I've been jotting notes on my early experiences and thought I'd share some of it for both inspiration and feedback. These are mostly not actual infield accounts, just thoughts based on them. Warning: it's long and a bit stream-of-consciousness. This might be valuable to anyone who's still new to seduction and wants to read something written from that perspective.

About me: I'm 27 and recently decided I wanted to try learning seduction formally to see how good I can get. I've had a pretty average track record to this point - some relationships, some ONS. I've always felt like I got lucky that girls are willing to forgive a lot of my romantic ignorance. I'd say I'm a decent talker and that's where most of my success has come from to this point.

I've read both 'Models' and 'How To Chase'. The latter has proven much more useful since it's an order of magnitude more technical. Most of what I write up here will be based on that.

Without further ado, some of my thoughts:

  • Teasing even before you fully get to know a girl does in fact work extremely well. It’s especially fun when a girl starts qualifying herself in response. I called a girl "directionally challenged" (as in cardinal directions; made sense in context) and she launched into a story about how she has in fact been working on it, which was highly amusing.

  • Caveat to teasing: don't keep doing it as often if she's qualifying instead of playing along, and be judicious with it overall. I fell into what I believe is a common trap out the gate by veering too far into asshole territory. So much so that I literally had a good female friend of mine ask me why I'm "being so mean". This happened within 3 days of starting. Just glad I noticed it soon enough to course correct a bit. Push/pull, yin/yang, whatever you want to call it, is the right way to go. Difficult to pull off and I can tell it'll take more time to fully calibrate.

  • Being relaxed and less tense in gait and posture translates into a better composure and makes it easier to adopt a devil-may-care demeanor generally. I've been refining my walk and sitting posture to be far more leisurely. Previously, I would have described my gait as powerful (or at least that was the aim). In reality, it probably seemed overwrought and a bit too attention-seeking. I now notice this a lot on the streets - men with puffed out chests, wide swings to their arms, moving a bit too quickly, and making thin air look viscous. Relatedly, I think some of the advice about walking that's out there is just plain bad. For example, the way Daniel Craig walks in some scenes in the Bond movies is imo too tryhard. What I'm doing now: back straight, shoulders hanging loose, slow stride, and no excessive arm swinging.

  • To reiterate why the above matters: how you sit, stand, and move affects comfort and, by extension, your stress/anxiety levels. The effect is subliminal but it is there, and I think it fits well with the concept of 'state' (as in the relationship between your physical state and your behavior/feelings). Being more leisurely in posture and stride seems to translate into more openness and fewer fucks given. Personally, I'm aiming to go further by picking up meditation and drinking less coffee.

  • Slowing down the conversational pace is acceptable and beneficial. You should also probably leave more pauses in your speech. I like to talk, so this has been a challenge for me, but it's useful because it cuts down on the awkwardness of silence and gives you more time to be witty or insightful or even to evaluate the interaction itself. One question for anyone with experience reading this: do you always have to break eye contact by looking off to the side when you're trying to think? I was trying to figure this out the other day. There are effectively three states you can be in during an interaction - listening, talking, and thinking. I'm finding it easy to hold eye contact during the first two but somewhat awkward to do so on the last and especially (obviously) if neither of us is talking. This is usually only a problem when I'm close to a girl and facing her directly. Any advice on this would be appreciated.

  • Some other tendencies I have to eliminate: leaning my weight on one leg, crossing my legs while standing, fidgeting.

  • Even if you don't feel like opening for some reason, you can still practice. So, you can see girls in any situation and come up with an opener in your head. Taking it one step further, you can actually say the situationally funny/witty thing that you come up with to her. Two recent street examples: I saw a girl (fit body but otherwise unremarkable) walking towards me buried in her phone while her leashed dog ambled along helplessly beside her, so I decided to say "your dog looks kind of bored; you should get him an iPhone too." Obviously this one was more about me amusing myself (it's negative and the response depends on the girl's sense of humor), so I kept walking. Other example: super cute girl standing outside a wine bar as myself and a friend were walking by, and I noticed she did something peculiar: she walked around in a tight circle, appearing kind of confused. As we were walking past her, I called out "if you keep twirling around, a drink will magically appear". She got the joke immediately and giggled so hard I kind of regretted not being able to make something of it. So what's the point here? Three things: 1. practicing makes you better at it and it's easier to practice at larger volume if you never have an excuse for not doing it; basically it helps to force yourself, 2. doing this can put you in the mood if you aren't already since it builds social 'opening' momentum and, 3. if you get a positive reaction it can put you in a really good mood and you might even just continue with the interaction anyway. I'm finding this particularly useful as a way to crack street game, which I assume is the most difficult context for opening anyway.

  • Piggybacking on the above: social momentum is very real. It's important to be in a generally carefree, joking, and talkative spirit and let that carry you throughout the day. Staying in social momentum also makes life more enjoyable. I recommend reading Chase's thoughts on the subject. There's also a guy named Adam Robinson who had some excellent ideas about being social. Part of the transcript of his interview with Tim Ferriss:

"Adam Robinson: And so you asked me what I learned in 2016, and I said I learned three things. I learned the importance of fun, enthusiasm, and delight in everything you do; absolutely everything. And first and foremost, fun, enthusiasm and delight and we’ll come back to that.

The second is connecting with everyone you encounter, on however fleeting a basis. You’ve been with me, and you see I do that.

Tim Ferriss: Yes. Uber drivers, maitre d’s, you name it.

Adam Robinson: Everybody, right; I put that into action. You really connect with the person, in however fleeting that connection is but you make an effort to make a connection. And the third is to lean into each moment and each encounter in everyone you meet, expecting magic or miracles. And those were the three things I learned. The interesting thing about all of them is that none of them have anything to do with me; it’s all about the other person. And when I say fun, delight, and enthusiasm; it’s to create fun, delight, and enthusiasm for the other person."

  • Only open girls you genuinely find attractive in some way. It makes a difference in how you interact and how committed you are to actually trying. It's easier to give up on an interaction if you have the excuse of her not being attractive to you. Manson makes the point well in 'Models'. Related: I've switched to a 0/1 scale and don't intend to go back. I now believe any other scale can't possibly be a genuine gauge of your desire and is therefore dishonest. It's tough to admit, but I only ever used a 10-pt scale out of concern for how other people would rate a girl, which is in reality completely irrelevant to me.

  • Stacking applies to seduction, as it does in other domains. Very simple: the more things you do that operate in a particular direction (in this case, making you more attractive/seductive), the higher your likelihood of success. Especially the passive fundamentals: body (posture, eye contact, walk, mannerisms, teeth, hair, weight, muscle), vocal, social ('law of least effort' in particular), fashion. These are giveaways that involve just you and how much time and energy (and sometimes money) you're willing to put in. The more of these you nail, the easier it is. I was already halfway decent on hair, fashion, and eye contact. I've started also improving on my posture, walk, and vocals. It has definitely made a difference. I've only just started applying the concepts like screening and compliance, so I'm excited to see how much additional improvement that can produce. Stacking works. At a high level, that's kind of the whole point of this. The more subtle point is that if you're out in the field and adding these things, a few at a time, you'll very clearly witness how they improve your attractiveness through the reactions you elicit.

  • It's super important to NEVER be defensive. Ever. About anything. You need to be absolute teflon in the face of any kind of derisive remark made about you, jokingly or otherwise. Of course this happens mostly with friends. I'm a somewhat sensitive person by nature and now I'm working hard to combat that. Ways to respond in these situations: witty retort or self-deprecating humor (as long as it's done without hurting your status, which is its own skill) or just smile and look unfazed.

  • I definitely have some supplicative behavioral tendencies. For me they are: overthanking, using the word "Sorry", and sometimes raising my voice at the end of what should be a command. It's been a challenge but I think it's been very useful to consciously catch myself and call it out in my head. Doing this actively has helped to slowly deprogram said tendencies.

  • It can be powerful to do what I'm going to call 'open and hang'. Example: I was across from a girl in a waiting room who was reading a magazine. I looked over at her, smiled, and commented "you seem really engrossed in that magazine; it's impressive." Simple. She replied, and then I actually decided to pause briefly to not seem too eager. Within a few seconds, she continued on with another thought. Now that I'm paying attention to it, I recognized how this slightly flipped the investment balance in my favor. It also helped me realize that it's theoretically possible to get a girl chasing you almost immediately after the open, if you have enough passive value. And having enough passive value as a man is a lot easier than you'd think, because the vast majority of guys are not trying. When you have enough passive value, many girls are in fact just waiting and hoping for you to open simply because that's the accepted social etiquette.

  • You should move towards being at least mildly flirtatious with every female you come across, regardless of looks, age, etc. Mildly meaning at least make small talk, be witty, maybe tease, smile, plus all the passive fundamentals. I have not had a really bad experience since switching to this mindset. Some women will be uncomfortable but they are a small minority, and I realized very quickly that it's something you have to accept and be unapologetic about because the alternative is defaulting to meekness. Related to social momentum.

  • You can't improve without being honest with yourself. Hopefully this is clear from a lot of what I called out about myself above. There's a good chance that you know some of the things that are making you unattractive, that people around you may have commented on, or that you may find out in the course of your journey to improve. Whatever form that input takes, listen to it and then resolve yourself to act on it. You won't get anywhere if you run away from the truth.

  • I've discovered that transformation in seduction can happen really fast. I'm sure a lot of people have noticed this.

  • You're going to lose hard in some interactions. You'll say something plain stupid, misjudge a girl and overreach, etc. This is natural and another price of playing the game. I'm getting better at recovering the interaction when this happens but, in the absolute worst case when a girl simply walks away, you have to forgive yourself and keep trucking. Manson in 'Models' thinks of this simply as polarization - as in, if you're not being polarizing and getting rejected at least some of the time, you're going to lose out in the long run. I wouldn't use this as an excuse to write off interactions but it helps to remember it in the process of bouncing back from a bad one.

  • A lot of this stuff is fake it til you make it. This is related to my biggest gripe with 'Models'. Manson argues that using certain intentional tactics is narcissistic behavior. According to him, you should just be vulnerable and non-needy. Now I get that he was referring to seedier shit like negging but I think it's easy to read 'Models' and come away believing that you should never be acting. I find myself in disagreement with this. Making adjustments to your behavior often necessarily starts off as an act until it becomes ingrained in your personality. Additionally, I think much of what is attractive behavior, such as screening and getting compliance, is subtle and non-obvious to many men (certainly to me). You could spend years trying to be natural and never figure out what the community has realized and codified, and consequently will get subpar results. You improve your odds with every attractive quality you adopt and many such qualities can only be incorporated at all by acting, until they become second-nature.

That's it for now. If this gets a good response, I'll be sure to check in again in a few months with more notes. I'm certainly open to any feedback on the above. Cheers.