Social Skills Archives - Inner Confidence

All of my friends are losers. How can I find new ones?

How you do anything is how you do everything, and the people you choose to associate with reflects on your character. It’s crucial to surround yourself with guys who are better than you if you want to become better with women.

Women are attracted to social status more than anything else, and one of the most important ways to show (not tell) your status is by being a leader or providing value in a group of other attractive men. This is why I always talk about how improving your dating life is more than just knowing how to attract; it’s about being a complete man who’s attractive to women.

So what do you do if all your friends are losers? Ditch the losers so you’re in a sink or swim situation. If you have no social contact, you’ll have no choice but to force yourself outside of your comfort zone to meet new people. And do it for your own mental health too; we naturally absorb the attitudes, thoughts, and actions of the people around us, so remaining in friendships with toxic people hurts you. It’s a subconscious process that psychologists call “convergence.”

Identify what kind of friends you’d like to make, and start participating in the activities that these people do. Are they into physical fitness? Join a Crossfit gym. Are they businesspeople? Hang out at the country club. Do they play chess? Join a chess tournament. Not sure who you’d like to meet? Pick up a side job in retail and start talking to your coworkers. Want to meet fun people while learning a new social skill? Do improv comedy. Just start doing something, absorb your experience as feedback, and adjust your actions from there.

By encountering people with similar interests to you in a natural environment, it’s easy for you to make friendships when you both start to gradually reveal more personal information about yourselves.

In order to become friends with people, you need to provide some value to them. This can be as simple and straightforward as being a good listener. If people feel comfortable and at ease around you, they’ll want to form a friendship with you.

The Four Types of Male Friendships

Men tend to have friendships that fall into one of four categories. If you understand these categories, you’ll know how to keep your loser friends at a distance and how to build valuable connections with others.

Just Friends

Just friends are guys you see from time to time and have surface-level connections with. It could be a poker buddy or a guy you see often at the gym. The distinction here is that it’s someone you don’t intend to get to know better or see in a different situation. Sometimes a wingman will fall into this category- he’s someone you’ll go out with but don’t have any kind of lasting bond.

Rust Friends

Rust friends are the friends you’ve had your whole life. It could be a childhood best friend or someone else you’ve known most of your life. You may have different priorities and values now, but the length of your bond is what sustains the friendship. These aren’t necessary deep friendships- they’re just old ones.

Trust Friends

Trust friends are friends who you’ve established a close bond with. Having this kind of friend to support you is crucial. You can share your challenges with them and they’ll help you get through them. They’ll help you meet women and you know you can count on them.

Must Friends

Must friends are friends who you “must” share everything with. They’re your deepest source of a masculine bond, and they form your inner circle. While it takes a long time with a lot of shared experiences to form, these are the types of lifelong friendships we cultivate in the Leverage Program. Having women in your life is great, but you can supercharge both your dating and your social lives by surrounding yourself with successful men and mentors.

How to up your conversation game in less than an hour

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Lately it seems like there are two categories of questions I get asked more than anything else: conversation skills and texting. And you could argue that texting questions fall under conversation skills- texting feels like a different language, but all the principles of conversation skills apply to texting.

Guys often tell me that their mind goes blank in the middle of a conversation. How do you stop running out of things to say?

We all want to know how to make someone feel truly heard and listened to. What if you could provide someone with that rare experience they’re likely to remember you for?

We know that putting people on a pedestal destroys our ability to connect with them. But that’s so abstract. What is the actual antidote for approval-seeking behavior?

I’m very pleased to welcome Dan Chang of the Friend Formula to the Leverage Podcast. In this episode, Dan answers these questions and dives deeper into what drives effective conversations.

Dan is an expert on communication and the psychology of how we build lasting relationships. But more importantly, he’s also an expert on breaking down this psychology into practical tips. He starts out the episode with three steps you can start using right away to get out of your head and into the present moment, no matter how nervous you feel in a conversation.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The practical gems continue for 55 minutes, so there you have it: how to up your conversation game in less than an hour.

My favorite part is when Dan shares his formula for developing new relationships by transitioning from small talk to deeper topics of emotional connection. You’ll learn to navigate the four phases of a conversation: cliches, facts, opinions, and feelings. Trust me, this framework is a game-changer.

Check out the podcast now and start upping your conversation game right away.

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 😉

The Minimum Effective Dose for day game

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Most guys know what it’s like to struggle with conversation skills during a day game approach. How many of these feel familiar?

The “I have a boyfriend” response
Only getting brief responses
Not knowing where to take the conversation (“I run out of things to say”)
Having boring conversations

If you can relate to any of these, it doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing anything wrong. It comes down to a different problem: having a day game conversation is really fucking difficult.

I’ve had a LOT of day game conversations and I’m really fucking comfortable having them, but they are still hard, even for a seasoned veteran like me! If you’re really good at it, it can be a more effective way to meet women than via bars, online dating, or any other method. I’ve met everyone else in the dating industry, and here’s the thing, even for these guys who are really fucking good, it’s difficult.

Day game is essentially forcing a conversation with someone who wasn’t expecting to have one. Your challenge is first to get them to want to have that conversation, second to enjoy it, and third to neutralize their social programming about talking to strangers.

So we know that day game in its simplest form is difficult. Trying to have an extended conversation during day game is even more difficult.

The Antidote

I first thought about this idea after I noticed that a lot of my clients were struggling in their day game conversations. So by using the concept of leverage, I figured why not eliminate the conversation altogether?

Looking back on all my approaches, the path of least resistance from approaching to getting a phone number and from texting to setting up a date occurred when I didn’t try to connect at all. I didn’t even try to have a conversation.

It was the simplest version of the word-for-word templates I advocate for guys to use. All I would do is walk up to a girl and say “Hey, I saw you and had to risk embarrassing the hell out of myself to come over here and flirt with you. I’m Robbie. I promise I’m only one third creepy. I’m in a rush, but I think you should give me your number, and if you don’t like me, give me a fake one. I’ll never know the difference.”

I hand her my phone, get the number, and I’m out. You don’t even have to get her reaction or wait for a response. They’ll hopefully smile and laugh, maybe give their name, and then they’re going to put their number in your phone.

That’s the whole conversation.

It takes 20 seconds to a minute to deliver. The psychology behind it is simple:

You’re being direct. Because most guys aren’t ever direct, you demonstrate your confidence.
You’re calling out the fact that you’re doing something that’s a little bit strange and socially awkward by saying you’re risking embarrassing yourself.
You’re showing her you’re not creepy, because the “1/3 creepy” line communicates “I’m not creepy because I know type of approach is a little bit creepy.”
You’re removing her worry that you’ll linger and force a conversation she doesn’t want to have by telling her that you’re busy and you’ll let her quickly get on with her day.
You’re getting her phone number without any pressure by telling her to give you a fake number if she’s not feeling it. It’s direct, it’s nonchalant, it’s fun, it’s flirty, and it works.

This is simple to execute. If you’re struggling to have conversations during your day game approaches, use this minimum effective dose. That’s it.

If you’d like to learn more about the day game protocol, check out our podcast episode on Social Media. We talk about why this simple version of day game is the best, and how to move the interaction forward using social media after you’ve gotten the number.

The Words Don’t Matter

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

When you’re walking up to a girl and meeting her, your first impression is crucial, but there’s one step here that I see a lot of guys mess up. They’re so nervous that they forget to use the same social skills they use in all their other interactions.

When you’re nervous, your intelligence drops. Your fight or flight system gets triggered. You get overly literal and hang onto every word she says. Contrast that to a conversation you have with a close friend or a family member. In these interactions, you’re able to read the emotions beneath their words.

If you came home and said to your roommate “Hey Johnny, how was work today?” and he responds tersely, “It was fine,” you know that he was pissed off because you’re detecting the emotional context beneath his words.

But we forget to use this same skill when we’re around a hot woman.

It’s not that people are consciously lying, but in today’s world it’s rare for people to express the brutally honest truth. You get responses like “It was fine” or “I’m good,” when often what people mean is “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.”

Picture this: a day game interaction where you walk up to a girl and say “Hey, I saw you standing here and I had to risk embarrassing the hell out of myself to come meet you.” She doesn’t smile or laugh, but responds “Ok. Now what?”

You’re nervous and stumble over a response. “Uhh… now, uhh… now…” You’re at a loss for how to answer her question “Now what?”

But here’s the thing: she didn’t really ask you that question. She doesn’t care about your answer. What she did was give you an emotional reaction. If you read beneath her words for the underlying emotion, she’s not actually asking anything, but expressing that she’s feeling unimpressed.

The best thing to do here is to call it out by playfully delivering an honest statement like “You look like you’re not very impressed.” Calling it out allows her to connect with you, because people connect via shared emotions. She’ll probably laugh because you were able to accurately identify her feelings.

Social communication is built on the expression of emotions, not facts. When you connect by sharing emotions, you build a deeper connection, and your conversation partner feels more comfortable being honest. Sharing deep truths about ourselves starts with small things and escalates as both people get increasingly comfortable. This only happens when there are shared emotions.

If you were correct in your assessment of her emotions, she may follow up with something like “No, I’m sorry I was rude. I’m just having a bad day.” This is an opportunity to have a vibing conversation. “No worries. Hopefully the random guy hitting on you on the street is making your day better. I’m Robbie.”

This sparks a deeper, more connected, honest conversation. She’s more attracted and you’re more confident. That’s the goal!

It’s rare that I see guy who hasn’t done a ton of approaches speak to a woman’s emotions. Instead, he just speaks to her words, so his approaches don’t go anywhere, and he can’t understand why.

You never want to be stuck in a surface-level conversation or asking logical questions that don’t matter.

To really get good at connecting with high value women, you need to understand what they’re saying beneath their words. If every guy could flip that switch to speak to emotions instead of what’s on the surface, not just with women but with everyone, communication in our society would be easier.

If you compare North America and Western Europe to other societies like Eastern Europe or South America, the social communication differences are striking. These cultures value direct communication. This is in contrast to North America, where people have thin skins and are afraid to have their feelings hurt. Everyone walks on eggshells with an artificial sense of politeness.

The result is that no one ever feels uncomfortable, but at the same time, everyone is disconnected. Male-female dynamics are complicated. Business dealings are difficult. It slows down any interaction where direct communication is needed to get from point A to point B.

How do you speak to someone’s emotions instead of their words?

To identify someone’s emotions, read their facial expressions, vocal tonality, and body language. While you’d have no chance of doing this if you were an alien visiting Earth, modern neuroscience has shown that the human brain naturally has this ability. It’s just a form of pattern recognition that you can tap into with practice. Watching movies is one example of how to practice, as is watching dating shows, or even practicing meditation to get in touch with your own emotions.

There are also two books that everyone should read to speed up their progress: What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro, and Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman.

Want to have an easier time connecting? Stop focusing on the words people are explicitly saying, and instead listen for the emotions they’re expressing beneath the surface.

Bringing Day Game Into Your Everyday Life

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Guest post by Patrick, Leverage Program member

You’ve read our blog posts on why you should day game, you get the concept, but are you still struggling to connect with girls when you hit on them?

The game changer is that you need to start incorporating day game into your everyday life. Luckily for me, I live in New York City, where the opportunities for day game are endless.

While it is definitely important to set aside some time to go out and practice day game, especially when you’re first starting, your goal should be to incorporate practicing your communication skills on a daily basis. Do this and you will be surprised at how it will impact your life.

Let’s define day game first. Day game is just talking to a girl where it isn’t a generally recognized social practice to do so. Usually when we talk about day game, we mean taking time out of your daily life to hit on girls in the context of deliberately practicing your skills. This is still super important, because if you don’t set aside time to practice your skills, you are not going to grow and develop.

But day game doesn’t have to be limited to specific practice sessions. It can and should be incorporated into your everyday life.

Think about this the next time you see a hot girl. The minute you see someone you’d like to talk to, go do it! In addition to that, I’d also argue that talking to everyone you encounter throughout the day and striking up a conversation is also day game.

You need to turn yourself into a social person, and how can you be a social beast if you aren’t talking to everyone?

Let’s give a few examples of what I’m talking about here. You show up to Starbucks in the morning: while you are ordering you double espresso, don’t just order your drink and move on. Strike up a short conversation with the barista. Ask her what her name is and how her day is going. Ask her for a discount to push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Or maybe you go to the the same breakfast spot each morning. Ask the guy who’s cooking your bacon, egg, and cheese wrap his name and how his weekend was. This may be all you do the first time you go there, but each day you go back, you are going to start to build a relationship with these people. The conversations will get more interesting. Do this every day and I guarantee that your conversation and day game skills will improve.

Now, when you take your lunch break, you are going to be already warmed up because of your interactions in the morning. Don’t just spend your lunch break grabbing lunch and eating at your desk, go talk to people! I don’t care if it’s the hot girl crossing the street, or the fat guy making your burrito, just talk to them.

Say anything. It doesn’t matter. The more you do it, the more you’ll get feedback, and the better you will get. And expect to suck in the beginning. That’s just how it works, and we’ve all experienced it.

By incorporating day game into your everyday life, you are going to improve your skill 10x. It happens progressively over a long period time, and when you make consistent efforts, you’ll improve before you even realize it. You have to be talking to new people on a daily basis and put yourself outside your comfort zone to grow as a person and improve your skills.

The 8 Ways to Click With Women

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

Guest post by Jay, Leverage Program member and resident lazy fuck

I’ve been working on my connection skills, and the group recommended I check out a book called Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do. The book is basically a collection of tons of examples and studies going over each aspect that creates instant connections, or what they call “quick set intimacy”: That magic moment when you feel like you’re in the zone while talking to another person, like you’re 10/10 on 3 pointers. Except the baskets are people. Or something.

So here are the 8 methods the authors describe to click with people:

1. Clicking
Clicking with someone is basically the most powerful tactic. Getting this ‘quick set intimacy’ allows things to quickly escalate, whether it’s escalating with a girl, establishing a friendship, or kicking ass with business partners/teammates. Even if you literally have nothing in common with a girl other than just the ‘clicking’, it’s super effective. The study showed ‘logical’ marriages lasted just as long as marriages where the only thing in common the couples had was ‘clicking’.

2. Vulnerability
Most interactions between people are at the “transactional level”, or boring shit about information. Taking risks and being vulnerable, sharing some private information about yourself, can open up the connection. This is one tactic I actually use a decent amount. I like to drop some low-key vulnerability to see if I can quickly connect with new co-workers or other people I’ve just met. I’m pretty good with this when establishing friendships/business relationships but I need to use it more when I’m connecting with girls on dates or when I’m approaching.

3. Proximity
The science behind this is that the closer you are to people, the more likely you are to connect. This is common sense and something I understand personally, but it’s cool to see scientific studies show how much insanely better the connection is if you’re directly around someone all the time. Just putting yourself in situations where girls are on a consistent basis is enough to get you laid a lot of the time. I’ve definitely gotten pussy for no reason other than because I was there and able to make a quick connection. This also ties right into approaching as much as possible. The other aspect of this is hanging around cool dudes consistently (IC dudes, mods) and getting a better connection with successful people like that. You only get the connection if you’re consistently around. And with that connection comes osmosis and other opportunities.

4. Resonance
Being in the flow of things. Keep being in the moment with the people around you. Continually take their emotional temperature and play to that. I would say I’m somewhat oblivious and sometimes not giving a fuck about my surroundings. I’m definitely easily distracted. What I need to do is get in the “zone” and be fully engaged with my surroundings and the people around me. They use an example of being in the zone in a basketball game as an analogy and I think that makes it pretty clear. If you try to be more engaged with your surroundings, then you can get into this state and easily connect with people.

5. Similarity
Basically any type of similarity, big or small, connects people. Even if the only thing you share with another person is a name, science shows you’re way more likely to connect with that person quickly. It also says that something almost pointless, like having the same birthday, is basically as effective for quickly connecting people as having the same political beliefs or religion. I do this to an extent socially but I could get more creative and find clever ways to use similarities and make better connections with girls.

6. Environment
When you’re in places where you have to go through shit with people, like bootcamps, intensive classes, war, etc, it creates connections. You bond over the intense crap you had to get through together. For me personally, I had this in my Web Development bootcamp where I was with the same 40 people 12 hours per day, for 12 weeks. I’m still friends and could hang out with at least 15 of these people. This also applies to three or four days of partying in a row where you’re hanging out with the same people. Getting through all the partying together seems to be effective in building connections.

7. Naturals
Basically the explanation of “naturals” is that they are “high self monitors” who instinctively change their emotions to match and meet people emotionally, and maybe even mirror body language. I could definitely be more attentive to what people around me are doing while I’m connecting with them and match my behavior more effectively. When I’m in the mindset of reading people and calling things out I am able to see a lot of this stuff, but if I’m not, I miss a lot of it. I’ve been working on reading people and calling shit out a lot lately, even just in normal interactions. I’ve noticed without a doubt that it brings out more emotion in people.

8. Effectiveness
People who click perform at a way higher level than people who don’t click, even if everyone involved is sick. It’s important to “click” with the people you start businesses with, girls that you are potentially going to see regularly, and the dudes you hang out with. You will dominate shit if you’re clicking with everyone.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t completed a book since I was like 17, other than three or four books on Texas Hold’em (which I read in one sitting each) and some Dr. Seuss shit. So I’m gonna go ahead and give myself a big fucking pat on the back for seeing this through to the end.

5 of the Most Effective Tips for Improving Your Vocal Tonality

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

Some guys are born with a naturally powerful voice that turns women on. Most guys aren’t as fortunate. Some guys have naturally picked up good habits from their peers, friends, and families. Most guys don’t put in this kind of effort, but they should. Even professionals like sportscasters have spent hundreds of hours working on their own and with coaches to sound more confident.

1. Open your mouth wider
Do you mumble? Open your mouth wider.

Do you speak too quickly? Open your mouth wider.

Do you speak too softly? Open your mouth wider.

This could go on and on, and there’s a good reason for this piece of advice: a huge amount of vocal tonality issues disappear when you simply open your mouth wider. It’s one of the first tips singers learn, and it’s as close to a magic pill as you can get when you’re working on your voice.

2. Breathe from your diaphragm
Even though it’s the only skill we’ve been using since birth, most people actually breathe incorrectly. Take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, and exhale.

Did you shoulders rise and fall? If they did, that means you’re breathing wrong. Correct breathing happens from the diaphragm, not the chest. When you breathe, the only thing that should be moving is your stomach because that means you’re properly breathing from your diaphragm.

When you breathe properly, you speak with more power and conviction, and come across as more seductive without even thinking about it.

3. Stop ending your sentences with an upward inflection
Don’t do this (unless you’re a Kardashian).

4. Record yourself
Most guys never do this because it’s awkward, uncomfortable, and even downright painful to hear their own voices. But this is another situation where just taking the simplest step will already put you ahead of most steps. Do something that’s uncomfortable and listen to your own speech.

Read a paragraph out loud while recording it on your iPhone. Once you get over the discomfort of hearing your own voice, the insights you’ll gain from listening critically will lead to rapid improvements in your voice.

5. Learn to relax your larynx
Guys with weak or feminine sounding voices often carry too much tension in their larynx (the muscle that we think of as the Adam’s Apple). Diaphragmatic breathing can help significantly, but it’s even more important to do exercises that specifically target the larynx. Search Youtube for tutorials, and practice these at least once a day. You’ll be shocked at how quickly your voice improves.

Most of the social skills you need to learn to improve your life are difficult. Vocal tonality is an exception. It just takes 10 minutes a day of following these simple tips to experience real results.

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.

How do I connect with girls on their level?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

A common challenge for guys during the process of developing their conversation skills is that they struggle to connect with girls intellectually. But most of the time, this isn’t a challenge they realize they’re facing, because it expresses itself in other ways. The most common way it shows up is when guys ask “How do I turn my brain off and talk to girls on their level?” or “How do I connect with girls at parties?”

This is something I’ve always had a natural inclination for. I didn’t even realize it was a useful skill until I heard a bunch of other guys lamenting about the challenges of talking to “dumb girls.” While their view of this is skewed, with some reflection, I’ve been able to identify that in my case this ability arose out of a combination of my natural personality traits with some skills I’ve consciously developed. It comes down to three things I’m doing.

The three factors that you need to employ to connect with anyone are curiosity, unconditional positive regard, and empathy.

1. Curiosity

Everyone is naturally curious about certain topics. Some people are more curious about technology and systems, while the guys who are naturally good with women are often curious about social relationships and sports.

The good thing about curiosity is that “fake it till you make it” definitely applies here. Faking curiosity looks the same as actually being curious, and it’s how you learn curiosity as a social skill. When you ask questions to fully understand where someone else is coming from and make statements to relate it back to your own perspective, there’s no such thing as “faking it”. Your actions matter, not your thoughts, so there’s nothing you’re really faking here.

Asking questions to find out what other people value in life will always prompt good discussion, and it doesn’t matter if someone is a party girl or a genius who likes all the same things as you- both of these individuals have values that you can explore, and all these values point to ironies about the human condition and commonalities we all share.

So that girl you have trouble connecting with because you don’t understand her? The fact that you don’t understand her is an asset you can use to your advantage! Be curious and try to understand her, because this quest will provide endless conversation material.

2. Unconditional positive regard

Unconditional positive regard is a fancy way of saying not to judge people. It’s one of the first skills that new therapists learn, which is how I came across it. Psychologist Carl Rogers coined the term, and Wikipedia has a great definition: “the basic acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does.”

It’s not about liking or approving what someone is talking about, it’s about accepting it, and showing that matter what they say, you’re not judging their value as a human being as a result of it. This means not emotionally reacting when someone tells you something that violates society’s norms. The best example is reacting nonchalantly if a girl tells you that she’s a stripper or a porn star. If you don’t have a visible reaction on your face and you continue the conversation just as if she said she’s an accountant, that’s unconditional positive regard.

When a woman feels that she can tell you about anything and you won’t judge her for it, that’s extremely powerful. That’s a foundation that can lead to the raunchiest sexual conversation, or it can lead to her telling you her deepest secrets faster than she’s ever told anyone else before.

Carl Rogers sums up why this is so powerful: “When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, ‘Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.’”

3. Empathy

I saved empathy for last on purpose. Everything thinks they know what it means, like compassion, or sympathy. But let’s look at what it ACTUALLY means and how we can use it to our advantage in this situation. Yes, that means I’m getting out the dictionary.

The Random House Dictionary defines empathy as “the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” When I said everyone thinks they know what it means, it’s because people think they get it at a superficial level. What the typical superficial understanding misses is how this can be a superpower in your arsenal of connection skills.

Empathy means psychological perspective-taking. It’s more than just seeing an experience through someone else’s eyes; it’s living it through their all their emotions and senses. I guarantee that if you try to fully empathize with someone about an experience they’ve had, you will not run out of things to say. There are always more things you can ask to better understand where they’ve been and where they’re coming from.

Never run out of things to say? How is this possible?

All humans have experienced the same emotions, and we connect by resonating with each other emotionally.

When you fully try to understand someone else’s emotional experience, that’s how emotional bonds are formed.

The homie Carl Rogers is back at it again: “Being empathic means: ‘To be with another in this way means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another’s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself that he knows he will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and can comfortably return to his own world when he wishes. Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being.’”

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