When something is scarce the price of it goes up. And price, is shorthand for “the amount of work and effort people are willing to put in to acquire something”.

Now here’s the odd thing about how this works.

A few months back, I was in Hyehwa, an area in Seoul known for stage performances like dance, plays and musicals, with BlueMystery, and two Korean guys–Joker and L. Because this is an artsy area there are lots of people, especially women strolling around.

Tons of coffee shops line the streets too.

(Coffee shops are ubiquitous around college campuses here in Korea. I suppose because people don’t want to study in the library?)

Anyway, the 4 of us are roaming the streets, checking out some of the street performances and hoping we’ll run into some interesting girls.

There are tons of different areas with different vibes and atmospheres you can go to in Seoul, and though Gangnam is much maligned for being uppity and snooty, no one can deny that when it comes to looks(though it’s often surgically assisted), the women are top notch.

The reality is, is that finding amazing women is tough. It’s a needle in the hay stack kind of thing. You can meet some fantastic women along the way and have some serious good times with the less than perfect women though, and I’m all for that.

So when I was in Hyehwa I gradually found myself thinking things like, “Maybe I should go and talk to that girl…she does have a nice smile.”

In my world, this is a flashing Chinese bicycle cop siren.

Because I know that if I were in Gangnam, I wouldn’t be thinking any maybes. I wouldn’t be using a nice smile as a reason to open. The way it should work is that you see a woman and it’s like getting sucked into an approach vortex of glory.

Let’s talk about motivation for a minute here.

I used to think I was the laziest guy there ever was. My father used to talk to my mother about how it was impossible to get me to do more than just the bare minimum to get by, and my mother would always respond by saying, “At least we don’t have to worry about him dying of a hear attack, dear.”

One year in 9th grade, I turned in a research paper on the poet Stevie  강남홀덤 Smith for my literature class over a month late! Another time, I had to hand deliver a paper to my teacher’s house in Philidelphia, 1.5 hours away from where I was in Washington, DC because I didn’t finish it on time to give it to her before she left and if I mailed it, it would have gotten there after she was already back in DC.

So here I am this lazy guy, who used to only work about 20-30 hours per month when I started PickUp Asia. Then I started thinking that I’m working awfully hard for a lazy guy.

And then it finally hit me.

All our lives we’re trained to believe that we should be able to motivate ourselves to do things that we really don’t want to do and have absolutely no interest in doing. Things like homework, and chores, and piano practice(unless of course you like piano practice).

And it messes us up in the head because we lose the ability to recognize real motivation, which is everything that you actually do do in life that is not on autopilot(ie like zipping your pants zipper is on autopilot, or SHOULD be).

So there I am in Hyewha, surrounded by women who I’m trying to be motivated to approach by looking at their best qualities(as seen from afar) and I contrast that with being in Gangnam where there’s the constant tractor beam effect of true motivation.

So as I was saying…a lot of guys don’t like to go to a place like Gangnam. The women there grade hard, but for me as exciting as the actual achievement of success is(however you define success), the pursuit of it alone is rewarding.

Especially in the world of dating and relationships because there are a lot of checkpoints along the way.