Posts Tagged ‘approaching’

The following is a transcription of an actual one-on-one coaching interaction I had with a client at a recent Bootcamp. This, by the way, is an excellent example of the individual coaching every coaching clients get!

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.