The Pick Up Lines Handbook
An Introduction to Pick Up Lines and Routines
Version 1.8 – May 2011
by
Angel Donovan
Smashwords Edition
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Published by:
Angel Donovan on Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Angel Donovan
http://www.datingskillsreview.com
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Contents
What Is A Pick Up Line or Pick Up Routine?
Advantages and Disadvantages of using Routines
So... Should You Use Routines?
Products and Services That Teach You To Use Routines
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What Is A Pick Up Line or Pick Up Routine?
A Pick Up Line or Pick Up Routine is one or more sentences that you have memorized and can say when you are talking to a woman.
Today people call them ‘Pick Up Lines’ or ‘Pick Up Routines’. Some people also just call then ‘Routines’. For the rest of this manual we will refer to them as Routines for simplicity.
Routines can be made up from one line, a set of lines, parts of a conversation and also some other actions. They are pre-scripted pieces of conversations and, in some cases, actions.
An example of a routine with several parts:
Example Routine
Guy: Is it a good thing when a girl tells a guy he is lovely?
Girl: Umm.. yeah, of course it is…
Guy: You see one of my friends had a girlfriend and lately she started telling him he was so lovely all the time. I told him that I think their relationship is sliding downhill and he didn’t believe me.
Girl: Haha.. you’re so right. Now I think about it if I tell a guy he’s lovely that isn’t good!
Guy: But you told me… (starts normal conversation or uses more routines)
You see all a routine is really is part of an interaction that you memorize and use repeatedly.
Routines are often used by people in the entertainment industry. The best examples are magicians and comedians who nearly always use routines and improvise very little of what they do.
Here is another way to look at routines. Have you ever heard a friend or someone else repeat a story to you in pretty much the same way? Or perhaps you have heard them tell it to several different people at different times?
The truth is that everyone has their own natural routines that are part of who they are and their experiences. Once you have related something to someone you tend to do it the same way the next time you relate the same thing.
You may have also noticed that some people use their own ‘catch phrases’ often. They have their own sayings. Or maybe they took one from that is colloquial language where they live or from a TV show.
You see people use their own little mini routines all the time. The big difference is with the routines we are talking about is that they are professional. Professional routines have a specific result in mind when they are used. And they are good at it, because professional routines have been put together by people who understand what makes a routine powerful in the objective it is trying to achieve. Whether that be to make people laugh, or to lure them into the deception of a magic trick, or…. To meet, attract and seduce women.
This contrasts with the natural routines we use every day. Most of us are not consciously aware of what impact we are driving for when we use them. Although we may subconsciously be using them to get a desired impact.
The main purpose of a routine is to ensure that you get the result you desire from the interaction.
Magicians use routines to make sure that people get fooled by their tricks. And also that they enjoy them.
Comedians use routines to make sure that people laugh at them.
You can use routines to make sure that you get a positive result from your interaction with a woman. And that you avoid negative results, such as her rejecting you.
The whole idea behind using routines is that they are ‘tried and tested’ and have proven to work and create the intended result.
The have other advantages too, which we’ll discuss later.
The use of pick up lines was initially for amusement more than really to use with girls. Men and women would have often used them as jokes, and men may have from time to time used them when approaching a woman – but the idea was that she would find it amusing that the line was so bad.
Today those lines are often referred to as ‘cheesy pick up lines’ or ‘funny pick up lines’. If you aren’t sure what these are, check out the hundreds of examples on our sister site www.PickUpLinesCentral.com. Remember, the lines are not meant to be actually used. They are just for your amusement.
In the late 90s this changed when one of the first self titled Pick Up Artists, Mystery (Erik Von Markovich) appeared on the scene. Mystery had a career as a Magician and a performer and was accustomed to using Routines in his acts.
Mystery took his skill with routines and applied it to the art of pick up that he had been obsessively studying. When we say obsessive, it wasn’t unusual for Mystery to be out 5 or more nights of the week practicing his pick up skills and learning and applying new theories and techniques.
Mystery is the originator of a good part of the dating advice for men that is available today in some form or another. You may have read about him in “The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pick up artists ” or seen his reality TV show “The Pick Up Artist” on VH-1. If you don’t know about the Pick Up Artist Community or want to learn more about the history of pick up artists you can read about it here.
Mystery’s whole approach to pick up was virtually 90% routines based. He developed hundreds of routines that he would use when approaching, attracting, building comfort with and seducing women. Literally from the moment he approached a woman up until she became his girlfriend or slept with him he relied on routines in the interaction with her.
Many other pick up artists copied the routines based approach to pick up afterwards, because Mystery demonstrated it to be highly effective. This included many of his former students such as Style (Neil Strauss), TD (Owen Cook) and Papa (Nick Kho) amongst many others.
By 2004 there were hundreds of men using routines to meet and attract women. The concept was proven to work – not just for Mystery, but hundreds of others.
From around 2004 there was a split in the Pick Up Artist Community, where some members decided to move away from routines and use an improvised approach. Today this split continues to exist. There are many pick up artists that use mainly routines, there are some that use none at all, and there are others that use a mix of routines and their own improvisation.
The dating companies that teach a primarily routines based approach to pick up or dating women today include Venusian Arts (Mystery’s company), Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method), Stylelife, PUA Training and Art of Attraction (formerly Pick Up 101). Real Social Dynamics (TD and Papa’s company) originally taught a routines based approach but switched to a natural improvised approach in 2006.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Routines
The routines approach has both advantages and disadvantages. By understanding these you will have a better idea whether routines are the best approach for you to learn. We’ll offer more specific recommendations further on in this guide.
• Can reduce your nervousness and give you more confidence (always beneficial to attract women)
• Allows you to focus on other aspects of what you are doing that are important (i.e. delivery) and learn them more rapidly
• You can be certain of the effectiveness of what you say because it comes from experienced pick up artists (one less thing to think about)
• They can make you inflexible and unable to deal with unknown circumstances
• Once you are past the initial interactions and the relationship starts you are outside the realm of routines. You may fall back into unattractive behaviors that reflect your natural self and repel the girl
• They can become a crutch and undermine your confidence in your own natural abilities to deal with interactions with women (you start to believe it is only the routines that attract women and not you)
We’ve given you a lot of background information, but now to the important stuff. How do you USE routines. It’s pretty simple and straightforward.
Figure 1 Using Routines
As a first step you need a routine to use. When you first start out you will get your routines from other people. Most people get the first routines they use from dating coaches. Some men may learn them from friends that study dating advice, perhaps the friend that introduced them to dating advice in the first place.
You should get your first routines from people who are experienced and successful with dating women and the use of routines. This will ensure that the routines are good quality and do their job (i.e. will get the result you want when delivered properly). It will give you one less thing to think or worry about.
The other option is to create your own routines. You should wait until you are experienced enough to know what is a good and bad routine first. Most guys get competent at this at the intermediate stage when they’re already quite successful with women. Guys create routines in one of two ways.
First, they can sit down and think about a result they want, brainstorm routine ideas, and then write it out. Surprisingly this isn’t that common.
The second approach is more common. That is that guys will use things they said or heard other people say that got good results with women. Or the desired result. Most routines that have been developed are actually based on things that people have said naturally one time or another and found that they worked. So they reused them and they became routines. They would normally improve them also by thinking and working on them a bit.
Once you have a routine you sit down and learn it. For some guys this just means looking over it once, and remembering the structure of the routine. They focus just on the main points. Other guys will sit down and read it out many times, and visualize using it in their heads. They tend to learn the exact words line by line.
It isn’t important which method you use. You should just use whichever learning method works best for you. Just remember you don’t have to get it perfect. This is just the first step of learning.
The next is where the real work of learning the routine comes in.
No one memorizes a routine and goes out and uses it while talking to a girl and has it work perfectly.
Not even Mystery himself. And he has been referred to as a ‘routine machine’ by some people because of his ability to delivery routines in the exact same way each time.
There is a period of time when you first go out and ‘run in’ your routines. You have to use them in conversations with women many times, before they start settling in, and you learn all of the nuances of them, and they start to work better and better and get their desired results more of the time.
A lot of the impact of a routine comes down to its delivery. If you don’t deliver it properly it isn’t going to work. So when you are “running in” a routine you are learning to deliver it better. Things like timing, your verbal tonality, your body language and so on will become more natural as you ‘run in’ the routine.
You will also pick up nuances, and you may make modifications and customizations (or personalizations) to the routine as you ‘run it in’.
It varies how many times you will use it before you move to the next step. It can vary based on the complexity or simplicity of the routine and how you naturally learn routines. Some guys will take up to 30 or 50 times to have completely run in the routine.
Another hint is that many good guys who are good with routines, will introduce a newer routine in the middle of his other ‘already run in’ routines. This is the strategy Mystery advocates. So that at any time you are ‘running in’ 30%-40% of the routines you are using, and 60-70% of them are ‘already run in’. This is a good approach to keep learning, whilst maintaining a good level of effectiveness (enough to meet your goals with women).
Once you have run in the routine it will become highly effective. You may be surprised at the results you get with routines that you have run in. They can have a big impact on women.
Think of it like this. Very few people are excellent communicators. When you watch a celebrity or politician on a talk show and he has the ability to keep everyone laughing throughout the talk show or is able to maneuver through the questions he is given, while giving the answers and the perception he wants to – that is communication excellence. And it is very powerful.
For the vast majority of us, we simply don’t get enough practice in communicating to get to that level of expertise.
However, when we practice using exactly the same routine many times we achieve communication excellence with that routine. And at that moment it can have a significant impact on women – it achieves the desired result.
If you haven’t practiced using dating advice for men with women, then you are in for a great surprise when you put this to the test. It is powerful (and exciting) stuff.
One more thing: When you meet that girl you are really really interested in. Who seems that much more special. It’s time to use the routines that you are effective with. It’s not time to use the routines you are still running in, no matter how cool you think they are. Stick to what you have practiced and become effective with when that situation comes up.
So... Should You Use Routines?
At Dating Skills Review we have our own opinion about the use of routines based on how we have seen many of the most successful men with women learn and evolve their approaches.
We believe that for many men it is useful to learn a routines based approach to dating and picking up women when they are beginners. This provides several learning benefits:
1. It takes some pressure off you so that you can get over initial nervousness at doing something new (e.g. approaching women). It can lower or eliminate your approach anxiety.
2. It allows you to focus on getting other important things right (e.g. body language and delivery)
3. It can help you to perform ‘above your competence level’ early on. This means that thanks to the ‘tried and tested’ nature of routines, you will get less rejections and more success early on. This can give you a confidence and motivation boost.
Typically, we recommend that after you have become competent with routines you gradually phase them out of your dating skillset so that they don’t play such an important role.
The philosophy behind this is that you will also be put in new situations where your routines, no matter how many you have, will not be relevant. In addition, as most guys want to get into relationships with women, they will not be able to use routines once they have achieved this (and at this point they will have to rely on their natural personality and abilities). It makes more sense to develop your natural personality and skills when you are looking to develop relationships.
Having said this, even advanced guys will still use routines from time to time that work in situations that they are familiar with. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just using an effective approach to handling a particular situation. The problem comes when you rely on routines for too much of your interactions.
There are also some cases where the routines approach may not be right for you even as a beginner. If you have the following natural abilities you should consider potentially skipping routines altogether and using one of the non-routine based systems.
Are you very talkative, naturally charming, or good at telling stories in general? And being entertaining? Are you confident in social situations and quite social by nature?
If you are, you are probably what psychologists refer to as an extrovert. This means you are already quite relaxed in situations and talkative. In this case you may be able to skip the use of routines, and develop a natural style of game where you improvise. This is your personal decision.
Even if you are an extrovert there are benefits to using routines for at least a short period, just to learn what impact effective material can have. This will also give you an added ‘tool’ to your set of dating skills which you may be able to ‘bring out of the toolbox’ when you feel a situation that you can’t handle ‘on the fly’ comes up.
These are the considerations you should take into account. Remember however, that the most successful dating coaches to date have used routines at least during one part of their development. And many of these still use routines from time to time in some format.
Products and Services That Teach You to Use Routines
If you are interested in learning to use the routines based approach to meeting and attracting women there are several products that we recommend you take a look at.
Please read the following recommendations carefully, as each has its role – we are not suggesting you buy all of these, but the ones that will support you and fill in the gaps that you need filling. You will know yourself if you have these dating skills gaps to fill.
The recommendations below are listed by the learning goal that they meet:
1. Learning More About How Routines Got Popularized: The Game – Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists is a book relating the biographical story of Style (Neil Strauss). In it he details his involvement with the community of pick up artists and his friend Mystery. In it you will discover how routines became used, and some of the final conclusions (some negative) that Style came to about the use of routines. Some details of the have been slightly modified for narration purposes (to make the story flow better), but the content remains true to the actual events.
2. Learn a Routines Based System: Venusian Arts’ Revelation ebook and Love Systems’ Magic Bullets Handbook are two comprehensive systems for meeting, approaching and seducing women. Both originate from Mystery’s own original methodology based on routines although both have been improved upon and evolved in slightly different directions over the years. Both are amongst our top rated products and are good buys. To be clear, in case it isn’t obvious, you don’t need to buy both of these. One of them will provide all the information you need – the products are relatively similar in content scope. Both give you examples of routines as they explain their systems.
3. Get More Routines: If you think you need more examples of routines to either get a better feel for them or to actually use then you can check out some of the eBooks we’ve reviewed with examples of routines here.
4. Getting Coached on Using Routines: Many dating companies will coach you in bootcamps where they give you routines to learn and then take you out to approach women and use them while they give you feedback and help you to master their delivery. The services we currently recommend the most are Love Systems bootcamps and Venusian Arts bootcamps. If you are considering purchasing a bootcamp you should also check out these out before purchasing:
a. Introduction to Dating Coaching: Bootcamps, 1 on 1s, virtual coaching and more…
b. Dating Bootcamps – How do the most expensive and cheapest compare with student feedback
c. How to buy dating coaching and get the maximum value for your dollars
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