Futuristic Words

A simple truth of the human experience is that if you want to be master something, you must learn to equate the glory and satisfaction of achievement with the sacrifice it took to get there. If that sounds like medicine too bitter to swallow, you are beginning a conversation that ends with a life of mediocrity. You can get good at something by dabbling, but to rise above the hobbyists and the amateurs, you need to cut something out. Remember, if it doesn’t suck or doesn’t hurt or isn’t inconvenient, it’s not sacrifice.

In most areas of life, you pay this cost with your social life.

My friend Dan is the finest guitar player I’ve ever met in person besides Keychain. Dan can play alongside Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and Dream Theater, and he does so with a smile on his face. When I asked him how he reached such a high level of skill, he mentioned that he had very few friends growing up; guitar was his life. At a high school reunion I was agog when someone I played water polo with said he was training to row crew in the 2008 Olympics. When he saw my obvious amazement, he said with dark mirth, “I better make it. I’ve given up everything for this. No one sees me. My family and friends don’t know me. My girlfriend broke up with me.”

Love Systems readers and students tend to come from the ranks of the intelligent and successful, so sacrificing short term pleasure in the name of long term achievement is nothing new to them. Some of you can perform medical procedures that would have been considered miracles a few decades ago. Maybe you have a legal library of Alexandria in your brain.   Perhaps understanding and navigating the world of finance and money is something like breathing to you, or you speak code better than you speak your native language. To do these things you missed some parties (or all of them) and disappointed some friends (or all of them).

Ironically mastering social skills also demands sacrifice, but it’s a sacrifice in the opposite direction. To get really good at dating and sexing beautiful women, you need to let other areas slip, and only you know whether that opportunity cost can be justified by the smell of a girl’s lightly perfumed hair clouding your nose or a sweaty sex mist clouding your windows at night. You have to put less time into making money. You have to study less. Read less. You have to go out and approach the task of enjoying yourself around strangers like a job. If that doesn’t come naturally to you it can be as grueling as practicing scales or putting those 20 extra pounds on the weight bar, yet it must be done to some degree. Our instructors come from many different reference points. Braddock was popular in high school, played football, and joined a frat in college. I was a drama geek, played Dungeons and Dragons, and joined the Marine Corps. Some of us have battled depression, some poverty, some weight loss. We are a motley crew united by zeal and aptitude for success with women, an enthusiasm guided by an optimism that is fundamental to everyone in the company. And we all worked very hard to get where we are with women. Whatever our goals were starting out, the Love Systems instructors refused to accept anything but the best results, regardless of the cost. Some of us lost money, some of our grades plummeted, most hid from friends and family while we practiced learning how to understand people. Yet none of us would return to the old way of doing things. We were sleeping and are now awake.

There are two particular sacrifices I want to talk about before I send you back on your way. The first is the cost of learning seduction to your friendships, and the next is the cost in girls.

Know Who Your Friends Are
If you want to know someone, get to know the five people they spend the most time with. We naturally seek people who most closely reflect the way we see the world, and we perform the same service for them. This is almost a worthy subject for an entire newsletter, but the point is that when you make the decision to get better with women, you are changing a core aspect of your life. Moreover, “success with women” is not a small thing. You’re not going to get it by learning a few routines and buying some new clothes. Success with women is the sum of your psychological health, your lifestyle, and your skills. You will still be you when you look back at your path with Love Systems, but you will be changed beyond recognition for some people, especially those people you selected as friends due to toxic thoughts and behaviors of your own.

We all know those people. They’re the guys who say messed up things under the mask of “only joking” or “just being honest.” They’re the people who always have a reason why something can’t be done. They are the victims who assign every evil or misfortune to an external locus of control.

This might hit way too close to home for some of you. This guy might be your oldest friend. He might be your dad. He might be someone who was there for you in a real time of trial. I wish it was as easy as just saying you need to cut the fat from your life, and that means that jerk first. But life ain’t that simple, and if you didn’t have reservations about it you wouldn’t be a very good person. The truth is that most of us want to see ourselves as loyal in some capacity. No one wants to be the guy who sizes up his friends purely for their utility. For most people the answer is to compartmentalize those people and not invite them to situations where their presence won’t grate.

But beware of the friends who make you feel bad about yourself. Beware of the girls who do the same. If you find that you have friends (or even family) who make you feel worthless or unimportant, cut them loose as soon as possible. Your self-perception of loyalty will be little antidote to the poisonous wear and tear on the spirit that toxic friends and lovers provide. It may seem hard, and you may wonder what to do next, but if it wasn’t hard it wouldn’t be a sacrifice.

Do You Keep That Girl When You Find Her?
Love Systems works. It works so much so that I have to warn you about a crossroads you will reach after you commit to learning it. You will meet a girl who is cooler and smarter and hotter and better than any girl you dated, most likely. I’ve seen it over and over again. The sex will be amazing, you will laugh at each other’s jokes, and you will think, “I did it! I won the game!”

Yeah, sort of.

The thing is, there are an awful lot of incredible women out there, and this girl may not be the actual second coming of Aphrodite so much as one of the goddess’s handmaidens. As you improve yourself with Love Systems you will naturally become more alluring to a higher caliber of woman. It can be dazzling when it first happens, disorienting even. Some guys cash in their chips right there and then. I’ve attended weddings and met babies who were the product of my teaching.

I’ve also heard sad divorce stories and bought cases of beer for former students whose hearts were rent asunder by a girlfriend who wasn’t quite right. With a lot of these guys, since they stopped their learning when the first high quality girl came around, they never really internalized the Love Systems materials, never dug deep enough to become more attractive people overall instead of merely manifesting the traits of truly attractive men. I’m not judging. If what I’m saying resonates it’s because I speak with experience.

You have to make that call, and it’s a hard sacrifice to make. I believe in my bones that intimacy is the real meat of all this stuff, but it’s dangerous to be intimate with someone who’s a reflection of your worst self. Moreover, saying that your heart is wrong or misinformed is like shooting a bullet at the screen at the end of Good Will Hunting when Matt Damon says he’s got to go see about a girl. It’s counter to what most people have learned about love and intimacy. It’s a hard road that people who haven’t walked it might not understand. And that’s why it’s a sacrifice.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of you might be all the way through your journeys, and some of you might be just beginning. If you’re interested in learning more about how Love Systems makes men into masters,

here’s my upcoming workshop schedule:

16 – 18 March – New York

23-25 March – San Francisco

30 March – 1 April  - Los Angeles

13-15 April – Washington DC

18-20 May – Singapore

25-27 May – Hong Kong

1-3 June – Sydney

I hope 2012 is the best year of your life yet.

Happy Hunting