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It's huge folly to dedicate all of your time to chasing women.
Yes, there are women out of your reach/league. How is that possible? Because the kind of men who Fawn over her are out of your league. Why should she settle for you then.

This is not to say you shouldn't chase girls, but if you know you aren't big enough to score the kind of women you want, you should spend more time building yourself and the women will be the dividends.

We give lonely guys all sorts of advice on how to get the woman of his dream but we've never stopped to ask ourselves why they seem to flounder when it's time to walk the talk.

Many men will not date themselves were the women.

Stop chasing women. Attract them.

Introduction:

Confidence is an abstract. It is the self-assurance in your ability or a feeling of certainty or favourable outcome in a particular pursuit.

What Causes of lack of confidence?



i. Upbringing and personal experiences

confidence can result from varying number of things. One of which is the upbringing or life experiences of a person.

A child while growing looks up to the parents for direction. A lot of parents, who dont realize how profound the influence they hold on them, unwittingly make the mistake of talking down on their children all too often, creating debilitating effects on the child’s selfimage.

Parents use words like “you’re just too stupid to understand anything”, ” how are you this dumb”, and the likes on their children. The child, being in his formative stage, internalises these negative words and not only does he feel but believes that this is exactly who he is and will never actually amount to anything in life.

Such Children go into the world with this mentality embedded in them, thinking they are and will never be as smart as other kids in school. They become awkward in public settings and have difficulty in socializing with their peers.



ii. Self-deprecation:

Most people are in the habit of putting down themselves. They maximize their failures and minimize their success. When all goes well, they give themselves little or no credit and when it’s otherwise not good, they can’t seem to stop telling themselves how it’s their fault, how they could’ve done it better, how they knew they couldn’t do it.

When you put yourself down more often you do elevate yourself, your confidence level is set in a downward spiral, your subconscious mind feeds on these negatives which permeates through your belief system.



iii. Indiscipline:

Another of the causes of lack of confidence – which is arguably the most prevalent – is indiscipline.

Discipline is deciding to do what is necessary, what is right, and not what feels good to do at that point in time. Defering instant gratification,Tending towards pain – an insurmountable essentiality for growth – and not pleasure: choosing the path of least resistance.

The lack thereof is indiscipline.



How do you develop Self-Confidence?

A lot of people who are sad and unhappy with the state of their lives are so due to their enfeebling habits.

Habits are either productive or destructive(consumptive).The former, over time, catapults you into a life of success and fulfillment, the latter on the other hand will impede your development.

When you spend your time being productive – hitting the gym, reading a book, developing a skill, dedicating your time to the pursuit of your goals – you begin to see results over time and this consequently lead to confidence in yourself and your abilities. You know you’ve paid you dues – in pain – and can take on the challenges of life with utmost conviction and self-assurance.

Body language

Body language is also an important function of self-confidence. Adopting a dominant body language can be of great effect on your state of mind and self-confidence. You walk down the street everyday and can’t help but notice the submissive body language of pedestrians. Their heads are facing the ground as they walk, daring not to look in people’s eyes, and can barely take large steps.

Various studies and research have proven that adopting a dominant body language has an instant effect on your confidence level. Anytime you feel you’re down, unhappy, anxious or have low energy, pause, raise your head, not too high so you don’t seem like something is wrong with you, widen your shoulder and raise your chest, take larger steps and walk with the swagger of a man that knows what he’s doing, where he is going and has life by the balls. You will soon or instantly notice significant change in your mood. Practice this over and over till it becomes a part of you.

Dressing and looks:

A saying goes: the way you’re dressed is the way you’re addressed. How you’re dressed is one of the first cue picked up by anyone you meet. As human beings, we haven’t spent as much times with people most especially the ones we’ve just met. One of the ways we can make some sort of assumption about people before actually getting to know them is by how they are dressed. Your dressing speaks status, your personality, state of mind and your sense of style.

You don’t have to be dressed to the nines, but putting on quality clothes that look good and presents you as a person of value has a profound effect on how confident you feel about yourself.

The better (not necessarily expensive) you’re dressed, the more confident you appear and feel. Make it a point to always dress and look good whenever you’re setting out.



Remember: how you choose to spend time – productively or destructively- has a great impact on the quality of your life and your overall confidence level. When you spend most of your time on inanities like staying in front of the TV flipping through channels, social media, laying idle E.t.C It feels good because they give you instant gratification and pleasure, but the perpetuation of such habits lead no where but the path of failure, sorrow and regret, which in turn plummets your self-confidence. You have consumed your time instead of using it. You’ve done a deservice to yourself, and no one but you will bear the consequences of your foolish actions.



In closing:

Self-confidence is a gradual process, it is developed over time; It doesn’t come in a day. Just as in building anything tangible, time must take its toll to ensure its fruition. You will have to be patient. Remember: nothing tangible comes easy. If it’s easy, it’s either of little worth or is soon snatched away.

Although slightly nuanced, Persuasion and Influence are terms similar in meaning. On that note, I’d begin by going into the semantics:

Persuasion, in its literal sense, is to cause a person to do something, through a means – reasoning and argument, certain acts that result to certain reactions from their subjects.
Influence on the other hand, is “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself”

As Persuasion and Influence are congenital in select set of people, they are skills that can be developed for those they don’t come naturally to.

An advantage a learned skill has over the innate is that those who embody the former are conscious in its dispensation and of its efficacy. Such persuaders aware of what they’re doing and the effect it elicits in their subjects. Those who have dedicated themselves to the acquirement of such skill, due to their conscious awareness, are duly equipped against its effect — they are less likely to be a subject of persuasion and Influence, at least not unwillingly.

A learned skill is rarely dispensed as perfectly and as effectively as an innate, it is honed to a certain degree; One which can only border on perfection.

Developing the ability to Persuade and Influence can immensely effect most areas of your life; Be it with business partners, office superiors and associates, your immediate family, women, virtually everyday encounter with people.

Thoroughly mastered, you will get the most out of life with a dazzling ease.



With that said, It begs the questions: how do you master the art of persuasion and influence? how do you harness its force and power, channeling them into extracting every of your desires from people and encounters with them?

There are persuasion and influence techniques, which I’ve successfully used, some of which werent given a name till i read Robert B. Cialdini’s Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion and adopted them. These techniques, when effectively executed, can lead to desirable reactions in people – the subjects:



Commitment and Consistency technique: You can activate the force of commitment and consistency in your subject by exploiting their proclivity to remain consistent with a preconceived ideology, self-image, beliefs or a promise.

I’d give a short anecdote: I was going to ask a colleague who had been — prior — somewhat difficult and unopened towards me, on a date, at my place. She wouldn’t even give me her number. I couldn’t risk the pain of any more rejection from her, so in the course of our conversation, I said, in the most innocuous and factual manner, “lol. you know you’re mean, so I’m not surprised“. She went on an attempt to qualify herself: “really? I’m actually not like that, maybe you misunderstood me…bla bla bla”. I acted indifferent, seeming like I had already accepted her as mean, and didn’t think she was any different or was going to change.

It wasn’t long I said I had to go attend to somethings. I asked her to a date at my place, she agreed, without any hint of reservation. She also had to give me her number — which she had initially refused to — because I needed to contact her as to how to get to my place.

why would a lady who had been cold and standoff-ish towards me suddenly become all nice and alluring, now open to all of my requests she had initially turned down?

Note that there are two techniques I employed here that resulted into the sudden change in her attitude, eliciting a reaction that swung the situation in my favor:

In the process of qualifying herself, she made a statement in her defense, implying she was in fact a nice person. Consequently, The need to be consistent with her proposed self-image — she being a nice person — and her words being in congruence with her actions, became engendered in her. Whether her initial attitude to me was her true self or a front, she now had to be ‘nice’ to be consistent with her proposed self-image.

Secondly: People hate it when you think you know them or have figured them out and make it a point to prove you wrong. Like, “How dare you think you know me.” They will go amusing lengths to disprove, no matter how true, a preconceived notion you had of them.



Threat and Incentive technique: One of the most effective techniques of influence and persuasion, though, unlike others, is more overt, is the use of threat – an unfavorable consequence due to noncompliance of a target – and an Incentive – what the target stands to benefit on shifting it’s stance in compliance to your desires.

For every human act, there is a motivation. We are more likely to review our position in the face of ensuing repercussion. When we realise the unfavorable fate that is to befall us shour we fail to bend in accordance to that which pleases a superior force, our decision is quickly Influenced in compliance, all in a bid to avoid an impending recourse.

Duly Incentived a subject’s decision is soon swayed. A subjects action is either motivated by fear or pleasure. Introducing an Incentive elicits the latter.

Show your subjects what he stands to gain and every wall of resistance come to a crumbling fall.



Reciprocation technique: The law of reciprocation demands that an act of generosity towards your subject create a feeling of obligation within them.

You are more likely to get a person to do your bidding having initially done them a favor. It could even be something as innocuous as getting them a gift, keeping a seat for them while they’re away, giving them a lift, you name it.

This force is so much powerful that the conscious awareness of the feeling of obligation it elicits in us does not in any way abate it. This explains why a woman who does not entertain the idea of having sex with a man will reject gifts or any other unsolicited acts of magnanimity from a man, because the moment she does, she feels a burning sense of indebtedness to him, consequently making it harder to turn down any uncomfortable request from him.

Salesmen employ this techniques in various forms. One which i have experienced firsthand is the idea of free samples: I was on my way out of the mall as I passed by a fruit juice section. I was offered a free bottle of a particular fruit juice product. “Just to have a taste of our tasty fruit juice”, the salesman said. The default response that came to my mind, which I told him, was that “I will have a taste, but I won’t be buying any of those.” This was when I knew close to nothing about techniques of persuasion and Influence, but I realised having a taste of that juice like the salesman proposed, even if I ended up not liking it, will create a feeling of obligation on my part to buy some of it.

Why most fail to successfully dispense the reciprocation technique owes to the overt way of dispensation that it immediately makes people put up their defenses. The reciprocity technique, in particular, needs to be served covertly, so much so your subject need not consider the possibility of you trying to exploit the resultant indebtedness it evokes in them. There has to be a latent purpose, one which the subject is completely oblivious to.



The context technique: You can influence the opinion of people to certain things by presenting them in a context. Their opinions are therefore shaped in comparison to the given context. The context technique is most commonly used by salesmen.

For instance, you walk into a store, wanting to buy some shoes. You are ushered to the shoes section by the salesman. Walking in, you are first shown a couple of shoes lower in standard and intrinsic value compared to the prices they go for, prices which have been intentionally hiked by the salesman. He knows, definitely, that you are sure to pass on them, but there is a psychological motive attached to this deliberate act, which i will touch on soon.

Asking to be shown other shoe collections, he walks you further to another section of shoes which are slightly higher in price but of higher standard and quality. You heave a sigh of relief, thinking to yourself, “Finally, better shoes for more or less ” you waste no time in swiping your card, thinking you struck a good bargain, oblivious to the psychological manipulation that influenced your decision.

Note that these are a set of shoes which if he had first shown you, you would have thought were too expensive to spend that much on, but owing to the fact you were initially presented relatively lower quality shoes for more or less the same price(Context), your probable reluctance to go for what you would have perceived to be too expensive for a pair of shoe, was assuaged.

Social Proof: Social validation is immensely instrumental in Influencing the opinions of your subjects as well as persuading them to do your bidding.

As humans, we like to cut through the stress of paying enough attention and time towards people or a thing, in order to ascertain their value, so we observe what people think then base our judgement off them.

People tend to pay attention to what others think about you and how they relate with you, taking them as a measure of how they should relate with you as well. Since he sees people treat you with utmost respect, even when you haven’t shown you’re a respectable person, he relates with you in accordance.

A person anxious and uncertain in a social setting tend to perceive the actions of others as what’s right, and feels the need to emulate it in order to blend into the the group and be more confident.

This is the effect of social validation: It’s what people do so it’s the right thing to do. It’s what people think thus it’s the right way to think.

when you’re trying to get someone to do business with you, simply pointing out a number of reputable and well-known people whom have worked with you can up the chances of your subject agreeing to work with you as well.

The same applies in dealing with women. Your value automatically skyrockets, to her, when a woman sees you effortlessly flirting with other women or she notices a number of broads frantically competing for your attention. Even when she knows little to nothing about you, she immediately fills that void with positive opinions of you. Since other women find you attractive enough to flirt with you, she begins to perceive you as more attractive than you actually are.



Conclusion: I will be touching on the intricacies of persuasion and Influence in subsequent posts prequeled by this as soon as I’m chanced. Go out there and put this techniques to use, seeing everyone you meet as subjects to be persuaded into doing your bidding. It is not enough to just read, taking action is imperative.