When I turned the last page, my reality had been shattered. Everything I thought I knew about women and sex had been thoroughly disproven by this revolutionary book.

 

My mind was racing with possibilities. I spent the next year of my life researching “game”. I read articles, watched Youtube videos, and even bought expensive products. I had come across a goldmine of knowledge, and by using it, I would be able to attract women like I never thought possible.

 

Of course, in that year of research I didn’t approach a single girl. I was still learning, I needed to have a sound intellectual understanding of seduction before I actually practiced it: or so I thought.

 

I had fallen for a common trap. I read The Game, and I was inspired to change my life . . . but I was terrified of the idea of cold approaching women. So, I spent a year mentally masturbating by consuming an endless sea of content.

 

I spent an entire year stuck in the first of the five stages of learning game. If I had known what I was doing is a common mistake that can only lead to frustration, I would have sucked it up and started to meet women in real life much earlier. I would have taken an entire year off my learning curve for game.

 

The purpose of this series is to help you avoid making the costliest mistakes I’ve made. In it, I’m providing you with a framework – the five stages – so you can understand where you are in your journey, what roadblocks you’re most likely to face, and how you can overcome those obstacles.

 

I’ve broken down learning game into five major stages. Identify which of the five stages you are currently in and use the information in this article to “level up” and drastically improve your dating life.

 

Stage 1: The Over-analyzer

 

“A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.” – Baron de Montesquieu

 

Knowledge is power . . . right? The over-analyzer has an overwhelming desire to understand the ins and outs of game: what to say to a girl, how to know if a girl is interested, etc. He thinks of attracting women as a Rubik’s Cube to be solved using algorithmic, logical thinking.

 

The over analyzer learns about how to attract women, but he spends little time interacting with them in the real world. He thinks that if he were to approach a woman or ask his crush on a date, it would most likely lead to humiliating rejection.

 

In a sense, he’s right. It’s true that if he were to approach a woman it would most likely lead to an awkward rejection. But he’s wrong in thinking that if he learns game online he can avoid awkward rejection and skip right to the good stuff.

 

At least 50% of the seduction community is perpetually stuck in the Over-analyzer stage. It’s not because these men are weak, it’s because they are too smart for their own good.

 

The over-analyzer thinks consuming online content is a shortcut to success. He replaces learning through approaching women and dealing with countless rejections with learning through osmosis by watching videos and buying products like RSD Max’s Becoming the Natural.

 

On the surface, this is a brilliant strategy. But it’s based on the fallacy that intellectual understanding is strongly correlated with practical understanding.

 

Truthfully, intellectual understanding and practical understanding are two completely different animals, having one mastered has almost nothing to do with mastering the other.

 

In fact, if you spent 100 hours learning game online, but didn’t approach any women, your game not only wouldn’t improve, but it would get worse.

 

If you were to try approaching a woman after all that learning, you would experience information overload. You would have so much to think about that you’d spend your entire interactions with women in your head – you’d be unable to connect with them.

 

Content only has two important uses:

-To orient your mindset towards action-taking -To help you take the best lessons from your in-field experience.

The purpose of this article is the first, it’s designed to dissolve excuses and make it clear that action-taking is the only real option.

 

The purpose of articles like, “How to arouse a girl,” (https://redpilltheory.com/2018/02/27/arouse-girl-youre-even-bedroom/) are to help you overcome sticking points. If your sticking point is approach anxiety, there’s an article for that, if your sticking point is creating attraction, there’s an article for that, etc.

 

But those articles are only helpful if you’re going out, meeting women, and finding out what your weaknesses are. Then, you can use that content to help you overcome those weak points in your game.

 

But if you read an article or watch a video that explains how to reach the sexual hook point, but you haven’t met a new woman in the last month, you’re doing it wrong.

 

Now, you might be thinking, “That’s true for a lot of people, but I have a genuine reason not to take action (I need to focus on college/ I live in a small town of only 100,000/I’m overweight and need to lose the extra pounds first, etc. etc.)

 

There are no exceptions, as soon as you tell yourself that in your situation, you don’t need to take action – you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

 

How to Get Out of the Over-Analyzer Phase

 

“Life beings at the end of your comfort-zone” – Neale Donald Walsch

 

We over-analyze because we want a better dating life, but we don’t want to experience the negative emotions that come with approaching women.

 

Getting out of the over-analyzer phase starts with accepting that there is no way to succeed with women without experiencing negative emotions.

 

No product, no video, no piece of content will be able to help you get the results you want without going through emotional turmoil, period.

 

In fact, trying to avoid negative emotions is the root of the problem. The human brain is designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Because of that, we constantly search for ways to avoid pain.

 

This is why the most effective marketing campaigns are based on making something seem easy, advertisements that promise you can:

-Get abs in just 7 minutes a day

-Make 6 figures in less than 6 months with no risk

-Get a perfect ten girlfriend tonight (without risking rejection)

 

Advertisements like the above are so common because they prey on the human brain’s desire to avoid pain.

 

How do you outsmart this universal human bias for pain-avoidance?

 

Ironically, the solution rests in intellectual understanding.

 

Once you know that the promise of six-minute abs is nothing but a marketing ploy, you won’t be fooled by it.

 

Similarly, once you understand that you can’t get good with girls simply by consuming content, you won’t fall into the over-analyzer trap.

 

As soon as you truly accept that you can only get better with women by putting yourself out there and experiencing rejection, you’ll stop procrastinating and start taking action.

 

Once you’ve accepted the fact that facing rejection is the only way to get success, the next step is to create a plan of action.

 

Most over-analyzers have a lot of approach anxiety (I certainly did), the first step is to start going out regularly. For this to work, you need to make it a habit.

 

Decide how many times a week you think you need to go out to meet women. For me, it’s 3 times a week. That’s enough to make progress but it’s not so much that I’ll burn out.

 

Make sure to keep track of your progress. I keep track of my goal to go out 3 times a week using Google calendar. You can also do this with an app or even a simple word document (the advantage to an app is that it can give you notification reminders).

 

Based on the results you’re getting, you may increase or decrease your weekly goal, but it’s extremely valuable to set a baseline for how often you want to go out.

 

If you don’t have a goal, it’s much easier to rationalize and procrastinate. I.E. “I’ll go out next week,” or “I’m not feeling today.”

 

Try this right now. Either:

– Go to Google calendar and set up a goal to go out x times per week.

– Use Microsoft Word to create a journal to keep track of your goal (set it up however works best for you)

-Download a goal tracking app and set up a repeating notification on it. Here’s a couple apps that can do this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rstudioz.habits

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uhabits

(there are similar apps on iOS)

 

Setting a goal like this makes your commitment real. It’s no longer something you’re thinking about doing, it’s something you’ve decided to do. This gives you a lot more leverage to take action.

 

Once you’ve made a habit going out using this system, you can add on to it. For example, you can make a goal to ask a girl for her number every time you go out.

 

But take it one step at a time. If you don’t regularly approach women, setting a goal to go out is already a big step. Discipline is the key to make a real change here.

 

You may not even approach a woman the first time you go out. That’s okay, if you’ve spent your whole life without approaching a girl, it may take some time to overcome your initial approach anxiety. Just keep going out and eventually your frustration with the fact that you haven’t approached will make you tell yourself, “Fuck it,” and you’ll overcome the anxiety.

 

This might happen on the first day, it might take 3 weeks, it’s different for everyone. Don’t give up just because the first time you go out you get a lot of anxiety or don’t make much progress. Trust that if you keep putting yourself out there, you’ll start taking action and making a change.

 

Do this, and you will get out of the first of the five stages of game. The next stage, “The awkward newb” is both a lot of fun and extremely frustrating. We’ll dive into what the second stage is, and how to get out of it, in the next article.