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1 year after AA review (Part 1/2): Changes in skills, attitudes, learnings

Your friend’s advice reminds me of Day 5 when Chris said to take a break after the first set. I’ve never taken breaks aside from driving to and from venues. I definitely feel like an actor on a lot of these drills. It’s not such a bad thing, it’s a version of fake it til you make it IMO.

I might do the break/switch soon considering the very high rep counts of upcoming drills.

I was hoping the AA program would have some magical side effects like extroversion other than just easily hitting on a lot of girls (which is reward enough in itself). Of course Chris never explicitly says that. Only way to see for sure is to beat the program and wait and see.
 
Read through your log, man you're a legend! How the fuck did you do day 21 and 30 on a sitting crowd? Like you literally went from table to table with sitting girls and squeezed?
I was skipping those days and was thinking of doing it when its normal.
Keep pushing it, you will for sure make it :)
 
Yeah its rough in bars where people have to be seated. Approaching can be a pain. Glad to see there's a bar where people can walk around freely. That really helps things a lot. You look to be doing great so far, I think the group drills in month 3 are a lot of fun to do. The arm grab is hit or miss honestly but it's a fun one to do. Keep it up
 
Day 36 (7/15) Nice guy on steroids. One week break.

I did four reps of one set after my day 35 drills a few days ago. Only did three reps today. Did not do any drills yesterday. Instead I watched some series and went to the forest to contemplate. I did both consciously. Today after doing the three reps I stopped and sat by the river and relaxed.

The reason why I didn't do many or any drills the two days was that my social battery has been severely drained, I need downtime. I have either been visited by friends or family or visiting them for over two weeks now. I'm a person that needs to be alone a lot and I have not had enough time to retreat and recover. I usually take my Sundays entirely off and only decide what to do on that day, and it is usually doing something on my own. My past three Sundays I hardly spent time on my own.

I will be travelling and being visited until Sunday. Monday is the first time I will have to really retreat. I don't think I will be back with drills until next Tuesday, probably even later if I need more downtime.

This sucks, but I need to take care of myself. Also, there is no point in forcing these drills on myself repeatedly in this mental state. It only makes me hate approaching and I want to create repetitive positive experiences. I am quite the perfectionist and tend to push myself too hard, making my life a misery in the process. Reading through just my day 37 post is representative of the insane pressure I am putting myself through. I had just finished an incredibly hard drill, and this is my summary:
CainGettingLaid said:
So today wasn't as hard and not such strong exposure therapy. But I got the reps I had to get and that is great.
Like I wasn't even really enjoying the HUGE success, instead I was looking for mistakes and shortcomings. Absolute insanity.

Taking a week off does not feel great because of this prefectionism, but it is the best thing to do for myself.

The forest reflection unearthed deep things about my past and the motivation behind doing the AA program. It reminded me of the reasons why I am doing this and for a first time clearly brought along the emotions in which these reasons are grounded. In essence, I felt deep anger about my upbringing and family/social origins. I want to be a different man than my father and grandfathers.

I am more certain than ever that I want to finish this program.



Sprezza said:
Read through your log, man you're a legend! How the fuck did you do day 21 and 30 on a sitting crowd? Like you literally went from table to table with sitting girls and squeezed?

Thanks man. Yeah that's what I did. Most of them were at least sitting on higher chairs so I didn't have to lean down :D
 
Day 36 complete, week 5 complete:

Monday through Wednesday I recovered, Thursday and Friday I procrastinated, today I went out and finished Day 36 and since I have done Day 37 already that is it for week five. It was hard to go out after not having done drills for 10 days.

Did one challenge rep. Got out 7 compliments I think. Forgot to take a break between two of them. After 7, there was nothing left to compliment haha. When starting off the day I was not sure whether I would be able to do the challenge but the social momentum and confidence from being back in the field helped me there.

I will not be able to finish the program as quick as intended, but I am happy I am making progress.
 
Hey man ! Congratz I see you are killing it, I also see you had some lows and I'm glad you never give up ! We started almost at the same time and you're at day 36 it's crazy, soon done.
I can't read too much of your log because I'm only in the beginning and I don't want to know what's in the later days but anyway congratulations man, really.
 
Day 38a You're cute (27/40):

I am definitely back well-rested and fairly in balance. This drill gave me way less anxiety than I expected it to. This is kind of a big step for me personally since giving direct sexual compliments is very close to serious sexual interactions which is the core of my AA besides rejection.

Did the drills over a fairly large time span since I didn't pick the most crowded parts of the city. I of course had some anxiety but that lessened fairly quickly after the first few reps.

The reactions were mixed as always. Nothing really negative today, except for a chick that didn't reply at all and looked weirdly. Maybe she was just baffles and insecure. Many neutral or somewhat defensive/skeptical. Many positive and very happy. Sometimes the girls were sceptical/defensive at the "Hey wait a second" part but then super happy and relieved when I complimented them. Not sure what they expected, maybe my voice or appearance was intimidating. Overall the happier/friendlier I was, the more happy/friendly the responses tended to be. One chick complimented me back which really made me happy haha. Not as happy as getting reps though.

I also noticed a lot how much my success in getting reps done depended on voice and assertive body language. Sometimes I was not mentally prepared and somehow slipped into a high and somewhat shy voice. Other times my body language was fairly passive. Both resulted in walkaways more often than otherwise.

It was funny when I approached groups of chicks and then picked one to compliment on. I felt a little bit bad for the girls I didn't compliment on. Sometimes it was a close call and merely randomness, on other occasions one was clearly hotter and I picked that one. If you are a not-so attractive chick and your friends usually get the compliments and you don't, that must suck. I bet that can give you serious self-value issues. Then again, many of the uglier chicks had it coming. Like having short, crazy-colored hair. Or simply being fat. I remember that one interaction from day 33 (clumsy guy). I complimented a chick on her sunglasses. Her friend asked why she didn't get a compliment, she had the exact same sunglasses. I told her that her sunglasses are cool too, but truth be told the honest reply would have been that the compliment isn't about the sunglasses and that I didn't compliment her because she is morbidly obese. Lose weight, bitch, lol.

I found it hard to implement the "skeptical" mindset and communicating it. I'm not even talking to the chicks beyond the compliment, how am I supposed to figure out whether they are cool, good in bed and so on?
 
Potential 3 week hiatus:

I haven't done any additional drills since Monday. Had a friend visiting from out of town and was very busy.

Monday, I am starting a new summer job which I will do three weeks full-time. It is a job where you cold-approach strangers to convince them of to donate to charity. It is well payed for an unskilled job since I am doing it in Switzerland. But mainly, the job will be great for developing social skills and approach stamina, which is why I chose it.

The job will be stressful and what I have learned about myself in the past 1.5 years is that I don't do well with too much stress. This is why I will only focus on this job for the next three weeks, trying to keep myself in balance during it. In order to keep my stress low, I will not plan to do any AA drills in the next three weeks. If I discover that I have plenty of energy to go around I will, but I doubt it. This is a bummer to me, I originally planned to finish the AA program before this job. But that's the way it is.
 
Congrats, good luck, and keep your head up almost no one makes it that far in that short period of time and your going to come back much better for approach after this kind of job !
 
I did a sales job (door-to-door sales) as a uni student and it changed my life.

It's actually a guest-post from GLL (by BoyToy) that inspired me to do it. Just another way that website changed the course of my existence.
 
Good luck with your new job. Good place to take a break—look forward to you finishing next month. :D

8/28 edit: When you go back to the program, add me on WhatsApp. I am restarting back to Day 38.
 
Accountability update III and little story:

Last post was about taking a 3-week break, it has been 4 weeks now, so back with a short update.

The three week job was extremely stressful so as I had feared, I had no energy to do drills. It was so stressful that I needed all the time since to recover. I was travelling to a different city every day, slept in a six-bed youth hostel room for three weeks and the work was talking to strangers all day in the streets trying to convince them to donate to charity which includes an insane amount of rejection and bad vibes.

For anyone reading my journal it should by now be apparent that I do not react well to stress. I have the psychosomatic reactions that pretty much anyone has like exhaustion and tiredness but I get them more quickly. Beyond that I also get a stress-caused skin rash (neurodermatitis), which is fucking annoying since it is mainly around the eyes and makes me look like a zombie. It is also kind of helpful since it is a pretty good stress indicator and prevents me from pushing myself too hard, which I tend to. When I look like a zombie, I am less likely to approach.

For the past week I have been feeling bad for not approaching. So beyond being stressed out, I felt guilty for that fact, which is pretty absurd and self-sabotaging. I should not judge myself for having to process and needing time-outs. The past 9 months have been fucking crazy and way less steady than the lives of anyone I know personally. I wrote my bachelors thesis, managed to find two fuckbuddies simultaneously, moved cities with all the social change that goes along with moving, started a new job in a sector I had never been in, quit the job because I hated it even though I was fit for it, started the AA program and already did most of it (=facing one of my deepest fears and undoing my social programming), traveled and had friends visiting me from out of town over and over, did the summer job which was constant travelling and rejection. My life is absolutely fucking crazy. It is not a surprise that this kind of unsteady and exciting life takes a toll. I will be able to finish the AA program, but at my pace. I need to be more patient with myself. FUUUUUUCK.

Next week I will be visiting some friends in the city I will move to at the end of the month. After that I will return to Cologne for like two weeks. I am hoping to "finish" the program (milestone day 46) within that time so I can start approaching once I have moved cities.

*Bonus story for the lads that read through all my thoughts:*
During the second week in the youth hostel, there was finally a hot chick in the six-bed room. I introduced myself to her, but she was super shy and wouldn't even tell me where she was from. Few days later on Friday I came home from work, made some small talk with her, and invited her to join me for dinner since I hadn't eaten yet. To my surprise, she was happy to join and we had dinner. Turns out she is 19, from Romania, studies at the Warwick school of Business (UK), and was too shy to tell me because it was her first solo travel and her crazy conservative parents told her not to talk to men she didn't know. We had a good conversation and she seemed interested.

The whole time I was contemplating on how to escalate and get more intimate. I invited her to go over to the area with couches so we could at least sit next to each other. Turns out it was all just single-seat couches with distance between them (fucking COVID). I should have just pushed two of the couches together but wasn't thinking quickly so we were still sitting very distant from each other. I simply didn't know where to go from there and so after chatting there a while I said "OK lets call it a night". I thought that I had fucked up my chance but when we went up to the room I noticed that on that night, we were the only two guests in the six-bed room. So I smelled another chance. She went to shower and so did I. When I came back she was still showering and I had some time to think. I needed to find a way to get us both seated next to each other on one of the beds. And then I found it. A disgusting shandy in a can was sitting in the corner of the room, some other guest had forgotten it. When she came back I showed her what I found and before I could do so she proposed to drink it together. She sat down on her bed and I asked her whether I could join her so she scooted over and we were sitting on the bottom of a bunk bed. We drank the disgusting warm shandy and chatted. She was sitting there in a very closed-off position and made little eye contact. I tried to loosen up the situation and we started chatting about music and eventually played some. I leaned back hoping she would too, but she didn't. She continued being very reserved and making hardly any eye contact. Usually at some point I put my arm around a chick but I was too scared given these circumstances. She had talked about the fears of travelling alone as a girl for the first time so I was afraid to misread signs and being the creep that becomes too touchy. After a while she said she should go to sleep. I took my phone, turned off the music and sat there for like one second. She repeated that she should go to sleep. I thought fuck, now I missed my chance. But I wasn't ready to give up yet. I turned to her and slowly leaned in for the kiss. She moved backwards with a questioning facial expression. I literally asked her whether I could kiss her. I have never done that before, usually was never necessary but the circumstances plus the facial expression made it appropriate. She said yes. We made out but she stopped me from further escalating and pushed me away. Turns out she is a virgin and not ready to lose it. Night could have been over even though we both enjoyed it. Instead I told her I wanted to kiss her again and she was into it, went back to her bed and we did make out. Took two matresses and put them on the floor so we would have more space than in the shitty small bunk bed. Cuddled a lot, eventually asked her whether I could kiss her tits after she had blocked attempts at undressing. She said yes. Turns out she has problems with being nude and would dress herself again after I caressed her nipples. Poor damaged girl. We continue making out, furthest I get is taking shirts of. At some point I ask her whether she has ever touched a dick. She said only with the tip of a finger, never grabbed one. Asked her whether she would like to. Yes. She is excited and does so. Ends up giving me a handjob. Much better than expected, probably because I hadn't masturbated for a week due to the stress and was therefore horny as fuck. She was super excited, talked proudly about how she would tell her friends that she kissed a German guy and made him finish. BOOM.

She wouldn't let me take care of her because she was on her period. I was uncertain whether that was an excuse but I think she wasn't lying, she was wearing a pad I could feel it through her pants. I explained to her that that is not generally a problem for sex, you can just use a towel. She told me she had tried toys with an ex but it hurt so they stopped. When she masturbates, she does not put fingers inside. She considered fucking for a second and even asked me whether I had condoms and which brand. Eventually she decided not to and said that for these reasons she was afraid of the pain and wanted to have her first time with a guy with a small dick. My dick is unusually big which I am pretty proud of, but this is not the first time this has caused problems (not virgins, but girls for which it was painful). It made me think of the article on screening game in which Chris talks about a friend who screened out virgins for that reasons. Maybe I will have to start doing that once I become good at picking up chicks and have abundance. So to all the guys who have an average dick: Having a huge dick is not without its downsides.

We made out some more and she claimed she even came while I was grinding and kissing on top of her. I have trouble believing that even though it sounded completely sincere and she was indeed super excited and into it.

We ended up staying up and making out all night until she took her train in the morning. Nice convos and a lots of insights into the psyche of a young and exploratory girl. Way too much to write up here, but just one funny one: She has commitment issues and doesn't want a relationship or a guy who is clingy or any intimate emotional connection. In contrast, she mentioned at another point of the convo that she doesn't like fuckboys. I think it's funny that she didn't notice that the guys that would be happy to settle on her terms ARE fuckboys. I think the "I don't like fuckboys/players/douchebags" phrase is kind of a thing that all girls tell each other because many of them have had their hearts broken by one and it has become so much of a phrase that it is meaningless and uttered without thought. Another possible interpretation of this contradiction is that she doesn't know what the fuck she wants. Evidence in that is that she was interested in my past sexual encounters and such even though she said she was just looking for casual stuff. She was asking all the "boyfriend-screening" questions.

I mentioned earlier how I was afraid to constitute a negative experience for her by misreading signs and being the creep that gets too touchy. I talked to her about this later that night and she said it was perfect the way I ended up doing it. I told her that she can make these things easier on the guy and more likely to happen if she gives signals back to him after he makes a little move towards her. Like moving closer to him, opening up her posture, making eye contact. She said she does not want to do that, she wants the guy to make ALL the first moves. That was pretty insightful to me. You can read and read and read so much about non-reactions being a green light, it doesn't sink in easily for me. This was practical learning and much more helpful.

Long story short: Be creative and persistent and take leaps of faith. If you get a lucky situation like this (only you and an interested hot girl in a six-bed dorm), go ahead and grasp it! Don't project non-reaction or interpreted rejection upon yourself. It is often just insecurity on the side of the girl. Try again later or in a different way. If she is still resistant, resort to questions of whether you may.


Holden said:
I did a sales job (door-to-door sales) as a uni student and it changed my life.

It's actually a guest-post from GLL (by BoyToy) that inspired me to do it. Just another way that website changed the course of my existence.

It was the very same article that inspired me to do that job. BoyToys own site is unfortunately no longer online but a lot of the stuff is on the WaybackMachine. Very good stuff, it is on a par with GLL.
 
Day 38b (28-40/40) and day 39a (3/40):

Got 16 reps out. I'm glad to be back. First drill since 6 weeks so I am happy that I was able to pick up where I left of. Was less audacious than some other times and skipped a fair amount of girls. Didn't get as much out as I hoped. But the important thing today was getting back out there.

My new goal is to finish the program before I move (September 28th) and to also do some real approaches before that date. This way I can start approaching chicks in my new town right away with some good momentum.

It is an ambitious goal, but I will make it possible.

Last week I was out clubbing with friends and tried to approach some girls in the club. I have wanted to hook up with chicks in clubs for a long time but I have mostly only been dancing with buddies, hoping for something magical to happen (yup, I'm retarded or at least an anxious procrastinator). I decided to take the first baby step to hitting on girls in a club. I set the goal to take the initiative to talk to three girls, no matter how long the convos were.

I did. Nothing special came of it in terms of results. Indeed it was not spectacular at all from the outside. The first I went and said hi and what her name was. She wouldn't even give me her name but told me her friend was into one of my buddies. Introduced them. The second one I just walked up and told her she's cute and asked her for her name, got it and told her mine. It was super loud and I'm not even sure she understood my initial compliment. She kinda awkwardly looked at her friend and I had no clue what to do and took off. The third girl I approached from the front and boldly (at least for my frame of reference) tapped her on the chest to get her full attention and then told her that she danced well. That was true and I was truly impressed by her dancing skills but I wasn't into her otherwise so I didn't even try to continue that convo.

The interesting thing wasn't what I did, but how I felt. I have always felt some type of pressure/psychological strain building up in the club because nothing was happening and I was too afraid to talk to chicks. It would make me feel shitty and lower my confidence and my enjoyment of the night. It feels similar to daytime AA but not the same. It feels kinda even worse. But on this night, every time after I approached a girl, that psychological strain dropped and I was relaxed, even though nothing came from it in terms of results. Each of the approaches was uncomfortable and it took me effort to do it. But this discomfort of kicking my ass was better than having that shitty feeling keep building for the rest of the night. It would start rising again after a while but I was able to kick it down again with a new approach. After the three, I was more relaxed because I had achieved my goal and was mostly able to just put the getting laid goal out of mind. It seems like I am finally starting to become more comfortable with the temporary discomfort than with the consuming trepidation of inaction.
 
Day 39b (4-30/40) Do what you want:

Got 27 reps out before it got dark. Pretty impressive number considering it was a rainy day. Much better than yesterday already in terms of ballsyness and going out of my way to approach chicks. Also had more fun this time. Getting back in the groove.

I mean it was kind of awkward to compliment them, introduce yourself and then just say goodbye. Naturally, one would hit on them like that. A lot of girls thought I was gonna hit on them and told me stuff like they are engaged.

At some point it dawned upon me what that really means. I have essentially done most of what it take to do approaches today, even though they aren't special. But man, that feels good.

Tomorrow I'll try to go out earlier so I can get even more done. I'll also try to be more aggressive/douchebaggy/cool and a less friendly.
 
CainGettingLaid said:
At some point it dawned upon me what that really means. I have essentially done most of what it take to do approaches today, even though they aren't special. But man, that feels good.
You are finally at the point where you basically are cold approaching. No more funny man, or goofy stuff. Just straight up calling girls cute.

Good shit dude.
 
Day 39c (31-40/40) and day 40. 50 reps in 1 day:

Today I told 50 girls that they are cute and introduced myself and high-fived 20 of them.

I woke up this morning and almost immediately thought about having to do the drills. This often happens, but something was different today. I didn't get an immediate rush of stress. I was not afraid of going out for drills. This is the first time this has happened to me since the beginning of this program. Amazing.

I even got in 1 rep just on my way to do grocery shopping. This is a novelty too, I usually do the reps as a completely isolated block of my day which I need to concentrate on. I hope I can start from this and slowly convert this into a lifestyle and approach chicks all the time in everyday situations.

The anxiety started building up a little bit before I went out later that day. Got 2 reps on the way to the train station, both fairly below-average reactions. The 40-min train ride built up the anxiety in a weird way. I think it was a feedback effect. From where I started off in the morning, I expected to have zero anxiety, which is of course naive. Having a bit of anxiety made me insecure and concentrate on it and increased it. Started off fairly slow but then build momentum. Took a break for dinner after the first 20 reps. Then grinded trough the rest of them. 50 fucking reps. Crazy number. I think the only time I had more interactions was on one of the tries for day 15 where I got a lot of high-five rejections. But these interactions were far less substantial than today.

Funniest interaction was a fairly young girl getting scared and running away when I tried to stop her.

Funniest event was a hobo throwing the rest of his burger at me and shouting "catch!" while I was on my phone texting @offwego. It hit me on the chest but I was lucky because it was just a part of the paddie and no sauce. This weird incident surprisingly improved my mood because it was so fucking random.

The week 6 audios really are good. Chris' talk on smoothness today said all there needs to be said about it.
 
Had no idea from the chat that you did that many reps. Congrats—you made it through "the slog." I felt like had to chip away at those 3 days, bit by bit.

Did you do the more confident voice?
 
offwego said:
Had no idea from the chat that you did that many reps.

Yeah I tried to hide it as a surprise :D

offwego said:
Did you do the more confident voice?

A bit. Not the super-cool-guy voice, but at least not the shy-funny-man-voice.

Sprezza said:
You motivate me! Fucking gonna do a complete day tomorrow! :)

Nice! Haha yesterday completely wrecked me, don't go too hard.
 
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