Pride, Determination and Resilience

As I am watching the movie Pride, it made me think about your pursuit. In your pursuit of being better with women and becoming a better man, you need to build a foundation of pride, determination and resilience.

Pride. It is the firm feeling of pure satisfaction from your own achievements or from qualities that are widely appreciated. Take some pride in yourself and what you are looking to accomplish here. Your pride should one of the main things motivating you to push through your comfort zone and become successful in life and with women.

Think about it.

How much pleasure do you get when you’re able to get the number of a very attractive woman? How satisfying is it when a woman tells you that she’s never been with someone like you? How awesome is it when you can wake up and feel like a much improved version of yourself from the day before? Think about those feelings and let them push you forward to help you get to where you want to be.

Determination. It is the firmness of purpose. How bad do you really want this? I mean, seriously. I hear guys say all the time that they want to be better with women. They want to be able to have the confidence to go up to a woman and sweep them off of their feet. I’m sure you all do, but how determined are you? What are you willing to invest in yourself to make this REALLY happen? You must find your reason – your purpose – for wanting this so bad and let them be another motivator for your progression.

There is an end game to each stage in life. This is just another stage.

Resilience. It is the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult situations. Rejection is GOING to happen, whether you like it or not. Women WILL put you on the spot just to see how you will react. There will be other guys around who will try to clown you. These things are going to happen. You are going to be in situations that you won’t be prepared for. What actions you take to maintain control of yourself and the reality around you will determine your resiliency. Maintain your composure is a very attractive quality to have and as you go through this stage of your life, you are going to develop your composure with all these difference interactions you will come across.

This is your tripod! This is the foundation that you can leave here with right away. And we all know what happens when you don’t have one leg of a tripod.

Go out there and be the best and don’t settle for ANYTHING less.

Thoughts?

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

The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down

When I came home the other night, I flipped on the TV as I normally do to have some background noise as I get myself ready for bed. Then I heard some ridiculous statements about picking up women. When I checked the info, it said,

“The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down. A Tongue-in-cheek look at 20-something singles clubbing and partying in L.A.; it's organized into 15 chapters from overview and preparation to partying and the morning after.”

I was very interested to keep watching. I ended up staying up until 4 AM but let me tell you, it is one VERY funny movie. If you can have a good sense of humor about dating and hooking up, you’ll enjoy this movie. The tagline made it worth watching alone.

A real life guide to sex, drugs, & bad behavior.

Not to spoil anything for you, this movie is loaded with diagrams, charts, scenarios, voice-over narration, and actual research experiments. It’s pretty well organized by the way they do the chapters. Literally, from nightlife preparation to the morning after (if you were to get that far), it was just an amusing and somewhat informational movie to watch.

The situations that they discuss are either right on or completely unrealistic. But either way, some interesting points are made; all while making you laugh, gasp, think, question and laugh some more.

It’s not an award-winner by any means, but certainly worth watching.

Here’s the IMBd link for all of the information.

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

Amusement Parks and Nightclubs

So last night, I was invited to go to the Absolut Boston launch party at District Lounge. I was allowed to bring a guest and so I invited follow wingman, Cort Johnson to partake in the festivities. I was pretty excited to go just because I thought it would be fun. Plus, you can’t really complain about open bar from 10-2. Anyway, we had a drink at Cleary’s before heading over there. I made it a point not to be too late because we wanted to make the best of the time there. We ended up getting in line at around 10:50. And it wasn’t long at all. As much as I hate lines, I figured it wouldn’t be bad and we’d be in there with vodka flowing like water. Then, everything went awry.

People started to cut to the front to try to get in before others and then people were standing in front of the entrance, calling whoever they could inside so they could come down and get them. People were dropping names like it’s was going out of style. It was absolutely entertaining. But then when so many people are moving around and causing a mess, you’d think that the security that’s out there would establish some sort of organization. Nope. Not only did they fail at it, what they did was make ANOTHER line of people who apparently had a "connection."

So now you have a line of people who were on the list (like me and Cort), and you have another line of people who were on “the list,” this imaginary list of people who think that they don’t have to wait in line (funny how they had to wait in line anyway). So, as I saw people who were on “the list” slowly get in, my patience was starting to wear thin. At this point, Cort and I were pretty much at the front of the line and for the next 4 minutes, we continued to see people get in before us to the point where the building was not only over capacity, but probably unsafe should an emergency were to occur. Then Cort and I made the decision to leave and go to MiniBar. We left at 11:08.

Total wait time at District: 18 minutes.

Total time it took us to walk in MiniBar and get a drink for both of us: 2 minutes.

And that doesn’t mean that MiniBar was empty. We walked in pretty much as it was about to peak. There were a really good amount of people. And then, when we sat down, we looked at each other and we were thinking the same thing.

“Why didn’t we just come here from the beginning?”

Sure it would have been fun to get into the party, but looking at the kinds of people who were going in and who were in line, it was obvious that these people weren’t our kind of people. The whole nightclub scene is just a messed up amusement park. Women just want to be seen and men just want to flex their muscles – and their collars. You go to a place like MiniBar, and you have a chance to socialize with like-minded people without having to fight through large crowds, loud music and the other fluff that comes with a typical nightclub.

It was a good reminder for me and let this be a lesson for you. If you’re looking to have a good time but primarily to meet someone, don’t go to a nightclub. Chances are, your quality mate is somewhere else.

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

I’m in Jamaica!

Where I am staying. The picture doesn't do it justice...

By the time you read this, I should be back home in Jamaica and on my way to the resort I’ll be staying at. The significance isn’t the fact that I’m actually going on a true vacation. For me, it’s actually the fact that I haven’t been home in 6 years.

I expect things to be VERY different in a few ways. I’m excited to be away from everything for some time off and to actually enjoy being with me and JUST me. Clearing my head, not having any worries and going nuts without regard for human life is something I think everyone needs as much as possible. Granted my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law and my nephew will be there (in proximity), but I’ll still be away from most of everything, which I think is totally healthy. I love what I do, and I believe that in order to continue to, I need to set off time for myself to maintain a healthy, spirited attitude. Anyway, I’m excited to see my family that I haven’t seen for over 6 years, including my grandfather, who is turning 95 soon. Crazy, I know.

On the other hand, being in a different country does have its benefits. If you’re in a country where women like American-speaking men, then you’re at an advantage (if you play it safe). Being in a third-world country, you get to appreciate more by having access to less. Also, there is a subtle disconnect from the United States that I enjoy. It gets me to learn about the internal affairs of another country’s government, culture, economy and other things that I’m curious about without having to be clouded by the media’s focus on one of the world’s super powers.

In the meantime, I have a few random blog posts set up to entertain you for the next week. Don’t be surprised if I post a random video or a blog post in between as well while I am down there. I think it would be fun to talk about life in a different country and how to develop a lifestyle in just a week. And as much as I don’t really want to look ahead, when I get back from Jamaica, things are going to pop off! There are some great things coming and I’m excited about them and you should be too. But I think it’s fair that after at least of year of hustling, I should be allowed to treat myself to an extended vacation.

For my clients, friends, family and those who want to contact me, you can still email me. It’ll just take a little longer to reply. I’ll let you know if I will have access to my cell phone when I get in.

If you don’t hear from me, have a great weekend, a better week and as always, keep it simple.

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

Be Interested, Not Interesting

Over the many years of trying to figure out how to be more attractive to women, it was sometimes misunderstood that the key was to be interesting. If women found you interesting, then in essence, they’ll find you attractive. I went with this thinking for a few years and although making the effort to be interesting made me learn a lot about myself and shape who I am today, it wasn’t enough to get the women I wanted. Actually, it wasn’t enough to keep any woman I was with. I was introduced to a written piece by John Gardner and came across this quote that I think everyone should pay attention to. Here, may lay the key to everything in your life and especially attracting women.

“If I may offer you a simple maxim, “Be interested.” Everyone wants to be interesting -but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out.”

This couldn’t be anymore true in today’s dating world. Every guy out there is trying to show value, prove to women that they’re the best potential mate and that they are such an interesting person that they don’t realize that most high-quality women don’t necessarily look at that. Women don’t want someone that is just interesting to them. They want someone that is interested in them – but actually interested.

So how do you really show interest?

Ask questions. Tell her to tell you more about thing that she cares about. Look to learn from her. Keep looking for some newness in your life and share that with her. Don’t fear the risk of failure. Put yourself out there. Reach out to her and share your value with her. Show care about her in a way that’s explicit.

An attractive man doesn’t just want to be interesting. An attractive man doesn’t define himself by how interesting and cool he is. He defines himself by his experiences that got him to where is but doesn’t restrict himself for the future because he keeps his sense of curiosity to learn new things. His interest in everything else around him and not only himself is what makes him attractive.

His natural attraction to the world around him is the key that gets women attracted to him.

That shift in my thinking has opened my eyes up to amazing things and even more amazing people.

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

The 50% Rule & How It Relates to Meeting Women

I am sure many of you who read this already are familiar with this. Others may forget about this so it’s never a bad thing to refresh everyone’s mind. I remember sitting down and talking with someone the other day and they asked me, “So how do you really handle rejection? In the beginning, you were obviously rejected more than you were accepted. How did you deal with that?”

Here’s what I said.

For me, I decided to treat making a connection with women like inviting them to a house party. If you invite 100 women, 50 are going to say ‘yes.’ Out of those 50, about 25 will actually show up. With all of your hosting duties, you’ll probably end up talking to 12 of these women for a decent amount of time throughout the night. Out of these 12, you’ll probably get 6 numbers from them. When you contact them, you may get 3 women to call you back. And out of those 3, maybe one will keep regular contact and a relationship will ensue. (The same concept goes for women trying to meet men as well.)

It sounds crazy but that’s how it is out there. You are going to go out there and meet many women (if you are actually taking action and making an effort). A very small percentage of those women will actually continue to talk to you 6 months down the road. As you get better at creating connections and become more comfortable with yourself, you will notice your success rate going up.

But at the beginning, you’ll be on the grind. You’ll be rejected. People may even laugh at you or think you’re weird or creepy. In the end, it’s not about how bad you get rejected. It’s about how much you can take and keep going. That’s where the evolution comes in.

A part of handling rejection is coming to terms that it will happen. As good as I am with making a connection with people, I still get rejected every now and then. After a while, you just say to yourself, "hmm…that blows. Well, I gotta keep moving.” Even at your best, you may mess up. It happens to everyone. And it’s ok. This is all for the greater good -

To become the best person we can possibly be and the only way to do that is to evolve through interaction.

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

NFL Workouts, Being Pummeled by a Cute Girl & Drinking

So these past few weeks have been VERY crazy and I have only missed one appointment so I feel pretty good about committing to the routine. While I was working with Jason Reese a couple of weeks ago, he had put me through an NFL-style workout that was ridiculously intense but used to cut body fat immensely. It’s supposed to be great for players who need to get back in football shape before training camp. Some of you may ask, “So why would I ever want to do an NFL workout?” The answer is simple.

It’s fun, it’ll push you and you’ll get into unbelievable shape, feeling amazing the whole time.

But anyway, over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with Lindsey. When you first meet her, she looks like a cute, innocent and fun girl. Then you work out with her and you hate her. Well, maybe you don’t hate her. But she’s definitely someone that pushes you to the limit. I am sweating within 5 minutes of training with her and she works you hard from beginning to end. I personally love it. My core is always sore the next day and as much as I hate the soreness, I know it’s what’s keeping me looking and feeling good.

The great thing about Jason, Lindsey and all of the other trainers at Revolution Fitness is that they always have me doing something different. There are two very good benefits of “changing things up.” The first benefit is that you’re never bored when you go to the gym. When you know you’ll be doing something different, it makes you curious and somewhat excited to see what they are going to put you through that’s going to push your muscles. I’d say over 50% of what I have done with them already, I have never done before. Granted, I’m no bodybuilder, but I have worked out in my day and still, there are plenty of exercises and tools that are new to me that I’m using in my regimen, which is great. The second is that doing different exercises and variations of the same exercise actually works your muscles more because you are constantly “tricking” your muscles. If you keep doing the same motion repeatedly, no matter how much you do, your muscles will plateau. By “tricking,” you are giving your muscles an infinite growth span. Both are great things if you ask me.

As a result, I have gained a decent amount of weight (most of it being muscle) and reaching my goal doesn’t seem so out of reach anymore. BUT there is one thing that has been holding me back from really cutting up and making the best of my program.

Drinking.

In this video, I talk about the problems I have been (am) having, why it’s a problem and what I am going to do to fix things.

Vote for my SXSW panel here!

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

Life Doesn't Care About Your Vision

And that’s a great thing.

This is going to seem like a contradictory post from my last post yesterday but it’s more of a compliment. To prove such I’ll start by using another Tyler Durden quote.

“I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”

While you may have goals and specific things that you may want to accomplish when it comes to pickup and your overall personal development, it’s important to understand that this thing called “life” will happen and in an instant, change the game on you. The key to your success journey is to just go with it.

When I finished school and went back to Boston, I had absolutely NO clue what was going to happen. I had visions of living with a few of my best friends, getting a kick ass job in design and being able to hang out with my old high school friends again, since I didn’t get to hang with them for nearly 5 years.

None of those things happened.

I ended up living at home with my parents, couldn’t get a job in design, picked up a job as a valet and all of my friends pretty much got themselves “real jobs” and weren’t really around much to hang out – leaving me alone to an extent.

I could have sat there and cried about it, thinking that I was screwed and I couldn’t make anything of myself the way I wanted to. But I didn’t; I decided to accept the fact that these were the cards I was dealt and I still played with them. Things have turned out much better for me, over a year later and as I can only see it getting better.

When it comes to meeting and connecting with women, no matter what anyone says out there, you will never have the perfect “thing” that will work every time with every woman. Every interaction you have with someone will be different and all you need to do is have the social aptitude and flexibility to go with the flow and learn from each interaction. You can have all the visions in the world about how your interactions are going to go and life will not care about it. Life will throw things in there that just doesn’t make sense. But you know what? That’s great. It should put less pressure on you for trying to make things perfect and allow yourself to be more carefree and LIVE IN THE MOMENT.

Let things happen and keep learning. Continue to evolve and you’ll be well on your way to become the person you want to be…and the object of every woman’s desire.

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

Goals & Expectations

Earlier today, I came across an article about Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) and his amazing quotes from Fight Club. If you haven’t seen it, you need to find a way to see it because this is a movie that will get you motivated. One of his memorable quotes is one that I want to talk about today.

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

That’s right, guys. After you read this, will have 5-10 minutes less to live your life. The significance with this quote is that when we go out and are so worried about being the perfect worker or the perfect friend or the perfect guy for women, we forget one thing.

No one can be perfect. No one.

Yes, throughout time, baseball pitchers have pitched perfect games and NFL teams have gone an entire regular season without losing even once, but that is in one specific period of time. That period of time will last forever but it’s history and the timeline continues. We need to come to the conclusion that we will never be perfect and the more you worry about trying to be, the less time you will have to just learn and evolve to be who you want to be.

You are going to make mistakes. You are going to fail sometimes. Stop being afraid of those things. Your fear is holding you back from truly succeeding and isn’t that what you want? Success?

In order to truly succeed, you will have to suffer through failure.

I don’t know about you but the more I fail at something, the more likely I will have a breakthrough that will ultimately lead me to my greatest success.

What does this all mean in terms of pick up and self-improvement? When you set goals for what you want out of the experience, your goals should be as specific as reasonably possible. For example, When my girlfriend dumped me a little over a year ago, I said to myself that I was going to work hard for the rest of my life learning to become a better person to prevent [what caused her to dump me] from happening ever again. And I will not stop until I find myself in a state where I can look back and fully believe that I have reached there.

The man I want to be is constantly evolving based on the experiences that I go through everyday I walk out of the front door of my house. Little, subtle changes that will eventually make up the man I will become. And a little over a year later, I can honestly say that I am WELL on my way to getting there. But believe me when I say that I failed many times and succeeded very few times to get where I am now. And that’s where the expectations come in. When you set any goal in life, ONLY expect two things.

1. You’re going to fail and make mistakes.
2. You will succeed.

This combines accepting the process and the hard work that is required to get where you want to be and having the focus and confidence in yourself to know that you will eventually get to that success.

You can apply that to every aspect in your life. I do.

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

Vote For My Panel at #SXSW!

When I originally heard about SXSW, I was watching Diggnation and Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht were talking about it and I had NO idea what it was. The next time I heard about it was from Gary Vaynerchuk. I had a better idea of what it was but NO clue how it could be beneficial for me being a dating coach. Then, I had lunch with Gary’s brother, AJ and he spent some time telling me how it could be beneficial for me. If at best, there would be quality networking, some collaboration and maybe a few clients. As strapped for cash as I was, AJ insisted that if I can go without filing for bankruptcy then I should do it. It was a spontaneous decision, but I did it anyway.

I was able to get a pass from Amy Greenlaw who was SO nice for hooking it up. I was able to get a round-trip plane ticket (one-stop) for under $300 about two weeks before the event. I also got an amazing hookup by being able to hang and crash with AJ and Gary – I didn’t know that until literally, the day of my flight down to Austin. The whole experience was incredible.

Going to SXSW changed the way I do almost everything when it comes to my business, how I network, how I engage and interact with new people and most importantly, how I can be most effective in creating a solid product. I can talk about all the other things that made SXSW great, like hanging out with Pete Cashmore (again), partying at a gay nightclub (we didn't know and partied anyway) hosted by Gary and swinging back a glass of wine with Jim Louderback, meeting people that are still my friends to this day (like my boy Sam Taggart and the awesome Leora Israel), meeting someone who became my girlfriend at the time and then sharing stories of our “younger hustle” late at night in the hotel room with the most amazing minds I have ever been around. Overall, I can honestly say that SXSW changed my life. Sounds dramatic but chances are, you haven’t been, so you wouldn’t fully understand. Believe me, it can be a life-changing experience.

Anyone who hasn’t gone should go. It’s an amazing experience and regardless of what happens, I am going in 2010. Ideally, I’d LOVE to speak there and share everything that I can with the people who are going there but I can’t fully determine that.

But YOU can!

I submitted a proposal to do a panel called “Social Media Konkatsu.” For those who are wondering what konkatsu means, it means “marriage hunting” (I knew my studying Japanese would come through at some point). I will focus on why it’s acceptable to indirectly use social media for dating and how you can use the skills you acquire from using social media to build amazing, healthy and very fulfilling OFFLINE relationships. These skills that I will introduce will not only help you network better, not only create and secure effecting business relationships but also help your dating life as well. It’s going to be a VERY fun panel and anyone who knows me or has seen me speak knows that I bring the energy and I bring the optimism. It would be an honor and an amazing sense of accomplishment for me to be able to speak at the same event that quintessentially changed my future. I would LOVE your support if you can pass this around and vote to get this panel on.

Here is the link to the actual page to vote but I am going to include the type so you can see what I am talking about.

Category:

Education, Online Relationships, Self-Help / Self-Improvement, Social Issues, Social Networking

Organizer:

Thomas Edwards, The Professional Wingman

Questions:

1. Why has courtship gone out the window?
2. Who is actually using online dating site more these days?
3. How can using social media help your interactions offline?
4. Why is important to understand the moving trend of dating?
5. What is konkatsu?
6. Why would it be in your best interest to pursue dating using social media?
7. How shy people can use social media to overcome anxieites when building offline relationships?
8. What is the history of online dating and it's success rate?
9. How is online dating sites different from dating through social media?
10. What social media sites are best for building offline relationships and dating?

Description:

Using social media for dating has become more acceptable today. The dating world has changed. There are people finding each other and getting married on Twitter! As we embrace this change, it’s important to know how using social media can help your chances of finding great relationships offline.

Tell as MANY people as possible about this and if you have any questions, leave comments here and on the site and I will answer them ALL! I REALLY want this!

Thank you in advance. You have all been amazing this far in the game and I am FAR from done. There’s still so much do to.

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