Great notes!
If you don’t mind, can you go more in detail on controlling your attention and learning to absorb attention from others?
Your attention is what people want, it's as simple as that.
Whether it's a girl wanting your sexual attention or your validation, or a guy wanting your friendship, approval, validation, or respect, they all want your attention.
Attention is a powerful thing. Without it Schroedingers cat is neither dead or alive. When it arrives, it changes everything.
Meditation (contrary to popular belief) is not about relaxing, nor feeling good or bad, but simply about attention control. The only popular exercise for the human mind, the only conscious practice of bettering the human mind in existence, revolves entirely around attention and where it goes.
Without attention, what even exists? If nobody ever saw something or perceived it, it might as well not have been.
Remember the adage "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" That's a question entirely about attention, and whether it is there or not. Attention creates reality, without it, there is nothing.
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Most people spend their attention like it is utterly meaningless. They scatter it everywhere, hoping that it will manifest something useful. All over social media feeds, all over TV, all over ads and beeps and burbles. What this means is that the rubbish they apply their attention to exists more than they themselves do (but that's a different story).
In a group, you will notice that the first thing that someone who perceives themselves as low status does is start spending their attention furiously. This is because they want attention back. But it doesn't work that way - those who spend attention carelessly are seen as people from whom all attention can and will be taken.
Desperate guys gape at women, hoping for attention back. Desperate people in social situations (and especially the socially anxious) spray attention everywhere. Those who perceive themselves as being at risk socially try to bribe people with attention in return for a clear and stable social position. Nice guys especially are like this. What ends up however is that they spend far more than they receive, and they remain stuck in a loop where they get just enough to survive, but not enough to establish anything they really want.
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Those who do not seek attention, but who still express themselves easily and are not hiding, are perceived to either have enough or not want it, both of which are spectacularly unusual and place them either as far ahead of the competition or well outside of it. This instantly captures everyone's attention, before they even know it, because they must resolve this question as to where the person is coming from. This is why teasing and ambiguity works well with women, because the question of what just happened or is happening, whether you want her or not, whether you think she's hot or not, in short what your attention makes of her, causes her to be incredibly curious and steals her attention in spades.
Have you ever gotten an IOI from a girl when you were looking at her out of your peripheral vision, and then you looked directly at her and her interest evaporated? The question was resolved, and/or it was not replaced with another question. Questions, ambiguity, these are the passions of the attention.
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So what of a group situation? What I would say is: everyone should think that the person next to them has your attention. What works spectacularly is when your body language and your vibe appears to be communicating with someone but nobody knows who it is. Have you ever walked up next to a hot girl, looked right past her and smiled teasingly? She'll spin around and see who's there. She has to know if it's her or who or what is going on. It's the same in social situations (a lot more subtle of course).
One good way to engage everyone in a group is to reach out and touch each person with your attention, and then move on. They will try to get it back and wonder why it left. Soon they will be giving you a lot of attention.
Now if you give someone attention, and especially if it is clear validation, make sure they know what it is for, and why. Because whatever it is they did to get it is something they will do again and again (if you don't give it any other way). If that something is negative (e.g. they tooled you and you can't stop thinking about it and reacting to it) you are going to have to put up with a lot of button pushing before they realize it doesn't work any more (if in fact you can help yourself from reacting to begin with). Self control is paramount in social situations, but primarily it is attention control. You are controlling yourself in order to retain control of your attention - it is no good if you pretend to be looking the other way but your leg starts shaking, your face goes rigid, or you start fidgeting. The question is, where is your attention? Your body reveals that.
This all might sound a bit silly and pedantic. But the fact is that the currency of social transactions is attention, and the man who spends a dollar to get $1000 back is admired by everyone, because everyone knows how powerful social skills can be, in terms of seducing women, influencing people in general, and having one's way amid the chaos of social competition.
And it is not about withholding your attention entirely - but curating it, knowing where it goes and why, like the money from your bank account. Whenever it goes out, it should be for something important to you.
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That is my 2c. I would be very interested to hear if
@Chase has anything to say on this thread, such as about sprezzatura. I've learned a lot from the Girls Chase articles on that and related topics that I've applied in my own life.
