Some Weekend Words of Encouragement

I hope you guys are enjoying the Giving and Taking Series. It’s been a lot of fun and I will continue it on Monday and wrap it up at the end of the week.

But for tonight and this Memorial Day weekend, I wanted to give you some notes that I have in my iPhone. It inspired me to write this and I hope it can help you with something this weekend.

These are just some solid points that I kept reading to myself over several months to battle any fears I had about failing, rejection, meeting women and trying to do new things in my life.

Imagine yourself successful. Nothing positive will ever happen if you can’t even think that it could happen. Spend time to think about the desired outcome as detailed as possible. If it’s about dating, think about how awesome you’re going to look this weekend and the kinds of women or men you’ll be talking to. Think about how each interaction will be successful in one way or another. Maybe with one you’ll get a phone number and in another, you two will go to a different bar and have a mini-date where things can be more intimate. Whatever you want, make sure you can actually imagine the success happening.

Reflect on past success. When it comes to dating, whether it was “luck” or not, most of you have been successful with getting a number, or a kiss or even a boy/girlfriend. It has happened before and it can happen again. Think about some of the things that you did that made it easy for you to get that number or kiss. If you can’t remember that, then think about the qualities about you that made him or her attracted to you. Don’t make it seem like you haven’t done this “dating thing” before. Most of you have and were successful. You’re just trying to create a level of consistency.

Set definite goals. When you go out tonight, have some clear objectives. Maybe for tonight, you want to find someone that you’re into and get his or her number. After that, you’ll want to follow up with him or her tomorrow and set up a date for Sunday. That’s just an example, but your goals should be pretty straightforward.

At the same time, don’t go out with these bottled up intentions because it will show through your body language and your conversations. Just keep them in the back of your mind as you’re interacting with people, check up on yourself every once in a while to see how you’re doing.

In the end, this is all a learning experience.

Respond positively to life. Being positive and just going out not only to learn but also to have fun is a huge to finding your success. At the end of the night, you still have yourself and the life that you’re living is something no one else can take from you.

Go out, have fun and no matter what, stay positive.

I’ll end this with a quote that was at the end of my notes. It’ll pretty much explain everything.

“Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds.”

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Giving and Taking: The Lose/Win Philosophy of Relationships

This is a part of a new series that I am doing about the different paradigms of human interaction.

These paradigms are based on Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So far we have done,

Win/Win
Win/Lose
Lose/Win
Lose/Lose
Win
Win/Win or No Deal

Today we are talking about the Lose/Win philosophy.

“Win/Lose has no standards – no demands, no expectations, no vision. People who think Lose/Win are usually quick to please or appease. They seek strength from popularity or acceptance. They have little courage to express their own feelings and convictions and are easily intimidated by the ego strength of others.”

This is the opposite of Win/Lose, obviously, instead of showing selfishness, you are showing selflessness – but on an extreme. The Lose/Win mentality is the one that lets people take advantage of you. You avoid confrontation and just let things happen because you want to preserve the peace as much as possible, it much as may hurt you, in the long run.

You know who loves these people? Obviously, it’s the people with the Win/Lose mentality. They feed off of you just to boost their egos, have the upper hand, and take advantage of you to get what they want. And you know what Lose/Win people do? They give in. They give up.

So let’s see here, how can I put this in a way that can drive it home really well?

Lose/Win guys are the “nice guys that finish last.”

In relationships, the Lose/Win will do whatever it takes to prevent fights and please his or her mate. He will sacrifice his identity for the sake of the relationship. It’s probably one of the worst mentalities to have in a relationship. And it’s not just because you give up all the time. It goes much deeper than that.

By letting this go, not expressing their feelings and allowing themselves to get taken advantage of, Lose/Win people hold EVERYTHING inside. You can’t possibly think these feelings won’t resurface later on, right? They may come back in the relationship as a total lashing out against your significant other. It can come back as an internal beatdown. It’ll crush your self-esteem and completely lower your sense of self-worth not just to your mate but also to the world around you. Your relationships will deteriorate to nothing if you just accept the Lose/Win mentality. People will take so much from you that there will be nothing left to take from you.

Both Win/Lose and Lose/Win mentalities drive themselves from personal insecurities created from past events and it’s so easy to go between the two. The perfect example given in the book goes something like this.

The Win/Lose starts as selfishness and inconsideration then goes into guilt and loss of courage as Lose/Win then frustration and anger sets in and in a fit of rage, a more aggressive Win/Lose mentality kicks in. Either mentality will not be good for a long-term relationship.

In the end, you have to battle your inner demons and resolve issues of the past in order to clear your mind and be truly ready to embrace the Win/Win mentality.

Enjoyed this article? If so, subscribe to the Wingman Labs below
and get exclusive content that will improve your social skills.

UStream Session Postponed...

...until next Friday.

Due to some problems at my second job, I will not be able to do my live session on Approach Anxiety this Friday at 6PM.

But I will have my session next Friday, for sure. It'll probably start at 7PM. Just wanted everyone to be aware of this change.

Giving and Taking: The Win/Lose Philosophy of Relationships

This is a part of a new series that I am doing about the different paradigms of human interaction in relationships.

These paradigms are based on Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So far we have done,

Win/Win
Win/Lose
Lose/Win
Lose/Lose
Win
Win/Win or No Deal

Today we are talking about the Win/Lose philosophy.

“Win/Lose is the authoritarian approach: ‘I get my way; you don’t get yours.’ Win/Lose people are prone to use position, power, credentials, possessions, or personality to their way.”

Most people feel as though they are in that kind of relationship already so they inherently have that mentality most of the time. It’s a very common mentality to have since we are raised from birth to compete with everyone and everything. Even in some of our families, you may have had to compete with your siblings for the attention of your parents.

In school, you were given a grade because you were compared to other students in the class. The “A” was the benchmark and if you got anything less than that, you practically was told, “you’re not as good as this student.”

At work, you may be competing to meet numbers so you can get a bonus. Not everyone can make those numbers. So while some of your co-workers are splurging on an island Christmas vacation, you’re wondering what he did to meet the numbers and how come you can't get a bonus.

You lose.

The idea of being conditionally rewarded in a relationship is a difficult topic. From the intial approach, you have to earn the trust and love of your significant other. If you do certain things, you will slowly gain the trust of your mate. But here lies the difference. If you are constantly being tested and reward for your actions - several months, years down the rad - then you are still in that Win/Lose dynamic. Eventually, you will want to get into a Win/Win dynamic. This is where conflict occurs.

The reason why is because by taking the Win/Lose method, you are deeming someone invaluable or lovable. As a result, he or she will have to constantly validate him or herself with their actions and never feel secure with internal validations from you.

Make sense?

I remember my ex-girlfriend – God bless her soul – was the embodiment of the Win/Lose mentality. If she didn’t get her way, it would be hell for everyone, even for those who cared about her. I realized that it wasn’t her fault. How she was raised and the kind of environment that she grew up in caused her to be that way. In the end, it wasn’t healthy for me in the long run, no matter how much I wanted to be with her at the time. You can’t approach a relationship with a Win/Win attitude and expect someone to change from his/her Win/Lose habits. Just doesn’t work like that. It takes communication, patience and consideration – if you think it’s worth it. I would constantly push to make her happy because I didn’t want to see her in any emotional pain. In the end, I was on the losing side more often than not.

We’ll get into that tomorrow.

Obviously there is a time and place for Win/Lose situations in life, such as sports, law, perhaps, and video games. Never in a relationship. Basically you are saying that you have a low level of trust for that person and isn’t trust one of the pillars that keeps a relationship intact long-term?

I make sure I let my girlfriend know that I am in it for Win/Win all the time. When we both have that approach, it makes it so much easier to work together to make us both happy. That's why it's important to be a good team in your relationship.

Competition is healthy in a relationship if you are making your significant other a better person and it doesn’t affect him or her negatively. But don’t use it to gain an upper hand or unnecessary leverage over someone you supposedly care about.

Enjoyed this article? If so, subscribe to the Wingman Labs below
and get exclusive content that will improve your social skills.

Giving and Taking Series Introduction

This is a new series I'm starting and I’d like to thank my girlfriend for giving me the idea.

I think this is a great topic when it comes to building and maintaining relationships, especially with those you care about.

We all have had this thought that goes through our minds when it comes to how much we should give and how much we should take, preventing being a taken advantage of or being the one taking advantage.

Then on the flipside, disagreements or conflicts of interests can happen and there needs to be an appropriate resolution to move the relationship forward.

And yes, I do mean sometimes, doing things that we may not want to do necessarily. But I do believe that there is a good way to go about it where you won’t actually be in a position where you’ll be doing something you don’t want to do. It’ll require an open mind and a genuine interest in the other person.

Are you ready?

Here is the analogy that I am going to use. For this, I am going to thank Stephen Covey and his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A great read it you want to learn about making your life and the relationships you have more efficient and more fulfilling.

In learning how to become more interdependent and taking on a bigger leadership role in my industry, my life and other’s lives, through this book, I learned the Six Paradigms of Human Interaction. Here they are:

Win/Win
Win/Lose
Lose/Win
Lose/Lose
Win
Win/Win or No Deal

I am going to talk about each paradigm, the frame of mind that is necessary in order to get the result and why each one is good or bad to have in a relationship. I am very excited about this one as well.

Tomorrow, we will start with the best one, Win/Win and how it’s possible to get that result more times than you think, without compromising anyone’s value in the relationship.

So while you look forward to that beginning tomorrow, I am still going to share with you some content with you.

You can check out my TSBMagazine segment Ask Your Wingman where last week I answered some interesting questions and talked about things going on in my second job.

My consulting company, The Professional Wingman has been updated with services specifically designed for men and women and I also have a media page where you can see some panels that I have been on where I give some good stuff.

This past Friday I tried out giving away free Twitter consultation regarding dating and lifestyle. Judging by the response, it was a huge success! Thank you for all of the feedback and I believe it will be a nice weekly thing.

Also, I would like to get back on the live tip. Something that I am going to try is having a live forum jam on Friday at 6 PM on UStream. It will be mostly open forum where you can ask me any question you’d like about dating, lifestyle and fashion. To guarantee some structure to this jam, I will talk about approach anxiety and give you some free tips that you can use that night when you go out!

I’m pumped about this and I hope you are too. Just trying my best to give you all what you need!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

New Series Coming Soon...

With updates and whatnot.

Elements of Communication: Element #5: Actually Communicating

This is the last installment of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are all of the elements so you can always reference them:

Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening
Element #4 – Telling the Truth
Element #5 – Actually Communicating

Very typical of me to produce such profound observations, huh?

This actually was inspired by a sequence of events that happened the other day. At my second job, there was a miscommunication between two co-workers of mine in determining the schedule – specifically my schedule – for this week. The miscommunication? Well, the base of it all is that no one communicated. I was told one story, that they were going to follow-up with me and confirm.

Nothing happened.

When I showed up for what was supposed to be my first workday of the week, I was greeted with blank stare and question clouds over people’s heads. So, being screwed over, in terms of hours, they try to remedy the situation, only to find out the next day that I have been scheduled to work in more than one location.

A couple of days later, I may have received well over 10 calls from 4 different people about the situation when I had nothing to do with the screw up. Everyone was talking to wrong people and it almost seemed like they were looking for someone to blame – namely me. Of course, I don’t tolerate that nonsense but to wrap up story, the hammer was dropped, those who messed up were given a talking to and I ended up working at the right location.

I’ll also briefly get into how planning the rest of the week went with these guys with the following line.

It was a disaster.

But anyway, the point here is not talk about my other job. I like working there and my co-workers are awesome. I just feel like they lack a very important quality when it comes to teamwork and, in this case, building and maintaining relationships.

The ability to actually communicate.

None of this would have happened if someone picked up the phone and talked to someone. Sounds vague but honestly, if one person called me or someone else who was involved or another person called the other person, everything would have been resolved.

When it comes to relationships, we have it SO easy these days.

We can call someone. Seems like most people don’t do that much anymore.

We can send a quick text. 10 seconds of your time and can save hours of worry. I am victim of forgetting this myself when it comes to letting certain people know of my whereabouts.

We can email. Another quick thing we can do to keep the communication lines open. Takes minimal time and just a few clicks. Probably one of the laziest but acceptable forms of communication.

We can tweet. Yup, I said it. It was reached the point now that public tweeting can be an acceptable method to let people know what’s up with you.

The important thing in the end is that we make an attempt to actually communicate. If we just stand around with our fingers in our ear and not try to say what we really mean, then how do you expect people to understand you? This is very important especially in disagreements or agruments. You have to be able to communicate how you feel in order for the other person to even get a sense of where you are coming from - whether your thinking is irrational or not. If you care enough, I urge you to give them the decency of saying something.

Maintain a flow of communication with people and watch how your relationships will progress. Sometimes, all it takes is a little reaching out.

I had a lot of fun developing this series and if you’d like me to talk about certain things, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or shoot me an email at the top of the page.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Elements of Communication: Element #4: Telling the Truth

This is continuation of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are the elements so far:

Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening
Element #4 – Telling the Truth

This should really go without saying but let this be a refresher for you. You have no idea how telling the truth will get yourself out of SO much danger in the future.

I can understand if you are nervous about revealing something. Maybe you did something wrong, you’re embarrassed or you don’t want to hurt his or her feelings. In the long run, it is SO much better to just get the truth out of the way and suffer the immediate consequences – whatever they may be. There may not even be negative consequences – you are making that assumption based on judgment and pessimism and we all know how that usually ends.

If you know you did something bad that will hurt the other person, you are better off just telling them now. Who are you protecting, really? I’m not saying to rat people out – let them figure it out themselves. You know, it’s one thing to tell a lie and another to live one. If you are holding something back and you have to constantly protect that lie, you are really putting more things in jeopardy than you think.

Take it from someone who has been on the lying side before. It’s not worth it. When you can establish a relationship based on trust and honesty, at that point, you’ll REALLY be able to say to yourself and other people, “I can just talk to [him or her] about anything.” When you find that person, why would you ever want to lie?

And there is no more, “one lie and you’re out.” Lies will always compound. They will be continuous. And if you’re not careful, they will be harder to backtrack.

Yes, this is a tough thing. Wait a second. No, it’s not. Just tell the truth. Stop making excuses why telling the truth would be a bad idea. Accept your own consequences and put yourself out there.

If you do lie and you’re caught, your integrity will ALWAYS be in question and you may never get the “benefit of the doubt” ever again.

I realize that I am repeating myself in different ways here, but with something like this, it’s worth repeating. Most relationships lie on the foundation of trust and honesty. If you don’t have that, it’ll be tough to maintain a long-lasting relationship with anyone.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Elements of Communication: Element #3: Listening

This is continuation of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are the elements so far:

Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening

Now this may not make sense to some because when we think about the basic form of communication, we think about expressing ourselves either by talking or some type of visual articulation. But none of what you say will mean anything if no one is listening. Some of the best times you communicate are when you shut your mouth, listen and pay attention to what’s being said.

If you don’t realize it by now, this post will be rather short and to the point.

When you can hear passion in someone’s voice or if you can tell someone wants to tell you something important, the best thing you can do is shut up, let them express themselves and listen.

If someone just needs to get some stuff off of their chest and are NOT looking for advice – maybe not even an opinion – shut up and listen. This one is especially important because if you can’t handle being someone’s soundboard, then don’t bother. You’ll be wasting their time and you might even heighten their frustration or complicate things.

Part of listening is actually being able to understand what someone says. If it requires you to repeat what they say or ask questions to better understand, then do so. The person speaking will appreciate that, knowing that you are listening.

It’s tough to keep your mouth shut when you have all of these opinions forming in your head as he or she is speaking but it takes a bigger person to keep them to themselves and only speak their mind when asked to.

If you are able to listen to what is being said – and the conversation calls for it – you can be able to say some very profound things. For example, if someone is talking to you and you can almost tell that they are “thinking out loud” or not sure of some things, if you are truly paying attention, you can help guide them to their understanding and have really good dialogue. You have no idea how much I have learned by being able to listen to people and share thoughts back and forth.

I think in the end to enhance things, you have to be able to just listen and pay attention to what’s being said. Many of what I just said, you already know, but how often do you really practice this? You’ll learn so much more and there are so many benefits that can come from just this simple but elusive ability.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.