Some ideas on keeping a healthy perspective about game itself:

  • Keep it simple. What is game? Women have certain attraction buttons. Push them in the right way, and she'll let you escalate. Keep going, and you eventually have sex and/or end up in a certain type of relationship--depending on your goal. That's it. There's obviously a ton of ways to push buttons and there's different social situations you need to learn to deal with, but the core of game is simple: create attraction. Sometimes, I find myself getting inside of my own head--should I be direct, indirect, etc.--and forget that everything is just about one thing: creating attraction. Don't lose sight of this simple idea both when you study game and when you're infield.
  • Love your game. Think of your game like a video game, where you level up, become advanced, and attack new challenges. Everybody's got a different situation, so your specific "game" is differently configured than everyone else's "game". The level of challenge with respect to opening, hooking, closing, etc. is different for each guy at each step of his journey. Embrace your "game" as it is and enjoy engaging your particular set of challenges. You can't play the game for very long if you don't enjoy your particular game. Learn to love your particular game.
  • Game is complex, but not out of reach. No one is all-encompassingly great at the game. Even master PUAs suck shit at times. Game covers a very complex area of human communication; we're talking about how women evaluate your evolutionary fitness here; these evaluation processes evolved over millions of years, so not everything can be "gamed" easily. Some "strengths" take decades to really develop. But you already have certain strengths from your unique life. In fact, you might even be better at some aspects of game than dating coaches or master PUAs.
  • Game is a specific skillset that is fairly independent of other areas of your life. You don't absolutely need to be goodlooking, have a job, have a nice apartment, be a certain race, have a certain personality, have cool hobbies, have a certain intelligence, or have friends to be attractive to the type of women you're into--those things can certainly help you build attraction, but they are not part of game. If you have "game", you can be, look, and act like a homeless guy, and still get extremely hot girls who are rich, beautiful, smart, and nice (I've seen this happen on a documentary about PUAs and from observing real people). To become better, all you really need is the ability to find a girl and interact with her, and make improvements in the way you interact. Don't ever say: "I don't get laid because I don't have a nice car." No, you don't get laid because you suck at getting laid. A homeless man can get an HB10, and it's happened many times. So, no more excuses.
  • Don't attach your ego to your game. Don't attach your sense of self-worth to what happens when you go out. If you come off creepy, observe it as merely data in an experiment, don't become anxious because of it. This is important in not having failures discourage you from taking bold risks in your attempts to improve. It's OK to suck at game. Creepy is girls' word for "unattractive", i.e., "you appear to suck at game". Now you understand where the word "creep" comes from in the first place, so that should liberate you. Practice reduces "unattractiveness" in the long run, at the risk of coming off "unattractive" in the short run. Forgive yourself for "sucking" in the short run. Take risks.
  • Practice. Strengthen your weaknesses. That's all you need. That's how naturals got good too. Naturals practiced inadvertently. You're practicing deliberately. You need 10,000 hours of "targeted" practice to become exceptionally good at anything. Naturals already put in their time. How many hours have you been putting in? If I told you after 10K hours, you will be guaranteed to be really good at game, wouldn't your motivation go up? And wouldn't you also focus more on spending time infield instead of on forums or reading books? Moreover, it has to be "targeted" practice, so not only do you have to be approaching, you have to approach with a certain focus on a certain weakness. Your intuitions about game concepts (DHV, DLV, negs) can only be developed infield; you won't truly know what those concepts really mean until you've experienced them yourself. It's like riding a bike; no one can fully describe the experiences to you in words.
  • Practice needs to be sustained. You lose your momentum rapidly if you don't go out. Even not going out for a week hurts your game. It's just like working out; you lose muscle mass if you stop. Because of its transient nature, if you're young and going out a lot, you might want to consider how much you care about game versus your career.
  • Don't let game fuck with your head. A lot of people talk about the side-benefits of game of how it changes their personal philosophy and how they live their lives in general. I agree that improving game spills over into becoming a leader in general, amongst other things, but I also say, "be careful about that". "Abundance mentality" is a good example. You want an abundance mentality in the field ("I'm awesome, I'm having fun, I give value, I don't give a fuck"), but off the field, you want a scarcity mentality ("What mistakes did I make? How can I improve myself? I need to push myself harder in X, Y, Z directions. I do give a fuck about my job. I need to make money."). Don't extrapolate too much from "game principles" into "life principles". There are plenty of PUAs who drop out of school, lose their jobs, or even lose their existing relationships. Do not assume that the mentality you adopt in the club should be the same mentality you have in other places. Product marketing (sarging) and product development (reflection, discussion, field reports) are two very different tasks with different underlying philosophies. Game is not the self-help end-all be-all. If you want to get good at business, for example, the philosophy of game will help you less than the philosophy of business. So, yes, continue to "give a fuck" in your personal life.
  • Don't take game too seriously. Don't neglect other areas of your life to pursue game. Game is just game. In the grand scheme of things, sex is just one small part of life, and it shouldn't dominate your entire life. But game can get addictive, like World of Warcraft, so you might need some self-control to not let it consume you. Remember, game is not without cost: game eats up a lot of time, and the return on time invested isn't necessarily worth it for everybody. Ironically, by working on game in moderation, you probably work on it for longer and don't burn out, and end up going further with it.