Long time, no C

No Objective-C, that is.

Sorry for being unavailable and not feeding your bleeding eyes with more pickup-related information. At a personal level, a lot of stuff has been happening. I’ve moved from the Project previously known av the Lace Lounge. I’m happy to inform you that the move was successful and I’m currently located in a place with people who are no less determined than my previous roommates.

We lived in the Project for approximately 6 months. Maybe 7. It was a rollercoaster ride of education and emotion. I won’t talk too much about it in a blog post, however, as many of the nuggets of knowledge I picked up during that period has already been communicated in this blog. Again, those were the nuggets.

Who the fuck cares about nuggets?

I’m happy to announce that I’m currently working on not one, but two projects. Or products, rather. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will present the main ideas. Partially to open loop your asses in a mad way, partially to force my continuing commitment to them.

Before you go

OH MY FUCKING GOD, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH EVERYBODY MAKING THESE FUCKING PRODUCTS?!

allow me to clarify: One of them will be free and one of them will be extremely reasonably priced.

Presenting:

The Ultimate Project Post-Mortem

With few exceptions, the inhabitants of Project Oslo are extremely talented. And I like to consider them close personal friends. Most of them have agreed to allow me to pick their brains on video to help create the ultimate analysis of how to become good at game. The first video interview has already been recorded, but it has not yet been edited and transcribed. Don’t push me on this one, it will happen. I just like to focus on the writing first.

What to expect:

• An ebook written by me, running approximately 100 pages. I fucking hate fluff. Why would anybody release a set of 14 DVDs about picking up women?!
• 14 DVDs where I interview the guys participating in the Project, with topics covering everything from game to daily routines to getting a happy outlook on life. Mainly game, I promise. Just kidding about the DVDs, tho, the video files will be available as free downloads, linked from COCPORN.COM and the other people’s blogs. I’ll do an excellent job removing fluff from these too, I hate fluff. Fun fact: Did you know that my online handle used to be fLUFFY?! How gay is that?! HEHEHE!
• Detailed instructions on how to create your own Project without shelling out $10000. Are you stuck in your tracks? Join a Project. Are you frozen with AA? Join a Project. 36 and still unkissed? Join a Project. Just home from a bootcamp, and while it felt good when you were listening to it, you feel just as lost as before? Join a Project. I’m telling you right now, no matter what your problem is, joining a Project with the right people might be the only thing that will automagically fix everything.

So, who am I to write this monumental document? Well, not to brag (read: qualify myself), but right now I represent thousands of hours of in-field knowledge with people with first hand experience of the level where you are yourself, most likely: At the very beginning. Remember, we were at least 6, for months.

Yes, you cheap bastard, the product will be free or donation-ware. How far along is it? I won’t even say, but it’s so far along that I feel comfortable announcing it.

Onto product #2: IT

Are you tired of it all? Like, everybody’s pushing out the same crap. It’s like;

Well known PUG: “Dude, you need to microcalibrate!”.

COCPORN: “Your mother needed to macrolubricate her vagina last night!”

(That’s a “Yo momma”-joke, and I’m implying that I just fucked some well known PUG’s mother. Without having a clue about how to microcalibrate. HEHEHEHEHEHE! Don’t let her kiss you on the lips on your way to school before she brushes. Yeah, you know what I’m implying. BTW, macro 1: being large, thick, or exceptionally prominent.)

Guy on an IT

Before the release of the Segway, before most people even knew what it was, it was called Ginger and “IT”. IT! In the vein of the Segway, I’m announcing my own personal IT. It is the product that will do what no legion of competing products have been able to; make people truly good. (Good at pickup. Not Jesus-good. That would be bad. Mkey.)

Let’s jump to Q&A:

Q: How good, you ask? A: Hella-good!

Q: HOW, you ask?! A: Well, I won’t tell you straight out. But I’ve left subtle hints here and there.

Q: I’ve tried all the other products out there, I still suck. A: Then this product is for you.

Q: Is it compatible with the Mystery Method?! A: Yes.

Q: Is it compatible with the latest natural-stuff from RSD?! A: Yes. It’s also compatible with that electric ball-scratcher they sell at Sharper Image for $199. And the Apple iPhone.

Q: Will there be a money back guarantee. A: No, sorry. I probably already drank that money.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit more? A: Sure, what do you want to know?

Q: How can it be so radically different from all the other stuff I’ve tried?!

How IT is radically different from all the other stuff you’ve wasted time on

Give me a resounding “YAY” if any, any of these sound familiar.

• I’ve started reading an ebook, but I didn’t finish it, because it was too lengthy and I’m too lazy.
• I’ve read an ebook, and it made a lot of sense, but instead of going out practicing what I just learned, I started reading another ebook to become even better! I didn’t! Become any better.
• I’ve stood at home in front of the mirror after spending time with my favorite product feeling like a million dollaroos, only to sit in the restroom at the club feeling like 25 cents an hour later, hoping my designated driver would get fed up and want to go home.
• I’ve masturbated to donkey porn.
• I’ve waited for two or more weeks with going out, waiting for the next big amazing product to come out; the one that finally made everything click for me.
• I’ve spent more than 10 hours on boards like ASF or mASF because I felt I needed to pickup more game theory.
• I’ve worshipped one or more PUGs, the same way I worship my favorite sports heroes; from my couch with a beer in hand and a pizza in the oven.

Now, I could be a kind bastard and tell you this: There is no product, the main purpose of this part of the post is to get you fucking idiots to understand that pickup is a sport and not a science.

I will not, however. There is a product on the way. A real, tangible product. It will be in the top 0.5 percentile of products that will guaranteed change your life (again, no money back guarantee, just my personal one. It’s more valuable anyway). It will be extremely reasonably priced, borderlining cheap. Borderlining Mexico Dirt Cheap.

Note: If you’re able to guess what the product is, in embarassing detail, I will give you the product for free, as well as access to an early version of it when it becomes available.

*Sigh*

There you have it. My public excuse for not actively blogging 2 times a week. But don’t worry, you’ll hear from me when I have something on my mind.

Microsoft Songsmith

When I woke up this morning, I headed over to KVR Audio before getting out of bed. I’ve actually not gotten out of bed yet, but what’s the hurry, it’s a Saturday. At one of the forums I saw a thread mocking a product by Microsoft Research called Songsmith.

The entry into the forum contained a link to this YouTube video:

The product go quite a bit of ridicule in the thread, go ahead and read it if you want.

As you might have understood by now, I pride myself in approaching ridiculous things with open eyes. I decided (as you can probably see in the thread) to take Songsmith for a spin. The download is approximately 100MB, and it requires that you have .NET Framework 3.0 or higher installed, as the application itself is written using WPF (the Windows Presentation Foundation).

Ok, so the application downloads and runs fine. The interface, like most WPF interfaces these days, is a little “clunky”. I fool around with the demo for a little while. While a better example than the silly YouTube songs, it’s really not an indication of whether or not this is something I want to spend time using.

I decide to try to record my own song. Remember, at this point I am still in bed, using my normal laptop with no special equipment attached.

It occurs to me that the application is buggy. WPF doesn’t always manage to render pulldown lists correctly, the window containing the options is rendered behind the window that contains the listbox-control. Lame. Also, I cannot for the life of me find where to change the time signature. I go for a jazz club beat, and record a couple of bars. Sounds pretty good all things considered.

I go to the control panel and crank up my microphone, start a new project, and there, hidden in plain sight is the ability to select time signature in the most crude way possible; the time signature is part of the style selection. I go for the Piano Pop 3/4-style:’

So far so good. I adjust the tempo to preference. Oddly enought, there’s nothing resembling a tap-button that I can find, but there’s audio preview when moving the slider, so it’s actually not so bad.

I record my vocals. Sorry about the quality and performance, I’m still lying in bed. Here they are, vocals only with drum backing: vocals Download link (WMA as exported from Songsmith)

Songsmith immediately tries to autoplay to the vocals:

At this point Songsmith has created chords automatically. I’ve cranked down the happiness and up the jazziness.

This is the result: autoattempt

Not exactly what I was going for, but then again, not too  bad for a first attempt. I mean, it didn’t really have too much to work with in terms of my initial recording.

Time to do some editing by hand. Songsmith gives you suggestions for each bar which chord it thinks will fit in. I end up with this:

This is the audio result: adjusted

I entered two chords in myself, the last C was the “hardest”. One place I copied an F#m in manually. All the other changes are other chords suggested by Songsmith.

I exported all the files, so I could add them to the blog-post. I restarted the application. At this point I had 5 hours and 30 minutes left of my evaluation period. Yeah, the evaluation period starts at six hours. So in half an hour I’d checked out a demo of the product, recorded my vocals (twice), played with the automatic settings, adjusted and made three exports.

Not too shabby for not even getting out of bed.

Microsoft Songsmith impressions, after 30 minutes:

The good:

• Easy to get started
• Results are pleasing
• Generous trial period

The bad:

• Buggy
• Limited
• Ridiculous ads
• No way (that I have seen) to retake some of the vocals, or append vocals after recording has finished. I guess I should read a manual.
• Application window not horizontally resizable, which means app is not maximizable. WTF? This is WPF, people!

All in all: Give it a shot, it’s free to test and cheap to buy.

Microsoft, you will get my money for this one. Now I can get out of bed.

Soundfiles:

• vocals
• autoattempt
• adjusted

A second quick test, 100% Songsmith-tracked (sorry about the voice being so short, but you get the idea):

• reflection

Putting it all together: The New Daily System

This is a follow-up of my previous two posts on implementing a powerful daily system. This post will describe how I do it. It is not a guide on how you should do it, but feel free to be inspired. Sorry in advance if this post seems like an hour long iPhone jerk-a-thon, I’m sure you’ll find similar tools for your platform of choice. As a matter of fact, most of the support systems I currently use, can be easily exchanged for pen and paper, but Goldfrapp doesn’t sound as good played back with a pen. And paper.

The Base: The Mental Bank

I’ve previously talked a lot about The Mental Bank. A lot, but obviously not enough. I’ve “finished” a set of value events I’m paying myself for. These are listed here.

I will comment on some of them separately:

Completing Everything on the TODO-list

I’ve dabbled with Remember the Milk earlier. I decided it’s time to take the plunge and start using it more religiously. Having a list of things to do, always at hand, is extremely empowering. Paying yourself extra for finishing everything allocated to a day is satisfying. I’ve made a rule not to pay myself on days I postpone events that are closer than 3 days. So no payment if events for the current or next days are postponed. No, sir.

Feeding the TODO-list

It’s no good paying yourself for completing everything in the TODO-list if it’s empty. The obvious (by now) way to make sure the TODO-list has items is to pay yourself to fill it, so I decided to do that. As I go to bed, I make it part of my nightly ritual to feed the TODO-list with items I want to accomplish the next days. I also fill it during the day.

Focused Reading

I’m not very good at focused reading. That is, I often read, and a lot, but I multitask it turns out getting a simple ebook-reader allows me to actually read with focus for the duration of my commute, which is at least 30 minutes.

MMS

I admit it, I got burned. If you’re going to try MMS, make sure you ramp up, you fucking idiot. The mere thought of the smell of MMS is now enough to make me spasm. I’ve decided to pay myself to do it. I deserve it.

Following Diet

Trying to become a raw foodist during the holiday season lasted until the first Christmas party. Again, direction, not speed. I’m back on the diet, but I’ve mellowed it out a little. I’m doing fruit, nuts and vegetables, but I don’t have a hard focus on mono-mealing. I’ve also started using the juicer I got for Christmas! Thanks, parents! I have, however, realized that following the diet is such a challenge for me, being how I’m a restaurant critic and all, that I’ve decided to pay myself.

Using the Ledger

For those of you still confused about how to use the Mental Bank Ledger, here’s my first entry:

The order I use is:

1. The date in the top left corner of the right page
2. The goal in the top right corner of the right page
3. List value events
4. Sum value events
5. List reality income
6. Subtract reality income
7. Get a total
8. Write the acuumulation statement
9. Sign the accumulation statement
10. List today’s positive happenings on the left page

Write it down the last 30 minutes before going to bed, using a pen and in longhand.

Support System: TODO 1.4.3

I decided to use Todo 1.4.3 by Appigo, Inc., almost on a whim. The normal client for Remember The Milk didn’t connect to the server for some reason, and I decided to look for an alternative. I purchased Todo using the AppStore, and it turned out it had the same problem. I rebooted the iPhone, and suddenly everything was working, but I played around with Todo, and for some reason it just seems to sit better with me than the original Remember The Milk iPhone-app.

If you’re anything like me, this app, coupled with the value events “clear all tasks for today” and “feed your TODO-list” will do wonders for procrastination.

As you can see, today I need to do the exercises for chapters 1 and 2 in Brian Tracy’s Goals.

Support System: Time Manager Pro

Knowing what to do and having a place to put your todos is one side of the coin. Knowing how much time you spent doing the different tasks is another. I decided to go for the big gun and buy Time Manager Pro from Telience. I must admit I had some trouble getting it to run at first, but after these initial problems, the app does what it’s supposed to; track time:

As you can see, I’m currently writing this blog-post. This makes it extremely easy to feed my Mental Bank Ledger at night. It also allows you to make a time budget up front, and you can see how the different categories are filled up with the time you’re tracking.

Support System: iBlueSky

We’re on a tangent here, but if you like doing mindmapping and don’t like to carry pen and paper, iBlueSky allows you to mindmap on the fly on the iPhone. I’ve started using it for laying out ideas and even taking notes during meetings:

Support System: TextGuru

To allow me to actually do focused reading on my commute, I use TextGuru for the iPhone. It supports landscape viewing of PDF’s, and has a bunch of useful features. It can download files from FTP, synchronize using Bonjour, read from the web, etc. If you need a portable ebook-viewer for the iPhone, look no further:

The one place where the app could seriously benefit with some love is application state. It’s tiresome having to scrub to the same place in a 400-page book every time the application loads. Am I missing something? Is there a way to do this? Please enlighten me.

I actually finished Mastery by Leonard reading 2/3 of it using the iPhone. It wasn’t too bad, not bad at all.

Support Mechanism: Checkpoints

NOTE: This super technology is experimental and not fully tested in real life!

It’s kind of hard for me to explain to which lengths I’ve gone to become disorganized in the past. I’m the kind of guy who never really got it right, but people always seemed to be willing to make exceptions to accomodate me. This constant stream of non-consequence has made me extremely happy-go-lucky, and I can totally see how people have really done me a disfavor, not a favor.

As I realized this, I started hacking away at a simple system to combat it. The system was quite simple. I would work based on TODO-lists (as covered previously in this post), but to further fight homeostasis I would define checkpoints in my geographic environment. The idea will seem humurously simple to those of you who are actually organized.

First, I will outline what I’m trying to combat: Autopilot behavior.

Autopilot behavior like leaving the apartment without checking if I brought my wallet and keys. Autopilot behavior like going straight to bed when I come home, surfing the Internet and watching TV, effectively killing the evening. Autopilot behavior like going to sleep without checking whether or not there are things I should have done. You get the idea. I guess a better description of it is to say that I am trying to improve my autopilot behavior.

Now, the basic idea was to create anchors in my physical environment, starting with my apartment. If you’ve ever been to our place, currently Lace Lounge, you’ve seen that we’re not afraid to put up posters on the wall. My basic idea was to actually put a piece of paper on the doors which spelled out “checkpoint”, with an icon reminding me that I should do certain things before I was allowed into that room.

Example: Put a visual piece of paper checkpoint on my bedroom door, yelling out “checkpoint”, urging me to check my TODO-list to see if I had unfinished business, before relaxing on the bed surfing Facebook.

I will implement the checkpoints as part of the new daily system, to see if it works. I’ve set a deadline in my TODO-list to get the posters up before I go to bed on Monday. I will write a short notice in the future about how checkpoints works for me, how my checkpoint posters look and whether or not they serve the purpose of creating the desired anchors.

Wrap Up

I find that this system work very well for me personally, as it combines towards and away from-motivation in a nice way. It’s very simple to use. It’s easily extendible.

The Mental Bank Program Streaming Video Notes

Ok, so I’m starting the Mental Bank Program again. Got my ledger, it’s nice. It’s not an “official” ledger, I just bough a blank notebook. It looks flashy, but that’s because I’m a decent photographer, it cost me 69,- NOK at Tanum. As I said before, I already bought the “official” ledger, but I actually feel a little better using just a blank notebook as the original ledger is married to the US dollar.

My new Mental Bank Ledger.

These following are notes from the video freely available from http://www.hypnosis.edu/streaming/mental-bank/.

The most powerful drive in human nature is homeostasis; the innate drive to stay the same.

Recipe for success

1. Come to believe in the power of your subconscious mind. None of us are broken. We are all functioning 100% and achieving exactly what were programmed to achieve.
2. Daily reinforcement. Life happens every day. Make sure you have an extra ledger ready. Have a dedicated pen. Put the ledger on your pillow.
3. Symbolic language to communicate with the subconscious mind. $-sign and numbers.
4. Idiomotor response; hand writing.
5. Magic 30 minutes; natural state of hypnosis.
6. Precognitive dreams.

The Mental Bank Program combines all these methods. It also mixes imagination and reality.

The process:

These are done when you start up. And when you reach your monetary goals.

1. Set your mental bank goal. This should be double your current annual reality income. I set my current Mental Bank Goal to 1 314 000 NOK.
2. Decide your hourly rate. This rate will be your mental bank goal, with the decimal shifted three points to the left. My hourly rate for this iteration, thus, is 1 314 NOK.
3. Decide on value events. These need to be things that lead you towards your goal. You need to decide what your goals are. Your value events are geared towards this overall goal. The most important value event is doing your mental bank! This is a flat rate event; do it and earn 1 314 NOK. Value events cannot be something that is already automatic in your life, they need to be stuff that drive you forward. it’s on your list as long as you stuggle to achieve it. Only pay yourself for what you struggle to achieve. The contract is an evolving piece of work. Things can go on and off the contract, adapt it to match your current struggles. Bonus events: Two events; the ones you resist the most and the one that propels you the most. Split in happiness, success and prosperity?

My New Mental Script Contract

Here’s an example mental script, the one I’ll be using. Recalculate to get values suited for your situation.

I, COCPORN (I will substitute this for my real name, I guess), agree on this 19th day of December 2008 to rewrite my Mental Bank Script to arrive at a yearly income of 1 314 000 NOK. This amount will represent 25% of my Mental Bank Balance, which will be 5 256 000 NOK. I will arrive at this amount by giving myself a base amount of 1400 NOK per hour for “value events” listed below, with varying amounts for special activities listed.

The hourly rate is rounded to make the math simpler.

Every night before bed

Two facing pages. The subsequent nights: Left page: Happenings, right page: ledger.

First: Write the goal in the top right hand corner, that is, for me, I will write 1 314 000 NOK in the top right corner every day.

For the first event/line in the ledger, write the DATE.

Each line in the ledger has a value event name, what you pay yourself, number of hours, how much you deposit.

Sum it up.

Next line is “Balance forward”. This is the balance from the previous day carried on to this day.

In longhand write the following sentence:

As of this date I have earned and accumulated a mental bank balance of one thousand six hundred norwegian kroners (or whatever amount you made). Sign it.

Any money you receive in real life get subtracted from your mental bank balance. The line is “reality income”. Any money you get in real life is your mental bank delivering to you.

The left page is for happenings! Quite simply write down the happenings for today. Only write positive stuff. Positive re-inforcement. Write two affirmations each night. Investment is only for people who have done the mental bank program for one year or more. Example affirmations.

“I’m receiving cash and income from new and exciting sources.”

“I’m giving and receiving intimate love.”

“I am giving and receiving prosperity from all my friends.”

Short summary: Do your ledger. Do your happenings. Do your affirmations.

Remember:

You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you ask for. Put the pebble in the bucket.

Lost in space?

If this post makes no sense to you at all, check out my previous post. Hopefully these notes will be helpful for those of you wanting to take the plunge and start using the most powerful daily system I know of.

Followup

I’ll be back in a couple of days with an updated list of value events and the full contract. I’ll post it as one of the pages in the top menu. This will serve as the main framework for reaching my one-year goals. I’ll update this post to contain this information.

No, really, how fucked up are you?

I’m asking you because I’m asking me; “Really, how the fuck fucked up are you?” The sub questions are:

• How many god damned self help systems do you need?, and
• Is there a smidgen chance you’ve become a self-help junkie?

I’m lying here at 07:43AM. I’ve been up all night. Mainly because I woke up at 8:30PM last night. Yeah, I’ve really fucked up my sleep patterns. I’ve been really intensely working on Brainwave Entrainment (BWE) lately, using Mind WorkStation and Neuro Programmer 2, two of my favorite programs in the whole world. I’ve also been tapping away merrily at my blocklist.

And now, I’m watching a video introduction to Byron Katie’s The Work.

A girl I like(d, HEHE, this is an old post brought back to life ) was talking about it the other day, and I immediately recognized it from a very vague description. Well, The Work is somewhat special to me, because one of my close friend’s mother is actually doing it professionally, still; I knew of it even before she started. Why would I know about The Work?

Well, it’s a byproduct of feeling so fucked up I needed to know about it all.

The first self-help system I ever knew of was The Silva Method. I have no idea how old I was when I was first introduced to it. My guess would be about 7 or 8. I just looked at it briefly, and did one of the exercises. I thought it was fun, but you know, at that age it’s hard to get into. When I was a teenager, I somehow magically stumbled across the book The Road to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda, in Danish, in my parents’ bookshelf. I found this book, even though the claims made by the author about it being a true story have been debunked, extremely fascinating. I actually, at a spiritual level, found things I could use in Castaneda’s work. At the very least, there was the tiny drop into my mind that there might be somthing out there that I cannot currently sense. Yet, it is there.

Of course, if you’ve read any of my blog before, you know that I’m now a religious practitioner of EFT and TAT. You have no doubt seen my posts on NLP, although I am in no way an active practitioner of NLP.

I no longer believe in energy medicine, because I know it is valid. You stop believing in that stuff when you see auras for the first time. What used to be esoteric and intangible becomes empirical facts. You know in about 5 minutes that EFT and TAT work, because that is basically the time it takes for it to work. There’s no believing anymore.

So why am I messing around with The Work?

I just finished a video presentation from David Feinstein about Energy Psychology. I’ve sort of decided to become a certified EFT professional at this point. It’s not very expensive, I think there’s a $300 fee. You need to practice EFT on others for over a year (I guess I can already check that), and you need to have worked with at least 100 people (I have a long ways to go, keep watching this spot if you need some cheap healing). As a part of this, I feel it’s good for me to look more closely at the whole field. David Feinstein, being married to the excellent Donna Eden, fuses some of her teachings into EFT, changing it slightly. Or, I guess you could say: Makes it a little less blunt. If I’m going to be certified and possibly do some professional work in the field, I don’t just want to go around prescribing The Basic Recipe to everybody, although it is indeed very powerful.

In Denmark, we were taught a nice fusion of NLP, Energy Medicine, Silva UltraMind and Huna. It worked marvellously well for me, thanks John La Tourrette. I want to reach a high level of proficiency by having the ability to see which tool fits best where. And I have to admit, I’m driven by selfish motives aswell, if you’ve seen my blocklist, you know I have issues, and I’m always looking for more effective ways of clearing it.

The methods I currenly understand and use are EFT and TAT. NLP I cannot get to work for me in any therapeutic way. I sometimes dabble in it as a control tool and consciously at a theoretical level (I’ll share some game-related routines later. Don’t be mad at me, they’re very positive patterns), but I simply cannot get it to work very well for self improvement. I’m in no way disrespecting NLP, however, the fact that I can effectively use portions of it to influence others means that it has merits. I’ll clear this up a little below, it’s not completely accurate.

Both EFT and TAT are based on energy medicine, making them extremely easy to use. You really hardly need any logical involvement at all. I like this part of it. No belief needed. No thinking involved. Results speak for themselves and it works, as far as I’ve seen, for everybody, every time.

The Work seems interesting because it explores problems at a logical level, but creates emotional releases and understanding from logical inquisition. From a simple script. I find this very enticing. It’s like an effective way to do deep NLP reframes.

Let’s look at some of the stuff I’ve worked with:

• Hypnosis tapes/guided meditation
• Brainwave Entrainment (often combined with the above)
• Energy Medicine (EFT, TAT, IDD, Donna Eden-stuff)
• The Silva Method
• Sedona Method
• The Work
• Satanism (HEHE, just kidding. Love you, babes.)
• NLP
• Transmutation from our pal Ross Jeffries

Now, as I said before, only two of these I feel really proficient with (yeah, those are EFT and TAT). The Silva Method (at least the UltraMind RV/RI-part) is part of my curriculum, as well as Donna Eden’s material, so I’ll probably write a lot about this in the future. Also, Brainwave Entrainment is something I do a lot, but I don’t feel like I know enough about it. I will however write about it in the close future, I have a lot of experience with it.

How, I’m the first to admit it; I’m a little off track. I sort of lack focus, I lack drive and I currently lack measurable goals. This, obviously, is mainly because I’m now almost sickened by something I was really committed to earlier. This tends to be quite a blow.

But I do have too many things going on at once.

I won’t even bother listing any of them here, because I don’t want to show you a glimpse into my world and habit of starting something I don’t finish. I will, however, commit to something that’s extremely near the core of my being; attempt to help people in one way of another, and perhaps salvage myself along the way.

A couple of years ago, I used a system called The Mental Bank Program. This system is really great. It fuses everything you need into a simple to use, five minutes a day system. Ok, maybe sometimes 10 minutes a day, but it is never overly time consuming. Also, it’s not a competitor to whatever else you might be doing, au contraire. It is the basis of what you do. Imagine a todo-list like Remember The Milk, only more general. Sort of an envelope you fit your day into. If you subscribe to the ideas presented in Think and Grow Rich, The Secret or if you believe longhand writing is an effective way to communicate with your subconscious, The Mental Bank Program is great. If you believe in positive thinking, and focusing on action, it’s awesome. If you need drive and passion to reach your goals, The Mental Bank Program will help you. I would almost call it more of a framework than just a simple program, it’s a framework where you can fit your own programs and make them work.

I know I linked you to a bunch of products for sale, before, but the nice people at HMI has a quite comprehensive video describing the system here. I’d go as far as saying the contents of the video, a pen and a dedicated notebook you can get at any bookstore is more than enough to get you started. I actually bought the book and 3 ledgers (which are basically specialized notebooks) when I started out, and I don’t regret it in any way. The only thing I regret was stopping using the program.

I was thinking of getting back on it the first of January, but writing this, I changed my mind. I’ll get back on it tomorrow.

Walking down Karl Johan, there are a bunch of mainstream bookstores. These stores now sport Eckhard Tolle and Susan Jeffries translated to frickin’ Norwegian. I have no idea how huge the self help industry is becoming, but my guess is bloody huge. Like super fucking huge.

Fun things about different self help systems: In my opinion, an opinion based on own experience and testimonials from users, most of them work. Obviously some of them are more effective than others, and some of them are more suited to some people than others, but all in all, most of them work. The main reason why they don’t work is because the users don’t commit to it.

I’m telling you now, again. A real great way to help yourself to commit to anything is to utilize The Mental Bank Program (hehe, don’t worry, I don’t get money from them). It is truly a gem in a very complex and increasingly populated landscape.

I’ll even be as generous as to write up my value events so you guys know exactly what I’ll be focusing on. Look for them in an upcoming page. One of the upcoming days. Hopefully the value events, a concept from The Mental Bank, will tell you exactly how fucked up I am.

PS: The Mental Bank was a real inspiration for Project Norway. If you’ve never heard of it; don’t worry—you never will.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Qualification…

…but were to afraid to ask.

In this post we’ll look at:

• What qualification is
• How it related to other well known concepts
• How to qualify, how to disqualify
• Ruminate on whether it is bad to qualify yourself
• What the effects of qualification are

If I’d only had an HD video-camera, this would be a video blog entry.

What is Qualification?

Let’s start with an example of qualification:

If I’d only had an HD video-camera, this would be a video blog entry.

Sounds familiar? Good! Just checking if you’re paying attention.

Those of you wanting to get a glimpse of the social matrix at work, learning qualification theory is definitely time well spent. Qualification is a beast with many heads, at it’s used in many contexts. Let’s start by looking at the different ways:

• To qualify oneself: When a person qualifies, he makes a statement or takes an action to serve as a testament to some trait or ability he/she has.
• To make someone qualify: The act of trying to make someone qualify. The reason I list it is that many people use the term “qualify her” as a synonymous phrase to “make her qualify herself”, making the waters a little muddy. We’ll look at a number of ways to make someone qualify.
• To qualify someone else: When you make a statement about someone else, focusing on a trait or ability and verbalizing it.
• To disqualify: Disqualification, either token or real, is commonly used in pickup and real life.

To Qualify

I gave you an example of a qualification previously. It’s a subtle qualification, don’t be embarrased if you didn’t pick up on it. Learning to spot qualifications is a pretty simple task. The first reason why you’d want to learn how to spot qualifications is that they say a lot about the person qualifying. Let’s kick it off by looking at some other examples of qualification.

Last year I drove from New York to Miami in my stripper girlfriend’s new Camino when we accidently got run off the road by a bunch of hillbillies.

Again, sounds familiar? The example is a paraphrase from Mystery’s example DHV stories. Mystery uses a bunch of fairly naïve techniques to push back “DHV spikes”. In how many ways is he qualifying in this one sentence? These are common thoughts that will consciously or unconsciously be created in the head of the listener.

• New York, capital of the world! This guy must be important.
• New York to Miami? The man is travelled.
• Girlfriend? Ah, preselection. Other girls like him, so I must too.
• Oh, she’s a stripper? She must be hot. He’s used to hot girls. I hope I’m hot enough for him.
• New car? She sure must make a lot of money on that body.
• Wow, what the fuck is a Camino? Sounds cool! He sure knows a lot about cars!
• They drove in her car? He’s a kept man! I wonder how expensive he is!

The DHV-spikes are stacked into a sentence and pushed back by continuing the story on a tangent about how they ended up in an accident. A tangent leading, of course, to more DHV spikes.

To the untrained eye, this is just a sentence in a story. Whether you are consciously impressed by the details casually dropped in, they are pushed back into the unconscious and serve to build a set of presuppositions about the story teller.

A less proficient person would blurt it out:

Hey! You know what? I just bought a new car! A Porsche.

Or even try to be subtle about it. Leaving the car keys on the table at a café, hoping someone would notice and care. I actually did a variation on this a while back. A girl offered me a sip of her cider, and I responded:

No, thanks, I’m driving. A BMW.

Obviously, this wasn’t really an attempt to qualify for her; this kind of blatant qualification is so apparent that it has value as a comic bit.

My friend Daniel and I were at the excellent tapas restaurant Mañana in Gothenburg a while back (dude, I know you’re starting to track qualifications in my sentences already. Good!). We were good and lubed up and having an excellent time. We started talking to three guys sitting at a table next to us. We were in a good mood, and we kept a conversation going.

Now, frankly, Daniel and I are dickheads. These guys were obviously computer geeks, and we started out subtly mocking them in a friendly tone. We escalated and at some point we blatantly dissed one of the guys’ shirt. We didn’t really do it to be mean or anything. It was just for fun, and I’m a huge fan of a little friction in my social interactions. His response, however, was textbook qualification:

I have nicer clothes at home!

Now, this wasn’t a competition in any way. But if it had been, he would be totally burned at this point.

I’ve intentionally left one huge question about qualification hanging way up in the air. Is it a good or bad thing to qualify yourself?

I want to paraphrase (I paraphrase a lot, because I’m too lazy to check my sources) Eckhard Tolle:

Things aren’t good or bad, they just are.

Instead of labeling qualifying yourself as good or bad, let’s look at the effects of qualifying yourself, as perceived by others:

• You communicate something using actions or words which wouldn’t normally be communicated. This will by many be consciously or unconsciously interpreted as compensating for something. Mystery’s DHV-spikes are therefore in fact, for many viewers, a DLV tour de force. Normal people use terms as “bragging” and “self promotion” to describe qualification when they consciously pick up on it being just that.
• You communicate something using actions or words that has already been communicated through other channels. Compare to having your date in your brand new Ferrari on your way to a restaurant, telling her “I own a Ferrari”.
• Skillful use of qualification means that the viewer (that is, the listener or the one watching you) will know more about you than he/she would if you didn’t qualify yourself. Sometimes you can enclose details that people find intriguing, and use it to create interest.
• If you qualify yourself for someone, you invest in them. We’ll look more closely at how qualification and investment interact later, but let’s just agree that there’s no way you’d enclose the contents of your wardrobe to anyone without actually investing.

Thus, if you would really want me to classify it as good or bad, I’d have to say: Mostly bad. As an attraction tool it is almost always bad. I’ll give you some dynamite pointers later to where it’s actually beneficial to qualify yourself.

What Does it Mean When People Qualify for You?

I’m not going to present this in terms of absolutes, but here’s a list of things for your consideration. Some of these are mirror images of the above observations.

• People qualify for you to raise their value in your eyes. This can be an indication that they perceive you as high value. When people qualify for you, feel free to assume it is an IOI.
• People who qualify for you invest in you.
• Knowing when people qualify for you places you in a position of power (subitems discussed in detail below):
  • Reward good behavior
  • Break rapport to spark attraction
• People who are extremely skilled at social interaction will intentionally qualify for you to bridge the perceived value gap. I’ve had this done to me at least once the last year that I consciously picked up on.

When learning to recognize that people are indeed qualifying for you, it gives you more to play with. Beware of becoming an asshole when you start noticing when people qualify for you. Everybody does it. Take it as a compliment. I’ve earlier communicated that it pisses me off when people qualify for me. It still does at times. Qualification often helps build a gap between people. Compare this to how friends interact. Relentless qualification is a sure way to communicate “we’re not quite friends”.

Tangent: The Accomplishment Intro

In case you’re unfamiliar with the accomplishment intro, I’ll give you a quick example:

Have you met my friend COCPORN? He’s a singer, he has a single on high rotation on Voice TV.

Basically, you decide up front how a friend wants to be introduced, and you use this to raise his perceived value from the get-go. This is a trademark of Mystery and Style, and described in painful detail in the book The Game.

The idea:

• An accomplishment brought to the attention of a person by someone else but the one who accomplished it will make it seem less like bragging.
• Cool people have cool friends. Introducing your friend in a cool way will make you seem cool.

The sad reality:

• The need to qualify your friends is try-hard.
• The person being accomplishment-introduced is categorized.  This is a known verbal manipulation technique. I personally feel I start out below zero after having been accomplishment introduced.
• The one doing the introduction can benefit from an accomplishment introduction, as he takes on a screening frame. We’ll talk more about this later.

If you have friends or wings who consistently accomplishment-introduce you and you feel it’s killing your approaches, tell them to stop; now you have the reason why it’s bad. A superb alternative to accomplishment introduction is to verbalize which emotions are elicited by your friend.

Hey, meet ICON. He’s the funniest guy I know; there’s always a party where he’s at.

The described feelings don’t need to necessarily be true (you’ll find that there’s a lot of power in suggestion, tho, both for the introduced and the ones introduced for. Everybody knows ICON is a boring dweeb). Hopefully you see the difference between this and an accomplishment introduction.

Making Someone Qualify

If qualification is so bad (I didn’t really say it is), why would you want to make people qualify for you?

• People who qualify invest. You might want to have people invest in you.
• People who qualify subconsciously register you as a person of value. This can be used with the concept of commitment and consistency (we’ll look at that later).
• It puts you in control of the interaction. When people qualify for you, it’s easy to propel the conversation in whichever direction you feel necessary.
• Puts you in a screening frame.

There are extremely many ways to urge people into qualifying. It’s funny to see how they respond to your technique, how people with high and low self esteem react differently. How the socially untrained fall for the simplest gambits.

You can use qualification gambits as calibration tools. We’ll talk about this in a future post.

Let’s look at some examples:

How good a kisser are you on a scale from 1 to 10?

Not sure who should be credited for this, but Swinggcat uses it in his material.

Why should we pick your company for this job?

Yeah. They are asking you to qualify. Looking at the concepts in a business setting makes it apparent how things relate to investment.

We’re having a bunch of people over for a warmup party tonight. How old are you?

We’re moving into sneaky territory. Asking a person his/her age in the context of a warm up-party is prompting him/her to qualify. Also, by qualifying, the person is tricked into he/she believing actually wants to go to a warm up-party.

Making people qualify is also a part of hoop-theory; the art and science of making people jump through your hoops.

Flipside: Spontaneously Qualifying Someone

The flipside to making someone qualify for you, and a little less powerful, is just spontaneously qualifying someone. This is quite simply done by, for example:

Hey, man, cool jacket. Where did you get it?

…or…

I like you. You’re intelligent and good looking.

Both having someone qualify for you and just spontaneously qualifying someone leaves you in the same place:

The Screening Frame

By qualifying, you put yourself in a screening frame. When you’re the screener, your perceived value rises. You are suddently the one who decides what’s good and what sucks; the guy who’s approval matters. A lot of people, especially people with low self esteem are happy to take anything that’s sent in their direction. This is the opposite of the screening frame.

Operating through a screening frame communicates:

• You are used to getting what you want.
• As you can afford to say no to things means that you have resources and opportunities in abundance.
• When it comes to people, that there is a chance you’ll say no.

All these traits are high value traits. Notice how you accomplish pretty much the same things that Mystery tries to accomplish using DHV-spikes, except that there’s no bragging involved.

Token Qualification

Token qualification, or false qualification, is the act of qualifying someone based on a lie. The previous example:

Hey, man, cool jacket. Where did you get it?

This is a known AMOG-technique; it puts you in the screening frame and prompts the guy to qualify himself. But it’s obvious you can use it even if the jacket isn’t really cool. This is a powerful tool, although the ethical side of it doesn’t work for everyone.

You can obviously use token qualification for any kind of situation.

As a mini-mission, you can try this with your boss:

Sir! I really liked the way you handled [situation X].

That is, I want you to give your boss a compliment, qualify him, either token or real. If your boss is a typical alpha kind of leader, I want you to feel how this shifts the balance of power once you put yourself in the screening frame. It is not a very risky move; after all, all you’re doing is giving him a compliment.

Disqualification

Disqualification is the ugly stepsister of qualification. As with qualification, a disqualifier can be a token disqualifier.

You will develop an acute sense of when people are doing token (dis)qualification, the same way you’ll get better at noticing when people are actually qualifying for you.

As with qualification, disqualification can be used on you or on him/her. Disqualifying yourself is counter intuitive for many people, but it’s effective for many reasons:

• It creates scarcity, and people tend to chase what they can’t have
• It communicates abundance

Examples of self disqualification:

I would love to come home with you, but I’m celibate.

…or…

Yes, boss, I’d love to take on this project, but I have no prior experience with this technology.

Disqualifying other people is very easy:

I prefer blondes.

…or…

I prefer brunettes.

And friend and I used to do stupid stuff before. We had a theme-night where the first thing we said to everybody we met was “I’m not going to have sex with you”. Like, complete disregarding context and who we were talking to. This was my first experience doing active disqualification, and I’m sure you can guess what the outcome of that evening was. *WINK WINK, NUDGE NUDGE*

Disqualification and SOI

Disqualification creates a void that’s great to fill with an SOI. This results in a subtle and cute push/pull.

It’s too bad you’re married; if you weren’t I would take you home with me.

…or mix it up a little…

You’re a cool girl. Too bad you don’t speak Armenian.

This pattern is also prompts the person to qualify, and they routinely do: “It’s not really going that well” and “I can learn!” are commonly experienced.

Qualification and Investment

As I’ve talked about before, qualification is almost pure investment. If this idea is unclear to you, I suggest you read that previous post, even though it contains a couple of factual errors.

The Promised Dynamite Pointer

You can actively qualify yourself to bridge a gap in perceived value. If you come off as extremely high value, you can get an unattainable, ethereal quality to you. You’re a fun and pretty thing, but you don’t come off as real. Spending too much time running scripts will make you intangible. Qualifying yourself for someone when you feel they have an extremely high perceived value of you puts the real back in the interaction. It makes you human, and it positions you in reach.

This is for advanced audiences. I don’t do it personally, because I have other techniques to battle the same problem, but I’ve seen at least three high value people use qualification to diffuse a value gap situation the last year. Not all of them consciously, but all of them effectively.

Summary

Qualification- and disqualification-theory is key in social interactions. And yeah, I just ordered the camera, so some of the upcoming posts will indeed be video-entries. For your convenience.

Review: Yaya’s Vika

Ok, I’m starting a new series; I’m reviewing restaurants I go to. If you’ve been reading this blog at all, you’ll hopefully understand that this series will contain more than observations about food.

So, it’s Sunday the fourteenth. I’m leaving the Lace Lounge at 8PM. I call up my friend ROCKSTAR for reasons which will be revealed later. I walk down Kronprinsens gate, passing the huge clock under the sign “Time Passes”; ironically a clock I’ve never seen show any time but ten to ten.

I pass Egertorget and continue down Karl Johan. When I reach Nedre Slottsgate I stop up and wonder where the fuck I’m going. I know I need food, but that’s pretty much all I know.

On Thursday, I visited the restaurant Ved Brua, wanting to order the moose, but it wasn’t on the Thursday Menu, leaving me with the reindeer. Which was good. I’ll write about Ved Brua later. I walk Råshusgata over Christiania Torg, getting Kontraskjæret on my left. The lights from Cosmo swiping the sky are very visible; the night is clear but it is cloudy. I think the moose is on the Sunday Menu there.

At Rådhusplassen, there is a christmas village put up. It’s getting close to 9PM. I remember appreciating how they’ve decorated the trees, making the trunks and branches light up. Christmas, it’s here, just around the corner.

Passing Aker Brygge, I see the restaurant Yaya’s. I’ve been there before. 4 or 5 times.

First time I was there, was with an ex. We had a good time, but at the time everything was good. I really enjoyed the place. The atmosphere is… Well, something else. I decide to go there instead of going for the moose.

A woman working there seats me. The waitresses at Yaya’s are a special breed, they have some strange amazon woman quality. Strong, beach bum-dressed and mostly swedish. I order a beer and get the menu.

The service is swift. The beer is good.

I’ve been drinking since Friday. On Friday I drank a bottle of Tanqueray Gin and Schweppes Bitter Lemon, mixed 1 parts liquor to 2 parts mixer. My old flatmate, Trym, used to drink this all the time, and coined the drink “Saft” which is Norwegian meaning “Lemonade”. It kind of tastes like lemonade. Why I picked this particular drink for Friday, I don’t know. I guess it was an attempt to travel down memory lane. To a time when stuff was simpler. This post is 1 part about traveling down memory lane.

Friday was a fun night out.

The interior at Yaya’s is different. From most other things I’ve seen. They call it “Thai Beach Bungalow”, and it’s a pretty good description. At first glance, the overall design idea escapes me; seemingly a bunch of random elements are just thrown together. The bamboo, blacklights, tablecloths in dire need of ironing, candle lights, the christmas lights, the reggae music. When you sit down and let it all seep in, you kind of get it, tho.

I pick up my cell phone. At 16:42 I received a message from a girl.

You sick sick fuck! Why did you tell people I slept with you?

I read the message at 18:40 and answered it shortly after. What a nice way to wake up after a scandalous Saturday.

My main problem with Yaya’s is that I like good food. This is one thing they really can’t provide. I decide on trying something I haven’t tried before, mainly because everything I’ve ever had there seems bland and uninspired. I select shrimps with peanut sauce as a starter, number 10 on the menu. And as the entree I go for filet of pork in coconut milk, number 20. It sounds good. I start getting my hopes up that they actually manage to nail the food this time.

Why would I go to Yaya’s if I don’t really care for the food? She says she loves it. I’ve never been there with her, but I always think about her when I’m there. Well, yeah, the girl from the text message.

The seventh of December, I was at Ved Brua, eating tapas. I’ll talk more about the Sunday Tapas in my thorough review of Ved Brua. Which, by the way, means “By the Bridge”. This was an excellent Sunday. I will write about it in detail in the future post, but let’s just say it includes a lot of drinking and a bunch of blind people. My friend sparxx joined me for the tapas. And he adviced me not to send this message, if I recall correctly (7th December, 21:57):

[NAME]. I love you.

She replied.

OK?!!? Are you drunk?! What?! Huh?

The truth is I was pretty drunk. But it didn’t really take away from the fact that it was how I felt at the time. “Sounds serious?” Well yeah, it kind of was. I don’t throw the L-word around easily. If I tell you, I care for you in a profound way. I care for you more than I care for me.

I get my shrimps with peanut sauce. Three shrimps with some salad on the side. “Uh-oh.” Well, as expected, it pretty much tasted like crap. The shrimps were rubbery and dry, apparently fried too much, almost to a burn. The salad was just sour. And the peanut sauce just tasted like peanut sauce. It wasn’t good or bad, it just was. I ordered another beer.

My waitress was a cute, tall blonde, wearing a t-shirt with a picture of smurfette, light denim jeans and beach slippers. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail. She was nice. I got my beer quickly.

Elton John sings about saying sorry. How it seems to be the hardest word. I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s not a song they would typically play at Yaya’s, and truth be told, they didn’t. I’m just foreshadowing. This post is 1 part about saying sorry. I’m sorry to say, the sir has no idea.

They do something at Yaya’s. At random intervals, they “cut the power” and fade in a sound that resembles a rainstorm on the stereo. It’s a nice touch. All of a sudden, everyone is sitting there illuminated mainly by candles and scattered cellphones. For a second I can actually picture myself being in Thailand, even though I’ve never really been there in real life. It’s a really nice touch.

I have an incoming call from an unknown number. I pick it up. It’s a Swedish girl I “dated” (if you can even call it that) a little earlier, but it went nowhere fast. She always managed to find my inner dweeb. I have no idea why she keeps calling. She talks about having seen a flyer from the book I’m in at her work. Talks about how she’s going to read it. I urge her to. She talks about going out for a beer one day. I say I think it sounds good. I do. I like her, she’s smart and cool.

Two weeks ago, she was in the blacklist on my iPhone. I’ve talked about it before, only briefly. I have installed an app called “iBlacklist” which allows you to ignore incoming calls and messages. It’s handy for ignoring people. This post is 1 part about ignoring people.

BTW, yeah, that’s me on the cover. Dressed in a clown buffoon-costume. It should’ve been tighter.

Waking up, I thought about it. You sick sick fuck. Yeah, it sort of sounds like me. Saturday was catastrophic for me. I mean, I had fun, but at other people’s expense. I got thrown out of the Benni Benassi concert. I got thrown out of the Z-Club. I made my sister cry at her own concert. Unintentionally, of course. Tight game.

But when I read and consumed the whole message I regained my composure. What the hell was she talking about? Who am I supposed to have told that she’d slept with me? I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff when I’m drunk, but this just felt odd. It didn’t feel real.

The smurfette-clad girl came with my entree and another beer. It actually had a nice smell, but the way it was served presented an immediate logistical problem. The pork and rice was in separate containers, but I had nowhere to mix it. Of course, I ended up moving bits of rice over to the pork, spilling a bunch on the tablecloth in the process. Good job making your customer feel smart, Yaya’s.

I took a quick picture. The quality sucks, of course. You can see the christmas lights. The curly tablecloth. The candle lights and the Swedes. All the Swedes everywhere. I recommend you going to http://www.yayas.no if you really care about what the place looks like. I didn’t have the sense to take a picture of the actual dishes.

It’s amazing that this place is always packed even though the food is at best mediocre. The pork was rubbery. The sauce was surprisingly good, tho.

My response to her message had been:

I’ve never said that to anyone. Who told you that?

She responds that she’s heard it from three different people. I’m baffled by this, as we don’t have that many friends in common. Again, I urge her to specify who she’s heard this from, but she refuses. I thought I might be able to straighten out a misunderstanding if I only knew who had given her this information.

How do I know I haven’t told anyone? Well, first of all, because it never happened. Not that I haven’t wanted to, but it just never did happen. As I said, I’ve done a lot of stupid things, both sober and drunk. But I have never ever lied about having sex with anyone.

As a matter of fact, just talking about it violates a principle I hold dear; the Don’t Kiss and Tell-principle. It just common sense. It is just common courtesy.

So, the mission is to figure out who has been misinforming. Not because it can repair anything, but because I’m hell bent on placing this person in my blacklist.

As I start on my fourth beer, I’ve talked to three people on the list of suspects. It is an unordered list, I’m just mechanically moving through it, starting with whoever I can reach. It means starting with the people I live with. No one has come forward.

From what I understand, there are three problems with saying you’re sorry. There is the situation where you are actually sorry, and someone is willing to accept your apology. In this situation, saying sorry is a relief.

I talked to her a couple of weeks ago while incredibly drunk. To the point that I don’t know what we talked about. I remember the result, however. I deleted her from Facebook, and entered her into the blacklist filter. Why, you ask? I have no idea. I don’t remember whether it was a phone call or text messaging.

I have three reasons for blocking people. The first is by far the simplest; I can’t stand you. If you screw me over in any way, I will eject you from my life like a human body ejects a dwarf-liver. It’s simple, for some things there are no second chances. With billions of people on the planet, there’s no point in associating with trash. It is the ability to embody willingness to walk away. I am willing to walk away from a bad deal.

The second is far more complex. I have a detailed history of consistently and mechanically alienating and hurting people. I’m bad news. If I truly care for you, I will sometimes save you from me by blocking you. I know it’s selfishness disguised as selflessness. This is an ongoing pattern of self sabotage; I sometimes do stupid stuff to give people a chance to reject me, to give them a reason to. If I’m rejected because of something I do, I’m not rejected because of who I am.

The third is the weakest. I will block you if I am incapable of handling the emotions you create in me. This is more than anything else a survival mechanism. Again, it is selfish, but I consider this a necessity.

No surprise, the girl was in the second category. I truly care for her.

I asked her again if she can please tell me who gave her the information.

No, I cannot, and now I ask you to leave me be.

I answered.

That’s too bad. I will.

There are things that are way worse than having to say you’re sorry. Not having the opportunity to is one of them. I guess this post is 1 part saying sorry. It’s like talking into a bucket. Even if the message never reaches its intended receiver, it feels better to have said it.

I skip desert and leave a generous tip.

Verdict:

Yaya’s is the worst restaurant I’ll happily visit again. And again.

Rating:

MMS: It’s on

You heard it here first. Unless, of course, you’ve heard it elsewhere before, or have even thought it yourself: I’m a stupid idiot.

So, my MMS arrived this weekend. On Sunday morning, I thought it was a good time to get started testing it. Now, the normal protocol is to start with one drop every morning and night, and then ramp it up to 15 for a while, and eventually ramp back down to about 5.

MMS - Miracle Mineral Solution

So I tried one. And nothing happened.

Now, the reason why the protocol is designed like this, is that MMS tends to clean out the body, and starting off with a lot of MMS is a more strenuous process than ramping up slowly. Unless you are in a life threatening situation, ramp it up. Slowly.

Now, the result of not ramping it up and letting the body gradually rid itself of waste products.

Well, as one drop did nothing, I tried three more! Approximately 2 hours after testing with one.

Now, apparently, the whole “ramp it up gradually”-protocol, with which I was very familiar, even at this point, somehow managed to escape me.

When three more drops did nothing, I squirted out what must have been more like 15 drops. And mixed it with a lot of citric acid. I happily gulped it down, thinking “this MMS-stuff doesn’t work for me”. Two hours later, I was barfing down the restroom at Sara’s Café. I then proceeded to Saigon Lille Café to order two cold rice rolls with shrimp and the wonton soup. Which I in turn puked up 3 hours later in the comfort of my own home. Maybe this MMS-stuff is working for me after all.

This morning I took another 5 drops. I’m not really sure what kind of effect I’m looking for from this stuff, but I’ll keep drinking it and keep you posted. If the blog posts stop coming, chances are it killed me.

Unspecified Referential Index

The unspecified referential index is a well known NLP construct. It is a deletion, and can act as creating a powerful unconscious open loop. This post will show you what the unspecified referential index is, and how to use it. Don’t worry, it’s not as complex as it sounds.

NLP operates with a number of different types of deletions. The complete definition of deletion is fairly simple to dig out on the internet, so I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader if he/she wants it.

A deletion is when something is left out or ignored, either because of our internal representation or purposefully. Sensory input is deleted, memories are accessed in a way which deletes huge amounts of information, and information is always deleted in communication.

The unspecified referential index is a specialized form of deletion.

Consider the phrase

We’re going to dinner.

Who’s going to dinner? “Well,” just might think, “this is taken out of context.” Not necessarily, this is a sentence that typically appears without any context. Responses that are valid include:

Ok, have fun, see you later.

Implying, “we” does not include the person addressed.

Ok, I’ll be there in a second.

Implying, “we” indeed includes the person addressed.

As you can see, just a simple, everyday sentence opens up a lot of room for interpretation, and also a lot of different ways to respond. Obviously, the response to the sentence “We’re going to dinner” is going to be different depending on who’s saying it to who. Sometimes you’ll identify as a person within the we, sometimes you don’t. By being conscious of the construct, try to identify in a way that’s more beneficial to you, not based on what you think the other person means. If you wanted to go to dinner with the person, and really think the person didn’t intend to include you in the we, say “I’ll be there in a second” anyway. If it becomes awkward, and it certainly might, just say:

Oh, I thought you meant we.

If nothing else, the person who’s going to dinner will be conscious of you associating with the we going to dinner.

Now, this is just a simple example, you’ll find so many examples of unspecified referential indexes that it’s no point starting to list them. It’s a necessary communications tool, as well as all other deletions. Without them, communication would simply be too heavy. Most of the time deletions are used where context provides meaning. It is however possible to use as a narration tool without providing the necessary context to fully understand the communication. Consider:

We went to the movies last night.

In this case, the we becomes a wildcard. Had the sentence been:

I went to the movies with Peter last night.

…the conversation beckons in the direction of “What did you see?”. When you leave out the referential index, another loop is opened. Another way to conceal the loop is to follow it up with a decoy question:

We went to see Die Hard 5 last night. Did you have a good time at your grandmother’s?

…or…

We went to see a movie last night. Did you have a good time at your grandmother’s?

By using the decoy question, you can push back multiple open loops with ease. Now, whether or not this loop will suck the listener in or repel him is up to you to figure out. Using too many open loops makes you come off as vague. Using too few makes you come off as predictable and boring. Using the right amount is an excellent propulsion system in any conversation.

I’ll leave you with the classical Ericksonian trance trigger:

I went finishing with my dad and my uncle. He caught a 10 pound bass.

Until next time, stay sexy.

Review: Taking Liberty

Our tasty friend at The Charismatic Lover blog has written an ebook titled “Taking Liberty”. From the corresponding blog-entry:

“What was my natural friend doing to attract all these beautiful women that I just wasn’t doing?”

That was the question on my mind when I saw my friend go into a model show and went home with the hottest model on his arm. It never mattered how much I had studied and read about “seduction” or how much I improved or approached women, there was always something missing that I wasn’t doing but my friend seemed to always possess. No matter where we went he would always out do me and get the hottest girl. This frustration led me down a path to discover what he was actually doing that made him so attractive. I finally started to see it in other guys that where natural with women too, they made it look so easy.

Here’s the cover page. Looks dazzling.

The Cover Page for the ebook Taking Liberty

Before I even dive into what it’s about, let me start out by saying it’s eleven pages. Eleven pages! Woho! It takes you about as much time to consume this material as it takes you to hear Eben say:

Hi, my name is David DeAngelo.

…in any of his products. You just can’t go wrong with eleven pages. So; what’s it about? I’ll let the ebook introduce itself:

In essence, taking liberty is about:

• Acting on your desire
• Creating opportunities
• Flirting

So, how does it do?

The Bad

Let’s start off with the bad. Yes, there’s some bad stuff. Not as much in content as in presentation. You’re presented with walls of text (well, a couple of walls, there can’t be that many; it’s only eleven pages long). Spelling and just plain layout leaves something to be desired. This is nothing that couldn’t be fixed in about an hours work. An hour should be spent.

The Good

To put it quite simple: The content. This is an excellent resource. Unless you are a pickup guru, hell, I’d even say especially if you’re a pickup guru, you should read this ebook. You just can’t go wrong with it. It’s in no way a magic bullet kind of thing, but it does what it sets out to do; enlighten you about the topic of taking liberty. The importance of it. How to do it correctly. How not to become a dick doing it. It has a lot of examples you can put to great use right now.

It’s not advanced, it’s simple!

How much does it cost? It’s fucking free! Talk about value giving. Thank you, Adam Taste.

The Verdict

If you need to up your game, I can think of no quicker way than reading this ebook. It won’t automatically turn you into a superstar, but for most people, the content of this sweet little ebook has a place where it will build or enhance competence. Looking forward to more free stuff from you guys.

Rating (out of five):

External Links

Here are some links to stuff mentioned in this blog post:

• The Charismatic Lover
• The ebook reviewed