Are you comfortable taking the lead?

Another day, another bar. Me and Scampi man are going out to a few bars in SF, and try to practice approach. I can't speak for Scampi, but I still haven't tackled AA without having some drinks before, during and after. 

I've been listening to a lot of the episodes of the Pickup Podcast. There's some awesome content there, but I don't know if it helps me much in my game. One of the concepts I am playing with as I go through this journey is the concept of being a leader of men. Now, Mystery Method (not to confuse with LoveSystems) used to have a bunch of bullet points that summarized the qualities that women would find attractive in a man, and being a leader was one of them. Are you confortable taking the lead in your social circle? are you ever the one setting up the party, or suggesting and initiating that you and your friends go to this task or another? Do they listen to you? I think this is a very good indicator of how strong your core inner game is. Do you think there is a correlation between how you lead your social circle and how you can lead the women you are interested in? can leadership  of women exist without leadership of people? 

Am I a leader of men? I remember when I was 12-14. Me and my brother would hang out with some other kids in the neighborhood. We were all going somewhere, and I suggested we go through this place; my brother suggested we go to that place. He didn't mean to amog me, but people decided his way was the better way. I can't say for sure how this may or may not have impacted my life, but I remember this event, 25 years later. I'm looking at that event in hindsight, so I might be projecting my emotions to that time, but I felt like, 'wow, I'm worth shit!'. 

How do you practice at becoming a leader of men? As a testament of my geekness, I refer to Star Trek. In one particular episode, Capt. Picard and doctor Crusher find themselves stranded on a planet, with some sort of magnetic cuffs that prevent them from being physically apart from each other for more than a few feet. One of the consequences is that they start being able to read each other's minds. At one point, Capt. Picard suggests to Dr. Crusher: "we should go this way!", to which the doctor goes, "you have no idea where we're going, do you? that way is just as random as any other way". Picard responds something along the lines that, "in times of stress, people look for guidance, and as a leader, it is my job to provide it, even when I might not know any better than them.".  So, as a general rule, try to be more assertive in your speech. Direct, instead of ask. Don't go "what do you guys think if we do this"; but rather, go "hey, let's do this". Now, this does not mean that you can be a dictator, after all, there is no leaders if you have no followers, and you could argue that the role of the leader is to give exactly what the followers want. Ever since I committed myself to this journey, I've felt more confident. And it's funny how confidence builds into itself. Prior to two months ago, I was not in the habit of initiating things for people to come, because frankly, I was afraid I didn't have enough 'pull' either because I wasn't interesting enough or cool enough for people to want to hang out with me. That's not to say that I'm super cool and people flock to me all the time, on the contrary, I still have next to zero pull as far as girls initiating chatting online with me, for instance (and these are 'friends' we're talking about...). One of my hobbies is running/hiking, and I've throw it out there if people were interested in going hiking to Half Dome, in Yosemite. So far I have a list of about 18 people that expressed interest in doing this. 

Now, if you have never organized or initiated something, you should know that one of the most important things about a social event is who is doing the asking, and who is attending it. In the case of this hike, it's a pretty tough adventure (about 16 miles, 13 hr hike) so most people are probably glad that someone's taking charge and is interested in doing it. At another level tho, everyone either told me straight up they were interested or not (due to lack of being in shape or conflict in schedules). None of them went, "oh, who's going?" I take that with some warmth in my heart that I wasn't being checked by them to see if there were 'cool people' coming or not. Then again, that might be more of a testament to the friends I asked (they're social types perhaps?) than myself. But that is a testament to my own choice of friends just as well.