The High Status Male

Little Bobby is 2 years old.  He likes to run around the house naked — laughing and screaming with joy as his parents chase him from room to room with the camcorder.  They tell him to “quit showing everybody that silly poo-poo bottom….”, but they think it’s hysterical and do nothing to stop it.  Why should they?  Dashing around butt naked is appropriate, healthy behavior for a 2 year old who’s just discovered the most delightful means of coordinating the rapid movement of his legs in such a way that he can now run!… (an absolutely transcendent advancement over mere walking, which was last month’s big achievement).  Being without clothing is no big deal either, of course — as long as it’s not too cold in the house.  Life is good.  Life is magical.

A year later Bobby is 3, and grandma is visiting.  Bobby decides to run out of the bathroom after his bath and surprise grandma… make her laugh and be silly.  But today it’s Bobby who’s in for the surprise, because when grandma sees him running towards her au naturel with his ding dong happily bouncing around, she gets an angry look on her face which stops him cold.  She scolds him, “Shame on you Bobby, go put some clothes on!”.  Bobby is confused.  Mom and dad never said anything like that to him.  They never yelled at Bobby for being a silly poo-poo head.  As far as he was concerned, there was no real difference between wearing clothes and not wearing them anyway, right?

So what’s wrong with grandma anyway?  Why is she making Bobby feel so bad about being naked all of a sudden?  “You shouldn’t run around like that, it’s not right…” grandma scolds.  Bobby looks to his parents, moving around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, for some support.  “Mom?” he asks quizzically.  But now both his parents have funny looks on their faces too, adding to Bobby’s dismay.  Mom quickly grabs Bobby by the hand and takes him upstairs and gets him into his PJ’s.  Now when he comes back, grandma is happy again.  But why?  What was the big deal about being naked?

Soon, anytime Bobby thinks about running around the house naked, he gets a funny, uncomfortable feeling inside of him that he doesn’t like.  This strange bad feeling goes away if he puts his clothes back on.  And he would never, ever dream of running around the house naked in front of grandma again… that’s for sure!

Soon, he won’t be comfortable doing it in front of his parents either, and they seem to be okay with that.  They never want to play ‘chase my poo-poo bottom with the camcorder’ any more anyway.  Oh well…

Welcome to Behavioral Modification 101.

This is of course a very common story that every parent has faced at some point in their children’s development, seemingly straightforward… but do you see what really just happened here?  Little Bobby has just learned to associate the emotion of SHAME with the act of being naked in front of others.  In the coming years, he will also learn that it’s shameful to touch himself “down there” in public, nor to let anyone look at him when he’s in the bathroom on the toilet, and then even in the bathtub.  Things are sure becoming different around here.

Now, Bobby’s new sense of modesty certainly may not be considered anything close to being toxic, but he’ll have plenty of opportunity for that to happen as the years roll by.  The development of a sense of shame is normal and healthy when it serves to set appropriate boundaries for our actions at various stages in our evolution from toddler to adult.  Shame endows our flowering sense of ego-dominated identity with a certain humility that guides our interactions with other individuals.  It helps us learn to take on more and more responsibility for our actions by slowly becoming aware of how they affect everyone else around us.  We discover empathy in this way.

It’s important to understand that the mechanism of shame is mainly one of association, that is, we learn to associate the unpleasant sensation of being ashamed with behaviors that society wishes for us to control or suppress in some way.  Shame is commonly wielded by parents to control the behavior of adolescents, but it is most certainly used against adults as well.  Morals and values and the boundaries of acceptable public and private behavior are all “taught” to us by way of inducing shameful experiences at some point in our lives in order to make them “sink in”.

To a certain extent this is okay, but the deadly vise-grip of deeply internalized shame can become stifling over time and fully degenerate into a form known as toxic. Toxic shame occurs when we are exposed – either physically or emotionally – in a way that repeatedly diminishes us in the presence of others, and especially in situations where we are not prepared to experience such an exposure.

How pervasive are the effects of toxic shame?

Well, humiliation is an extreme form of toxic shame that is so awful, men will put their lives in jeopardy in order to avoid experiencing it or to avenge it.  Physical violence and murders routinely are committed due to violations of shame boundaries.  Emotionally rigid cultures like the Japanese partake in a form of ritual suicide called hara-kiri to absolve themselves of toxic shame or the so-called “loss of face”… choosing the extreme action killing oneself to restore honor to themselves and their family name — rather than continuing to live a “faceless” existence.  And most devastating of all, almost every form of addictive behavior has its roots in the desperate need of the afflicted individual to escape from an overwhelming sense of shame that he or she feels has completely consumed them.

You see, it’s when shame begins to exceed its normal function within our minds, i.e. to provide us with a sense of humility that grounds our identity somewhere between God and the lower beasts, that it begins to create problems.  Usually this happens either through some unrelenting source (i.e., constant harassment by parent or peers), or by way of an isolated or even continuous traumatic event.  Such repeated shaming events re-enforce themselves over and over and can continue to haunt us for a lifetime.

The most powerful counter force to toxic shame is Self-Compassion and Self-Awareness. Part of the dysfunction of shame is manifested in a tendency for us to be way too hard on ourselves — continuing the desire for self-punishment… taking up the mantle of past tormentors.  Just knowing about the effects of shame and becoming aware of how it might be pervasive in out lives is a powerful tool for its’ eventual destruction.  That’s because one of the great strengths of an over-inflated sense of shame has to do with it’s stealth.  The fact that you don’t comprehend how deeply it’s affecting you allows it to continue to operate unchecked within your mind, silently creating shyness or rage or depression or all manner of other emotionally addictive-type behaviors that could be ruining your life.

This is why we always seek the safe harbor self-awareness: because simply being aware of these hidden subconscious monsters and what they are doing to us drags them out into the bright light of our logical and rational consciousness… where they will often burn up under the heat of reason like vampires in the sunlight.  You can begin your own journey to freedom by doing the self-examination and inner work that will lead you to this elevated state of self-awareness.  Once you are able to “step outside yourself” and see yourself and your deepest motivations from a larger and more objective viewpoint, you will be firmly on the road to self-discovery and permanent inner healing.

Most of us men know all too well that horrible moment of quiet terror when we’re steeling ourselves to “spring the question” on some girl at work or school and ask her out on a date! Our heart races and our throat tightens as the moment approaches — and we begin desperately trying to talk ourselves out of it: “she won’t say yes, it’s impossible… she’s got a boyfriend… she’s got exams coming up, she’s way too busy, she’s out of my league…”. Sort of comical I suppose, but disturbing nonetheless.

This anxious reaction in guys facing this sort of situation is more common than you might imagine.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any easier to live through for some of us.  After all, you are preparing yourself to stand psychologically “naked” before some girl and expose your (possibly shame-bound) desires to her.  So some level of fear must be normal, you would think, right?  But THIS intense?  So terrifying that I can’t speak or even MOVE?!

So the real question is this: how do you distinguish between the common and quite rational fear of being rejected by a woman, and the more complex issue of chronic love shyness?

Here’s a little test: do you find it’s impossible to engage a woman with romantic intent even when she’s sending you “GO” signals all over the place with obvious body language cues, or unmistakable flirtatious behavior?  If she’s making it so perfectly clear that she’s NOT going to reject you, then what’s there to be afraid of?

Well, what you could be afraid of is revealing to her your very secretly shamed need for affection.  See, at some point in your life you were made to feel ashamed whenever you expressed a desire for love and affection, and it caused this very basic (and normal) human desire to become shame-bound, i.e., linked to the sensation of shame so that you could not experience one without feeling the other along with it. A shamed emotion is perceived as painful, alien and strange — and therefore must always be kept hidden from view of others!

Shame like this can become so overwhelming that it becomes known as toxic.

Now sometimes the misery of shame-induced love shyness can be temporarily suppressed with the use of drugs, food or alcohol.  This is the reason people become deeply addicted: because focus on the addictive behavior allows them distraction from the underlying pain, as well as creating some degree of freedom to experience the emotion shamelessly for awhile.  Think of how YOU act when you get too drunk or high.  Pawing every girl in sight at the bar?  That’s because the emotion we most often seek to express when uninhibited by drugs is the one which is the most tightly bound by shame when sober.

The first thing that you need to understand insofar as turning this situation around for yourself is that knowledge is power. Simply having your eyes opened to the mechanics of love shyness and how it has been adversely affecting your life can become a powerful tool for dismantling it.  Knowing and understanding that your shame-bound emotions are something that was done TO you, and is not really YOU (i.e. an permanent aspect of your personality) is an enormous revelation in itself… one that holds vast potential for jump-starting your personal growth almost immediately.

A second weapon you should have in your arsenal against love shyness is what psychologists call desensitization.  This idea makes use of the natural tenancy of the mind to adapt to anything after a while and become bored with it.  What bores us becomes psychologically invisible and eventually gets taken for granted, and when that happens the emotion in question loses its potential to generate any kind of strong response within us, either good or bad.  I mean, an event or experience that provokes no emotion is the very definition of boring, right?

So how do we turn an intense fear of rejection into something that actually bores us?  Try this experiment in personal growth (and mind-over-matter) for yourself: next time you have an opportunity to talk to an attractive woman, even in some non-romantic situation (like work or school), begin to think about asking her out on a date. Really try to do this seriously and not just as a joke in your own mind.  You’re REALLY going to ask her out in five more seconds and reveal to her your shameful need for affection by blushing like a five year old.  Yikes!

If you can do this mental exercise with the sort of intense focus that makes it real within your consciousness, you should begin to feel that familiar fear begin to swell in your chest and choke your throat closed.  Now you’re getting it!

Now here’s the important part: try to HOLD yourself in this uncomfortable state for as long as you can before you excuse yourself and slip away.  Make your retreat calm and sociable and with good humor… don’t just bolt away in panic to the nearest john and start puking! Relax, no one knows what’s going on inside your head except you.  This is the important ‘inner work’ of self-change and personal growth that you are now undertaking.

The trick now becomes to repeat these “near-shame approaches” as often as you can find the opportunity to do so in order for the desensitization to really begin to take effect.  You should push yourself a little closer to opening your mouth and actually speaking the terrifying words “…would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?…” in order to provoke those feelings of intense fear and “shy guy” paralysis that normally haunt you.  By raising the psychological bar like this one small but significant notch at a time, you are slowly making it more and more difficult for the love shyness to take over and set off all those humiliating physical anxiety reactions that you hate so much… things like sweating, nervousness, the squeaky little-kid voice, etc.

Keep this self-restructuring process up for several weeks at least — just whenever you can manage to run a mentally-simulated “approach”.  In essence what you’re doing is toying with your love shyness now… poking and teasing it by deliberately getting close to performing the frightening activity that draws the shameful feelings up out of where they hide deep within your unconscious mind, and forcing them to run their routine for you on demand.

What will happen is that the feelings of shyness will begin to exhaust themselves after a while — especially if you stay determined and keep “false-alarming” them regularly whenever possible.  Each time there will be some degree of mental discomfort to suffer through, and that’s good!  The amazing magic starts to become apparent when after a while, you find that you have to keep getting closer and closer to the edge of actually speaking the words before you can get the fear to bubble up inside your gut.

Now you’re beginning to cripple your love shyness!

Each time that you drag the fearful feelings up it’s like using mental sandpaper to scratch them down to a smaller and smaller nub.  With such frequent and repeated “sanding” your despised veneer of shyness will soon become thinner and less powerful in its grip over you.  One day you’ll find that you can actually go right through the entire routine FOR REAL and ask a girl out on a real date… and without hardly feeling any nervousness about it in the least!

I know that caught in the grip of your fears right now this may all seem impossible to conceive of even as you are reading this… but the techniques of desensitization DO work wonders.  They are commonly used by psychotherapists everywhere to cure seriously anxious people of some very strong phobias, such as a pathological fear of flying, leaving the safety of their home, driving across tall bridges, etc.  So you can surely do this with a “lightweight” phobia such as fear of rejection without much help beyond your own determination and by using the techniques that I just showed you.

Your defeated love shyness will simply give up and go away before long… too exhausted to torment you any longer.

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Copyright 2010 by Mike Pilinski

Let’s talk about what it means to be a shy person and why having this moniker hung on you can be a heavy personal burden to bear.  Shyness in general, and especially in youngsters, is a cautionary reaction designed to make you ‘freeze up’ in a sort of protective instinct that goes something like this: “If I just stand here, say nothing and remain invisible, then no harm will come to me…” Now for a kid, this might make sense.  Unfortunately, this sort of reflexive tendency to lock-up around unfamiliar people or situations can persist into adulthood as a nasty bad habit, and that’s when it becomes trouble.

For guys especially shyness can be socially devastating because it makes it virtually impossible for you to make that first ‘revealing move’ around women… the sort of action that can signal your possible romantic interest in her.  This puts you at a major disadvantage on the romantic playing field because, if you are always “turtling-up” into this ego-protective mode, then you are certainly not connecting with anyone!

That said, here are 7 key pointers about becoming more social that every shy person should thoroughly understand:

1)  While shyness can sometimes be considered “cute” in women it is absolutely deadly for men. Here’s why: because appearing or acting shy is a bright red signal flare of low male status.  It’s an indication that you have been ‘put in your place’ by the other men in your world — that they have cowered and bossed and mocked you into submission, and now it makes itself visible for all to see in your shy behavior.

Now perhaps you’ve been able to create an aura of accomplishment and respectability around yourself in your professional (non-romantic) life that gives you some shielding from the worst of your shyness — but these defenses quickly lose their power when it comes to being judged worthy of romantic possibility by women.  Females have a unique power to pierce and destroy the pretenses established at great cost and effort by men — and it’s the thought of coming face-to-face with this awesome power from which a lot of your rejection-fearing shyness probably arises in the first place.

2)  Most people actually HATE being around a shy person. Why?  Because demonstrating shyness has the effect of causing many people’s OWN latent shy feelings to come bubbling up to the surface (and everyone has a little bit of shyness lurking in them somewhere for this to play on…).  “He’s always acting so shy, he starts to make ME feel shy… I hate that!” What you are doing is (unwittingly) engaging in a subtle psychological practice called MODELING.  When we model certain actions and behaviors in front of others they tend to unconsciously pick them up and mimic them, especially if there’s a wall of formality still existing between people (i.e., total strangers) and therefore a bit of nervousness involved in their behaviors towards one another.

Test this out for yourself: next time you are face-to-face with someone and you both have drinks in front of you for instance, watch how many times you can pick up your drink, or toy with the straw or something, and the other person will almost immediately begin doing the exact same thing without even thinking about it.  That’s modeling! Now if you are aware of what you’re doing and purposeful in your actions, it’s possible to have people copying your behaviors and attitudes all over the place.  These are actually common politician’s and salesman’s tricks that you can borrow and use to your advantage if you, again, are purposeful and can practice living outside of your own head a little bit.

3)  Roll over all small embarrassments and make nothing of them. Much of your shyness has to do with being too inwardly-directed — simply meaning that you tend to dwell too much on what’s going on inside your own “thought cloud” rather than being fully engaged within your surrounding environment.  The typical shy person has a tendency to assign too much importance to every little thing that he does or every little move that he makes.  Stop this right now by getting out of your head in any way that you can manage to do so.  Focus more on modeling and controlling your “puppets” if you must!

4)  Stop obsessing over every little thing that you might feel like saying — essentially pre-editing yourself out of many good conversations before they can even begin! I used to do this all the time: pre-judging and PRE-REJECTING everything that I was about to say before the words ever made it out of me.  You feel like others are constantly judging your thoughts and ideas every second of the day, and this kind of intense scrutiny — imaginary or not — is difficult to hold up under.  It’s little wonder that you are reluctant to speak up!  I think this is why introverts find people to be more a source of stress to them rather than of comfort.  It’s also one of the major reasons why being social may feel like such a chore for you, when it can often seem like such a breeze to most everyone else.

The sad part is that the entire underlying dynamic causing this pre-rejecting response (i.e., the intense scrutiny of others) doesn’t even exist in actuality.  It’s entirely in your mind for the most part, and you are merely projecting all this garbage onto others and seeing what really isn’t there. This is a form of paranoia, but it’s also a form of arrogance as well.  Arrogance?  That’s right: after all, what makes YOU so special that everyone is always watching YOU and everything that you are doing all the time?  Why do YOU deserve such constant observation?  Well you don’t, and you aren’t getting any! This is all what’s known as ‘magical thinking’, and it’s an error in cognition that you need to address and overcome.

5)  Shyness is a distortion of our natural sense of shame — which has gone off the rails and become associated with emotions that are not inherently shameful. Shame is the master controller emotion of the entire human race and has been used as such throughout history.  It is wielded as a psychological bludgeon by societies, parents, religions (they are experts!…) and almost every other sort of collective gathering of people to steer individual behaviors towards some commonly accepted norm.  Most of us would not walk around naked in public for instance, because we would be ashamed to do so.

But do we have some sort of natural instinct that makes us feel weird and uncomfortable about walking around publicly naked?  Not necessarily, we were TAUGHT at some young age to keep our clothes on and our private parts covered around others by our parents.  This was a “rule” they imposed at some appropriate moment, and they likely had to make us feel ashamed about our nakedness at some point in our development in order to get us to comply with this rule.  Once scolded and “embarrassed” about it, our desire to be naked in public then became shame bound — that is, the feeling of shame was successfully linked to this idea of wanton exhibitionism in order to inhibit the desire.  It therefore became impossible to experience this desire without feeling ashamed about it! The two sensations became tightly linked (bound) at the deepest levels of our consciousness.

When shame becomes associated or “bound” to the wrong sorts of emotions however (like our natural human need to feel affection for instance) it can make us unable to experience these particular emotions in the absence of the shame.  And because shame is so uncomfortable to experience, we will usually seek to maneuver clear of this psychic pain by avoiding whatever stimulus threatens to trigger it off.  We “shy” away from such stimuli. Socializing with other people (and especially in a potentially romantic context) can unleash a Pandora’s Box of different emotions.  This is normal.  However, if any of these critical emotions have become shame-bound at some point along the way, then they cannot be experienced without the associated torment of shame being present as well.  Thus, we are made to suffer adult shyness in this sad and maddening way.

Shame that has gotten itself twisted around our normal emotions where it doesn’t belong is known as toxic. This is a large and complex subject that I talk about in my books and is really beyond the scope of this short article.  Suffice to say that toxic shame is the basis of almost every sort of addictive behavior that you can imagine — from alcohol to overeating, rage, sadness, hard drugs like cocaine or even obsessive work-aholism.  That’s because we have a powerful urge to escape from shame’s poisonous effects in whatever way that we can.  Certain things must therefore be made off limits to us and cannot be experienced as they should be.  Our spirit becomes strangled over time, and we seek to nullify this chronic pain with the distractions of our addictions.

6)  Discover the power of self-compassion to overcome chronic shame and self-hatred. Shy people are often so mentally tough on themselves that it’s no wonder they constantly act as though they’ve been cowered into submission.  They have been: by an internal cognitive monster called the Tyrannical Conscience.

Ask yourself this: who else do you HATE so badly that you would wish the same kind of monster to enter their brain and torture them as relentlessly as you torture yourself with thoughts of fear, uncertainty and inadequacy?  What?… you say that no one else deserves such cruel treatment?  Only you?  Well now there’s that good ol’ arrogance again… this idea that only YOU can be held to such high, God-like standards of performance to which you repeatedly fail to measure up (and therefore must be made to feel ashamed about).  Everyone else (all those lower class beings?…) get a pass I guess.  They get compassion, but not you.  Shame can create such thinking distortions known as grandiosity — what John Bradshaw in his great book “Healing The Shame That Binds You” calls the Disabled Will.

7)  Shyness in adults is learned behavior — essentially a bad habit. This is actually good because it means that it is possible to completely reverse your shyness!  Since the original fear which the shyness was designed to protect you against no longer exists, once the “back of your shyness is broken” it should not return.

Remember, it doesn’t matter that you may have to “trick” yourself into getting started down the road to defeating your shyness, all that matters is the final RESULT.  Actors and sports stars use similar mental tricks to get themselves up for a game or a performance, and no one gives them any grief about it.  So why can’t you do the same?

Your job as a recovering shy person is to first embrace this serious flaw in your thinking without fear and then move forward to correct it.  No anger or regret, just strength of purpose.  And lots of self-compassion for a change.

For all you guys out there who are having a difficult time attracting the romantic attention of women, one major reason for this could be due to your lack of a confident male display.  This is that invisible and silent “vibe” that you are always sending out about yourself to females everywhere.  If your own male ‘love beacon’ has been broadcasting a weak and unappealing signal that’s been getting you nowhere lately, then you need to boost up the strength of this Love & Romance energy field and make it shine with the light of unstoppable courage!  This is essentially the master seducer’s secret to success: quietly capturing the interest of a woman away from the men who surround her with his A+ male display, and then gradually monopolizing it until he’s got her completely hooked into him.

Well check this out… here are 5 Instant Confidence Boosters that can immediately help you begin appearing onto the romantic radar screens of women everywhere, ASAP:

1) The #1 mental gear-shift that can almost instantly improve your outlook on most everything and make you appear more confident to everyone involves creating a brand new mental Confidence Frame for yourself… and then plastering it all over your reality!

What am I talking about?  A confidence frame is a highly personalized LENS through which you view the world.  It’s a mental filter — a “coloring” that determines your perception OF (and reaction TO)  what’s going on in your presence.  Your confidence frame is more than just an academic exercise however, it tends to constrain what is or isn’t viewed as possible for you to achieve by setting limits beyond which you’ve convinced yourself that you cannot venture.  Your confidence frame operates by overlaying a veneer of assumptions across whatever it is that you’re witnessing — and it’s those personal limitations that determine the sorts of “safe” interactions that you can engage in with any particular situation or person.

You can think of this as the invisible boundaries defined by your fear.

Here’s how it works: two people standing side by side viewing the same reality will apply entirely different biases (assumptions) to what their seeing, and thus create completely different (even totally OPPOSITE) interpretations of that situation.  For instance, I see a girl standing there and I think that it’s possible for me to walk up to her and get a conversation going, and you think that this isn’t possible for YOU to do.  Neither one of us is actually right or wrong in a strict sense — and our “overlay of assumptions” may have little to do with our actual chances of making this happen anyway, since it cannot take into account the one big ‘unknown’… if she would even be remotely interested in either one of us!

What it DOES do however is position us to either take or withhold a particular sort of action based upon our applied bias to this neutral observation of a girl who’s just ’standing over there’.  This GO / NO-GO decision point (and you live through several of these each day) has the potential to change the trajectory of your life to some major or minor degree — depending upon what you actually decide do… make a move, or simply allow the moment to pass.

The built-up weight of these kinds of collective choices, in retrospect, are what determines where you are in your life right now — which is essentially a patchwork of all these decision points both big and small that you have made along the way.  Sure, some of the reality of your world may’ve been imposed upon you by the actions of others or by circumstances beyond your control, but a lot of it wasn’t.  It is mostly our own choice to be where we are today (even if the main “chooser” was our fear). People with a social anxiety phobia for instance have applied a strong negative bias to most every aspect of their reality, which thus colors their world through a prism of abject fear.  You should strive to stay out of this deadly trap of fear-based decision-making and begin coloring YOUR world through the lens of limitless possibility.

2)  Get all the people who “know” you as being sad, depressed or lonely OUT of your life. I’m serious.  Do whatever it takes (short of anything violent) to diminish the supporting effect they are having on the psychic MONSTERS that you are trying to flush out of your skull!

The people around you can often feel threatened by any sudden change in your attitude or physical state — especially if those changes are life-enabling for you. Such personal changes threaten to have you moving “out in front of them” in terms of where they imagine you to belong in their own personal pecking order (which is usually somewhere beneath you, of course).  I’m talking about work, school, and especially within your own family structure.  You need to begin casting a more critical eye upon these individuals and begin grading them for their usefulness to you.  Don’t assume that these people have your best intentions at heart, they often do not.

In my books I talk extensively about male status and becoming the “high status male” in order to begin attracting the kind of high quality women that you desire into your world.  People who can support you rather than drag you down.  Well, you cannot feel that you are high status in any sense of the word if you are constantly being put down by the people that surround you.  These individuals act as physical manifestations of the poisonous thinking that’s going on inside your head. They re-enforce your circular rotten thinking, and they need to go!

3)  Dump good old “schmootie” or “titso” forever. Or whatever other sort of cutesy, put-downish nickname that others may’ve stamped you with over the years.  Think about some of the more powerful and respected people that you know of.  Do they get these sorts of stupid nicknames hung on them?  Do people dare call them by it to their face… or are they afraid of the consequences?  Or maybe just too respectful? Again, as noted in confidence booster #2, this sort of thing represents all the external inertia present in your world which works against your making any sort of positive, uplifting changes in your life.  This is entirely toxic to the free and full expression of your existence.  Get rid of it! You have 2 choices here: face these people down or flee them.  Either method will work — although the first has the added benefit of improving your self-esteem enormously.

I realize that the number of people we could be talking about or the pervasiveness of their low regard for you may make this seem like an impossible task, as you could be vastly outnumbered by these agents of psychic doom.  Regardless, you must revolt against their endless tyranny and seek your own mental freedom!

4) Taking a major mulligan (a “do over”) on your life can be thought of as your next really big confidence booster… in the sense that you will ultimately walk away from such a fearful experience a VASTLY stronger person.  Especially if you’re in the 20 to 40 age range reading this right now, you will be thanking your lucky stars that you took up the challenge of personal self-change when you did because it only gets tougher as you get older and more set in your ways and attitudes.

I’m talking about seeking out a completely new circle of friends where you can finally get some emotional support.  This may mean having to discover entirely new social circles, changing schools, your place of employment, a spouse… or maybe even the radical decision to pack your bags and leave town.  It all depends on just how much importance you are willing to give this crazy idea that having some RESPECT from others (and also from somewhere deep inside your own head) is worth more than the safety and security of holding onto your current crummy life situation.

It means looking the risk of building a new life for yourself straight in the eye… and refusing to blink!

5)  Know and understand the critical importance of long-term MOTIVATION when mounting any sort of major challenge to your well-established routines and habits — and especially when trying to break out of calcified old thinking ruts.  Your brain has made subconscious assumptions about the limits of possibility for you.  It has spent a lifetime subtly directing your thoughts and behaviors in ways that create a supporting reality… thus “proving” everything it believes about you to be “true”.

These profound if poisonous self-created assumptions can get themselves buried in very deep — and can therefore take a very powerful commitment of motivation to reverse.  Attempting to just casually sweep these rooted-in ideas aside in the service of more positive ones will likely be regarded as a THREAT to the very existence of the subconscious itself… and so will be viciously resisted at every turn.  This is why it can be so difficult to remain motivated to stay at positive personal change until it finally begins to take hold, but this is the task that you must now shoulder.  Otherwise, this is a process that runs almost hypnotically and unconsciously unless you deliberately force it to STOP.

Finally, whether it’s something physical like losing weight or quitting smoking, or something completely psychological like changing your fundamental belief system, you’ll find that Courage and Self-Awareness are your best friends for remaining in the fight long enough to achieve the kind of boost in confidence that you are seeking.  Just stay true to yourself — and stay in the fight no matter what sort of blowback you encounter.  Remember that no one can prevent you from having anything that you truly desire in life.  Except you.

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And speaking of having more confidence…

You know that I just posted my entire Kick Ass Confidence 7 Part Audio Training Series up online as a totally FREE giveaway program, right?  So go listen to the entire 90 minute program for nuthin’… take a look and sign-up on the following page:

http://www.ka-confidence.com

Thanks!
~MP

Nothing creates a more attention-grabbing romantic signal that most women will immediately take notice of than the magnificent display of Confidence in men.  Whether it’s actually while in the act of “hitting” on her itself, or merely doing something powerfully in her presence, confidence always makes a stunning impact on women!

A dynamic display of self-confidence can have a near magical ability to influence others and get them to RESPECT you as well — and it’s especially important for women to see men as being confident because it plays into their subconscious grading system via which they sort out the (attractive) high status males from their (less desirable) low status counterparts.

Here’s an important fact that you may not be aware of: men gain most of their natural confidence not so much by interacting with women, but by competing against one another. So your seeming LACK of it will be read by a lot of these women as a measure of your submission to these other men… professionally, financially, physically, etc.  You have apparently been made into one of their bitches and now it shows through in your shyness and lack of self-confidence!

This may not be entirely fair, but you need to understand little IS fair in the game of romance and seduction — and so it’s something that you need to factor in when it comes to getting yourself seen as being out there “on the playing field”… an important appearance that you should always try to maintain.

So in light of all this, here are 7 important confidence tips that can really help you pump-up a weak and paltry male display:

1)  Realize that most people are probably just as big a bundle of doubts and insecurities as you are, probably even more so. And especially women… and DOUBLE especially if she’s a 9 or 10! This is the ‘hidden insecurity’ phenomenon that the pick up artist’s technique known as “neg hitting” attempts to exploit, (although I myself am not a practitioner of this particular fine art, charming little sweetheart that I am)…

Regardless, understand that we are ALL fighting with these same challenges and demons… merely to different degrees.  So keep soldiering on — you are not alone in your struggles!

2) People are NOT mind readers… which means that they cannot peer into your soul and know your deepest fears at a mere glance.  So if you appear to be confident around them, then who are they NOT to believe you?  “Hey, this guy seems pretty confident in himself for some reason, so I guess I’ll go along with it…” This gives us the advantage of being able to “fake it until we make it” and pad our male display with some early bluffing until our personal change becomes more genuine and deeply integrated into our core personality.

Look, you’re probably already practicing exactly the opposite process right now when you consistently keep talking the wrong sort of internal self-talk to yourself.  You are essentially hypnotizing yourself into acting in ways that support a poor and unattractive self-image.  So if you want a better self-image, then learn to fill your head with better thoughts about yourself and your value as a person than you do now. Inner game is essentially 99% of the “secret” to coming off like the confident alpha male around women!

3) Try to always remain aware of your body language and the kinds of “plus or minus” subliminal signals about yourself that you could be broadcasting to women — they have an extremely sensitive radar for this sort of thing, and especially when it comes to men.  I’m talking about things like shoulders back, head up, solid eye contact, being at ease about casually being the first to touch someone non-offensively (an assumed HSM “privilege”).

Hey, don’t be afraid to employ a few “cheap trick” confidence tips like this next one to get some early points on the board for yourself:  For instance, if you’re still too shy to meet someone’s eye directly, then stare at their nose. Seriously, it’s an old salesman’s trick… people cannot tell the different between someone staring at the bridge of their nose and someone who’s looking them straight in the eye.  Try it today and see for yourself.  (And also take note the more positive reaction that you are pulling from people as well… The power of confidence!)

4) If you see yourself as being confident in your own mind, then you will give off a confident “vibe” about yourself without even being aware of it. This has to do with the inability of the human mind to distinguish between common everyday reality and a richly-imagined fantasy.  Your imagination is the gateway to achieving feelings of deep self-worth, so learn how to use it to “fool” your subconscious mind into seeing yourself in a stronger frame. What you are looking to do is create an emotion more overwhelming than your fear.  This will allow you to begin seeing the people around you differently, while having them view YOU differently as well.

It’s from this shift in subliminal vibes that new social opportunities will soon begin to appear all around you — and your shiny new cloak of unstoppable confidence will be the power that drives it forward!

5) Never worry about having to “back up” your confidence — almost no one ever has to do this.  People see you acting confidently and that’s just the way it is, they simply accept it.  Rarely will anyone challenge you to “prove” it (prove what?).  It’s only those guys who really insist on pressing what a tough guy they are that eventually end up in fights.  This isn’t confidence, it’s bravado.  Like having a fat ‘tell’ in poker.

Look, there’s no shame in trying to change whatever poor thinking it is that’s currently holding you back from participating fully in the game of love and romance, so don’t worry about any of this high-minded BS.  These are just mental red herrings designed to keep you distracted from making serious personal change in your life.  No one can know what you are doing in the privacy of your own mind, and it’s none of their business anyway – so feel free to imagine your way straight into a better life!

6) Get good at something that makes you look cool and/or powerful and competent and show it off somehow (guitar hero anyone?… just kidding .  Seriously.  Why not strive to become skilled at some type of activity, trade, sport or even a cool hobby like rock climbing to help yourself attract women?  Start with some modest demonstration of your prowess and just keep playing it up.  Soon you’ll begin to gather a following of closer friends and maybe even a few fans as well.  (Just don’t “pied-piper” them all into the jungle one day and have them sample your specially formulated kool-aid…!)

7)  Surrender the Self-Hatred and let your spirit fly! Give up once and for all on the misguided belief that your station in life is somehow genetically or culturally imposed upon you, and that you are permanently stuck right where you are.  That’s Middle Age-going-nowhere sort of thinking.  What it really is, is self-hatred keeping you locked in its “hopeless and helpless victim” trap.  It performs this little feat by making any other alternative life-path seem impossible for you to achieve, which is utter nonsense of course.

Take a chance to prove this to yourself today by challenging your fear in some significant way.  Get mad at your fear, take it on! Don’t let these powerful ideas that I’m giving you just go in one ear and out the other… use them!

I think that confidence, to finally describe it, is nothing more than an overriding assumption that things will always go your way in the end… no matter what. But this won’t happen for you until you get out there and demonstrate to yourself that new and vastly different possibilities really can exist… for YOU. Once you achieve this absolutely critical cognitive breakthrough (called, duh… “belief and motivation”…) you’ll finally be able to take those first few baby steps towards massive personal change…

And at that point, believe it or not, the hardest part of the entire journey will already be behind you.

–

And speaking of having more confidence…

I just put my brand new Kick Ass Confidence 7 Part Audio Training Series up online as a totally FREE giveaway program.  That’s right, you can now listen to the entire 90 minute program for free.  Just sign-up on the following page:

http://www.ka-confidence.com

And you’ll get the links for each of the 7 lessons e-mailed to you at 3 day intervals.  This gives you time to listen to each one and perform the little homework assignments before the next part arrives.  It’s a more disciplined way to learn, prevents overwhelm and REALLY WORKS!  Give it a try, and I thank you for your support.  And be sure to spread the word to any of your interested friends who could use a little extra shot of self-confidence. 

~MP

Hello everyone, sorry I haven’t posted in a while… but I’ve been busy, busy cooking up a brand new online FREE Audio Training series that I’m sure you guys will find most useful.  Stay tuned for word on that in the coming weeks…

For now, just this quick announcement concerning the RE-release of my classic “Tome of the PUA Arts”: Without Embarrassment — which I am very pleased to be presenting to you today as a newly upgraded version… IN PRINT!

The books themselves look absolutely beautiful as expected: 6×9 glossy softcover, 300 pages and very professionally produced via Amazon.com’s CreateSpace print-on-demand system.  I’m very proud to be unveiling Without Embarrassment to the world once again in this classy format. E-books may be the future but hey, it’s nice to be able to kick back on the recliner now and then and get away from the computer with a good book!

Both Without Embarrassment and She’s Yours For The Taking are reasonably priced at $24.95 — and I set up a discount code for you to use in celebration of this mini- launch.  Simply go to my Createspace storefront…

…and type in the Discount Code: B9XALS5F at checkout to receive a 10% savings off the cover price!

(For you guys who have a One-Click already setup at Amazon and would rather buy directly through them, you can pull up the book listing right here)

(The discount code does NOT work through Amazon unfortunately.  But you’ve got both options to choose from.)

If you’d like to look over 10 or 15 pages selected at random from the e-book (which is EXACTLY the same content now as the printed book) you can read through some pages posted on the site.  Here’s the link for that (give this page a few seconds to load — these are screen-captured images off the Adobe Reader):

You may also wish to take a peek at the stack of TESTIMONIALS that have coming flying in here over the years for Without Embarrassment…

Finally, take a moment to pop back over to the main page and you’ll see that I’ve chopped the price of the 2 book Combo Pack (the e-book versions) all the way down to $27 bucks from $67 — which is a super-duper crazy Eddie type deal.  I’m now offering my 2 audio programs ‘Dealing With Your Fear of Rejection’ and ‘Kick Ass Confidence’ as separate upsell items for only an extra $10 bucks — which now gives you the option to add them to the books to create the complete “HSM Total Training Package!

Thanks again for all your great support and your inspiring words over the past decade — as always I deeply appreciate all of it!

P.S.  If you decide to order from Amazon.com please DO take a moment to come back after you’ve read the book and leave an honest review for me.  I need reviews!

Digging around on my hard drive the other day I ran across one of my old self-produced audio promotions for my program: “Dealing With Your Fear of Rejection”.  This audio is no longer posted on the current sales page, but I listened to it, had a few laughs, and thought that you guys might like to give it a listen as well.  There’s actually some helpful teaching in there, and it’s even got some rockin’ music and a few ’stingers’ that I mixed in myself!  I used to have such fun…

Anyway, I streamlined the current pitch for this DWFOR product because it’s now included in my 4-in-1 Combo Pack as a free bonus item, but it was originally a very popular stand-alone product when I first introduced it a couple of years ago.  It got rather “rave reviews” at that time, as they say

You can listen to it here, or use the link below and download the MP3 for your i-pod:

DOWNLOAD THE MP3 (right-click, “save Link As…”)

This program was intended to laser-focus straight into the key issue that a lot of you guys suffer from: that paralyzing fear of being rejected by women.  And I’m not talking about just a little nervousness or ordinary trepidation, but a fear SO intensely bad that it completely blocks you from making any social or romantic progress in your life whatsoever. I also created a 40 page workbook that goes along with the 2+ hours of audio training which includes dialogs that you can use to get yourself started doing cold walkups right away.  It even presents formulas that you can employ to create your own custom dialogs that would be better suited to your own personality, etc. etc.

Really helpful stuff that I poured a lot of thought and effort into creating as an adjunct to the materials in my books.

You can still buy this program as a single item, BTW (as well as any of the other 3 elements in the Combo Pack), and… it’s a better deal than ever before since I just cut the single-item price on all my products over the weekend from $37 to $29 — a savings of $8 bucks. You can optionally purchase an NLP Accelerator add-on to DWFOR that hypnotically implants the concepts into your sub-conscious memory quickly.  It also helps to boost your confidence and quiet your reactive fears as well by using deep hypnotic suggestions.  Lots of available options, so you can pick and choose what you feel best addresses the particular issues in your game that you need to improve the most.

Check it out if you’re interested — the price box for the single items is down near the bottom of the page where this link should take you.

And I thank you! 

Tell me, are you a man?

Are you a REAL man?

Then prove it! I’m tired of going out with guys that go up, say hi to a girl, start talking to her and then 5 minutes later they are back talking to me… Then I hear the same old excuse:

“I started talking to her and the conversation kinda just went flat. So I left…”

Did you get her number? No.

Did you ask her out? No.

Did you try to kiss her? No…

Then why the f*$# are you here talking to me? Go back and talk to her!

The Best Advice You’ve Never Heard…

Yes, I know you hear other people say the same thing. But for me, this advice was a defining point in my pick up success. Let me explain.

Most of the advice you hear has to do with inner game – like confidence building – or approaching. You spend most of time practicing and doing this. But none of this actually gets you laid!

Yes, I said it.

You can build your ego to the max and do one thousand approaches in one night. But what’s the actual result? In the end, all you did was practice approaching. So how do you get exposure to the rest of pick up process if you want to get anywhere. The only way you can do this is by staying there after you approached.

Don’t break the interaction unless she leaves or tells you leave!

And if she does – which is as rare as seeing as polar bear in the beach – leave politely. Don’t bad mouth her, swear at her… just go find your next group of girls to talk to. She’s the one missing out on you, so make sure she realizes that.

That’s what Make the Ho Say No is about. Stick through the interaction until the end. For instance:

• If she’s not into you, try to change that around—flirt with her.
• If there’s no energy between you—create some!
• If she’s bored, spice up the conversation—make it fun!

Which brings me to my next point…

The Art Of Talking… Is Listening!

The biggest reason guys wuss out is because they have nothing to say. And yes, if you leave the interaction before she rejects you, you wussed out, my man

If you have nothing to say, start listening and asking questions. Your goal here is to talk to her on the same level you talk to a friend. That interrogation pattern people follow when they meet someone is as boring as organizing your socks:

Where do you live? What do you do? Where did you… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I’m getting bored just writing this. Ask interesting stuff. What are your hobbies? What do you like doing? Have you watched Avatar? Do you think streaking should be illegal in Texas? Etc. Think of something interesting you would talk to your friends about and talk about it.

And when she answers, listen and build on it. For instance:

Normal conversation from a boring guy:

Him: What do you do?
Her: I work at a bank.
Him: Which one?
Her: XYZ Bank
Him: That’s really interesting. What do you do there?
Her: *Eye rolling*

Fun Conversation:

Him: We’ve been talking for 5 minutes and you never tell me what you do. For all I now you might be a serial killer.
Her: *Laughs* I work at a bank.
Him: Oh my god! You are the single most boring person I met in a decade…
Her: Shut up!
Him: Do you at least get to keep any of the money in there? I’d so ask you out if you do…
Her: *Laughs* No…
Him: Well, you’re the bank-girl with the best sense of humour I’ve ever met, so I will ask you out anyway.

Disclaimer: Any similarity to the actual conversation I had with a girl last Friday in the club is merely a coincidence.

So What Are You Gonna Do About It Now, Tough Guy?

Before I say anything else, let me make one thing clear for those with a dirty mind.

I am not telling you to force the girl to do anything. I don’t support that. If you think that staying around when the girl is not comfortable then you have to realize that you’re the one making excuses. If she wants you to leave, she’ll either leave or tell you to.

On the other hand, if you think you’re supposed to try and force a girl to kiss you – I seriously hope you get beat up by security.

I’m going to be dead honest with you: the reason you leave the interaction before anything happens has nothing to do with her. It’s your own fault for letting it go. You are running away because of your own insecurities. The only way to get over it and start dating the women you deserve is to push past the discomfort and stay there till the Ho says (Yes or) No!

So next time the conversation is dead or you feel like she doesn’t like you and your stomach is quivering, remember: retreat is not an option!

Best of luck,

John Lione
www.MeetingWomenSecrets.com

What kind of advice do you have for guys like me who are about to graduate college and enter the working world, but only just recently began improving their relations towards girls?

Barry

Hi Barry,

Thanks for writing.  Well, I don’t know if you’ve read any of my materials but you ask a very broad question that I address in various different ways in my books and audios, so I wouldn’t know where to begin trying to synopsize all that down into a simple bit of magical advice that I can give you.

One thing that I think you may have overlooked in all this agonizing though is motivation.  And I don’t just mean motivation to chase after women, but a motivation to do all those scary and potentially painful things that you must do (such as face down your fears, actually approach women and not just dream about it, etc.) in order to make serious changes in your life.

There’s no painless way to catch up once you’ve fallen behind the average person in terms of romantic skills — there will be embarrassment and bad emotions to experience and push through as you stumble and bumble your way to eventual competence.  It’s like anything else that you’ve been studying at school.

Here’s the one big thing to remember: the longer that you wait to tackle the chore of learning these skills the more embarrassing and difficult it will be to swallow the inevitable flubs that you will surely make along the way.  That’s because we naturally assume a greater level of romantic and social skill in people as they age, and when this experience is missing it diminishes us greatly.  The awkward romantic mistakes made at 16 may be laughable and expected — but those same mistakes made at 36 are sad and can sometimes even seem tragic.  So DO get to work facing down your fears and get this stuff handled — those fears won’t always self-correct, as a lot of people think they will.

Get yourself motivated to run that gauntlet of fear and fuck-ups!

Finally, you should understand that the “23 year old virgin” thing does actually leave an invisible stink on you that many women can actually sense before you even say anything to them — and this often ruins your chances to make a powerful, high status male impression right off the bat.  In this ” virgin mode” you’re always fighting an uphill battle again a nasty bad vibe that you’re sending out ahead of yourself… making the task of hooking up far more difficult than it should be.

I would therefore make the somewhat radical suggestion to you that you get yourself an escort or a hooker or something and just get laid already. Just be done with this whole virginity deal!  The longer you wait the more you end up over-thinking the whole thing until you’re completely locked-up on the issue. Hiring a courtesan is actually a time-honored way for a boy to become a man, and is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.  Just keep it all on the down low if you want to and no one will ever have to know your business.  (Although maybe some of your frat bro’s could help hook you up?… if it wouldn’t destroy your rep with them to even ask such a thing?)

The important thing is to just get the stink of pussy ON you and get that virgin stench OFF you! Then you will experience a more natural shift in your attitude that will be far more attractive to women and give you a real shot with them.  Don’t get yourself all tangled up worrying about the “right way” to lose your virginity –  women obsess about that sort of shit (some of them, anyway).  Guys just need to get the V label off them and move on.  Hope this gets you thinking and ultimately motivated to begin staring down your fears.

Mike,

I found your books to be very interesting and I felt that they related to my life more so than ‘The Game’ because it isn’t so fIxated on the club scene.  (I have also been reading the Layguide as well and multiple links from the Fast Seduction website).  I don’t really have anyone to discuss your books with — I have been reading up on some of your forums, reading your books.  I haven’t yet really listened the audio or the workbook yet though (I bought your package about 2 weeks ago).  In theory I understand everything you are saying and it all makes sense, but I  still have that fear of approaching women.

I have tried to figure things out and I have come up with two significant events in my life.  The first is that I am an identical twin and for the majority of my life I have always been around my brother.  I feel I have gotten so used to having him around that I am uncomfortable trying things on my own.  Also when I was younger I got into a bike crash and smashed up my teeth pretty badly.  I still haven’t got them fixed, couple are chipped and crooked.  I still remember this moment vividly in my mind and think that at times this may be making me more self conscious than I should probably be.

I am only 20 years old, so I still have plenty of time, but I want to be able to take full advantage of being in college with tons of single girls.  I have only dated or seen one girl in my life and we dated for about 2 years. I have trouble approaching complete strangers though, the thought of not knowing what they are going to say in response scares me.  I know I just need to overcome my fear of approaching and I will immediately start to see results, but I’m having trouble getting over the hump.  I am not a bad looking guy, I feel like I have been getting interest from some girls, but not really enough to be able to act upon.

I don’t know where I am going with all of this rambling, any help or insight you can provide would be great.

Thanks,
Danny

Hi Danny,

Well the identical twin thing is a bit unusual and it’s something that I don’t really have any personal experience with (nor do I know any identical twins), but it could be that you are experiencing a bit of separation anxiety or some such thing, and this is something that you’ll just have to grow out of I would think.  You’re young and as you say have plenty of time, so I wouldn’t worry.  There are still very many life changes ahead for any 20 year old! Being on your own now at college will help this process, and you should begin to gradually desensitize to this kind of anxiety over time.

The important thing is to avoid “turtling-up” and withdrawing in the face of this or any other type of fear… if you do that the fears will only grow stronger and you will waste more of your time chasing down the causes of your anxiety than doing those things (like reaching out socially to others) that will eventually make it go away naturally.

So be mindful to direct your thoughts and energies OUTWARD as much as you can, rather than obsessing inward on your own closed-off thoughts too much.  Stay involved — join some groups and organizations or study groups.  Volunteer for stuff on or off campus.  This is how you make friends.  Just don’t let yourself become isolated… because it’s a self-propelling burden that will only make you seem more weird and a bigger question mark to those around you.  This is NOT a good way to meet women, to say the least! They look for men who are into things that give them some juice… have a drive and apparent purpose or goal in life, and have a base of close friends to provide them with so-called social proof.

The way to do this is to be social and that means you must network… join some of those clubs or groups, go out for some sports.  Networking is where all your best chances to meet girls will occur.  Say ‘yes’ to every offer to party or hang out or do whatever it takes (to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with your studies, of course).

Also the thing about the missing teeth is no big deal… in Canada they call it a ‘hockey smile’ and guys wear it with pride!

You can get them fixed after college if you want.  As an adult trying to break into the working world, that’s when it may become more of an issue for you.  I wouldn’t worry about it until then.  Get busy reading and listening to my program and figure out how to apply my ideas to your own life and situation.

Remember the ultimate goal should always be to raise your status in order to ATTRACT women — rather than chase after them from a position of social weakness. Do whatever it takes to stay connected, stay involved, and take a chance here and there where it seems you have good odds of success.  Or even if you don’t and fail, so what?

Most importantly of all: Dump the Emotion And Save the Data! This means that you have to coldly and ruthlessly extract the lessons embedded in your failures and learn from them, while absolutely REFUSING to take any of these setbacks personally… because this only produces negative emotions that will ultimately hold you back in the future and could even cause you to shut down completely.  Don’t fall into the trap of letting your fears rule you!… like I did when I was your age.  Learn from my experiences — that’s why I wrote my books.

Hello Mike,

I’d like to ask your advice on how to deal with the embarrassment of when you ask a woman for her phone number and she says no, then you see her again and there’s an unpleasant tension that wasn’t there before.

Thanks in advance
Jake

Hi Jake,

There’s only one good way to handle this kind of softball rejection and that’s to roll right over it like it never happened. Act NO differently towards her than you did before.  Remember, an HSM never apologizes for his desires as a man.  Act friendly and happy and normal.  It’s no big deal.  You ask women out all the time… (this is the attitude you want to project)… so what?  Sometimes you can’t even recall which ones you asked or not!

The worse thing that you can do is go into a pout… this is classic LSM behavior that will only convince her that she made the right decision to turn you down in the first place.  If you go the HSM route instead, it won’t be long before she begins to think just the opposite — that maybe she made a mistake!  Then she’ll start flirting with you again.  Accept her “penance” with good humor and consider giving her a second chance if she “begs” for it with more intense flirting and body language than usual.

Listen… a rejection, if played properly, actually provides you with the perfect opportunity to separate yourself from the typical hang-dog shmucks that women are used to blowing off, by reacting in a way that demonstrates that you are an HSM instead.  Lo & behold… NOW they’re interested!

Hey Mike,

I’m sorry to bother you again — its just that I’m always getting big time nervous when I talk to girls, and I was wondering if there is some way to feel more confident and less nervous?

Danny

Hi Danny,

It’s no bother at all, always glad to chat with you.  Being nervous in social situations is always a big problem for guys like you and me because we’re basically introverts, which means that we’re more involved in our own internal mental world rather than the external world around us.  That also means that we tend to heavily over-think everything before we take action because, well, thinking is what we do best!

Over-thinking is often the source of nervousness because our intellect sits in between our reactive brain, which just wants to respond to our more instinctual urges, and the motor-drive part of our brain that controls the way in which we behave, (and thus the final persona that we project to others).  In other words, we can’t just act on an impulse when we want to (like socially glib people often do) because we’ve got to filter those impulses through our mental gatekeeper and think it to death first!!!

And death it is… death to our motivation to interact with people, or take a chance by reaching out to others.  The intellect obsessively mulls over the hundreds of variables in every situation until it does one of two things: 1) paralyzes the motor-drive mechanism (so we can’t act), or 2) scares the hell out of us! The second is what makes you so nervous.  Fear.  From over-thinking.

The way out of this trap is to do whatever it takes to quiet the over thinking intellect and become re-connected with the deeper instinctual urges that are trying to manage your actions and behavior.  When you see a girl, act… speak, smile whatever…. BEFORE you can think it through.  Use the 3 second rule if you must (say something within 3 seconds or your hair will catch fire…).  The idea is to trick out your higher, overlord mind into fumbling the ball and let your freewheeling instinctual urges have control of the rudder for a change.

This will be hard to do at first, but if you keep working at it you’ll eventually cause the master control system to “hang” a few times, and you will suddenly find yourself acting in a way that won’t seem like it’s even “you” any more… and you’ll finally be making a connection!  Imagine that!

And you’ll be right — it won’t be “you” any more… at least not for that one brief moment.  And that will be a good thing.  It’s called growth and change.  Don’t be afraid to try it.

Hello Mike,

I’ve been working basically on talking to girls and saying “Hi”, just to get rid of my fear of approaching them.  I was in the club last night and there was this girl that I really liked but before I could gain the courage to approach another guy had moved on her.   I’d like to know what is the best way to go about approaching girls in clubs.  Thanks.

Ted

Hi Ted,

Thanks for writing.  Clubs can be tough, they are not the normal world where regular sort of social techniques are effective.  Everybody has their eyes on the top 10% of hot bodies (both men and women) and everyone else looks diminished and low quality in their shadow.   This makes it damn hard to get a “hearing” from women, so it’s a tough environment that requires a thick skin for rejection.  That’s because girls who would otherwise pick up a flirt and play around for awhile with any guy like yourself will reject you pretty quickly instead, especially if it’s obvious to them that you don’t have a lot of “club mojo” or aren’t a regular player in that environment.

Here’s 3 things to know about working in clubs:

1) You have to open with a big playful flirt, something like “Hey baby, you were smokin’ out there on the dance floor! Very nice, I love that _____ look (mention something unique about her look), it’s great.” This delivery should be big and grand and done with a laughing, joking demeanor.  A meek little “Hi my name is Joe…” approach here will be ignored.   You’re invisible giving off this little energy.

2) Watch her eyes! If you get good eye contact and she picks up your flirt you have a shot.  If she won’t meet your eye, then bail-out and save yourself.   She’s a queen who’s not interested in you, for whatever reason.   Pushing further will only draw a firmer rejection.   So you have to sort through them fast in this environment because a lot of them are just out shitting around with girlfriends and ego-tripping on all the guys hitting on them or staring and drooling.  Many have boyfriends.   Women will usually make this sort of grading determination about a man (hot-or-not) in about 3 minutes — in the real world.   In “club reality” you probably have a minute or less.

3) Everything is time-compressed in a club, there’s no getting phone numbers or having long, pleasant conversations here.   It’s all about ACTION and moving and dancing. You have to seem like a player and not a wallflower or you become background noise that gets ignored.   Move around, talk up lots of women, dance.   When women are in motion their juices are flowing and the men appear sexier and more appealing to them. That’s why guys often end up doing it right out in the parking lots with these chicks — time compression means cutting right to the chase lots of times.   This is not a venue to meet people for later dating, it’s about TONIGHT!  What happens tonight.   Lots of touching, flirting, sexual innuendo are in order.   The women are there to get buzzed up and excited and possibly have some kind of adventure tonight — not to meet nice guys.

If you can learn to shift gears and take on a “club-face”… dance, circulate around, become a recognized face, and especially get gossiped about by the women, then you can do well in this environment.   It can be tough for introverts, but if you want to play in this arena then you have to train yourself for this style of game, just like an athletic event.

Sorry to be bothering you, but I trust in your teachings and I know that you can help me.   I am working on my toxic shame — I have bought the book “Healing the Shame that Binds You” and I’m beginning to better understand this problem.   And I would like to thank you for your responses, because you respect your readers and this is fantastic.

I am facing a new problem and I would like some advice.  This case involves a girl called Dani (she studies with me at college) who I think I have fallen into the “Let’s Just be Friends Zone” with.   I worked a lot to change this scenario and I thought my situation was improving.   One day I had lunch with her and we laughed, sometimes I touched her, etc.   It was really good I thought.

So I invited her to go to the cinema with me and she accepted.   But yesterday when I called her she wasn’t home.   Today I called her again and the bitch gave me an amazing amount of excuses why she couldn’t go out with me… she had to study for her tests, it was raining, etc.   I tried to pretend that I really didn’t care and said to her that we could go out another day.   But the truth is that I want to send her to hell because I am really, really angry.   Who does she think she is?   Should I say something to her about this when I see her at school next week?

Artie

Hi Artie,

Sorry to hear about the crash and burn, but this is the sort of thing that often happens when you let yourself fall into the friends trap with women.   Women mistake your very gradual attempts to move a buddy-buddy relationship towards a romantic one as just a sweet expression of your “nice guy friendly” nature.   They misinterpret it, in other words.   Then, when they suddenly catch on what you’re actually trying to do (date them), they get scared and run away.

You may feel led-on and used and enraged, but you’re the one who ruined everything when you suddenly tried to turn things around and get it on with her, is how she feels.   The girl doesn’t understand your unexpected change of heart — women don’t get it that men don’t mentally compartmentalize members of the opposite sex the same way they do.   We can develop lust for a girl as time goes by even if there was none present at first, but women make these quick initial judgements of men as either “friend or hottie” and rarely seem to change their minds, no matter what happens from that point on.   (One of the few things they don’t seem willing to change their minds about, damn it!!)

That’s why I harp on guys endlessly that they must always start off on the correct foot with women and make their romantic interest as a man known right away by generous flirting and teasing right from the start.   You CANNOT try sneaking into her pants by coming across as a sexually-disinterested buddy and then suddenly reversing field once you get your foot in the door.   She views this as a cowardly way around your obligation to create chemistry with her.   Women live for the “snap of chemistry” with men — they are uninterested in guys who want to move in on them gradually on the sly, even though many chicks secretly love to watch movies like “When Harry Met Sally” over and over again which deals precisely with this very theme.   Go figure.

Here’s my 90-90 Rule: she forms 90% of her opinion of you (hot guy, neutral, repulsive, friendly nice guy with no passion, etc.) in the first 90 seconds of meeting you! Where you end up at the end of this “rapid filing process” is where you will stay!   This is why it’s important to always keep your HSM mojo running at full power at all times, as you never know when a chance meeting (what I call your “best chance”) will turn into something cool and special.  You need to be walking around with your ‘tude locked and loaded at all times or Fate will have the last laugh.

Next time, follow the guidelines in the book and establish your potentially romantic interest in her right away to avoid all this time-wasting, enraging, bullshitting around.   You’ve learned a lesson here — take the data out and dump the emotion.   Write me all about your rage if you must — writing is therapeutic.   Leave her alone though — no nasty stuff.   How you react to her will be seen and gossiped about by other women in your social circle, and if you get a reputation as an irrational LSM hothead around the neighborhood / campus, you’re dead.   Be cool and move on.   This will enhance your reputation, instead of poisoning it.

Hi Mike!

I bought your book a little while ago and it has really opened my eyes and helped me to speed up the process of self-discovery greatly.   I understand a lot more about myself and how I relate to others because of you.   Anyway, I looked for this topic on the Q&A section of your site, but didn’t see it covered… so with that I have to ask: from your experience and knowledge, what can a short guy do to make his height less of an issue?   I just hear so much about how important height is to women, and it makes me so totally insecure at my height ( 5′ 6″) that it shakes my confidence immensely.   Any advice you have to give me would be so greatly appreciated.

Jimmy

Hi Jim,

Height is a bitch of a problem for a man, I won’t lie to you.   I’m 5′ 6″ myself and I always thought that my life would’ve been entirely different (and a lot better) for the want of another 4 or 5 inches of stupid leg bone.   A $2 chunk of goddamn calcium and the flesh to go around it!   But what the hell can you do about how tall your genetics will allow you to grow?   This is one problem that has no medical or cosmetic cure, and you’re right, it does affect how people come to regard you and relate to you… and for a man, it’s usually not very good.   Taller guys just sort of subliminally consider themselves to be better and more powerful or whatever, than shorter guys.   It must be the whole looking up vs. looking down thing that does it. Completely psychological no doubt, but real nonetheless.

I ultimately came to deal with my height by using a mental trick that goes something like this… imagine a guy 6 foot tall who was horribly burned and facially disfigured.   No one can stand to even look at him.   If doctors told this guy that he could have his face back to normal BUT that he would have to lose six inches in height in the process and be 5′ 6″ for the rest of his life (maybe by using some genetic reconfiguration machine?), do you think he’d go for it?   In a heartbeat, I would guess.   In other words, any guy would gladly trade having a normal face again, one that people wouldn’t run away from on sight, for the loss of a little height.   He would be ecstatic.   Somehow, someway, you’ve got to convince your unconscious mind that, like this burned up guy, there are a lot worse ways to become a social outcast… and that it simply isn’t so bad to be short.

You just have to put your height challenge into perspective and realize that it can only affect your life to the extent which you allow it to.   Always remember that you have control over how people react to you by the expression of your personality and life force, and physical stature can’t change that.

Hey… take a look at the photo below of little 2′ 8″ Verne Troyer (”Mini-Me”, Dr. Evil’s sidekick from the Austin Powers movies) and his ex-wife the 6′ 2″ smokin’ hot chick Genevieve Gallen!   That’s right, his ex-wife.   He dumped her three weeks after they were married!!! This little dude hangs out at the Playboy mansion with Hef and all his centerfolds — you see him pop up constantly in the photo gallery they publish every month in the front of the magazine, trumpeting all those parties they’re constantly throwing over there with tons of Hollywood celebrities.   This guy turned his Munchkin status into a movie / TV career, and he’s scoring with Playboy 10’s now!!   High.  Status.  Male.   That’s why.   Even at 2 foot eight.   Women flock like honey-starved bees to the HSM — they just can’t seem to help themselves for some reason.

Until the day comes that they can “cure” shortness with some kind of genetic manipulation, this is all we can do… think the problem into insignificance like Mini-Me did, and go on with your life as if it didn’t matter.   I know it still does, but you’ve got to “forget” that fact and learn to act as though you’re 6 foot tall anyway.   If you believe it, so will the women.

Mini-Me actor Verne Troyer is taking marriage to the max!

According to Britain’s Sky News, the 2-foot-8 “Austin Powers” film star is engaged to a model who’s more than twice his size.  His fiancee, 6-foot-2 Genevieve Gallen, is a yoga instructor and model.  Troyer and Gallen have been dating for a year, beginning soon after meeting each other at a New Year’s Party in Beverly Hills in 2000.

Here’s another shot of her from the Howard Stern Show :