Minimal Game: Review Roundup

Minimal Game has been out for about three months now, and it was met with an enthusiastic response. I gather reviews and comments on a special section on my website. Because I am proud of the feedback, and want all of you who haven't bought it to get the book too, I'll post some highlights.

If you've already bought Minimal Game, then let me thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate it.

It's to the point, and tells you the truth that gurus have been hiding in order to keep their students in the dark. In other words, it is the most honest book that I've read about picking-up women.
—Assanova

I read your book twice through. Of all the pickup books I've read, Minimal Game is the best. Honestly I don't think there was anything I disagreed with. The book stresses a couple fundamentals that almost all other pickup books miss or barely mention.
—Jameso

Minimal Game gives you an entirely new outlook on dating. While you might have found it boring and repetitive before (maybe with Mystery Method - heck, Mystery himself said that he finds the "opening" phase boring), it will then become exciting and liberating.
—Bumblebee

As most everybody in the scene knows, Aaron Sleazy is the real deal. He's also one of the few people who have invested the tremendous amount of time and energy it takes to master game at an extremely high level. If you don't have the time or the desire to exert the same humongous effort, this book is the perfect guide to the art of seduction: A "Pareto's Principle of Pickup", or how to get 80% of the results with 20% of the work.
—Karea


Read it, follow the advice, and get on with your life! It's a fabulous book, it's completely honest, and it will help you. It sure helped me.
—Tweetie

The only alpha way to interact with women — straightforward and direct, none of this pussy-whipped timid indirect bullshit, which just encourages you to fear women!
—K

Rather than beat around the bush, he went straight for what works. The book is the right size to learn quickly from and then go practice. Many good learnings. Enjoyed reading it! —Krav

It will absolutely help me one hell of a lot in my sexlife. There's little doubt it will do just as well for you, whatever holds you back from achieving your full potential now. Price is 10€, it's worth at least 200. One read-through takes at most two hours of your time. It will save you hundreds. Minimal Game is A+++ recommended.
—Paalcopronst

One word book-review: AMAZING! It's like a good short story — there isn't anything unimportant that distracts you from the original storyline.
—600mg

I liked the book. It gave me some sense of normality, which I think a lot of people need, when doing something unusual. Written in calm and honest way that manual makes you believe it's absolutely normal to invite girls home on first date and have sex with them, and makes you believe everybody does the same. You just didn't know that. That it's normal. That women want sex a lot, and that's why in a lot of cases you don't even need to use game so much. That some girls are desperate and lonely. And if they aren't into it, probably they are not that interested in sexing you.
—Maniakka

I received the book today and I read it tonight. Minimal and no-nonsense are indeed the perfect words to describe it. Minimal Game is a bit like the first Mode One book but even more succinct. This is down and dirty, practical advice, no ramblings about high value or the difference between direct or indirect or multi-threading if you run out of things to say.
—Alastor

This lean book of a little over 100 pages is quite simply awesome. It provides a straighforward structure for attracting woman that is entirely realistic. Aaron Sleazy does claim anything ridiculous such as "any man can pull any woman" in fact he states quite blatantly that no man, not even Brad Pitt can pull any woman. In short, he does not try to sell you any bs, rather he provides the elements to form a strong foundation for attracting "the fairer sex."
—TLN

The relief and empowerment that you feel after reading Minmal Game will be more than a thousand times worth the very low 'minimal' price of the book because you'll avoid having to spend thousands of dollars on products and trainings that will be much less efficient at telling you what Aaron does in 80 some pages.
—Billy

This book aims to set your attitudes and basic convictions on dating straight, and I'll say that it succeeds in doing so. My sex life is getting better pretty fast and it's probably due to this book.
—Tormandy


Sleazy's writing style is simple, and he addresses the process from basics to simple steps of initiating interaction to progressing to relationships in this small but precise guide in a clearly understandable style stripped of all Disney elements. This book should be of immense help to guys who appreaciate the normal common sense approach to seducing women than blindly following dogmas that has a poor success rate. A big thanks to Sleazy for writing Minimal Game. Your writings in masf and elsewhere, your books and of course Minimal Game has been quite influential in my love life.
—illuzsion

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Review: Models by Mark Manson

I am not quite sure why Mark Manson decided to call this book Models as it is neither about that category of woman nor about presenting role models. The subtitle  A Comprehensive Guide to Attracting Women is much more fitting though, and Models succeeds in what it sets out to do. It is an okay guidebook that offers some interesting insights to the average reader.

In the introduction, Mark states his general goal as outlining a “new masculinity,” which he understands to be “the direction to a new way of being attractive, masculine, dominant and in control of your relationships with women and your life in general.” That he couldn’t just write “masculine,” while the reader automatically thinks of the other adjectives as well is probably less a sign of the verbosity of the author than of his perception that people don’t really know what masculinity means anymore.

Obviously, I am not going to agree with every single bit in a book that outlines its subject in a whopping 370 pages, and I am talking about densely formatted ones, not the “20 page special reports” of our beloved “gurus” that contain 30 words per page at most. There is a lot of content in this book. However, how much you get out of it depends a lot on your level of experience. Mark had the great idea of adding a step-by-step guide for taking practical action as well, but it’s unfortunately hidden in the table of contents under the headline “Conclusion: Moving On.” If you are a first-time reader of Models, I thus urge you to start with this chapter first and do the reading as you gain more experience with women or work on improving your life.

I was most pleased that Models is indeed a book about picking up women in real life. It does come with quite a bit of theorizing that may or may not be true (I’ll discuss one instance in a moment), but it’s always with a view on actual interactions. I wish other authors would similarly have their focus firmly on reality instead of dreaming up bullshit. Mark gets some more brownie points by almost completely ignoring online dating. He probably shares my view that the downside compared to other options are just too negative, in addition to the sad fact that too many women on those sites look like the “before” pictures on Weight Watchers.

Models is a bit verbose at some points, but it is up to you to view this as a lack of structure or of a representation of a more colloquial style. One big benefit I see is that thanks to a plethora of examples and sometimes interesting, but other times somewhat distracting side notes, it is not a dry book and for most parts quite fun to go through it.

My biggest gripe is actually to be found in the first section of the first chapter, as Models opens with Freud’s infamous quote that even after thirty years of counseling he still doesn’t know what women want. I love to pick this quote apart whenever someone utters it in my presence, and my arrogant standard response is that Freud obviously spent too much time listening to women and too little fucking them. Given Mark’s wide-ranging introduction, I was thus a little surprised to see him write that ”there’s still no clear-cut definition or model of what drives female attraction yet”, and that “male attraction is pretty straight-forward.” But just as most guys like skinny chicks with perky boobs and firm asses, so do women want tall, muscular, handsome men. They also love money, and if you’ve got plenty, it wouldn’t even matter if you looked like Quasimodo. This is one of a few instances that show Mark being a tad too “grounded” in traditional pickup mythology, despite offering plenty of realistic advice otherwise.

Frankly, I am quite sick of reading about the alleged simple-mindedness of us men, even more so if male authors hint at it. Feminists love to state how plain our emotional lives are, but, frankly, the average man is a much more complex creature than the average woman, just by looking at the things we are interested in. The curiosity of women usually doesn’t extend beyond mere gossip, while the gossip men are interested in is called science or politics, and that’s a big difference. Or consider areas like comedy and fiction. I literally don’t know a single female comedian that made me laugh, and the most acclaimed female writers can’t hold a candle to their male counterparts either. If women have such complex inner lives, and are gifted with a special sense of perception, they sure have a hard time expressing it. Really, the last thing we need is other men adopting the feminist view of the alleged superiority of the female species.

Mark claims that women are very adept at decoding the most minute status signals, but if this is the case, then why does height override literally any other criteria? What women want is really obvious. As I said before, they are attracted to good-looking guys, and it would be awesome if they had money, too. A hot guy is attractive to a wide range of women, the same a hot girl is appealing to many men. Mark’s counterexample is that he was once in a club and one bitch called him a creep. Yet, one hour later he found one that was into him, which makes him conclude that female attraction is whimsical. After all, those were allegedly similar girls, but they gave him opposite responses.  But what about the possibility that either the girls weren’t that similar (if you honestly think that there are ever two people that “look exactly the same”, then please go shoot yourself), or the other just didn’t feel like hooking up. Men sometimes feel like that, too, you know.

After this relatively rough start, though, I began to thoroughly enjoy the book and can state without reservation that there is a lot of good information in it. In fact, it’s often too much to digest, and if you followed every little bit of advice he gives, it would probably take you years to implement. For this reason, I would have liked summaries after chapters or possibly margin notes.

Some passages could have been presented in a more concise manner, however. For instance, it shouldn’t take fifteen pages to explain the difference between women who react disinterested, neutral or interested. Then again, if you live in some wonderful pickup la-la land and run the “Who lies more?” routine on every woman that is unfortunate enough to be spotted by you, you might need an author that keeps hammering a point over and over. Chances are that if you aren’t getting anywhere with girls, you just can’t read the writings on the wall. If this is you, then Models is definitely a great book for you.

In some areas Models really shines. I was most impressed with Mark’s description of humor and the basic examples he gives. Obviously, his outline will not quite suffice to get you a gig on Saturday Night Live, but it will certainly help you out if you have difficulties spicing up your conversations. The material really is powerful. I wouldn’t be surprised if after digesting that section, you could already give Tucker Max a run for his money. Of course, we are talking about typical US-American in-your-face humor, but you will find that in general people are infinitely more susceptible to that kind than, say, dry British humor. This is probably true even in Great Britain.

There is also a great amount of “inner game” spread in the book as well. One insight that should help a lot of men who have a hard time coping with their lack of success with women is that, “rejection exists for a reason — it’s a means to keep people who are not good for each other apart.” This is a somewhat tautological explanation, but it’s better to just accept it than to look for explanations, which is one of the biggest issue of the mainstream pickup industry, namely that with the right technique you could get any girl. Consequently, for them there is always a reason if you didn’t get a particular girl, and it’s something that can be fixed if you just by some other inane product. Thus, I am glad that Mark does not only offer good pickup advice, but also, sometimes subtly, but at other times in a rather confrontational manner, attacks the mainstream seduction industry for their often implausible teachings.

Another strong point is the psychological perspective on the dating and mating process. You probably didn’t see this coming, in light of my opening remark on Freud, did you? There are many discussions of common thought processes, the most striking one being about a guy who talks himself out of approaching a girl he finds attractive but considers “trashy,” even though he knows nothing about her yet. To some extent, we are all guilty of prejudices. Yet, especially men who lack success with women tend to project a negative image on women. Of course, if you think they are all “sluts” for wanting to have sex, and your ideal partner is Virgin Mary, then you shouldn’t be surprised of your lack of experience. If you feel that you are your worst enemy in this regard, you may find some solutions.

While I agree with most of the content, some parts of the process of getting better with women are somewhat glamorized. I cringed when I read, “Show me a guy, any guy, who is good with women, and I’ll show you a guy who has been shut down and rejected by more women than you can possibly fathom.” Well, I can show you some guys who are extremely good with women, and always were, and they have in common that they are good-looking, tall, and work out. The idea that "game" is a skill that you gradually improve is highly questionable to begin with as your level of success depends on obvious factors. Yes, I know that Tom Cruise is short, but I also know that he is world-famous, good-looking and has a net worth of a few hundred million dollars. So, what was your argument again, Neil Strauss?

Overall, Models does provide you with the necessary information about picking up girls. Yet, I do think that Mark overshoots his goal significantly and makes the process sound more complicated than it is. But don’t get me wrong here: he gives you an overload of relevant information, but some of it is just barely relevant. If you work with this book, it would be like using a TI-89 calculator for basic arithmetic. Yes, it gets the job done, but you could do the same faster with the in-built calculator of a ten year old cell phone. On the other hand, many other pickup books only confuse you with for the most part completely irrelevant advice. Extending the previous example, they hand you a brush and a palette of aquarelle colors instead of a calculator, so bad are they at doing their job. Gladly, Models does not belong to that category, and being over-equipped is certainly preferable to having a completely useless set of tools. However, it's hardly a situation you would want yourself to be in either. Therefore, I can't really recommend Models as the downsides are impossible to overlook. I'll give it a 6/10, and you probably know how you'd react towards a "6" in a club or a bar. Exactly, you'd just move on.

Models is available on Amazon.com as a paperback or an ebook for Kindle.

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Review: Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide to Life by Frost

Maybe you are familiar with Frost. He blogs on Freedom Twenty-Five about his attempt to find meaning in a world without. Having given up his well-paid government job, he nowadays resides in some Third World paradise. Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide to Life is his first book, and the title is more than fitting. It was released today and is available on Amazon as a paperback and in an electronic version for their Kindle ebook reader.

Frost challenges us to cut the bullshit from our lives, escape our mundane existence, and find ourselves. He himself hasn’t found all answers to the questions that were pressing him either, but he is able to share a tremendous amount of insight in this short book. The review is long and detailed, but if you trust my judgment without reading it, or you simply belong to the “tl; dr generation”, I’ll tell you straight away that I highly recommend this book. It may well be the best investment you have made all year long.

Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a framework, Freedom Twenty-Five is a tour de force taking on your whole existence. It is split into five chapters, which are inspired by Maslow’s categories. As a framework, Maslow may be helpful, but if I was to criticize this excellent book for just one thing, it is that there are a few broad generalizations in the beginning, such as “Success with women is also a necessary precondition for success in the next levels.” In this part, Frost tries too hard to male his philosophy of life fit a common model in psychology.

An obvious counter-example is what Freud called “sublimation”, i.e. using your sexual drive to succeed in any other field of endeavor. I am not sure this is a correct interpretation either. However, the fact remains that many outstanding men have seemingly completely neglected their sexuality, almost as if it was beneath them to engage in such activity, and devoted all their life to extending the frontiers of science. That John von Neumann or Richard Feynman had a reputation of being womanizers does not refute this argument either.

However, this shouldn’t detract from the immense benefit you will reap from this book. In fact, I have read it in two sittings, which was easy to do since the book is concise, and it’s also written in a very lively language. Some parts are exceedingly funny and made me laugh out loudly, while others are much more introspective. For a non-fiction book, the range of emotion Frost manages to hit is impressive.

I was more than pleased to note that Frost is an adherent of the same no-nonsense philosophy I follow. In fact, going through the biographical sketch he provides, I could already see that we would agree on not just a few points. I did learn a few things as well, though. The first was his recommendation of Paleolithic Nutrition, which addresses the problem of unbalanced energy levels which are, ironically, the result of a balanced diet according to general wisdom. My nutrition was certainly not bad, but by cutting carbs and substituting it with meat, I quickly began to feel more active and alive throughout the day.

That’s not all there is to the Paleo Diet. In fact, if you are the average American, then you may have to completely change your nutrition. This diet has many more benefits, such as taking less time to prepare and removing the need to have three to five meals a day.

The remainder of the book is full of such no-nonsense advice. For instance, he recommends a work-out plan that consists of two sessions at the gym a week, for half an hour each, and tells you how to really maximize what you get out of it. Of course, this won’t make you look like Schwarzenegger in his prime, but it will easily put you above Joe Average and the few of his buddies who spend hours on training muscles most medical students wouldn’t be able to identify.

Reading advice on how to minimize the effect of alcohol on your body struck me as somewhat contradictory, but that’s just from my perspective. Frost’s philosophy is to enjoy life, and if getting wasted every now and again is part of it, then so be it. If you are on a tight budget, you will surely appreciate his tips on how to get a bigger buzz for the buck.

The chapter on money should be illuminating for many, especially given how common it is to grossly overspend. Frost discusses typical spending habits, and by doing so he hopefully raises your awareness that your possessions lock you in. For instance, a mortgage on a house usually ties you to a certain geographical region. He gives an excellent overview on money management, and thus I can only hope that this book finds many readers among high-school students who should think twice before saddling themselves with an amount of debt that they may find impossible to ever repay. As Frost correctly analyzes, not even the safe jobs are safe anymore, and the decision to go to college shouldn’t be made reflexively.

Especially in the “Money” chapter the author’s pessimism for Western civilization, which he describes to be in its autumn period, is most visible. However, I do agree with him. Where he might sound a tad too euphoric, though, is in his recommendation of entrepreneurship. If real wages are stagnating or declining, and more and more people lose their job, then you will only compete for an ever shrinking pie. This is the only instance where he seems to buy into purported myths, even though he does a great job imploding them everywhere else in this book.

“You will sink or swim based on how smart you are, how hard you work, and how well you execute,” just doesn’t tell the whole story. Of course, the typical biography of a successful business man is most often a hagiography that makes no mention of factors such as luck or simply connections due to having dropped out of the right womb. Those books read as if their heroes could single-handedly defeat armies, climb the Mount Everest barefoot, and learn a foreign language by osmosis simply by sitting next to a Chinese or Arabian on the plane.

Obviously, it’s not that simple. If you believe business “gurus” who proclaim that guys like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Donald Trump would have become billionaires no matter under which circumstances, then please talk to me. You may be interested in some of the property on the moon I could sell you for a great price. Really. However, I respect Frost for stating that you shouldn’t blindly take his advice as he’s not yet a successful entrepreneur himself.

The chapter on “Sex” is a very good introduction to seduction. I was pleased to see that he shares my criticism towards the seduction industry and, just like me, follows a simple and straightforward method. Since Freedom Twenty-Five is a book on life it goes far beyond pick-up. Frost’s analysis of the fundamental problems of the hook-up culture deserve to be fleshed out in a different book. I certainly would like to read more of him as it is obvious that he has had quite a bit of experience, and has learnt about the implications of easy sex as well.

His ties to the “manosphere” become evident in this chapter as well, with a scathing and brilliant analysis of how feminism makes women bad marriage material:

The harsh reality, which  21st  century women seem to be largely unaware of, is that men are generally uninterested in committing to aging women with triple-digit sexual partner counts. (…) Men with options simply don’t like sluts, unless we’re trying to sleep with one and so are trying to make her feel unjudged, in which case we’ll say whatever needs to be said.

Truer words were seldom spoken.

Note that this is not a contradiction because it is a big difference, after all, whether you just want to get your rocks off, or whether you are looking for the woman of your children. Jenny with the big fake tits and an an obsession with experimentation that would have made Isaac Newton envious may have been the ride of your life. But while it’s easy to forget the fact that you probable weren’t the second guy she’s ever slept with, you do hopefully have higher standards when it comes to the potential mother of your children.

Arguably the most important chapter is on “Wisdom.” In a powerful opening paragraph, Frost diagnoses the “millennial generation” to have sever attention deficits, and that the need to always be “connected,” and seek entertainment around the clock ruins our lives. You may not be such a bad case, but even then, you will find many great tips on making you aware of how you actually spend your time, and how to become productive.

The culmination of the book is the chapter on “Purpose”. It’s written in a motivational tone that would have made Obama’s speechwriters proud. They wouldn’t approve of the content though, as Frost diagnoses symptoms of a broken era and calls out to change the world for the better. He doesn’t provide many ideas, but he does give you plenty of motivation. Thus, there is hope that Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide to Life will make one or the other guy forego spending his evenings playing ego-shooters on his Xbox 360, and look for a higher purpose instead. Frankly, I hope this book will give more than a few slackers the kick in the butt they need to finally do something worthwhile with their life.




Freedom Twenty-Five: A 21st Century Man’s Guide to Life is available on Amazon as a paperback and in an electronic version for their Kindle ebook reader. Also, check out Frost's blog at Freedom Twenty-Five.

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Review: "How to Make Girls Chase" by Chase Amante

I have known Chase Amante for many years now. Our paths first crossed on mASF where he called himself Regal. He did not post much, but whenever he shared his knowledge, it was unusually insightful and very thorough as well. Thus, I was excited when I received his first book How to Make Girls Chase.

How to Make Girls Chase belongs to a new breed of books on pick-up that strive to give guys a realistic perspective on seduction, unlike Neil Strauss’s The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists or Mystery’s The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed, which both present a contrived model of seduction that is far from easily applicable, and oftentimes quite useless. Of course, the standard defense to this accusation is that Mystery’s “game” was developed to pull girls in the nightclubs of Hollywood. But if this is the case, then his teachings are of questionable merit for anyone who does not life in Los Angeles or wants to go after this particular kind of girl.

On the other hand, Chase Amante has the average guy in mind, no matter where he lives, what he does, or what kind of women he wants. He even goes to great lengths to also addresses the needs of people who seemingly start out below zero. This is not a mocking remark, though. How to Make Girls Chase is a very thorough book, and in its 420 pages it covers issues so detailed and intricate that no other seduction coach has written on them yet. For an experienced seducer, it is easy to take some things as granted, but for men without success, it’s often hard to realize that some of their habits literally drive women away.

Having a wealth of relevant information at your fingertips is great, but the downside is that guys can easily fall into the trap of believing that they have to learn or know everything in this book before they can go out and succeed with women. This is obviously not the case. If you want to get the most out of this book, I therefore recommend that you skim it first to get an overview. If something strikes you as too detailed, then it probably is because it’s an area you don’t have much need to improve on. On the other hand, you will most certainly find that you are lacking in some other areas, and in this case, make at least a note and get back to this section later.

Since every guy who writes on seduction draws from his own experiences (at least the legit ones do, the others just make things up) we pay attention to different aspect. As such, I don’t fully agree with some details — the general direction is definitely alright. To illustrate this, I will cite from the book:

If a woman feels a man is too easy, she will think little of him and his value (if he’s so valuable, why is he so easy to get?). Women will tend to dismiss him, although because they perceive him as too easy for them to get (and thus, lower in value than themselves), they will typically dismiss him in a thoughtful way that seeks to take care of his emotions.

This may be a valid interpretation. In the framework Chase Amante operates in, it is certainly a sensible piece of information, and heeding this advice will make it hard for you to ruin your chances with a woman that is interested in you. However, it is important to keep in mind that this can also be a matter of personal style, and not the only possible approach. Chase’s book shows you a lot of ways to meet women, and unlike the books I have mentioned in the beginning in the review, he does not come across as dogmatic.

But as it is often the case, there are corner cases where generally plausible rules don’t always apply. You certainly won’t shoot yourself in the foot if you stick to the advice of the quote. However, if you live in a metropolis with a vibrant nightlife and no shortage of women, you can play play the game hard and fast. You just don’t have to worry much about losing one girl if the next one you like is just two feet away. I know this is a luxury not everybody has, but in those situations you can comfortable indicate to the woman that you are “easy.” You can communicate that this is her one chance to get with you. She can take it or leave it, and she has to know that you’ll just pick some other girl if she doesn’t want to leave with you. Of course, this is a much more advanced approach to seduction and one not many guys would even dare to pull off. Yet, in the right context you can never be too easy if you want to get laid quickly.

However, given that Chase addresses the beginner to intermediate guy, I really can’t hold it against him that he omits special scenarios. Doing so would arguably just be confusing to the target audience of his book anyway, because you have to have a significant amount of experience in the first place. In general, How to Make Girls Chase does a great job to describe seduction to the layman and will give you a solid foundation. It is an excellent guide, and, even better, it is a very useful companion to go back and read up on various aspects of seduction. Even for an experienced guy it is a joy to go through the book. I felt as if I was comparing notes with Chase, and found out that we agree on a lot of of topics, and on others, we have a slightly different interpretation.

You may not agree with every fine detail if you are an experienced seducer, but this book will at the very least make you aware of some minor aspects of seduction you have not paid much attention to before. Thus, it may help you to refine some parts of your “game”. On the other hand, if you don’t belong to that small group of people, you should go ahead and get How to Make Girls Chase because it will not only give you an excellent foundation. It also has so much content that you will grow with it. As you work through the material, you will learn to reflect on it and put your own experiences into context. Eventually, you will mature as both a seducer — and a man.

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Review: The End of Social Anxiety by Edward Cottrill (Illuminatus)

I am not the biggest fan of classical self-help books, and I only have to refer to a well-known title such as Tony Robbins’s Awaken the Giant Within to demonstrate why. First of all, a lot of those books are tomes. You could probably substitute your dumbbells with them. But filling hundreds of pages is not so easy, which is why you will find page after page full of jargon, hackneyed phrases with a kernel of truth and lengthy attempts to sell you seminars, often with greatly exaggerated claims. Reading those books almost makes you think that used car salesmen are pleasant to be around in comparison.

On the other hand, The End of Social Anxiety is presented in a down-to-earth tone. If you are looking for another story along the lines of “I used to sleep in my car --- and now I live in a castle”, you will therefore be disappointed. However, if your motivation is to get help for some very specific problems, all related to social anxiety to varying degrees, then please read on.

I have known Edward as “Corvette” for many years now. He used to be one of the most prominent contributors to the seduction forum mASF, but he eventually left to set up his own Internet presence at Personal Power Meditation and now calls himself “Illuminatus”. He had a similar motivation to me, namely to look for a venue in which he could express his views and experiences without being attacked by narrow-minded people who felt threatened by someone who undermined their view of the world. One of his projects was to use meditation as a tool for overcoming certain psychological problems. It has worked for him, and now he is sharing his success story.

But if you read “success story” and want to roll your eyes in reflex, you should take it easy, because The End of Social Anxiety focuses on tried-and-true methods for overcoming social anxiety. It won’t promise you the world, and Edward doesn’t claim that he will magically transform you into a superhuman being either. I found it particularly refreshing that there was not even a trace of sensationalist language in the book. Instead, he writes very clearly, and if you have read other books in the self-help area, you may wonder why he doesn’t “motivate” you more strongly. Hopefully, though, you will quickly realize that this is by design, and that it will be good for you as it will keep you from forming unrealistic expectations, therefore potentially making you more content as well:

The point here is that life goes on, and what bored you before will probably still bore you, and what made you happy before will still make you happy, but the difference is that you aren’t getting any unnecessary suffering from being out in public, or having thoughts all the time about your social anxiety and how to deal with it. It’s a huge weight off your shoulders. The message here is, if you do make images of your future life without social anxiety, make them as realistic as possible. Simply not feeling fear is a great place to start.

In order to help you get rid of social anxiety, Edward tells his story to help you relate to typical problems you may face. It also helps you to put some of the exercises into context. So, even if you are not an especially anxious person, the book also deals with aspects you may very well be familiar with although you may view yourself as a confident person. Or wouldn’t you want to have fewer distracting thoughts in addition to feeling a bit happier? I thought so.

Two parts stuck out to me. In one, Edward analyses “overlays”, which could also be called flash images. The example he uses is rather drastic, but you are surely familiar with having sudden thoughts that deal with how you should have acted in a certain situation, or what you want to do some time in the future. A simple example is you caving in to some inane wish of your partner. You really don’t want to, but you do it just because you want her to stop throwing a childish tantrum. But later on, you think back and paint a picture in your mind about how you should have resisted that urge to give in. This is an example of an “overlay”, and I am sure that most of you have overlays popping into your mind on a pretty regular basis.

Of course, overlays can be very distracting and emotionally consuming. Edward then describes a method to overcome them that shares some similarities with my experiences from meditation. In fact, I managed to get rid of overlays, which I more broadly refer to as “distracting thoughts”, through years of meditation, and the mental process I have used is close to the one described in this book.

Another high point was the description of how to get rid of negative feelings by simply focusing on them and allowing yourself to experience them without resistance. As a practical application, Edward even tells you how to use this skill to get rid of pain much quicker. Again, this is something I am very familiar with as well. As is described in the book, by making use of the example of a cold shower, it is often the case that the mere thoughts surrounding an action determine your reaction to it, and if you learn to control your thoughts, you will realize that what you perceive as a negative experience, which you naturally seek to avoid, may not be so bad after all. Of course, you don’t have to go as far as Edward and take a cold shower every day to hammer home this point. It is not mentioned in the book in particular, but the problem of procrastination is deeply related as well, where the focus is too much on avoiding potentially negative emotions. This applies to the student who has to work on a term paper the same way as it applies to the office worker who has wanted to ask his boss for a salary rise for half a year now.

Those were just two examples, but they have hopefully whet your appetite. The book also has a very good culmination in a chapter on happiness, which analyses a key problem of Western civilization, namely the motive of delayed gratification. This keeps you in a loop of constant discontent, always wanting the next shiny thing, which will make you happy for a while, but then you have go out again to shop for a new pair of shoes, a dress, or a smart phone. As a consequence, this might affect your whole life as it could make you hold on to a job you don’t enjoy much, just because it is well paid. But all is good in the end, because after toiling away for decades, you will finally be able to enjoy retirement. Of course, you can already see what is wrong with this kind of reasoning, and what the path to happiness might consist of instead.

Overall, I have greatly enjoyed The End of Social Anxiety. If you feel uncomfortable in social situations and want to change this, I would definitely recommend this book. Admittedly, social anxiety is none of my personal concerns, at least not any more. However, I did recognize some of the issues I had in Edward’s descriptions, and the method I used to overcome them was similar to the techniques he recommends. The effects were the same, though. Thus, I can attest to their effectiveness.

The End of Social Anxiety is available as a PDF. It is also available for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader.

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Upcoming: Review of Illuminatus's "The End of Social Anxiety"

I just finished reading Illuminatus's "The End of Social Anxiety". I'll re-read some parts of it tomorrow, and will write a review shortly afterwards. The book has made a very good impression on me, and even if you don't suffer from social anxiety, you will benefit from reading it. But this short statement has to suffice for now. Look forward to the review!

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Assanova Reviews The Sleazy Stories

One of the blogs I follow is run by Assanova, who is one of the sane voices in the "seduction community". Part of it might be due to the fact that he is not affiliated with any pickup company and is therefore free to tell the honest truth. Love Systems and others would quickly go out of business if they promoted views such as:

So many of you go out night after night, trying to work this angle and that angle, spending a ridiculous amount of money on alcohol, while playing a massive numbers game. For a second, think about all of the nights that you went out trying to work this angle and that angle, only to end up with a bunch of flakes. Imagine how toned you would be by now if you even spent a fraction of that time in the gym.

(From "Looks are your best investment")

Such is certainly a refreshing statement. If this is too blunt for you, feel free to subscribe to guys like "Jeremy Soul" (aka. London Soul from Lovesystems), who has pearls of wisdom like this to offer:

Why do flakes happen?

Flakes can happen because of a lack of Attraction, Qualification, or Comfort. It’s not just a Comfort issue like most people assume. If a flake happens, think back to the interaction for clues as to what caused it. If a woman called you cute you know Attraction wasn’t the problem, and it’s either Qualification or Comfort. If you never gave her any compliments, then she was probably wondering why you liked you her (i.e. Qualification).

(From a post titled "Why Women Flake on You".)

Of course it couldn't be that the best "attraction game" there is consists of getting a decent haircut, work out, and get some good clothes. But I'm already rambling. Let's get back to Assanova. He has recently reviewed my book Sleazy Stories. Here is an excerpt:

We've all read such stories from gurus. They run a routine stack, and they're pulling one-night stands with 9's and 10's every day of the week. However, after further reading, I could see that this Aaron Sleazy guy was really being honest in his stories. Of course, he got a lot of lays, but as an experienced guy who has been gaming for years, I could see that he was telling the truth.

How? Well, there are two reasons

Check out the full review if you are curious what those two reasons might be, and have a look around his website, too. He has some really great content.

Lastly, if you haven't bought your copy of Sleazy Stories yet, get it on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or The Book Depository.

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