I do know what I’m going to be for Halloween, though, this year. I am going to be jet lag.

It’s going to be about 10:45 am on the plane heading home from London, but then again I left at Noon UK time so now over the Atlantic who knows what time it really is.

The great thing about being away for a while at this time of the year, is that I am going to get to go through my second “fall back.” I already “fell back” once in London, and now I’m going to get to do it again here in L.A. it’s like time travel.

Speaking of time travel, I saw an absolutely terrible movie on the airplane called “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” I still don’t understand how you can go back in time and see yourself.

That would, however, be a great idea for a Halloween costume. You can tell people you are a time traveler and you’ll see them in ten minutes. What a great approach for the night. You are talking to a woman and you say, “I’d love to talk to you now, but I’m time traveling. I’ll see you in three hours . . . in my bed. How do I know that? I’m a time traveler!”

Have a great Halloween, and enjoy this classic Halloween blog. . .

It’s time for the Monster Mash. It’s a graveyard smash . . . It caught on in a flash . . . ‘Cause it’s the Monster Mash . . .

So how exactly are you going to mash this Halloween season?

Remember the good old days walking door to door with a plastic pumpkin, knocking on strangers’ doors, and hoping you didn’t get an apple with a razorblade in it? By the way, what kind of person hands out apples at Halloween anyway? We’re out for candy! In fact, lots of candy . . . and not a stinkin’ apple! That’s the shit your mother gives you at home.

As we rang each door bell, we’d utter these magic words: “Trick or treat for UNICEF!” For those of you who don’t know what UNICEF is, it was a private collection. That is, we would collect it . . . and UNICEF would never ever get it.

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could go to an apartment complex where hot chicks and singles reside wearing your Scooby Doo costume with the plastic mask and that shiny material that your mother had to tie in the back. You remember those, the kind where if your mother bought the wrong size, it only came down to your ankles?

The great thing about that shiny material though was that it repelled all the eggs and the shaving cream pelted at you by the older kids. Not to mention, it was always freezing outside and you never wanted to wear a jacket because it would ruin your great costume.

What a great costume that was that your Mom bought for $5.00 at Wal*Mart. Thanks a lot Mom!

Not to mention, sometimes your head was too big for the plastic mask so either a lot of chin or a lot of forehead would always be visible. On top of everything else, that cheap elastic string on the back of the mask would continuously break, so the mask got tighter and tighter every time you fixed it.

So now you’re an adult. You are no longer trick or treating in cheap costumes that don’t fit. You now dress up in adult-themed costumes.

Women will dress up in skimpy little bunny costumes. Men will dress up as women . . . not a pretty sight by the way, and definitely not a costume I would consider.

Instead of getting a stomach ache from eating a pumpkin full of candy, as adults we get a stomach ache from drinking a pumpkin full of booze. The candy is no longer chocolate with caramel filling . . . it has become the opposite sex.

The problem is that people tend to act really stupid on Halloween. They start talking like the character they are portraying.

I met this female pirate one time at a Halloween party. When I asked if she would like a drink, she answered “Aye matey!” Then I asked if she would be interested in some casual sex that night, and she answered “Aye matey!!” In fact, she said “Aye matey!” all night until she passed out from drinking too much pumpkin juice.

A Halloween party for adults is hilarious. Women will have sex on Halloween and then rationalize it: “It wasn’t me . . . Wonder Woman slept with him.” Men will approach women with the worst pick-up lines ever.

Everyone here in L.A. wants to go the Halloween party at the Playboy mansion which, by the way, I’ have attended. It happens to be a lot of fun. Lots of “Aye Matey’s” there . . . and lots of people on drugs.

There’s nothin’ like Halloween in L.A.! I think here in L.A., that everybody’s magic pumpkin is filled with magical Ecstasy.

Once again, remember that Halloween is just one night. Either you can rap or you can’t.

Just wearing a costume is not going to turn a man into a smooth-talking stud. A woman’s sexy skimpy costume is also not going to make her the social butterfly she craves to be. Halloween is also the night you will hear the most stupid pick-up lines of any night of the year . . . with the possible exception of 5-4-3-2-1 night.

So what is my idea for a good Halloween? Go to Target. Buy one of those little kid costumes and an orange plastic pumpkin. I’m sure one of that little kid costumes will go down as far as your knees . . . if you’re lucky. This is very funny.

Then go door to door wearing your costume and carrying the plastic pumpkin, and say this to the hot single mom or dad who answers the door: “Trick or treat for a social life! Please put your phone number in the pumpkin, and I’ll call you tomorrow when I become a person again instead of a giant Hello Kitty.”

I think I’m going to go to this area of my town that has a ton of single women and ring some bells. Bells will be ringin’ … Oops! Wrong holiday.

So now you know what I will be doing on Halloween. What will you be doing?

I will leave you with one of my favorite kid jokes: Why can’t witches get pregnant? Because ghosts have Halloweenies …

Do you know what ruins the possibility of most relationships taking off?

Ego always ruins it.

Here you are, hanging out with a woman you’ve been out with three or four times. You’re getting along great, and you know it. You’re having a good time, and then all of a sudden, one of you gets scared – which always happens. Someone always gets scared.

So all of a sudden, she stops calling, or she doesn’t text you back right away. And what do you do?

Your ego works to protect yourself, and you basically say to yourself, fuck it – it’s not going to work out.

In reality, your ego was actually just protecting you from becoming even more vulnerable.

Love Me Always

Then you rationalize to yourself by just submerging yourself in work or whatever it is. Your ego is just trying to protect yourself the whole time.

Life might just take one more phone call. Call that person out and say to them, “hey, what’s going on? I don’t get it. You and I were having a good time, and then you disappear. What’s going on?”

By calling somebody out on their shit, you’re going to get a response that will be far different than you ever imagined. Maybe she just needed that extra push.

Women like to feel safe. Maybe she did get a little bit scared, and when a woman gets scared, what does she want? She wants to be protected by her man.

A real man is going to make her feel protected and make her feel safe. That’s what women are craving – that feeling of safety and security. Women are nesters. Women are looking at you as a potential husband or father, and they want to feel very safe.

And by you saying, fuck it, and just walking away, you proved to her that that little doubt that she had about you was 100% correct. Just because you didn’t want to become vulnerable and you had to protect your ego. You wanted to save face.

And who might you be saving face from? Her friends if she talks to them? If you call her and just tell her what’s up, she’s going to go to her friends and say: “Joe called, and he just wants to know what’s going on with me. What should I do?” If her friends know that she likes you, all her friends will be encouraging her to call you.

So your ego just protected you from nothing.

You have to lose the ego. If you really want a true, spectacular relationship, drop the fucking ego. When you go to meet somebody, drop the ego. Stop worrying about what other people say and just live your life to the fullest every day by becoming vulnerable.

A lot of you have egos that do not even allow you to meet people at all. So many of you do not even realize how much your ego is stopping you from making changes so you can be happy in your life.

Your ego can be the sole reason why you are alone right now. So today on Columbus day 2011 lets talk about ego and dating.

In life, we tend to try to protect ourselves all of the time with our egos. We spend so much time worrying about everything – someone didn’t text me back quickly enough, someone didn’t email me back yet, someone hasn’t called me back!

Does Your Ego Ruin Your Dates

And then you meet someone who turns you on more than anyone you’ve met in a long time and they don’t respond to an email right away.

First of all, you have to start thinking to yourself, how many times have I gotten a lot of emails? And then you don’t check for a few hours and they just get buried. Or you read an email, you smile, but you’re in the middle of doing something else at work and can’t respond?

Shit happens. Stop standing on principle – you might miss a connection. Your ego gets in the way of so many great things.

If you meet someone and you have great chemistry, it’s worth it to lob in another text or email. You have to be willing to go the extra distance. If you don’t, you might miss out on something spectacular.

The reason why meeting people and dating is so difficult is because we make it that hard. Our egos get in the way all the time. We just don’t go the extra distance.

We say to ourselves, fuck her, man, she didn’t text me back, I’ll go find someone else!

Okay, great, go find someone else. But you thought she was spectacular before. Now you rationalize to yourself that she’s not that spectacular anymore – oh, I didn’t really like her that much anyway.

Yeah, you did! But you spend all of this time convincing yourself that you didn’t, just because she wounded you and you want to save face.

What are you saving face for? Lob in another email or text, or even call her up. She might say, “oh my god, I forgot to respond, I am so sorry, I got so busy at work.”

That ego kills you every time.

As a matter of fact, I am going to call Apple, and I’m going to get this thing done.
It’s an app that is called “Lower Your Standards Time!”

Picture it. It’s 1:00 am and you’re standing in a bar. You’re drunk. All of a sudden your phone starts going crazy — beeping and vibrating. You look at it, and it says “It’s Lower Your Standards Time!”

“Look, there’s a drunk girl leaning against the bar right now. She just made out with a random guy in the corner. It’s time for you to go over there and get her number. It’s time to lower your standards!”

It is hilarious what we do at 1:00 am. It’s almost like we’re one of Pavlov’s dogs.

It is 1:00 am and you haven’t been successful all night long, so you automatically lower your standards and go for whoever you can possibly get so you can validate yourself that night.

Why? You do it so you can tell your friends you got a phone number. You, however, never tell your friends that it’s the phone number of a woman who was drunk, vomiting at the bar and won’t even remember who you are when you call her.

So, really, I think you know where I’m going with this. Why ever lower your standards?

The only reason why you ever lower your standards is because you don’t have the balls to talk to women to whom you are attracted. You get all full of panic because your ego wants something.

Your ego desires to get a phone number. It validates you that you actually could do something — even if it’s something that totally lowers your standards.

So, you know what? I’m going to have you download this new “Lower Your Standards” app from Apple. That way you can always kid yourself and think that you’re more successful than you really are.

The other option is for you to get on the ball and really start to meet the women to whom you are most attracted. Which option seems better?

CLICK HERE to find out the one way to never again be stuck settling and lowering your standards — and to always CHOOSE the women you want to meet.

Understanding how your actions affect others could be life’s biggest challenge. I know I’ve written about this before (and probably a lot) in the blog, but I think this is something we all need to learn.

In a relationship, if someone comes to you about your behavior, you need to look deep into why they came to you in the first place. Relationships are about compromising, really understanding each other and how we make each other feel. There is no perfect relationship out there.

I know the majority of my readers are single. For those of you who are single, if you are searching for a perfect relationship, let me tell you something. You will be searching forever. There is no perfect relationship because we are imperfect people.

If you believe that you are perfect, then you have a lot of growing up to do. If you believe everything you do is okay, then you also have a lot of growing up to do.

Actions that effect people you love and make them feel a certain way are ones at which you need to look. You need to look deep into whether you believe those actions are harmless, and you need to listen to people you respect and love.

Are you like some couples who battle more than others? Why is that?

It could be because certain people bring out the battler in you. The reason why they do is because there is a lesson you need to learn.

So instead of getting angry at the other person and defending yourself, start to look at your piece and part you played in causing the battle.

Once again, dropping your ego is good not only for your personal growth, but because doing that can help love grow even deeper. Being able to drop the ego is a huge challenge.

If you are able to look at how your actions affect others every day, though, you will find that your love for yourself will grow even more. The more you love yourself, the more someone else can love you.

This is a great lesson for all of you who are single. I know a lot of you who are single and reading this are thinking that this blog doesn’t pertain to you. The truth is that it very much pertains to you.

It pertains to you in so many ways, because you still interact with people — friends, business associates and dates — every day. There are things that you do every single day about which you can look deep inside yourself and from which you can grow. Life’s biggest lessons happen when you drop the ego.

If you are talking to someone you trust, honor and love and they tell you that your actions cause them pain and to feel things they never wanted to feel, do you defend those actions? Would you really listen?

In life, our ego is constantly protecting us. So many of you know that you are not good at meeting the opposite sex, but yet you always let your ego protect you.

Your ego will tell you, “Don’t worry. You just need a lucky break. Things will change. Spring is coming…” or whatever excuses your ego will provide you. Your ego may tell you, “There’s a party next week and you will meet somebody there.”

What you don’t do is anything to change yourself, because change is the toughest thing for you. Change means that we have to drop our ego and allow it to subside.

Nobody can change anybody else. The only person you can change is yourself.

You get out of life exactly what you put into it. So if you are in a spiral of life where things don’t work for you — whether that means disagreements with your boss, disagreements with your partner or not meeting the people you want to meet — it’s happening because you can’t embrace change.

It’s happening because your ego will not allow you to embrace change. Your ego is basically protecting yourself from embracing any type of change. We are all flawed.

I can’t stand when somebody tells me that I did something that caused them pain. I’m always about protecting myself.

Maybe the way that I deal with things is not the way they want to deal with things, and it causes them pain. So we’re all flawed.

So the next time someone challenges you about changing, do you react full of ego or do you react in an open way? The person who defends themselves is the person who is reacting out of ego, because your ego is defending you at all times.

My ego will defend me until the day I die. If you allow your ego to defend you until the day you die, you’re going to die alone and not having grown.

We all do things that annoy the hell out of people — partners, business associates and friends. If someone that you love tells you that something in your actions causes them pain, don’t look at them and say “Well this is how I’ve always been and no one seems to be bothered by it.”

If you like or love that person, you are going to say, “You know what, maybe that is something I need to work on and change in myself. Maybe that is a habit of mine, or maybe that’s the way I deal with things.” It really may not be that healthy.

How did they come up with that? Is the fourth day of Christmas the fourth day before Christmas? Also, if you don’t have a true love, who is going to give it to you?

Sometimes with our egos we don’t get anything. It’s good to have a healthy ego — to feel good about yourself and love who you are as a person.

Where ego can really ruin you, though, is in dating and relationships. How many of you don’t call someone back because you feel like they should be calling you? How many times have you fought with someone over nothing (and it was just two egos battling)?

Egos always want to be right. They say that it is when you are humbled that you learn your greatest lessons. We are going to talk all about when you need to lose your ego in today’s podcast. I am also going to tell you how doing so can dramatically change your dating and relationships.

So on this fourth day of Christmas, your true love — me — has a gift for you.

Four big lessons.
Three more words.
Two more sentences in this blog.
And one ego podcast…

Click here to listen to this special bonus podcast, and I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Invest in yourself by learning how to get rid of the ego that is sabotaging you in your love life with my Men’s What’s Your Excuse? and Women’s No Excuses programs.

I used to be the guy who would go out and get validated by sleeping with women. I used to be the guy who would go out with a bunch of guys every Friday night to cruise bars, try to meet hot women, and try to get as many women’s phone numbers as possible.

I used to be that guy trying to do all that stuff — going from bar to bar and place to place — looking for the best night I could possibly have. I used to be that guy who would actually go home with girls to whom I wasn’t even all that attracted. I mean, they might be okay or kind of a cool girl . . . but they weren’t who I wanted.

The women I really wanted always had left the bar two hours before, but my ego needed validation so I’d be with women I didn’t really want just to be “that guy” who could get women to all my friends. I had to prove to them that I was the guy who could pick up women.

My ego needed that validation. I used to be that guy. I remember being that guy in my 20s.  

I recently had a great coaching session with a guy in his 20s, and we were talking about this very subject. As we were talking and reminiscing, I found myself being amazed thinking about how many women I would have actually connected with if I knew then what I know now.

I would have connected with women on much deeper levels and would have had much better connections with them. I would have met women I wanted to meet, instead of allowing my ego to dictate with which women I’d have sex or ask out on a date.

Back then it didn’t matter to me about the kind of connections I was having as long as my ego was getting validated. As long as I got validated by women, I was able to connect and hook up with women.

A lot of guys are like that. I used to be like that. I used to be that guy. That’s why I totally understand what all you guys are going through and what you really want.

You don’t need to have constant validation, because truly connecting with women is one of the most unbelievable and amazing things you can do. A lot of guys don’t understand that until they get older.

What is so great about coaching you guys and really getting inside your mindset is that I understand where you want to be. I’m so jealous and wish I could be in this mindset I’m teaching you when I was younger, although it’s so great to be able to help you and see all of you get there now.

I used to be you. Now I can help you become the most powerful version of you.

Let’s talk a little about relationships today…

Anyone who has read me knows that there is something I say over and over again (because it is so important!): To be able to truly love yourself and to truly be able to love someone else, you must drop the ego. This is absolutely essential to finding an amazing relationship, but it’s equally critical to maintaining and continually improving a relationship once you’re already in it.

Nothing will kill a relationship (even the best of relationships) more quickly than ego. Here are 6 ways your ego can kill your relationship, and how to avoid having your ego ruin your relationship.

1.Resist The Temptation To Defend Yourself: Think about the number of times you’ve fought with a significant other, and whenever things get a little heated you start to defend yourself. All you hear is you being attacked, and you immediately go into “defending yourself” mode. Do you know that when you defend yourself in a fight, what’s really happening is your ego is defending itself.

It also means that you’ve stopped listening to the other person.  If someone tells you that they don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately, why not hear them out instead of defending yourself? It will almost always create a MUCH better outcome. 

2.To Love Yourself And Someone Else Completely You Must Separate The Ego: In order to truly love someone, you must separate your ego from yourself. This is also true if you want to be able to totally love yourself. Now, I know that in a perfect world, we would never be ego-driven. This is not a perfect world of course, so let’s get real. We are all ego-driven to some extent or another, so let’s acknowledge it and embrace that we need to separate the ego to cultivate and maintain a truly amazing relationship with someone.  

3.Your Ego Can Ruin Any Conversation: The truth is that no matter how much you prepare, plan and hope for a good conversation with your significant other, your ego is the one thing that will consistently ruin any conversation you’re about to have if you let it. 

Let’s say your significant other is frustrated with you in one way or another and really needs to express something about that to you. How do you respond? If you let your ego get involved and you defend yourself, it means that you’re not listening to them.

In order to really listen to somebody, it’s uncomfortable.  Sometimes your significant other has things that are really bothering them about which they want to talk to you, but which you would rather not hear. To maintain a great relationship, however, you can’t let your ego keep you from really listening.

This is a topic that we will go much deeper into another day.

But think about these 3 topics and ask yourself are you guilty of this?

So the next time you see your ego getting involved in your relationship, get rid of it! If you find yourself defending yourself or not allowing you to really listen, then you need to take a step back. Listen carefully to what’s really being said, and use it to create the most amazing relationship.

Do you constantly criticize others on things that you’re clueless about? Are you one of those know-it-alls that think you can run a business better than your boss can – even if you’ve never worked in a business like that before?

Or are you one of those people who, when someone asks you, “If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?” you answer, “nothing at all”?

You’re all ego. You’re 100% ego-driven. Your ego is so large that you can’t even accept yourself for who you are – including your faults.

You basically walk around all day long creating lies. You’re trying to hide behind things that you don’t know about quite yet – your ego is just that large. And everyone can see through it.

The people I respect the most in my life are the people who are real. I like to attract real people into my life. I like to attract people who are humble – people who are open.

Ego is the number one thing that can destroy us. Dr. Wayne Dyer – he’s someone who I’ve met and become friends with through my girlfriend – talks about ego in a lot of his books. I also talk about ego in a lot of my products.

Ego is something that you need to drop every single day. In my How to Become a Master Communicator course, you’ll learn about the ego and how to drop it. It teaches you how to be a REAL person – because that is what people are attracted to.

Nobody’s perfect. If you think that you are, it’s just your ego preventing you from growing as a person.