There’s a lot of talk in seduction literature about ’state management’.
This is language borrowed from Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In NLP, ’states’ correspond to ‘emotional states’, or as we laymen might say, ‘moods’.
So state management is really just the ability to change your own mood — to be in charge of your own emotions.
‘But thirty,’ You might say, ‘Our emotions are real and raw, the unambiguous fabric of human experience that never lie. Why would we want to change or manipulate them, ever?’
The answer is simple. We change our minds on a regular basis, based on new information, and we are in control of that process; so why not be willing to change our moods, too, for the same reasons and with the same intentionality?
The real reason to change our moods as well as our minds, of course, is to improve our functioning in the world, and specifically with women.
So let’s get started. Before we get into the techniques that are most effective at managing and regulating our moods, allow me to introduce two fundamental maxims of life that, once accepted as fact, will clear the way for you in so many ways.
The Two Fundamental Maxims
These two maxims, taken together, form the whole of the basis upon which healthy and successful emotional regulation is possible.
The first maxim addresses the nature of emotions. Emotions are real; but they are not the same as facts. They are an important — nay, crucial — source of information about the world we live in, our place in it, and our current state of existence…
…but they are not factual.
That Giacomo Casanova was born April 2, 1725 is a fact. That a mile is made up of 5,280 feet or 1,760 meters is a fact. But “I am pleased” is not a fact per se; it is only a transitory state of my existence that owes its existence to myriad factors both inside and outside my control. It is not likely to last forever, or even very long, and while I may identify my emotional state or mood as ‘pleased’ again at some point in the future, it is unlikely to be exactly the same sort of ‘pleased’ I feel now. The “sitting in Starbucks eating an egg salad sandwich I didn’t purchase on a sunny Sunday morning” is a very different sort of pleased than the pleased I am likely to feel later today, when I am enjoying wine and conversation in the company of some of my closest friends.
As well, my state of being ‘pleased’ is not an independently verifiable — or even necessarily observable — fact. Others in the coffee shop with me might not even be aware of my emotional state, and if they were asked to guess, might peg it somewhere between “pensive” and “perturbed” — both of which would be very far off the mark.
Another important point is to remember that while your emotions may be intense and seem like an inescapable reality in the moment that will last forever…they won’t. So if you’re in the midst of a bad emotional state, simply remind yourself that this, too, shall pass.
My point with all this is to underscore the fact that feelings, well, aren’t. Instead of the steadfast, verifiable and mostly stable nature of what we generally consider facts, feelings are mutable, transitory, inconsistent, and (typically) immeasurable.
The practical application of this maxim will reveal itself gradually over time, so keep it in mind while we move on to the next: that no one but you can control your emotional reality.
A lot of people in this world move through life in a state of constant reactivity. That is, they are continually reacting to events in their lives, to other people, and continually refusing to take ownership for their own course in life. By viewing everything in life as something that happens to them that they must then react to, they are abdicating responsibility for charting their own course.
This is, of course, drawing the classic distinct between those who are reactive and proactive; or between those with an external versus internal ‘locus of control’. Those who are said to be proactive / internally controlled take ownership for their lives, responsibility for their actions and decisions, and are always looking for what they can do in a given situation.
In contrast, those who are reactive / external locus are passive, give away ownership and control, and are always looking for and focusing on what they can’t control in a given situation. These people are often said to have a ‘victimhood mentality’, since they always find themselves ‘at the mercy of’ other people and situations.
This is a very simple distinction in terms of focus and attention, but a big difference in how one experiences life.
Of course, most people don’t fall to either one of these extremes, but have a mixture of proactive and reactive behaviors. In seduction, however (and generally when dealing with other human beings), proactivity and the internal locus of control are a big advantage.
Let’s look at a real-world example of what a big difference this small distinction makes.
Scenario 1: Guy works up enough courage and finally cold approaches a woman on the street. She rejects him. Because he is reactive, and externally focused, he is emotionally devastated. Feeling hurt, angry and rejected, he rages at the woman: “What a bitch. Women are nothing but dirty cunts, I’ll never approach another one again.” Or, better yet, “What a bitch. Women are nothing but dirty cunts. I think I’ll focus on seducing them in demeaning ways, so I can hurt them emotionally later, to pay them back for rejecting me.”
Scenario 2: Guy works up enough courage and finally cold approaches a woman on the street. She rejects him. Because he is proactive and internally focused, he takes a deep breath and allows his emotional reaction to pass over him (realizing that feelings of rejection and personal hurt are hard-wired into his brain for evolutionary reasons), and then begins examining his delivery, tonality, and energy during the approach, looking for how he can grow from the experience. He congratulates himself for having the courage to make his first approach and thinks: “I did it. I’m proud of myself, and I can’t wait to make my second approach, since I already have some ideas for things to change.”
This is where the idea of determining your own emotional reality hits home for me: since, like most guys, I have dealt with moderate-to-massive levels of approach anxiety, simply realizing that I was in control of my own emotional reality really helped me relax into the process of approaching.
In other words, there is nothing to fear in engaging attractive girls, since their emotional reactions are their own, and not yours.
Therefore, logically, you ought to approach and engage attractive girls, since there is no potential downside, and a very high potential upside (an awesome relationship with an awesome girl).
To recap: keep in mind always that 1) feelings aren’t facts, and 2) nobody can control your emotional reality except you.
Now that we’ve got that taken care of, it’s onward to the techniques.
Emotional Self-Regulation or Changing Your Own State
There are several different behaviours that allow us to consciously regulate and control our own emotional states; most of us are already pros at using them, though not conscious of being so.
To my mind, there are three main techniques we use to influence our moods:
These behaviours are not discrete or conscious, but happen naturally as part our everyday mental lives. Of the three, the one that requires the most explanation is re-framing.
Re-Framing for Better Moods (and decision making)
Re-framing is really just the process of asking yourself, “How might my first impression of this situation be wrong?”
This is applicable whether you are in a good situation or a bad situation. In fact, it can be extremely profitable – especially in the business world – to look at a good or great situation and ask yourself, “What are some ways in which this is a bad situation?” Or “What might be the drawbacks of this state of affairs?” Doing so will help you generate more creative, comprehensive thinking about all the situations in your life, both good and bad.
Of course, if you are in a bad situation, or something “bad” has just happened to you, it can be profitable to ask yourself, “Where is the silver lining” Or “What is good about this situation?” Not only will this unleash your creative thinking and force you to re-evaluate your initial perception (and negative emotional reaction) but it will, in many cases, genuinely identify an opportunity you might otherwise have missed.
To take it to an extreme, you can even force yourself to come up with a positive interpretation of a negative event. An example would be getting downsized from your job: although this is traditionally considered a minor life disaster, I have had plenty of friends for whom losing their job was actually the best thing that could have happened to them, as it freed them to pursue other (and ultimately more fulfilling) opportunities.
This is what re-framing is all about; looking for, finding, and often forcing alternate interpretations to your initial emotional reaction. The idea of ‘framing’ is another original NLP term, but has since been borrowed heavily by political scientists and pundits (to say nothing of the seduction industry).
Re-framing is especially powerful in seduction, since so much of our mating habits are wrapped up in what’s considered “bad” versus “good” outcomes. She slapped me, bad – she’s got a boyfriend, bad – she is laughing and smiling at me, good – she’s wearing a short skirt and no panties, good. Take a second and force yourself to come up with opposite and alternative interpretations to each one of those statements and you’ll start to get a sense of the power of reframing.
Self-Talk
Self-talk is a huge topic that could easily warrant its own article, but for the sake of brevity and quality information, I will here present just the bit of information most relevant to managing your emotional states; that is, your emotional baseline is heavily dependent on the “default” tone of your self-talk, which is tied fundamentally to your basic core sense of self-worth.
Self-talk can be used powerfully in conjunction to reframing to counter negative thoughts and interpretations of events. If you find yourself saying, “You’re no good at approaching, you should just stick to picking up chicks on the internet”, you could counter that piece of self-talk with a competitive message: “Approaching is hard, and something that fewer than 20% of guys even have the balls to try, and I feel really proud I’m in that courageous minority.”
As I’ve mentioned before (and no doubt will again), the biggest part of successful self-talk is consistency and commitment. Self-talk works best when it is absolutely repetitive and becomes automatic. Most people don’t realize just how many times a message (positive or negative) must be repeated before it becomes ingrained in the physical structure of your brain.
For a more in-depth discussion of self-talk, see Using Self-Talk to Improve your Game.
Visualization
This technique goes right along with self-talk. Visualization is a powerful tool, perhaps one of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal for personal growth and self-development.
The visualization technique that is most specifically useful in emotional regulation, is simple recall and relive. If you are in an anxious or unhappy state and wish to change that state, try the following technique:
Because the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real and imagined event, the above exercise, which asks you to recall and re-live a specific event, engages the power of your subconscious mind by using it to convince your body and mood to match a previously experienced state.
This exercise is nothing more than a conscious application of what happens when people think of a past fight or injustice, and get angry again, even though the event is years past. Memory is state-dependent, and this exercise harnesses that fact and the re-creative power of memory to improve your state in the moment. That’s why it’s such a powerful tool.
Watch this space for a link to a much more comprehensive article on visualization, and additional ways you can harness it, in the future.
That’s it for our introduction to Emotional Self-Regulation. If you start using these basic techniques, I guarantee you’ll see a noticeable difference in your experience of moods and emotional states.