By Ian Andrew Smith

A problem I see among many people who have embarked on personal development journey - in whichever are of their life they choose improve - is that in becoming fully conscious of the aspects within that area (PUA for example). The trend is that most will tend to over-complicate the whole situation.

This idea applies to many different forms of personal development, but I will further explain it in terms of becoming successful with women.

In other words, by dedicating so much attention and energy to learning how to be successful with women, we cloud the issue with over-rationalization and too much thought. The side effects of this include nervousness/anxiety, going down the wrong path (usually as result of second guessing yourself), loss of intuition, dedicating too much thought to something that isn’t complicated, wasting your time, and so on.

Contrary to what most guru’s in the community would have you believe, there is no right way - there is a general wrong way - but in reality there is no right way to do things. Only a ball-park figure of what works, but for the most part this is a rather ambiguous thing outlined only lightly by a medley of tested social theories, attitude, situational factors, and accepted/unique patterns of behavior - among other things. With this in mind, you should feel liberated to take that playbook you’ve been clutching onto and studying endless and chuck it the fuck out the window.

I can say this, because I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum, extensively. Before discovering the PUA community, I had tremendous success with women from a very early age. Once I discovered the community I re-learned everything in depth, and became completely conscious of what I was doing. I stayed away from routines and methods, but I understood the theory behind it all and applied it to my life. Soon, I noticed that I was beginning to drive myself berserk with the endless amount of thought I was putting into everything. Instead of picking up the phone and calling when _I_ felt like it, I was waiting 3 days like a jerk-off because some other jerk-off declared some kind of golden rule. Instead of telling a woman how absolutely beautiful I thought she was, I was busy conjuring up new ways to ‘neg’ her. And instead of learning to be real with people, I was learning how to manipulate them.

About 6 months ago, right around the time I launched my own personal development website, I came to the conclusion that while knowing this information certainly helped me, the way I was applying the knowledge was in fact detrimental to my persona. So I stepped back, keeping the rough outlines of what works in social situations, and began doing what I had done all along. And that was to be myself.

But now I knew one essential thing. People are people; there is no reason for all these rules and procedures for social interaction. No-one is going to hurt you, and if they do, that’s only because you let them. Now, I have more success than ever with both men and women. I bought a girl I have been seeing for less than a week a nice arrangement of Oriental Lilies the other day. Is it because I’m a sucker? No. It’s because I felt like it, and she’s a delight to be around. Why the hell not? Did that make her think I was a chump? Of course it didn’t. She jumped and smiled with joy and told me I just made her week, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

It’s all about how you handle things. Keep it simple guys. With the right attitude, perspective, and ideas you can do anything you want. Don’t concern yourself with all these guidelines, methods, routines and what have you. Find that ball-park figure, and once you do, embrace it. Then let it all go out the window. I’ve got dozens of stories of outrageous ways I’ve brought women into my life, and I can assure that not one of them starts with “Hey Ladies, can I get your opinion on something” (not that this won’t work, because we all know it does)

Have faith in yourself and just do it. If you’re nervous about this beautiful woman you see, GOOD! That means she’s worth your time. So feel the fear and do it anyway. Life is all about ‘just doing it’. So relax, throw your hands up, and enjoy the ride. And let the sillies do the over-rationalization while they try to figure out why the women were more receptive to the guy who speaks his mind instead of them, the guys who rehearsed out a conversation ahead of time and are baffled at why it didn’t go as planned.

Again, this lesson applies to all walks of life.

Namaste.

**Note** I’m not implying we shouldn’t rationalize and analyze situations, there’s a difference between healthy thinking and excessive thinking. One promotes growth, one stunts it.

Words: Ian Smith

Photography: Calvin Wallace. You can check more of his art in his page.