Power Attitudes for Dating

Hey there, gentlemen (and some ladies, too). Hope things are going well. I've been getting a good number of great questions from you guys, so thanks for that. In the meantime, let's get to this letter, which sets up today's topic by bringing up some excellent points:

"I recently met a very beautiful woman at the club this past weekend. In fact, she was the bartender. The conversation was going well, but I wasn't too interested because there were so many women around. Anyway, before I left, I got her to give me her e-mail (she said she never gives out her phone number, which I didn't ask for anyway). While I was walking away she said that she rarely checks her e-mail...perhaps once a month. I just shrugged it off and walked away. It was almost as if she wanted to give me her phone number...Question: How long do you think I should wait to e-mail her, and should I try to get her number right away—with the first e-mail? What are some good e-mail techniques to get women to give you their phone numbers?
Thanks!"
—Jeremy

Ahhh, yes. The bartender. Hot, by definition. Gets all kinds of attention. How *do* you get her? How do you negotiate the minefield of courtship, such that you don't screw up? “How do I get the prize, Doc?”

To start with, let's examine the things that our friend Jeremy here has done right:

"The conversation was going well, but I wasn't too interested because there were so many women around."

First off, he's not being needy. There are two effective ways of getting to this attitude: one is through external means, and the other is through internal means.

Something hilarious thing that I learned in my 23 years of formal schooling Is: never use a simple term for something, when you can use a needlessly complicated one instead. So in that spirit, let's call one means “externally-determined self-sufficiency,” and the other
“internally-determined self-sufficiency.”

Externally determined self-sufficiency means that you are so obviously surrounded by abundance that it doesn't even occur to you to be needy. That's what our friend is doing up there: there are so many other good-looking women around that the bartender barely registers on the radar.

In my “Tao of Dating” e-book, I offer up a “cookies experiment (Exercise 14 from Chapter 7),” which ties directly in to what we’re talking about here. When you have just one cookie, you get a lot stingier with them because that last remaining one seems a lot more valuable. When you had twenty cookies, you had no worries. You could even afford to give some away.

Internal self-sufficiency means that even when the external signs of abundance are missing, you still have that attitude of abundance WITHIN YOU. Because you know and deeply understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that abundance is the Law of the Universe. And you are fine, right where you are.

This is the turbocharged, supercharged, rocket-propelled version of external self-sufficiency, because once you have it, NO ONE CAN TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU.

It doesn't depend on who's around. It doesn't depend on where you live. It just is.

And that's exactly what The Tao of Dating is all about, My friend. Getting you to that point of internal self-sufficiency so that you're not affected by circumstance.

Getting back to the letter. All the stuff we’re talking about here ought to bring to mind one of the first beliefs about the Universe from The Tao of Dating e-book:

"I believe in the abundance of the Universe."

It should also be an echo of the first of the three principles of being a man (vs. a boy), namely, total self-sufficiency (the other two being an internal frame of reference and leadership—go back to your copy of The Tao of Dating e-book if you've forgotten, (or if you’re reading here for the first time).

Okay, back to the letter. Let's see what else our good man Jeremy does right:

"Anyway, before I left, I got her to give me her e-mail (she said she never gives out her phone number, which I didn't ask for anyway)."

Good work here. When you have a positive interaction with a woman you like, capture the value of the interaction by getting information that allows you to follow up. This means getting contact information at some point. Jeremy got the e-mail, which is good. He also didn't sweat it when she didn't put her phone number down, which is also the right thing to do. Remember, she's either a customer already—or she's not. You're never going to *persuade* her to like you.

Which reminds me of a story (I’ve got oodles). The other day, I was reading an article by this very intelligent, famously beautiful woman. And I thought to myself, "Self, how would you get her?"

The answer came to me almost immediately: you CAN'T. Especially if she's obviously hot and well-known, she's going to have literally thousands of men after her. If you try to compete with the hordes, you've already lost.

Recall Sun-Tzu: "The battle is already won or lost before the first blow is struck."

The harder you try to rise above the noise to make her like you, the more you are doing the wrong thing: chasing her.

Well, exceptionally beautiful women end up with somebody eventually. Who are these guys?

The answer is simple: they're the guys that *the women* want. The guys the women had to chase down themselves.

So how do you make an exceptionally beautiful woman want you?

By making her come to you, that's how. And it's actually true of any woman, not just really pretty ones.

I was at a rock concert recently, where thousands of women were screaming for this skinny, not terribly handsome singer. Why?

Because he was the cause of a set of intense feelings for all those women. He had been giving these women those feelings for years.

Which brings us to another big Tao of Dating concept. There's something that people forget about these rock stars. They think, "Oh, he's successful with women because he's a rock star." Yes, but he's successful because he's spent all this time and energy GIVING.

The Universal Law is that if you want more of something, give more of it away. The rock star is giving away passion, love and intensity, all in the form of music. Which is why he gets a lot of that stuff back.

So become a giving machine. If you do it with expectation of return, it doesn't work so well. If you do it because the giving is its own reward, it works a lot better.

What will happen is that you will get so into the giving groove that you'll be suffused with a contentment that everyone (including women) will see from a mile away. People will gravitate towards you and just want to hang around you. In large quantities.

And the supreme irony of it all is that at that point, it won't really matter that much to you. Because you will already have that feeling that you were seeking all along—fulfillment. That's where I want you to be as a result of studying and implementing The Tao of Dating.

But, I digress. Right now we're trying to get the girl's number, so we'll stick to that for the moment. Up until now, our hero was doing very well. Now let's look at the next sentence:

"Question: How long do you think I should wait to e-mail her, and should I try to get her number right away—with the first e-mail? What are some good e-mail techniques to get women to give you their phone numbers?"

Here is where the battle is lost. There are several implications to his line of questioning here:

1) He's more worried about losing her than gaining her.
This goes directly against wealth-consciousness. If you focus on losing her, that's what you're going to get. If you focus on the amazing amount of fun you're going to have together, that's likely what you'll get. Your pick.

2) He cares what she thinks.
In doing so, our good man Jeremy is violating the first rule of attitude (from Chapter 5 of The Tao of Dating e-book): "I will not give excess importance to what someone else thinks or says."

3) He's more focused on what he can get than what he can give.
We already talked about that. Be the giving machine.

And...
4) There exists a technique that will get women to do things they would otherwise not want to do.
Unless coerced, a woman will never do something she would not already want to do. Is there any technique that will make you give me your wallet? Your left kidney? Jump off a cliff? Join a cult? Well, same for women. You have either already done the things that will make her want to give her number to you willingly (in business-speak, she's already a 'customer'), or you haven't.

"Before you can ask for something, you must wait for it to be given."

What you *can* do, however, is get out of your own way by NOT doing something blatantly counterproductive. A woman who likes you will make it very, very easy for you to get closer to her—trust me on that. They are exceptionally forgiving that way.

A good way to make it easy for a woman to give her your phone number in any situation is to make it incidental to a shared goal. For example, if you both want to go see a movie, it makes sense for you to exchange numbers so you can find each other at the mall where the movie is playing. Or, if you're giving her complicated directions to somewhere, it may be easier to do it over the phone. And, if anything, make *her* work for your phone number, not the other way around.

The phone number is merely a means to an end, the end being greater ability to communicate. We forget that sometimes. And if she's not giving it—no worries. She's not your customer, which leaves you free to move on.

That's all for now. As always, I'm interested in your stories and feedback. I do my best to answer all of them personally, so please keep them short—150 words max. Put 'Story', 'Success' or 'Testimonial' in the subject line so I know to get to you quick-like. You can reach me at dralex@thetaoofdating.com.

The power is within you,
Dr Alex
www.thetaoofdating.com