Behaviors ARE skills… the flip side is that Behavioral Skill isn’t taught unless you’re an acting career kid in Los Angeles… I’ve hung out with them in L.A… and, yes, they DO have impressive skills, way above and beyond the average person in the average life… they are impressively good conversationalists, even when they aren’t on intimate terms with the subject of the discussion.
They have advantages, such advantages that give them terrific performance edge in love, life, and business… and they also have some terrific limitations, particularly that the get so good at behavior that they begin to confuse behaviors with factual knowledge.
So… this could become a form versus substance problem… in truth, to succeed, to make large sums of money, to have the major benefits of life, to minimize life’s problems, you need a LOT of behavioral skill and you need a LOT of substantial knowledge…
On the behavioral skill side of the equation… you never stop learning, there is always a teacher or a circumstance that will open up worlds to you that you never imagined… for example, in one class I attend there are students who have been with this one teacher for 5-10 years, why ? because she can give such useful feedback… maybe it is one or two details, maybe it is a whole self attitudinal thing, could be some displacement of anxiety into the hands or feet… or how you connect or don’t connect… but, how are you going to to know that passively going through life ? Maybe you think you are communicating one thing and you are communicating another thing ? Maybe you think you are a good listener and people perceive you as a poor listener ? You need expert feedback on a constant basis…
So I spent some good money and went to one of those PUA classes, taught by 3-4 instructor types who went by those strange stage names… funny, isn’t it, the only other type of person I know that uses a public stage name like that are hookers… hmmmm… hookers and PUAs… some unseen connection here ?
Anyway… my impression of the PUA “professional caste” was that of very poor listeners… totally hung up on notions of “game” and “frame control”… but their listening skills were complete crap… like, nonexistent… wow, the PUA masters were hopelessly inept amateurs at this most basic component of human connection ? And they didn’t know it ? How could they not know it ? I supppose because they have been so wrapped up in their fantasy lives for so long, becuase they don’t have strong external feedback loops… they’re trapped in this solopsistic fog of behavioral amateurism…
OK… on the other side of the equation… often now the things I’m sometimes forced to learn, or are very annoying at first to have to deal with, and I’m clumsy and embarrassed by… slowly begin to take shape as fully integrated behavior in me (meaning, unconscious competence, I’m not even aware that I’m doing them until later) and stuff that would have been crude or off key if done wrong can be seamless, elegant, leaving no traces of itself…