Socializing

In the article on operant conditioning the other day, I'd made some terminology mix-ups that a commenter with the handle Slightly Confused noticed and pointed out to me in a very polite and socially gracious way, and I checked on the errors he pointed out, realized he was right, owned the mistake, and corrected it. I commented back letting him know of the correction, and he had this to say after:

“Thanks for handling my earlier comment so well. I'll have to remember how you responded for when I run into that situation in the future. If you want another article idea, you could write one on corrections. It could talk about how to handling being corrected in different situations as well as when and how to correct others. The article could differentiate between corrections based on opinions and based on facts and could talk different situations such as pickup, a long term relationship, being out with friends, meeting someone new, and in a business situation, like one were a boss says something incorrect (or the boss corrects you), when you are with peers, or when you are talking to a customer. It also could cover the situations when you should and should not correct yourself when you realize you are wrong and the long term effects handling the situation a certain way may have. I realize that may be too big of a topic to cover but hopefully it gives you some ideas or something you can use.”

Some interesting ideas for a post there from SC - when and how to correct yourself, and when to perform a course correct, effectively.

And this is more nuanced than you might at first think.

There's a surprisingly great deal at risk in correcting oneself - you chance losing the confidence of those who were depending on you to know your stuff, you chance undermining and reversing whatever momentum you had, and you even chance transferring momentum over to an opponent who's hard at work endeavoring to snatch at the moral high ground away from you.

So should you ever do a course correct? With so much to lose, does it make sense to ever correct yourself... or might it be better just to soldier on, never admit mistakes, and keep your own personal reality distortion field tuned to maximum at all times to take others' eyes away from the inconsistencies?

In The Law of Success, a very, very good book by Napoleon Hill - perhaps one of my favorites all time, in fact - Hill discusses, as one of the 16 tenets of success, the necessity of having a pleasing personality. Part of his recommendation is for listeners to be agreeable.

If you look at most people in Western society, I don't think this aspect of a pleasing personality - being agreeable - is much of a problem for them. In fact, I think one of the overriding problems for Westerners is in being too agreeable - so much so that anyone willing to be a bit less agreeable is able to easily steamroll them into uncomfortable submission.

But, that's a topic for another time. What I want to discuss in this article is why it's a good thing to be a little hard to please... at least some of the time.

Because if you've long made a habit of being overly agreeable - and there really can be too much of a good thing - a little dose of pickiness may just be in order.

We've had a handful of commenters write in recently to ask about how to be vulnerable, as well as how to more fully embody Byronic traits, like those mentioned in the articles on answering "Do you have a girlfriend?" and on being a challenge to women. How do you, as a man, be vulnerable, in a way that is both appealing yet not overly sappy or saccharine?

One of these comments from a reader reads as such:

“I have several girls interested in me primarily because of my flaws, and they have told me to my face that I am imperfectly perfect. I am interested in this Byronic concept. Do you try to adapt byronic traits? And can you do a post on them?”

The flawed, vulnerable, Byronic romantic hero - he lines the pages of romance novels, and dots the dreams of women's hearts. But who is he, and how do you become this imperfect man that women so love to fantasize about?

The truth is, we are all of us imperfect, and that gives us an edge. The problem is, most men spend too much time either trying to cover up their flaws entirely, or indulge in them so much that they refuse to improve.

Like always, I will advise you to take the middle path, that lies at neither extreme, but the crossroads of both. Let's have a look at how you can do that.

We’ve all faced judgments and judgmental people in the world, and it is something that people very rarely have a complete grasp of. When a man truly holds no prejudice, women will open up to him in a way that they could not imagine themselves opening up to any other guy. All of the sudden, women feel comfortable with you and communicate with you in a very warm and friendly way.

When you want to start a relationship right, you cannot judge women, of course; but, what happens when you are consciously aware of this, and despite that, the women are judging YOU?

Most people have judgments without even knowing it. Ask someone if they are judgmental, and you’ll get a “No, of course not!” Judgmental people are seen as bad, horrible humans who don’t have a soul and don’t deserve our time.

If a woman acts judgmental, you should righteously stop the seduction on the spot; or so you would think.

We all remember a time when we were judgmental of others, but would we say we were morally unjust humans because of it? No. Just because a woman is judgmental does not mean she isn’t worth your time.

Most people aren’t aware that they are doing it, and it is very simple to cut out of conversation. It’s just another barrier we need to overcome.

In the article on causes and cures for a moody girlfriend, a reader asks about how to compliment a girl, saying:

“Hi there Chase,

Can you write an article about compliments to girls that [you] are interested in. Not just from that you approached cold but girls that you met through hobbies or friends. I tend to like to tell girls aggressive compliments of sexual nature. Like I would think they are good kissers, they have nice ass or legs, or that I love their bodies and also other compliments in which is related to personality type because there are 2 opinions about compliments.”

Compliments are a little tricky to get your head around when you first start using them. Go to far overboard, and you seem like you're chasing her; don't compliment at all, and you run the risk of that attractive new woman you've met ending up in auto-rejection.

Then, there are the various kinds of compliments... everything from the most subtle compliments she won't even realize were compliments until she thinks about them later, to those blunt-force-direct compliments our reader talks about, like telling a girl she's got a great pair of legs.

We'll cover all those and more in this article, your complete guide to complimenting women like only a pro knows how.

One of our younger readers, by the name of Jaden, asked over in the comments section of my article "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way" about high school popularity, asking:

“What would the process for becoming popular look like? I would say im on the edge of popularity, as the "cool" kids all talk to me and invite me to their lunch tables and stuff (hardcore, right?), yet they do not invite me to their houses and parties, which are actually quite fun. How can I develop an air of superiority, and is there anything in specific I can do to raise my status?”

If I had to redefine that question to really get to its gist, I'd say it's more, "How do I make friends with the other students I want to be friends with?" than it is, "How do I make everyone like me more?" What Jaden wants here is to see these classmates of his outside of school - he wants to make friends.

But he isn't the only one who wants to know how to do this better. There are plenty of people who struggle with making friends in high school and college - and even more once they're out of those places.

If you thought it was hard making friends in an environment where everyone is your own age and you all do the same things, just wait until you're out of that environment, and you're working in the professional world where people range from 22 to 62. High school and college end up looking like friendship bonanzas compared to the working world that follows them.

Making friends isn't actually that hard a process though - take it from me, a guy who spent his the entirety of his teenage years friendless, then reinvented himself and emerged as someone who made friends with jet-setters, entrepreneurs, seducers, celebrities, and millionaires. How'd I go from zero friends to friends with some of the most in-demand people you'll meet, whom everyone wants to be friends with?

The secret, I found, lies in just one master key - from which all the other paths to friendship flow out.

In Sunday's article on how to be smooth, Walls made the following comment:

“I truly appreciate all the work you do breaking this down, Chase. It would be so easy to just own this info you learned from years of trial and error and just monopolize it. I was thinking about smoothness in conflict due to this life-changing post and it got me thinking: when do you let comments/threats/faux paus/annoyances roll down your back, and when do you actually put opposers in their place? And what is the best way to ignore when people make fauxpas, such as the ones in your article "Faux Pas of the Social Neveaux." (maybe more faux pas listed too?)”

He's talking about two things here, but the two are in many ways one and the same:

1. When someone is standing in opposition to you, accusing you, or insulting you

2. When someone is making social mistakes around you and creating awkward or disadvantageous situations for you

That is, in other words, when someone is making things challenging for you. And he is asking the question "How do you answer a challenge?"

It's a good question, because it has an answer that can go a variety of ways. Do you remain unreactive to it - and potentially let the challenge eat your chances alive? Or do you challenge your challenger back, and potentially lose your cool - and the girl you were most interested in?

This is a question without a readily apparent simple answer... and sometimes those are the questions we like most on this site. How do you answer a challenge, anyway?