One week to go until Black Friday, and I am just chomping at the bit to find out what super deals will be out there . . . and how I have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to fight for the one plasma television in the store they put on sale for $529.00. It’s funny how much of a shopping culture we have become, which is evident from the one million websites and television commercials counting down to Black Friday.
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.
For those of you who have never seen a Cirque du Soleil show, it’s a must on anyone’s list. We saw Kooza the other night, and it was outstanding.
There’s one part of the show called “The Wheel Of Death,” in which two guys get into these two rotating gerbil wheel contraption and they run and jump around these wheels like it’s a carnival ride. They did all this with no fear.
It’s interesting that people can do things like this — death defying acts — with no fear. To some of you, saying hi to a member of the opposite sex is a death defying act.
Google Cirque du Soleil or do a search for it on YouTube, and watch some of the things they do and some of the ways they contort their bodies. Then I want you to think about all your fears about communicating with the opposite sex because, really, would you rather say hello to someone you’re attracted to or get caught in The Wheel Of Death?
For those of you who need some motivation today, here is The Wheel Of Death:
What I really want to talk about today, though, is all of the mumblers out there. Recently someone sent me a voicemail message. I had to listen to it four times just to figure out on what phone number to call them back, because the person who left the message was mumbling so badly.
If you’re going to leave a voicemail message, be concise, leave your number twice and speak clearly. Keep the message short. Don’t tell people how you won’t be available from 12:00 to 1:00 because you are going grocery shopping, or how you are taking a shower at 3:00 that afternoon.
For business, keep it short but friendly. Say something like, “Hi, it’s David, calling to talk to you about the work we discussed on Wednesday. Have a great day, and I’m looking forward to speaking with you soon.”
For personal, you can leave a message that is something like this: “Hi, it’s Joe. It was so great speaking with you the other day about Italian roast coffee. You know, I Googled that coffee that you liked, and I learned something really interesting about it. Call me and I’ll you something about it.”
It’s always good to bring someone back to the moment when you met them. Also, by doing this you show them you were listening and interested in what they were saying, which will intrigue them even more.
I tell guys all the time that when they meet a woman, they should learn at least three things about her and remember them. That way when you contact her later, you can bring her back to the moment you met.
This technique is important in business too. Let’s say you have been shopping for a new car. When you go to contact a salesperson with whom you spoke at the dealership, you can say “It was great talking to you about the new Audi A4 the other day.” It makes your communication instantly go more smoothly.
So many of you are voicemail mumblers. It’s time to stop being a voicemail mumbler, and to stop putting a strain on people’s eardrums!
For those of you who missed getting my football picks this week, I needed to take a break to attend to my fantasy teams. I am, however, going to give you my pick for tonight’s game.
For tonight, I like the Ravens over the Browns. Boy, that’s a tough one to pick. The Browns are about the worst team in football, and I think a team of teenage girls could probably beat them.
Are you a passive aggressive person? Are you somebody who has a lot of trouble with confrontation? Do you have difficulty telling someone how you feel — whether it’s telling someone you love them, that you want to see them again or even asking somebody out on a date?
Are you a “beat around the bush” person? Mr. Beat Around The Bush is Mr. Passive Aggressive’s brother. He always waits and waits and hopes and hopes for someone to give him confirmation so he can ask them out.
Do you beat around the bush when you’re trying to ask somebody out? Do you say, “So, do you like coffee?” hoping they will respond with “I love coffee. Why don’t we get together for coffee sometime.”
Let me tell you something, Mr. Beat Around The Bush. Doing this is really no different than being passive aggressive.
People in life who beat around the bush and have passive aggressive behavior tend to be the most frustrated people, because they never seem to get their needs fulfilled. They tend to walk away from situations saying over and over, “Oh man, I wish I would have asked her out. I just didn’t get the right signal.”
My question to that guy is, “Why didn’t you ask her out?” The reason is that they beat around the bush and are passive aggressive.
In life, you had better state exactly what you want. You better state what you need and you better be damn proud of it. If you don’t state what you want, you’ll never get what you want.
If you don’t ask that person out and continue to beat around the bush, you’re always going to be frustrated because you never get your needs fulfilled. You’re never going to date the person you want.
Then, when you finally do date people, you will go from Mr. Beat Around The Bush to Mr. Passive Aggressive. This will manifest in your relationship. So stop this cycle now, and stop beating around the bush!
So often in dating, a lot of your time is spent figuring out the “right” place or the “right” restaurant to take your date. Here is a little advice for guys out there who want to impress women when they take them out on a date.
Go to www.yelp.com. It has reviews on restaurants. When you’re on that third or fourth date trying to impress that date, you want to find a cute cafe or a great restaurant. So look at the reviews. Look not only at the reviews about the food, but also the reviews about the service.
The reason to do this is something I realized while I was in France. Waiters in France and the United Kingdom (and actually all throughout Europe) are professional waiters. In Los Angeles and New York waiters are struggling actors, so you are not getting great service a lot of times.
In Europe, however, you are getting waiters whose career is being a waiter. Also, in Europe they pay their waiter a respectable wage. It’s a career, not just a job. They even get health benefits and so forth. Restaurants here barely pay you, and they expect the customers to tip you 30% so you can earn respectable wages.
We’ve already talked about tipping in a previous blog, so that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. What is really important about this, though, is to avoid having bad service when you’re on a date.
You don’t want bad service when you’re on a date because, if you think about it, you are not your nicest self when you’re faced with bad service at a restaurant.
Things may come out of your mouth that wouldn’t otherwise say, and on a date you are always trying to make a good impression.
Your surroundings are really important on a date. So the next time you’re planning a date, check out yelp.com and the restaurant reviews on there . . . especially the reviews of the service at each place. When you’re out there, you better make sure that everything is in your favor, and bad service can quickly turn a good date into a bad one.
Do you want to be that guy who walks into a room and women are instantly mesmerized by him? How does that happen? Well, it’s actually very easy!
The first thing to do when you walk into a room is to slow down. A lot of guys will walk into a room very quickly, hustling and making a beeline to the bar or the corner of a room. They somehow feel they need to get there really fast.
What I always tell guys to do is stop when they walk into a room. You frame whatever doorway there is, and if there’s not a doorway then you make a doorway around you.
You stop for two to three seconds, and you look around the room. You scan the room — look left, center, right, right, center, left — so you’re looking at the entire room. People naturally are always looking toward the entranceway of a party or bar to see who is walking in the room.
Not only do you do that, but when you walk in you also make sure you have really good posture. Make sure your shoulders are back and your chest is puffed out. Make sure you’re standing up straight and tall.
Body language is very important. So much of life is based on initial impressions.
So once you walk in a room and you command power (commanding power is standing upright and walking in), then you have to walk through that room slowly. You literally should strut through that room.
Walk through that room at a very slow pace, smile at a woman that you see – make that initial contact. Give her a look directly in her eyes, smile, and ask her “How are you doing tonight?” That’s it.
You can walk away right after you do that, because it is all about how you deliver that smile. If you deliver that smile very strongly — with conviction and with good body language — then she’s going to wonder who you are and will be very intrigued by you.
Next, go directly to your friends (or whoever else you are meeting) and have great body language when you talk to them. People noticed you when you walked into the room. You smiled at the woman and she smiled back at you, and you now have acknowledgment from all of the people who are around you.
When you go to talk to a friend, you make sure that you greet your friend in the same powerful way. Put your hand on his shoulder, shake his hand, look directly in his eyes, and have a very commanding presence.
So not only is body language important, but the speed of your walk is equally important. When you walk into a room slowly, you’re a commanding presence that people will notice. When you walk into a room quickly, you’re hustling into that room so fast that you’re basically just a blur.
You have to be a commanding presence. You may have the body language right, but you’ve got to get the walk right too.
Another important thing to remember is the right body language when you’re talking to a woman. When you are talking to a woman, you need to look directly at her. Your body needs to frame her body. This means that if you’re standing there in front of her, you have to face her directly so you’re mirroring each other.
It’s all in the way that you look at somebody. Once again, a strong, powerful man looks directly into someone’s eyes and shows them who the man is in that situation.
If you have any questions about body language, I suggest you go to YouTube and search for Bill Clinton videos. Bill Clinton has great body language when he speaks.
I know when I’m talking to a room of people, I’m talking to left, center, right. I’m looking directly into people’s eyes to make them feel like I’m connecting with them, which is what people are looking for every time.
Do you know what “the magic of a story” is? The magic of the story is remembering that while you might be telling a story for the hundredth time, the woman you’re talking to is hearing it for the very first time . . . and being able to tell it like you’re telling it for the first time.
Recently while I was with some clients, I told a woman a story I’ve told probably at least a thousand times (that’s why the story is so good!). The clients who were with me were shocked when they found this out, and said it seemed like I was telling the story for the first time.
I have such enthusiasm for my stories because I like them. I also know how people will react to them because I’ve told them before.
So how do you tell a great story; how do you tell a story like you’re telling it for the first time? Well, you have to start somewhere in order to learn how to do it.
Pick five or six things that come up over and over again in conversations, and then think of stories that relate to those things. It doesn’t matter what they are about, so long as you enjoy telling them and can do so with passion.
Practice your stories, so they are natural and easy for you to tell. I would suggest that you record all your stories, and then listen to yourself tell them.
As you listen, ask yourself whether you are interesting enough as you tell each story. If you are not, then go back and record them again. Keep listening to those stories over and over again, because those are the stories that are going to come out when you meet people.
Those amazing stories will be what attract women when you talk to them. They love to hear them.
A man who can tell a great story is very intriguing to women. It will show you as a man who is passionate about who he is. A woman will think that if you’re that passionate about yourself and your life, then you will be equally as passionate about her if you start hanging out together.
If you’re passionate about everything that you do – even down to little things like sniffing fruit passionately at the farmer’s market — then women are going to realize how passionate you are about all sorts of things. It’s about living with passion, and it all starts with your stories!
What are the four worst words in the English language? Do you have any idea what they are? They are: We have to talk.
What a powerful phrase that it. It’s never good when anybody says those four words to you. Usually when people say “We need to talk,” they do so lurching at you with a frustrated energy, because no one wants to have the talk that follows the announcement that “We need to talk.”
If you think about it, the reason that you have the “We have to talk” talk before you have the real conversation, is because you’re full of anxiety. What you have to talk about is probably something you’ve been thinking about for weeks, but just couldn’t get yourself to raise with the other person.
Because there has been all this buildup, when you do finally bring it up the tone that is taken is unbelievable. It is never a loving tone.
If your boyfriend or girlfriend ever says to you “We need to talk,” you know it is not good news. If it was good news, you would have heard about it already..
Nobody uses the phrase “We need to talk” to tell someone that they love them. When your boss calls you into the office and says, “We need to talk,” it’s never good.
It’s funny, too, because you could have just been in the kitchen with your boyfriend or girlfriend five minutes before talking about breakfast, then all of a sudden you are hearing “We have to talk.” So you say, “Weren’t we just talking?” and they will say “No, we weren’t having the ‘we have to talk’ talk.”
I don’t have a solution for the “We have to talk” problem, but I can tell you one thing. If you have something good to say to someone, you’ll never preface it with “We have to talk.”
Also, no matter what you have to say to someone — whether it’s something great or telling someone they are driving you up the wall — don’t start it off with “We need to talk.” Start it off with something more loving like, “Hey babe, I want to share something with you about the way I’ve been feeling that I think will really be beneficial to our relationship.” Doesn’t that sound much better than “We need to talk?”
Let’s talk about this. There are so many better ways to start a conversation than, “We need to talk.”
What would the theme music be for ‘we need to talk?’ Maybe the theme from The Exorcist? It must be something ominous sounding. Let me know if any of you have suggestions.
So there’s a trend going around. You may have read about it.
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.
