Think to Succeed In Dating and Life

This is a big one. It’s so big, I normally would have started the series with this because it’s so important right up front, and one of the most common dating mistakes I see guys make.

But it’s tricky. So tricky that when I’m with clients, I often don’t tell them this one, or I don’t explain it, and just try to trick them into fixing it, or at least I’ll wait until we’ve developed a trusting relationship before broaching this subject.

Why?

It’s too complicated; or it’s too delicate; or it’s too ephemeral. It’s either hard to explain or hard to “get” or hard to believe.

We’re here now, though, so I don’t think I can avoid it any longer. So here we go:

Your Thoughts Are a Part of Every Date

Oh no. Am I getting all mystical?

I don’t know. Maybe you could look at it in that Napoleon Hill way, which would mean that your thoughts themselves have an effect on what’s happening.

Stay with me though, because I’ll be describing it in a far more grounded way.

Your thoughts are too powerful. You give them too much power over the interaction. And when things go wrong, I’ll show you what you can do to fix the problem, or minimize the danger.

Solution One: Revise and Revamp

I’m reminded of this EVERY time a client recounts an interaction, and I hope I can persuade you to look at it the way I do and adjust, ever-so-slightly, the way that you think.

To clarify, when I say interaction, I’m talking about “you-just-met-her”…

or “a date”…

or “a conversation”…

or “an online-poke or wink or flirt”…

or “an IM-exchange”…

or “you-bought-a-pack-of-gum-and-the-cashier-was-smiling-at-you.”

Anything. You interacted with a desirable woman.

One other caveat: recognize that as a rule, the interactions clients describe usually do not end with a desired result–inherently something goes wrong. After all, why else would they be seeking out my counsel?

90% of clients, when describing an interaction maintain implicitly or explicitly a perspective of “Here’s where it went wrong.”

Alternatively (or additionally) they’re looking for me to tell them where they went wrong.

Well guess what?

“What Went Wrong?” Doesn’t Work

It may be a while before you believe me on this one. All of your life experience and practice may have convinced you that knowing the problem is the first step in solving it.

This may be your belief and a guiding principal for you. I don’t intend to change everything in your mind today.

I will recommend an excellent book called Switch by Dan Heath, but I’ll leave you with your existing method: identify the problem first. Especially when you’re attempting to optimize something that’s working really well. It may not be the best method, but it can work under those circumstances.

No, for many things in life, the overview is negative, or you’ve never done it, or you have no experience (therefore expectation) of success.

In those cases, focusing on problems will hurt in many ways. Here are some:

1) When you focus on problems, you are beating yourself up. You are punishing yourself. If you’ve seen my book, Who Lies More, you know that I am not a fan of punishment, but it’s not because punishment doesn’t work.

It’s because punishment works too well.

The problem is that punishment curtails behavior: it stops you. Punishment doesn’t improve or better your behavior, it just reduces problem behaviors, a lot of times in a non-constructive way. It won’t fix any dating mistakes you’re making, it just gets you out of the flow entirely.

Put another way, guys who felt like wimps in gym class usually didn’t train harder. They avoided gym. That’s not improving themselves, it’s stopping because something is difficult. It’s quitting. You do not want to do that in most areas of your life, especially when it comes to interacting with women.

2) Every experience lives with you. Reviewing your mistakes means making them again in your imagination. Can you see how that isn’t great? You probably didn’t enjoy when you asked her if she got her clumsiness from her mom and she responded, “My mom slipped off a stage and broke her neck. She’s in a wheelchair now.”

When you go through it again you will enjoy it just as little! You will suffer again. I spoke to you last week about association. You are associating that negative feeling with her and with dating and with going out. That’s not good.

3) It practices behavior you don’t want. Reviewing the mistakes means rehearsing and practicing and solidifying them. Doesn’t it? Perhaps you don’t think so.

Think about this. You are trying to learn a guitar lick. In order to recognize and understand the mistake you made last time through, you play through the mistake a few times.

Doesn’t that make it easier to play that mistake in the future? In fact, every mistake you make is another thing you’ve learned, isn’t it? Great! You keep learning the wrong stuff! How do you fix it? I’ll get to that.

There are a lot more ways identifying your mistakes and problems hurts you, but for now, these will do.

Going over these mistakes 1) demotivates you, 2) associates bad feelings with her and dating and 3) practices the behavior you don’t want.

3 Questions You Can Ask Yourself to Fix This

Every time you’ve completed an interaction – of any kind – I’d like you to ask three questions:

1) What went right? WWR

2) How would I like it to go? (i.e. What would have been perfect?) HWYLI2G

3) How am I going to change it? (i.e. What will I do differently to get it to go as in 2, above?)

Do you see how much more effective this is? I kind of co-opted these from a book on telephone sales, believe it or not, from an inside sales guy named Mike Brooks.

You can also shorthand them with Good, Better, and “Delta” (for “change”)

“What Went Right?”

First, you reward yourself for everything you are doing right, which will encourage “good behavior” on your part.

It also will help you increase the number of times you interact with women, since you’ll be doing your best to feel good. Notice that by imagining the perfect or optimized version, you are ostensibly adding even more fuel to that good fire; feeling better about showing up and/or everything you did.

Powerful Mental Rehearsal with “How would you like it to go?” and “How am I going to change it?”

Reviewing and visualizing positive outcomes have been scientifically proven to be up to 80% effective as actual practice reps. In one oft-cited experiment by Dr. Judd Biasiotto one group improved 24% practicing basketball free throws live one hour per day for thirty days. A second group improved by 23% using only mental rehearsal.

So you’re reviewing, which is mental rehearsal, and then you’re also visualizing –  How Would You Like It 2 Go? – which is more rehearsal.

You are seeing what you want, your objective and goal.

You’re actually doing it, which is a crucial step for any guy to take.

And seeing yourself accomplish your goals twice. This locks that good behavior in. WWR sees the best you did. HWYLI2G skips all the mistakes and goes right to their corrected versions.

How Producing These Mental Habits Can Change Outcomes Enormously

Certainly you’ve realized by now that much of my advice is based on a belief that most of what’s going wrong with you on dates is just “habit” and most of what fixes bad habits are good habits and association.

Most of what works to generate what you want in the other person you’re into is also association and most of what you are working against in that person is habit and association.

When you ask these three questions after every interaction, you get value immediately – as outlined above.

In addition, you are training yourself with a certain mental habit. It looks like this:

After each interaction, feel good; lock in things that worked; let go of any unintended things; plan improvement.

Wow! If you do that on your own say, 20 or 30 times, it will become automatic. At first it might take thinking, you might knit your brows a bit trying to keep everything straight.

Eventually with practice, you’ll get quicker and quicker until you’re going through the process at the speed of thought – which is the fastest thing you have – so that you begin to get better and more motivated automatically. This is so powerful that you won’t believe it until you start to see it.

Solution Two: Expect the Best

The next problem with “What did I do wrong?” is that it influences the event itself. Here you are with a girl, live, talking and eating and smiling and making eye contact.

In the back of your mind, though, you know that you will be cutting yourself down at the end, so you are second guessing as you go.

I’m looking at her too long. I should smile. Oh damn, I’m smiling too much now. I shouldn’t have asked how much the wine was. She thinks I’m cheap and an idiot. What was that look? I screwed this up already.

If you’re thinking it, it shows. It informs your own actions. The things clients will say on a date astound me.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer.”

Really? The sad part is, that’s not even that rare–it’s a pretty common mistake guys make.

What it says to her is worry. “While you’re at it, think about serial killers.”

Don’t negate your way into what you want.

Am I so arrogant that I think every girl likes me?

Do I take everything as the possible compliment that I can – straining –  eek out of it?

No. but it’s all you’ll hear me say – out loud and in my own head.

It’s like the bill at the store. A lot of people are 100% honest there, but some people will only say something if they feel they got less than the correct change. If they got more, they might stay quiet.

The ATM spit out some hundreds? You might keep them. If you tried to take out $500, on the other hand, and it says, “Here you go!” but gives you $260, you’ll probably squawk.

Always Be on Your Side

This is the same thing. Any idea that pops into your head should have one overarching criteria to be spoken or even entertained:

Is this what I want?

You don’t have to be right all the time. No one expects that. You can however, always be on your side.

“Oooh! I like when you hit on me!”

“What? You were going to pay?!”

“I’d love a drink thanks!”

“..and you like it!”

We could go on, but that’s enough for now! In case you want more, here are two bonus pieces that I’ll delve into deeper in the future.

Bonus 1: Go back to “Solution Two: Expect the Best” and this time realize that that first sentence has another version: “What Can Go Wrong?”

I’ve gone over all the problems and habits that are caused by reviewing your errors. Well expecting problems, as in “what can go wrong?” has the same effect and maybe more.

Read it again with that in mind and you’ll see what I mean – second guessing as you’re going, rehearsing mistakes in your mind before you make them, punishing yourself for what you haven’t even done!

Bonus 2: The two sources of negativity – review and expectation – definitely influence performance, but there are two other ideas I didn’t even touch upon that you could explore on your own.

The first is what these negative expectations and awareness of errors does to your mood and how they affect the most attractive things in the masculine personality: optimism and self-acceptance. Just think about that for a minute. If you think things are going, or went, or will go badly, do you look confident? Happy? Devil-may-care? Easy-going? Successful? Like a winner?

The second is how those negative expectations and awareness of errors fulfill themselves during the interaction. She says she’s in a bad mood. Instead of immediately changing direction like jumping of the exit when you see six packed lanes of highway crawling in front of you, you connect to it – yeah, because of my tone and the way I didn’t pull out the chair, or it’s because I asked about the price of the lobster, or I’m getting drunk like last time, or I knew I’d piss her off with my dumb jokes!

The point is, expect the best, find the best and then review the best. It’s absolutely critical for your mindset that you do.