I did a Mystery Method bootcamp last weekend led by Tenmagnet in London. I believe that the MM guys have tried to standardize their bootcamps to across the board so for those who don’t know the format, check out the website.
I think you go in to bootcamps with a mixture of three thoughts / fears:
So what did I get out of the bootcamp? Well again it comes down to three things in my mind:
1. This is not stuff that you can just read in a book. It makes a big difference listening to someone talk about all of this live. It like watching a live performance of a comedian. The jokes may be funny in their own right, but they are so much better when they are delivered in a particular way. Applying this to the game let’s start with the first two words that many people use to open … “Hey guys….” If you look at these words, there are several ways of delivering them; you can put emphasis on the first word and then pause, so “Hey……guys” or you can draw out the word guys, so “Hey guuuys”. You can play around with inflexions and intonations to your hearts content, and work you what works for you and what doesn’t, but either way, you get a head start from seeing it in person.
2. The second thing I took away was really two parts:
a. You can get away with a lot in the field, and one of the things that it is interesting to see is the level of energy that is required. I learned a lot from both Cajun and Tenmagnet on energy, frame and Kino, just by watching them
b. The guys doing this, for the most part are just normal guys. I’m not a 7 foot magician. There is no way that I ever could be, and it’s really good to see that the people doing the guys who get good.
3. The guys on the bootcamp are a great support network. I’ve been out with some of the guys post bootcamp, and what I can say is that they are actually really good blokes. I’ve met a couple of people through the community – some I am still friends with and some aren’t. But I think that the benefit of actually making friends with the bootcamp guys is that it is impossibly to take in everything that you learn from a bootcamp / the seminar, but between you it is a lot easier. This stuff is like when you were at uni / college / school. How would you get good at a subject? Well you’d read things about it, and you’d pay attention in class, but if you needed help, you’d go and ask the guy who was good at the subject, and that would make things easier. You’d compare notes, you’d discuss and analyse. Now I know that I am on a journey, and it is so much more reassuring to know that there are other guys on that journey as well.
One of the guys on the bootcamp said to me “we’re all bros for this weekend”. I must admit that when he said that I instinctively thought that I was being tooled. That we were actually competing and that he was trying to win me over. I soon realised that there are plenty of sets to be opened, plenty of things to be learnt, and that really, to get good, you need other guys to help you and critique you, and be on your team. Well here is my challenge to my bootcamp buddies – if we are all bros for this weekend, lets make the weekend last longer.
Ok, so there is my cheesy American call to arms. How has life changed one week on from bootcamp? Well once again I started to really look forward to the weekend. Not because I could chill out, but because I wanted to test my skills / resolve. Would I completely flounder once let out in to the real world without my teachers? The answer was no, it’s not so tough. Here are a few of my major sticking points and thoughts:
- One of the most difficult things is actually mustering up the energy to get out of the house. I could have so easily locked myself away for this weekend, but in the end didn’t, and went out both on Friday, with the bootcamp guys, and Saturday, with some other friends.
- I still get really bad approach anxiety and am so glad that the bootcamp guys pushed me to keep going. I need to internalize openers.
- Once I’m in set, I can actually do alright. The veil seems to be lifting and I can actually see attraction being built. I know that I need to practice, read and experiment a lot more, but there are signs of improvement. I need to be able to transition better.
- You can open with almost anything if you have the right body language and a good energy. I noticed this last night when in a club with some non-community friends. One of them kept saying to me that this was the type of place where it would be easy to pull. I’m sure you’ve all been there. Those clubs where you can see that it is a meat market and that people are picking up and you convince yourself that you could if you wanted to, but really you don’t have the first idea of how to go about it. Well this time things were different – he was the guy who’d convinced himself that he could if he wanted to, whereas I was the guy who was going to do something about it.
- I think that this is a lifestyle choice rather than a quick fix. This I have realised is such an easy thing to say, but an entirely different thing to understand and believe. I know that a lot of people go on bootcamps, and I was the same, and say something along the lines of “you obviously need to practice a lot to get good”, but to actually understand what you have to go through is a different thing. I realise that it’s not good enough for me to just practice by going to bars, I need to do more. I need to improve several aspects of my life. I need to get down to a gym, I need to do more interesting things in my spare time. I need to become more of the person that I want to be – the person that women see that you can be, and is ultimately one of the things that make them so alluring.
Right this seems like a natural pause. I think that every night out is like directing a new film. The aim is to get better each time around. You pick and choose your cast and your venues, but ultimately it comes down to what you have learnt, and it’s your film. If something works well you try and keep it in the next film and fuse it with new ideas and then you keep doing this until it gets boring or it doesn’t work.
Thanks to the instructors on the bootcamp: Tenmagent, Cajun, Max, London Playboy and Sam. And thanks to my bootcamp buddies for a really cool first week.
