Now it’s been a while since I wrote anything about bars and clubs.  To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been out to any clubs.  But I’m going to be out on the town this weekend with some friends, so I figured I’ll put you guys in the right mindset with a question that comes from an email I got last week:

Hey Shogo,

Thanks so much for the coaching call yesterday, I got some great advice out of it and can’t wait to put it to use.  One question.  Could you help me out with cock blocks in a bar or club, they can be very annoying and ignorant I find and I’ve been cockblocked now and again.  So what could ya say to the guy to stop?

J, Ireland

Hey J,

Here’s how I feel about cock blocking.  I never get cock blocked.  It just doesn’t happen to me. So what that means is that cock blocking has nothing to do with another guy being an asshole, swooping in and taking “your” woman.  It’s got everything to do with YOU.  You can learn all the quick and witty comeback lines and banter you want to be prepared for a so-called cock block, but it’s not going to stop it from happening to you.

Because cock blocking only happens to certain types of guys.  And it happens to them over and over again.

Guys who are very hesitant about expressing themselves to a woman.  Guys who don’t claim their space.  Guys who keep their distance and are afraid to get close out of fear that he’s offending her or coming across as “giving her the wrong idea”.

When you do that, other guys will notice it and see that there is no chemistry there.  Maybe you just look like friends.  Maybe a guy is an asshole, and sees an opportunity there to come in and take her away.  In any case, she’s clear for the taking to any other swinging dick who walks by.

Cock blocking happens to guys who don’t intrigue women.  If she is interested in you and the conversation you are having, she will stand there and listen to everything you have to say.  When she’s not into you, her eyes will start darting across the room, hoping for her friend or some other more interesting guy to come rescue her.

When that starts happening, you’re done. Nothing can save you.  She’ll pray for someone else to come join the conversation.  She’ll be totally open to starting a conversation and flirting with another guy who’s around her.  And a guy who sees that will jump right in.  Sometimes she’ll start a conversation with another guy.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone up to the bar to get a drink, and a girl standing there will turn and start talking to me while another guy was just in mid-conversation with her.

Then I’d look over her at the poor guy’s disillusioned face and give him a little shrug.  Does that make me a cock-block?  Does that make me an asshole?  No.  It means she was bored to death with the other guy and wanted talk to me instead.  It means the other guy needed some coaching—not on how to deal with cock blocks, but on how to keep her intrigued.  Because I’m no better than the guy who just got shoved out of the picture.  But I’m much better in conversation.

Cock blocking happens to guys who don’t claim their own space and walk over with confidence and start great conversations with women everywhere they go.  Cockblocking happens to guys who talk to one or two women a night, and then CLING onto those conversations like their lives depended on it.

Sound familiar, victim of cock blocking?

You sit in the corner of the bar, waiting for what to say to that one girl you’ve been looking at for the past 45 minutes, then you finally get up the guts to approach her and hope it really works out because this is your one shot for the night.

Instead you try and try and try with that one girl you finally approached, even when there’s no chemistry.  And the more you try with a girl who’s only lukewarm about you, the longer you stand there struggling, the more likely some guy with dimples and a great smile is going to wink at her and jump in to the rescue.

So you’re still asking why you need to start conversations with women everywhere?  This is why.  Because when you start doing that, you will start having an abundance mindset.  You’ll start approaching women everywhere.  When I go out, I talk to girls everywhere.  Quick, 30-second conversations.  If there’s no chemistry, if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I move on.  I don’t stand around in a shitty conversation, struggling to make things happen, and wait to be cock blocked by some guy she likes better than me.

You think you’ve been cock blocked, but you really just cock blocked yourself.

I love that shit. They’re offering you a shortcut! Do you remember that book The Secret? Write yourself a check for a million dollars, and it will just show up!

Not by working at McDonald’s, it won’t! That’s just not how it works.

There is no shortcut in life. You attract who you are, not what you want.

If you want a relationship that is based on love, great sex, confidence – whatever it might be – then you’d better be that person. When you walk over to a woman full of fear, and you see that she’s confident, guess what? She’ll walk away.

And then you will always wonder why you always seem to attract these really timid and scared women. Well, that’s who you are.

You attract who you are. Many people don’t realize that you have to work on yourself first. All of the guys who have come to my bootcamps realize this: the more you work on and embrace yourself, the more you love yourself – the greater the chance that someone else is going to love you back.

If your goal down the road is for a great relationship, then you’d better work on yourself now. You are always going to attract who you are.

Many people look at their past relationships and they don’t take inventory of them. They always place blame – well, I was this way with her, and she was this way. She did this, and I feel bad… bullshit.

The reason why you were a certain way with her is because that’s who you were. You have to take responsibility for everything that you are, and realize that you can attract who you are.

In my current relationship, I attracted me. I’ve attracted me in all of my relationships. I like this version of me that I’ve attracted now more than any other version of me that I’ve ever attracted. And this actually forces me to look deeper inside me and realize that I have to take responsibility for myself.

So it’s not just about writing down what you want – that’s fucking lala-ville. That’s just airy-fairy shit. “I want a big dick” – you can’t just put that shit out into the universe and expect it just to come to you.

You have to BE the big dick! You have to be that person. If you want a hot girlfriend, you have to be a hot guy. If you want a girl that is confident, you’d better be confident! If you want a girl that’s really a sexual dynamo, you’d better be that.

You have to be all these things first. Otherwise you’ll just attract people that will teach you lessons. You have to look back on your lessons, and when you make your list of what you want, make your list of who you want to be.

If you make your list of who you want to be, you’ll attract that person.

The other day I was hanging out with this woman and we were talking about my business.

She knows exactly what I do – teaching guys how to really become master communicators and learn the art of attraction – but she had no idea that there are all of these wacky companies out there that teach pick-up terminology and teach you how to be something that you are not.

She could not believe that guys sit around and ask each other how to ‘escalate sexually’ the very first time.

I’ve always said it – but the way you ‘escalate sexually’ is by listening and talking to her. You engage her, and you smile at her. This is how you escalate sexually.

If she says something funny, you can lightly touch her arm. You don’t have think to yourself, like a robot, oh she just did something. Let me touch her arm now. Okay, I touched her arm, now I need to lean in and kiss her.

It doesn’t have to be this hard!

The reason why you make it this hard is because you just don’t spend enough time developing and trusting yourself.

Granted, when I was first out there in the dating world at 18 or 19 years old, I was nervous as hell and always scared to death to go in for the kiss. Of course you’re nervous – that’s natural!

But I never looked for a manual that told me exactly when to go in for the kiss.

Instead, I learned and practiced and started paying attention to things. If you really pay attention to women, you’ll know when she wants you to kiss her. If she’s looking deeply into your eyes and smiling at you – absolutely you should go in for the kiss!

You don’t have to sit there and think about when is the best moment for going in for the kiss. The fact is that you just have to be yourself.

A guy just emailed me, and he basically said, “I’m going out with this girl, she’s really deep, she’s really amazing, but how do I get her to like me?”

Hello! You just said it yourself: she’s really deep and really amazing. How do you get her to like you? You have to be deep and amazing for her as well.

I’ve said it a thousand times: in order to attract amazing looking women, you have to learn how to be attractive to yourself. You have to learn deep inner confidence. You have to learn to love yourself before you can go out there and meet people.

If you don’t love yourself and trust yourself, of course you’re going to be neurotic in every situation! That’s the way that things go and it’s just the way you are.

Develop your inner confidence. Every product that I put out there has so many lessons for gaining inner confidence. I know that there is no shortcut in life.

Eventually, you’re going to have to find a way to be comfortable being yourself. The most powerful version of you is the most comfortable version of yourself.

Learn who you are. Trust who you are. Along the way, start taking chances and risks.

If you see the outward signs that she wants to kiss you and you want to go in for the kiss, grab your balls and go kiss her!

Just try it. If you get rejected, who cares? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. No matter what I say and tell you, you’re still going to have to get out there and try it.

You are going to fail, but you are also going to succeed.

But no matter what, you’d better start today!

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.