A client of mine recently asked me a great question. He asked me, “How do you stay in your own reality? How can you keep your own frame of reference and not get sucked into the reality of the person we want to meet?”
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.
