Confidence Archives - Inner Confidence

Why is this girl being flaky?

flaky You meet a girl and things start out well, but she starts getting distant or flaky. It’s a situation we’ve all been in. Steve, a Leverage Program member, posted a great question in our private members area about this very situation. Here’s his question:

A girl I’m enthusiastic is being flaky about our third date. Our conversation has always been smooth and to me it seems like we share mutual chemistry.

We met on Tinder and got drinks on our first date. Our second date was a cooking date at my place. We made out, cuddled in our underwear, and I cooked her breakfast the next morning.

We had plans to hang out, but she canceled because she said she has “so much to do” because her mom will be visiting. It feels like a BS excuse. If she wanted to see me I can’t imagine preparation taking that long. She also invited me to her birthday party, but then rescinded the invite and said it’s “too soon to introduce me to her friends.”

I like this girl a lot and thought we had a good connection. However, her flaking makes me feel shitty. Am I making too much of it? Am I being too pushy? What’s my optimal next play?

There are a few possibilities in this scenario and it’s likely a mix of all three. Let’s go through each one.

1. She’s not into him

From the way him described the situation, it sounds like he’s in chase mode. It’s 100% normal to be offended, feel shitty, and be salty when things turn out like this. Connecting with and liking a girl that doesn’t pan out sucks.

Why does this situation make most guys irrational? Because you didn’t just invest the time you spent with her. You invested years of dreaming up a relationship with a certain kind of person you hope to have, and this person matches years of daydreaming. You get excited. Then poof. She’s not into you.

Do not let the above affect you emotionally and act irrationally. It never ends well with this kind of girl. Ever.

Also, think about what chemistry actually means. If she felt this “chemistry” to the extent that he does, she’d be taking him to all these things that she says he can’t come to. When a girl likes a guy, she makes it easy for him to see her (unless she’s being manipulative or there’s some other issue going on).

2. She’s too rigid

If it’s a big deal to meet her friends, imagine all the other things that aren’t actually a big deal that she will think is a big deal. Run from this kind of girl, because dealing with them is a full time job.

Don’t make excuses for women who aren’t into you. When you jive with someone, you hang out with them. If her birthday and her friends visiting are such a big deal, really think about how rigid this person is. Think how she will be a year from now. Good luck with that. Never mind that she did invite him- that’s some evidence that it’s not a big deal.

Introducing a guy to her friends is only a big deal in the movies. Seek someone who is flexible, not rigid, and not in their head. It’s hard to stress enough how valuable of a trait being flexible is in a partner, and most guys (and women) never even think about it.

3. There’s another dude in the picture

My instinct is that the un-invitation is not about her BS excuse, but rather another dude in the picture that will be at the party.

I ran this situation by a female friend of mine, and her conclusion is that there’s someone else: “She’s not hanging out with her mom. A guy visited her. If it was her mom, she’d find a way to sneak away for five minutes. She can’t do that with another guy around.”

It’s always safe to assume that you have some competition. Any hot woman will have exes, current guys she’s lukewarm about but who are pursuing her, guys in her social circle who are out of a reach but she’d gladly date, and the list goes on and on. Believing that she’s getting chased by other guys is good for you because it encourages you to keep approaching other girls. This gives you an abundance mentality so no matter what happens with any one specific girl, you aren’t phased by it.

The Lesson

If you’ve been following my newsletter for a while, you know that I like to make everything about attraction as simple as possible. I can’t stand dating coaches who overcomplicate things.

So strip away all the gaming, game theory, questions, guessing, and gauging. As cheesy or oversimplified as it sounds: is she being present and transparent?

Long story short: solid connections between people that are en route to building a deep connection or falling in love show mutual presence and transparency. When one of those things is missing, there’s usually an alarming reason why. It could be that one person is not interested, there’s someone else in the picture, or someone is a basket case. If a new relationship feels like a ton of work, it’s probably not on a path to anywhere positive.

I’m taking on a few new clients in the Leverage Program, so if you think you could benefit from coaching tailored to your exact situation, like what to text a girl back, apply here.

I look forward to working together.

The truth about confidence and rejection

by Robbie Leave a Comment

If you don’t feel confident in your dating life, it says nothing about your character. It’s just an indication that you need more practice so you can stack more wins.

There’s a lot of nonsense out there on what confidence is, or what it takes to develop confidence. Confidence is the thoughts and feelings that result from a series of wins stacked together. It’s your expectation of how you’ll perform in a given situation, and it’s different from self-esteem, which is your overall evaluation of yourself.

I was reviewing Mate by Tucker Max yesterday and found a brilliant definition of confidence:

“Confidence is the realistic expectation you have of being successful at something, given (a) your competence at it and (b) the risk involved with doing it.”

Confidence ONLY comes from experience and competence. “Fake it till you make it” is a bad long-term strategy because no matter what you tell yourself, your brain subconsciously creates a metric that assesses whether or not you’ll do well in this situation with reasonable accuracy. Confidence is grounded in real world results, whereas arrogance is based on your imagination and self-delusion (and doesn’t work).

The subconscious part of your brain is more important for confidence than what you rationally tell yourself, meaning that if you don’t subconsciously believe you have the skills to be competent, you don’t have confidence.

Unfortunately, there is no faking out your own psyche when it comes to how confident you feel about your abilities. Your confidence has to be calibrated on your competence. You can’t lie to yourself because your self is smarter than you are- LOL, confused yet? I am. Anyway…

If you step up to bat against a major league pitcher, you know that the best guys in the world are getting a hit 30% of the time, and getting on base 40% of the time. How confident should you be if you don’t play baseball? Even if you played in high school or college, your confidence isn’t gonna be very high, and it shouldn’t be!

You develop a higher level of confidence in any field when it’s something you’ve done often, when you’ve failed over and over, and when you’ve achieved some success. When you learn what works and what doesn’t, you develop an accurate assessment of how you’re likely to perform in any situation.

If you keep practicing and the wins aren’t coming, it means you’re practicing in the wrong areas, getting bad advice, or you have blind spots you’re unaware of. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. That’s crazy. Get some coaching, learn proven methods of success, and practice those methods. That’s the only way to develop confidence over the long haul.

Let’s talk about rejection.

What most guys don’t realize is that women don’t actually want to reject you. They don’t enjoy it. They have no desire to make you feel bad about yourself, they are only doing their best job of exiting an interaction that doesn’t interest them.

If they aren’t attracted to you, their goal is to signal to you in the least awkward and offensive way possible that you should move on. Unfortunately, most guys don’t pick up on these signals.

Common Signals of Rejection:

1. The first hint occurs when she communicates with a passive businesslike manner and avoids eye contact. This is when you get one-word responses and she doesn’t actively engage with anything you’re throwing out there.

2. If you persist, you’ll get the cold shoulder. This is what’s occurring when guys interpret women’s behavior as subtly “cold” or “bitchy.” She starts going from passively rejecting you to being actively dismissive.

3. Finally, if you haven’t gotten the message by this point, she’s likely to say something that you interpret as condescending, rude or mean. She’s doing everything she can to get you to leave.

The thing to remember is that this behavior isn’t really about you, because most women constantly get hit on really poorly. They’ll frequently encounter sociopathic guys who have no fear of rejection. These guys will walk up and say whatever they want. Their confidence occurs from the lack of a biological fear response, so they have no calibration to her signals.

The other common uncomfortable way women get hit on is by guys with poor social skills. Guys who can’t pick up on social norms, like guys with Asperger Syndrome, come across as creepy to women because they’re oblivious to the signals women are sending and they keep on pushing. Like guys with sociopathic traits, this is a category of guys that women have to go out of their way to send signals of rejection.

Should I hit on less attractive girls?

Back in 2007 when I was working through the requirements to become an approach coach for Pickup101, I needed to get an infield hidden camera video where I got a number or instant date on camera- a daunting task. I spent an evening walking around the UTC Mall in La Jolla and hit on 32 women.

I got the “I have a boyfriend” line 32 times. I vividly remember letting a few approach opportunities with the hottest girls go because I felt like I had less of a chance with them. But after 32 rejections, I was completely annoyed and on the verge of feeling straight up angry.

Finally, on the 33rd approach I was able to get a girl’s number, but the audio didn’t work. I really wanted to destroy those stupid wireless microphones. I was so angry I needed to break something to release my frustration. But I got some Zen calming advice from my cameraman and called it quits that day.

We later traveled up to West Hollywood for the weekend and hit up the Beverly Center for more approaches. The talent in LA was way better than in San Diego, and even when I get rejected the girls were way sweeter about it.

It dawned on me that the hotter the girl, the more experience she has rejecting guys. Because of this, the idea that you should “warm up” by talking to less attractive women is a silly one. Doing so will only lead to harsher rejections, because you’re dealing with a girl who doesn’t have as much experience confidently and respectfully exiting conversations. Less attractive girls have less experience dealing with guys in general.

Men and women have radically different experience with dating. Women get hit on so often that they develop experience rejecting men.

Ever since she hit puberty, an attractive woman has dealt with all kinds of guys approaching her, checking her out, making suggestive comments. By her 18th birthday, odds are she’s already had six years of this happening every single day. Compare that to a typical 28 year-old guy who’s hit on 100 girls in the last year: she has way more experience under her belt.

Regardless of how experienced you think you are, I promise she has more experience rejecting guys than you have being rejected.

But remember that most of the time women are being hit on by guys they don’t want to talk to. That’s good news for you. You’re not a construction worker catcalling her as she walks down the street, you’re not an intimidating sociopath, and the better you get, the easier for you it becomes to read the social signals she’s sending nonverbally.

And if you were wondering, I finally did get a number on camera. Here’s the footage. Notice my horrific outfit, bad posture and general dorky-ness.

If you have a good eye for reading women’s reactions, you probably noticed that this girl was not into me at all. This is the classic example of a pity number. She just gave it to me because she didn’t want to make me feel bad, especially on camera! Needless to say, she never responded to my texts but hey, I got the video.

Here’s one tip that I use all the time when asking for a girls number to alleviate any awkwardness. Just say “Give me your number or if you don’t like me, give me a fake one.” She will always giggle. It turns the taboo number exchange into a laugh which can only strengthen a connection.

Stop caring what other people think…or don’t?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

Think of all the things you could accomplish if you didn’t care what other people think. In an ideal world, you could flip a switch in your brain to do this, start taking bigger risks, and reap the rewards.

That’s why on the surface, “stop caring what other people think” is a great piece of advice.

But as is usually the case, reality is more complicated than a piece of rah-rah self-help oversimplification.

So what’s my problem with this idea?

The problem is that caring what others think is ingrained in human nature. We evolved in tribes with less than 150 people. If you were ostracized by your group, it meant you had to live on your own without any support. And that means you’re probably going to die, because our ancestors depended on cooperating when they hunted and gathered food.

When I first started studying the social psychology principles we teach at Inner Confidence, I came across the piece of advice to be “internally validated.” There were times when I fell into a trap that a lot of guys encounter, but no one really talks about. It’s impossible to always be internally validated, and when I felt myself seeking others’ approval, I beat myself up more for not being internally validated. Ironically I ended up worse off than if I had never known the concept in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong- every action you take should be a step on a journey towards more internal validation. But give yourself permission to be human. If you find yourself seeking or even craving the approval of others, it’s completely normal. If you don’t care at all what other people think about you, it means you’re a sociopath or a psychopath.

What’s the alternative?

If you’re able to flip a switch and stop caring what other people think, more power to you. Do it and don’t overthink it.

But for guys who struggle with caring what other people think, that’s difficult. So here’s my suggestion:

Live your life based on what matters to you and what you want to achieve. Don’t compromise on your values based on what others might think.

Pay attention to the times when you’re worried about what others think, and then do whatever it is you want to do regardless of their judgement.

Seeking Validation

There will always be times when you seek validation from others. Like we discussed, it’s in our genes as a result of humans’ tribal evolution as hunter-gatherers. The goal isn’t to eliminate this tendency altogether, because that’s impossible. The goal is to be aware of it and turn it into something that helps you.

The problem is that we evolved to care what 150 people in our tribe thought of us. If you didn’t care what that tribe thought of you, they would ostracize and exclude you, and you would die. That’s the biological reason we care what other people think.

We’re in a completely different environment now. Our brains aren’t wired to effectively respond to the social realities of 2017. That has advantages and disadvantages.

I look up to Robbie as a mentor and a boss. I look up to my family. I have positive friends in my life and I want them to respect my actions. I want to do things that make all of these people happy, and I’m fine with this. Yes, I’m seeking their approval or validation. I share their values, so if they’re happy with the actions I’m taking and the way I’m living my life, then there’s a good chance I’m on a good path.

Unlike most people who passively seek the approval of others without giving it any thought, I’ve consciously determined that these are the people I care about receiving validation from. And I’m rejecting most of the norms that society forces most people into believing, like accepting the standard 9-5 job and career path, or the standard relationship trajectory that American culture endorses.

Define clearly the people you care about and what you want them to think, then don’t worry about the rest.

Who are the people you are happy to seek validation from?

The 6 Biggest Mistakes To Avoid

by Robbie 1 Comment

In my early 20s I sucked with women. I was fat. I wasn’t making any money. I didn’t know how to dress.

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No wonder I couldn’t get dates.

I wanted to change everything at once. I didn’t know what to do.

Things are different now. I date hot women. I choose what kind of relationships I want. I’m in shape. All of the problems of the typical American dude are solved in my life. I never have to settle.

castle

I don’t feel guilty bragging about my lifestyle because I hustled my ass off to get here.

So how did I get here?

I got here because I failed. A lot. I’ve made the same mistakes everyone has. But every time I fell down, I got back up again. I refused to stay down. I learned from my mistakes. Eventually I stopped making them.

I wasn’t naturally good with women, so I’ve lived the same journey you’re on. If you aren’t satisfied with your dating life yet, it’s likely that you’re making the same mistakes I was making. Here are the most common ones:

1. You love being comfortable.

Everyone understands that experiencing muscle strain is mandatory for bodybuilding. It’s painful. It hurts. But it’s a sign of progress and no one runs from it.

Unfortunately, everyone forgets this in others area of life, so they avoid discomfort and they keep struggling.

It’s not your fault. I love being comfortable too. Consumer society bombards us with advertising for products that remove any possible form of discomfort. Don’t like walking? Grab an Uber. Don’t feel like cooking? Go to McDonald’s. Feel bad about yourself? Buy a new Lexus.

I love being comfortable, but I won’t allow it anymore. To get good at anything, you have to embrace discomfort. Get HUNGRY for the strain that comes with leaving your comfort zone.

One of my personal favorite expressions comes from the military: “embrace the suck.”

With weightlifting, the suck is physical. With approaching women, it’s psychological. Embrace that shit. If you’re uncomfortable it means you’re growing. If you feel comfortable you should be afraid, because that means things in your life aren’t going to change.

People just don’t want to tolerate discomfort, even if it comes with a guarantee that the pain will be temporary. They trade short-term comfort for long-term misery. Separate yourself from the losers by embracing the suck.

Making excuses is a normal function of the mind. But don’t let excuses keep you in your comfort zone. A common misconception is that you need to be confident and overcome your excuses before you can face rejection or discomfort, but that’s actually backwards. First you do the thing outside your comfort zone, then you gain the confidence. This is because confidence is based on demonstrated performance.

Let’s get specific. When you’re uncomfortable, ask yourself: “What sensations am I experiencing right now?”

When I’m about to make a difficult approach, my heart races. Sometimes my throat gets dry or my hands get sweaty. I ask myself, Are you willing to feel a racing heart and sweaty palms for a couple minutes in order to get better at talking to girls?

That’s an easy YES. If you’re like me, you’d rather experience a racing heartbeat and sweaty palms every day than spend a lifetime watching porn and playing video games.

Keep embracing the suck every single day, and one day you’ll wake up and realize that things don’t suck anymore. It worked for me.

2. You’re obsessing over the outcome and ignoring the process.

Research has shown that top athletes have one factor in common: a growth mindset.

The goal of a growth mindset is to “get better.” In contrast, we have the fixed mindset, with the goal “be good.” When they’re facing a challenge, beginners often want to “be good,” coming at it with the mindset of worrying about how well they’ll perform. Their ego hurts their ability to learn.

There’s a great idea from Carlos Gracie Sr., one of the primary developers of modern Brazilian jiu-jitsu: “There is no losing in jiu-jitsu. You either win or you learn.”

I challenge you to approach with the goal of getting better. Forget being good. Everything you do provides feedback. Every approach puts you one step closer to becoming a social beast. Every rejection is a chance to laugh at yourself. Every time you feel discomfort, you make it 1% easier the next time you’re in that situation.

Focus more attention on the process than the results. Making an approach is something you have control over; getting a number is not. So instead of considering an approach a victory if you GET a number, count it as a win if you ASK for a number, regardless of what happens.

When you learn to love the process, the satisfaction and inspiration that come with going after your goals are more rewarding than actually achieving them. This is why top performers are able to easily bounce back from failure.

Guys who obsess over the outcome and ignore the progress typically aren’t approaching consistently, so they’re not seeing results. Because they aren’t seeing results, they don’t have the motivation to keep approaching. Which brings me to my next point…

3. You’re relying on motivation.

That lack of success/lack of motivation vicious cycle we just reviewed creates nothing but frustration, disappointment, and desperation.

99% of the time the solution is to approach more and fight through the suck. But I’ve been there and I know what it’s like: in the moment, that’s difficult.

Our egos are sensitive to change, especially major changes. No matter how motivated we feel, our brains will subconsciously resist any life changes we attempt. This is why people so often feel like they sabotage themselves and give up on their goals.

Let’s revisit the bodybuilding example. The most important part of bodybuilding is showing up at the gym, over and over. Major positive life change occurs as a series of tiny changes fueled by effective habits, not from a giant burst of motivation. Consistency beats motivation every time.

4. You haven’t changed your environment.

I’m an unhealthy food and leftovers addict. If there are leftovers in my fridge, I will eat them every time. If my Chipotle burrito falls on the floor, I’ll still eat it. What can I say, I’m still a fat kid at heart.

So when I do have an occasional cheat day (which my diet allows), I’ve learned that I must throw my leftovers away before I go to bed. I don’t rely on willpower, because it will fail every time. I design my environment to make success automatic. I remove thinking from the equation.

It’s the same with dating. You’ll succeed if you create an environment that makes progress inevitable.

Live somewhere where there are women around. Hang out with other guys who are good with women. Go out all the time. Get a second job in retail or bartending.

Guys have no problems moving to a different city for their career, but are rarely willing to move to a better market for meeting women. That’s despite the fact that the decision of who to marry is the single greatest factor for your overall happiness. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Shape your environment and you’ll get what you want.

5. You’re starting too big.

Our society teaches us to view life improvement in black and white, all or nothing. Either I’m going to stick perfectly to my new diet, or it’s not worth trying. Either I’m going to run 5 miles every day before work, or I’m going to stay on the couch. Either I’ll approach 100 women this month, or I won’t approach any. People view anything short of radical life change in every domain as a failure.

If you can relate to this, it means you have unrealistic fantasies about building habits. In reality, we improve our lives by making tiny changes consistently, not by drastically changing overnight. That’s why New Year’s Resolutions fail.

The way around this is to take small action steps that slip past the part of our mind that resists change. Do one pushup. Floss one tooth. Approach one girl. The funny thing is that when you have these small habits in place, they naturally sustain themselves and grow. Our brain gets used to doing a single pushup, so doing two becomes no problem. Flossing one tooth seems silly so you automatically start to floss more. Approaching one girl becomes natural, so you start to do more approaches without realizing it.

For success, momentum is more important than motivation. I’ll repeat myself: the most important part of bodybuilding is showing up at the gym, over and over.

Let’s take my example of flossing. For most of my life I hated flossing so I didn’t do it. A week before my dentist appointments I would start flossing. But it was too little too late: I’d get yelled at for not flossing my teeth, so I’d start again. That would last for about a week and I’d stop again.

But now I floss my teeth every night. It’s actually my favorite part of getting ready for bed. How did I do this? I started flossing one tooth per night. You read that right, just one tooth. You establish the habit small with one tooth, then the momentum builds up and flossing more teeth becomes automatic. Before you know it you’re flossing your whole mouth without even realizing it.

Stanford professor BJ Fogg talks about the power of flossing one tooth in his excellent TED Talk, Forget big change, start with a tiny habit.

6. You don’t have accountability.

You’re never going to improve without accountability. Create a challenge for yourself and talk about it with people who can hold you to it. Set a consequence for failure, like paying $1000 if you don’t complete 7 approaches in next week. Report daily on your progress. Ask you friends not to let you off the hook if you stop making effort.

This is the same method I used to lose 55 pounds in 2011. It’s what I use with my students to get them results: I put them on approach bets where they put a serious amount of money on the line. Guess what? Approach anxiety is no longer a problem. They embrace the suck and get it done. One of my students even dated the first girl he met on an approach bet for a couple years.

It’s tough to focus on getting better instead of being good when you have no one there to

laugh at your failures with you and make sure you keep showing up. My skills with women improved rapidly when I was younger because I had mentors who would not tolerate mediocrity or laziness. We had a team mentality that turned getting rejection into something a fun sign of growth rather than something to be avoided.

Putting it all together

By this point we’ve seen that success doesn’t happen in huge leaps. It occurs in small increments. We don’t go to bed unhappy one night then magically wake up and say “I’m different now, I made it today!” When we create the right small habits, we slowly become successful over time.

Our society loves the fantasy of the “overnight success.” But real overnight successes take years of hustling, and it’s a long, tedious process.

If I had to pick just one of these as the most important, it’s the final one: accountability. Even if you mess up the first six principles on this list, having accountability forces you to succeed. That’s why I’ve designed this element into the Leverage Program.

Our measuring stick, curriculum path, and end goal is what I call the Inner Confidence Belt System. Super creatively, the end game is to be a black belt. Equally creatively, the starting block is white belt.

Each belt level has accountability built in. From day one, you’ll be paired up with an experienced mentor. We’ll use approach bets to remove approach anxiety from the equation.

It’s so easy to claim we want to approach more beautiful women…we want to learn from successful mentors…we want to live a life where we can choose what kind of relationships we want. Even the most self-aware guys can SAY that.

But what are you doing about it?

I force my students to succeed, because if they don’t then that means I’ve fail as a coach, and I feel like a loser when I fail. That looks different for every guy. For newer students it’s often approach bets, accountability coaching calls, and some other tricks I have up my sleeve. For other students, it’s more hanging out with other guys in the group and getting coaching in person.

Here’s an example from Joel, a student who’s become an approach beast since joining Leverage:

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Try out Leverage and use my proven accountability system to make sure you start approaching more. I’m here to help, and I’ve been coaching guys professionally for a decade. I’m not going anywhere and I won’t let you settle. Even if that means you give it your best effort, find that it isn’t for you, and leave within the first 30 days for a full refund.

The good news about your dating life

by Robbie Leave a Comment

When I was a kid I spent 10 years doing nothing but practicing golf. I was a +2 handicap at one point (2 strokes better than scratch) and an All-American in college. I just thought I was just lucky to find a good coach because I worked with John Anselmo, who taught Tiger Woods from age 12-17. I also thought I was blessed with a natural swing thanks to my ice hockey skillz.

After I discovered The Game in 2006, I figured getting good with women and making crazy money would come easy too. I didn’t realize that I got better at golf by doing NOTHING but practicing and playing EVERY DAY for 10 years.

I was ready to hustle hard, but the more bootcamps I took the worse with women I got. I started doing goofy things like dressing like a weirdo, trying to jam girls into deep conversation and connect with them so hard they would cry. I started listening to stuff like The Secret, going to a million self-help seminars, making vision boards and even going to see psychics and visionaries. If someone was offering a magic pill I bought it.

As you can imagine, I got nowhere. I was trying to optimize everything at once, which meant I was neglecting the fundamentals.

But then I got tired of being overwhelmed by all the contradictory advice out there. Rather than spend endless hours sorting through it to identify the BS versus the stuff that worked, I picked one method and shut out everything else.

At this point I developed several skills that set me apart from other guys. I think the two game-changers were my willingness to do whatever it took to get ahead, and my focus on the fundamentals. I went out at least five nights a week for years, hitting on every single girl I thought was cute. I day gamed constantly.

The number of times I heard “I have a boyfriend” in a single year is higher than the number of times most guys even approach in their lives. By being willing to face rejection thousands and thousands of times, I eventually reached the point where I can attract gorgeous women simply by being myself, and I will never have to settle.

The Good News
So what’s the good news about your dating life? First, let me tell a quick story.

Two guys are walking in a jungle. Suddenly, they see a tiger in the distance chasing after them. But the first guy stops and pulls a pair of running shoes out of his bag.

“What are you doing? You can’t outrun a tiger,” the second guy asks.
“I don’t have to outrun a tiger. I just have to outrun you.”

You’re the first guy. You have running shoes, in the form of the advanced social hacking and dating skills that we discuss on the Leverage Podcast and the blog.

Every other guy is the second one, and he’s going to get eaten by the tiger.

The good news about your dating life is that you don’t have to be perfect to get the results you want.

Ask any woman about her frustrations with dating, and she’ll tell you that most guys are painfully terrible:

They don’t have their basic grooming handled, like shaving, cutting their nails. It’s way more common than you’d expect.
They don’t know how to dress, wearing clothes that don’t fit, or they follow outdated trends that give away the fact they don’t have hot women in their life, otherwise those women would help them dress better.
They compensate for being bland and boring by trying to buy a woman’s affection through gifts and spending money, or they brag about how rich they are.

Keep in mind that dating is a zero-sum game, which means that in order for you to win and get a hot cool girl, other guys have to lose.

But what that means is that you just have to be better than the other guys you’re competing with. You don’t have to be perfect at everything.

Being Dynamic
Author and cartoonist Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) describes two paths for attaining extraordinary results:

Become the best at one specific thing.
Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

Option 1 requires you to be world-class at one skill, which takes a lifetime to develop. For every Taylor Swift (my not-so-guilty pleasure) there are a million other wannabees who will never get there.

Option 2 is easier by far. I’d even argue that for dating, it’s more effective than Option 1. Being dynamic, or the top 25% in multiple categories, does enough to make up for flaws in other categories.

Real success is about becoming attractive to women, not just learning how to attract women. So if you’re not the richest guy but you’re an amazing chef with impeccable style, most women won’t be thinking about your (lack of) wealth. Or if you’re an amazing conversationalist with a minimalist travel lifestyle, you can get away without having a 6-pack.

A lot of the advice out there is aiming at perfection at the margins, like analyzing what you should say in conversations in rare hypothetical situations (the mistakes I made when I first started improving my dating life). Instead of getting hung up on minutiae, go about improving your dating life like a sport, where you’ll get the quickest gains from getting exceptional at the fundamentals (like what I did with golf):

being in good shape
being a good conversationalist
having a good social circle
traveling
having a solid career
having a good style
knowing how to orchestrate dates

Ignore the tiny, meaningless improvements, like memorizing countless opening lines for hypothetical situations at a nightclub. To take a metaphor from the financial advice space, it’s like focusing on cutting out $3 lattes when you’re neglecting the fact that you could ask your boss for a $5k/year raise or start a side hustle that could earn you hundreds of dollars every month.

Have you ever heard the saying don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Nowhere is this more true than when you’re learning how to be better with women. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be exceptional in a few categories and crush your fundamentals.

What does it take to be a man?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

There’s a lot out there in self-help media for men and popular culture about what it takes to be a man. I have a simple definition for this that I recently heard from an interview with Tucker Max, and I agree 100%.

Reach between your legs. What do you feel?

If you have a dick, you’re a man. It’s that simple.

If anyone gives you a definition that’s more complicated, see if you can identify what their hidden agenda might be. It’s most commonly an attempt to do one of two things:

1. Justify their own insecurities

Self-acceptance is a rare trait because it takes consistent hard work over a long period of time. But who needs genuine confidence when you can instead justify your own insecurities by pushing your own view of the way the world works?

The guy who’s spent his whole life on his career to the neglect of the rest of his life can say “a real man works for himself and doesn’t have a boss” to justify his decisions to himself. Or the guy who spends all his time the gym can say “a real man has abs like Brad Pitt in Fight Club” to hide from the the fact that he has no meaningful relationships. Be careful of this in the dating space and don’t base your image of manhood on what some “pickup guru” tells you.

2. Sell you a product

A common sales technique is to target peoples’ insecurities, accentuate their pain, say that only you have the solution, and get them to buy whatever you’re selling. In modern Western culture, many guys grow up without masculine role models or father figures, so it’s incredibly easy for marketers to take advantage of this phenomenon and use it to sell products. “Don’t feel manly? Well, let me tell you my definition of what a man is. By the way, I have a product that can help you achieve exactly what I’m telling you that you need to achieve.”

Choose Your Own Masculinity

Confidence looks different for everyone based on the combination of their personality traits and life experience. Are you naturally shy? Introverted? Working on your social skills? Recovering from past trauma or negative experiences? Depending on where you’re coming from, your path to success looks different.

That’s why you should make your best effort to avoid comparing your inside to someone else’s outside. Every high achiever has experienced setbacks and challenges that you can’t see just by examining them on the outside. You see yourself at your lowest points, but you only see others based on what they choose to show the world. This is why you need to pay attention to the social media experience you’ve curated for yourself: the people you see on a daily basis influence your self-image.

It’s important to recognize that despite anyone’s (including mine) advice to be internally validated, we’re social creatures with an innate drive to be accepted by our peers. We all still crave external validation to some degree. You can’t shut it off, but what you can do is be conscious of when that process is operating in your mind.

Choose your own version of masculinity that’s effective in your own life. Don’t define your own success by what other people say success means, because you’ll be constantly trying to live up to the expectations of others. You start living by the illusion “When I achieve this goal, then I will be successful.” But what that does is postpone your happiness to some hypothetical future that’s perpetually just around the corner.

Define Your Own Success

A better definition of masculine success is living by your values. This version of success can be instantly achieved by determining the tiniest action that you can perform that’s consistent with your values. If your value is to be a grateful person, you can express your thanks for someone important in your life. If you value is to always push your comfort zone, you can go out and make a day game approach. You’re living by your own definition of success, and it’s instantly achievable.

The best part about the living your values version of success is that you can achieve success even if you don’t feel good, positive, motivated, optimistic, inspired, psyched up, or in the mood. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your mind. Just take that next positive action and in that moment, you’re successful.

By doing this, you can avoid the trap of the high achiever. High-performing people in any field are often susceptible to fragile self-esteem. This is when they have a strong positive self-image based on how well they’re performing. This is great when they’re doing well, but when setbacks occur, as they inevitably do, their self-esteem comes crashing down as well. They stop seeing themselves as a “winner” and become a “loser”.

Both loneliness and neediness are helped by living your values, especially when your values are centered on meaningful work that impacts the world positively and close relationships. When you’re following your own masculine path, you’re more grounded and don’t crave the approval of women.

Live by your own rules. And choose your rules consciously rather than passively accepting what society, your family, whoever has chosen for you. If you don’t consciously choose your own rules than you’ll be living by someone else’s rules.

Dealing with discomfort

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

What I’m about to say is sad, but not very controversial: most people would experience mild discontent with their situation than face the discomfort that’s necessary for improving their lives.

People just don’t want to tolerate discomfort, even if they have a guarantee it’s temporary.

Getting into shape is a prime example. Unhealthy people tend to know that getting into shape requires eating healthy, and physical exercise. The failure to act isn’t caused by a lack of information. It stems from an unwillingness to feel uncomfortable. Eating healthy is uncomfortable. Working out causes physical pain. Both of these are a struggle, and only when you choose to accept that the process is not going to be comfortable can you get into shape.

Most people make decisions based on how comfortable they think they’ll feel in given situations. This is why most people aren’t satisfied with their lives. Comfort is a terrible metric for pursuing a life of fulfillment.

Making excuses

Originally I intended to write about how you need to stop making excuses, but that’s not even it. The better advice is to stop letting the excuses you make prevent you from taking action.

Making excuses is normal. It’s a function of the human problem-solving mind.

What’s key is taking action despite those excuses. Don’t let excuses keep you in your comfort zone. People often think they need to be confident before they can face rejection or discomfort, but that’s backwards. First you do the thing outside your comfort zone, then you gain the confidence.

Especially when we’re talking about forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to improve your dating life, there is NO reason to hide any part of who you are from the world. You’re not doing anything wrong or shameful and you’re not violating the rights of others. You can make the decision to be completely honest and open with everyone. Vulnerability is tough, but it’s empowering. It’s how we grow. And if others are not upportive of your decision to improve your life, then the only thing they deserve from you is distance.

Get specific about your discomfort

When I advise that you should be willing to be uncomfortable, it might make sense but it’s still an abstract concept. To make it actionable, it’s helpful to put yourself in a difficult situation then ask yourself: “what sensations am I experiencing right now?”

When I feel anxious about approaching a girl, the main thing I feel is a racing heartbeat. Sometimes my throat gets dry and my hands get sweaty. It’s so much easier to approach if I can ask myself “Are you willing to feel a racing heart and sweaty palms for a couple minutes in order to get better talking to girls?” That’s an easy yes. When you can get very specific about what being uncomfortable means to you, it’s way easier to face than a big abstract concept like “approach anxiety.”

Emotional avoidance is an important idea to think about. When we do not want to feel our emotions, we try to push them away. It works in the short term, but emotions are like water in a pipe. You can block the pipe, but the pressure only increases until it eventually bursts.

Clean emotions versus dirty emotions

A great concept from the intersection of mindfulness and psychology is that of clean emotions and dirty emotions. Clean emotions are the feelings that come up for us naturally. Dirty emotions are what we get when you try to fight those clean emotions. The concept borrows from the Buddhist concept that while suffering is optional, pain is an inevitable part of life. In short, as turn our pain into suffering by resisting it, we turn clean emotions into dirty emotions.

For example, if I experience a rough breakup with my girlfriend, it’s natural and normal for me to feel sad. When we experience loss, we grieve the loss with a healthy sense of sadness, a clean emotion. However, if I were to fight that sadness by getting angry I feel sad, or worry about it and cause myself anxiety, that’s turning it into an unhealthy dirty emotion. One definition that distinguishes between sadness and depression is that when we fight feelings of sadness we become depressed. Depression is sadness plus avoidance.

An example from dating: it’s normal to feel fear when you’re approaching an attractive woman, but when you tell yourself that you shouldn’t feel that fear, it multiplies it.

Instead of classifying emotions as positive or negative, try classifying them as clean or dirty. Every emotion can be useful, even the painful ones. If you use your emotional intelligence then they can provide you with information about how you’re responding in your situation.

Research has shown that the people who are the most successful are those who have a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative emotions. Seeking psychological flexibility and wholeness is always better than blind positivity. Attempting to be happy and positive 100% of the time is a recipe for delusion and failure. Remember the ratio: 80% should be your goal.

Along the same lines, a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology has shown that emodiversity, or a life in which one experiences a balance of different emotions, is associated with better mental and physical health.

Get better; don’t be good

Top performers and athletes from all kinds of endeavors or sports tend to have one psychological factor in common: a growth mindset.

A growth mindset is built on the goal to “get better.” The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, which centers on the thought “be good.” When facing a difficult task, beginners often want to “do good,” coming at it with the mindset of worrying about how well they’ll perform.

There’s a great quote from Carlos Gracie Sr., one of the primary developers of modern Brazilian jiu-jitsu: “There is no losing in jiu-jitsu. You either win or you learn.”

Your challenge is to approach with the goal of “getting better.” Forget “being good,” because everything you do provides feedback. Every approach you make puts you one step closer to becoming a social beast. Every time you experience discomfort, you make it a little bit easier for the next time you’re in that situation.

The satisfaction, inspiration, and motivation that comes with going after your goals is an order of magnitude more valuable than actually achieving them.

What’s the point?

Connection and companionship are what bring purpose and meaning to our lives. If there’s anything in this world that’s worth experiencing some temporary discomfort for, it’s learning how to create genuine connections.

Which is more important: looks or confidence?

by Robbie 1 Comment

I’m 5’8 and almost obese. I’ve never received attention from women the past year despite becoming more social. 3 years ago, when I was almost 40 pounds slimmer, I took a summer class and I noticed the prettiest girl in class hitting on me. However I was too aloof to notice that she was interested. Why do people keep saying that attracting women relies on confidence when my experience proves otherwise?

When people say that being attractive to women relies on confidence, they’re correct. But being attractive isn’t solely about confidence. A healthy sense of confidence isn’t enough to overcome deficits that make you unattractive, like being out of shape. The only guys who can get away with being out of shape are exceptionally attractive in other crucial categories. I’m talking celebrity status, being a multi-millionaire (a sign of career success), or being off the charts in charisma and likability.

Ranked by importance, not being unattractive comes before being attractive. This means that unattractive traits will disqualify you before attractive traits even have a chance to make you a qualified candidate.

A preference for men being in good shape is not a superficial desire by women, by any means. It’s actually an effective way for them to gather information about you as a potential partner, short-term or long-term, because your physique is an accurate indicator of deeper physical and psychological traits. It demonstrates your overall physical health, your ability to be conscientious and maintain a healthy diet, and your self-esteem.

This has roots in human evolutionary history, where the men whose genes with the highest likelihood of being passed on were those who could effectively hunt, fish, protect their family, and survive in the wild. As a result, women have an innate preference for guys who are in good shape. They aren’t looking for a bodybuilder or powerlifter type body- that would have been a disadvantage in our evolutionary environment, and could even be interpreted as a sign of sexual insecurity. They’re just looking for low body fat and developed musculature. Picture a swimmer’s physique or a lean Crossfitter and you’re on the right track.

As with everything in dating, context matters. Women’s preferences will vary depending on your audience. Looks matter more to girls who are young and inexperienced with dating. As women get older and look to settle down and have a family, looks hardly matter at all, taking a back seat to personality and confidence. If you’re going for girls who are mature enough to see past the Billy Biceps of the world, looks may give you a slight boost in attracting her interest and attention, but that’s about it. I’m guessing that the girl in your class was younger and less experienced with dating, so she would tend to favor the more superficial traits like pure physical attractiveness.

Regardless of your audience, getting in better shape remains one of the easiest things you can do to improve your attractiveness. You said you’re almost obese, which means that if you clean up your diet and get on a good exercise regimen, you’ll quickly make progress on your physique and become more attractive.

How to put yourself in a position of strength

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

It’s too easy to trap yourself into a position of weakness. If you’re struggling to go attract and connect with the caliber of women that you really want, there’s a good chance that you’re talking yourself out of a position of strength.

When you’re craving attention or affection, you’re in a position of weakness.

When you’re needy, you’re in a position of weakness.

When you’re trying to convince someone that they should like you, you’re definitely in a position of weakness.

When you’re trying to impress someone, well, you know where I’m going with this.

So what should I do instead?

Five ways to make sure you’re in a position of strength

When a girl cancels a date on you, don’t rush to reschedule. Instead, keep her engaged on social media, and let her come back to you. Yes, there’s a chance that she won’t ever come back, but it’s better to let that happen naturally than to try to force her into committing to a date again.
If a girl doesn’t respond to two texts, stop texting her. Sorry buddy, but she didn’t forget about you. She probably isn’t “too busy” to be attracted to you either. She’s just not attracted to you at this point in her life. Maybe things will change and she’ll come back around. Maybe they won’t. Either way, stay in a position of strength and dignity by not chasing her.
Be honest with your intentions. Guys who struggle in the “friend zone” messed up by not being honest with their intentions. It’s okay to be attracted to your friend- it’s less okay to conceal that fact while scheming and manipulating the situation to try to get her to fall for you.
Invite rejection into your life. The fear of rejection is an order of magnitude worse than the pain of actual rejection. You should be constantly pushing your comfort zone and growing your social freedom by intentionally getting rejected. The more you do it, the more you see that it isn’t that bad.
Seek honest feedback from mentors. It’s rare for people to express the brutally honest truth. It’s not that everyone is consciously lying, but the norm is to respond with “It was fine” or “I’m good,” when what people often mean is closer to “Today was whatever. Nothing good happened. Nothing bad happened. I’m just saying ‘fine’ because it’s the programmed response I’m expected to say.” It’s the same way in communication with friends- we’re programmed to be polite instead of actually being helpful. This is why it’s crucial when you’re improving your social and dating life to surround yourself with guys who are better than you who are willing to provide honest feedback. They can diagnose your weaknesses, identify your strengths, and help you to live your life in a position of strength.

What my dog taught me about meeting women

by Robbie Leave a Comment

This is Wiley, my German Shepard/Collie mix:

Last week I brought Wiley with me to Las Vegas. We took a walk down The Strip and countless girls stopped me to pet and adore him. I need to get him a t-shirt that says, “I’m Wiley, 8 years old, Shepard/Collie.” I’ve probably answered those damn questions 5,000 times. When it’s a cute girl, I don’t mind as much though.

Having a dog is one of the best hacks to meet women.

But you already know that…

A client in the Leverage Program asked me a question about how to know which “rules” to follow and which to ignore, and I immediately pictured Wiley. Think about why people love dogs so much: they are happy, friendly, and wear their emotions on their sleeve.

Dogs are always in the moment. They’re open to any experience before them, and they never have a hidden agenda, since they’re incapable of lying.

In contrast, humans typically become more guarded and closed off as they age. This leads to a vicious circle of not opening up, which is a subtle way of always rejecting people, and being rejected in return.

Many guys overthink everything and getting caught up in the “rules” of the dating game. But really, there are no rules.

Change Your Approach

When you meet girls, don’t focus on getting them to like you and sleep with you. Focus on having fun and entertaining yourself. This takes the pressure off you and allows her to have fun with you, which creates a connection.

If you’re entertaining yourself, you’re more likely to be honest and say whatever is on your mind. If she is enjoying herself you’ll naturally be genuinely curious about her and take an interest in her life, since you find her attractive

As the time together and connection grows, you may feel comfortable enough to share something personal. Maybe it’s something you’re embarrassed about, or a secret you’ve always wanted to share. These are examples of being vulnerable, and if you’ve shared in a way that doesn’t scare her off, she will respond in kind. This deepens the connection.

Pickup artists are always talking about sexual escalation and teaching their clients to escalate the interaction towards sex. I once was a rookie pickup artist and I too propagated this horrible advice.

It’s completely counterproductive to think like this, because a natural attraction always exists between a man and a woman. If you put a man and woman alone on a desert island, they will eventually have sex. If you have a fun conversation where you speak your mind, share vulnerability and create a connection, sex will occur (unless of course, she thinks you’re gay). She’ll gradually open her body language and sexuality towards you and probably mirror how open you are. Rushing it or trying to speed it up will only have an adverse effect and kill the connection.

A case study of how to show vulnerability

Let’s take an example here:

Brian is a 20-something guy living in LA. He gives off the vibe that he doesn’t really give a fuck about anything and has a hilarious dry sense of humor, because he says almost nothing and just looks at you in expectation that you’re supposed to do the talking. Girls eat it up, and the first few minutes of the interaction seem to go well. She will start asking him personal questions, which is usually a signal that she is attracted to him. They will share basic facts with each other about where they grew up, went to school, do for work, etc… but after a few minutes, the conversations always seem to fizzle out. Sometimes he’ll even make out with girls within the first few minutes, but he almost never hears from any of them again. They don’t return his texts and it’s pretty frustrating.

When he told me what was going on, I explained that he isn’t creating a strong enough connection. He said he didn’t know how to connect. He didn’t understand what I wrote above about being vulnerable. He also felt like he has a boring life. He just goes to work, goes to the gym, goes out, and he didn’t think girls would be interested in that, because he isn’t passionate about anything.

But guess what? Most young guys are right there with him and so are tons of chicks that you’d want to get naked with.

When I was 25 I was jobless, clueless and had no idea what I was passionate about besides California Burritos and nice butts.

Girls want a guy who has created or is living his dream. But they’ll also take the young guy who is chasing his dream. Even if you don’t know what dream you’re chasing, you can still show passion in wanting to figure it out. It shows that you have the same character traits as the guy who’s built his dream; you’re just earlier along in your journey.

You show your vulnerability in this situation by revealing your embarrassment about your lack of passion in life, which is ultimately what will sabotage your chances with her in the first place.

Here’s how I suggested Brian use this in conversation: after the conversation is chugging along and she’s seeking rapport and showing signs of attraction, ask her about her passions, hopes, and dreams for the future. If she isn’t giving much, ask her what she’d do if she won the lottery and took a year off from whatever she was doing.

Odds are she’ll say something basic like “I’d travel!” You then say, “Well, I’m kinda embarrassed because I honestly don’t know what the f*ck I’d do. Of course everyone says they’d travel, but that would get old after a few months. So I’m just trying to figure out what excites me because I’m not sure, and every time I hear people talking about finding their passion, making money doing what they love, and changing the world, it makes me feel like a fucking loser. LOL. I’m not a loser right? Do you ever feel like that too?”

If she has found her passion and she’s crossing her dreams off her bucket list 24/7, odds are she won’t feel the same, but then again, she wouldn’t be talking to you at a bar in the first place.

Remember that the purpose of your conversations when you’re going out isn’t to impress people. It’s to have fun and entertain yourself, which will naturally lead to sharing your life, which creates vulnerability and connections. As our guest host Carly mentioned on this week’s podcast on age, that’s an area where a lot of young guys struggle. They try to impress others because they aren’t yet comfortable in their own skin.

Here’s your homework for the week

Watch this TED talk by Brene Brown on the power of vulnerability. This is one of those TED talks that I keep coming back to because it’s potentially life-changing, and it’s been watched 26 million times so I know I’m not the only one who thinks that. Watch the talk and trying ways you can be more vulnerable in your interactions with women. I guarantee you’ll see positive results, or I’ll give you your money back 😉