Look for the Girl Looking for You

May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

What if you were at a bar and could tell what girls in the room were single and looking for a man? That’d be pretty cool right? Imagine not ever having to spend 30 minutes flirting with some girl only to find out she has a boyfriend…

The trick is to look for the girls at the venue that are looking for you. How do you do that? Simple- girls looking for a man will rarely ever walk straight up to you and announce that they’re interest (that would be WAY too easy). Instead available women will put themselves strategically in your way and hope that you’ll say something. Here are some of the signs a woman is looking for YOU and inviting you to go over and say hi:

  • Eye contact. Remember the importance of reading body language [LINK]? When you’re settled at a venue take a look around- make eye contact with as many people as you can across the room. An interested woman will hold your eye contact for 2-3 seconds, break it, and then look back at you. If she does this, or you notice her making eye contact with you even as you move around the venue, she’s inviting you over. Oblige her.
  • Positioning herself closer to you. Many women will make a point to hang out around guys they’re interested in. This means she’ll grab a table right next to where you’re sitting, or elbow her way through the crowd and start dancing with her girlfriends next to you. To double up on the previous tip, if you see a girl follow you through the bar lock eyes with her for a few seconds, then just go say hi.
  • Being loud or ridiculous. Sometimes a girl will make it obvious she wants you to say hi by loudly talking about something with a friend right next to you. I’ve had girls at a bar talk sit down next to me and start talking loudly about how they can’t find a good man in their lives. Guys, they didn’t come to a bar to whine about their relationships- that’s what Facebook status updates are for; they want you to know that they’re single and interested so pay heed.

Guys- how do you know if a girl is single at a bar? Ladies- what signals do you send to try and make it obvious you’re interested in a guy at the bar?

Filed Under: Tip of the day Tagged With: , , ,

Are You creeping Women Out With Your Approach?

May 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Are you ready for some knowledge bombs?

The other day on Reddit there was a very poignant response to a post about how women feel when men cat call or say overly sexual things out of the blue. Here’s the full post verbatim, and I think it makes some great insights in how women view the world, and how to start a conversation with a women you don’t know.

Sit back – this is gonna be long.

You have to understand – this isn’t just mindless fear coming from nowhere. This isn’t media-driven. This fear comes from a million interactions with men over a lifetime – men who go too far and feel that it’s ok to touch/grope and otherwise threaten you (and of course, rape, at the far end of the spectrum).

This starts early – bra snapping, for instance. I’m not saying it’s sexual assault for a young guy to snap a young girl’s bra, but it’s intrusive, unwanted, humiliating and painful. Somehow, these boys think it’s ok or even funny to do this. It’s objectifying and implies that these boys think a girl’s body/underwear are his to do with as he pleases.

I remember in 8th grade Flashdance was a huge movie (yes, I’m old). I was wearing – as a lot of girls were – a sweatshirt that was cut out at the neck, so one shoulder was exposed (like the lead character in the movie). I didn’t think anything of how I looked, I just wanted to wear a Flashdance sweatshirt. That day, a boy I had never spoken to sneered at me and said “You’re just wearing that so everyone looks at your boobs.” He was angry. I have never been so humiliated before or since. I was 12 and I had no concept that someone might be looking at my breasts, or that someone would wear a shirt just to make that happen.

The thing that burned that interaction on my brain though, and makes it a propos, was his anger about it. Like I was trying to fuck with him. It’s the same anger that comes through loud and clear when some guy yells “Hey, nice tits.”

In Jr. high/high school we all start to learn about the unexpected grope. About the guy who slips his hand on your chair so you sit on it, then laughs with all his friends. About the hard pinch on your ass in the hallway, or the straight up grab both your breasts move. Again, mocking, angry laughter with the guy’s friends usually accompanies these things.

Are you starting to get the picture?

High school is usually also when men (often much older men) start to drive very slowly next to us, trying to “talk” to us and get us in the car.

There are so many many more examples. Guys grinding on you in the club. Guys jerking off next to you on the bus, guys cornering you on the street. Guys and their friends forming a circle around you and you barely escape.

Here’s another good one from my own memory banks. I was a senior in high school and went to a college party with a friend. We were both gothy girls and my friend called herself a “witch.” One of the guys at the party asked her about the pentagram she was wearing, she told him she was a witch, and he started to get really belligerent. His friends joined in, taunting us both and saying we were devil worshipers. Then shit got scary – he and his friend picked up pool cues and said they were going to shove them so far up us they’d get the devil out. They tried to grab us, we shoved past them and ran.

Are you starting to understand why strange men talking to you on the street is so threatening?

I’ve had guys follow me home from work. There was one guy who lived at a halfway house at the end of my block who used to wait for me to get off the bus so he could leer at me and say all sorts of disgusting shit.

Thankfully, most of this has stopped now that I’m a mom and middle aged – that makes me pretty much invisible to men (it’s actually kind of funny how invisible I am now!) But — as recently as 2 years ago when I was 7 months pregnant there were guys who would yell shit at me.

Oh, and I’m just an average-looking woman.

All this to say – there’s a long history for most women of harassment, straight up assault, possibly rape that has us all in a constant state of alert. So, keep that in mind if you want to meet a girl you see on the street.

Don’t act threatening. Don’t follow her. If she seems freaked out, stop trying to talk to her. Your best bet is NOT to compliment her on her appearance. Strike up a conversation about something else. Say something funny. Talk about the weather. Comment on what’s in her shopping cart. ANYTHING but her appearance (that includes asking about tattoos, piercings, etc). That’s just a giant red flag. And then, if she seems friendly, keep talking for a bit – like a friendly person, not someone who wants to get laid. And then – give her your number and ask if she’d like to get coffee sometime.

There is NO REASON for a man to talk to a woman about her appearance if he doesn’t know her. It’s intrusive, even if it’s just “you look nice today.” Why can’t you just think that, and keep it to yourself? Why do you feel the need to make her know that you think she’s attractive? That’s all about your wants and your needs and nothing at all to do with her.

So again I say, if you want to talk to a woman you’ve never met, talk about anything else but what she looks like.

I’ve had a long-standing theory that women, even average looking women, experience a fundamentally different social experience than men. Most guys have little-no game when it comes to talking to women, and as such are supplicative, needy, pushy, and sometimes aggressive in some attempt to get a women to like them.

This all leads to two different types of social experience that most men simply can’t fathom, because its so far out of their normal experience with things. They simply don’t understand how many times a day the average girl is hit on, bought things, and generally viewed as a sexual object. Judging from the many women I’ve talked to about this over the years, it happens several times a day, every day. Combined with the fact most men take for granted that they’re 1.5-2.5 times the size and weight of your average girl, and all of a sudden you start having incidents like the ones described above.

And THEN there’s this whole cycle where some guy doing some combination of the aforementioned actions gets rejected by a girl he’s interested in, and he starts to generalize that feeling of rejection to other women. Pretty soon you’re deep into a vicious cycle of misunderstanding and sexual frustration that leads to more insecure behavior on the part of men everywhere, which they then project onto the women they meet.

As the saying goes, “hurt people hurt people.”

Anyways, as I read it there are a few takeaways here:

  • SMILE. When you approach a woman you might seem a lot more threatening than you think. As a guy with solid inner game, there’s nothing wrong with showing a woman you just met that you’re sexually attracted to her- in fact, I’d argue you need to show some sexual attraction from the start. However you need warm and friendly body language to make her feel comfortable and not-threatened.
  • Women get a lot more attention (especially sexual attention) than most men think. You need to set yourself apart from the masses by a) strategically withholding attention and NOT being that supplicative, needy guy or b) give her attention in a unique way that she’s never seen before. As legendary entrepreneur Seth Godin says- “Be remarkable.”
  • I disagree that you shouldn’t compliment a woman on her looks. I do it all the time, but in a quirky, nonthreatening way. I like to make random jokes like “you look really cute in those shoes… I almost bought the EXACT SAME pair last week!” or “you have beautiful eyes… can I touch them?” This is kind of like classic-push/pull where you reel a girl in with a compliment and diffuse the tension with the random joke or follow up. The point here is you must actually release the tension otherwise she’ll be creeped out.
If you want to learn how to stop creeping women out and give them the right type of attention then look no further. The Tao of Badass helped me reframe my view of the world and specifically how I interacted with women. It worked for me, and I’m confident it can help you too.

I’d love to get your guys’ thoughts on this and if there are any women reading PLEASE share your experience in the comments. The whole point of this blog is to help guys understand male/female relationships, and a feminine perspective would be greatly appreciated.

 

Filed Under: featured, Social Dynamics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Fun Game to Play Next Time You’re at a Bar

May 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Check this out next time you go out to a bar or club- you’re guaranteed a good laugh and will learn a thing or two.

When an attractive woman walks into one of these places, every guy there will notice her and immediately start thinking on some level how they might be able to get into her pants. Usually about 10% of the guys will have the balls to go up and hit on her. About 98% of the time, all these men will fail their mission to remove her g-string.

For you, this is where the learning and entertainment begins! Time to do some eavesdropping. Subtly place yourself within earshot of the lady and what you observe as her current suitor. But don’t be a criddler, nobody likes that. A good technique is to have one of your shoulders facing the pair, and occasionally look over to observe their body language.

The vast majority of guys are going to fail if she is exceptionally beautiful (hell, even if she isn’t), and you are now perfectly positioned to watch a slow motion trainwreck. It usually starts with him buying her a drink which she’ll sip on and nod her head for 5 minutes saying “mmm that is interesting” as he blathers on about his work or showers her with compliments. She’ll politely end the conversation by saying ‘I need to go meet my friends’ or something to that effect and the poor bastard will wait anxiously hoping she comes back.

(hint: she rarely does)

If you are in a frustrating place with your love life, watching other guys crash and burn gives you a solid example of what NOT to do and is good for getting absolute newbies used to social situations fast. As you observe more of this sort of interaction patterns will emerge and you’ll be able to read the whole situation before you even approach.

Try this out and let me know what you learn!

Filed Under: Tip of the day Tagged With: , , , ,

“See The Matrix” of Social Interaction by Reading Body Language

May 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Put some effort into reading other’s body language, and you will be amazed at the things you can discover. Go out to a coffee shop, bar or any well-populated area and just sit back and take some time to people watch.

Of course, don’t stare at anyone for too long. The key to good people watching is to have it remain subtle and go unnoticed. We don’t want you out there looking like a criddler. If someone happens to catch you staring, give them a warm smile as if they were looking at you first, but you don’t really mind. This technique helps avoid any awkwardness.

Observe how the people around you walk, how they stand, how they gesture and where they seem to focus their gaze. Feed this information into your imagination and start guessing what type of person they could be. Ask yourself: What kind of vibe are they putting out? Is their body language attractive or repelling to those around them? How are other people in the vicinity responding to this person’s presence?

As you get good at this a lot of guys say they can “see the matrix.” You can look across a room and say “yeah that guy isn’t getting anywhere with that girl… that group of girls over there are all single… oooh but that girl is definitely with that guy.” You can even tell exactly how engaged people are when you’re talking, and when you need to shift up the conversation or do something else if you’re losing the girl’s attention.

Ready body language: it's kinda like that.

After your people watching adventures take some time to reflect. Start to consider what your body language might be giving off in a public setting. Take hints from people you see who seem to have attractive, magnetic body language and start adopting some of the ways these people conduct themselves. We ARE social creatures and the best way to learn is to immerse yourself, watch others, and then try it out for yourself.

Filed Under: Tip of the day Tagged With: , , ,

Make Some Girl Friends

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

No, not the kind you have sex and go on dates with. I’m talking about actual girl friends, aka women you hang out with but don’t actively try to sleep with.

Wait, those exist?
/sarcasm

But seriously, every guy could use more cool platonic female friends in their lives. There’s several benefits from hanging out with cool women more often:

  • You don’t seem as threatening. It’s creepy to women when you show up with 5 of your best dudebro friends and immediately start circling the venue. Women are perceptive, and your agenda is obvious. Having some women with you makes the group seem cooler, and offers social proof that you guys are fun and safe enough for other women to hang out with. Speaking of social proof…
  • Have a girl friend wing for you at the bars. Women tend to trust other women, and having a girl friend talk you up to a new girl will do infinitely more for your cause than if you try to do the same thing with a guy wingman.
  • You get more experience interacting with women. Just because you’re not trying to sleep with your girl friends doesn’t mean you don’t play around and casually flirt with them. Bantering back and forth with your female friends is a great way to hone your abilities to talk to women you’re actually interested in, and you’ll be much more comfortable in approaching women at the bars.
  • Girls balance balances your energy. This is kind of woo-woo, but hanging out with only high-testosterone guys can wear off on your personality and mood. Women naturally have a calming, almost healing energy to them. It’s classic Yin and Yang; most guys could benefit by hanging out with more women to bring their attitudes and perceptions back to centered.
  • Everyone wants more women. Realize that clubs/venues always want more women, so you’ll have an easier time getting in if you’re in mixed company. Not to mention most women have girl friends they can introduce you to later, so even if you don’t get in with her, maybe she has some available friends for you.

Instead of trying to sleep with every cool girl you meet, try actually becoming friends with the women in your life and watch your dating success skyrocket!

Filed Under: Tip of the day Tagged With: , , ,

Turn Your Phone Contacts Into Dates

May 21, 2012 By 1 Comment

A lot of us guys have numbers from girls we don’t talk to that much anymore. Perhaps you have a girl’s number you got from a night out at the bars, but your initial text and phone conversations didn’t take you very far. No need to fear! Consider 2-3 months or more as a magic ‘reset’ button with your phone conversations.

Here are a few suggestions to seduce that elusive girl who gave you her number a few months back:

  1. Catch her by surprise with something you say in your first text. An attractive woman gets ridiculous amounts of text from guys just saying ‘hey,’ ‘what’s up?’ or ‘you doing anything tonight?’  Saying something like ‘whats up’ is just annoying to her since she gets those texts all the time. All it communicates to her is: ‘pay attention to me cause I’m just another guy who wants to have sex with you.’

    Instead say something fun and offbeat ‘Whats up peanut butt?’ It may sound stupid, but the goal is to make her laugh or think twice and react emotionally. She’ll want to see where the conversation will lead, and more likely she will be enticed to respond. The goal is to get any response here, regardless of what that response may be.

  2. If she really doesn’t know you or remember you well you may get a response of ‘haha who is this?’ or something to that effect. Don’t give her a serious or logical answer back. Generate more intrigue by saying something like ‘Its your future ex-husband.’ (be original here!). The most important thing is NOT to get offended or upset if she doesn’t remember you.
  3. Remember that the main goal of texting her is to secure a time to meet up so you can continue your seduction in person. Idol text conversations will go nowhere, and you’ll probably just become another one of her ‘text buddies’ at best. A good frame to take is to say that you are going to do something (where you could meet her) on a certain day and perhaps she could come along. This shows that you are not desperate to see her (even if you are) and you are a desirable guy with things going on in your life.

More details about text seduction later. Do you have any great text tips? Tweet @innergameguy or blow it up in the comments!

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How to Beat Approach Anxiety Once and for All

May 19, 2012 By 2 Comments

We’ve all been there.

You see a cute girl slide up to the bar a few feet away from you. You know you should say something, anything. So you take a few deep breaths, center your chi, think of a few things to say aaaaand… never actually approach. Maybe she left before you finished psyching yourself up, maybe another guy started talking to her first, or maybe you just talked yourself out of it in those few seconds of thinking about it at the bar.

After all, nobody likes rejection. Approaching a hot girl is putting yourself out there and making yourself vulnerable to a complete stranger isn’t easy, and no matter how good you get you ARE going to face rejection.

Well let me tell you- as a guy who’s gotten pretty good at attracting women, approach anxiety is never going to go away. The internal tension you feel when you see a hot girl is always going to rear its ugly head. The only thing that changes as you get more experienced is how you deal with and manage that tension. It’s like they say:

Here’s my 6 tips to dealing with and overcoming approach anxiety in any situation.

1. Embrace the tension

Rejection sucks. The best pick up artists all admit to feeling intimidated by those high quality women we all want to attract. The difference between the newbies and the gurus is their attitude toward this tension. Newbies run from it and avoid tension in their lives; guys with solid inner game realize that tension is a vital part of living an interesting life.

You know what’s a great way to never feel any tension in your life? Work in a comfortable job that pays a moderate salary, and spend most nights sitting on your couch playing video games instead of going outside your comfort zone.

Tension is a healthy thing- it reminds us we’re alive. Instead of running from the anxiety and nervousness you feel when you think about approaching a girl, take a moment and really feel that anxiety inside you, smile, and go in for it anyways. Just by approaching you’ve already accomplished more than 90% of the guys out there.

Donald Glover, being correct.

2. Recognize your social skills are fluid

Some days you just aren’t in the right mood to be your most social self. It could be a rough week at work, drama in your personal life, or just that you’re particularly tired or out of it one night. The point is some days you’re just ON and can talk to anyone and other days you can’t keep up a conversation if your life depended on it. This doesn’t mean you’re only as good as you are on your worst days- we all have off days.

The problem is, so many guys let that get in their heads and they internalize having an off day as being bad with women. “I couldn’t even talk to the fat chick at work today, I suck at picking up women.” Remember, learning to be attractive doesn’t happen overnight, or even over a few weeks or months. It’s something you work on over the course of a lifetime, and you never really stop learning. As you keep improving you’ll have less and less “off” days so even if yesterday was crappy, today is a new chance to absolutely rock.

3. Start being social EVERYWHERE

If you want to be social at the bars Friday night, then you need to be more social every day of the week.

Approach anxiety doesn’t start the moment you see a hot girl. It’s something many guys face every waking moment of their lives, they just don’t realize it because they’re not always trying to attract women. The problem is, if you work a crappy desk job 40 hours a week, and stay mostly quiet or shut in until the weekends, then how can you expect to magically become the attractive, outgoing alpha male the second 6:00PM Friday night rolls around?

Getting over approach anxiety starts the moment you wake up- say hi to your neighbor as you leave for work. Start a conversation with a stranger at the office or at school. Smile at the cute girl in line at lunch. The little actions you choose to do (or not do) throughout the day build up momentum and create your “state.” If you’re having trouble being social at the bar, then make a point to start at least 10-20 conversations throughout the day before you go out.

Your subconscious will see how outgoing you’re being, and the small successes in making someone laugh or making a cute girl smile will build up and inspire confidence in your ability to approach once you’re in the club. You can’t fool your subconscious mind, so start forcing yourself to be social every chance you get and you’ll be surprised at how natural approaching becomes over time.

4. Look for little successes

Many guys feel they’re “only as good as their last approach.” For this type of guy it doesn’t matter if he went home with a Playboy Bunny last night; if that semi-cute girl at the bar rejects him tonight he’ll go home feeling absolutely worthless. Even if you make 10 approaches and only get 1 positive response, then recognize that success for what it is. It can be hard not to focus on the 9 failures but think about it- at the end of the night you only need 1 girl to say “yes” so don’t get your panties in a bunch if you seem to be striking out early on.

5. Focus on the process and not on the outcomes

I picked this up from my time studying Brazilian jiu Jitsu. As a white belt I constantly got my ass kicked by higher belt ranks. In fact for the first 6 months I didn’t win a single fight; I showed up 3x a week and got choked, arm-barred, and crushed repeatedly. All you can do is trust the process of training and ignore the fact that you’re getting your ass kicked up and down the floor.

Most guys define success at a bar by the phone numbers they get, or if they go home with a girl at the end of the night. Recognize that approaching in itself is a huge positive because most guys don’t even have the balls to start a conversation with a hot girl. By sacking up and approaching you’re improving your skills, even if your sets aren’t going anywhere. Once you realize this the sting of rejection suddenly isn’t so bad, because it really doesn’t matter if you succeed with any one girl- you’re building skills that will last a lifetime.

6. Realize she’s not rejecting you

She might just be in a relationship. Or on a girls night out. Or she might only be into black guys. Whatever.

The point is a lot of guys take “no” personally, as in the girl is rejecting them as a person. Guys let me say- she just might not be feelin’ it that night. You could be Brad Pitt and approach her and she’s just not having any of it because of whatever she’s feeling. So don’t beat yourself up when a girl says no- just chalk it up and move on.

 

Those 6 tips are what helped me deal with my approach anxiety. I still feel it almost every night I go out, but I just shrug it off and recognize that I’m getting better with every approach, regardless of what she says.

What are your best tips for dealing with approach anxiety? Share it up in the comments =D

Filed Under: featured, inner game Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Magnetically Attract Any Woman

May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“You’re not my type.”

“Uhh… what?”

“Sorry, but I’m just not attracted to you. You’re not my type.”

“Oh. My bad.”

That combination of words has stung more men than just about any other phrase in the English language, with the exception of “let’s just be friends.” They especially stung coming from the lips of this girl Erika I’d been flirting with for a week or two prior to that exchange. What I’m about to tell you will ensure you’ll never hear those words again for the rest of your life.

Friend zoning: don't let it happen to you.

This was several years ago as I was just starting to develop any sort of ability to attract women. I’d been doing pretty successful actually- I had hooked up with a different girl each weekend for the 2 weeks prior to flirting with Erika. This sort of success was unheard of for me at the time, and as a result I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to attract women.

So as you can imagine, my ego took a pretty hard fall when I heard those four words: “you’re not my type.”

For several months following this incident I refused to get over it. I should have simply chalked it up as a learning experience and gotten over her, but instead I did the worst thing I could have done: internalized the experience by endlessly thinking about it.

“I should have bantered and built more attraction before making my move like that.”

“Maybe if I was more attractive and in better shape she wouldn’t have shot me down.”

“Next time I’ll say X to her to win her over…”

Sound familiar?

When Erika told me I wasn’t her type I kept thinking about what her “type” was and how I could fit myself into that mold. What drove me even crazier was the guys I had seen her hook up with were like me- young, athletic, middle class white guys that wore too-tight Abercrombie shirts and high-fived way too much. What did they have that I didn’t?

Obviously- I couldn’t have been more WRONG in how I handled things. In fact, despite my two successes leading up to this “failure” with Erika, I went on to have a four month dry spell. Can you pinpoint specifically where I went wrong?

Yes, I was being needy/approval seeking and had a scarcity mindset, but those are both symptoms of a deeper problem: I was defining myself based on what other people thought about me, or rather what I THOUGHT other people thought about me. In other words, I was externally validating.

How to get away from external validation

I’ve said this a lot here at Inner Game Attraction, and I’ll keep saying it until guys everywhere get it: the secret to developing rock-solid inner game is to figure out your life purpose and what steps you need to take to achieve that purpose. A man that knows why he’s here and where he’s going isn’t swayed by little shit like whether or not some girl approves or finds him attractive. He’s too busy getting shit done and creating a life worth living. It’s this attitude about making your life as badass as possible that will have women coming out of the woodwork to hit on you.

Finding your purpose can be a daunting task when you first think about it, but really it isn’t as tough as it seems. Try the following exercises to get on the right track and after a few weeks you’ll start to see some major changes in your life:

Focus on the positive

A big lesson learned from my story with Erika was not to let one negative interaction get inside my head. I had hooked up with two equally fun and cute girls in the weeks before flirting with Erika- a HUGE accomplishment for me at the time. And what did I focus on? There’s a saying characteristic of guys with great outer game but no inner that goes:

“you’re only as good as your last lay.”

I had adopted this poisonous mindset and was letting a single rejection define me as a person and also as a man. Take a few minutes and write down some recent things you’ve done and frame them in the positive. Ask yourself “why am I so great at X?” or “What makes me so attractive to women?” And then think of some reasons why.

Are you making a living, or a life?

A lot of guys have terrible inner game because they hate their jobs. Being forced to spend 40+ hours a week doing something you hate makes it tough to be excited for the other parts of your life. Guys who hate what they spend the bulk of their time doing try to make up for it with things- suits, cars, bottle service at clubs. But like my buddy Santiago said: “a fast car that drives me to a job I hate is doing me no favors.”

If your life looks like this you need to do some thinking.

These guys think that the more cool stuff they have, they’ll gain admiration from others and finally have their choice of women. Sadly, the only women they’ll ever get to choose from are equally shallow, only interested in status or money. If you want to attract a truly goddess-like woman that’s beautiful, fun, AND interesting then you need to re-examine your job.

Know when to call in the experts

Sometimes the best way to figure out what’s keeping you back in developing your inner game is to talk and listen to other guys who have walked the walk. The pickup podcast by AJ and Jordan Harbinger is a great free resource for guys looking to learn from other top inner game gurus. I also like what Joshua Pellicer has to say in his the Tao of Badass program. Josh is onto some good stuff with how to quickly bring your inner game up to badass levels and is a great guy to boot.

Anyways…

To bring things full circle, two weeks ago I started casually seeing this cute girl named Aimee who keeps telling me “you’re not my type.” Aimee is a white girl that’s into asian culture – and men – and I’m actually only the 2nd white guy she’s ever been with. And every time after we hook up, she finds some way to mention “you’re not my type,” almost as if she’s trying to figure out what just happened.

I just smile and nod. I know what happened.

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Changing Your Inner Voice

May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One of the cardinal rules to Inner Game development is to never underestimate the power of your own thoughts. The hectic, stressful and complicated lives we often lead can fool us into thinking that our emotions can be permanently contained within a few cubic inches of our cranium. In our culture, most of us boys were trained from early childhood to hide and suppress feelings of discontent under threat of ridicule if you happened to show any vulnerability in your character.

For a lot of guys out there, this cycle of hiding, containing and suppressing these discontented feelings continues into adulthood. Generally it is not acceptable for us guys to show some of our true feelings, so they remain bottled up inside our head. These negative feelings start to fester, and infect increasingly greater portions of our conscious thoughts. When all the bad stuff floating around in our noggins is too much to bare, we start to act out in one way or another. In attempt to escape the beast living inside our head we turn to drugs, alcohol, food, living in fantasy or completely spiral out of control in a fit of depression or rage.

Is there a way to stop this cycle of building up bad emotions only to end up exploding like Mount St. Helens? Absolutely.

Give your feelings the respect they deserve

The first thing an emotionally troubled guy has to do is start giving their feelings more respect. We can’t just feel an emotion, shrug, and haphazardly throw it in a box never to be seen again, even though we can fool ourselves into believing that will make the feeling go away. Our emotions have a way of creeping back, and start to affect the way we think about ourselves; they re-manifest to become our inner voice, also known as our conscious thoughts.

Believe it or not, we always end up attracting the reality we are thinking in our heads. It is a subtle, but entirely real phenomenon. If your mind is incessantly dwelling on negative thoughts, you will continually find yourself around negative people and negative situations. The opposite is also true. If you are feeling great, you will start to attract the positive things into your life.

Start to realize the true power of your emotions. They are the driving force behind the reality you live every single moment, so you should give them the respect they deserve.

Take time to reflect

How do you give emotions respect? You reflect! A cool mnemonic device if I do say so myself.

Instead of trying to throw your bad feelings into a box, you need to get to the true source of why you feel uncomfortable. Before you pop your favorite anti-depressant (which I like to call a depressive suppressant, because I firmly believe they DO NOT actually solve your problems) think about the source of those bad feelings. Are you upset with your relationships? A job? A lack of ability in some area?

Take time to pinpoint what is making you hurt inside, and reflect on constructive ways you can cure the emotional pain. Yes, that’s a tall order. If you are accustomed to a cycle of bottling up bad feelings and drowning them in mind-altering drugs or other hedonistic pursuits you have a long road to travel. You must accept you need to improve your character, and believe that the long road to improving your Inner Game is one worth traveling. We all have our own very specific inner-battles. There are no easy answers.

Love yourself

If you are looking to improve your Inner Game because your love life is on the rocks, you need to learn how to truly love yourself.  How can anyone else love you if you don’t love yourself first? Start genuinely accepting yourself for who you are, what makes you special and love yourself for it.

If you hate yourself and are constantly criticizing who you are and telling yourself things like: “I hate myself.” “Why am I so fucking stupid all the time?” and “I never do anything right.” You will attract people, relationships and other situations into your life that will re-enforce those beliefs.

STOP.

For most of my life I was guilty of talking to myself this way, and was quite depressed. To start loving myself, and to start attracting happiness and abundance into my life I began doing a simple exercise that sounds crazy, but it works.

Every morning, find yourself a mirror and look at yourself directly in the eyes and smile. Say “I love you.” to yourself in the mirror. Repeat as many times as necessary until you start feeling love and positive energy flowing through your mind and body. This is Oxytocin for all you science types out there who don’t want to hear any ‘metaphysical bullshit.’ Its a real chemical that naturally resides in everyone’s heads, and its also an anti-depressant that actually works.

Ask positive questions of yourself

This is another trick I did to change my own inner voice. It is a way of re-framing the negative, destructive questions I was asking myself like: “Why are no girls ever interested in me?” “Why am I so lazy?”

Note that destructive questions like these put your logical, egotistical brain on a quest to find the answers. Your brain is now on a feedback loop to spit out negative answers which confirm the negative opinions you have of yourself.

Instead, take whatever negative questions you are reflexively asking yourself and turn them into positive questions. So, I started flipping any of my negative questions and opinions of myself upside down. I began asking myself: “Why are girls so magnetically attracted to me?” and “Why do I have such a ridiculous abundance of energy to accomplish anything I want to?”

Create questions in the form of: ‘Why am I so great at _____(positive action)?’ ‘How come I am so awesome at _____(positive ability)?’ You get the idea.  Replace the negative feedback loops of questions and answers in your head with its positive polar opposite.

Try it now.

Take out the head trash

Recognize ungrounded bad thoughts for what they are. Trash.

So many guys out there suffer from believing negative things that are  completely untrue about themselves. When you have a self-deprecating opinion of yourself, step back and ask yourself if it is actually true. Is that just your opinion or an actual fact? Again, take time to reflect.

Sure, we all have our actual shortcomings; nobody is perfect. However, when you take a step back you will realize far more of your perceived problems have to do with a bad self-esteem rather than actual concrete problems. This way you can effectively sort out the actual things you need to work on, versus the ridiculous negative things you imagine about yourself.

Once you start recognizing bad opinions of yourself that have no grounding in reality, laugh at them. This is your head trash. Laugh at how ridiculous it was for you to believe that these horrid things were actually true. Laughter makes you feel good, and takes away the power this negative opinion had on you. Humor is a very effective way to throw out your head trash.

Be Grateful

During your reflective moments list all of the positive things you have going in your life, and be thankful for each one of them. Every time you think of something you are thankful for say ‘thank you’ out loud. If you are a spiritual person say ‘Thank you’ to your god or gods. Even if you are a complete atheist say ‘thank you’ out loud anyways because saying it will naturally inspire feelings of positive gratitude.

On those rough days, when it seems impossible to say ‘thank you’ for anything in particular, say it anyways. At the very least, be thankful that you are alive, be thankful that you are going to live this day to improve yourself and be thankful that you are thankful, because so many people are not.

When we are thinking about things we are thankful for, we are thinking about positive things and displacing our negative emotions.

Each day we have is a gift. Be thankful for it.

 

 

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How to Stay Motivated and Achieve Your Goals With Women

May 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

Ever wonder why you start off strong when trying to make a change in your life, only to lose your drive within a matter of weeks? One day you’re determined and kicking ass, the next day it’s a chore to do the thing you know you should be doing.

It could be you trying to get better with girls, weight you’re trying to lose, or a business you’re trying to build. The end goal can be anything important to you and your journey for inner game, it doesn’t matter. Some days it seems effortless to stick to your plan and other days it feels like everything is stacked against you, no matter how hard you try to motivate yourself.

“Yeah but it’s Sarah’s birthday today and she brought a cake in for the office, I guess I can break my diet this once.”

or

“Nah I’m not really feeling that social tonight. I’m gonna stay in and watch some Netflix.”

These are the days you make excuses and listen to that little voice inside your head that tries to prevent you from succeeding. Here’s how to shut that little fucker up and take control: use push and pull motivators.

Push and pull motivators

Think back to when you first start any new pursuit. I like to use dieting  as an example because it’s such a common frustration for a lot of guys, but this obviously applies to pickup and social dynamics as well.

Think back to the last time you made a resolution to get better at something: what made you start in the first place? Did you look in the mirror one day and realize you needed to lose some weight? Or maybe you got rejected by a girl and you vowed to get better with women. This is called a push motivator and is any state or experience you want to push yourself away from. This is how the majority of people motivate themselves and it works great!

…at first.

With push motivators you’re really fired up at the beginning because the push stimulus is so prominent in your mind. But as you start to improve and time passes the sting of the push motivator starts to fade, and so does your energy and motivation.

Push motivators lose effectiveness over time... unless it's a T-rex chasing you.

 

As you probably guessed, a pull motivator is a goal that inspires you to achieve it. It’s not something you should ever feel you have to work for; a true pull motivator is something that, if you do not achieve it, you might as well be dead. You’ll never become better at talking to women if you have to force yourself to do it every night. You have to truly want to do it, otherwise you’ll never achieve your true potential.

I’ve seen so many guys get frustrated with their inability to attract women and start on a journey of personal development, only to quit 3 months later when they get comfortable and start dating the first girl they hook up with. Or they lose 5-10 pounds, see a bit of a difference in the mirror, and decide it’s good enough and quit their diet there.

Self improvement isn’t a weekend retreat or an epic vacation. It isn’t even a 3 month backpacking trip across eastern Europe. Self improvement is a lifelong journey that rewards endurance and consistency.

Do some thinking and identify some pull motivators in the key areas of your life you’d like to improve. Once you know what those are, realize that pursuing them is the most important thing you can be doing with your time and don’t settle for anything less than the best. You’ll be amazed at how much easier getting what you want becomes when you focus on what really matters and put everything else on pause.

All you have to do is reframe your own motivations and see yourself moving toward a kickass future instead of moving away from a shitty past. I know which way I’d rather do things.

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