Your emotional state is an important thing to learn to control. It takes time to learn to do so, and to a certain degree, we’re not entirely in control of our emotions.
If someone is about to attack you or one of your loved ones, go ahead and try not to get an adrenaline rush! It takes an incredibly disciplined person to maintain a level head under high pressure circumstances.
One of the ways this can be very challenging is when interacting with a woman you’re very attracted to. If you’re like most men, when interacting with a woman you feel strongly about, it’s hard to keep your cool. You get inside your head and start doubting. Your movements aren’t as free flowing.
How about when interacting with a woman you’re only “so so” attracted to, or not at all? You don’t care. You’re not trapped in your head. You don’t overthink little moves like taking a sip of your water with your weaker arm!
Isn’t that funny? Have you ever done that? I have. I’ve been really nervous around a girl and been like, “Better use my trusty right hand to take a sip of this water. Wouldn’t want her to see a slight tremble from my left hand.”
A lot of these little insecurities seem to get better over time. I don’t second guess myself as much anymore. I don’t really care who likes me or what others think, in a healthy way. I don’t “defiantly” not care what anyone thinks.
I just have a healthy respect and comfort in the person I am today.
Where were we? Ah, yes! Controlling our emotions!
Have you ever heard that emotions are contagious? I think to a certain degree they are. It depends on the person you’re dealing with. Some people are very rooted in who they are and your emotions are not contagious. They may be happy, sad, angry, or whatever emotion and they’re good about filtering out other peoples’ emotional states.
To a large degree though, emotions are contagious and we tend to be aware of the emotional ups and downs of those around us. Coworkers, family members, and friends can rub their emotional states off on us.
Even if you’re dealing with someone that is not easily swayed by the emotional swirling of those around them, being in a nervous state of mind, overthinking things, and being hypervigilant isn’t a good look. It’s at least not a good look to be chronically in those negative states.
There are many different ways to learn to control your emotions, but for simplicity, let’s look at two broad ways of getting the upper hand on your internal state. I want to focus more on the inner game for a change. I’m a big proponent of action based learning and I think inner tactics to improve our love life should be used in a supplementary way.
Nonetheless, let’s first look at the action based approach.
As it pertains to learning to control your emotions, simply put, the more attractive women that you interact with, the more you’ll become comfortable doing so.
Taken a step further, it’s not enough to just interact with them. You have to get to the point where you’re actually trying to win. By trying to win I mean making them attracted to you, flirting, and putting your best foot forward.
It’s one thing to get comfortable interacting with women. It’s another thing to actually get your game on, right?
That’s literally all the time I want to spend talking about the action based approach in this post. Many more action based blog posts coming in the future!
So, the other way to control your emotions, is to do just that! Try to control your emotions from the inside out!
How? There are many ways to do this, but here’s a short process you can quickly work through.
When you’re feeling nervous, recognize it, first and foremost. “Ok, I’m nervous.”
You’d be surprised how much fear subsides just by saying “Hello” to it.
Second, ask yourself if your fear is rational. Do you have good reason to be nervous? Or are you getting nervous because you’ve made it a habit?
Has the woman given you a clear reason to be nervous? Being an attractive woman isn’t enough reason. Sorry. Read on.
If you’re like most men that have fear and nervousness with women, you’re not coming from a rational place. You’re likely repeating stories to yourself and viewing the world through those stories.
You remember that time you got shot down and it stung. You remember the dozens of times you’ve been shot down. Heck, maybe you’ve been shot down hundreds of times. You’re in good company! You have associated fear and self-doubt with interacting with attractive women.
The problem is when you’re inaccurately projecting those past experiences on the present moment. “This probably isn’t going to go well,” isn’t a great headspace to be in.
It may seem true based on your past experiences, but you’re never going to break free from that old pattern if you keep doing it! It’s a paradoxical self-fulfilling prophecy. You have to stop feeding those narratives. You need to starve them! It may take time.
This is the essence of step 3: Starve the “make believe” stories in your mind.
Really let that last idea sink in: You need to stop feeding the stories that are holding you down. You need to starve them for them to die off. I know you don’t want to because in your mind they’re true. Women that you’re attracted to don’t like you.
In your mind, cutting off those beliefs doesn’t make sense because they’ve been your experience. Why delete thoughts that are true? You’ve slotted those beliefs into the same category as 2 + 2 = 4, but they don’t belong in the same category, and the only way to begin moving yourself into a different reality is to choke the life out of those thoughts.
You have to attempt to let them go just like you need to stop poking a bruise, or picking a scab. You need to shift your focus like you do when the asshole at work is giving you shit. Sometimes you need to just walk away from him/her and let them think they’re right and let it go.
You’re the asshole at work when you reaffirm your stories of failure to yourself. Walk away from the asshole! Stop listening and shift your focus.
This takes practice. Reading up on different types of meditation and practicing is a good place to start, but ultimately you need to take that ability to clear your head that mediation teaches you and bring it with you when talking to women. It’s great to be able to achieve a very present clear state of mind while sitting on a couch. Even better when you can take that peace everywhere.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you reprogrammed your brain to feel positive and optimistic when interacting with attractive women? Mind you, I’m talking about women that you find attractive. I’m not here to judge what you’re attracted to and if it matches up with my preferences. When you see a woman that you’re attracted to, when you’re on a date, when you’re introduced to someone at a party and you feel the attraction smack you in the face, wouldn’t it be nice to at least have a neutral outlook and a neutral internal state?
Blind optimism can be just as detrimental to your results over the long run as blind pessimism. I’m 100% convinced of that. Too much optimism and we let our guard down. Too much pessimism and you never let it down. I’m a fan of finding that sweet spot where my positive and negative thoughts collide and annihilate each other. They cancel each other out and leave me feeling neutral and in the moment.
That’s where I want to be, in a clear and neutral headspace.
I do believe that learning to use positive affirmations is a good tool to have in your box, but it’s not the answer to everything. Perhaps I’ll write a post about positive affirmations at a later time. Many of you guys need to spend some time on that blind optimism end of the spectrum to balance yourself out.
Where were we again?
1) Recognize the fear.
2) Determine if your fears are rational.
3) Starve the negative thoughts. This is very difficult to do. I know. Many guys that struggle with women overthink things to death, so your tendency is going to be to want to figure out the negative thoughts. Certainly, do some self-evaluation, but I think, ultimately, you’re going to find that it’s a bottomless pit. The way to float back to the surface is to stop trying to think your way through the darkness. You have to just let go and stop trying to think your way out!
The fourth and final step is to be patient, recognize that it might take time to develop this habit, and be prepared for a little back and forth emotional tug of war. If you’ve been thinking negatively for a long time, it’s going to take repeated effort and focus to reprogram your emotional responses. Your emotions and thoughts are going to be constantly pulling you back to what you’re used to.
With repeated effort, you can break the spell though!
You’ll find yourself feeling very positive and connected to the moment and without even realizing it your unconscious programming can sneak up and snatch you back into a downward spiral. Just recognize it when it happens and bring yourself back to center. Over time, you’ll be able to stay present for longer and longer periods of time and the negative thought loops will lessen.
Sometimes my “present to not present” cycles are changing on a minute to minute basis. It’s a constant struggle. Back and forth we go! Other times, it seems like I can go for weeks or even months in a great emotional state and it’s not even hard. Easy!
1) Recognize and acknowledge that you’re afraid.
2) Are the fears rational? Should I listen to them?
3) Chances are “no” you should not, so you cut them out like a cancer.
4) We pull ourselves back to center when we slip back into our old ways. This is sometimes a moment to moment micro battle and other times it’s a longer-term war that we must win.
Simple 4 steps. They’ll become automatic in time if you internalize and practice them.
Being in the moment and being carefree is attractive. You become an oasis in a desert of worry. You’re a light in a dark world when you’re free of worry and concern. People are concerned and worried all the time. We all slip into it, even people that practice mindfulness and controlling their emotions. How does one not occasionally slip into a bad emotional state in this crazy world? I don’t know if it’s possible or even healthy to never worry about anything!
However, if you’re consistently and constantly nervous around women, you need to change that. To make a woman feel free of worry, you yourself have to be free of worry.
Remove her fears by being fearless yourself.
Attraction, sexual energy, and overall positive emotions flow better when you’re in a good emotional state.
You don’t try to convince the woman to feel present with you in a logical way. You don’t explain to her why she should be feeling good emotions.
You certainly don’t try to convince her to feel attraction for you, while you yourself are questioning your own attractiveness and overcome with worry and fear!
Break free and you’ll break her free!
Ok, I think that’s enough food for thought, for now.