The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible (16 page)

              For example, if he gets you a drink or holds your seat for you, look directly into his eyes and enthusiastically say, “Thank you SO much, that was so sweet of you.”  For behaviors that you’d like to see less of, withdraw your attention: look to the side, look bored, or turn your body away from him.  This is the opposite of getting angry: anger is an unmistakable sign of
attention
and therefore another positive reinforcer.  The law of extinction says that a behavior that is not positively reinforced will decay and disappear over time, so just coolly ignore what you
don’t
like while making a big fuss about the things he does that you
do
like. 

4. I’m not attached to any particular result, so I will flirt with him because it's fun. 
If you were to remember just one rule when you’re going out into social situations, it should be this one.  It embodies two key principles: the mindset that you are the prize, and an attitude of detachment.  Being desireless and detached from results embodies the essence of Taoist thinking and is the key to effective action.  We will go into more detail on tantalizing and flirting in later chapters. 

5. I am the only person allowed to assess my success or failure.
 
For better or for worse, rejection hurts, and this pain seems to have been embedded deep into the tribal mind of
Homo sapiens
.  Fear of rejection gets in the way of many a woman’s romantic success, so we should do something to handle it more effectively.  But how do you know when you have been rejected?  Where is that rule written? 

              Well, it’s not written anywhere, and even now, if I were to ask you to state explicitly what constitutes rejection, you wouldn’t know.  Are you rejected if he doesn’t return your phone call?  If he doesn’t show up for a date?  What if he really liked you and was too shy to call back?  What if he would have been really terrible for you and did you a huge favor by staying out of your life? 

              What I suggest here is that you craft your personal rule for rejection, and do it in a way such that it’s effectively impossible to be rejected.  My personal rule for rejection is: “I know I have been rejected when someone proves unequivocally that I have behaved in a malicious way.”  And since I generally don’t behave maliciously, it’s rare for me to ever feel rejected.  We will go through this exercise in detail in Chapter 9.

              On a more metaphysical note, if you have a habit of self-deprecation, stop it.  Now.  There are enough forces in the world trying to bring you down, and they don’t need your help.  Be your own best advocate.  Build yourself up instead of bringing yourself down; err on the side of pride if you must. Which brings us to the next rule.

6. I will always leave him wanting more.
  Let’s say you were at a theater watching a movie preview, and the preview had all the highlights of the movie.  It told you what happens in the beginning, in the middle, and how the movie ends.  How compelled would you be to see that movie now?  Probably not very. 

              Similarly, in your interactions with men, you don’t want to give away the store.  You want to give a preview, a taste of who you are, with the implication that there’s a lot more left.  Don’t tell them too much about your job, your background, or where you’re from.  Think appetizers, not full courses.  The rule applies to physical interactions as well as information.  For example, if you can give excellent hand massages, just do part of one hand, then stop, and move on to something else.  If you’re kissing him, be the first to stop.  We'll cover this topic more extensively in Chapter 11.

Your attitude towards your body

             
Do you like your body?  Do you
love
your body?  We're all built a certain way, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that.  Sure, you can put on makeup, or maybe exercise a little more, but the basics are here to stay. 

              As I've said before, pain is wishing the world to be different than it is.  Your body is part of the world, so you can either fight a futile fight against the way it is, or accept and appreciate it.  Here are two suggestions for doing that.

Inhabit your body
.  At first glance, that may seem like a strange thing to say – how can you
not
inhabit your body?  And yet, too many people go about their days filtering out the body, oblivious to its signals, its needs, treating it like some kind of car made of flesh and bone – wash it now, fuel it then, repair it sometime.  No!  Your body is not the
vehicle
for you – it
is
you.  When you speak of the hair, the butt, the belly, the thighs in the same way you say
the coffee table
and
the car
, you objectify your body and distance yourself from it. 

              When you fully inhabit your body, you start to appreciate it.  When you appreciate it, you start to love it.  And the more you love your body, the more you love
you
, the more attractive you become. 

Emphasize your strengths.
  No one woman has a monopoly on beauty, and even the prettiest women in the world perceive themselves as having so-called flaws.  Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to appearance.  So play to your strengths.  Do you have big, beautiful eyes that everyone compliments?  Emphasize them.  Great hourglass figure?  Wear a dress that flatters it.  Nice legs?  Wear an outfit that presents them well.

              Note that men will appreciate you for what you have to offer, not what you don't.  So highlight your strengths in the appearance department, don't worry about the rest, and you'll draw plenty of appreciative men to you.

Exercise 10.  Accepting and appreciating your body

Find a quiet place where you can concentrate for the next few minutes without any interruptions.  Now I invite you to relax... and imagine the time when you were a single cell... just one little tiny cell.  This cell divided into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, then 32.  And it kept on dividing, until there were thousands of cells... millions... then billions... then trillions.  These cells ordered themselves into muscles to move you, bone to support you, digestive tract to feed you, blood to carry oxygen and nutrients everywhere, kidneys to clean your blood, brain cells to run the whole show.  And these trillions of cells all worked together in perfect unison, for years and years, all without any interference from your conscious mind.  It's really mind-boggling and a complete miracle that we exist at all.  So take a moment now to marvel at this magnificent machine that is you, and give it some deep gratitude. 

              Every day your body keeps you healthy and alive by fending off billions of infectious agents, by extracting nutrients from the food you eat, by filtering your blood of waste products.  So just do a quick scan of your body from toe to head, and as your attention passes over each body part, thank it for all that it has done for you and is doing for you now.  Accept your body for the miracle that it is, and appreciate it for the gift that you are. 

Love your body now

              The following is one of the best pieces I have read on relating to one's body in a healthy way.  My good friend Christine Mason McCaull wrote it.  She is a truly remarkable woman: entrepreneur, CEO, yoga teacher, artist, environmentalist, writer, wife, and mother of four amazing children. Many of my female friends have found this piece useful, and it's so eloquent and empowering that I really can't improve upon it.  She's been kind enough to allow me to include it in
The Tao of Dating
, so I hope you find it useful:

Wherever you are, love your body as it is right now.
I mean now, not when it achieves some desired future state or as it was at a reminisced point of peak fitness. I mean now, not when it is ailment-free. It’s a magnificent machine, and does wonders for you everyday. Maybe it only gets your spirit from the bed to the bathroom, or maybe it allows you to have babies, or peel a banana or walk to the store or dance Swan Lake or hold a handstand. Whether it is fat or tall or small or imbalanced or polished or bearded or wispy or unpredictable – just love it for what it does for you. Appreciate all the elements and miracles that allow you to live – strong legs, ample hips, the crook of the elbow. The fullness of the heart-beating, veins-throbbing, stomach-growling you!             

Decommoditize yourself.
Your body may be valued in the abstract by the culture at large for its sexuality, its reproductive and productive capacity, its creative capacity – or any number of other things. Don’t allow yourself to be commoditized! There is no cookie-cutter beauty, sexuality, age, or attractiveness.  These are cultural constructs, and there is no need to accept these constructs or support their ongoing existence. If you were born in a different place and time, the rules would have been different. They are not real!

              Plus, realize that a lot of people make money by trying to convince you that you should be different.  They take your resources and power by trying to trick you into thinking you will have more resources and power or love by investing in a stereotype of beauty. Imagine what would happen if the scores of hours and all the emotional and intellectual energy that went into counting calories or self-berating actually went into living! Take a cue from artist Stefan Sagmeister, who says: “Trying to look good limits my life.”  Derive your value from being most fully alive, from the times when you are intimate, compassionate, caring, creative, engaged – not from the outward projection.

Decommoditize others.
Stop praising other people for the values of the commodity-body culture, and start calling out those qualities that make them most themselves, approachable, reachable, human!  Begin to notice and compliment people when they embody values that are more to the point: for their humor, intelligence, flair, originality, intensity, focus. Tell them “I love it when you smile – you light up the room!” Even better, take the time to pause and look into people’s eyes and lift the veil that separates you. Check your own judgment at the door and try to see the person behind the body.

Get real
. Look around you at
real
people and
real
bodies of all ages. How does skin age? Joints age? What’s genetic? What’s diet and habit? What is the range of appearance? How many people do you see that look like the magazines? This is the range and magnificence of humanity and there is no shame in it. Those who would judge have not yet seen this truth. In this context you are but one in 6 billion – and probably not that different from most.

              Want to get really real?  Go somewhere and be naked, in a non-sexual way. There are hundreds of places where hippies, free spirits, and those that want to be free go and take their clothes off and lay in the sunshine or ride a bike or swim or just enjoy what Benjamin Franklin called "the air bath"– his recommended practice of laying naked in the open air for an hour a day. See people – scrawny, broad, dimpled, pimpled,
beautiful
people from 8 to 108 being naked just because and not judging each other at all... Feel the sun on your breasts and give yourself a love bath. Walk among others similarly attired and 99.8% won’t have a thing to say – you are just a body among bodies, free with no shame.

Heal old traumas in the body
. All of the violent messages, imagery, dysmorphia, lack of relevant and meaningful comparison points, abuse, injury – let it fall away. Develop a practice of appreciation, gratitude and genuine
feeling
of being in your body – how the breath moves, how the limbs move, and become free. Any combination of awareness, yogic exercise and breathwork will help you let go of those things which don’t serve you.

Show your body love through action.
  When you love someone or something, you start caring for it, you bring it nice things, you polish it, nurture it, do nice things for it. Take it out to play! Let your love for your body come out naturally – not as a compulsive desire to fix something or get somewhere, but lovingly and kindly from a place of joy.  Change through effort stemming from joy, not from a desire to get somewhere for any other reason.

Show your love through kind words and appreciation.
The same goes for praise and appreciation. Whenever you hear the old tape in your head saying something like “I am so fat!” counteract it with 3 positive mantras: "This body serves me well, and lets me paint. It lets me climb on the roof, and I am damn happy in the sack." Practice self-massage, giving gratitude for all the parts from toe to crown.

              Your body is a plaything for the spirit. Even in saying "I am working on myself", you acknowledge the duality of the spirit, the I, the self, as separate from the body. In moments of peak meditation or tantric experience, you can catch a glimpse behind the veil of the body, seeing to the bottomless depths of another person’s soul. Your senses allow experience.  Imagine your body as a hula hoop swirling around the soul.  Enjoy it, marvel at what it can do, how it works; engage it with the world around you in every possible way.

Part III

Do