnerable. And at first, that vulnerability is going to hurt. You can’t skip it. The only way out of it is through it.


My point in all of this, though, is that early on, when the neediness and vulnerability come out, it's awful. It’s not sexy. In fact, it’s usually incredibly unattractive and uncomfortable. But that’s part of the process. The Pain Period. Slowly, you become comfortable with it. You become unattached to it. And then you become OK with it.


You may be reading this and thinking, “Well, that’s all fine, but I already express myself really well and am pretty aware of my emotions.” Really? See, I don’t buy it. In all of my years doing this, the single common thread between every man I’ve worked with who has problems with women is either a lack of awareness of his own emotional motivators or an inability to express his emotions freely with those around him. And the sad part is, almost all of these men think they’re fine.


How attractive you are is based on your lack of neediness. Your non-neediness is based on how vulnerable you’re able to make yourself. And how vulnerable you’re able to make yourself is based on how honest you are to yourself and others.


But what I learned is that regardless of what you say to a woman, the intention and implications of why you are saying it are far more powerful than the words themselves.


Because when a man comes right out and says he’s interested in a woman, the sub-communication is actually, “I’m totally OK with the idea of you rejecting me, otherwise I would not be approaching you in this manner. Therefore, I'm comfortable with myself and my prospects.” Think about it, if a guy wasn’t comfortable with the prospect of a woman rejecting him, he wouldn’t have been honest in the first place. In fact, he would have pretended that he wasn’t actually interested in her! The fact that he honestly expressed to her his intentions, that he put his nuts on the chopping block and made himself vulnerable to her immediately, actually sub-communicates non-neediness and attractiveness in itself. And on top of that, it shows desire for her, which is going to trigger her arousal. Remember: what you actually say doesn’t matter; why you say it matters.


could sell you the best 100 things I’ve ever said to women, but I can’t ever sell you my intentions or my confidence in myself. You must develop those on your own.


A man with an attractive and interesting lifestyle, a man with high standards for himself and the relationships in his life, will take the time to get to know an attractive woman before soliciting her with gifts. He will wait until he feels strongly enough to genuinely give her a compliment. And if he talks to her and discovers that there is little that is interesting about her beyond her looks, then he will lose interest. Ironically, it’s these high standards and self-regard that women pick up on and find incredibly sexy. And it’s these same standards and self-regard that most men spend a lot of time trying to fake. When in doubt, check your intentions.


When he pays for fancy dinners and offers to buy them jewelry, why is he doing it? So they’ll be impressed with him and not leave him. These are not gifts or compliments at all. These are deals he’s brokering. The terms may be implied or unspoken, but they’re transactions all the same. Everything he gives to her, he is giving with the expectation to receive something in return.

The biggest aphrodisiac in the world is someone who likes you, genuinely likes you. A woman’s desire is to be desired. But it has to be genuine desire. It can’t be a, “I’ll desire you as long as you boost my ego and impress my co-workers,” kind of desire. The point is that genuine no-strings-attached appreciation is rare in this world, particularly from men.


Here’s the litmus test. Look at your actions and words around women and look at the intentions behind them. These intentions are always speaking ten times louder than your actual words. What are they saying?


I should add that these aren’t all-or-nothing propositions either. Look, we all want people to like us, and we all like to impress others. We all need some validation sometimes. We all do these things to certain degrees. It’s impossible to be perfectly non-needy all the time. But neediness is relative. That’s why I say it’s about being less invested in others’ perceptions instead of NOT invested in others’ perceptions. It’s an important difference. I’m not advising to become a heartless sociopath. Quite the opposite, really. Because the more you invest in yourself, the freer you will become to care for others around you without looking for anything in response. A man who is needy and does not invest in himself is ultimately only capable of superficial interactions because his threshold for vulnerability is so low. It’s impossible to be completely devoid of investment in other people. That’s how we’re wired. But it is always possible to invest and care about yourself more.


Again, it’s not about what’s being said, it’s about the intention and sub-communication behind it. When you’re willing to cut a woman off and tell her when you feel that she’s out of line, when you’re willing to tell a woman what you will and will not tolerate in your life, this sub-communicates the most powerful elements of attraction to her.


This is why it’s quite possible to piss a woman off and turn her on at the same time. Any man experienced with women will be familiar with this.


A non-needy man does not seek to impose himself on the boundaries of others, he’s merely interested in maintaining his own boundaries while respecting the boundaries of others. Non-neediness means you respect yourself AND others. Narcissism means you only respect yourself. Neediness means you only respect others.


Your ability and willingness to establish boundaries is inversely proportional to how needy you are. Men who are needy and lack vulnerability will keep their boundaries loose and open, inviting manipulation into their lives and allowing people to walk over them. This is because they are more than willing to alter themselves in order to receive validation from the women they meet. Men who are non-needy establish strict boundaries because they value their own time and happiness more than receiving attention from a woman. They also see no reason to trample over other people’s boundaries.


The problem with forming strong boundaries is that in order to form them, you have to be particularly aware of your own desires and emotions.


Men will often have to spend a lot of time seeking truth within themselves first before they’re able to express it to others.


Here are some truths that I’ve found out about myself: My overwhelming desire for affection from women probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was raised by a single mom in adolescence. My parents’ divorce left a deep-seated fear of commitment in me that permeated all of my relationships into my 30s. That a lot of what I considered cool when I was younger was really just different ways to protect myself and medicate my emotional wounds. That I resented my dad for a long time. That I have a peculiar obsession with my masculinity. That my most important values are honesty, empathy, and intellectual curiosity. That I’m unwilling to tolerate women who don’t make me happy, no matter how hot they are. It’s easy for me to say these things now, and what’s important is not the words. What’s important is the floodgates of emotions that came up as I discovered these truths about myself. As I discovered these things about myself, it allowed me to express previously stifled emotions in my daily life and with women. Because as I’ve discovered each one of the above truths about myself, I’ve then been able to draw boundaries based on that truth, which in turn makes me less needy.


All the advice in the book is crafted to help you develop non-neediness. Implementing these behaviors and becoming more aware of your emotions while you’re doing them should help you down the road to permanent change. As you’ll see, the book is divided up into three core areas: building a congruent and attractive lifestyle for yourself, overcoming your fears and anxieties, and becoming socially adept at expressing your emotions and sexuality without shame or hesitation. All three of these sections will help you become more vulnerable and less needy. As we’ll talk about in Chapter 6, these things are all interconnected. When you work on one of them, you indirectly benefit the others, and vice-versa.


Again, if you’re only trying to get women to impress other guys, then you’re not in a very good place, and you need to take a serious look at your motivations. To undo this, you must come to terms with why you’re seeking attention and approval from other men — maybe it goes as far back as your father — and then seek to find that approval through other means. Join a sports team. Take your co-workers out for beers. Buy season tickets to the local basketball team. There are much healthier ways to get male camaraderie than to try and impress other guys by getting girls. For me, I had a combination of the second two examples. I spent most of my adolescence living alone with my mother. As a result, I always related more to girls than to boys, and had few male friends until I reached adulthood. I never could relate to them as well, and not having my father around as much (both physically and emotionally) drove me to unconsciously seek a lot of approval from other men. Throw on top of that the fact my girlfriend of four years left me, and I had a lot of anger toward women. Combine the two and you have a perfect recipe for a needy man who turned to narcissism in order to over-compensate and become a player. Recognizing and accepting these truths is the only thing that allowed me to resolve and let go of a lot of my investment and neediness toward women’s approval.

The uncomfortable truth is that the majority of women are going to have high degrees of friction and projection when you meet them. With most of the women you meet, things are simply not going to work no matter what you do or say. This is to be expected. And this is fine. You are going to be incompatible with most of the women in the world and to hold any hopes of being highly compatible with most is an illusion of grandeur and a figment of your own narcissistic tendency. Incompatibility is a fact of life. No matter how you behave or what you’re into, the majority of women out there at any given time are simply not going to be interested or emotionally available to you. Our job is not to attract every woman, but to screen for women with a high potential of being attracted to who we really are.


Rejection exists for a reason — it’s a means to keep people apart who are not good for each other.


Other men often stick to plain jokes and safe topics of conversation that end up not polarizing at all for fear of being rejected. This is also a form of hiding one’s truth, not showing vulnerability, being over-invested and therefore not attractive.


At the bar, the first question out of my mouth is one of my favorites for Neutral situations: "What's your favorite thing in the world?"


The percentage of women who are Receptive to you will increase proportionally to the quality of your lifestyle, your social status, and your looks. The percentage of women that you’re able to move from Neutral to Receptive will be proportional to how good your “game” is, or how well you’re able to communicate and express yourself with women. And your ability to sort through each type of women and meet as many as possible will be determined by how fearless and bold you are when it comes to meeting women.


The fact is that sexuality, attraction, and relationships are, by their very nature, confrontational and controversial. You have to either make the decision to accept being controversial and confrontational or you need to accept that you will go through life with everyone being Neutral towards you.


“Your ability to deal with the failure will determine how much you get to deal with success.”


As soon as you realize that 95% of this attracting women stuff has nothing to do with you, is the moment you become free to pursue what you want without hesitation or fear. When you get out there and start meeting a lot of women, you’ll begin to notice that there’s a lot to be said about “the right person at the wrong time.”


The beauty is that whether she falls in love with you on the spot or she throws a drink in your face… you’ve succeeded. You’ve found out the truth. Your curiosity is fulfilled and you can now decide whether you should move on or not.


Choosing how we define success with women is vitally important. If you choose the wrong way to define success for yourself, then the months or years of effort you put into achieving that goal will go to waste. For instance, men who define success for themselves as how many women they can have sex with will waste away time pursuing and manipulating women whom they don’t necessarily enjoy or aren’t even that attracted to in the name of achieving the “success” which they’ve defined for themselves. This isn’t a shooting range we’re on here. We’re talking about the health of our emotional lives. Women and our relationships are one and the same with our emotional health, and so the way in which we perceive women and relationships is going to be reflected in our emotional well-being.


I define success in a qualitative way: maximizing happiness with whichever woman/women I prefer to be with. Success = Maximizing happiness with whichever woman/women we prefer This may seem like an obvious statement, but the implications are actually quite profound. For most of the men in the world, their “success” with women is defined by: Being married or not being single.

When we define success as finding the relationship(s) that will maximize our happiness, our approach takes a completely new light. Instead of waiting and hoping for a woman to select us, instead of racking up numbers, instead of winning bragging rights, instead of avoiding rejections — our success is defined by screening through as many women as possible until we find the ones we enjoy and the ones who enjoy us. Suddenly, rejection goes from hurting our success rate to often helping it.


Whether we get any specific woman or not depends on our level of investment relative to our investment in ourselves. This is non-neediness. We build non-neediness through vulnerability. We practice vulnerability by being honest.


There are three ways in which we are honest. And those three ways will make up the bulk of this book. The three ways are 1) living based on our values (lifestyle); 2) becoming comfortable with our intentions (boldness); and 3) by expressing our sexuality freely (communication).


The first way of expressing our truth involves developing a lifestyle that makes us happy. The second way of expressing truth is by being courageous and fighting through our fears and anxieties. And the third way of expressing truth is by communicating well and being uninhibited in our sexuality. Choosing to not live a lifestyle based on our values and interests is only being dishonest with ourselves. It reflects a higher investment in others than in oneself. Therefore, it is unattractive. Not acting on our desires and asserting ourselves where appropriate is showing more investment in others than ourselves. It is therefore unattractive. And not communicating our thoughts, feelings, and desires freely and clearly also demonstrates more investment in others than in ourselves. This is also unattractive. Lifestyle, Courage, and Communication: I refer to these as the Three Fundamentals.


For short, I refer to the Three Fundamentals as Honest Living, Honest Action, and Honest Communication.


For instance, Honest Living, or creating an attractive lifestyle involves really drilling down and understanding what you want as a man for your life and then working to make that a reality. If you’re in a job you hate with hobbies you hate and friends you don’t like, then no matter what you do or how much money you make, you’re going to have a hard time meeting attractive women that you enjoy and who enjoy being with you. This is because the identity you have adopted does not accurately reflect your emotional needs and desires. You are not living your life honestly, which means you are not investing in yourself, which means you are needy and unattractive.


I call it Honest Action because it is honesty in the strictest terms. If you see a beautiful woman and have a desire to meet her, to not take action and meet her is a form of being dishonest with yourself.


Overcoming your fear and anxiety will correlate with your overall results with women. The reason being that once a man overcomes his fear of rejection, he’s willing to more or less pursue any woman he wants when he wants.


Honest Action correlates directly to the quantity of women you meet and attract.


Chances are, you’re already pretty strong in one or more of the Three Fundamentals and weak or mediocre at one or more of them. Where your strengths and weaknesses lie will determine not just the quantity of your results with women, but also the types of outcomes you achieve. For instance, a man with an amazing lifestyle but poor action and poor communication will be surrounded by beautiful and interesting women but never be with them. Classic examples of this are rich or good-looking men who are still single and frustrated. They may have money, connections, power and meet beautiful women regularly (or have beautiful women approach them), but they’re never able to capitalize on their opportunities. A man with no fear or anxiety with women will be able to approach and ask out many women, but his effort-to-reward ratio will be poor and the quality of women will be worse. Often a lot of aspiring players fall into this category — they go out 5-6 nights per week, approach dozens of women, fail with almost all of them, but every once in a while convince a drunk sloppy girl to come home with them. A man with great communication skills but a lot of fear and a poor lifestyle will rarely meet or attract beautiful women, but the few times he does, he will capitalize on his few opportunities. Most so-called “normal” guys are like this. They rarely see opportunities, but when they come along, they take them and do well. The problem with these men is that they never feel like they’re in control of their love lives. They’re always waiting for that next woman who’s interested to come around. And sometimes they end up waiting quite a while.


But the second and third fundamentals are intimately connected to one another. Anxious guys are anxious because they’re so socially attuned to others (perhaps even too socially in tune with others), and socially disconnected guys are fearless because they are socially disconnected from others.


Which women do you want to meet and what kind of relationship do you want to have with them? Context. Whether you chat a woman up in a coffee shop, introduce yourself at a business networking event, or attend a speed dating event is going to make a huge difference. This question of where and in what context you meet women is what I call demographics,


What’s not quite as obvious but just as important, if not more important, is how our beliefs naturally screen the women who come into our lives. When I say beliefs, I mean beliefs about women, sex, relationships, and ourselves. The idea is that our beliefs are reflected in our behavior, and behavior determines which (and how many) women are attracted to us. For instance, if you believe all women are sluts and untrustworthy, then the only women who are going to be willing to tolerate your judgmental attitude are promiscuous women who are untrustworthy.


I think acknowledging your beliefs and also being able to acknowledge that they may not be true comes back to what was discussed in Chapter 3: being able to take an open and honest look at yourself and your desires. Becoming a non-needy man requires, first and foremost, a high level of honesty with yourself.


You change your beliefs by simply accepting the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about and then you open yourself to coming to other conclusions. If you believe that all women are evil and manipulative, consciously decide that you may not know what you’re talking about, and then go out and test new hypotheses out in the real world.


Another way to think of this is that age, money, and looks are universal demographics, and therefore, an incompatibility in any one of them is apt to cause extra friction everywhere.


The concept of social proof comes from influence psychology and is well documented in everything from salesmanship to advertising, to politics, and to attraction and relationships. The idea is that as humans when we see many other people valuing something, we will unconsciously value it ourselves. For instance, if everybody else is talking about a new movie, we are more likely to want to see it because we’ll unconsciously assume that it’s a good or important movie to see. This works with people as well.


The goal, as a man, is to cultivate as much social proof within your demographic as possible.


Part of living the honest lifestyle is to pursue what you’re passionate about to the fullest extent. If you absolutely love visiting art exhibitions, don’t just visit a bunch of art exhibitions, but take an active role in the organization, start a meet up group to find other people who want to visit them, or create a forum for commentary. Don’t just pursue your interests, become a leader in your interests. Don’t just choose a demographic of women to meet, dominate the demographic.


If there’s one takeaway from this chapter, it’s that it is far more powerful to be something attractive rather than to say something attractive.


Women are attracted to your identity. Words mean nothing. What you say is only a means to buy you enough time to show her that identity.


when you’re focused so much on performing rather than actually being – then you are out of touch with your identity, who you are, and what you want. And when you’re out of touch with yourself, you will fall into the abyss of vague and empty demographics. You will aimlessly claw for whatever woman comes near you. You will be left bewildered at how you seem unable to polarize anyone.


Yes, even shifting your body into a more confident position consciously will make you feel more confident and vice-versa. Even if you do it on purpose and know what you’re doing, it will still work. So start paying attention to your body, how you present yourself, how you sit, how you stand, and the amount of eye contact you’re making.


Assume everything has a form of value; it’s your job to find it.


“there has to be something to this form of art, otherwise it wouldn’t have a following, so I should find out what that something is.” Once you find it, then decide if you like it or not. Whether you like something or not, you should always be able to appreciate it.


I don’t even know her. Yet I’m judging her. It’s a defense mechanism. My conscious fear has disappeared, but my subconscious resistance is still alive and kicking. And from what I’ve observed, everybody’s subconscious defense mechanisms are still kicking. The resistance doesn’t go away. It just changes shape. Over the years, anxiety morphs into apathy, which morphs into arrogance. The resistance may come before meeting her or before kissing her or before having sex or before committing to a relationship. We all have our own weak spots, and those weaknesses each have their own form of resistance to the change we want. One boundary simply gets pushed back into another and another.


These are my stories. They’re completely different now than they were three years ago. And they were completely different three years ago than they were six years ago. But they’ve all had the same purpose: to protect the status quo. My emotional inertia. What stories do you tell yourself? Because until you’re aware of your stories, you’re not going to be able to change your behavior.


Maybe you tell yourself that you need to have something really amazing to say for her to like you. So you stutter and stumble when talking to her, trying too hard and weirding her out. Here’s a story to try out: maybe you’re already amazing.


It’s always something, isn’t it? There always seems to be something that you don’t have right this second, that if you had it, you’d be able to act in the exact way that you’d like. Right? So what are your stories? What do you tell yourself to justify that internal resistance inside you? And what stories can you tell yourself instead to remove as much of that resistance as possible?


The only important "skill" in dating is learning how to stop buying into your own bullshit, to stop believing your own stories. The resistance is constant. So you must constantly fight against it, acknowledge the stories you create for yourself, look them in the eye and say, “You know what, I don’t care if she’s on her phone and her ass says ‘PINK’ on it, I want to meet her.” And then do it. Without hesitation. Without fear. And without apology. Sure, you’ll have to flex your mental and emotional muscles, and build up your body of self-awareness, but here’s the good news: those are the muscles chicks actually dig.


These anxieties are manifestations of neediness and an unwillingness to be vulnerable. Typically, the needier you are in a certain area, the more anxiety you’ll have in that area.


The first step to overcoming your fears is to figure out what your pattern is. When we are confronted with our fears or anxieties, we have a pattern or strategy that we usually use to deal with them. For instance, my most common pattern is apathy. Whenever I’m confronted with something I’m afraid of, I pretend — or scratch that, I convince myself — that I don’t actually care.


The key to overcoming your fears is first and foremost to break your patterned response to your fear. This requires a certain level of self-awareness and discipline.


Humans stereotype for a reason: so that we can manage large chunks of information to orient ourselves more efficiently. Often, stereotypes can be useful. But usually they’re not. Often they’re nothing more than excuses — ways for us to avoid the blame and responsibility for not being satisfied with our results.


Blame is yet another form of neediness. It’s prioritizing others over yourself. As long as it’s their fault, then you don’t have to make yourself vulnerable. But when you practice taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life, you stop blaming others. It becomes less a question of blame and more a question of sacrifice. It’s no longer their fault that you’re still single because they’re all cold bitches, but now it’s your fault and a question of whether you’re willing to sacrifice the extra effort or not to find a woman who isn’t a cold bitch. Taking responsibility and morphing blame into sacrifice empowers you. It puts the ball in your court and returns you to the healthy reality that the only person in this world who determines your success and failure is you.


That women at the party, in the coffee shop, on the dating site, they want you to be that unbelievably attractive man, that man who makes time stop for them and can make them feel things they’ve never felt before. They want you to be that. And when they reject you, it’s not because they enjoy it, or because they have a big ego, or because you’re too short or your muscles aren’t big enough… It’s because you didn’t give her that feeling. You didn’t make her spin and fall and laugh and forget where she was or who she was with. That’s what she goes out looking for: the man who can make her feel more alive. The next time you make your move, when she sees you coming — and trust me, she usually sees you coming — know that she’s already rooting for you. Secretly, she wants you to succeed as much as you do. And for a moment, she’s your biggest fan. And your role as a man is to take action. It’s all on you. It’s always on you. You move things forward.


In fact, sometimes men use reading and hoarding information and advice as a way to avoid taking action. They feel like if they’re reading a 150-page book on attraction, then they’re accomplishing something right? And as long as they’re accomplishing something, then they don’t have to confront what they’re afraid of: going out and standing in front of a woman and expressing their truth, being vulnerable, subjecting themselves to rejection. This isn’t a new problem. The self-help and business advice industries have been dealing with it for decades.

Psychological research actually shows that people perform better at activities under a certain amount of anxiety. In fact, what matters isn’t the anxiety itself, but the person’s confidence in their own ability to perform whatever action they’re anxious about. So it’s less about the anxiety and more about how competent you feel you are. The less competent you feel, the more the anxiety will hinder you, the more confident you are in your ability, the more the anxiety will help you.

See, a lot of people assume non-neediness means being fearless. But non-neediness simply means to feel the fear and not let it define you. Non-neediness is feeling the fear and deciding that something else is more important. If I say or do something that screws everything up (and I still do all the time), I don’t really care. It doesn’t change how I feel about myself, and it doesn’t change my confidence in my ability to interact with women in the future.


The way to attack anxieties is through incremental, consistent exposure. Not single, extreme exposure.


greater boldness leads to greater polarization. This is yet another argument for behaving in an assertive manner. This is also why one of my mantras that I tell men is, “Always err on the side of assertiveness.”


But bold behavior by itself will only go so far. Boldness must be molded by charismatic and efficient communication.


what’s the difference between a tease and an insult? Both are derogatory statements. Both often incorporate humor. So what’s the difference? Intention. Teasing is done with a fun and positive intention. Insults are done with a negative intention. Or what’s the difference between sharing yourself and bragging? Let’s say you are friends with a celebrity. What’s the difference between sharing your life experience with a woman (attractive) and bragging to her (unattractive)? Hopefully, you’re catching on by now: it’s intention. What is your intention? Are you trying to impress her (needy) and therefore bragging? Or are you sharing yourself (vulnerability) and therefore polarizing her?


Remember, women don’t see your features, they see how you present yourself. They don’t hear your words, they hear your intentions.


As is often the case, women are terrible authorities on why they like/dislike something, all they know is that they like/dislike it.)


Women have a lot more to lose from expressing their sexuality than men do. They make babies. We don’t. They get raped and/or sexually assaulted at a startlingly high rate. We don’t. They have five thousands years of sexist cultural history making them feel like a slut. We don’t. The second you make them feel uncomfortable sexually is the second you become a creep and the second she’s finding an excuse to get away from you as fast as she can. This is why vulnerability is so huge.


I’ll be grouping most methods of flirting into two different groups: teasing and boldness. Both teasing and bold types of flirting (whether it’s negging, false takeaways, or roleplaying) follow the same basic formula: they all involve breaking rapport in order to generate sexual tension. Scientific research shows that sexual tension builds when the uncertainty of potential sexual possibilities is presented in an interaction. For example, if I say something with implied sexual innuendo like, “Well, that’s cool you are into cats, maybe I can come over and play with your pussy for a while,” this generates sexual tension because, assuming she doesn’t throw her drink in my face or slap me, it leaves the possibility of a future sexual encounter on the table. It’s a story with no ending, the human brain wants to know what happens next. And in this case, what happens next is probably something sexual. Teasing type behaviors generate sexual tension because they generate uncertainty as to whether or not you’re actually interested in a woman. In the example above, depending on the context and situation, I could be totally joking and being facetious. Or I could be totally serious and masking my desires behind a thinly-veiled joke. She doesn’t know. And that’s what makes it so good. The uncertainty generates the tension. If you tease a woman about her hair, telling her she looks like ET with a perm, or that your grandmother once owned a wig like that, you accomplish sexual tension because you are sending mixed signals. Your intentions are sending a “Yes, I like you,” signal, while your words are sending a, “No, I don’t,” signal. This generates uncertainty and, therefore, sexual tension.


But if a man goes the bold and vulnerable route, and is willing to risk rejection, he is rewarded by creating massive amounts of sexual tension, because in a single stroke you have transported the context away from, “What do we talk about next?” to “What will he say or do with me next?”


Ultimately, this is what most women want. If you look at romance novels — basically the female version of porn — they all follow more or less the exact same pattern: hard and rugged bad-boy type male hero is troubled but strong, and as he slowly opens up and shares his true emotions and desires with the heroine, she’s able to support him, to save him and ultimately fall in love with him. Of course, they live happily ever after. This is more or less the blueprint of seduction: a strong, high status, attractive exterior (lifestyle and looks), fearless, and able to open up and share your vulnerable side with her. Women get weak in the knees for this shit. And it’s not even conscious most of the time.


Whatever it is, open up about it. Challenge yourself to go one level deeper.


And the interesting thing is that you can resolve them from both sides: fixing your outer behaviors will help alleviate your internal anxiety, and alleviating your internal anxiety will help fix up your outer behaviors.


Using effective language - Questions versus statements - Creating endless conversation topics - Storytelling - Basics of emotional connection


For our purposes, cold reading is just a way of creating interesting statements rather than asking questions for information. You don’t ask the question you want to know, but instead, you make a mild prediction. Instead of asking her a question about herself, you guess the answer to your question and then state it. Here are some examples: “Where are you from?” translates to: “You look like a California girl.” “What do you do for work?” translates to: “You seem to be a creative person. I bet your job is interesting." “How do you guys know each other?” translates to: “You guys look like you’ve been friends for a long time.” In each situation, the statement makes an educated guess and engages the woman far more than any question will. Instead of asking her about herself, you’re telling her about herself. The only thing people love more than talking about themselves is hearing about themselves.


Besides that, creating conversations out of statements protects you from what I call “blanking.” You know when you are talking to a woman and all the sudden the conversation dies and you have no idea what to say? You’re sitting there awkwardly and the more uncomfortable you feel, the harder it is to come up with something. Eventually, you blurt out something boring like, “So… where do you live?” Using statements can prevent this a great deal. Instead of fishing for a new conversation based on a generic question, you can simply comment about something or observe something. Never underestimate the power of non-sequiturs. “I’m thinking about quitting drinking.” “A car almost hit me on the way here tonight.” “My roommate eats peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. It’s disgusting.” “I’ve always wanted to visit Africa.” These will sometimes come across as random. But that’s because they are — they’re whatever thoughts are popping into your head at the moment. It’s better to be random and interesting than predictable and boring. Don’t be afraid to just blurt something out.


This works because unlike questions, statements require no investment from the other person. You can say whatever you want and there’s no implicit expectation for her to generate conversation as well. Speaking in statements in this fashion — to generate spontaneous conversation — is important in that it forces you to share yourself with her. When you simply ask a girl questions, you aren’t giving any information about yourself, so it’s harder for her to trust you or build rapport. But if you simply state a fact about yourself and then talk about it, you are now sharing yourself and giving her a chance to chime in with her input as well. The amazing thing about speaking in statements is if you do it correctly, she will start asking you questions. This may not seem like a big deal, but it actually reorients the entire interaction. As I mentioned earlier, whoever is asking the questions is sub-communicating a desire to learn more about the other, i.e., interest, i.e., they’re attracted to them.


At its core, humor is the art of drawing connections between two seemingly unrelated ideas or objects.


In humor, the more specific and odd the details, typically the more funny a joke is.


Generally women who don’t enjoy being teased really appreciate genuine compliments, so I switch it up.


Some naturally funny men overly rely on their ability to make a girl laugh and actually overdo it. Instead of being attractive and strong men, they become entertainers constantly seeking attention and validation. The worst part about this habit is that it all happens while making the woman laugh and making her enjoy your company. So a lot of men get confused and actually think that they’re seducing her. She’s smiling. She’s laughing. She likes me. She must be sexually attracted to me, right? Sadly, no. Humor is only useful if used in conjunction with leading her in a dominant manner and pushing things physically with her. Ultimately, you aren’t ever really attracting a woman unless you’re connecting with her physically and emotionally. And although humor is a very useful tool to help you do that, it doesn’t actually do it for you.

On our dates, we are doing things — lots of things. We’re going bowling, having drinks, dancing, checking out statues in the park and carriage riding — all in three hours. There’s something strange in human psychology. Our level of intimacy with one another doesn’t just come from how much we talk about as much as it comes from the experiences we share. These dates are designed to create as much mutual experience as possible in the least amount of time possible.


I’m going to say this point-blank: getting physical with women, and getting physical quickly and comfortably, is ultimately the difference between having a lot of female friends, and having a lot of girlfriends and dates. Being physical with women is by far the most integral piece of seduction and dating women.


As you having a conversation with her, assuming she is Receptive, just lightly touch her on the arm, near the elbow. Don’t press hard or hold it, as that could startle her, but just a small brush or tap or light squeeze. Use your touching to punctuate the conversation, as if emphasizing a funny moment or the punchline of the joke. Think of touching as the exclamation marks or question marks of the dialogue.


Also, be honest. If you don’t like the way she gives a blowjob, tell her and then tell her how you do like it. But also, be honest with the compliments. Tell her she’s beautiful naked. Tell her you love how she rides you. Tell her she looks sexy in that position. Be open and honest. Communicate. The most important factor for good sex is how comfortable the two people are around each other. (This is another argument for practicing vulnerability, by the way.)


Ultimately, the causes of sexual anxiety are directly related to other forms of anxiety: lack of confidence, high investment in others, shame, and a fear of vulnerability.


Over the course of the previous 230 pages, we’ve discovered that attraction flows from women perceiving non-neediness and a sense of inner security in men. This confidence and security arise from having a stronger identity and investment in oneself than in the perception of others. This sub-communicates that as a man, you’re dependable, confident and high status (or likely to become high status). The way to cultivate a higher investment in oneself, the way to becoming more confident, is actually counterintuitive. We learned that showing vulnerability, both in emotion and action, actually leads to a higher investment in oneself and higher non-neediness. This newfound confidence then allows you to express yourself more clearly and directly. When you express yourself more clearly and directly, you polarize the reactions of women, opening yourself up to more rejection, but also attracting other women stronger than ever before. Attracting women occurs through a process of self-selection. The rate at which you attract them happens through a process of overcoming fear. And the consistency in which you seduce those women attracted happens through a process of expressing your sexuality. These are the three fundamentals.


Whatever happens to you, no matter how bad, no matter how bleak you feel, ask yourself, “What if it was a gift?” and then try to rationalize a way it could be so.


Because you see, in the world of emotions, there are no absolutes; you can usually draw whichever conclusions you desire. So why not choose to draw conclusions of blessings, positivity, and gifts?

Lucas Muzel 17/11/2015

Livro para vários níveis de homens
Mark Manson tem um bom estilo de escrita. Tentou condensar a trajetória dele, desde sua juventude, passando por sua época de PUA, e o que ele se tornou depois disso.
Pessoas são complexas, e não existe bala de prata na área das relações humanas. Ele contudo, tentou criar alguns axiomas. Como se fossem três grandes áreas, que seriam o alvo, em basicamente qualquer aspecto da sua vida.
1) Honest living - "como viver"
2) Honest action - "como agir"
3) Honest communication - "como comunicar"
Reparem na repetição da palavra "honest", que significa honestidade. Essa é a chave. Não faz sentido algum viver uma mentira contínua. Apesar do que eu sempre acreditava, uma dose mínima de egoísmo é necessária. Tem de ser o melhor tipo de pessoa que você conseguir. Pois a sua vida está acontecendo nesse exato instante.
Em uma sessão do AMA no Reddit, o Mark Manson deu uma resposta que creio definir bem a essência do livro. "Se você tem vergonha de fazer alguma coisa, então é melhor para de fazê-lo".
Ao contrário do que o subtítulo pode indicar, esse livro pode ser aplicado para a vida em si. Como obter uma vida melhor. Por isso que pode se aplicar a quase qualquer tipo de pessoa. Afinal, o modo de vida pode sempre ser melhorado. Cabe à pessoa decidir se vale à pena ou não.