Do you think about laying in bed all alone, candles lit, romantic music playing in the background, with a bottle of KY lotion next to you, as you slowly explore your organ for probably the thousandth time this year? Is that self-love?

How about when you look in the mirror and you actually admire everything about yourself, when you stare directly into your eyes and embrace everything about who you are. Is that self-love?

Or when you actually write down all the amazing things about how you are, the type of friend that you are, the type of lover that you are, the type of boyfriend that you are, the type of man that you’ve become, and more importantly, through all those experiences, how you look at yourself. Is that self-love?

Self-love is by far the most powerful lesson when it comes down to dating. Without it, you are doomed. You really are. There is no chance in hell you are ever going to meet somebody great unless you love yourself.

So how do you go about loving yourself? Pretty simple. You’ve got to start looking at the good points of you, instead of the bad points. And this is usually where I get the “Yeah, But David” from my clients.

“Yeah, but David, I really, really don’t like the way my body looks right now and I’d do much better meeting the opposite sex as soon as I like my body.”

Do you hear the way that you are talking? Listen to what you are saying “when I like my body.” You’ve got to love your body.

Here is the deal: your body can always be better. Whose body can’t be better? All of us could lose a few pounds; all of us could gain a few more pounds of muscle; all of us could fix our hair, fix a tooth, or whatever it might be. But self-love starts every day because every single day you have an opportunity to meet the opposite sex; you have the opportunity to meet a great woman and if you are feeling down about yourself, there is no way in the world you are going to be able to meet that awesome woman.

Self-love is one of the most powerful journeys you can take and everybody needs to take that journey every single day. Otherwise, you might end up like this person:

“I am really waiting until the spring time to date because I figure by then, I will have the job that I want because right now I just don’t really like my job that much. And I know I am going to have a better job even though I haven’t sent my resume out yet but I know someone is going to want me once I send my resume out. Not only that but spring time, I am going to lose the 20 pounds that I have put on over the course of the holidays and the wintertime and I am going to start hitting the gym come March and I will look a lot better and…”

It doesn’t start in the future! Self-love starts in the present. It starts right now.

Self-love.

You know what she’s thinking?  She’s wondering, “Why doesn’t he talk to me? Why does he stare at me?  Why is he constantly looking at me but never saying a word?  Is he mute? Is he terrified?  Does he speak Russian and not speak a word of English?”

Here’s what funny: every morning I wake up and I walk for a few miles and I see the same woman every single day.  I look at her, sometimes I smile, and sometimes I don’t.  

So today, I looked at her and said hello, and she looks at me—eyes light up, face lights up—and she says “Hi,” like it was a relief that I finally talked to her.  I mean, come on guys, stop trying to always think about what to say and just say, “Good morning. Hello.”

If you see somebody over and over again the best conversation starter is not the most clever thing you can think of, it’s just a simple “Hey, Hi, Good morning, I’m a normal human being.  I know how to say good morning. It’s one of the first things I learned when I watched Sesame Street when I was a kid.”

Don’t overcomplicate it.  Make it simple. And if you make it simple, you’ll start building up your confidence and your social network.  “Good morning” leads to “Hey, how are you doing today?” or “I see you all the time walking.” It leads to a conversation the next time.

So stop appearing to be this neurotic freak that scares her because you never talk to her and just stare at her, and start being the human being.

It’s that simple.

They had good pedigree. They were successful and age appropriate. They were good-looking. They followed up with phone calls. Then all of a sudden—poof—they just vanished.

You’re in shock. You can’t believe that this one went away. You felt like it was the perfect kind of a relationship. You really felt like you were ready for it. You really needed this relationship because you were so tired of dating. You were tired of putting yourself online and having nothing happen. You were tired of going to the parties and heading out to the same bars and restaurants. You felt like this was the one.

Here’s the deal: everything that you’ve ever known about dating is wrong. During those three weeks you never kept a dating journal. See, Mr. and Mrs. Perfect do not exist. What we do when we date is we get caught up in what I call the oxytocin moment. We get caught up in this wave of emotion, like a drug is released in our bodies.

It feels so good to be rescued from being single. But in reality, the warning signs are there from the beginning. I tell everybody in my very new book, Naked, to keep a dating journal, and write down how you feel at the end of each date. How does this person make you feel? Do you feel desired? Do you feel excited? Take it even deeper. Do you keep a journal where you know exactly the way you need to feel in a relationship?

My new book Naked goes really deep into dating. It gets you to fall in love with the most important person in your life: you. Because when it comes down to dating, most of us date based on needs. I need to have a relationship. I need to no longer be single. I need to find somebody different because the last person didn’t treat me well.

What Naked does is it takes everything down to the root and allows you to forgive everything that’s gone on in your life and allows you to embrace all the lessons you’ve learned. But more importantly, it gets you to fall in love with who you are as a person. It allows you to realize that you’re an amazing catch.

Naked is almost 200 pages of daily exercises that help you no longer date out of need, out of frustration, or out of desperation. When it comes to love, in order to find someone to love you the way you need to be loved, you need to love yourself first. You need to take yourself out on dates. You need to do things for yourself. You need to feel amazing and wonderful and you need to strip yourself down of all your fears and become naked. You need to forget about past failures and learn from them.

But more importantly, you need to know exactly what you want going into that date, emotionally. Because when it comes down to dating, all it is is based on feelings. How did you feel at the end of a date? Most of us have never asked that question, because we always date based on wants, needs, and desires.

It’s time to change the way you date. It’s time to get naked.

Obsession is something that is not very healthy at all, especially when it comes to meeting the opposite sex. So many guys are so obsessed with the approach or so obsessed with trying to figure out what to say.

Women get obsessed with a lot of different things also. Some get obsessed and fixated when it comes to why the date went wrong and what the guy must be thinking and why the relationship is not working out and how it could not work out.

Today’s video is all about obsession. I think you’ll enjoy it because it’ll finally open up your eyes to what obsession is all about.

If you’re ready to stop obsessing and start having a healthy, productive, amazing dating life, I suggest you buy my book, Naked.

Now it’s been a while since I wrote anything about bars and clubs.  To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been out to any clubs.  But I’m going to be out on the town this weekend with some friends, so I figured I’ll put you guys in the right mindset with a question that comes from an email I got last week:

Hey Shogo,

Thanks so much for the coaching call yesterday, I got some great advice out of it and can’t wait to put it to use.  One question.  Could you help me out with cock blocks in a bar or club, they can be very annoying and ignorant I find and I’ve been cockblocked now and again.  So what could ya say to the guy to stop?

J, Ireland

Hey J,

Here’s how I feel about cock blocking.  I never get cock blocked.  It just doesn’t happen to me. So what that means is that cock blocking has nothing to do with another guy being an asshole, swooping in and taking “your” woman.  It’s got everything to do with YOU.  You can learn all the quick and witty comeback lines and banter you want to be prepared for a so-called cock block, but it’s not going to stop it from happening to you.

Because cock blocking only happens to certain types of guys.  And it happens to them over and over again.

Guys who are very hesitant about expressing themselves to a woman.  Guys who don’t claim their space.  Guys who keep their distance and are afraid to get close out of fear that he’s offending her or coming across as “giving her the wrong idea”.

When you do that, other guys will notice it and see that there is no chemistry there.  Maybe you just look like friends.  Maybe a guy is an asshole, and sees an opportunity there to come in and take her away.  In any case, she’s clear for the taking to any other swinging dick who walks by.

Cock blocking happens to guys who don’t intrigue women.  If she is interested in you and the conversation you are having, she will stand there and listen to everything you have to say.  When she’s not into you, her eyes will start darting across the room, hoping for her friend or some other more interesting guy to come rescue her.

When that starts happening, you’re done. Nothing can save you.  She’ll pray for someone else to come join the conversation.  She’ll be totally open to starting a conversation and flirting with another guy who’s around her.  And a guy who sees that will jump right in.  Sometimes she’ll start a conversation with another guy.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone up to the bar to get a drink, and a girl standing there will turn and start talking to me while another guy was just in mid-conversation with her.

Then I’d look over her at the poor guy’s disillusioned face and give him a little shrug.  Does that make me a cock-block?  Does that make me an asshole?  No.  It means she was bored to death with the other guy and wanted talk to me instead.  It means the other guy needed some coaching—not on how to deal with cock blocks, but on how to keep her intrigued.  Because I’m no better than the guy who just got shoved out of the picture.  But I’m much better in conversation.

Cock blocking happens to guys who don’t claim their own space and walk over with confidence and start great conversations with women everywhere they go.  Cockblocking happens to guys who talk to one or two women a night, and then CLING onto those conversations like their lives depended on it.

Sound familiar, victim of cock blocking?

You sit in the corner of the bar, waiting for what to say to that one girl you’ve been looking at for the past 45 minutes, then you finally get up the guts to approach her and hope it really works out because this is your one shot for the night.

Instead you try and try and try with that one girl you finally approached, even when there’s no chemistry.  And the more you try with a girl who’s only lukewarm about you, the longer you stand there struggling, the more likely some guy with dimples and a great smile is going to wink at her and jump in to the rescue.

So you’re still asking why you need to start conversations with women everywhere?  This is why.  Because when you start doing that, you will start having an abundance mindset.  You’ll start approaching women everywhere.  When I go out, I talk to girls everywhere.  Quick, 30-second conversations.  If there’s no chemistry, if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I move on.  I don’t stand around in a shitty conversation, struggling to make things happen, and wait to be cock blocked by some guy she likes better than me.

You think you’ve been cock blocked, but you really just cock blocked yourself.

So lets talk today about leaning.

Have you ever been to a party where the music is so loud that you can’t even hear yourself talk, and you wonder “How do I talk to somebody when everything is so loud? Do I scream at them, or do I just stand there in the corner and not say a word? What do I do in this situation?”

It’s very simple. Use the power of “the lean-in.”

When talking to a woman at a party or a loud bar, lean in, touch her shoulder very gently, and then speak into her ear so she can hear you. Then pull back. Now you allow her to do the same thing. If she follows your lead, then attraction is going to start to build.

So keep the process of a lean-in going. By leaning in directly into someone’s ear, you’re creating sexual tension. The ear is extremely sensual.

Have you ever kissed a woman’s ear and watched her squirm? While having sex, have you ever looked directly in her eyes during that intense moment, kissed her, then whispered in her ear exactly what you want to do to her? No wonder at that moment she starts to climax like a maniac.

You can create that moment right from the beginning. Everything in life is about the subconscious.

Recently I was at a party where the music was so loud that I couldn’t hear what I was thinking. I walked over to this woman in the corner who had been staring at me, and I used the lean-in. Every time I did it, I would pull back afterwards. Every time she did it to me, she was either touching her hair or touching her stomach. She probably didn’t realize she was doing this. She was touching herself without probably realizing because words in her ear brought her back to some intimate moment in her subconscious mind.

It’s really not hard turning someone on . . . it’s just understanding how people are wired. The power of the lean-in is such a powerful connection between two people. You’re creating intimacy without having to say it.

A lot of men think that they have to whisper in a woman’s ear things like “I want to do you tonight” or “I want to lick you from head to toe like a popsicle at Coney Island.” In truth, just talking to a woman (i.e., having an interesting conversation and paying attention to what she’s saying), then speaking those words in her ear, will create powerful sexual tension without having to say anything cheesy.

The next time you’re at a party or a bar and a woman is checking you out, walk over to her with confidence, lean in, and speak right into her ear. Don’t scream in her ear and break her eardrum . . . just talk. The confident man – the ones who have adapted all the principles that I speak about in all my programs – will know exactly what to do at this point.

Turning a woman on is as simple as knowing trigger points. The lean-in is a powerful trigger point in creating sexual chemistry. Oh, and by the way ladies, use the lean-in on men and it works the same way.

I’ve spent my whole life learning to understand human behavior. The lean-in technique is one of my favorites. Lean in, listen, pull back, and watch their reaction! You’re in for some serious sexual tension.

The question is, do you know what to do next? We’ll talk about that another day. By the way, for those of you who want to see some good examples of this, rent “Oceans 11” and watch George Clooney use the lean-in.

A lot of you are probably in front of your computer or on your phone right now, texting, e-mailing, you’re at different stages of planning out what you’re going to be doing tonight. You’ve waited all week for Friday night. This is going to be the night that you’re going to go out and meet a cool new woman. If all goes right, everything is going to change by the weekend, you’ll have one or two or even three prospective new dates, and your lifestyle is going to be different. You’re finally going to approach the woman you’re most attracted to.

Then what happens? As the night progresses, all those fears and excuses start creeping in. You get paralyzed. You stand around the bar. You do nothing.

Some of you may not even be reading this blog until late night Friday night, and you’ll say to yourself, “David, you just described my night. I was all jazzed. I was all excited. You’re right, slowly but surely, all my fears and excuses crept in and the next thing I knew, I was home again. I was staring at the ceiling, reviewing the night, and I finally came up with something really great to say to the woman I was attracted to, but it’s too late now.”

Here’s what I want all of you who read this blog early today to do. For those of you who are reading it late, do this exercise tomorrow night.

I want you to go out. I don’t want you to talk to a single person tonight. Not one person. I want you to observe, and I want you to watch, and I want you to understand the dynamic of what makes one guy fearless and successful with women, and another guy who goes home and masturbates, dreaming of the woman he wishes he could be with. I want you to watch the guys that are successful with women.

It doesn’t matter what they say, because I’m about to launch a brand new program that’s going to give you everything you need to say in these situations. I want you to take a look at their body language. I want you to take a look at what real attraction is. I want you to look at these guys and I want you to basically see how much fun they’re having. How engaging they are, how they use their hand motions, how they smile, how they walk with confidence. I want you to notice everything about them.

Now what I want you to do is I want you to look at yourself. No, don’t look directly at yourself in the mirror, but look at a guy just like you. I want you to find the guy who’s in the corner with his hands in his pockets, a clueless or frustrated look on his face, the kind of guy you can feel is really thinking with all the monkey chatter going on in his head.

I want you to look at that guy, and I want you to ask yourself this question: if you were a woman, who would you rather talk to? The guy who’s going around talking to everybody and generally just having a great time, or the guy who’s paralyzed in the corner waiting for the woman to go to the bathroom so he can chase her down and find the right moment to talk to her? The guy with that nervous energy who kinda scares people a little?

How do you feel? What type of emotion do you feel when you look at the guys who are having fun versus the guys who are not having fun? This is a great exercise that I have every single client do, any guy who’s ever been successful with women going out and meeting them on a Friday or Saturday night. Every guy goes through this exercise, because you have got to learn how to enjoy yourself before you can start meeting people. If you approach with nervous energy, nothing will happen, but if you approach with a smile while having a good time, the words don’t make a difference.

Note To All Men: If you are already subscribed to my email list you are well aware that next week I’m releasing a new product that is going to empower you to get over the BIGGEST issue you guys have when it comes to meeting women… approach anxiety. I hear it time and time again, and it was confirmed by thousands of survey responses taken by my email subscribers that have been pouring in the past couple of weeks.

I put together a video to help you learn how to kill approach anxiety to become natural with women, simply by using the power of observation!“

Do your friends make fun of your physical imperfections? Well, maybe it’s time for you to find some new friends. Or MAYBE it’s all just in your head….

In keeping with our new found tradition of answering all of your best questions on Podcast Wednesday, today’s podcast takes on over-sized lips, bald-spot paranoia, small breast insecurities, whether it’s time for you to find new friends, and jumbles it all up into one big mixed-race dating blender!

And as far as dating goes… It’s all about dating and mixing all the great things in that giant blender.

The Ultimate Lips For Sex

The giant blender is your dating life!

Check out what I think about mixed race dating, over sized lips and why bald spots are a huge turn-on.

Click Here To Download Today’s Podcast!

As I am approaching the entrance, there is a guy standing there holding one of the doors open (and blocking the entrance) as he is talking to friends of his who just drove up (thus making him face in my direction).

So here I am, clearly walking toward the door to the restaurant, and I know he sees me, but yet he still just stands there blocking the doorway and doesn’t move. I look at him and I say, “Excuse me.” He looked up like he didn’t realize there was actually anyone near him.

This kind of total lack of self-awareness when you’re out and about is the reason why so many of you have so much difficulty meeting people. Every time I coach a man on observations, I tell him to observe the world around him and then I take a look at what he tells me he sees. It’s amazing how many things a lot of guys miss.

You’ve got to take in the world around you. I’m not talking about when you’re in the middle of talking to someone so that your eyes are darting all over the place. There is a way, however, to tune into the world.

If you’re blocking a door, have a sense of self-awareness. Maybe there is someone coming and you can hold the door open and connect with another person. When you’re in the market and you’re looking at people, have a better sense of awareness and look at the big picture.

So many people don’t look at the whole big picture at all. They are so focused on whatever the project or task at hand is, that they tend to miss all the opportunities.

Self-awareness is one of the best ways to become powerful at meeting people. Self-awareness, and meeting people by really feeling their presence, is the way to truly connect with the world. Once you become in touch with everybody around you and you start recognizing emotions and opportunities, you’ll start seeing things differently and the world will become slower for you.

The world is very slow for me. When I go out and about and I talk to people, I can see the conversations before I even have them.

It’s not that I’m thinking particularly about what is going to be said, because I always remain present when I’m talking to someone. I can, however, see walking over and experiencing that conversation because I feel it. I see things so slowly, and everything is broken down for me slowly.

Can I Have A Bite Of That Apple

So if I see a woman in the market looking at apples and sniffing them in a certain way, I know she is experiencing the essence of the fruit. I know exactly to walk over there with a smile and say, “You’re really enjoying that apple.” I know I’ve tapped into her energy because I’ve paid attention to the world around me. It really does not matter what you say as long as it pertains to what is going on in her world at that present moment.

By doing that, I am able to have an amazing conversation and create an amazing connection. That is why I tell all the men and women I coach to be totally tuned into the world. It allows you to actually see conversations unfold before they happen. You don’t know exactly what the conversations are going to be about, but they are going to unfold before your eyes.

So wake up and be perceptive of everything around you. Walk around and start noticing things around you that you’ve never noticed before. Pay attention to the smaller details of life, and you will not only be more successful in dating but also in life.

Do you know what your body language is telling about you?

When you talk to a woman do you think about what her body language is saying?

Do you wonder what every hand gesture, eyebrow raise and arm cross means?

If so, you are and have been wasting your time over thinking each and every conversation.

Check out how to really understand what body language means in today’s video.