After Johnny

There’ve been some discussions on the Lair about Johnny Soporno. He’s met with mild disbelief on many parts, it’s hard not to say as any prophet, or bearer of good news ever was. To cut a long story short: I think it comes down to making the choice to believe. What I got from JS’ seminar and entailing experiences with him and his entourage is that when you start believing, things start happening. I have the feeling many guys in the Lair are waiting for something they can undeniably state is worth believing in. But it never comes, as there is always doubt. You could doubt the sincerity of JS’ words, make him out as a fraud. Or you could say that you wouldn’t want his lifestyle, implying that his teachings lead only to being a porn movie producer. Or you could say that it’s nothing new.

It was pretty new to me; it was new to me to meet someone who’d made things happen for him. Someone who was so comfortable with himself he can look like a fat guy with devil’s horns and steal your girlfriend. You can’t argue with that kind of success. Bottom line is if and when you get that level of comfort and confidence with yourself, the sky is the limit. So far so good. So how do you do it, concretely? What’s the first step?

The underlying first step is that you take a step into the unknown. If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve gotten. Revolutionising the way you think and live never happens by thinking about it at length. You do it, now.

Start by putting rabbits into hats. Do people favours for no particular reason, and without waiting for gratitude. Don’t expect gratitude, but do expect to feel good about yourself. And you will. I did, at least. And I found out how easy it is to be nice to people when you don’t expect anything. You don’t wait for the validation of gratitude, you’ve already got it in knowing that it was just nice for that person to have their life made easier. It’s like micro-purposefulness.

What this will give you is the undeniable proof that you can feel good about yourself without any validation. You’re free! Now, on to the point of getting what you want.

I struggled for a long time (and still do when I’m tired or out of it) with the notion of combining being happy NOW, and improving. The only thing I can say about it, really, is that once you’re in a place where you feel really, really good about yourself, change comes automatically. It’s a silent supposition in the Western (for lack of a better word so excuse the blatant generalisation) way of living that if you don’t DO something, nothing will happen. But when you live in a beautiful big world and you’re a beautiful person and you want to experience that beauty, it just finds you. Like when you buy shoes you see shoes all the rest of the week, opportunity jumps out at you once you start looking the right way. Zan compares it to looking at 3D-images, it comes down to the fact that once you look at things differently, things ARE different. Approaching people becomes much less of a problem when you’re convinced of the goodness inside you and that any interaction can only be a good one. I’m sure you’ll shrug and think it’s only natural, but how often do you unnecessarily NOT FEEL THIS WAY? What’s stopping you from feeling that way now?

Right, nothing is. There is nothing you need to do to feel good – it’s your natural state. Just drop the negativity. Observe your thoughts and accept them, without getting lost in them. This is who you are. What’s your relationship with the present moment? If you’re thinking about the past or future – how long do you have to think about these things to be able to change them for the better? I always thought things had to be thought about at length. Now I think I need to go with what my gut tells me and correct myself if it turns out to be wrong. When things conflict, I use my mind to decide what is best for me. Once I’ve decided, I let it go and do it. If I’m wrong, I’ll try to accept my mistake, decide if it’s situational or permanent, and act accordingly.

I’m also aware of the fact that once I start lecturing, there’s probably something stirring inside of me. The question I now have is: should I paying attention to it and risk falling into a negative spiral, ignore it at the peril of its rebelling, or – aaahhh…. – observe it and then decide whether it’s worth going in on or not by how good it makes me feel deep inside? I’ll try not to think too much and smile.

I love Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

Since the seminar

I haven’t been writing much since two weeks ago, which isn’t to say that nothing has happened! On the contrary, I’ve been flowing with the new paradigm and trying to make it work, look for the concrete applications of it to my life. Because I don’t want to BE Johnny Soporno, or anyone else for that matter, I want to find the source of energy and power they have and emanate within myself. That implicitly supposes that I believe that everyone, or at least I, have this in me. And I do! I can feel it with every passing day, that validating that belief is making it happen.

So what actually happened since then? I met a really cool woman and had an great night out with her; I consolidated my bond with a girl I slept with during the Ghent Festival, who’s coming to dinner this Tuesday. I’ve infused a new energy into most if not all of my relationships and have given some people around me the attention they had been wanting for a while, as well as an insight into where I’m at. Like the conversation with my mother, I only then realised how fragmentary our views are of each other. We get an idea at one point and that just stays the same or we project it into the future by analogy – anything that’s going on behind the scenes is just not there until you say it. Sounds stupid, but I’ve been realising just how much of it is going on in my life, how many loose ends there are to tie up. So much for not having anything profound to say to each other anymore

As for sarging and approaching, it’s been a blast. I realised that the whole fear of approaching loses a lot of its power once I’m convinced that the interaction after the approach will be worthwhile to me and the person I’m approaching. As in, as I begin to realise more and more that what I have to say is interesting, I needn’t worry about reactions – it’s normal that people feel a bit uncomfortable around someone they don’t know. I even feel uncomfortable instinctively when someone new just comes up to me. But with going out and meeting new people more and more myself, I’m also feeling more comfortable with being approached. So I’ve been out about five times since, and generally just had a good time, had fun and interesting conversations with great people and regularly felt a spark of attraction coming into being.

One of the coolest nights was in the Versuz last Wednesday. Cruise told me about an afterwork party in Hasselt and I decided to take the hour and a half ride to get there, and check it out. It was a big club, loads of people that were well-dressed and good-looking. At first it was a bit intimidating, also because I was there alone. I took some food and settled in a corner, eating and observing. I calmed down as I saw people’s interactions and how no-one was looking at me or expecting anything – maybe a glance now and again from a curious female

Then I nearly fell into a jacuzzi, and some people nearby started laughing. I began talking to them, joined them, and before I knew it I was in there! Cruise arrived, he joined. We then met the other guys: Rupam, Erland and another guy whose name slips my mind (sorry man!). I was warmed up so I just talked to people left and right, basically spraying off the top of my head, and not bothering if there was a lot of resistance. I actually noticed that because I accepted that some people didn’t feel like talking, they actually became more receptive!

And that’s the gist of the whole movement I’ve been going through the last weeks: I constantly remind myself of the abundance I have in my life. I have a family that loves and supports me; three superb and different close guy friends that I can tell anything to; more than enough mates and girl friends (well, I could use a few more girl friends ); etc. And that’s only talking socially. It goes back to the difficulty I had combining being happy NOW and wanting to improve. In Hasselt, I was already happy with my life but as I was there alone, it was up to me to make that moment great as well, so I naturally slipped into social mode as that is the one most likely to give me personally a good time. Amazing how it can feel so logical – if I’d heard myself say this six months ago, I probably would have shrugged and mumbled:’That’s easy for you to say…’

The rest of the night went by in a haze; I walked up to pretty much anyone I wanted to talk to, and go mainly good to very warm reactions. I won’t even mention the other ones (right), I probably didn’t approach them in a way that would lead them to want to interact with me, and I understand. I could have bedded a couple of ladies but to be honest, I didn’t really need to. It feels like I want to build my way of life, have it come naturally and only go with the women that truly fascinate me, rather than being happy for having ’scored’. Another thing that has been changing as opposed to before, where I doubted my ability to actually attract women and was looking for the validation that I could. Now that I’m more and more self-validating, that just becomes superfluous. Thanks Fizmo for teaching me that.

This Saturday was a bomb night as well. I hooked up with Fizmo and Monica, and we went to the birthday party of my upstairs neighbour, in a garden in the middle of Flanders. There was barbecue and pimps&hoes, and a boatfull of booze. We hung around for two hours and then went to a cosmic disco all-nighter in Café Capital, Antwerp. Fantastic music! I’ll post some pictures here that will explain the night to you

Confidence: The game

Become more confident - open the box

From Buttersafe

Johnny Soporno’s seminar

It’s two days after I went to Brussels to meet Johnny Soporno, and it already seems like a far-away dream. Johnny talked for four hours, expounding on so many subjects I won’t even begin to make a summary of them. Also, his way of talking kind of mixed many things together, making it hard to summarise – it’s more a question of certain statements sticking out and to mind.

On the whole, it was a great experience to meet him. The fact alone to meet someone who is certifiably superb with women, was a great help for me. To know it’s possible, which is something I tend to forget with only videos and surrounded by very little real-life examples. Another thing is the atmosphere he brings along: relaxed, open-minded but also founded in common sense and anthropological analysis, creating a deeper understanding of relationships and interactions. That combined with accepting yourself and taking responsibility for your own happiness NOW, makes for a powerful yet relaxed combination.

There was also another guy there, Jamie Small, and NLP specialist that did some ‘unpacking’ near the end of the seminar, asking questions like ‘what’s the first concrete step you can take’ and ‘how do you relate feedback to being self-validating?’. That’s a big one for me, together with being happy now and still getting into action. About the latter, I was talking to Jamie afterwards (he did some NLP on me and we wandered around for a while after the seminar before realising we were lost and taking a cab to the others) and he said he had experienced the same; that he had just let go and had simply come to the conclusion that he was still ambitious, only different and more focused. So that’s that solved.

I didn’t sleep much and felt drunk the day after (as predicted by JS himself), spent half a day in bed. In the evening, I went to see my mother and ended up talking about meeting JS and explaining the more general parts of his view (and mine), especially about taking responsibility for being happy NOW, and being self-validating, and not getting stuck in your head making yourself miserable as the slave of your thoughts. It was a big conversation, one that went well but not completely amazing, as I walked out stuck back in my head. So I think I was able to bring across many things to them, but lost myself in the process. That just means it’s not engrained enough yet, which I will endeavour to do. Being comfortable with yourself and being able to do nice things for worthwhile people is an amazing gift for yourself and your surroundings; it reminds me of one of my friends (a real relaxed natural) who does this instinctively – after all these years I finally understand why he’s so successful in life and with women: because he makes people feel good about themselves when they’re around him. It’s something that’s been challenging to me for a long time, and that I hope to develop.

How, concretely? Two ways:

- Being nice to worthwhile people: I will go out of my way to do nice things for people I consider worthy. That in itself will make me feel good about myself!
- Spending time with myself and loving it: I will dedicate fixed times for myself to get back to the core of me. In time, this should become less necessary as I stay with myself more, but for now this will be daily practice.

On the front of goal-setting, I will combine some Zan with Deepak Chopra:

- Make a list of things I want in my life (again) and read it three times a day
- Take this list into my moments of silence and insert them as intentions into those silences, as they will become part of my subconscious and manifest themselves that way. That may sound spiritual but it’s more about understanding the subconscious: what your mind can conceive and believe, you will achieve (thanks Hypnotica). Or, your subconscious is like a computer that takes logical orders (see ‘Mastering your hidden Self – the Huna way’, by Serge King). If you change the orders that guide your actions and demeanour, you will automatically start getting different results within and without.

But back to Johnny! He’s a nice guy; I like the way he has made the dissemination of his message a goal in life, traveling around the world telling it to others, and really being open to them afterwards. It feels a bit like an uncle that you can go to and ask about life, and be sure he’ll give you an answer that will take you a step further if you’re up for it. I’m glad I went, because I needed some of that. I needed a bit of inspiration, of leading by example, to see top class and feel the space in between that and me. It’s encouraging, as all the space in between is actually fun as well!

So about being a worthy playboy: I feel like this is the vision I’ve been looking or. It started with the Style way of tricks&tips for being more effective and making things happen with a framework that you can fall back on. Then came the natural vs. routine discussion, on how much routines should be used in the game. In the end, I realised for me that routines are helpful, but only to the extent that they gel with who I am and that they supplement my character. For example, I like telling stories and role-playing, which aren’t really routines I guess as they’re different every time. I think repetition makes it feel fake for me; every woman is different and most openers would just make me feel stupid doing them all night long on twenty different people. Back to the point: after that, I kind of got fed up trying, and feeling that I was trying to be something I wasn’t. The fact that I could’ve fucked girls and couldn’t get a hard on while with my girlfriend there was no problem, denotes a certain unease with myself and the situation. What I want is to feel completely comfortable with myself and the situation, flow into it naturally and be confident that I actually want to go where it’s headed (sometimes I’d be kissing a girl and know I can take her with me, and then realise I didn’t really want to. But I did it anyway because I felt like I had to, to prove myself to her and myself and of course ‘the guys’). I guess I had to go through it to realise it.

In reaction to that my aim is to be self-validating yet also very open to feedback from all sides. I want to talk to and explore with women our respective worlds, and see what happens from there. I’m going to suppose that things will flow naturally from there, and that I will become more forward and comfortable as time goes by. By this I mean to address the issue of being happy now vs. progressing and making things happen. And you know what? I’m smiling, so I must be doing something right

Thanks Johnny, Jamie, Hans, Fizmo, you each know why.

The worthy playboy

Since the Ghent Festival, I’ve been taking it more easy, thinking things over. I’m still in contact with the two girls I slept with during the Festival, which I see as a good sign. I’ll tell you why.

I’ve been looking at the Worthy Playboy attitude, an attitude where men have “an absolute dedication to achieving ongoing personal-satisfaction – through comprehensively understanding and appreciating YOURSELF, and ensuring your words, your actions, and your motives are all congruent with the person you wish to be; YOUR BEST SELF!” To become comfortable around myself, and have people feel comfortable around me.

Why not just learn routines? I think mainly for me, it comes down to this: when I did routines, things that weren’t really what I felt, I also felt distant from myself. I was acting from behind a veil, didn’t really know what I wanted from the interaction anymore. Even when I succeeded, it just felt a bit… empty. Also, when you’re not completely yourself in order to get a girl attracted, when do you start being yourself again? Tim from RSD says: ‘There’s a time and place for emotions: after sex!’ Maybe so. But you are creating emotional spikes in the girl, and all this time you’re supposed to stay distant and not admire her? It feels so incongruent, like lying. I want to be able to say to a woman that I like her, and still be attractive to her. To be honest, and find attraction in that. A bit like Zan.

Now there is a certain amount of technique involved there, as some cocky&funny and interesting routines like the Cube, or roleplaying… are not really lying, and they’re playful and fun. So I’m not saying to skip the routines, that would just be an excuse to not have to try out new things. That’s not what it’s about. I do want a style that is congruent with me, I want a woman to know I like her – also that I’ll respect it if she doesn’t want to go with me at that time, no problem – but the whole ‘you’re not my type’-thing feels more like one night stand material than the things a lover would say, the guy that women adore even afterwards. Because in the end, that is what I want. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but all the women that I haven’t been honest with or treated well, just leave an emptiness and even some guilt in me. What’s the point of that, even if you got to empty your sack? That’s never been appealing to me.

So I will walk the path of the worthy playboy – I want to be able to tell my mother what I’m doing, and how, and have her actually be proud of me! – plus it’s the path that for me doesn’t take the back door to feeling really good about yourself. Learning to manipulate women’s feelings so you can finally realise that they’re just human and that you can relax around them is not the way, not for me, and not for anyone with integrity I think. Feel free to contradict me.

Ghent Festival: Summary

So after ten days of going out nearly every night, what have I learned? What’s happened that affected me, and where will it go from here?

- I got laid twice. First one was kind of a give-away, a 20-year-old with which it had been brewing for years, and now it came out. I think I could probably have done it without any skills as well, albeit a bit less smoothly. Second was an older woman and to be honest, it was a really good pickup but I was drunk and I only know that it was good because she told me how it went.

- About that pickup: good stuff! I just showed up in front of her, started talking. Then said there would be no kissing, which led us to the subject of kissing of course. Then at some point as she was going to go, I told her the story about the two people that fell in love at first sight and then never saw each other again. Then I told her to kiss me. The rest I do remember, except what she replied when I asked her if she liked giving blowjobs. I’m happy with it, on the other hand I really wish I could do this kind of stuff when I’m sober. That I would believe in it as I seem to do when I’m drunk.

- I didn’t meet a whole lot of new people, which makes me worry about how I’m doing this. I think I’m too outcome-driven, and that my agenda is keeping me back. Am I sincerely going for cool experiences, am I a Worthy Playboy (I discovered this two days ago)? Not really. Even though I feel calmer, cooler, more in control, and am having more social success, I feel that there is work to be done on the sincerely liking people front.

- I have trouble staying with my company and just having fun with them. I have the tendency to run away, looking for something restlessly. What am I missing? The thing I’m looking for is within me. I stand there, and when no-one entertains me I go and find entertainment. I can’t keep a conversation with my friends, keep wandering off. That could say something about my friends, but it says more about me because I have it with all of my friends. Plus, I want to be a loyal friend, even if they’re the biggest losers or boring people in the world (that shouldn’t even exist, that terminology), they’re still my friends.

- I have trouble not drinking and even smoking when I’m going out a lot. That means I get unbalanced. I should learn to take care of myself before everything else. I think this ties in with the restlessness: always running after something so hard I can’t be happy with what is. I should learn to be happy with what is now, and happy in becoming (from Mastering Your Hidden Self, the Huna Way, by Serge Kahili King). Also the power of now; after Ireland I was on my way to incorporate it, but it wasn’t strong enough for the Ghent Festival I will get back to it now and build routine so I stay with myself and my power.

- Is night game really my thing? Should I go for it so assiduously? What if I hang around in the gym and meet lots of women there, or in the supermarket? Or in some evening activity, like theatre? Maybe that’s more my thing, as I am getting sick of night life talk. I’m losing my own depth and missing really good conversations. This is also my own issue, I know. I think I need to balance the two more; so with my three days a week going out, one or two should be more of an social evening activity than clubbing.

- I saw my ex twice, and it affected me. Especially the time with that other guy. On the other hand, when I was with Delphine, Steffi and just conversing with other women, that anxiety lessened considerably. I’m still holding to the ten other women thing. I still think about her regularly, even miss her sometimes. I forget why we broke up again. I was at my grandmother’s and she was saying how charming she was, and a wave of regret hit me, draining the blood from my face. I joked around it but I have to admit I was rattled. I cycle through town and secretly hope I’ll meet her. It’s not strong, just little things. It’s not taking me over, but it’s there, throbbing now and again. Guess it needs time.