Boot Camp Journal

[isotope]

well i said hi to several old guys who were walking on the beach while i was jogging. they were polite, most smiled and said hi back.

i also said hi to 2 girl joggers, one ignored me and one said hi back. they were cute. I think I am getting better at not caring whether people say hi back. Just do it for the hell of it, is what i have to do.

later at the gym i didnt say Hi to many people, but i did try to keep eye contact with a few of the women. Kept wanting to look away, i will have to get used to staring without looking away. I think i need to smile more, but i feel stupid smiling unless i already have eye contact... yet, they seem to break eye contact before i have a chance to smile.

I saw 2 really pretty girls at the gym. I thought about the 3 second rule but i guess im just not ready. I knew i would crash and burn since i had no idea what to talk about. One girl I didnt even bother saying Hi to. I did try to make eye contact with her but she was not really paying attention.

the second girl i kept making eye contact with, and i think she noticed me but she didnt smile or make any indication that she enjoyed the eye contact. I figured since she is pretty, guys probably always stare at her. So maybe she put me into the "another pervert" class.

Anyway one time i was walking by girl-2 and she looked up at me for a second. I took the chance to nod my head and say "hey" but she totally didnt say anything back, so i just kept walking. If this had happened before, i would have felt stupid. but i am trying to get used to not caring. I think this is very healthy: being confident enough to not care even if people ignore/reject you.

So thats all so far. But one other story:
I did notice that a couple guys came up to the girl and started chatting with her. one even touched her back, a little Kino, so he must have known her (she seemed comfortable around him, but he wasnt BF) Anyway i was just astonished to see them talking and see her laughing, so naturally. I got the urge to sidle up behind them and eavesdrop on their conversation, to learn. But that would have been 100% obvious and weird. That was the main reason i didnt talk to her. i was like, "what can i say? i cant make her laugh, or probably cant even say anyting interesting. that guy obviously is much cooler than me"

 

[Walden]

week2 day4

Bit of a short day's play today bvut a good'un.
I went downtown first to buy a CD and got talking to a cute girl I saw leaving a backpackers hostel.A cold approach no less.

A context-appropriate convo wth a chick at the Subway sandwhich (hot chicks seem to go for great big fcuken sandwhiches go figure?)

Then I went into university and got talking to a way cute chick up there.

Then on my way out I saw a really vute girl sitting on one of the couches in the study centre. Gulped hard and went over and struck up a conversation with her.

This and several well placed Hi's (I'm learning thta you can say it GASP! even when people aren't looking at you and you'll gnerally geta positive resposne) meant my choke ratio was at 4 from 6 (ie I acted on 4 of the 6 chicks that passed my way) which I'm happy with.

I need to work on my convo-from-cold technique tho , they're still pretty short , stilted conversations.
I've found that you can expect if you smile and say hi , people will smile and say hi , and will generally respond to the first inane question you ask ("Are you studying here?"), but after that I think I need to have some genuinely funny icebreaker to get over peoples shyness and put chicks at ease (I'm a great big guy with a military haircut , I scare the **** out of little hippe girls).

More work needed but I'm pretty thrilled.Today I did 3 cold approaches (admittedly 2 of them weren't wildly successful) , which is as many as I've probably done in the past
year. Also when I figured I was drawing a blank here and moved on (politely of course) , I didn't feel all that embarassed about it.

5 to go.

Well pleased.

 

[Paranoid]

weird thing happened yesterday....I was trying out the EC thing and I made good EC with a lot of girls yesterday...and the moment they spotted the EC they smiled and said "Hello"...happened with around 10-12 girls...messed me up a bit..but on the whole I got around 20 Hi's..6 no responses..College life rocks!

 

[Walden]

Week 2 Day 5

Hastily I said I'd do 3 today.

I got into campus and was walking thru the cafe when I saw this quite cute woman sitting by herself at a table (there were other empty tables).I thought I should go start a con with her, but went and made an excuse to myself "naah I gotta go to the bank , I'll do it on the way back..."

But something wouldn't let me weasel out , so I turned around , bought a cup of coffee and went and joined her at the table , apologised for taking up all the space with my big ass accounting textbook (I know , I know) and got the conversation going.It was awesome I was tottally gitting doggy dish eyes all over the place.

As I went up to the table these 2 guys looked over from another table like , thinking"watch this punk get **** down (smirk).

But I didn't try for number close , partly cos I'm a ***** and partly cos it was going so well I wanted it to be anchored as a positive experience making it easier for next time.

I got up to leave and the 2 guys were looking over (having just seen an average-looking guy just cold rollin on a hot chick and do really well) with expressions like "what the F*CK just happened here?". Too cool

And I got 2 others , neither of which were HB's but both convos went well.

2 in 2 days doesn't sound like a big ask any more but I want to try a few more cafe tables , if I can get that to go I'll be sweet.

 

[optic]

Hey Walden, I just wanted to comment on how inspiring this series of posts have been. I think I am definately going to work at the same thing. Thanks for contributing all the time to write these posts, they are refreshing to read as I can relate to exactly what you are saying. Keep it up.

 

[Walden]

Week 2 Day 6

Man am I off my game today.This shoulda been easy after my absolute blinder yesterday but I am choking left and right here.

Just can't get myself to take action today, it's a really debilitating feeling to be paralysed with fear , I should totally be able to do this and yet all day it's been , I check the situation (see an HB see where she is...) and totally b*tch up!

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Went downtown still totally choking.

Finally managed to strike up a conversation with a cute goth chick in Borders books (which admittedly is somewhere on par with shooting fish in a barell).

Good convo, but man I was way nervous tonight.

1 to go.

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On my way home I stopped at the traffic lights and without thinking about it struck up a convo with a cute girl there!

This is awesome!
Week 3 starting tomorrow and I'm (i hafta admit) pretty nervous , but I'm starrting to think week 3 will be where I start to see some real progress.

BTW thanks for the props Optic. As you can tell, this board is really helping with my motivation.

 

[Walden]

Week3 Day1

Wanted to start week 3 early, I'd got my tally and it was slowly turning into week 3 anyway as I was almost exclusively moving in on cute women.

Went to the gym today , (again the fish-in-a-barrel thing).

I stopped by the supermarket before the gym, and was waiting in a queue behind a girl who looked okay. I realised the only reason i wasn't starting a convo was cos I couldn't think of what to say so I just said something about what a long queue this was.
I'm also getting comfortable with the idea that even if a girl wants to meet you, you'll still have to carry the first 30 seconds of conversation. I'm gonna refer to this as the half-minute rule cos I think it's a valuable learning point for me at least.

Went to the gym class, started a convo with one woman there who was doing two classes in a row , simply by saying "good class?".

All thru the class I was totally perving on a HB who probably looks perfectly average in real life but has that girl-next-door-in-lycra effect or maybe it's just me 8) ) anyway she looked hot.
After the class I walked over to where she and her mates were talking (had to stand there like a spare dildo for a halfa minute while she talked to this other chick), I lead with " Hi , I'm Mike , I think my sister introduced us last week..." which was only half true (my sister introduced me to a cute girl who looked a bit like her , last month ). Now she said "No that wasn't me , I haven't been here in weeks" but , and here's the big thing , it wasn't a shootdown, I just said how I wasn't sure and you always feel stink ignoring people you've met before.

Now I like that one. If I can think of something funny to say after "Didn't my sister introduce us three weeks ago?" goes over , it might do as a sorta standby when I'm standing next to a girl in a mortuary or something and there are no environmental cues for something funny to say.

 

[Walden]

week3 Day 2

Gutted.

Went to the supermarket for food this afternnon and totally choked (saw a nice looking woman by the tomatoes and couldn't think of damn thing to say).

Went to the gym tonight (i've been studying for an exam so that's been pretty much the extent of my social errands today).

It was pretty harsh.I got talking to one cute chick , and wanted to roll in on another one I met last week.But my sister's best friend (who I think rates me) showed up and I spent the whole class talking to her which left me not much time to move in on this other chick, and consequently I fumbled the both of them.

Lessons.

One- I shouldn't take this game too seriously . Hence I'm not gonna overanalyse how I went tonight. My aim is to just approach a sh!tload of women and to try to train myself as to what works rather than try to consciously develop a successful "macking checklist" in my head.

Two-Pick one and focus on her.Missing two adds up to getting none.

Three-I should drop my gym bag over by where I want to meet someone , cos that's where you wind up talking between sets.

Four-Never ever ever ever wear your favourite grey T shirt to the gym. It shows the sweat and me , I sweat fcuking buckets!

I can see that I need to develop my game in 2 areas.One I need to just beat the approach phobia out of myself (more to come) , and two I need some way to increase the level of connection I make with women in the course of normal conversation. I hit about 3 minutes and I'm looking to change venues to put a longer convo in context (coffee or something) , and I need to work on ways to improve those odds.

 

[CGE333]

Walden,

I'm in week 3 of the Boot Camp as well. One thing that might help is to think a head of time, i.e. right when you get in the store of something to say that is situational instead of waiting until you see the HB. I've had the same problem of the mind drawing a blank. Another thing is to just for training purposes use the same opener everytime so at least there is no hesitation, even if it is only Hi, my name is ..... and take the convo from there.

 

[Walden]

Week3 Day3

Had my final exam today and wasn't really in the game .

But , between showing up early and dikcing around on campus for an hour or two I started 3 cold convos without even thinking about it!

It seemed really easy , in eah case they were just sitting somewhere , I went up , joined them , said hi and started talking about exams.

Stoked!

 

[Walden]

Week 3 Day 4

Went to town today to try cold DJing around the malls , street market and cafes and sh!t.

An absolute total shocker , I just could not get myself to move.
Again it was a case of being unable to make myself interrupt someone. I mean the best I did was a couple of "Hi's".

Really crap performance today just too scared to move. I'd rather have moved a coupla times and got shot down but didn't even get that far.

 

[Walden]

Week 3 day 5

I'd been trying street DJing yesterday , but never really got into a situation where I was comfortable to act up. Mainly I guess cos i'm not so with the idea of how you'd go about stopping a moving woman. Went out again today, and still couldn't. Dad gum it. But I did manage to get two phone numbers and a date of casual women acquaintances who I happened to bumb into. One girl I was really into when we were roommates took me up to her really cool jazz bar and bought me beer all afternoon!

All in all it was an awesome day , but still not all that productive in the DJing front.

Will need to put some more work in tomorrow , and I'm sure that next breakthrough of being able to (gasp!) talk to strangers in public is just around the corner so long as I keep trying.

 

[SamePendo]

Good going
I personally think there should be a bootcamb board.

Oh, and watch out, notice how youve had less and less action over time.
But overall, its GREAT! And yes, the 30second rule is also very ¨present¨ in the dj stage.

 

[Walden]

Week 3 Day 6

Spent today in a professors office writing a scientific paper with him. Good for my academic career but a shtty way to spend yr day off.

Started one convo with a cute indian grrl who was walking across campus in the same direction as me on the strength of "Hi , how's it going?".

Then kinda mentally crashed in a crisis of confidence this afternoon.
Read Challengeguy's contribution to the Bible the very best of which is;

LIFE IS A DEMOLITION DERBY : YOU JUST GOTTA GRAB YOUR FUKKING BALLS.

Which for some reason put me in mood to get back in the game.

It's like one of my old instructors said , sometimes you're in a good mood sometimes your in a shtty mood , but you need to control your mind not have it control you.

Went out and did another. 2 to go.

 

[Walden]

Week 3 Day 7

Big lesson today.
Ran about an hour's worth of errands today.

In the city I stopped at a bookstore adn started a convo with a girl looking at a stack of discount books , with "Anything here look interesting?"

After that I started a convo with a girl who was standing in the hall looking sad (casual eye contact first) by saying "Hey cheer up , man , you look really depressed" at which she grinned and we joked about her being hanging out for a cup of coffee.

Also I got to talking to another woman who was in the cafe , joking about how dodgy the sushi looked.

A good day and I've finished the weeks tally , which is good cos I go on duty this afternoon and then I go into hospital for the rest of the week.

Lessons from this week.

Firstly and possibly biggest is just to relax. I've been in a very "DJ Karate" frame of mind , ie looking for situations that perfectly suit preprogrammed agressive mode of "say hello"[she'll instinctively say hello back] "Ask a question"[good manners mean she'll respond] and "make a joke" [she'll laugh without even thinking of it]. All of which requires me to work up enough motivation to get over my shyness and say something.

Today I was thinking about my old aikido club and so I came to a different analogy. Better is for me to be relaxed, in a cheerful , "flexible", centred state of mind.When I see a woman , I I get a feeling for her state of mind and say / do / aproach in more relaxed interactive mode. Becuase I'm relaxed (yes I know, 4 times in 3 sentences) I'm less susceptible to nerves and I don't fcuk with my head so much.And I bring a more pleasant "energy" to the whole deal.

Second lesson is that woman don't always scream and run away if you just go up and say something , especially a case in point with the sad looking girl.

This week was hard , and it's taken a lot of work to get through my old AFC conditioning.Partly the need to "motivate" myself through that has seen me get quite uptight about this , which is 100% the wrong way to go.

I'm medically downgraded for the rest of the week , so my plan from here is to take a few days out from training , then do a few days remedial work (back at the Hi's and startig convo's stage) before I start into week 3.

Before I started boot camp I might have seen a woman in a perfect convo starting situation and maybe would have started a convo with her , maybe.

Now I'm at the stage where I'll almost instinctively do that , and I'v even started conversations with women in pretty mediocre situations. This is probably laughable for the senior DJ mentors at the site, but it's progress for me and I know I can make more if I keep at this.
Cheers guys.

 

[isotope]

well my car is in the shop all the week so i dont have much new info. havent been out much to even meet people, except today which i think was a good day.

I still am not quite comfortable going up to random chicks starting a convo, but i do feel more confident in general and i can tell that eventually i will be ok. It's like i have learned to put myself into a new frame of mind. An entirely relaxed, confident mindset where i say to myself, "just talk to people for fun and you have nothing to lose." its a good mindset for life in general.

so i went to several stores today, shopping, etc. I was doing great at keeping eye contact and smiling, saying HI when they seem to be looking back. I think i have the EC, and HI pretty much down.

smiled and said hi to all the friendly looking people in Publix groceries. one time i sat down at the bench to wait for my sister, and i made eye contact with everyone who walked in (lots of people). later made stupid small talk to the cashier (a 6 lookwise).

later in walgreens, i was friendly and smiled to the pretty cashier. I think my smile must have lightened her mood too, because she got friendlier. She even helped me go back in the store to find something i needed. then she made some joke about herself when she rung up the sale wrong. I said, "dont worry i do stupid things like that all the time too." she smiled at that. She had some weird name so i asked her where she was from (the phillipines). I wanted to try to make a little bit more small talk, but there were other customers waiting (damn them) and so i said bye.

But i was happyy because i felt comfortable talking to her. A month ago, i would have simply worn my "ice cold personality" where i just stay inside myself and do my errands with the utmost speed and efficiency. Now i am beginning to see every moment out in the world as an opportunity. a chance to meet people and get better at talking to girls, etc. YOu can make even a boring trip more fun by talking to people around you.

ALso, i am beginning to think like a predator (lol). not really in a bad way, but i go into situations (on the bus, the movies, the store) and i see things differently. i realize it's like I have a new sense. I am constantly looking for pretty girls who look like they might be approachable (not occupied and in a mood to talk). I figure if i keep thinking like this (which i will) it might eventually become unconscious. Everywhere i go in life, I think it's important to spot opportuinties to strike up a conversation or to make a joke.

then there is another little exercise i have been trying. I basically look at any person, and try to think up a quick sentence that i could use to start up a conversation. at first I used this as an excuse not to talk ("darn, i couldnt think of an intro. guess i shouldnt talk or i'll look stupid") But after a while i am getting better at it. And i am making sure to do it QUICK, so that it doesnt violate the three-second-rule. So i look at a girl, take a second to think of an idea, then i can go talk to her. (still havent got good at ACTUALLY approaching, but i want to feel more confident striking up the convo first.)

So for example i just look at her clothes or what she's doing, and think of something to say, some little comment. Or a good one that i thought of recently was to look at her nationality and then ask "are you puerto rican/spanish/italian/whatever?" (assuming she looks like something.) Alot of girls, especially latinas where i live, are proud of their heritage or whatever and you can identify with them that way. ALso if she has a weird name (like the girl i met at walgreens,) you can ask about her background.

anyway so later i was at winn dixie and saw 2 pretty chicks working at the customer service counter. i was with my elderly grandma so i didnt go to strike up a convo, but i was really colse to doing it. i just felt too dorky with my cane-weilding grandma nearby. Also there was a pretty girl doing inventory. I said,"Hi, how you doing" and tried to start a convo. she smiled back but she seemed busy and not in th mood to talk so i just smiled and went about shopping.

 

[Microphone Fiend]

Originally posted by isotope
then there is another little exercise i have been trying. I basically look at any person, and try to think up a quick sentence that i could use to start up a conversation.

St-st-st-stolen!

Wondereing where you were isotope, you hadn't followed up on your previous post. Nice to see your still going strong

 

[Walden]

Dang! That's a great idea Isotope!

 

[Walden]

Remedial Training (Day 1).

This is partly a bump so I don't lose the thread.

Got back from hospital and have four stitches in my face and feel like the f***ing elephant man.

Thi is kinda unfortunate cos I do not want to backslide from the progress I've made over the past few weeks.

My plan therefre is to go and run some errands downtown today , and take any opportunities I get if only to keep my hand in. I figure that looking like a "before" picture might stop me from closing but if I'm doing it right it shouldn't stop me from opening a few times at least.

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Phew , well despite my worries about having a face full of stitches I went to town and spotted a hot chick walking down the street ahead of me , by coincidence I noticed her do the big eye contact looking over the shoulder. I took that as an invitation walked up level with her and said hi , and we talked for a little while.

I'm going to spend this week with the intention of going and starting a conversation with one woman I'm really attracted to every day. I know this was the intention for last week but I feel that I still need more practice in that area.

 

[Oxide]

alright i was in the middle of week 4 2 months ago but slacked off ad stopped. time to fisnish the buisness.


ok , lets go get those rejections.