Archive for » 2011 «

Video: Happy New Year!

Natalie (NML)
31
Dec 2011

Just a quick note to say happy New Year – the full post is by video today! Thank you for taking the time to read Baggage Reclaim and helping to make it bigger and better. I’m incredibly grateful to not only be sharing my journey with you but to be sharing in so many of your own journeys. I’m very lucky to have an amazing community of people that make me laugh, cry, forgive, be compassionate, think, thrive, strive, inspire, and sometimes snort tea up my nose

Whatever you’re up to today (make sure it doesn’t involve waiting around or giving yourself a hard time – and that’s not just for today but for every day), do it with love, self-love at the heart of it. Spend it with people you give it a damn about, even if that ‘people’ is you.

I’ll be back in a couple of days – I’m off to have a karaoke evening in our living room. Saria, my 4 year old does a tear jerking rendition of the chorus from Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ which does make me think of quite a few BR readers!

Love and hugs

Nat xxx

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Free Communication Weekend On Now and Ends at 11:59PM on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 ET

Robert
31
Dec 2011

Free Communication Weekend begins at 12:01AM on Friday, December 30th and ends at 11:59PM on Monday, January 2nd.
Begin your free membership and find the most compatible match you’ll ever meet in 2012 starting right now!

New Year. New Love. Join eHarmony and connect with matches FREE 12/30 – 1/2!

** Free Communication does not include photos, secure call ® or Skip to Email

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What’s Your Limit? Deal Breakers and the Importance of Listening to Your Shame Alarm

Natalie (NML)
29
Dec 2011

alarm

In the past, I’ve put up with some pretty shady stuff that only for the benefit of hindsight, compassion, and forgiveness, I no longer cringe when I recall it. Instead I see these acts of boundary busting behaviour as a reflection of what I needed to be and do to grow as an individual that wouldn’t experience this stuff anymore. I did the best that I could with the limited tools, experience, and reference points that I had to draw upon at the time. But until I realised that I need to have limits, my various mishaps, relationship crashes, and even elements of my childhood were deep sources of shame.

This is the feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that stems from the recognition that you’re engaging in behaviour or a situation that detracts from you, which deals a blow to your self-esteem through the loss of self-respect and self-trust.

Having little or no boundaries is like an invitation to offer people your back for them to walk all over you, and at best take advantage and at worst, abuse you. Looking back over my past, while I wasn’t hot on boundaries (I didn’t even know what they were), there were certain things that when they happened, I was like “Hell to the effing NO! I’m out” and I’d finally bail on a bad deal.

At a time of year when people engage in all sorts of craziness just because it’s December, but also become reflective about how they want to move into a new year, it’s time to batten down your hatches, fix your broken windows, and know your limits. A bad deal has gotta end sometime – sooner rather than later.

Each day I read and hear stuff about what people, primarily women, be and do in order to date or hold onto a relationship. Some of it, is quite frankly scary and what becomes clear is that some of you are reluctant or downright unwilling to break a relationship ‘deal’ no matter how flimsy, unfavourable, or dangerous it is. At what point are you prepared to declare yourself out?

A deal breaker is something that you cannot accept or overlook in a relationship, so the existence of it renders the relationship over. In basic terms, code reds and in some cases code ambers are deal breakers, but it’s basically anything that signals that the relationship deal is not good to go including signs of disinterest or half interest.

They should be constructed around the premise of: Even if I’m wildly attracted to someone and they look how I’d like them to, the sex is great, we share similar interests, and I feel that I love them etc, what type of behaviours would they have to engage in for me to break the deal?

Every person needs boundaries and absolute limits to what they’ll put up with. If you can’t end relationships no matter how bad they get, it’s like “I have no limit to what I’ll put up with and my shame alarm is broken.”

Unhealthy relationships detract from you, sapping you of your self-esteem because you’re lacking in love, care, trust, and respect while morphing, twisting, bending and contorting in order to accommodate someone’s ‘less than’ treatment of you. In turn, because you go against yourself, they also bring about a great deal of shame, which in turn makes it even harder to step away because it feels like if you’ve behaved in a particular way, why would someone else want you?

The shame blocks the confidence you need in order to see a way out.

It can seem ‘logical’ to ‘make’ this person correct a poor situation and cancel out the shame, however, unfortunately all you end up doing is digging yourself into an even bigger shame hole, which of course will cause you to lose all sense of you so you feel an even greater dependency on the very person causing you pain and the trophy of ‘winning’.

No relationship that you consider worth you investing your time, energy, emotions, and self in should ever cause you to feel shame as a result of what you be and do in order to maintain the relationship.

Shame equals the deal is off. If you’re already engaging in embarrassing or even humiliating behaviour and/or are knee deep in an unhealthy situation, it’s like your shame alarm is broken.

The moment that you recognise feelings of shame in your relationship as a result of what you feel compelled to be and do in order to ‘keep’ and ‘love’ them, is the moment your alarm should be ringing and you’re taking positive action for you.

Much like bullshit begets bullshit, shame begets shame, so when you start down a path of doing things that you later come to regard as embarrassing, humiliating, or even downright abominable, if you don’t step away from the pain and shame source and declare yourself out, you’ll end up being like one of those gamblers that doesn’t know when to fold and is now gambling at a loss, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and continuing to gamble by any means necessary instead of folding. All for the sake of avoiding the feeling of ‘losing’, when in actual fact, you’ve already lost.

Your shame alarm should be ringing when how worthy you feel is tied to someone else and it’s plummeting.

It should be ringing when you feel inadequate, not because you truly are inadequate but because you’re being and doing things that send a message of not being good enough – it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It should definitely be ringing when you feel the sting of embarrassment and humiliation. It should ring even louder when after feeling the sting, you actually seek to do something else in some crazy plan to get away from the feeling and ‘prove’ the other person wrong.

It should be ringing when you do things that have you deviating from your core values and in fact, cause you to be used, abused, or taken advantage of.

Think of shame like a notification emotion – notification’s don’t ‘notify’ all the time. You’re supposed to act on the notification. This is a sign that you need to take care of yourself and that you’re in a situation or engaging in behaviour that sells you short. Don’t hold onto the shame and berate yourself – fight for you.

The best way to let go of the feeling of shame that arises from seriously crossing over your own boundaries, is to step away and retreat from the source of your pain that compels. The better you treat yourself and the more self-control you have, the more that the feelings subside and fade away.

My ‘old best’ obviously wasn’t up to much by a long shot, but when I expanded my tools and knowledge, and looked beyond my childhood and previous experiences for references, my best has only continued to get better and better – so can yours. I would only still feel ashamed if I hadn’t moved away from these experiences and behaviour – it would stem from regret at recognising that I’d continued to do the same things in an attempt to generate a different result instead of growing as a person in my outlook and behaviour.

It’s not important to have the last word, to tell them about themselves, to convince them that you’re good enough, to ‘make’ them change and adopt your values, or to do what they want, and to accommodate unhealthy behaviour – these are all things that are a distraction from getting on with your own life and being you. It’s critical to have a limit and to opt out. The only person who can be you is you. If you keep busting up your own boundaries and pretending to be something that you’re not, you leave the life you’re destined to have empty.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Image via SXC

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Stop Acting Like You’re a Fraud – It’s Time To Believe You Deserve Better

Natalie (NML)
27
Dec 2011


bluffing with blank cards

Months ago, while catching up with a mate of mine, she told me about Impostor Syndrome, a term that refers to being unable to associate our achievements with ourselves. We’d been exchanging work tales, where we were essentially talking about things that we’d each achieved, positive feedback from clients and readers etc, but each was praising the other, but neither of us were talking about it as if we were two people who had truly internalised our accomplishments and were proud.

Imposter Syndrome is what I recognise as that paranoia that somebody is about to catch you out because you don’t believe in your accomplishments. You carry on like you’re ‘deceiving’ people even though you’re not. If you don’t believe in you enough or you still think “I’m not good enough” no matter what you do or what anyone says, this feeling should be all too familiar to you. My mate who told me about it was the in-house PR for one of the most famous homeware brands in the world and now runs her own business. She still expects someone to suddenly turn around and say “What the eff are you talking about? You’re a fraud!”

I think that this whole feeling like a fraud and being disassociated from our accomplishments actually stretches beyond the professional world and into our relationships. You don’t associate you with you, whether it’s the person you claim you are, the person you see in the mirror, or the positive external feedback you receive from others.

There are so many people who are punching below their weight in relationships because they know the theory that they should have boundaries, that they need to and should treat themselves with love, care, trust, and respect, and that they are in possession of qualities, characteristics, and values that if they honoured them and focused on entering into a mutually fulfilling partnering, that they’d be happy. They look around and see happier people, or look closer to home and recognise that even if they don’t know what ‘healthy’ looks like, ‘this’, their current state, isn’t working.

Yet they don’t believe in themselves enough and more destructively, they don’t believe that they deserve to be treated in line with what they recognise to be healthy.

It’s weird to admit this but, in wanting to have something different from what I’d witnessed and experienced in childhood, I felt like a fraud. It seemed easier to be around the ‘familiar’ and try to change that, than it was to totally leave it behind and take a punt on the unfamiliar. It was a bit of “Who do you think you are?”

When I did try to date differently and was treated ‘better’ than say, when I was with my ‘type’ (a jumbled up Mr Unavailable version of my father with all of my hopes and expectations pinned on it), because I didn’t truly believe in a healthy relationship and I wasn’t following through on treating myself well, I’d look at external evidence of the fact that I deserved to be treated better and be unable to internalise this.

If you’ve felt like you were ‘choking’ in a relationship where you were actually, for all intents and purposes being treated very well, you’re disassociated from this manifestation of what being treated well looks like. On paper you may believe that you have various characteristics, qualities, values, and even superficial qualities that would merit you being treated well, but when you get external validation of this, you reject it.

It’s that question of whether you have the confidence to act in your best interests, know that you’re a person of value and that you deserve to be treated as worthwhile? That’s not just by others; that’s by you also.

I used to have a fear of the ‘flaw’ that made me ‘not good enough’ being discovered by whoever I was involved with. I believed that guys would be attracted because I was smart, ambitious, appearance and yada yada yada, but then I’d worry that I wouldn’t be able to hold onto them or that they’d be shocked when they realised I wasn’t ‘all that’ or found out ‘too much’ about my background, so of course I’d change my behaviour to hold them, which would actually only feed further into this idea that I was ‘fraudulent’ and had deceived them by wooing them in on a souped up version of myself.

It’s like the moment conflict was on the horizon or I felt nervous, I went “Haha! I was just bluffing about being a woman that respects herself. If I offer you the doormat version instead, will you stick around?”

Always remember: Being you doesn’t make you ‘fraudulent’ – it’s being all the things you think you ‘should’ be in order to win over others and avoid conflict.

You might read Baggage Reclaim and sometimes practically punch the air and say “Yes!” while beating your chest in affirmation of what you know to be a reflection of healthy relationships. It may feel empowering and on paper, you know you deserve better, you know why an unhealthy relationship or treating yourself in a certain way is going to yield certain negative results, and you know that change doesn’t come out of doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.

Yet when push comes to shove, you don’t associate yourself with the fruits of treating yourself well and expecting it from others.

I see it time and again when people practically complain about having boundaries, having to opt out, to ask questions, to get uncomfortable, to make decisions, and to have some self-control. You’ll do it for a while and see genuine, positive results and feel them…and yet, you won’t associate yourself with them because you don’t internalise the good things you’re doing for yourself.

When asked or even thinking about the personal accomplishments you’re making in growing as a person and striving for healthier relationships, you’ll put it down to ‘luck’, or forecast doom and gloom, or quietly wait for the other shoe to drop, and in the worst cases, sabotage it so that you end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you meet someone new, you’ll question whether it’s ‘you’ they really think they’re getting or look for faults in them.

Funny enough though, if it’s something negative, you’ll probably have no problem associating yourself with it…

Being good to you is a habit. Expecting to be treated with the basics of care, trust, respect, and where appropriate love, is a habit. Saying NO and not being a doormat is a habit. Listening to yourself and avoiding treading water in stress is a habit. Making decisions is a habit – the more you do it, the easier it gets. The less you do it, the more your life feels like swimming in treacle.

In fact, being you is a habit.

There are many things you can get away with faking in life such as futures, orgasms, how much hair you have, and your nails, but the one thing you can’t fake is you and all that you encompass. You come with history, experience, quirks, characteristics, qualities, values, and yes, flaws, but so does everyone.

If like me, you decide that you want to outgrow your childhood, to go down a different path, to change habits, to break patterns that may go back generations, it doesn’t make you a fraud; it makes you, you. Where you’ve been doesn’t have to define you – you define you. No you can’t erase your past but you don’t have to be shackled by it, live in it, or see yourself through a lens based in the past that limits you.

Instead of seeing being you as a pain in the arse and focusing on negatives, regrets, and not believing in yourself, positively focus your energies on you and embrace you, day after day after day. Just like relationships are the act of choosing one another day after day after day through your actions, so is self-esteem. Choose you every day. You deserve better than selling yourself short.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

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2012: The Coming Storm

Robert
26
Dec 2011

I want to warn you about getting caught up in the “New Year” crap that you’re going to see in the next few days.

Every New Year brings us new resolutions that we promise to ourselves, how to do this and that better… the list goes on, doesn’t it.

I’m not someone that believes in the end of the world either. There’s enough doom and gloom in our own backyards to worry about some prophet or calendar proclaiming the end of all things. It’s just bullcrap.

If you feel the need to make promises to yourself that’s fine. Just keep them reasonable, keep the goals within your reach.

Making far-changing, life altering resolutions often end in disappointment and even depression.

So go slow, take baby-steps, and have yourself an awesome 2012.

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2012: The Coming Storm

Robert
26
Dec 2011

I want to warn you about getting caught up in the “New Year” crap that you’re going to see in the next few days.

Every New Year brings us new resolutions that we promise to ourselves, how to do this and that better… the list goes on, doesn’t it.

I’m not someone that believes in the end of the world either. There’s enough doom and gloom in our own backyards to worry about some prophet or calendar proclaiming the end of all things. It’s just bullcrap.

If you feel the need to make promises to yourself that’s fine. Just keep them reasonable, keep the goals within your reach.

Making far-changing, life altering resolutions often end in disappointment and even depression.

So go slow, take baby-steps, and have yourself an awesome 2012.

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2012: The Coming Storm

Robert
26
Dec 2011

I want to warn you about getting caught up in the “New Year” crap that you’re going to see in the next few days.

Every New Year brings us new resolutions that we promise to ourselves, how to do this and that better… the list goes on, doesn’t it.

I’m not someone that believes in the end of the world either. There’s enough doom and gloom in our own backyards to worry about some prophet or calendar proclaiming the end of all things. It’s just bullcrap.

If you feel the need to make promises to yourself that’s fine. Just keep them reasonable, keep the goals within your reach.

Making far-changing, life altering resolutions often end in disappointment and even depression.

So go slow, take baby-steps, and have yourself an awesome 2012.

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Stop Pumping Them Up! They’re Really Just Not That Special!

Natalie (NML)
24
Dec 2011

Bicycle pump

At a time of year when many of us find an excuse to act a little (or a lot crackers) by using Christmas/the holidays to reach out or accept contact from exes, to get back together, to stay together because it’s Christmas, or to expect a Miracle on Assclown Street, it’s time to remind you that nobody is that special that you need to sell yourself down the river by treating yourself without love, care, trust, and respect in the name of ‘winning’ them.

Every single thing you do in an effort to ‘win’ someone who isn’t engaging in a mutual relationship with you inflates them. You’re dwarfing yourself and making them into something mighty. Stop chasing and please stop pumping.

When someone is as great as you claim they are, they’ll be that special without you adding your backing track and vocals to their life. They can stand on their own two feet without you protesting too much about them or harping on about their ‘potential’.

And this is one for the ladies here – being a woman doesn’t automatically make you qualified to see the potential in others, especially men. It’s like thinking that because you’ve lived in a house or like houses, that you can spot a home with potential, or that because you’ve handled money or stood inside a bank that you can be an investment banker.

It’s like going “I’m horny/I love you/I see things that I don’t like” and deciding you’re qualified to determine the potential. If you’re focused on the wrong things, you’ll choose partners for all sorts of strange reasons that don’t stack up, just like the person who’ll bet on the wrong house, or will cut into the wrong deal.

Stop pumping them up! Stop going on about their looks, or their status, or the fact that they go to church, or they have a good job, or they have a lot of money, or they’re really intelligent, or they’re liked by ‘everyone’, or that you have great ‘chemistry’, or whatever.

There’s no point in going on about anything that you’re not directly experiencing the positive results of. That means it’s all well and good going on about their super intelligence or their appearance, but without mutual love, care, trust, and respect, you’re making much ado about shag all. Let’s also not forget that the more you have to talk up someone, the more it becomes clear that you suffer with Those Who Doth Protest Too Much.

It’s not your job to come along and define them, but you may be tempted into trying this if you’re wanting them to define you.

The same goes for latching onto something that they did early in the relationship or as one of their ‘good times’ and then repeatedly reminding yourself of it – you wouldn’t have to latch onto something if you had a good relationship. In fact, you wouldn’t have to keep living in the past or betting on potential in the future, if your present day relationship was making you happy.

Every time you latch onto something about them and make out like this characteristic, quality, or value is far more amazing or valuable than it is, while the reality and impact on your relationship are radically different, you distort your relationship and the truth of who they are.

This is why you’ve got to stop pumping up people and treating yourself in a less than manner in the hopes of ‘winning’ them. Aside from the fact that this all detracts from you because you convey all of the wrong messages about yourself, the more you pump them up, is the more they actually start to believe their own hot air hype and think “Maybe I can do better!”

Stop pumping them up!

If I could send a text to someone saying “How are you?” or “Hope you’re well!” and get back a flurry of adoration, detail, love, sexy pictures, begging and pleading and other such disproportionate responses, I’d think I was that special.

If I could keep tapping you up for sex or pressing the Reset Button, and even pulling the same con numerous times using the same ‘ole lines and excuses, I’d start to think I was that special.

If I could have you prancing around in underwear, waiting around for my calls, pining for my texts, turning down opportunities with single people, crying, wailing, begging me to leave, always being fun, hospitable and entertaining, and essentially being an upper and a painkiller escape from my married or attached life, I’d think I was that special. I’d be like “Man! I’m so fricking special, I’ve got two people! Check me and my special fried self!”

In fact, if I stopped texting you and you got upset and even asked me why I wasn’t texting, I’d think I was really special. It’s just a text after all, but if I can get you this bothered and this into me, and I’m not even calling and seeing you, I’d get a very overinflated sense of my own self-importance.

If I could tear you down, call you names, knock you about, tell lies to your family and friends, and abuse you, even though I’d obviously be a grubby, lowlife, controlling, abusing jackass, I’d start to think I was that special.

If all I had to do was touch base occasionally and you’d drop whatever you were doing, give me a great shag, stroke my ego, listen to my problems, or even lend me money, I might start to think that I’m the kind of person that has so much to offer and is so special, that I only have to drip out some crumbs and not even put in even half the effort that other people do.

If I can get in touch with you no matter whether 2 months, 2 years, or even 20 years has gone by and have you quickly slotting back into the old routine, giggling, complimenting me, and fantasying about us being together, I would think I was really that special.

Stop pumping them up!

They’re just not that special that you need to be engaging in behaviour that essentially degrades you.

If you keep starving yourself of self-love, care, trust, and respect, you will be like someone starving in the desert that gets offered a cracker and thinks it’s the best food you’ve ever eaten. “This cracker’s amazing!” you’ll be telling yourself but over time, it really won’t look, feel, or taste anything close to amazing. It’s just a bloody cracker just like they’re just just a bloody person.

Feed yourself with love, care, trust, and respect, and I tell you this – you wouldn’t pee on any of these people you’ve been inflating if they were on fire, never mind pump them up.

You are better than this, and whether it’s December, or any other month of the year, you deserve better than anything less than mutual. Do not waste another second or drop of energy pumping up some clown that doesn’t appreciate you – turn that energy on you.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

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Twas The Night Before Christmas (Chatroom Version)

Robert
23
Dec 2011

Christmas Wishes from Santa!

Christmas Wishes from Santa!

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house people were stirring, they were clicking a mouse.

They clicked to go here and they clicked to go there, they knew St. Nick would still be coming with gifts for their care.

The boys searched for girls and the girls searched for boys, the men searched for women and the women, well, the women waited for the men to be found.

Chatlines were logged into and bookmarked with care, and friends shared their bookmarks listed in “Google Docs with share”.

When suddenly in a forum their arose a great clamor, webcams jumped to life and men were showing their “personal power”.

There were shrieks and there were moans and then suddenly there were stones. Good old St. Nick had entered the room and had seen the naughty men, rocks of coal St. Nick let fly, knocking the men’s “personal power” back into their desks.

“Oh Danner, oh Blitzen” cried good old St. Nick, “Dial 911 and Dateline and make these men pay for their perverted trick!”

With a shout of “Let’s go!” old Nick jumped on his sleigh, he whipped back the reins and told the reindeer “Let’s get out of here!”

“We have childrens toys to deliver and must make good time this eve, let those men find Perverted Justice and that guy on TV!”

And with a mighty roar St. Nick was in the air, reminding to others to always beware!

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Why VERY INTELLIGENT Men Fail With Women

Robert
23
Dec 2011

The Ten Reasons Why HIGHLY INTELLIGENT Men Fail With Women… AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT…
By David DeAngelo

I’ve been teaching men how to become more successful with women and dating for a several years now… and one “problem scenario” just keeps coming up OVER AND OVER… and OVER
and OVER and OVER again…

…and it’s really amazes me.

I’m going to refer to it as “The Genius Failure Paradox”.

“The Genius Failure Paradox” is the tendency for UNUSUALLY intelligent men to have very LOW levels of success with women and dating.

After contemplating this particular paradox, discussing it, and working on it for an awesome amount of time, I’d like to share my thoughts about it with you.

I assume that if you’ve read this far, then you see probably yourself as smarter than the average guy.

You know that you’re a little different than other guys.

You probably realized at a young age that you saw things differently, and thought differently than others in school…

And you’ve probably realized that your smart mind gives you an advantage over others in many areas of life…

Your smart mind gives you a particular type of advantage that can be very, very powerful in life: YOU’RE USUALLY RIGHT.

Smart people get used to being “right”, because they usually ARE right.

And when you’re RIGHT more often than others, you can get ahead in many situations.

But unfortunately, this smart mind of yours can actually be WORSE than USELESS when it comes to a key area of life:

WOMEN AND DATING.

By the way, I did say WORSE than useless.

It can actually be like having a hammer when you need to tighten a bolt. If you use the tool you have for the job, you’ll most likely make the situation WORSE.

Of course, it’s hard for a smart guy to even IMAGINE a situation where his smart mind could HURT his chances for success…

But trust me, this is one of those situations.

So relax, open your smart mind, and let me share with you the ten reasons why smart guys fail with women… and what to do about it.

REASON #1: THEY’RE WRONG, BUT THEY CAN’T OR WON’T SEE IT OR ADMIT IT

I mentioned that smart guys are used to being RIGHT in most situations.

And what do most smart guys do when they come across a situation where they’re WRONG?

They find a new situation… one that fits their strength. They know they’ll be right next time, so they just walk away… knowing that it won’t be long before they’re right again.

(OR they let the “problem situation” destroy them… more on that later.)

Well, the BITCH about being wrong when it comes to women and dating is THERE’S NOWHERE TO RUN AND HIDE.

There’s no quick “I’m right” around the next corner to make you feel better.

It only takes “failing” with a few women in a row for a smart guy to see the pattern… and realize that something isn’t working.

Solution? Think harder.

A smart guy just assumes that his logic must be good… so he just keeps thinking harder.

But when no success comes, it really starts
to become mentally difficult.

Accepting that you’re wrong is a VERY hard thing for a “smart guy”.

Accepting that you’re not only wrong, but you have NO CLUE WHERE TO EVEN START is even more difficult.

Ultimately, many smart guys come up with the following logical conclusion:

I AM A SMART GUY, THEREFORE IF I CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH WOMEN AND DATING, THEN THE PROBLEM MUST NOT BE SOLVABLE OR WORTH SOLVING.

Try that on for a self-defeating idea.

REASON #2: THEY’RE BLIND AND ARROGANT

In short, many smart guys refuse to accept that a good, solid, workable answer could come from someone “dumber” than them, so they discount any idea that comes from an “obviously less intelligent person” before trying it.

Let me ask you a question:

If you were going to be walking across Africa on foot, would you rather have your guide be the guy on this planet with the highest I.Q., or a caveman who lived a million years ago that had an I.Q. of about 50… but who grew up being chased by lions and all kinds of animals that wanted to eat him all his life?

It’s an interesting question.

Now, hopefully you’d like to have the guide who isn’t the smartest guy around… but who has escaped from many, many dangerous situations with deadly animals…

But now let me ask you:

If you’d like to learn how to be more successful with women and dating, would you take advice from a guy who isn’t very intelligent, but who knows how to attract women?

There’s something about being smart that makes some guys unwilling to accept input, ideas, or instruction from anyone who isn’t either as smart or smarter than them.

Well, any SMART GUY can see the folly in this particular approach… once it’s examined closely.

If you’ve been making this mistake, then you need to STOP IT. Stop being an arrogant bastard, and open your eyes.

Look around.

Learn from some “dumb” guys… and let them teach you how to get what you REALLY want.

REASON #3: POOR SOCIAL SKILLS

It BLOWS MY MIND how many smart guys I meet that just don’t GET IT when it comes to basic social skills.

It’s as if they have logically reasoned that social skills are for lower beings who need to play games… and not worth the time it would take to learn them.

In fact, I believe that there are a lot of smart guys running around this planet who don’t even have “social skills” and “be a cool guy that people like” in their “MENTAL MODEL” of what it could possibly take to be successful with women and dating.

Social skills are just that… SKILLS.

They’re not social INFORMATION.

They’re not social THEORIES.

They’re social SKILLS.

And you don’t get them by THINKING about them. You get them by GETTING them.

Excellent social skills are the foundation for good communication with other humans… and if you don’t have good social skills, you dramatically lower your chances for success with women.

REASON #4: THEY PSYCH THEMSELVES OUT

Smart guys do something that fascinates the hell out of me…

They come up with all the reasons why everything WON’T WORK when it comes to women and dating.

They actually figure out why what they would like to do will probably fail…

They use their amazing creative imaginations to imagine all kinds of horrible pictures and scenes… and then they use those imaginary outcomes to create negative emotions… which ultimately stop them from having success with women and dating.

THEY DON’T EVEN TRY.

Now, if you’ve thought something through and come up with a good reason why it would fail, it makes sense to not do it, right?

I mean, why would you want to do things that are going to fail?

It’s sound logic, but HORRIBLE thinking when it comes to the REAL WORLD… and success with women.

Because smart guys don’t UNDERSTAND women, and they don’t UNDERSTAND what it takes to be successful with women, they are working with bad figures. They’re wrong before they even start figuring!

Using your mind to come up with all the reasons why things won’t work in this area of your life leads to ULTIMATE FAILURE.

You must learn to overcome this habit if you have it.

REASON #5: THEY SEEK ONLY “INFORMATIONAL SOLUTIONS”

What does a smart guy do when he runs into a problem… or he needs to figure something out?

He looks for INFORMATION to help him solve the problem.

MORE INFORMATION is always the answer.

Information is the friend of a smart guy.

Got a strange virus on your computer? Just hop on the internet and search for how to eliminate it.

Don’t know how to change the alternator on your car? No prob. Just buy the manual and turn to page 147.

Don’t know the definition of a word? Open up your dictionary.

MORE INFORMATION solves the problem.

So what do smart guys do when it comes to overcoming a problem with women?

They want MORE INFORMATION.

They think the answer lies in learning just ONE MORE TECHNIQUE… or one more magic concept.

Well what if there were a situation in life where the “get more information” strategy actually made things WORSE?

How would you even know that it was making things worse?

Now, I don’t want to suggest that learning more about how to be successful with women is a bad thing. It’s not.

But if you have a problem that is EMOTIONAL or PHYSICAL in nature, then reading five million theories on it probably isn’t going to help you very much.

You need to get out in the real world and try some stuff!

You need to look at the REAL problem… the ROOT of the problem.

When it comes to women and dating, there’s a very good chance that you have MORE than enough “information”.

Smart guys often use “more information” to distract them from TAKING ACTION.

I’ve heard this referred to as “Creative Avoidance”.

Nod silently if you’ve ever figured out a creative way to avoid facing something in your life.

Good, thank you.

REASON #6: THEY FOCUS ON LOGIC INSTEAD OF EMOTION

NEWS JUST IN: Women don’t feel ATTRACTION for men who make them THINK.

Women feel ATTRACTION for men who make them FEEL.

So what do most smart guys do when they first meet a woman?

EXACTLY!

They get into a LOGICAL CONVERSATION.

I’m shaking my head right now…

Smart men try to engage women in LOGICAL conversations and interactions because that’s where THEY feel comfortable… not knowing that they’re SHOOTING THELSEVES IN THE FOOT by doing it!

Get this: A monkey sitting at a typewriter will type the collected works of Shakespeare before you will make a woman feel ATTRACTION for you by engaging her in logical conversation.

When you start a logical conversation with a woman you’ve just met, you are basically taking out a NEON SIGN that says “I don’t get it when it comes to women” and putting it on your head.

Typical “logical” conversations include talking about work, family, school, and jobs… discussing politics, religion, weather… and anything that has to do with math, science, or INTELLIGENCE.

On the other hand, if you start talking to a woman and you say “OK, so tell me something… Why is it that all women say that they want sweet, nice guys… but they all date sexy, selfish bad boys?” (and then make fun of any answer she gives) you’re having an EMOTIONAL conversation.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, keep reading. You need more help than I thought.

REASON #7: THEY’RE NOT USED TO THE CHALLENGE OF THE MOMENT

Smart people usually have time to THINK about things.

If you’re taking a test, you can sit there and work out the answers.

If you have a math problem, you can work on it until you’ve figured it out.

If you’re trying to fix something, you can keep working on it until it’s fixed.

Smart guys are used to being able to take at least a LITTLE bit of time to prepare and show off their “good sides” in most situations.

Not so with women…

If you don’t know what to do at every step along the way, you’ll be shut down very quickly.

Women have an AMAZING “He doesn’t get it” radar system.

Women have all kinds of subtle and ingenious tests that they throw at men to separate the “get its” from the “don’t get its”.

And if you don’t get it, then you’re going to fail one of these tests VERY quickly.

But the worst part is that you won’t ever KNOW that you were being tested… OR that you failed.

Smart guys aren’t used to dealing with complex EMOTIONAL and COMMUNICATION challenges in the moment… and especially the “women and dating” kind.

One of they keys to becoming more successful with women and dating is learning to handle all of the tests that women throw at you effortlessly.

But before you can learn how to deal with the tests, you must first learn how to communicate on an emotional level, how to demonstrate that you have fundamental social skills, and how to keep your cool in the moment.

REASON #8: THEY THINK THAT DOING “NICE” THINGS IS THE “SMART WAY”

OK, let me ask you a trick question:

If I told you that you were going to have a date with the supermodel of your choice, which of the following would you choose as a “smart” way of preparing:

1) Find out what her favorite type of flowers are, and show up with a dozen of them so she would be “wowed”.

2) Learn about her favorite travel destination so you could discuss it with her.

3) Find out what her favorite type of food is so you could take her to dinner… and she could see that you cared enough to choose something that she enjoyed.

OK, time’s up. Which did you choose?

Now, I already mentioned that this was a TRICK question.

The answer is NONE OF THE ABOVE.

But WHY?

These three options all seemed logical, right?

I mean, why WOULDN’T you want to show up with her favorite flowers?

Why WOULDN’T you want to talk about her favorite places to travel?

Why WOULDN’T you want to take her to eat her favorite foods so she enjoyed herself?

Go with me here…

Smart guys think that they’re being CLEVER when they do things like buying a woman her favorite flowers… and bringing them to the FIRST DATE.

Right?

In their minds, they’re thinking “I’m going to be the guy who is thinking ahead… and I’m going to show up with the flowers that I KNOW she loves… and she’s going to see them and like me more because of it”.

Makes sense… good math, right?

Well the one teensy-weensy mistake that these “smart” guys make is not realizing that it doesn’t actually take a smart person to think like this!

In fact, ANY jackass can figure out how to kiss a woman’s ass.

And guess what?

WOMEN KNOW THIS!

And guess what else?

EVERY WUSSBAG DOES THIS STUFF.

An intelligent guy, in his proud arrogance, will think he’s being such the charmer by using this “thoughtful” approach…

…and the woman he is chasing will interpret it as just another Wussy who’s trying to MANIPULATE her.

Ouch. Another blow to intelligence.

MISTAKE #9: ALWAYS NEEDING TO BE THE EXPERT

Have you ever met a smart guy who always needed to be “right”?

Have you ever met someone who would actually argue with you about something they knew nothing about… and make a fool of themselves because they just couldn’t shut their “smart mouths”?

Over the last few years helping guys improve their success with women, I see this one pattern over and over again…

Smart guys don’t like to be “beginners” at ANYTHING.

They don’t like the idea of screwing up… especially if others are watching.

They want to maintain this “smart guy” image of themselves… so they try to always be “The Expert” at whatever they do.

Instead of saying “Hey, you know what? I’m a beginner at this… how do I do it? What should I do first? What next?”… and instead of being totally OK with screwing up, making mistakes, and making a fool of themselves in front of others in order to LEARN…

…they won’t risk embarrassment, failure, or others thinking that they’re beginners… so they wind up ultimately FAILING.

MORE NEWS JUST IN: It’s OK to be a beginner.

MISTAKE #10: THEY CAN’T DEAL WITH FEAR AND OTHER EMOTIONS

A smart guy’s STRENGTH is his MIND.

His WEAKNESS is often his EMOTIONS.

Smart guys are often IMMOBILIZED by FEAR.

Totally stopped.

FROZEN.

And since many smart guys aren’t comfortable dealing with things they’re not good at, they just repress or RUN away from fear.

Many men would rather DIE in lonely isolation than admit that they don’t know how to deal with their emotions… or, GODFORBID, ask for help!

Hey, I went for YEARS like this.

I know what it’s like.

But the reality is that any guy can learn to handle and even MASTER his emotions (even fear)… if he just takes the time and effort to learn HOW to do it.

If this is you, then do yourself a big favor… take the time. Take the effort.

Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks of you… it doesn’t matter.

What matters is you doing the things that YOU need to do FOR YOU.

…I think the reason why I’m so fascinated with “The Genius Failure Paradox” is because I have had to struggle with all of these issues for a lot of years of my life.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m the smartest guy on the planet…

But I don’t think mamma raised no fool.

And it always bothered the hell out of me that even though I was so good at figuring things out, I couldn’t figure WOMEN out.

Something tells me that you know what I’m talking about.

Well, after beating my head against the wall for a few years… trying all kinds of crazy “logical” stuff… I finally got the “bright” idea to start studying guys who were “naturally” good with women.

Of course, I found out that you could be both NOT SMART, and VERY SUCCESSFUL WITH WOMEN at the same time.

I also learned that you can be SMART and VERY SUCCESSFUL WITH WOMEN too.

By carefully studying what the “naturals” did with women… and learning how they “thought” about the topic, I began to realize that success with women wasn’t entirely LOGICAL.

Much of what I learned was very tough for me to accept… because my logical brain just didn’t want to buy into it.

One thing I saw was guys pushing women away from them… and having the women then chase them in response.

Made no sense at all.

I saw guys tease beautiful women and make jokes about them to their faces… and then watched those women become “little girls” in response… unable to maintain their composure, and therefore unable to maintain their manipulative power…

It took me quite a long time, but I continued to learn, test, and refine what I was learning until I personally figured out how to approach women in any situation… get any woman’s number I wanted anytime I wanted… date any type of woman I wanted…

…and most importantly, GET RID of that “empty” feeling that I carried around my whole life because I didn’t know how to attract women.

And once I got this area of my own life together, I decided to help other guys get this area of THEIR lives together.

The ultimate result of all this time, effort, and energy is my free Dating Tips Newsletter.

And I’d like to invite you to sign up.

It’s free, there’s no obligation, I’ll never share your email address with anyone, and you can easily remove yourself anytime with no hassles (and no, I’ll never pull any of these tricks where I send you a bunch of unwanted junk email when you try to remove yourself).

Of course, it even gets better than that…

In addition to my free Dating Tips newsletter, I also have a killer downloadable eBook that you can download right now and be reading in literally MINUTES from right now.

It’s JAM PACKED with dozens and dozens of specific strategies for overcoming fear, approaching women, getting phone numbers and email address from women quickly, great inexpensive or even free date ideas, and how to take things to a “physical” level smoothly and easily.

To sign up for my free newsletter AND download your copy of my online eBook, just go here.

And I’ll talk to you again soon.
Your Friend,



David DeAngelo

________________________________________________________________

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All Rights Reserved.” Double Your Dating” and “David DeAngelo” are trademarks
used by David DeAngelo Communications Inc.

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