The Art of Seduction: How to Make Her Want You

By PUA Freeman

Copyright www.PowerfullyConfident.com 2016

www.PowerfullyConfident.com

.

Forward

Not many men would admit to it but approaching a beautiful woman they are attracted to is perhaps one of the scariest and most daunting things they could ever imagine doing. The fear of rejection can almost be paralyzing for so many guys, many of whom are highly successful and confident in other areas of their lives.

PUA Freeman is a dating and attraction coach who runs self-confidence Bootcamps in major cities all around the world. Teaching men how to approach and talk to women.

Forget everything you think you have heard about “game’ and ‘pick up’. This book is not about manipulating or tricking girls into bed. Powerfully Confident Bootcamps teach men how to have the drive and passion to go after what they want while having the heart and integrity to be the sort of genuine guy that women dream of one day meeting.

If you are ready to get off the fence and go after the life you really desire then this book could be one of the most important discoveries of your life.

Discover:

How to become fearless with the opposite sex.

How to make a powerfully attractive first impression.

A complete body language overhaul.

NLP secrets that make your words magnetic.

How to open, engage and get her number within 60 seconds.

How you become the man that all women dream of meeting.

How, by applying all this you can make the world your playground.

Chapter One – The End

“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it”, Jiddu Krishnamurti

When guys turn up for a Powerfully Confident Bootcamp they are often shaking with fear. The brave decision to attend this extreme and unusual form of personal development training seemed like a good idea at the time, when it was just a payment window on a computer screen. But then in the cold light of day, when we are standing face to face many want nothing more than to tell me to keep the money and just let them go home. To date only one student has bailed out, this is testament to just how important this training is to the many men who go through the process with me each year.

A Powerfully Confident Bootcamp is a two-day training program with me and no more than two other likeminded students. We start with a process that I call the ‘Deep Dive’, this is where we talk about fear and those intense feelings of anxiety that prevent guys from laying it all on the line and going after the girl they really want. After I listen to stories that are often very common and similar to one and another I start the Bootcamp with the bad news. I inform my students that one day, no matter what they do they are going to die. Regardless of the decisions they make there will come a time when all the things that they worried about will mean nothing to anybody. All the stress about the opposite sex, all the anxiety spent worrying about what other people may think of them and all the misdirected energy will be a blissful irrelevance.

Fear is a protective reaction of the human mind; it is there to serve a purpose. When you approach the edge of a tall building, fear is very much your best friend. This action of the central nervous system will dramatically extend the duration of your life in situations like that. Where this process falls down is where it tried to protect you in environments where you are not really at risk. Walking up to a beautiful woman that you are attracted to and simply talking to her does not put your life at risk and yet our mind tells us that we are doing something very dangerous. Often it will put our limbs into a state of paralysis to force us to avoid the danger. If you have ever attempted to approach a girl when you feel like this and have experienced just how intense the sensations of panic are you will understand that I am not exaggerating here. A recent survey has revealed that the number one biggest fear in America today is public speaking; do you know what came in second? Death was the second most common fear. What this tells us is that people fear speaking in public more than they fear dying!

This may at first glace appear to be a rather silly thought process but in my experience of teaching this material I have often seen that the more intelligent the man the more they experience fear. The biggest threat to your ability to approach and attract women is thinking, or better put thinking too much. My goal in working with students is to get them to the point when they operate entirely subconsciously around women; I want them to get to the point where they very seldom make a conscious decision to approach. You will see from the in field videos at my website that some of the best approaches I make are done with zero planning or forethought. When I find myself talking to a hot woman and I have no idea how I got there, this is a beautiful feeling. In this moment I know I am operating from the most powerful part of my mind, the subconscious.

The Bad News

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new”, Steve Jobs

Back when I first started out in the media industry as a cocky seventeen-year-old boy, I remember once being interviewed by a local newspaper. I had just been appointed as the new breakfast presenter for Radio Wyvern, in Worcestershire – a town near the southern Welsh border with England. At the time I was the youngest morning show host in the country and the pressure was on me to mature fast but also to quickly demonstrate that I was worthy of the risk some poor misguided programme director had taken by putting such a total newbie in this enormous position of power. The newspaper article had been arranged as a favor for the boss and so it was only ever going to be a light hearted affair. I didn’t need to be too careful what I said because the journalist had been asked to write something that was nothing much more than a complimentary commercial for my new breakfast show. The depth and weight of those questions would hardly tax me further than ‘what’s your favorite color’.

It quickly became apparent that I was going to be given twenty harmless if somewhat inane questions to pad out an article about me that they would probably bury somewhere on page thirty seven, just next to the classified ads for surgical support stockings and lost pets. I answered each question quickly and honestly. The journalist would listen to my reply, sigh and scribble something down my reply on his note pad. After four or five questions I realized that I was boring the guy to death. Hey I was seventeen years old, nobody had told me how to speak to the press or even how to answer trivia about myself.

I decided I was going to have to spice up my answers and try to be a little more of a personality, after all I was guessing that was all this poor journo was clinging to for ammunition to write what might be the most tedious piece of copy in his career. After a few more questions I felt like I was doing a little better, the journalist had smiled once and raised his eyebrows a few times. This, I decided meant that I was either doing really well or really bad, I wouldn’t know for sure until I saw the actual newspaper the next day or I got called to the boss’ office for the hair dryer treatment.

Question twelve was ‘what is your biggest fear’, I looked him square in the eye and paused a moment. Then I raised one eyebrow, Roger Moore style and said ‘fear, is my only fear – everything else is child’s play’. This answer immediately made me want to vomit. So putrid and contrived was it that on the anniversary of this interview I swear the same gut wrenching, bile-inducing sensation came over me every year for many years that followed, as some sort of divine punishment for saying something so pretentious and appalling.

Here I am twenty-five years later sitting on a train to London and for some reason that memory is as fresh as it was the day I uttered such trite nonsense. Shockingly, I now believe it may have leapt from the grey, murky bog of my mind because I may actually have been right. Now hold on a minute, I know that premise does not defend against such wanton pomposity and I still most deservedly require a good slapping about the chops until I beg for forgiveness. However, ‘fear’ is what I have come to recognize as the single biggest element that prevents me (and all of us) reaching our true potential and really living the life of our dreams. It is not logic, responsibility or contentment that keeps us trapped in underachievement but rather it is fear that holds the key to our jail cell.

Human behavior appears to be complex and multilayered but in reality it comes down to two simple elements. All human motivation is essentially a binary process, meaning that we are moved to do something or avoid doing something by a switch in our head, either being in one position or the other. All decisions, actions and deeds are made as a result of us either avoiding fear or pursuing pleasure, and that is pretty much it. The reason for everything we do comes down to this simple premise.

We can spend hours debating this issue (as I have done many times before) but trust me on this one, even the apparently self sacrificing actions of a parent for their child are still motivated by the emotions of fear and pleasure.

In the case of self-esteem and confidence the fear that prevents us performing as we could is 99.9% misplaced. Of course sometimes the fear we feel most definitely has a place and I am not suggesting you ignore that little voice in your head that suggests you can’t safely jump from one tall building to another. The fear you feel just before you do your first parachute jump is a process of the human mind operating exactly as it should. Making you feel afraid in these moments is a form of self-preservation. It is the brain’s way of saying ‘hey if you carry on doing what you are doing there is a very good chance you will die, and you will most likely take me along with you’!

But the fear that suggests to you that you are not attractive enough to talk to the hot girl is a misfire of this process. The gut twisting anxiety you experience as you step up to make a presentation to the whole office is this life saving feature of the human mind misunderstanding the situation and trying to force you to exit an environment it has incorrectly judged to be dangerous. 

Confidence, or rather the lack of it is a simple throw back to our earlier times as hunter-gatherers. Or putting it another way, we are witnessing and experiencing the time lag of evolution trying to catch up with and adapt to what modern life involves. The life of a human being in the western world today has changed so dramatically over the last few hundred years that it is almost incomparable to what our forefathers had to endure. Today we get upset and feel like we have had a bad day if we get cut up on the way to work, can’t find a parking space in the lot or spill our latte on our favorite t-shirt.

Compared to the life threatening events that happened on a daily basis to the generations that went before us, all these things are embarrassingly trivial. As relatively recently as the 1800’s the average life expectancy of a human male living in the United Kingdom was 39 years. With disease, unsafe working conditions and vigilantly justice commonplace someone at my tender age of 40 would be considered to be an old man. Perhaps my children have been correct all along when they insist I am incapable of appreciating their musical taste because I am so decrepit.

Bearing in mind that evolution is a painfully slow process that takes hundreds of thousands of years to make even the smallest adaptations to the design of our species, you can perhaps see why it is struggling to keep up with our rapidly changing modern lifestyles. Apple might bring out a new model of its products every year but Mother Nature does not!

Back when we were at constant risk of being attacked by not only wild animals but also our fellow uncivilized man the human mind developed systems to try and keep us alive despite the inherent danger around us. Perhaps the most famous of these is what we have called the ‘flight or fight’ response.

When our fight or flight response is activated, sequences of nerve cell fire and potent chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream. If you want to see just how dramatic these chemicals are, get food poisoning and watch what happens. I can tell you from recent experience you’re your body uses these neuro chemicals to make you dance like you are nothing more than a puppet on a string. When the body detects you have ingested something dangerous, like rotten food or too much alcohol it needs to force you to evacuate the offending material and it doesn’t want to waste time debating this with you. Vast amounts of chemicals are released by your central nervous system that make you feel incredibly ill, almost to the point where you feel like you are going to die. The next thing you know you are holding onto the toilet bowl like your life depended on it, screaming projectile vomit into the water. As a reward for doing as you were told the body now releases mind bending amounts of dopamine, which has the effect of making you feel instantly better – almost high. I don’t advise you experience food poisoning to verify this for yourself, just trust me.

My apologies, a rather unpleasant tangent sidetracked me there for a moment. Getting back to how the mind instigate the flight or fight response. These patterns of neuro reactions and chemical releases force our body to undergo a series of very dramatic changes. Our respiratory rate increases. Blood is shunted away from our digestive tract and directed into our muscles and limbs, which require extra energy and fuel for running, fighting or maybe even both.

Our pupils dilate

Our awareness intensifies

Our sight sharpens

Our impulses quicken

Our perception of pain diminishes.

Our immune system mobilizes.

We become prepared physically and psychologically for fight or flight.

We scan and search our environment, "looking for the enemy."

When our fight or flight system is activated, we tend to perceive everything in our environment as a possible threat to our survival. By its very nature, the fight or flight system bypasses our rational mind—where our more well thought out beliefs exist, and instead it moves us into "attack" mode. This state of alertness causes us to perceive almost everything in our world as a possible threat to our survival. As such, we tend to see everyone and everything as a possible enemy. Like airport security during a terrorist threat, we are on the look out for every possible danger. We may overreact to the slightest comment. Our fear is exaggerated. Our thinking is distorted. We see everything through the filter of possible danger. We narrow our focus to those things that can harm us. Fear becomes the lens through which we see the world.

Our fight or flight response is designed to protect us from the proverbial saber tooth tigers that once lurked in the woods and fields around us, threatening our physical survival. At times when our actual physical survival is threatened, there is no greater response to have on our side. When activated, the fight or flight response causes a surge of adrenaline and other stress hormones to pump through our body. This surge is the force responsible for mothers lifting cars off their trapped children and for firemen heroically running into blazing houses to save endangered victims. The surge of adrenaline imbues us with heroism and courage at times when we are called upon to protect and defend the lives and values we cherish.

While this protective routine still has a valid place in our lives it does not need to be activated quite as much as it is being doing and certainly not in situations that are not dangerous such as making a PowerPoint presentation at work!

But ‘flight or fight’ is an incorrect moniker for this instinctive response to stress. There is a missing F in that much quoted saying. Actually the more common reaction in situations deemed to be high risk is not to fight or flee but rather to freeze.

Fight, Flight or FREEZE

I am sure at times you have felt that ‘rabbit in the headlights’ sensation, where you know what is expected of you but somehow you just can’t bring yourself to move. There are no mistakes in nature and obviously removing your conscious ability to move, is a feature designed by evolution.  If a giant brown bear enters your immediate environment and your subconscious programming decides that the absolutely best chance you have to remain alive is to play dead then the last thing it wants is your pesky (and weak) conscious mind to have a say on the decision. So it locks you down and despite how much you want to move you find that it is virtually impossible.

When you freeze before making a speech or feel like your tongue has been paralyzed the very moment the beautiful woman starts to talk to you this is simply the mind misreading the situation as dangerous and firing off one of your self-preservation routines. Of course the big question is how do you stop it doing this?

The answer to this question and the beginning of a life full of abundance and success lies in the preceding pages. All I ask at this point is that you don’t try to skip ahead and find the magic bullet. You will find no such thing, there is no one sentence that on it’s own can build your confidence. Success, as with everything else in life is not about the final destination it is all about the journey to get there.

What I have discovered in life is that pretty much anything worth having is slightly just outside your comfort zone. Whether it’s launching your own business, winning the league in your chosen sport, getting the career you have dreamed of all your life or ending up with the man or woman who makes you think you just won the lottery every moment you are with them. None of these things are inside your comfort zone, they all require you to stretch and grow before you can reach them. As most people know the walls of your comfort zone are made of a very strong material called fear. In order to smash through these barriers you have to stare fear straight in the eyes and charge ahead regardless.

Fear (false evidence appearing real) is just an illusion, and I don’t just mean certain types of fear. You might quite reasonably argue that the anxiousness you feel when you stand on the top of a tall building is a very valuable sensation to experience in that moment. Of course, sometimes fear serves you in the short term but the biggest problem we have, as an intelligent species is we believe that we have something to lose. The quote from Steve Jobs that I started this chapter with is perhaps the most profound paragraph I have ever heard and for that reason you will find it quoted verbatim in many of my books. You are going to die, not one of us is getting out of this alive. One day everything you ever worried about will become irrelevant dust. You are already naked, you always have been and there is not a single reason why you should not be following your dreams and living a life full of happiness, peace and purpose!

When this ride is over nobody is going to mention the day you risked it all and unsuccessfully went after that big promotion at work, nobody will recall the day you threw caution to the wind and gambled with rejection by approaching that beautiful girl you saw in the street. All this stuff is only significant to your own ego.

Law of attraction books like ‘The Secret’ tell you that if you want to be rich then act like a rich person, think like a rich person and express gratitude for your wealth before it arrives. I am telling you this will never work, UNLESS you believe you deserve it.

When you consider what you want in life, ask yourself; does it lie beyond a wall of fear you are never going to cross? If so, then you will always use the divine power within you to hold your dreams just slightly out of reach. No matter how positive your thinking gets, no matter how many affirmations you make or how much gratitude you express, fear is going to prevent you manifesting magic into your life.

In this book you will make friends with fear. I will show you how I recognize fear not as a warning or obstacle but rather as an indicator of an opening window of opportunity. I now know that when I am afraid to do something, then this is the universe telling me clearly and specifically what I have to do next. Fear is a very strong sign to me that an opportunity to learn, develop and grow has arrived. What most people see as an obstacle I see as the most powerful gift anyone can get and I am going to give the same paradigm to you, starting today.

V is for Victim

“ Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.

But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that!

I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life ”, Rocky Balboa

I want to tell you about Katie, I am sure you know her already, perhaps not the same Katie but certainly ‘a Katie’. Poor Katie drew a bad hand in life; she didn’t do great at school because as she tells the story the teachers were idiots. She always dreamed of a cool apartment overlooking the sea, with a little dog called Jack. Unfortunately because her boss is an asshole she has to rent a crumby flat in a rough part of town and due to the fact the Mr. Brown the landlord is a total douche and doesn’t allow pets she is not allowed to get a dog.

Talk to Katie yourself and she will tell you how unfair life is and how she deserves so much more than such and such a person and yet they have everything she wants. She will tell you that nobody really understands her and all her friends are two-faced bitches who are out to cause as much trouble as possible.

Is it possible that Katie just got an unlucky break in life, is there any chance that she is correct in her assessment of life? Let’s put it this way, there is more chance of Donald Trump denouncing racism and promoting love and peace for all men than Katie being accurate in her assessment of why she is not living the life she wants. Katie is a victim and these victims are everywhere – we can’t move for them. These are the people that believe life owes them something and they often spend an entire lifetime furious that the neighbor got yet another new car or so and so got promoted at work when they are quite clearly incompetent.

Victims not only suck the energy out of their own lives but anyone who comes close enough to get caught up in their vortex of doom. They are mood hoovers and I am almost certain you can think of at least a few people who fit perfectly into this description. Let’s first talk about how you deal with this trait in other people and then I want you to have a little honesty session about areas of your life where you have adopted the roll of victim, because its easier than facing the hard truth.

How do you help a victim? The short answer is you can’t, because they don’t want to be helped. They like being the victim; it gives them a convenient explanation as to why their life blows chunks. On their deathbed you could ask them ‘why didn’t you live the life you were truly capable of’ and they will have enough plausible deniability to stubbornly point at something or someone and say ‘because of that’. All the time they are pointing a finger of blame at everything and everyone around them they are blissfully unaware they have three fingers pointed right back at them. It is really frustrating to care about a victim because you can see the huge untapped potential in them but they cannot. When they look in the mirror all they see is someone who has been badly treated by life.

If they are a family member, or even perhaps your son or daughter you will desperately try to help them see the truth but in my experience all you will end up doing is expending vast amounts of energy to get precisely nowhere with them. The harsh reality is this; we are all divine creators of life. We each have a fragment of God embedded within us and we all have the power to perform our own miracles. If we take decisive action and flow with the universe instead of kicking violently to go back up stream we can manifest breathtakingly amazing lives for ourselves. Victims have this power too but they choose to ignore it.

How to spot a victim

Victims have reasons, lots of them and often they seem entirely logical and plausible explanations.

I am ill because the doctor gave me the wrong medicine

I am poor because my boss is a jerk

I got fired because I am a woman

I got made redundant because I am black

They won’t employ me because I am white

I can’t quit drinking because it’s the only pleasure I have left.

I am too stressed to stop smoking

The list goes on and on and all of it is 100% proof bullshit. There are four certainties in this life. You will be born, you will die and in between you will pay tax and life will repeatedly knock you down. As Rocky Balboa says ‘Ain’t nothing going to hit as hard as life’. Getting knocked down is not bad luck anymore than turning on the tap and getting water could be considered luck. Life is getting knocked down, the choice is getting back up again looking it in the eye and saying ‘is that all you got, hit me again but this time put some effort in it you big girl’s blouse’.

The reason you can’t help the victims is when they get knocked down they love it. It gives them what they want, an excuse not to get back up again. They are like boxers who are too tired to keep fighting hoping for one decent punch so they can fall down with dignity and stay the hell down until the referee counts ten.

Exercise

Stop reading for ten minutes and think about the victims in your life. Ask yourself who they are, how long they have been there and most importantly how much time are you spending trying to make them feel better. Which by the way is like trying to push oil uphill. Once you are clear about who these people are I want you to make a conscious decision to spend less and less time in their company – until they are no longer a part of your life. That’s right I am asking you to fire the mood hovers in your life, you can’t help them, they are not helping you so it’s time for them to leave.

There is a way to help but it is almost certainly not what you are doing at the moment. If dumping them out of your life is not possible or you are not comfortable doing that then reduce the amount of time you spend with them and use the cleaning method I describe in detail in Manifesting Magic part 4. To do this you have to accept responsibility for your share of the problem. The fact that this person’s victim mentality is present in your manifestation of the universe means that it exists within you at a subconscious level. Use the healing meditation of Ho’oponopono to clean the program within you and you will both reap the benefits.

But wait… what if you are the victim?

Are you a victim? This is a pretty easy question to answer; think of something in your life that you are not happy with. For example lets say you need more money. Now with that problem in mind explain to yourself why this is your current situation. If you find you have answers and excuses readily available (such as because my boss keeps overlooking me for promotion) then you are operating in a victim mindset around this area. If your response is more positive and places responsibility on your own shoulders then you are in an abundance mindset (for example – I took a pay cut to change direction in my career but I know if I give this new job 100% I am going to earn ten times the amount I would have in the old role).

Having an abundance mindset always starts with you taking 100% responsibility. Let me give you an example from my own life. In 2007 I bought a villa in Cyprus, I didn’t know it at the time but I was investing at possibly the worst time in the last century. Property prices were hugely overinflated and there was a mad rush of eager buyers trying to get in on what was being touted as a gold rush. Realtors were promising anyone who would listen that you could easily double your money within a few short years. I had always wanted to live in the sunshine by the sea so I went all in. Three months after I collected the keys to my property the Lehman Brothers collapsed and the whole western world went into a financial meltdown. Overnight my property lost 40% of its value but that was irrelevant, as the whole market had evaporated. Due to a concrete explosion over the past few years the tiny island of Cyprus found itself with thousands and thousands of new build property and absolutely no buyers to be seen. To make matters worse I had taken a mortgage in Swiss francs on the advice of the bank. Because Switzerland was considered a safe haven outside the crashing dollar, pound and euro their currency value went through the roof. My mortgage payments tripled over night.

Whose fault is this disastrous investment? The victim would say it’s the realtor for advising me badly; it’s the bank for selling me a volatile product or any other number of villains that could be pointed at and labeled as the ‘fault’ behind this mess. At the point where you create an excuse you become a reaction to life. You are a passenger who is responding to the events of life that are thrust upon you. Conversely when you accept 100% responsibility for the events around you then you are in the driving seat. Let me tell you, when you are alone in a runaway car the last place you want to be is in the passenger seat.

My thoughts about the house in Cyprus are this: It is my responsibility, I created it and I will solve it. I don’t believe it was a mistake, I believe it is a blessing here in my life to push me in a specific direction, to challenge me, to teach me and ultimately to make me stronger. When the time is right the situation will resolve one way or another.

Exercise

Stop reading and grab a pen. I want you to write down everything negative in your life that you believe is there because someone else put it there. Then next to each bullet point I want you to come up with a new positive spin that gives you 100% responsibility for the event. Now wait, lets be clear. There is a huge difference between blame and responsibility. I am not asking you to take the blame for the day you got mugged in broad daylight or the night your car got stolen. Fault and blame are pointless actions of the ego, blaming the mugger for attacking you doesn’t undo the act of violence that occurred.

What I want you to do here is accept the situation as being a part of your life. You may not have chosen to have it happen but for whatever reason you attracted it in. It’s a part of you and that means you are the only person who can heal it within yourself. Make peace with it and try to give yourself a point of view that does precisely zero finger pointing and has a high expectation that a positive outcome will arrive.

These exercises are very easily skipped and forgotten about but please try to do them because they make a huge difference to the speed at which you can effect positive change in your life.

Forgive Yourself First

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison”, Nelson Mandela

It’s almost a certainty that many years ago you buried some demons alive. The bad news is these beasts don’t die they just change shape and eventually escape the grave. If you are holding onto any resentment, especially from your childhood, now is the time to let it go. Sometimes these issues are obvious, if you had an abusive childhood then you probably have a very specific person in mind already. However, sometimes they are a little subtler, despite this they are still capable of causing significant disruption to your inner state of peace. I am a good example of this latter situation.

Many years ago I recognized that I had two very profound issues. I had a very strong fear of rejection and also a fear of being constrained (not physically constrained but mentally). It’s always much easier to deal with a problem that you know you have than to stumble around in the dark looking for the cause of your pain. However, what perplexed me with these specific problems was I had no idea where they had come from. My childhood was as close to perfect as you could get. I was lucky enough to grow up with both sets of parents; I was loved and wanted for nothing. I simply couldn’t understand why I was such a ‘fuck up’ in various areas of my life.

One day I was in a spiritual bookstore in New York and I got talking to a woman who was also browsing the books on meditation. She was called Anne and she had such a peaceful aura about her and we ended up talking for about an hour, just standing there in this little store. We started to get quite deep about our lives and I told her this long-standing conundrum of mine. She listened carefully and asked a few pertinent questions. Specifically, she wanted to know if my mother had been very strict or overbearing. I told her that was not the case but my dad used to infuriate me. He was a real no nonsense sort of guy and he always seemed to spoil my adventures by telling me the outcome of everything I wanted to do before I had had a chance to try them. I would get excited by a new project, sport or activity and he would spoil it by telling me that I will get bored of it within a week and it will all have been a waste of my time. The only thing I hated more than him doing that was the fact that he was virtually always correct.

When I turned thirteen I couldn’t take it any more and I asked if my parents would pay for me to live at school (my school had a small boarding contingency as many children had parents who were serving in the armed forces). I wanted to be around people my own age and out from under the scrutiny of my father. I needed the freedom to make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. I told my parents what I wanted to do.

At this point in the story Anne became very interested, ‘what did they say’ she enquired and I told her that they were fine about it and simply said ‘If that’s what you want son’. To me this was no big deal but to my surprise Anne thought this was terrible, ‘What you mean they didn’t even try to stop you’ she asked with a very concerned expression. I told her again that no they just said I could do anything I wanted. This she said was surely what was the cause of my fear of rejection; that my parents didn’t fight to keep me close. It had been no hardship for them to be free of me at such a young age. I had never thought about it like that before. I don’t know if that is the only cause of my issue but since this revelation and my acceptance of it I have felt significantly more peaceful in almost every situation.

It doesn’t matter whether you have hulking great painful events or just a collection of minor scars, all must be forgiven before you can move on. This subject is a whole book in itself and I can’t really do it justice in one chapter. However, I encourage you to address this challenge as soon as possible. There are several things you can do that may help:

One of the most effective ways to address buried feelings about events and people from your past is a technique called Timeline Therapy. This is a talking therapy where you mentally revisit past traumatic events under the guidance of a trained counselor. Rather than experience all the painful emotions again first hand you are encouraged to view the event as a third person, watching the situation unfold as though you are floating above it. This way you can detach yourself from the all encompassing feelings you experienced at the time and try to see what was motivating the other person to treat you in such a way. It is good to remember that very few people are inherently evil, most negative behavior comes from fear in the other person. Bullies for example are not super strong, tough individuals but rather the opposite! Bullies are deeply afraid of something unspoken and use violence and intimidation to try to suppress that distress.

Timeline Therapy would be my preference but there is no doubt that any good, trained councilor will be able to help you release resentment and find peace with the traumatic events of your past. Perhaps you already know what your major fears and phobias are, if so then you have already taken the first step towards a solution. So why not decide right now that you are going to take action and deal with this once and for all. Unless of course your major demon is procrastination, then probably just do it tomorrow hey?

Perhaps the easiest and most cost effective solution can be found in the online members area of my VIP Club. Once you get started you will get access to my Demon Slayer Hypnosis downloads. You will find a complete range of subliminal reprogramming tracks designed to deal with everything from fear of rejection to body confidence and social anxiety issues. 

The Illusion Of Permanency

Have you ever wondered how hugely successful Hollywood stars who appear to have everything in life anyone could possibly end up committing suicide? Despite the outside appearances these people believe they are trapped in a situation that can’t ever get better, in short their misery appears to be permanent.

Permanency does not exist in any form in our world. Everything living, everything nature placed here and everything we build will eventually crumble and fall. Nothing is saved; death and destruction are like the outward breath of God. He breathes in and life is created, trees grown and buildings emerge. He breathes out and people die, trees burn to the ground and buildings collapse.

Sadam Hussain spent a lifetime building as many statues in his image as possible, he commissioned hundreds of portraits to be painted and even officially named Iraq’s main airport Sadam Hussain International Airport. He did all this in a vain attempt to live on after his death – he failed. Virtually all the statues were pulled down and the airport was renamed.

If you are pinning your happiness and success in life on achieving permanency then you are destined to fail. At the end of your days when you lay in your deathbed considering your vast property portfolio and the millions of dollars in the bank you can be sure that you would happily trade it all for just one more week alive.

More subtly than that we all also get attached to the idea of permanency when we give ourselves labels. Do you not think at some point when Adolf Hitler was growing up his mother sat him on her knee and said ‘Adolf you are such a good little boy’. Was she wrong, or perhaps she was right but only in that moment?

All too often we take these labels and decide that they are a permanent description of who we are.

I am a good person (how do you know you always will be?)

I am a fast sprinter (will that always be the case)

I have high standards; I will never stay in a hotel with less than a 5 star rating (Never?)

When I coach people one to one they normally approach me with a label that they have decided is permanent. They come up to me and say ‘I am a terrible public speaker, I always make a fool of myself’ or ‘I have terrible bad luck, nothing ever goes right for me’.

If you believe there is anything about your life that is permanent then I want you to spend some time thinking about how that could possibly be true in a world where it’s impossible. I apply this just as much to the good stuff as the things we call ‘bad’. I would call myself a ‘good parent’; I love my children deeply and without question. However, I am willing to admit that at times I have made mistakes, given bad advice, shouted when I should have hugged and generally been a ‘bad’ parent. Especially during the challenging teenage years where my kids were striving to break free and be individuals. So which am I? ‘A bad parent’ or ‘a good parent’? In reality no label serves any useful purpose beyond the moment it is expressed in.

Good times will end and life will blindside you with events that spoil the fun. In the dark times the storm will come to an end and bright sunshine will once again fill your life. This is the ebb and flow of the universe – God will breathe in and God will breathe out.

Fear, Your New BFF

“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones” , Thich Nhat Hanh

A beautiful woman walks into a bar full of guys. Each man notices her, admires her and imagines himself with her. The married guys allow a little sigh to escape their lips and a few even curse the missed opportunity. But what about all the single guys, surely here is a perfect chance to at least talk to a stunningly attractive woman. A small but perfectly formed window of opportunity to find out if her personality lives up to her beauty. In 99.9% of occasions that woman will come and go without a single interaction – dozens of single guys deliberately opt out of the possibility of being her man on a daily basis… but why?

The answer is fear, while their heart says ‘speak to her’ the head (or rather their ego) says:

She is too hot for me.

She probably has a boyfriend.

She looks busy, I would be annoying her.

I bet she gets hit on all the time and is sick of it.

She will laugh in my face

The excuses and reasons are endless and all of them are baseless or if you prefer, false evidence appearing real. None of those excuses are a valid reason not to speak to this amazing girl. They are all just pieces of graffiti that are sprayed on the walls of your comfort zone. As we approach the edge of the zone we notice that there are lots of brightly colored and aggressive looking warning signs. They scream that there is danger and risk beyond this point and for your own safety you should go no further!

Let’s break down a couple of those excuses a little further:

She is too hot for me: Says who? Attraction is not a choice, we can’t consciously make a decision to be attracted to someone or not – it just happens. I have been in relationships with women who have been up to 15 years younger than me, this does not mean all younger women are attracted to me – I wish, but sadly this is not the case. Attraction is not a choice, I have been rejected more times than I can remember but I don’t take this personally and I am certainly not offended by it.  Failure is never in the rejection but rather in deciding to take no action at all.

I have met truly awe-inspiring men and women over the years whom describe themselves as ‘not that attractive’. I want to grab hold of them by their shirt collars and shake them until they see what I see. Only last month in London I was coaching a financial executive who looked after billions of pounds worth of stock options on a daily basis. He was a partner in his firm and I quite quickly gathered that he is a total genius at what he does. As we sat in a coffee shop off Knightsbridge he relived the story of how he made his way from a council estate in Glasgow to living in a penthouse apartment in London worth over five million pounds. I was totally blown away by this guy and his story, then as he came to the end of the tale he looked me straight in the eye and said in his no nonsense Scottish accent ‘shame I am such an ugly bastard right?’, and laughed.

This guy considered himself to be unattractive and had spent most of the past decade single or in poor quality relationships that didn’t serve him.  In reality he is extremely intelligent, witty, charming and sophisticated man who has moved mountains to create pure success and abundance. I told him that there are millions of women on this planet who if they found a guy like him would think all their Christmases’ had come at once.

We are all our own worst critic and yet most of us ask ourselves such important questions as ‘am I attractive’, “am I a good person” and ‘what do I deserve in life’. We should not be surprised when we get a similar answer to when you ask the grumpy old men from the Muppets what they thought of the show!

She probably has a boyfriend: Yes this is a possibility but are you really saying that married people and those in long term relationships no longer enjoy feeling attractive to other people?

I don’t know about you but I have found that it is often the married and long-term relationship gang who get the least compliments in life. If I see someone I find attractive I always make a point of going out of my way to tell them that. Quite often they will be shocked and blurt out ‘oh I am married, sorry’. I will just say I know, smile and walk away. My intention was not to do anything other than make that person’s day brighter.

If you are not speaking to people you are attracted to because you are afraid they are in a relationship and you will get rejected for that reason then you have this whole thing the wrong away around. You are not pushing through your comfort zone to get something, such as a phone number, a date or even sex but rather to give something of yourself away. You have the power to make everyone you meet (male and female) feel amazing, unique and special – not using this power is a crime.

Now, sometimes people are so used to living in a loveless world that they refuse to accept this gift from you. It happened to me yesterday, I was in the bank and the most stylish woman I have ever seen in my life walked in. She must have spent over four hours getting ready that day – she looked amazing. As is my custom I walked over to her and said ‘Excuse me, just wanted to let you know that you look amazing’. I smiled and expected at least something comparable to a smile in return - I didn’t get it. She curled up her lip and stared me straight in the eye and said ‘go away’.

There is no point taking offense because I don’t have enough data to understand why she reacted like that. Perhaps she was just dumped by her boyfriend, maybe she lost her job that morning or maybe she was just in one hell of a bad mood and everyone was getting that response that day. Who knows but what I do know is that the problem does not belong to me.

Yes, it is true that if you always obey the danger signs nailed to the outer walls of your comfort zone you will be protected from awkward situations like the one I just described. But you will also never experience the flip side of that scenario. I have amazing friends all over the world because I make strangers feel amazing on purpose. I consider the world to be my playground, I believe I can travel alone anywhere on the planet and leave having had an amazing time with a whole new group of friends. My current partner Ina is from Berlin, Germany. We met when I was there in January and saw her amazing smile behind the counter of a local deli. We got chatting and met up after she finished work – the rest they say is history. Fear did not want me to meet Ina, fear wanted me to keep walking and stay away from any chance of rejection – but that is not what I wanted.

I don’t want this to become a book about pick up or solely about relationships. I want this to be a tool to release you from the life limiting loops created by fear. When we use the word fear we normally apply it to situations where we wrongly or rightly predict that we are at risk of harm. For example standing on the edge of a tall building generates a sensation of fear and anxiety so we become acutely aware of what could happen if we act inappropriately in those situations. We can be afraid before a job interview because we have become attached to an outcome and don’t want to experience rejection followed by the loss of that outcome. However, fear isn’t always this obvious or dramatic but it can still be hugely limiting in our life.

When people go on a diet they start out with good intentions and a desperate desire to improve the way they look and feel. An honorable pursuit, but why do nearly 95% of them not only end up putting back on all the weight they lost plus and additional few pounds for good measure? The answer is fear, at the start of the diet the pain of looking in the mirror or not being able to squeeze into their favorite denim any more creates low level fear. For example ‘what if I just keep getting bigger’, ‘what if I have nothing to wear at the party’, ‘what if they start calling me names at school’ etc. So, we start the diet motivated to move our chubby body away from the fear. Then we lose a bit of weight and the original fear subsides but it is often replaced by a new concern. You see, we enjoy our tasty treats and takeaways in front of a good movie. Suddenly we feel like we are depriving ourselves of some of the fun bits of life. We fear that if we carry on being strict with ourselves we are going to be short changed by life and have less fun. Thus begins the yo-yo diet routine that dominates the life of so many.

I am writing this section of the book in the business class cabin of a British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Austin, Texas and even here fear is present. I am not talking about worrying about the plane crashing or running into some scary turbulence. I have been on board for just two hours and so far I have been offered free alcohol at least half a dozen times. I can’t drink alcohol because it has a nasty habit of trying to kill me. If you have read my book Alcohol Lied to Me you will know that I had a near two decade long battle with the booze and I became teetotal about six or seven years ago. I don’t have to struggle to stay away from drinking, no part of me wants to go back where I was but there is an element of fear at the back of my head every time the airhostess comes down the aisle with the drinks trolley and I turn down a very expensive French Bordeaux and instead ask for a cheap glass of water. The northerner in me feels like I am getting ripped off – I feel like I am getting much poorer value for money than the guy next to me who has so far knocked back $100 worth of wine and brandy. I am 99% certain that I won’t buckle in the name of value but I am acutely aware and afraid of that 1% that still lingers at the back of my mind.

Fear is present on a daily basis and in a myriad of ways. We are taught to be careful, to listen to fear and respond accordingly and the vast majority of society obeys this unwritten law. The result is a safer, more boring & less fulfilling life. This is the world of the Average Joe and the Average Jane – safe and steady but beige. What I am encouraging you to do is respond to fear in a highly counter intuitive way. Instead of seeing fear as a warning I want you to see it as an opportunity light blinking on the dashboard of your life. Essentially, if you are afraid of it then you must do it!

Fear Response Examples

Situation

Average Joe Response

Fearless Response

Afraid of drinking alcohol.

Path of least resistance. Surely just one won’t hurt will it?

Take the least easy path. See it as a clear sign that drinking won’t serve you.

Afraid to approach the hot girl.

Don’t do anything – let her walk out of his life.

Approach without a second thought. See the fear as a green light.

Afraid to go through with the charity parachute jump.

Cancel for ‘health reasons’ explains to friends they would love to but the doctor said no.

Fear means there is no other option but to do the jump. Everything else will make their comfort zone contract.

I can’t begin to tell you how many people I meet who are full of regret, and virtually never about the things they have done in their life but much more commonly about the things they never did. The last time I saw my aunty Angela she was having a coffee with my parents at their home in Darlington. I joined them all for a short while and as I sat down Angela was expressing her regret that she had never learned to drive. She had started to learn but got too afraid to ever put in for the test and it just became one of those things we label shoulda, woulda, coulda. Two years previously Angela had sadly been diagnosed with C.U.P. cancer (cancer of unknown primary origin). She was still her old lively self but her prognosis was not great, all treatment had ultimately failed. The doctors estimated she had between six and nine months to live. Angela decided that before it became impossible she was going to take and pass her driving test.

She never got the chance as she died three weeks later. The moment she died passing or failing that driving test became irrelevant; all the fear about taking the test in the first place also became equally as irrelevant. There are dozens of things that you want in life that you don’t have because fear is preventing you going after them. One day in the future all that fear will be rendered pointless by the same event that Angela went through, the event that nobody has ever managed to avoid. What I am saying is that your ego is trying to protect you from harm by encouraging you to avoid risk by using fear as a virtual 10x4 to hit you about the head with.

Your body is like an apartment shared between two tenants. The ego and the soul, or if you prefer the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are the tenants of your body. The soul is eternal and divine, it is essentially a fragment of God and it knows this for certain. It is also acutely aware that the apartment it is renting is temporary and when the lease ends it will just move to a new place and start over. However, the ego knows that when the lease ends that’s the end of the story, its game over. This creates a sensation of blind panic for the ego, which point blank refuses to accept the situation. It kicks and screams trying to prove that it can prevent the lease from ending. Hey perhaps if you fill the apartment with more and more stuff and never leave so they can’t come in and dump your possessions then perhaps the lease will continue evermore right? The ego is so terrified of the end it has been rendered insane by the constant thought of it.

Out of this insanity we get all the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Save for a rainy day

What can go wrong, will go wrong

She’s too hot for you, she will reject you

You are not ready for your driving test

You are not good enough for that promotion at work

The ego uses the past as a reverse projector in an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Fear is liberally applied to all areas of your life in the hope that it will keep you safe if completely unfulfilled. You are alive but miserable, that’s good enough. The ego doesn’t particularly care how happy you are, its primary focus is trying in vain to avoid the inevitable final act, at whatever cost.

What I am about to ask you to do is acknowledge that one of your tenants is insane and while you can’t evict you can decide to stop listening to his/her insane ramblings. From this point on fear should be seen as the screams in the night of your troublesome tenant. All the predictions of doom, gloom, terror and trauma are nothing more than a desperate illusion.

Start living in the knowledge that the only moment that exists is this one, right here and right now. The past and the future do not exist and they never will – this is it and this is all there will ever be.

There is a percentage chance that this nineteen year old Boeing 777-200 aircraft will crash before I reach Austin, Texas – should I just stop writing now just in case? No of course not, because right here in this moment I am alive and as long as that situation continues I have a message to get out there.

Exercise:

I want you to stop reading at this point and take a little life inventory. Grab a pen and paper and write down everything you can think of that you have wanted to achieve but have been prevented doing so by fear. Perhaps you have always wanted to skydive but can’t quite bring yourself to sign up for a jump. Maybe there is a senior position opening at work and you have told yourself that you are not quite ready and maybe try again in a few years. Perhaps you have been head over heals in love with Nicola on reception for years and never done anything about it?

On a blank piece of paper draw four columns, in the first column write your goal, in the second write down how fear is preventing you from achieving this goal, in the third column write down what will happen if you continue to let fear dominate this area of your life and in the final column I want you to imagine how you would feel if you ignored the ‘Danger Do Not Pass’ signs hanging on the wall of your comfort zone and charged on through regardless.

Example:

Goal

Fear

Failure

Success

To skydive

I might die, or worse I might embarrass myself by refusing to jump!

It will always be there as something that says ‘you are a coward’.

I will feel invincible. I will have done something most people would never be brave enough to do. I would feel huge pride in myself.

One of the most positive motivational speakers that America ever produced was Zig Ziglar. He would describe the start of his day in such a beautiful way. He used to say ‘every morning at 6am my opportunity clock would go off and wake me up. I don’t call it an alarm clock because that’s negative. That bell signals the start of a whole new day full of wonderful opportunities’.

As ever I want this to be a practical investment of your time and money, something that you can take and implement quickly into your life and consequently see massive positive change as a result. I am going to close this final chapter on fear with a challenge, for you to do one thing right now that fear has been making you avoid. It could be something as simple as picking up the phone and apologizing to someone you didn’t act in the right way with. It could be clicking send on a resignation email or a job application form – find something that you are afraid of and embrace it as an opportunity.

I sincerely hope that this aircraft lands safely on the tarmac in Austin, Texas and this book gets to make it into your library of success and personal development downloads. If you are reading these words you are already in the top 20% of individuals of the world. Over eighty percent of people who invest in a self-help, inspirational or motivational product never get past the first chapter. Now I want you to join the guys in the top 5% who actually take what they have heard and implement it into their life.

V is for Victim

“ Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.

But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that!

I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life ”, Rocky Balboa

I want to tell you about Katie, I am sure you know her already, perhaps not the same Katie but certainly ‘a Katie’. Poor Katie drew a bad hand in life; she didn’t do great at school because as she tells the story the teachers were idiots. She always dreamed of a cool apartment overlooking the sea, with a little dog called Jack. Unfortunately because her boss is an asshole she has to rent a crumby flat in a rough part of town and due to the fact the Mr. Brown the landlord is a total douche and doesn’t allow pets she is not allowed to get a dog.

Talk to Katie yourself and she will tell you how unfair life is and how she deserves so much more than such a such a person and yet they have everything she wants. She will tell you that nobody really understands her and all her friends are two-faced bitches who are out to cause as much trouble as possible.

Is it possible that Katie just got an unlucky break in life, is there any chance that she is correct in her assessment of life? Let’s put it this way, there is more chance of Donald Trump denouncing racism and promoting love and peace for all men than Katie being accurate in her assessment of why she is not living the life she wants. Katie is a victim and these victims are everywhere – we can’t move for them. These are the people that believe life owes them something and they often spend an entire lifetime furious that the neighbor got yet another new car or so and so got promoted at work when they are quite clearly incompetent.

Victims not only suck the energy out of their own lives but anyone who comes close enough to get caught up in their vortex of doom. They are mood hoovers and I am almost certain you can think of at least a few people who fit perfectly into this description. Let’s first talk about how you deal with this trait in other people and then I want you to have a little honesty session about areas of your life where you have adopted the roll of victim, because its easier than facing the hard truth.

How do you help a victim? The short answer is you can’t, because they don’t want to be helped. They like being the victim; it gives them a convenient explanation as to why their life blows chunks. On their deathbed you could ask them ‘why didn’t you live the life you were truly capable of’ and they will have enough plausible deniability to stubbornly point at something or someone and say ‘because of that’. All the time they are pointing a finger of blame at everything and everyone around them they are blissfully unaware they three fingers pointed right back at them. It is really frustrating to care about a victim because you can see the huge untapped potential in them but they cannot. When they look in the mirror all they see is someone who has been badly treated by life.

If they are a family member, or even perhaps your son or daughter you will desperately try to help them see the truth but in my experience all you will end up doing is expending vast amounts of energy to get precisely nowhere with them. The harsh reality is this; we are all divine creators of life. We each have a fragment of God embedded within us and we all have the power to perform our own miracles. If we take decisive action and flow with the universe instead of kicking violently to go back up stream we can manifest breathtakingly amazing lives for ourselves. Victims have this power too but they choose to ignore it.

How to spot a victim

Victims have reasons, lots of them and often they seem entirely logical and plausible explanations.

I am ill because the doctor gave me the wrong medicine

I am poor because my boss is a jerk

I got fired because I am a woman

I was made redundant because I am black

They won’t employ me because I am white

I can’t quit drinking because it’s the only pleasure I have left.

I am too stressed to stop smoking

The list goes on and on and all of it is 100% proof bullshit. There are four certainties in this life. You will be born, you will die and in between you will pay tax and life will repeatedly knock you down. As Rocky Balboa says ‘Ain’t nothing going to hit as hard as life’. Getting knocked down is not bad luck anymore than turning on the tap and getting water could be considered luck. Life is getting knocked down, the choice is getting back up again looking it in the eye and saying ‘is that all you got, hit me again but this time put some effort in it you big girl’s blouse’.

The reason you can’t help the victims is when they get knocked down they love it. It gives them what they want, an excuse not to get back up again. They are like boxers who are too tired to keep fighting hoping for one decent punch so they can fall down with dignity and stay the hell down until the referee counts ten.

Exercise

Stop reading for ten minutes and think about the victims in your life. Ask yourself who they are, how long they have been there and most importantly how much time are you spending trying to make them feel better. Which by the way is like trying to push oil uphill. Once you are clear about who these people are I want you to make a conscious decision to spend less and less time in their company – until they are no longer apart of your life. That’s right I am asking you to fire the mood hovers in your life, you can’t help them, they are not helping you so it’s time for them to leave.

There is a way to help but it is almost certainly not what you are doing at the moment. If dumping them out of your life is not possible or you are not comfortable doing that then reduce the amount of time you spend with them and use the cleaning method I describe in detail in Manifesting Magic part 4. To do this you have to accept responsibility for your share of the problem. The fact that this person’s victim mentality is present in your manifestation of the universe means that it exists within you at a subconscious level. Use the healing mediation of Ho’oponopono to clean the program within you and you will both reap the benefits.

But wait… what if you are the victim?

Are you a victim? This is a pretty easy question to answer; think of something in your life that you are not happy with. For example lets say you need more money. Now with that problem in mind explain to yourself why this is your current situation. If you find you have answers and excuses readily available (such as because my boss keeps overlooking me for promotion) then you are operating in a victim mindset around this area. If your response is more positive and places responsibility on your own shoulders then you are in an abundance mindset (for example – I took a pay cut to change direction in my career but I know if I give this new job 100% I am going to earn ten times the amount I would have in the old role).

Having an abundance mindset always starts with you taking 100% responsibility. Let me give you an example from my own life. In 2007 I bought a villa in Cyprus, I didn’t know it at the time but I was investing at possibly the worse time in the last century. Property prices were hugely overinflated and there was a mad rush of eager buyers trying to get in on what was being touted as a gold rush. Realtors were promising anyone who would listen that you could easily double your money within a few short years. I had always wanted to live in the sunshine by the sea so I went all in. Three months after I collected the keys to my property the Lehman Brothers collapsed and the whole western world went into a financial meltdown. Overnight my property lost 40% of its value but that was irrelevant, as the whole market had evaporated. Due to a concrete explosion over the past few years the tiny island of Cyprus found itself with thousands and thousands of new build property and absolutely no buyers to be seen. To make matters worse I had taken a mortgage in Swiss francs on the advice of the bank. Because Switzerland was considered a safe haven outside the crashing dollar, pound and euro their currency value went through the roof. My mortgage payments tripled over night.

Whose fault is this disastrous investment? The victim would say it’s the realtor for advising me badly; it’s the bank for selling me a volatile product or any other number of villains that could be pointed at and labeled as the ‘fault’ behind this mess. At the point where you create an excuse you become a reaction to life. You are a passenger who is responding to the events of life that are thrust upon you. Conversely when you accept 100% responsibility for the events around you then you are in the driving seat. Let me tell you, when you are alone in a runaway car the last place you want to be is in the passenger seat.

My thoughts about the house in Cyprus are this: It is my responsibility, I created it and I will solve it. I don’t believe it was a mistake, I believe it is a blessing here in my life to push me in a specific direction, to challenge me, to teach me and ultimately to make me stronger. When the time is right the situation will resolve one way or another.

Exercise

Stop reading and grab a pen. I want you to write down everything negative in your life that you believe is there because someone else put it there. Then next to each bullet point I want you to come up with a new positive spin that gives you 100% responsibility for the event. Now wait, lets be clear. There is a huge difference between blame and responsibility. I am not asking you to take the blame for the day you got mugged in broad daylight or the night your car got stolen. Fault and blame are pointless actions of the ego, blaming the mugger for attacking you doesn’t undo the act of violence that occurred.

What I want you to do here is accept the situation as being a part of your life. You may not have chosen to have it happen but for whatever reason you attracted it in. It’s a part of you and that means you are the only person who can heal it within yourself. Make peace with it and try to give yourself a point of view that does precisely zero finger pointing and has a high expectation that a positive outcome will arrive.

These exercises are very easily skipped and forgotten about but please try to do them because they make a huge difference to the speed at which you can effect positive change in your life.

Forgive Yourself First

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison”, Nelson Mandela

It’s almost a certainty that many years ago you buried some demons alive. The bad news is these beasts don’t die they just change shape and eventually escape the grave. If you are holding onto any resentment, especially from your childhood, now is the time to let it go. Sometimes these issues are obvious, if you had an abusive childhood then you probably have a very specific person in mind already. However, sometimes they are a little subtler, despite this they are still capable of causing significant disruption to your inner state of peace. I am a good example of this latter situation.

Many years ago I recognized that I had two very profound issues. I had a very strong fear of rejection and also a fear of being constrained (not physically constrained but mentally). It’s always much easier to deal with a problem that you know you have than to stumble around in the dark looking for the cause of your pain. However, what perplexed me with these specific problems was I had no idea where they had come from. My childhood was as close to perfect as you could get. I was lucky enough to grow up with both sets of parents; I was loved and wanted for nothing. I simply couldn’t understand why I was such a ‘fuck up’ in various areas of my life.

One day I was in a spiritual bookstore in New York and I got talking to a woman who was also browsing the books on meditation. She was called Anne and she had such a peaceful aura about her and we ended up talking for about an hour, just standing there in this little store. We started to get quite deep about our lives and I told her this long standing conundrum of mine. She listened carefully and asked a few pertinent questions. Specifically, she wanted to know if my mother had been very strict or overbearing. I told her that was not the case but my dad used to infuriate me. He was a real no nonsense sort of guy and he always seemed to spoil my adventures by telling me the outcome of everything I wanted to do before I had had chance to try them. I would get excited by a new project, sport or activity and he would spoil it by telling me that I will get bored of it within a week and it will all have been a waste of my time. The only thing I hated more than him doing that was the fact that he was virtually always correct.

When I turned thirteen I couldn’t take it any more and I asked if my parents would pay for me to live at school (my school had a small boarding contingency as many children had parents who were serving in the armed forced). I wanted to be around people my own age and out from under the scrutiny of my father. I needed the freedom to make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. I told my parents what I wanted to do.

At this point in the story Anne became very interested, ‘what did they say’ she inquired and I told her that they were fine about it and simply said ‘If that’s what you want son’. To me this was no big deal but to my surprise Anne thought this was terrible, ‘What you mean they didn’t even try to stop you’ she asked with a very concerned expression. I told her again that no they just said I could do anything I wanted. This she said she was surely what was the cause of my fear of rejection; that my parents didn’t fight to keep me close. It had been no hardship for them to be free of me at such a young age. I had never thought about it like that before. I don’t know if that is the only cause of my issue but since this revelation and my acceptance of it I have felt significantly more peaceful in almost every situation.

It doesn’t matter whether you have hulking great painful events or just a collection of minor scars, all must be forgiven before you can move on. This subject is a whole book in itself and I can’t really do it justice in one chapter. However, I encourage you to address this challenge as soon as possible. There are several things you can do that may help:

One of the most effective ways to address buried feelings about events and people from your past is a technique called Timeline Therapy. This is a talking therapy where you mentally revisit past traumatic events under the guidance of a trained councilor. Rather than experience all the painful emotions again first hand you are encouraged to view the event as a third person, watching the situation unfold as though you are floating above it. This way you can detached yourself from the all encompassing feelings you experienced at the time and try to see what was motivating the other person to treat you in such a way. It is good to remember that very few people are inherently evil, most negative behavior comes from fear in the other person. Bullies for example are not super strong, tough individuals but rather the opposite! Bullies are deeply afraid of something unspoken and use violence and intimidation to try to suppress that distress.

Timeline Therapy would be my preference but there is no doubt that any good, trained councilor will be able to help you release resentment and find peace with the traumatic events of your past. Perhaps you already know what your major fears and phobias are, if so then you have already taken the first step towards a solution. So why not decide right now that you are going to take action and deal with this once and for all. Unless of course your major demon is procrastination, then probably just do it tomorrow hey?

Perhaps the easiest and most cost effective solution can be found in the online members area of my VIP Club. Once you get started you will get access to my Demon Slayer Hypnosis downloads. You will find a complete range of subliminal reprogramming tracks designed to deal with everything from fear of rejection to body confidence and social anxiety issues. 

The Illusion Of Permanency

Have you ever wondered how hugely successful Hollywood stars who appear to have everything in life anyone could possibly want end up committing suicide? Despite the outside appearances these people believe they are trapped in a situation that can’t ever get better, in short their misery appears to be permanent.

Permanency does not exist in any form in our world. Everything living, everything nature placed here and everything we build will eventually crumble and fall. Nothing is saved; death and destruction are like the outward breath of God. He breathes in and life is created, trees grown and buildings emerge. He breathes out and people die, trees burn to the ground and buildings collapse.

Sadam Hussain spent a lifetime building as many statues in his image as possible, he commissioned hundreds of portraits to be painted and even officially named Iraq’s main airport Sadam Hussain International Airport. He did all this in a vain attempt to live on after his death – he failed. Virtually all the statues were pulled down and the airport was renamed.

If you are pinning your happiness and success in life on achieving permanency then you are destined to fail. At the end of your days when you lay in your deathbed considering you vast property portfolio and the millions of dollars in the bank you can be sure that you would happily trade it all for just one more week alive.

More subtly than that we all also get attached to the idea of permanency when we give ourselves labels. Do you not think at some point when Adolf Hitler was growing up his mother sat him on her knee and said ‘Adolf you are such a good little boy’. Was she wrong, or perhaps she was right but only in that moment?

All too often we take these labels and decide that they are a permanent description of who we are.

I am a good person (how do you know you always will be?)

I am a fast sprinter (will that always be the case)

I have high standards; I will never stay in a hotel with less than a 5 star rating (Never?)

When I coach people one to one they normally approach me with a label that they have decided is permanent. They come up to me and say ‘I am a terrible public speaker, I always make a fool of myself’ or ‘I have terrible bad luck, nothing ever goes right for me’.

If you believe there is anything about your life that is permanent then I want you to spend sometime thinking about how that could possibly be true in a world where it’s impossible. I apply this just as much to the good stuff as the things we call ‘bad’. I would call myself a ‘good parent’; I love my children deeply and without question. However, I am willing to admit that at times I have made mistakes, given bad advice, shouted when I should have hugged and generally been a ‘bad’ parent. Especially during the challenging teenage years where my kids were striving to break free and be individuals. So which am I ‘a bad parent’ or ‘a good parent’? In reality no label serves any useful purpose beyond the moment it is expressed in.

Good times will end and life will blindside you with events that spoil the fun. In the dark times the storm will come to an end and bright sunshine will once again fill your life. This is the ebb and flow of the universe – God will breathe in and God will breathe out.

Fear, Your New BFF

“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved one’s” , Thich Nhat Hanh

A beautiful woman walks into a bar full of guys. Each man notices her, admires her and imagines himself with her. The married guys allow a little sigh to escape their lips and a few even curse the missed opportunity. But what about all the single guys, surely here is a perfect chance to at least talk to a stunningly attractive woman. A small but perfectly formed window of opportunity to find out if her personality lives up to her beauty. In 99.9% of occasions that woman will come and go without a single interaction – dozens of single guys deliberately opt out of the possibility of being her man on a daily basis… but why?

The answer is fear, while their heart says ‘speak to her’ the head (or rather their ego) says:

She is too hot for me.

She probably has a boyfriend.

She looks busy, I would be annoying her.

I bet she gets hit on all the time and is sick of it.

She will laugh in my face

The excuses and reasons are endless and all of them are baseless or if you prefer, false evidence appearing real. None of those excuses are a valid reason not to speak to this amazing girl. They are all just pieces of graffiti that are sprayed on the walls of your comfort zone. As we approach the edge of the zone we notice that there are lots of brightly colored and aggressive looking warning signs. They scream that there is danger and risk beyond this point and for your own safety you should go no further!

Let’s break down a couple of those excuses a little further:

She is too hot for me: Says who? Attraction is not a choice, we can’t consciously make a decision to be attracted to someone or not – it just happens. I have been in relationships with women who have been up to 15 years younger than me, this does not mean all younger women are attracted to me – I wish, but sadly this is not the case. Attraction is not a choice, I have been rejected more times than I can remember but I don’t take this personally and I am certainly not offended by it.  Failure is never in the rejection but rather in deciding to take no action at all.

I have met truly awe-inspiring men and women over the years whom describe themselves as ‘not that attractive’. I want to grab hold of them by their shirt collars and shake them until they see what I see. Only last month in London I was coaching a financial executive who looked after billions of pounds worth of stock options on a daily basis. He was a partner in his firm and I quite quickly gathered that he is a total genius at what he does. As we sat in a coffee shop off Knightsbridge he relived the story of how he made his way from a council estate in Glasgow to living in a penthouse apartment in London worth over five million pounds. I was totally blown away by this guy and his story, then as he came to the end of the tale he looked me straight in the eye and said in his no nonsense Scottish accent ‘shame I am such an ugly bastard right’, and laughed.

This guy considered himself to be unattractive and had spent most of the past decade single or in poor quality relationships that didn’t serve him.  In reality he is extremely intelligent, witty, charming and sophisticated man who has moved mountains to create pure success and abundance. I told him that there are millions of women on this planet who if they found a guy like him would think all their Christmases’ had come at once.

We are all our own worst critic and yet most of us ask ourselves such important questions as ‘am I attractive’, “am I a good person” and ‘what do I deserve in life’. We should not be surprised when we get a similar answer to when you ask the grumpy old men from the Muppets what they thought of the show!

She probably has a boyfriend: Yes this is a possibility but are you really saying that married people and those in long term relationships no longer enjoy feeling attractive to other people?

I don’t know about you but I have found that it is often the married and long-term relationship gang who get the least compliments in life. If I see someone I find attractive I always make a point of going out of my way to tell them that. Quite often they will be shocked and blurt out ‘oh I am married, sorry’. I will just say I know, smile and walk away. My intention was not to do anything other than make that person’s day brighter.

If you are not speaking to people you are attracted to because you are afraid they are in a relationship and you will get rejected for that reason then you have this whole thing the wrong away around. You are not pushing through your comfort zone to get something, such as a phone number, a date or even sex but rather to give something of yourself away. You have the power to make everyone you meet (male and female) feel amazing, unique and special – not using this power is a crime.

Now, sometimes people are so used to living in a loveless world that they refuse to accept this gift from you. It happened to me yesterday, I was in the bank and the most stylish woman I have ever seen in my life walked in. She must have spent over four hours getting ready that day – she looked amazing. As is my custom I walked over to her and said ‘Excuse me, just wanted to let you know that you look amazing’. I smiled and expected at least something comparable to a smile in return - I didn’t get it. She curled up her lip and stared me straight in the eye and said ‘go away’.

There is no point taking offense because I don’t have enough data to understand why she reacted like that. Perhaps she was just dumped by her boyfriend, maybe she lost her job that morning or maybe she was just in one hell of a bad mood and everyone was getting that response that day. Who knows but what I do know is that the problem does not belong to me.

Yes, it is true that if you always obey the danger signs nailed to the outer walls of your comfort zone you will be protected from awkward situations like the one I just described. But you will also never experience the flip side of that scenario. I have amazing friends all over the world because I make strangers feel amazing on purpose. I consider the world to be my playground, I believe I can travel alone anywhere on the planet and leave having had an amazing time with a whole new group of friends. My current partner Ina is from Berlin, Germany. We met when I was there in January and saw her amazing smile behind the counter of a local deli. We got chatting and met up after she finished work – the rest they say is history. Fear did not want me to meet Ina, fear wanted me to keep walking and stay away from any chance of rejection – but that is not what I wanted.

I don’t want this to become a book about pick up or solely about relationships. I want this to be a tool to release you from the life limiting loops created by fear. When we use the word fear we normally apply it to situations where we wrongly or rightly predict that we are at risk of harm. For example standing on the edge of a tall building generates a sensation of fear and anxiety so we become acutely aware of what could happen if we act inappropriately in those situations. We can be afraid before a job interview because we have become attached to an outcome and don’t want to experience rejection followed by the loss of that outcome. However, fear isn’t always this obvious or dramatic but it can still be hugely limiting in our life.

When people go on a diet they start out with good intentions and a disparate desire to improve the way they look and feel. An honorable pursuit, but why do nearly 95% of them not only end up putting back on all the weight they lost plus and additional few pounds for good measure? The answer is fear, at the start of the diet the pain of looking in the mirror or not being able to squeeze into their favorite denim any more creates low level fear. For example ‘what if I just keep getting bigger’, ‘what if I have nothing to wear at the party’, ‘what if they start calling me names at school’ etc. So, we start the diet motivated to move our chubby body away from the fear. Then we lose a bit of weight and the original fear subsides but it is often replaced by a new concern. You see, we enjoy our tasty treats and takeaways in front of a good movie. Suddenly we feel like we are depriving ourselves of some of the fun bits of life. We fear that if we carry on being strict with ourselves we are going to be short changed by life and have less fun. Thus begins the yo-yo diet routine that dominates the life of so many.

I am writing this section of the book in the business class cabin of a British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Austin, Texas and even here fear is present. I am not talking about worrying about the plane crashing or running into some scary turbulence. I have been on board for just two hours and so far I have been offered free alcohol at least half a dozen times. I can’t drink alcohol because it has a nasty habit of trying to kill me. If you have read my book Alcohol Lied to Me you will know that I had a near two decade long battle with the booze and I became teetotal about six or seven years ago. I don’t have to struggle to stay away from drinking, no part of me wants to go back where I was but there is an element of fear at the back of my head every time the airhostess comes down the aisle with the drinks trolley and I turn down a very expensive French Bordeaux and instead ask for a cheap glass of water. The northerner in me feels like I am getting ripped off – I feel like I am getting much poorer value for money than the guy next to me who has so far knocked back $100 worth of wine and brandy. I am 99% certain that I won’t buckle in the name of value but I am acutely aware and afraid of that 1% that still lingers at the back of my mind.

Fear is present on a daily basis and in myriad ways. We are taught to be careful, to listen to fear and respond accordingly and the vast majority of society obeys this unwritten law. The result is a safer, more boring & less fulfilling life. This is the world of the Average Joe and the Average Jane – safe and steady but beige. What I am encouraging you to do is respond to fear in a highly counter intuitive way. Instead of seeing fear as a warning I want you to see it as an opportunity light blinking on the dashboard of your life. Essentially, if you are afraid of it then you must do it!

Fear Response Examples

Situation

Average Joe Response

Fearless Response

Afraid of drinking alcohol.

Path of least resistance. Surely just one won’t hurt will it?

Take the least easy path. See it as a clear sign that drinking won’t serve you.

Afraid to approach the hot girl.

Don’t do anything – let her walk out of his life.

Approach without a second thought. See the fear as a green light.

Afraid to go through with the charity parachute jump.

Cancel for ‘health reasons’ explains to friends they would love to but the doctor said no.

Fear means there is no other option but to do the jump. Everything else will make their comfort zone contract.

I can’t begin to tell you how many people I meet who are full of regret, and virtually never about the things they have done in their life but much more commonly about the things they never did. The last time I saw my aunty Angela she was having a coffee with my parents at their home in Darlington. I joined them all for a short while and as I sat down Angela was expressing her regret that she had never learned to drive. She had started to learn but got too afraid to ever put in for the test and it just became one of those things we label shoulda, woulda, coulda. Two years previous Angela had sadly been diagnosed with C.U.P. cancer (cancer of unknown primary origin). She was still her old lively self but her prognosis was not great, all treatment had ultimately failed. The doctors estimated she had between six and nine months to live. Angela decided that before it became impossible she was going to take and pass her driving test.

She never got the chance as she died three weeks later. The moment she died passing or failing that driving test became irrelevant; all the fear about taking the test in the first place also became equally as irrelevant. There are dozens of things that you want in life that you don’t have because fear is preventing you going after them. One day in the future all that fear will be rendered pointless by the same event that Angela went through, the event that nobody has ever managed to avoid. What I am saying is that your ego is trying to protect you from harm by encouraging you to avoid risk by using fear as a virtual 10x4 to hit you about the head with.

Your body is like an apartment shared between two tenants. The ego and the soul, or if you prefer the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are the tenants of your body. The soul is eternal and divine, it is essentially a fragment of God and it knows this for certain. It is also acutely aware that the apartment it is renting is temporary and when the lease ends it will just move to a new place and start over. However, the ego knows that when the lease ends that’s the end of the story, its game over. This creates a sensation of blind panic for the ego, which point blank refuses to accept the situation. It kicks and screams trying to prove that it can prevent the lease from ending. Hey perhaps if you fill the apartment with more and more stuff and never leave so they can’t come in and dump your possessions then perhaps the lease will continue evermore right? The ego is so terrified of the end it has been rendered insane by the constant thought of it.

Out of this insanity we get all the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Save for a rainy day

What can go wrong, will go wrong

She’s too hot for you, she will reject you

You are not ready for your driving test

You are not good enough for that promotion at work

The ego uses the past as a reverse projector in an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Fear is liberally applied to all areas of your life in the hope that it will keep you safe if completely unfulfilled. You are alive but miserable, that’s good enough. The ego doesn’t particularly care how happy you are, its primary focus is trying in vain to avoid the inevitable final act, at whatever cost.

What I am about to ask you to do is acknowledge that one of your tenants is insane and while you can’t evict you can decide to stop listening to his/her insane ramblings. From this point on fear should be seen as the screams in the night of your troublesome tenant. All the predictions of doom, gloom, terror and trauma are nothing more than a desperate illusion.

Start living in the knowledge that the only moment that exists is this one, right here and right now. The past and the future do not exist and they never will – this is it and this is all there will ever be.

There is a percentage chance that this nineteen year old Boeing 777-200 aircraft will crash before I reach Austin, Texas – should I just stop writing now just in case? No of course not, because right here in this moment I am alive and as long as that situation continues I have a message to get out there.

Exercise:

I want you to stop reading at this point and take a little life inventory. Grab a pen and paper and write down everything you can think of that you have wanted to achieve but have been prevented doing so by fear. Perhaps you have always wanted to skydive but can’t quite bring yourself to sign up for a jump. Maybe there is a senior position opening at work and you have told yourself that you are not quite ready and maybe try again in a few years. Perhaps you have been head over heals in love with Nicola on reception for years and never done anything about it?

On a blank piece of paper draw four columns, in the first column write your goal, in the second write down how fear is preventing you from achieving this goal, in the third column write down what will happen if you continue to let fear dominate this area of your life and in the final column I want you to imagine how you would feel if you ignored the ‘Danger Do Not Pass’ signs hanging on the wall of your comfort zone and charged on through regardless.

Example:

Goal

Fear

Failure

Success

To skydive

I might die, or worse I might embarrass myself by refusing to jump!

It will always be there as something that says ‘you are a coward’.

I will feel invincible. I will have done something most people would never be brave enough. I would feel huge pride in myself.

One of the most positive motivational speakers that America ever produced was Zig Ziglar. He would describe the start of his day in such a beautiful way. He used to say ‘every morning at 6am my opportunity clock would go off and wake me up. I don’t call it an alarm clock because that’s negative. That bell signals the start of a whole new day full of wonderful opportunities’.

As ever I want this to be a practical investment of your time and money, something that you can take and implement quickly into your life and consequently see massive positive change as a result. I am going to close this final chapter on fear with a challenge, for you to do one thing right now that fear has been making you avoid. It could be something as simple as picking up the phone and apologizing to someone you didn’t act in the right way with. It could be clicking send on a resignation email or a job application form – find something that you are afraid of and embrace it as an opportunity.

I sincerely hope that this aircraft lands safely on the tarmac in Austin, Texas and this book gets to make it into your library of success and personal development downloads. If you are reading these words you are already in the top 20% of individuals of the world. Over eighty percent of people who invest in a self-help, inspirational or motivational product never get past the first chapter. Now I want you to join the guys in the top 5% who actually take what they have heard and implement it into their life.

Chapter Two - The 30,000 foot view

“ Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent ”, Calvin Coolidge

Taking the 30,000 foot view is a general business cliché that simply means ‘to look at the big picture’. I am going to use it here to help give context to what you are really doing when you are dealing with approach anxiety. I do believe that the more intelligent and introverted the person the more they are going to suffer with fear around approaching and talking to girls. This is because their internal dialogue is very quick and very powerful. These people are most likely very successful in other areas of their life where there acute brainpower gives them the advantage of being able to see problems from multiple different angles and plan the best route through the obstacles in their path. However, when it comes to seduction and approaching hot women it is a major disadvantage because they can often think of a hundred reasons why they should not approach before they get a chance to take a step toward her.

They can vividly imagine her very loudly and visibly rejecting them in an array of embarrassing ways. Because they have learned to trust this voice in their head the very last thing they feel comfortable doing is ignoring these warning signs and alarm bells ringing in their head. The laws of attraction state that what you believe you receive and this compounds the problem for our over thinker. If he approaches a woman with the deep inner believe that she is going to reject him – then he has a better than good chance of getting the very outcome that he feared the most. He will then use this rejection as proof that he should have listened more closely to that voice in his head. This whole experience creates a rejection loop that becomes more and more difficult to break, unless you take quick and dramatic action to get out of the cycle.

If you live too much inside your own head then you are going to create many difficult obstacles between you and the girl you are attracted to. To get over this I advise my students to try and mentally zoom out on their life. Think about the last time you used Google Maps for a moment. If you keep hitting that magnify button on the left of the screen you will eventually get to the point that the only thing you can see on the screen is about a twenty-foot radius of the map. You can only see a small section of one street; the name and topography of the city and county are long since zoomed out of view. This tightly focused area is your universe and because you are unaware of everything outside this area you become obsessed with the small window of the world that you can still see.  A plane could dramatically crash into the earth a hundred feet to the left of your map position and you would be completely oblivious to it.

This is the mindset that many guys are in when they approach a girl. They are so tightly focused on the little bubble of life that contains the girl and them in the moment that they lose all sense of proportion. That little twenty-foot square universe becomes the only thing that exists and accordingly is the most important thing happening anywhere in that moment. This means any girl in that bubble with him has the power to destroy his universe with a simple rejection. He has zoomed in far too much and given her far too much control over the moment.

I ask my bootcamp students to zoom out their view of the situation. If you were watching the moment from high above you would see a guy approach a girl. But you may be distracted because a hundred foot to the left you notice a guy getting mugged, in the next street you see a guy reverse his car into a streetlamp and a few blocks down a girl drops her shopping and bursts into tears when she gets a phone call to say her father has been rushed into hospital. Because you are aware of all the ‘real’ drama going around this approach bubble you are able to give it proper context. If you had just seen a violent crime and a car crash – how significant is a girl telling a guy that she has a boyfriend and won’t be able to give him her number?

Get your head out of the bubble and stop making the approach more significant than it really is!

Chapter Three - Outcome dependency

“ Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat ”, Theodore Roosevelt

During bootcamp I repeatedly witness guys strolling back from approaching a girl with an expression of pure disappointment on their face. What they say next varies but it is normally a variation of ‘she has a boyfriend’, ‘she was in a rush’ or ‘she wasn’t interested’. They say things like this as an expression of their failure. What I remind them over and over again is rejection is not failure. The only way you can fail at this stuff is to do what 95% of the other guys do, nothing!

Inaction is the only way you can fail, even if you approach a girl and she tells you to fuck off and die, this is still success. Every time you approach a woman you learn something and your skin gets 1% thicker. Every now and again you come across women who are either having a bad day or just having a bad life. No matter what you say or do they are going to attack you – but ask yourself, in those situations who has the problem – you or them?

This very situation happened to me in Grand Central Station, New York before Christmas. I started talking to a cute girl who was taking photographs of the iconic mbuilding; she looked me in the eye and said ‘I am busy, fuck off’. I smiled and walked away, over my shoulder I shouted ‘call me’, to which she responded by again telling me to fuck off. I do not consider this failure, I discovered really quickly that the pretty girl I saw has a really crappy personality and is certainly not someone I want to invest any of my valuable time in.

The reason we lose sight of what success and failure looks like is because we get attached to an outcome. During a bootcamp weekend I witness guys making rapid progress with ‘Game’. I have seen the same pattern play out so many times that the sequence of learning they go through is now entirely predictable. Initially the students get blown out over and over again and start to doubt themselves and then they almost expect to fail and get detached from their neediness. Out of the blue they get a phone number and suddenly they are back in the game, full of energy and ready to approach again. But now something has changed, they start to chase the high of getting a number. Having the woman give them her number now becomes the only outcome they will be happy with. They get attached to a number close being the indicator of success and therefore no number means failure.

Unless you break this cycle it will just keep escalating until you see anything other than full sex as failure. This sort of belief system will make you miserable and depressed. The only objective you have is to meet another human being that you are attracted to and give them the opportunity to meet you. Anything that happens after that point is what it is, but it is not success or failure.

Let me make this point a little clearer by switching to a sports analogy. You would probably agree with me that Wayne Rooney is a very confident and successful soccer player, Colin Keapernick is a very talented football player and Victor Marteniz is a superb baseball star of the MLB. But what do we mean by confident and successful, and why are they considered to be so much more worthy of the label than we give ourselves?

Let’s take Wayne Rooney for example, last season he made one thousand eight hundred and ninety nine shots at goal in the UK Premiership division. Of those eight hundred and ninety eight shots got nowhere near the goal! The total number of balls that came off his soccer boot and went into the back of the net was two hundred and eighty four! This means that eighty five percent of the shots Wayne Rooney takes end up missing the target – what a big fat loser right? Of course not, we are certain in our belief that he is a success as a soccer player. So why do guys who approach ten women and get one number consider themselves a failure?

What I want you to do is stop believing that not getting the outcome you want is failure. Wayne Rooney never stops shooting at the goal. Every opportunity to score he gets, he takes. Without the hundreds and hundreds of misses he would not be able to achieve the hits and ‘earn’ his eighteen million dollars a year. Just in case you were wondering what that works out at per goal, it’s sixty four thousand dollars for each one – no wonder he never stops shooting!

When you get out there and do the thing that scares you, whether that is making a presentation at work or approaching the hot girl in the supermarket – sometimes you are going to get a different outcome than you wanted. But be okay with that; understand that without those moments you can’t be the person you want to be. It’s okay to be okay and failure is a victory in its own right! Once you can start living this new mindset what you will find is that the old programs in your head that were not serving you in a positive way get deleted and replaced.

On confidence bootcamp I sometimes challenge students to go on a rejection mission. This is where you go out with the sole purpose of failing; I actually don’t want you to succeed at this task. You might go up to the super hot, catwalk model and get blown out, that’s great! I might ask you to interrupt a group of people chatting over lunch and tell them a joke that fails to make them laugh – perfect, I love it!  Get comfortable with failing, it’s no big deal and what you will discover is nobody really cares. Once you get detached from the outcome then you are going to become more confident than you ever thought possible.

One more story to emphasize this important lesson and then I am going to give you two tricks to accelerate the process. A few months ago I was asked to consult for a telecoms company. They had a team of in house sales execs who each evening had to make random calls and cold sell the product to the person on the end of the line. I am sure you can imagine what a tough job this is and just how much abuse these guys take each day at work. As any salesman will tell you cold calling really sucks and no ambitious seller wants to do it a moment longer than they need to.  For this reason this telecoms company had a very high turn over as staff. Literally as soon as the newbie salesman or saleswoman had cut their teeth on the cold calling they were applying for better sales jobs. On top of that a lot of the new recruits simply quit because they just couldn’t handle the rejection of being told ‘no’ or worse hundreds of times a day. They asked me to advise on how these guys could be better motivated to deal with the negative responses they got from strangers on the end of the phone.

We worked out that it took on average seventeen rejections to get a sale. Obviously it didn’t always work out like that and some salesmen performed better than others but roughly speaking they were selling a product every eighteen calls. So, we simply changed the way the new salesmen would be paid. Instead of getting a bonus when they sold a product we started paying them a small commission for every rejection they got and a bigger bonus for making the sale. What happened was amazing, the new salesmen actually started smiling when they got a ‘no’ or a slammed phone – because that previously negative event meant they just earned another dollar. My challenge to you right here and now is how do you think you can turn a current negative into a positive?

Chapter Four – Being Bond

“ Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy ”, Norman Vincent Peale

James Bond is the ultimate unattainable man that women want. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you that will work in almost all situations of seduction is before you act, ask yourself what would Bond do in this situation.

007 is almost always unruffled. Even when bad guys are trying to kill him he's cool. This is sexy. Bond does not move without cause. You never see his knee bouncing or fingers fidgeting. He speaks carefully and intentionally and is rarely hurried. These are all very mesmerizing qualities.

He has the unflinching eye contact of a predator, and this enhances the likelihood females will fall for him. 007 doesn't gush and get all needy over girls. He never reveals his emotions. He keeps them guessing and his unpredictability increases attraction rapidly. Bond doesn't smile a lot and this too makes him appear hot to women because pleasure isn't attractive in guys. That might sound strange but if you think back to all the most successful leading men of Hollywood, the guys who really got the girls excited were not cheeky faced comedians of the silver screen but rather the brooding, tough guy heroes such as Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt.

James Bond’s body language is powerfully commanding and he's not frightened to take up space, such domination of the environment is hugely appealing and very masculine. 007 does not babble on and this too is smooth. Bond never slouches. Good posture enhances confidence, feelings of power and makes you physically tougher when you want to look classy in your tuxedo while battling machete wielding evil minions.

I am what is known as an introverted extrovert. This means that I am predominately a self-aware thinker – I live inside my own head but I can turn on the showmanship when it is required of me. I am willing to place good money that you are also somewhere on the introverted spectrum – you have a tendency to overthink situations right?

A lot of guys think this is a disadvantage and they wish they could be more like their outgoing friends who seem to be fearless in front for women. I am here to tell you that you are in good company; James Bond fits the introverted character definition perfectly. He has the sort of unattainable, confusing and pattern breaking behavior that drives women crazy with lust. You have a gift but all the goofball PUA’s out there with their stupid hats, negging and peacocking are telling you to be the opposite of how you want to be. Ultimately they are encouraging you to be more like them and less like the real you. Discarding what women find most attractive and seductive about you.

If Bond were to adhere to the typical PUA suggestions these days, he would have a great deal of difficulty attracting girls. Can you imagine? Tossing out jokes, making a gregarious and loud show, positioning himself as the life of the party ... It feels a little off, doesn't it? That's because it's just not him. Instead, Bond is non-conformist. Badass. Fascinating. Calmly confident. That combination is magnetic to females everywhere, apparently. Do you have to be James Bond to have the same sort of appeal he has? Not at all.

As long as you're an introvert, you can concentrate purely on improving yourself in a way that feels desirable to you, and your character will look after the rest. Here are 7 reasons that you, as an introverted guy, are naturally attractive:

1. You are mysterious. You have a rich inner world, loaded with stimulating ideas and feelings. Girls who like you need to know what you're thinking, but they can't possibly know so easily. This sets up a vivacious, intense dynamic naturally.

2. You are easy to be around. Naturally, you are always cool and relaxed. You're not clamoring for attention, and you're a great listener. These qualities make you appealing and pleasant.

3. You have a fresh perspective on the world. Given that you're not into passing crazes but you are in harmony with a deeper reality, the way you see the universe is often unexpected and wonderful to others. You have a fresh sense of humor and eccentric a sense of fun.

4. Your introspection makes you an incredible lover. You have a routine of searching out where you're going right and where you're failing in life, so you can take responsibility and better yourself. When established, this is trustworthy and incredibly earnest to a woman.

5. You are in tune with subtle chemistry nuances. This is so sexy. Your quiet intensity puts you in close touch with your body, her body, and the environment in a way that gives you a unique edge. Sometimes, simply the smallest glance can make a girl melt, and your instinctive nature means you are especially primed to do that well.

6. You are intellectually stimulating. Smart women are stimulated by meaningful conversations with perceptive men. You know all kinds of different things to share with others because of your exploratory and intellectually curious nature.

7. You know yourself. As an inwardly oriented male, you know what you like and what you don't like. You know your values, your preferences, and what you desire in life. This makes you trustable and sophisticated.

Those are only 7 reasons you are naturally attractive. There are a lot more about you specifically that you may not even know. I encourage you to go search for those naturally attractive qualities in yourself.

Go do whatever it takes to turn up the dial on your most attractive qualities so you can naturally attract extraordinary women and enjoy the hell out of the process.

Chapter Five – Looking for completion

“ Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill ”, Christopher Parker

Most guys are haunted by the need to find completion in life. This fruitless search for the perfect moment paralyses our potential and locks us in a loop of frustration. When it comes to getting confident with women and dealing with our fears about being rejected there can always seem to be a reason why you should delay taking action.

Lots of guys I speak to have a reason/excuse as to why they are not with the woman of their dreams or even earlier in the process, not approaching and learning how to be seductive to women. Excuses include:

When I get a promotion at work I will feel more self-assured.

I want to lose some weight before I start approaching beautiful women.

I am going to hit the gym for a few months and then I will have the confidence to approach girls.

It’s nearly Christmas, that’s a time for family not chasing women – New Year, new me!

All these excuses are just moving the life you want further away from you. There is no a better time in the future to get started on this journey. The perfect time is already here, in this moment. Every moment you avoid taking action in the hope that life is going to deal you a better hand at some random point in the future is a moment of your life that is gone forever.

It is rather difficult to feel content in a world that is consistently offering you the "next best thing". I mean, how can your possibly pay attention to the now when you can't wait for the future to show up?

Because it will be better? It will be bigger, quicker, more beneficial, more effective, more fulfilling and ... perfect, somehow.

But how dependable is relying on the future? And what proof do we have that it will deliver a more desirable life than we have today?

The only thing we can be certain of is the present moment; this moment you're experiencing as you read this book.

The truth is that we devote far too much time contemplating the past and anticipating the future. We look to the future for abundance and, when it lets us down, we look romantically to the past at the way things once were. The mind is always trying to take us some place else, to somewhere more desirable, a place we have convinced ourselves will make everything worthwhile, a place where we feel content and fully realize our purpose and place in the universe.

But that place doesn't exist in the future.

In reality, all that transpires is disappointment. We become increasingly impatient with life as it fails to provide the perfect embodiment of happiness promoted to us through a plethora of advertising mediums on a daily basis.

The more we own and achieve the bigger the discontentment expands as the gap becomes impossible to fill. We end up being more and more unhappy and more stressed, more egocentric and judgmental, more anxious and sleepless, more disenchanted with the sphere. This impacts adversely on our relationships with others, and on our capability to connect with the true nature of things. On our confidence and self-belief, it prevents us taking action and going after that beautiful woman who stands in front of us at this moment. Instead we tell ourselves that there will be a better opportunity tomorrow, when we are dressed better, have had more sleep or just feel more energetic.

If I had a dime for every time I heard someone say, "Things will be better when I. ...," "I'll be happier when I.".

When what?

When you move apartment again?

When you get a higher-paying job?

When the children go off to university?

When you finally take that vacation?

When you get a more substantial car?

When you achieve what your parents expected of you?

When you meet the right girl?

When you retire with that pension you've been toiling to build up?

This continuous process of desiring to get to some moment other than the one that's in our presence is causing us nothing but mental anguish. We live in the world of our imagination, a delusion reliant on the prospect that contentment and self-confidence is just one more purchase, one more action or goal away. Guys come on bootcamp because they realize that at some point there is no point reading any more about ‘game’, they have learned all there is to learn and the only thing left to do is to face their fears and put themselves out there as an alpha male.

We are all guilty of hoping and dreaming that a better, easier window of opportunity is just around the corner. But what if we just stop dreaming for a moment? What if we could find absolute satisfaction in just being here right now?

I guarantee you that if you let go of the grasping for just a second, you'll see just how perfect this moment is and how incredibly complete you feel.

Simply because regardless of what is going on in your life at the moment and how you regard it, this is how it was intended to be in this instance.

Every instant is part of the interdependent mortality of life. Mother earth doesn't use a clock. There is no time, only a sequence of perfect instances that form our existence. And they can be nothing greater than moments, due to the fact that one only ever exists at any given time.

And if you need any more motivation to free yourself from the jail of contemplation over what the future might bring, remember that one day there will not be another instance to contemplate. The cold, hard reality is that you'll die before that perfect moment you visualize ever arrives.

Every second we wish away, disregard or reject as not good enough, we never get back. Conversely, every moment is ours to seize and value, to love ourselves, others and this incredible planet full of beautiful women.

Do not overlook the opportunity for unconditional gratification and fulfillment that can be found in your life right this moment. The way you interact with this moment will have an explicit effect on the next, subsequently impacting the level of opportunity and success that opens up in your life.

So right now, bring your mind home. Stop longing for something greater to happen, to have more than you own, to have a six pack, to be slimmer, to own better clothes or to be somebody else, somewhere else. Stop dreaming of the girl you want and just go and get her – she is not going to get more attractive if you wait a few years (only us lucky men get more attractive with age).

There is no perfect moment to come. There will never be a more perfect time that this one. Because this instance is completely as it is intended to be.

If you wait for one of your excuses to come good, for example perhaps you said you were going to lose ten pounds and then get busy finding the girl of your dreams. Do you know what happens when you lose the weight? You come up with another reason why now is not the right time.

Your happiness and confidence as a man doesn't reside in the future, and it hasn't passed you by, either. It's right here. Step into this most beautiful instance and get in touch with your existence.

Life is happening right now. Don't miss out.

Chapter Six – Disrupting Her Pattern

“ You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along ”, Eleanor Roosevelt

A pattern disrupt is a way to change a woman's state or perception of you in the split second that you approach her. We all have behavior patterns that are habit sequences or mental pathways. Often habits are useful. Autopilot means our brains have become so efficient at doing something we can disregard our conscious minds.

We get dressed, drive a car, walk and brush our teeth in ways that don't need much mental attention. Essentially we have expectations and associated responses in life that are based on numerous similar experiences. It would be highly ineffective to reconsider each of these identical events on a case by case basis – so we have a pre-programmed response ready to go at anyone time.

Women have inbuilt patterns around their expectations of us guys. When a guy walks up to a girl in a bar and offers to buy them a drink a pattern in her subconscious is activated. She doesn’t need to consciously think about how she feels about your offer she will have a subconscious assessment and response already established. She will most likely think ‘oh great another loser guy who thinks he can buy his way into my bed with a Bacardi and coke’, she will have her own way of dealing with this, the most common being taking the free drink with absolutely no intention of your interaction going any further.

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal”, Paulo Coelho

We have patterns to deal with the routine elements of life. When you approach a girl in the street and tell her you want her this is like throwing a hand grenade into her perception of reality. This shit does not happen, she is used to guys staring at her and lusting after her but she is not used to men having the confidence to approach and tell her. You have already broken her standard pattern but watch out because your work here is not finished. She will almost certainly have a go to pattern for dealing with sensations of shock, fear and the spot light being on her.

Some women take the approach well and are genuinely and obviously thrilled but others will automatically blurt out “sorry I have a boyfriend’. A lot of guys will bail out at this point unaware that in at least half the time this is not true, it is just an automatic response of the subconscious to try and retake control of an unusual situation.

Women are also used to being asked ‘do you have a boyfriend’ this is a routine question and often they will answer yes whether it is true or not. By positioning yourself in the routine bracket you have instantly demonstrated that you are nothing special. So, if the pattern is built around the question ‘do you have a boyfriend’, how do you ask that same question without activating the autopilot response?

You use different words; women are much less likely to be asked ‘are you single’. Us guys are genetically programmed to guard against attack from another alpha male, so their first thought is often to ask ‘do you have a boyfriend’? This choice of words displays their primary concern and in doing so shows a weakness in their character. You can’t be an alpha male if you are worried about being attacked by the alpha male, does that make sense?

By asking her ‘are you single’ you are using language that is unusual for her to hear and you are also demonstrating that you don’t care about another man – your focus is on her, not him.

Rapport is tuning in to another at a subconscious level. You can tell when you have rapport because the girl leaves behind her conditioned responses and starts to follow your lead. Often when I feel her interest in me is at it’s peak I will say I have to go and tell her to give me her number so I can text her later. About half the time I do this the girl goes into another pattern. She suddenly feels a little worried about giving her number to the stranger, she imagines all the horror stories she has heard and alarm bells start to ring. I must disrupt this pattern within one or two seconds before it takes hold or my ability to get her number is going to decrease dramatically. As soon as I sense hesitation I bring the palm of my hand up level with her face and assertively say STOP. Normally at this point the guy has started to sense rejection coming and has already started to back peddle. Instead I give a powerful command and then an instruction:

“Stop, I don’t want excuses give me your number”.

This is a demonstration that I am an alpha male and I am not asking for her number I am telling her to give it to me. This is as far from routine as you can get and it is incredibly attractive to women.

A girl’s pattern can be interrupted by any unexpected or sudden movement or reaction. Have you ever messed up someone's story by asking a question for instance and they cannot remember where they were?

They experience temporary confusion, and occasionally even memory loss. Have you ever started to do something and after being interrupted can't remember what it was? This confusion state can make you open to proposition-- we are willing to trade our uncomfortable state for another's clarity.

Start looking out for autopilot responses. Not just in other people, be aware that patterns can be our own personal downfall too. We can eat mindlessly and as a result pig out. We can ignore important people and not hear important messages. We can exercise without paying attention and damage bits of our bodies. These events are happening to us and around us all the time – unless you want a non-conscious monotonous reaction to your endeavors your need to start kicking down pattern responses wherever you go.

Chapter Seven – Cold Approach Vs Warm Approach

“ Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear and superstition ”, Bernard Beckett

So here are some hard truths about making cold approaches: they are formidable and terrifying, particularly if you're attempting to hook up with a girl that evening. You are essentially approaching a total stranger and trying to persuade them that they should be interested in pursuing a relationship with you in a matter of hours. Sounds impossible right? It’s not and as with everything else in life it’s 80% about your level of confidence.

Warm approaches, on the other hand, involve meeting women you at least have some connection to, which can speed up building rapport and lessen the chances of getting turned down or rejected right from the get-go. They're demonstrably easier, but the downside is you are not in control of when these easy opportunities turn up in your life.

So you could reasonably ask: why even do cold approaches at all?

Well to start with: you're not always going to have a social circle at the ready. If you've just moved to a new town, you're not necessarily going to have that network of friends and friends-of-friends to introduce you to the girls they know. In addition, your social circle may not be all that sizable or well connected; not everybody's group of friends is going to be filled by super friendly extroverts who know dozens and dozens of people for you to get to know. If you are over the age of 30 you may also find that your network of friends all seem to be married or in long-term relationships. You don’t want to end up with there average looking single friend just because they feel sorry for you both – this situation is a compromise that fails for everyone involved.

There will be lots of times when you will stubble across some hot stranger with no link to your real life, the girl who sits across from you in your Conversational French lesson, the stunning woman with the amazing eyes you see weekly at Whole Foods, the adorable bookworm scanning the Personal Development section of Barnes And Noble. Having the ability, skill and confidence to go up and strike up a conversation with them means fewer missed opportunities to meet the girl of your dreams.

Additionally, cold approaches have to do with more than just getting dates or trying to get more sex. Being able to build relationships with complete strangers is a critical component of 'Game' in general. To take a recent example: if you're intending to make professional connections at a conference, the place to do so isn't during the seminar itself, it's at the after conference social get-togethers and parties. When you become a master of cold approaching you will find you can also nail job interviews with ease – your unusually high self-confidence and self-esteem will ooze through every answer you offer to their questions.

Equally as importantly, however, is the fact that mastering cold approaches helps make every other approach easier. If you become skilled at building relationships with people you've never met before, envision how much easier it's going to be to charm the pants off (figuratively and literally) the hot girl that works in the cubicle across the office!

Phase One: The Opener

The opener is the simplest, yet highest stress inducing part of a PUA cold-approach. It's a very simple concept: you are trying to find a reason to start off a conversation.

But this is the area that trips up men the most. Men devote more time freaking out about what to say to girls than almost any other element of the approach. I've lost track of the PUA forum guides, threads and ebooks dedicated exclusively to pick up lines, looking for the "magical" opener that will "create instant intrigue and attraction in any woman you talk to".

Generally, openers are divided into two assorted kinds: indirect approaches and direct or cold approaches.

Indirect Approaches:

The indirect opener is a technique of starting the conversation without directly revealing that you're interested in a woman sexually or romantically. You are basically coming up with a tenable reason to speak with a woman besides the fact that you find them attractive. These have the tendency to be somewhat easier for the socially inexperienced or shy guys; they are low risk investments for both parties, almost to the point of being another way of sacrificing the goat that we will talk about in more detail later.

Indirect openers tend to be either the classic "opinion based" lines, where you are getting a girl's opinion about an issue or dilemma. These pick up lines all follow the same template: Question, reasoning for asking, broadening and expanding on the story for clarity.

The most famous is the "jealous girlfriend" opener:

"Hey guys, my friends and I were arguing about something and we need an external female opinion: would you date someone who's still friends with their ex? [Pause for her to answer] Here’s the deal, so my buddy is still kind of close with his ex-girlfriend. They are still very close friends. And he's got this container of little keepsakes and photos and stuff from their time together.

So one day his current girlfriend finds the box of memories and just flips out, she goes insanely jealous about this. Now she's demanding that he burn the box and all the memories in front of her? So, do you think that's reasonable?"

The potential issue with indirect openers is that ... well, they're indirect. You can quite often spend a lot of time speaking with a girl who is otherwise not available but doesn't mention it because she believed you were just being friendly rather than actually trying to flirt with her.

The other complication is that it's really easy to get jammed on the opener. If you're already reluctant about cold approach or like most introverts completely overthinking the process, it can feel more comfortable to stick with the conversation you already have in play rather than trying to shift gears ... and as a result, your interaction ends up going nowhere fast. You have to be willing to adapt, move and cut a conversational thread short and shift to a new topic if required.

Direct Approach:

Direct openers are precisely what it says on the tin: you're being upfront, clear and direct with a girl about why you're talking to them. These tend to be very simple: "Hi, I think you're beautiful and I wanted to meet you. My name is Freeman" and you carry on from there. Personally, I've had the most success with "You seem like you're fun ... but are you friendly? Cool, my name is Freeman". It's short, simple and establishes early on that you're attracted to her specifically. However, It can be a polarizing technique, it goes without saying, you're basically asking her to make a snap judgment as to whether she feels the same about you, but it also means you figure out very swiftly whether or not she's single, which means you invest less time on metaphorical dead-ends. I prefer finding out early on whether or not a woman I'm attracted to (dating or sleeping with) is uninterested or unavailable; it means I'm not burning up my valuable time attempting to chase something that will never materialize.

Now, here's the dirty little secret about approaching girls: what you say effectively doesn't matter nearly half as much as you think. I have quite literally initiated a conversation with "I love you your hair style, I would marry you for that reason alone" and wound up taking that girl home that evening. 99% of the women I've slept with don't remember the first words I said to them. It's all about just approaching with high energy, lots of self-confidence and initiating an interaction with her.

Phase 2: Develop Rapport

It's time to start building interest and attraction once you have the girl's attention. You want them to feel that spark; that inexpressible feeling of chemistry that gets them aroused when they are with you.

The best way to accomplish this is by developing deep rapport with the woman, identifying all the things you have in common while keeping a particular sense of playful fun in the connection by bantering and flirting, even adding a little intimate tension in too; you want to communicate that you like her as a human being but also that you're interested in her on a sexually level.

It's a fine balance; you want to establish an emotional link with the girl you're flirting with in addition to a sexual or physical one. Too much in just one direction and you may be just making a new friend; don’t get me wrong this can be awesome, but if you're trying to find an intimate connection, not completely helpful at this point. Too far in the other direction... at best, you're going to be wearing the girl's white wine and soda all over your new shirt before the night's over. At worst, you're going to come across like a really pervy old man.

Attraction is as much about feelings as it has to do with sexual chemistry. Even if a woman thinks you're hot buttered sex on toast, they're not going to want to fuck you if you repulse them on an emotional level. Building rapport is a mix of sharing and flirting, telling stories and creating leading questions for her to answer. Offering a little and then pulling it back just a tad. The secret is to not fall into interview style, asking her the same twenty questions every average Joe asks her: "what do you do, where are you from, what kind of movies do you like?" You want to ask penetrating questions and share your passions back beyond just the basics.

If you share some of your tastes with her, try to give her a story to go with the statement. Telling her that you are a huge fan of the Black Eyes Peas is great but not as great as telling her how your older brother won front row tickets on the local radio station and it was the most amazing night of your life, a night that turned you into the most passionate BEP fan on planet earth.

At the same time, you do not want to be a "sheep" and simply agree with every little thing she says or be overly fawning, you wind up transcending the stages of being a friendly guy and into giving her signs of being a needy bore. A man who is excessively gushing in his praise or can't bring himself to go against the grain or perhaps even argue his opinion with an attractive woman is sub-communicating that he's desperate to be liked and hopes that sucking up to her will make her want him. You need to be prepared to disagree, but don’t be a jerk - be playful about it.

"Your favorite movie is Inception? It's a good thing you're fun to talk to because I am going to struggle dating someone with such bad taste in movies".

Keep in mind: you're being funny and teasing; it should be immediately apparent that you're not judging her or telling her she's stupid. If she can't tell that you're not being serious, then not only are you doing it incorrectly, you're also being kind of an arsehole.

Observe Her Attention.

As you're building rapport, you're going to want to be periodically checking in on occasion to see whether or not she's beginning to fancy you. It's one thing if she's been hooked in enough to talk to you or invest some of her free time with you. It's another if she's really feeling trapped with ‘this strange guy’ and is desperately looking for a way out of the interaction without being rude.

The signs that she's actually curious about you and not just being courteous are relatively noticeable if you pause to become aware of them.

How is she reacting to you? Is she responding with enthusiasm to your questions and giving long and engaged responses, or is she providing short, blunt replies? Is she volunteering information without prodding from you, or do you have to drag responses out of her as though you're pulling teeth?

A woman who's actually intrigued by you will give lengthier and more psychologically entailed replies, often offering a lot more personal info as a way of trying to relate to you.

Just as importantly, is she asking you questions? Does she seem to be actually taking notice of what you have to say, or is she just waiting for her turn to speak?

Watch her eyes. Is she making strong eye contact with you, or are her eyes darting around the room? Watch her pupils – if they look bigger than normal this is a very good sign. Our pupils dilate when we are in the company of someone we are attracted to. It’s kind of cute really, its almost like your eyes are opening up to allow more of their beautiful image in.

Is she concentrating on you or is she constantly inspecting her watch or her phone? These are all signs that she's looking for a reason to get away from you. Looking around typically means that she's hoping to see a friend and give a nonverbal "COME SAVE ME FFS" signal. Checking her watch is a way of saying "For how long do I need to tolerate this man before he gets the message and beats it?"

Physical touch is a crucial way of communicating interest and attraction. If you're touching her (and you should be) and you take your hand away, does she touch you back? I've had great success with the "side caress", an arm across the shoulders during an emotive high point such as an awesome story or while being told an amusing joke. Does she lean in or put her arm around you in return? These are signs that she's increasingly attracted to you.

Is she willing to change location and follow you some place? One way of assessing attraction is to say, "Hey, I am off to the bar. How about you come help me?" A woman who's interested in you will want to keep the conversation going. A date whose not as invested in the conversation will be more likely to say "Erm that's Okay, I'll catch up with you later on”.

It's time to consider how far along you are in the interaction if you're not seeing signs of interest. If you've been talking to her for TWENTY minutes or more and you're not receiving much feedback from her then the odds are she's not that interested in you. It's better to say your goodbyes and push on. It's better to cut things short than to stick around for too long in a dead conversation; in a worst-case scenario, you can always talk to her again later.

Phase 3: Qualification

Then it's time to take things a little deeper once she's emotionally invested in talking to you. You need to learn more about her-- beyond the exterior issues and more into what actually makes her tick. This is why you want to start using qualifications. Qualifications perform two purposes. Primarily it allows you to screen for distinct personality traits, if you're the outdoorsy type who likes to go hiking and mountain biking, you don't want to date a woman who gets deadly cedar-fever as quickly as they set foot outdoors. Secondly, it's a means of intensifying the connection. You're looking for reasons why they're awesome ... and having them describe why they're awesome and then agreeing with them. This action creates a positive feedback loop; they're telling you why you should like them, and you're saying "you're right, I do like you. It's a way of escalating the rapport between you two ... and it works both ways.

They start with a basic question: "Do you love to travel"? Then you expand on it. "That's really awesome; I love world travellers, they're usually the ones who're wanting to find new experiences and take risks trying new encounters. Do you like hanging around to the well-known touristy areas, or do you like going a little off the beaten path?"

From here you have a number of means you can go: look for more commonalities by comparing travel stores, dig a little deeper into who they are or even take it in a flirty, sensual direction by making a tease about their being into exotic men. You're filtering for a trait you like (traveling in this particular case) by asking what's amazing about them.

When done well, it's a very powerful technique. Correct use of qualifying measures is a way of building emotional intimacy and familiarity quickly; it builds to that sense of "we've only just dated but I feel like I've known him forever" that is extremely appealing.

Phase 4: Close The Deal

A lot of guys get attached to an outcome they have preselected, they concentrate on securing the kiss or the same-night lay. And while getting a kiss or a make-out with someone you've just met can feel exciting ... it's essentially not as meaningful. Don't get me wrong, it's not to say that kisses are worthless, but they're highly contextual.

Girls are able to disconnect emotionally from kisses. Have you ever been in a nightclub when two girls will make out just because they know it drives the men crazy? These girls are rarely gay; they are simply using their sexual power to get lots of attention and focus from the guys in the club.

Getting a kiss or making out with a girl at a club does not necessarily indicate that she's into you or you're going to be taking her to your house; she may want to make-out with somebody she met that night but not considering really seeing him outside of the club. That being said: if that's what you really want, then hey, go for broke! Just don't assume it suggests more than she's willing to kiss you at that particular place and moment.

If you're interested in going for the kiss, you want to look for signs that she's interested in being kissed ... assuming she doesn't just grab hold of you and kiss you first. The timeless indicator is what I call the triangle-gaze, looking from eye to lip to eye. Also be aware of how much physical space is she giving you? A girl who's interested in being kissed is going to be relaxed being up in your personal space. If you're holding her hand, give it a squeeze; if she squeezes back, she is responding to your physical lead and she's going to be a lot more likely to be interested in kissing you than if she doesn't respond at all.

Tip: While a kiss doesn’t guarantee that you will get her number and see her again, her investment of her time in you is a better indicator. If a woman has been chatting with you exclusively for twenty minutes or more this is always a very good sign that she will want to see more of you. Woman are ruthless they won’t spend time with weak and unsuitable men.

Chapter Eight – Sacrifice The Goat

“ You've done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination ”, Ralph Marston

In all areas of life you get back what you give out. This rule is no truer than when you are approaching a woman you are attracted to. If you approach in a nervous and timid way you are going to get the same level of indifference back. Maybe she will fob you off with the old ‘I have a boyfriend’ response or perhaps she won’t even waste her time by stopping and entertaining your limp approach. Conversely if you talk to a girl from a position of high energy / high self-confidence you get a good proportion of that enthusiasm returned to you by the girl. mSo with that truth in mind how do we get ourselves into the right frame to be successful in our approaches?

I am afraid the answer is messy, gruesome and as a consequence innocent little goats must die, well not quite. I don’t care who the PUA is or how experienced at ‘game’ he claims to be. When any guy goes out approaching girls the first couple of attempts are going to blow chunks. He will say something lame, come across creepy, stumble over his words and generally be a bit of a choad about the whole thing. The secret to success is to understand this is a natural and unavoidable part of the process. So much so that it is commonly referred to as ‘sacrificing the goats’. During bootcamp we start each day by deliberately going through this process. I will give you the same two or three routines that I give to my students – you can pick one or use a combination of them to sacrifice your goats before you get your game face on.

Reject me bitch

Your goal here is to get rejected as spectacularly as possible. This requires you to jump in at the deep end but nothing works quite so well to blow the cobwebs out of your ‘game’. We all worry that we are going to say something stupid or stumble over our words and so with this exercise you are going to remove all doubt about that eventuality. We decide in advance that we are going to say something stupid so there is no point worrying about it happening. Ross Jefferies (the father of Speed Seduction) even suggests saying things as nonsensical as ‘Hey, what’s your favorite flavor of bowling ball’?

On bootcamp occasionally guys will still come back with a number – despite how lame they were trying to be. A phone number is not success in this exercise, come back with her number and I will frown at you and send you right back out there for another go. You must keep doing this until you have three rejections in the bag.

The Smiler Challenge

Your objective here is to have three interactions with people (male or female) and make them smile. You can compliment them on the way they are dressed or even how they have their hair – the only rules are you must have a genuine conversation with them that lasts at least sixty seconds. This is an amazing exercise because your whole objective is to make people feel a little better than before you met them. In accordance with the rule of getting back what you give this has the corresponding effect of filling your head with feel good dopamine.

Here are a few examples of ‘Smiler’ approaches that I have done that still stick in my mind.

In Hull, England I was in a shopping mall and I saw an old war veteran sitting on a bench. He was smartly dressed in an elegant suit with all his medals proudly pinned to his chest. His shoes were as polished as his army boots were during World War II. I sat down and spent twenty minutes listening to his heroics in the war – it was a genuine pleasure to speak to him and I could tell he was over the moon for the opportunity to tell his stories.

Another one I remember was in a deli on Wall Street, New York. A larger than life African, American woman was ordering a sandwich from the counter and she had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard come out of another human being. It was like listening to warm chocolate – simply beautiful. I ordered my own sandwich and then chased after her to tell her that I was in love with her voice. There is no doubt about it, I made her day – which in turn made my day!

I don’t care you are just a goat

Pretty simple – you make three approaches in rapid succession and you accept from the outset that they are going to be terrible. Your goal here is not getting a number, not getting a positive response but rather getting to number three. The title of this exercise is purely based on what I say to myself every time I do this in the field. As I am walking away from a girl – regardless of what happened I am thinking ‘I don’t care you are just goat number 2 – now, where is goat number 3’?

This process of warming up may seem a little silly but just as a champion athlete would never dream of competing without stretching and preparing his body for the race. Similarly we must warm up our brains, mouths and posture before going after the prize. Giving yourself permission to fail takes the pressure off and allows you to ease into the correct mindset rather than always be jumping into a freezing cold pool and swimming for your life.

No goats were harmed in the writing of this chapter.

Chapter Nine – Body Language

“ Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come ”, Henri Nouwen

Stop reading for a second, and observe how you are standing or sitting.

Where are your arms?

What is the expression on your face?

If a girl were to walk into the room right now, what assumptions might they make about you purely based upon your body language?

Women are particularly astute when it comes to quickly assessing a guy’s confidence and strength of character based purely on non-verbal cues. A large percentage of communication and how girls perceive you comes from body language. This includes stance, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Despite what you are saying to her your body language may reveal your true feelings or intents.

Maybe you feel weary, irritated, horny, frustrated, or enthusiastic, but a few of these may not be emotions you intend to communicate in a given scenario. Do you actually want your boss to know his speech is making your eyes glaze over?

Do you want the hot girl to know you think she is the most beautiful woman on planet earth?

Managing and understanding body language boosts your self-confidence in a couple of ways.

By managing your body language and sending appropriate signals in specific situations, you receive positive feedback and feel assured you aren't sabotaging your own success or the perceptions of others.

More significantly, when you practice effective, positive body language, you're sending messages to your mind to reinforce positive, self-assured feelings. Self-assured body language literally makes you feel more confident with women.

Here are 9 powerful body language tips to immediately boost your confidence:

1. Practice smiling.

Smiling not only makes you appear trustworthy and more attractive, it also enhances your health, decreases your stress level and broadly boosts your feelings about yourself. Smiling slows the heart and de-stresses the body, and it releases endorphins that counteract and diminish stress hormones. It also has been shown to increase productivity while performing tasks. According to several studies, smiling can trick your brain into feeling happy, even when you feel sad or depressed as you're doing the smiling.

Exercise : When you wake up in the morning, stand in front of your mirror and smile at yourself. Yes, you will feel foolish, but nobody is watching so practice smiling to yourself for a moment or two. When you're in your car or alone at your desk, practice smiling. Be conscious of the impact smiling has on other people, and before you approach any hot girl remind yourself to smile.

2. Pay attention to posture.

You practice good posture when your position standing or sitting generates the least amount of pressure on supporting ligaments and muscles. When you sit, your back is straight, your rear is against the cushion of the seat, your feet are flat on the carpet, and you flex your knees at a right angle.

When standing up you should be able to draw an imaginary straight line from your earlobe through your shoulder, hip, knee and the middle of your ankle. Good stance is essential for avoiding back and neck pain, prevention muscle aches, and keeping your bones and joints in correct alignment. But most important in our case is it makes you look more confident.

It opens respiratory tracts to ensure proper breathing, which permits all of your organs and tissues to function properly. Good posture also reflects a self-assured demeanor to others. When you stand straight, with your shoulders back and head held high, you look fearless and poised.

Exercise : Notice your position at the moment, as you are reading this book. Are you slumped in your chair with your back bent, neck forward, and shoulders hunched? Practice standing and sitting with correct posture.

Check out yourself in the mirror and make modifications so you feel the proper alignment of your body. Wear a rubber band on your wrist or some other physical reminder to stand or sit up straight.

When it's bad, ask a family member to notice your posture and comment. Before you approach a woman you are attracted to check your posture, straighten your back and pull your shoulders back naturally to occupy more space.

3. Use power poses.

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy showed in her 2012 TED talk that standing or sitting with certain poses for as little two minutes raises testosterone levels and lowers cortisol (the stress and anxiety hormone).

These postures can affect your performance, as well as your success at work, with women, and in your relationships. Several of the poses involve opening your body and occupying space, making you feel more confident and powerful.

Exercise : Get on Youtube and watch videos of how confident guys hold themselves. Watch Bond movies; observe how Brad Pitt or Marlon Brando walks into a room etc.

Select two or three positions that you might practice by yourself and in approach scenarios when you want to appear and feel powerful. Practice doing these poses every day for a few weeks until they feel 100% natural.

4. Use engaged body language.

If you would like to reach an agreement, win the girl, persuade someone to your side of things, engaged body language gives you more self-confidence and sends potent messages to other people to win them over.

Engaged body language involves making use of open gestures, smiling and nodding, and mirroring the expressions and movements of the other person. Once you've achieved your objective, seal the deal by offering a firm handshake, saying "thank you", or in the case of approach – asking for her number.

Exercise : Think about upcoming situations in which you want to reach an agreement or win someone over. Practice the encounter beforehand using engaged body language. In casual conversation, practice matching expressions and movements so you feel confident with it before your big meeting.

5. Remember your arms and legs.

Crossing your arms suggests you feel resistive, self-protective, and closed off. Crossing your legs away from another person can suggest you dislike them or feel uncomfortable around them. Crossing your ankles can signal you're holding something back and not articulating your true feelings.

Note: This does not apply to women – many girls are taught from a young age to sit in this ladylike fashion.

If you squeeze your hands behind your back, you might be saying you feel bored, anxious, or even angry. Hands clasped and crossed over the genital areas is a self-comforting expression that shows vulnerability or shyness. Tapping your fingers and fidgeting tells others you are bored, impatient, or frustrated.

Exercise : Begin to take note of what you do with your arms and legs in approach circumstances. When your legs and/or arms are crossed, Notice how you are feeling. What is the woman saying or doing, and why might you feel defensive or closed off? In bootcamps I often observe the guy crossing his arms at the point of rejection. Trust me, women notice this too and it only goes to confirm that you are not the strong alpha male she needs in her life.

Begin to change the position of your arms and legs. When sitting put your hands in your lap and by your side when standing.

6. Dress for confidence.

In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, subjects who wore doctors' lab coats scored higher on attention-related tasks than did those who did not.

Clothes do make a difference in how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us. Dressing confidently is more than wearing the trendiest fashion. It's about feeling good, looking poised and being self-assured in all situations.

It's also about sending the right message to the people you are with. It’s amazing how much easier approach is when you know you are dressed well.

Exercise : Does your wardrobe add to your confidence or diminish it? Do you often find yourself in sloppy clothing or not dressed appropriately for the situation? Dressing well will add to your confidence, even when you are feeling down.

Determine your personal style by looking at blogs or magazines to see what you like. Learn about the impact of wearing certain colors. Purchase a few classic pieces to add to your wardrobe that make you feel powerful and full of self-confidence if necessary.

7. Stop fidgeting.

Over 500 managers surveyed by Adecco USA, a workforce solutions company, said that one fifth of the candidates they've rejected for a position were fidgeters. They felt it betrayed a lack of confidence and a lack of preparation for the interview.

Fidgeting, like shaking your foot, or biting your nails, is an obvious sign of anxiety and nervousness. These nervous movements draw attention away from what you're saying and distract people from your message.

When you are talking to a woman avoid touching your face or neck which also indicates you feel anxious. Fidgeting sends the message clear and loud that you aren't self-assured. Women always notice this stuff, whether they are conscious of it or not.

Exercise : Do you have some regular fidgeting habits? Have others commented on these behaviors in the past? Start to pay attention to how you fidget and what triggers these actions. When you encounter the trigger, think about what you can do to replace these nervous habits.

You could hold your hands in your lap, use your hands to gesticulate when you speak, or hold a pen and pad. , if you shake your foot or knee, place both feet flat on the floor.. When you feel the urge to fidget and have nervous energy, take a few deep, calming breaths.

8. Practice appropriate eye contact.

Eye contact suggests you're truthful, engaging, and approachable. It imparts a sense of intimacy and confidence to your interactions, and makes women feel more positive and connected to you. However, too much eye contact can send the signal you're aggressive or maybe even a little strange.

When eye contact goes from gazing to staring, it makes girls uncomfortable and actually activates their sympathetic nervous system. According to Michael Ellsberg, author of The Power of Eye Contact, "In order for eye contact to feel good, one person can not impose his visual will on another; it is a shared experience.".

Exercise : If you feel uncomfortable making eye contact, start to get comfortable by practicing with family and friends. Look them in the eye for about 50-- 60 percent of the conversation ideally.

When you break eye contact, look to the side rather than down. Looking down signals lower-status, shame, and/or submission. As you get more confident with eye contact with family and friends, practice it in field when you are approaching women you are attracted to.

Chapter Ten – 10x4 Rule

“ Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth ”, Bradley Whitford

One of the most common broadsword questions I get from guys on a Powerfully Confident bootcamp is; ‘how do you speak to women’. This is a very different question to ‘what should I say’. This concern is directly related to the performance of approach rather than then content of it.

When you approach a hot girl follow these simple rules. Speak in your own voice, with your own accent and in the style that you usually adopt in day-to-day life. Of course you will need to speak with more clarity and punctuation than you do when you are talking to your friends but just remember to take your 10 by 4 with you as you approach her…

The 10x4 Rule

10% louder than normal.

10% slower.

10% richer.

10% clearer than you normally speak.

The easiest way to get used to speaking like this is to get a video camera and record yourself making pretend approaches – each time you do it you will watch back the tape and notice something that weakened your opener, perhaps something that you were not even aware of at the time of recording.

Often the most common thing that guys notice is that they are speaking far too fast. This happens because in every day life we do tend to talk quite quickly to our friends and family, who have become tuned into our style of speaking. This was made very clear to me when for a year or so I had a girlfriend who was Iranian and English was her second language. Occasionally I would forget and talk to her just as I talk to my English friends. Her face would drop into utter confusion and I would have to repeat the sentence over, but much slower and much clearer for her.

But additionally when we are suffering with a little approach anxiety, we ramp up the speed because we desperately want to get the approach over with as quick as possible and so we turn a marathon into a sprint. Trying to speed your way through an approach causes a negative performance loop because the speed demonstrates a lack of confidence and it also makes you stumble over your words, which further demonstrates a lack of confidence.

You can notice you are speaking too fast when words start losing their ending. For example going becomes goin and doing sounds more like doin. Also you will find several words become connected together rather than be spoken as individual words. ‘I am going to make a speech’ becomes a jumble of a words that sounds like ‘ Iamgoin t maker speech’. Don’t worry there are some very simple exercises you can do just before you speak to a girl that will really help prevent this happening. It’s almost impossible to write down the instructions on how to do these because you need to see and hear what I am doing with my mouth for you to grasp the concept of the exercise. If this is something you would find useful, there are lots of training videos at my website that you can download free of charge. While you are there be sure to check out my video on the power of the pause. It is strange but often the most powerful part of any approach is actually the silence in between the words. Placing a pause in a strategic place in your delivery adds a disproportionate amount of power to what you are saying. For example, say these two sentences out loud and see which sounds more powerful:

“Nicola opened the basement door and allowed her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Suddenly out of the gloom came a scream and then she saw the full horror of it, a snarling animal charged straight for her”

“Nicola opened the basement door and allowed her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Suddenly [PAUSE] out of the gloom came a scream and then she saw the full horror of it, [PAUSE] a snarling animal charged straight for her”

Do you see that the pause is the power behind the drama of the story? You can compound the effect of this dramatic element by making eye contact with a few of your audience during the gap. This makes them feel that you are personally telling them a story and sharing an important moment with them. Additionally the eye contact effectively puts the spotlight on them for a moment, which further amplifies the sense of intrigue created by the pause in conversation.

But there is another benefit to the dramatic pause. Silence can be very uncomfortable at times but only if you are not in control of it. Have you ever been involved in a conversation about someone, only to have them walk into the room? That horrible moment is what we label ‘an awkward silence’. It is a moment that nobody wants to own; nobody is in control of it. Eventually someone starts talking about a random subject to fill the gaping chasm in the room and the group is very grateful that somebody took control. Equally you will have witnessed nervous speakers who get frozen to the spot in fear, perhaps it has even happened to you. The speaker knows it is time to speak but for some reason they just can’t bring themselves to start, after a very short amount of time everyone in the audience starts to feel uncomfortable. With the knowledge of just how awkward an uncontrolled silence can be, being the sort of person who isn’t afraid to use silence in their approach says louder than any words could; this guy is a very confident individual.

The 10x4 rule is going to enhance the results you get with women massively and if you add in this final tip you will blow what you were doing previously out of the water. One of the most powerful things you can do to enhance any approach is smile… a lot. Show me any guy who is failing to make an impression on a girl and at least half the time I can guarantee you he is not smiling. His face looks like a pure bag of shit scared.

Smile! It is the simplest instruction you will ever receive but nothing has such a dramatic impact on your delivery and level of confidence than a smile. You see, most guys approach girls they like with a load of terrifying self talk going on in their head. They are demanding that they ‘don’t mess up’ the openers, they are praying to God and doing dozen of other things that they hope will speed them through the torturous moment ahead. As a result of all this activity in the conscious mind they approach the girl looking like a frightened ghost.

Try this, say this sentence twice. Firstly with a solemn face and then do it again but with a smile on your face throughout:

Hi, I noticed you a few moments ago and I thought wow she’s really cute and so I wanted to come over and meet you.”

Do you see how different it sounds, but more than that do you feel how different you feel about yourself in the moment. It is very hard to smile and be miserable at the same time and confident men are rarely miserable when speaking.

So remember the next time you speak… take your 10 x 4 and smile, smile, smile!

Chapter Eleven – The R Word

“ One of life's fundamental truths states, 'Ask and you shall receive.' As kids we get used to asking for things, but somehow we lose this ability in adulthood. We come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons to avoid any possibility of criticism or rejection ”, Jack Canfield

There is no doubt about it rejection stings like a bitch. If you are going to step above most other guys and do the stuff that they are afraid to do then I am afraid from time to time you are going to be rejected. That is the bad news, the good news is most of the times you predict rejection it won’t happen and even better still when it does happen the chances are good it wasn’t even a true rejection.

Sometimes when a woman says no it doesn’t mean all the negative stuff in our head. We tend to assume that women say no because they don’t like us or they find something unattractive about us. If you approach a hot girl and she doesn’t want anything to do with you, the temptation is to beat yourself up with thoughts like ‘of course she was far too hot for me’ or ‘she probably likes guys with a better body’. The truth is you don’t really know why she doesn’t want to take it further. She could be about the be made redundant at work, her father could be gravely ill in hospital or perhaps she missed her target at work and this month she is not going to have enough money to pay the rent. Perhaps she doesn’t find you attractive but you are rarely going to find out if this is the true reason, so why ever assume this?

Hot women are used to rejecting the approach of guys and sometimes it just becomes an automatic response. Think about how you react when you are dashing about in your lunch break from work and one of those annoying charity muggers approaches you. Instantly the hand goes up and you say ‘no thank you’ before they even get chance to speak to you. Does this mean you are not a charitable person or you have bad manners? Of course not, you are not rejecting the concept of giving to less fortunate people you are rejecting the approach because it doesn’t give you what you want or serve any immediate need within you. It is highly unlikely that you would ever be walking around thinking ‘I wish someone would come and ask me for a donation to charity’. Well, it’s the same thing for women with guys making lame approaches. Remember, virtually every other guy who has tried to pick this girl up has done it in a super lame, unattractive way. No hot woman is walking around hoping some douche bag will say ‘hey how you doing’ or ‘hi can I buy you a drink’.

Sometimes you will approach a girl and get nothing but a stone cold response or a quick brush off. Be aware when this happens that she is not rejecting you, she is rejecting the concept of being approached by just another guy. You have to kick her shields down and push past this first stage sure in the knowledge it has nothing to do with what she thinks of you. There are several things you can do that will make the approach harder for you. A lot of guys with good Game inadvertently raise her shields without even knowing it. For example if she notices you watching her before you pluck up the courage to approach then it’s shields up Scotty. You are obviously a guy lacking in confidence and not worthy of her attention. To get over this always apply the seven second rule to approaching hot girls. The instant you see a woman you want to talk to start walking towards her, you need to be in conversation with her within seven seconds of seeing her.

The reasons for this are many fold, if you leave it any longer than this the following problems arise:

You come up with a million reasons why you shouldn’t approach.

The adrenaline in your body causes a sensation of panic. Approaching with a pounding heart in your chest is not a good state to be in.

She notices you looking at her but doing nothing about it. Trust me on this women notice you almost instantly whether you are aware of it or not.

I can tell you from experience that the sensation of disappointment you feel in yourself when you allow a hot woman to walk out of your life like that is infinitely worse than any sort of rejection she can give you.

My final word on rejection is best left to Denis Waitley:

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing”.

Remember all significant learning and growth happens when you are outside your comfort zone. Start to appreciate the tough approaches for what they really are; the best opportunities to learn.

Chapter Twelve – Closing

“Every candle that gets lit in the dark room must feel a little rejection from the darkness around it, but the last thing I want from those who hold a different world view to me is to accept me” . Kirk Cameron

What you must grasp is that the female of the species is the most deadly of creature; in the insect world the women have such power of the males that they can entice them to have sex in the full knowledge that it will be a death sentence. Quite often the female insect will kill and eat the male directly after intercourse, and yet like lambs the slaughter the guys fight over the girls just like we do. Perhaps all these loser guy insects thought that it would be different this time and that the sex with him would be so good she would spare his life?

Just because that cute girl you like looks so innocent and adorable do not assume she is not a ninja of her craft. Girls learn this shit while we are playing football and erm well talking about girls and what we would like to do with them. By the time teenage girls leave high school they are Green Beret’s in persuasion and manipulation. I see these skills developing in my own teenage daughter and some of the stuff she pulls on me makes me tremble at the thought of the poor sucker that is going to get trapped in her tractor beam. For example, when I divorced my wife and left the family home my daughter completely changed her tactics with me. My son pretty much stayed the same, if he wanted money he would just ask and his reason would be as straight forward as ‘because I need new football boots for school’. My daughter would ask for money and her reason would be ‘because I miss you being here and I want to get something to cheer me up’. Ok, she hasn’t got her black belt yet but she is already identifying the path of least resistance in me and shooting straight for the weakest point in my shields. I am witnessing the creation of a master assassin, and perhaps one of you guys reading this will one day end up with her. If that is true then you fully deserve everything that’s coming to you as karma for dating my daughter!

Girls want to know if you like them, if they are good enough, if they are pretty enough. This is what they want but it is also what they don’t want. As soon as you give them this information, it is game over, you lose! There are only two exceptions to this rule:

You are already in a relationship. If you have been dating for weeks and decided that you are going to become boyfriend and girlfriend then this is not about seduction anymore. In this situation you have both invested time in each other and now you want confirmation that was a good decision. This book is purely about the process of attraction and seduction, not relationships.

When the news of your attraction comes as a surprise or is in contrast to what she expects. If you walk up to a woman in the street and say ‘STOP, I saw you walking down the road and though WOW, I have to talk to her’. Yes, you are revealing your attraction but she has had no time to make a judgment on you and so you are beating her to the punch. Plus this will have happened to her no more than once or twice in her life. Most guys don’t have the balls to do this shit. The pure power of your confidence overrides the rule. You are not simpering over her and blowing smoke up her ass you are saying, “I like you and I don’t care whether you like me – I just wanted to tell you and so I did”.

For most of us all this ‘treat them mean’ stuff is hard to accept because for the most part we were all brought up by a woman that we respected and loved. Our mothers taught us about love, loyalty and generosity of spirit. She told us how to treat a lady and how to be kind, loving and supportive. It is very unlikely that your mum warned you to be careful with bitches because they are manipulative little fuckers. So, to implement the Alpha Male attitude we have to go against the grain somewhat. In doing so, be alert to the fact that you are always being tested by someone instinctively more skilled in human psychology than you are.

Before you respond to a statement, request or questions from a hot girl you are interested in apply this filter: ‘what does she want to hear from me right now’? Then adjust your answer so that you never give her quite what she is looking for or even the exact opposite. Sometimes women will be so obvious about it and yet we still fall into the trap. I was in a club a few weeks ago and my friend was talking to a girl with an amazing set of fake tits. They hypnotized him and of course she knew it so she just asked him ‘do you like my tits’? Like a male insect getting excited at the prospect of losing his head in the name of sex he blurted out the worse thing he could possibly say ‘Yeah they are amazing’… GAME OVER! He failed the test as quick as that, he gave her exactly what she wanted and proved instantly that he is not a worthy male. Say anything apart from what she wants to hear. Tell her they are ‘Okay’, ‘tell her that they are not bad but you balls are better’ or tell her ‘they remind you of your mums old sofa cushions’… just say something that confuses her.

I was at a wedding a few weeks ago and all through the day I was having little five minute conversations with one of the bridesmaids. I noticed that each time we talked the conversation was getting more sexual in nature. Around eleven PM she asked me if a liked her? I am 41 years old and she is beautiful Slovakian girl of 26, of course I fucking liked her. Every part of my DNA was saying get her room number, take her upstairs and rip her clothes off at the first opportunity. Most of the guys you know can’t seize control of their actions away from their dick in moments like this. This is why so many guys go home alone, horny and confused because they thought they had it in the bag. They end the night regretting ‘just another one that got away’. Instead of confirming what she suspected and giving her all the power I asked her old she was. When she answered ’26 why’, I smiled and said ‘awwww your just a baby, you couldn’t handle someone like me’. Then I made my excuses and went to talk to someone else. I didn’t talk to her again that night and I was completely detached from the outcome because I was in control. If I got to have sex with her then great but if not then that was entirely my decision not hers – it would have been me doing the rejecting and not her.

As I was getting ready to leave she came up to me one more time and pushed a napkin into my hand. On the napkin were her number and a note written in eyeliner. It said ‘You might be surprised – Diana x’. Three days later she came to my home for coffee and we were in bed forty-five minutes after she arrived. I have never heard from her since, I never contacted her again and she has never attempted to message me. I honestly believe she just wanted to prove that she wasn’t a baby and could handle me. Of course we don’t know what she would have done if I had admitted I liked her when asked but in hindsight I believe I would have failed the test and missed out on an amazing opportunity… plus I got my Czech Republic badge that day.

Back when I was a loser with the ladies I used to read stories like that from other PUA’s and think ‘does that shit really happen’. I can tell you that it does and more you start to see yourself as the giver of sex rather than the grateful receiver of it the more it will happen to you.

I want to close this book on the subject of escalating girls to the bedroom. After this point I believe if you still need help you need someone more qualified than me. I don’t want to get into all the birds and bees stuff – just go be disgusting! We have firmly established here that women want sex (a lot), if they don’t want it from you it is not their fault it is yours for failing to lay the groundwork to make it possible. Women carry with them a lot of social expectation and baggage about sex. Occasionally my daughter will talk to me about boys and I find myself trotting out the old dad lines of ‘hey boys are only after one thing and remember there is no need to have sex until you are ready, maybe even not until you are 30’.

Around the thorny subject of sexual intercourse, the playing field is not level for the genders. If I tell people I have slept with 500 women I will get positive labels thrown at me like ‘Stud’ & ‘Ladies Man’. Conversely if a woman gets into double digits then she is a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’. These sorts of insults were first experienced when these girls were at a very sensitive time in their development; they were very painful accusations and for many caused deep emotional scars. This is why if you ask a girl if she wants to have sex, nine out of ten times the answer will be no. Not because she doesn’t want sex but because she doesn’t want to be seen as a slut.

For most women they need to feel comfortable and absolved of blame to have sex. Whether they believe it or not they need to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and say ‘it was his idea not mine’ or ‘it just kinda happened’. They want to be able to sit with their girlfriends and talk about what happened with their integrity intact. They want to be able to say with a clear conscience ‘somehow he managed to get me into bed’… the implication being that despite her purity and high morality he tricked her into going further than she wanted.

We will come back to escalating things to sex in a moment but first I want to rewind slightly and restate some things that most come first.  Before you can have sex you have to have kissed, before you can kiss you have to have touched and before you can touch you have to establish attraction. You can’t get a girl from 1 to 100 in one step, in most cases you won’t even be able to go through all the steps needed to complete the level (sex) in the space on one evening. In my experience a level completion takes between three and seven hours of continuous work. That can mean you meet a girl and spend the next seven hours with her or over the space of two or three dates you accumulate enough hours to get her into bed. No matter how attracted to you she is, very few girls are going to jump into your bed until the foundations have been laid. Remember she needs to be sure that the ‘slut’ button hasn’t been hit, that she is absolved of blame and that she is comfortable with you. The psychology of sex is very different for men and women, as a rule we don’t get penetrated by someone else. We are the dominant gender that forces a part of us inside another human being – there is something quite powerful about the difference in that action.

To start the process of escalating to sex you need to be touching often and correctly. If you are talking in a busy bar and people need to get past you take her by arm and move her to where you want her. As you remember a great story you want to tell her, take the opportunity to touch her on the arm. If she pulls away you touched too soon or too often, back it up a little. If she doesn’t respond or moves a little closer you are getting right. Next start holding the touch in place for a second longer than is natural… she will notice this and will subconsciously give you a green, amber or red light.

Once you have established a physical connection, hopefully you are touching her and she is now touching back. We come to the first kiss; there are lots of ways to do this right and even more ways to do it wrong. I don’t want to go through lists because I think this is something you need to design for yourself. What works for one guy might feel weird and uncomfortable for another. What I will do is tell you my default, go to option:

When I am happy with her body language and our positions within each other’s personal space I will reach out and put my hand on the back of her neck. I will look into her eyes; quickly look at her lips and back at her eyes. You will often see girls hold their breath in anticipation at this point. Then I will pull her to me and just before I kiss her I will move her face to the side so I can smell her hair or just pull her in for a hug. There are several reasons for doing this, firstly girls love when you smell them but that is really more of a byproduct of the move than the reason for it. If you go in with the intention of smelling her hair, if she pulls away at the last minute and says ‘Oh I am not ready for that’, you can genuinely say you just wanted to smell her hair. Also this movement builds suspense and expectation. Whether she wanted you to kiss her or not the woman will almost certainly have expected you to kiss her in that moment. Remember what we talked about earlier about the power of confusing girls and always giving them what they don’t expect. If she lets me hug her or smell her hair I will pull back out and look into her eyes again. This time I tighten my controlling grip on the back of her neck (women love this) and move in slowly for the kiss.

Rapport leads to touch, touch leads to kissing and kissing leads to sex…

Another big question I get is how do I get the girl to come back to my place without it sounding like I want to fuck her? Of course the traditional line is ‘do you want to come back for coffee’ but this has been used so often that it has lost all of its innocence and coffee is just another word for sex. But why does there even need to be an innocent reason?

It all comes back to the ‘Slut Button’, the girl can’t maintain her integrity if she agreed to come back to your place and have sex. There needs to be a reason for her to be there in the first place, so that ‘it can just kinda happen’. She probably wants you to fuck her but there is no way that is going to happen unless you make it comfortable and easy for her. The easiest way to do this is to have something in your apartment that is cool or interesting to her. If she is a huge fan of the TV Show ‘Friends’ and you have one of the coffee cups used in the show, signed by Matt LeBlanc you have an amazing reason why she HAS to come back to your and see the cup. Okay you know its bullshit and so does she but you have given her plausible deniability and that’s all it takes. 

So now you are making out on the sofa, how do you move her to the bedroom? The biggest mistake guys make here is giving the decision to the woman. If you ask ‘do you want to go to the bedroom’, in virtually all situations the answer will be no. You hit the ‘Slut Button’ you duffus, she can’t be seen to want sex. You don’t need to ask this question; it is made redundant by the very fact that she is making out with you on your couch. Of course she wants to have sex with you (if she doesn’t there is often a good reason and I will touch on that in a moment). The best way to get her in the bedroom is at the moment she is most turned on, stand up, take her hand and say ‘come with me’. Then lead her firmly and confidently to the bedroom. From this point onwards I am in leader mode, when we get in the bedroom I TELL her to take her shoes off and I TELL her to lay on the bed with me. I never ask them if they would like to do anything, this is a crucial moment where you have to be the Alpha.

If you get all this right then you will be having sex within minutes. However, there are still a few potential dead ends, even when you have got this far down the road. Sometimes you will just be about the seal the deal and the girl with get cold feet and say something like ‘No, it’s too soon’. This is extremely frustrating for us guys because we are all primed and ready to fire and it feels a bit like trying to hold a sneeze in. Believe it or not but even at this late stage in the day this is another test. You fail it when you beg her to have sex or say please. The best response is to give her what she is asking for, which is exactly the opposite of what she expects you to do. You stop all the nice things you were doing and say ‘ok fine’, get your phone out and check your Facebook or something. This shit drives them crazy, all of a sudden they have gone from being sure that you want them to not being sure, all compounded by the cessation of all the nice stuff. You might have to do this several times before she learns that bad behavior is not rewarded.

I had this very situation happen to me last week, all night long the girl was saying what a bad idea it would be to have sex. Instead of trying to persuade her, every time she mentioned it (and by the way she must have done it five times) I agreed with her and got up off the sofa and did something else. The last time she tried it I was shocked to see her use my own technique back on me. I had walked into the kitchen to get a coffee; she followed me, grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom. She looked me in the eye and said ‘fuck me’. I still didn’t, I rang mate friend Mike for a chat… only joking, of course I fucked her!

Now, occasionally you will hit a brick wall and she just won’t move any further. In these cases she normally does want sex but some unknown issue is preventing it. A few years ago I was with a girl whom I would go onto have a six-month relationship with. We had been making out all night and I had got her onto my bed but she point blank refused to take her jeans off. She went home and it was a few more days before we actually ended up having sex. I remembered this incident and after a few months of dating I asked her why she wouldn’t have sex with me that night. Her answer was ‘because I wasn’t expecting us to have sex and I hadn’t shaved’. Do you see how easily you can take an event like that and assume it is because the girl doesn’t like you or there is something wrong with you. There are reasons why women do things that are completely unrelated to you and your little world, remember that!

Thank you for reading The Art Of Seduction with me, now I want you to stop reading about this shit and get out there and do it.

I really hope I get to meet you one day, perhaps on a bootcamp or maybe just as a member of my online coaching club at www.PowerfullyConfident.com . As a final favor to me would you now please go back to the online store where you bought this book and say nice things about it? I always read the reviews and they mean a great deal to me, plus they help me refine the advice I am giving to guys like you. 

Powerfully Confident Coaching Program

Destroy All Self Doubt & Live The Life You Deserve

There are hundreds of websites out there promising to show you ‘easy’ ways to get more. More women, more sex and even more money. It’s a common belief that girls like the bad boys of the world and there are plenty of pick up artists ready to sell you techniques on how to be the bastard that drives women crazy.

It is true that a lot of these approaches do work, especially if you are currently a ‘nice guy’ getting nowhere with women. However, what none of them tell you is there is another step beyond that of the ‘bad boy’. There is a powerful state of mind that less than five percent of guys ever reach. This is what I call The Powerfully Confident Man!

When you get to the place where you are peacefully and profoundly comfortable in your own skin and you know your strengths inside and out. Utilizing this knowledge to generate massive leverage. When you have matured enough to accept and embrace your weaknesses and are no longer afraid of them. When you do not need the validation or approval of anyone, especially women. Then and only then you will achieve an internal state of nirvana that automatically floods your life with abundance.

If you are looking for quick ways to trick girls into bed then go somewhere else, that advice is everywhere and so are the guys using it. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. If you like the idea of being a guy who enhances the lives of all the women who come into his life then visit my website right now and I will tell you how you get to this place.

My ‘Powerfully Confident’ coaching program is designed exclusively for men willing to work on themselves diligently until they reach the top 5%. Start today and work with me to quickly become the best version of you possible. Decide now and from this point on you will be so secure in yourself that you may still ‘want’ but you will never ‘need’ anything or anyone again.

One to One Coaching

If you are REALLY serious about nailing this? Then why not take a private one to one bootcamp with Craig? Two and half days of intensive in field training that most guys say is nothing short of ‘life changing’. Not for the faint hearted but the quickest most dramatically effective way to become a Powerfully Confident man. Available in any major city around the world – see the website for more information.

www.PowerfullyConfident.com