Confidence

If you’re not willing to date certain girls, does that mean you’re insecure? Well, perhaps… But only if “insecure” doesn’t mean what your accuser means it means.

There’s a common refrain you’ll hear from women. Not just women, but men sometimes too. The refrain goes like this:

“You don’t want to date her because you’re insecure.”

There are some women this is obviously pure self-serving commentary from. Morbidly obese women, for instance. If a morbidly obese woman tells you you’re insecure if you don’t want to date her, well, you know that’s a tub of baloney (and maybe a tub of lard, too).

This article isn’t about those women. Not the obviously undesirable girls who’d claim your rejection of them stems from insecurity.

Instead, this article is about the fuzzy cases: girls with high notch counts, girls who’ve dated far wealthier or handsomer men than you, girls who’ve dated criminals. Heck, girls who’ve dated men of ‘badder’ races than you are (a white guy if you’re Asian, or a black guy if you’re white, for instance), or girls who used to be guys (transsexuals), or girls who tell you they’ve been rape victims or abuse victims.

Are you, in fact, insecure if you don’t want to date one of these people?

Your gut usually knows what the right thing to do on a date is. The challenge for many guys is learning to be in tune with that gut sense.

A few weeks ago, I found myself grabbing drinks with a girl I met on a dating app. She was pretty cute, a career girl through and through. While texting beforehand, she mentioned she had been working weekends and late nights, but she still made time to meet me on a Sunday evening after another 8-hour day in an 80-hour work week.

I arranged for her to meet me in my area at a lounge just a five-minute walk from my place.

I ran a great game over drinks. We were laughing and vibing at a high energy level the whole time; we talked about Fifty Shades of Grey and sex for a bit, I shared some adventurous stories, and we developed a passionate energy. Forty minutes into it, we got a second round of drinks and I started holding her hand. She was gripping back firmly, and we held hands periodically for twenty minutes. Effectively, she was complying and submitting, and I was firmly in control.

After an hour or so, I suggested we bounce and go grab a snack nearby. She agreed but also said she had to be at a friend’s house in an hour and a half; apparently there was some drama she wanted to clear up. We soon left the lounge holding hands and walking really close.

In this episode of Dating Mechanics, I talk with Dr. David Tian, PhD holder, founder of Aura Dating Academy, and good friend of our own Chase Amante for over 10 years.

What are the differences between how a beneficial, robust mental model works, versus how robust-yet-harmful mental models (like victim mentality) or non-robust mental models yet clung-to models work?

I’ve been analyzing mental models a lot recently. In particular, how people can have extremely different, yet robust or at least unyielding mental models, and how each different kind of mental model produces different kinds of results.

For instance:

• Victim mentality is actually an extremely robust mental model. Individuals who view themselves as victims – and such individuals are extremely common across societies, of every sex, race, age, and creed – continually find reason to view themselves as the recipients of misfortune, find justification for their models, and receive feedback from the world that reinforces rather than disabuses them of their models

• Conversely, what I’d call winner, or success-driven, individuals also have extremely robust mental models. Individuals who view themselves as successes tend to be quite good at finding ways to pull victory out of defeat, at avoiding situations where they would suffer setbacks, and don’t spend much time dwelling on setbacks, other than from a problem-solving mentality. As a result, they spend little time in defeat and quickly dust themselves off even after most reasonably catastrophic failures
  

But it’s not just someone’s victim/winner orientation. It’s also the reliability of his predictions.

For instance, someone who sees himself as a victim has confidence in his mental model because his predictions are either correct, or he explains them away if they aren’t. He sees a pretty girl and says, “Well, she’ll reject me, of course,” and if he approaches and she does reject him, he says, “See? I knew it. Women always reject me.” If instead she’s friendly, he’ll be inclined to explain it away: “She must’ve been drunk” or “She doesn’t really like me... she was probably just being polite.”

Both victims and winners make predictions and their predictions either come true, or they attempt to explain to themselves (and others) why in this case the prediction failed, yet the failure does not violate their mental model overall. This makes these models robust.

Obviously, if they receive enough feedback to crash the model, they’ll be forced to reassess. But most people adopt models that seem to justify their experiences, and avoid experiences that may invalidate their models.

However, prediction is only the surface here – largely because it doesn’t give us a way to qualify the differences between different mental models (like victim and winner mentalities). So we need to add two more pieces.

I propose any robust, success-oriented mental model is comprised of three (3) bits:

• Predictive accuracy,
• Confidence in the model, and
• Harmonious choices and outcomes
  

Hey everyone.

Today I wanted to discuss a very important form of confidence that is rarely mentioned, yet is a KEY factor in your success with women. We are here talking about sexual confidence.

I will first discuss what it is and how it will affect your success with women, then I will give some suggestions on how you can become sexually confident – i.e., tell you how to get there. So this post will be a mix of theory and practical elements.

Early in my “career” I noticed a rather peculiar phenomenon – when I was out with guys (and gals) who saw me as a sort of master seducer (usually due to a combination of my image, behavior, and, occasionally, seeing my previous successes), I would find myself performing much better with women. Every single part of the seduction dance would become noticeably easier without any additional conscious effort on my part.

Would you like to guess why this happens?

Sure, being in a good mood because you’re hanging out or meeting people you like plays a significant role, and an occasional comment like “Oh yeah, he’s very experienced in bed” said jokingly in a group setting does its job to create a reputation of someone who knows what he’s doing.

But that’s not it; the change that makes the biggest impact turns out to be in our head.

You see, when I hang out with people who already see me as someone who’s successful with women and expect me to act like that, it puts a certain positive pressure and, in a way, makes it socially okay, even expected, to act sexually.

In turn, I would find myself assuming the role of a sexy guy who pulls women left and right, which, as we’ll learn later in the article, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – cool, right?

Note that this is happening almost exclusively in our head and, more often than not, without conscious interference – a change in self-perception based on the environment.

Men are supposed to be natural born leaders. They are supposed to voluntarily run into the throes of danger, protect all those who they hold dear, and, most of all, make sound decisions on a consistent basis whenever a challenge or dilemma presents itself.

But if this is what men are supposed to do naturally, why do so many men find it so hard to be good decision-makers? Shouldn’t it just come to them like second nature? Although some people may believe that decision making for a man is easy, all men know that it can be hard to make a decision – not because of the act itself – but more because we fear bringing about a negative outcome or not making the best decision we can in a given situation.

Most of the time when you ask people for advice on decision-making they just say things like: “Just do it!” But this isn’t really advice. Nor is it really useful unless you’re already decisive.

So how can we make ourselves more effective decision makers? That’s what I’m going to talk about today. I’m going to outline some important mindsets and techniques in order to make you stronger and more confident in your decisions and, more importantly, your decision process.