One of my favorite Inner Confidence exercises is our social freedom exercises. We do things like lie down in a crowded public area, pretend to text on our phones in a crosswalk until the light turns green and we get honked at, and go to Chipotle and ask for free guacamole. Pictured left is Leverage Program moderator, doing a social freedom exercise during this year's EuroTrip in Budapest. The point of these exercises is to embarrass yourself in public and learn to deal with whatever reaction you get. There's actual psychology behind it: the original cognitive-behavioral therapist Albert … [Read more...]
Why Getting Rejected Is Good
Why is rejection so scary? Our society does a great job of instilling shame in men. Growing up as kids, and even into our adult lives, we’re told toxic messages that can hold us back for a lifetime. Sometimes this shame originates from the people around us. Our parents or friends tell us these messages explicitly: that guy’s a player and you shouldn’t be like that. Or they could be more subtle messages from the media and movies: in order to get a girl to like you, you need to be nice and submissive. People mean well when they give us this kind of advice. Despite their good intentions, … [Read more...]
Why is approaching so important for building confidence?
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 … [Read more...]
Dating With Social Anxiety
I've said before that I don't care about approach anxiety. But when does anxiety become a real problem? When social anxiety becomes a problem, it’s because it turns into more than just a feeling of anxiety in social situations (like approach anxiety). If that's all it was, then you could just tough out the uncomfortable feeling and force yourself be social, like what most people do when they have to speak in public. The reason that social anxiety is a bigger problem is because it changes your actions and behaviors: you stop chasing your goals in order to avoid feeling anxious. What is … [Read more...]
