The most common tip you hear to be better with women and men is “just be yourself”. Jump in a forum, blog, or conversation where people discuss the secrets of making friends or attracting the opposite sex and you’ll hear the unanimous piece of advice echoed like ancient wisdom. I’ve received many emails and comments on articles like What Women Want in Men saying, “Forget everything. Just be yourself.” I manage to withhold from clicking reply and sending an angry response.

Being yourself is as useless advice as being told to “be confident”. How do you just be confident? You can’t just do it. Unless the word triggers what you need to do like “express your feelings” or “stand up straight”, being yourself is not helpful advice.

It’s time you understood this cliché and what you can do to be the best real you.

Why You’re Told to Be Yourself

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.Aeschylus, ancient Greek playwright and father of tragedy

Understand the reasons people say to be yourself and you begin breaking down the belief it’s useful advice.

The majority don’t know how to attract women, get a guy, or make friends. Asking the average person how to keep a conversation going is like questioning a poor man for the secrets to be rich. If you ask your well-intentioned mother how you can get that cute girl at school, she’ll tell you to be yourself because she knows no better. Few have studied what makes one good with people.

The second reason someone tells you to “just be yourself” is to reassure you that as a person you’re fine. To change something about you implies something is wrong and flawed. Those who care for you want to preserve your self-esteem.

Asking the average person how to keep a conversation going is like questioning a poor man for the secrets to be rich.

The third reason someone tells you to “just be yourself” is that’s what most of us have heard about social skills our entire lives. Popularity creates familiarity and belief.

Mention these three weapons to counter the folly advice and you’ll be told “okay, then just be patient” and “it’s not meant to be if it doesn’t work out”. The reasons someone tells you to be yourself also explain this pathetic advice.

Talk to these people about conversational strategies, body language, or NLP and you’ll see a blank look flush over their face. It’s like getting a layman to explain how a bulb is switched on. Most lack understanding and consciousness of everyday systems we take for granted.

The Dangers of Being Yourself

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.Mike Murdock, televangelist.

One of the main differences between happy, successful people and their opposite is an attitude of responsibility towards creation. The common miserable man believes he’s a victim of the world. “There’s no point learning how to speak on stage because I’m bad at it.” A belief that being yourself is the way to go creates victimization and laziness to get what you want.

“Just be yourself” excuses you from leaving your comfort zone. It grants you permission to surf the Internet all day, not approach someone you want to talk to, or avoid that class you want to attend. Such thinking is like: “This feels uncomfortable so it’s unnatural. I better stop.”

An unchallenged body does not know itself. Talk to someone who’s been through severe adversity and you’ll hear someone who knows what matters to them. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

An unchallenged body does not know itself.

The risk in being yourself and not leaving your comfort zone is stagnation towards achieving your goals. You get your current results in life for a reason. If you’re fat, I guarantee you eat and think different to models on TV or bodybuilders. If you’re lonely, I guarantee you move and think different to someone popular. If you’re shy, I guarantee you talk and think different to a confident person. In this lies the problem of being yourself: you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got and be what you’ve always been.

The Case for Being Yourself

You never find yourself until you face the truth.Pearl Bailey, American actress and singer

If you’re fuming about what you’ve read, I’ve just undermined your belief system of what to do to be good with people. To get what you want, you have to evolve. If you keep your daily habits, your future will be the same if not worse.

Pete Sampras, Wade Gretzky, or Jack Nicklaus didn’t give up after a lost match, missed shot, or lost tournament. They certainly did not think being themselves was the secret to sporting success. Each of them practiced something everyday that wasn’t “them”.

Your true self is not your habitual self. You do what you do now for many reasons. Influences of what you do include friends, family, culture, and general experience in the world. A woman can be a rape victim fearful of intimacy or she can be a loving wife. Experience shapes who you are but it doesn’t define you. You define yourself.

“Just be yourself” has too broad of a meaning to be useful. Getting more focused, there are certain situations where it is good to be yourself depending on context and meaning.

Being yourself is good advice when its understood as not comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to the billionaire or the guy who gets a hot new woman every week, you’ll feel worthless. You’re better off doing what I call a “self-to-self comparison” where you juxtapose your present self to your past self. Your past is too different from others to compare yourself with them. Stop putting people on pedestals.

It’s not about being someone you’re not. Authenticity is saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

Being yourself is also good advice for authentic conversation. “When one is pretending, the entire body revolts,” wrote French author Anais Nin. What you feel shows in your body language. Psychologist Paul Ekman gave the term “microexpressions” to describe how the face gives off subtle signals of one’s true feelings. You can say you’re fine about a friend going to a movie without you, but your narrowed lips and eyebrows close together give the person an intuitive signal you’re angry.

Fake a smile in the mirror to sense the weirdness of being unauthentic. Begin to imagine how hiding yourself damages relationships. It just feels wrong. Most of my teenage years were spent with a mask on covering my true feelings with family because of shame. Your emotional health and relationships eventually suffer when you’re not yourself.

Why then do we act “fake” in relationships? You most likely do it because you fear rejection and not being loved for who you are. It is deep stuff.If someone dislikes your mask, that’s only your mask and not you.

To be what I call “the real you” entails vulnerability. The real you entails equal effort, fear, and risk. If this scares you, know that a challenge will cause evolution. The best real you is saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and doing what you can to be trustworthy, reliable, and responsible.

The path to the best you is ****en hard if you’ve been unauthentic most of your life. People judge and treat you a certain way based on the image they expect you to uphold. Heck, you have an image of you called a self-image that regulates what you do.

The question is: what’s your self-image at the moment and what do you want it to be? As you answer and think about that question throughout the week, keep in mind what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”

The next time you hear “just be yourself”, email or post the link of this article to your advice-giver.

Christian Carter begins Catch Him and Keep Him with two apparently simple questions: what is a man and how does a man differ from you as a woman? If you think about them, the answer to these questions contains the secrets to attract a man and make him committed.

Like most women reading this, you want a real man; not a childish boy. Carter says a woman can attract the wrong man for many reasons, but a major reason is she doesn’t understand the principles of attraction. Books on love and relationships can fill libraries, yet Catch Him and Keep Him covers those subjects and more by also helping women in the initial stages of a relationship when man and woman are strangers to each other. This is where I believe the book is most powerful – that and learning what it takes to keep a man interested.

What he calls “selfish love”, Carter says women fall into a form of vanity believing a man wants the same as she. He teaches women of all ages both single and in a relationship to give a man what he wants by seeking to understand than be understood through three simple steps:

1. Grounding stage
2. Understanding stage
3. Feeling stage

You are taken step-by-step from any emotional immaturity then transformed into a woman who has her psychology and emotional life together. This is to naturally attract men.

You are taken step-by-step from any emotional immaturity then transformed into a woman who has her psychology and emotional life together to naturally attract men.

After this, you discover advice on how to qualify men. You learn to be the selectee instead of the selected. Carter shows you how to regain the power in a relationship, feel in control, and avoid dangerous relationships. No unattractiveness forms from this, however. Men who see a woman exude these in-control qualities view her as someone to spend time with in the future. You’re shown how to spot a player, how men want more than physical qualities, and what you must do to be seen as “relationship material”.

Rarely will you know Mr Right is seated on the other side of the room. A spiritual force is unlikely to make you feel he is the one. Such perceptual awareness requires intense judgment, leaving you vulnerable to misinterpretation and mistaking a feeling of chemistry for a great guy.

Put judgments and blame aside. Start fresh and grow. Carter makes the most important point of self-improvement to get the relationship you want and become the woman men desire. A lot of what he shares helps women develop their emotional and logical lives. To me, growth and personal development to become more than you were yesterday, instead of blame and victimization, is extremely attractive.

Coming to the seventh chapter of the ebook’s nine chapters, I think this will most interest you! Here’s a sample of what’s in the chapter:

• Thirteen personality traits that attract men
• How to naturally attract men
• The curse of physically attractive women
• Six behaviors to avoid like the plague or men will avoid you
• Body language tips and nonverbal habits that repel men
• How to trigger a deeper level of attraction in men to make a guy stick around
• Art of being unique and unpredictable (two seductive qualities that attract men)
• …and more

The ebook is designed to help you attract men even if you’re not beautiful. Men want women in the long-term who give them pleasurable feelings associated with non-physical attraction. Catch Him and Keep Him teaches the logical and emotional methods of attraction vital for happy, ongoing relationships any woman can learn. These methods to attract men are key for all stages of a happy relationship.

Watch this video as Christian Carter reveals a few simple techniques you can use even if men don’t talk to you:

A lesson Carter teaches in Catch Him and Keep Him that is more applicable to keeping Mr Right that I liked is to avoid criticism, having “the talk”, and divulging how you feel about a man. Such logical arguments create resistance in men to repel them fast! You cannot convince men to love and attend to you. Attraction, love, and commitment occur at a level deeper than conversation. It’s an internal decision men make in response to their feelings – even if they cannot describe it that way.

Attraction, love, and commitment occur at a level deeper than conversation.

One major problem that needs emphasis in this review is that women sooner than later cannot get a man to open up according to Carter. Due to society, men fail to articulate the state of the relationship and how they feel with statements like “Umm… I’m not sure”. It becomes unmanly to express emotions. Women can learn from Catch Him and Keep Him to express their beliefs and feelings in an open, rare pressure-free way that connects to a man who reciprocates her open intimacy. Yes, we’re not rocks. I’ve seen that it is possible!

Catch Him And Keep Him is a must for any woman who is single or frustrated with her current relationship. It’s written in easy-to-understand language you can use in your life. It’s the number one book I recommend to a woman who wants to attract and keep a quality man.

Sign up to Christian’s eLetter by clicking here. Once you sign up, you will be taken to a page where you can download his ebook Catch Him And Keep Him: A Woman’s Guide To Finding Mr. Right… And Keeping Him Hooked For Good!. (If you already signed up to his newsletter, just enter a fake name and email to get to the next step so you can claim your copy of this amazing ebook.)

For men, this means you can cultivate and maintain happy friendships and intimate relationships with women. If you are already in a relationship, this is what your woman wish you already knew. Anytime you can get a woman feeling attraction, whether it be over the phone, in a business deal, or placing an order at a restaurant, you will get more out of the situation – not necessarily at the expense of her.

If you are a woman, the mysteries revealed could mean many things. You will gain a clearer understanding of what drives you as a woman in your relationships, why past relationships have failed, and even how to select a real, authentic man that is Mr Right.

3 Sources That Trick You to Believe What Women Want

I’ve read dozens of books, subscribed to attraction newsletters, talked to attraction experts, talked to women about what they want in a man, tested techniques, and have observed many scenarios comparing and contrasting variables men display in their interaction with women to create a set of complete, holistic characteristics women want in men. In my search, I came across my first dilemma: experts gave contradictory advice – more so in the diverse stages of a relationship.

At the start of a relationship, dating experts attempt to describe what women want. There are pick-up artists and attraction experts that tell men to neg (a gentle, teasing insult), take advantage of a woman’s insecurities, and advance the relationship as fast as possible. Such people praise themselves as pioneers in defining what women want, but in reality nearly all of them cannot keep a long-term relationship. They excuse themselves as having the power to be selective, instead of dating and keeping any woman that comes their way, though their denial is a facade for deficiencies in their personality.

…long-term relationship advisers transform men into sensitive, new age, wuss-bag, girly men.

At the later stages of relationships are marriage experts, psychologists, romanticists, and communication trainers that teach men to listen to women. According to such experts, women want to be heard, understood, and made to feel special. These teachers do not tell you the skills and personality characteristics that create animalistic urges in women because the principles are counter-intuitive to “good relationship communication”. Pick-up artists and those that teach men how to succeed in dating, bash marriage trainers and the like over their teachings because the dating coaches feel long-term relationship advice transform men into sensitive, new age, wuss-bag, girly men – and I agree… to an extent.

Most men that learn communication skills from me fall into the trap of applying interpersonal relationship advice at the start of a relationship. It is not so much what they do as it is how they do it. The men become needy, have low self-esteem, and fail to communicate strength. Women don’t want to feel understood, listened to, worried about, and comforted at the early stages of a relationship – such “nice boy” characteristics send them running. Women want to feel indescribable urges that arise from bad boy qualities.

Culture and society creates the second dilemma: society infuses disempowering beliefs and limiting norms into men. I don’t blame guys for their limiting beliefs about what women want, but I do blame them for holding onto the beliefs when the truth is revealed. We are lead to believe women only want tall, handsome, wealthy men. Such advice drives men to feel insecure about themselves then validates their initial belief. They may get rejected on an approach, dumped by a girlfriend, or divorced from a long-term relationship, and reason through their perceptual filters that their shortness, ugly looks, or poor wealth did it to them.

If most experts and society don’t know what women want, surely women know? What better way to get the answer, then from the source itself, right? No. Most women don’t even know what they want – and therein lies the third and last dilemma.

Women preach to guys the characteristics they feel attracted to. They reason, “I’m a woman so I know what I and other women want.” This causes confusion.

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says attraction is one topic of many when our rapid judgments and feelings are unconsciously processed. When our conscious, analytical mind enters the fray, errors occur. Gladwell says we label what we think attracts us to what really attracts us. Few people are aware of what lurks beneath the conscious mind. We succumb to personal qualities that leave us feeling out of control and bewildered.

If these three sources of information create dilemmas in defining what women want in men, what is the source of truth? What I’m going to teach will probably shock you, but put your preconceived notions about this topic aside so you can learn. “Empty your cup” as Bruce Lee would say.

Why Women Are Confusing

Women say one thing and mean another thing. A woman says she wants you to spend more time with her, but according to David Deida, author of The Way of The Superior Man, if you give her that in certain circumstances, your compliance disappoints her. If a woman sees she can upset you by calling you ugly, she will weed you out of being a potential mate – not because of your looks, but because your weak self-esteem let her easily destroy you.

When women say what they want, it isn’t really what they want – it’s an attempt to rationalize something abstract to them.

When women say what they want, it isn’t really what they want – it’s an attempt to rationalize something abstract to them. The surface is not a description of the depths. Attraction is a confusing subject to intellectually understand and experience. Often guys and women cannot explain why they are attracted to someone because attraction isn’t a logical decision (“I keep dating the wrong type of person”). Attraction isn’t decided. Attraction certainly isn’t a choice.

Women say they want nice guys, so men be nice, but a woman does not make the logical decision to be with a guy because he is nice to her with compliments, presents, and gifts. Both genders make emotional decisions on their relationships. If a man compliments a lady, gives her gifts, buys her flowers, and earns her affection, the techniques may work for a while, but he is just being used. Such behaviors are fake, manipulative, needy, and undesirable.

Another confusing characteristic men adapt that women say they want is humor, one of the most universally attractive qualities women want in men. Being funny is not the whole story. A good sense of humor isn’t what they entirely want. Women aren’t crawling over comedians. What they want is a guy who is cocky, has a sense of humor, can tease, and doesn’t constantly degrade himself. Unstoppable confidence combined with humor attracts nearly every woman – even the psychotic type so be careful. (Here’s a good guide on humor to attract women.)

Do Physical Looks Matter?

One of the strongest beliefs I need to destroy is that women must have a physically attractive man. Society overemphasizes physical appearance as it pries off male insecurities. Physical attractiveness in women is important for men, but guys get into relationship-trouble projecting their desires onto women.

A guy’s attractiveness towards women comes more from his personality than physical looks. I’ve heard countless stories of guys over 40 years old, bald, short, and even over 300 pounds, who date and keep very attractive women. On the contrary, I know plenty of wealthy, young, good looking men who initially attract a woman, but they don’t keep her because these guys do not have the complete package described to you in this article.

Physical looks grabs a woman’s initial interest, but it fails to maintain any strong relationship. (Remember, this a holistic approach to what women want in men.) If that’s the case, why do tall, good looking, rich guys attract and keep beautiful women? Such men have other characteristics that attract women. They emit confidence, are challenging, and show other alpha male qualities.

If you still do not believe a man’s personality, communication, and other non-physical aspects attract women more powerfully than tangibles, you are a “theorist”. You theorize on what you think works and does not work based on limiting beliefs. Put your limiting beliefs aside to discover the truth.

How you communicate to a lady, and not your physical looks, determines how attracted she is to you in the short-term and long-term. Non-physical qualities are more important in the long-run because they determine the condition of a relationship.

How you communicate to a lady, and not your physical looks, determines how attracted she is to you in the short-term and long-term.

Of course, there are women who only accept a man based on his looks. These women probably make up 2% of females. Don’t worry about these few women! In fact, avoid them like the plague! Their shallow personality is created from low self-esteem and other self-related problems that make them a pain to be around.

Though the characteristics described throughout this article is attractive to even shallow woman, do not avoid such women because they may dislike you. Avoid superficial people because they are unhealthy to be around. If a potential partner adds no value to your life, and you only want them because they are attractive, then you are the one with a shallow personality seeking to cover a void only you can fill.

With that said, the importance of a guy’s looks for a woman is more about looking good rather than being good looking. Women get repelled by a man’s looks when he has poor hygiene, awful attire, and annoying nervous habits. These negative physical qualities hold any man back from success with women.

Rather than worry aimlessly over your looks, focus on looking good. Firstly, to make better use of your looks, get some good clothes. Ask your friends what they think you could change to improve your physical attractiveness. Even better, ask a female friend what she thinks you could change. Most women will be more than happy to fix you up. If price worries you, good clothes need not be expensive. You can jump on eBay and search Google for online clothing stores to pick up bargains.

Oral hygiene is another physical aspect that must work for you instead of against you. Brush your teeth in the morning and night. Remember to brush the roof of your mouth and tongue to remove bacteria that makes your breathe smell like an unemptied disposal unit. Floss at least once a week to remove food stuck in between your teeth. Furthermore, you can rinse your mouth regularly with water, gargle salt water, and use a mouth rinse. Do what you can to prevent the build up of bacteria that creates smelly breath.

Another physical quality any guy can improve to become more desirable to women is his health. I encourage you to workout at the gym at least three times a week to improve your strength and aerobic fitness. Hit the weights and do cardiovascular workouts to improve your vitality. The sessions will develop your endurance throughout the day, better your happiness, improve self-perceptions, and help you maintain an energetic personality.

Working out gives you psychological benefits beyond characteristics favored by women. You can overcome personal insecurities and live a happier life with regular workouts. You will emit confidence, dominance, boost your self-esteem, and improve your wellbeing – all characteristics women desperately want in a man. Anything that improves your life makes you more desirable to women.

Why Women Hate Nice Guys

Women do not want what attraction expert David DeAngelo terms a “wussy” or “nice guy”. A wussy is an omega male. He is not confident, has no power, and is too compensatory with women. He is dominated by females and other males.

A high percentage of males are wussies because society conditions everyone to be nice to strangers. It is an area where most communication coaches fail. Good communication is being nice to people, though this doesn’t cut it for the holistic approach we’re after to describe what women want. It is counter-intuitive to traditional communication skills that teach “be nice and people will like you in return”. Many marriages fail because the man stops being a man – he transforms into a nice wussy.

Nice guys are too boring, submissive, easy, predictable, anxious, indecisive, agreeable, clingy, and insecure.

A nice guy runs after women. He is willing to dedicate his life to a woman, forever begging like a puppy for attention. He desperately wants a woman, any woman that gives him the attention to make his lonely life worthwhile. Because he is chasing and crying for approval, he is not being chased and is disproved by women – further hurting his low self-esteem.

The nice guy versus jerk argument of who women like more is confused by what is “nice”. Being a nice guy in the sense that you smile all the time, listen to a woman’s problems, compliment women, and be ultra sensitive to not offend a woman, is not what women want.

Geoffrey Urbaniak and Peter Kilmann, two researchers from the University of South Carolina, in 2006 had 20 women analyze 191 male college student’s answers to a questionnaire designed to measure their niceness. Now, niceness in this study was defined by agreeableness, which brings up this problem of defining a nice guy. “Proponents of the nice guy stereotype argue that women often say they wish to date kind, sensitive men,” write Urbaniak and Kilmann, “but, in reality, still choose to date macho men over nice guys, especially if the macho men are more physically attractive.” The researchers found nice (agreeable) guys had no real advantage in short-term and long-term relationships.

Ask any lady who is frequently approached by guys. She will tell you she hates nice guys because they are too boring, submissive, easy, predictable, anxious, indecisive, agreeable, clingy, and insecure.

A nice guy tries to buy a woman’s attraction instead of creating it through his communication and personality. He cannot keep a woman interested through himself so he does it with gifts and dinners to make her like him. He has the disease to please, suppressing his own needs and emotions in favor of giving women what they say they want. Women are too happy to receive gifts, but only to fulfill material needs. They view such a guy as a provider; not someone they want. A woman’s attraction cannot be brought.

What You Can Learn From Animals

In the animal kingdom, an alpha male is followed by its specie within a given geographical location. It is the dominant animal of the group. An animal that possesses an alpha status breeds abundantly.

An alpha animal has responsibilities. Males often try to take down the alpha male. The dominant creature must successfully fight challengers to keep its alpha status otherwise it will become an outcast and possibly die.

In the human world, alpha males get what they want with humor, confidence, composure, and a lack of need for people’s approval without domineering behavior. They overrule fearful males in possession of low self-esteem. While jerks are not very different to nice guys deep down because they are easily intimidated, show insecurity, and put on a false front, nice guys lose out altogether in sucking up to women and collapsing in any situation. Jerks pummel invaders beyond necessary means while nice guys run away scared.

Like the animal kingdom, alpha males are challenged by other males in pursuit of alpha status. Fortunately, death isn’t associated with these challenges. Being challenged can make or break you, however. Women don’t want jerks who try to physically take down any guy that threatens the relationship. (You’ve probably seen these jealous, overprotective boyfriends try to dominate.) A true alpha male can walk-away from ego-headed jerks who pick a fight and come out of the situation stronger than before because of his confidence and humor.

Women don’t necessarily want alpha males, but they do want a man with alpha qualities.

Alpha males are territorial. If a threatening person invades their space, they defend themselves or leave the location. An alpha male is protective. He does not fight to prove his toughness, because he is tough in his own right, but he does protect people he cares for.

A strong male takes lead when a couple goes out to a movie or dinner. He chooses a movie or place to have dinner with his woman’s preference in consideration. He does not say, “I’m happy with whatever you want” or “I don’t care where we go”. He takes control without being controlling.

What I recommend you learn from this is to set a goal of developing alpha male qualities. You don’t need to be the macho leader of a group; rather, work on building qualities seen in alpha males. An alpha male has confidence, strong self-beliefs, and power in the relationships. He is assertive, takes the lead, knows what he wants, and isn’t afraid to get what he wants with integrity and honor. Women don’t necessarily want alpha males, but they do want a man with alpha qualities.

5 More Hidden Qualities Women Love in Men

A man women love gets through any situation. When a situation fights him, he comes out stronger. When a woman treats him poorly, he challenges her thoughts and behaviors to bring out the best in her. He does not require people’s approval. He never degrades his values. Other qualities I feel need emphasis follow:

Leadership and Status. A man’s status to a woman is a woman’s looks to a man. Higher status means the man is more able to obtain the necessary resources for surviving and thriving. The high school quarterback, the company CEO, and manager of a nightclub are positions traditionally attractive to women.

Fortunately, there are situations and skills outside of your career that will increase your status. Become more social. Make friends easier. Learn to speak in public. Make great female and male friends. These are few of the many ways to increase your leadership and status.

Cocky and Funny. The attractive man balances cockiness with humor. He teases women like playful puppies. It may appear serious to outsiders, but participants know its fun and enjoy it. He is confident enough to play with people. Studies show that two people comfortable enough to playfully tease one another share a stronger relationship.

The attractive man balances cockiness with humor.

One example of cocky and funny can be noticing something unusual about a woman then busting her for it. Let’s say a woman is going out to a party you were not invited to and she has a large bag (it doesn’t have to be really large). You can bust on her by smiling and saying, “That bag is huge! Do you have a bomb in there? Are you going to blow up the party? Glad I’m not going *smile*.” This example is funny and shows no need for her approval.

The other day a woman complimented me on how good I looked. (I’m not actually that good looking. It’s just that I was teasing her and the only response she knew to feeling attraction is to be nice). A wuss would have reciprocated the compliment and let the situation fizzle down. I knew this was an opportunity to keep building the tension. I looked at her in a calm manner, said, “Thank you”, and made my eyes trace down her body. I saw her shoes, which were these strappy things with small heels. I then teased her by asking, “Did you make those shoes this morning with strings and some bamboo?” She laughed, loved it, and I loved it. It was confident, appropriate, cocky, and funny.

Ambition and Passion. Women want men that know their life purpose. Women want men to passionately pursue their life’s passion no matter what. Even when the woman complains about her man’s passion, deep down she wants him to not succumb to her complaint. A man willing to forgo his life purpose to pursue a woman is not what women want.

Truth. Women, like men, want someone authentic. Incongruent communication and behavior turns off anyone. Avoid dishonesty. Being truthful does not mean you approach a woman you like and tell her, “I want to get to know you because you’re beautiful” (that violates other qualities that women want, though it can work in some situations). It does mean being authentic to people and true to yourself. The truth will come out later regardless of your choice to be truthful so make it a virtue instead of a limitation. Truth and honesty is a core theory of my Big Talk training course that lets you quickly build relationships with anyone. (You can learn about my course so you can effortlessly talk to women – even if you’re scared of them – here.)

Chivalry. Chivalrous behavior defines courteous gestures towards women. It is another confusing topic for men. Chivalry has never been, and never will be, dead. Here are examples of chivalry:

• Opening doors for women.
• Walking on the footpath closest to the road.
• Pulling out a chair for a woman to sit on.
• Buying a woman dinner – not to impress her or to take her out, but because you are eating there in the first place regardless of her accepting your invitation.

The context of chivalry determines its effectiveness. Chivalry behavior can be negative when the chivalrous man does not take a holistic approach to what women want. Women like chivalrous men when they have other qualities mentioned in this article.

If you ever get confused with what to do, avoid being the desperate nice guy. Keep your power in the relationship. Take the journey of personal development so you become a better person day-by-day. Use all the advice share here and you could even make women attached, needy, and wanting your approval.

Any man can improve his success with women by following the holistic advice. You may not want to attract women in dating, yet qualities women want in men help any relationship, whether it be with a spouse, friend, or business associate. Communicate what women want and they will give you what you want on a silver platter.

(To learn more about women in dating and relationships, I recommend you learn from David DeAngelo. Also check out a follow-up article on what men want in women.)

He feels less than the executives who are dressed in suits while he wears a basic business shirt and slacks. He poorly knows the executives and finds it hard to socialize with them making him feel even less as a person. Regardless of the superficial reason for his difference, the real problem is his inferiority complex.

What is an Inferiority Complex?

A psychologist in 1912 by the name of Alfred Alder wrote a book titled The Neurotic Character. His research in the book founded a popular area of psychology known as the inferiority complex, a term that describes a sense of inferiority an individual feels about oneself towards others. It revolves around social status, power, ego, and dominance. You have an inferiority complex when you feel less than people. You think other people are better than you.

An inferiority complex can arise when you experience an imagined or conditioned feeling of inferiority. For most people it is a combination of imagination and subtle conditioning. You feel inferior when an event takes place. This makes you feel less than others (conditioning aspect). Your mind (imagination aspect) blows out your understanding of the event beyond what seems reasonable to another person.

Mitchell in our example feels inferior because he thinks the executives are better. His inferiority has nothing to do with not knowing the executives, being dressed differently, or having a less prestigious job. His interpretation of the situation makes him feel below standard and creates inferiority.

The conditioning aspect in Mitchell’s example is his actual differences to the executives. He is wearing different clothes to the executives and he is not “a part of the group” based on his employment status. The imagination aspect for Mitchell is his clothes fall below standards (if there was a dress code, it would be part of conditioning), the executives are better than him, the executives want nothing to do with him because of his difference, plus other irrationalities he thinks make him less of a human. The big difference between conditioning and imagination hold the answer to cure your inferiority complex.

How Your Inferiority Started: Conditioning

“The inferiority complex is all in the mind. Simply stop thinking you’re inferior because you’re not.” That is a lie. If it were that easy, millions of people at sometime would not experience feelings of inferiority. The inferiority complex is society’s psychological black plague that devours too many lives.

My main motivation for writing this article is to give you accurate information to overcome the problem based on what works. This is a collection of the most useful advice on the inferiority complex I synthesized over the years, along with specific lessons I developed to overcome my inferiority complex; unlike personal development teachers I know of who solely emphasize positiveness to overcome feelings of inferiority.

I did some brief browsing on the web to see what information was available on the inferiority complex, and most of the advice offered is harmful. “Experts” were telling people “things will get better”, “be more positive”, or “it’s not so bad”. If you have the inferiority complex and someone says similar things, you understand the massive frustration caused from the misunderstanding when someone gives you such poor advice.

Positive thinking can be nicely understood through an analogy in a Bible verse. In Luke chapter five (NKJV), Jesus was talking to complaining Pharisees. Jesus replied to them in a parable so they would be more likely to understand:

No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.

The garment and the wineskins examples are what positive thinking does to our self-image. A new patch over the bad garment improves the garment a little bit, yet it is still its same old self. If new wine (positive thinking) is poured into old wineskins (your poor self-image of feeling inferior), then nothing good will result. It is a battle of willpower and what is known as creative imagination.

Positive thinking can slightly improve the situation, but in the end it usually results in frustration as your willpower becomes exhausted. Willpower results in an oscillation between the problem and an absence of the problem – failing to create a permanent solution. You cannot use self-determination to cure feelings of inferiority. Whenever willpower fights creative imagination, creative imagination is the victor. I repeat for emphasis: Your creative imagination, which consists of images and feelings, will always conquer your willpower.

From personal experience and coaching others, I know first hand that a better self-image where you do not feel inferior cannot be achieved through positive self-talk, affirmations, and the like. It is unfortunate that people continue to teach positive self-talk to overcome feelings of inferiority. Positive self-talk is often nothing more than an attempt to live deliriously from reality, ignoring what really takes place.

When Doing Becomes Being – How Failure and Criticism Fuel Inferiority

Everyone has heard “you suck”. Some individuals are abused so much yet they are confident with high self-esteem. What makes high self-esteem people different to those who feel like others are better?

Primary factors of conditioning that determine whether you become inferior or rise above the circumstance is your attitude towards criticism and failure. Do not forget about the creative imagination component – the stronger influence of feeling inferior – yet criticism and failure most powerfully influence the conditioning component.

Criticism and failure will always bang at your door to success – more so as you achieve your goals. I have noticed that as readers of my newsletter (ToP Tips) and articles increase, so does the criticism. I get excited with this because I know the criticism signals achievement. Any criticism and failure has nothing to do with me – in fact, it usually has more to do with the other person.

Inferiority arises when doing becomes being.

You and I will always have our critics if we avoid mediocrity. Anyone that has achieved anything notable, sooner or later receives harsh criticism. Find a dark corner where you can hide from the world if you want to avoid criticism (but then again, you will be criticized for hiding). The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

People criticize you because they either want to improve your life, desire to release their frustration, or have their own problems. Failure and criticism say nothing about you; rather, let them signal personal growth. You can take criticism as a sign of progressing in life. If I had not experienced feelings of inferiority, I would not have worked on myself and personally grown. No way would I be writing this article today. I am certain I would not teach any communication skills.

You will never eliminate criticism or failure. The conditioning aspect of inferiority will never vanish. This means to overcome the inferiority complex you cannot expect to avoid failure, dodge criticism, and achieve perfection. You must learn, move on, and maintain a goal-focused attitude to overcome an inferiority complex.

Criticism and failure will never stop as long as you pursue goals. Problems arise when you let the two burglars get a foot hold within your life. You come to feel inferior by associating criticism and failure with how you see yourself. The thieves steal valuable mental goods important to your success.

You will always do things in an inferior way to what other people can do – there is no ignoring that – but a secret to overcome your inferiority complex is to stop associating yourself with your actions. Stop letting failure and criticism form your identity. Inferiority arises when doing becomes being. When you associate what you do with yourself, actions of doing become actions of being.

A young guy gets poor results at school. He associates his grades with his intelligence – leading him to believe he is dumb. Is he really dumb because he was too lazy to study? No. A guy who gets poor results at school and does not feel inferior, dissociates himself from the result. He does not let his lack of study and effort over the school year make him feel he is the outcome.

When you feel criticism is a signal of your unworthiness, only then does it stimulate inferiority, shame, and failure. Do not take criticism personally and think of yourself as a failure. Just criticism can be used as feedback to adjust what you do on the path of your success. Criticism can actually make you thrive.

The Three Factors of Criticism – Don’t Let These Get You Down

The reason some people feel inferior from criticism and failure, while other people flourish, is how they react to the three components of criticism: the power of the sender, intensity, and frequency. You cannot control the three components of criticism – as is true for any conditioning aspect of inferiority – but you can control your reaction to them (the imagination component).

If you are passionate about boxing and Muhammad Ali said you are a hopeless boxer, his power and status intensifies the criticism. If his criticism was delivered in an intense outburst, the criticism would make a bigger impact on you feeling inferior as a boxer. If Ali also constantly reminded you how hopeless you are at boxing, this would stimulate further inferiority. The sender, intensity, and frequency of positive and negative messages impact how we feel about ourselves.

What matters, however, is your reaction. Think of a time when the power of the sender, intensity of the criticism, and the frequency of criticism made you feel inferior. If you can – and I suggest you do – make your selected memory one related to your current feelings of inferiority. If you are a shy person, perhaps think of a time when someone told you to stop talking because you have nothing good to say.

Once you remember one or several experiences, ask yourself these questions:

• What were you thinking when the person made you feel inferior?
• What emotions did you experience?
• What self-talk followed the person’s negative feedback?
• How long did these feelings and thoughts last?
• How intense were these feelings and thoughts?

The thoughts and feelings you experience after the event determine whether your inferiority grows or dies.

After answering these questions, if you reacted poorly to the negative feedback given to you in these situations, you should now be aware of how your feelings of inferiority develop. This is big. If you have the inferiority complex or know someone with it, I hope you’re getting excited about this insight.

The powerful lesson to learn from this is that people’s criticism and other types of negative feedback have no power over you. Events do not make you inferior – it is your reaction to the events that do. The thoughts and feelings you experience after the event determine whether your inferiority grows or dies. The conditioning aspect of inferiority partly manifests through the criticism of others – if you let it. Your reaction to the event determines how you feel about yourself.

When you believe criticism signals your unworthiness, your self-worth plummets. You train yourself to feel inferior through self-criticism. You become your worst enemy. The failed events and experiences shape your identity, making you appear a failure.

Harmful feelings trail behind harmful thoughts. You start to feel inferior. You use your creative imagination poorly to evoke images of failure, misery, shame, unworthiness, and low self-esteem. All the negative messages you accepted over time mold your self-image to make you feel inferior. You eventually believe you are inferior. That is essentially how an inferiority complex develops – through poor use of your creative imagination.

How Your Inferiority Grows: Creative Imagination

Animals are preprogrammed with a set of functions for survival. I am amazed at the simple yet effective preprogramming given to birds. When the season changes, some birds fly thousands of miles straight to a destination they have never visited. Birds build nests without ever attending “Nest Building 101” or taking a course in materials engineering.

Like animals, we are preprogrammed with a set of functions that enable us to survive threats, gather food, and procreate. We have one huge difference to animals: we are goal-driven. Humans have the option to select goals while animals do not have this ability. Animals are preprogrammed from birth to live a certain life. They survive and procreate. Humans are different. We can create goals and set out to achieve them with our creative imagination.

I feel this to be the greatest part of all personal development. My creative imagination is something I get excited about. It gives me the ability to literally become who I want and so yours can with you.

The creative imagination is not so much about idea generation – though it is a wonderful technique to generate ideas. Your creative imagination gives you the ability to dream goals and visualize them so vividly that your nervous system cannot tell if the visualizations is fake or reality. You make your entire body think that intense visualization from your creative imagination is realism.

People unknowingly use their creative imagination to create their inferiority complex. They create scenarios and thoughts of inferiority from their imagination.

Unfortunately, many people waste their creative imagination. It is as if they have a billion-dollar check in their wallet and they do not cash it in at the bank. In fact, it is more like they have a billion-dollar gold nugget they do not convert to cash so they are burdened with the impossibility of getting through life by carrying it around. They let this great opportunity go to complete waste. Unless you awaken this inner giant, it will lie asleep, dormant, and do nothing productive.

The first common way your creative imagination is wasted is through aimless daydreaming and fantasizing. This lets it go to complete waste. Your mind aimlessly wanders off into a fantasy that cannot be created or which you have no desire to experience.

The second common way your creative imagination is wasted is using it to create bad events in your life. This is where the inferiority complex is derived. People unknowingly use their creative imagination to create their inferiority complex. They create scenarios and thoughts of inferiority from their imagination. They imagine rejection, failure, criticism, shame, hatred, scarcity, and loneliness; instead of acceptance, lessons, love, abundance, and togetherness. A huge difference exists here in the parallels of thinking.

The images you evoke of failure, unworthiness, and shame wastefully use your creative imagination to bring further bad events into your life. If you have fear, anxiety, or worry about what others think of you, you make this common mistake and waste your creative imagination.

There are three common ways psychologists say the creative imagination is wasted contributing to an inferiority complex: napoleon complex, cultural cringe, and superiority complex. Many more ways of waste exist yet these will help you understand the problem and how to better your self-image. Though a problem may not apply to you, learn from it.

1. Napoleon Complex (and a Sad Email)

A part of Alfred Alder’s work of the inferiority complex developed the Napoleon complex, which is a specific feeling of inferiority about one’s height. Alder named the Napoleon complex after the great military leader Napoleon Bonaparte who was said to be motivated in battle from insecurities about his height.

The images you evoke of failure, unworthiness, and shame wastefully use your creative imagination to bring further bad events into your life.

People with a Napoleon complex make up for their “inferiority” through aggressive behaviors. They feel handicapped because of their smaller stature and attempt to counter this perceived problem through aggressive behavior and a superficial layer of toughness. A smaller stature is not a true handicap as it just a perceived handicap made from the creative imagination.

Diagnosing this type of inferiority lies in identifying overcompensating behaviors from a perceived inferiority. You would have the Napoleon complex and demonstrate overcompensating behavior when you aim to put-down others who are taller than you. You would have that little extra desire to do better than those who are taller than you. You would try to make taller people look bad. The worst possible symptom of this feeling of inferiority is physically hurting taller people because of their stature. This specific Napoleon complex is derived from one’s personal feeling of inferiority and fear that taller people are better than shorter persons.

I received the below email in response to an earlier version of this article from a lady who lost her son to the Napoleon complex. The email is unchanged and used with her permission:

I am married to a wonderful man and I am a mother of three beautiful teenage children. Last October 31st, 2008, my 17 year old son committed suicide. It has been the most devastating experience of my entire life. I would like to stress first of all, that our home life was not what you would consider tumultuous. We had and still have a very loving home life. I would like to share with you my son’s story:

Jacob’s childhood was truly an awesome experience for a typical boy. He played hard and got dirty. He and Joel (our eldest son) with help from their father would pitch tents, dig tunnels, and build forts. As Jacob grew up, it became abundantly clear that he was very concerned over his spiritual affairs. I had the opportunity to teach him in Sunday-School classes and later on in his teens I would assist in teaching Confirmation classes. He was keenly aware of the many blessings we enjoyed being a Child of God. He wanted to understand the works of our Heavenly Father. When we would pray together as a family, he was very earnest and sincere for such a young man.

When Jacob turned 13, things started to change in him. He was unusually short for his age and it bothered him tremendously. I had initially thought that the “teenage idiot gene” had kicked in because he had become very short tempered, easily agitated, and extremely defensive. Because of his stature, Jacob had developed an inferiority complex. Because he was now attending middle school, I noticed he had also developed a chip on his shoulder and would easily get in anyone’s face if they picked on him. His coping methods made me uncomfortable and we constantly tried to coach him and teach him to accept himself for the talents he had. At one point, one person asked Jacob what was he worried about…many great men in history were short. He very quickly responded with the comment, “Yeah…that is because they all had to prove themselves.” In spite of his quick wit, Jacob dealt with the day to day stress of school by becoming a ghost. He rarely spoke to many kids and kept to himself most of the day.

Jacob went into the ninth grade at High School with the same issues he had in middle school. He was embarrassed at how short he was and the chip on his shoulder seemed to get bigger. Fist fights between Jacob and his brother seemed to be increasing in frequency too. The hardest part about those sibling fights was the fact that even though Jacob was considerably smaller than Joel, he would go into the fight with absolutely no fear of getting hurt. Ninth grade was very hard for us as parents to stand by and watch our son mentally mutilate his self-esteem. No matter how hard we tried to turn that tide, he would never allow himself to be consoled.

Eventually, Jacob did become taller. By the 11th grade he had filled out into a very good looking young man. He was extremely comical and made many people laugh. However, he never truly learned to like himself. He had a hard time talking to people unless he was using humor as his shield.

Ultimately, his low self-image got the better of him and he ended his life. He was more afraid of living than he was of dying.

I cried when I read the email. Inferiority is a real emotional problem not corrected by the physical defect or positive self-talk. People return to plastic surgery not to remove physical defects, but because they have emotional defects.

2. Cultural Cringe (a Worldwide Problem)

The cultural cringe is an area of the inferiority complex where people feel inferior due to their culture. Genetic appearance, pronunciation of words, or other factors of the human body vary between cultures that make the individual feel less than people in other cultures.

A few days ago I came across a lady who was experiencing the cultural cringe about her physical appearance. She had a poor self-image as she complained about the unusual features of her body. She loved how Asians looked. “If only I could look like an Asian lady,” she said. Her idea that other cultures are better than hers made her feel inferior.

Feelings of inferiority damage your communication with yourself and others. The cultural cringe makes you hate certain people, cultures, situations, and events. Your subconscious will be so poisoned with imaginary beliefs that are powerful enough to destroy your happiness and relationships.

3. Superiority Complex (and the Biggest Myth About Fixing an Inferiority Complex)

The superiority complex is a feeling of superiority over other people. Some experts and bloggers dangerously suggest it is the solution to an inferiority complex.

Let’s return to the scenario where Mitchell is in a room full of successful executives. If Mitchell had a superiority complex or attempted to feel superior, he would criticize the executives to pull down their status to feel better. Another form of the superiority complex is demonstrated when Mitchell tries to lift his status by portraying how better he is than the executives. Both of these techniques attempt to lift his status relative to the executives and fail to overcome his inferiority complex.

I was tricked to believe from books and blogs that feelings of superiority were the secret to overcome inferiority. After years of frustration, I can tell you feelings of superiority cause you more pain than what it removes.

You fail to overcome feelings of inferiority by becoming superior. You try to feel bigger, faster, smarter, wiser than peers. This only leads to frustration and inferiority. This solution is a temporary patch on a wound too big. It takes most people an experience of significant superiority, such as earning a million dollars or being popular with the opposite sex, to realize they still feel inferior.

If you try to feel superior, you still compare yourself to the false measurement stick that judged the inferior you.

If you try to feel superior, you still compare yourself to the false measurement stick that judged the inferior you. External validation is required to prove your superior self-image. If you are put out of place through ignorance or you are made to feel less superior, you attempt to grab back your non-existent podium of superiority by criticizing others and using similar behaviors to lift you status.

If a person’s need to compete against another is driven from insecurity to feel superior, does a superiority complex exist? I think it does exist, but an inferiority complex can be used to explain someone with a superiority complex.

What is Your Perception of People You Aspire To?

Everyone is superior to you in some way, but they are not superior in who they are. There is no question people are better looking, more popular, and wealthier than you. The problem is the transition from doing to being. Sufferers of the inferiority complex overcompensate for these differences.

Referring back to the Napoleon complex, most of us tend to be controlling or aggressive beyond height. All of us have our own – often strange reasons – for feeling inferior that we dare not share with anyone.

A common example of overcompensating behavior is when an attractive lady feels insulted purely because of another woman’s looks. Women are very competitive in dating and can feel inferior to a more attractive lady so they criticize, tease, and display other insecure behaviors. A shallow woman tries to raise her self-esteem by being better than other women.

It disgusts me to hear both men and women pull another person down. I too often see unsuccessful, unhappy people criticize a successful, happy person. These critics are no better or inferior than the people they criticize.

What is your attitude towards people who are better than you in certain areas of your life? How do you feel towards people who are more attractive than you? How do you feel towards people who are your superiors at work? Do you feel inferior? Do you feel they are better than you? Do you need to pull them down from their podium by criticizing? Are you inspired, excited, and thrilled to see others succeed?

Take your time to think of and relive relevant experiences. Your recollections hold important understandings of your inferiority complex.

How to Accept Yourself No Matter How Much You Suck

A secret to overcoming the inferiority complex is accepting who you are as a person. When you accept your uniqueness, you no longer compare yourself to mystical standards. I estimate 50% of people have the inferiority complex. Our perceived standard is a joke! You are not inferior or superior to anyone nor is anyone inferior or superior to you. We are ourselves. You are you. Mitchell is Mitchell.

People say, “Just be yourself”. That is awful advice. If you continue to be yourself, you continue to have poor habits, thoughts, feelings, and results.

Being yourself is different than accepting your uniqueness. A guy who knows he is unique can grow as a person and “not be himself”. He accepts his uniqueness and still becomes more than he was yesterday. He becomes his best self. No matter what he does, he will always be unique. When he accepts his uniqueness, he does not compare himself to other people.

Next time you feel inferior, challenge those thoughts by investigating why you feel inferior. You will realize your comparison is based on a mystical benchmark. The people you measure yourself against are not the true measurement stick. They are not you. You are your true measurement. Compare yourself with the person you were instead of contrasting you with other people. Neuro-linguistic programming calls this technique a “self-to-self comparison”.

If you are shy in conversations, do not compare yourself to the extrovert, blabbermouth, social butterfly. Compare your present shyness to your shyness one month ago. Get satisfaction from knowing you’re becoming a better person. Many variables make you unique – your family, friends, co-workers, upbringing – the list goes on. It is foolish to compare yourself to others.

You can enjoy your journey of personal development without realizing your ultimate goal by seeing progression in bettering yourself. When you make your past the benchmark, you begin to heal. (Read Anthony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within to learn more about enjoying your journey. Robbins teaches you how to adjust your values so you become happier and self-motivated on your journey instead of relying on an end result to be happy.)

Self-Image: The Human Thermostat

The core secret to overcome your inferiority complex is changing your self-image. The self-image is how you perceive yourself. It is a mental picture of who you are. It does not have to be truth as you have seen in the inferiority complex where you are not inferior. The self-image is your image of yourself.

The great Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-cybernetics, was a plastic surgeon in the mid 1900s. He operated on many individuals who felt inferior due to their “unusual” looks. Most of the individuals did not look unusual; it was their self-image that blew their looks out of proportion. They had used their creative imagination to create a dangerous false image of their physical appearance.

Dr. Maltz operated on many who despite successful plastic surgery remained feeling inferior. They returned to him requesting more surgery as they sought to look like famous individuals. He would again operate on them only to have the clients still dissatisfied with their appearance.

For some of his patients, this was not the case. Some individuals’ feeling of inferiority disappeared after plastic surgery while others even had their emotional scars cured without ever going under the knife. This made Dr. Maltz curious. Why did some people with healed “outer scars” like facial deformations that were successfully operated on still have “inner scars” of inferiority? From his research emerged modern self-help psychology. He is the founder of visualization, creative imagination, self-talk, and changing the self-image.

Your self-image… controls what you can and cannot do. If you see yourself as inferior to others, this self-image ensures you remain inferior.

Dr. Maltz discovered that each hurtful word, thought, and experience over a person’s lifetime accumulated to form a poor self-image. He began to teach people how their self-image was shaped and how they can be more careful with their own words in shaping another person’s self-image. What mattered most was what he called the “creative imagination” that contained the self-image. He discovered a person’s creative imagination shaped one’s self-image to determine feelings of inferiority. We have been working on yours throughout the article.

Your self-image has tremendous powers. Your self-image controls what you can achieve. It controls what you can and cannot do. If you see yourself as inferior to others, this self-image ensures you remain inferior. No amount of positive thinking, willpower, or self-determination cures a feeling of inferiority when an inferior self-image exists. Dr. Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics, profoundly explains the power of the self-image to shape our behavior and achieve what we desire:

The self-image controls what you can and cannot accomplish, what is difficult or easy for you, even how others respond to you just as certainly and scientifically as a thermostat controls the temperature in your home. Specifically, all your actions, feelings, behavior, even your abilities, are always consistent with this self-image. Note the word: always. In short, you will ‘act like’ the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.

A person that weighs 250 pounds can drop to 210 pounds through willpower and determination. If the weight-loss took place out of willpower, however, the person will return to his true self-image weight of 250 pounds. You can decrease the girth of your stomach through grunt force, but if your self-image has not adjusted to your new weight, your old weight will return. The room temperature can fluctuate a few degrees depending on who enters and leaves the room, yet the thermostat always returns the room to its set temperature. (For more discoveries on this fluctuating problem, read this article titled “Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change”.)

The same rule holds true to become more muscular. If your self-image is a thin-body, you will have a tough time packing on muscle. Arnold Schwarzenegger at 15-years was thin. What set him apart from other bodybuilders was his self-image. He would visualize his new muscular body each time he performed a rep at the gym while other bodybuilders would fantasize over bikini models. In 1980, Schwarzenegger claimed his seventh Mr. Olympia title and become the icon of bodybuilders.

A person that aims to lose weight through willpower uses forward goal-setting. If you use forward goal-setting, where you set a goal to achieve and work towards it, you will fail. As I have repeatedly said, positive willpower cannot overcome a negative creative imagination. Your creative imagination will always win.

Apply this to other areas of your life. Stop trying to use willpower to overcome your inferiority complex or to achieve some other goal. It cannot be done for permanent results. What you need to do for all your goals is use backward goal-setting where you set a goal to achieve and begin doing the things now that you would do upon achieving that goal.

To do this you need to awaken your creative imagination by immersing yourself in an imaginary environment where you achieved your goal. Your aim is to visualize yourself immersed in an environment so real that it feels like you achieved it.

I will run through a complete exercise you can do right now to overcome your inferiority complex. You are to primarily rely on this technique to overcome feelings of inferiority. When the technique is used over time on a frequent basis, your inferiority complex will evaporate.

Exercise to Cure Your Inferiority Complex and Boost Your Self-Image

The exercise is an intense visualization. The nervous system cannot tell a real event from a fake event. Studies have repeatedly shown that when we visualize, the body experiences physiological responses that mimic action. The mirror neurons in the premotor cortex of the brain become activated from visualizations in the same manner as doing the action.

This is not the exercise, but imagine you are in a real fight. Hear the yelling, swearing, and abuse. Feel the air. Taste the blood. See the people gather around you. Look at your angry opponent. By immersing yourself in the environment your physiology will appropriately respond. Your body will release doses of adrenaline as your heart rate increases along with a heightened awareness. The more real your visualization is, the more your body responds as if it were a real experience.

To demonstrate the exercise I encourage you to use on a daily basis, I will walk you through what I would do in Mitchell’s situation.

I firstly slow down my breathing. Notice present tensions in my body and make a conscious decision to relax that part of the body. Next, I visualize myself walking confidently into the room full of executives. Shoulders are back, posture is erect, neck is straight, and my strides are slow. I make strong eye contact when others look at me. I smell the champagne and hear the chatter and smile at hearing the occasional loud laugh. I see the gray walls and people’s black shoes.

I feel the wrinkles around my mouth as I smile when greeting an executive. I feel a person’s hand as I give them a firm handshake. People are warming up to me as I communicate complete comfort with myself. I am poised. I love myself and have no need to compare myself to other’s standards. I am proud in knowing that I am becoming a better person. I am a unique individual.

That is a brief example of what I would feel and see in my mind’s eye. I encourage you to go into more depth. Create more details. Visualize what it is like to not worry what people think of you. Smell the air and touch the surfaces that are around the non-inferior you. Thorough details are extremely important. Make it so vivid that it becomes real. Use your five senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing. These focused visualizations will give you a new self-image.

Run through constructive visualizations everyday. It may seem like a lot of effort, but this is your life we are talking about. You are important. You run through visualizations everyday. The exercise has you control imagery you would otherwise waste.

I also encourage you to use positive thinking, which I earlier “bashed”. Positive thinking is a valuable tool when used in conjunction with your creative imagination. Combine these two great tools together with the many other tips in this article and you will soon overcome your inferiority complex. After all, your inferiority complex developed by using these tools in a negative fashion.

You will never eliminate all thoughts of inferiority because it is human nature to think the occasional demeaning thought. You do not need to feel inferior, however. The difference is whether you let the occasional thought and feeling grow.

If you still feel helpless from feelings of inferiority, please book an appointment with a therapist. I don’t want you to end up like Jacob.

(Please post a comment or story about your inferiority along with how this article has changed your life. You are by far from alone in experiencing inferiority. I could have easily charged for this report, but decided not to. I want as many people to read this as possible. This can be more easily accomplished with your help by telling your friends, family, and co-workers about the article. You do not know the feelings of inferiority someone could have that is damaging their life. Do them a favor. They could be forever thankful for your thoughtfulness. Email them by clicking the social media buttons below.)

(I have reposted people’s comments below from an older version of the article.)

Wow! Talk about an amazing list of contrasting fears! The truth about fears is they seem stupid and irrational. What fears do you have that drive you crazy?

You can fear one side of the story and the other at the same time. It is possible to simultaneously fear talking to someone new and not meeting new people because fear hides the truth. I will reveal the truth about fear to you in this article.

Fear creates an experience through a smoke screen. It makes you uncertain of what is ahead. The acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear does not want you to know the truth about itself and yourself.

Fear can immobilize your body. You can want something, but fear sends what seems like a massive electromagnetic pulse through your body to shut down your ability to function. Unless you suffer from poor health, this is a facade, a survival mechanism to protect you from something that will not hurt you.

According to Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, there are five truths about fear. Whatever you fear, provided the fear is not physically dangerous like the taking of drugs, the following five truths apply:

Truth #1

The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.

It is far more comforting and exciting to experience growth and live in fear than to live paralyzed by fear.

Fear is a survival mechanism hardwired into the human mind that makes you think danger and pain resides in the darkness of the unknown. Our ancestors feared when they ventured into new lands because the environments were unfamiliar and potentially life-endangering. Fear will continue to protect you as long as you grow emotionally and mentally. Do not want a fearless life if you desire to grow. As Thomas Leonard, a personal coach, so bluntly put it: “Fear is natural. Be with it.”

Once you explore territory unknown to you, new fears arise. I know it is uncomfortable to hear that, but I am hear to tell you the truth that fear does not want you to know. It is more comforting and exciting to experience growth and live in fear than to be paralyzed by fear. Be excited to know that fear will exist if you live a life worth living.

Truth #2

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.

Truth number two sounds contradictory to truth number one. Both truths are still truths. You fear because uncertainty looms over your ability to handle the situation. “Fear comes from uncertainty,” said 17th century English playwright William Congreve. “When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.”

Fear will always exist in your life. The only cure to fear and social anxiety is to accept it and do it. When you do the thing you fear, whether it was a facade or not, you build confidence in your ability to handle the situation. Personal development expert Anthony Robbins said, “Do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” Action will conquer fear any day. By acting in the face of fear, you transform the uncertain into the certain as the unknown becomes known.

Truth #3

The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it.

When ridden with fear, we reason that we will take action once we feel better about ourselves. “When I’m ready, I’ll…” “If I can… then I’ll…” “I’ll wait till I’m…”

You will not feel like a better person or build more self-belief in your ability until you do what you fear. Stop waiting for whatever it is you want to change! Change your ability to take action.

While self-esteem boosts you ability to take action, go the quicker and more direct route: take action to boost your self-esteem. Confidence builds on itself like a good financial investment leading to more positive feelings about yourself. You feel good about yourself when you dive into action. Stop wanting to be a fearless public speaker before speaking in public. Do public speaking to be a fearless public speaker.

Truth #4

Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.

You fear because uncertainty looms over your ability to handle the situation.

It is comforting to hear this truth. Every public speaker and writer I know suffered or currently suffers from fears and insecurities over the judgments of other people. These are strong, powerful people who do not let their fears stop them from reaching their life’s mission.

Fear wants you to think it is a unique psychological problem, but it really is an educational problem. Those around you and those you envy also experience (or once experienced) what you fear. The insecurities you feel are unique, unites you with everyone.

Truth #5

Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

Fear encompasses uncertainty, but it is scarier to have the certainty of living a fear-controlled life. The fear of being ill is scarier than seeing a doctor. The fear of having a divorce is scarier than addressing a tough relationship problem. The fear of having no friends is scarier than approaching someone.

When you have a purpose greater than fear, you become courageous. “Courage is not the absence of fear,” said Ambrose Redmoon, “but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Create a life mission more important than fear to compel yourself to face things you previously were scared to confront.

Repeat each of these truths at least 20 times every morning and night. When you continually affirm the truth, you will accept it as truth. You will no longer be tricked by fear.

I am excited to finally reveal how fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Follow the five truths in this article and you will see the light fear hides from your eyes. Live a fear-filled life!

UPDATE: As a follow up to conquer shyness and your fear of talking with people, read The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom.

David DeAngelo starts by letting you know his Double Your Dating ebook is not an encyclopedia, but a reference to being successful with women. It is not intended to be a complete resource on how men can attract women. It is a mighty fine start. You get strong foundations any guy must know in order to become successful with women and dating.

The History of Double Your Dating and DeAngelo

After a decade’s experience in learning how to attract women, DeAngelo knows how guys approach the subject of learning how to be successful with women. Too often he has seen guys take a mental standpoint where they mistake themselves for knowing the information while they don’t put the skills to use. He mentions the need for guys to go out and practice the attraction skills he teaches. Many guys seeking advice from him are intelligent, but smart can be dumb. The skills he teaches, like any other, require practice. No great skill or canned pick-up lines will make a guy succeed with women and dating if they are not practiced, adapted, and understood.

There are many canned lines given in the ebook, which give you a strong frame of reference for creating your own lines. “What to say” is not the basis of the ebook. The ebook is not filled with lines – it is a holistic reference to become successful with women. The given lines act like the framework for tough situations, such as the complete guide on what to do and say to get a woman’s phone number. The ebook is a powerful reference to create the whole mindset you must have to start dating physically and emotionally attractive women.

DeAngelo has slashed through the loads of dating and psychology advice for men, most of which is useless or harmful.

This touches on another topic where guys follow the age-old dating myth of “just be yourself”. Most guys have no idea how to attract women because their natural self is bottled inside of fear, anxiety, and placing women on a pedestal. Once you practice and internalize the information, you then have the privilege to behave in whatever way is natural to you. Being yourself is an earned privilege and not a right.

DeAngelo’s teachings come from his own experience, and years of studying experts. He has slashed through the loads of dating and psychology advice for men, most of which is useless or harmful, so you can be certain his guidance and tips work. I heard him describe his learning experience from the loads of information as walking through a jungle with a machete slashing through the crap that gets in the way of men being successful with women.

The Theory of Attraction and Dating Women

In traditional DeAngelo fashion, he begins Double Your Dating with theory. He briefly goes back a few thousand years to identify the psychological factors of women that remain unchanged to this day. There are inherit differences between the way women and men think, feel, and behave. By taking advantage of these differences – instead of letting them confuse you, like most guys who are unaware of gender differences in dating and attraction – you become more successful with women.

Men new to attraction and the whole “pick-up scene” make the mistake of assuming women are only interested in handsome, tall, wealthy, and powerful men. These guys also mistake women as wanting similar characteristics in men that guys want in women.

You learn that women are naturally attracted to handsome, tall, wealthy, or powerful men. Though these characteristics instinctively trigger a woman’s natural feelings of attractiveness towards a guy, a man who develops his confidence, social skills, and attraction triggers can elicit more powerful sexual feelings from within her. What matters most is how a man makes a woman feel through his personality and communication. There are plenty of wealthy, tall, good-looking men who get women’s attention, but cannot keep it because they disobey the principles in Double Your Dating.

How This Will Help You Transform

Two general principles I loved, which stood out from Double Your Dating, is the mindset you must have to become good at something and the need to constantly improve yourself. Though the ebook provides quick, short-term tips to be successful with women, the guys who make the commitment and effort to practice the advice get greater success with women than the guys after quick canned lines. A commitment to yourself with persistent effort is a sure way to get the most out of any goal you desire. The second principle of constantly improving yourself will do all guys a miracle in becoming more emotionally and physically attractive.

You learn many skills in the ebook that I recommend to improve your social skills and feelings about yourself. You discover how to adjust your attitude, change negative beliefs to empowering beliefs, boost your self-esteem, become a man women know is sexually attractive, and general psychological betterment. The exercises he provides improves many areas of anyone’s life – they are not limited to helping guys become more successful with women.

Become a True Man That Naturally Attracts Women

One point I think you will love most in the ebook are the strategies and exercises to overcome your a fear of approaching women. Too many guys let their fear of approaching stop them from success with women. I felt DeAngelo was speaking directly to me with my past fears of going up to girl and getting rejected.

Another interesting point worth noting is “ass kissing” behavior like buying a woman’s affection is to be avoided at all times. In any situation where the motive behind complimenting is manipulative, you can expect a poor response. The basis of the ebook transforms these natural tendencies guys have into challenging behaviors (she buys you a drink). A guy in control of his life who can playfully tease women communicates sexually attractive qualities.

…a reference to being successful with women.

The personality styles that turn women on is, by itself, enough reason to check out the ebook. These personality styles go beyond personalities that women love – they are an entire life-changing mindset. One particular personality style of many I’ll share with you to demonstrate what I’m talking about is the “aggressive” personality. This personality is not about beating up women or being a jerk; it refers to pursuing a goal with passion, persistence, and determination. Women attract to men that work aggressively towards their passionate goals. It communicates energy, protection, security, and a future outlook. These are instinctively attractive traits to women.

Possibly the greatest thing about Double Your Dating was added in the second edition: the action exercises after every chapter. I cannot stress enough the need to practice any skill. Practicing is especially important in the dating world because fear unnecessarily prevents you from dating success. A lot of people develop their fears from thinking too much. The action exercises are little steps to get you where you want to be in the dating world. These steps backed by a lot of real-world advice means the ebook can help you go from not even being able to approach a girl, to having a great long-term relationship.

Overall, I was very pleased with the ebook. David DeAngelo’s style of writing was casual. I’ve observed his company and products for over five years. It is great to see thousands of men around the world in diverse cultures succeed from Double Your Dating.

Readers have more than doubled their dating – they have gone from never having a girlfriend to dating ten women a month. It’s crazy how much success some men now have with women after reading the ebook. These men are now the selectee instead of the selected.

If you wonder how you can be more successful with women, DeAngelo’s ebook shows you how. I believe all men if they practice hard, can “mold with their hands” the kind of success with women they want. If only every man could read it, they would not experience years of frustration, loneliness, and fear that controls their lives.

Double Your Dating has my recommendations behind it! Sign up to David’s newsletter by clicking here. Once you sign up, you will be taken to a page where you can download his ebook Double Your Dating: What Every Man Should Know About How To Be Successful With Women (Second Edition). (If you already receive his newsletter, just enter a fake name and email to continue to the next step so you can get your copy of this amazing ebook.)

To begin the course, what is your reaction to learning about apologizing and forgiveness? Take a few seconds to think about it.

You probably feel neutral and unexcited learning about apologizing and forgiveness like most people. You assume a shallow understanding of a powerfully deep topic. A closed mind literally steals your ability to grasp new information to change your life.

Why do people avoid learning about apologizing when it has tremendous benefits? People think like this for three reasons:

1. They think they know how to apologize. Just like the many people who have yet to start learning effective communication skills, so are these people with apologizing. They think they have the necessary skills, but in reality their thoughts blind themselves from opportunities to improve their lives and relationships. When you say you know what is right, you use the number one technique to destroy learning: ignorance. You close your mind because it is too full to accommodate further information.
2. They think it is irrelevant. These people think apologizing is not worth it and a waste of time to learn.
3. They are too lazy. These people cannot be bothered to learn. Hopefully, you don’t fit in this category. But if you do, there is nothing I can do about it. It is your choice and your life. Don’t blame other people for the events in your life because of your decision to avoid responsibility for who you become.

These excuses to avoid emotional healing are sadly limiting because we always make mistakes. Mistake after mistake. It doesn’t stop. I’m not only talking about physical accidents, but mistakes we make with our relationships. We say things that hurt others. We can be ignorant in loving our family. We can be emotionally blind to those in need.

You Have Two Decisions Make

Take a momentary leap of faith to expand your awareness and grasp the powers of apologizing and forgiveness to free yourself from mistakes and pain. Accept a level of awareness and openness to change. Having done this, you have two decisions to make in dealing with your mistakes.

A successful apology is a radical movement from pain to empowerment.

First, you need reduction. You will never eliminate mistakes, but you can reduce the number by learning more about yourself and developing your communication like you’re doing with my newsletter, social skills blog, and this course. Characters in Soap Operas are the worst role models to follow to improve your communication because the characters continue to screw up, fight, make up, and repeat the process (it is drama after all). Communicate more effectively to avoid relationship blunders that create emotional pain.

Second, you need to cope. You will always make mistakes that hurt people. Learn to live with your mistakes as they will always exist. Coping can be ignorance or passive acceptance, but for our purpose it is learning to better manage ourselves with inevitable events.

This course focuses on the coping component of emotional healing because the first decision of reduction is an ongoing process achieved through continual learning. A successful apology is not just saying “sorry” – it is a radical movement from pain to empowerment.

What Happens When You Fail to Apologize

A large barrier faces each of us in emotional healing: the difficulty of an apology. We get ensnared in thoughts about ourselves by holding onto pride. We can be selfish and not willing to admit our most obvious mistakes. Pride eats away at us as we argue or, at the other end of the continuum, ignore the mistake to defend even an obvious wrongdoing. Pride ensnares us in its cage of lies as we defend our self-centered minds, ignoring guilt that would restore harmony.

I have been there. I had too much pride and selfishness to apologize to a loved one I hurt. When I did want to apologize, I couldn’t bring myself to face the person. The result was a hurt relationship and less happiness for me because I ignored the guilt that could have helped me apologize, seek forgiveness, and get emotional restoration.

Pride ensnares us in its cage of lies as we defend our self-centered minds.

In shifting the focus on apologizing away from you, what does avoiding an apology do to other people? They feel hurt that you are unwilling to communicate your mistake. They lose trust in you as you hide behind your mistake. They become angry towards you, wondering why you will not tell them the truth. They may begin to counter your lack of apologies by not apologizing themselves as the relationship goes downhill with the two of you caught in a power struggle.

Communicate your mistakes. Show your guilt. Tell the person how bad you feel. A mistake you make is like a scratch on the skin. By not apologizing you deepen the wound and rub salt into it. Stop hurting the other person and yourself, and learn to apologize. There is real power in apologizing and emotional healing.

9 Powerful Benefits in Apologizing

If you feel you have little reason to start apologizing already, here are more reasons and the amazing power of apologizing:

1. The healing process begins when you apologize. This is the most powerful benefit of apologizing. People hold grudges and resentment against those who fail to apologize and admit their mistakes. By apologizing, you put yourself on the same wavelength as those hurt by your mistakes. You see the wrongdoing they see in you. Their resentment diminishes as they become more capable of moving on and freeing themselves from the past.
2. While emotional healing in other people can be initiated from apologizing, it can also start self-healing. The next time you apologize, note how free it feels to admit your wrongdoing. It is liberating to free yourself from guilt that would plague you for days, weeks, and sometimes years. Don’t be a person whose past is a burden until the day you die.
3. People are more likely to follow your actions when you admit your mistakes and reveal your weaknesses. Their courage builds to practice the power of an apology. They see it is the better choice to follow. Apologizing produces guilt in people for the better. They may become aware of their mistake, feel safe, then apologize.
4. We are flawed. If we were cars, we would breakdown every 50 miles. Mistakes are inevitable regardless of your intentions to do good. Apologies are necessary to balance your life.
5. If someone hurts you, it is justice to have them apologize to you. For some reason this is not the case when we hurt someone. The hurting person desires your sympathy as much as you desire their sympathy when they hurt you.
6. Apologizing gives back what you took. You restore the victim’s feeling of worthiness and self-esteem. They no longer feel burdened nor responsible for your mistake. This benefit of apologizing is especially true in children.
7. By having complete responsibility for your actions, you possess an enormous amount of self-control. You are no longer a victim of others. You stop blaming people for what you can control. You become your own person. You create your own destiny.
8. A sincere apology shows effort in a relationship. It shows you care for the person. That’s an entire different approach to avoiding mistakes in an attempt to “secretly get by”. By not apologizing you sweep dirt under a rug. An avoided problem is likely to reappear and bite you when you least expect it at the worst possible time.
9. You build courage and become a confident person. When apologizing and asking for forgiveness, you rise above the destructive compulsion to avoid remorse. You no longer cover your behavior; you bring your behavior into the light. Tough conversations take courage! Your new-found courage will roll into other areas of your life as you begin to address difficult issues you avoided in the past.

Who would have thought there is this many benefits in apologizing! In fact, there is a lot more power in emotional healing and freeing yourself from the past. Read the rest of this free course to receive the many powers of apologizing.

Links to all four parts of this course, “Freeing Yourself From Mistakes and Pain: A Four Part Course On Apologizing and Emotional Freedom”:

1. The Power of Apologizing
2. Barriers and Mistakes in Apologizing
3. How to Correctly Apologize
4. How to Forgive and Be Forgiven – The Art of Forgiveness

When you think others always judge you, you become socially awkward, talk less, and shut-down. This is essentially a social anxiety disorder. It becomes difficult to socialize, have fun, and make friends.

I often get asked how someone can overcome these thoughts where they worry what others think because I had the same problem years ago. I fretted over people’s judgments of me in conversations and general social situations. I stand at 6’9” (206cm) and attract attention where I go (at least that’s what my inner-voice told me). Some people go about their day as I walk by while others gawk. I’m tall, not deaf! I had thoughts like, “Why are they looking at me like that?” destroyed my ability to socially enjoy myself until I discovered a few secrets I will share with you in this article that transformed me into a confident, happy, powerful person.

Surviving the Brutality of People’s Thoughts

Why are you concerned what people think of you? Take time as you explore your concerns. Analyze your unexplored fears and anxieties. Read on once you have thought deeply about this question.

As you explore your worries and anxieties about people’s thoughts towards you, you will see the problem boils down to worrying if people accept or approve you. Your worries center on accurate mind-reading in hope of adjusting yourself to be accepted or approved by people.

Social acceptance is important for everyone. If our ancestors were rejected and ostracized from their tribe, it was a death sentence because they had to confront other tribes and animals while hunting and gathering food by themselves. It was near impossible to survive alone.

Your fears are a survival mechanism so it is okay to want acceptance, but because interactions and group structures have changed after thousands of years, you have outdated ways of thinking and behaving. What thoughts and beliefs helped humans thousands of years ago – even you last year – are unlikely to serve you well now. When you worry what people think of you, does it help you survive? Does it improve your conversation skills?

…chokes your social skills as you become unable to release your real, powerful self into the conversation.

If you think about thinking about people’s thoughts, you see the anxious process does more harm than good. It chokes your social skills as you struggle to release your real, powerful self into the conversation. When you try to determine people’s judgments towards you, your perception of their social judgments creates inhibition and blinds your natural, magnetic personality.

We worry what people think of us more than we know:

• You keep quiet in a meeting as you withhold your ideas in fear of saying the wrong thing and being rejected. From a survival perspective, the fear makes sense because you could be ostracized from the workplace and lose your job, money, and lifestyle. In reality, suggesting an idea will never cause such a drastic outcome (unless you say something absurd like, “Let’s steal from the poor”, but even then your coworkers will probably laugh-off your remarks).
• When you talk to your spouse, you know something needs to be said, but you keep quiet because you fear his or her reaction. From a survival perspective, this could ultimately result in a break up where your genes cease to pass onto the next generation. If you say what is on your mind, however, your relationship strengthens because you discuss what really matters. (Difficult Conversations is a great book for these tough conversations.)
• You avoid doing something silly or unusual in public because you fear other people will label you as “weird”. Some couples do not kiss in public because they worry what the viewing public will think. The same survival principles hold true again: the fear originates from being ostracized from society. No one is going to reject you – yet alone remember you – because you did something you consider an embarrassment.

If you do something people label daring, they may put you down, but most admire your courage. (Tweet this quote.) More often than not, something that is “out there” may not even be “out there” because we fathom what constitutes safety. Giving your opinion in a conversation is not going to determine if you live or die even if it appears daring to you.

Although it is uncomfortable to take action on something you are inhibited over, the return is greater than the initial expense. When you decide to not mind-read people in your conversations, your discomfort increases the same time your power increases. This is as certain as water grows a plant. Facing the uncomfortable makes you powerful.

Your Innate Gift of Mind-Reading

Our ability to infer a person’s mental state is referred by psychologists as having a “theory of mind”. The survival mechanism of mind-reading adapts you to diverse people. It is powerful if you know how to use it.

Researchers agree our theory of mind develops around two years of age. Toddlers can calculate people’s desires, intents, and thoughts. If a toddler sees a crying baby, she infers the distressed baby’s mental state. The toddler may tug her mother’s sleeve, pulling her to comfort the distressed baby. Up until then, you will not see empathetic children with mind-reading skills.

If you were like a baby absent of a theory of mind, you would continuously get in social and emotional trouble. A theory of mind helps you to do the closest thing to mind-reading as you dig into a person’s mind. You are able to see the intangible like: a young boy picked on at school feels hurt and alone; your partner comes home from work smiling, leading you to believe he or she had a good day at work; a depressed friend who recently broke up with her boyfriend leads you to think she needs space for recovery. Your inference into mental states helps adjust your behavior to better accommodate people.

Your inference into mental states helps adjust your behavior to better accommodate people.

What if, however, your friend who broke up with her boyfriend, wants to be comforted by you. Because you guessed she needed space, she would feel neglected, ignored, and more rejected. Inaccurate mind-reading causes relationship destruction.

Tell someone their destructive mental state or intent behind an action, such as, “You’re jealous because you think…”, and you will cause immediate trouble. This is what I refer to as “diagnosing” where we figure out people’s intents behind their actions, which gets us into arguments and detracts from our power with people. (I recommend you read the third chapter on diagnosing of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People for more information about this bad communication habit.)

Mind-reading also frustrates the beholder. We jeopardize our well-being from judgments because we have limited ability to infer someone’s mental state. A person laughing at a distance who makes eye contact with you may be giggling at a joke, not you. You think people judge you – a useful process when used correctly – but it too often sends you to mental imprisonment. You become anxious and constrain your real self from entering the conversation. Your theory of mind is too often an unreliable tool to calculate what people think.

You were given the ability to read someone’s mind so you could better adapt to the environment. Someone aggressively staring you down triggers thoughts of potential danger, allowing you to change to survive the threat. You can be over-reliant on this skill by worrying about people’s thoughts when there is no concrete evidence (such as nonverbal communication) that signal you need to adjust your behavior. What is used to survive and better connect you with people, separates you.

Approval Versus Acceptance – And Why It Matters to You

Let’s look at a paradoxical outcome seen in the following example of someone concerned about social acceptance and meeting a person’s expectations – and be sure to learn from this example. A guy is meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. He worries about being “good enough” and living up to the high expectations of her parents. He does not want to break up with his girlfriend.

He has two extremes to choose from:

1. He gains their approval.
2. He gains no approval.

Let’s say the guy chooses the first option. In this situation the guy is determined to get the parents’ approval. He analyzes the situation, thinks, worries, and focuses on what the parents could think. He tries to mind-read the parents, which makes him anxious.

When the guy tries to calculate what the parents expect of him, he gets stressed and anxious. His continual analysis of the parents’ thoughts causes awkward behavior. He becomes fidgety, apologetic, and strangled from his natural self. He gets along great with friends, but when it comes to talking with strangers he feels awful.

In this first situation, the guy forward-thinks and screws his chances of gaining the parents’ approval because he is seen as needy and lacking confidence. The guy needs people to validate his identity, which ironically causes them to disapprove him.

When you need approval, people sense it as neediness then reject you. A weak self causes you to be rejected and makes you feel less worthy. The cycle continues as you develop an inferiority complex where you feel less than others.

People with low self-esteem who worry what others think, get their self-esteem from external sources. They feel good when others think good of them and feel bad when others think bad of them. This is why praise and compliments can be a dangerous communication barrier.

When you derive your powerful self from competence, capability, and self-responsibility – instead of external validation that moderates your behavior – you release your powerful self into the conversation.

In the second situation, the guy does not require the parents’ approval. If he finds something funny, he laughs. If he wants something, he asks for it. If he likes something, he says so. These behaviors are different to the first situation where the guy is fidgety, apologetic, and strangled from his natural self.

You may think “he can’t just ignore the parents’ approval of him because he’ll screw up!” The same thought drives destructive mind-reading: you think mind-reading people’s judgments helps your ability to adapt, but more destruction than construction occurs. Your confidence and self-esteem gets knocked down from the destruction of so-called “adapting”.

It is okay to want people to like you without their approval, but not needing approval is different from reckless behavior and not caring what people think of you. Having no need for approval does not mean you run down the street screaming and waving your hands above your head. Reckless behavior will have you cut from society by getting in prison or a mental institution. A healthy balance is possible. You can moderate behavior without needing people’s approval.

Beyond What People Think of You: How to Become More Powerful in Conversations

An elimination of harmful mind-reading is only the first step to not care what people think about you. Because you infer people’s thoughts to get along with people, the second step is to replace the anxious behavior with something to help you with people. Behavioral adjustment to get people to like you is what mind-reading poorly achieves.

In our example, once the guy does not require his girlfriend’s parents to validate if he is good enough for his girlfriend, the battle is half won. He still needs to adapt. He needs to do things like be polite, friendly, joke around, and other things to gain the parents’ acceptance.

Acceptance differs from approval. Seeking approval passes a test to grant yourself permission to be who you are. It is about being “good enough” to meet someone’s standards. On the other hand, acceptance for our purpose builds a positive response to something that is offered. When you seek acceptance, you have a strong sense of self that you present to people, and whether they accept it is up to them. Should people not accept you, it does not diminish your self-esteem because your powerful self comes from inner worth, not external validation. Approval and acceptance are valuable terms you need to reread, understand, and burn into memory.

If you are to be powerful with people, you must build acceptance by doing things people favor, such as starting interesting conversations, making a good first impression, and using other effective communication techniques. Grow yourself and adapt to situations, but do not feel people must validate your reality. Work towards acceptance, but do not worry for approval. Powerfully confident individuals do not require people’s approval at all. They are concerned about people in their life, but they do not limit or inhibit themselves. They seek acceptance without approval.

Once you know the difference between acceptance and approval, and how to build acceptance, release your spontaneous self that attracts people in conversations. Dr. Maxwell Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics writes about self-consciousness and releasing your powerful self into the conversation:

The reason some people are self-conscious and awkward in social situations is simply that they are too consciously concerned, too anxious to do the right thing, and too fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing… If these people could let go, stop trying, not care, and give no thought to the matter of their behavior, they could act creatively, spontaneously, and ‘be themselves’… Your creative mechanism cannot function or work tomorrow – or even a minute from now. Only right now.

The paradoxical effect of releasing yourself in the conversation discussed by Dr. Maltz is that people accept you when you stop trying and start being. We fear revealing our true self into conversation, but when we unleash it, people feel it and become attracted to our authenticity.

The guy in the second situation who does not require the parent’s approval, feels confident and others see it. The parents are more likely to accept him. When you rise above the need for people’s approval, your confidence soars, worrying vanishes, and fear of how others see you stops. You are happy with who you are and what you can do.

It surprises me that the purpose of worrying what people think of you is to get them liking you. It is Zen-like that when you trash such thinking, you achieve its goal.

How to Be Free in the Present Moment

A great pianist never anticipates, when performing, every detail needed to play a great song. The pianist allows himself to be enthralled in the moment as his natural playing abilities shine through his music. His focus in the moment makes people accept and like his music.

In a conversation, do not anticipate people’s thoughts towards you, then your natural, powerful personality will be seen. You will behave freely as you do with friends. Act as if no one thinks about you because few probably are. Turn-off the imaginary spotlight you see on yourself and you will be amazed at your high self-confidence. Your new-found confidence will radiate into your conversations as you free yourself from inhibition and release your real self.

Be in the now as you surrender yourself to the moment.

I want you to live in the present moment instead of anticipating the future. Be in the now as you surrender yourself to the moment. People’s reactions do not matter because all that matters is how you respond right now.

Your thoughts about people’s thoughts towards you is an outdated way of thinking that destroys your ability to make conversation. Make the shift to act boldly, build internal sources of validation, gain acceptance (instead of approval), and live in the present moment by not anticipating people’s judgments. You will be unconcerned what people think of you as your powerful self releases into the conversation.

Tweet this article here so your friends and followers benefit too!

(Learn to become authentic, confident, and people-magnetic with the Big Talk Training Course, which will help you confidently socialize. Learn more about this breakthrough course available for download here.)