Oh well. I am actually really counting the days until Cosmic Saturday. Do you know what that is? Well you’ll have to wait until tomorrow and catch the commercials on my site to find out.

No on to today’s Friday blog . . .

It’s interesting. A lot of people who smoke think it’s a great way to meet people. To them it’s always the easiest way to meet people. Ask any smoker, and they’ll tell you so.

They will tell you that the greatest thing about smoking is that you can always walk up to someone of the opposite sex and ask to bum a cigarette. All you have to do is walk up to someone and say, “Excuse me. Do you have a cigarette?” or “Excuse me. Do you have a light?”

Let me tell you how you are perceived when you use the “Excuse me, do you have a cigarette?” line. You are bumming a cigarette, which means you are a bum. It means that you cannot afford your own cigarette (and hence you have to bum one), or that you are one of those people who are perpetually quitting and thus never buys your own cigarettes.

Either way, it really doesn’t look good. Picture this. There is a woman you want to meet standing across the room. So you decide to walk over and bum a cigarette off her as a means of initiating conversation with her. When you ask her if you can bum a cigarette, you are basically telling her “Listen, I was too cheap to buy my own cigarettes tonight, so I decided I was going to bum, steal and borrow cigarettes from other people.”

Being a non-smoker, and having recently spent some time in Europe, I have to say it’s nice to travel and not have to smell smoke wherever you go. Granted, there are smokers all over the place — outside and puffing away outside the doors of restaurants and so forth.

Here’s something, though, that I always wonder about with smokers. Why do smokers feel like it’s a right to throw their cigarette butts on the ground? You’re basically polluting the Earth.

No, this isn’t one of those blogs where I’m going to talk about saving the planet and the oceans, but why do smokers seem to feel entitled to litter their cigarette butts everywhere. If you look around your average city, there are cigarette butts all over the place.  

Now I know that some of you think it’s wonderful that you can go out there and meet people by asking for a cigarette or a light, but this isn’t a pick up blog about smoking. If it was, the only thing I’d be telling you pickup is cigarette butts.

I’d tell you to get down on your hands and knees and pick up was all the cigarette butts you see on the ground. It’s really disgusting to walk down the street and see all the cigarette butts.

I also love all the gum chewers out there who think the world is one giant ashtray to discard their chewed up wads of gum. When you look down at the ground, it seems like all you see are cigarette butts and old gum. We’ve become inhumane, dirty and disgusting.

Don’t worry. I am still going to tie this into dating, because I know some of you hate when I rant and rave . . . or when I vary even the slightest bit from the topics of pickup and how to meet people.

So the next time you see a smoker throw a cigarette butt down on the ground, I’ve got a great pickup line for you. Say, “Excuse me. Do you realize that thing doesn’t decompose? What gives you the right to throw that butt down on the ground?”

You want to start a relationship off on the right foot. So you might as well start it off arguing.

Yesterday on the flight home from New York City, I was sitting next to a guy who was wearing a pair of True Religion jeans. Every time he bent over or reached down for something, the whole plane had the privilege of seeing half of his hairy ass. I am not just talking “plumber butt crack,” this was plumber butt crack on steroids.

This is not something anyone needs to see . . . ever. Every time he moved, every person on that plane — women, men and children — were forced to see his ass.
SO, guys, if you can feel the wind chafing your ass when you are wearing jeans, then it means they are way too low and you need to cover up!

Now, on to another revealing topic . . .

This might be the most powerful podcast you will ever hear. I was recently on the phone with a guy who was thinking about taking a Bootcamp, and he asked me why he has trouble approaching women. He had already attended someone else’s bootcamp at which they had instructed him to approach women using some kind of pickup line.

I told him that pickup lines will never work. Life is all about observations based on instincts. He asked me about what kind of instincts I was talking, and I told him I was talking about the kind of instincts we have as a child.

Remember when you were a kid (maybe three, four or five years old) and you’d see something you like so you’d look at it and touch it? Remember also how when you did that your mother would scold you and say, “Don’t do that?”

Do you realize that the social conditioning we got from about the age of four to about the age of eleven was all about the things we should not do (and all about the things we can’t do)? Don’t look at strangers. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t smile at that person.

Our social conditioning is the reason why so many of us out there now suffer from problems meeting the opposite sex. Our social conditioning taught us not to talk to people instead of relying on our natural instincts.

This podcast will truly blow you away. It is by far the most important podcast I’ve ever done. Enough writing now. It’s time to open your ears and start listening!

Also, if you want to learn how to recapture your natural instincts and de-program yourself from all of you bad social conditioning, then you need to check out my Men’s “What’s Your Excuse?” and my Women’s “No Excuses” programs.

There are a bunch of guys that go around and teach the “you’re beautiful” opener or the “you’re really cute” opener. This opener is being taught to guys who want to authentic and real, and these poor guys are forced to go out and approach 40 women a day saying the same “you’re beautiful” line.

What kind of strategy is this? You could almost just stand in the town square walking around in a circle saying to person after person, “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful! No, really, you ARE beautiful!”

It is about the most ridiculous line I’ve ever heard in my life. Keep in mind that regardless of how nice sounding the sentence is, it is still a line.

Keep in mind, too, that by saying this line out of the blue to a total stranger you are putting the woman completely on the spot. She may be insecure or not want to hear it . . . but she definitely knows you are bullshitting her. She absolutely does.

Another flaw in this whole “you’re beautiful” routine, is that you have no good means of follow up. So you say “You’re beautiful!” to a woman and she responds “Thank you.” Now what? You have nothing else to say because “thank you” gives you nothing to go on to create a conversation.

Canned lines and routines in general are ridiculous, but this particular one is really bad because all it achieves is to leave you standing next to a woman feeling uncomfortable. I had a client once who had tried this routine, and when I asked him how he felt afterwards he told me, “The conversation didn’t go very far and I had no choice but to abruptly end it. It felt embarrassing – from the first moment and I still felt bad afterwards. It’s not natural.”

Of course starting the conversation with a woman with “You’re beautiful!” is going to feel not natural. It’s an awkward way to start a conversation with a complete stranger.

Also, telling a woman she is beautiful the first moment you meet her isn’t helping you connect with her in any way, and isn’t giving you any information (or potential to create a connection with her.

The only connection you create with a woman by this routine is with her physical appearance. Women already know you like their physical appearance if you walked up to them! They’re not stupid. They know if we’re talking to them it’s because we’re intereseted.

Now, don’t mistake what I’m saying. Of course you need an “opener” when you approach a woman. If you are observant of what a woman is doing, and you are 100% confident and authentic about who you are, then you don’t need to use a canned opener. You will have the right opener every time, and women will chase you all day long.

If you want to learn how to authentically approach and attract women, without using canned routines and pickup lines, be sure to check out my “20 Ways To Meet Hotter Women Without Pickup Lines” product.

After asking my client to elaborate more on what he meant, I understood that what he was asking was how to keep control of situations instead of letting situations control you. He wanted to know how to not let intimidation get in your way when you want to meet someone.

I told my client that it all starts with the way you approach. You have all heard me talk over and over again about the power of observation. So the first and most important thing to do is always to observe what a woman is doing so that you can frame the conversation based on your own enthusiasm.

Let’s say that you go to a book store and you see an absolutely stunning, beautiful woman browsing in the travel section of the store. Let’s also say that you are very interested in travel and have traveled extensively, so approaching that woman should be quite easy and comfortable.

If you don’t stay in your own reality, though, you can risk not controlling the situation and letting the situation control you. Because the woman is so beautiful, you may want to open her as quickly as possible. You may not take the extra five or six seconds to realize she is standing in the travel section.

A lot of men in this situation panic, and all they focus on is the thought “I’ve got to approach, I’ve got to approach, I’ve got to approach…” While I would agree that you should approach, you should not do so until you are armed with the necessary information to do so. Taking those extra five or ten seconds to really observe what is around you is arming yourself with that necessary information.

Men will often be totally focused on what they can think of to say and will often miss something easy, comfortable and obvious they could say based on what is going on around them. So you need to take those extra five or ten seconds and observe before you approach. It will be well worth it when you see how much more successful (not to mention easy and comfortable) your approaches will be.

Think about what is in her mind at that moment. Is the woman in our hypothetical looking at a particular book? In what section of the book store is she browsing? If she is in the travel section, maybe she is looking for a book about the place to which she is about to travel (or a place to which she would like to travel).

What you’re doing is playing the odds. You are playing the odds based on what she’s already thinking, though, which means that you’ll be in control of the conversation.

This is precisely what most guys do not do when they approach. Most guys go in too quickly.

The reason why these “too quick” approaches don’t usually end up so well, is that you are not starting a conversation based on what the woman is already thinking. You are not getting inside her head.

Don’t go into the approach too quickly simply because you want to get it over with. Don’t rush the approach.

The more you train your mind to be observant by taking those extra ten seconds, the quicker your mind will begin to do that on its own. Don’t worry about getting faster, though, and just work on the observation skill and on not rushing your approaches.

As with everything else I teach you, whatever happens in any approach you should never beat yourself up. Remember that you learn from each experience, and there will always be another opportunity. Working on this observation skill, however, will help to make more and more of your approaches successful.

So here’s something I said to a recent client who was very anxious about approaching women. He was also very nervous about what would happen if he did approach them, and about how they would react. Here’s what I said to him:

Think about this. Every time you approach a woman, it’s like you’re doing it as a child would do it. Do you remember when you were a child and your mother would say, “Alright, before I get home tonight you have to clean your room. If you don’t clean your room, you won’t be able to watch TV?”

So what did you do? You cleaned your room, because you knew that you’d be rewarded for it. You might have kicked all your clothes under the bed to get that job done, but the bottom line was you did whatever it took to earn that reward.
Now, because of that social conditioning, whenever you walk over to a woman you are still completely attached to the outcome of the encounter.

At work if you wanted to become a partner, there were certain conditions you had to meet. As you met all of those conditions, you would think, “Okay, check. I did it,” but then they would mind-f*^k you a little more by making you do more things before they would make you partner.

When you finally did make partner, though, do you remember how you felt? It was a reward, right? You thought, “Yay! I made partner!”

Here’s the thing: Our whole life is about rewards. At work if you bring in a lot of money, it means that you had a good month. Everyone has a different agenda.

Salesmen have sales quotas. Copywriters want their sales pages to make a lot of money. If these things don’t happen, people will think “What did I do wrong? Where is the reward?”

Everything is about the reward. If you eat well for a day and then get on the scale, what happens next? You might lose a pound. That’s a reward.

Everything in life is a reward EXCEPT interactions with people. We have to stop being so selfish.

When you see somebody you’re interested in, why don’t you pay them a nice compliment just for the sake of being nice? People always expect something back.

Men and women will stand there like a little kid waiting for something in return when they make a gesture to each other. So you walked over to somebody. Congratulations! So then you stand there, expecting to be rewarded with a phone number or a date . . . or with sex?

Sex is certainly not a reward. A lot of “nice guys” are conditioned to believe that if they do nice things (or do all the right things), that they will be rewarded with sex. It doesn’t work that way.

Here is the way life really works. You know what you know, and you have to be okay with that and with whatever sensations are going through your body and whatever ideas are going through your head.

Being in a situation where we don’t know about something brings us anxiety. We always like to be in control of the situation.

It is an anxious moment for a lot of guys to go over and approach a woman. It’s an anxious moment for a lot of guys to just walk up to a woman and pay her a nice compliment.

The truth is that many women get their validation from someone paying them those kind of compliments. If you think about it, when you give a woman a compliment you are actually giving her a reward. She wants to be noticed, so when someone appreciates her it is a reward.

Deepak Chopra wrote that every day you should commit one random act of kindness or pay one compliment to a total stranger, and expect nothing in return. When you expect nothing back, you get everything back.

Instead of seeking a reward, just walk up to somebody and compliment them. Say, “Wow, that is a great shirt on you” or “Wow, you have a great pair of legs.” Whatever it is – it doesn’t matter. Then continue on with your business.

Make it seem like you’ve always laid those compliments out there, so it doesn’t appear to be something that is totally new. This will help get over that anxiety.

I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, but one of the best Sunday exercises is going to a museum or an art gallery and hanging out there.

Hang out there for two or three hours and have conversations with every single person you see. Everyone.

Walk over to them and say, “excuse me, what do you think of this painting?” or “how does this painting make you feel?” You will get into great conversations all day long.

This teaches you a few things. For one, it shows you that people don’t bite – nothing bad is going to happen to you if you talk to people.

Secondly, it’s great practice. It teaches you how to listen. You have to listen to be able to talk about the subject that you’re discussing.

Specifically in terms of artwork, there is so much going on in front of you. We’re in a museum right now, and a client just told me how easy it is in here, because there are so many things to talk about – the things on the wall, the collections, etc.

But life itself is like a museum! After you go to a museum, you can walk around your life and find anything to talk about. You find things to discuss and things to ask questions about.

Today, during a bootcamp, we started at a food market, and all of the conversations started with talking about brownies and pastries. And all of those people we talked to came back to talk to us later.

This is why observations are so powerful. In a grocery store, in a museum, in an art gallery – you have all of these opportunities to talk about the things that are going on.

All of us think to ourselves, “Oh, if I were only taller…” Do you know that my entire life I’ve wanted to be shorter? I’m 6’2” – and I hate it. If I put on a pair of cowboy boots, I’m 6’3 ½” – there are photos where I’m just towering over everybody.

I have a bunch of Asian coaches – Yakub’s 5’6”, Khiem is 5’10” (he’s pretty tall for an Asian,) and Rey’s 5’8” on a good day – and here’s the Jolly Green Giant, towering over all of them. I have some funny-ass pictures of that.

I always wanted to be like 5’10”. If I was 5’10”, I could wear my jeans a little bit tighter, my legs wouldn’t be as skinny. There’s a major insecurity for me – my skinny legs.

And I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a pair of jeans that were long enough for me. It’s like, Jesus, if they shrink up a quarter of an inch, I’m done for!

But we all have these insecurities. People are always emailing me, saying, “Oh my god, I’m really short – what am I going to do?”

The answer is nothing! You’re not going to walk over to women and say to them, “Hey, I’m the short guy – you don’t want to date me!”

Let me tell you something: women are flexible. Some women, like my girlfriend, are very visual: all of her ex-boyfriends look the exact same. They are tall and in shape…she definitely has a type.

I have a type. My type is always very athletic women. When it comes down to hair color and everything else, I could care less.

But most women are all over the map. “My last boyfriend was French, and I thought I hated the French!” “My last boyfriend was an Asian guy, I’d never dated an Asian guy before then…”

And Asian guys totally have blond fever. I have tons of male Asian friends that won’t date Asian women. But I have a ton of male white friends who LOVE Asian women!

We all have a certain type, but women are much more open to new things. If you come at them with energy and confidence, you can change her. She may not like guys that are 5’7” – her “type” might be guys that are 6’2”. But if you come at her with a larger-than-life attitude and you turn her on – if you’re quick and you listen to her – all of a sudden she’ll become attracted to you.

And then her friends are saying, “Oh my god, you never dated a short guy before,” and she responds, “He’s short?”

They don’t see the things that we see. Men, we are SO critical it is ridiculous. If a woman has cellulite, we notice it. We really do. We’re fucked up like that!

Have you ever dated a woman who had one boob bigger than the other? I have. And I saw it all the time – hello big guy, hello little guy! We always notice stuff like that. And the younger we are, the more we notice things and the more critical we are.

And the fact is that women are not like that. We have to realize that women are much more evolved than we are! We’re way too superficial. This is why women freak the fuck out all of the time. God forbid they have a little stubble on their legs. God forbid their hair doesn’t look right.

But the competition they feel when they see airbrushed women in magazines and don’t feel as stick-thin… Think about all of the things that women go through, and be more accepting.

Not only are they under a microscope from the competition with other women in magazines and their friends, but they also know how fucked up we are as a species. They know how critical we are of them.

So just realize that you can rescue them from all of that by being strong, powerful, accepting, and by making them feel beautiful. Doing this will be the first thing that ever gets them to be attracted to you.

Now I’m not talking about walking over there with some cheesy line like, “You’re beautiful!” Definitely not. I’m talking about the way you talk to them, the way you listen to them.

You know what’s it like – she comes home, she had a shitty day, you wanted to have sex, but you know it’s not going to happen now. She had a shitty day, and now you have to go into listening mode all night and do things that you didn’t want to do.

If you do that, you become that much more attractive to her, so that the very next day, the sex is going to be so much better. Because you gave her what she needed that night, you’ll become that man that she always wanted.

Do that in every situation. Be open to her suggestions. I’m not talking about being a wuss or a wimp, but if you say, “Hey, let’s go see a movie tonight, I’ve really been wanting to see this one,” and she says, “Oh man, I’m not in the mood for that tonight,” then you can respond, “Alright, babe, what are you in the mood for?”

If you do her thing tonight, sure enough, she’ll go see your movie the next day. Hell, she’ll even watch the football game with you the next day!

It’s about feeling her needs from the get-go. You are every woman’s perfect man if you listen to her needs.

It’s not about how we look; it’s about how we act. Now of course you can’t go out like scratching your nuts and rocking the sweatpants on a date – you have to at least fit the mold in that manner.

But you have to understand that all of you have the capacity to do all this – it’s all about listening. Listen and make her feel wonderful!

In my mind, I thought, “Thank god I don’t ever have to talk to her again!”

Her reaction wasn’t about me. I didn’t take it personally. Most guys would think, “Oh no, what did I do wrong? I must have done something wrong!”

But in reality, you can take it a step further and have a fun little visual: imagine having sex with her. Wouldn’t that be fun? She’d just lie there like a sack of potatoes. That’s how you have to start thinking. Start finding the humor in these things.

I get blown off all the time too – but I don’t give a shit! You have to stop thinking negatively, and get out of your head!

Just wanted to share a quick moment with you all today. I am out for the day I have an LA bootcamp this weekend and a great group of guys that will learn this attitude and many others.

Have an amazing Friday!

Think about football. Think about the quarterbacks who are successful. The ones that are successful have that attitude – “Fuck you. You picked my pass off? I don’t care. I’m coming back at you again in ten minutes anyway, and I’ll keep doing it.”

Brett Favre is notorious for that. Love him or hate him, he’ll throw so many games away that he plays. He’s 39, and look at his attitude. He’ll throw five interceptions in a game, and he’ll go fade back to pass and just do it again. He doesn’t care.

And all the fans are sitting there, saying, “Oh no! He’s doing it again…” but he just doesn’t care.

You are caring too much, so when you walk over you approach her with an expectation of rejection. You’re like that quarterback that’s fading back to pass and all you’re looking at are the defenders. You might as well just pick the one that you’re going to throw directly to right off the bat.

I don’t feel like I’m bothering anybody when I go over to someone to talk. And no one ever walks away from me.

But I used to feel that same way – that I was bothering someone when I approached them. You’re not bothering them at all.

But when you walk over to them with that concern, you’re bringing that energy with you. Women are feelers. Doesn’t that drive you crazy? They are always feeling and describing those feelings. “I feel this…”

You sit there and you just want to fix everything. “Okay, you’re feeling this way, and here’s the solution…”

So the fact is that women feel your energy. She feels every little bit of your energy as you walk over. She senses your fear.

Animals smell fear, and so do women! We’re basically all just animals, anyway. Think about the noises that people make when they fuck… we’re animals! Just because we’re standing upright doesn’t mean that we’re any better than Daphne. We may not smell each other’s asses, but we’re just like dogs.

So if you walk up to a woman with fear and the expectation of rejection, she’ll know it and you’re done. When you walk over like you don’t give a shit how she reacts, she’ll be responsive. She’ll wonder, who is this guy?

It’s a quantum switch inside your head. And once you make that switch, it’s like a paradigm shift. It’s an amazing shift in what you’ll begin to receive from other people. You’ll get what you want.

Client: Let’s say you’re in a bar and your environment is somewhat limited. In this scene, I really can’t observe much to comment on.

I had trouble with that exercise yesterday – not so much coming up with something to talk about, but thinking that it might actually work – that it might generate enough interest to keep the conversation going. I always have major doubts in myself in terms of that, and in a bar, I can see that being a million times more difficult.

David: Yes, it’s magnified in a bar because there you have to manufacture a conversation. This is the reason that I don’t really like bars – you’re spending the entire time just trying to manufacture a conversation.

You have to be so quick in a bar to even open a woman. Khiem uses a certain thing in a bar when a woman bumps into him – he asks her what her name is. When she tells him, and says, “Alright, Judy, thanks, I just needed to know the name of the woman who was bruising me all night long!” He’ll just say something like that, being very playful, and just kind of push her away.

The reason why a lot of guys don’t like bars is because it is a limited environment and you really do have to manufacture things. The environment just doesn’t feel natural.

If I see a woman in a bar that is texting her friend, I might go up to her and say, “Would you stop texting me? I’m here! You can talk to me now!”

Or if I’m standing next to a woman and we’re both on our phones texting, I’ll say, “Let’s switch phones. Let’s text each other’s friends. It will be more fun that way!”

Or I’ll ask her for her name, and she’ll tell me that it’s Amy. “Hey Amy, let me borrow your phone for a second. Who am I texting?” She’ll tell me it’s her friend Susie. I’ll text: Hey Susie, it’s David, Amy’s new buddy. I decided to take over the texting tonight…

In a bar, you have to do things that are fun and playful – and that will work. You have to keep it light and playful the whole time. A lot of guys do that stupid opinion thing in a bar – “Who cheats more, men or women?” – but that’s the shit she’s heard a thousand times.

It’s much different when you say, “Listen, my buddy and I were debating this topic today….” Or “I read in the paper today about this… have you heard about it?”

Bring up something current rather than asking her opinion on something ridiculous and artificial. She’s heard all of that.

So even if the environment seems limited in a bar, you can bring things up in conversation from the rest of the world, which is unlimited. Doing this makes you look like you’re actually living in the day and not just manufacturing words and pick up lines.

I hate manufacturing conversations, so I don’t really like bars. You have to prepare yourself for the mindset of going out there and manufacturing conversation. But you also have to be fun and playful in a bar.

Client: So when you go up and do the “I read today in the paper” thing, do you think that in her head she’s immediately thinking that you’re hitting on her? Does she know that it’s just an opener?

I’ve said stuff like that before and had women ask me, “Is that really what you’re going to approach me with? Is that your best shot?”

David: In that case, I’d challenge her. I’d say, “So maybe it is – do you have anything better? If that was so bad, why don’t you coach me so that I’ll have a better chance of getting this right with the next woman I walk over to?” Say this with a smile on your face.

Challenging her in that situation is important.

Client: Yeah, I would have seen her reaction as a blow-off before yesterday and the work that we’ve done. I would have just given up and gone somewhere else.

David: No way, it’s not a blow-off. You just have to challenge her. What is she looking for in that situation? She’s not looking for some guy that is going to cave in. She’s looking for someone who will step up and challenge her.