Hey mate,

I want to share this story with you which really explains how to become socially free by becoming the social artist.

The dialogue below is the MSN conversation between me and my friend Stan, from sat at my desk at my last 9-5 office job in 2005:

“God, another Monday… We can’t do this for another 40 years, this is suicide”.

“This doesn’t feel right, does it – how do we get out of this?”

“Uni? LOL”

“lol we can’t man, 25 is too old!”

“Nah, you can go at any age. You just get a loan. You can even do halls. 3 years of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’roll”.

“Fuck it. I’m in if you are. Let’s do it. But which uni?”

“Well, what are the best party cities in the UK?”

“Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield…”

“Right, what we’ll do is a weekend out in each one and the city we like the most, we’ll go to university there. Deal?”

“DEAL”.

Me and Stan set off on our weekend recce and eventually hit Leeds. Stepping on the streets of Leeds was like being on holiday in Ibiza: armies of girls, with legs up to their ears. (We instantly fell in love with the place!)

We picked up the prospectus from the two universities on offer and decided our fate. I eyed up the first artsy course I could find: “Contemporary Creative Practice”.

According to the blurb, there were no guidelines and the first two years didn’t count towards your final grade. Jackpot! I could do a couple of doodles a week and spend the rest of the time tapping up the campus klunge.

You’ll be pleased to know, Stan had a much more thought-out reasoning for his choice…

“I’m going to do Psychology”.

“Why’s that, Stan?” “Cos loads of girls do psychology and… I quite like Derren Brown”.

Stan lasted all of two weeks and spent the next three years playing online poker for a living.

Myself, on the other hand – I had quite a different experience…

At first, the degree felt like work. I was grinding through the briefs and I would do what I thought was needed in order to pass. I was ticking all the right boxes but when I got my grades back, they were always a B but never an A. Despite coming to uni for all the wrong reasons, it bugged me.

I was doing everything asked of me and yet I could never get the top grade whereas some of the other students were. I spoke to the lecturer and asked what I had to do to get an A…

“Why do you want to get an A?” she replied grinning.

It was a strange response but looking back, it made perfect sense. I was chasing an outcome. I wasn’t focussed on the actual art, the love of it and the creative process. I wasn’t expressing what I wanted to express. I was simply doing what I thought was required of me, to get by.

And because of this I hadn’t yet become the fully fledged artist.

By the time I was in my final year, something strange began to happen. I deleted my fb and I fully threw myself into the creative process. I went on a path of curious exploration. I started to try and understand what art really was.

When you boil it down, it’s just visual communication. So what is it that I want to visually communicate? What is it that angers me, upsets me, elates me? What is it I really want to show people? How can I visually communicate this?

If you read my book Game Over, I spoke about how I was a lil’ pipsqueak at school and the school I was at, if I got through the day without being harassed or beaten up It had been a successful day!

So I thought it would be fun to bully people on the streets of Leeds, to remind them what it’s like to be stuck at school where you’re constantly getting harassed.

So I started handing out offensive flyers, sticking “kick me” signs to people’s backs as they walked pass. I hijacked bus stops and I even held up traffic on the dual carriageway which eventually got me arrested!

I was letting the project direct me and was allowing it to evolve organically. I didn’t care what the end piece looked like. There was no end piece. It was an unravelling, an unfolding and I was at the very heart of it.

I was just creating, exploring, playing. Being free.

By this point, I had found my inner voice – my identity and I was turning up the volume so loud it could fill Wembley arena.

By my final year, I was no longer trying to pass the grade. In fact, I had reached a point where I wasn’t concerned about what grade I got at all, I had become a maverick.

Something funny happened… When I graduated, I finished with a first class honours degree and was winning national awards.

Only when I had shifted my focus from trying to do something so “it works”, to fully expressing myself and bringing my unique style out, without any concern over how it’s perceived, did I truly become The Artist.

In other words…

Only when I had fully let go of the need for a result, did I achieve the result that I earlier craved.

Artistry is Mastery

The true artist doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about them or their art. He visually communicates for his own sake and for his own expression. Just like I did.

In fact, it’s worth watching a documentary called “Painting in the Dark” which is about Van Gogh.

He is considered one of the greatest artists of all time, but only sold one painting his entire life. If he’d have painted for the sole purpose of selling, you could say he was constantly getting ‘rejected’ and was a failure.

However he didn’t see his art in that way. He was painting relentlessly without knowing if people would like it, but for his own expression, which is why it was called “painting in the dark”.

The true artist doesn’t have a fixed outcome in mind and doesn’t care how the art is received.

The artist is in a start of pure creation and as he creates he allows him and his creation to move organically and be steered into different directions. Most importantly, any eventuality is welcomed.

It’s an exploration, an unfolding.

The true artist doesn’t copy anyone else’s style either. No two artists are ever the same. They have created their own identity unique to their personality.

Those that impersonate others aren’t true artists – they are merely photocopies of the original. And just like a photocopy, it’s a weaker version of the original.

Becoming the Social Artist

The tragedy is that they call people who think they’re good with women, pick up ‘artists’ – when in reality they are not artists in the slightest. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

They are more like artisans.

The artisan crafts something as it’s meant to function. Think of a piece of furniture, clothes or a teapot, it has a functional value. The artisan, crafts something precisely, so that it does what it’s meant to do. If the item is not made in the way that fulfils its exact function, then more often that not, the piece is useless and you have to start over again.

In the social world, you want to be the artist not the artisan.

An artist is invincible through the fluidity of their process, they’re like water, always flowing into new eventualities. And always ok with whatever new moment they arrive at.

But an artisan is limited and brittle, they are stifled and off balance, all the time. Because everything has to be perfectly controlled and lined up piece by piece. Constantly trying to engineer something as it’s meant to.

One is painting, the other is painting by numbers.

My journey becoming the artist at uni in this story, is much like my journey from being a limited PUA and eventually escaping and becoming the Social Artist.

In PUA I had completely lost my own personality and identity. My heart was broken and I felt worthless , I didn’t feel comfortable in myself so I was using tried and tested lines and routines from someone else to try and metaphorically “make the grade”.

Then as I went deeper into it, I did away with lines and routines and learnt techniques. Then I got embroiled in “natural game”, which I thought was the Promised Land, all the while, doing what I could do to pass the grade (of the women), to get that result with them.

But I was never quite getting what I wanted. It was only when I stopped focussing on results, and thought “fuck it” and indulged in the creative process and really learnt to let go and play with women, did I start seeing connections again and having amazing social and sexual adventures.

From that place. There is no forcing anything. There is no fear. By opening into not-knowing we gain access to everything, that spans beyond what we know.

From an expansive space of not-knowing and not controlling, our awareness moves form a limited perspective into that which is perspective-less and limitless.

The mainstream dating and picking up industry is saturated with coaches training their students to be artisans not artists. Engineering interactions with tricks, promising their students they will “make the grade” with tried and tested “material”. In effect spawning more and more photocopies. But less and less actual unique social artists who have their own personalities and expression.

If this message resonates and you want to make that shift from the junior leagues of PUA & Game into Social Heartistry where you can become the unique and creative social artist and not the limited artisan, then check out my program on Menprovement X – The Ultimate Dating Program – where I take you step by step and teach you how to be truly socially free with women, and in general.

Thanks guys – John

And if you have any advice on how to become socially free, let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear what you have to say.