Ozzie@RSD Samlade artiklar

[TobiasK]

BY Ozzie | December 15th, 2010 at 12:48 PM
The Ups and Downs
Everybody has to deal with setbacks when you go out with the purpose of meeting women. Reality can be unpredictable. What you did successfully yesterday may seem impossible today. Most perfectionist type of guys want a constant string of success with women. However, you must realize setbacks are a normal part of building your skills with women and you must not be discouraged if you have had a bad night.

Some solutions

1. If you feel you are slipping backwards, it could be because you are trying to run before you can walk. One step at a time. Take things slowly and understand that debunking old patterns of behavior takes time and effort. Even a small victory means you are not stuck, but need to keep working.

2. Bad performance can be deceiving. It is more apparent than real. You may have had a bad performance that day because of external factors like being tired, overworked, mentally exhausted or not feeling well. A bad performance is usually the result of things not being in place. It makes all your efforts seem harder.

Doing things when you don’t want to

Don’t allow negative thinking to tell you “not now”. Make it a point, even if you don’t feel up to it, to walk up to the first attractive girl you see in the club and start a conversation. Trust that the universe will protect you against rejection. Trust you will be fine. You will find that if you make it a habit to meet new women, it becomes an ordinary everyday activity. It brings less of a strain. You start considering meeting new woman as less dangerous or frightening than you thought.

Stop keeping yourself safe

Keeping yourself safe keeps you on the “down”. You fail to act because you don’t see a possibility of succeeding. Either you feel “too tired,” “not the right time,” “she is too busy now,” and so on or you end up failing to take action. Most “downs” in the dating game happen because you fail to act, not because the interaction went bad. Interactions can go bad and you can still feel positive and “up” because you took action anyway.

Keeping failure “low profile”
Hairy Back by SFBart, on Flickr

One reason you feel you are slipping and not moving forward is because failures weigh too much on your shoulders. Social mistakes need to be considered like ordinary mistakes. You need to think about them like any other ordinary mistake like “I forgot my umbrella today and it is raining”. You don’t beat yourself up because you forgot your umbrella on a rainy day. You just keep going to work as you intended and not give it a second thought. Same applies if you start an interaction with a gorgeous woman in the tube and she excuses herself and leaves because she had to get off the train. Don’t read much into this. Don’t think you had a big fat failure. Just think of it as a small setback. Your next interaction can go better.

Inner child stuff
Copyright 2008 Wicked Local Wayland. Some rights reserved

We all have a critic sitting in our heads acting like the judge of what we do. This voice tells whether you did right or wrong- rain or shine-, reminding us we are not measuring up, doing it right. Many psychotherapy schools call this voice different names, “Top Dog”, “Critical Parent” or “the Critic”.

In other words, that voice is the Meta voice: the boss. It always knows best. Sometimes you think, “My god, that was my father/mother talking”.

That voice is responsible for most of your “downs” in the dating game. It gets triggered with criticism when we make a mistake or don’t live up to its high expectations. It is not you. It is an older parent who takes over.

Taking control of your deranged inner voice

Nobody can do anything to you except yourself. In other words, that inner voice cannot get away with destructive criticism without your consent. Make a decision to recognize such a critical voice and make a stand against it. Decide to screw up on purpose. Deal with the voice later. Practice protecting yourself against that critical voice.

If you hear that inner voice, recognize it. Learn to identify it and label it “boss talk”, “top dog” or “the party pooper”. Whatever name you find amusing. Then get back at it by saying to yourself “this is negativity. It won’t be allowed.” Give yourself a 2 minute break from it and shut it down. Then start taking action as if the voice was never there. Motion is emotion. You break the inertia created by the inner voice by taking swift action and not playing safe.

Thumbnail: multi-views of Blew, the blue arrow, by Leo Reynolds on Flickr