Robbie Kramer 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.

How to Set Goals: The Pillars of Life

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

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 3 F’s: How to Become An Expert At Anything

by Tyler W Leave a Comment

I love when someone tells me that something is “simple, but not easy.” Many of the best things in life fit this saying. Fitness. Nutrition. Confidence. Meeting women. Day game. These areas have simple rules for success, and then they require hard work applying those rules.

Expert performance is the same way. It’s simple, but not easy. How simple? The path to becoming an expert can be broken down into three steps that anyone can understand and apply immediately.

1. Focus

This doesn’t mean a general sense of focus. This is referring to taking a microscope on the skills that comprise expert performance. In this step, you break down the skills required of an expert into components you can do repeatedly.

An example of this concept for approaching looks like this:

Describe signals women give off that demonstrates they want to be approached
Go out into the world and find women giving off these signals
Perform the hook and swoop
Deliver the 1,2,3 in a conversation
etc.

Another example from health and fitness- eating healthy:

Understanding what macronutrients are
Identifying your physique goals
Understanding what macronutrient composition you need to reach your physique goals
Learning the principles behind meal prep
Being able to prepare meals that will help you reach your health goals
etc.

Any individual skill that seems daunting to master becomes simple when you break it down into the tiniest components possible. Instead of asking big questions like “How do I get better at dating?”, ask little questions like “What is something I can do today in 5 minutes that will make me more attractive?”

2. Feedback

There are two ways to get feedback when you’re developing a skill. The first is to analyze your performance and pay attention to the result. If you go out and approach 15 women and 14 tell you that they have boyfriends, that’s a piece of information you can use to assess your skills. If you attempt a new type of joke in a conversation and get a big laugh from it, that’s another piece of information. Every micro-bit of information you gain in actual conversational practice teaches you something about whether your actions are working, or if you need to correct something.

The other method of obtaining feedback is to have a coach or mentor who can do this for you. Self-experimentation and practice is essential to becoming an expert, but it can’t ever happen at the same rate as when you work with a coach. Learning from a true expert gives you all the advantages of years of experience and highly developed mental models. They can take knowledge from their vast range of experiences and provide you with all the specific cues that you need to be successful.

Osmosis is a powerful concept that’s related. You gain feedback automatically when you surround yourself with people who are successful in the areas you’re working on.

3. Fix it

You get good at things by practicing your skills, applying them effectively, assessing the results, and by modifying as needed. Gaining confidence is a process of constant iteration. When you’ve determined your weaknesses, either on your own or with a coach, the next step is to figure out ways to address them.

This is actually a straightforward process when you’ve broken each skill into the smallest possible parts. If you say one line and you don’t get a good reaction, it’s easy to go out and practice that line multiple times, changing little things about it each time. You can change your delivery, you can change your facial expressions, and you can change the situation you deliver it in. By constantly iterating on this skill, you will slowly learn what works and what doesn’t work.

That’s how experts are created. The difference between an expert and a beginner lies in their mental models of their skill. Everyone has ideas about how a skill should be performed, and beliefs about the natural state of the world in relation to that skill. An expert just has much more thoroughly detailed mental models compared to a beginner, and the expert has a lot more models.

These models are developed through real-world feedback, the kind that the 3 F’s make simple.

The Value of Coaching We Often Forget

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Guest post by James, Leverage Program moderator

One of the biggest influences during my childhood wasn’t a part of my family, schooling, or friends. It was my soccer coach, Brian Malloy. As a child, I was always willing to listen to what he said. He was a major part of my life. He pushed me to be a better teammate, a better player, and to achieve success in and out of the classroom. My life would be drastically different without his coaching in my adolescence.

During adulthood, I lost the understanding of how valuable a coach can be. Growing up I needed people who saw the world differently and pushed me to be my best, so why not as an adult?

During my mid-20s, life started to stagnate. I thought I knew it all. I thought my career was great, I was in decent shape, and I was a great friend and lover. I was lying to myself.

I was not as successful in my career, fitness, and social and dating as I thought. My classroom was a mess, I was overweight and out of shape, and getting ZERO dates. But through coaching, I got my life back on track and pushed myself to be the man I strive to be.

I had several years of teaching experience and a master’s degree. At all outside appearances I was successful, but the feeling in my classroom was different. I had behavior management issues it was causing major problems for my students’ learning.

Craig Sini and I started working together. He was in my classroom every day and making observations. It was pretty excruciating to think I would be judged on a daily basis. However, his attitude was inspiring. I decided to let go and do what he said. I’d implement his suggestions and my class would improve. Through working with him, I slowly but surely developed into the teacher I wanted to be. He provided positive reinforcement, celebrated my successes, and pushed me to improve my teaching strategies.

At this time, I was overweight and disappointed with my physical health. My good friend Danny was constantly asking me to join Crossfit. One day I just said yes. After inconsistently going to the gy for the previous two years, I had a lot of work to do. My coach Steve was there to push me. I couldn’t do a pull-up when I first started, so he would place supports for me which were gradually removed until I could do one independently. He talked to me about nutrition, taking care of myself, and living a healthy lifestyle. He constantly provided feedback and was a positive support to get my health back on track.

Even though I was finding more success in these areas of my life, I was still struggling socially and in my dating life. Though I had never really been sold on the concept of a dating coach or a confidence coach, I met Robbie Kramer through a good friend, and it changed my life.

Simply by talking about my dating life, he forced me to be honest with myself. I was not dating the women I wanted to be dating. I was pushed to think about friendships and how I provide value. I was pushed to day game. Many times I would see a woman on the street, and have too much fear and lack of knowledge of what to say or do. Robbie not only gave me strategies but also pushed me to go out and do it. With his support and others in our group, I started getting more dates with women I want and created better friendships and relationships that have improved my life drastically.

(That’s Cameron, Robbie, me and Hippie together on the Leverage Trip In Budapest, Hungary)

As a child, I always understood the need for a coach. We need someone to make substitutions, design tactics, and push us to play our best. Now as an adult, I have come to understand the huge value of coaches in all aspects of my life. Craig pushed me to be a better teacher, Steve pushed me to improve my physical health, and Robbie Kramer pushed me to improve my social and dating life. All of them helped me live a fulfilling live based on my values, and be the man I strive to be.

Who is pushing you to be the man you strive to be?

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.

9 Ways to Create Enough Time and Money for a Quality Dating Life

by Robbie Leave a Comment

Recently, I asked for an update from some of my coaching clients in the Leverage Program. I noticed that almost all of the guys who are lagging on the dating front are also worried about their finances.

While it’s true that guys often use money as an excuse, I actually do think that it’s hard to get your dating life handled if your finances are also not in order. Financial difficulties are an emotional drain that affects our self-esteem and cause us to project insecurity to everyone around us.

The relationship between money and dating is an issue I started to think about in junior high. My plan growing up was to become a professional golfer on the PGA tour. Becoming a pro athlete, I assumed, would solve both my money and dating problems.

My plan, however, was upended in two ways. I started to lose interest in golf. And after that, I read The Game, which made me realize that there was a lot more I could to improve with girls that had nothing to do with money.

During the first few years after college, I worked in a variety of office jobs, but my main interest was learning how to improve with girls. My progress was uneven, both professionally and in terms of dating.

The issue wasn’t effort. I was working 11-hour shifts. But I also did day game approaches during my lunch break, hit the bars from 10pm-2am, and attended self-help seminars and pick up bootcamps over the weekend.

Within a few years, I spent about $82,000 on various self-development programs.

It was only after I transitioned to a more fulfilling career that my results with dating skyrocketed.

I discuss my story in some detail in this podcast episode with Y.L. Savitskiy. But basically, I negotiated a remote work deal at my venture capital firm, then became a dating coach, and then hacked the sharing economy.

Once I figured out how to stop trading time for money, I was able to leverage every single resource at my disposal, and then use the newfound time, money, and energy I had to date more women.

It took me many years to figure this out, mostly through trial-and-error.

Do I have a 4-hour work week? No. Do I make as much as my friends who stayed in finance? No. But I work whenever I want, wherever I want, doing a job that I love. All things considered, I think I’m living what Ramit Sethi calls a “rich life.”

No formula is going to work for everyone and I’m obviously not suggesting that you quit your job. I actually think the structure of a 9-5 job works for a certain type of person.

But if you’re looking to free up some time, generate passive income, and meet more women, here are a few tips that I’ve found generally work:

· Take advantage of money hacks

· Become a minimalist: I know it sounds ridiculous, but as my clients get rid of all their useless shit, their success with women starts to improve. The reason, basically, is that tidiness and control in our outer world frees up our mind to focus on our goals.

· Hack spending: Share your typical expenses with a trusted group of friends and advisors and take a hard look at what you can eliminate. You’ll be surprised how much cash you’re spewing. Some of my coaching clients use the Leverage Program for this purpose.

· Hack transportation with services like flightcar.com, relayrides.com, and turo.com/

· Ask for discounts

· Hack Credit Cards and Retirement Accounts

· Build passive income streams through the sharing economy

· Stop wasting money eating out by cooking at home. It’s easier than you think and way healthier.

· Leverage a skill: Think of all the skills and knowledge you have, then find a way to tutor, offer a class, or market them in ways that can generate money on the side.

As you hack your finances, you’ll start to take a more critical look at every other aspect of your life. Before you know it, you’ll be a “King of Leverage.”

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.

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.