Identity: conveying value

Identity is the deepest concept with regard to pick up. In fact, it's not really a concept, because identity is who you are. It's what uniquely defines you; your personality, your memories, experiences, feelings, ideas, opinions, knowledge, everything inside of you. And perhaps that is why many people have such a hard time grasping what identity really is. Most people don't really know who they are, something that becomes obvious when they do something they'd never thought they would do. They surprise themselves because they don't truly understand their own minds. On this level identity is important with regards to your inner attributes: having a strong personality, a strong frame, being in good state, confidence (being unreactive, independent, determined, etc). This is something you'll work on mainly through changing your thought patterns, but in order to do that you will need to get results (sex) on your way, for true confidence and self knowledge needs real world evidence. You'll improve your identity a lot by getting experience, and mainly those experience that leads to results. In the beginning phone numbers and kissing might be enough, but after a while you'll realize nothing short of sex will do. And many times not even sex, but sexual relationships.

To more practical matters, identity isn't enough in itself. Having a strong identity that no one sees is not very helpful in getting you girls: you also need to know how to convey your identity. Everything you would think of when asked "who are you?" is about your identity. Luckily, no one will ask you that question. Instead, girls ask more specific questions that relate to your identity. Here are the most common questions you will get:

1. What do you do?
2. What's your name?
3. How old are you?
4. Where are you from? (if you look foreign or have an accent)

Your name and age are not very interesting facts about you by default, but you can always make the best out of it. For example, I convey some of my personality by saying: "I'm really bad with names, but then names say more about our parents than us". When asked for my age, I like to make her guess a couple of times, letting her know whether she should guess lower or higher. This is mainly about the frame; it creates a more playful vibe.

The interesting question is the first one: "what do you do?". This is an indirect request for your identity through your interests. There are three other questions that relate to this one:

1. Why do you do that? (Why did you chose to do that?) (your passion)
   
2. How do you do that? (your competence)
   
3. What do you want to become/achieve? (your ambition)
   

They indirectly give away a lot of information about who you really are - your identity. Many girls will ask you what you do, but fewer will ask you why or how. This doesn't mean you shouldn't tell them. In fact, you don't even need to wait for a girl to ask you what you do in order to convey your identity, you can to this indirectly through stories or by throwing in references to what you do while talking about unrelated things, thus baiting them into asking about your identity.

It's interesting to see that these three questions relate to some very important concept that obviously increase your value, as indicated above:

1. What you do: interests
2. Why you do it: passion
3. How you do it: competence
4. What your goals are: ambition

Interests are starters, you use them to convey your passion, competence, and ambition, because these latter three things increase your value. To be more specific, they increase her chances of surviving, or in more modern terms, getting a better life by pair bonding with you. To be more convincing about your interests, you need to be passionate about them. Why you chose to do it conveys this passion, and again, also your personality. But a dreamer is not nearly as attractive as a man that is down to earth. It's one thing to want to do a lot of things, and another to actually be able to do them good. If you don't have any success or potential, the value you are conveying is not real. So you need to convey your competency by telling her how you are doing the things you do. Simple yet fascinating examples or stories will do fine. It conveys that you know your stuff, and competence/intelligence solidifies your interests. Finally, ambitions are about your near future. Projects you are working on right now, or upcoming ones. This shows that you have the potential to become even more valuable in the future. You become a good investment for her.

This is of course not how girls consciously analyze you - it is an evolutionarily built in mating strategy they have. When you convey your identity through your interests, how passionate you are about it, how competent you are, and in what direction you are going to go, girls will naturally become more attracted to you.

To give you an example, I used to do research in cryptography, and so when girls would ask me what I do, I would say: "I'm a cryptographer. Don't tell me, you're probably thinking about codes, because you've read or seen the Davinci Code right. Don't worry, that's fairly accurate: cryptography is the art of communicating with someone in a language that nobody else understands." Usually that would give a "that's interesting!". Compare this to: "I work with cryptography. Do you know what it is? It's about codes and ciphers, most of the calculations are done on computers today." That would definitely not give you an honest "that's interesting!", although it the description is also accurate. It is very important that you convey your identity efficiently. Back to my former identity conveying, I would then proceed by baiting her into my identity slightly, and finishing off my short yet effective presentation:

"Do you know what a prime number is? Really, OK I wanna hear your version of it. Yes, that's exactly what it is, you must be smart - not many people know that. What they also don't know is that they are using cryptography every day. You've probably done a lot of shopping on the internet, I'm not even going to start guessing where. I'm the guy who makes sure you can safely check your email and shop on the internet. That's what I do."

Sometimes they'll ask me if prime numbers are used in cryptography, and I'll go on conveying my identity through an example of secret message exchanging.

Note how this conveys my identity through what I do and how I do it (my competence). To convey my passion, I would sometimes say: "Cryptography is about information and communication. I love how all kinds of communication works. Did you know that only 7% of all communication in this room is verbal right now? The rest of it is conveyed through body language and other signals. I find that amazing."

From there we sometimes went into people watching games: pointing to random groups of people in a bar and guessing their internal relationship.

As you might have noticed, I'm never being reactive when I convey my identity. I'm never asking her what she thinks of what I'm doing. I'm confidently and proudly conveying it to her. This is about frame; when you convey your identity - that is, a part of yourself - you obviously want to be alpha, as well as interesting.

You know you're doing it right when she gives you indicators of interest that relate to your identity. Here are some typical examples:

1. She asks you questions about you (she is curious to know more)
   
2. "That's interesting..." (she finds you interesting and wants to know more)
3. "You have so much going for you" (she likes you and wants to connect)
   
4. "You are great" (she really likes you)
5. "I believe in you" (she is yours)
   

Identity is also about personality, something I will address in a separate post. Finally, your interests, passion, ambitions, and competence are things you can and should convey very early: right off the approach if you can. You can for example embed bits of your identity into the story that follows an indirect approach.

When you are building connection with a girl, you will use deeper parts of your identity. This will be addressed in the isolation module.

Your homework is very important with identity, because you need to concretize these ideas. For early identity conveying (as this post is about) you need to think of all the things you like to do. Make a list of them. Then for each one of them, explain why you like to do it (passion), how you do it (competence), and what you want to achieve by doing that (ambition). Make sure you outline these things in a way that is nicely presentable to girls and group of girls in clubs, it has to be both understandable and interesting. Don't keep going for too long, and feel free to throw in one or two short questions that will keep/amplify their interest. And no weird stuff, remember the purpose of conveying identity here: to increase your value, thus making you more attractive.