#NerdsUnite: Social Dynamics Lesson 2 (Non-Committal Body Language)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Eric. He is a MAASSTTEERRR social dynamics expert that will be talking about his experiences in the field from both an expert, and experience perspective. He's not just saying "this is how to get the girl" he's here to share his actual life stories and lessons learned from them. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ERIC !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Redolpho

Hello friends, happy holidays. 

<tangent> Is anybody else getting hit up by their exes? I’ve been hit up by two in the last two weeks, who I literally never thought I’d end up in a steamy make out sesh with again. #wtf </tangent>

So today we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, body language. Specifically we are going to be taking an in-depth look at body language before and during the opening of a conversation. There are a couple things to note about body language before jumping in. Women are extremely in-tune to subtlety and your body language can be beneficial or detrimental to your approach. Generally speaking, what comes out of your mouth is only so important, and it is your body language that will either validate or invalidate what you’re saying about yourself. For instance, you are telling a story where you are surrounded by women and friends, and thus your words are saying that you are a confident leader and social person. But what if you’re body language is saying something else as you’re telling it, you’re hunching your shoulders, avoiding eye contact, and fidgeting nervously? If you guessed that no one is going to believe you, especially the women, then you’re right they’re not.

It is also important to note that reading body language is really about contextually recognizing changes in body language. Here is an example, you are talking to someone on the patio of a cafe and as they tell a story their arms are crossed with their hands tucked in their armpits. Suddenly they mention something and their hands fly above their head, and their feet lift off the ground. Now, here it is important to note that old-school body language axioms would say that this persons crossed arms is a form of protection or reservation, but in this scenario the people could be sitting outside and it could be cold. What’s important is the change to flailing of the arms and feet from a state of having the arms crossed. That change shows excitement and it’s that moment in which the person gives us a true “tell” that they’re elated at the conversation they are having.

The last thing that I want to mention before diving in is that there are no silver bullets in social dynamics, and that definitely includes body language. Body language is a tool and if you’re trying to up your social game it’s an important tool but still just a tool. There are other tools in social dynamics (verbal communication, touching, synergy, and your appearance) and when used well together with the others, body language can be a very powerful asset. I will say this a lot in my pieces but always remember that everything I say is a guideline. All guidelines in social dynamics are meant to be bent and sometimes broken but you need to know what they are first. 

Alright so let’s dive in, when does a social interaction start? In my last piece I wrote that it started when you open a conversation. I wasn’t being completely truthful. It actually starts before that, it starts the moment that either person is able to see the other. Here is a small checklist that you should mentally run yourself through when entering a social situation:

• Am I standing tall, with my shoulders back and my chin up? But make sure you ain’t cray...

• Am I smiling? But make sure you ain’t cray...

• Am I moving at comfortable pace? (Many people walk nervously fast)

That covers the basics of entering a new social area. If you walk in standing tall, smiling, and walking at a comfortable pace then you look approachable and confident. So now lets get into the meat of this talk with non-committal body language during opening. This is where I see a lot guys make mistakes repeatedly because they’re simply unaware of what they are doing. Non-committal body language is a piece of jargon that simply means you are not displaying commitment to a conversation or interaction via your body.

In order to do this you’ll want avoid entering the conversation head on. Rather approach the group of people from the side. If you’ve done this correctly then you should be standing shoulder to shoulder with the person that you are talking to, with your bodies facing the same direction. It should look kinda like this:

To validate why this initial positioning is important do this test. You can even just imagine it and probably feel the difference. Stand next to someone, shoulder to shoulder, and look at them over your shoulder with your body facing forward which should be the same direction that their body is facing. Take a moment and do a scan of your body, how do you feel? Now pivot and turn so that you are facing them head on. If you didn’t move and just swung around then your faces should be inches from each other. When you do this you should experience an innate feeling to move backwards in order to regain “personal space”. Even though the space in between you may have changed very little, the feeling of comfort changed quite a bit. One thing to note, is that appropriate distances for personal space vary quite a bit by culture. Israelis for instance talk much closer than Americans.

If two people are sitting facing each other directly then it’s best to be facing the same direction as the person nearest you. Your body will then be facing straight past the person across from you and not directly facing anyone. If it’s a group of people then it’s going to be hard to not face someone directly because if they are standing then most likely they’ll be in a circle. In this case follow the same rule as before to stay facing the same direction as the people that are directly next to you.

So now that we’ve dealt with the approach lets look at how you should stand or sit after you’ve started the conversation. One of my first students made this exact mistake when he approached his first group during one of Jen and I’s workshops. The two girls were sitting at a bar height table and he was standing, after he approached he leaned in so that his body was not only facing them, but his torso was tilted at a 140 degree angle. The girls reaction was to immediately lean back in order to create more distance between them and my student. You could see their facial expressions become defensive and he had already lost that interaction. The interaction continued to feel forced and was over very soon after it started. The lesson to learn here is to not lean in. People lean into a conversation when they are engaged and if you come in hot like this, before people are comfortable, then you’ll most likely get the same reaction that this guy got. Also people constantly engage in mirroring which is a body language term for copying or emulating. When you smile they smile, when you cross your arms they cross theirs, etc.. People mirror other peoples body language all the time. So when you lean back and you’re relaxed and non-committed, they’ll by nature do the same. It is a wonderful tool and it will significantly improve the success rate of the conversations that you open.

At this point we’ve dealt with position and posture, now lets take a moment to examine you facial expressions. When you enter a conversation you want to convey a friendliness that will put people at ease. The best way to do that is with a “light” smile. When I say light I mean that your teeth should be visible but the corners of your mouth shouldn’t be stretched to your ears. The right mood that you are conveying is that you are relaxed and happy. Once you’ve opened the conversation then you should smile a little less. Listen more, be attentive to what the people are saying back to you, you should be identifying social cues that they are giving you to spark conversations after your opener has run its course. If you read my last post about what to say when opening a conversation, and are running the 50 Shades of Grey opener, then as the people are giving you back their answers look them in the eye, lean back, relax and let them know that you are listening. Even though your body isn’t facing them directly you shouldn’t give them the impression that you are aloof and this is why it’s important to be attentive but not needy.

All of the above techniques signal that you are not fully committed to the conversation. When this is done correctly the people that you are talking to will feel more at ease and the thought, “How long is this person going to be here for?”, shouldn’t cross their mind. Even if it does they’ll be subconsciously comforted by your lack of commitment at the onset of your conversation. You are also signaling that you are willing to walk away which is exactly what you want. But there will come a point where you should become more invested in the conversation. The easiest way to know when is to let them invest first. Wait for them to pivot their body, smile more, and then mirror their motion. That’s all for now folks. If you have any topics that you would like to have covered please email me. I’d love to talk more about them here on TNTML.

Hope everyone had a great holiday season! And just in case you didn’t here is a cat hugging a baby kitten who’s having a nightmare.

L’chaim

#thatisall

If you’d like to share your stories please feel free to tweet me at @redolpho or email me at eric dot rudolph dot carrillo at gmail dot com

#NerdsUnite: To Trust or Not to Trust (a lesson in social dynamics & learning to let go)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Eric. He is a MAASSTTEERRR social dynamics expert that will be talking about his experiences in the field from both an expert, and experience perspective. He's not just saying "this is how to get the girl" he's here to share his actual life stories and lessons learned from them. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ERIC !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Redolpho

I almost made the complete wrong decision and it was because I was deciding based on fear. I was strategizing the future marketing plans for mine and Jen’s social dynamics workshops when Jen had provoked the discussion of what to give away. Dealing with intellectual property is a tuff thing and thankfully after debating with myself I realized that we don’t have any so it doesn’t matter. I didn’t invent social dynamics I just became really really obsessed with it for a long time and gained a lot of insights. Our value lies deeper than the principles of what we teach and it’s really about our combined expertise and ability to help people succeed. The whole reason I wanted to start doing this was to change a few lives and I’ve already accomplished that. So the next goal is to change many lives. What better way to do this then to start teaching through my writing here on TNTML. So without further ado...

I wanted to start where social interactions start, with someone opening a conversation. The purpose of social dynamics is to give people choice, opening is where this choice starts. When I started studying social dynamics I mostly wanted to have a choice in who I talked to. If I saw a girl that struck me I wanted to be able to approach her and for that interaction to last more than a couple awkward minutes. If I saw a group of people that were having fun I wanted to be able to join them and turn former strangers into new friends. One important thing to note is that there are no silver bullets and no panty-dropping pick-up lines. It's paramount that you focus on the principles of what I’m talking about. Feel free to take the examples I’ll provide and use them word for word at first, but understand that these are only training wheels and inevitably you’ll have to take them off.

There are many types of openers and I’ll write about each of them individually, for this piece we’ll be talking about what’s called an opinion opener. This is the best place to start for most people because the chances of getting blown off are low. The basic premise is that instead of starting a conversation off with the normal, “Hi, how are you doing?”, that you immediately start a conversation in a way that provides social value. Social value could be defined as something that is said or done by one party that is engaging to the desired audience. The opinion opener accomplishes this by immediately engaging the desired audience in a discussion they are interested in. Here is the opinion opener that I taught my students and it has worked with a lot of success.

“Hi, I’ve had a strange last couple of dates and I need an opinion. Twice within the first five minutes my date talked about how in love they were with 50 Shades of Grey. I don’t know what’s more disconcerting, whether they just have a horrible taste in books or whether I may end up walking into a dungeon. What are your thoughts?"

Let’s break down why this opinion opener works well. First is the hook line, “strange couple of dates”. Most people are interested about swapping dating horror stories and putting this at the front of the opener will spark someone’s interest. Second is the mention of other dates, this may seem counter-intuitive, especially if the person you are talking to is a romantic interest, but the reason for this is to disarm the other person. It immediately lets them know that you are not in a place of desperation and also conveys that you are not talking to them for the purpose of hitting on them. Third, is the use of 50 Shades of Grey, it’s topical, well known, and controversial. Lastly, is the part about taste and the possibility of a dungeon. This gives the person something specific to respond to and allows them to either affirm their good taste in literature as well, or disagree and offer another opinion. Either way they are engaged and your opener has completed its job. Generally, I encourage people to always directly ask for their audiences participation at the end of the opener.

Not all of these elements are needed, so here are the essential parts for you to use as a style guide when creating your own opinion opener. The opener needs to be short and should be delivered within 30 seconds. It should be relevant to the person you’re talking to, the 50 Shades of Grey opener may not work well with a child or with your new, or potential, partners parents. Most importantly it needs to strike a chord, it needs to be interesting, the desired audience needs to want to talk about it. In other words, it needs to have social value. The easiest way to find interesting opinion openers is keep your eyes and ears open during everyday life and ask questions about things that genuinely interest you.

Next blog post I’ll be talking about how to use body language to your advantage during opening. Many people have a lot of trouble because they don’t even know they’re making mistakes but the things you don’t say can oftentimes be more telling than what comes out of your mouth.

That’s all for now friends. If you have any questions or would like to submit your opinion openers to me I would love to take a look at them and write about them here.

#thatisall

If you’d like to share your stories please feel free to tweet me at @redolpho or email me at eric dot rudolph dot carrillo at gmail dot com

#NerdsUnite: Feeling so inspired!

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Eric. He is a MAASSTTEERRR social dynamics expert that will be talking about his experiences in the field from both an expert, and experience perspective. He's not just saying "this is how to get the girl" he's here to share his actual life stories and lessons learned from them. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ERIC !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Redolpho

There is something amazing about teaching social dynamics that makes me so inspired I have to write. It seems like it’s been ages since Jen and I had our last workshop and the progress that all these guys have made is INSANE. One of the guys who took the first class just wrote a super long post in our private Facebook group about a new girl that he is dating. He talked about how much his life has changed with work, his family, and of course his love life. I can’t even describe how much this warms my heart.  Every time that I hear one of these stories it reaffirms how amazing this life changing process is.

Tonight I was finalizing the curriculum for our part two of our workshop. The part that I’m most excited about is calibration and looking at the personality types of both guys and girls. This stuff is INSANELY powerful. This section of the course is based off a study that looks at the personality types of men that women find attractive and then correlates the female personality types that match. So for instance, extroverted women like social leaders. Women who make emotional decisions are attracted to bad boys and so on.

It probably comes as no surprise that most of the guys that take social dynamic workshops fall into the nice guy bucket, I certainly do. But here is the thing, there is a common flaw in nice guys and that’s neediness and/or weakness. I know this all too well. I spent my life being pushed around by people I thought were my friends, and my bosses and also my father. In my last post I dealt with this same thing, I had to stand up for myself in my business life. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I had to dig deep to find the courage to do so.

If you’re reading this post and you know you fall into this category that's awesome, women find that personality type attractive. But, be a nice guy don’t be a weak guy. You can be both nice and strong and that combination is really powerful, not just in your romantic life but in every facet of your life. I am still a very nice guy and I still deal with my neediness and weakness. More and more I realize that the path of personal growth is never over. It changes over time and new challenges arise.

One of the hardest challenges that nice guys face when it comes to social dynamics is the first one, and that’s admitting that you want to make a change. There is something in the back of our head that tells us we’re less of a man because we’re admitting we want help with women. You’re not, you’re stronger for being vulnerable enough to admit you can improve this area of your life, it takes a lot of balls. Or maybe you think that studying social dynamics will turn you into a douche. Guess what, you’re still going to be you, just a better or different version of you. Lastly people think social dynamics is all about bedding women. It’s not, it’s about learning what motivates people to do what they do and that skill permeates every area of your life.

The contributors here are on TNTML constantly put themselves out there, find that place of vulnerability and let go. Every time they grow and become better because of it. So if you’re sitting on the sidelines, get the fuck up and do something. Invest in yourself, you’re worth it. Studying social dynamics may not be for you but everybody has an area of their life they want to improve. Move forward today, just take one step and be brave. It’s hard, believe me I know but you have an entire community here that will support you. More than half of the posts I’ve written for this site have brought me to tears but the other side always feels so much better. My relationship with my business partner is 10x better than it was before, and had I not dug deep and decided to grow stronger I would have ran again! I’m telling you first hand that when you let go and simply start moving forward everything gets better. Whatever your area of improvement may be, just make one step forward today, JUST ONE. Your life isn’t going to change overnight but you’ll be further ahead than you were yesterday. Do that for a couple months and you’ll be at the top of a mountain basking in how far you’ve come and looking over the ridge at the next leg of your journey. That’s progress, that’s what life is about.

#thatisall

Interested in taking Eric and Jen's social dynamics workshop where you will learn not how to "bed women" or "pick up chicks" but rather how to understand social cues, and read social situations?  Email Jen for more info: JenFriel at talknerdytomelover d c and check out what one our past students had to say. 

Next beginners workshop: October 26 7:30pm in Hollywood, CA 

YAY PERSONAL GROWTH!!! 

If you’d like to share your stories please feel free to tweet me at @redolpho or email me at eric dot rudolph dot carrillo at gmail dot com

#RealDeal: Hi, my name is Ken and I am no longer "that guy"

This past weekend TNTML hosted their very first ever social dynamics workshop and it was a MASSIVE success!! Our resident social dynamics expert @redolpho and I took guys and gave them not only the basics on human interaction but we then took them in the field to 4 different types of bars and had them open different groups of men and women. 

It literally brought a tear to my eye watching these guys grow and KILLLLLLLLLLL it by the end of the evening. The changes in their confidence and overall attitude were IMMEDIATE!!! 

I asked one of the students to write about his experience from a very honest and real perspective on what he was able to take from the class. 

I have only one thing left to say ... HIT IT "KEN"!!! 

I’ve forever been the guy who avoids eye contact in halls.  If I know I’m going to cross paths with someone, I’d immediately grab my phone and pretend to not notice to avoid that weird hello.  Combine that with my shyness around women and you had a laughably awkward guy whose social skills forced him into lonerland.  Finally tired of being “that guy,” I pursued @JenFriel and @Redolpho’s Social Dynamics workshop, unsure of what to expect.  Though I was committed to improving myself, I had natural reservations – those were squashed immediately.  Before the class, I had never randomly approached a woman in my life; by the end of the night, I was talking to groups of attractive women all across the LA bar scene, thoroughly enjoying interactions I would have never had the courage to pursue.  What’s more is that those around me enjoyed it – not only did I learn how to approach others, but how to keep them engaged.  It was an eye-opening experience, and one that has already benefited me in friendships, relationships, and business.  I highly recommend Jen and Redolpho’s teachings to anyone looking to improve their human interactions, whether you’re the guy with no friends or Rico Suave - even socialites could benefit from these lessons.  

This isn't a class on "how to bed women, or how to pick up chicks" it's more a 101 of what makes people tick and understanding and owning your OWN confidence and awesome!! We teach you the basics then take YOU in the field and show you how it's done all while standing side by side with you. The classes are VERY intimate and you'll get a lot of 1 on 1 attention. 

Looking forward to seeing more of you this weekend!! 

#thatisall

Join Eric and Jen for their social dynamics workshop in LA on August 18th!

Click here for more info

#NerdsUnite: Giving In

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Eric. He is a MAASSTTEERRR social dynamics expert that will be talking about his experiences in the field from both an expert, and experience perspective. He's not just saying "this is how to get the girl" he's here to share his actual life stories and lessons learned from them. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ERIC !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Redolpho

I did it. I finally came out and said what I had been hiding for too long. I have been feeling suicidal and I hadn’t told anyone until last night. For the last 6 months I’d walk down the street hoping for a car or truck to plow over the curb and end it. When I’d walk I’d close my eyes and imagine the moment of impact, it would bring a sense of calm over me, no stress or sadness anymore, just a silent calm end. I’m sitting at the beautiful West Hollywood Library right now trying not to cry. This has been one of the hardest times in my life to date.

In one of my last posts I downplayed the level of sadness I was feeling but I’m not going to lie anymore, not to myself and not to the world. No one deserves to feel that way and it’s high time that I start following my own advice and do what fulfills me. Being a social dynamics coach and watching these guys’ lives change right in front of me brings a warmth to my soul that is unspeakable. The only rivaling feeling I’ve ever felt is the adventures of traveling. I intend to do a lot more of these two things.

I was recently at a bar with Jen Friel and the conversation headed for the depths of my soul. Finally I let go and told her how I was really feeling. An entrepreneur friend of hers joined us and helped me realize that I have nothing else to lose. I already gave up my job that paid me well, I’ve been homeless for the last two years and I’m sad. What else is there? I couldn’t sleep because of our conversation. I had experienced a daunting enlightenment and all that is left is to act. This morning when I awoke there was a certain sense of calm that fell over me. I know what I need to do but the decisions are still not easy to make. There have been points in my life similar to this and I can feel the courage brewing within me to make the hard decisions I have to make. I’m ready to jump but I’m still scared.

Today I have something to be extremely grateful for and that’s my first social dynamics class. So I’m off to prepare and I’ll continue to keep you updated on what is to come. I am searching deeply for the courage to make the decisions that are on the horizon. Thank you to everyone who keeps me moving forward. If it weren’t for your words and your hugs I may not still be here. If you’re feeling this way as well then reach out to me or reach out to a friend. Let’s talk and grow together.

#thatisall

If you’d like to share your stories please feel free to tweet me at @redolpho or email me at eric dot rudolph dot carrillo at gmail dot com