The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible (21 page)

How to initiate conversations

              Remember that
anything
that you say is sufficient to get the ball rolling, so there's no need to get fancy or overly flirtatious here.  That way, if you find that you need to end the interaction early, you can do so effortlessly and graciously.  Innocent enough topics of conversation that women have used to successfully initiate conversation with yours truly:

1) A comment on an item of clothing (e.g. "Nice ring/hat/shirt, where did you get it", etc).  You are a woman, and it's perfectly normal for you to be interested in such things.  And if the man has a sense of style, he'll appreciate your compliment and take it from there.

2) Ask him for some kind of help ("Do you know where the bathroom is?", "Could you please hand me a napkin?").  Men are nurturers by instinct, so you are engaging their noblest nature when you ask them for assistance.  No man will be able to refuse a simple request like that, and he'll feel six inches taller for having been helpful.

3) Ask him a factual question or for his opinion.  Men are vast repositories of mostly useless facts and entirely useless opinions, so this approach has an excellent chance of success. 

4) Tell him that he looks familiar and you're wondering where you may have met before.  Although this may seem a tad disingenuous if you really haven't seen the fellow before, it's almost never interpreted as such by the man.  In the process of figuring out where you have or have not met, you often find that you really do have things in common, and you can take it from there. 

The importance of intention

A key aspect of moving with the Tao and having the Tao help you along in your quest is
intention
.  Most of the techniques in this book will work regardless of your intention vis-à-vis the men you meet – anywhere from “I want to meet the man I can cherish for the rest of my life” to “I want to have a one-night stand.”  However,
The Tao of Dating
will work most effectively when you have a strong
positive
intention which incorporates the beliefs we discussed in Chapter 4, the most important of which being "the world is a reflection of me." 

So if you approach the dating arena with the attitude “What’s in it for me?  What can I get out of this?,” the world will respond by saying right back to you, “What’s in it for me?,” and you will encounter scarcity (or meet men who share the ‘taking’ mindset with you).  You will be much more effective if you approach with an attitude of
giving
and sharing
: “How can I serve?  How can I enrich my environment?  How can I bring something to this man’s world that was missing before?” 

The fact is that you
are
bringing something valuable to a man’s life – your warmth, your caring, your wit, your beauty, your interest, your
presence
.  You are a woman.  Wars have been fought over you, tomes have been written about you, monuments have been built to you.  When you truly believe the value of your presence, it becomes very easy to have the positive intent of bringing that value into someone else's life.  The more positive your intent, the less energy you have to expend hiding it, and the more energy you free up to be more effective and have more fun. 

You may think of the powerful positive intent (PPI) as a noble stance and a way to be good.  But that is not necessarily the way of the Tao: the Tao finds all enforced nobility and goodness suspect:

A truly good woman is unaware of her goodness;

Thus she is truly good.

A foolish woman tries to be good,

And is therefore not good.

A truly good woman does nothing,

Yet leaves nothing to be undone.

A foolish woman is always doing,

Yet leaves much undone…
              When the Tao is lost, there is kindness.
              When kindness is lost, there is morality.
              When morality is lost, there is ritual.
              Ritual is the mere husk of loyalty and promise-keeping,
              The beginning of chaos.

Therefore the truly good woman dwells on reality,

Not the surface.  On the fruit, and not the flower.

So take one and reject the other.
                                          – Lao Tzu,
Tao Te Ching
, Ch. 38

Rather, think of the PPI as another manifestation of enlightened self-interest: this is the way because it is more
effective
.  The Tao would much rather have you be effective than good.  The following exercise demonstrates how powerful positive intent empowers you. 

Exercise 13. Powerful Positive Intent (PPI)

Imagine that you are on a sidewalk and you see an unusually handsome man.  You find him very attractive, and would like to speak to him.  Notice how you feel about approaching him.  Do you go right up and speak to him, or is there some hesitation?  Are you certain that he will immediately like you, or is there some doubt?  Now imagine that a crazed cyclist is coming behind him and is clearly about to hit him.  Now how much hesitation do you have to yell
“Watch out!”
at the top of your lungs and move him out of harm’s way?  How much doubt do you have?  What is different from the first scenario?  What if you were to bring the same powerful positive intent as in the second scenario every time you meet a man?  How would that change your behavior?   How much more effective would you be in your interactions with men? 

             
Below are some more examples of PPI statements from other women who have had some great relationships.  Notice how they all have
sharing
as an explicit or implicit theme.  Use them as suggestions to craft your own PPI:

“I want to share my joy of life.”

“I want to provide the support that allows a man to blossom and grow beyond what even he himself thought possible.”

“I want to create a home full of love, abundance and joy with a great partner.”

“I love everything about men and want to express my deep appreciation of them.”

Exercise 14. Craft your own PPI to act with greater authority and integrity

Write your very own PPI.  It should start with “I …”, be brief, and easy to remember.  Make it big and bold.  Make sure it resonates deeply with who you are and what you believe.  Stick a little clause about sharing if you can.  You know you have a good one if it leaves the world a better place when applied universally.  Remember it every time you are out meeting men – maybe even keep a copy of it in your purse.

From reading the previous chapter, you now have a sense of the kind of man you’d like to meet and where he is likely to be found.  But before we go into further detail on where to meet men, we will go over one of the most pivotal concepts in this book: the Pipeline of Abundance.  The most important mindset in this book is that of
wealth-consciousness
– noticing the sheer abundance surrounding you at all times.  The mental exercises provide the foundation for the mindset; validating it in the real world cements it in, making it permanent. 

You validate the mindset by meeting men all the time.  The more quality men you know, the more options you will have for dating, and the less hungry (or scarcity-conscious) you will be about them.  So celebrate abundance and always welcome new men into your life. 

Exercise 15. The Cookies Experiment

Let’s say you have twenty cookies right now.  Would you give me one if I asked for it?  Chances are you would.  What if I asked for two?  For three?  Twenty cookies are far more than you can eat, so unless you’re unusually greedy, you would be willing to part with even three.  Now let’s say for some reason you lose 19 of your cookies and you’re left with one.  Now how do you feel about giving me that last cookie?  How is your attitude different? 

The three-man plan

              From the cookies experiment, it's easy to see how our behavior changes when confronted with perceived scarcity.  The more choices you have, the freer you'll feel.  And this bears directly upon your behavior – in the case of the cookies, being generous or stingy, abundance-conscious or scarcity-conscious. 

              Similarly, in the dating arena, it's important to have options.  So I encourage you to be dating at least two, ideally three men at any given time.  No, you won't be a slut for doing so.  And you don't have to get physically intimate with all three or any of them.  But having three men or so in a rotation is great for many reasons.

              First of all, dating is a skill that improves with practice.  The more men you interact with, the better you understand them, and the better you figure out what matters in a companion.  That's fairly invaluable all by itself.

              Second, imagine this scenario.  You're applying for jobs.  You get several interviews, but only one company offers you a position.  How much leverage will you have when negotiating your salary?  Not much – you're completely at their mercy.  Now imagine that you have
three
job offers.  How much leverage do you have now?  Exactly.  Dating more than one man at a time gives you latitude and keeps you from ever feeling needy.  Since two is only one step away from desperate, three is the ideal number to keep your attitude self-sufficient and abundant without letting things get too out of hand.

Handling rejection

              Fear of rejection is a perennial source of social anxiety for both men and women.  What's it good for anyway?  Anthropologists hypothesize that our built-in aversion to social rejection has to do with our history as hominids evolving in savannah-dwelling tribes.  Over the course of several hundred thousand years, the social unit of the tribe was about 100-150 people, and everyone knew each other (for a fascinating discussion of tribe size and Dunbar's 'Rule of 150', see Chapter 5 of Malcolm Gladwell’s
The Tipping Point
).  In such a small social unit, there was a very high premium put on social harmony.  As such, social rejection was tantamount to a death sentence, since ejection from the tribe meant a cutting off of resources and reproductive opportunities.  The next tribe was usually too far away and unlikely to accept a stranger.  Therefore social disharmony was selected against, and social harmonization and rejection avoidance, with their survival advantages, were passed down the generations.  This makes most of us scaredy-cats when it comes to dating, even though conditions in our modern metropolises are very different.
  Luckily, with some insight and practice, you can get rid of this impediment.  Here are two suggestions.

Becoming Rejection-Proof  I: Re-write your rule

              We briefly touched upon this before: how do you know for sure when a given man has rejected you?  Is it a particular sequence of words that he says, or some facial gesture of his?  Or maybe it’s a feeling you get – if so, where does it start?  Can you describe it?  Most people don’t really have a concrete answer to these questions.  And each woman I’ve met can come up with examples of when she
thought
she was being rejected but really wasn’t.  My point is this: you probably don’t have a hard-and-fast rule for knowing when you’ve been rejected.  And usually it has to do with some external factor ("He said this", "He didn't return my phone call") rather than some internal rubric having to do with you.

              So may I suggest that
right now
you establish your rule for rejection which establishes when you know beyond doubt that you have been rejected.  And since you’re the one writing it, may I suggest that you make the rule such that a)
your
behavior decides it, not external events and b) you effectively make it impossible to be rejected.               

              For example, my personal rule for rejection is this: “I know I am rejected if I know unequivocally that I acted maliciously towards someone.”  Since I generally don’t act maliciously, I have effectively made it impossible for me to reject myself. 

Exercise 16.  Write your personal rule to make rejection an impossibility

Write your rule for rejection, starting with the statement “I know I am rejected if…”.  Then put in there the action
you
have to take in order to know that you have been rejected.  Feel free to use variations on the example used above.

Becoming Rejection-Proof II: Re-framing

              One very useful technique in hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is
re-framing
.  Since we have considerable latitude in interpreting the meaning of events – free to pick positive, neutral or negative ones – we should pick meanings that are most useful to us.  The useful interpretations will tend to make us feel better and be more effective, while the negative ones have the opposite effect.  And remember – the Tao's pulling for you to be more effective. 

              For example, you can interpret a police car on the side of the road as “He’s there to get me,” or “He’s there to keep the neighborhood safe”, and you will have different feelings associated with each interpretation.