So you’ve made an approach. You feel like THE man. You start conversing with her. Everything is going well. All of a sudden, you start to notice her eyes drifting away more and more. Her interest is waning. She’s hurling questions and answers at you the same way Romans are hurling projectiles from their catapults. This set is over, you start thinking to yourself. Ouch. But hey, we’ve all been there.

The hardest lessons about Game, are mostly coming from getting and staying congruent. Though the general idea is simple enough – Being aligned and attuned brings the best results – it’s really easy to miss this mark in practice.

Once incongruent, anything you do will seem as try-hard. Recently, while “running game” in Vegas, I totally lost connection with congruence. I paid the price for it. Learning to be congruent is perhaps the best, and hardest, lesson you can learn from your experiences. Here are a few concepts that I learned from mine.

Definition

Congruence is the relationship between two objects of which their forms agree with each other; by either reflecting each other, or matching each other to form a cohesive whole.

Congruence in Game manifests itself in 3 ways – Self, Situation, and People. You can think of these as 3 types of objects you have a relationship with. Your projection of self, your perception of reality, and other people’s projection of themselves.

To be congruent, you must constantly practice the art of evaluating and calibrating where you stand in these 3 areas.

Self-congruence – projection and alignment

Picture a shape. Any shape. Now rotate it 90 degrees clock-wise. Now flip it vertically. Now flip it horizontally. Now rotate it 90 degrees clockwise again. Okay, sorry to make you do math, but my point is that it is not the same shape you started with, is it? This example illustrates the projection of yourself to others.

Who you are from within, is defined by a set of beliefs, values, intentions, and behaviors. The extent to which you are attuned to those values and how your actions align to them, dictate your sense of congruence. However, how you project yourself might be different from how others perceive you.

The question to ask yourself is: “Which hill do I want to die on?”

You have to pick a set of values and boundaries that you won’t ever compromise for. These values and boundaries are probably your most valuable assets. By picking a hill to die on, or establishing your boundaries around your values, will further project those values onto others.

On the flip side (sorry for the pun),

Incongruence comes from a weak ego that is defensive without specific values to defend for.

They are defensive of things that don’t matter ultimately. Insecurity is a form of incongruence, whereby without a hill to die on, you run from one battle after another. When you sense a misalignment within yourself, revert back to this question and find your hill again.

The next question to ask yourself is: “What is my intention here?”

Your intention should always be to express, not impress. If you are looking for anything other than to express yourself (such as getting attention, validation, acceptance, or praise), then your actions and behaviors will ultimately align to that cause, and you’ll come across as needy.

Change your intention and your actions will follow. In the short run, it’s too easy to modify your behaviors to seem unneedy. However, it gets tiring and you’ll probably revert back to your base set of behaviors. It’s more efficient and conducive to gradually change your intentions in the long run. You’ll see that being congruent is a natural state of the human mind. You’ll discover a personal style of being congruent from within yourself.

This is why self-congruence should always come before situation-congruence and people-congruence. For better or for worse, you will only accept the people that accept you for who you are and the rest can just fuck off. Self-congruence signals self-confidence, deep-seated beliefs, and a sense of character. This is what I like to call the ultimate projection of attraction.

Situation-congruence – harmony and vibes

Picture yourself at a lavish black-tie party in a tuxedo. How do you see yourself being composed? What is your emotional state? Now picture yourself at a hot and sweaty dance club. What has changed? Is your energy level higher or lower?

Situation-congruence demands that you are able to amplify and reign in your emotions and energy state as needed, without compromising your intentions and behaviors.

The question to ask yourself is: “If I don’t feel like people are watching, what would I do?”

Studies have shown that people tend to perform worse at complex tasks when they feel like they are being watched. This is due to the extra amount of cortisol that is pumped into the blood stream at the moments of anxiety. This cortisol level demands more attention to the fight-or-flight instinct and takes attention away from the sensory and motor parts of the brain.

You can manage this by asking yourself “what if people weren’t watching?” This is very effective for two reasons: most likely people are not watching you (it only feels like it), and if some of them are, who cares?

To stay attuned to the environment, we have to open up extra sensory capabilities to take in more information. We also need to call up an extra amount of motor capabilities to multi-task (walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time). The overly-excitable amygdala gets in the way of all that. However, we can train it by using a process called a reappraisal.

A reappraisal is simply a question you ask yourself to reevaluate an emotional knee-jerk reaction. By reconsidering what is going on, you can turn your negative emotions around and create positive ones from within. Positive emotions help you become engaged and harmonized with the environment you find yourself in.

Harmony allows you to correct gauge what is appropriate and inappropriate to do without feeling self-conscious. This is the “can do no wrong” feeling that people have, when they feel that the environment is in their favor. As I will present in a later article, it is also the most conducive way for you to enter a mental state called Flow. You will know it when you feel it.

The next question to ask yourself is: “How can I experience this moment the best way I can?”

The fragile ego will struggle to establish itself in an unknown environment. This is coming from a position of weakness instead of strength. A more powerful and deeply-grounded ego would seek to absorb the situation to their state of being. What you should do, is let the environment set in. Then allow the power of now to take over and transform your perspective without changing your values.

Once the power of now takes over, you enter a state of selflessness. In this state, you lose the judgement of self and start to focus on objectives you feel strongly compelled to achieve. You are infinitely more creative in this state. Anything that happens will be converted into opportunities by your actions and your desire to live the moment the best you can. You are free to act as you choose and not be restrained by artificial rules that seem to bound others.

The irony of situation-congruence is that it frees you from the normal shyness, anxieties, and hesistations which seem to adhere to social etiquette but actually cripple bold actions. Because congruence is a dynamic quality, your actions seem to align with the vibes of the moment. They seem to transcend of the dead weights of social norms and expectations. Those who are the most attuned to the situation, seem to have the most power to transform them, which polarizes others to them like a magnet.

People congruence – synchrony and rapport

Every person you meet will come with their own mindset and emotional state. Failure to recognize and capture these mindsets and emotions will cause people to be disinterested and disengaged faster than looks or personality ever will.

The question to ask yourself is: “How do I matter to him/her?”

This comes from a belief that you should leave people happier than you found them. If you only care about your own needs, you will only seem as another person who is just trying to get something from them. People are constantly trying to extract values and attention from others. To this effect, the human brain has found a way to tune them out.

In trying to gauge their emotions, you seek to either amplify the happy feelings or alleviate the negative ones. If people are feeling anxious, having somebody funny to talk to, will make them feel more at ease. If they are on a mental high, having somebody who shares those feelings, will actually validate them.

In the book Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, synchrony is achieved when both interacting parties are seeking a mutual “I-You” relationship. Though most of us go through our daily lives interacting with each other as if we only need each other to get things done (which called “I-It” relationships), we find these relationships empty and forgettable.

In “I-You” relationships, we look deeper into each other to establish connections for the sake of having meaningful connections-not just to get something done. To achieve this, we must read the other person’s emotional state, which activates mirror neurons that run the empathy motor.

When the empathy motor is in full rev, we get to a state called synchrony. In this state, we are attuned to each other’s feelings so much that we start to feel other’s emotions and mirror each other’s actions. This is full-on congruence. To reach this state, you have to draw people out of their shells. The trick is that you have come out of yours first. Yes, this means to take some risks and accepting your vulnerabilities.

With high self- and situation-congruence, this shouldn’t be hard. You just approach directly and tell them a story of what brought you there. Then start to cold-read them. They will either correct you, or accept whatever innocuous statements you make about them. Do not interview them, unless you are ready to defend yourself against the Roman onslaught of empty replies.

Another question to ask yourself is: “Am I saying what’s on my mind?”

Studies have shown that we are constantly communicating and can’t stop doing it. More than half of our communications come from non-verbal cues and memes. This means people are matching what is being said and what is being portrayed at all time. If you are not saying something you mean through your facial and body expressions, then you are either out of tune or being dishonest. Women will sometimes refer to this as creepy.

Fixing this is easier than it seems. You just have to accept and take responsibility for your words and actions. The golden rule is:

As long as it’s honest, if you accept it, she’ll accept it.

What you subcommunicate, is often more important than your words, so they still have to align. You can take responsibility for your words by becoming meta.

The objective of establishing rapport is to seek mutual benefit from the interaction.

Understand that people are attracted to each other through their rough edges.

It’s also at these rough edges that you mesh with people. And if it doesn’t happen, move on. Being congruent sometimes means to walk away when you detect strong incompatibility.

Conclusion

Introspection is one of the most difficult things you will do with yourself. However, with the right concepts and tools, your powerful mind will naturally become congruent even in the toughest situations.

You will start to realize the moments you lose congruence. With a heightened sense of awareness, you can bring yourself back to harmony and synchrony. The simple reason is that even without advanced techniques, methods, and styles, being congruent alone will create more attraction than you can ever imagine. The right type of attraction.

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Quan

I am an enthusiast of life, women, and speed. I love to discover the science and technology of living well. Writing is my purpose in life. I hope what I discover and write about help others as my favorite writers have inspired me.