authentic dating Archives - Inner Confidence

Dealing with discomfort

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.

You Should Dump Your Girlfriend

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

Guest post by Jay, Leverage Program member

It’s easy to fall into the trap of letting a girl who isn’t really a good fit for you stick around because she prevents you from feeling lonely.

We all feel lonely at times. It’s part of the human condition. And for guys who aren’t naturally good with women, it’s normal to feel lonely most or even all of the time.

When you start developing your skills, having success is inevitable. You’ll start to get numbers, you’ll start to get dates, you’ll start to make out with women, and you’ll start to sleep with ones you like.

Once you start sleeping with the kinds of women that you like, there’s a critical point where you have to stay on your path. It’s easy to get sucked into a relationship by default, that happens from settling with someone who makes you feel less alone. That feeling of loneliness? The novelty of a new sexual relationship is one powerful way to drown it out.

Too many guys end up dating girls long-term just by default. They never made the conscious decision to do it, but they end up with her because it fills a space in their lives, and the access to sex is a powerful motivator.

What they don’t realize is that space will always be there, and is part of being human. The only thing that you should attempt to use to fill that space is your drive to be better. Part of being a man and accepting your place as an adult is a constant drive for self-improvement. And that emptiness you feel will only get better through your journey of self-improvement, not by a woman.

Friday night dates. Complacency. Stuck banging one girl forever. Not having threesomes. Never traveling. Having the same lame friends. No self-growth. These thoughts seem like a great foundation for a happy relationship, so how could this touching story come to a bad ending?

Now of course if you’re not having these thoughts and are actually completely satisfied in your relationship with zero doubts, regrets, or insecurities, then I’m not talking about you. You’re already winning. However, if you are experiencing these feelings and emotions, stay with me. I’m not going to focus on the negative actions some girls do, because that’s playing the victim game- a game for losers. I’m just going to focus on things from a personal level. Your life is on you. No one else.

Nothing is worse in a relationship than that moment you realize you’re unsatisfied. Even if you get an attractive girlfriend, have a great time for a while, enjoy love, have weird sex, and experience shit together, eventually your insecurities creep back. That little voice in your head comes back and says “Hey motherfucker, I’m still here.” It’s not really noticeable when you’re in the early stages of intimacy, but as the excitement starts to wear off, the thoughts of being unsatisfied start to creep in.

There’s a number of reasons why you might not be satisfied. Your personal social circle isn’t fully developed. Your girlfriend isn’t cool and open-minded to threesomes and other sexual exploration. You feel like you deserve a better girl. You’re not getting better at the things that are important to you. You haven’t traveled and experienced enough. And on and on.

If you’re carrying these thoughts with you while in a relationship, there’s no way that it will have a happy ending, not with all that dissatisfaction. It’s unfair to the girl. No matter what she does, she can never make you happy. It’s literally impossible. The only way you can be fully happy is if you go hard on reaching your full potential and doing everything you actually want to do to resolve these issues.

When I was going through multiple relationships, I’d be initially excited in the honeymoon phase, lose some interest in the middle phase, and then feel married and not giving a fuck by the end of the relationship. The girls were attractive, had cool friends, and liked my personality. But even with all that, I just felt dead every time. I wasn’t satisfied on the inside. My real needs and desires weren’t being fulfilled, and so I wasn’t happy.

After having enough of these girlfriends, I finally started seeing the picture. I wasn’t into monogamy and jealous atmosphere it brought to the relationship. Threesomes and sexual exploration were important to me, but my relationships had been too tightly knit to allow those things to happen. My weekends were being sucked away with Netflix and pointless dates. My social circle was lacking. I wasn’t developing as a man and becoming a winner.

There was a ton of other shit I was unsatisfied with, as far as my self-growth, like lack of traveling and new experiences, poot fitness, bad finances, but one thing was killing me the most. I felt terrible about being unskilled with girls, and never having massive success with women. I was always having to fight hard just to get one girl, feeling like I couldn’t easily replace them or pick the ones I actually wanted. Just because I was able to repeatedly get girlfriends or hook up with a decent amount of girls (between relationships), it hadn’t resolved my deepest insecurity: my lack of skills and confidence with women. I was sick of it.

Even if the girl was cool, I just couldn’t live with the thought of never being 100% of what I could be. I wanted full control over my life. If I never developed myself into a sick individual and started becoming a winner who could actually get with the type of girls I deserved and wanted, I knew I would never be happy. That was the one thing I had to have to be able to die in peace.

When I finally dumped my last girlfriend, it was liberating. I felt relieved. I felt no pain. I gave no fucks. I could focus on my business, my dick (me), 24/7. I immediately improved my career and income. Started getting in shape again. I did some traveling. And more importantly, I finally found the type of coaching I was looking for and started addressing this issue. Have there been roadblocks? Of course. Am I doing the things I want at a high level yet? No. I fell in a couple gutters in the past year and had some hard times. But despite that, I’m pumped and feel alive every day, knowing I’m on track working toward my goals.

Look, I get it. It’s easy to be complacent. Who doesn’t like easy pussy? Your girlfriend might have a cool social circle and you might do cool shit together. But if you’re not satisfied, if you have insecurities and doubts in your head, don’t ignore them, even if your realizations are painful. You gotta dump your girlfriend and handle your shit until you can be satisfied with yourself. That way when you do pick a girl and hang up the jersey, you can do it without any regrets.

Don’t let validation fill the emptiness you feel inside. If you don’t, you’re basically gonna be 49, jacking off to weird porn in the shadows on Sunday at 2pm in your carpeted Downey apartment with erectile dysfunction, thinking about how you wish you had threesomes, had more weird sex, banged more girls, connected with more females, traveled more, did more self development, took more risks, etc. Don’t be that guy.

Validation gives you a temporary high. Settling in an unsatisfying relationship provides you with a dull numbing of that pain. In contrast, allowing yourself to be open and vulnerable rather than settling for whatever provides you validation or comfort, is scary. You’ll feel lost at times. You’ll feel like maybe you aren’t making the right choices, and that maybe you shouldn’t try to improve this area of your life. Your inner voice can be a nagging demon that holds you back.

But look past it. Never accept mediocrity. Understand that these feelings are part of the journey, and that this empty space will only be fulfilled by living a life of your values, and by always striving to be a better version of the man you want to become. No relationship or sexual experience can fill that void. The only thing that will do it is consistent hard work, every day for the rest of your life. That’s what’s truly rewarding and fulfilling about this journey. The relationships you’ll start to form are just a side effect of being a fulfilled man who’s living his purpose.

If You Play it Safe You’re Boring

by Tyler W 1 Comment

When you look at guys who are great with women, or anyone with peak social awareness, they perform a bunch of smaller actions that add up to an arsenal of social skills. These discrete skills combine to form a killer ability to communicate with others and assertively get what they want.

When we’re teaching you to improve your dating life, we focus on a lot. Accumulating as much practice as you can and playing the “numbers game” is part of it. Developing your character is also part of it, and it can seem overwhelming to go from where you are now to the success you really dream of.

While it’s true that there are millions of little moves you’ve got to understand, it’s also true that what often looks like natural competence with women is the result of daily habits constructed over a long period of time. Guys who do well with women tend to have just naturally absorbed attractive behaviors from role models such as fathers, teammates, coaches, and friends. And one thing guys who are successful have in common is that they never play it safe.

Guys don’t take risks in conversation because they don’t want to piss people off, say the “wrong thing”, or get rejected. So they play it safe, and end up being boring.

When guys want to play it safe, the things they do in one-on-one conversations or in social situations are seeking a reaction, seeking relevance to whatever is being discussed, and to ward off FOMO. They’re seeking validation and avoiding taking risks. It’s easier to force a pity laugh by making a lame, non-risky joke than to take a stand and disagree with others.

It’s easy to say “stop giving a fuck what other people think” but that isn’t actually helpful because it doesn’t tell you what to do instead. Conversations are only hard or scary if you aren’t confident in what you’re discussing, so guys often ask for topics they should discuss. What they’re missing is that no one can tell you what to say. It’s something you have to develop on your own with a lot of practice.

That means a lot of trial and error. That means a lot of putting your foot in your mouth. Everyone starts out saying lame stuff, then they get better. Reading feedback is key, and since humans are naturally social, this happens automatically. You read the feedback of others you interact with and passively develop s sense of pattern recognition around having exciting conversations.

Talk to everyone. A study done at the University of British Columbia showed that if you interact with more people throughout the day, you’ll be happier and have a stronger sense of belonging, and it doesn’t even matter if they’re good friends or just casual acquaintances. Everyone wants to have fun conversations and you can easily be the guy who delivers that experience. Talking to everyone you encounter throughout your day teaches you how to push past fear, and you get tons of reps starting conversations with strangers.

Over time, you’ll start to surprise yourself with the things you say in conversation. You won’t really be sure where they come from, but you’ll spontaneously come up with great, witty content and banter. Being cool is when you’re not easily excitable about stuff that doesn’t involve you, and not being easily excitable in general, and eventually you’ll automatically reach this point.

Do this: Say more crazy stuff and stop trying to play it safe. You’ll get better the more you practice.

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.

Develop Your Inner Confidence Interview on Pickup Change

by Robbie Leave a Comment

I was recently interviewed by pickupchange.com

We talked about how to build your confidence and make your approach to girls more natural and effective.

Here’s what we covered in the podcast:

The easiest way to meet girls
How to develop your inner confidence
How to overcome approach anxiety
What is the average success ratio in daygame
How to enjoy the process and stop being focused only on the outcome
Do looks and wealth really matter?
How to spot a girl who is actively looking for men.

http://www.pickupchange.com/develop-your-inner-confidence-interview-with-robbie-kramer/

Enjoy,

Robbie

Do you agree too much?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

A common mistake that guys who don’t have well-developed social skills make is that they are too agreeable. They don’t want to tell girls no. They don’t want to make polarizing statements. They’d rather go with the flow than rock the boat. They avoid controversy.

At first glance, this seems like it’s a good idea. If you aren’t a social genius or a beast with women, why take a risk that has a chance of hurting a relationship or creating tension?

Here’s the problem: when you’re in the middle, you’re vanilla. You need to be polarizing to be attractive to people. You need to filter some people out. You need to invite rejection with some girls in order to build attraction with others, because no one is attracted to a guy in the middle.

If you’re getting polarizing reactions, you’re probably telling the truth. When you don’t hide behind things left unsaid, you’re going to get some strong positive reactions, and you’re also going to get some harsh rejections. That’s a good thing.

Invite rejection as a filter. You should be making bolder claims and use your questions as a way to invite rejection. If the content you’re saying is something that everyone can agree with, it means your conversations are vanilla and boring. You should instead be more polarizing in order to screen out women you wouldn’t be happy with.

There’s a good reason why guys with social anxiety are too agreeable. For these guys, disagreeing with others activates the same brain region responsible for triggering anxiety. As we know, avoidance is the most common coping strategy for anxiety: we avoid stimuli that trigger anxiety. So these guys are excessively agreeable in order to ward off the potential of feeling anxious. They’ve subconsciously and automatically found that they can feel more comfortable in social situations if they’re agreeable all the time.

Most people default to being agreeable and easy to get along with, because in general, being agreeable is the social lubricant of new relationships.

The patterns of social behavior that people display over time represent their individual method for warding off emotional discomfort. People tend to reflexively use different social strategies and avoid others, based on what creates and avoids anxiety for them. So in this case, people who have a tendency to feel anxious about social interaction will default to being excessively agreeable in order to ward off that type of emotional discomfort. It’s why social anxiety is often accompanied by passivity.

Always remember that communication isn’t about your intent. It’s about the effect you have on your listener. And if you aren’t ever having an emotional effect on your listener, you’re boring.

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.

Reader question: How do I escape the friend zone?

by Robbie Leave a Comment

A reader asks:

I’m planning out a date with an old casual friend from my hometown, where I’ve been staying for a few months. I recently got out of a 5 year relationship and looking forward to dating again.

Background: I’ve somewhat had a crush on her. I always had an older brother-sister frame with her. I want to use this harmless coffee to take a step beyond the friendship dynamic. I know I need to do this very smoothly so there is no weirdness and end up creeping her out. What’s the best way to do this?

You are going about this with the wrong frame of mind. She knows you are both out of a relationship and it’s going to look super telegraphed and desperate on your part if you try to pursue her romantically. You’ll likely fail, look like a huge idiot/douche/loser, and also end up ruining the friendship.

Damaging a long-term friendship for pussy is really dumb because cool, attractive girls will usually have others just like them who they can hook you up with.

You’re much better off going this route and letting her make an obvious move on you if she’s attracted to you. You might think there’s something there in her mind, but you aren’t even close to qualified to make that assessment.

Hang out with her, connect and treat her like a friend. The less sleazy romantic and flirty you are, the better. Treat her like your little sister and bust her balls as you would with a little sister. Attempt to see her another time soon in a group situation. Don’t ask her out on anything that seems like a date.

You’re finally single! Now you can daygame and use the Leverage Program how it’s designed, instead of trying to go for the “seemingly easy layups” with girls from your past. I promise it’s way more difficult than meeting new girls, and the downside severely outweighs the upside when things inevitably turn awkward and jeopardize the friendship.

The bigger picture here is that guys with a scarcity mentality, who haven’t hit on enough women, are the ones who get “friend-zoned.” It’s a result of guys being attracted to a girl but not having the courage to announce their intentions, then when they do girl says “no” and they follow her around hoping she will come around one day. I’m not saying this is the case with you, but guys who do this are dishonest and pathetic.

Don’t pursue every woman you meet. Instead befriend them, THEN YOU ARE PUTTING HER IN THE FRIEND ZONE. Eventually some of the girls you befriend will want to date you, they’ll introduce you to their friends, and your life will be better. Stop saying that stupid phrase “friend zone,” because it’s holding you back. GTFO with this mentality. Make friends, be casual, work hard, have fun, and turn your brain chatter off.

Just build regular normal two-way friendships. If you want a girl, ask her out. If she says no, move on. Voila- all your problems are solved.

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.’”

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