There seems to be a fair amount of debate between the best approach to pickup. Basically it boils down to two schools of thought. The first (and most popular on Seddit) being pick up is all about self improvement. When you present the best version of yourself, you will increase your success with women. The other one boils down to the strategies and methods you use to pick up women. That calculated approaches, openers, routines, and kino-escalation are the key. My opinion is that it is the combination these two schools of thought that create the most successful PUA’s. It is the integration of both self-improvement and the understanding and utilization of social dynamics that will make you successful.

Now this may seem obvious to a lot of you, but hopefully this will lead to some break-throughs for guys who have thought to themselves either “I have worked out, learned hobbies, meditated…. Everything that you guys suggest, but it has not helped me pick up girls.” or “I’ve tried direct openers, indirect openers, jealous girlfriend openers, the Cube, kino escalation ladder… every technique, but girls don’t seem to be responding.” So let’s break down the two components…

Self Improvement/ Personal Development

The underlying message of this school of pick up is that increasing your confidence will escalate your game. Recommendations for this is working out, perfecting your style, and paying attention to grooming. In addition, they preach exploring and focusing on your hobbies, pursuit of knowledge, development of your talents, and meditation. All of these are fantastic tips, but they won’t directly get you women. You can be a physically fit, stylish man with lots of hobbies, but still not be successful with women. What I’m getting at is that these recommendations are a vehicle to making you better at picking up women, through your increased confidence. Focusing on these aspects of your life will have two effects. 1) By focusing on other pursuits, you will become less needy, clingy, and codependent with women (pussy-on-the-pedestalitis). 2) It will help your game by giving you value. You will give value by having something valuable to talk about, whether it’s your hobbies, travel, books you’ve read, better storytelling, etc.

Understanding and Utilizing Social Dynamics

This is all fantastic, but we have only got our foot in the door. What happens next in the seduction can make or break your success. There are certain aspects of human behavior that must be understood to be successful in pick up. The major keys to this school of thought is understanding the impact of what and how you say something and the body language associated with it. Deeper knowledge is needed on how your body language, posture, gestures, touch, smile, and eyes portray your intent and how to use these things to your advantage. Also it teaches you to read and understand someone else’s cues such as voice tonality, body language, facial expressions; what they mean and how your should or shouldn’t react to them.

More importantly, it is the utilization of this knowledge that creates success. This is the part of seduction that is seen as manipulative or exploitive, but in fact it is not. It is simply the understanding and utilization of social aspects that are inherent to all of us. Further things to research are how your touch affects others mentally and physically. What exactly is push/pull and the advantages of building and breaking rapport and its effects on increasing attraction and why. Why comfort is so important and the beginning of an interaction and why physical escalation is so important later on (by the way, the two best resources for this in my opinion are Vin DiCarlo’s escalation ladder and The Mystery Method if you ignore the routines and focus on the stages).

To summarize:

Confidence without social dynamics = good opening/ no close (friendzone)

Social dynamics without confidence = incongruence/ creepy/ robotic/ obvious PUA attempts

Confidence AND social dynamics = baby, you got a stew goin’

When you synergize these two schools of thought, i.e. better story telling (as a result of your confident, vibrant personal development) augmented by your understanding of verbal pacing, tonality, posture, gestures, etc. and how it affects the person you are telling it to, you are now using a powerful one-two punch approach that will send you to the next level.