Visualize yourself with a beautiful woman. Really take in all the sensations, emotions, the sights, the sounds, what would the experience be like. Now, make this picture brighter, more intense, make the emotions stronger, take everything up to 11.

 

Visualizations like the above are the closest inner game concepts get to having a practical application. Visualization, meditation, positive thinking, core confidence; these are all ‘inner-game’ concepts. And they do have value, understanding them helps you to understand yourself and to broaden your conceptual map of yourself and others so that you can develop a paradigm that will allow you to grow as a person and to change not just your behaviors, but your identity.

 

But with the idea of inner game comes a paradox, a war between two different dating advice strategies that needs to be consolidated. Inner game and outer game do not need to be opposing concepts, the idea of learning a routine or a specific strategy to implement doesn’t mean that you can’t also be learning to improve your self-esteem, core confidence, and intent.

 

In fact, outer game leads to inner game, more so than the reverse. The best strategy is to learn and implement outer-game ‘techniques’ so that you can improve your inner game. Outer game provides structure and it provides you with tangible techniques that you can try, and this tangibility is incredibly valuable. Tangible techniques can be practiced in the real world, inner game concepts cannot.

 

As great a concept as freedom from outcome is, to get it, you’re going to need to take intelligent risks and face rejection to become accepting of negative outcomes. Outer game advice gives you a blueprint for what risks to take and how to take them, thus guiding you to take the necessary steps to build your self-esteem.

 

Self-esteem comes from facing rejection and freeing yourself from limiting beliefs, murky inner game concepts related to self-esteem like freedom from outcome are great to understand, but knowing what it means to be free from outcome isn’t going to do anything on its own.

 

You must understand the concept and then take the actions that facilitate change. To become free from outcome you’re going to have to face a lot of rejection, and there’s no way around this. Outer game is based on action, specific steps to take, whatever you’re not doing effectively correlates with a specific outer game concept. For example, if you’re great at approaching but never pull, outer game strategies on pulling can give you the specific guidance you need. Then, once you start practicing those concepts, the inner game concepts like freedom from outcome will be developed naturally because you are pushing outside of your comfort zone and taking risks.

 

Outer game strategies act as crutches that allow you to build experience-based understanding of inner game concepts. They allow you to understand the concepts instead emotionally instead of just knowing them intellectually. It’s one thing to understand the concept of self-acceptance, it’s another to take actions that lead you to actually feel at ease with yourself.

 

Outer game provides you with the step-by-step actions you need to internalize the underlying concept. Teasing for example is a crutch for creating man-to-woman interactions with sexual tension. Once you learn to tease using specific outer game ‘lines’ and you practice teasing, you will internalize the concept and understand it on a deeper level; then you won’t need to use a particular teasing line to create sexual tension because you will understand what it feels like to create tension, you’ll be able to let go of the crutch because you’ve used it to understand that overarching concept.

 

But without that crutch to start, it’s going to be very difficult to learn how to create that tension, understanding the idea of what a man to woman interaction is, is only useful when you have a method to practice making your interactions more man-to-woman.

 

If you boil inner-game down to its core, it’s about self-esteem, feeling good about yourself as a person at all times, including when interacting with women. Self-esteem is built through learning from actions you take, you can’t visualize yourself to self-esteem, you must take risks, face rejections, and then you can let go of your ego and build true self-esteem.

 

Outer-game isn’t the end goal, but it’s the path that leads you to the destination of having strong inner game. Without the path outer game lays out for you, you are flying blind, and you may not get results from the inner game content you’ve been absorbing.

 

Evaluate what your personal weaknesses are, then learn the outer-game techniques that will allow you to improve upon those weaknesses. If your interactions aren’t man-to-woman, learn some statements of intent and practice them. If you’re not closing, learn specific lines to say and actions to take that will allow you to practice closing. If you’re not opening enough, learn some canned lines and strategies (like putting money on the line), so that you can overcome this hurdle.

 

Practice outer-game techniques so you have something tangible and measurable to work with, knowing that you need to show intent is vague, giving yourself a challenge to hold eye contact with girls you interact with until they look away is actionable.

 

Find the outer-game techniques that you can practice that will help you to overcome your current sticking-points, and then your inner game will improve. Visualize girls liking you, or meditate to become more present first, can easily become more procrastination than anything else. Results first, inner-game second.