Two very different nights this weekend coupled with new realizations, as I shall now go on to explain.

Friday
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Braved the cold and headed up to central London, starting in the O' Neills in Leicester Square. One of my main aims for tonight was simply to stay in set as long as possible, to the point where it starts to become awkward. O' Neills had a reasonable number of women, and opportunities did present themselves.

Standing around shooting the shit with a couple of friends when I spot a group of 4 girls; hesitated for a bit, then eventually said aloud 'CRASH AND BURN TIME' then proceeded to walk over. To the outside observer, this would have been the most messy approach ever - fighting through crowds of people to get there! I eventually get there and open, to be met with 'no speaka da english' (a common answer in Leicester Sq). However, I know I must persist and stay in set. I continue talking, the girl is smiling so this is good, she keeps saying she can't speak english and I keep responding with 'it's fine'. Eventually it runs its course, and I go back to the group laughing.

This should have been the beginning of a good night, but things got more difficult from there. Tried talking to a few more girls but it just wasn't flowing. And there were some that were waiting for me to open them, but I didn't (more on this later). Eventually we decided to move on, and headed to a Brazilian club near Holborn.

This was a bigger venue and again there were a reasonable number of attractive women, but a lot of them were in couples. Hmmm. The main highlight from this was talking to a quite bitchy Latina; again, I was trying to keep the interaction going for as long as possible despite the initial frostiness and subtle insults.

At the point where we started to walk around the venue looking for girls, we knew it was time to leave. This change of mindset would affect me badly in the third and final club we went to.

By the time we got there my mentality had changed from 'have fun' to 'find girls'. This attitude may suit some, but for me it proved to be the night-killer as I ended up getting more and more in my head. Again there were girls showing interest, but I was too hesitant (that pesky 'window of opportunity' again). My mates tried to motivate me, but to no avail, and I ended up leaving (or bailing) early.

This could be considered as a 'bad' night, but in retrospect I learnt a lot. During the drive home I felt shit and kept replaying things in my head; the next day, having slept, I was able to sit down and rationally think about what happened. Two things came out as a result of this:

1) I needed to press the 're-set' button, and forget about Game when going out;

2) It is OK not to get laid.

So we move on to the events of Saturday.

Saturday
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Shortly before going out, I watched this video by Alex from RSD:

Self-generate the vibe that makes you attractive to the hottest girls. Draw state from within. - YouTube

Which was quite appropriate for my current situation. Tonight we were going out as a mixed group, which was nice; the girls were chill so we all ended up doing our own thing anyway.

Saturday was very different to Friday - my aim was just to be chill and chat to people, and this resulted in several revelations:

1) The opener doesn't matter. This was solidified yesterday; sometimes I simply started with 'how's it going?' and trusted in my ability to keept the conversation going from there.

2) The power of eye contact. I haven't been great at this before, but now starting to see the benefit.

3) The initial reaction doesn't matter. This was one of the most significant revelations; some people just need more time to 'warm up' than others. Leading to....

4) The power of 'staying in set'. Combined with staying chill, I just felt more at ease.

5) Freedom from outcome provides more choice. I wanted to build my conversational skill (i.e. 'staying in set') so ended up talking to all kinds of girls. An unexpected thing then happened; with no self-generated pressure, I felt able to choose whether or not to escalate.

LESSONS FROM THE WEEKEND
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1) Just be chill and chat to people. Period.

2) The longer you talk to someone, the more of a connection is built. I now understand this.

3) Feeling comfortable in my own skin is the first thing that matters.

4) The 'worst' of nights can produce the most profound lessons.

And finally....

5) Attractive women like sex as well! Learned as a result of dropping our female friends off to a 'booty call' at the end of the night (which had been set up the same evening, by the looks of it)