The Real Deal
When I started my own seduction journey in the early 2000s, most of the so-called dating ‘gurus’ were all advocating a very indirect and scripted way of interacting with women. Within this bunch of socially awkward dudes dressed in snake leather and talking about “HB 10s” and how to ”DHV” (if you don’t know you’re lucky), a man immediately got my attention as someone who immediately seemed like the real deal. His name was Zan Perrion and he was pioneering a method of connecting with women based on honesty and expressing one’s individual desire. In fact, Zan was one of the first few coaches to teach what became known as Natural Seduction.
As the years went by and TNL grew to be an élite coaching company worldwide, our paths crossed several times at international self-development conferences, and yet, we never had a good occasion to sit down and talk. Now, as a deadly pandemic is forcing most of us to take shelter and go monk mode for the next few months, I decided to finally reach out to Zan and invite him to be the next guest of the TNL lockdown podcast series. The interview was warm and wide-ranging. We discussed everything from the origins of the pickup community to the true cure for approach anxiety, from understanding social hierarchies to why I’ve never read a self-development book & how to 10x your learning, and from how to survive unfaithful partners & build a sense of worthiness to the fatherhood dilemma: when to settle for a family versus remaining an eternal free spirit.
What is the cure for ‘approach anxiety’?
I’m sure you’re dying of curiosity so I’ll say a little more about how to cure so-called approach anxiety. While you might benefit in the short term by pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone, the truth is that most times this irrational fear is just a symptom of something else…a poorly developed sense of self. Fix that and the majority of your social struggles will be gone in a blink. How? Like it or not, being confident and attractive is not something you can switch on and off at will. It’s not a static state and it’s not something you can “learn”. Confidence is the real time culmination of millions of choice points throughout your life. The bad news is that you can’t just do a confidence course, or a few days of self affirmations to change lifetime habits.
The good news is, they’re just habits: thoughts, feelings and actions you’ve repeated so many times they seem set in stone. By recognizing that true confidence will always fluctuate and that by making a dozen different decisions a day, you can very quickly reverse the spiral up. These habits are around meeting women for sure, but they’re also related to the social scene you roll in, your health, communication skills, emotional intelligence and sense of purpose. Are you daily actions creating powerful networks, boosting your health and emotional well-being? Or are you surrounded by toxic (or even just lazy) friends & colleagues, destructive habits and negative influences?
Beyond Seduction
As you can probably tell the discussion went well beyond seduction and I discovered that Zan and I have both made and continue to make seeking adventures and finding your true purpose the top of our priority lists. As we talked I realised that Zan and I were both inspired by the Beat poets, the group of American writers who went counter to the mainstream culture well before the hippies of the late 60s. On The Road by Jack Kerouac is probably the most famous novel produced by these writers and as I found out more and more about Zan I realised that we were both men who ven as boys had wanted something more from life and weren’t afraid to take the difficult and dangerous journey to get there, in fact, it was the road itself we were attracted to - for its characters, its raw emotion and the chance of seeing much more than what those around us were willing to settle for.
Of course I want you to go watch the video, but if you don’t then it’s this sense of adventure that I want to leave you with. I’m not suggesting that you need to jump onto a motorbike with a joint hanging out of your mouth and scream “Death or freedom!” as you take off into the sunset (although that sounds pretty cool doesn’t it?). The key thing you need to do in order to live life as an adventure is to learn to listen to your own intuition on where to explore and don’t let other people’s expectations get in the way.
I wish you well on the path.
Peace,
James
