(If you already read part 1, you can skip the intro.)

Stephen Coveyâs book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is widely considered the greatest self-improvement work of all time, and for good reason.

Coveyâs book stands out because it doesnât teach tactics like, âSmile more,â and, âListen well,â instead, the seven habits are about the underlying principles of success. If you understand -and live by- these principles, success will naturally follow.

While reading Coveyâs book, I noticed the principles apply just as much to game as they do anything else. So, I took the liberty of transcribing the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People into the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Players.

In this article youâre going to learn the underlying principles for success with women: whether youâre looking for a girlfriend or a string of one-night stands, if you live by these 7 habits, your success is all but guaranteed.

3. Put first things first.

 

To put first things first means to prioritize effectively. The importance of this habit canât be overemphasized.
In fact, I failed so impressively at implementing this habit that I’m a great example of why this principle is so important.

I read the book, The Game, ten years ago when I was just sixteen. I thought the book was fascinating, and I started practicing the techniques I learned in the book on my classmates.

I started âneggingâ my friends, I made a point to âdemonstrate higher valueâ with made up stories, and I made a point to act cocky and aloof. Guess what? It didnât work. My new persona just came off as standoffish and try-hard, I didnât attract women, I alienated them.

I thought the most important thing The Game had to teach me was that I could use specific techniques to attract women. I was missing the point entirely. What The Game can teach us is that we can treat dating like a skill, and we can improve improve that skill through approaching women, facing rejection, and learning from our experiences.

I didnât put the first things first. If I wanted to learn game, I should have focused on taking social risks, not on trying to create a false persona. The truth was that I was afraid to approach a girl or to ask someone on a date, so instead, I focused on something that was easier- Mystery Method style pickup techniques.

The PUA community as a whole has a problem with putting first things first. Most comments on the forums, the Facebook groups, and the Subreddits are clearly made by guys who donât approach women (at least not regularly).

Most guys Iâve met who are involved in the community spend a lot of time consuming content, and very little time meeting women in the real world.

Content can be useful, sure, but itâs a complement to going out and practicing the skill-set. This is similar to the relationship between exercise and supplementation: if you arenât exercising, those expensive workout supplements arenât going to accomplish anything, itâs just mental masturbation at that point.

The same goes for pickup, thereâs a lot of great content out there, but itâs worthless unless youâre taking more action than you are spending time consuming that content.

The most common excuse guys make for not approaching women is that itâs not a high enough priority(1).

This often takes the shape of an either/or fallacy:

I want to do game, but Iâm focused on school.
I want to do game, but I need to get my business running first.
I want to do game, but not until I reach X% body-fat.

The notion that we canât do game because itâs not a high enough priority could be legitimate. But Iâm confident that in many cases, itâs nothing more than a rationalization.

For example, when I learned about game, I told myself that I needed to learn more material before I did any approaches. In my mind, I wasnât ready, I was too awkward, it was only once I learned enough lines and techniques that I could start approaching women with a solid foundation.

That was complete bullshit, I was lying to myself because I was afraid to approach women. It was so much easier to tell myself that I couldnât approach yet than it was too actually risk rejection.

For a lot of guys, their excuses for putting off approaching women are similar. They seem to make logical sense, but theyâre really nothing more than an emotion-based excuse.

Letâs be real, game can be hard, and the fear of rejection is something most of us share. We donât want to get rejected, and itâs so easy to come up with an excuse to avoid that rejection.

Maybe if youâre Gary Vaynerchuck, then you legitimately donât have time to go out and meet women because youâre too busy. But in 99% of cases, you do have 30 minutes a day you could dedicate to this, you would just have to give up some Netflix/Facebook/Reddit.

Most guys donât put first things first when it comes to dating, because the first thing in question is something weâre afraid of.

This is why we convince ourselves that weâre âjust going to focus on social circle gameâ or âstop doing game for a while because I have too much on my plateâ- itâs not because game really isnât a priority, itâs because itâs hard.

If you doubt that the best way to improve your dating life is through cold approach, thatâs fine. Come up with another solution, but make sure itâs a real solution based on getting results, not an excuse to procrastinate.

 

4. Think Win/Win

For a lot of guys, dating is a competition. In this mindset, sex is something to be âtakenâ from a girl. Men who think this way focus on what they want to the exclusion of whatâs good for the women they interact with.

This way of thinking is fundamentally flawed because one of the most useful skills one can develop for dating success is emotional intelligence: the ability to understand and respond to othersâ feelings.

When guys who see dating as a competition get rejected, they get hurt and blame the girl for being a bitch.

When guys who see dating as win/win get rejected, they think about what they could have done differently:

-Why did she feel that way?

-What was it I said or did that she didnât like?

When you focus on what a woman is feeling, you can change the dynamic of an interaction for the better. If she isnât responding to your humor, you can tone it down a notch. If she seems bored, you can make a point to change the topic to something sheâll be more interested in.

Thinking win/win is about focusing on what you can offer the person youâre interacting with. Few guys get this, they think that catering to a girlâs feelings is ânot having a strong frameâ.

They donât understand that the best way to get what you want is to offer value, first. In psychology, this is called the principle of reciprocation, when people make us feel good, we feel obliged to return the favor.

When it comes to making girls (or anyone) like you, understanding the mindset of win/win is necessary.

Game at the most advanced level is learning what a particular girlâs wants and needs are in life, and then becoming a source of fulfillment of those wants and needs.

For example, if a girl is physically beautiful, and constantly gets told that, she doesnât need or want more flattery about her looks, and complementing her on her appearance isnât offering her much value.

However, if you have a conversation with her and make her feel that her mind is more fascinating than her physical appearance, then you are offering a lot of value(2), and this will make her more attracted to you.

In game, change your focus from what you can get from a girl, to how you can make her day better. Once you make her day better, then she will be much more likely to give you what it is that you want.

You already know what a win for you is in an interaction with a woman youâre attracted to (sex, at least for most guys), your job is to find out what win you can give her, and, ultimately, how you can make sex with you a win for her, too.

 

Footnotes:

1. (BTW, if you spend a couple hours a week consuming pickup content, but donât actually go out, then this excuse is complete bullshit, going out should be a higher priority than consuming content.)

2. This is because she probably isn’t made to feel that she’s intellectually interesting all that often, everyone is too focused on her looks.