#NerdsUnite: What Does Fight Club Teach Us About Dating?

Editor's Note: Jordan is a dating coach. But not like "a" dating coach ... lemme rephrase that, he is THE dating coach. He has a show on SiriusXM called "Game On" and he's a super smarty pants when it comes to examining social dynamics. No ... like for real.

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jordan Harbinger

"This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

I watched Fight Club recently on BluRay and re-asserted the awesomeness of it in my personal movie universe. This isn’t just a killer movie, it’s a piece of cinematic literature. It spoke to me. Some of the great themes: throwing off the corporate chains. Embracing our nature as animals and our need to be violent. Our need to screw like animals. Rebellion. The internal battle of good vs. evil. Being an insider and being a part of something that makes us special. Living a life of passion. Pushing the edges and finding our limits. The bad boy versus the nice guy.

Everyone knows that Fight Club makes a great metaphor for game. Check it out.

1st and 2nd rules. You DO NOT talk about Fight Club. We actually talk about dating and game ad nauseum online, so when we’re out in the field socializing, we DON’T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB…I mean, don’t talk about game. This is a great rule. Don’t analyze your interactions mid-set, don’t debrief in the club, do not get out of the moment. Instead, live in the moment and fill your interactions with passion. Revel in the closes and laugh at the blowouts. The time for breaking down interactions is after you’ve had sex with a chick, or when you’re back at the house at the end of the night.

3rd Rule: If someone says “stop,” goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. If you get blown out, eject from the set and move on. If you get broken up with or you do the breaking up, don’t linger in the relationship, move on. Next.

4th Rule: Only two guys to a fight. This is a good wingman rule; don’t move in on your buddy’s target. I also see this in another way. I see this as an internal battle, the alpha vs. beta, chode vs. player. When you’re out socializing, the challenge is always one of you versus yourself, not you versus the chick, versus the club, or versus other dudes. You are the one who makes game happen, and you are the one who defines a good night versus a bad night. In the movie, the true battle is actually between the unnamed narrator (Ed Norton) vs. Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), or the protagonist versus himself.

5th Rule: One fight at a time. Live a life of abundance, but stay focused on who’s in front of you.

6th Rule: No shirts, no shoes. Go into your interactions unadorned and exposed as a true man of character. Let people see who you truly are.

7th Rule: Fights will go on as long as they have to. Run your sets to their natural conclusions. Give it your best effort and fight to win, but don’t be afraid to lose either. Take chances. Plow when needed.

8th Rule: If this is your first night at Fight Club, you HAVE to fight. This is the most important rule on the list. If it’s your first time out, you HAVE to open sets. No excuses. Treat every single social opportunity in the same way, even if it’s approach 1 or approach 1000.
Here’s a great Fight Club quote:

“A guy who came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.”

When you’re beta and suck with chicks, you’re that wad of cookie dough. After you go into the field enough and do hundreds of approaches, you’re carved out of wood. Your entire reality is different. Everything else in your life gets the volume turned down. You turn into a fucking warrior.

Remember, don’t talk about Fight Club!

To learn more from The Art of Charm about how to meet & attract women, visit www.afterhello.com And, if you're an LA local, you can stop by The Art of Charm office and meet the crew!

#nerdsunite

Pick Up Line O'El Dia

Is your last name Gillette cause you're the best a man can get. 

#Question: Are You A Closet Heterosexual? Part 2: Showing Interest Without Creeping Her Out

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jordan Harbinger

Question: Are You Scared of Being Sexual or Flirtatious Around Women?

If you’ve been hiding the fact that you have romantic or sexual interests in a woman or women in general, you might be doing it because you believe that it’s not classy to show interest overtly, or because you believe it is bad to have desires, or because you’re afraid that if you exhibit your desires to a woman, she’ll shoot you down or be creeped out.

In Part I of this post, I gave you some insight into why men conceal their sexuality. In this post, I’ll show you how to let it out without being needy or creepy.

Not knowing how to show your interest in a woman can cause you two different problems:

1. If you ask a woman out BEFORE you’ve shown her some romantic interest or flirting, she will be confused by and wary of your intentions.

For example, let’s say you have a quick conversation with a woman and establish that you both like biking. Throughout the conversation you have concealed that your underlying motive for speaking with her is that you are attracted to her. You then ask her to go biking with you and she seems a little unsure and hesitant. You suddenly feel rejected and ultimately leave empty-handed. 

She wasn’t unsure and hesitant because she didn’t like you;  she was unsure and hesitant because she couldn’t figure out WHY you wanted to go biking with her. If you had shown some interest or flirted with her, she may have been much more receptive to you.

2. If you show TOO MUCH interest or are too overt with it, she will think you’re NEEDY and be turned off.

For example, if you determine that you both like biking and then tell her “I’ve always wanted to go out with a woman who likes to bike and you are very pretty and I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and would you like to go out with me for biking and then dinner?” You’ve given her TOO MUCH interest.  Her conclusion from the above approach will be that you’re desperate for company, and if you’re desperate it must be because nobody else wants to go out with you and if nobody else wants to go out with you, why would she?

So how do you show enough interest, and make it flirtatious?

Get a sheet of paper.  Think about the qualities you find attractive in a woman. Anything is fair game:  physical qualities, her skills, her values, anything. What are the top five qualities a woman MUST have to be interesting to you? Write them down.

Your paper might look like this:

- Pretty face

- Thin

- Healthy/fit

- Creative

- Funny

Now cross out any of the ones that describe physical traits. Memorize your list.  Next time you meet a woman who exhibits ANY of these five qualities, just say “Hey, you’re (a health nut/creative/hilarious). I like that. What’s your number; we need to get together again.

The beauty of this method is you don’t even have to have anything in common to date her. She simply has to meet one of your criteria.  Your tone of voice should be the same as if you are making plans with your best friend. Calm, interested, but totally relaxed.

By telling her you like the quality she exhibited, you’re showing interest, but by staying calm and TELLING her to give you her number, you’re showing her that you KNOW how to take the lead and make new connections with people. Taking the lead without attachment to the outcome of the interaction telegraphs CONFIDENCE and never shows neediness or desperation.

Watch her eyes light up as she gives you her number. Never go back in that closet again!

To learn more from The Art of Charm about how to meet & attract women, visit www.afterhello.com And, if you're an LA local, you can stop by The Art of Charm office and meet the crew!

#nerdsunite

#Fact: Hesitation is the Mind Killer

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Jordan Harbinger

You can tell exactly how things will go just by watching him walk toward her.

“Go say hi to her,” I tell him. He’s a tall, exceptionally good-looking guy with hair parted straight down the middle.  He looks across the bookstore at her. I can see his expression change from normal to tense as he says “Okay.”

He starts to think.  And think.

He sees me looking at him. “Okay,” he says again five seconds later.  He starts to walk. It’s a death march. He’s going slowly with his eyes fixed on her.  Just as he gets near her, he loops around and comes back.  ”Give me a minute,” he says.

There’s a very simple rule in pickup, probably one of the first rules guys learn. It’s called the 3-second rule: if you see a girl, don’t wait more than three seconds to approach her.  This rule is one of the most important rules when it comes to approach anxiety. The longer you wait before you walk up and talk to that girl, the more your anxiety builds and builds and builds.  You wait long enough and it is almost certain the approach will fail.  She can tell when you’ve waited ten seconds or twenty seconds or two minutes before you approach her.

How can she tell? Is she telepathic?  No. It’s written all over your body.

The tension is everywhere. There is apprehension in your voice. You’re faltering. You are thinking at a billion miles an hour.  Ah, thinking. If we could only turn off that deluge of thoughts that comes in like a fire hose and drenches our confidence.  Conversely, if you approach her before you have time to think, your nervousness is at a minimum. You don’t have time to “brace yourself.”  Your braced readiness is what causes you to fail. You become shut off, self-protective and anticipatory of a bad reaction–all the hallmarks of the guy with social anxiety.

You end up closed off and unintelligent, instead of open, exploratory, welcoming and fun, exactly how you want her to be with you.

A lot of my best approaches happened when I wasn’t even expecting myself to do it. All of a sudden I was talking to her.  In studies of school children, it was determined that the time it takes for them to approach each other was the number one factor in determining social success.

“Asendorpf developed an observational system for coding children’s contact initiation behaviors. The category most closely related to dispositional shyness was the percentage of observed “wait-and-hover” among all initiations, defined as “the child approaches the physical proximity of a partner, stops, and observes the activity of the partner for at least 3 seconds without speaking”. Here, watching occurs within a self-interrupted approach.”  (Jens Asendorpf, 1985)

It is no coincidence that the 3-second rule and Asendorpf’s study honed in on three seconds as an appropriate time frame within which the approach will succeed.  There is also a strong correlation to another important part of becoming uninhibited and successful with women: spontaneity.

Even within interactions when we become fearful and non-spontaneous, the interaction suddenly becomes dreadful and boring for her.  One of the best things you can do for yourself is practice getting better at approaching women immediately.  If you are unable to do a full-on approach immediately upon noticing the woman, you can practice at least engaging women when you see them.

You see a hot woman. Not ready to approach? Immediately go up and ask her for directions.
“Which way to the bathroom?” if you’re in a bar. “Do you know how to get to the library” out on the streets.

Don’t worry about getting a good reaction out of her. The point is to do it over and over and kill your hesitation.  Kill your hesitation and your interactions start to get smoother than butter.

Don’t let another second pass. Approach her now!

To learn more from The Art of Charm about how to meet & attract women, visit www.afterhello.com And, if you're an LA local, you can stop by The Art of Charm office and meet the crew! 

#nerdsunite

Pick Up Line O'El Dia

Can you give me directions to your heart?

I've seemed to have lost myself in your eyes.