I thought I'd share this little story with you guys as it really hit home hard for me.

I was out last night with a group of friends and I was the designated driver, so I had the opportunity to observe the ongoings of the night with reasonable clarity and take away what lessons I could.

After entering the club and having a few drinks we started to get into the music and made our way onto the dance floor. We started dancing and lifting each others states, enjoying the music and generally having a good time when I noticed two middle aged women that stuck out like sore thumbs in the club on the dance platform in front of us. At the risk of sounding shallow, they were not attractive in the slightest. The first woman had a short, auburn hair style and looked like she had endured several life times of drug and alcohol abuse, and the second was a tall blonde with a terribly mis-shaped body and the face of a particularly unfortunate meth junkie.

So we continued to dance and have a good time when suddenly the blonde pulls one of my buddies up onto the platform and starts dancing with him. I assume at first that he is being a good sport by going along with this - he is laughing and having a good time with it. After about 20 seconds she goes straight in for the kiss, he dodges it, much to my relief, and continues dancing and grinding up against her and I continue under the assumption that he is simply entertaining her.

Two and a half hours later, after witnessing the two of them making out constantly and having dry sex on the dance floor, I came to the realisation that he wasn't just playing around.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking at this stage - "You're just jealous, stop putting down your buddies achievements". I can assure you, however, that this is not what this post is about. In fact, I felt happy for him at this stage - he was getting in there and having a good time and enjoying himself.

Beer goggles aside, he was hooking up with a girl he was attracted to and had moved forward that night.

But what really struck me, was a conversation I had with him after we had left the club and were grabbing some burgers to stave off the 4am hunger pains.

As we were waiting for our burgers to be made he said to me - "That was awesome, it's not often that a girl hits on me like that - it's been a very long time. She was hot, I wonder what was wrong with her?".

Here I was, standing in front of this dude that I would gladly rate as more attractive than myself and the only way he could justify a pretty average girl hooking up with him was that if something was wrong with her. I shook my head and thought "Damn, you poor guy".

At that point it just hit me, and I had what alcoholics refer to as 'a moment of clarity' - it simply doesn't matter how attractive you are if you don't believe in yourself. If you don't even value yourself enough to the point that you believe that you deserve the attraction of beautiful women - then it doesn't matter how good you look. If you can't get there mentally, if you don't KNOW that you are the fucken shit and that you're dick has been dipped in pure gold, then you'll be stuck with 40 year old meth heads and wondering what you did right to get them to be attracted to you.

I think it was Willy Wonka that said "Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. "

Well in that case "Pickup, my dear friends, is 93% self belief, 6% knowledge, 4% masturbation, and 2% looks."

Believe in yourself guys, because if you don't, no one else will.

Edit; made some changes to come across as less of a prick. Seems like the mirror has been turned back on me by a lot of sedditors regarding my attitudes - I'm re-reading the post and learning what I can from it