Inner Game Archives - Page 2 of 6

Why Getting Rejected Is Good

Why is rejection so scary?

Our society does a great job of instilling shame in men. Growing up as kids, and even into our adult lives, we’re told toxic messages that can hold us back for a lifetime.

Sometimes this shame originates from the people around us. Our parents or friends tell us these messages explicitly: that guy’s a player and you shouldn’t be like that. Or they could be more subtle messages from the media and movies: in order to get a girl to like you, you need to be nice and submissive.

People mean well when they give us this kind of advice. Despite their good intentions, they miss how these messages teach men that their desires are unacceptable, and that being masculine is a bad character trait. Compound this with all the men who have grown up without a strong father figure, and things get even worse.

As a result, men today are scared. They’re scared to approach beautiful women. They’re scared to be masculine for fear of stepping on toes. They’re scared to express who they really are. They’re afraid of meeting women. They live their lives devoid of meaningful companionships, opting instead for the comforting yet numb experiences of internet porn and video games. They walk on eggshells and don’t express themselves.

Men have become deathly afraid of getting rejected by women.

You don’t have to live this way.
It’s ok to be a sexual being.
It’s ok to want to sleep with hot women.
It’s ok to want to sleep with multiple women.
It’s ok to express your desires, feelings, and fears honestly and openly.
It’s ok to be rejected.

What’s the antidote for feeling scared and weak? It’s being a man and facing your fears head-on. With dating, that means getting rejected.

Learning to deal with rejection teaches you how to be a man. Part of being a confident, masculine being is accepting that sometimes things don’t go our way, and being composed when the inevitable disappointments occur.

Connection and companionship give more purpose and meaning to our lives than anything else. You must get rejected to find and create meaningful these relationships with women. Relationships are built on vulnerability. You can’t be vulnerable without risking rejection.

The ONLY way to get better with women is to get rejected more. I wish there was a “hack” or a way around it, but sorry, there just isn’t. Robbie is better with women than anyone you know because he has been rejected more times than anyone you know. And even a guy like Robbie will only expect to connect with about 3 or 4 women out of 10 during day game.

But if there was anything that’s close to a shortcut, it’s this:

The fear of rejection hurts more than actually getting rejected.

Anxiety doesn’t exist in the present moment. Anxiety is only something you feel about the future. When you’re actually feeling it in the present, it’s only fear, which is much easier to deal with. Any amount of fear is something you can and will live through.

The pain of rejection is a short-term experience. Pain is what you experience when you push yourself outside your comfort zone. Think of the struggle of a hard workout at the gym. It’s uncomfortable while you’re experiencing it, but it goes away. You become stronger as a result.

Our minds are amazingly skilled at (wrongly) anticipating how bad it would feel to get rejected. They jump to conclusions, and imagine the worst possible scenario where everyone is watching you, and where you’ll run into the girl you approached again and be embarrassed.

Fortunately, that’s not how it goes. A girl who isn’t interested moves on and forgets about the interaction. Unless you choose to ruminate on it, you do too. You learn something you can use next time. It’s never as bad as you expect it to be.

You will always thank yourself later for being vulnerable and improving your social skills.

There is rarely a downside to being assertive and asking for what you want. The happiest, most fulfilled men are the ones who go after everything they value in life, and it’s not a coincidence that these men are the ones that women are the most drawn to.

The men who get rejected the most are the ones who succeed the most, and so getting rejected is crucial to your dating success.

How To Start Taking Responsibility Like An Adult

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

When things don’t go your way, it’s easy to place the blame on anything but yourself. It’s a natural reaction for most people.

Didn’t get that promotion? Boss must have it in for you. Car accident? You’re a perfect driver so it was the other guy’s fault. Can’t lose weight? Bad genetics.

While it’s easy to say this is bad, this tendency has some value. It can serve as a psychological defense mechanism that prevents people from thinking depressing thoughts. If we were to act as if everything negative in our lives is our fault, we’d get overwhelmed and depressed, so it’s understandable why people shield their egos by externalizing the blame for bad events.

But what happens when we take the opposite action, and accept responsibility for the ways that our lives suck? It’s not what most expect. People who decide to do this don’t get depressed. In fact, psychologists have done studies that demonstrate that people who take personal responsibility for the bad things in their life are actually happier and better at reaching their goals than people who have believable, external reasons for the bad things that happen to them.

Why is that? When we take responsibility for our role in a negative situation, we can then take action to fix it.

Another example: you approach a girl and she says she can’t talk because she’s in a hurry. Guy A externalizes the outcome of the situation, and says that it’s likely she really is in a hurry. It’s believable and understandable. Guy B assumes it’s his fault she wants to leave, taking responsibility.

In a situation like this, it’s probably equally likely that each of them is correct. But play this situation out 100 times. Who will be a better conversationalist after the 100th time this happens? Clearly Guy B will have an advantage, because he will have adapted his behavior to better fit the situation.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who was actually correct. What matters is that Guy B assumed he had some responsibility, so was able to grow from it. Even if it was only 5% his fault the girl wanted to leave, he will STILL end up in a better situation after repeating this. Being objective takes your ego out of the equation.

The next time something doesn’t go the way you want it to, look objectively at the situation. You are not a victim. Even if only 5% of it was legitimately your fault, you will still be better off by taking complete responsibility for it.

People who constantly have “bad luck” and “accidents” are often objectively different in their behavior from people who seem to always catch lucky breaks. The real difference is that people with “good luck” take responsibility when things go wrong, and people with “bad luck” always have a scapegoat ready.

Let’s revisit those examples we discussed earlier. Guess what, you may be completely right, but unfortunately in life being right often doesn’t matter. Maybe your boss legitimately doesn’t like you; at the end of the day, you’re still making less money. Maybe the car accident was completely the other driver’s fault- the result is that you don’t take any action to avoid similar accidents in the future. Maybe you have the worst genetics in the world- sorry, you’re still fat.

Your life is no better off, despite you being right. Whether or not your excuse is correct, it’s still an excuse. Instead of doing what 99% of people do, be objective when things go wrong and accept some responsibility, because it pays off.

Knowing how to accept feedback when things go wrong is a crucial part of acting like an adult. Most people say they want others to be upfront and tell them the truth, but their behavior doesn’t back up their words. If you want people to tell you the truth, you need to not get defensive or reactive when they give you feedback. If you shoot down their feedback by getting defensive or rebutting it, you’ll stop getting feedback. Getting honest feedback can be difficult, as we often feel it attacks the core of who we are.

Why is approaching so important for building confidence?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

You’ve heard me say it over and over, but if you expect to get results and you’re not crushing approaches or already dating multiple women, it’s just not gonna happen.

If you wanna get good at basketball you’ve gotta take a ton of shots right? You can’t expect to show up at the court, stand around with the ball and expect to improve can you?

Well, that’s what many of you guys are doing, and then whining that you suck and the program isn’t working. That line of thinking is actually offensive to guys who have put in the work. Robbie crushed 10k approaches by the time he was in his late 20’s. Now he never has to approach anyone because he paid his dues.

Confidence isn’t a switch you flip because you feel like it. It’s something you develop over thousands of repetitions. Confidence occurs as the byproduct of developing your skills.

Here’s what you can expect in terms of objective results when you start making approaches:

1,000 approaches get most guys past anxiety.
The next 2,000 get you more comfortable being in the moment.
The next 2,000 after that get you dates with 6’s, 7’s and occasional 8’s, as long as your fashion, accent, body language and fitness are on point.
Once you hit the 5,000+ mark, it becomes almost silly to day game anymore because odds are you’re crushing social circle and night game much harder, because you have a much hotter pool of women to draw from.

“Fake it till you make it” really means perform an action repeatedly until it becomes a habit. You can’t fake an action and expect it to work long-term, but you can keep performing an action until it becomes comfortable.

Let’s take Leverage Program member Joe as a case study. I met him in 2007 at a workshop Robbie was leading in Phoenix. He didn’t sign up, and didn’t reach out again until 2014, when he signed up for the Leverage Program. He spent his first six months in the course downloading lessons into his brain and getting crushed in the group for douchey behavior. He did a great job taking the feedback without getting angry or salty. He lost some weight then grew a cool beard then approached like crazy. Now he’s consistently banging 6’s and the occasional 7+. See how that works guys?

Meaningful life change isn’t something you develop instantly as a result of being motivated. It only comes through baby steps and daily habits. You have to improve your social skills, physiological state, building relationships, and objectively achieve success with women. Focus on getting more reps, but ignore the 10,000 hour rule, because Malcolm Gladwell got it wrong.

Eventually, you’ll get to the point where you have the eye of the tiger. The eye of the tiger is an expression we use for a guy who has a lot confidence, has fucked a lot of women and isn’t intimidated by women.

When you reach this point in your game, you tend to use eye contact as your number one tool for approaching. Women will smell your confidence and you’ll notice them checking you out. You throw a seductive look their way and see how they react. If she gives you love, you walk over and just say hi. It’s often a done deal from there, granted you don’t say anything stupid.

Essentially, being an active member of the Leverage group and hitting on a TON of women will help you develop your eye of the tiger.

True confidence only comes from demonstrated performance. It’s hard to fool your subconscious mind, which is why gimmicks like NLP and positive affirmations are just a band-aid that ultimately fails.

Most guys overestimate how different they are from others. What this means is that you can simply take someone else’s path to success, and emulate it. Take the same actions that they took. Look to your mentors to build your identity. Do what they did. Do what works.

Can Hypnosis Get You Laid?

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Here’s my interview with hypnotherapist and Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner Jonny Dupre on how to form emotional connections with women.

PART 1

PART 2

The idea that hypnosis and NLP could be used to attract women first occurred to me when I read The Game in college.

One of the more memorable scenes in the book is when Ross Jeffries runs an NLP routine on an unsuspecting waitress. Soon enough, the waitress falls into a trance and admits to Ross that she’s attracted to him even though he’s not her type.

When I first read the book, I assumed that the hypnosis and NLP stuff was basically bullshit.

After several months of failing with pickup lines, however, I took another look at hypnosis and NLP.

While Ross’s work never really resonated with me, I became fascinated with Hypnotica and Steve P, who you might remember from the David DeAngelo programs.

I wasn’t really introspective at the time, but Hypnotica and Steve P helped me to become more aware of the inner game issues that were preventing me from succeeding with women. I came to terms with past feelings and gradually learned to surface them, and then let them go for good.

(As a funny sidenote, I bought Steve P’s White Tiger Tantra program and started trying out the tactics. I was about to conclude that the program didn’t work when one my dates — much to both our surprises – erupted in a squirting orgasm.)

I ended up spending several years going through various hypnosis and NLP programs and eventually became a certified Landmark instructor.

The big lesson I took away was this:

We’re speaking to ourselves all day. The words we use create the experience that we have in the world. When we process events and describe them with empowering language, we improve our lives. When we use disempowering language, we hurt ourselves.

One of the most shocking things I discovered is that most of the stories we tell ourselves are total bullshit. Our reality and our story, which we think we form objectively, are actually completely skewed by our unconscious perceptions. When we learn to see different situations from different angles – without blame, judgment, or other negative emotions – we wake up, become aware, and take responsibility for our lives.

We learn, in other words, to think about what we’re thinking, and then change what we’re thinking, which naturally alters our interactions with the world.

In my own case, I realized that I had many of the typical issues facing “nice guys.” My “niceness” was actually just a mask for the laziness, entitlement, and fakeness that I unconsciously felt on the inside.

Interestingly, as I worked on my inner game, I noticed that things in my outer world, such as my body language, immediately improved. I no longer looked like I was apologizing for my existence.

Over time, I developed a system for how to merge inner game and outer game.

While I would certainly encourage everyone to spend some time learning hypnosis and NLP, I think that you can get many of the benefits that these tools offer simply by getting brutally honest feedback from people who genuinely care about you.

Things about ourselves that are obvious to others – especially to women, who tend to have well-developed intuition – can completely elude us guys.

One of the downsides of our polite society — where everyone pretends to be nice to each other — is that we miss out on this feedback.

Researchers, in fact, have discovered that feedback is one of the keys to achieving a state of high performance in any area.

I think, incidentally, this is why a lot of naturals with women played team sports as kids. The social feedback that comes from teammates tends to weed out douchey behavior that lingers in others.

One of the reasons why the Leverage Program delivers results relatively quickly is because it emphasizes personalized feedback — not only from me, but also from others in the group. Think of it as crowdsourcing social feedback.

Being smart guys for the most part, Leverage members realize how they come across in their day-to-day lives and figure out for themselves how to implement lasting change.

Again, here are the links for the Jonny Dupre podcast:

PART 1

PART 2

Let me know what you think.

Your friend,

Robbie

Why is it hard to stop chasing girls?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

A common piece of advice for men is “don’t chase girls.” It’s good advice, and it’s a piece of advice I’ve given before. And yet, a lot of the advice from beginners is still “how do I get this girl to like me when she doesn’t?” Why is it so hard for beginners to follow?

Before we answer that, let’s take a step back. It’s crucial to understand that the only lasting method of having women in your life is to first, develop the characteristics that women find attractive, second, learn how to display those characteristics, and third, put yourself in situations where the kind of women you want to meet will see you displaying those characteristics.

Although these three steps form a simple formula for confidence, they’re not easy to implement, and they don’t happen overnight. This is why we say there’s no magic bullet to being successful with women.

What’s an example of mastering these steps? A guy who doesn’t know how to start a conversation goes to improv classes to learn how to banter, then he starts volunteering where he begins to start casual conversations with women.

Back to our original question about chasing: the problem is that if you haven’t already mastered these steps, you’re going to be chasing girls who aren’t completely sold on you, and it’s hard to stop. if you don’t already have women in your life, it seems like your only option is to chase.

If you feel like every girl is telling you no, your gut reaction won’t be to find a different girl who says yes, or to find new ways to improve your life. Your gut reaction will be to figure out how to get past the no. You see a brick wall in front of you and instinctively look for ways to get over it, rather than figuring out why the wall is there in the first place.

If you’re the typical guy who isn’t already attractive to women, and someone like me tells you that you need to stop chasing women, you feel like if you do that you’ll lose all your options.

And to most guys, that feels worse than chasing.

It’s tough when you’re craving a girl’s time and affection, but sometimes the only way to get it is to wait. The point of icing is to get her pursuing you. In most scenarios, if she gave a fuck she would have hit you up again. Women want what they can’t have.

Yes, you need to stop chasing. If you’re chasing, you’re not the one in control, and you won’t get what you want. But at the same time, you need to ensure that you’re also improving your life so that you don’t need to chase. You need to develop attractive traits. You need to learn how to display these traits. You need to learn basic social skills. You need to understand your personality. You need to identify what kind of women you do the best with. You need to start going to where these women are, and you need to start putting yourself in uncomfortable situations.

Basically, you need to follow the example of the guy who took improv classes.

There’s nothing more unattractive than desperation. Desperation is the least attractive shit on Earth.

The root of the issue is that “don’t chase” is advice about how to stop being unattractive. It’s helpful, but it’s not enough. Only when you combine it with everything else you need to become attractive does this advice become helpful, and powerful. Only then will you stop running into the brick wall, and start to deconstruct it brick by brick.

Why Your Life Depends On Being Assertive

by Tyler W 1 Comment

Like most guys on this journey of self-improvement, one of the hardest things I ever struggled with was overcoming social anxiety. Often I knew how I’d like my life to be different, and I recognized how I’d behave in a world where I had unlimited confidence. Some part of me knew what to do, but anxiety stopped me from doing it.

Getting past that anxiety and starting to develop true inner confidence and self-acceptance was tough. And not just tough as in the way our society views hard work, but tough in the way that only comes from challenging who you view yourself as a person. Tough doesn’t even begin to describe the challenge of challenging all your assumptions about how you were raised, who you are now, and really, what it means to be you.

When I look back at my own development of assertiveness skills, I was initially operating with some subconscious scripts in my head that held me back.

During times of self-realization, I could tell that I was more motivated by avoiding pain than I was motivated by going after rewards. To some extent, all of us are risk averse in this way: universally, losing $20 hurts more strongly than the joy we get from gaining $20.

But while this risk aversion exists deep within human behavior, some people are more biased towards taking action towards the things they want, while others focus on what could go wrong. I fall into the later category. It’s the same idea of playing not to lose versus play to win, and when you fall firmly into one camp, you have to overcome a ton of friction to behave like someone in the other camp.

So where does this come from? There’s some scientific evidence that suggests we have a biological predisposition to be one way or the other. And our childhoods also play a role.

A lot of us grow up not feeling like we have a legitimate right to put our needs before others. Instead of asking for what we want in a healthy, assertive way, we learn that there’s less friction when we put the needs of others above ours. We walk on eggshells to avoid conflict. And sometimes it’s not even avoiding something as strong as conflict. It can look like avoiding any kind of uncomfortable interpersonal situation.

Only partially aware of these ideas, I took baby steps to push myself out of my comfort zone. I purposely put myself in uncomfortable situations. I embarrassed the hell out of myself, as Inner Confidence teaches you to do when you’re improving your dating life.

When you follow the right process and learn from the right mentors, progress happens. You don’t always see it during the tough times, but progress is inevitable when you prioritize taking action over everything else. Things have gotten better for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful to be able to say that social anxiety will never hold me back in life the way it used to when I was in my late teens and early twenties.

And I’ll be clear: the goal isn’t to eradicate your feelings of anxiety. The goal is to transform your relationship with anxiety. Top performers don’t worry about anxiety, even though they feel it just like the rest of us. They just view it differently. Athletes get “in the zone.” Public speakers talk about being energized by their audience.

Anyone who tells you they don’t feel fear is full of shit. Because that’s the thing about negative emotions: we feel them the most strongly in the areas of life for which we care the most deeply. If I didn’t care about having close personal relationships then I would never feel approach anxiety. If I didn’t care about getting along with others then I would never feel uncomfortable when I have to assert myself and say things others might not like.

So what script do I have now in my mind that I didn’t have before? It’s one idea:

You have a right not to justify yourself to anyone.

Put another way: You have a legitimate fucking right to show the world who you are.

Your needs are valid. Your needs, preferences, and desires are all equally important to everyone else’s wishes. We’re so often taught that it’s selfish to express our desires, and as a result we become passive.

The idea that it’s selfish to express our desires is bullshit. There’s nothing selfish about fully expressing yourself. And if you’re not violating the rights of others, there is nothing wrong with showing others who you are fully. Ever.

Your survival as a man depends on you speaking up for what you want.

That means going up to the girl you think is cute, and letting her know how you feel. That means telling your boss what you’re worth as an employee, and tactfully negotiating for the salary you deserve. That means setting limits and enforcing boundaries with people in your life.

The antidote to feeling like you have to justify yourself to the world is a healthy sense of assertiveness. Assertiveness is about asking for what you want in a way that respects your relationships with others, maintains your self-respect, and is neither passive nor aggressive. Building assertiveness requires changing your thinking and developing new actions.

Reading posts like this and examining your thoughts are two crucial steps for getting the ball rolling, but alone they’re not enough. They MUST be followed by consistent action. Especially in this domain of life, that action is uncomfortable as hell for guys who were taught to be passive.

Being human means that you have values, desires, and goals, and yes, that you need things from other people. You do not ever have to apologize for your existence, or justify why you want something.

All you have to do is pursue your values wholeheartedly, and don’t ever let your subconscious scripts get in the way of building and expressing your confidence to the world.

Why You Aren’t Making Enough Mistakes

by Tyler W 1 Comment

We all know the cliches about how you fail your way to success, or how you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. It’s common knowledge in our culture that the way you get better at something is by making mistakes.

But is it really? A lot of guys don’t realize that they’re looking for dating coach because they’re looking for permission to make mistakes. They might “know” that they need to make mistakes to get better, but they don’t actually believe it. They get a coach because they want someone else to tell them it’s ok to mess up.

One area where this shows itself is when guys are too afraid to lead the interaction because they might make a mistake.

Leading the interaction is when you put out a feeler to where you want her to get to next. It’s making a statement or taking an action to get her to the next step in wherever you want to take the interaction. Then you wait to see when she gets there. If she goes in the opposite direction, then you have to readjust to match her vibe and then try again.

This means you’re going to be putting yourself out there and giving yourself countless opportunities to be rejected. When you walk up to a woman and say your first statement to her, she has the option to reject you. When you continue talking with her, she has the option to end the interaction. When you ask her to move to a different part of the bar, she has the option of declining.

Every time you lead the interaction, you run the risk of getting rejected. You run the risk of making a mistake. And even though guys think they know that they need to make mistakes to improve, they still fear leading the interaction because making mistakes like these are scary.

There are no guarantees that what you’re attempting will go well for anything worth doing in life. If something is completely guaranteed, it won’t make you feel any better about yourself. It won’t feel like an accomplishment.

The only real certainty in life is that if you work hard, you’ll eventually get opportunities for more success. But it won’t come the way you expect it to, and you have to make mistakes along the way.

The only way to improve your social awareness is by taking risks and getting it wrong. Often.

Social awareness is the ability to make the people around you feel understood and comfortable connecting with you. If you don’t make wild guesses about what others are feeling, you’re never going to get it wrong. It’s literally impossible to start getting it wrong without getting it right first.

I first learned concept this when I was in school to become a therapist. When we were learning how to convey empathy to our patients, we were told to guess a word for the feeling we think our patient is experiencing. Of course, everyone was concerned that we may guess the wrong thing. This is when I learned that we need to say the wrong thing at first. The only alternative is to not say anything, and that prevents you from improving.

Dating is about managing ambiguity and having good social awareness. Most of what we do with relationships and dating is subconscious. This is why you feel approach anxiety despite rationally knowing that it’s nonsense.

Remember that everything in the interaction is about her. The goal is to get to a point where you can mirror her communication and emotions without underdoing it or overdoing it. But the only way to get to that point is by underdoing it and overdoing it often.

Commit to making mistakes, because it’s the only way to improve your social awareness and learn how to lead the interaction.

Why The Stories You’re Telling Yourself Don’t Help

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

One of the most popular features of the Leverage Program is that guys post writeups of social experiences and interactions they have, and they get feedback from other members and experts in the group.

The best way to get systematic step-by-step advice based on what we know works is to be objective. Both when you’re looking at your own life and your own interactions, you need to get specific about behaviors.

Here’s an excerpt from a writeup of a Leverage Program member recalling an interaction while out at a bar:
“She then gets mad at me over something stupid (I went out to check on her while she was smoking, she literally was mean mugging me for 10 minutes afterwards cuz she wanted me to keep her friend company).”

Why does this writeup prevent the group from helping him?

1. It’s emotional instead of objective (“Gets mad”)
So what did she say? What did she do? How did you know she was “mad”? Is there a chance your assessment is inaccurate?

2. It’s too vague (“Went out to check on her”)
What did you actually do? Checking on someone can mean a million things.

3. It isn’t factually accurate (“Literally was mean mugging me”)
Sigh, improper use of “literally”. That aside, this doesn’t paint a picture of what actually happened, and “mean mugging,” while a socially acceptable term, isn’t clear enough in this context.

4. It’s attempting to read the intentions of others instead of their behavior (“She wanted me to keep her friend company”)
What happened that made you think this? If she said that, tell us what words she said, not what you think she meant.

This isn’t just something that guys in the Leverage Program do when recalling the events that happened while out at a bar. It’s a pattern that we all do when we tell ourselves stories about our lives.

We all have blind spots, but it’s important to be objective about these blind spots by getting specific about behaviors. Whether you tell yourself “that interaction went well” or “that didn’t go well,” you’re not being objective or accurate about the situation. You’re letting your emotional interpretation control your view of what happened, rather than the events themselves.

Focus on the situation, not your interpretation of the situation.

Assess your progress from the facts, not how you feel.

And most importantly, bounce your stories off others so they can keep your emotional interpretations in check and help you improve.

What’s Better Than Motivation?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

I’ve found from working with hundreds of clients that motivation is NOT what drives behavior change. Trying to change too many habits at once more often than not leads to failure, discouragement, and not trying again.

Habits are more important than discipline or willpower.

Our society teaches us to view life improvement in a way that is very black and white. We love all or nothing thinking: either I’m going to stick perfectly to my new diet, or it’s not worth trying. People see anything short of radical life change in every domain as a failure, when in reality, we improve our lives by making tiny changes consistently. Why is the dieter who decides to add one vegetable per meal more likely in the long run to end up healthy than the one who decides they’re never eating a single gram of carbohydrates for the rest of their life? Why is the person who decides to start with one pushup a day tends to do better over time than the one that commits to 6 Crossfit workouts per week? Because for success, momentum is more important than motivation.

What often looks like luck is the result of hard work and daily habits constructed over a long period of time. You don’t get lucky; you accumulate small victories and constantly iterate from there. And this is really important, because how effective you are in life translates to how effective you are with women.

Expertise comes from practice, not from talent.

Your plans should focus on the process more so than the outcome. Making an approach is what you have control over; getting a number is not. Keep everything under your control and you’re significantly more likely to succeed. So instead of having an approach only count if you get a number, make it only count if you ask for a number.

Starting small is key when you’re improving your social life, and this is why our advice when you’re learning isn’t to go out and try to change everything about yourself, it’s to meet more people and have more fun. Setting the goal of meeting people and having fun is the best way to ensure that you focus on your process rather than the outcome.

The Hardest Weight To Lose

by Carly Leave a Comment

As a health and fitness coach, I’ve seen tons of people both lose and gain weight. While people come to me for first for health advice, it usually evolves into life advice, because we develop deeper relationships with the people who help us. In so many situations, the advice follows similar patterns, and the best advice I could ever give is to be honest.

Be honest with your family, friends, coworkers, social media followers, and acquaintances. But overall, be honest with yourself. Being honest with others can only happen when you’re honest with yourself.

Most people are too scared to be honest with themselves. Let’s face it, the truth about yourself can be downright scary. It takes courage, and it’s a level of courage that most people don’t really expect of us because our society accepts less than honest behavior.

Most people shape their lives around avoiding painful realities. The alcoholic won’t admit he has a problem. The introvert avoids meeting girls because he fools himself into thinking he prefers video games. The overweight client deludes herself into thinking she doesn’t care about her health and body image.

As typical humans, it’s painful to admit when we’ve gone against our morals or values. We don’t want people to know the truth, and would rather present a perfect image of ourselves as infallible.

But who actually gets the most respect, and who creates the deepest relationships? It’s those who stick up for themselves and say “This is what I did. This is why I did it. I know that it was wrong but I want to come clean and this is the lesson I’ve learned.” They’re far more healthy and successful than those who flat out lie, and lie, and lie, and lie again.

No lie goes without repercussions, even if they’re only internal psychological repercussions. So ask yourself: is it worth it? Is it worth the immediate gratification knowing that what you did will eventually be revealed in the long run, knowing you hurt the person you lied to, and not knowing how many other people it could hurt along the way.

Lies are like the snowball effect: they start small, but you’ll have to tell another lie to cover up the first lie, then another to cover up that, and so on and so forth.

If lying has been your only way through life so far, it won’t be easy. Start with honesty today.

Dont tell one single lie, and if you do, correct yourself immediately. You may not even be aware of how many times you fib throughout the day because it’s such second nature.

Start today, and you won’t regret tomorrow. Every day you’ll feel lighter, and shed a little bit more weight off your shoulders. And you’ll find that the key to a healthy relationship is brutal honesty, no matter what.

On that note, I have to be honest about something. I’m actually not a health and fitness coach. I just thought it would be a way to establish my credibility and prove my point. Now that I’ve come clean about it, I feel a lot better about this article. I’m glad that one’s off my chest, and I hope you can learn from my example.