Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men

From Self-Doubt to Success

• On "Mindfully Masculine" we support and encourage men who strive to level-up their lives as we share books, media, and personal stories on mental health and well-being. Challenges in your life? We deliver the tips and tools that really help. • Episode 171

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In this episode of Mindfully Masculine, Charles and Dan dive into Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover, exploring the psychology behind self-limiting beliefs and how they affect dating, relationships, and personal growth. They discuss how to shift from self-doubt to confidence by embracing vulnerability, reframing rejection, and stepping outside of your comfort zone.

Key Topics Covered:

✅ Overcoming self-limiting beliefs in dating and life
✅ The role of vulnerability and authenticity in attraction
✅ How social conditioning impacts relationships
✅ Breaking free from the fear of rejection
✅ The power of confidence through discomfort
✅ Why men should stop romanticizing unavailable women
✅ Practical steps to challenge self-doubt and build success

Why Listen?

If you’ve ever struggled with confidence in dating or found yourself stuck in negative self-talk, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you reframe your mindset, build resilience, and take control of your dating life.

Resources & Links:

🎧 Listen to more episodes: MindfullyMasculine.com
📖 Book discussed: Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover

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Charles:

You need to be willing to ask that question of okay, here's what I bring to the table. Yeah, do you find this appealing enough to give me a chance for the next level of interaction, yes or no? I know a lot of guys that are uncomfortable voicing that question in a way where it actually gives a woman the power to say yeah, I am, or no, thanks. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles.

Charles:

In this episode, dan and I will be talking about dating essentials for men by Dr Robert Glover, and topics included this week will be understanding self-limiting beliefs, vulnerability and authenticity in dating, reframing the purpose of dating, the impact of social conditioning on relationships, overcoming the fear of dating, the impact of social conditioning on relationships, overcoming the fear of rejection, building confidence through discomfort, breaking the cycle of negative self-talk, developing a growth-oriented dating approach, the importance of testing for romantic interest and avoiding the romantization of unavailable women.

Charles:

Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, to find our full audio and video episodes, as well as any other resources we find worthy of sharing. Thanks and enjoy. We're going to jump into chapter two of Dating Essentials for Men by Dr Robert Glover, and again, the first half of this book is some real valuable stuff. All about getting your head right so that you can enter into dating in a way that doesn't doom you to failure, because a lot of us are walking around with some programming that if we don't make some edits and some modifications to that programming, we're just going to get frustrated by trying to socialize with date, possibly romance and girlfriend lover doesn't say something.

Dan:

He says all of us come from imperfect homes. And it's true, that's true, right, and and we all have some self-limiting beliefs that show up in in different ways. And yeah, so we all have something to work on yeah, the first thing.

Charles:

That sort of caught my attention and I printed out the some pages from this chapter of the book where the whole idea of dating really starts with a question of to, to the women of the world, and eventually specific ones of hey, given everything that I'm bringing to the table good and bad, but he emphasizes the negative, like based inside of these flaws that you can see immediately and the ones that I'm able to keep covered up for a little bit.

Charles:

Inside of these flaws, are you going to find me interesting enough, attractive enough, valuable enough to give me a shot at having your number or going on a date with me or sleeping with me or marrying me or having kids with me? Are you and and that's really where it starts you need to be willing to ask that question of okay, here's what I bring to the table. Yeah, do you find this appealing enough to give me a chance for the next level of interaction, yes or no? I know a lot of guys that are uncomfortable voicing that question in a way where it actually gives a woman the power to say, yeah, I am, or no, thanks, I'm not interested. And that's scary, and I think that's why a lot of guys myself in the past included will try to get that closeness and that relationship with a woman without actually feeling like we have to be vulnerable enough to ask for it.

Dan:

Yeah, and that's how guys end up in what they call or consider the friend zone, or or yeah, or the other thing is covering up a lot more of who you are because you're afraid that's not going to meet her standards or criteria based on assumptions that you're making, not even. A lot of times it's not even proven facts or information they have. It's guesses that you're making based on your previous experiences and a lot of times that's inaccurate, and now you are basically selling something that isn't reality, and so it's like all right.

Charles:

So the car dealer gives you one car to test drive, but then, when it's time to sign the paper and get the keys, it's like it's a completely different car. I don't, how would you react to that? There are times where you know whether it's a job interview or a first date, where we do feel that impulse of okay, I've got to, I got to spit, shine this turd a little bit who's myself, so that she doesn't really see who I really am. Because we have these self-limiting beliefs of okay, if we were just honest and direct about who we were and what we wanted and what we were interested in, then we would get rejected. So we can't do that. We have to come up with these other schemes and strategies instead, and that does lead to a lot of disappointment and a lot of heartache on both sides of the romantic equation.

Dan:

It's immediate distrust, because if you're scheming here, that means you're a schemer and you will potentially do it in other areas and as we learned in our last book, the number one thing that women look for in men is are you trustworthy?

Charles:

Are you who you say you are, and do you do what you say you're going to do?

Dan:

And everything else that has to be be the and that's not that easy to do. It sounds really simple the way you spew it out like that, but it no, it's not. Especially coming growing up in when we grew up and having our own experiences between movies and tv and just not parents relationship, parents relationship and no formal education on what a healthy relationship is like. They it'll teach that.

Charles:

No, they certainly don't.

Charles:

And and even if they did, it's like how effective would it be compared to all the other messages that we receive and all the other examples that we see?

Charles:

Yeah, even if we took two semesters on it in high school or college, how much would it really succeed at deprogramming the information that we've already gotten by that point? I don't know. So he makes the argument that we change the way that we look at dating. Instead of looking at dating as I'm going to do these things that will make women like me want to sleep with me, want to marry me, instead of treating dating as this exercise of I'm going to be what I need to be to get what I want from people, no, think of it instead, as this is a method for you to clean out all the crap bouncing around in your head and the misunderstandings you have about yourself, about the world, about women in general, about one woman in particular. You're going to use the process of becoming a good dater to fix all of these problems that you have inside your head isn't there an easier way to do this, because that sounds horrible yeah about that.

Charles:

Like when I was highlighting it, I thought if I need to travel 26.2 miles running, it is certainly not the easiest way to do it. Yeah, you don't run marathons because, oh, I need to get from here to this other place 26.2 miles away. You could grab, you could hop on a bike, you could get a car, you can charter a helicopter. There's a lot of easier ways to go 26.2 miles than running them. But if the goal is okay, I need to get from here to there and I also have a whole lot of other work I need to do on myself in the process, like eating better, getting in shape, being more disciplined mentally then, when you view it through that prism, running it might be the best way to accomplish not only getting from point A to point B, but all these other benefits that you would get.

Dan:

If it was easy somebody just told you what these issues were you wouldn't be likely to put in the hard work to actually shit and get uncomfortable to change those things. But if you're in the process of trying, to date somebody and, like you, have an epic fail about something or you're humiliated, you're going to remember that and you're going to be a lot more likely to want to do something about it.

Charles:

Yeah, and Robert Glover is in both his book and in interviews he's done. He's honest about the idea of I'm not interested in teaching guys how to get chicks. That's not my goal. My goal is to teach men how to be better versions of who they are, and I use the desire to date, fall in love, have sex, start a family as the motivation to teach men how to be better men. And then he says when I started challenging these self-limiting beliefs and I started asking myself these hard questions and I started saying I'm going to subject myself to anxiety-inducing experiences, every other aspect of my life took off. My business, my friendships, all parts of me being me got better when I was willing to say, okay, I'm going to tolerate the difficulties and the anxieties of becoming a better man in trying to get better romantic relationships. And it just affected every other aspect of his life.

Dan:

The older I get, the more I realize that life exists outside of your comfort zone, or a good life, a happy life, a fulfilled life. You don't have to go that far out of your comfort zone, but I think that needs to be a regular practice. Yeah, Otherwise you're just going to be the same old every day. Yeah, because how many Some people? That might be okay for some people.

Charles:

Yeah, how many I think about this all the time. How many of us guys, from the day we left high school or college or the military, like, how many of us just spend every day doing stuff we know we can do? We just wake up every morning and do things that like, yeah, I did this yesterday, so I'm not going to have any problem doing it today, and that turns into yeah, I've done this for the last 10 years. Every day for the last 10 years I've done this, so I can probably do it today too. And yeah, it really feels like the exciting parts of life are when you wake up and decide, all right, I'm going to do something today I've never done before and it might work. It might not work, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. And yeah, I think that's a better life.

Charles:

And for some people, that is running a marathon and for some people, that is just I'm going to say, if you're right to the fridge, I'm going to say hello to a stranger, or I'm going to say good morning to someone on my morning walk and I mean, you can start as small as you need to do those new things. And uh, yeah, if it's something you're nervous about. There's probably an interesting reason why it's probably what you need Right, exactly Okay about. There's probably an interesting reason why it's probably what you need right, exactly okay. So he gets into some of the categories of self-limiting beliefs that we experience and what the the sort of targets are. Of those self-limiting beliefs, there are some that are going to be about about yourself, like I'm too fill in the blank fat, poor, shy, whatever. Or I'm not rich enough, I'm not tall enough, I'm not. Or I'm not rich enough, I'm not tall enough, I'm not young enough, I'm not old enough, I'm not whatever To get the attention and affection of the kind of women that I'm attracted to.

Dan:

Every woman that you're attracted to you don't meet any of the qualifications. It's impossible for you to know, I know, funny thing is we all do it, I've done it. Funny thing is we all do it, I've done it. You know what I'm saying. But it's crazy If you really break it down and think about that statement for a minute. It's impossible to know. And so why would you believe that? And it's just because you probably had a few. What he talks about. We've had a few experiences. Yeah, starting in middle school usually. Yeah, and then we apply that to everything.

Charles:

Yeah, and even I'll give these SLBs, self-limiting beliefs, a little bit more grace than you are. We might just have one where it might just be. There's one thing about me that makes me appealing to every girl. Oh yeah, you only need one. It really does.

Charles:

It only takes one of up too short, I'm too tall, I'm too poor, I'm too, whatever it is, I'm too thin, I'm too fat, I'm too fat, I'm too young, I'm too old, whatever it is that you're zeroing in on to be okay, this is my essentially, this is my past, this is my reason. I don't have to compete in the dating marketplace because I've got this one thing that makes me a bad choice. And so, okay, congratulations, you're off the hook. You're off the hook as long as you're willing to give up this relationship. You're not getting what you want. Yeah, you desperately want the companionship and the love and romance of a woman in your life, but you've decided no, there's this one thing about me that that takes that off the table. So I'm still going to desperately want this thing, but now I've given myself a pass where I don't have to do anything to get it.

Dan:

I think, particularly now, a lot of young men find themselves in that position where they're just they've decided I'm not willing to compete in the dating marketplace. Yeah, he digs into this scientifically quite a bit. Apparently, his brother's name is Danny Glover. Yeah, I thought that was funny, but I thought it was fascinating the way he really made it simple and explained it.

Dan:

Like, our brains, as kids, aren't fully developed yet and so basically all our emotions come from is the primitive brain, so we might have an experience where a woman rejects you and then that kind of gets registered and at that point now the way your brain works is it's always going to look for confirmation of that experience, to believe that it's true. So now you're going through your whole life just reinforcing that one experience that you had and you're looking for it in all these other ways, and so now it becomes like a deep-rooted belief and so in order to undo that, it's going to take some work yeah, and we, yeah that that paradigm effect or confirmation bias, whatever you want to call it, it definitely it happens.

Charles:

happens with the news that we get A lot of us our age and younger get the majority of our news off social media, and it's so easy when Instagram, facebook, twitter, whatever suggests a news source that we've already decided we don't like, we just all unfollow that, and so I want to make sure that I only get information from people I already agree with, and I'll seek out more people that I already agree with. It's much more pleasurable. Yeah, I don't want to see that guy. That guy doesn't think the same way I do about whatever foreign policy, fiscal policy, whatever it is. No, I'm not like him, I don't want to. I don't want to hear from him anymore.

Charles:

You all do it, and then, yeah, it gets easier and easier to only expose yourself to the things that you already believe are true, and we certainly do that about ourselves as well. It's like every negative reaction or every time somebody looks at me in a way that doesn't feel good. Oh, it's because they they see this thing about myself that I've already decided I hate and it's not attractive. So that's what they're thinking about when they look at me and yeah, where can other people could look at me in a positive way, and I'll just push that off to the side, never pay attention to it and focus on the confirmation of I am too short, this sucks.

Dan:

And here's the thing too, is if you had a negative experience as a kid, it came from your immature brain as a child and it was, and it may have been an interaction with another immature brain.

Charles:

Absolutely.

Dan:

So it doesn't even apply at this point now, because you've had many years of experience in life and maturity as well as the other person. So, yeah, we're talking apples and oranges here, but again, that's so ingrained in our primitive brain which keeps us alive. Yeah, that it's very difficult to, unless you're really aware of it and you work on anxiety and your physical reaction when you're upset, unless you can, like consciously, catch yourself doing that and tell your brain hey, relax, thank you for doing this job. I know you're trying to protect me. You can relax now and then just be open to getting more information instead of just going with the old belief and and going down a rabbit hole of shame yeah, and it really is.

Charles:

It can really go all the way back to the very beginning, with how you were treated by your parents. Then, a little few years after, that was the first girl you had a crush on and how she interacted with you. And, yeah, yeah, you can. Just that stuff can just get written into the, to the base code and carried along seemingly forever or until you had enough compelling, a compelling enough reason to change it, which you're listening to, a podcast like this.

Dan:

Maybe you've had that moment what was also interesting was the way he very graceful, the way he explained it is your self-limiting belief is that girls like this don't talk to me so, and you never talk to girls like that, sure, so you now have, basically, you're confirming it.

Charles:

Yeah, basically a vision, just creating your own evidence on a daily basis to prove that your brain was right about whatever. Yeah, so the categories of self-limiting beliefs that we can categorize everything into one of these beliefs about yourself, beliefs about a particular woman, meaning oh, she's so pretty she already has a boyfriend or she's so put together that she's probably with some guy who's equally put together or certainly more put together than me, women in general, which is, beliefs like women have all the control. All women want a successful man. Women don't like sex. All the good women are taken and, yeah, it's very easy to tell yourself that story.

Charles:

The other one is all women are gold diggers. All women care about is dating a guy with money, and that that one I find to be very pervasive online right now with guys who talk about dating. It's always all women care about is how tall a guy is and how much money he has, and to which I say depending on how social you are, how many friends you are, you have, I can confidently say I know guys who have been in situations where their girlfriend or wife even has left him for a man that is objectively less attractive by current societal standards or objectively has way less money, and so that's a real thing. That happens. Women will leave rich men for poor men. There's doctors and lawyers who are left every day. In this country, money can't be loved for musicians and artists. That absolutely happens every day. And also women will leave attractive men for guys who are less attractive again based on the current standards. As if it ever happens, then this idea of all women want blah, blah, blah has to be false.

Charles:

When I hear somebody say all women this, or it's like a neon sign that says my relationship trauma is screaming right now, isn't it?

Dan:

And but also it's very arrogant, oh for sure.

Charles:

So you've got every woman on the planet completely figured out. You know exactly how they all.

Dan:

It is partly arrogant, partly immature, and so, yeah, it's partly arrogant, partly immature, and so, yeah, it's ridiculous to go down that road.

Dan:

And I as a kid and a teenager and high school and college I was I've done that, I've made those assumptions. But if you could take a step back and realize it's just wow, because no one ever wants to come across as arrogant. When I've said that to some other people where they thought they've made these assumptions based on information that they don't have or couldn't possibly get, and I was like, don't you think that's a little bit arrogant? And they're like good people. And then they're like, oh, I was just like I was, basically, and it calls them out on them and their self-deprecating language and using that as an excuse for not getting what they want. And so I think that was a wake-up call to a couple of people that I mentioned it to. I was just like, hey, dude, you're a smart guy, you're a great X, y, z, but don't you think it's a little arrogant to think that A, B and C here? And it made them pause for a second.

Charles:

Yeah, I was having a conversation with my girlfriend this week about imposter syndrome and it triggered a memory that Renata and I talked about in one of my sessions years ago, which is, yeah, sometimes I do feel a little bit like I've got she's an imposter. Oh, this is about you. That is definitely not her problem. Renata does not see the struggle of imposter syndrome, but I have at points in my life, thought, okay, maybe I'm not as smart or as competent as I think I am.

Charles:

And sometimes points in my life thought, okay, maybe I'm not as smart or as competent as I think I am and sometimes I can just get by on my charisma and my salesman skills and things like that. And she was the one that brought up oh so you really think you're that much smarter than everybody that you've got every person in your professional orbit is just convinced that you're good. You're not actually good. You've just you're such a super, a criminal mastermind that you've got this whole industry convinced that you're not really as good as you actually are. And so, yeah, that that would. That does take quite a bit of hubris to say everybody I've ever worked with is just some idiot that I've conned into thinking that I'm good at my job and that can't. Yeah, that doesn't pass. When you say it out loud, it definitely does not pass the test. It doesn't make any sense.

Dan:

It's very difficult. I think we all suffer from imposter syndrome at one point or another.

Charles:

I would say so, unless you're just an absolute psychopath.

Dan:

Yes, yeah, and the reason why I think it is just something that we all need to just accept is because we are learning from people who are smarter than us, and so we immediately think this is where we need to be, or this is the standard, and not where we are, and, unless different, in a classroom setting where you have, like other students and they're on your level, but like these days, as an adult, a lot of times when we're learning from things, it's videos, it's people on social media where it's like polished and professional and they've got all this stuff and we're learning from them and that's great, but at the same time, we're also secretly comparing ourselves to them and going this is where we need to be and, of course, that's going to feed into yeah, I'm an imposter, I'm not going to be able to be that good and yeah, you won't be at the beginning, but that's where we need to have a little bit self-compassion and be a little humble.

Charles:

And where we need to have a little bit self-compassion and be a little humble, and for me, it also works to have a little bit of logic. Okay, yeah, a lot of logic. The idea. The idea that you're not competent and capable and you just can. You're super competent and capable at convincing people that you're competent and capable, but you're not actually competent and capable so that dumb thing that you've, you fooled them like you're not actually doing a good job.

Dan:

Yeah, the yeah.

Charles:

Occam's razor that, all things being equal, the the simplest explanation is probably true is oh no, I probably am just decent at my job and people probably like working with me because I'm enjoyable to work with and not because I've cast some sort of a smell on everybody and convince them to thinking that I'm something that I'm not okay. He gets into one. One interesting thing is the emotionally laden language that we use, which is how we can expose some of our SLBs with the way that we talk about ourselves and the stories that we tell, and he gives some examples like she shot me down versus she said no, or I blew it again versus it didn't work out. And, yeah, sometimes the way that we tell a story about how an interaction may have gone with a woman will reveal a lot of where we're coming from and how we feel about ourselves. Also reinforces how we feel about ourselves. Correct, exactly, yeah, when you hear yourself talking that way about yourself, you believe the messages that your brain tells you.

Charles:

So if you're someone who says and the last one that he uses, which I really like, his position on rejection, the word and the concept of what is rejection, when you ask a girl out for coffee and she says, oh, no, thank you.

Charles:

Is she rejecting you or is she just expressing a lack of interest or low enough interest that she doesn't want to go out with you? And that's why I think we some of us have probably experienced rejection either from a parent or from if you're with a partner for a long time, like a year, thanks, but no thanks, I'm not interested anymore. That is difficult, but that's not. But our brain wants to make that the same as asking that stranger out for coffee, like our fears triggered. Oh, if she says no, this will feel just as bad as the time I got dumped by my wife and so I'm better off to not to not even bother asking her. But it's really not the same. Your brain wants to tell you that it's the same, but it's not the same. Having somebody who says no thanks, I don't want to go out with you, when she knows this much about you, should not feel as painful as my wife left me.

Dan:

Here's why it's also not the same. She's not the same person, correct. It's always a different person, right. It will never, ever not the same. She's not the same person, correct, it's always a different person, right.

Charles:

It will never ever be the same Correct yeah, no relationship that ends and no first date rejection is ever the idea of get to know as quickly as you can, because the faster you get to a no response from someone, the less it's going to hurt you. Guys, I've seen it in myself and in my friends. It's like that fear of giving a woman the power to say thumbs up or thumbs down is so paralyzing. That's how we find ourselves in the friend zone for two or three years with a girl that we've got a crush on.

Dan:

Yeah, and I think that happens because our minds start fantasizing about a life that is not reality for us. Person, yes, it's. They didn't know you as long as you were married to your ex-wife in the example that you were getting right. But in your mind, if let's say, this isn't a woman that you just saw it on a bar somewhere or a coffee shop, this is somebody that you know and you're talking about being in a friend zone, those two years you're fantasizing. You're not thinking about, oh, what great friends you're going to be. You're just like walking down the road hey pal, that's not what guys do and the feeling, these emotions, as they're replaying it in their minds. And so now you have built up a year or two of these connections and these like strong feelings and everything else like that.

Charles:

So, yeah, it's gonna sting a lot more if she does reject you, and so then you push it back right and just taking what you can get correct and and I think one of the main benefits of doing this kind of internal work when it comes to the way that you perceive of dating relationships and romance is you've got to get yourself to a point where, when you are evaluating a woman for going out on a date or having a future with is an absolutely rigid deal breaker for me is a woman has to be romantically attracted to me and willing to express that. I am not going to get caught up and infatuated with some woman that I don't even know she has romantic interest in me.

Dan:

Yeah, because that's what a girlfriend or a partnership is. It includes romance and sex and attraction and companionship and all these other things. It's not coupons, right? It's not a chauffeur, right. That's what a normal, widely understood relationship requires and is comprised of, and so to be in one and you're not having the basics being met, right.

Charles:

You have to get to the point where you waste your time, and I know it's. It's not up to us. We don't get to choose what emotions or feelings spring up inside of us, but we do get to choose which ones we are going to feed and nurture and care for, and have, grow and grow and grow. To feed and nurture and care for and have, grow and grow and grow. And you just you got to get to the point where I am not willing to let myself feel strong romantic attraction for women that have not expressed any interest in me, and that's why, again, so you get to know as quickly as you can. Hey, I'd be interested in getting to know you better. You want to get a coffee? Oh, no, thank you, I'm not interested. Okay, then I'm going to turn around and walk in the other direction and not continue to put myself in her proximity and continue to think about and ruminate on what future we could have. She says she doesn't want it right now. So believe her and move on. And I know it's easier said than done.

Charles:

But look, I went from a crushing on girls friend zone type of guy to one who doesn't do that anymore, even when I was on the dating apps. It's like I would match with a girl. I would say, hey, I'm glad we match. I'd like to get to know you're available for getting coffee or getting a drink. All go to a public place and have a coffee with them. Oh, okay, we're looking for different things. It's great meeting you. I wish you the best. And boom, I was onto the next one and that was good for her and good for me. That's how it's supposed to work. Somebody isn't sure about you and you are interested in knowing more about them. You got to believe, take them at their word, believe them and say, okay, we're not looking for the same kind of experience right now. I'm gonna move on and wish you the best. Let's talk about some of these absolutely anxiety inducing activities that glover is telling you should engage in and that I'm going to try to do some of these again.

Dan:

That makes sense in the context of I'm already in a relationship yeah, you know what we should go and we should let us literally know what we've done as part of these things already.

Charles:

Okay so go places you don't usually go. Okay, done that. Yeah, I have two both, both on a big level and, uh, at a small level often shops things like that correct.

Dan:

Yeah, yeah, being a gym, I've done that because the yeah, the chains, whatever yeah, talk to everyone you meet no, I've never done that, not everyone yeah, and that's the talk to everyone you meet.

Charles:

Oh, okay, if I meet less people, have less people to talk to. There's definitely ways that you can try to, but, like we said about taking care of yourself and your space. Who are you trying to game here? Who are you trying to get one over on it's make and hold eye contact? I've definitely done some playing around with that. Just walk around the mall and stuff. Where every person I pass, I hold eye contact with them and it can be a little uncomfortable.

Dan:

Oh yeah, I've only done it a couple of times because it was yeah.

Charles:

And usually I find once it starts to feel a little uncomfortable if you just give a little smile and a nod and then just keep walking on your way.

Dan:

So that's one of my self-limiting beliefs is anybody who stares is a psychopath or a pervert or whatever. So right, those are all and and it's, I think all that's all from movies, not from real life or television shows you know, science tells us the opposite.

Charles:

Science tells us it or it's the predator who, as soon as he gets caught looking, looks away yeah, it's so.

Dan:

that's the thing is. I'm not intentionally like looking and then as soon as they look I look away. I just do a perusal kind of thing, just seeing where everything's going. Usually I'm not intentionally making eye contact, unless it was we were.

Charles:

we had talked about doing that and practicing, but I could see that, yeah, that's worse Like looking away like that, yeah, yeah that, that response of, oh, I just got caught doing something I'm not supposed to do and I looked down especially. That's the. If you do a little digging into women, in particular friends or women that you know. Yeah, it's not the, oh, I caught a guy looking at me. That creeps them out. It's. I caught a guy looking at me and he immediately looked away.

Dan:

That's the creeps, Absolutely that's worse, absolutely yes.

Charles:

If a guy locks eyes with a woman briefly and then gives her a little smile or head nod and then just keeps going on his way, never talks to her, never interrupts her. I don't know any woman who's explained that exact situation to me and felt like, oh, I felt really unsafe or really creeped out by a guy who we made eye contact. He smiled and he just kept walking. He left me alone. That is almost the safest scenario is to do that. Yeah, that's something I've challenged myself with when I've been around the mall. Yeah, make eye contact with everybody. If they hold it for a second, give them a smile and then just keep walking. You don't have to interrupt them, you don't have to insert yourself into their day or their life, you just keep going.

Dan:

I feel like I'm inviting into my life, if I'm staring at them like I want, and so that's one of my other reluctances. As they could, they can decide if they want to say hello to you or not. Yeah, absolutely no, I, I get that. I I just feel like it's just hokey, provoking somebody. I don't know.

Charles:

That's me, though yeah, but I think again, that's where the smile and the nod, especially if it's dudes I mean, it's not like I've done it with when I've gone out and decided I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do with everybody, and sometimes, yeah, dude will will look at me and he'll hold it for a second and I'll just give him a little nod of the head and I'll keep going. Does he look you up and down?

Charles:

kind of doing one of them I mean, everybody does, especially when I wear my five inch shorts. So, yeah, making and holding eye contact and I think that is also something that we've talked about in previous episodes and how you can there's different levels of trying that out that you can experiment with Ask a woman to meet you for coffee yeah, that's a little bit bigger than making and holding eye contact, but it's. I've never done that too. I have not either. I've never done what they would call a cold pickup, where you just see somebody in public and we'll talk about why. Glover's not a big advocate of cold pickup either, of just finding a stranger. Now, what's the criteria that you're evaluating here? Like, and look, if it's a complete stranger, it really does come down to I think I'd like to see you naked. So therefore, that's enough. That, and only that, is enough reason for me to approach you and introduce myself into your life, and I that's not.

Dan:

One of my beliefs of myself is that I'm shallow, and so when I, if I were ever to do that to somebody, immediately my mind goes to I'm being shallow. I'm showing the person that I'm shallow.

Charles:

Yeah, and there may. Yeah, if you've seen someone a little bit and how they interact with people and you find something attractive about that's one thing. But just walking into a brand new bar, nightclub, cafe, whatever, and you just see the prettiest girl and you just immediately walk up to her and ask her out for coffee. I'm not saying there's anything ethically wrong with that. But number one I'm not going to do it because I'm not comfortable doing it. And number two I don't feel like it has a high probability of success.

Dan:

Yeah, I think there's got to be a little bit more detail that Glover's leaving out here, because I don't think that would work in almost any situation without a little preamble, a little conversation first. Oh hey, and some indicators of interest from her. Yeah, I'm a Cowboys fan too.

Charles:

And Glover's whole thing is and we'll get into this later on, I think in the next section of the book don't be banging on locked doors. When a woman opens the door for you, all you have to do is walk through it. And so at one point, asking her out for coffee might be she may have given you all the indications and all the signs that the next thing you should do is ask her for coffee. He's not saying walk up to complete strangers and say, hey, will you get coffee with me? But there is a time in the process of testing for a woman's interest that the next logical step is hey, do you want to get some coffee?

Dan:

I thought it was literally just walking up to somebody and going hey, do you want to grab coffee?

Charles:

He's just putting this on the list of things that uncomfortable, anxiety inducing things that you will have to try at some point got it okay, not that you should be doing these to get out of your comfort zone now that's what is. Tell a woman to give you her phone number, okay, walk it up to a stranger and say give me your phone number. Yes, that that is going to be and your social yeah, that's a.

Charles:

That's going to be a high risk maneuver that will usually not work for you. But as you learn the different levels of testing women for their interest, at some point the next thing that makes sense is going to be asking her for her phone number. And then, when it is you're going to have to do, you're going to have to build a whole lot of high anxiety activities that get you to the point where the next thing that makes sense is hey, give me your phone number so I can give you a call. That will make sense at some point, but not right when you walk into a room and you see a pretty girl and you just decide, okay, what I'm going to do is walk up and say give me your phone number, Good luck, Okay. And then he offers the example of wanting to learn how to salsa dance and using that as a way to prompt some of these anxiety inducing situations.

Charles:

The value is not in I'm going to meet my wife in this dance class.

Charles:

It's going to be I'm going to do something I'm not comfortable doing and I'm going to survive it, and I'm going to become the kind of person that does things that I'm not comfortable with to see what might happen. That's really where the value is. We already talked about the section on why you started lying to yourself. Basically, when you're in middle school and you're crushing on a girl who may or may not be crushing back at you, you're both going to be very sloppy and awkward with the way that romance or those romantic intentions express themselves. It's going to be in almost every case. It's going to be rough because you're learning how to be people much less learning how to be people who are attracted to the same or opposite sex and you're gonna you're gonna run into some pretty sloppy interactions and they can really be carried forward into your history with romance and dating for the rest of your life yeah and being able to just say I was just a dumb kid and she was just a dumb kid and we.

Charles:

We did what came natural to us and it was probably the wrong thing. There's value in being able to just discount some of that and say because most of the women that you interact with now are going to have at least some clue on how to talk to a man, what they're interested in a man. You can cut through some of the level of bullshit that you absolutely had to deal with when you were middle school or you had a crush on somebody bullshit that you absolutely had to deal with when you were middle school, or who had a crush on somebody. Yeah, we, and we also talked about how your mind is going to continually reinforce the things that you already believe to be true. And again, we'll say something we say all the time if what you're doing now is working for you, then you don't need to listen to us or robert glover or anybody else.

Charles:

If you're completely satisfied with the results that you're having, I don't know why you're listening to the podcast in the first place, but if you are not satisfied, it seems to make sense to say okay, part of the reason I'm not satisfied might be because I believe things that aren't true and I'm relying on the beliefs that I have about things that are not true to get me to where I want to go. To get me to where I want to go, and so you got to be open to letting some of those ideas go. If you're not completely satisfied with how your life's going, you got to be willing to say okay, is this the result of me believing some things that I just got wrong?

Dan:

And that's scary. A lot of. Most of us don't want to go down that road because they'll start questioning everything.

Charles:

Yeah, we'll accept familiar discomfort over unfamiliar comfort, absolutely. And, yeah, and we find ourselves stuck in situations whether that's jobs or relationships or or lack of relationships, that we're not particularly satisfied with. But you know, you know it, you're comfortable with it, you know what to expect tomorrow morning when you wake up. You know what life's going to look like. Yeah, and people will get comfortable expecting some pretty miserable things just because they're comfortable, and we are encouraging you not to do that. Yeah, knock it off. Be willing to say, okay, some of the things that I'm certain of may not be true, and I'm willing to at least temporarily experiment with letting go of those beliefs and trying something else and humble everybody. You're not going to fail or succeed until you try first. And yeah, whether it's dancing or whatever it is, put yourself out there and say, yeah, I can attempt this and no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay.

Dan:

Yeah, I've tried. You're going to starve. You're going to go to jail.

Charles:

Most of the time Right, yeah, yeah, what you tell yourself. The negative potential downsides are probably completely made up in your head where it's going to be either upside or neutral side. To whatever attempt you make, it's either going to be a wash or it's going to be something good's going to happen.

Dan:

I think regardless. You could say something good happens because you get more information, regardless of what happens you get more information regardless of what happens, right?

Charles:

you get more information now, and so you and your identity changes into somebody who's willing to try difficult, uncomfortable things. It's win-win right. So get out there and do something. I'm gonna ask you yes, I'm gonna ask you next week. Get something you did between recordings that you are comfortable with the very next recording we're about to do in a few minutes but next week, when we get together, I'm gonna ask you about something. Yeah, sounds good. All right, thanks, dan, we'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode. Start to finish, dan, and I really appreciate it. Again. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, where you can find full audio and video episodes, as well as any resources we find worth sharing. Thanks, we'll talk to you next time.

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