William aka Man Cannon is on the right in the black leather jacket
Dear Asian Playboy,
One year ago today, I completed a 3-day bootcamp seminar taught by you (and assisted by Johnny Wolf and Gatsby). On that day, I began my entry into a completely new world-- a world of experiencing life, love, and romance like I've never experienced it before.
Many pick up artists refer to this as "beginner's hell," but I like to call it what it is: learning how to be yourself. What follows is a brief account of my reflections of how my life has changed over this past year.
The curriculum that you created and taught me over the course of three days in October 2007 have changed my life for the better, forever.
Step 1 of 5: Unchanged
When I first completed the bootcamp, I was nervous and unsure of what to do. I knew in my mind what you had taught me. As you know, I have quite a talent for learning things, understanding their core principles, following them in my own life, and also explaining those things to other people.
Despite this knowledge, I was still the same socially awkward person that I was when I first started the bootcamp. I had lots of social anxiety, and I would tremble with nervousness and get sweaty palms within moments of just seeing a girl I was attracted to from across the room. I had knowledge of how to improve upon my abilities to connect with girls, but I had only 3 days worth of experience in actually putting that knowledge into practice.
My fundamental social awkwardness, creepiness, and neediness, remained unchanged.
Step 2 of 5: Dedication, hard work, first times, and breaking down my own ego
What soon followed, over the following few months, was very difficult. I made a decision in my life to move forward, grow up, mature, and take forward steps towards improving the way I fundamentally think, react, behave, and interact when I am meeting a new girl.
This period of several weeks was one of the most difficult periods of my life. I experienced wonderful moments of happiness-- my first time approaching a girl without getting dissed & dismissed within 5 secods, my first time enjoying a conversation with a girl enough that we could both talk , laugh, and enjoy each other's company inside a nightclub, my first time sitting down to talk with a girl inside a nightclub, my first kiss with a girl that didn't take 10-15 dates to get to, and my first romantic connection with a girl I met in a nightclub that came about as a result of an actual choice that we both made together, rather than as a result of my hopelessly clinging to her for months at a time until she finally agreed miraculously to romantically connect with me.
(For more info on this, see the ABOUT section of the betterasianman.com website.)
These were things I had not previously been able to accomplish for my entire life (29 years, at that time). But greater than all of these accomplishments, was when I first was able to express my honest, sincere, and direct romantic interest in a girl. This was very difficult for me, because I had spent my entire life NOT expressing my romantic interest in a girl for fear that she wouldn't want to be my friend anymore.
I pathetically clung to any woman that existed in my social sphere, and silently tortured myself as I kept silent about the feelings I had inside for her. My ego was too fragile for me to venture out and express my direct romantic interest in a girl that I liked. However, that first time that I put into practice the lessons I learned during my bootcamp about the "D" phase (direct interest), I realized that I had to reduce my ego to nothingness in order to make this possible-- I had to reduce my ego to nothingness in order to have the guts to approach a girl, talk to her, and then risk her rejecting my romantic advances by actually expressing my romantic interest in her.
I felt that I was finally alive. It was tortuous. It was VERY difficult to overcome this mental obstacle. "What if I express my romantic interest, and she doesn't return it?" "What if she tells me that she's not interested?" "What if...?"
"What if" indeed!
By consistently working on and applying the lessons I learned during my bootcamp, I soon turned "What if she's not interested?" to "I'm going to talk to her now and find out if she is interested."
This one tiny change in my mentality had dramatic positive effects on my life. For the first time in my life, I experienced the joy that comes with meeting someone new, learning about her, discovering what she's like, romantically connecting with her in conversation, and in some cases, fully romantically connecting with her.
How wonderful it was, after 29 years of living a life of sorrow and loneliness, to finally experience fulfilling romance!
Step 3 of 5: Selfishness, being inconsiderate, and feeding my own ego
At a certain point, something got fucked up inside me. A brief period (several weeks of my life) of selfishness overtook me. During this period of time, I began writing field reports, and lay reports. These on-line accounts described, in graphic detail, all of my encounters with women in graphic sexual detail.
These reports started out as anonymous journal entries that were tied to no person, contained no identifying information, and had no markers that could tie that information back to me or any of the girls that were mentioned.
However, during this brief period of my life, I became selfish, inconsiderate, and began to use these reports as a way of feeding my own ego. I would go out, meet girls, and then report on all of the details of my romantic adventures with them anonymously on the ABCs of Attraction on-line forums.
I then started meeting my fellow bootcamp alumni and told them what my screen name was so that my identity, and therefore the identity of the girls I was with, was no longer private. I enjoyed being with these girls, and I had some of the most fulfilling romantic experiences I've ever experienced in my life (often for the first time ever in 29 years), and in addition to that, I also used my reports on these experiences as a way to feed my own ego.
I even went so far as to publish on these forums that I had the goal of sleeping with 100 women in one year.
Step 4 of 5: Finding true love, losing it, and walking away a better man
I abandoned that goal last February. I met a girl that I completely fell in love with, and I immediately stopped meeting new girls, and I also discontinued any and all field reports. I had no need for any of that because of the fulfillment and joy that I shared with this one special girl. She was the woman of my dreams.
A few months later, she left me, and I was completely heart broken. I was so depressed afterwards. After taking the bootcamp, I had met many girls who had dated me briefly and then left me, and even though those situations caused me to feel disappointed, I did not feel as down as I did when this one special girl left me.
I was so in love with her that I had begun the process of shopping for a ring, and I even went so far as to plan out a savings schedule, which I had intended to follow over the course of 9 months, which would allow me to buy the ring that I would use to propose to her with. I met her parents multiple times. She met my parents.
My heart was so far gone into that relationship that when it ended, I could feel nothing but pain inside my heart during the weeks that followed.
This kind of heartache was something that I had previously experienced in my life. Those were some very sad and depressing points in my life indeed. However, this one particular time, there was something different. This situation reminded me of all of those wounds I once had, and hurt even more than those did (yes, I really fell head over heels for this girl), but I was not debilitated in the way that I once was.
Yes, I was hurt.
Yes, I felt great emotional pain when she left me. But there was one crucial thing that I possessed THIS TIME which I had never possessed at any other point in my life:
Choice.
Asian Playboy, the curriculum that you developed and then taught me, during that brief 3-day bootcamp weekend, gave me the one thing I never had in my life-- the ability to create new dating options and romantic choices for myself. I didn't need to sit there and wonder if I would ever somehow accidentally meet another girl again.
You see, this was the case for the first 29 years of my life-- when I said that I "hopelessly clung to" any girl that I could be with, it was because I simply did not know:
(1) how to go out and meet girls, and
(2) if a girl even existed that would like me romantically.
However, thanks to the lessons and principles that I learned from the ABCs of Attraction, this experience left me emotionally hurt, but it DID NOT leave me wondering how I would go about meeting new girls, and it most definitely DID NOT leave me wondering if a girl even existed that would like me romantically.
Thanks to the time, energy, and guidance that you provided, I was able to demonstrate to myself that I did not need to sit there and wonder about these things.
Yes, I was completely heart-broken. But my heart later healed. I spent lots of time thinking deeply about what I could have improved in myself that would have made that relationship better. I journalled about it (in a journal on my personal computer that will NEVER be published as long as I live).
I thought about it. I wrote down action items and goals for myself so that I would NEVER allow myself to be anything less than the best man that I could be. After doing all of this reflection, thinking, and learning, I got back up on my feet and started going out and dating. And this time, once again, something changed in me.
I walked away from that experience a better man. I walked away a better man because:
Step 5 of 5: I am now no longer a pickup artist. I am naturally good with women.
I don't use any artificial nonsense when I date girls now. All I do is express my thoughts and feelings in a way that is honest, sincere, fun, and adventurous. I have never let go of that little boy inside me that once wondered what it would be like to kiss a girl for the first time.
There is no question in my mind that I follow the ABCs of Attraction principles when I meet people, but after having been through all of the things that I've been through this year, all of the concepts, principles, and ideas that I learned from the ABCs of Attraction are so ingrained in my way of life that this "new" version of me-- this "new" man that is so drastically different from the man that turned 30 during that bootcamp weekend-- does not need to follow any process like some sort of robot.
I MOST DEFINITELY followed the ABCs of Attraction method in a VERY ROBOTIC WAY for 90% of this past year. While meeting new girls, I would consciously think about it in my mind. To them, it would appear as if I was interacting with them in a way that I naturally learned over the course of my life, when really, I had just learned how to be that way only a few weeks prior.
Now, though, after an entire year has gone by, I don't just follow the ABCs of Attraction method (click here to read it if you don't know what it is), I am the ABCs of Attraction method. It is a part of me. And here's something that will surprise you even more-- the sequence of steps that is outlined in the ABCs of Attraction method is the exact same series of interactions that ANY MAN who is NATURALLY GOOD WITH WOMEN already does.
I don't need to think "um, which phase am I in right now-- B? C? D?"-- I simply flow naturally with a girl. For the first time in my life, now, at the age of 31 (today is my birthday), I feel completely comfortable and natural when I meet, talk to, go out on dates with, and meet girls. I sometimes wonder if this is what my life would have been like if I were born with a natural ability to be good with women just as 99% of my male friends were.
But then my mind soon returns back to the present moment and I enjoy all of the fulfillment that I experience now, and none of that matters. None of it matters because going forward, I will always be naturally good with women.
Asian Playboy, you have helped me to realize things within myself that I would have never realized on my own. These awakenings that I discovered for myself as a result of taking the ABCs of Attraction bootcamp, learning and applying the principles and ideas from the course, and never giving up, have all made me into the Better Asian Man that I am now, as I turn 31 years old today.
Thank you, Asian Playboy.
-William
Labels: Beginner's Hell, Better Asian Man, Birthday, Man Cannon, New York City, William