(Drawn from the Author's Forum)

And now for some further mail analysis. This particular one is from a recent discussion I had with a reader who continues to have difficulty striking up conversations with women -- the single most common and vexing problem for men in the game of seduction. My new book ""She's Yours For The Taking" addresses this issue in depth with a technique called "pull-tabbing"... a simple and low pressure way to exchange a few words with any pretty girl that you see hanging around... anywhere.

Remember that, whenever you flirt, you always want to do so with at least the minor objective of getting a sense of whether or not the woman seems to have any return interest in you. You're 1) making her feel good about herself (it's the ultimate compliment any man can give a woman, after all), and 2) checking for the sparkle in her eye that signals possible sexual / romantic interest. Flirting is always just regarded as a TEST, never a moon mission. You're just being playfully curious about her, that's all...

Hey Mike,

I wrote you a few e-mails earlier about my dating troubles after I read your book Without Embarrassment. Anyway, I feel compelled to write you again...

I still have difficulty maintaining a conversation. I try to forget about the fact that a particular girl might be really attractive, and want to just converse with her as another human being. Now, you caution in your book against this neutral-friendly approach, as this doesn't communicate enough sexual interest, but I believe that only after I can relate to women as other human beings I can elevate my game to the next level which is to communicate my sexual interest to them.

As an example of how lousy I am at this, there is this gorgeous woman in a swim class I'm taking that I would rate a 9, maybe even 9.5! The class is small (only 5 people + an instructor), and it seems like the other guys who are there are no competition to me as they don't say anything throughout the whole class and aren't particularly good-looking enough to give them any edge. Unfortunately, I'm not saying much either! I do say a thing or two here and there, I even elicited a laugh from everybody a few times, but I can't seem to get into the frame of mind where I could just have some harmless conversation with her.

Yesterday she appeared in class, after having missed it the previous week. So I said to her, "I thought you quit."

She answered "No, I was at a conference in Montreal."

I then said "Cool, what was the conference about?"

"Some psychology crap." (she's a psychology major I guess)

"Yeah, most psychology IS crap I suppose..." I replied, laughing.

And that was all for THAT conversation! I realized I could have told her how much I liked Montreal... asked her about other things she has done there, etc. But none of this happened, of course. I wonder if I can ever muster up enough courage to ask someone like her out? Just uttering the words "Let's go for coffee sometime" would be HUGE progress for me, regardless of her response. I'm sure I won't remember what was so hard about asking women out when I'm actually doing it on a regular basis someday, but I'm just not there yet. Any advice here?

Cheers,
Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for writing and good to hear from you again, it sounds like you're determined to do the work necessary to get over these issues and make some real progress in your social life. And for this you are to be commended my friend. That's the way to keep driving forward into the wind!

It seems to me that the problem you're having with conversations, like most introverted "over-thinkers", is one mainly of focus. By that I mean where your own focus is directed. The difference between guys who are limited talkers and people who can "talk the bricks out of a wall", is all about whether or not their focus is INTERNAL or EXTERNAL. You are probably still too internally focused while trying to converse with people. By this I mean that what you're actually trying to communicate isn't as important as fretting over how you're coming across to them... or maybe you're trying to "mind-read" what she thinks of you, etc. Like that.

For example, while talking with this girl after swim class, you might've been thinking things like, "that must've sounded stupid to her..." or "this girl probably has a boyfriend..." or other things that concern issues OTHER than the content of the actual conversation that you were trying to have. (Probably issues about how well you were being received, which is internally-directed.) That's why it didn't occur to you until much later that you could've picked up and ran with that conversation in several different directions and scored some connection points with her along the way. However, you weren't really thinking about Montreal or anything else at the time -- only your own discomfort and anxiety.

An externally-focused person instead would've been thinking: "I wonder if she's ever been to Toronto?" or "how long does it take to get a psychology degree?" or "maybe I can get this girl to psychoanalyze me over coffee?...". In other words, he's thinking about things OTHER than himself and how this encounter is perhaps distressing emotionally. The externally-focused person "disappears" (ego subduction) and becomes "one" with the content of the conversation, instead of standing outside of himself continually analyzing his own performance.

The exchange of communication is more fascinating to him than his own presentation of it, in other words.

This is the major problem with internally-directed people... their own mental universe is always more dominant and more important to them than any external reality could ever be, and so this is where the problem must be addressed. Remember this, if you're ego-centered it means that (in your own mind) you are always standing on stage and giving a performance... and that you (along with everyone else) are also JUDGING that performance! You can't comfortably allow yourself to become absorbed into any conversation for it's own sake because you're too busy judging, grading and inhibiting your own sweaty stage act. This means that to some degree you are always suffering from Stage Fright!

Until you break this habit and free yourself from this tyrannical "judge" that lurks in your consciousness, you won't be able to have an effective conversation and then be able to escalate it upwards towards sexual interest / flirting as you form a growing connection. You need to remove these mental handcuffs and let your consciousness free-stream some more.

And so this is where you need to direct you efforts in terms of staying alert for when this "judge" pops up, and then immediately learning how to cancel him out. Try to let yourself become absorbed and interested in what the other person is saying and forget about your own internal chatter for a moment. Slowly through this kind of gradual self-conditioning you will learn how to become more at ease in conversation with anyone... and especially with highly-intimidating, cute women!

Psycho-Tricks 101: Another great social skill to have is something called MODELING. Modeling is based on the interesting fact that people will pick up on subtle non-verbal clues from others around them and begin to unconsciously mimic them. It's possible to elicit a smile from most people simply by smiling at them first, for instance. You can basically model the types of behavior that you want to see coming from other people and have them reflect it back at you. By modeling an upbeat, horny, sexy, emotionally-charged demeanor for instance, it's possible to "pull" a woman into the same state... IF you can get her attention to remain focused on you for a while. The more YOU seem to want it, the more you can make HER start thinking about it too. It's a classic rapport-building technique (though admittedly, modeling horniness goes far beyond the mere establishment of rapport! ).

Still, if you focus more on controlling another person in this way (kind of like the puppet-master working a puppet) it will absorb a lot of your mental energy that would be otherwise spent self-judging your performance and dissipate it harmlessly.

Which brings me to Psycho-Tricks 102: You can learn to trick-out your brain's anxiety by forcing it to engage in two competing conscious processes simultaneously. The brain doesn't multi-task well, it "serial-tasks" (one thing at a time). That's because the neural networks tend to compete with each other for your minds' undivided attention, so they are forced to switch back and forth rather rapidly. This gives the illusion of being able to multi-task, but your brain is really only doing one thing at a time at any given moment. And you can use this little biological fact to block and control unwanted emotions.

For example, did you ever have "piss fear" at a public urinal? You know what I mean... it can happen when some dude steps right up next to you as you're trying to take a leak, and suddenly your own kidneys lock up? (Piss fear always seems to afflict some chump way up in front of me during those long halftime lines at football games... usually while I'm standing way in back of the pack with a distended bladder only seconds away from bursting open, Aliens-like).

Well, whenever that happens to you from now on, all you need to remember to do is FOCUS YOUR CONCENTRATION ON A MATH PROBLEM. Go ahead... multiply 97 x 23. Do it. Work it out in your head. About halfway through the problem, while you're still carrying numbers and aligning them mentally... lo and behold, the piss runneth! Why? Turns out the ol' brain can't do complex math AND support "piss fear" at the same time -- one of these high level conscious processes has to go away and wait for the other one to finish.

The point is, this ability to distract by serial focus is a major tool that you can learn to use to control your emotions and performance, both socially and at other things as well. Focus blocks fear. So next time you're chatting up some cricket and feel yourself beginning to choke up, do a few math problems in your head and relax. Just make sure you don't seem too distracted and lose track of the conversation altogether.

Still, it's better to seem distant (mysterious) than desperate, right?

As a final technical note, when talking with women always express wonder and amazement at what they have to say rather than laying on a snap negative judgement. For instance, when you dismissed all of Psychology as being "crap" (even though you were technically in agreement with her) this brought the conversation to a dead stop. A negative judgement will always do that, especially where it concerns women. They still tend to hang on the potential judgements of men and require their validation to a certain degree -- feminism be damned. If you demonstrate an inability to give praise, it will give them pause about you and you will go down a notch in their minds.

Remember how I talked about the idea of CHARISMA in my books?... How it's all about making people feel good about themselves because of your presence? You can do this simply by remembering to be AMAZED and INTERESTED at whatever any cute chick is talking about, rather than jumping automatically to some negative comment or dismissing her ideas as stupid or childish.

Save that shit for when you become a married, bitter, cynical old guy... (kind of like me, without the marriage part of course ;-)

There are lots more interesting Q&A Forum Letters like this one waiting for you on the site right now: Authors Forum...

©2007 Mike Pilinski

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