In this self‑help video, Aaron Doughty argues that attempting to impress women is counter‑productive and that true attraction stems from authentic expression and vulnerability. He explains that people‑pleasing is a toxic masculine trait rooted in childhood conditioning, where validation is sought through external approval. Doughty contrasts the toxic "protect‑and‑control" and "serve‑by‑pleasing" masculine patterns with the healthy "protect‑and‑serve" approach, which involves setting boundaries, embodying values, and creating a safe container for the feminine. He introduces the distinction between impression (outcome‑focused) and expression (present‑moment energy), asserting that shifting from the former to the latter dissolves the need for validation. The core practical framework consists of three types of vulnerability—social (approaching strangers without fear of rejection), physical (flirting and consensual touch), and emotional (openly sharing feelings). By recognizing that these vulnerabilities should be practiced for who one truly is, not to win approval, men can develop magnetic energy. Doughty guides viewers to identify limiting beliefs inherited from childhood, separate thoughts from identity, and replace them with values such as authenticity, vulnerability, adventure, and fun. He shares personal anecdotes, including meeting his girlfriend in Sedona, to illustrate the transformation. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action: viewers can text a provided number for questions and are directed to a related video on the power of no‑contact after breakups.
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This video is gonna show you how not trying to be impressive to women is actually gonna make you way more attractive, and it's gonna show you how to actually have magnetic energy from the inside out. Now, when it comes to attracting women, sometimes people believe that they must impress them in order to receive from them their love, connection, support, or the deeper thing of this that it's really about is if someone is trying to impress women, then what is happening is they believe they must impress women in order to get validation, or they believe that in order to receive love, they must have those qualities of being impressive. Now, the thing that happens is in dating, in relationships, in magnetic energy, the more we try to get other people to like us, the less they will like us. Have you ever noticed that? Somebody that doesn't care whether someone likes them or not normally gets way more validation, support, more girls, whatever. It's because they're not trying. The more you try, the more you resist. And the thing when it comes to this topic of today's video that is really the transformation is becoming aware of the story that you might have around love and believing that you need to impress someone else to gain validation or love. And the key to this is really being honest to yourself because for a long time for me, I had this toxic masculine trait. It's called people pleasing. People pleasing is when we try to make someone else happy or fix them in exchange for their validation, for their love, for sex, or for some form of like exchange thing. The thing with people pleasing is, is it is manipulation. It is manipulative and it is an unattractive masculine trait. And yes, some female, some feminine people or females can also have that of the pleasing mentality. And normally it comes from, I believe, not having a strong male figure growing up that had boundaries, that wasn't trying to please in order to get— normally nice guys also. So I think people pleasers may also have dads that were nice guys. It is a theory that I have. But in general, I was talking to my shadow work integration coach about this recently, and we were talking about positive and negative masculine and feminine traits. And the masculine's job is to protect and serve, protect and serve. Now, serving doesn't necessarily mean pleasing. It doesn't mean making them happy, but to serve somebody else, sometimes you could serve somebody else by holding your own strong masculine presence and letting them feel safe with that. Actually telling somebody else, hey, this isn't, This isn't in alignment or this isn't a good thing, or I don't agree with what you're doing. That's a way of serving some, that can be a way of serving someone else because as the masculine, you are laying the foundation of a safe masculine container by being in your values, having a vision which allows the feminine to feel safe. Now the toxic side of this, okay, you got protect and serve. The toxic masculine side of this is instead of protect, to control. You will do this, you won't do this, wanting them to call you back, trying to control their behavior in order to get your own needs met normally. That's the toxic side of that. And then of serve, it's to please. I'm gonna please you, I'm gonna make you happy. And I'll tell you that women do not find it attractive to be pleased because then it's having like a little boy that's gonna do whatever he can to make his mom happy. That's how it feels. So the woman isn't, able, the feminine energy isn't able to actually relax and feel safe. What they really want is that energy of serving in the sense that the masculine is being himself grounded in that energy on the purpose that also serves the feminine, for them to be on their purpose, to have a vision for their life. So impression though, the thing I wanna really show here is that wanting to impress someone else is not understanding that there's this dynamic of impression versus expression. Trying to impress is attached to the outcome. Trying to express is a present moment energy. So impression is I'm going to impress you. And normally what this stems from is as a kid, not feeling like mom or dad were able to give their love unconditionally. So there's a belief there that says, if I impress you, then maybe you'll give me that love, that attention, that support. And it's based on outcome. If I am this way, then I will get this outcome, and that outcome is conditional. So my question to you is, do you believe that in order to give and receive love, you need to impress in order to receive it? Because if so, then it's a belief thing. And almost all of this anyways, it's all about belief. The story we tell ourselves. If we believe we must impress in order to get love, then we're gonna continue to try to impress women. But the thing is, is the more you try to impress, the more you're attached to outcome, the more you're trying to control and please versus protect and serve. So the game changer here is when we become aware that the key is to not impress, to not try to get our own childhood needs met through somebody else by playing on this old energy dynamic. Instead of impression, instead of getting this someone else to impress them, focus on expression, expressing the real you, expressing your real desires, also expressing real vulnerability. Because being vulnerable means that there's a value that you're living by. And when you're living by vulnerability, you allow other people to be vulnerable. Vulnerability, there's 3 different types. There's social vulnerability, which is that means the ability to walk up to someone else in public to introduce yourself, not afraid of the rejection or the other people judging you. Vulnerability takes courage. It's attractive. That will impress women. but you can't be trying, you can't be doing the vulnerability to impress the woman for the outcome. You have to do it because it's who you are. You're the kind of person that walks up to somebody else that introduces yourself when you see someone you think you're gonna get along with or like, or you're attracted to. The second level of vulnerability is physical vulnerability. Being able to get physically close to somebody else, maybe touch them on their shoulder or their lower, or their back or something. When I was first shedding the nice guy persona, and I say persona because it's not, being nice isn't real. Nice, everything we're talking about here, by the way, means that normally in childhood, love was conditional. If I acted in accordance to this, then I would receive X, Y, Z. So being nice is always attached to outcome as well. The key to this is pulling your energy back. And knowing you don't need this in order to receive love. You are worthy for you being you. That's it. And that helps you to then realize, okay, how can I be more vulnerable here? So I was afraid when dating somebody to show them that I was sexually attracted to them because I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of the outcome of not getting my needs met. And what I eventually learned to do is that that was really confusing the situation. I'd end up dating someone and then for like a month or two, they wouldn't know if I was actually dating them or if I really was attracted to them or not. And then it would like mess up the energy. But then eventually I was like, wait, I'm not expressing the real me. I'm not expressing the authentic part of like what I really wanna do here. So then when I met my girlfriend, for example, in Sedona, When she came to Sedona, I was very intentional in showing, oh, I'm actually sexually attracted to you, which meant I was physically flirting with her, which I would've never done before, or like at that level, because I would've been afraid of that rejection. I'd play very safe. Am I pleasing you? Are you okay? I don't wanna make you feel uncomfortable. It is a way of polarizing someone because if you start, if you make a move on them and they reject you, then you very quickly are polarizing to know one way or the other. but it actually works more so, it's a good thing to be able to express your emotion. And then if they aren't receptive to it, then at least you know, at least you know, and you can either move on or be able to like just decide who you like, be yourself, you know? So that is physical vulnerability. And you do this, and by the way, the creepiness, Creepiness is when you're doing it to get somewhere else, right? You're like touching them because that's gonna make them sexually aroused. No, that is not the key. That is creepy because you want an outcome from this person. And instead of wanting the outcome, flirting is supposed to be a very present moment thing. It's a dance of energy. It's like dancing and saying, oh, get to the end result, get to the end result. No, dancing is in of itself a process. Now that's physical vulnerability. The third level is emotional vulnerability, able to express your emotions to somebody else, how you feel about somebody else. That could even be verbally, and that could be, "Hey, I'm having a great time with you. I like you. I have feelings for you." When you're dating someone, to be able to share that eventually, you know, maybe not the very first like 10 minutes you meet somebody, but you get the idea. Nice guys and people pleasers are very afraid of that vulnerability. They're afraid of expressing the vulnerability because they don't wanna get rejected. So the power of everything I'm sharing in this video and the idea that I really wanna to hit home is that the belief system you may have is that one of two things, you believe that you either need to impress women in order to receive love or it's a belief that you need to impress women to get validation. And the key and the solution to this whole entire thing is to become aware that that pattern exists, to become aware of that belief and to see that it's something you believed normally from childhood. Once you become aware of the belief, what you can then do is become aware that it's a belief and then you can realize that that belief is not you. Like think to your, if you're able to look at your thoughts, you can see that you think thoughts, but you're not your thoughts. And think of it like, I am not worthy, I must impress the woman in order to get love or validation. That's an identified belief. But if you realize, wait, I'm thinking thoughts and I have this memory from childhood where I had to impress my mom or dad in order to receive love or validation, and I always believed I wasn't good enough. Oh, now you've separated yourself from the thoughts and the beliefs and you start to create that distance. And for me, that meant I had to become aware that a lot of the nice guy people pleasing stuff was toxic masculine stuff that I learned because my dad is very nice with my ex-stepmom who's a narcissist, who he eventually divorced. But when he was with her, it was this dynamic of him just kind of like being trolled around and like, you know, kind of a leaf in the wind around her 'cause she controlled everything. And I had to learn, wait, a lot of these patterns aren't my own. This is what I learned from our role models growing up. And maybe you had a nice guy dad or you had a soft dad that maybe wasn't in his own masculine energy. So then there was a certain way you relate to masculine energy or you had a mom that was very controlling. These are all different toxic sides of that energy to where then we learn in order to be loved, I must impress. I'm not good enough the way that I am. I must be perfect. And the key to this is becoming aware that that's just an outdated belief. That's just an outdated mechanism that was being used to get your needs met. You don't have to use it anymore. And actually it doesn't even work. It works the opposite. Instead, focus on you being the real you and also living by your own values. For me, I realized I was valuing other people's validation and approval I was valuing things that weren't serving me in a positive way. And then what I eventually did is I became aware of these values and then I changed my values to where I started to value authenticity and vulnerability over everything. So then if I'm in, and our values make up our identity, we just normally have values that have been on autopilot. I was craving significance, validation, approval because those were my unmet childhood needs. I became aware of those And then what I did is I started letting go of the abandonment wound. The abandonment wound believed that I wasn't good enough, someone was gonna leave me, and in general, I believed that people don't stay around. And what I had to do is become aware of these beliefs and then realize that they came from childhood and then realize that they're beliefs, they're not inherently true. I can think thoughts, but I'm not my thoughts. I can have beliefs, but I'm not my beliefs. And then I simply decided to live by values. That were more so in alignment with the real me. And the values I choose to live by that I actually chose are authenticity, vulnerability, adventurous, spontaneousness, having fun. These are all present moment values. And by living according to those values, I would then be able to have the courage to express my vulnerability of how I'm emotionally feeling, physically being flirty, or socially being able to like walk up to somebody else. These are things that change your sense of identity, and this process is an identity shift when you begin to apply it in your life. So with that as well, if you haven't texted me yet, you can text me at my phone number your questions. I'll put them in YouTube videos. Also, that's where I engage. I send out, I just sent out yesterday my top books that I'm reading this month. And that's a way of having a little bit more intimacy, I guess. But if you wanna text me, you text me at 424-304-0104 or click the link in the description box below. And also, if you want a video to understand the amazing power of no contact, why it's so effective and how to use it, this is a game changer when it comes to attraction. Check it out right here. One of the worst things to do post-breakup or after you have detached from somebody else is to keep an open loop and the energy going back and forth. Now, in this video, I'm gonna share with you the solution that changes everything
