Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Acclaim
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One: Find the Guy
1. Put the Odds in Your Favour and Don’t Leave Your Love Life to Chance
2. Being a Woman of High Value
3. Get a Social Life That Serves Your Love Life
4. The Mindset of the Chooser
5. The Traits of Desirable Women
6. The White-Handkerchief Approach
7. From Great Conversation to First Date
8. The Joy of Text
9. A Word About Online Dating
Part Two: Get the Guy
10. The Ultimate Formula for Attraction
11. A Word About Insecurity
12. The Art of Creating the Great Date
13. Sex Talk (Part I)
14. Stuck in the Friend Trap
15. Why Hasn’t He Called?
16. Premature Obligation
Part Three: Keep the Guy
17. How to Be the Woman of His Dreams
18. Is He Mr Right?
19. What Guys Really Think About the C-Word
20. Sex Talk (Part II)
21. If You Want Him to Commit
22. Love for Life
Get the Guy Details
About the Author
Index
Copyright
Eva Longoria
Use the Secrets of the Male Mind to Find, Attract and Keep Your Ideal Man
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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www.penguin.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Matthew Hussey 2013
Matthew Hussey has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact,
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with
reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize
for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the
appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448152551
ISBN 9780593070758
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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The greatest gift of my life has been the self-belief instilled by so many who have believed in me as an individual. There are many more than I can list here, but I’ve done my best to name a few.
Family first. My parents, who told me I was great long before there was any legitimate reason to do so. My dad Steve, who taught me what it was to take risks and never stop trying, and my mum Pauline, the master of empathy and sensitivity. Both skill sets have been equally important in getting here today. They will always be my best friends in the world. My youngest brother Harry, whose pride in me means more than he knows, and whose effortless genius will always amaze me. My middle brother Stephen, who worked tirelessly to co-write this book with me and treated it as if it were his own. An immensely talented writer who did me an enormous favour by being with me till the end.
Edward Whitehead, my right-hand man, without whom I would be lost. A young and disgustingly bright colleague and friend for whom I am grateful every single day.
Those who have helped over the years with the content and ideas behind this book: Raphael Dworkin, Sloane Delancer, David Dipper, Kathryn Bilverstone, Richard La Ruina, Adam Lyons, Michael Roche.
The team at Get the Guy past and present: Raj Khedun, John Ross, Siobhan Robinson (my angel!), Rhen A. Khong, Martin Hetzel, Monica Millares, Kim Zaninovich, Seema Gulrajani, Lucy Counter, Andrew Baker, Kelvin Ke, John Maguire, Chandima Nethisinghe, Ivana Nemcova, Stephen Costello, Adam Abdulla, Doug Haines, Bie Hernando, Jamela Mundell, Daiyaan Ghani, all of whom over the years in one way or another helped me reach millions of women worldwide through Get the Guy.
My mentors along the way: Justin Howard, who gave me my first office floor to sleep on. My dad, the person I can go to any time of day for help, advice, and motivation. Richard La Ruina, who gave me the opportunity to shine when nobody knew who I was.
My book agents, Heather Holden-Brown, Elly James at HHB Agency and Richard Pine at Inkwell Management, all of whom delivered exactly what they promised and more.
My publisher Michelle Signore and her team at Transworld, for first believing in this book’s potential and being part of my journey.
My publisher and mentor Karen Rinaldi and her team at HarperCollins, including her assistant, Jake Zebede; publicity director Tina Andreadis (the biggest cheerleader I could hope for) and Kate Blum; Leah Wasielewski, Mark Ferguson and Katie O’Callahan for all their help with the marketing of this book.
Karen Karbo, the wonderful and caring writer who came on board to work with me in the late stages of the book. Her nurturing and gentle nature was the perfect complement to my often heavy-handed approach.
The journalists who have written honest and fair reviews of my work over the years, including Alison Tay, Katie Mulloy, Nicki Bailey.
My dear friends at Creative Visionaries, Jon Turteltaub, Simon Edington, Kathy Eldon, Amy Eldon, Michael Bender and Catherine Cunningham, who have taken me on a rollercoaster ride through the United States which led to me getting a show on NBC.
Everyone who has made my TV career possible: Sean Perry and Ivo Fischer at WME; David Garfinkle and Jay Renfroe at Renegade Productions; Virginia Hill at Gogglebox Entertainment; Jason Ehrlich, Peter Higgins, Susan House, Greg Goldman, Louise Roe, Philomena Muinzer, Bill and Giuliana Rancic, Eva Longoria, Camilo Valdes and Sloane Delancer.
My favourite schoolteachers, Mr Dunn and Mr Haskett, who taught me what it is to teach with heart.
All as important as anyone on this list, my clients over the years, many of whom are now dear friends. You have all taught me so much about life and human nature. Without you none of this would have been possible.
Lastly, the friends and family along the way: Billy, Kasey, Danny, Sam, Shirley, Uncle Pete, Jamie, Michael Gendi. Thanks to Ollie Powell for making sure I didn’t fail university while building my business. And thanks to those who have kept me sane: Ian Austin, Clive Nichol, Rob Unterhalter, Richard Pentecost, Bobby ‘Bistro’ Bull, Will Gilburt, Rory Barker and all the others I have no room to list. I love you all!
LOVE IS HARD.
You love someone who doesn’t love you back. You fall out of love with a guy you thought you’d love for ever. Someone you love disappoints you. Or he leaves you. You fall for someone, hard, then you never hear from him again. You’ve been burned, shut out, heartbroken.
Even at the best of times, love can be traumatizing, like being punched in the gut. But isn’t it amazing that although love sucks, we still want it in our lives? We patch up our hearts and go forth, hoping to find our real true love. Why? Why risk it all again? Because nothing feels as good as being in love. There is nothing better than lying in bed on a Sunday morning with someone who drives you wild. Nothing like the sound of your beloved’s voice when he simply says hello. There is no business opportunity, no promotion, no holiday, no amount of money that makes our hearts swell so.
Whatever your experiences with guys have been in the past, I know the odds are you will go out and try to find love again. This time, though, I’d like you to go back out with the tools and techniques that will help guarantee success in finding the man of your dreams.
So often I hear, ‘Where are all the good men?’ They’re all around you! The problem is that you’re not meeting them, simply because you haven’t given yourself the opportunity to meet them. I’m not talking about meeting every player who’s wagging his tongue at you from across the bar, but someone up to your standards, who’s worth your time and attention.
Finding a guy isn’t just about finding a guy. It’s about living a life that engages you at every level and by extension creates opportunities for you to connect with many people. Some may well be guys you date, and one may be the man of your dreams. The real benefit to the techniques I teach is about raising the level at which you live your life. Women who live passionate lives are inherently sexy and attractive.
What I teach in this book is how you can be proactive in your love life without seeming desperate or easy, and how you choose the men you want to meet, but still get them to do the chasing. Most of all, I’ll show you how to do this naturally, so that you never have to play games again.
When I was just starting to notice girls, I used to wonder how other guys always seemed to be able to get the girl they wanted, and I somehow always ended up with whoever would have me. It drove me mad.
Even at a young age, I knew that there were rules of attraction that eluded me. The frustration I felt for my own lack of prowess sent me in search of ways to teach myself how to become acquainted with the girls to whom I was attracted, how to talk to them, how to attract them and how to win them.
Over the years, I became more confident and successful. I believed I had tapped into something I could share with others, and I started to coach other guys on how to do the same for themselves. My coaching business grew quickly, and over the course of a few years I worked with more than ten thousand guys on how to attract women. By trying to overcome my own limitations, I wound up developing a widespread reputation throughout the UK for helping men with their love lives. I was featured in a major documentary, and dubbed a real-life Hitch in the press, after the 2005 romantic comedy starring Will Smith as a professional ‘date doctor’.
One day I was giving a talk to a room full of three hundred guys, and to break the ice I asked, ‘So, who here wants to get laid?’ There wasn’t a single woman in the room. There was no reason for them to be anything but honest. You would think they would all raise their hands. What guy doesn’t want to get laid, right? But only 60 per cent of them raised their hands. Then I asked, ‘Who here wants to find a great relationship?’ And do you know what happened? Every single hand in the room went up.
It turns out that men want what women want: a lasting, meaningful relationship.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that show of hands. ‘If women knew this about men,’ I thought, ‘it might make them feel more optimistic about finding true love.’
At first, the thought of coaching women seemed daunting. How could I possibly understand the mind of a woman from a woman’s point of view? Why would anyone listen to me? I’m a guy. How could I possibly help? But then the idea struck me that I knew what men were thinking. I had spent years hearing, coaching and learning about what makes guys tick and what they are looking for. And, of course, I can certainly relate to them. What if I took all of that acquired intelligence and shared it with women so they could use it to find love? I could help them to get noticed, to get dates and to expect to be treated with respect. Perhaps I could even help them to get the proposal of marriage so many of my female friends thought was out of reach.
I created some basic and practical steps for women to follow and then hosted a small gathering for the women in my life. At this meeting, I distilled and divulged what I’d learned about the way men think, and how they could use this to their advantage. We worked on elegant techniques the women could use to influence men without ever looking as if they were doing anything. I offered subtle ways in which they could be proactive in their love lives, ways that would slip completely under a guy’s radar, so that they could choose the man they wanted and orchestrate his attraction.
The key to making it all work is the importance of striking the perfect balance between being proactive and being ‘high value’. (There’s plenty in this book on the subject of being a high-value woman. More about that later.)
I had no idea how this would all go down, but my friends were floored. They’d never heard these things before, and certainly never from a guy. In some ways, I felt as if I was betraying my own sex by coming over to ‘fight for the other side’, but I really wanted to help my female friends. Even though I believed every word of what I told these women, what happened next was crazy.
Within the next week my single friends began getting dates with men who appealed to them. Those in relationships started saying their boyfriends were treating them with more respect and admiration and seemed to find them more attractive. Men who had never said, ‘I love you’ started saying it for the first time; one even proposed when previously he had said he never would. Three months later, the women who’d been single were in relationships with guys they adored.
Word spread. Women I didn’t know started calling me, asking for advice. Emails flooded my inbox from women with dating and relationship questions. I began conducting private coaching sessions. Every week, I’d receive phone calls at all hours of the night from women in far-flung time zones.
This was the beginning of what would be a year-long journey of working with fifty thousand women in Get the Guy events, and with millions online, to help them find love. Through Get the Guy, I now host everything from weekend events aimed at transforming women’s love lives, to five-day retreats held all over the world. The contents of this book are the result of what I have been thinking about, teaching and refining over the past four years.
During my Get the Guy weekend courses, I give women the A-to-Z on everything they need to know, from where to meet the right guys and how to attract them, to how to make the guy they’ve chosen desire a relationship that will last a lifetime. I’ve utilized thousands of real-life case studies to road-test every technique and theory. My mission is to convey every piece of secret information about men that I have been privy to and share it with women to transform their love lives.
The evening of the first day of the weekend, I send these women out into the world with a simple mission to practise everything they’ve learned that day. They talk, flirt and have fun in ways they’ve never experienced. The next morning they return to the seminar and recount their stories. Women who haven’t had a date in years tell of how they already have several dates set up for the next week. It is my hope that you will do the same after reading this book.
‘Get the guy’ is meant to be a double entendre. It will help you land a mate, if that’s what you desire, but it will also help you ‘get’ the guy – to understand how men think, what they really want, how they view women, relationships, sex and commitment. It must be said, though, that even though I reveal a lot of secrets about the male mind, this book isn’t about guys; it’s about you.
I’m not here to lecture you, I’m a far cry from perfect in this area myself. I make mistakes just like anyone else (they usually come from not following my own advice!). I’m here to help as your personal insider. The guy in your corner. There’s nothing I say here that isn’t designed to help you. Some of it might strike you as a little blunt, but were I writing a book for men I would be just as direct about what they should be doing to find women, and believe me, the book would be much longer. Whilst I can’t help you by telling you what’s wrong with men, I can help by telling you how to utilize men’s needs and desires to find the one worthy of your love. At times it may also feel as though there is a lot I’m telling you to do, but trust me when I say if you do but 20 per cent of what is in this book you will be doing more than most ever will. So don’t be overwhelmed, my only desire is to give you as much of what I have learned as possible. It is up to you to take on the information that is most important to you.
I know there is a lot of information out there about how to improve your love life. There’s the makeover crowd, who focus on fixing your appearance to the exclusion of your behaviour, and the therapy crowd, who delve into your deepest psychological and emotional barriers to help you overcome obstacles. These are the shallow and deep ends of the spectrum and may well have value. But what you really need to know are the logistics of finding, meeting and getting the guy, and then what to do with him once you’ve found him.
With a proper model, you will be successful. No matter who you are, what you look like, what you do for work, whether you’ve been married before, whether you have kids, whether you’re shy or outgoing, tall or short, blonde or redhead, you can have the kind of love life you desire. It has nothing to do with luck or fate or Cupid coming along with bow and arrow. Your love life is not determined by romantic notions and magical thinking, but rather by a set of conditions that everyone and anyone can create.
My model is based on three basic ideas, which form the foundation of my philosophy:
The parts and chapters of the book are organized to build a practice of techniques behind finding the guy, getting the guy and keeping the guy.
‘Find the Guy’ will teach you how to meet more men, get them to approach you, and engage in conversations that will tell you within minutes whether you want to get to know them better. This part of the book focuses primarily on how to increase your odds of meeting the right guy. While some of it may seem daunting, it’s the millimetre shifts in behaviour that transform our lives and love lives.
‘Get the Guy’ deals with methods for creating attraction and deepening your connection to find out if this is a guy you want in your life.
Finally, ‘Keep the Guy’ focuses on the work that we all have to do when we finally find the love of our life. You will learn that the theories that apply in the beginning are also relevant at the end. The practices you develop and hold dear will help you to enjoy the love life you’ve been hoping for.
One last note: as you go through the book you’ll see display boxes called ‘Video Alerts’. Each one contains links to online videos that are designed to help you visualize the techniques in the book. If you don’t have online access, or you are not inclined to move off the page, the book stands on its own.
However, I wanted to give you just that little bit extra, so I have taken snippets from my live seminars – which women fly from all over the world to attend – and strategically ordered them in the members’ area online. In these videos, I speak directly to you with the hope that your reading experience is enhanced, and you get the most from this guy.
If you’d like to get started with these videos immediately, go to www.gettheguybook.com/members and enter the code gtgbook. I’ve done everything I can to help ensure your success, now you just need to commit to the programme. And here is my promise to you: if you read this book, watch the videos and truly put the advice into practice, you will meet more guys, your love life will improve, and ultimately so will your life. What are we waiting for?
To the ultimate
high-value woman,
my mum
FIND THE GUY
GET THE GUY
KEEP THE GUY
At Get The Guy we offer a number of coaching options for women wanting to gain a better understanding of men, and ultimately to find, attract and keep their dream guy.
We all know that just studying something won’t get us what we want. This book is a great start, but it’s only the beginning. Here are some useful links to everything I can do to guide you in the next steps of your love life …
Our events are your opportunity to come and meet the team in person, unite with other incredible women in an amazing atmosphere, and achieve the results you’ve been looking for in the fastest and most enjoyable way possible. They range from one-day events to five-day transformative retreats in exotic locations.
You can find our full calendar of events here:
www.gettheguybook.com/events
If you’re not able to come and see us at a live event, this is the place to get your hands on our courses without having to open your front door. Here you’ll find video programmes on meeting men, relationships and commitment, online dating, and even your professional life. They are all set up for you to be able to start right now.
www.gettheguybook.com/products
If you’d like to inquire about booking Matthew or one of his speakers for a private or corporate event globally, please feel free to contact us:
www.gettheguybook.com/speaking
HOW MANY GUYS DO you meet in an average week?
And when I say ‘meet’, I refer to a genuine social interaction, where you engage with a man, eye contact and all, for anywhere from five minutes of chatting to a full two-hour conversation. But it has to be a conversation, not just collecting your mail from the postman (unless of course he’s new and you turn him into a new social connection).
If your answer is ‘None,’ or even ‘One,’ how long do you think it’s going to take you to meet the guy? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt: let’s say you meet one new man every week. How long will it take to meet Mr Right if in an average week you are meeting only one new man? I’m not a mathematician but the odds are pretty long. What makes them even longer is that these interactions are probably happening by chance, and certainly not because they are men you have selected yourself.
This isn’t the case for only you. If I asked the same question of a male reader, the number would be just as small. Both sexes are guilty of leaving their love lives to chance. Blame it on the fairy tales read to us as kids, blame it on Hollywood, but the fact remains that we’ve come to believe that true love is the product of fate. We’ve all been led to believe that someday it will just ‘happen’, that one day fate will drop the person of our dreams right next to us while we’re standing at a red light. The fate-will-bring-me-love approach lacks urgency, which leads to lack of action. We assume that ‘when the time is right’ the right guy will come along, and in the meantime we focus on our work, our ambitions, our families, our friends, our hobbies. That’s not to say that these are not all highly fulfilling aspects of your life in their own right, but I want to help you understand how within these essential parts of your life are opportunities to find the man of your dreams. When people focus on these parts in isolation from their love life, years pass, and one day this lack of urgency turns into panic. We become frantic as we realize that not only is nothing happening in our love life, but we are at a loss as to how to make it happen, which of course leads to more panic, creating a loop of frustration, at best, or hopelessness at worst. You may be reading this book because you keep asking yourself (and perhaps your sisters, girlfriends and colleagues), ‘Where are all the good men to be found?’ If you’re gradually coming to the realization that fate isn’t co-operating, you might be on the verge of seeing that you’re going to have to be proactive. You are going to have to go out and find him.
And how do you find him?
It’s a very simple principle: To meet more men you have to, er, meet more men!
A word of encouragement before you set out to meet the man of your dreams: life is full of people who wait. They wait for the right moment to approach someone, or wait for someone to approach them first. They wait for someone to show enough interest so they don’t risk being rejected, they wait to be invited and wait to make a move. They wait to feel confident before taking action. Wait, wait, wait, for everything.
‘Waiters’ imagine they are playing it safe, but more often than not, only two things come to those who wait: the wrong thing, or nothing.
Ask yourself: ‘Right now, at this very moment, am I waiting or am I creating? Am I taking the positive steps that will give me results in my love life?’ (If your answer is no, take heart: simply by reading this book you are already taking action, seeking the knowledge that will enable you to make the changes necessary for rapid progress.)
There’s an added benefit to taking your life into your own hands: when we know we are doing everything in our power to improve our situation, we can be content even if the results aren’t immediate. The knowledge that we are moving forward, improving and developing in a significant way, is what makes humans happy.
Wherever you feel you are right now, you still have a choice: you can wait or you can create.
There is only one way to wait: just do nothing. But there are thousands of ways to create, so the opportunities are endless.
Video Alert Start Creating Now
I’ve produced a special video to help you start creating. Go to the members’ area page.
Go to: www.gettheguybook.com/create
Access code: gtgbook
I know your goal is not to meet as many men as possible, but to meet your man, the one who is going to add more meaning to your life. Setting aside for a moment the logic that you can’t meet your man if you don’t meet any men, there is another reason to throw the net wide.
Let’s say that you meet only one man in three years. You might think he is fine, or, even better, good, or even perfect for you. But since you have nothing to compare him to, you risk settling for less than you deserve. No one is perceptive enough to call it correctly with only one option.
As much as you might love to act like a marksman, picking out a single target, taking aim and shooting, you can’t just pick your ideal man out of the crowd with Cupid’s single shot. I suspect you’ve already discovered that, even when you think you’ve hit the bull’s-eye, you have instead missed the mark completely! A single shot does not allow you to choose the best for yourself. And you never, ever want to settle.
If you want to have a better chance of finding the right guy, you have to begin with meeting more men from whom he can be chosen. Not one more, not two more, but A LOT more. The more men you meet, the more you increase your chances of finding the right one.
Imagine attending a party where there are two hundred men in the room. Out of these two hundred guys, how many would you feel even remotely attracted to? Maybe twenty? Out of these twenty there might only be ten with whom you felt enough attraction to consider a first date. From these remaining ten, how many would you feel sufficient chemistry with to want to date again? Five? And from these five last men standing, there may be only one with whom you could deeply connect. Many might say that even these figures are wildly optimistic. In which case, how long will it take to find your guy if you’re meeting only one new man each week? Anywhere from four years to – you won’t live that long. In this scenario, you’re left relying on fate, which we’ve already established is the same as waiting. Waiting for fate to bring you love is like staking your financial future on the Lottery. And the Lottery is a lousy way to get rich.
I’m not a mind reader, but I do have quite a bit of experience hearing directly from women some common complaints about men, which simply are not true. I want to share a collection of stubborn myths about guys and love that refuse to go away. These mad and bad beliefs do us no good, and only hold us back:
Every single one of these is a myth. Sadly, they are not only false, but dangerous to hold on to, and often become excuses for all that is wrong in our love life.
Most of us have had painful experiences in love. It’s one of life’s biggest, most unforgettable feelings. Love hurts. But when we have been let down by someone, we have to be careful not to let those moments, however awful, become our sole reference point for future relationships.
I’ll make you a deal. If you set aside all the myths and generalizations, if you adopt the right mindset, if you set aside whatever bad experiences you may have had with men and refuse to allow these things to colour your judgement, I will reveal to you all the facets and secrets of the male mind, the good, the bad and all of the things he desires from the woman in his life.
Now that you are committed to expanding your options by meeting a lot more men, I am going to offer a proven system, a method for all of this man-meeting. It is a process best visualized as a series of funnels.
The first funnel is the largest, into which you pour all of the new men you meet. (We’ll get to the part about how you are going to meet all these new men in a few pages … stay with me.) The funnel acts as a filter, and only the guys you’re attracted to pass through to the second funnel.
The second funnel then filters out all the guys you don’t want to date. These would be the guys who may seem attractive at first glance, but you don’t have sufficient immediate chemistry with them to want to make real time for them. This would allow only those guys with whom you’re genuinely interested in spending time to drop into the third funnel. Only a select few will pass into the fourth funnel, those who are worth more than just one date. Of course the final filtering will result in finding the guy with whom you want a relationship. We will dig into that process in the second and third parts of the book. For now, we are simply getting you to the place of opportunity.
The process is clear and obvious, but there is one important principle I want to emphasize: the first funnel is where we are least selective. The first funnel is not about attraction. It is about meeting new people, both men and women.
The first funnel is about getting out there. It’s about joining the human race. It’s about practising conversation and flirting. It is about interacting and entertaining and allowing ourselves to be entertained. Out into the world you go, with the goal of meeting as many guys as possible, so that you have more guys to pour into the first funnel. Pouring only three guys into that first funnel makes it highly unlikely that the right guy will come out the other end. Pouring in every guy who doesn’t strike you as a potential serial killer makes your chances much higher that at the end the right one will emerge.
Part of the reason you’re tossing every guy into the first funnel is to create the habit of giving a lot of guys a chance, early on. Most of us are so focused on meeting The One that we wind up not meeting anyone. If I could, I would tattoo this on your palm: Every interaction with another human being is a possible gateway to some new world or experience, which could, in turn, introduce you to the love of your life.
There are other good reasons to meet as many men as you can:
When you meet lots of men, you put less focus on any one man. Approaching your love life from a position of abundance rather than scarcity helps to put the odds in your favour. It is making simple economics work for you.
As much as you might be agonizing over one guy, always remember, men are 50 per cent of the population. You are not the luckiest woman in the world when you meet one you like, and you aren’t the unluckiest woman in the world when the guy you like doesn’t like you back. Scarcity makes us settle. It encourages us to believe that there aren’t many good guys out there, which in turn makes us invest far too much in the first decent man we do meet, even if he’s far from being the right one. At its worst, belief in scarcity will cause you to settle. Abundance, on the other hand, leads to choice and confidence. Abundance comes when we start increasing the number of men going into that first funnel. As soon as you heartily believe that there are plenty of men out there, you can adopt an easy come, easy go attitude and begin to have fun with all of this.
Make talking to new people a habit and it will do wonders for increasing your basic social skills, which in turn will boost your confidence. You will find yourself creating attraction simply by becoming more at ease engaging with someone you don’t know or who you’ve just met. This happens simply by doing it more often, and applies not only for men but for anyone at all: women, children, young and old. If you are in the habit of meeting more people in general, it will by default lead you to meet more men. Why do you think you revert back to a being a blushing, nervous schoolgirl when that hot guy approaches you? Because you’re out of practice. If you’ve never developed your skills by talking to everyone, you can’t instantly summon your best, most confident self for the ‘hot’ guy.
The more new men you meet, the more you’ll have to choose from. It will allow you to be selective. We should all be extremely fussy about love, considering the significance our relationships have on the quality of our lives. The person we spend most of our time with, are intimate with, share our life with, and who we trust the most needs to be extraordinary for us specifically. There are extraordinary people everywhere, but it will take some filtering to find that certain someone who fills your particular needs and desires. Logically, then, to find that special person, you will need to increase your chances of success by meeting many men from whom to choose.
The idea of treating our love life like a large filter system might not seem the most romantic approach to the dating process; but as we’ve seen, leaving it to fate also leaves us with no sense of control in our lives. The fact that we can apply workable strategies to create the results we want doesn’t make our love, once we find it, any less real, meaningful, sexy or romantic.
Yes, I know. Some people do get lucky.
I once knew a young woman named Jane who, while sitting in her first college class waiting for the lecturer to arrive, met the love of her life. An attractive and friendly young man happened to sit down right next to her. They joked together, and went for coffee after the lecture. A month later they were seeing each other regularly and ultimately began a relationship that lasted throughout her university years. She told all her friends that he was The One. She envisaged getting married at twenty-five, with kids to follow a couple of years later. She had it all planned out. Her friends were a little envious. They wondered how it was so easy for her.
Then one day, Jane’s boyfriend, The One, told her he needed to do his own thing for a while. He wasn’t ready for marriage, and though he loved her there was so much more he felt he needed to do before settling down. All of a sudden, at twenty-five, Jane found herself back in the dating game, heartbroken and wondering where and how she would ever meet someone again.
She patiently waited for another Mr Right to come along, but nothing happened. She daydreamed that perhaps the guy sitting at the next desk at her new job would be attractive and friendly and introduce himself, just as her first love did. Then, when she began the job, not only was the guy at the next desk neither friendly nor attractive, he didn’t even bother to make conversation. She spent Friday and Saturday nights going out with her friends, talking about how impossible it was to find someone like the man she once had. Jane has spent years waiting for another Mr Wonderful to approach her again and sweep her off her feet. Jane won the lottery of love at eighteen and spent seven years enjoying the winnings. But at twenty-five she was bankrupt, only this time she was seven years on without any idea how to get back out there. Because her limited experience had taught her that the right man was supposed to sit down next to you and start a relationship with you on an unexpected day, she had no skills to make it happen.
Most lottery winners (even those who win millions) find a way to go broke again. And when they do go broke, they don’t know how to make that money again because when it happened the first time it was by pure chance. They have no formula they can replicate. Those who are successful in business, on the other hand, know that going broke isn’t the end of the world. They have the skills to get back into the game and create something from nothing, and know that waiting will get them nowhere. Likewise, those who know how to go out and find a relationship don’t panic when they’re single.
Rituals are the best-kept secret of anyone who has ever succeeded in business, love, fitness, family life, learning a foreign language or any other area. A ritual is an ‘action or type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed’, or an action that is repeated continuously in the same way. Rituals are usually enacted for positive results. Incorporating rituals creates a positive association, which in turn results in a positive outcome. Keith Cunningham is a wealth mentor and I often quote his simple but effective mantra: ‘Ordinary things done consistently produce extraordinary results.’ This is as true in our love life as in every other aspect of our lives.
The rituals that we are looking at here are designed specifically to help you meet more men.
Increasing the number of new men you meet each week from, say, one, to three or four would have a dramatic impact on your love life in just a few months. Meeting four more new men each week would be enough to take meeting 0–50 men a year to meeting over two hundred, which would totally transform the entire landscape of your dating.
How would your life have to change right now if you set yourself the challenge of meeting two hundred new guys in the next twelve months? Not dating two hundred guys, just meeting two hundred. Some of them might lead to dates, but for now, imagine it’s just starting a five-minute conversation with two hundred new guys this year. What would you have to do differently? How would you have to spend your time differently from the way you spend it now?
Sustainable change is rarely created by one huge action with dramatic results. In fact, it’s just the opposite. What is essential is that we make this process natural and easy to assimilate, so that our love life takes care of itself while still letting us go about our normal routine. Since it is so easy to make small changes for a big return, you can take control of your love life, beginning today.
I get frustrated by those TV shows that take a girl with no confidence, no social life, who has difficulty finding a relationship, and claim they are going to give her an instant total makeover and turn her into a new woman. They then busy themselves changing her make-up, hairstyle and wardrobe – all of which results only in a change in appearance.
The implication is that all that was missing from her life was that her look needed updating. I have nothing against working on how we look: rituals that maintain our health, fitness and physical appearance have great value, but on their own these will produce no more than a small shift in our love life. It may be a positive step forward, but it’s still a baby step.
The effects of such a makeover are temporary. It works on our external appearance and might look like a big transformation on screen, but it doesn’t target the changes in behaviour that really make the difference. Yes, I know it can be great TV, but no speedy external makeover addresses the greater task at hand of finding (and keeping) the right man for you.
So, what are those rituals that will put you on the right path to your man? And how do you enact them? Read on.
The key is to learn how to create conversations everywhere we go. Here are some rituals we can implement to ensure that we constantly exercise these social muscles. Even exchanges seemingly unrelated to our love life have a cumulative effect on our confidence and our ease with spontaneous interactions.
Make a habit of talking to everyone who serves you: waiting staff, baristas, salespeople, doormen, the delivery man. This is great practice, especially if you’re shy, because talking to you is part of their job. Try to make every conversation go one step further: aim to get their names, or find out where they live, or one simple fact about them.
You can always ask anyone in any situation, ‘How’s your day going?’ When he replies, follow up with another question, a comment about the weather or even a compliment. Tell him something nice about his smile for no reason other than to make him feel good. If he has an accent, ask where he’s from. If it’s Friday, ask him if he’s doing anything fun this weekend. Ask him to recommend his favourite cake for you to have with your coffee, or ask him if he can make one of those artistic designs on the cappuccino foam.
Service staff are supposed to be nice to you, so take advantage of it. It’s great practice and it will make their day – and yours – so much better.
Whether it’s the guy who hands out the towels at the gym, the person who serves you lunch or the security guard at your office, make a mission to get a new name from someone every day.
Set this new ritual: ‘I have to speak to anyone I see holding a book I have read or want to read.’ Comment on it or ask if they’ve read any of the author’s other books. You could simply ask if they are enjoying it or whether they would recommend it.