Most guys I know feel that they don’t need help with their game (they do, we all do), whether their game is used for meeting dozens of beautiful models or just talking to that one special girl we all could use a little help. On the other side of the coin women have a deeper understanding that they could use a little help landing Mr. Right, nearly once a week a female friend comes forward and asks me for some help. Here is IDM’s definitive guide to meeting and landing Mr. Right this summer.

Traditionally, meeting Mr. Right is more of a passive activity, this guide will focus on being actively passive. More or less, making sure you are putting the best ingredients together for him to approach.

Looks – Physical attraction is important, millions of years of evolution ensured that we are looking for a healthy mate that will produce viable offspring, even though we aren’t battling sabre toothed tigers those evolutionary bi-products are still there.  You should look good when you leave the house, teeth should be clean and white, hair should be clean looking, clothing should be well fitting and feminine. Final message: You don’t want to leave the house looking like Sue Sylvester.

Health – More and more health is becoming important, start going to the gym, quit smoking and cut the sugar out of your diet. We don’t all want to date Marissa Miller, but we do want someone that cares about their health, you can be curvy, skinny or a big beautiful woman, but you should still be healthy. Final message: We don’t want you getting winded walking from the car nor do we want you blowing away on a windy day, we are looking for a life partner after all.

Confidence – I hear “I’m just an average girl” more than I can count. No one wants to date an average girl, no one wants to be average, just because you aren’t a Victoria Secret model that has a Nobel prize and Olympic medal doesn’t mean you are average. What average says to me? is you are willing to settle, you are bored with your life, tell me you are passionate, tell me you aren’t average, maybe you love Star Trek and love playing indoor soccer, that makes you unique. Instead of telling me you are just like everyone else (then why wouldn’t I want to date everyone else?) tell me why you aren’t like everyone else. Final Message – We want someone who is confident, motivated and happy.

Location – Not just for real estate. If you find Nerds sexy, chances are you aren’t going to meet them at some trashy downtown bar. If you want to meet a Doctor stop hanging out at Law School. What I’m getting at that you need to figure out what you are looking for in a man and then put yourself into the circle. Join a summer sports league, join a wine tasting group, join a guild of elves, really, it doesn’t matter what, but that you are actually taking a step forward to meeting the right person. Too many girls go to work, come home, go out with friends and that’s it, those are not ideal situations to meet Mr. Right.  Final Message – You meet a guy that appreciates art at a gallery, not at a night club.

Stay tuned for part 2.

Let me lay this out there first:

Things worth doing are hard, they are going to require effort and you are going to most likely have your ass handed to you numerous times until you start to succeed. Talk to anyone that is exceptional successful in their field and they will collaborate this theory.

Have a look at this graph (yeah, I know, it’s made in mspaint, but it’s here to get a point across, not to look pretty)

At the very start the difficulty of the skill shoots way up in difficulty, it will plateau and then as you become practised it will slowly decline until the difficulty is low. The red zone is the critical zone, this is where most people quit.

It’s too hard

I’m not seeing any improvements

It’s not worth my time

I don’t like it as much as I thought I would

etc.

In reality they haven’t given it enough focus, dedication and do not have enough drive. If you want to get good at something, continue, work hard (and smart) until it becomes easy.

Any stories of something you found difficult and have managed to become good or even great at? share them in the comment box below.

Check out this video on why it’s important to take risks and why not taking risks will kill you.

Shouldn’t you feel like that all the time?

We work hard, go to school, meet the right person (or wrong person) and get married. We believe we have  control over our lives, that it is all self directed, I’m going to disagree.

We have control in the situations we are put in, absolutely and I believe ultimately we have the freedom to choose in any situation. What I don’t believe is that we have control over the little things in our lives that can make wild changes in our direction.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine was in Africa. While there she took a 2 day trip to the Indian Ocean, I advised her to stay an extra day and relax. She refused, stating that she needed to get back to her work and didn’t really need the extra time off, we bickered back and forth till finally she decided to stay an extra day. For what it was worth I’m not sure why I argued with her so much about staying longer, it really had no bearing on me and wasn’t really that much of a deal. The next day she awoke to learn that this was the bus she was supposed to be on.

Over half of the passengers were killed, including all of the people in the front of the bus, where her seat had been reserved.

Last night I was driving in my car when another car ran a light and hit my car head on. All four people (two in my car, two in the other) were a bit shaken up, both cars were totalled but we were all ok. a slight shift and the circumstances of the accident could have been otherwise different. If I had of been a few seconds early or late then nothing would have happened (at that moment) and the course of the next few weeks would be different. If I had of been a second earlier, the vehicle would have struck the passenger side of my car and most likely Xander (who was riding shotgun) would have faced more of the impact and could have been seriously injured. As for my life this week a few seconds means I wouldn’t be dealing with insurance companies, car rentals etc. If only I had of brushed not taken the time to brush my teeth, if I had of grabbed a glass of water, anything would have changed my night and the next few weeks.

At first glance, it’s a pretty shitty thing that happened, over all we were lucky to get out alive and unharmed. But I can’t help to think that maybe this was the universe course correcting. Maybe if it didn’t happen I would have been involved in a major accident in my car later this week resulting in my death or serious physical injury. Maybe this accident showed the young driver to be more cautious and in the future he’ll drive safer and avoid hitting a pedestrian or killing someone’s child.

All I know is that there are people alive or dead all over the world because they were or weren’t in a particular place in a particular time. Maybe spilling your coffee on your lap in the morning shifts your day by just enough time that you aren’t on a train that crashes or in a store that gets robbed.

So when something bad happens, but you come out ok, just keep in mind that maybe the universe was course correcting and making sure you weren’t in an even worse place at an even worse time. Have faith, find strength in the bad just as you do in the good. You have the power over your situation, but sometimes the universe intervenes.  Keep your chin up and find the good in the bad.

No related posts.

The Zone
By: Apex

“Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel.” –Aryton Senna, 3-time Forumla 1 World Champion

There’s a feeling that everyone has. It is difficult to experience, and even harder to describe. It’s that moment where everything you do is almost supernatural – things happen before you make them happen, all your goals seem to achieve themselves, and you can’t be stopped. This is your flow, your zone, your state.

It’s amazing when it happens. You’re on top of the world and you can’t be stopped. Everything you set out to do seems to happen on its own, beyond your control. You’re operating at full throttle, but it seems like you can accomplish so much more. You’re a passenger on the ride to success, but you reap all the rewards. You’re “in the zone” and you can’t be stopped.

This emotional state is the mechanism that drives success. It allows you to put all your anxiety, all your worries, all your self-doubt aside, and instead proceed with only your strengths and confidence. You are able to, proverbially, go outside your head. Proceed as if you are watching yourself from the outside, without all the inner doubt and ‘what-if’s’ of failure. Success is at hand, and you just need to go capture it.

Many people experience this state but don’t realize that it’s occurring. Most don’t reflect upon their route to success, and simply have not recognized this emotional phenomenon and chalk their successes up to good luck. Luck is not the answer. Luck is that one in a million circumstance that only occurs as a result of the entropy of the universe. Instead, success is usually a result of one’s ability to hone in their abilities, and use this honed state to take advantage of their circumstances.

The ultimate challenge is to put yourself in this state. It’s a mix of finding an emotional connection to your goals, embracing a feeling of invincibility, commitment, and embracing a routine. Watch any successful sports figure, executive, or the guy with all the desirable women, and you’ll see all of these things. The key is for you to find your own method of achieving this state.

So, how can you transpose this emotional state into success with women? You know you need to be in the zone where you don’t worry if you get rejected, get humiliated, or look like a fool. You need to act, and not worry. Everything you say has to be delivered with dedication, because people can sense if you are being ingenuine. If you say something excellent, it will show that you mean what you say. If you say something stupid, you don’t fret on it and mentally move on from the setback and continue. You need to have fun, and you need to show to everyone that you’re having fun. You need to act, but take the perspective of a bystander watching you act.

You will need, however, to have some basis for competency. You can’t step into a racecar with no training and expect to set lap records. You can’t just walk into an exam without studying and expect to ace it. Further, you can’t simply walk up to a group of women and expect to have a foursome within the next hour. Admittedly, if you’re that one in a thousand guys who has some innate talent, you’ll be a superstar. But for the rest of us, there’s a little bit of prep work to be done before you can just “jump in the zone” and conquer it all.

But once you have some knowledge about what it takes to achieve your goals, you’ll need to find a way to get yourself in that special mental place. So, how can you put your mind in this state?

This is a very personal mental transition – everyone has their own methods. Some of my friends like to put in their headphones and listen to specific music that helps them get in the zone (you’ll see lots of athletes walk into the stadium with headphones). Others need isolation – a total void of stimulus. Some may give themselves a pep talk. Others may need to shout and yell, jump up and down, or do something totally unexpected.

All of these methods have one common underpinning. They all allow for an individual to concentrate on his own self. Listening to music and being in isolation allow the elimination of unnecessary and unhelpful outside stimuli, and instead allows one to focus on getting into this special mental state. A pep talk is a conversation with oneself, about oneself, on the subject of the goals for oneself. Shouting, yelling, and jumping are all activities which are all totally self-serving and perform the function of reminding a person of his consciousness, sense of control, and ability to act of his own accord.

The key to getting yourself in this state is to pay attention to the times when you achieve it. If you find yourself in the zone, get a piece of paper and write down, or leave yourself a voicemail, telling yourself how you got here. Did you do something prior to getting here? What task were you trying to accomplish when you found yourself here? Were you feeling a certain way before you got here? What happened earlier in the day to get you here? Even seemingly inconsequential things like what you were wearing may have had an effect. Take note of these things and try to replicate them again.

This process of finding the zone is not necessarily an easy one. You’ll need to try various techniques to be able to get yourself there. Try a pep talk. Try your favorite music. Incorporate elements you recorded the last time you were in the zone. But, when you do, you’ll find yourself achieving more than you thought possible. It is important to spend some time in your everyday life to put yourself in this state. That way, when you meet a woman that you have a desire to talk to, maybe go on a date with, or maybe start a relationship with, you’ll be able to put yourself in this state and achieve what you want.

No doubt you’ve noticed that this piece hasn’t been focused solely on the issue of women – instead, it has the context of life in general. The reason for this should be clear. If you can get in the zone, you’re on your way to achieving any life goal. However, this holds especially true in the case of your relationships with women. Trust me. Get in the zone.

Every time you do something that is outside of your comfort zone, you grow as a person. Your sphere of what you’re afraid of shrinks, and you gain a confidence and adaptability that you didn’t have before.

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferris talks about acting outside the box and how to gradually step outside your comfort zone, and even assigns Comfort Challenges to his readers. Here are two from his book you can try to get used to not acting like everyone else:

1. Learn to propose
Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions. For example, if someone asks “Where should we eat?” or “What movie should we go see?” don’t reflect it back with “Well, what do you want to…?” Offer up a solution. “Let’s rent Starship Troopers” or “I suggest we try that new Japanese place where you eat sushi off the naked woman…”

2. Find Yoda
Call at least one potential superstar mentor per day for three days. Have a single question in mind, one that you have researched but can’t find the answer to. Aim high on this one – CEOs, famous authors, etc. Use www.contactanycelebrity.com if you need to.

Read about how Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in four weeks and more here.

“Success leaves clues”

This simple quote changed my life.

I remember hearing Tony Robbins’ say this in his Personal Power II audio series, on my mp3 player. I was driving my motorcycle on a small back road in Vietnam, focusing on weaving in between the herd of water buffalo, so it didn’t really register when I heard it.

After I passed the herd, I mentally recounted what Tony had said that I missed.
“Success leaves clues.” It was simple, and incredibly obvious. And although I’m sure that I may have heard it before, the gravity of the statement really hit me.

I stopped the bike for a good twenty minutes, and almost filled my little notepad with thoughts.

I’ll paraphrase what he said next: “If you want to be successful at doing X, find people who have done X before and do what they do.”

I thought to myself: I’ve done this in the past, with learning foreign languages and becoming a more social person (I was incredibly shy as a kid, to the point where people would forget I was there), but I wasn’t really consciously doing it. Tony was suggesting modelling another person who has whatever it is you want. Business success, lifestyle, physique.

You want to run a successful ebay business? Do what the successful ebay businesses did. Now, every new goal that I have, this is one of the first steps that I take. If my goal is to be successful with women, I make friends with guys who already have massively successful dating lives, and model their behavior. If my goal is to ride a motorcycle around the world, I’m going to call up Ewan MacGreggor and ask him for advice.

“Success leaves clues.”

Simple, obvious, but needed to be said. Think about it.

Unfortunately everything after “I was walking to the store one day” is not true. In fact life doesn’t work like that, because if it did we’d all be dating supermodels, and driving million dollar cars.

Together lets say it out loud: “my dream girl Is NOT Going to fall into my lap” furthermore nothing falls in your lap not your dream job, not your dream car, nothing you dream of. It’s going to take “effort” and “dedication” if you don’t think you have those then you should stop reading and head over www.collegehumor.com and waste some time watching pointless videos of stupid undergrads.
Still with me? Good. Relationships, Jobs, Life the list goes on. these things all have one thing in common. If you want a good one you are going to have to step out of your comfort level, you are going to have stop doing what you are doing and make something out of yourself. Grab your balls (or ovaries) and let’s go

10 ways to meet the person of your dreams:

1. Are you a Runner? a Baseball player? Into cars? You probably won’t meet a person with similar interests at clubs and bars. There are too many people there and the odds are not stacked in your favour. So let’s stack the odds, how? By joining a community group, association, or a start attending events that are all related to what interests you. Meet someone that is interested in fine art at a art show, wine at a wine tasting, baseball at a baseball game. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Oh wait, not at all.
2. Smile. I’m serious, when you are out in public you should be smiling, I’m not suggesting a Cheshire grin., that would probably creep people out. What I am suggesting is a subtle smirk. Make eye contact with people and everyone around will start to wonder “who is this really confident guy? why is he smiling?” you’ll get them thinking and at the moment you see that beautiful person at the grocery store you’ll be able to make your approach with ease.
3. Update your wardrobe. Now you don’t have to go out and spend a fortune on clothing to look like a celebrity. What you have to do is update your ward robe. Add a nice pair of shoes, a few dress shirts and some slender fitting clothing. You want to accentuate your features and hide your flaws.
4. Get out. Get out. Get out. Too many of us fall into routines. We go home from work, we make dinner, we watch TV, go to bed and repeat. Life can trap you in a stalemate, don’t let yourself fall into this routine and if you are into a trap like this it’s time to break out. Go out with friends from work, go out and meet people, join a club or a team. Get off the internet/the couch/your ass and go meet people, go increase your social circle. Improve your life, enhance your character and increase your odds of meeting Mister or Miss Right.
5. Challenge yourself – Decide you want to meet 30 new people in 30 days, sign up for a 10km Run Clinic or a Marathon Clinic. Take a language class, learn a martial art. The list goes on. How does this help you find a soul mate? It will enhance your life and you’ll become more interesting and more attractive to the opposite sex.
6. Approach. There are dozens of ways to approach girls and guys. Hands down the best resource is The Mystery Method website. Magic Bullets is an excellent book and can’t be recommended highly enough. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this book. It’s not going to teach you magical secrets that will make women jump your bones. What it will teach you is how to become more attractive and more interesting and finally how to approach a total stranger without scaring them away. If you don’t believe it try and find a few episodes of “The Pick Up Artist” online. It will show you how one book can change the life of 10 nerdy guys.
7. Go to the Gym. If you look good you feel good and if you feel good your confidence will improve. People with higher self confidence are more attractive. 1+1=2 simple as that. Plus you’ll live longer and be better in the sack.
8. Online Dating. Millions of people are taking to the internet to find their match. With websites like lavalife.com and match.com you’ll increase your odds. Even facebook and myspace are great ways to meet girls and guys. You’ll have to brush up your on your online game but don’t worry we’ll have some posts about that in the future.
9. Be Unique. Throw on a fedora, buy and interesting piece of jewelery. If you look like everyone else you’ll be classified like everyone else. You don’t have to dress like a clown, but do/wear something that is unique to you. People will notice you and getting noticed is half the battle. As an experiment make a bracelet from coloured paperclips and wear it for a few days. Wait and see how many people comment on it AND when they do tell them it’s from Tiffanys or that it’s the newest trend (humour is key folks). I can’t tell you how many girls commented on my bracelet the last time I wore one out. It’s a conversation start and it shows you are fun and confident.
10. Get out there! Put your ideas in to action.

Any tips for our readers? Hit the comments section to let us know what you did (or are doing) to find your soul mate

The casino that we’re playing at has given each of us a very high bankroll to do with what we please. The agreement is that we don’t have to pay back what we lose, but we get to keep and enjoy everything that we win. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? What would you do, if you knew you had nothing to lose?

This is the mindset you need when going out to approach women.

In our lives, we can approach and interact with as many women as we wish, and if we get rejected once (or many times), it won’t affect our lives — unless we let it. We don’t have to “pay anything back.”

On the other hand, if we get a collect a few phone numbers from interesting, beautiful women, we get to keep those. We might get a date, five dates, a girlfriend, or just a new friend to hang out with out of it. Either way, we get to keep our ‘winnings’.

Some guys will say, “but there are real consequences to getting rejected when approaching women.” Not really. Unless you live in a town of 200, any unsuccessful interaction with a woman doesn’t really matter. Shrug off that little feeling, take a break if you need it, but you haven’t really lost. You still have that high bankroll that you never have to pay back, so get back out there and start playing again.

I want to give a quick credit to David Deangelo from Double Your Dating, who first introduced me to the very powerfull casino mindset a few years ago. Thanks David.