building confidence Archives - Inner Confidence

How to Set Goals: The Pillars of Life

Guest post by James, Leverage Program moderator

Sitting in the airport in Buenos Aires, after a weekend of food poisoning and partying, I was feeling pretty miserable waiting for my flight that Sunday evening. I was writing and avoiding my travel friends, just going through my normal weekly routine and trying to prepare for the week to come.

Phillip, a guy I met that weekend came over and asked me what I was writing about. I really looked up to Phillip but I hadn’t been able to create the relationship I wanted with him. He was a deep thinker, entrepreneur, in great shape, and charming. I saw his question as an opportunity to grow our relationship, even though my first thought was he would think what I was writing about was stupid.

My weekly routine is to write about my goals for the week based on what I now call the pillars of life. I explore my values and determine my focus for my social (friends, family, and dating), professional, fitness (workouts and diet), financial, minimalism, and self lives. Self is how I treat myself, and in this category I write about meditation and gratitude. I must take care of these aspects of life to be the complete man I want to be, and live a fulfilling dating life.

Phillip told me he thinks of life in the same way as me and rethinks his goals in his pillars every six months. He compared it to a table, and if one leg of that table is out of balance, then the table will not be sturdy and could potentially fall over.

If a part of a person’s life is out of balance, that person could fall over and break. A strong table is supported by its base just as a person is supported by their pillars and actions. You can be meeting women but if your career isn’t moving forward, you will struggle.

Just as a table needs its supports, my pillars of life support me. If my social life is out of balance and I am avoiding friends and not doing day game, I struggle. If my diet and workout routine is off, I struggle. If I am working too much or unable to pay my bills, I struggle. If I am not being proactive at work or not developing meaningful relationships, I struggle. If I avoid taking care of myself, I struggle.

I still focus on these aspects on a weekly basis. If one pillar starts to get out of balance, it’s ok. I refocus and get back to strengthening that pillar, while making sure the others remain sturdy. If I miss a workout because of a client one week, I make sure to prioritise it the following week. I don’t beat myself up about small or large slips. I make sure I get back to my focus of my goals and what I truly want and desire.

How strong are your pillars?

The Truth About Height, from a Leverage Moderator

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

Guest post by a Leverage Program moderator

Don’t let something you can’t change become an excuse.

I am not a small guy, but I’ve had a unique experience. I am 5’11 170 pounds, and I am only attracted to tall athletic girls, 5’8-5’11. That means that they’re taller than me when they wear heels, so most of the time I meet a woman out, she’ll be taller than me.

Tall girls have issues about being big, but a 6’5, 240 pound guy makes them feel small. Most women who are 5’8 and up want to date really tall guys so they can feel small in their arms.

I am by far the shortest and smallest guy any of my girlfriends has ever dated- they always went very far out of their way to let me know this. I dated a girl who was engaged to a professional baseball player who was 6’5. Another ex was dating a minor league hockey player before me. This dude was the Incredible Hulk. And another ex dated a guy on a college football team who was like 6’6, 230lbs, 8% body fat. Her ex before that played major league baseball.

My current girlfriend, who is the shortest girl I’ve dated in 13 years, was a godsend. She is just under 5’6, so surely she would appreciate how tall I am. Nope! Her ex was 6’8 played pro tennis, and ex before that was 6’3 model.

If you guys think you are somehow in a different boat than me, you are wrong. 5’0-5’5 girls are not an option for me because I’m not attracted to them. That leaves me 5’6-6’0 girls.

By and large 5’11 to 6’0 girls aren’t gong to be into me, so that leaves me 4 inches worth of girls to pull from (remember that 5’9 and 5’10 girls want 6’2+ guys).

I’m in your boat because I’m the “little guy” trying to pull chicks who want much larger guys, so I know what it’s like hitting on taller women. How do I combat this?

Personality. I’m charismatic and confident. Every single girl I’ve ever dated at one point or another has said “I feel so safe with you.” Anyone who knows me knows that I have very clear boundaries and I’ll let people know the second they cross them. I think this is what makes the girls feel like I’m strong and they feel protected (which they all say).

Add in some interesting stories, some mentor game, charisma, appear to be a hot commodity, make sure that there’s nothing visual about you that’s repellent, and suddenly the height factor vanishes.

They don’t see your height. They see your other positive attributes.

My buddy Jeremy is 5’6 and doesn’t have a Napoleon Complex. He is chill and easygoing, but he has a stern voice and it’s clear that if he is pushed he’ll let you know to stop. He has consistently pulled girls his height and taller, and this is what he had to say on the subject:

Although height can be an important factor in attraction, it mainly comes down to protection and feeling safe. That has to do with attitude and confidence. Not attitude in a douchey way, but you need to show you’re somebody who is not a pushover. When you stand up for a girl or someone else in a vulnerable position, women find it incredibly sexy.

Here is what another shorter friend had to say:

I am just over 5’7, I just look even shorter because I’m always hanging out with taller guys. Attitude is everything, but that does not mean being a Napoleon. A lot of shorter guys have SFC (short fucker complex) and try to overcompensate, which only makes it even more clear that you are not confident.

>Women feel safe when they know that you are confident and that you will protect them if necessary, but not when they feel like you go over the top to prove that you’re a man because you’re short. I have very clear boundaries and if you cross them, you’ll be let known in a stern way that exudes confidence but not compensation. I always get the “I feel safe with you” which is simply a function of confidence.

Yes, I consistently pull 5’8 or 5’9 chicks who are much taller than me when in heels. I have to make up for that with personality, charisma, and be more fun and interesting than the taller guys. It is a disadvantage, but if there’s one thing a girl loves more than anything, it’s having fun and laughing. I also think power plays into it too.

If you hang out with the mods in Leverage, you can instantly see that most of the guys in our group can turn the lights on in a room with the air of confidence, power, and charisma. Robbie speaks in front of large groups of people, and you can feel that energy when he walks into a room. There is a level of confidence that communicates you are powerful to a woman. It’s not necessarily what you do for a living, but how you feel about it and how you portray yourself. Find your strengths and leverage them.

So there you have it guys. Height can be a disadvantage, but it’s certainly something that you can overcome by developing your personality and positive attributes.

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.

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.

Inner Confidence on Elite Daily: Yes, Women Actually Do Pay A Lot Of Attention To The Way You’re Dressed

by Robbie Leave a Comment

At the end of the day, being dynamic is your greatest sales pitch ever. The end-all, be-all is becoming a man who’s witty, charismatic, driven, spontaneous and grounded. This is the whole package, and women will pretty much do anything to be with a man who’s dynamic.

If you don’t know how to dress, it immediately sends out a signal you’re not dynamic. Continue reading on Elite Daily.

Do I Need To Be Rich To Date Hot Women?

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

monopoly A lot the teachings of Inner Confidence are how you can use minimalism to be successful in all areas of life. There’s a big misconception out there that you need to have money to date women.

It’s crucial to understand that the only lasting method of having a healthy dating 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 notice you displaying those characteristics.

Money can be a signal for traits that women find attractive, like perseverance, entrepreneurship, ambition, and leadership. But money is not the same as those things. It’s just a proxy.

What does this mean for your dating life? Developing these attractive traits is MORE IMPORTANT than making money. Sure, making money is usually a side effect of working on yourself in this way, but money is just a signal for what’s actually attractive. Women are not hard-wired to respond to money, since we evolved before money was invented. But they are hard-wired to respond to all the positive personality traits that being rich signals.

How else can you signal these personality traits, other than becoming rich? Equally attractive to cultivating wealth is the ideal of having few possessions, traveling all the time, and having a life filled with rich experiences. It’s not a coincidence that this is the type of lifestyle we advocate at Inner Confidence, and it’s why we even teach you how to do it.

We’re happier when we spend money on experiences, like traveling and other people, than when we spend it on material goods and ourselves. This same idea easily applies to dating: the experience is more important than anything you can buy.

Emotional connection is always the primary element of attraction, and everything else is either secondary or noise. If you’re using money to signal your attractive traits, it’s secondary, and if you think money on its own will attract women, it’s just noise. When you can connect with a woman emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, how much money you make becomes irrelevant.

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.

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.