Tactics Tuesdays

CAPTION

As you move about your social life, you are bound to receive compliments. Compliments can be a funny thing: while they are nice to receive, we don’t always know how to receive them. Should we compliment back? Self-deprecate? Accept the compliment with a ‘thanks’?

Part of the confusion revolving around how to respond to a compliment is this: not all compliments are the same.

To respond appropriately to a compliment, first, we need to figure out what kind of compliment it is.

How can a man get comfortable enough with women and dating to be relaxed and natural with them? Only through expanding his comfort zone to include them.

For today’s tactical article, I want to give you a tactic to use in service of an important strategy: making yourself as comfortable as possible with women and dating as you can get.

Most of the time when folks talk about the comfort zone, they talk about breaking out of it. When you are in the process of testing the limits on your comfort zone and going beyond them, this is indeed what you are doing – getting out of your comfort zone.

However, the ultimate effect of breaking out of your comfort zone is to EXPAND your comfort zone, spreading it into new territory. No man ever stops having areas in life he is unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. Yet it is possible to expand his comfort zone so far, in so many places, that he only occasionally and deliberately ends up in scenarios he’s unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. In essence, his comfort zone becomes almost everywhere.

The only way to expand your comfort zone is by treading ground you were previously hesitant to tread. To do that, you need to break out of your comfort zone.

We’ll use a tactic for that today we can dub ‘comfort zone expansion’.

At unexpected times, in unexpected places, women may start talking to you. If you aren’t ‘on’ you can miss these chances. How best should you respond?

Commenting on my article about testing girls for interest before you approach, Sub-Zero asks:

How do you deal with not knowing what to say? There’s times when I guess a girl pings me and I don’t know how to respond or how to close.

For example, would you say that these were pings or invitations?

A: I had one girl say the food I was getting made looks good. I couldn’t tell if it was a ping or if she was making small talk. Anyway, I still didn’t know what else to say. I might have said thank you or something?

B. I was shopping and a girl said something about buying some food for her kid, then she said you probably don’t care what I’m getting my kid. There I didn't say anything because I really had no idea what to say.

So would you say those were pings for me to approach or were they just being social and what should I have said, what do you do or say when you don’t know what to say and are stuck?

Yes, these are both pings (the subject of my article on testing girls for interest). Just like you can ping women to test for interest before approaching, women can ping you too. A ping doesn’t mean she’s ready to hop into bed with you, of course – it just means she’s interested in finding out if you’re someone she can chat with. She might want to date you or might just want to talk. Either way, she’s testing you for openness to a conversation.

The problem Sub-Zero has here, that many guys have, is that women ping you at unexpected times, when you are not prepared to be social. Worse still, because most women expect the man to lead, usually all you’ll get from a girl is a single ping… then she retreats and waits. If you don’t act soon, she gives up, closes off, and runs away!

How can you deal with these situations when girls unexpectedly open you… and where you aren’t already primed for socializing, in any kind of social mood?

It’s early into a conversation and you’d like to tell a story. What do you talk about? These 7 examples help you figure out just what tale to tell.

In a comment on my article “How to Tell a Story that Rivets and Captivates”, Greg remarks:

Very interesting article, thank you, I really appreciated it. But now that I know how to tell a story (the form), the problem is what stories to tell (the content). A long list of story examples to tell (one sentence per example, not the complete stories, just the basic idea) (like 30 stories exemples at least) could help in developing or finding one's own stories. Because I don't know about others, but for me, I feel like I don't have any stories to tell.

Sure, story examples. We can talk about some of those.

For this article, I’m going to focus on early conversation stories, since that’s the place the most guys have the most trouble. E.g., “How do I get the storytelling started with a girl I’m talking to?”

We’ll break it down into two categories for this piece: “crazy thing” stories and “cool DHV” stories. Before we begin, I want to preface with a note on the ‘recency’ requirement for early conversation stories.

Instead of ask a girl out on a date, you can offer her one – as thanks. Frame your date as a sign of gratitude and change the frame on your dating.

What if there was a way to leverage the power of the social factor of reciprocity… and use it to actually get dates with more girls?

There is – we just need to use reciprocity the opposite way from how most men try using it with girls.

When your average man attempts to use reciprocity as a romantic tool, the way he does it is by attempting to ingratiate himself to women. His hope: if a woman feels grateful enough to him, that he has done so much for her and provided so much value to her life, she’ll finally agree to a date with him.

This is simple chasing of women, of course. It’s transparent; women see right through it; and studies show that women in general don’t feel too much need to comply more with men just because those men performed favors for them.

If we want to use reciprocity to get dates the seductive way, we can’t use the same (ineffective) approach to it normal men use.

We need to use it the seductive way.

Turn boring conversation into playful banter and open loops. Just ask her, “Is it true what they say about X girls?” with ‘X’ being something about her.

Let’s give you a simple little banter line you can use with pretty much any girl you talk to.

That is this:

“Is it true what they say about X girls?” / “girls from Y place?” / “girls who Z?”

… with ‘X’ or ‘Y’ or ‘Z’ being anything about her she uses to describe herself:

• Age
• Hobby
• Career
• Star sign
• Place of origin

You can also make it a statement: “You know what they say about X girls…”

For instance, if she tells you she’s Greek, you say:

“Is it true what they say about Greek girls?” / “You know what they say about girls from Greece…”

She, of course, will be curious and want to know what “they say” about Greek girls.

That’s where the real fun begins.

You can tell a story to amplify your charisma. Showcase charismatic qualities in your storytelling, and be amazed how people start treating you different.

In light of our New Year’s promotion of my charisma-generating course “Charisma in a Bottle” (and the new, limited release Sexual Charisma Manual that comes with it until January 7th), I wanted to share some pieces devoted to the theme of charisma.

For this Tactics Tuesdays, we’re going to discuss a simple type of charisma-building tactic that anyone can use, and that builds charisma even if a guy doesn’t have great charismatic fundamentals or advanced charisma game… yet.

I call it “Story-Based Charisma” and it revolves around telling stories that frame you in a charismatic light.

If you think that sounds like it couldn’t possibly work to generate charismatic attraction, you’d be very surprised.