---
title: Episode 105 Pick Your Battles
episode_number: 105
era: mid
source_file: Episode 105 Pick Your Battles.mp3
audio_size_mb: 56.8
duration_sec: 1860.9
duration_min: 31.0
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.996
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T16:52:12Z---

# Episode 105 Pick Your Battles

**Speaker 0:** Tom Torero podcast, 105. Pick your battles from a country that's seen a lot of battles, Georgia. That's right. Georgia the country, not Atlanta. Georgia, I'm in the capital city, Tbilisi. It's my first time here. It's my first time in the country. I arrived late last night, but already I can see that it's stunning along the river, the old town, the lights twinkling, churches, monasteries, wine. It's a daygame reconnaissance trip really, so I want to see how good the hustling is, how hot the women are but I shall be putting out some diary videos from here to show you around. Anyway before today's topic of battles, some very exciting news. I put out a video a couple of days ago on this already places are selling and that's not a cheesy marketing trick to get you to buy this really is one or two places for each of these things I'm about to announce in July I'm doing the only infield teaching of this year For one month, I'm going around the world continuously with my wing and co instructor Craig and we are teaching five one day boot camps. First one is on Saturday July 1 in London and then Saturday, July 8 in New York City, Saturday, July 15 in Los Angeles, Saturday, July 22 in Sydney, Australia, and Saturday July 29 in Munich, Germany. I think there's one place for London left, one place for New York, two or three for LA, two for Sydney and two I think for Munich cause there's only four places per boot camp, it's a two to one student to instructor ratio, 100% infield, it's five hours 12PM till 5PM, wireless microphones, no seminar bullshit but a good debrief as well. What else do you need to know? The price 600 British pounds. So as I said, the only teaching I'm doing for this year. I'm not going around the world to just teach daygame. I'm actually doing this crazy July tour to film a documentary. But a few guys have asked already, are they gonna be filmed for the documentary on the boot camp? No. They're entirely different things. So don't worry about your anonymity, your double life, that is absolutely fine. But I shall tell you more about the documentary in future episodes. But for now, that's all you need to know about the daygame bootcamp tour. There's information on YouTube. It's probably the previous video to this one or go to my blog, to my Facebook. It's all on there to book. You just got to email me tomtotorero dot com. Alright. Picking your battles. This is a podcast about frame and reframe, gaining the frame, losing the frame. It applies obviously to life, business, politics, relationships with anyone as much as it does to girls and daygame. But we'll focus on daygame for today. It's pretty Machiavellian. Although it might sound passive when you abstain from a battle perhaps. We're gonna talk about why that is not so. So Machiavellian texts that you might know. Did I say that right? Texts. Texts that you might know. First of all, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, I think you say, that ancient text, not sext, text. And, he talks about picking your battles. He talks about the cost of war and breaking your enemy's resistance without fighting because it's not all about fighting and conquering all your battles. Sometimes without fighting, that's the better strategy. That's, like this chess art of war. So there's a famous book you might also know, 48 laws of power, Robert Green. It's a bit mingled because a lot of the laws contradict each other, but yes, Machiavellian and he obviously speaks about picking your battles carefully in a lot of the laws. Law eight, I think it is. He says, make others come to you. So that is forcing others to act, so you're in control. And law 22 is the surrender tactic. So when you turn the cheek, that's actually not passive because it infuriates the enemy. Yep. And it's about energy, conserving your energy, don't just fight for honor but picking the battles as we're going to talk about today. An easy quote to sum it up is, you don't have to show up to every argument you're invited to or you could say battles not fought are not lost. Yeah. Because many of the so called battles that you face in your office or with girls or with your family or with guys on comment sections of forum forums or YouTube or Twitter. They are not battles. They are distractions. Yeah. And by engaging in them, you show that you're reactive, which shows that you're affected, which means they've touched a nerve. Alright. Another quote says, the art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. So the most important thing to say at the beginning is that not reacting, engaging in an argument, not engaging in every battle sounds weak. Yeah. It sounds like a poor strategy, especially that law 22 of Robert Queen when he says surrender sometimes. Yep. But actually it's a technique a for not getting tired and b it's a technique for drawing your enemy into your trap. Yep. So there are many fighting styles where you try to fatigue your opponent, and save, their fatigue for your grand finale. Yep, drawing them in. That's in chess, that's in sport, that's in game with vacuums and flipping the script that we're going to talk about. The opposite to waiting and drawing in and being patient and being clever and saving your energy is being reactive. And I'm sure you can think of somebody you follow on Twitter or you see them putting out videos or they have a blog or they're an author or they're your friend or they're somebody at work or they're a daygamer or just an average kind of trody romantic guy. You know that person. Try and think of a male for this in your head. Think of that male who is very reactive. Okay. He's very prickly. He's overly sensitive. So he's very easy to provoke. If you want to touch the nerve, it's super easy because he's super petty. Yet always playing defense, not offense. What does that show? What is the most important topic underlying this podcast? A weak frame. You could actually say he doesn't have the frame because he's given you the frame every time he reacts, every time he jumps, every time he tweets back, he might think he's winning in the moment but actually he's displaying to you and everybody else that he has a weak frame or he's given away the frame And daily we have many many invitations to fight. Now, maybe that's physical fighting but probably it's other kinds of confrontations. Yep, so daily when I check my emails or my filtered emails, I face a lot of trolls. Yeah. Angry emails. Maybe you remember my number one hater, Eric the troll. Although he's vanished for a while. Slightly concerned where Eric is. Eric, if you're listening, send me another angry email so I know that you're alive. I'm half thinking that you've topped yourself. You've jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, but I hope not. Touch wood. You get the kind of concern trolling, guys pretending that they're looking out for your well-being when actually they're white knighting, passive aggressiveness, that's a key trait of a super duper nice guy. What else do you get? You get guys dedicating whole blog posts to me or forum posts, know, there are guys that are really out for me, they're out to get me, that's the price you pay. I've spoken about this in other podcasts. If you put your head above the parapet, if you start putting out YouTube videos, if you start running a blog, if you start writing books, those guys come at you even more. And as I said, dedicate whole videos, whole articles about me. It might be a kind of a passive aggressive form of that where a journalist would often contact me and say, can we interview you for this or can you be on this talk show? I had one recently from channel four. On the surface you think that doesn't look like a confrontation, that looks like a very acceptable offer. One of them said they'd pay me £20. I was like, okay, this must be really really good. But you look closer and you see that it's an invitation to have a confrontation. And the older you get, you learn that this is an invitation for a frame battle. Okay? It's like with the shit tests or even when a girl asks you a seemingly innocent question like how old are you or why are you single? So a logical normal romantic guy, he won't spot that as a shit test, he won't spot that as a frame test, I prefer to call shit tests frame tests for this reason and he'll answer logically he'll fail that test or he will qualify himself which is handing over the frame to her a bit like in a job interview he's selling himself to her he's talking about his car he's talking about his money he's talking about why, she should pick him, he's the dream boyfriend. All these are little tests, all these are examples where he hasn't spotted that this is a frame game, that this is a form of war. Okay. Now you don't need to think of all shit tests, frame tests as highly aggressive combat situations, but they're subtle. They're like chess moves. They're like trading moves. They're like poker moves. Alright? We'll talk a lot about that today. We'll talk a lot about these shit tests specifically. When you're doing day game over text, when you're on the date, she'll shit test you. She might quote unquote reject you. Okay? Guys see that as failing or when the girl flakes or when she gives token LMR. All these are chances to take back the frame. I've put videos out there about frame control and qualification you can look on YouTube. Frame is just who is wearing the trousers, whose reality is the other person in. Are you in hers or is she in yours? Yeah. Who is the man? Who is the mouse? Who is the rock? Who is the sea? Who's in control? And I don't need to tell you by now that the masculine presence is the one holding the frame. Alright? When she takes the frame she doesn't really want to hold it, she's waiting for you to take it back like naughty children, like a naughty puppy, that's part of the deal and guys misunderstand this, they get reactive, very snappy, very angry and automatically by reacting, by entering into that battle in the wrong way, by getting very confrontational, then they automatically lose. So you should know by now the two different ways, the two different main ways in the pickup world to pass a shit test or a frame test. Yep. Can you think what the first one is that everybody nags you to do? The answer is do nothing. Alright? So when she asks you one of those famous shit tests, you could ignore it, brush it off, act like water off a duck's back, and just carry on. That works in a lot of occasions which we'll talk about. What about the second form of dealing with the shit test? The answer is cocky funny. So agree and amplify. Be the cock. And that often works. I use that a lot on the street or over text. Street hustle, sorry, stealth seduction, my infield video product that's full of cocky funny, agree and amplify. But there's a time when that's not good. Alright, you don't want be doing the cocky funny too much, doesn't work that well in Eastern Europe, in Former Soviet Union, in Russia. There's different ways of dealing with persistent frame tests specifically from princesses that we'll talk about but yes also be aware that cocky funny is not always a good idea. So let's go through some of the classic shit tests, frame tests that you meet on the street over texts in the bar on that date with her. First one is she says she has to go. Alright. And the guy, the student, he just assumes that that's true and he says, okay. Bye. And she goes, he's lost the frame. Okay, she's gone. Even worse, he gets confrontational. He treats this like entering into a war. So she says she has to go, he says, no, you you don't have to go. You've got one minute, you've got two minutes, come on, just come on. And, again, in the girl's eyes immediately he's lost the frame. She goes, he's failed by trying to fight that battle logically. Yep. Exactly the same with when she says she has a boyfriend. That could be on the street, that could be on the date, even over text. And the nice guy student, he just gives up. So he loses the frame because she's wearing the trousers, she walks off Or he enters into a battle. Okay? Because again, he he thinks that boyfriend just means one thing. It must be true. It must be true love. She's never gonna leave him. He must do the moral thing. And he says, ah, but okay, well maybe, he could he could come along as well. Right, that's an attempt to be agree and amplify cocky funny or he could pour the drinks or I have a boyfriend too. That's often a good example of when agree and amplify an attempted version of cocky funny doesn't work because it's too reactive I would say to even acknowledge the boyfriend. So when she says to me I have a boyfriend, I simply say I don't want to be a boyfriend. Anyway, you were telling me about cats. So that's brushing it off. That's basically ignoring it. Yep. I'm not entering into a battle. I'm not trying to bring up the boyfriend and be better than the boyfriend because I don't really don't want to be her boyfriend. That's not a cocky funny response. I really don't. I often say, I'm a very bad boyfriend. Or you can be a little bit cheeky and say, look, I'm glad you have a boyfriend. He can take you to the cinema and to the park and to church. I just wanna take you for a cheeky glass of wine. You know? Girls might say to you, do you do this all the time? Is this the is this what you do all the time? How many girls have you stopped today? That's a common street shit test or she might say it on a date. Again, you might, just eject. If you're a beginner, you might be shocked because you don't realize, the job of a girl is to test your frame. She wants to see if you can take it back or you get defensive. You say, no no no no no no. No. I I don't do this at all. No. I just want to be a friend. I just want to teach you English, take you to salsa lessons, be your photographer. Yeah. Snake seduction, lying. When you can just embrace it, you can either move on. A famous line from the old John Matrix is to say, look, life is too short. When I see something I want, I go for it. Do you agree? That's a nice way of kind of brushing it off. Or the cocky funny response when she says, do you do this all the time? You can say, yeah. You're number 2643, but I like your shoes. Alright? Depends on the guy, depends on your delivery, depends on how many times you've you've used cocky funny before in that interaction, at what point you are in the interaction. But you can go with cocky funny, Hank Moody. She might say, you're too old for me or how old are you? The guy might panic, he might get into, an apologetic explanation qualifying himself, he might start a battle where he's saying, oh, I'm not that old but, I know this is wrong or I know I understand that this is weird. Trying to explain himself, trying to, again sell himself, say to her, pick me, pick me. You can either brush it off. I often say, well, how old are you? I think you're a bit young for me perhaps, you know. That's flipping the script, qualifying her or you can do the classic Tom Torero cocky funny, she says, how old are you? You say, I'm 86 but I've had a bit of plastic surgery. Plastic, fantastic, as you rub your own bosom. She might say the nuclear shit test. What exactly do you want from me? Alright. The weak guy might eject or get into some argument by saying no no no, it's not what you think, I just want to be friends and she's like yeah yeah yeah come on. So she loses all respect for you, you clearly lose the frame. Shouldn't have entered into that discussion. I laid on the table, non reactive. What do you want from me? She says, well, I say, well, you're an attractive girl. I'm a guy. Life's short. When I see something I want, I go for it. I find you very attractive and I'd like to take you for some wine but, you know, I don't plan ahead, let's not treat this like a job interview, you know, or you can be a little bit more cocky phoney, you say yeah, I'm a simple guy, I'm like a bear, know, I like eating, I like sleeping and I like let's see what happens with a glint in your eye and a cheeky grin. Okay? She might say on the date or she might say back at yours, look, we're not gonna have sex. Alright? And the angry moody guy might sulk and kick her out or get really reactive and be like, what the hell man? What the hell? We just had two drinks. It was just two hours. What the why did you even come here? That's a classic example of a completely normal and predictable shit test and the guy losing it at the last hurdle. He might, do the awful apologetic thing of saying, that's okay, we can just, watch the movie and we can just, I can just give you massage and she's thinking come on, come on, don't be a snake. So either lay it on the table, flip the script, I often say, what why are you even thinking about sex? God, you're obsessed, you know, you're corrupting me, I'm a good Catholic boy. Throw it back at her or just brush it off. A good rule of thumb, of Tom Thumb is that use cocky funny especially with western girls, so Canadians, Americans, Australians, British girls, girls with wit and banter. It's amazing. Use it on the street or wherever you meet her. Yeah. In Whole Foods or in the bookstore or in Starbucks. Use it a little bit over text because you know she's already hooked so you don't want to milk it too much. You don't want to be the clown. And on a date really avoid too much cocky funny at green amplify because it looks try hard, you look like a player, you look like an entertainer much better to be non reactive just turn your head away pretend you're watching the TV in the corner of the bar, just angle yourself slightly away from her, yawn, just simply brush it off and, carry on as normal. The script should have been flipped by this point. You know she likes you because she's come out on a date with you. In the western world that means it's yours to fuck up. Okay? So you should be doing some rapport, you should be doing your seeding and your grounding, you should be doing your verbal escalation but most importantly you should be qualifying her, saying look love, you're cute, beauty is common, but what else have you got going on for you? You know, are you fun? Are you interesting? Let's see. All that classic stuff. Second venue, there shouldn't even be too much talking. It should be nice and slow. Listen to last week's podcast on low and slow and it should be physical, a bit more seeding and then la la la la la, bouncing back to your place and certainly in your place don't do cocky funny, don't do teasing, it shows that you're not comfortable with sexual tension And definitely don't get into battles, the topic of today, right? You don't want to get into logical battles. Never, never, never ever about politics or religion or health or with any of these shit tests, you don't want to logically fight her, okay? Change her mood, not her mind. Listen to what she does, not what she says. These are common pickup truisms, yeah? Now, often you have to lose little battles to win the war, to get the lay and I speak about this in cold calling which has come out this week in paperback, go to my website. Many times in Moscow the girl, I would say let's meet here and because of the size of Moscow she might initially agree and then suddenly she says actually can we meet here now for beginner or in a small city not a good idea because if you keep doing early concessions, you fail. Then she'll push for more and you fail. She'll push for her own way. She feels weird. You feel weird. The guy snaps. It's the end of the date. Or she might say she's running late. Very common with Russian girls or in a city the size of Tokyo or Moscow or in Los Angeles. Fucking hell. Just a girl getting to a date is a minor miracle where she does one and a half hours in a Uber across LA, you know. Or she might change the date venue if it's not your city. You say let's go here, she says actually I want to just show you something here. Now I know I always say if the girl's leading at any point from open to close, something is wrong but these are exceptions that I talk about in daygame three point zero sometimes from calibration you know that okay I'm gonna let her off with this one or this one's actually gonna take me closer towards the lay or she's actually suggesting a whiskey bar. She's actually saying she's not coming back to mine, but I think she's hinting at me going to hers. She doesn't want to watch this movie, but I actually think she's hinting at a more sexual movie. Okay? Even with a flake, even with a flake as shocking as this sounds, many girls flake, that's part of daygame, you know, the difficulty of daygame and cold approach pickup. But sometimes when you smell that it is real, like she really is ill or she has to really go and pick up her sister from the hospital whatever whatever whatever, if you just reacted to it and went ah fuck her and delete or you sent her a really angry message but you said you were coming, I gave up my evening for this, fuck you. That's a beginner error. You're very reactive, very prickly. The guy is the emotional one. And again, how do you think a girl feels when the guy is prickly and emotional and reactive? Jesus Christ, you know, you know as a guy, meeting a guy like that how disgusting it is. So imagine what she feels. Anyway, there are times when you accept the flake, you accept to rearrange, you lose that little war, but you lose that little battle but you win the ball. Yep. Even with LMR. I've had this recently where I was, I do my usual escalation in my house up until the point of no return when you think if I go past this point and over escalate I look needy and horny. So I escalate up to that point, I give her space as I talk about in daygame three point zero, let her come to me, I flip the script and she's giving me hints of not this time but next time. Tom, next time. Okay, so a horny beginner might get reactive and just lose it and do the royal flush too early. We'll talk about that in a minute. He might just kick her out. He might just be completely black and white. She was a bitch. She was a no. She was a time waster. Delete. That often comes from inner game issues as well of doing pickup because you hate girls. I talk about this in daygame three point zero. That often pours out of you, right? You can't hide that very well if you really have a deep hatred of women and you're getting revenge. You can kind of hide it on the street and on text, but on the date, after a few glasses of wine, your character really shines through. The real self is always coming through as some self help guy said. And girls are very hypersensitive to this. Okay. So the minute you start moaning about life, about politics, about religion, getting reactive to all those little tests that she has to do, that it's good for her to do, it's healthy for her to do, okay, it's clear why you don't get the lay and why many guys are good at number collecting, they're okay at texting, they're okay at dating and they never get the lays because quite simply they're entering into every single battle. They are creating battles where there didn't need to be battles. They are losing the frame, through tiny little things which add up to her just for some subconscious unconscious gut feeling realization. She's like he was doing so well but no. And she says, thank you for a lovely evening and they are the ones that confuse you the most and that feeds this cycle because the guy gets angry. What the fuck, man? Time waster. He goes on the next date full of rage and the next one full of rage. Downward spiral. Yep. Okay. To finish this podcast because time is ticking. Can you ever lose it? Can you ever fight well? Can you ever go for it? Actually create a battle and win. Is that a good idea? Because the old saying in pickup and daygame and dating is non reactivity is king. Excuse me, I'm burping. Because I've already said that's a big way to pass frame tests and shit tests. It's what the true gorilla guy, the alpha guy does. He he sits there and he smiles. He just brushes it off when she says, oh my god. Your shirt is so shit. And he just does a cocky grin and looks back at the TV with football on it. Yeah. It doesn't react. And that's a good strategy, particularly with princesses in South America, in Russia, in Ukraine, that's a very good idea. It's just like a fly on the horse's back. Just just gives it a little shake, doesn't even notice. But if this keeps happening and happening and happening and happening, my friend Steven used to say b o b, BOB which stands for boundaries on bullshit and I totally agree. Sometimes reacting is a really good thing to do but it's your last chance saloon. I've said this before in podcasts and in street hustle and in daygame three point zero is called the royal flush. So that's when I put my cards on the table and I'm prepared to walk away from the game. You only get one shot at it and you have to do it properly. Good teachers know this. Good parents know this. Good puppy trainers know this, right? You let the small things slide, but occasionally, I used to do this twice a year in the classroom, you do a short sharp correction and I used to unbelievably raise my voice to the point of nearly shouting, not losing control, listen to last week's podcast, but so the kids were shocked. They would just look at me mouths open, eyes wide, lay down the law, lay down the boundaries, make an example of some poor kid blessing but the kids need to see that you're in control. There are rules, right? And they massively respect you for this. Kids want this, they need this, they don't want to hold the frame, Girls don't want to hold the frame. So I'm not saying do this all the time, definitely not because that is, the topic of this podcast being reactive and crazy and brittle. But occasionally I'll do the royal flush so if this is date number three or even date number two she's back at mine and I know she's playing games it's not just token LMR but it's kind of princessy games I'll let it slide let it slide let it slide non reaction then bang. Alright? Little raised voice, I'll say, listen, stop. I don't like your games. Alright? You make me feel like a teenager. You're acting like a man. Do you like to feel like a man? And she'll gasp, she'll be shocked, maybe she'll put on her coat, she'll pretend like she's going to leave. A couple of Russian girls have cried, kind of crocodile tears. And then just like with kids or just like with a puppy, once they felt that sting of there's the line, you give them a hug, you go back to normal, you escalate as normal and many many many many times the royal flush has got me laid but you can only use it once and you've got to accept that sometimes when you use it she's just gonna walk out the door you're gonna lose it if you don't know the calibration okay we shall finish it there because that was half an hour I think and I'm dying to go out hit the streets of Tbilisi. I shall make some videos from here. That was podcast 105 picking your battles and if you want to know more about feisty princess, Former Soviet Union, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian girls plus FSU girls abroad. Check out my new book cold calling. Go to the YouTube video, go to my blog, look at the book section or go to Lulu and type in Tom Torero cold calling. It's out now. Until next time.