Inner Game
Inner game is your relationship with yourself: how you see your own worth, and how much you need other people to confirm it. Techniques (outer game) only work on top of it. With solid inner game, most outer game comes naturally.
Secure vs defensive self-esteem
Thinking highly of yourself isn't enough. There are two kinds of high self-esteem:
- Defensive: you rate yourself highly but still need others to agree. Their reactions can shake you.
- Secure: you rate yourself highly and don't need outside confirmation.
Inner game means the secure kind. It shows up as:
- Less neediness: you don't need this woman, or this night, to prove anything.
- Less approach anxiety: you aren't worried about how a stranger will react.
- Outcome independence: you enjoy the interaction whatever the result.
How to build it
- Accept that you are enough as you are. You don't have to be tall, rich or extroverted. The first author was short, slight, introverted and a self-described nice guy, and still did fine once he stopped believing he had to be someone else.
- Improve yourself for yourself. Lift, build a career, dress well, take up hobbies, but because they fulfil you, not as tools to impress women. Someone with an impressive life can still fail with women if all of it is done for approval.
- Expect ups and downs. Inner game is a mental state, not a trophy. Notice what gets you into that state, and keep doing those things to get back there on bad days.
Value your time
A second contributor adds:
- Stop wasting time: train, focus on your career, build social skills, read more non-fiction, cut back on TV, games and porn.
- Be assertive. Don't be afraid to take up space or go after what you want.
- Don't keep investing in a woman who gives nothing back. Constant unasked-for effort earns you a place in the friend zone, not respect. People tend to undervalue someone who always gives and asks for nothing.
- Respect comes from being successful physically, mentally and socially. When you have that, most techniques happen on their own: playful teasing comes from valuing yourself, and physical escalation comes from being assertive.
- Confidence is quiet; insecurity is loud.
- Wanting something and going for it are different things. Many men stop at wanting.
Key takeaways
- Inner game means not needing validation.
- Accept yourself, improve for your own sake, and maintain it.
- Value your time and act on what you want.
See also
Summary of two posts originally shared on Reddit's r/seduction.