From Models:

"Developing an attractive lifestyle is a long-term process. It requires a consistent and penetrating look at your actions, your habits and what you've chosen to do with most of your time.

Your job, your hobbies, your friends, your interests, are these things mostly a result of what was told to you or pushed on you, or are they things that you consciously evaluated and chose based on how enriching and passionate they made you feel?

These are important questions. No one can live your life but you. And as long as you sleep-walk through life not ever questioning or evaluating the lifestyle you've built for yourself, the same behavioural patterns are likely to creep up over and over again.

Guys often don't totally believe me, but poor lifestyle choices afflict all of your interactions and communication when it comes to women. Poor lifestyle choices reflect a lack of investment in yourself, which in turn causes you to be less confident around others for validation.

I first noticed this when I worked with guys who still lived at home with their parents. It was bizarre, these guys said all the right things, approached whenever they wanted to, could even flirt well most of the time.

Yet they got absolutely no results. Women never responded warmly to them, and they never seemed quite as motivated or as confident.

There's a certain baseline level of independence and self-sufficiency that your lifestyle must give you for you to be able to move forward. If you're constantly stressed by work, upset by your friends, and in poor health, then no amount of work on your anxieties and communication is going to help much. You're effectively putting a ceiling on your development and your potential with women. The other parts of this book will not be much use to you. You can try, but I can tell you, you probably won't see much change in your results.

Get your life taken care of. Get healthy. Find a happy group of friends. Find a few hobbies that you love. Develop opinions. Start caring about what you spend your time doing. This increases your self-investment and will make you more confident around others. This in turn will give you the courage to take the correct action and the wherewithal to communicate effectively. This is honest living. And once you're living a life true to yourself, your values and your ideals, then it's time to take action."

After this Manson starts the chapter on taking action to approach girls. The priority is to work on your lifestyle, job, hobbies, friends and interests. Then you get better results approaching girls. I feel this is the key a lot of guys who struggle with girls and just do approaching ignore, and is why they struggle.

Some of you reading this know this. But for those who don't, I hope this excerpt was helpful.