Author Archives: mindpersuasion

Drill The Three Second Rule Into Your Monkey Brain

Get Rid Your Monkey Brain

Essential Training

Why is the three second rule the three second rule? Any time you’ve got some general rule like that, that makes sense, it’s going to be for a bunch of different reasons.

For one, if she sees you and you see her seeing you, the sooner you walk over there, the better. If you walk over there pretty quickly, she’ll think you’re pretty confident. If you wait a few hours, she’ll think you’re a nervous goof like most guys.

If you walk over right away, you won’t give your monkey brain any time to think of all the horrible things that might happen. As soon as you start moving adrenalin kicks in and shuts that monkey brain down. The more you stand there trying to think of that perfect pick up line you read on the Internet, you’re scared monkey brain will think of a million reasons why you SHOULDN’T walk over.

If you walk over right away, you’ll be doing so BEFORE any other goof has the opportunity. If you don’t walk over right away, some other guy might.

If you’ve noticed she’s flirting with you, that means in her mind she’s being VERY blatant, about as much as most girls can be. Which means if you DON’T walk over right away, she’ll think you’re either rude or not interested. If you wait an hour before you walk over, she’ll wonder what changed in your mind. Not a good starting point.

So you see, the longer you wait, the worse it gets. The sooner you take action, the better your chances are.

And just like any other inter-personal skill, this is something that you can PRACTICE, and get better at.

There’s not a magical switch in your mind that makes it easy. The ONLY way that makes it easy is to simply get in the habit of doing it. 

Kind of like waking up early in the morning. If you ALWAYS hit your snooze button sixteen times, you’ll never develop that bounce-out-of-bed habit. You’ll always be some lazy slouch who can’t get up.

So, how do you PRACTICE adhering to the three second rule?

The basic structure is observe then act. Practice this any way you can. Like quickly raise your eyebrows after any kind of eye contact.

Or quickly smile after eye contact. Any kind of observation MUST be followed quickly by some kind of action on  your part. This will build in that automatic response that girls find so attractive.

Remember, this is PRACTICE. Every time you practice you are NOT trying to number closer or name close or anything else. Only practice. Observe and action. It DOES NOT MATTER what she does. This is only to build in your automatic response to any observations. Keep this up, and the three second rule will be automatic in no time.

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Girlfriend Generator

Do You Talk Yourself Out Of Success?

Shut Down Those Inner Voices

Deal With Those Inner Voices

There is a battle raging inside your mind.

Most people don’t know this, but you do.

Few notice this, but you know it’s there.

A battle of ideas, intentions, desires.

Part of you wants to move forward, but then a split second later, too quick for most to notice, another part steps in with the doubts. The worries. The “what ifs.”

When I went bungee jumping, the guy at the top said don’t hesitate. Don’t look down. Just look straight ahead, count to three and lean forward. If you look down, you’ll talk yourself out of it.

This is a clear example of what happens that everybody understands. But when you want to speak up in a crowd, say something in a meeting, or approach an interesting stranger, it happens too quickly for most to notice.

What’s worse, that second voice is the most persuasive voice you’ll ever hear. Not only does that voice convince you it’s not a good idea to do what you wanted to do, but it’s actually BETTER if you don’t.

And if you’ve got a super advanced Jedi ninja in your brain, you may even find yourself patting yourself on your back for your “advanced insight” that keeps you from doing what you wanted to do anyway!

How did we get this way?

Once upon a time, we would move forward with nothing but enthusiasm and excitement. Then we learned that sometimes it was not such a great idea. Adults yelled at us. Teachers scowled at us. Those with “moral authority” shook their fingers at us.

So that secondary voice isn’t REALLY trying to hurt us, it’s trying to protect us.

But like those 100 year old Japanese soldiers still living in the jungle, they don’t know the war’s over.

They believe it’s still raging.

Which means yelling at them, cursing at them, thinking they are somehow proof of your “brokenness” isn’t the best way to approach them.

Kindly let them know they’ve done their job well. They did a fantastic job keeping you safe when you were a kid and surrounded by well meaning but not always effective adults.

Tell them to stand down. You’re an adult now. You can deal with whatever comes up.

Let them know you’ll check in from time to time, maybe for advice, maybe just have a few laughs over the old times (like when you got yelled at by your teacher in front of the class).

But other than that, it’s all you.

Set yourself free.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

The Most Crucial Goal Of Life

It's All Up To You

It’s All On You

Many guys make an absolutely crucial error when meeting girls. Simply stated, they blame the market, rather than themselves.

Now, that may seem harsh, but if you can’t get what you want, there’s only one thing you can do. And that is to improve yourself until you CAN get what you want.

Imagine going to the store to buy something to eat. But all you’ve got is a dollar. You could complain that the market is rigged, that food is too expensive, or that the food producers are ripping everybody off and there’s some kind of food scam conspiracy going on.

Or you could simply find a way to get more money, so you have more choice. 

One of the most common things people tend to do is NOT take responsibility. Politicians have known this for thousands of years. So long as they promise the common man their problems are NOT their fault, they keep getting elected.

Unfortunately, it is a false promise.

While it’s not technically your “fault,” it is most certainly your responsibility. Most of the time it’s not ANYBODY’S “fault.”

But something about the human brain keeps us from seeing things this way. We seem to be hard wired to ALWAYS need some kind of “bad guy” to point our fingers at.

So, how do you respond when you approach ten girls and they all shut you down?

Do something different.

Anything.

You can’t call the pickup police and force them to accept your advances. You COULD get angry or hurt, take your ball and go home, and never go out again, but there’s no fun in that.

What exactly should you do differently?

This is where your own personal responsibility comes into play. This is only up to YOU to decide. You can’t learn what to do specifically on the Internet. You can’t copy something from a movie.

You can only try different things, and keep trying different things, until you find something that works. Then keep doing variations of THAT (whatever it is) until it works better and better.

Is this fair? Absolutely not. Some guys are naturals, some guys aren’t. Nothing you can do about that.

Is this easy? No way! Getting rejected by a cute girl hurts worse than pretty much anything else.

Will this be a quick process? Not likely. You’ll have to sort through a lot of girls that won’t want to have anything to do with you, until you find one that does.

But guess what?

If you really want a high quality woman to share your life with, this is the ONLY way.

However, here’s some good news. If you make it a point to spend the next year or two (yes, YEAR or two) refining this process, increasing your skills, until you DO meet her, you will be able to do ANYTHING.

Get Started:

Girlfriend Generator

How To Be Comfortable Around Anybody

Lower Your Shields

Turn Off Your Shield

It’s a very common experience to think of something to say after the fact.

Like you’re in a conversation with your friends, and somebody says something, and you don’t know how to respond.

Then later on, maybe at home or in the car, you think of witty comeback.

Or maybe you’ve had this experience.  You’ve got to give a speech. You practice at home, in front of the mirror, over and over. Then you give the speech, only you don’t remember much of it.

OK, how about this one. You’ve got a great idea in your head. You rehearse what you’re going to say.  Maybe to your boss, your partner, or your kids.

But when you say it, it doesn’t sound nearly as good. Maybe even people look at you like you’re crazy.

That can really hurt. Especially if you were fully expecting them to embrace your idea.

What gives?

Why do we sometimes have so much trouble communicating? It’s not rocket science. We’re not trying to reverse engineer Euclidian Geometry.

The reason is all have a kind of imaginary “bubble” around us. One that pops up unexpectedly.

When we’re with our close friends, it’s rarely present. We can say whatever we want. We know from our experience that they’re our close friends, so we’re not worried about rejection.

But when it’s somebody we don’t really know, AND it’s somebody important, we suddenly are very careful how we speak.

Now, this rarely happens consciously. We don’t carefully choose our words like some high level negotiator or diplomat.

But we do severely limit ourselves. Our chests constrict. Our vocal chords get a bit tighter. We speak from a slightly higher point in our diaphragms.

It’s that ancient “fight or flight” response coming to save us. Only it doesn’t know we’re not going into battle or trying to scare a tiger away from our cave.

We’re just talking to some person, who’s just like us, and we may get something good, we may not.

Think of what you could accomplish, what you could get, if you could talk to ANYBODY as naturally and easily as your close friends.

Not necessarily say the same things, but if you were as relaxed and confident. If you were not worried in the least of rejection.

Talking to your boss, giving speeches, talking to attractive people. 

Just imagine if you were as comfortable talking your boss into giving you a raise as you were convincing your friend to meet you at the corner pub!

The good news is that you can. Because all those fears and anxieties that may be subconsciously holding you back can be ejected.

With the right mental exercises, and some daily journaling, you can get rid of the for good.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Make It Easy To Talk To Her

Practice Without Pressure

Not Always Do Or Die

It can be incredibly frustrating if you don’t have the social skills and confidence to walk up and start talking to a cute girl, even though you’d really, really like to.

Especially if you haven’t done anything like this before. Many guys are desperately searching for some kind of magic line or phrase that will instantaneously fire up her attraction.

In reality, those first few moments of the conversation are not nearly as dependent on words as we’d like to believe. It really doesn’t matter WHAT you say, so long as you’re relaxed, and confident, and not pushy.

If you’re a little nervous, that’s OK. She is usually going to be to. That’s normal, and that’s expected.

It’s when you’re SUPER nervous is when that becomes a problem.

However, the only way to move from SUPER nervous from a normal level of nervousness is to practice doing things that make you nervous.

No memorized lines or patterns are going to do this. In fact, they are likely going to hurt in the long run.

Why?

The best possible thing you can say is whatever comes up, in the moment. If you practice a bunch of memorized stories and openers, you’ll just get good at these particular openers or routines.

This takes away feeling of spontaneity that’s a crucial ingredient in that first important conversation.

The only way to be “in the moment” is to practice being “in the moment.”

But before you start walking up to strange girls just to practice, ease into it.

Start with whatever you’re comfortable with, and work your way up. If you’re comfortable with eye contact, then start with that. Then move to flirty eye contact. Then move to eye contact and smiles. Then move to saying, “hi.” Then move to short conversations.

It’s absolutely crucial to see this as exercise. Skill building. Not actual pick up. If you’re working on eye contact, for example, DON’T do anything else. If she says “hi,” don’t get excited and try to number close her or make her your girlfriend.

This is much harder than it sounds. The tendency is to suddenly treat her as a potential relationship and go as far as you can. This will hurt your ego, and will be counter productive.

When doing these skill building exercises, tell yourself before you go out it’s ONLY PRACTICE. Don’t push yourself further than you can. Just get ten “hello’s” and that’s that (or whatever level you’re at.)

When you finally do see a girl you’d like to talk to for REAL, it will be a lot easier.

Get Started:

Girlfriend Generator

How To Obliterate Inhibitions

Everything Is Perfect

All Is Perfect

Many things are very inefficient.

On the other hand, everything is always perfectly efficient.

From nature’s point of view, everything’s perfect. Always has been, always will be.

The laws of science always behave exactly the way they are supposed to.

It’s only when the human brain, intention, and limited understanding come into play do things seem to be out of whack.

Take riding a bicycle for example. You put in a certain amount of energy to get from point A to point B.

A lot of that energy is heat, both in your body and in the bike. 

Or consider driving a car. You put gas in, and drive somewhere. The gas produces exhaust, which means that there’s an inefficient use of fuel. A perfectly efficient use of fuel would leave zero exhaust.

Same goes with your body. Fuel in, and exhaust out. On a personal level, it seems to be a lot of wasted energy.

But then again, from a very broad perspective, it’s perfectly the way it should be.

Only when we want something we can’t get, or we don’t understand the system does something seem to be “not working.”

Take something simple like shooting baskets. You shoot and you miss. Even if you completely miss the rim, the laws of physics are still working beautifully.

But what happened? Your brain wanted it to go in, but your body didn’t cooperate. Or did it?

Maybe part of your brain was wanting it to go in, and part of your brain was worried what everybody would think if you missed.

Kind of like having one of those two-person bikes when both people aren’t pedaling in sync.

When you were born, you were perfectly in sync with your intention and your intuition. When you wanted something, you let everybody know. When you were curious about something, you went over and grabbed it. When you were sad, you didn’t pretend you weren’t.

Then you went through a process of becoming an adult. Sadly, many folks don’t make it through this “training period.”

Many people never regain their innocence, curiosity, tendency to express their emotions clearly and confidently.

Think about an adult you know, that can still do that. Open, fearless, not afraid of risks.

Most people would describe somebody like that as incredibly charismatic.

It’s really just a combination of an adult mind (and all the implied responsibilities), with a childlike attitude. When you combine those two, there’s NOTHING that can stop you.

All you’ve got to do is ditch all those “learned inhibitions” that come with a typical growing up process.

That outgoing, creative and curious charismatic YOU is still there.

Ready to let yourself out?

Get Started:

Emotional Freedom

Turn Down Approach Anxiety

Slowly Turn Down Approach Anxiety

Slowly But Surely

Approach anxiety is a common barrier to successful relationship creation. And often times, guys don’t even admit they’ve got approach anxiety. Humans are pretty good at lying to ourselves in order to cover up uncomfortable truths.

We say things like, “She’s not my type,” or, “I’m not really looking to hook up,” or “I’m just here chilling, I don’t really want to talk to anybody.”

So even admitting to yourself you’d LIKE to approach, but feel to anxious is making a huge leap most guys never will.

Even then, there’s a misconception. Guys tend to think they are afraid of rejection, but that’s not really the case. What’s really nerve racking is being in the spotlight.

Approach a girl, especially from a distance away, feels very similar, on a gut level, to giving a speech. You feel that all eyes are on you, and if you make a mistake, everybody’s going to know and adjust their perception of you accordingly.

This is a holdover from our hunter-gatherer days, when the collective social opinion of us was absolutely crucial to our survival.

Even though it’s not any more, because it’s a deep instinct, you can’t really “switch it off” any more than you can “switch off” being hungry or horny.

So, how do you deal with it?

Very slowly.

Meaning you don’t walk over there slowly, but you simply recognize it’s going to take some time to get over that uncomfortable “everybody’s looking at me” feeling when approaching.

But if you start small, and slowly expand your comfort zone, it WILL happen.

How do you do that?

Luckily, there are plenty of ways.

Public speaking is one. Joining your local toastmasters and giving a speech once a week will get you right in a hurry.

Or you could simply see “flirting with girls” as some kind of weekly “exercise” to do. Not because you want any kind of tangible results.

Kind of like jogging on the treadmill. You’re not running on the treadmill because you think you’re going somewhere, you’re doing it to build up your endurance and burn away some of that flab.

If you did things like purposely go out to flirt and say “hi,” you’d slowly get over that social anxiety. If you coupled this with some weekly public speaking, it would happen even quicker.

So long as you acknowledge that while you can’t “switch it off” you certainly CAN slowly “turn it down,” you’ll be in good shape.

Pretty soon you’ll be in such good shape that walking over and talking to a cute girl feels perfectly normal.

Get Started:

Girlfriend Generator

How To Obliterate All Rejection

Become The Sorter

Become The Sorter

I’ve had plenty of sales jobs in my time.

Always lured in by the promise of big money.

And then confronted with the cold hard reality of constant rejection.

Really successful outfits knew that because they had such high turnover, they ALWAYS had to be hiring.

Meaning that part of their daily operations were hiring and training new people. Baked into the cake was the idea that most of their sales would be made by new salespeople only a week or two out in the field.

Many didn’t last longer than that.

Like I said, just a few rejections can quickly kill any dreams of big money.

The guys that seemed to do the best had super human charisma and were always high energy.

Kind of inefficient if you ask me.

Then later I learned all about NLP, proper criteria elicitation, and how it’s MUCH better than simply spitting out the same “features and benefits” pitch over and over and over.

The people that are in sales the longest know that no matter WHAT kind of technique you use, it’s all a numbers game.

Call enough people, and you’ll get some sales. Get enough sales, and you’ll make some good money.

Now, for most people, this requires getting rejected so many times that it simply doesn’t matter any more.

While this does work, it’s not a fun strategy.

The very few people who tend to make serious bank from the beginning never see it as rejection in the first place.

If somebody says they don’t want to buy, they salesperson doesn’t take it personally.

Once I had a phone number with the last two digits missing. So I basically had to call up to 99 different phone numbers to find the person I was looking for (who happened to represent a HUGE commission).

I didn’t see each wrong number as a “rejection” since there was no way to magically make the wrong number a right number.

It was more a matter of pure sorting.

When you look at sales, or anything you want in life, with the mind of a sorter, there’s NO rejection.

Since you’re not trying to get “accepted” by anybody. You’re just looking for somebody who matches what you’re looking for.

When you get down to it, EVERYTHING in life can be put into this broad model.

Figure out what you want, and sort through everything out in the world until you get it.

You used to be able to do this without ANY problem.

Back when you were a little kid. Back before you learned what “failure” even meant.

The good news is you can get back that mindset of the sorter. The fearless explorer. That golden child within that loves the journey as much as the destination.

Learn How:

Emotional Freedom

Get In The Game And Find Your Match

The Jigsaw Puzzle Pickup Angle

The Jigsaw Puzzle Pattern

When I was a kid I loved jigsaw puzzles. Sort of. I like the idea of being able to finish one, but I never really had the motivation. I would put together all the outside edges, since that was the easy part.

But once it got to the inside pieces, I just didn’t have the patience to sort through all those pieces.

Lots of things are like that. For a jigsaw puzzle, it’s kind of easy to understand. When you finish, you’ve got some picture of a castle or something. For some, the feeling of accomplishment is a good enough feeling.

But for kids, when all you end up is a picture of a castle after spending a few hours that you COULD have been doing something fun outside, well…

You can think of meeting the right woman as putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Every woman’s got her own set of things she’s looking for in a guy. And every woman’s got her own qualities that she has to offer to a guy.

Every guy has (or should have) these same two groups of qualities. Those he’s looking for, and those he’s got to offer.

The more you’ve got to offer, the more you can demand. Basic market economics.

The process seems simple enough.

Work on yourself, building up what you’ve got to offer. Keep meeting girls until you find a match.

Luckily, even if you are starting from zero, meaning you have no idea what you have to offer, and no idea what you want, both of these will build over time.

Meaning the very process of walking up to and talking to girls (and falling on your face) will build up your self confidence, your social skills, and your experience. All things a quality woman looks for in a guy.

At the same time, you’ll be refining your criteria of what’s important to you in a woman BEYOND her looks.

Which means if you treat “pick up” as an exercise in criteria generation, AND personal development, you’ll be a natural in no time.

The trick is to see it as scrimmage. Those pretend games in practice that have no effect on the standings.

Sure, it sucks getting shot down, but think if it as practice. Practice in building up your skills until you meet Miss Right.

The more you build your skills BEFORE you meet her, the more likely she’ll be AUTOMATICALLY attracted to you when she sees you.

Making it easy to get together with her.

Get Started:

Girlfriend Generator

What Kind Of Hills Do You Like?

Get In The Game

Get In The Game

I used to go skiing when I was a kid. I belonged to the Explorer Scouts, which was kind of like boy scouts.

But instead of merit badges and helping old ladies cross the street, we just did things like camping and hiking.

And once a year, we all went on this big ski trip to this big mountain resort. Bunch of kids crammed into a cabin, away from out parents, and only a few adults. All of us with crappy equipment that we had to rent. Great fun.

I remember two types of ski runs as a kid. One was steep and flat. One was steep with these HUGE moguls.

Moguls are like little hills, (some not so little) and are kind of put there accidentally by how skiers make a lot of quick turns going down the mountain.

Since I was never good enough to do that, I HATED moguls. I would make this HUGE zig-zags down the mountain, and moguls made that incredible difficult.

Problem was you couldn’t tell which runs had the huge moguls unless you went down the run. So I had to kind of remember which ones did and which ones didn’t.

Once we got the nerve to take the lift up to the biggest, steepest run. We all looked over the edge and said, “No Way!”

So we went down the backside. Through a bunch of trees and back around to the front.

Funny thing was that was likely the most fun we had that trip. It took us a couple hours, since we had no idea where we were going, and a lot of it was pretty flat. But it was an adventure. 

Had we not had the courage to go all the way to the top, we would never have experienced that.

The best things can happen when you least expect them. But unlike the movies, they don’t really happen “to” you, while you’re sitting around.

That’s the great dream of most of us, to be thrust into some kind of adventure without much effort on our part.

But in real life, we’ve got to take part. We’ve got to get out there and get in the mix.

Sure, sometimes we’ll come across these huge scary moguls we’ve got to get around.

Other times, we’ll look down and say “No Way!” and try to find another path.

But those “other paths” are where all the good stuff is.

Amazing things will happen when you get out there and open yourself up to whatever is waiting.

Having the courage to do so will help.

Learn More:

Emotional Freedom