The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible (15 page)

…The giant tree grew from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
Starts from right under your feet.
 

                            – Lao Tzu,
Tao Te Ching,
Ch. 64

              A great part of this belief is accepting what you may perceive as faults.  No one brings home a perfect report card and neither will you.  Human imperfection is not a bug – it’s a feature.  So let go of that false need.  Perfectionism is just another form of self-pity and low esteem.  Throw it aside.  Relax and realize that everyone has experienced loneliness and failure at some point, so it’s normal.  Be comfortable in your own skin.  Which brings us to the next belief:

3. Being with quality men is my birthright as a woman.
Whether you like it or not, nature has designed you to reproduce.  That's what we're here to do on earth.  So acknowledge your sexuality, embrace it, and bring its power into your service. 

4. I provide the best experience a man could possibly have
.
  Perhaps you think this particular belief a bit outlandish and not an exact fit for your personality.  If that is the case, good: this means we are running up against tired old beliefs that need replacement.  Remember: we don’t care as much about the absolute truth value of a belief as much as we do about its usefulness. 

              Right now, chances are that the old belief expresses itself through this whiny voice in the back of your head saying, “Well,
maybe
I’m kind of fun to be around.”  The fact is that neither your version nor this new version of the belief can be proven or disproven, so why not utilize the belief that will
serve you best
. 

              Additionally, I want you to really think that you provide the
best
experience, not just a good one.  That way, when another woman comes along to chat up the object of your affection, you won’t think, “Well, I’m good but she’s probably more interesting, or better-looking, so I’ll just let her have him.”  No!  The fact is,
there’s no way for you to know that
.  And when in doubt, might as well assume that you have the upper hand.

The beliefs that last longest are those that have strong support not just in your head but also in the real world.  So as you go through this book and incorporate its principles into your life, you will give this and other beliefs strong legs to stand upon. 

5. I am the more important person in the relationship.
 
Do you remember the safety announcement that we all ignore at the beginning of an airplane flight?  It says that in the case of a drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will automatically fall from the ceiling.  And if you’re with a child, put on your
own
mask first,
then
attend to the child.  The reasoning is that if you do it the other way around, both of you are likely to perish, which makes for an unhappy ending.  This book is about happy endings, so please do yourself a favor and take care of you first.

              This particular belief is not about selfishness but rather about practicality.  If there are two people in a relationship, then you have a choice of either making your needs or his more important.  If you choose yourself, then you more or less know what you want, and you can handle that.  On the other hand, if you make your companion the most important person in the relationship, then you have to
figure out
what he wants.  You can do this by asking, or by guessing.  If you guess, you’re very likely to get it wrong (trust me on this).  And if you ask, you’re
still
likely to get it wrong, since people are notoriously inaccurate in reporting their unconscious needs and desires at a conscious level. 

So your best solution is to stick with what you know, i.e. what
you
want in the relationship, and take care of that first while remaining your kind and considerate self. 

              This belief applies as soon as you have a relationship with someone, and that happens as soon as you start to relate to someone, i.e. at the moment you say ‘Hi.’  Start by knowing your truth.

6. I am inherently desirable.
 
There are people who don’t like champagne.  Is that the champagne’s fault?  Does it make the champagne bad?  Similarly, you are desirable.  Your company is something that all sensible people should seek out.  There will be some people who don't quite perceive that yet, and that's okay.  That does not change your intrinsic nature which is desirable. 

The process of belief

              The foregoing nine principles were the
content
of your beliefs.  Nine is about the right number because the conscious mind can attend to 7 ± 2 items at a time.  For these to affect your life and bring you closer to fulfillment, you must internalize them such that they become a part of your everyday mental makeup. 

              For that, you need
processes
for internalizing and instilling beliefs.  In my experience, one of the most powerful techniques for creating new beliefs and behavior patterns is hypnosis.  As a scientist and skeptic who once sat in on a clinical hypnosis class in medical school to heckle it, I have become more and more convinced of the power of hypnosis to effect lasting change and create new beliefs. 

              Hypnosis works best when done by an expert who custom designs a session for you.  As this option may be costly or not available to most people, I have created audio files of hypnotic scripts relating to the material in
The Tao of Dating.
 

The next best thing is self-hypnosis.  A reasonably good primer on this is
Hypnosis for Change
.  More advanced techniques can be found in
NLP: The New Technology of Achievement
.  In the meantime, the following three techniques are easy to implement and require minimal effort and time commitment.  These are the three that personal development expert Brian Tracy recommends for himself and his students in
Maximum Achievement
and the companion audio course,
The Psychology of Achievement.

Affirmations.
  Tracy speaks of the law of subconscious activity: whatever the conscious mind accepts and believes, the unconscious mind immediately puts into effect.  So for affirmations to be effective, they must speak the language of the unconscious mind.  This means they must have the three P’s: they must be
positive
, they must be
personal
, and they must be
present-tense
.  As it turns out, the unconscious cannot process a negative.  For example, if I told you, “Don’t imagine a pink polka-dotted elephant running down the highway,” what happens?  Did you just visualize the elephant?  Exactly.  So you must tell the unconscious what you
want
it to do, not what you don’t.  Tell it, “I am incredibly good with men” as opposed to “I don’t want to screw this up again.” 

              The unconscious also tends to be better at accepting statements in the present tense and first-person singular.  Say “I am successful” instead of “You will be successful.”  Writing affirmations every morning in the first minutes after you get up has the magical effect of hard-wiring them into your brain.  Make your list of affirmations (perhaps some derived from the beliefs and attitudes we explore here in
The Tao of Dating
) and commit to writing them down in the morning for 90 days.  Brian Tracy writes down his goals and affirmations
every single morning
, and he’s been doing it for decades, and even though he's a guy, his method may very well work for you, too.  It's free to try.

Visualization.
  See a clear, precise picture of your ideal result.  The mind cannot distinguish between what is real and what is vividly imagined.  Add in all five senses.  Go back to Exercise 4 for an example of this technique.  You can attain the picture of whatever you can hold in your mind on a sustained basis. 

Acting the part.
  Some people call this technique
faking it until you make it
.  The fact is that beliefs and behaviors are a two-way street: one can create the other.  Every time you do something you didn’t think you could, your beliefs expand.  As your beliefs expand, so does your envelope of behavior. 

              Sometimes behaviors can create new global beliefs.  For example, when you jump out of a plane or walk on hot coals and had never imagined that you could, you may come back from that experience with the feeling that a lot of limitation has been removed from your life.  In the case of dating, you may want to act the part that you are incredibly good at meeting and attracting men.  Do it as a joke first, and notice any changes over time.

              Remember that if you feel that you’re not good with men now, it’s probably because you pretended that you weren’t good with them long enough to turn that into a belief.  The good news is that you can use the same process to your advantage and replace that useless belief with a more useful one.  You are what you pretend to be, so pretend to be the best you can be.

Chapter 7. Attitudes

The six rules of attitude

Attitudes are the next phase in our movement from the more hidden aspects of personal power to the more manifest.  Attitudes are somewhat more overt than beliefs, but still mostly hidden from view. 

There are two powerful ways of expressing attitudes.  The first is to articulate them as
rules
.  Keeping the rules in mind creates the right behaviors which lead to the right results.  The other is to think of them as behavioral modes, or
roles
to play.  The role has the attitude built in.  By naturally falling into that role, you have no choice but to manifest the behaviors that go along with it.  Here are the rules:

1. I will not give excess importance to what anyone else thinks or says. 
This rule is about having an internal frame of reference.  Many women try to behave in a way to conform to what a man (or peer) may think.  “Will he like this dress?  Does he think I look good?”  This is a waste of time and a squandering of your personal power.  You have no idea what he is thinking, and even if you did, it’s a poor guide for your behavior. Much better to know what
you
want, and have him wonder what you think of
him
(which most men are doing anyway).  Always assume the position of the buyer. 

             
One of the
Four Agreements
from Toltec spiritual teacher Don Miguel Ruiz's book of the same name is to take nothing personally.  It's one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received, and a great way to articulate this rule.

              Words can also be deceptive, so be careful about how much importance you place on them.  How many times have you heard ‘Yeah, sure’ when it meant ‘No’, and how many times have you heard ‘I don’t think so’ only to find out later that it meant ‘Well I wasn't sure then but may I have some more now’?  This happens over and over again, so it’s important to have a more reliable signal than speech.  Which brings us to the next rule.

2. I will cue my behavior to what he does, not what he says.
  Everybody, male or female, needs companionship and likes to have fun, but men and women have been trained to be coy.  So we use words as instruments of obfuscation instead of clarification.  So in a social interaction, watch him like a hawk.  Not only is it flattering to pay him attention, but the information you glean will be invaluable. 

              So watch for mismatches in his speech and behavior.  Is he saying he’s not really interested in a relationship while hovering around you the whole time?  Does he send you a seemingly bland email the day right after meeting you?  Does he say he'd really like to go out with you but in a flat, unenthusiastic monotone? 

              Pay attention here to the
meta-communication
, not to the content of the communication.  For example, if a man calls you five times to tell you he's not interested, then he's
communicating
lack of interest.  However, his action – calling you five times – is the
meta-communication
, which says unmistakably that he
is
interested.  Conversely, if he calls you once every two months to tell you he misses you terribly (and he lives ten blocks away), then he's really saying he's not that interested.

              Also, nonverbal behavior is much harder to fake than verbal pronouncement, so treat the information you get from nonverbal behavior as gold.  Is his body turned towards you?  Is he leaning towards you or away from you in the conversation?  Is he paying attention to you or are his eyes darting around?  We’ll go into more detail about nonverbal communication in a later section. 

3. I will positively reinforce the behaviors that I like in others and neglect the behaviors that I don’t like
.  In behavioral psychology, a reinforcer is something that increases the likelihood of a behavior happening in the future (see
Don’t Shoot the Dog
by Karen Pryor).  Animal trainers use food rewards to train dolphins, dogs, primates, etc.  Luckily, people are much smarter than animals, so you don’t need to carry a cod or banana to parties to implement this rule.  For people,
praise
and
attention
work just as well.  Conveniently, they can also be used immediately after or during the desirable behavior, which is the way a positive reinforcer is most effective.