The Gangster Wall

The "Gangster Wall" is a concept I developed this week as I've been pushing my boundaries and trying to develop the skills that I need to develop in game (and in life). It has three concepts:

Being a Gangster

I think of a "gangster" as a guy who is committed to doing whatever needs to be done, regardless of whatever others think about him, regardless of how he feels about himself, regardless of whether he fails of succeedes. If his emotions are shit because he's out of practice / in a bad state, he sucks it up and he does it anyway. If he feels like quitting while he's working out, he clinches his teeth and does it anyway. If he's in set and he can't think of what to say, he'll force himself to say something, even though HE KNOWS it's going to come off uncalibrated and unattractive, and he'll blow himself out. He will try to open sets he knows will blow him out. If he sets a goal for himself to open 20 sets a hight, and the first 15 blow him out hard, and he feels like a piece of shit and wants to go home, he'll approach even though he feels like shit. If he hates good tasting food and craves bad tasting food, he will force feed himself the good food because he knows its good, even if his body and mind are in revolt. In short, he is committed to doing what needs to be done.

Hitting the Gangster Wall

Merely committing to do what needs to be done does not free a gangster fom his mind and body "revolting" against him. When you try to go on your first run, your mind and your body will be screaming at you to stop, turn back, stop running and start walking. When you first try to get your time management down, it will be so overwhelming and require so much energy that you will think it's impossible. When you first start approaching, your mind will be screaming at you to stop, to be paralyzed; it will fill you with negative thoughts, it will encourage you to chode around at the bar and then go home early. When you start public speaking, your mind will flood you with doubts about how good you're doing it.

Even when you're skilled, your mind and body will still go into revolt, but they will go into revolt at later stages. Whereas your mind and body might go into revolt after a half mile when you start running, it might go into revolt around the 2 mile mark of a 3 mile run once you've gotten some monemtum. If your mind doesn't go in revolt when you approach the cuties, maybe it goes into revolt when you approach the stunners. If your mind doesn't go into revolt when you read a 5 minute speech word for word from a page, maybe it'll go in revolt when you're asked to give a 10 minute speech with no preparation whatsoever. 

When you're a gangster, you consistently find this wall and go up to it over and over and over. And you run into it over and over and over. And you fail over and over and over. You live to find ways to put yourself in this area. The feeling of trying to do what you set your have decided when your mind and body are in full revolt is unlike anything else. It feels like your brain is short circuiting. It feels like you are frazzled. It feels like you are in sensory overload. It literally feels like nothing about you is working, becauase you're meeting so much internal resistence.

This happened to me in set last night. As a relative newbie, I knew I was hitting the gangster wall. And yet I kept pushing through it. I was in set, there was awkward silence, I knew I had to say something, I knew that it would come out terrified and uncalibrated. I didn't want to say anything. I tried physically escalating, even though I knew the escalation would be awful and chodey and timid. Everything about what I did was timid, timid, timid. My eye contact was shit, my tonality was shit, my body language was shit. But still, I forced myself to say things, I forced myself to remember what I had been taught (as best I could). I even did the awkward hand on arm for no apparent reason, and asked for opinions on something. I got blown out every single time. The girls looked geniunely confused. I tried to lead, and I didn't get much compliance (I got some).

But this wasn't about me doing well. This was about me being committed to doing the job I set out to do regardless of how shitty I felt and how hard I failed. I was a gangster: I was committed to doing things no matter how bad they felt internally. But I hit the gangster wall: I spent the last two hours of the night with my mind and body in utter revolt, and I forced myself into a few sets that went poorly, trying to do the fundamentals.

Beyond the Gangster Wall

I have enough faith based on the stories I've heard from others and from my own experiences that the gangster wall moves. The point where your mind and body goes into revolt moves a little bit each time. When I go for a run, my body and mind used to go into revolt around the 0.2 miles mark. Now it's closer to the 1 mile mark. I've read so many journals from others who went from being terrible at opening to pulling weekly. I'm confident that if I keep hitting the gangster wall, it will move each time. A month from now, when I approach, I might be able to vibe consistently well, but the gangster wall will come at physical escalation. Or it might be at mixed sets or physical escalation or pulling. A year from now, the gangster wall might be at hotter girls, or at louder clubs, or daygame.

The point is, I am positive of 2 things: (1) The gangster wall will always be there. (2) As long as I commit to being a gangster, the gangster wall will move further out. Right now, it doesn't matter that I'm failing with chicks. It matters that failing while doing my best to incorporate through what I've learned, and that I'm trying to fight through my mind and body being in revolt.

And that's fine. Look, at the end of the day I don't care what other people think about me. I don't care how good I am in comparison to others. I don't care whether I'm slamming more hoes than MW. I know that being a gangster is what I'm supposed to do, and that the world will come around. If any fuckers don't like me being a gangster, if any of them make fun of me for being a gangster, that's their problem, not mine. My job is to find that place where my mind and body are in revolt and to do my best to execute the program anyway,

Happy fucking, you fucking fuckers!
mwaha