Then there are the SLBs that repeat themselves in your mind after a missed opportunity. “Why did I freeze up? I’m such a loser! She seemed to like me, but I never get it right. I’ll never have a girlfriend. Why try? I’m worthless.”
You can have self-limiting beliefs about every aspect of dating. These include beliefs about you, about a particular woman, women in general, sex, and about the world in general.
•About You: “I’m too . . . . (fat, poor, shy, etc.)” “I’m not . . .. (rich, tall, young, etc.) enough.” “Attractive women don’t talk to me.” “I’m a loser.”
•About a particular woman: “She is so pretty, she probably has a boyfriend.” “She would only date a really successful guy.”
•About women in general: “Women have all the control.” “All women want a successful man.” “Women don’t like sex.” “All the good women are taken.”
•About sex: “I’m a bad man if I want sex.” “I don’t believe I can satisfy a woman.” “Women think men who want sex are bad.”
•About the world: “Good things happen to other people, not me.” “There is only so much to go around.” “It is only a matter of time until the other shoe drops.”
Becoming Aware of Self-Limiting Beliefs
Often in my seminars, I have the guys take turns being the class secretary and writing down class member’s SLBs as they come up. It is amazing how these self-limiting beliefs just pop out of guys’ mouths without them even being aware of them. I point them out and request that the “SLB secretary” write them down. Here are some of the ones that come up frequently:
•“A woman will think I’m hitting on her.”
•“People will think I’m a dirty old man.”
•“Women will think I’m sleazy.”
•“Women will think I’m a serial killer.”
•“I might get rejected.”
•“I might be intruding.”
•“I don’t deserve a loving relationship.”
•“I’m not good with small talk.”
•“I won’t have anything interesting to say.”
•“I might fail.”
•“I don’t want to come on too strong.”
•“What if she is in a relationship?”
•“I don’t want to be phony or a fake.”
•“I can’t see myself doing it.”
•“I might make a fool of myself.”
•“I might piss a woman off.”
•“She’ll tell all her friends if I make a fool of myself.”
•“I don’t want to be a jerk.”
•“I’ll have to give up too much to be in a relationship.”
•“I don’t want women to think I’m a player.”
•“I have low self-esteem.”
•“It is easier for other people than it is for me.”
•“I’m shy.”
•“I lack confidence.”
Do any of these internal soundbites sound familiar?
Emotionally-Laden Language
Another way to become aware of your SLBs is to pay attention to your emotionally-laden language.
When Nice Guys and bad daters talk about their experience with women and dating, they often use strong emotional terms that reveal their self-limiting beliefs. I have to point these words and phrases out to them because they don’t usually realize how much negative energy they project onto these situations. This negative energy is just one more manifestation of their SLBs.
Your words are a window to your thoughts.
•“She shot me down.” vs. “She said no.”
•“I blew it again.” vs. “It didn’t work out.”
•“I must have done something really wrong.” vs. “She had a negative reaction.”
•“Women are all gold-diggers.” vs. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to support a woman.”
•“I got rejected.” vs. “She had low interest.”
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
One of the most powerful tools for calling up your SLBs into consciousness is to do something outside your comfort zone that challenges you.
•Go places you don’t usually go.
•Talk to everyone you meet.
•Make and hold eye contact.
•Ask a woman to meet you for coffee.
•Tell a woman to give you her phone number.
When you do anything that challenges your SLBs head on, they will quit whispering at you and start SCREAMING at you! This makes it a lot easier to find out what they are!
For example, I wanted to learn how to salsa dance. I thought it looked cool and it seemed like a great way to meet women. There was only one problem; I had huge self-limiting beliefs about my ability to dance. As a middle-age white guy, my SLBs shouted, “You can’t do that, you have no rhythm, you’ll look foolish, and people will think you’re just cruising for women.”
I decided to consciously challenge my SLBs head on by signing up for a five-week salsa class. My beliefs were so strong that I had to sign up for the class three times before I actually got up the courage to go. Once I started, I kept going. Nevertheless, my SLBs tried to talk me out of going to class for months. By forcing myself to go to class anyway, I got to hear my self-limiting beliefs shout at me loud and clear, “You have to do it perfect, because If you don’t, you’ll look foolish and people will laugh you.”
These SLBs had always been in my head, whispering in the background. It wasn’t until I consciously did something to bring them to the surface that I got to hear them loud and clear. Then I could actually evaluate whether or not they were accurate. I discovered they were just lies. Cleaning out these SLBs through salsa had the effect of eradicating them from many other areas of my life.
Even though your emotional makeup and self-limiting beliefs were pretty well established early in your life, you can use other parts of your mind to overcome your hardwired emotional tendencies. As stated before, this is one of the great things about dating. Dating will call up your self-limiting beliefs like nothing else can.
Why You Started Lying to Yourself
The problems you have experienced getting the love and sex you want is the direct result of a lifetime of believing and acting upon a boatload of false, distorted, negative, and judgmental self-limiting beliefs.
All of your SLBs are the result of repeatedly internalizing inaccurate interpretations of life’s events. Your mind has been telling you these things since you were a child and you have found plenty of evidence to support these beliefs through adolescence and adulthood.
For example, your beliefs about yourself and your desirability to women we’re probably strongly influenced by your interactions with adolescent girls when you were in middle school. You weren’t very mature or socially experienced and neither were the girls. When you started noticing these interesting and unpredictable creatures, you had no idea how to get their attention in a positive way. I’m sure it seemed to you these girls had all the power. I’m sure you believed they could see right through you.
You probably either avoided them or approached them clumsily. The girls probably responded in equally unsure ways. You didn’t realize it at the time, but the girls in eighth grade were a mess of insecurities and surging hormones. Unfortunately, when the girls seemed to ignore you or react negatively to you, this left an indelible mark on your emotional brain.
Fast forward to present day.
You aren’t the same naive, immature 13-year-old and neither are the women. Yet, your mind is probably stuck in early adolescence in terms of how you see yourself and women. Everything you internalized when you were an adolescent is probably still dictating your thoughts, feelings and actions. You still expect women to view you the same way they did when you were 13 and still expect them to react to you with the same adolescent immaturity they did when they were 13.
Because your mind is so powerful, you have found many creative ways to make sure these SLBs seem true. You’ve done it by drinking too muc
h, being a couch potato, or packing on too much weight. Perhaps you’ve worked too much, sat at home watching TV, or surfed the net instead of getting out around people. Maybe you’ve avoided talking to strangers or clumsily approaching obviously unavailable women and then generalizing that all women will reject you in similar fashion.
When your life seems to be a very accurate proof of the validity of your thinking, the cycle just keeps spinning downward.
Your Mind Believes What Your Mind Tells Itself is True
Your mind can cause you great suffering and your mind can liberate you. Your mind can keep you stuck in the mire and your mind can help you attain everything you want in life. This is true because your mind is the source of your feelings and the conductor of your actions.
My cousin, Dr. Dannie Glover (he’s a physician, not an actor) makes the following statement about the mind:
“The mind resides in the brain and the brain is connected to every part of the body. Therefore, your mind controls everything about you through your brain.”
The mind:
•Interprets the feelings generating in the primal part of the brain (fear, anxiety, etc.) and gives them a name and meaning.
•Creates feelings by what it thinks about and attunes itself to.
•Decides how to act upon feelings.
•Translates thoughts and feelings into physical responses (both positive and negative).
The mind can also:
•Be an observer of itself.
•Correct erroneous beliefs.
•Rewire old emotional programming.
•Soothe itself.
•Challenge itself.
•Grow beyond its own self-imposed limitations.
Your mind can enslave you and your mind can set you free.
What this means is that your toxic shame, your self-limiting beliefs, and your outdated paradigms don’t have to drive the bus of your life. You can take charge with your mind. You can take control of how you think. You can reshape your emotions. You can start acting in powerful ways that take you in the direction of getting what you want! This book will show you how!
The Dating Essentials for Men Workbook which is available as part of the Dating Essentials for Men Bonus Bundle at datingessentialsformen.com presents some assignments to help you uncover and challenge your deeply held self-limiting beliefs. Throughout this book, I am going to encourage you to do things that will stretch you outside of your comfort zone, and therefore make you anxious.
It is in this “stretch” zone of life that you have the chance to become the most aware of your inner thought-talk and beliefs. While in the stretch zone, you can consciously challenge your SLBs (lies) and replace them with more accurate information about you, women, and the world in general.
Chapter 3: Eliminate Your Fear of Rejection – Forever!
Rejection doesn't hurt.
George: “Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but ... I was perceptive. I always know when someone's uncomfortable at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I've ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every area of life, be it something to wear, something to eat ... It's all been wrong.”
Waitress: “Tuna on toast, coleslaw, cup of coffee?”
George: “Yeah. No, no, no, wait a minute, I always have tuna on toast. Nothing's ever worked out for me with tuna on toast. I want the complete opposite of on toast. Chicken salad, on rye, untoasted ... and a cup of tea.”
Elaine: “Well, there's no telling what can happen from this.”
Jerry: “You know chicken salad is not the opposite of tuna, salmon is the opposite of tuna, 'cos salmon swim against the current, and the tuna swim with it.”
George: “Good for the tuna.”
(A blonde looks at George)
Elaine: “Ah, George, you know, that woman just looked at you.”
George: “So what? What am I supposed to do?”
Elaine: “Go talk to her.”
George: “Elaine, bald men, with no job, and no money, who live with their parents, don't approach strange women.”
Jerry: “Well here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them.”
George: “Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.”
Jerry: “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”
George: “Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do something!”
(He goes over to the woman)
George: “Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice that you were looking in my direction.”
Victoria: “Oh, yes I was, you just ordered the same exact lunch as me.”
(George takes a deep breath)
George: “My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.”
Victoria: “I'm Victoria. Hi.”
George was convinced that an unemployed bald man who lived with his parents could never get the interest of a great woman. On a whim, he decided to challenge his self-limiting beliefs. Surprisingly, by “doing the opposite,” he ended up with a girlfriend and a job with the Yankees.
As stated in the previous two chapters, self-limiting beliefs are the result of the inaccurate way you interpreted painful, frightening or unpredictable experiences in childhood. You believed these events were telling a story about you.
Because the part of your brain responsible for conscious reasoning was fundamentally undeveloped in childhood, you had no way of knowing that these were inaccurate interpretations.
As you have traveled through life, the “paradigm effect” strengthened these false beliefs. These beliefs have affected you in many ways – your work, career, health, finances, friendships, happiness, relationships, and your sex life.
Like George Castanza, the difficulty you have experienced with dating, relationships, and sex has not been the result of you being a worthless, unlovable loser. It is not the result of you being bald, too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too poor, or too short. Nor has it been the result of women being uncaring, gold-digging bitches. And, contrary to your distorted SLBs, women can’t just look at you and sense that you are a loser.
Three Types of SLBs
There are three fundamental types of self-limiting beliefs – all of which can lead to self-criticism, inactivity, self-defeating behaviors, depression, procrastination, anxiety, no dates, and no sex. These three types of SLBs include: negative thoughts, distorted thoughts, and judgmental thoughts.
Negative thoughts might include:
•“I don’t deserve a loving relationship.”
•“I’m not good with small talk.”
•“I won’t have anything interesting to say.”
•“Attractive women never talk to me.”
•“I’m not good with women.”
•“I’m afraid of rejection.”
•“I might fail and then I will look foolish.”
•“I’m too old.”
Distorted thoughts include:
•“If one woman rejects me, they will all reject me.”
•“All women are alike.”
•“Women don’t like bald men.”
•“Women only go for guys with money.”
•“Rejection hurts.”
Judgmental thoughts might include.
•“I’m a fat slob.”
•“Women want successful men, not a loser like me.”
•“If I can’t date a beautiful woman, I won’t date.”
•“All women are gold-digging bitches.”
Right now, I know some of you are thinking, “But some of my beliefs are true. Some are based on reality. I am short. I am shy. I don’t make a lot of
money. I am overweight. Women really do seem to be attracted to a different kind of guy than me. Women do keep telling me they just want to be friends.”
While some of your self-limiting beliefs might indeed have some truth to them, that is not the issue. Your real problem is you will always act as if your SLBs are 100% TRUE! You might be short, bald, and live with your parents, but these realities will only become liabilities if you believe they are.
Challenging Self-Limiting Beliefs
Here is an example. At a workshop I led for recovering Nice Guys in Mexico, one of the participants made the statement, “I’m afraid that if people see me sitting by myself on the beach drinking a Corona, they will think I’m a loser.”
Over the course of the five-day workshop, this guy whom we’ll call Diego, began to test and challenge his SLBs. He actually went and sat at a table on the beach by himself and drank some Coronas. Not only did no one seem to act negatively or judgmentally toward him, he had a really great time on the beach people watching and looking at the ocean.
Next, Diego decided to challenge his self-limiting beliefs even further by saying hello to people he met on the beach. Again, no one acted negatively toward him. In a short amount of time he was starting conversations with strangers and approaching groups of women to test for interest. Again, no one whom he approached responded with judgment for the fact that he was by himself on a beach in Mexico.
Diego continued his experiment of testing his SLBs with no attachment to outcome. On the fourth day of the workshop, he started a conversation with an attractive young woman who sat down by herself at his favorite spot on the beach. At first, his SLBs screamed, “She’s out of your league. She’ll think you’re intruding. She’s hot, she probably has a boyfriend. She’ll think you’re a loser because you are all by yourself on the beach.”
Diego decided to challenge the SLBs screaming in his head. He made a comment to the woman. She responded positively. He asked her to join him at his table. She did.
They began to talk. She was a physician on a short holiday. They spent the afternoon together. He invited her out to dinner. He kept challenging his self-limiting beliefs and she kept responding with high interest. She ended up spending the entire night with him and they watched the sun come up together the next morning on the beach.
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