Grow Your Game

There is a certain exercise that I have every man and woman I coach do. It is also something that is in both my Men’s And Women’s Audio Mastery Series. It is meant to show them what they usually don’t see, or to show them a misperception they have, about what kind of image they project to the world. It is meant to help them see how others people perceive them.

Do you know what other people think of you? Now I am not talking about caring what other people think of you (since anyone who knows what I teach knows that is NEVER something about which I tell people they should be concerned). The reason to do this is because many people believe they are seen or perceived in certain ways by others that simply aren’t true. It’s often those misperceptions that cause people to lack self-confidence or to fail to take action they should in their dating life.

Here’s how to do this exercise: Ask five people what they think about you. Specifically, ask them to tell you the answers to these four questions: (1) What type of energy do you convey? (2) What type of confidence do you convey? (3) What do you look like? and (4) How do you dress? Again, this is not about conforming yourself to how others think you should be. This exercise is to show you if you are an optical illusion.

Let me give you an example. I have a client named Rob who is a great guy. The other night we were out to dinner having a long talk. If you just met him, you’d say Rob is a confident, great-looking guy with a great image. The truth, though, is that it’s all an optical illusion. He projects these things to everyone who sees him, but deep inside he doesn’t really believe it. This is his fundamental issue. He doesn’t believe that he’s good-looking. Rob is 5’7,” but if you sat with him at a table you’d think he was 6’2.” He has this incredibly large persona.

Rob’s problem is that he doesn’t believe any of these things about himself. Everyone sees all these amazing qualities except for him. Rob is what I call an optical illusion. This is why many men and women come to me for coaching, because what I can do for them is to really work on what’s going on inside of them. It’s great if you can exude great qualities, but if you don’t actually believe that you possess them then other people won’t either.

When you first glance at Rob, you believe it. When you hear him talk, you still believe it. If Rob doesn’t believe it himself, though, he will never be able to really connect with a woman. He won’t be able to approach them, ask for their number or ask them out on a date. To be able to do all these things, he needs to really believe all these things about himself. And those of you who can relate to Rob – those of you who live in a life of optical illusions – you need to do something to make yourself believe it.

If you are an optical illusion, you need to invest your time and money in personal development. You need to invest in YOU. You are your own corporation, and you need to invest in yourself. What are you waiting for to decide today is the day you start to change yourself? If you are an optical illusion, i.e., if everyone thinks that you are confident on the outside but you don’t feel that way about yourself on the inside, then your life is never going to change unless you start doing internal work on yourself.

So here is a suggestion – and a challenge – I have for all of you: I want you to go out there and find out if you are an optical illusion. I want you to ask five friends what they think of you. Ask them those four questions I listed earlier. Find out today if you are an optical illusion. If you are, we really need to get you started doing some inner work on your brain. It won’t change by itself. If it could, you already would have been able to self-motivate and make it happen. Consider this the first step – a little friendly kick in the ass – to getting rid of that optical illusion that you may be conveying to the world.

Public displays of affection are one of my favorite things in the world. If you have chemistry with a person, why should you keep your hands off them? Why should you be so aware of other people?

I’m not talking about you should be gyrating each other in public, making out, making out in the middle of the supermarket, but why not hold someone’s hand, put your arm around them, whisper something in their ear, give them a kiss.

I’m all for that. In supermarkets, it’s great.

Sometimes, I’ll walk through the market with my arm around my girlfriend. I’ll give her a nice little kiss on the lips, and you know what, I don’t care what other people think because people that make determinations like that are basically jealous.

They’re jealous because they don’t have that in their lives. Now granted, I’m not going to grope her. I’m not going to touch her private parts in the market, nor am I going to try to hump her in the middle of the supermarket. As for bars, I believe in bars, anything goes when there’s alcohol in there. People can go and they can gyrate, hump each other, make out like crazy.

That’s a bar atmosphere. But I find that people who are judgmental about PDA or public display of affection, I find them jealous. I find that the jealous people t need more love in their life, need more affection in their life, and really need to be able to comment on things, because they are the types of people that because they don’t have PDA in their lives, they’re the type of people that actually need it the most.

But, I’m all for it. If you’re a couple and you have this great chemistry. I mean, if you can’t keep your hands off of somebody, who doesn’t want that. That’s the relationships we’re all looking for.

We’re all looking where you can’t keep your hands off of somebody, where you don’t want to keep your hands off of somebody, where you just want to be next to them at all times. That’s what really love is all about. That’s what life is all about. That’s my thoughts on PDA.

I was recently sitting in the lounge at Heathrow waiting to head home and I was thinking. I have never written a blog about how to meet women in an airport. And the truth is, that it’s very simple.

First of all, airports are places that women go to connect to other places, right? If you think about the psychology of the airport, about half the time you’re traveling for business, and the other half you’re traveling for pleasure. But 100% of the time you want it to be pleasure.

So if I see a woman standing in line at Starbucks – because there is basically a Starbucks in every single airport – I would just say to her, “So, where are you heading to?”

She might respond, “Well, I’m heading to San Francisco.” I can ask, “Really, do you live there?” She says, “No, I’m just going on business.”

Then you can say, “Alright, so we’re in an airport. If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?” If someone is just going for a business trip, it’s not that big of a deal. They might be going to a great city, but if they are there on business, they probably won’t be able to see much of it.

If you can get someone to talk in fantasy-mode – if you can get them to talk about where they really want to go – then the conversation can be more fun.

For instance, if the woman says, “Oh, I’d much rather go to Italy,” you can ask, “Why Italy? What about Italy? Where in Italy?” If you’ve been to Italy, you can contribute something to the conversation and you can have a conversation about where you want to visit and where you’ve been.

It’s fun. You’re also getting someone out of that whole “Oh my God, I can’t believe…” zone. “I can’t believe I have to go on this business trip.” You’re getting her to think about things and talk about things that are pleasurable. You’re talking about things that are fun.

If you’re looking up at the flight departures/arrivals board you can do the same thing. Look at her and say, “Where are you heading to?” She answers, “Oh, I’m heading to Iowa.” You ask, “Okay, if you had to pick any place on this whole board, where would you go and why?” And you say it with a really big smile.

That’s how you start conversations in the airport. Make it fun, make it quick, and just be different! You can find out so much about someone when you do it in this way. Not only that, you’ll be able to find out where they live, where they are going – and who knows? Maybe they are from your hometown but are heading off for vacation, and you can have dinner with them when they return

Or maybe they are heading to the same place you are, and you have a date as soon as the plane touches down!

So what about on the plane? Particularly if you’re not sitting next to them?

It’s really the same thing on the plane. You take an inventory of where they are sitting, and then when you get up to use the restroom, you smile at them as you walk by. She’s probably totally bored on the plane, and she sees you smiling at her, and then the next time you pass by to go to the bathroom, just smile at her again and ask, “How’s the flight?” Or you could say, “Oh man, you are so lucky you’re sitting back here right now, I’ve got the kid kickers behind me! You wanna switch?”

I’ve done that. Or sometimes I’ll walk over and I’ll look at her and say, “Are the flight attendants treating you as well as they’re treating me? Because I’m sitting up front.” I’ll play around with it, and have a good time.

Those things work every single time on an airplane. You don’t need any more. Those are just simple ways to approach.

Now what if you see people in the concierge part of the airport – not near the gates, would you still just approach them and say, “where are you heading to?”

Why not? “Where are you heading to?” Let’s say you’re sitting in the lounge, waiting to take off and the woman in there is cute. You can stand next to her and say, “going home, or going on vacation?” If she’s on your flight, you’ve already made contact ahead of time. “Going home, or going on vacation?” That’s how you do that.

Let’s say you’re walking around, killing two hours in the airport between connecting flights. You see a woman sitting in an area that implies she’s going to San Francisco, and you’re going to Los Angeles.

You go over there and sit down next to her and ask, “Wait, is this the flight to LA?” She’ll say, “No, it’s to San Francisco,” and then you can say, “Oh man, I am so tired from traveling,” and then share your story with her.

“Man, I’m so tired right now, I’ve been on business trips all week long, and you know what? San Francisco sounds much better than going to LA on business anyway! Are you from San Fran?” You have her laughing and you’ve shared a little bit of a story. What happens next? You start communicating with her.

If you’re in a bookstore – I’ve done this a lot as well – and you see a woman with magazines, you can say, “Oh, People magazine – you must have a long flight! Where are you heading to?” That’s it. You don’t have to be so funny.

As I am writing this I am being chatted up by Alan a business traveler who has been making me read this whole thing to him and he has a question.

Go ahead Alan ask away.

Alan…… Right, you can get in a funny line a couple of minutes down the road, but I like to have a good, funny line to open, and that’s where I’m thinking and not acting. And it’s like the three-second rule – I’m sitting there waiting, and then it’s almost creepy when you wait too long!

David: Yeah, you’ve waited way too long and things are not going well. And the fact is, once again, this should all be based on observations. You’re not doing anything that is so earth shattering; you’re just getting inside her head. It goes to the whole theory of becoming a natural at doing this.

You’re not walking over there saying, “Let me ask your opinion, do you like 747s better or 767s?”

You’re not breaking her train of thought. The reason why so many guys mess up, when it comes down to it, is that you’re pulling her out of her train of thought. You don’t want to do this.

When you pull someone out of their train of thought, you’re inevitably going to crash and burn. She’s not going to be thinking about what you just said. You’re trying to make her think on an entirely different wavelength.

By opening her with observations, you’re getting her to think on the same wavelength of what she’s already thinking about.

So there you have it in airports!

And Alan as you asked me what I was working on to strike up this last part of my blog, you can do the same with women!!

It’s funny how much men love to complicate things.

You really need to think about this for a few minutes: when you get a brand new gas grill and you’re going to put it together, do you read the directions or do you just figure it out?

When you go and buy a brand new big screen TV, do you just figure out what plugs into what or do you do it by the book?

When you go and get a brand new car, do you ever crack open the owner’s manual?

Never, right?

But then why do men think that women should come with a manual?

When you first talk to a woman, it doesn’t have to be so complicated. The obvious things are the best things because it means that you are paying attention to the little things. If you think about what past girlfriends and other women have said – it’s all about the little things. All the little things make life so much better.

If you pay attention to the little things, women will feel like you’ve actually connected with them. They’ll think, wow, this guy actually paid attention! He was actually present. He wasn’t just trying to pick me up with some type of ridiculous routine.

It’s the obvious things. You need to start thinking and picking up on everything that is obvious. If you don’t, you’re just going to be looking at a barbeque gas grill manual.

Everyone who has worked with me for a weekend always notices the same thing about me and how I function. Like John, a new client. What do you notice about my behavior?

John: What do I notice about your behavior? It seems very natural, very easy to you. And everything you say is very obvious.

But once I’m not with you, it seems like I’m reaching again for the perfect thing to say, and then I’m waiting. And finally it’s like, ugh, I’ve waited too long, now do I move ahead or just let it go?

David: Right, and that’s why repetition is important. You notice that we’re doing the same things over and over again, right? I asked John if he talked to those women in Pinkberry and he said, “no, I wasn’t attracted to them.” And I said, “I’m not attracted to 90% of the people I talk to, but I’m getting to know some great people.”

Just because I don’t want to go out with someone doesn’t mean that they’re not a great person worth talking to. It doesn’t mean that I can’t learn something from them. It doesn’t mean that I can’t meet their friends down the road – it’s all about building up that power and social network.

John: And the fact that those girls at Pinkberry were looking at that furniture book – even if we hadn’t been to that furniture store I still could have just picked up on that and said something about it.

David: Yeah, it was the obvious thing. Furniture shop, redecorating your house… think about the things that come to your mind. An exercise that I tell guys to do is to take 20 common, everyday words – like coffee, groceries, furniture, fresh fruit, gas stations, whatever – write them down and create a story about each of those words.

If you think about it, you can say something about every one of those twenty words. Every word. For gas stations, you think: gas is under $4.00 a gallon now. So then the next time you’re filling up at a gas station, you can say, “holy shit, gas dropped below $4.00 a gallon!”

Everything can be created from that story. The obvious things are the things that you already know and things you can talk about.

Furthermore, if you state the obvious, you won’t break her train of thought, and if you don’t, she’s going to wonder why the fuck you’re talking about something that’s out of left field.

So do you see the difference there? The difference is huge!