Look Confident: How To Appear Less Needy

Hi, Dr. Aziz here. And today I want to talk with you about how to appear less needy. Now, this is an area that's particularly challenging for me, especially given my background in helping guys in psychotherapy and doing some really deep work with people, is I find out that one of the biggest sources of pain is when we reject ourselves and. And we say, ugh, I'm needy and I suck. And we're just really mean and harsh to ourselves, sometimes even abusive with ourselves. And so having worked with people on this deep level, it pains me to see that. And we do a lot of work. There is really self acceptance and how to overcome some of the ways that you dislike yourself and really get into a better relationship with yourself. And so sometimes I'm a little worried about doing something like this where I say, like, hey, you know, you don't want to appear needy to a woman because that's not going to work for you. And we all know that. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we can accept ourselves and our needs and really love ourselves no matter what. So I'm going to share three ways to appear less needy. But I don't want you to get too hung up on this stuff. You know, a lot of the pickup artist stuff out there is like, you know, 566 ways to look less needy and look awesome and trick her into liking you. And I don't want this to be about that. I want the foundation to be, look, the most important thing is for you to love and accept yourself and know you're awesome. And I'm just going to give you three little tips that might. You know, it's like, these are kind of big, blatant ways in which you might look desperate or needy, which basically means you're leaning heavily on the woman, and it can be a bit aversive to her. She can be like, whoa, this guy doesn't even know me and he wants so much for me. That can be a bit of a challenge in starting a relationship. Of course, once the relationship develops and you're really connecting with each other, then it's awesome to express love and approval and that you like the person. And eventually, if you're really connected to them in a relationship, to express that you need a person is one of the most profounding, profoundly bonding things that we can have. So that's a lot of preamble. But let me get to the three things that you can do to appear less needy in those initial interactions. Another way of saying that a better way of saying that is to appear more fulfilled in yourself, more firm in yourself, more confident in who you are and in the sense of like, look, I'm open to meeting you and I want you to, you know, maybe come with me if it's a good fit, but it's okay. If not, how do you communicate that? Because that's a very attractive mindset and hopefully it's a mindset that you can actually, not just portray, but actually believe and feel. And of course, you do that by developing your own interests, investing in yourself, doing self improvement, and really connecting with who you are and what you want to do in the world and your purpose. But I digress. Let me talk about those three things that you can do to appear less needy. The first is to plant many seeds. Let's say there's a metaphor that I like, which is that of a garden. When it comes to the initial stages of meeting women, let's say you're single and you want to be in a relationship, or you want to be dating several women and then have your pick of the litter and pick one that you're really into and settle down and have a girlfriend. Or maybe you just want to be dating women for a while. Either case, you need to have contact with women. Right? And one of the major challenges that I find, especially the guys that I work with, or if you saw the last blog, starting in a place of being the nice guy, is they're in a state of scarcity in their mindset. The nice guy mindset is that I really got to impress a woman. I got to please her. I got to make sure that I do everything she wants so she likes me. And it's really rare that a woman's going to like me because I'm not very good. And so I got to really make sure this one works out. There's sort of a if this doesn't work out, it's going to be another six months before I get another chance kind of mentality, which makes guys be very. They latch on and they become too invested and want too much right away. So one way to counteract that is to plant mini seeds. So what that is is let's say you're going to school right now or you're taking a class or you're at work or whatever. Like something like that. You're a regular environment you go to and there's a woman there that you're interested in. So I would suggest interacting with her, flirting with her. And, and if you don't know how to do any of this stuff, I highly suggest checking out 30 days to dating Mastery, which is coming out soon. You can put yourself on an email list to be aware of when it comes out. But you flirt with her, you interact with her, maybe even get her number or something like that. But if it starts to progress a little bit, you don't want to not have any contact with any other women. Be like, this one's working out. Put it all on red. Yeah, it's just so early. You don't know. You don't know if it's a good fit. You don't know if she's open. You know, we tend to jump into a mindset of like, well, she's the one. You know, this would be amazing. But you don't know that. Even if she's beautiful, even if she's hot, maybe it's not that good of a match. Maybe you have to struggle to start, you know, maintain conversation. Maybe you find what she talks about kind of boring. Maybe she's a little mean. Maybe it's just not a good fit. So you want to be able to plant mini seeds to find the connections that are really going to bring out the best in you. So you interact with her at work. What that means is you learn how to interact with people in other places. When you're at the store, you can start a conversation with them there. When you're in a coffee shop, you go there, you do other things, you're part of a writing group, or you look for things in your community and you interact with women there. So the key is you're not just honing it all in on that one woman that you don't even really know yet. And that happens from a place of scarcity. So what you really want to do is plant many seeds, and then what that allows you to do is the next thing, which is be more laid back. Right? Because if you think about this, if you have a garden and you're planting one seed in the earth, I don't know if you've ever actually had a garden. I barely managed to get some kale to grow. Kale is the most awesome vegetable in the world, so it was worth it. But I don't do anything fancier than that. But anyway, if you plant a seed in the ground, if you've ever done this before, if not, just take my word for it, if you were to plant one seed in the earth, what would happen? Well, if you watered it and it was good soil, potentially a sprout would come out, but maybe not. Not every seed grows. There's something wrong with the seed, there's something wrong with the soil, there's something wrong with it. It doesn't take or who knows what. So if you were just to plant one seed and then sit there and, and be like, okay, here we go, it's going to grow. Okay, you know, and you're impatient, you're waiting, maybe you're like, is it growing yet? Is it growing yet? Is it growing? Are you growing now? Right. But if you were to say, you know what, I'm going to plant 30 seeds in this garden and see which ones go, then what you do is you plant the seeds and then if you look over there and that one's not growing, that's okay because you can go over here and that one's growing well. So there's a level of being open to what comes, and that is what the planting mini seeds is about. And what allows you to do that is the second thing, which is then you're able to be more laid back. So let's say there's that woman at work or in your class and you got her, you got her email or number and you say, let's hang out. And she says, yeah, that sounds great. And then you say like, well, how about, you know, let's go, let's go do X on Thursday night. No response. The dreaded no response via text. Right? That's just. You gotta like combat all of your own BS that comes up, belief systems that say, oh, God, you ruined it, she doesn't like you, you're pathetic, all that stuff. And all of a sudden, you know, she's not responding. And who knows, you know, it's just been an hour or two or maybe even a day, but maybe she's got a busy life, maybe she's not sure yet. Who knows? But if that's the only seed you got going, you're not going to be laid back. It's impossible. You're going to be. You're going to text her again. So did you get my last text or the next time you see her and hey, did you, did you read my email? Zoe, want to hang out? Want to hang out? You know, and there's this kind of neediness to that, that can be aversive unless she's right on board with you and then, hey, rock and roll. But that's not often the case. Women might be, you know, they might be testing you, they might be feeling you out a little bit. And so if you're able to be more laid back, the only way to do that is to have mini seeds. So she doesn't respond. You say, great, okay, I'm gonna interact with this other person. Or it's okay because on Friday I'm having a date with so and so. Or if you don't have any of that going on and she is your one and only seed, then be able to develop your abilities to go out and meet people. So that means, you know what? Okay, and she's not responding. I'm gonna go to the bookstore and just, you know, there's this book I wanted to pick up and if I'm out and about and I see an attractive woman, I'm gonna talk to her. It doesn't mean you're going to get a number, it doesn't mean you're going to score. It just means you're developing your abilities, you're working on yourself, you're working on your confidence and that feels good. That makes you more relaxed in yourself and allows you to take a more laid back approach. Which basically means if you text someone and they don't text back right away, you don't just immediately text them. You just kind of say, okay, I'll wait for them to respond. You know, a good rule of thumb early on is to not send multiple messages in a row to no response. So if you send a message and they don't respond, wait until they respond. And I'm talking about really early stages here. Not if that's like your girlfriend or something, but, you know, you guys barely know each other. She just gave you her number. You send her a text and she doesn't respond, don't text her again, like two minutes later and then again five minutes later. You know, there's this whole debate about that in the movie Swingers, which if you haven't seen, is highly worth watching. It's awesome. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau and it's all about, you know, putting yourself out there and dating. And there's a range of skill levels and confidence levels in the movie. And there's this debate about like these two guys who are a little better with women or think they are, say like, you know, well, how long do you wait until after you get a woman's number to call her? And one guy's like, yeah, you know, I wait like three days. And one Vince Vaughn I think is like, yeah, I wait a week. Which is, I think, ridiculous. I would say don't wait a week. I mean, it's just so over the top. But anyway, there's a scene later in that movie where Jon Favreau who's just broken up with his long term girlfriend, is a wretch of low confidence and feeling really bad about himself. But he eventually gets out there and he meets a woman and he gets her number and then he goes home and he thinks about that conversation, you know, like, I should wait at least a couple days. He puts the number down, you know, somewhere near the phone. He walks out of the room, then he comes back in. This is the same night he got the number. And he gives her a call like, hey, it's me. And it's really like nervous message, like, hey, it's me. Hi. You know, I don't know if you remember me. Click, hang up. Really awkward message, right Then he's really uncomfortable. So what does he do? He calls her back again and he goes back like, I think, I think maybe he was cut off during one of the messages. And if you've seen this, you probably remember better than I do. I think he's cut off by the answering machine. So he feels like he has to get completion. And he calls again. He ends up calling like, I don't know, five or six times or more. And eventually she just calls him back. She was there, she was waiting by her phone. This is back in the days of like, you know, people didn't have cell phones, I guess. And there's, you could hear the answering machine as it was recording. So she was listening to his messages and then she calls him back. She's like, don't ever call me again. You know, just. It's one of the most painfully awkward scenes you could, you could ever watch. One, because it's just this guy going down in flames. But two, we can all relate to it, right? We can all relate to that pain and that desire to reach out. So that is not being laid back. And that is not how you appear less needy. To appear less needy, you need to take the laid back approach, which would mean if you're stressing out, you know, I remember I learned this from Eben Pagan. He was saying, if you're really stressing out about should I call her tomorrow or the next day? Tomorrow or the next day, he's like, just pick the most laid back option, which would be the next day, the two day one, the longer one, and then just forget about it. If you notice the anxiety or whatever, just tolerate it. Don't act it out by calling her. So take the more laid back approach. That's the second thing you can do to appear less needy. The third thing you can do is to not hesitate. Now that Might seem contradictory to what I'm saying, but let me make it clear what I'm referring to. Not hesitate when it comes to an opportunity to interact with a woman. So there's a common thing, I think I learned it from the game. Maybe it's a common parlance which three second rule. If you haven't heard this, it's great. But if you have, bear with me. It's that if you see a woman that you're attracted to, you have three seconds to go initiate the interaction with her. Or A, you're going to talk yourself out of it, or B, you're going to do the kind of weird hover around thing which can make a woman feel uneasy, right? You're kind of in her peripheral vision and you're just like standing there and then you know, she's like looking at a CD or whatever and then she looks up and you're on the other side of her. You know, if you like scurried around her and you're like studying her from the other side and that could make a woman feel a little uneasy. Probably also an evolutionary past that, right? This predator hanging around me. So what you want to do is you want to just immediately initiate the conversation. Another great thing that I learned from the guy, Neil Strauss, he was giving some advice to a guy which I thought was really good, was this guy was in a club and he was having a hard time because he just felt really stuck and awkward and he was there by himself. And Neil recommended, like if you're going to a new place, like a club or a house party or anything, when you get there, especially if you're by yourself, immediately engage in conversation. As soon as you walk in the door, just walk towards a group of people, find a friendly group of looking people and just start a conversation with them. Even if you're there to meet women and it's not a woman, it's just, you know, middle aged couple, just chat with them. Hey, how's it going guys? You know, and basically what you do is you get more comfortable. You don't sit there kind of worrying yourself and getting more tight. And you also sort of are not hovering around a woman that you want to talk to. This comes to an example. I'm a huge fan of helping guys meet women in bookstores and coffee shops and on the street and you know, in a supermarket. That's the place where I met a lot of women. Whole foods, incredibly beautiful, healthy women there. And that's important there too. So if you're walking down an aisle and there's a woman that comes around, and all of a sudden it's right there. And if you go. And then just start following her from afar, and then she looks up and you're like, checking the cereal. And then you walk towards her again, she looks up and you're like, ah, I'm just, you know, it's almost like one of those old cartoons with Wile E. Coyote or something. And you're like behind a bush. And then the bush moves closer and then you're behind the bush. It's like you're. You're hiding the fact that you're approaching her. And that's. It appears like the nice guy thing. It's a little weird. But if you just like casually immediately walk up to her and be like, hey, can I ask you a quick question? Or which one do you think I should get? And you hold up two cereals, you know, something like that. You just engage her right away. That can be a huge way to appear less needy because you're not kind of hovering in the corner. So be less hesitant is a way to appear less needy. And if the stuff I'm saying seems like totally out of your reach and you're like, what is he talking about? Like, I can barely start a conversation with someone, let alone go. Go up to an attractive woman and ask her which serialized is she recommends. Then if you're struggling in that area, I highly recommend one of two things. One, get confidence unleashed. Starting right now. You can get it right away. It's immediately available for sale or sign up. There's going to be a link below to sign up for the waiting list for 30 days to dating Mastery, which is going to be coming out soon. I can't say exactly when, but this thing is amazing. It's densely packed. You get one extensive email a day that's got, like, way more information than this about specific topics around dating relationships. And then it's got, most importantly, a mission, which is an action step that you take each day to build your social confidence step by step. It's incredibly powerful. We're doing beta testing with it right now, and some of the results that guys are getting are amazing. We're talking, like major transformations in three weeks kind of thing. So I'm really excited about it. Put your name on the list if this feels like something that you want to start mastering and it feels like totally out of your reach. So go ahead and do that. Hope this has been useful for you. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are.