Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Inner Game -- Value

I caught some recent episodes of Pickup Podcast on value and holy crap this is foundation level stuff here people. Listen to these episodes and internalize them. Once you do your game, and your life, will be changed forever. AJ and Jordan hit a grand slam with these. If you're really interested in the self-improvement side of social dynamics do yourself a favor and listen to these ASAP!

Pickup Podcast

Just scroll down until you find them. If they roll off that page as they add more podcasts either go back a couple pages or check out these individual links in the blog:

Value Part 1

Value Part 2

Value Part 3

Sadly you need to create an account in order to check out the blog pages. The first one I posted above though is public and you can listen to them from there. The benefit of logging into the site and going into the blog page itself is because from there you can actually download the episodes and take them with you. Granted you can do the same thing from iTunes for free as well.

Like they say at the start of most episodes, check out the first 5 or 10 episodes they did to get a good foundation and feel for how they operate, and so you get the context of what they're always talking about.

To give you a quick primer, what they discuss is how men can be rated on a value scale just as men often do with women. However, what we're judging ourselves on is vastly different from when women are rated. Women we typically value by their looks due to youth and reproductive value. Men on the other hand are valued on their behavior and status.

Using the same 6-10 scale we use to rate women, men break down into typically one of the following categories, although your value can fluctuate at any given time:



9 and 10 - Truly high value guys. Pretty much the epitomy of what we all strive for. Gives value freely, isn't affected by others, and still recognizes he isn't perfect and constantly searches to improve himself. The only real difference between 9s and 10s is that 9s think they're 10s and 10s think they're 9s. It's a subtle difference and comes down to being humble and realizing you don't know it all and can still learn and thing or two about yourself.

8 - Competitive. Can float one up or one down and has pretty decent inner game, but still has his insecurities. If a 7 AMOGs him hard he may resort to AMOGging instead of trying to raise others' value and in effect raising his own. If he sees someone higher value he may recognize it and join the higher value guy at that level if he realizes competing with that person won't do anything.

7 - Combative. Basically douchebags and AMOGs; have some value but as soon as they're threatened they try to bring everyone else down to under their level. If other 7s back down those 7s become 6s. If the other 7 doesn't back down you get your classic bar fight. Often has poor body language, or overcompensates both with body language and aggressiveness and is the bold obnoxious types of people wish would just leave the room.

6 - Supplicative, validation seeking, qualifying wussy. Basically this is where most men fall and are your classic AFCs. Also, they usually have poor body language and pecks all the damn time.

What I took away from all this:

  • Now I can gauge myself and if I catch myself doing low value things I can fix those behaviors. Over time I've already stopped doing certain things entirely.
  • You really do choose you're own value. It's really that simple. You just have train yourself to believe you're a 10 and everything will start falling into place on it's own.
  • Giving value to others raises your own. It's counter-intuitive, but think about the AMOG situation. Some guy busts on you for whatever reason. You don't get reactive. It doesn't even register you're so far beyond that low value behavior. Instead you bring up his value. When you do that your value goes up as everyone gauges your behavior against what else is going on at any given time. By not reacting negatively and raising others up, you become the star of the show.

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