How to build your own personal identity (riker aut)

Subject: How to build your own personal identity

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Recently we had a very interesting discussion in General where someone asked:

On 9/23/06 8:50:00 PM, BenderTheOffender wrote:
>But what if I don't have a
>specific identity? I'm not a
>photographer, I'm not a
>magician, I'm not anything
>specific and more importantly
>I don't want to be. I work as
>a programmer but I don't ever
>talk about computers or hang
>out with other computer guys.
>
>It's just that I don't see
>myself as doing anything
>specific with my life. I'd
>like to be a rich guy who
>watches TV, plays computer
>games and fucks hot girls.
>There's no special identity in
>that, most people want the
>same thing and it doesn't
>bother me.
>
>On one of his DVDs Mystery
>says that he wouldn't have so
>much success if he went in
>"generic" (without the
>magician identity). If I'm not
>(and don't want to become)
>something specific or socially
>valuable as you put it, how do
>I make something up that will
>work for me?

Why is “Identity” important? I belive, or rather, these days I know from experience, that for pickup it’s helpful for people to be able to relate to who you are. They want to understand what you are about, and you want to be able to show chicks that you do cool, interesting stuff with your life and that you have an unique lifestyle. Chicks love guys with ambitions, who are going somewhere and working hard for their dreams.

This is very attractive, and in my opinion knowing your “true” identity is the necessary groundwork for “natural game” (which I consider to be game without memorized routines or tactics, basically “unconscious game”.) Also, if you have a strongly developed identity, it will make certain specific parts of PU easier, like arranging a Day2 or meeting the right kind of chicks that YOU like.

I realized how important the “Identity-concept” is over a year ago after I met a really hot waitress at a pub. I mean, she was merely a young waitress there, with good genes (looks), studying law on the side, but she was already seeing herself as the successful attorney she would once be. Wow, did that girl have an attitude…as if she was worth a million bucks already. On the surface, she was a just a stupid low wage waitress, but she pulled her self-esteem from KNOWING what she WOULD become (certainly also from her looks, but not just from that).
But for many guys the big question is – if you are just an average or even slightly geeky guy, computer programmer, Star Wars fan, pencil&paper roleplaying… how can you create a “cool” lifestyle identity for you that’s both genuine AND fulfilling for yourself?

Obviously you don’t want to change your interests “just for the girls”. You can of course learn to dance Hiphop and charm the Hiphop chicks, but if you don’t really have an interest in Hiphop, you will never feel happy inside since you’ll have to “fake your life”. And chances are also that the chicks you meet at Hiphop Places will not really be what you’re looking for. This paragraph is actually almost verbatim from an mASF post I read a wile ago – sadly I just don’t know who has written this, but it certainly struck a chord with me.

I think I nailed this quandary pretty well – I’m not some Pickup Master by any standards, but I spent the last year really working on this part of my life, and now I’m seeing that more chicks are interested, I have easier Day2 setups, and I’m getting laid where before I did not really. And I did NOT drop my interests and start doing something else.

I’ll try to use my own example on how I did it, and then carve out the important bits that other guys can try to do themselves. Sorry for the mass of text - this is a process that easily takes one or two years for most of us, and it's hard to cut it down while still allowing people to understand where I'm coming from.

1) Where did I start?

Three years ago I was still a major geek. I had a huge interest in aviation and airplanes, military stuff and WW2. Spent my time reading books on those subjects and playing online flightsims with other people just as geeky as I was. In my day job I was (and still am) a network admin. Of course, before ASF I was also shy and low self-esteem.

Not exactly an attractive combination of character traits. It was really hard to get other people to relate to my own personal interests.

During my first months and year on mASF, I got more socially competent, but I still didn’t have a major shift in my interests (though for a while I was pretty obsessive about PU-Stuff and Social Dynamics, which was slightly better conversation material).

2) What happened then

The change eventually happened when I bought a digital camera to take sexy pictures of a female friend (for whom I still had an AFC-like crush and was one-itised even though I was already GFTOWing). With my love for aviation in mind, I bought a camera that could also take pictures at airshows, or so I thought.

But the camera was not fast enough for that in it’s functions, so instead I found out that taking pictures of other subjects was also pretty cool. I noticed that I had a skill to make certain things look good, and my friends liked my photos.

=== I think this is lesson 1 here. By accident I started looking into interests adjacent to my own core interests. So whatever your core interests are, start exploring neighbour areas, try a few, you might find one or two you actually like.
For example, if you are a computer programmer, try coding a website. Or pick up a photo editing software and play around with it. Be more creative.
If you are a Paper&Pencil Roleplayer, try writing a short fictional essay in the style of a Fantasy Novel. Be creative.
If you are a Computer Game Freak, perhabs join a game-modding project and learn 3d-modeling or 2d texturing work. Be more creative.
Take your core interest, and be creative about where you can go with that. ===

Since people were liking my pictures, I soon had a website up and contacted my first model for a fetish/glamour shot (non-nude). She saw my website and the examples of other subjects I had already done and was willing to work with me. Now I had reached an important point – other people were working with me, and I as the super-geek had a hot girl dressing sexy running around in my apartment. The reaction to the images by other people was a real ego booster, as was the simple fact that I had done this on my own.

I wanted more people to see my pictures, and so together with a photographing friend I had met on an online flightsim board back then I started looking for a place that would exhibit my stuff. Took my map of photo prints and approached coffee-shops etc. Eventually I found an owner of a restaurant/bar place, pretty cool and “in” location, who either wanted to put up some of my own shots or wanted new ones made for him. Me and my friend decided to make new pictures for him.

=== Lesson 2: When you expand on your core interests, try to eventually create valueable things. By my examples above, you’re now creating websites, or writing fantasy essays, or doing 3d-modelling or whatever. Some people would still consider that pretty geeky, but now you’re actually doing something that society at large has a demand for (and not doing things for yourself that produce no value to the world).
Then start looking around if you can sell to or otherwise attract a larger audience for what you’re doing. You’ll have to start small and humble, but chances are that you found something you like doing and you’ll grow fast. ===

Meanwhile I had spent a good, very active year with my first camera and was feeling the limitations of it. So I decided to spent the cash on a really good piece of gear. Suddenly, my initial interest – taking pictures of airplanes at airshows – was in reach again. But I knew that to take really great shots, you needed access to the right spots, and that meant getting some kind of press credentials, and I knew that I could write fairly well. So I contacted one of my old flightsim sites and asked if they would give me reference as a “staff photographer” in exchange for pictures and a report from a large local airshow. They did, and thus Summer 2005 I spent six days doing what I really wanted – taking pictures of military aircraft, talking to display teams, and getting to know the right people in the military and civilian industry. The report was an online success with lots of international visitors. I had done something valueable but still slightly geeky, yet now it had a certain kind of social proof to it – hundreds of people were reading and viewing my stuff, and I got mails incoming asking me questions and for larger pictures.

Late 2005 I met the waitress I had mentioned above, and I realized it would boost my own self-esteem a lot if I could tell chicks how cool my life was going to be when I was done putting my dreams into reality. So I sat down and wrote up my perfect self-image how I wanted it to be at 30 years of age, in a list of things I wanted to have archived by then.

Amongst other stuff like “great apartment, great girlfriend, great motorbike” I really had to think about who I wanted to be – and I wanted it to be something that would also “wow” the girls. So I decided I want to regulary sell my fine-art prints, I want my stuff to be on art exhibitions. On the aviation side of things, I want to get regulary published in REAL print magazines, with my shots all over the page. I want to make money of that. I want to fly as photographer in fast military jets. All the cool stuff.

Then I took these large, almost impossible-seeming tasks, and cut them down into smaller steps. I had six years to go (now it’s five left) so I concentrated on what steps I could realistically do in the first year, and also wrote a list about those. I knew that if I want to sell my fine-art stuff, I have to work more with real models, so I made it a point to work with two models the next year. If I want to exhibit it, I need ways to print it large size, so I wanted to create two large prints for my own home. To get regulary published in big magazines with my aviation journalism stuff, I wanted to get published at least once in a small mag with a small article. And I wanted to fly for free once in some airplane or helicopter, as photographer. There was also other stuff in the list about working out, eating healthy, improving my financial savings, but that’s not directly related to finding my own identity – these are just things everyone should care about anyway.

=== Lesson 3 was perhabs the most important for me: I made a clearly structured plan where I wanted to be with 30, I realized how much time I had to go there, and then I set out with “milestones” for the first year that were tricky and not too easy to accomplish, but still doable. By breaking down a larger task into smaller steps, it becomes infinitly easier. If we go back to my examples, the guy who’s doing programming and websites now (and really likes it) may actually want to have his own company later – but first he should find a few regular customers working on the side to another day job. The guy writing fantasy essays may eventually want to publish a full book, but first he got to find people willing to perhabs publish his small essays online or in print. The guy who learned to do 3d-models might also want to do this as a day job sometimes (perhabs for movie CGI productions?), but now, first he has to create a portfolio for himself, perhabs sell some of his 3d work trough the web. Whatever you picked in the first lesson, now would be the time to see where it can take you and set the steps to go there. ===

Since I was now focusing on Aviation Journalism more, I started coming up with ideas for new articles and contacting the important people from my first airshow. With a healthy bit of luck, I got invited to a large event in November last year and actually found one international magazine that hadn’t any freelance journalists there, so they published my stuff. That was the first milestone I could hook off the list. Now, by being published, a few aviation journalists I had known from online message boards earlier started taking an interest in who this new guy was. They invited me to hang out with them regulary, we became friends, one of them I invited to my last birthday.

On the artistic side, I took the photographs for my friend, the restaurant owner, and he also then asked me if I wanted to take pictures at his big party events there. I did, and suddenly I was at those partys, for free, free food, free drinks for me, and “friend of the cool dude who owns the place”, with a camera in hand as an ideal excuse to open girls. At some places in the bar I could actually show the chicks the shots I had done already. I was also looking for new models and used the chance to game pretty girls as well. One I also took to my birthday party in 2005.

Now I could honestly start considering myself an “Artist” and “Journalist” and I happened to meet similar people, especially in the Art Scene. In fact pretty much around the time I wrote my “ToDo-List” I met a new wing and now very good friend who’s an artist himself – he knows all the places where people like that hang out. I like alternative, non-mainstream girls who aren’t bitchy and have something going for in their life – and they were at those places too. I started building new social circles.

=== Lesson 4 now: Once you know who you will become, you kind of magically start attracting likeminded people. You may still do stuff that some people consider “geeky” (like my interest in airplanes) but now you are also part of a large successful crowd who are making money off these geeky things. You can merge these people with other people who are not into the same stuff, and they will see that you’re not a single loner – you are part of a respected crowd.

The key thing here, in my opinion, is this, and this may be the most important part of this whole post: Stuff that you do at home alone in front of a computer or with a few “geeky friends”, with no ambition, all for yourself not producing anything usefull to society, is geeky, like my flightsim-playing.
But you can do similar stuff (taking aviation shots and writing articles), merge with other people who are already good at this (I now know the best 5 or 7 aviation journalists in Austria, most of them have had really cool adventures flying with fast combat jet pilots and make a nice bit of money on the side getting regulary published) and suddenly the whole thing doesn’t seem geeky anymore to other people, even if they are not inside that “interest-crowd”. Two key points: Geeky stuff is not geeky if other people are already very successful doing it AND making good money of it. Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas are science-ficition geeks after all, but no one would think they are uninteresting persons.

In my case, Girls do not usually get exited about military aviation, but when you tell them you got published again recently, and you’ve been hanging off the side of a helicopter while taking pictures, this takes on an adventurous, successful image that is very good for pickup.

With my examples for other people above:
The programmer and Website-Designer may now actually work together with two or three other guys to design larger projects, gets to know more successful business people and is well on his way become a successful business man himself. Perhaps he’s actually organizing some workshops or leading free-time projects himself, making him the “alpha” within an already successful group of people.

The guy writing fantasy novels may now have published his first larger essay online, meets other people who are into writing, perhaps had a chance to live-read his stuff at a game convention or maybe otherwise makes a bit of money out of this. Maybe he got back to where he initially started and wrote a new ruleset for a P&P rolegame, but now he got the contacts and also the “Drive” to market this stuff correctly and sell it.

The guy doing 3d-models may have released his first animated movie with his own 3d-rendered characters, perhabs he can do some part-time work for a graphics agency now and sees his stuff shown in a small TV-Spot or similar. He now knows people who are into the same kind of thing and are making money off it, putting him into a highly successful crowd. Perhabs he also helped release a small computer game with his artwork and is making cash of that as well, being part of a successful business now. ===

I can honestly say that after the first year on my list of things, I’ve done more faster, better and made more cash of this than I would have ever thought. I’ve flown in helicopters for free three times now, been published on a few big websites and two magazines, I’ve been in Dubai taking pictures of airplanes and sold them afterwards to people emailing me about them, my apartment is now decorated with a fantastic eye-catching canvas print of my girl pictures which always gets VERY positive reactions from girls.

I’ve met enough people with a similar lifestyle (fine art photographer or journalist) now to have adapted my dress style to something that I both like AND which suits my identity, my apartment “looks” my identity, I’ve got a photo website and business cards I can show to girls if they ask me what I do. Lately while on the phone with a chick setting up a day2 I realized she was into drawing and painting herself, I hadn’t told her about my creative side yet, so I managed to build this into the phone game and made her open my website on her computer. She was instantly blown over and we met two hours later to visit an art exhibition.

===Lesson 5: Adapt your whole world to who you want to be. Integrate your identity in everthing you do. I now go to places where “art” people or journalists hang out. I arrange my day2s to start with visiting an interesting art exhibition in town (then I drag them to a quiet little bar and make out). I dress and behave like an artist and adventurer (like a guy who hangs out of open helicopter doors and takes pictures in the arabian desert, both things I’ve done). My apartment now looks less random and more like it actually belongs to me, bits and pieces of my identity on display everywhere.===

So you see…I went from being a computer geek and airplane/military nerd to being a successful photographer and journalist. I’m STILL a network admin in my day job, nothing changed there. But that doesn’t matter since I have so much more things going on in my life.

The guys in my examples (which I made up on the fly as I wrote this post, just to see if my method would work on them) are now having a successful career developing websites for important companys, publishing their essays, hanging out with other writers, or doing stuff in the TV/Movie industry. They would hang out with the right kind of people (in all cases crowds with interesting girls in them, and cool guys), they would look their part and fit right in. And we (me and my three imaginary friends all started off as major geeks, and did NOT change the core of our personalitys, but STILL we are much better now and girls can actually relate to what we are doing and think it’s “cool”.

The basic formula I distil out of what happened to myself is:

1) Expand your interests in a more creative or ambitious direction
2) Start creating things valueable to a larger part of society and market them.
3) If you like what you’re doing, make a plan where you’ll be with it in 5 years. Make a plan what your identity doing this will be like in 5 years.
4) Hang out with likeminded people, become part of a successful crowd with similar interests.
5) Integrate this identity with the other bits of your life and now you can even attract girls with different interests.

I’d be actually interested to learn about a few more “base interests” that are common to guys here on mASF and see where they could theoretically go with that. If you think your current “identity” is particularly hard to improve, let me try.

This was certainly the largest “tactics” post I ever wrote on mASF. Hope it makes sense to some.

Later

Helmut

http://www.fastseduction.com/discussion/fs?action=9&read=57541&fid=136&BoardID=2#356792