Lifestyle: You’re only as attractive as your lifestyle

This is part II of my audaciously titled series: “Seven Immutable Laws of Pick Up.”

I. The Law of Rejection: He Who Gets Rejected Gets Laid
II. The Law of Lifestyle: You’re Only As Attractive As Your Lifestyle
III. The Law of Aggression: Push Every Interaction to the Limits
IV. The Law of Sub-Communication: It’s Not What You Say But WHY You Say It
V. The Law of Connection: You Can Only Share What You Know
VI. The Law of Relationships: Setting and Managing Expectations
VII. The Law of Inertia: Every Habit Requires Repetition

People oft talk about lifestyle in the community, but I feel like it really turns into an extended diatribe of, “be cool; girls like guys who are cool.” Usually, “be cool” is equated to learning to salsa, going to the gym or painting a self-portrait with watercolors.

Today, I’m going to try to think of lifestyle in a different way. To me, lifestyle is the elusive bridge between inner game and outer game.

Recently, I’ve been thinking of everything in terms of value. Inner game involves cultivating value within ourselves — valuing ourselves, really — and outer game is demonstrating and sharing that value with whatever hot chica we’re talking to. Your lifestyle has a symbiotic relationship with your inner game in that, the more confidence, self-esteem and positivity you have, the greater your lifestyle will flourish and vice-versa. For instance, the stronger your inner game, the more likely you’ll be to get off your ass and go to the gym, learn a new language, take a risk and travel to Japan, start drawing again.

How so?

One major theme of my recent seminars has been to talk about how all anxieties and limiting beliefs are just ways in which our ego holds us back from trying new things. Our ego holds us back — keeps us in our comfort zone — because to our ego, trying something new and outlandish is “risky” to our social acceptance.

The root of this behavior lies in the concern over “social acceptance” or receiving validation from those outside of ourselves. Just as in my post on rejection we have to learn to accept failure and in this case, ostracisization for doing things differently, doing things in a new way, doing things that many people won’t understand or accept.

What I get from a lot of guys is, “But I don’t know what I want to do,” or “I don’t know what I’m passionate about.” Do this. Grab a blank sheet of paper and set aside twenty minutes with no distractions. Start a timer and begin a list – a list of things you want to do before you die. Your goal is to write down 100 items. It’s not as easy as it sounds!

Afterwards, take a look at your list. See what sticks out to you. At least a couple of the items should elicit an emotional response in you. You should see patterns and themes – did a lot of items involve travel? Family? Athletic goals? Intellectual pursuits? (Credit: Mr. Awesome for this exercise.)

Contemplate your list and try to narrow these themes down to a few activities that can be realistically done NOW! Do it. Write down five things you can do NOW that starts you on the path towards the lifestyle you desire. And then what? Go DO those five things today.

This exercise is two-pronged: it pushes you down the road of doing things in your life that YOU desire and simultaneously absolves you of any social pressure that may be holding you back from your dreams. If you have things written down that you said to yourself, “Oh, I’ll never have time to do that,” or “people would think I’m crazy.” GOOD! Do it anyway!

Lifestyle is the foundation for your outer game as well. Everything that you say or do with a girl, will be tested against your lifestyle for congruence. Gurus always talk about how you need to be congruent or else the girl will think you’re a fake or a fraud, well what they’re talking about is that your words have to line up with your lifetime of actions.

For instance, a guy in suspenders who talks about his stripper ex-girlfriend is going to get weird looks. A guy in an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt who talks about the last time he painted a landscape is going to get weird looks. A guy who talks about driving a Ferrari in Europe yet lives in his mom’s basement is going to get — OK, you get my point.

Your real life should be the foundation of all of your attraction and comfort material. Using anything else will come across as incongruent. That’s why I see your lifestyle as the ceiling of the amount of attraction you can build. No matter how tight your outer game is, if you live with your mom, play World of Warcraft all day and are overweight in a stained T-shirt, you will build NO attraction.

But if you’re successful, dressed well, confident, well-traveled, genuinely happy, in good shape, and have cool hobbies, your ceiling for attraction is EXTREMELY high.

You’re only as attractive as your lifestyle. Relinquish social expectations. Live the life you want to lead — no one else is going to.