THE FORUMS

Day 30 – Saturday, Jan 28

So I went out tonight with the mission on hitting up everything. I wasn’t able to do it to the full extent, but still did a good amount of approaches. The first venue I get into has fewer people than usual, but there are at least 1 or 2 sets I could open. I don’t quickly go in, and can’t bring myself to get over that initial hump. I head to the next venue.

The rest of my night went like this: I’d walk into a venue and not approach (get frustrated), realize that I had committed myself to approach everything, change venues and hit up the next venue hard, then repeat this cycle. The biggest problem with this is I’d hit up a few sets in a short time span, then it would be a while before I hit up the next one. This resulted in my state going up and down, very weird feeling.

Decent Sets:
Opened a girl on the dance floor (2 girls 1 guy), she was a bit surprised but I persisted for a bit. I’m glad I wasn’t too scared to do this.
Hit up a girl in a 5 set (2 guys 3 girls) and it was going well, but I didn’t push it and left after 5 min.
Stopped the absolute hottest girl I’d ever opened. (street set)
   o Me: “hey, who are you?” (I hold out my hand and bring her in)
   o Her: “hi, I’m name”
   o Me: “hi name, I think you’re cute” (ask her to thumb wrestle me)
   o Her: “it’s cold out here” (she had on this outfit that exposed the most skin I’d ever seen, very sexy)
   o Me: “yea lets go inside”
   We show the guy the ID and it turns out the two of them are only 19. At this moment I was shocked and totally went into my head. I looked at the two of them, awkward moment, I told them I’d see them around. Totally dropped the ball. However, throughout the opening I was icy as hell.
Open 2 girls in like a 5 set of guys. No hesitation, I just go in and stay cool & relaxed. I can feel guys watching everything that’s going down. One guy comes in and puts his arm around my neck, I say what’s up and keep chatting with the girls. After 5 min it fizzles because I was interacting friend to friend and spewing boring stuff.
As I walk through one venue a cute girl puts her finger on my chest and says she likes my hair. We’re going in different directions in the crowd so I can’t get back to her. Then 5 seconds later another girl walking by me rubs her hand on my chest, again I can’t get to her fast enough and she’s gone. These are excuses and I should have fought my way back to her.
Open a girl in a 3 set, pull her in, tell her she is cute. She scuttles away and pushes one of her friends toward me while to other two go dance. I realize she is trying to hook me up with her friend and this makes the situation seem “like a big deal”. This results in me boring her to death because I’m too scared to escalate.
At the end of the night when the bars were closing I did a good amount of street approaches. These two guys were about to fight and while I was watching I met this chill drunk guy. We proceeded to approach almost every girl that walked by, some stopped some didn’t. I go in hard with one girl standing by herself, she is into me, then the drunk guy enters and kills the tension. Still a fun interaction. I tell the drunk guy we should hang out again. At one point he tells me how he is a distributor of various different drugs. Hm.
Open a girl on the street while she is on the phone. I tell her she is cute, but she tells me she is in a bad mood. I tell her that’s no big deal, then she says “you’re pretty cute too, but I’m not in a good mood”. It didn’t seem like I could push through this, so it was over quickly.
•Pulled a girl in and started dancing with her.  Had her in "rocking rapport" but I didn't escalate much after that and ejected.

Blowouts: None funny enough to mention, except that the drunk guy had no hesitation at all in approaching.  Once we started doing street sets, he would literally hit up every girl.  The only thing was he went in very weak, quiet, and had bad body language.  It was inspiring to see and reminded me of Tyler hitting up everything (during my bootcamp, and of course tyler was making stuff stick).

Bottom Line: Wasn’t able to keep hitting up sets quickly and this put me in a weird funk because I knew I could have. Was mostly interacting friend to friend. I need to get physical and stop talking about boring shit that keeps the interaction going. I care too much about my self image.

Girls Approached: 20-25 *(this could have easily been 35+ if I hit up everything, unless I was sticking in set longer)
Time Out: 10:45pm-02:15am
Goals Met:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes
4. No

Day 32 – Monday, Jan 30

Did not go out. It felt very weird that I wasn’t going out. Even though some nights consisted of me talking to a guy or sitting by myself in a bar I could feel myself making progress. Not going out I was like “man, there’s a night I didn’t make any progress” not that I was hard on myself but I am realizing I can literally get better at this stuff by working at it. It’s like I’m trying to understand a massive text book were each night I go out is a small section completed. I know the best way I’m going to make progress is staying consistent and “small chunking it”. This makes sense to me, but shit, I’m still a noob.

Some practical thoughts on the challenge:

Venues:
I had trouble finding spots Sun-Wed that had many (if any..) girls in them. This is no excuse though. It seems best to choose a different place each night though. No matter where you are, weekends are the most packed nights, you can easily get 15+ approaches in.
I live in a mid-sized area so most of the people out on the weeknights were locals. Not too much of an issue, but this somewhat kept me from approaching everything.

When would you go out?
At the start I was going out from 10pm-11pm on weeknights and 11-1:30am on weekends. I kind of fine tuned it to; 9-10:00-ish on weeknights and 10:45-2am on weekends.

Sleep:
Your body will adjust to the reduced amount of sleep. I started to get a cold before doing the challenge and thought it would ruin it, but this wasn’t an issue at all and going out literally improved my mental state and probably got rid of the cold. Not an excuse whatsoever.
I just want to put it out there that I have a full time engineering job and work 7:30am to 4pm. Work is not an excuse.

Going out solo:
This is not an issue at all. Except for one Saturday night I did the whole challenge solo. This doesn’t need any more explanation.

30 day challenge vs 2/3 Nights Going Hard:
Bottom Line: Going out many nights in a row really shows you where you are at and literally pounds into your head that you are going to take consistent action and are serious about this. Doing the 30 day challenge gave me a better perspective on my lifestyle and which things were constructive or destructive to my progress. Going out 2/3 nights may get you success and fun nights, but it’s very easy to go back into your “default mode” once the weekend is over. I recommend everyone should do the 30 day challenge at least once.

Newstuff, does this mean you’re going out every night now?
No, I love working on this stuff but I’m going for the long term success. What I see happening is organizing my time better so I can exercise, meditate, read, etc. I will probably go out 3/4 nights a week and see how I progress. I definitely see myself doing 30 day challenges in the future to bust through plateaus. This could be a cool schedule: go out 3/4 nights/days a week for 2 months, then do the 30 day challenge. Repeat. Then at some point in the near future take a bootcamp.

This definitely doesn’t cover all the changes or experiences I had during the past month, but it covers some main points.

ps - The Greek Girl I met tried calling tonight me via Skype from Greece.

So with this challenge over I’m going to start a different journal to keep track of my nights. Continuing my progress on this thread is just too much info to sift through. This thread is officially ended, RIP.

@sexymachine:

Great to see you're still at it. That's definitely some good advice about the hired guns, will keep it in mind on the next 30 day challenge.