| The Inner Game of Social Skills |
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Page 1 of 2 A cat stalking a bird. Effortlessly alert, he crouches, gathering his relaxed muscles for the spring. Not thinking about when to jump, nor how he will push off with his hind legs to attain the proper distance, his mind is still and perfectly concentrated on his prey. No thought flashes into his consciousness of the possibility or consequences of missing his mark. He sees only bird. Suddenly the bird takes off; at the same instant, the cat leaps. With perfect anticipation he intercepts his dinner two feet off the ground. Perfectly, thoughtlessly executed action, and afterward, no self-congratulations, just the reward inherent in his action: the bird in his mouth. ~ W. Timothy Gallwey
Social Games are far more demanding than any other sport, art or hobby. The reason is Complexity: At any given moment a person has to choose between an Infinity of possibilities, that can send even the most avid chess player running for help. In most arts there is a set of well defined rules which we must play with, but when it comes to social games, this condition has been removed: We have to cope with the constantly changing rules of another human mind and this can saturate our brains with scenarios, feelings and thoughts. Even if that were not enough, social interactions are only happening in 'real time', leaving no place for 'Let me think of it for a while': Analysis, Decision and Reaction must happen within fractions of a second, without option for bailing out other than that of failure. However, libraries are full of books presenting ways and techniques from, how to bring the perfect man to your bed, up to how to manipulate your way up to a CEO position in-less-than-one-year. The reality is quite different though: Most people manage to improve their social ways as much as my cat learned to be nicer to my neighbor's parrot. I still remember the day, when the neighbor came terrified to my doorstep to announce me, that his parrot had had a heart attack and the reason was probably sitting calmly on my bed and staring at me with his big, kitty eyes. It may come as a surprise to you my smart reader, but there were some people that managed to improve their social skills. Few, pitifully few people managed to do it. How? What did they do differently from the rest of the pact?
Only twenty three years old, Norma Jean Mortensen was looking for an opportunity to become an actress. Despite the fact that she was quite pretty, all the roles she had managed to get were those of extras. According to the producers, she seemed to lack extra dimensions that usual female actresses posses.
One day, while she was in a restaurant, a man told her that a producer was looking for a woman to play in a film with Groucho Marx. His words were 'He wants a girl that will play the role of a blond bombshell that ... would arouse his elderly libido and cause smoke to issue from his ears'.
During the audition, Norma improvised a new form of walking that mixed innocence with lust. After only two minutes of watching Norma walking up and down the room, a dazzled Groucho announced to his partners: 'We shoot this ... tomorrow'.
Norma passed the next few years, trying to find ways to amplify the effect she had on men. She studied her voice and learned how to mix her natural sweet girly voice with a deeper, slower sexy tone. She studied the art of make-up and became more aware of the way she carried her self around. Before a shooting or a public appearance, she would spent hours in front of a mirror, just searching for new ways that she could behave, like a girl that tries out combinations of clothes.
It was then that Norma Jean Mortensen gave birth to a legend: She became Marylin Monroe.
I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public — talent in privacy.
~ Marylin Monroe
The Inner Game
Watching a football player sprinting down the field, piercing all defences and landing the ball at the goal post, excites always male spectators. After the match, buddies order some beers (gloup) and the discuss about the Ways and the Strategies our player chose to get the job done. Enthusiasm invites even more beers (gloup, gloup) and the discussion moves now onto the latest Systems and Techniques, which are nowadays used in football. After some more drinking and laughing (gloup, gloup, gloup), the friends notice that, not very far away from them, there is a group of attractive girls. From the five buddies, three fail to find the courage to do the proper move. The remaining two brave take a last, long sip, and in a genuine Roman army I-cover-you-You-cover-me tactic, they go over there and succeed to ... get themselves blown out.
(gloup, gloup)
While everyone can see the moves a player is performing in the football field, very few understand that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind a simple pass, a player is playing another game, that exists only in his mind. There he performs the proper visualisations, he avoids judgemental thoughts and he focus only in the present moment. The difficulty with this type of Game, which Timothy Gallwey coined as Inner Game, is that very few people are even aware that it exists and from those few, even fewer know how to improve it.
Social Skills are no different from football: Seduction, Lobbying, Politics, Public Relations, Sales, Coercion, Persuasion and Everyday Social Interactions, they all demand a solid Inner Game if one wants to be successful at them.
You are not alone in your head
When a warrior learns to
stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most
far-fetched schemes become attainable.
~ Carlos Castaneda
So let's take for example Seduction. The typical pattern is: George learns about a new method of getting women to his bed. He reads about Body Language, he reads about what to say, what not to say, how to deliver it and he makes sure to read as much as he can from his favorite Sex Guru to amplify his success chances. Now he has an approximating model A on how Male-Female relations work and he has created his own sub-model B for how to exploit the above model.
He understands that by trying hard, things will go well. He knows how the X technique should be executed and that if he says X, she will respond Y.
He wears his best shirt, he smiles at his mirror and he walks out of his apartment.
While walking to the next whiskey bar, his mind looks like a postgraduate thesis, full of instructions and arrows and with plenty of red corrections. He then *AHA* spots one of those 'females', and starts a conversation with the opposite sex to test his model. Despite that George is a cool guy and that the girl wants to meet somebody new, his mind is already chasing its own tail. His thoughts are jumping constantly between vocal instructions and 'If=>then' series, that would make even the most capable programmer to say "Enough with computers. I will use a Macintosh from now on".
"You must say it now. SAY IT NOW.".
"Keep your head up and stop fidgeting, man..... There you go... There you go...".
"Relax.... It is going to be alright... You see how better is relaxed?".
"Why on earth did you say THAT FOR?".
"You must hold her hand. HOLD HER HAND! .... &%$#!!! ...Not like that god damn it".
"C'mon be concentrated, try your best! If you try hard, it is going to come out as the best! Damn, are you sweating on me now ???".
"... Smile, man! Yes! Smile! Wooo-Hoo... Oh, wait... Has SHE smiled yet?".
Question no.1: If George is talking to himself, who is George and who is Himself?
George is always criticizing or congratulating Himself but it seems that Mr.Himself never answers back.
Who or what is exactly Mr.Himself ?
Mr.Himself is nothing more than George's subconscious. The subconscious is like a wise man living inside your mind. He knows everything: Every pixel in your field of view, every sound you've ever heard, every feeling you've ever felt they are all registered and stored, somewhere between your ears.
Even more, at any given moment your subconscious is controlling accurately all of your 800 muscles without a single conscious thought from your part. Any task, that you and your ancestors have been performing flawlessly for the past million years, originates from your subconscious. Few, very few thoughts actually come from your conscious mind that we'll call "George" - There was a research saying that actually politicians have even fewer but I don't remember where I put that. Cross my heart. :)
Somebody asks you a question and you answer: "Let me think". But wait! You are not thinking! You are waiting! For what? You are waiting for your subconscious to make the necessary neural connections and to bring the idea out: Make it conscious. Bring it to the public. Some of the greater inspirations arrive in moments of silence. When you pray, who else do you think is listening to you, apart from God?
The little God that lives inside each and one of us.
Now, do you really think that your subconscious needs to be instructed for every step it has to take in order to learn a new skill?
It knows exactly how to learn new skills. It doesn't need to be told, judged or screamed upon. The relationship between George and his subconscious should be the same a rider has with his horse. He must gently ask for a destination and then trust that million years of biological evolution will get him where he wants, without having to precise every single step. However, our subconscious does not understand words very easily: It speaks another language.
The New Way of Learning Social Skills
If our subconscious does not understand very well words, what should we use to explain him what we want him to perform? How do we explain him how to seduce a woman or a man, if we cannot talk to him? Mmmm ? How do we learn a certain behavior that can help us defend our selves against verbal abuse, if we cannot do it in plain English ?
Flashback: How do kids learn ?
In 1961, a researcher named Dr. Albert Bandura conducted an experiment that would revolutionise the field of Social Psychology. This experiment would be known as the Bobo doll experiment and it offered a direct proof of the hypothesis that people learn new social behaviors by watching and imitating what other people do. During that experiment a group of children were shown a short film of an adult male hitting an inflatable Bobo doll. Then each child was left alone in a room with a similar doll. The results were overwhelming: Children exposed to the film were many times more likely to become aggressive with the doll, than the children that never saw the film.
Inspired by those early experiments, researchers like Bandura, Tarde, Rotter, Kohler, Akers and Burgess formed a new theory that is now known as Social Learning Theory.
Meet Social Learning Theory - Monkey See, Monkey Do
1. People can learn by observing the behavior of others and the outcomes of those behaviors. You see a driver getting insulted in the street and you see a clever answer that disarms his opponent: You have now learned this behaviour and you are ready to reproduce it, if you ever find your self in a similar situation - without having to read through any Submission Psychology manual.
2. Learning can occur without a change in behavior. According to Social Learning theorists you do not need to try out a certain behavior in order to learn it - Simply by observing your friend who is good at picking women up, you can also learn how to do it, if the setting is similar - without having to read through any Attraction Psychology manual. This explains how 'natural seducers' are born: During their up bringing they have observed a figure that was good with the opposite sex. Usually it is some kind of friend or some family member that serves as a role model.
3. Awareness and expectations of future reinforcements or punishments can have a major effect on the behaviors that people exhibit. The realisation that seducing a man may give you pleasure or not, can influence your future behavior.
Self efficacy: People are more likely to engage in certain behaviors when they believe they are capable of executing those behaviors successfully.
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