Yesterday, however, I received the best Christmas gift of all. The Colts decided to sit Peyton Manning in the middle of the game, allowing the Jets a defeat against a third string quarterback.

It also gave the Jets an 8-7 record, putting them in charge of their playoff destiny. Next week I hope Marvin Lewis decides to sit his best players too so that the Jets can win again. It’s the Marty Schottenheimer style of coaching – get into the playoffs and lose.

My Christmas break was great. I was in New Orleans looking for a place to get married. I saw some really cool venues. If any of you know a great band or a great photographer down there, let me know. Or, if any of you are a professional photographer, let me know and perhaps we can work something out.

Over the holiday, Yahoo! published an article of mine and put it on its homepage. I really love when Yahoo! publishes my articles. It’s great. It gives me massive amounts of feedback in about a six hour time period.

It also, however, makes me realize something very sad. It makes me realize that there are a lot of people out there who hide behind their laptop and criticize people all day long.

Whenever I look at comments on any article which appears on Yahoo!, I’d say at least 50% of them are full of anger. It doesn’t matter about what each person is writing, people will find fault with it.

They are the blamers in life. They are always blaming other people for their misfortunes.

They are also very negative people. They are always looking for the opportunity to say, “Aha! I told you this wouldn’t work!”

These people often say things like this because they don’t realize they are the cause all the negative things in their own life. They are responsible for every decision they make, every mistake they make and every relationship they’ve had.

They are 100% responsible for these things. Instead of confronting themselves and taking responsibility, they hide in forums, chatrooms and message boards and blame others. Instead of going out and working on themselves, which they should do every day, they spend hours and days online blaming everyone else.

The Internet is wonderful. You can reach the masses by pressing a few buttons., but too often you realize that a lot of the members of the masses are very angry.

Sometimes I read comments about technology items — items that work perfectly fine — and yet people will find eight things wrong with them and spend their time and energy spewing their anger on a message board about them. Why?

Why waste so much time on anger? If you’re angry, it is your own fault. Take responsibility for your anger.

I have a friend who constantly bounces checks and is somewhat of a financial mess. He is always blaming Bank of America for his problems.

The bank is against him he believes. Really? Bank of America, which probably has about ten million accounts, is against him?

If you bounce checks, it is your fault. It means you don’t know how to handle your finances. It’s not that my friend doesn’t make money. He makes money and he is still a financial mess.

I can understand if someone is buying food for their family, and they bounce a check because they need food to survive. This person, however, actually makes a good living and he still blames the bank for his problems.

As we close out 2009 and head into the 10′s, isn’t it time you stopped criticizing or harping on things and started taking responsibility for yourself? You are 100% responsible for your life. That is what being an adult is all about.

For my young readers who still live at home with their parents (and maybe battle their parents on a daily basis), one day you will be 100% responsible for your life. You can start right to prepare yourself for that by seeing every decision you make as a lesson being taught to you.

I remember the first time a friend of mine got drunk and threw up. He blamed everyone, saying they forced him to drink.

We use the term “peer pressure” when we’re young. In reality, though, you are the one in the end who has to make the decision.

When you’re young, it’s harder to make an independent decision because you want to be cool and go with the flow. When you’re older, however, you just have to make up your own mind about yourself and make your own decisions.

So spend the next few days thinking about how you blame others for what has happened and how things are in your life. Start writing it all down. Write “I blame so-and-so for this” and “I blame such-and-such for that.”

Then I want you to amend all those and substitute yourself in those sentences. At the end write, “I am fully responsible for everything that happens in my life due to my choices.”

Have a great Monday!

So when I write about what women do wrong online, I am not ignoring the fact that men are also guilty of doing wrong things online. I just like to address the sexes separately, because the mistakes men make online are either different from those women make or are “the same with a twist.”

Are you ready for the twist? Here are 8 of the most irritating online behaviors committed by men:

1. Athletic & Fit?: It’s time that all men realized that they are not Peyton Manning or Marvin Harrison. They’re not an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer. Your body type is exactly what it is. So you really need to look in the mirror and make a determination of how you really look, because when you say “athletic and fit” in your online profile and only put up dazzling head shots of yourself, a woman is expecting a swimmer’s body to accompany that dazzling face. When what shows up instead is a dazzling face with a middle-aged body, the expression on a woman’s face is usually one of discomfort. When you post an accurate full-body photograph of yourself, you’ve already been exposed. Then you just let women make the choice if they are interested or not. It’s that simple. Lying about your body type never produces good results.

2. Stop Being A Salesman: When you contact a woman online, do not send her a cut and paste email telling her all the reasons why she should want to have a relationship with you, why you’re a gift to mankind and why she is a fool if she doesn’t answer your email. She can read your profile if she chooses. Your profile is intended to intrigue her. It’s not a sales brochure of all the reasons she needs to be in a relationship with someone she hasn’t even met yet. When you send a woman a message online, say something intriguing that will make her want to go and read your profile. Women do not want to read a cut and past email telling her how amazing you think you are. Let her find that out for herself.

3. Respect Her Age Range: If you’re a 50 year old man looking at a 25 year old woman’s profile that says she is looking for a man between the ages of 25 and 35, then you should not contact this woman. Period. You need to respect a woman’s stated age range for the men she’s looking to meet (give or take no more than five years). Nothing turns a woman off more than having her Father’s friends chasing her online. If a woman says she wants to date someone who is no more than five years older or younger than she, then she does not want to date someone twice her age. Men get visually impaired when they see pictures of beautiful women. Some men somehow think they have the right to date hot younger women half their age. Now there are some men can do this . . . but online is not the right place to try and do that. In online dating, you don’t stand a chance of dating women if you are outside their stated age range. Even if you would be able to completely dazzle a woman in person, online you’ll just be viewed as an old guy chasing younger women. If you want to meet younger women, get out of the house and dazzle them with your charm and wit – you’ll stand a much better chance.

4. Read Her Profile!: I’ve lost count of the number of women who email me saying “David, what is up with all these men who don’t read our profiles? I get so many men who wink at me when my profile clearly says ‘NO WINKS!’” Nothing turns a woman off more than a man who does not read her profile. Women are all about an emotional connection. So when you contact them, pick out something interesting in their profile and respond to it. By cutting and pasting a form letter to women without having read their profile, you are simply wasting your time. Online dating works, but you have to put a little effort into it by doing things like reading a woman’s profile so she knows you made some effort.

5. Nix The “Possession Pictures”: Before some of you get angry about this one, understand that I’ve ripped women on this same picture issue for putting up certain kinds of pictures with their friends or pictures of them from a distance. Men tend to put up pictures of their possessions – everything from their car to their Super Bowl tickets. The fact is that women don’t care about your possessions when they’re looking at an online profile. Now, granted, some women are looking for men to take care of them, but women still want to be able to see who you are when they look at your online profile. So put pictures up of you in different situations. Just be sure any picture you post is clear, up close, and current! If you have no hair, don’t put pictures up of yourself with a full head of hair. It’s just not going to work. Once again, you are who you are. There’s no need to go into salesman mode to get to meet women. There are plenty of women to meet out there – so represent yourself accurately and you’ll find them.

6. No Email Stalking: You contacted her once, and she didn’t respond. Why? Well perhaps she didn’t like what you wrote to her. Perhaps she’s busy. Perhaps there’s no reason at all. It doesn’t matter. If a woman doesn’t respond to your first email to her, email her again a week or ten days later just in case there was some snafu the first time (and so you won’t have to wonder if there was some snafu the first time). Doing this is perfectly fine. To send a woman a barrage of increasingly nasty emails for four or five days asking why she isn’t responding to your emails (or something similarly nasty), however, is behavior guaranteed to get a woman to NEVER want to communicate with you or see you. It’s frankly tantamount to email stalking. Two emails with no response equals you needing to move on to someone else.

7. Lose The One-Liner: I can’t tell you how many women have forwarded me emails they’ve received from men online whose first contact with them is something akin to a “hello” subject line with a one-line email body containing his phone number and an invitation to call him. It’s usually something like “Sally, give me a call sometime – my number is 301-555-5555.” How do men expect women to respond to this – by calling them? If a total stranger on the Internet sent you their phone number and asked you to call them sometime, you wouldn’t call them either. Women like to be intrigued and pursued a little bit. By sending this one-liner email, you did nothing to intrigue them. Get creative in your first email to women you meet online, and they’ll be offering their phone numbers to you.

8. Don’t Be An IM Stalker: Some online dating sites allow you to instant message with people you meet. This can be great! If you’ve emailed a woman several times and she’s never responded, however, do not start instant messaging that woman every time she gets online. You’re going to freak her out! Allow someone to answer you (or not answer you), but don’t become so obsessed over one person. Take a look at Yahoo! Personals. There’s TONS of people to date on there. TONS! So don’t start stalking one person with instant messages, and making them wish they would have never tried online dating in the first place. Respect when someone is not attracted to you or interested in you.

Online dating is fun. It also may be challenging at times. The best thing to do is to think of it as a party on the Internet, and don’t engage in behaviors online that you would never engage in at a real-life party.

If you want more online dating tips and/or a way to make your profile and contacts better, send me an email. I’ve told you here what to avoid doing . . . but there’s plenty you can do to make yourself a more successful online dater.

This was this afternoons lead story. And just think all you need to do is facebook someone with the same name as yours.

I think we found a new way to fall in love!

Well, apparently (and according to hotel owners from around the world) loud obnoxious Americans are not the world’s worst tourists. It’s the French.

So who do you think are the best? It’s the Japanese. It figures, because nobody understands their language so no one knows if they’re complaining. it’s easy to tell when the French are complaining. They’ll just turn their nose up and walk away. The Japanese are quiet all the time.

Also topping Yahoo’s homepage news stories is this headline: “Boy Saves Mom After Indoor Lightening Strike.” There’s even a video about it. Then there’s the headline “Inside Jackson Kids’ Lives At Neverland” for a story which reveals that Michael Jackson actually cleaned up his own spills. Wow! It sounds like Yahoo should actually be called yahoonationalinquirer.com.

Finally, Yahoo’s fourth big story of the day was the results of a poll. I love polls. Exactly whom do they ask to participate in all these polls? People who come out of supermarkets in the middle of the day who have nothing else to do? No one has ever asked me to participate in a poll, and if they did I would walk away. I always say that people who participate in polls have too much time on their hands.

This story was about poll results which indicated that Sarah “Screw You Alaska” Palen is “still a viable presidential candidate.” It’s 2009. Do we really need to be talking about who will run for President in 2012? Shouldn’t politicians learn to act in the present like I teach all of you guys to do?

Anyway, let’s talk about the present today…

There are a lot of good talkers out there. So many people are wonderful talkers. People are just great with talking.

“I want to please you Honey.”
“I want to take care of you Honey.”
“I want to do this for you Honey.”

The question is: Do you really do what you say you’re going to do? Everyone can say all the right things, but how many people actually deliver?

In life, are you a talker or are you a doer? I really believe all of us should be doers. 

If you have found someone you love, then think back for a second about how hard it was to find that person. How many dates did you go on before you found the person you love? How many years, and how many bad relationships, did you go through before you found the person you love?

Pretty grim isn’t it?  Well, then, you’ve got to start coming through with the things you promise that person, because otherwise you are going right back to that place all over again . . . and you don’t want to go back there.

I believe a relationship is a sacred place. When your lover needs something, what do you do? How open are you to your lover’s desires?

If your lover needs their head scratched one night, will you scratch their head for two seconds and then stop?  That is the equivalent of saying “f*^k you” to them. That is like saying, “Whoops, I just touched your head but I didn’t mean to do it.”

When your lover asks for a massage, will you really give them a great massage for an hour and enjoy it because they enjoy it, or will you massage them for two minutes and that’s it? If your lover looks at you and says they want to take you to the bedroom for some great sex, do you say “Ok, after we watch Everybody Loves Raymond” or “Well, just wait because I haven’t seen this episode of Two And A Half Men?”

How open are you to your lover’s needs and desires?  All of us need to be more open to our lover’s needs and desires.

As far as I’m concerned, the thing that turns me on the most is when my lover expresses her desires to me. It’s when she expresses her needs, because then I know how to make her feel good.

I think all of us need to understand that sometimes you have to ask for what you want. A lot of us feel very funny about asking, and feel we are putting a burden on the other person by asking.

We hint a little bit, saying things like “I like my head rubbed,” and then we don’t ask again. We will just say things like this in passing but won’t ask outright. All of us are so preoccupied that we can’t remember everything our lover says.

So if you say “I need my head rubbed,” they will hear it and acknowledge it. When you want your head rubbed, however, why not just look at them and say, “Rub my head.”

If someone asks you for something like this, then don’t ever put a silly time limit on it. That time limit is what makes people not want to ask you for things ever again. So the next time your lover wants their head rubbed, don’t stop until they thank you and say they’ve had enough.

Be generous. Don’t just be the talker. Be generous with your time and your affection. It will come back to you ten-fold.

I listened to it the other day when I was driving around. It’s about a guy who is basically bored in his relationship and puts out a personal ad. His ad says, “do you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain? If you’re not into health food and like the taste of champagne,” or something like that. “Do you like making love at midnight…” blah blah blah… whatever might be.

But what is really funny about it is that the internet is just full of personal ads. We’re all searching for somebody that fits our personal ad. Have you gone to match.com, or Yahoo personals, or any of the other websites, and read what the opposite sex is looking for?

This is great research. If you want to learn about the opposite sex, and learn about what is important to them, just sign up for a dating site for three days. Search the opposite sex’s ads – forget about the pictures. Don’t even look at the pictures. This isn’t Maxim magazine or Cosmo – just read the profiles. Read what people say in their profiles. Look at what they are talking about.

You can learn so much about the opposite sex by reading profiles. Spend an hour or two every single night reading profiles. Read about what people say about themselves, and read about what they are looking for. Read everything.

This way you will learn about the opposite sex, and you will learn what they are looking for. You will also start to understand them more. A lot of the problem is that men and women don’t understand each other; and they don’t do enough research to begin to even begin to understand one another.

So do some research. Instead of trying to meet the opposite sex – research the opposite sex!

Recently I told a client that he needed to learn women. Go to a coffee shop, bring a newspaper, and sit down next to two women chatting. Learn how to speak woman-talk. If you want to learn about men, sit down next to two men at a café and listen to them talk to each other.

Listen to the opposite sex interacting with each other. Then you can learn how to communicate better with the opposite sex.

Worst-case scenario: you can always post a personal ad titled “Do you like piña coladas!”

Todays Video is all about drinking that Pina Colada and heading to the beach. A live in field breakdown of beach hook ups.

I think I’ve written a couple of blogs on flakiness and dating before. A lot of people say, “I don’t understand. I seem to meet women (or men) and they just always seem to flake out on me.”

Here’s the thing: in general, people tend to be pretty flaky. Assume that people are going to be flaky.

Why are most people flaky? They have their own stuff going on – they are busy with work, with friends, with their dog or their cat – maybe they are busy chasing the FedEx guy around. Who knows why they flake?

But it gets more and more difficult to meet people as people in general become more disillusioned with dating. This is when they tend to flake out.

There are countless times that I’ve met women who I’ve been on the fence about – I wasn’t quite sure she was worth giving up a night for – and so we made plans, but the day before we were supposed to meet, I decided that she wasn’t really worth it. So I flaked. We’ve all done it. We’ve all been there.

In dating, people try to play it very safe. Very few people let out their full personality when they are dating. I’m not talking about verbally vomiting everything you’ve got on the table on your first date, but I think that we don’t really give people a peek into who we really are to intrigue them.

The key here is this intrigue. If you intrigue someone enough – even if it is just five minutes in person or ten minutes on the phone – I think people would flake much less.

As you get older, you begin to learn about what you really like and you just want to be excited about somebody – I’m not talking about doing back flips or anything like that – but you want to be somewhat excited. You want to look forward to giving up one of your evenings to spend it with this person.

You might just be giving up a night of television, but it doesn’t really matter – you are still giving up your own time. The older we get, the pickier we become, the more precious our time is, the more interest we have and the more satisfied we are in our own lives. This is why we tend not to just give up a night. We only want to give up our time to people who really intrigue us.

If you’re on the fence about somebody, my suggestion is to get him or her on the phone again. If you’re a woman and you’re on the fence about a man, call him one last time. The same goes with a man for a woman. Lob one last phone call at her, and see if there is any interest or any sparks.

You could also possibly throw them an email and try to get a flirtatious banter going. If you’re not fully intrigued by somebody it’s really not worth giving up a night.

There are plenty of people out there – you have to have an abundance mentality in life. There are plenty of people to meet and date. Personally, I’m not a huge dater at all. I really kind of just go with the flow. If somebody interests me, I’ll go out with her. If not, I’m not going to go out on a date just for the sake of going out on a date.

Last night, I went to the beach, took the dog for a long walk, had dinner with a friend – and that was a great night. If I meet somebody, I’m much more in the mindset of just hanging out and getting to know each other. I know it right from the start if someone interests me.

So these days, I tend to not flake. I’ll make a phone call and get to know a woman over the phone, and if she doesn’t interest me, I’m done. I don’t need to pursue it. I don’t feel like I need to give somebody a second chance.

But some of us do. So if you are ever on the fence about somebody, give him or her a second chance. Lob an email at them. Lob a phone call. Maybe they were nervous the first time you spoke to them. Maybe their real personality will shine on this second chance. But give them that second chance before you totally write them off.

As for flaking, I’ve always said that I don’t believe that flaking exists. I believe that you’re just not interested in somebody or that they didn’t intrigue you enough. Flaking is not really the issue here. It’s really about letting go and letting yourself out.

Match.com. What does David have to say about match.com? Or Yahoo personals? Or any one of the number of online dating sites?

This is an open letter to all of you who are paranoid as hell to post your profile on an online dating site:

Wake up! The number one excuse that people give for not putting themselves on a dating site is that they are so afraid that someone is going to find out.

Let me tell you something: if somebody finds out, then they are on that dating site too!

Let’s say that you are in the office and that hot girl you were attracted to but afraid to talk to walks over to you and says, “hey Jim, I saw your profile on match.com.”

What are you going to do in that situation? You’re going to look at her and say, “really? I didn’t know you were on match.com too?”

She’s only going to come over and tell you that she saw your profile if she’s somewhat interested. She’s not going to come over and say, “I saw your profile on match.com, what are you doing on there?” The same thing that you’re doing on there – trying to meet somebody! You don’t need to defend yourself, because she’s on there too!

Everyone is so afraid that somebody is going to see their profile online – but if somebody recognizes you from match.com and approaches you in public, it means that they are attracted to you and want to talk to you! Otherwise, they wouldn’t say anything, they would just run and hide.

I’ve seen people walking around whose profiles on match.com I’ve seen when I’ve been doing profile work for clients. I’ve seen their pictures and their profiles, and I’ll look at them and I’ll hide – because I don’t want to talk to them! I don’t feel like walking over to them and saying, “hey, the other day I was looking at your profile on match.com, and I didn’t know that you liked to run naked through the rain.”

The great thing about posting your profile on online dating sites is that it is now socially accepted. Put your picture online – who cares? It doesn’t matter. You want people to know that you’re single.

It’s so funny that people complain all of the time about being single, but then they try to hide the fact that they are single. They go to a party and someone asks, “so, you’re single?” And they respond, “yeah, I’m single” in a depressed voice, rather than saying, “yeah, I’m single. Do you know any great people to introduce me to?”

People are so afraid to put it out there. Being on the internet is now socially acceptable. Get yourself on a dating site. Yes, I’m sure I’ll get a ton of comments and emails about how there are crazy people online – but there are crazy people everywhere!

I see crazy people online all the time. The other night we were doing an internet product – which I will release soon, it’s fantastic! It’s a two-hour audio with what is right now about a 75-page book accompanying it about how to date online. It’s my first full online dating product besides Girls Tell All: Secrets of Online Dating.

And it was great – it happened at the end of a bootcamp, we recorded the whole session with a bunch of guys, and I just walked them through how to date online.

So during this evening, I was on jdate.com – yeah I am a New York Jew, whatever! I have my profile up on a couple of dating sites because it’s fun and I learn a lot. I can write things. Most of it is research, but I have gone out on a few internet dates.

So I’m on this site, and a woman IMs me. We’re basically just chatting away, and she’s saying, “yeah, I just don’t really meet anybody online, I don’t know what it is,” while she’s chatting with me. You don’t meet anybody online because you have a bad attitude!

You have to realize that people are on there, and you can shop. It’s so great. It’s like midnight right now, and we can just shop for people online.

Patrick, what are you in the mood for right now? Would you like a brunette?

Patrick: I like blondes, personally.

David: Alright, a blonde. So why don’t we get on yahoo.com right now and go find some blondes. It’s like a convenience store for people, 24 hours a day!

You can even click and see who is online right now and find people. It’s instantaneous and fun.

For those of you who have never tried online dating, you really need to listen to this audio series that I will release soon. In two hours of audio, I’m going to tell you all the ins and outs of online dating, and you’ll have a blast online.

Online dating is like going to 7-11 – for people!

Todays video is all about how to have fun when meeting the opposite sex. Stop chasing and being so uptight when you meet the opposite sex.