Welcome to the 21 Convention Podcast. My name is Steve Maeda and I am your host for today's episode. Today's episode we are featuring Damien Diecke. Now Damien Diecke is not only the founder, the creator of the School of Attraction dot com, but he is also somebody who is a 21 Convention alumni speaker from Melbourne, Australia in 2012 and also scheduled to speak at this year's Tampa event in 2014. Now Damien and I very good friends. We've known each other since the 2012 event in Melbourne, Australia and we've had a lot of amazing discussions. But this discussion that we talk about today, man, trumps them all. It's really amazing. We get into the true science, the true psychology about socialization, how our brains work, the neurons that build a map for not only you being a great social artist and a great sexual being, but somebody who can use their mind to its highest level of excellence in terms of life, sales, perception and perspective of the world out there and just everything you would need to know to shape your mentality to be the ideal man. You'll really be impressed by what Damien says and how he goes about explaining it all. Now this discussion gets really in depth and we didn't have enough time to talk about it all in one hour. So if you want to continue that discussion, the best way you can do that is come to Tampa October 24th through 26th at this amazing event where we are having 22 speakers from around the world including myself, Damien and 20 other awesome guys at the top of their field in health, fitness, mentality, personal philosophy, martial arts, dating, relationships, man, did I leave anything out. But to be the most amazing sculpted crafted version of yourself, you can sit down with us face to face, whether it's at the hero's dinner or in one of the side rooms at the convention and talk to us and pick our brains so that we can build this community, this dialogue, this form of excellence through exchange brought to you by at the 21 convention. You can find out more about tickets and find out more about all the speakers featured in this year's event at the 21 convention dot com slash event. I hope to see you there. Let's get into this episode. Steve Maeda here with Damien Diekka and you are from the School of Attraction, let alone many other things. But more importantly, you are a 21 convention alumni speaker from Melbourne 2012 and you are going to be at the Tampa event as well. And also we've talked quite a bit about a lot of different, you know, just perspectives, life, you know, men, women, progressing in business and whatnot. So you do a whole bunch of stuff. Am I leaving anything out there? Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I, you know, I'm predominantly I run the dating coaching school, but I do a whole bunch of kind of sales and marketing corporate training. I do run a whole sort of life coaching branch. And we do a lot of what's called this kind of men's work, which is sort of men's development way outside of the scope of like picking up women.  And I know, like, dude, that's something you do. You're kind of involved with quite a bit as well. Yeah, man, there's so much going on with me. It's not even funny. I don't even know where to begin with it because, uh, you know, it's okay. So first off, we're doing these podcasts, which are like beaming out all over the place.  And, and, uh, man, 21 convention is just such a beast of that. You know, it's, and it's much needed because there's so many people that are really looking for that sense of masculinity. So that's an honor to be able to be, uh, man, emceeing this. Anthony always says it's not just a host. It's the master of ceremonies. So, um, anyway, but then also, uh, with TSL, the sexual life and, uh, with the Venetian arts, there's just a whole bunch of stuff happening. It's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, isn't that nuts?  You've got to go beyond, uh, just, you know, the, the kind of like life hack of dating or whatever it is, man, you know, the, the total like buying into the PUA scene and really improve yourself. But the guys that started the whole pickup thing, you know, mystery and those dudes actually are like, you know, um, uh, basically asked me to help front their company and rebrand it and do a whole bunch of crazy stuff. So interesting. But, um, man, you would said something, okay, right? When we got started, that the key to getting better with women or having a good dating life, basically being happy with all those things, dating, sex, relationships, your sense of being a man had a lot to do with developing skills outside of the seduction scene. That's what I want to know about. Yeah.  Yeah. And what you generally find is that these guys, they're not like warm trick ponies. It's not how they became really good in that part of their lives. What you generally find is that they have pulled skill sets from, from various other parts of self development, various other, I guess you'd probably call it sciences and integrated that into the dating and sort of pick up land because when was the last time you saw an actual research paper on picking up women? It doesn't happen. There's no quality research that really occurs. You know, you, most you're going to vote for would be some guy going, well, I once picked up a girl and this worked very well, but you know, you can't, there's not a broad scale. If you look at it as, put your scientist cap on and you look at it and you say, all right, great. Where's the research here? It's not there. And, and what I find is that the people have gotten really good with women. Like if I sort of, I could give my story to give it a bit of an example. Most of what I read, most of what I integrate into my training when I work with people is not from sort of pick up literature. Right. So a lot of it comes from, you know, you've heard of this idea of a lean manufacturing that's starting with a minimum viral product and system and systemizing what you do and having a, having a really neat way of measuring your results. You know, if I'm a sales person, I measure everything. Right. So I measure my funnel. I measure, you know, the number of calls I get those calls to first meetings, those first meetings to sales. But if you talk to a most guys trying to get better with women, of course, that's not part of the general way of thinking. You know, they don't, they don't go, well, how many girls did I approach and out of that, what percentage convert to a phone number? What percentage of phone numbers convert to, and they don't, they don't systemize. There's no systematic thinking for most, you know, guys when they think about going out to pick up women, they don't think of it as something that can be an economics or a science or they think of it just as this thing that you go out and you kind of hope for the best. But what they, what you have to learn to get good at this stuff is to look elsewhere, is to read literature outside of the pickup industry, because that's what I and most of the guys that I've found have gotten good at this. I know you're the same, have gotten the biggest inspiration from books, from, from, from research that has nothing to do with women. So let me ask you this. Do you actually think that a science of seduction and pickup, like a calculated step by step, you know, pattern or something like that, is that what you're aspiring for? Or is it something else? Yeah, no, look, I'm not, I'm not, I certainly do not subscribe to the paint by numbers concept.  Of course, it's not. Human interactions are way more complicated than that. Yeah. But there is a little bit like, you know, if you go to, I'm a big fan of Anthony Robbins and if you go, if you read one of his books or one of his, you know, CD packages, he'll take you through a learning journey, right? Where in that journey, you learn about how to be the most successful in your life that you can be, right? He doesn't tell you, push this button, do this, this is how you're going to make a million bucks. He just tells you the journey that you have to go through to learn the skills you're going to need that are wildly different from person to person. So I guess what I believe is there is a science to improving yourself in that area of your life. I don't think it's been nearly researched well enough, but I know that it's out there and that's why I pull from other areas, you know, like there's a science to selling. You can't follow a paint by numbers of script.  Yes, hello, Steven from, you know, how are you doing today? You know, it doesn't work. You can't follow a script to sell someone anything. It doesn't, you know, the same thing with pickup, but there is still some people get really good at sales and we know that you can learn to be really awesome at sales. So that being said, what are the things that you explored to that really hit the mark to be the better man with women, sex, sales, you know, business and all that sort of stuff? Yeah, it's interesting. I think there are two major areas for me and for most guys. One is, you know, your own self-development and really integral to that. I don't know if I've spoken about it, so I won't kind of go into it again too much here is, you know, stuff like your David Data and stuff like your, you know, all your men's development stuff, your power of now, what you kind of classically call you're in a game. There's that side of things. And you know, we've spoken about this at length. I know you have as well in up talks. But then the other side is really, you know, the science of understanding why people behave the way they do. What is the key behind human behavior? And you know, if I were to pull off the top of my head, some books that I think were massively integral to understanding that, one of them would be, have you heard, you've heard of the book called Influence? Yes, yeah. Yeah. Fantastic book. It teaches you why we do stuff the way we do it. You know, there's, there's, well, so have you heard of Daniel Kahneman? No, huh? Fantastic. It's the most boring book you'll ever read. Actually, it's the most boring book and he's got this TED talk as well. It's the most boring TED talk you'll ever hear.  Really? Wow. Yeah, that, yeah, that is rare. Yeah. You know, but because he did this, what's called economic behavioral economics, which is the economics of how people behave and act. You know what? Okay, so when did he win a Nobel Prize? Was that in 2008? Or was it more recently? Oh, no, because I actually, I think I may know a guy who worked on that team, who's a professor of economics and psychology at Cornell. But it's the right area, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Tversky, but Tversky died before, before the award was awarded. Yeah, no, man. No, Dan, amazing guy. Actually, he's friends with David Tien and some of those dudes as well. But crazy. No, man. So this is very interesting because the economics of psychology is something that really has not been explored and looked at. And, you know, when you were describing that book, I haven't read it. I haven't read influence or the other guy that you mentioned who won a Nobel Prize. So I might know somebody who knows somebody. But, but basically the thing is, is that another book like that for me was social intelligence and Daniel Goldman stuff or even Paul Ekman stuff, because it's so tremendously like, man, you have to be a fan in order to get into it, even though they are well written. But it's just not that, you know, it's not the normal stuff that we would talk about or see as entertaining. And that sort of the way that people communicate. And this is actually an interesting thing, because when you were talking about seduction and the pickup scene, that there was no real science to it, no real numbers about it. And but also at the same time, I believe that socializing and sex are such an organic thing that there, there's so many things complexly happening. But we make up myths about why they happen, right? And then we say, Oh, it's all because of social value that this girl likes you or, you know, perhaps, you know, there might be something in terms of sales or business or corporate life of why we do things. And they're totally not true.  But if we don't get to the truth of it, then we build a lie. And that's when we start like, you know, of course, people with more money or more attention get more attention and, you know, might have the pick of the litter in some situations, but that does not mean that it's making sex happen. That does not mean that it's making socializing happen. And that definitely does not mean that fulfillment of social and sexual behaviors happening either. We really got to get to what that truth is. What were some of your biggest revelations when you were looking at, you know, these kind of behavioral sciences? Yeah, it's hard. I think one of the big things, and this is what one of the big things I got from Kahneman as well, was the notion that, you know, a lot of his research was around this idea that humans, of course, not just women, but they've got a fast and a slow, there's two sort of brain systems that operate, you know?  Or if I show you a picture of a girl, within seconds, you've worked out what sort of girl you think she is. You didn't have to really concentrate that high. But then there's another part of your brain that if I ask you, what do you think is the meaning of life?  That's the slow thinking brain. Right, yeah. Understanding that we've got these two. Now, if I, to give you an example, if I talk to a woman, there are certain questions I can ask her that are going to activate her fast thinking brain. There are certain questions I could ask her that are going to activate her slow thinking brain. Right. And understanding that the fast thinking brain doesn't use logic. Understanding that the fast brain brain basically works on emotion.  If you want her to not go into that mind state, then you don't ask those types of questions. So that was a big piece of it. Yeah. If you can imagine, it's really hard to kind of explain in this. No, no, no. I like, let me build the dialogue even more because the slow thinking brain may not necessarily be, because the way I had it explained to me was a little bit different, but it may not necessarily be the emotional path. It's just the emotional path can be spoken in it. It's more just a cascade of feelings.  And it's really kind of crazy because women and men have a different brain structure, different set of cells.  And, you know, it's almost immediate and it works actually very quickly, but then our amygdala can't process it. And so basically there's the amygdala. And this is still very theoretical, but the science behind what you're talking about is for real stuff. I mean, it's crazy. They did experiments with people who were blind, but their ocular receptors could still see stuff, but it wasn't processing to the, I guess, the logical part of the brain. And just how it was, I mean, it was science, you know, there were consistent interactions with it. So it's really, it's really kind of awesome. And now what you're doing is you're taking that into some direct communication that accesses that one road of the brain and then, you know, moving it into or I guess holding the hand of the emotions into the fast moving, I guess, more logical side of the brain. Am I getting this? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. But I'll actually, I want to rewind to something you said before. And that's this idea that we never actually have the full picture.  Even us as coaches, if I'm talking to a woman and things aren't going well, I've got lots of experience. I'm really good at influencing the situation to the best of my abilities. I've got lots of practice, but I never have the whole picture. Right. And I think a lot of guys miss that. They miss this. They've got this notion that they should always be able to control completely and you never can. You can only influence. So I learned something really interesting about fast and slow thinking brains and I can do it. It can give me a better statistical advantage, but it never gives me complete control of the interaction or it never gives me complete control of anything. All I can do is be a better influencer. And that's something that I think a lot of guys miss. Something goes wrongly and they think they've got the full picture. What they don't realize is she's not being rude to him because he did something wrong.  Or she's being rude to him because her husband just cheated on her that morning or you don't know the full and you'll never have it. Yeah. Man, that's so interesting because we get so wrapped up in control, but where does the wrapping up of control come from? And I really believe it comes from being in dysfunction. When we're in pain or we're confused and something's not going right, we search for man some stability and control is the illusion of that. And it's not because I know from this acceptance is happiness. Control is not necessarily happiness. Again, it's like the science are figuring out and that's exactly what it is with social dynamics or whatever.  But really, that is God, if we had a life in a lifestyle where people were focused more on bettering themselves, exploring themselves, even with their bodies, with their minds, not just in the dating scene, but you can definitely see it there. But health and fitness, we wouldn't have that. I'm going to use this word, but that desperation mindset to always have to control something. It's almost unnatural for humans to do that. We're meant to experience and meant to live in the moment, whether you talk about us in caveman days to right when we are developing agriculture into these high stimuli technology super system that we have going on now. So interesting stuff, man. Yeah. And you know from my happiness talk to my feelings about control. It is about if all your focus is on all the stuff you paint and they can't control, you're stuffed. Yeah, man. I remember you actually talking about epigenetics in that. Okay, I'm not sure if you use that term or not. But I remember I was just like, man, okay, this is some kind of like spacey stuff or whatever. And as time went on and more knowledge comes your way and you just pay attention to more people. Man, it's such an interesting thing. And then with the pregnancy of Esteban with Maria and myself, we basically, we got into all that. How can we genetically influence or have the best, maybe not influence, but have the best situation for our child that it was really, really interesting. I mean, we did a lot of stuff, you know, diet into like meditation, different exercises, and all that sort of stuff. But I definitely remember that you should watch Damien's 21 convention talk from 2012 Melbourne. And he gets into that. It's really, really cool. Epigenetics is awesome. You know how like your son can have certain genes, but depending on what you do before he's born, it'll get expressed or not, right? Yeah, and actually, you know, this goes into something like even way back when like epigenetics and what you were explaining at the convention there, like I said at the time was kind of confusing. I was like, all right, you know, is this for real?  And then I just heard a ton, a ton of people talk about it. And some of the great health minds that I really pay attention to really focus on that is a big deal. Actually, just at a podcast with an amazing guy, Ted Rice, and he was like, Hey, but look, the one thing that's for certain, the one thing that we do have proof over as humans are wrong all the time. So don't, you know, there's like, you know, but so he was like, look, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket, live a good life and be well rounded nuts. But the thing is with with that, I remember years ago reading something by Dr. Andrew Weil, who I don't know if you know who he is, but he's the bearded guy and he's got kind of like a bigger dude, but he's always talking about health. You know, he's a medical doctor, and he's definitely been doing it for a long time. May not be as popular now, but he had actually talked about the cellular change that happens and how, you know, that affects your DNA and that senescence, a cell only regenerates a few times.  And you know, how cancer can come from that. And it's just such an interesting thing. How we are this entire organism that now we're seen as dysfunction as the norm, you know, sickness or God, whatever, you know, a different way of thinking.  So I'm going to be super healthy. It's, it's just a funny, funny thing. Man, just to switch gears here a little bit. I think what's so interesting that you had said in some of the talks that we've had before is that your ideas on the transition from how somebody might get into dating and then switch to sales or get into man sales and then transition to, you know, corporate life coaching, you know, what are these transitions that you've seen for yourself because literally every guy from the dating seduction or even just life coaching scene that I've talked to has seen that it's almost impossible to stay within that. And the growth and branching out in it has really been what has shaped them. You know, so what have you seen on your journey with that? Yeah. And this is really, it's something that I try to promote as a reason to, for example, work with me as well. But it's, it's so interesting what I see with clients. So they finish a program, you know, and I run really long like 13 week programs. And when I finish a program with them, it's really interesting. I have ongoing contact with them as part of the program. Yeah.  I quit my job. I'm like, cool. Why is that? Well, I asked my job for a rate by boss for a raise. And he said no. And I told him, I'm out of here and I've gone, you know, and it's, it's so common and it happens so much. And it's because what you're learning and it's not just sort of, if you're learning to get better with women, you know, it's, it's if you learn to master something and get really good at a skill set. And it doesn't matter if that is sales or if that's business or if it's pickup. But once you've learned to do that, you get these invaluable skill sets and we learn these basics kind of life truths about yourself, about getting what you want. You know, one of those is very simply not stop being afraid of asking for what you want. And if you learn that, I don't, I don't just mean, Oh, Damien said, don't be afraid to ask for what you want there for I should do it. It's when it's really internal.  Not beat around the bush, not play games. This is what I believe I'm worth to do that in any area of your life consistently. It bleeds out. You know, it's one of these life truths. It's, it's knowing your worth. It's being able to not be shy of telling people what your worth is. You know, it's, it's having a game plan and, and so going, this is where I want to be. This is where I'm at now. How am I going to structure this journey so that I can make it happen? How am I going to show I don't procrastinate? It's all these success skills.  I'm a dating coach, but really I'm a life coach and my niche is dating.  So guys just pick up the skill set and they take it elsewhere. You can't help but then migrate into, Hey, you know what? I could be a really good salesman with these skills. Or knowing all I know, I've always wanted to get into, I don't know, I've always wanted to pursue my career as a designer, but working for myself, a software designer with my own business, I've always wanted to do it. And all of a sudden they do it because they know they understand the process of success, you know? And that's why I'm sure you would have had successful business guys often really easy to coach. Yeah, yeah. Or successful sales guys are really easy to coach. Or people have gotten extremely good at a musical instrument, you know, have become usually easier to coach because they understand how to be successful at something is like that universal truth that just permeates outwards.   It's the same thing. And so what's so interesting is that man, this is actually moving down a different road of clients that I've had that are the the most fair, thorough, you know, moving at the highest level, they are entrepreneurs. So that's what you talked about. But it's not just all entrepreneurs. It's entrepreneurs that it definitely helps if they've, you know, orchestrated, they've done it for a while, they have they've dealt with employees. They're just excellent communicators and build that natural leadership in and it's not leadership like I'm trying to, you know, make some alpha quality. It's that they just know how to talk to people and they know they they can walk into any situation and know who to talk to and where to make that work. But the other one would be people who were actually now this is illegal, but I don't know who these people are, but guys who were who had been drug dealers. And so they would like hire me. It was funny because I've had and I work long term courses as well. And actually, I want to ask you about that. But there was this one where there's this guy and he was that's what he did.  But, you know, eventually over time and knowing him for actually a couple years, he revealed it to me. But there was a cop on that course as well, they they both became very good friends. It's and even after knowing all about it. And it was just a funny, funny thing. But it was what I want to talk about with that was that people who made decisions that had to do with themselves. And I don't want to encourage anybody to get into some illegal activity. But there was a level of independence and knowing and this guy did not. I mean, he was very, very business like he was not some, you know, guy on a street corner or whatever. He was somebody who, you know, ran whatever his shop was and actually transitioned out of it into a real business, which is very, very impressive. And I've had a couple clients like that. So clients that are entrepreneurs, or it doesn't even have to be that if they're just really into weightlifting and know exactly how that works, they will be able to get the relationship of when to push when to slow down, you know, how do I get in touch with my body? Okay, wait a minute, you know, it's the relationship with me and the iron, or is it the relationship with myself and the femininity, they'll be able to make these analogies and they that help so much in the learning process, but also the fight and drive to really achieve that goal is big, but we don't hear about the process of the ebb and flow and the points of failure that they're able to bring themselves out of, you know, because of their awesome life experiences. What I wanted to ask you, so you have 13 week courses, that's awesome. Okay, let me ask you this. Do you think, I mean, like I always wonder when people have workshops and stuff like that, man, do they, I just, I really think that the only way to see a person change is in that long-term process and with a lot of connection, and you mentioned both of those things. How did you come to that and why did you pick that teaching path and style?  Another part was the understanding, you know, education, the way the brain functions, as you probably know, is a huge area of passion, and I understand that to learn something new, to change your behavior, is so rare, because it's actually quite, it requires consistent effort. Yeah. If you have a stroke, a minor stroke, and part of your brain is damaged, that has to do with your ability to speak, it requires tough effort to learn to speak again. It's the kind of effort that might be, let's say, any listener might like writing, hates writing, maybe writing essays or writing, I used to hate it, and it's, it's almost frustratingly difficult to try to write something if you're not used to doing it, or, you know, it might be guys to tease someone, it's really frustratingly difficult to think of how to tease someone, so I know that in the beginning when you do something different to change your behavior, it's tough, and in fact it's annoyingly, frustratingly very hard to do, because you're trying to use your brain the way it's not wired to do, and I guess I learned that basically the way the brain works, it just requires lots of repeat firings, you know, you go to rehabilitation after an accident of some description, you got to go regularly, you know, I know when I read, there's a really great book about neuroplasticity in the brains, the way that the brain wires itself, and you know, it's again, the people who, who, the more frequently you go right after an accident, or the more frequently you go for rehabilitation, the better your brain is going to rewire, and rewire amazingly well, we can do incredible things, but if you don't go often enough, if you don't go out consistently enough, or you leave big gaps, then your brain can never rewire itself, so there was kind of the science behind it that I understood too, so what I knew was that if I wanted to get a change out of guys, I had to somehow force them to take action, to actually do the hard stuff they don't want to do, consistently for at least a few months, I knew that was a necessity, or no one would ever get the results that they wanted, you, you can't get a change in behavior any other way, and I know from myself, and I'm a bloody driven guy, like I really push myself hard, probably too hard at times, but I know even then, if I don't have someone to push me, as driven as I am, I can let myself off the hook, so I guess what I knew was that it wasn't enough just to tell guys you got to put in three months worth of work, I had to literally grab them by the scruff of the collar and say, go, go, they have to be consistently pushed and prodded, otherwise nothing happens, and so I guess I realized that, and I do, I keep revising it more and more because I learn more and more about how to make things stick internally, you know, I mean another big one of course is just being surrounded by guys who are as dedicated as you are, you know, I always say to people, if I picked you up and dropped you in a house full of guys or girls, people who were, who were really, who took massive action to get what they wanted in life, that would be the best thing you could ever do with someone because you would just adopt their behaviors, you'd adopt their mindset of just pushing for what you want, but that's, yeah that's I guess how I came about it, it was my experience, and I guess I'm very, I love the idea of doing something differently to whatever anyone else is doing, I love seeing what's there and making it heaps better, and that's kind of what I try to do. No, cool man, I also, you, you offer a tremendous amount of service as well, and man I almost think coaching without some sort of community or, you know, access and contact is really, really, I mean you, there's a difference between information, there's a difference between experience, and there's a difference between interaction, and human beings I think are so fundamentally wired to connect, it just makes everything work better, it puts our minds in its healthiest mode, you know.  So when you talk about drive and pushing yourself in that sort of way, I think every person that I know that has their own business, or is, and it doesn't even have to be business, you know, that's one thing that I want to make clear here, if somebody's just really into something, whether it's a musical instrument or some sort of hobby, man, it's very easy to get carried away with that, and you spoke about this drive that you have, and that being around the right group to push yourself, where do you find the balance with that, because that is, I think that's the real art, you know, how am I not, you know, pushing myself too far to burn myself out, and actually I remember talking to you at the beginning of the year, when it went from 2013 to 2014, you're like, man, I'm taking two weeks off, taking two weeks off, because this year I'm going to go crazy, and I just want to be mentally prepared. So where's that balance for you in finding out that right lifestyle? Yeah, I, you know, I struggled.  Um, for me, what I've learned is that, is that I actually have to forcibly plan time to have fun. I have to forcibly plan time to have a social life. I just actually plan time to see my partner, because if I don't, it's really easy to become unbalanced. Yeah. You know, I can, I can, guys, a lot of guys have this ability to become like a dog with a bone, you know, women too, but testosterone makes us more prone to this, to becoming addicted to a single-minded task, and be really easy to have that invade your whole life. If I've been working all day, I step away. It takes me an hour to recover and become normal and social again. So one of the things that I learned was that I had to, I had to, I mean, every week, what I do is I literally structure my life to the half hour. Really? Yeah, I do. And that might sound anal, but I really do, because I have to tell myself, this is when I'm going to stop working, you know, and then I have to tell myself, on Thursday night, I'm going to see friends. And Tuesday night, I'm going to spend with my girlfriend, and it's going to be date night.  If I don't do that, none of it will happen. Nice. Because what I find is that it's overwhelming. You can really, I can only be obsessed with one thing at a time. Yeah. And if I don't give myself the space to have balance, I won't take it for myself. And I know a lot of business people in exactly the same boat. It's really easy to get unbalanced. And it's not successful. If I have a big business, I'm not successful if I'm overweight or unhealthy. I'm not successful if I haven't got a good relationship with my partner, or if I haven't got good friends, I'm not successful. I'm just good in one area. Right. Man, you know, it's interesting because a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business people follow the same mentality that you have. But it's one of the reasons why I like the podcast and the 21 convention podcast is just the diversity in general, because we're talking to such a huge group of people. And I think like where I found this was, you know, a lot of this so much comes to me through the seduction scene, you know, in what we were talking about, you know, mastery or experts. When I talk to somebody in the fitness scene, you can see the same discoveries happen. But I found a lot of people being really calculating about how they decide to do things, scheduling and all sort of stuff. And for me, I'm the opposite. I have zero schedule. I just work as you know.  Damian and I have done two podcasts. The first one, I missed it like four times. But in what's crazy is in between then, I've easily done at least 20 interviews between then and now.   I can't believe it, man. It's uncanny. But, you know, I follow that different route. But what you see, especially with when you look at diversity, when you get when you study this stuff and you shouldn't study mastery, you should study what you're passionate about. But when you study that, you see different people do things in such different ways. Who would have known? I mean, I've known Anthony Johnson, the CEO of the 21 convention since 2008. Who would have known this convention would be is powerful and changed so many people's lives. And he, God, man, he just wanted to put the stuff out there. He's like, let me just put the stuff out there. Let me put it out there. I believe in it. I believe in it. I believe in it.  And man, you know, that's something that actually I was thinking about today. What was the first success that you had that made you go, bam, I'm going full fledged at this? No, probably for me, for me, it would have been my first three clients. I still remember them. First three guys that I've had. How long ago was that? Well, that was two, Jesus, six years ago. Yeah. So he was the problem for me getting started was the notion that I could pull something out of the air and charge someone money for it. That pay me be happy that I gave that to them that I invented out of thin air. That was a real struggle for me that people would pay me just to give them what I had in here. Yeah. That was really tough. And I'm sure, I know I'm not alone in this. I felt like- Oh, totally. Totally. I agree. I felt like an impostor in many ways. You know, I knew, I knew what to do, but I felt like I was faking it. And then one of my friends said something very funny to me. And it's something that I tell people because I chuckle at the idea. He said, okay, think about Genghis Khan.  He must have felt like he was pretending at being a conqueror, at being a warlord. He's like faking the whole warlord thing. Because the first time you do something, that's what you're doing.  And that was a really hard thing, you know? But hearing that, thinking, yeah, that's true. Whoever starts something the first time, it always feels a bit awkward. But just having those first few people, actually not just pay me, but be happy for the work that I've done, that was this big pivotal shift. Everything kind of changed in here when that occurred, when I realized people really did value what I had to give them.  Yeah, man, no, that's, I think that's key. I think if, how somebody can get in touch with success is one of the most important things that you can do for your mental health, you know, and your ambition and everything that goes along with it. How we can find that, that sort of success is key. You know, it's interesting, I don't know if you are a proponent of this, but one of the big things that I keep hearing with a lot of these guys who are, you know, whether it's in fitness, whether it's in life philosophy, you could say dating sex relationships, but how we can get five small wins a day. You know, how can we build the momentum of success with the small things? And, you know, and a lot of guys take a different take on it. Some people say, well, okay, we build momentum. We get some confidence. Other people say we instill this sense of being, but you hear it over and over and over again.  Take a step down, even if it's too easy. I don't care. Get the form exact. Get your wins there. And move in that direction. You'll get to know your body better. And it won't just be about the one singular goal of the weight, but it'll be, you know, envelope into this whole thing. And he goes into all this whole life, philosophy, craziness about it too. But those five small wins, is that something that you work with or tell me your thoughts on that? Yeah, I love that idea. I love that idea. The way that it was, I had one of the big lessons I learned from a friend who was retired when I started the business. He'd retired already. But he said it like this. He just said to me, most people do jackal. Most people do nothing and hope that their lives will change. He said, I don't care if you only do 10 minutes a day on this new business idea of yours. After a while, 10 minutes won't be enough and you'll want to keep doing more. But if you just commit, and it was really interesting, that's what I did. I committed to actually half an hour a day. Which is nothing if you're going to try to build a business. You can barely get a few words down in half an hour. But what happened was that in the beginning, every now and again, it grew out to an hour long because I'd just be so enthralled in this one little task. Other times, oh, thank God, half an hour. But after about two or three weeks, it just became like a baby and I couldn't leave it alone. It was like it started to get a life of its own after a while. And success is like that. It doesn't have to be a business. It's the same thing if you learn to get good with women. Or as you said, if you're going to the gym, once you've done something consistently for a while, you start to feel an ownership over your success. You start to feel a... Yeah, it becomes an identity. It becomes wrapped up in who you are and what you do. And that's what most people miss is it doesn't matter how little you put in. Like you said, just get your wins every day, right? The way I like the idea, I love the idea of five wins. You know, when I used to train, I still do train. For me, it was always every time I'm out, I have to do a little bit more than it last time. And I don't care if it's only running 10 meters further in a 10 kilometer jog, a six mile jog, 10 feet further, it doesn't matter. It's just a little bit more every time. Yeah, that's, I guess, the way it was explained to me. But that was pivotal. That was a big one for me. So how did you get this crazy drive competitive edge? You know, where did it come from, man? You're always so passionate about it. Yeah, for those who don't know my history, I used to suffer terrible panic attacks and depression for years that kind of left me trapped in my room for a while. And when I was there, for me, the thing that kept me going and stopped me, I don't know, trying to hurt myself or doing something else was the notion of one day, it'll all be better. There's the notion of one day, I'll get out of here and I'm going to show the world why, why I'm not just this guy who's trapped in his room. So that kind of, every time if I start letting myself slip or letting my life sort of fall backwards, I think about that guy, you know, and I think about, I owe it to him. For all the suffering that guy went through, to make something of myself now. You know, it was kind of like a silent prayer that I would say to the powers that be, you know, and get me through this, and I will show the world what I can do.  You know, they've had this conversation with themselves, just get me past this. And I swear to God, everything's gonna change. It's like the bounce point, right? It's like, well, you just hit this low point, you swear to God, everything's gonna change.  But you know, I think also, I think there is something to be said for the outlier effect. A lot of people take a lot of comfort. They wrap themselves up in the blanket of comfort, which is I'm like everybody else. So all my friends and I were the same ilk, and we look after each other, because we're the similar and we're the same. I never had that, you know. I've always felt like a loner, if I always felt like an outlier. The benefit to that, it sounds very lonely, but the benefit to that has been in business. I'm not afraid of being different, unlike everybody else. And I think that's actually the fear for a lot of people is to be radically different from all their friends around them. Feels like it'd mean they'd have to be isolated and lonely. And I think that is a part of it for a lot of people. They have to be comfortable being different, you know, being unique. That sounds really stupid, but that really is, I know it's a big part of it.   And if I am different, it tends to have no value.  But man, what the hell happened to you?  Yeah, for me, it was kind of exactly what I've brought across to all my other coaches. You know, it's kind of stage one for me. But that was literally, there's a couple of things. One, I had absolute faith that I kept working on something. If I kept trying different strategies, eventually I'd find a way through. But the other thing for me at the time was, I had a lot of time on my hands. So what I ended up doing was I started to keep a journal, right, basically to track some sort of measurement. So what I'd do is I'd journal how I felt every few hours throughout a day. And what I'd do is a week at a time, I'd make a certain number of changes to how I'd behave, whether I'd meditate, whether I'd exercise. And I'd just measure over that week what my shift in emotions would be. So it was really, it's the beginning of testing and measuring. And most people don't do that, but it was, again, my scientific brain. I had been studying engineering before all the panic attacks and everything took polled.   And that's the same strategy that I used, because I had no mentors with it when I originally started learning the pickup stuff. It was the same thing there. It was, all right, I'm going to go out and I'm going to literally keep statistic numbers, how long my interactions go for, whether I get numbers, how many of those numbers convert. You know, it was geeky. It was a numbers game. But it worked brilliantly, because then I could make changes and see literally, because we're actually really bad at estimation, and humans are horrible at that.  People think the conversion rate is X, but it's usually like half of X is the reality. So yeah, by testing and measuring it, it was really obvious really quickly what was making all the difference. Yeah, so really that was the big lesson that I learned, was testing measure, testing measure, testing measure. And oddly enough, I became really lazy about it in business. I've just gotten back into it this year and it's paying off the dividends, but it's funny. Yeah, it was a massive part of my, it was my way to regain control.  Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's funny because my friends who are really successful in business, exactly the same. They're like, aimly retentive about numbers and understanding how they all fit together. Yeah, it's funny because again, people do things in such different ways in their business, but you will see always it does come back to the numbers.  What you will see though is that it always, it's like, hey, what are the results? And that is like the main deal. It's such an interesting thing. Do you ever think that business for yourself becomes like an expression of you? Like sometimes I'll feel this way. It's like, wow, okay, so this is my expression, this is what I'm doing, but sometimes I'm just doing it to keep myself occupied. Like it keeps me busy. It keeps me mentally well. I mean, these are all the good things that happens in what I have organized my life with. And I look back on the day and I'm like, wow. Okay, you know, I made some money. Okay, I didn't make some money.  I kept myself busy and entertained in this sort of, I mean, shoot, man, today this will be, God, you know, three or four hours of talking to people. It's so cool. It's awesome.  But do you ever think that with business and expression, it has that sort of feeling of like, well, wait a minute, I'm just playing this like awesome little game with myself. You know, you know what I mean? Yeah, actually, what I always tell people, as I say, people look, six years ago, I paid $2,000 to get on this ride. And the ride's still going. You know, six years later, the ride is still going. It cost me two grand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, man, that's- That's how I explain it to people. It's true.   If you realize that, if you realize that you're not going to actually die, you'll take hits and things will go wrong and up and down. But if you realize it's just, it's like, yeah, it's the same mentality of if it's a game, if it's just a curiosity instead of, I have to win, I have to win. But it's more of a, hmm, I wonder what's down this alleyway.  And it, yeah, it is. It's very, that's a very healthy mindset to have in business. I think it's very dangerous when people like have to win, you know, which a lot of people have. And I think it's, it's, but actually, I think it was interesting what you said before, you mentioned that you, you know, different people have different mindsets when it comes to business. Right. And I think almost to bring, you know, to create some full cycle between dating and business, it is exactly the same thing in that there are a lot of ways to be supremely successful just in business. Yeah. And there's not only one strategy that gets you there. Right.  You're supposed to find your way to do it. Yeah. And it's the same thing with business. You should be watching lots of successful people. What do they do? But then only take what matches your personality. If you are, if you are creative visionary, if that's kind of what you identify with more, you're probably gonna hate looking at numbers all day long.  You've got to find your own way to get there. And I think that's a big answer. The same thing with behaving good with women is don't just take one person and mimic them. You'll never get there. It's illogical because we've got different personalities. We're driven by different needs. And I think that that is actually, you know, anyone listening, yeah, I'm numbers crazy. You don't have to copy me and do numbers crazy though to be successful. Man, like to come back to this, what about for a guy that is just, man, there's a lot of people who will actually email me, talk to me about what they saw on the 21 convention and how it helped them out so much, but it's like, where can I start? You guys are talking about this advanced mode of wherever, but where's step one? Because I know for myself, when I'm in dysfunction, whether that's been with health or with relationships, with just making friends and being social, let alone being sexual, I need to step one, get out of that dysfunction. And then step two, you know, I might have this vision of like, all right, I'm gonna screw all these chicks or I'm gonna travel the world and do all this stuff, but that can only really happen or even turn into what it's supposed to be once I'm out of that mode of isolation and within self and in alienation from society. So what do you say to a guy that is watching this, just like, man, what can I do? I don't leave the house, you know, maybe I'm eating too much or wrapped up and playing video games. Like what is that first step that he can take? What I say to most people is we pack animals. And usually what I say is if you want to, it doesn't even matter if you're not ready to take action yet.  And this is what's so great about the internet and the internet age is there are forums, there are communities, there's meetup.com, there's all these ways to find groups of people around you who probably meet in person. And I say the most important thing, even if you're not ready to take action, like if it's dating and pick up, I say to guys, get out with guys who are going out to hit on girls.  The mindset, what happens up here, begins to change. And I see that as being a really, really huge, huge part of that, just getting surrounded with the right people, it makes life so much easier.  And I think anyone is almost superhuman to do that without people around them in a similar boat. You know, yeah, I mean, they've been doing it with addiction for a long time, right, getting people connected to similar people so they don't feel like such losers. Actually, yeah, I think that that, you know, it's so fundamental where I've seen the biggest changes of people is in a community and it's impossible to not do it. I mean, it's so powerful. That's why I believe that, you know, we're born to be social, we're born to be sexual. If you are not being social and you're not being an expression of yourself and you haven't found a group or a tribe that you can do that within, you almost have no chance. I mean, you have almost no chance at happiness and fulfillment. You can get everything, but you will never be what it is you want it to be. So I think there's so much power with that. I mean, man, I've seen, it was, God, it was interesting. Man, I heard a crazy, crazy story from a guy that, you know, I had done an interview with and it was just, I mean, and I've heard a lot of stories. Like I've done a lot of stuff in rehabs and I've heard like, man, I don't really get freaked out by it, but this was intense, what he was saying, but the way, and I was amazed because he was a very normal guy, you know, very, you know, from what I could tell him and from what I know him as, and we haven't spent a ton of time around each other, but I know his work and his, an interview and so on. But man, you know, in order to get through that, you know, what he said was the community that he built around himself and that it was huge and that it wasn't a quick thing and it wasn't something that was just a short-term deal, it was his life and that was one of the most important things that he had done. I think it's interesting though because we hear this saying and it's been happening for, you know, years and years and years since I was a little lad that if you surround yourself, you know, with five people or your five closest friends, you take the average of their income, it's probably close to yours.  But what I think is maybe a better way for me to stomach something like that, if you surround yourself, like if we take it out of the financial, if we take it out of the, you know, social value kind of or whatever, you know, societal definition, but if you surround yourself with the people and really make it important that value what you value or the ideals that you're trying to shape for yourself, you know, whether it's approaching people or whether it's people who have happiness or perspective, stuff does change. And I've seen that change literally monsters who society had given up on into functional people, man. And not to say that they're like squeaky clean, whatever, but man, they're actually people that I would much rather hang out with than a lot of people in public. It's really amazing to see that change. And that can happen.  And those things can be reactivated like that.  I mean that like in terms of getting the resources, you know, you can do them. I mean, you could say hello to people. You could talk to people, you could give people hugs. You could share about your feelings. You could relate in a moat with other people.  And it shows the power of humanity. And it's really, I mean, it's really sad that when we're in the natural mode of functioning out there, living life, driving cars, going to work, you know, shaking hands and getting the paycheck, we forget how powerful that 20 minutes of decompression or one hour of decompression of talking to people on a daily basis is just, man, it's a really helpful thing. Anyway, in terms of being social, what do you say to a guy that is a little bit socially unhealthy? You know, you probably see that with what we call the recovering PUAs.   They don't, you know, they have a bad view of anybody trying to help them, a bad view of women, a bad view of themselves. With a guy starting out for that mentality, what are some things that you offer him to get socially healthy or to move in a more positive social direction? Yeah, it's an interesting one. I guess in many ways, one of the first things I do, mostly what I rely on, to be honest, is experience. You know, of course, when I first start working with someone, anyone, but especially guys who are in this position, one of the first things they need to know is what's going on on the other side of the fence. You know, what's going on from a female's, like any women who have hurt him in the past, what the hell's going on in their world? You know, the women who told him to get bent when he approached them last time and he's feeling angry about it. And you gotta try to, the first thing I do is try to just give him the top down view because it's too easy to look at everything from just this angle. But honestly, what ends up being the most powerful with guys and is giving them experience. And what I mean by that is what I'll often say to them is, look, you don't have to just take what I'm saying as gospel, but what I want you to do, I want you to promise me that you will test, and I'll do this with them, test what happens if you say X, Y, Z, or if you approach thinking X, Y, Z, and I want you to test that against using this approach, thinking this other way. And I just want you to see what happens. So, because I believe very much as we only really learn core values through experience. So to give you sort of an example, if I have a guy who's got this belief that all that they have no concept that what happens is a lot of guys give out numbers and never call girls. Most guys have no clue that this happens all the time. And so why would girls be jaded? I wanted a number, I'm a nice guy. Of course I'm gonna call. The one thing I can easily do, which is just massive for a lot of guys, I can get him into an interaction with a woman and what he has to do is ask her, hey, can I ask you?  And of course, if you ask this group of four or five guys, they're all like, oh my God, you have no idea how much this happens, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden this guy is like mind blown because he has this experience where he can see and feel real women who aren't trained to say anything have this massive reaction of, oh my God, okay, there's pain on the other side of this fence as well. So that's one of the biggest things I actually try to do with guys is give them experiences like that. Rather than just have me go, no, this is how it is and I'm God from up on high telling you. Yeah, it's so interesting that exchange, man, when people start to have that sort of empathy and what I mean by that is just the exchange. It's not necessarily like, it doesn't have to be good or bad, but when people can exchange with people and feed off each other and feel what one another feels, this sort of this different, there isn't judgment in that. We stop being angry and resentful and of course those like big long-term things that are more deep seated in us might take a little bit more unearthing, but it's very easy to just be in the moment and not have to have much more beyond that when we can build that human exchange. I mean, it's just very, very powerful. Man, I actually am a little bit pressed for time and I know you got busy mad dog stuff happening. I wanna ask you, what are you planning to talk about at the 21 convention Tampa 2014? It's gonna be epic, but what is it that you're gonna bring to the table? Shera, so I'm gonna be bringing my business corporate training skills back into the arena in the world of dating and pickup because what I wanna bring in is that most people when they go out and they wanna work on getting better with women, they waste a huge amount of time because what they don't do is think in the same way an entrepreneur would think. What they don't do is plan, have a plan of attack, understand how they can get the best results the quickest and start relying on quality systems for themselves. It's really what it is. It's a look at why most people are too lazy to put in a little bit of work required before they go out to get massive, far better results than they ever do because you and I both know guys who go out and practice on their own, often they can go out months at a time and not make any difference in the results they get. Yeah. So it's really about what they're missing, what the core thinking is that they're missing that no one ever gives them because it's not an integral part of the pickup community. So it's really taking a skill set like we talked about today for a completely different area of life, top entrepreneur skills and bringing that back into how are you gonna use this skill set to be better with women? Nice, nice. So man, really building that foundation. Cool stuff, man. I'm like totally excited to hear it and actually especially in following you in the two years since it's been that when we first met, man, some cool stuff. You have an awesome, you have that awesome video. Everybody needs to watch this video. It's the School of Attraction ad. I don't know where they would find it. I saw it on Facebook, but it's awesome. How can people find you and get in touch with you and what's the best way for them to start interacting with you? Yeah, for sure, dude. I reckon the best way is they can check me out at schoolofattraction.com.au. But we are just, it's a soft launch so you're actually the first person to hear about this. Schoolofattraction.com, the book that I wrote, the, it won awards over in the States. We didn't even know. We won awards. We just put emails like, how did that happen? That's cool. So people are loving it. Got to the top 10 in men's development in Amazon. So it went really well. We've actually put that, the whole website is this book. So you can actually, it's like this massive resource online now on schoolofattraction.com. So if you're going there now, the website has only had a soft launch. It's got still little looks and crannies, which aren't perfect. But consider this a bonus for anyone watching. It hasn't even been fully launched yet, but it's all up there. That's probably one of the biggest pickup resources free available on the net now. So I would certainly direct people there as well. So schoolofattraction.com, for the book, schoolofattraction.com. Do you, especially if you live in Australia, check out our programs. Awesome. Cool, man. Awesome talking to you, man. Can't wait to see you in Tampa. We're just a few weeks away. And man, it'll be good times. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, buddy. Cool. Later. Okay, see you. Cheers.


Ukraine, lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal for Russians. Ukrainian forces are hunting Russian arms, warehouses and logistics nodes. In support of Kyiv's broad, ongoing offensive, a senior Defence Ministry official said seeking to bleed Moscow's frontline formations. Hanamalia Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister wrote on Telegram that Kyiv's forces destroyed another six ammunition depots on the Eastern Front. He confirmed the destruction of a large rocket storage site in the Donetsk city of Makivka. We see everything, Malia wrote. This is our answer to the frontal assaults of the enemy. We inflict effective painful point blows, bleed the occupier for whom the lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal. In modern warfare, logistical objectives are key. Malia added that this week's strike on the rocket storage site in Makivka was an example of Ukraine's focus on logistical targets. This is a vivid example of the effective work of the Ukrainian gunners who inflicted fire damage and aerial scouts who corrected the strike. Malia wrote, A really large warehouse was destroyed where a significant number of artillery shells and rockets for the BM-21 grad anti-aircraft missile system was stored. Ukrainian officials have been urging patients as Kyiv's forces press their long-awaited counter-offensive according to Newsweek.


I struggled with an eating disorder and I learned to love myself through brain education. My name is Erin McDonough. I'm from Native Massachusetts. Brain education changed me by supporting me with my self-care. I found brain education while I was a grad student for a mental health counseling degree and I was really looking for something to help me go through my own layers, my own stuff that I was holding inside, so that when I went out into the world and was meeting with clients I could really meet with them from an authentic place. So I was really looking for self-care. I was also looking for some practice to help prevent burnout and very naturally I found brain education. What I didn't expect was for brain education to also support healing from past struggles in my life. When I was in middle school and high school I really struggled with an eating disorder. Throughout college I had been considered recovered and was able to maintain a fairly stable, steady life. It did really well in school. On the outside it looked like I was doing really really well. However what I was still struggling with was all of the mental issues that come along with an eating disorder that aren't usually addressed right away. Sometimes they are, but once you hit a certain weight they're often ignored. So what I didn't realize until I really started brain education was how much I was holding on deeper inside. How many of those thought patterns I was still holding on to and how much they really controlled my life. When I felt those strong emotions I finally had tools to help me make the choices that I wanted to to be able to move towards who I wanted to be and the future that I wanted to live for myself. My favorite brain education exercise is dancing. I danced for about 12 years while I was younger, three years in college and it used to be something or another thing to be perfect at and I was never perfect at dancing. I was never as good as I wanted to be but I still enjoyed it. I still did it for over a decade and it wasn't until through the context of brain education that I was really able to use dancing as a way to express myself and really share kind of that inner emotion and that inner joy that I feel and now I can't help but to move and dance whenever a good song comes on and I know that when I feel any feelings of depression or anxiety or stress even if I don't want to even if there's resistance to it dancing is a sure way that I can move through those emotions and allow myself to feel a little bit of joy so I'm very grateful for that. Knowing what I know now what I would have to say to my old self is you're much stronger than you think you are or than you know you are not just physically but mentally and emotionally I would also share with you that you have this brightness inside a brightness that I think a lot of other people saw but it wasn't in or it's not going to be until you are able to see it for yourself that it will really help to open you up allow you to develop that confidence and allow you to really step into the person that I know that you want to be and that you're really struggling to find right now so keep it up and also the last thing that I would say to you is stop walking by the body and brain center and go in and get that free horror reading it will make a difference. I struggled with an eating disorder and I learned to love myself through brain education


I guess we can start, so my name is Shimon Yand and I will present you how to do Bluetooth on Linux, Bluetooth low-energy specifically. So what we will talk, I will introduce myself, then I will do a short recap of what Bluetooth low energy actually is, then I will move to a stag architecture, how it's split between Kernar and Unespace, then we will, I will present you the way to do basic things with Bluetooth low-energy using D-Bus APIs like scanning, advertising, pairing, so on. Then I will present you the GAT API that was recently promoted to a stable APIs, so this, you know, that was a big thing, and a bit about connection to channels and six low-pounds. And then a few tips and tricks how you can customize Bluetooth stag on Linux a bit more, and some thoughts about future work. Okay, so about me, I'm a software engineer. I work with Linux and Android platforms for nine years now, and I'm primarily focused on local connectivity things like Bluetooth NFC. I do contribute to open source in my both work time and in free time, mostly to Bluezy, some Linux kernel work and recently I'm working on Zephyr. Last year I co-founded a company named Codeco and we provide consulting for other companies with Bluetooth, Linux, Android, embedded software and so on. Okay, so Bluetooth low energy. The technology was introduced in 2010 with the presentation of Core Specification 4.0. It is a short-range technology, about 100 meters top. It operates on IMS, a 2.4 GHz band. It's designed for low power use cases, and applications are typically implemented as profiles that use GAT, Generic Attribute Protocol. In Core Specification 4.1 and 4.2 there were further improvements to low energy. This includes at least secure connections. So the key generation is now done with the elliptic curve crypto and connection into channels. Okay, so what is supported by Linux? Basically Core Specification 4.2. This includes all the roles like central privacy observer broadcaster and privacy feature, which means that you are using randomized addresses so that nobody can track your device. Security manager is supported, both legacy pairing, secure connections for LE and BRDR, and cross transfer pairing. Generic Attribute Profile, L2CAP connection into channels are provided by Kernel as an L2CAP socket. Six low plan, hit over GAT is supported. You can have multiple adapters. So how the stack architecture looks like? It's basically split between Kernel and user space component. Kernel is implementing most of the GAP profiles. So it handles scanning, connecting, pairing, and so on. It abstracts the hardware for you. So whatever chip you have, if you have a running driver, upper liars don't need to care about it. If it's USB, UART base, or all that type of connection. Security manager is implemented inside Kernel, and that's quite important. And it provides an L2CAP socket that user space can use. On the user space side, we have a Bluetooth D. This is a central daemon that provides high-level APIs over D-Bus that the application can use. It implements GAP, basically it uses what Kernel provides and provides it to D-Bus. ATT and GAT are implemented in user space. So this is done in daemon. It provides storage, so it will save keys, cache the GAT databases, and so on for you. And it is extendable with plugins if needed. On top of this daemon, it provides a D-Bus interface. So agents or user interface or other kind of applications should be using this D-Bus interface. Okay, so what is exactly done in Kernel? As mentioned, GAP L2CAP security manager, so pairing is done by the kernel for user space. And for control, we have a management interface that basically allows user space to control what kernel is doing with your adapter without very low-level details of HCI interfaces. And Bluetooth D, central daemon, as mentioned, D-Bus interface, it really, really reduces the exposure to low-level details of the technology for applications. And it handles persistent storage. Extendable with plugins, okay, so NERD plugin, that one is, well, that one implements a handover interface that is required by NERD so you can get out of band pairing using NFC. And this is a bit star here because it only supports basic right now, so it's still not implemented for LE, but eventually it will be. And there are legacy GAT plugins that predates the D-Bus generic GAT API. Those are currently deprecated by default, so you actually need to explicitly enable them when you build Bluetooth D if you would like to use those legacy interfaces that were provided. But you really shouldn't. From the tools perspective, we have a Bluetooth control command line. This is a pretty nifty command line client that allows you to register agent, do the pairing, scanning, query GAT because it implements GAT D-Bus API. For monitoring, we have a bitmon that provides you tracing for HCI so you can actually see what's going on between host and controller. And there are some other command line tools which are not installed but are useful for development of Bluetooth technology like to some tests, some tools for testing lower protocols, and so on. Those are usually placed in tools or test folder in Blu-Z code. Okay, so the management interface I mentioned, that was introduced in kernel 3.4 and it basically replace a raw HCI access that user space used to have to the controller with a new interface that provides a generic access profile functionality. So you can configure your control with this, you can do scanning, pairing and so on, but you don't need to use a raw HCI command so it abstracts this into more use cases. And this interface is required by Blu-Z5 user space. So if you really think about doing low energy on Linux, you should be using Blu-Z5. Blu-Z4 is deprecated for a few years now and you really shouldn't be using that. The interface is documented in Blu-Z source codes and there is a testing tool, BT management, that can actually issue commands directly to kernel and see the events that comes back. Okay, so Blu-Z as a Bluetooth demon provides a D-Bus API and this is the API that most of the applications should actually use. So it uses a standard object manager and properties interfaces that are standardized one by free desktop org. So if you have bindings for your language, which you use for your application that actually implement this, like Python for example, using D-Bus APIs from Blu-Z is really, really simple. So local adapters and remote devices are presented on D-Bus as an object with standardized paths. So you get org, Blu-Z, ACI, zero, one, whatever number of adapters you have and devices are, when they are discovered, they are hierarchically placed under the adapter that actually sold them. Then on those objects you get interfaces that you can call methods and set properties. Those with Blu-Z5, those are those are versioned. So what it means is that if we ever need to really change interface in an incompatible way, there will be a new number, a new version of that interface and the old one will be supported at least for one version bug so that there is a great period of time for applications to actually adjust. Let's hope that it won't be needed, but this is lesson learned from Blu-Z4. And if the device provides functionality like connectable gap or something like this, then more interfaces will be showing up on those objects. Another type of D-Bus interaction that Blu-Z requires is kind of manager and agent style APIs. This basically means that Blu-Z provides a manager interface that external application can register its own agent that will be called when Blu2D, for example, needs to interact with user. Since Blu2D doesn't have any input output capabilities, it just calls the agent. And with the release of Blu-Z5.42, which happens a couple of weeks ago, the gap D-Bus interface is finally declared stable. So it's no longer needed to provide an extra switch when you run Blu2D to be able to use this interface. Okay, so what you can do with D-Bus APIs? You can control adapter like powering on, setting connectable, discoverable, configuring name and so on. You can start a discovery session so that you can discover remote devices. It allows for connection management, so connecting, disconnecting. It provides a high-level API for pairing. So all you need to care when you pair is to only interact with user, nothing else. You don't need to care about low-level details. So basic interfaces, adapter one is for controlling adapter. That's on the adapter object. Device one is for device control. This is on objects that represent remote devices. And agent one interface, it's the interface that is implemented by external agent that is used by Blu-Z to actually interact with user for, let's say, confirming a pass key when you pair two devices. So I will now go through the basic functionality that you can do with Blu2D. So let's start with scanning. So to discover remote devices, of course, you need to first power on your adapter. And after that on interface adapter one, you get start and stop discovery methods, very simple, no parameters. You start discovery, you wait for devices to show up, you stop discovery. By default, this is doing interleave type of discovery. So if your device is dual mode, it will do both basic rate and early discovery. If you are having only control, it will do only early discovery. But sometime ago, we added a method called setDiscoveryFilter. And this method can be used by applications to actually do some tuning on what kind of discovery application are interested in. So you can do filtering based on UID supported by devices or RSSI or PUT loss type of transport. So you can choose, even if your contrary supports two type of technologies, so classic Blu2D and early Blu2D, you can only do early discovery when you configure this. Multiple applications can actually set their own filters. So internally, this is matched to one that fits the needs of all the applications. So this is important because if you are expecting to run more than one application that have different requirements, you need to filter the devices that shows up during the discovery by your own. For example, we have one application that do early scan and another one that will do internally scan. The early application will also get signals about new devices from a classic Blu2D discovery. So you want to make sure that you take care of that in your applications. And when devices are discovered, new objects with device one interface start to show up on the debas and using object manager interface, you can catch them and start interacting with them. Okay, so that was scanning, so central. Now advertising, so if you want to be a peripheral, Blu2D provides interface so you can actually register your own advertising instance. Multiple advertising instance will be supported. I think it's not supported yet. There are some limitations. But the interface is ready and it will be supported. So what you need to do to start advertising is that you create the object with early advertisement one interface in your application that implements the implements the required properties. And with those properties you specify what type of advertising you want. For example, if you want to connect table advertising or you want to be a beacon, what kind of data should be included in advertising and so on. Then Blu2D will prepare advertising data based on this flux and start advertising. So when you have this object ready in your application, you just register it with early advertising manager and it will start advertising. If your application crashes or exits without cleaning, Blu2D actually tracks this so it will stop advertising for you even if you don't call unregistered advertising. Currently there is no support for configuring responses with this interface, so you can only use advertising data. But it will come eventually. This API is documented in doc advertising API file in Blu2D sources. So if you need to check what options are available, you can check there. Okay, so pairing. Once you discover the devices, we want to connect to it and issue security. So for user interaction, Blu2D relies on agents as mentioned before. So this can be user interface, but it can also be if your device doesn't have a screen or something, but you have some sort of internal policy you want to enforce. This can be also used for this, like allowing specific devices to connect or something like this. So using agent manager one API using register agent method, you register your local agent that will provide the information about local capability. This is something I want to emphasize because there is some confusion if you look for forums on Google. So you provide your own local capabilities. What IO capabilities are your devices capable of? So if you have screen, you use display. If you have keyboard, you use keyboard only and so on. And when the pairing starts, Blu2D and Kernel will figure out what's the best pairing method for you. Each application, if you have multiple applications, can register on agent. And this agent will be used for pairing that was initiated by this application only. If application didn't register any agent, the default agent can be used for pairing. And the default agent is also used for incoming pairing requests. So if you are peripheral and you get central connected and it will start pairing, the default agent will be used. The figure on the right shows basically the call chain of what is needed to pair with remote device. So you register your agent. You set your discovery filter with UIDs, for example. You start discovery. When devices show up, you stop discovery. This is rather important since you will have better antenna time for pairing and connecting. And on device object, on device one interface, you call pair. And that's it. Blu2D will start pairing. If there is a need for a user interaction because you, for example, need to confirm a pass key if it matches, it will issue a call to registered agent. And when pairing is complete, the pair command will return. Okay, so we managed to pair with device. And now we want to do some application on top of this. So we need to use GAT. As mentioned before, internal plugins that was available before are now deprecated. So you should not use, I know there was a heart rate plug-in, a second speed and a few others that provide a custom API. So now you should be using GAT. The interface is stable. If there will be changes, those will be in a backward compatible manner. Local and remote services are represented with the same D-Bus APIs. So we have three types of objects that represent service, characteristics, and descriptors. And on the right, you can see a screenshot from Defeat that actually shows a remote device hierarchy of objects. So those basically represent a remote device database, GAT database. So when Bluetooth connects to device, it will start doing GAT discovery. So those objects will start showing up on D-Bus. And if your application needs to wait for a full discovery to complete, it should wait for a service resolve property change to true. That means discovery is done, service discovery on that device. Okay, so that was for remote. If you want to expose your own GAT database to remote devices, you have to use GAT manager API and register your own application. Basically what you do, you create a hierarchy of D-Bus objects in your application with D-Bus object manager in the route that will allow Bluetooth V to examine what kind of GAT database should be created, what properties you want, and so on. And then you register your application using register application on GAT manager. And that's it. For a local profile, that means that creates a GAT server. And if you want Bluetooth D to automatically connect to devices that actually support specific UIDs, for example, you also need to create an object that implements GAT profile in this hierarchy, GAT profile interface. And then if Bluetooth D sees that this interface is present, it will add matching devices to auto connect list. This is quite nice because it uses passive scanning, so it's conserved battery. It's not doing active scan like when you do with discovery session. So typically this is for devices that you already know. So you pair it with your heart rate monitor and whenever it starts advertising, you want to connect to it. This should be used for this. And objects should not be removed. Well, I'm not sure it will happen if they are removed, but if you remove the object, the database will not change. So this is, if you want to change database, you should unregister and register again your application. Okay, so one exception from what I mentioned is heat over GAT. This is actually implemented internally for inside Bluetooth D with Hock plug-in. This is for mice and keyboards over using Bluetooth low energy. So this plug-in claims the heat device and those characteristics won't be visible on the bus. So if you pair it to your mouse, you will not see a heat over GAT interface over D-bus. Instead, Bluetooth D will claim this service and if the U-heat interface is enabled in kernel, it will connect your mouse, create a virtual device. You should see something like that in kernel and you can start using your mouse or keyboard. So that's one exception. So this is basically done to make it very easy and similar to classic heat devices. So you pair your devices connected, you can start using your mouse and it works pretty well. Privacy support. Since in Bluetooth low energy, whenever device wants to connect, it needs to start advertising. So other devices can scan it so that you can be tracked. So Bluetooth D can be configured to, sorry, kernel can be configured to use something called resolvable private address, which means that after pairing your device will be using random addresses that match your identity key that was exchanged during pairing. So only devices that you are paired with can track you. So they knew that, okay, this random address is really that device. If the address changes and it matched the identity key, it will be known that it's the same device, although it's using a different address. This prevents tracking. So if you move around with your heart rate monitor that doesn't use this, everybody can track you where you go around. If device is using this privacy, then only bonded devices can actually track you, identify you. Okay, so this is supported in kernel. It's not yet supported in Bluetooth D and by it I mean local privacy so that Linux box is using random addresses. Because if remote device is using random addresses, this is handled internally by Bluetooth D and your application doesn't need to care about this. There are patches pending on mailing list, waiting for review. Marcel, that will provide a Bluetooth D way to actually generate and store identity key and enable requested privacy mode for your device. I hope it will be integrated before next release. So then all you need to do to enable privacy is to set a configuration option in my.com file and restart Bluetooth D and that's it. Okay, early connection in the channel is that was added in kernel 3.14. Very easy to use. You can use standard socket interface. You create L2CAP socket with type of address set to LE and provide PSM number. There's one neat peek here is that currently you cannot obtain address type from D bus interface. So you need to guess whenever your remote device is using public address or random address. But this will be sorted out eventually. I'm not sure yet if it will be profile one interface that provides abstracted connection for connection in the channel or we just provide address type on D bus as a property on some interface. Okay, six loop on. It's available since 3.16. There is no stable interface yet. So you need to use debug.fs to play with it. But it's pretty easy to use. You just mod probe Bluetooth six loop on module. You enable six loop on and debug.fs and to connect you, you have to connect to a six loop on control file and network BT0 interface is created and you can start bringing your device. There were some patches for proposing management interface API that would allow to promote this interface to stable but they were never finished. So it's still pending. Okay, so that was all if you want to use Bluetooth D. So this should cover most of the typical use cases like you want to connect to heart rate, you want to be a heart rate monitor, you want to implement some standard profiles. But sometimes Bluetooth D is either too big or too generic for your application. One reason might be that for some reason you don't want or cannot have a D bus on your system. So then you are not able to use Bluetooth D. But Bluesy source code is nicely split into internal libraries and shared code that is used and then D bus interfaces are separated from that. So you can actually use those libraries for your own applications. Libraries placed in SRC shared folder are LGPL based licensed. So as long as you comply to this license, you can use them. It's not GPL, it's LGPL. Those are C. Libraries provide C APIs that is really, really nice to use. Easy to integrate and you get the all the functionality you need to actually implement your custom C, let's say demon or something like that. So you get the library for accessing management that will queue the events and comments for you and so on. ATT is implemented as a shared library that you just provide connected file descriptor and you get ATT working. Got crypto for if you need to do some cryptographic stuff on your application. There are libraries that are used advertising gap for scanning and so on. Well, of course, those are internal libraries. They are isolated, but those are still internal. So there's no guarantees that the IPs will change, but based on my experience, they don't change that often. And even if they change, those are like very easy things to integrate in application. There are some examples of how to use this besides Bluetooth decode. So in Peripheral folder, there is a sample also a GPA license that created a simple peripheral application using those shared libraries, not the GAT API. And for applications, when you need really, really low level direct access to HCI interface, I would recommend using a user channel API instead of raw HCI socket interface. This basically gives your application exclusive access to controller. So the controller appears to disappear from a management interface, for example, for a Bluetooth D. So when you open this kind of user channel, you have two controllers, and when you open it for one, it will disappear from Bluetooth D. So your application has exclusive access, which means that Bluetooth D will not screw you with your application and Vesa Vesa. Your application will not do anything that could confuse kernel or Bluetooth D. So some tips for the end. Use D-Bus API whenever possible. So don't try to use some HCI hooks. There is a lot of legacy documentations in some forums or blogs that have examples that use HCI interface to access controller, for example, to enable advertising or something like this. Don't do it because it will first confuse kernel states, and eventually kernel will start to confuse your application as well. So use D-Bus API. In test folder, there are Python-based examples. Super easy to check, works nicely, easy to understand because Python bindings supports object manager interface. Don't use HCI to really use Bluetooth control that use D-Bus or BT management tool if you really need to access management interface directly. For traces, use BTmon instead of HCI dump, basically because it provides more decoding and it also can support multiple adapters, including power-up sequence of adapter, which is not possible with HCI. And HCI dump is basically deprecated and probably will be removed at some point. If you are stuck with ancient kernel because you should be using the newest kernel, the newer is the better. But if you are stuck with old kernel, which can happen, if you have some custom embedded board or things like that, you can try Linux Backport projects that allows you to backport Bluetooth subsystem from newer kernel to older kernel. We actually use this in BlueZ for Android project and it works really well. I mean, better than we expected. We basically have almost no issues related to backporting itself. If you need to do some extra configuration like change default connection parameters and so on, you can do it by assist interface. And in debug interface, you can get some extra information about your currently running controller. Okay, so Bluetooth D has a configuration file. It is not needed. If it's not present, it used, let's say, reasonable defaults. But you can place it in ETC Bluetooth main conf and customize it. If you want to contribute, join BlueZ on FreeNote. You can send mailings, patches or questions to mailing list as well. Read a hacking file before you do that. This will allow you to skip some obvious steps. If you don't follow what's hacking, the first response will be, please read hacking and follow rules that are described there. If you report a bug, use BlueZ users IRC channel or report them to Linux Bluetooth mailing list. Provide HCI traces. This is usually the first question you will get when you try to report the bug. Please show HCI traces from this session. And if logs from Bluetooth DR are required, enable debug logs. This can be done by starting Bluetooth D with minus D option. Or if you are already running, you can send a SIG user to a signal and Bluetooth D will start printing debug logs as well. What's missing? Management API for BT6. As mentioned, there was some effort a few months ago to actually propose this API. It never went in, got stale, so if someone needs this, you can pick up this work and try to propose something that actually will be accepted. Got D bus API has a limitation that it doesn't currently provide included services, so this is something for sure that will be implemented at some point. The API is specified for included services, but it's not implemented. Of course, upcoming Bluetooth 5 features when they show up and out of band pairing for early devices, but this requires interaction with nerd, NFC demon, and it's a bit bigger task to actually achieve. For some internal stuff, currently we have inside BlueZ say two types of gut. I mean, we have two libraries that implements gut and one is legacy, and it eventually going to be removed, but it didn't happen yet because some parts of some tools and some part of the demon are still using that old code. So this is something that for sure will be work on. And a few months ago, I also proposed an extension to device APIs that should improve the way Bluetooth de-handles dual mode devices. Dual mode means devices that can operate both on Ali and classic Bluetooth because there are some limitations related to choosing transport and so on. I think it was in 542 that there were some improvements in the internal code that actually tried to figure out which transport should use that should fix some problems with headphones that do advertising on Ali in the same time. So if you have problems with your boss super headsets, then try with latest Bluetooth de-handle. And the extending adapter one interfaces something. Actually, I don't remember what I wanted to say here. So yeah, that's future work. Due to limited time, not everything will happen soon. So it's a nice moment to actually try to get involved into the community if you need some of the features. We are willing to guide new commerce if needed. Okay, so that's all I had for today. If you have any questions, I think we have a few more minutes. So if there are any questions. Okay, so no questions. So thank you for attending. And you can, I will be hanging around on the corridor. So if you want to ask questions offline, then I'm all for you. Thank you.


This research paper examined the potential of using the XCOs on web simulation system as a tool for bachelors of electromechanic students to learn how to model technical objects. It was found that this system could be used effectively to teach bachelors of electromechanic students the skills needed to model technical objects. This system can also be used to create a cloud-based learning environment which allows students to access their course materials from any device with Internet connection. This article was authored by Yaviniai O. Modlow and Serhi O. Samerikov.