A lot of us had parents, even if it was only one—but could you consider your parent a mentor?

As a man, even at my age, I understand the importance of mentorship. Men especially need strong male role models.

When I was a kid, my dad was a horrible mentor.  I actually used to call him my anti-role model.  I used to tell everybody, “When I grow up, I want to be the exact opposite of my father.”

As men, we need strong mentors from the beginning.  Moms should never mentor us, but our dads should fill that role.

But the problem is, most men that I know have come from homes where their dad wasn’t a great mentor—and these men actually had their fathers around! Nowadays, most marriages end in divorce, and for some socioeconomic groups, the father is never there to begin with.

When a man is not mentored at a young age, he’s constantly searching for guidance throughout his adulthood, and this neediness, this desire to be led doesn’t translate well when dealing with women.

And that’s why men that do not have strong male role models in their life growing up often have trouble with women later in life.

A mentor actually gives you the confidence that you need. A mentor can teach you things about women based on their own successes and failures. A mentor can accelerate the learning curve, and keep you from making some silly mistakes early on.

My dad was not that guy. He was no mentor.

His dating advice went something like this:

“Hey Dad, I like this girl, man, she’s really pretty.”

“Son, don’t look at your feet.”

That’s it.  That was my dad’s advice. It’s a wonder my mother was even with him in the first place. (I guess he was able to look her in the eye when all the other men were busy looking at their feet.)

Through sheer will and determination, I was able to undo a lot of my early programming and finally have success with women. I had to overcome shyness and fear, but the David Wygant underneath all of that finally came through. I learned to express myself.

Now I’ve been coaching for over 14 years and people look at me as a mentor. It’s quite surreal to see young men listen eagerly for my advice, and run off into the world using what I’ve taught them.

I feel like Archie Manning, watching his sons win Superbowl after Superbowl, even though his father never had time to play catch with him.

I just appreciate the large circles in life—you never see where the line is going until it circles back. And then you realize how complete everything is, or how complete it’s becoming.

I never had a mentor in my life, but perhaps it was just to show me the importance of having one, and to make sure that I respect the responsibility of being one now.

Today, I answer questions that have come in through Twitter, Facebook, and the Blog.

Watch and learn:

Make sure to follow me on Twitter and send those questions to @Davidwygant.

And how did you all do with last week’s Friday Challenge? Who amongst you is still Master of Your Domain?

Plus I think all of them will be on sale, this weekend is a great time to get a deal on a potential mate. Do you want to know my number one way to meet people today? The message is hidden in this blog so you better read it carefully.

Today I want you to reflect on what you think about the first thing in the morning.

What did you think about this morning?

Every morning when you wake up, if you’re thinking about yesterday, what happened yesterday, and what went wrong yesterday, then you’re basically in Yesterday Zone.
When you wake up in the morning, you have to think about what an amazing, beautiful, incredible day you’re about to experience.

Everything you experience each day is brand new.
Tell yourself, “Everything I experience today, every new person who I meet today, every new conversation I have with a person I already know, is a brand new experience in my life.”
Why? Because you can’t blame any of the people today for anything that happened to you yesterday or the day before.

That means that every woman you go up and talk to each day is an invitation to a brand new experience.
Tell yourself, “Every woman that I talk to, I want to find new out things about, because if I’m open and I’m curious, I’m going to learn something about myself. If I learn something about myself every day, it means that I’m growing as a person every day.”

The more people that you can find out about and experience, the more you will grow as a person.

A great mantra that I want you to have every single morning when you wake up is, “There’s a lesson to be learned every single day.”
Go find that lesson. Be almost child-like, and be so excited about looking for what lesson is out there for you to find and uncover today. If you think about every conversation that you had today with a new person, you’ll find that there was a lesson to be learned in it.

Really think about the conversations you had and you will find that lesson: “Bingo, I found it in the last woman that I spoke to in the book store!” Things like, “I stopped listening to what she said after the first 2 minutes, and I lost her… Lesson learned for next time.” Or, “I found out she’s going through the same type of relationship issue that I’m going through right now, so we understood one another and I got a new perspective.”

Life is about sharing, giving, and experiencing. The more you give of yourself, the more people around you will give back. When you are the leader, be the leader of giving, and give to people. So if you give a lot, they’re going to give a lot. If you lead and give to the women you come across every single day, the women you come across will follow and the right ones will give you everything you could ever want.

So tell me, what was the hidden gem that you can now walk up and talk with anyone about?

It’s amazing that when we’re unsatisfied in a relationship — feeling like our partner is not satisfying our needs, wants and desires — that we feel afraid to tell them. It’s amazing that we are afraid to be that open, honest, raw and vulnerable with our partner.

Instead, what people do is search for that perpetual carrot.

Say your partner never really comes onto you, even though you’ve told them how important it is to you for that to happen. Then one day, out of the blue, your partner does it. Somehow if someone does something one time, we think to ourselves, “Wow they understand me. They get it.”

That is the carrot. You tell them how great that was and how much you loved it, but then they don’t do it again for two months even though they know how important it is to you.

It’s that perpetual carrot backed up by passive-aggressive behavior. You are probably not doing something that is important to them, and that is their way on a very deep and subconscious level of getting even and keeping score.

Relationship Promises

We do this, and are not really even aware we’re doing it most of the time. It’s just how we react as humans when we’re not getting our own needs met and we’re not fully satisfied.

We react by taking away from someone something they really need, want or desire. We do that in a very passive-aggressive way, and then we’ll throw that carrot out there.

Do you know what the solution is to all of this madness? The solution is to step up to the plate, and be raw and honest with each other about how you feel.

Maybe you can’t satisfy each other, but you’re holding on anyway. A lot of people do this for years — five, seven, even ten years — hoping that the relationship will work.

The bottom line is this: You need to be raw and honest with someone today — right now — if you want to make your relationship work. Stop holding out for the carrot.

Think about the moment when you see “that guy” — that confident, good-looking guy — who walks over to you and says something really cute and clever. Maybe you were in Starbucks looking for something to eat, and you were indecisive about whether you wanted a muffin or a scone.

He reads your mind and he read the moment, so he looks at you and says, “Indecisive today? If you could have anything in that case, which one would it be?” Okay, it’s something a bit stupid, cheesy, and funny . . . but something in the moment. It is kind of like what I teach men to do — to just be really present.

I always tell men to walk over and allow a woman to have a moment like this that she so desires. If the world was a perfect place then every man would embrace all of my teachings, become very natural, and allow the woman to experience that magic moment she craves.

The man, because he is able to create that moment, will then become satisfied because I truly believe that all men need to have that feeling of conquest. They like to have that feeling of conquest. They like to feel like they selected that woman.

They like to feel like they selected her, and she fell for all of the things he said. He said all of the right things at the right time, and they have this instant attraction.

How To Meet Rich Men

So in a perfect world men would be doing this every single day, women would be falling for it every single day, and people would be falling in love. People would have a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and they would really start to see how easy life can be.

Since this is not a perfect world, however, why not try reversing the roles a bit if you are a woman? Why don’t you become a hunter, so you don’t get the guys you’re not attracted to anymore, i.e., the passive guys?

The guys you are really looking for are the ones you need to select. When a woman decides to be a hunter, there are a lot of different ways to do it — and I know all the guys appreciate this.

Guys appreciate it when a woman becomes a hunter in any way. Maybe a woman walks over to you in that coffee shop and helps you in that magic moment. Maybe a woman makes a comment on something or asks you for your opinion. Maybe a woman cracks a joke about what you have on the conveyor belt at the supermarket, and she challenges you to bring out the hunter in you — to bring out your confident side.

I used to love meeting a female hunter when I was single. It made my job a lot easier. It was also a lot more fun, because it felt like I was meeting somebody who was playful, enjoyed life, and who was not living a life full of fear and excuses.

So when you’re out and about, try being the female hunter. Smile and bait the man a little bit. Walk by, look at him him again, smile again, and bait him a little bit.

Do this, and maybe you will start meeting a different type of man. Actually, not maybe — I know you will meet a different kind of man.

Just start saying hello to guys. Make it that easy. Then maybe make a comment here and there.

Start becoming the female hunter, and you will finally be satisfied in dating because you will start meeting the guys you really want to meet. You can pull any guy out that way. Men are just looking for a little hint — a little validation — that you are interested.

Also, just wait until you check out the sex with this new kind of man you will be meeting. When you have sex with someone you actually hunted, the passion is going to be ten times that which you have experienced in the past.

The way I do it is really easy. I happen to have been born with a zipper on my skull, so all I have to do is peel back my toupee, unzip the back of my head, and crawl out (usually feet first). It’s a really interesting phenomenon to watch me, because I’ll just be there laying on the ground and then all of a sudden I’ll whip my toupee off, unzip my head and crawl right out.

Sometimes I’ll get out shoulders first, then I go heart, then I go stomach, then I go groin, then I go legs. Sometimes if I’m in a really flexible mood, though, I’ll be able to get my legs all the way up to my head.

Okay, obviously I’m kidding about all of this. How do you really get out of your head though?

Dating Head Games

The way I learned how to do it was by writing everything down. I kept a journal, and every day I wrote down like a maniac all my thoughts, fears and insecurities.

When I did that, I found that there was a recurring theme. I would go and try to talk to people. If it didn’t work, I would go and write all my feelings down instead of getting totally inside my head.

I’d write everything down because by getting all my thoughts and fears out of my head, I never remained in my head. I put all that “stuff” somewhere else, and that allowed me to move forward.

The key thing to understand is that when you keep all these thoughts, feelings and insecurities in your head, you tend to over-think things. When you over-think things, there is no way in the world you’re going to be able to react to situations in the right way. There’s no way in the world you are going to be able to meet people.

So the next time you’re in your head, write down what you’re feeling. Get it out. Become self-aware. It’s a great exercise for all of you to do.

Now before you jam my in-box with emails for next week. I want to set the record straight.

If you want your email to be the one that is turned into the podcast, it would make my life easier if you posted on the blog.

That way everyone can see the posting and get involved in the conversation as well.

Here is today’s winning email.

“I have been listening to your podcasts and I wanted to bring up something that has hurt my dating life for years. I was raised by a overprotective mother and I was a chunky little girl as a child with very little fashion sense. I didn’t know how to talk back to people and defend myself and I was subsequently harrassed and bullied for much of my childhood up to high school. Safe to say that this took a huge toll on my self esteem and self image. Much of the problem today stems from the fact that the ones who teased me the most were the handsome jock types. While I find these men very attractive today I have the hardest time making eye contact with them. If I see a attractive man walking towards me it takes a extreme amount of will power and mental proding to look at them and attempt to smile. I know this is a defense mechanism from when I wanted to avoid the bullies attention when I was little but this has stuck with me today and it is extremely hard to stop doing it.

I am almost 27 now and in better physical shape than when I was 16, I figure skate and attend regular exercise classes but I still have a hard time thinking that I am attractive. I can still hear the bullies voices in my head sometimes and it is extremely difficult to overcome. I know I am much older and have a very thick skin because of my childhood but after awhile the behavior of looking away became so ingrained I don’t know if I will really ever get rid of it. I know body language is extremely important when trying to talk to someone you find attractive but aside from tripping and falling on the person I find attractive I am not sure how to break this habit and show that I want to talk to them. I am not sure I can manage to smile at them once let alone 3 times. Is there any advice you could give me to break this lifelong habit?

Erin, Cleveland, Ohio”

Are you ready for my answer?

Just listen in now below:

David Wygant’s “Self Love” For Women

David Wygant’s “Self Love” For Men

When I first tried to call him, sure enough I dialed the wrong number. I have the world’s worst handwriting. You’d think I was a doctor. My handwriting is so bad that I can’t even read it half the time.

Anyway, due to my poor handwriting I dialed the wrong number. I eventually figured out which numbers were wrong and left my client a message.

A few minutes later, though, my phone rings. It was the person I originally called when I dialed the wrong number.

He leaves me this message: “Hey, It’s Tom. You called me. What’s going on man? Give me a call back and let me know. I’ll be around the rest of the day.”
I’m thinking to myself, “This guy doesn’t even know me, but yet he leaves me that long of a message?”

How many times have you dialed a wrong number and hung up, only to have the person you accidentally called call you back and leave you a message saying, “Hey it’s Tim. You called me.” Why do we do that?

If you dialed a wrong number and hung up in the good old days, nobody knew it. You never really knew if you really any wrong number calls unless you actually answered the phone when they came in. That, of course, was pre-caller ID.

Then, all of a sudden, technology started getting really good and you could hit *69 if someone called and hung up, so you could call that person back. If you got home and you didn’t even know if anybody called, but you wanted to know, you could use this feature to call the last number that dialed you. Then you could say, “Hey, this is Joe. Did you call me?”

Now with cell phones with caller ID and everything else, we’ve become virtually addicted to technology. Now when someone calls and hangs up, we feel compelled to know who called and why they didn’t leave a message.

It’s a wrong number folks! That, or someone who called and hung up because they didn’t want to talk to you or leave a message.

It feels really neurotic to me when someone calls me and says, “You called me. Why didn’t you leave a message?” I didn’t leave a message because I didn’t want to leave one at that time.

Maybe I didn’t leave a message because I’ll call you back later. Maybe I didn’t leave a message because my other line rang or the dog threw up or who knows why. Obviously there was something going on that was more important to me at that moment than leaving you a message.

When it comes down to dating, though, there is a different rule: Always leave a message! if someone calls you a few times but doesn’t leave a message, call them back and say “Why don’t you leave a message? Did you not trust that I would call you back, and you would rather phone stalk me all day?” Have some fun with it.

Alright, see you tomorrow. Bye.

Do you know anybody who is a repeat talker? Every time you talk to them on the phone or go out with them, they talk about the same things and tell the same stories over and over and over again.

It’s funny. You’ll go out with them, and they’ll bring up the same story about something that they did last summer, last Christmas or last football season. It might be a story about something that happened during their childhood.

Whatever it is, it seems like they never remember what they’ve ever said to you before that moment. I don’t know if they have a poor memory or if they are very limited in how far their conversational skills can go.

My Father was a repeat talker. Whenever we’d go out, he’d always repeat the same things over and over again. My brother and I would sit there, start to laugh and say, “Cue the Jay Levine story” or “Cue the Jets game story.” It’s like my Father found a way to tell the same four stories every time we were with him — at every single dinner that we had with him, at every lunch, and at the beginning of every football season.

He would always repeat the same stories. That is not what is called tradition. It is just a poor memory. There are just people who repeat the same things over and over again.

Instead of sitting there listening and pretending you’ve never heard it before (because you don’t want to be rude), whenever a repeat talker starts to tell one of their stories you almost want to let them know you’ve heard the story before and don’t want to hear it again. You almost want to say, “You know you’ve told me this story about 7,000 times. Let me tell you the beginning, the middle and the end of it.”

It is almost like repeat talkers are just limited in the amount of things they have to talk about with people. They are limited in their ability to connect with people (which I know through my Father).

They are limited in their ability to connect with people, so they only talk about what’s safe to them. What’s safe to them are the same stories they’ve been talking about over and over and over again.

Have any of you ever been around a repeat talker, or are you one yourself? I’d like to hear from all of you today about this.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer the suffering that is familiar.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Let me know your thoughts