Why Your Brain Prefers Miserable Dating Habits, Over Risking Success

In this insightful episode of "Mindfully Masculine," Charles and Dan delve into Chapter 5 of "Dating Essentials for Men" by Dr. Robert Glover, exploring why your brain is hardwired to keep you safe—even if it means sabotaging your dating life. They discuss the hidden comfort traps, anxiety management, overcoming the fear of rejection, and why immediate action is crucial for personal growth and successful dating.

Key Topics Covered:

• Understanding anxiety as your brain’s protective mechanism
• Why your brain favors familiar discomfort over unfamiliar success
• Practical strategies for overcoming fear and anxiety in dating
• The true cost of avoiding rejection
• How an "abundance mindset" changes your dating outcomes
• Managing vs. soothing anxiety—why the distinction matters
• Friend Zone: How men unintentionally trap themselves and how to avoid it
• "Geeks with Techniques": Why action matters more than information
• The power of immediate action and realistic expectations

Notable Quotes:

• "Your brain's job isn't to make your dreams come true; it's to keep you alive."
• "Failure needs to be part of the process—success is a numbers game."
• "Men who aren’t resilient to rejection spiral out of control or shut down."
• "Testing for interest is not about being accepted or rejected personally, it's about understanding mutual interest."

Actionable Tips:

1. Expand Your Comfort Zone: Regularly interact with new people and situations to reduce social anxiety.
2. Reframe Rejection: Adopt the mindset "I can handle it," turning setbacks into growth opportunities.
3. Immediate Action: Apply the "three-second rule" to bypass anxiety and hesitation in social interactions.
4. Test for Interest: Engage authentically without pressure, using interactions to gauge mutual interest.

Book Featured: "Dating Essentials for Men" by Dr. Robert Glover

Find More: Visit mindfullymasculine.com for full audio and video episodes, updates, and resources to enhance your personal growth and relationship success.

Chapters

• 1:39 The Real Purpose of Anxiety
• 5:06 Comfort vs. Growth: How Your Brain Keeps You Stuck
• 7:24 Why Anxiety Stops Action
• 9:27 Geeks with Techniques: Knowledge vs. Action
• 10:38 Rejection, Resilience, and the "Numbers Game"
• 15:42 Managing vs. Soothing Anxiety
• 17:33 The Truth About "The Friend Zone"
• 25:13 The Three-Second Rule for Taking Action
• 31:46 Realistic Expectations for Personal Growth
• 36:20 Perseverance and Realism

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Instead have this mindset of no matter what happens, no matter what girl says no to me, no matter what girl says Ooh, I'm not interested in you. In that way, you can handle it and you can recover from it. And that really is. I've said for years that some of the biggest problems we have in our world is men who are not resilient to rejection, men who are not willing to put themselves out there and say this is what I want, this is what I'm trying to get, and then they're told no, you can't have that thing you want. And then they just spiral out of control and act out or shut down or whatever it is.

Charles: 0:37

Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles Okay. In this episode, dan and I will continue our analysis and review of Dating Essentials for Men by Dr Robert Glover, and the topics we discuss will include the purpose and nature of anxiety, the comfort trap, overcoming the fear of rejection, managing versus soothing anxiety, the friend zone revisited, the power of immediate action and realistic expectation and personal growth. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom to find full audio and video episodes, as well as any news or updates that we find worth sharing. You may notice that we're still struggling a little bit with the audio quality of our episodes. We are in the process of trying to get that straightened out, so please just bear with us for one or two more episodes and we'll get it taken care of. Thanks and enjoy Going well, welcome back. We're going to cover chapter 5 of dating essentials for men, and this is the anxiety chapter, and man anxiety is.

Charles: 1:39

Why are you feeling anxious? I know this is an easy one, because there's some pretty basic stuff to understand about anxiety that can, in my experience, almost immediately make it easier to make it less of a limiter of what you experience in your life. And first is this concept? That was a big deal when I first heard it. It's not your brain's job to grant you all your dream, make all your dreams come true.

Charles: 2:10

It's your brain's job to keep you safe and keep you alive, and so everything that your brain tells you is going to be coming through that filter of yeah, you don't depend on me for making your life amazing. My job is not to make your life amazing, my job is to keep you alive long enough to reproduce, and that's about as far as your brain. To get it to do anything else, you're going to have to hack it in some ways. You're going to have to. You're going to have to convince it that these other things are just as important as your ability to feel comfortable and safe and secure. And if you don't do that, then you're going to be pushed against taking a risk or against doing anything new, because familiar discomfort is easier for your brain to pull off than unfamiliar success and making just amazing things happen for you.

Dan: 3:03

Yeah, Look at it this way. I just thought of this, basically the same as Ben Siller on a long-term poly right. He was an insurance.

Charles: 3:10

I've never seen it.

Dan: 3:11

Oh, really, he was basically. I think he was like a risk assessment for a company. He's a CRM In his personal life, that was because of his job, or basically assess risk Worst case scenarios.

Charles: 3:22

Worst case scenarios or basically assess risk. Worst case scenarios, Worst case scenarios yeah absolutely Don't do that.

Charles: 3:26

Yeah, think about it in terms of it's not the job of your appetite to keep you in good shape. It's the job of your appetite to keep you from starving to death. Because if you start looking at your appetite's job as keeping you cut and ripped, you're just going to be disappointed every day. You've got to figure out. Okay, I understand that this is what my body's trying to do for me and it is trying to do it for you. It's a good thing that it's trying to do, but if you just put it on autopilot, without intervening in what those impulses and those instincts are, you're not going to be happy with the results. We live in a culture and a society where, if you just let your appetite drive the car, you're going to be significantly overweight because of the food and the things that are available to us.

Dan: 4:13

Yeah, and also the lack of required exercise. We don't require exercise to survive anymore exercise to survive anymore, and that the big difference is we don't need to go running for miles and hours in order to find food and then carry it back and all the weight that we have to carry, all that stuff. We don't have to do that anymore. So the appetite was developed basically to combat all of the physical exercise that we were doing, because if we didn't eat Hulk, basically we'd waste away. We'd have energy to go hunt a nice day or gather or whatever it is. You're out, you know, just again, just walking around all day, even just the gathering part of things if you're not hunting. This is very demanding on the body if you're doing it all day long. So that's, I think the problem we run into is our activity levels have dropped significantly over time.

Charles: 5:06

Yeah, and so we've got this. We've got these mechanisms inside of our brain just telling us to keep things the same. Whatever the normal is, whatever the status quo is, the easiest way, the surest way to make sure that you survive is going to be to just not rock the boat. And so, when it comes to changing up the experiences that we have with dating, it's like there's going to be a lot of voices, or at least one in your head, telling you Nope, don't do anything new, don't do anything different. Just hear the reasons why this podcast is wrong. Here's the reason why this book is wrong. Here are all the reasons why you should just keep doing what you're doing and eventually maybe you'll get lucky and things will be better.

Charles: 5:46

It was like no, you need to participate in your own rescue, as they say. Where if you're just waiting for things to randomly change and get better? No, because even if something random, something great, happens to you randomly, your response to it is still going to be dictated by all these decisions you've been making on a daily basis and you're going to squander that opportunity when it comes your way by all these decisions you've been making on a daily basis and you're going to squander that opportunity when it comes your way.

Dan: 6:05

If you're not open to it now, what makes you think you're going to be open to it when it's basically handed to you on a sort of ladder?

Charles: 6:11

Yeah, like when people win the lottery and they've got the financial habits of a poor person and then they get a couple 10 million, 100 million dollars, they're still going to behave with that money as if they're a poor person because they didn't put themselves through the work necessary to become somebody who can generate and manage that amount of money.

Dan: 6:31

Just because you can't manage, you kept $100 and had to allocate, handle that properly. What makes you think you're going to be? Any better at managing a thousand. It's not the amount of money that's the issue, it's the management of it itself.

Charles: 6:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're my girlfriend and I are going to see the new Captain America movie tonight, and I was, I'm, reminded of the first movie, where the doctor that gives Steve Rogers, the super soldier serum says part of what this does is it makes you more of what you already are. So it makes bad people worse and it makes good people great, and that is what money or exposure to really great women that are the kinds that you say that you want to date that's what will happen. It will. The things that you're bad at you will get worse at, and that's really anything that induces anxiety does that to you. It will make it will.

Charles: 7:24

Anxiety will bring out the cracks in your game, and the things that you're good at, maybe you'll rise up and get even better at, but the things that you're bad at, those will come out and be very clear to you as well. Yeah, but what anxiety mainly does is it? It stops action. It's, it puts you in a place where you feel like, no, I'm not going to do anything, I'm not going to rock anything, I'm not going to rock the boat, I'm not going to change anything, and so that way I'll feel safe and you might be miserable, but you'll be safe too Safe from success, safe from failure.

Dan: 7:55

Known as the fight, flight or freeze feelings. Right, that's what anxiety is actually a reflection of or description of, and if you are needing to think about doing things, meaning you have to consciously think about doing things, it's not ingrained in you. It is not something that you have practiced that often, because the more often that you've practiced, the things that are part of you are not necessarily the things that you need to think about. And if you have a bad emotions from your primitive brain, like anxiety, while you're trying to do these things that you haven't practiced very well before, it is truly, truly difficult for you to do them well, whereas the things that you've practiced and honed and it's just become part of who you are without that anxiety. When that anxiety comes, it's a lot easier to fall back on your routines and your habits and the things that you are. Because you have that, you're not consciously needing to make effort. Think about every single thing that you're doing.

Charles: 8:55

Yeah, I'm reminded of. One of my favorite scenes from Batman Begins is when Bruce Wayne is training with Liam Neeson's character Ducard, and he says your parents' death was not your fault, it was your father's fault. And Bruce Wayne immediately wants to make excuses for his dad. He's now the guy had a gun. And the answer is would the gun have stopped you? No, I've had training. My dad didn't have training. And his character says the training is nothing, it's the will to training. And his character says the training is nothing, it's the will to act.

Charles: 9:27

And so that brings us into the section on geeks with techniques. We're so much of what we think is limiting us in our ability to go out and meet great girls is. I just don't know enough. If I could just learn what's the right way, what's the right opener, what's the right thing to say, what's the right book to read? Yeah, exactly Right. Yeah, yeah, it's no. All that is holding you back is the will to get out there and do something new and do something with a with an unknown result. Go out there and do something where you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know exactly how it's going to shake out, but you're so afraid of that unpredictable result that you're just going to choose not to do anything.

Dan: 10:09

And I think that's why he talked about the abundance mindset in the previous chapter, because if you practice that a little bit, you are now that unpredictable result could be something good. If you don't practice that abundant mindset, the unpredictable results always in your mind somewhere going to be, it's going to be a bad result. It's not. I'm not open to it being a good result, because there's abundance out there that I'm just not aware of.

Charles: 10:38

Yeah, I was recently watching a video on YouTube of a guy who's an actor and he was talking about auditions and what your success ratio would be, and he's like I've been doing this a long time, I make a lot of money and I'm pretty successful at it and, if I can get as as a professional who makes a living doing this, my ratio is, for every 50 auditions I go on, I book one and that's me being, that's me being really good at this, and so that's part of the getting comfortable with the idea of I'm going to go out there and fail at something 49 times before I succeed on an average. So there's going to be days, days and weeks that are way worse than that and there's going to be some that are better. Imagine if you approach anything with okay, I got this audition, I may never get another audition again. This is the only audition I'll ever have and I've got to book this job, otherwise I could go hungry. You walk into an audition with that kind of mindset and I can guarantee that's not going to be the that's not going to be the one that works out for you. But if you're okay with, my average is 50, meaning I'm going to have some weeks where I'm doing way worse than that and some weeks are going to be way, way better. Then you can treat each audition as okay.

Charles: 11:55

Did I just bring the best I could to this audition? Great, then that's the success. The success is not did I get booked for this job or not. The success is did I give it my best shot and did I successfully apply the skills that I have? And then, if the answer is yes, and they didn't pick you anyway, then okay, great, I wasn't what they were looking for and that's fine. But maybe the next one will be, or the one after that, or the one 50 tries from now will be it, and that's. It's like cold calling we talk about any. Anybody who starts their own company has to be comfortable with the idea of I'm going to ask some people for their business and they're going to say no and it it's real to speak to, to think about it otherwise.

Dan: 12:33

But so much of our brain leads logically just doesn't make sense that everybody's going to say yes, failure, you'd be part of a process. And I still struggle with that.

Charles: 12:44

Yeah, me too.

Dan: 12:45

With whatever's important to me, to say, yes, failure needs to be part of the process. And I still struggle with that. Yeah, me too. Whatever's important to me, I'm trying, right, it helps me to get set back in and just try to get an idea of, hey, what's the realistic outcome here? And really just having that belief that it's not futile. Right, a success will come. You're just not exactly sure when it might be, and that is less likely to happen than a failure.

Charles: 13:12

Sir, could you tell us what you thought, but that will get better, and part of that is just the knowledge that, hey, this is a numbers game can be enough to tell you that, okay, if you expect everything to always work out for you, you're going to live a very disappointed life. But if you expect I'm going to fail a lot and still feel okay about myself because that's part of the process, like you said then that can motivate you to get up the next morning and try it again.

Dan: 13:38

It can also put your primitive brain at ease a little bit by saying those things, thinking about those things, digging into those things. You are conscious of processing them, but you're still conscious and you're from the primitive brains actually taking that is so I think it helped probably put some of that anxiety at ease, Whereas if you don't ever get set back and try to set up your perspective and your intentions and realistic outcome, every time you fail, you're going to be like a disaster and you're. You can feel it's a disaster.

Dan: 14:10

Whereas expectations, in whatever form that looks like, on some level you make yourself aware of it. I think it's easier to tempo your anxiety.

Charles: 14:19

Yeah, it's really. It's the unexpected failures that hurt us the most right, the ones where, if we finished this podcast and both went over to the gym across the street and I was like I'm going to try to deadlift 500 pounds, the best case scenario is I just don't do it. The worst case scenario is I really hurt myself trying. But if, yeah, if I walked in there thinking, all right, I've not deadlifted in quite a few months, I've never hit 500 pounds. But man, if I don't pull 500 pounds off right now, I'm going to re. I'm going to feel really down on myself. That would be ridiculous, that would be silly and it would be just moronic to think that, okay, I'm just going to go try this brand new thing or this thing.

Dan: 14:59

I'm never going to lift, unless I could deadlift 500 pounds.

Charles: 15:04

Exactly. I'm never going unless I'm going to make this list of my perfect woman and if I can't date her, I just won't date anybody. It's that same, the same mindset of just setting yourself up for failure and not realizing okay, no, it's, failure is part of the process and I'm I can fail at a lot of things and still be okay. And yeah, if you can't, if you can't get comfortable with the idea of the world's not going to work out the way you would like it to, then that will paralyze you and you'll just do nothing. And people who are paralyzed and spend their days doing nothing, those aren't happy people that you want to hang out with or be by any means Okay.

Charles: 15:42

So he makes a distinction here in this chapter about managing anxiety versus soothing anxiety. Distinction here in this chapter about managing anxiety versus soothing anxiety. I would say that managing does not have a negative enough connotation with the way that he uses it. I think what he's really talking about is fleeing from anxiety or avoiding anxiety. Resisting anxiety? Yeah, he's, because managing is a pretty neutral word for me, but the way he's talking about the way people try to manage their anxiety is really no, they run away from it, they avoid it.

Dan: 16:22

They flee from it. We use the word managing in a way that allows us to get in a way with not actually going forward with the thing that's giving us anxiety. Oh, I'm not going to do this because? But I am managing my anxiety by doing this thing that's making me feel better, but the ultimate result is you're not doing what you ultimately wanted to do, and but we're not feeling guilty about that, or we're not, yeah, maybe because we're using these nice words like oh, I'm managing my anxiety by doing these things Right, Instead of so and I do it.

Dan: 17:01

I'm pulling over that.

Charles: 17:02

Yeah, no, me too, I find that, yeah, just procrastinating, putting stuff that I say I want to do on the back burner. There's all kinds of ways to manage that anxiety. Has everyone reported soothing all the way? Exactly? Yeah, saying okay, I'm going to try this and I expect it to not go exactly the way that I want it to, and that's okay, I can handle it not going exactly the way that I want it to. The result of that is not going to be crippling to me by any means. It's going to give me the opportunity to refine, try again, refine, try again.

Charles: 17:33

So, yeah, I definitely feel like think of it not as managing your anxiety, but think of it as fleeing from your anxiety, avoiding fleeing. Yeah, put it in a little bit more negative context, where soothing soothing is fine, soothing is I'm going to live with my anxiety and figure out ways to exist through my anxiety. But, yeah, managing your anxiety is no, you're not, you're not managing your. Yeah, you're running away from it. One of the ways he says we manage our anxiety is by really getting over-invested with a particular girl, to the point where we are thinking about her more than we're spending time with her and, as a result, we find ourselves getting into that friend zone situation and again that the friend zone is not a place that girls put you. It's a place you put yourself. The only way you get into the friend zone is by being a bit too afraid and a bit too dishonest. Exactly yeah, you only get in the friend zone by not being direct and honest about what you want or what your intentions are.

Dan: 18:43

And then holding those boundaries. If she doesn't read, it's not something she wants and, steve, you will walk away from that versus oh, I'll just settle, she's not interested in me.

Dan: 18:57

But you know what I'll settle for whatever I can get in any type of interaction or relationship with her. And now you are a friend, but you can't complain about that now Because you were settling for what she has basically told you, even if you have, you know, presented yourself it's your interest in her romantically and she's not looking at you in that way or whatever that might be, or I'm not interested in you that way. Then you decide all right, are you going to hang out and be a friend or are you going to move on? You have an abundance mindset to know that this wasn't the end or be all the only possible. That exists as a big part of that.

Charles: 19:33

Correct, yeah, and yeah, being willing to say no, here's what I'm looking for and hearing, nah, I'm not looking for. Or even worst case scenario, yeah, I'm looking for that too, but just not with you. Like, okay, then good luck, and then then let her go I think a lot of us don't realize that's actually.

Dan: 19:50

What we're saying is that when we agree to just, you know, self-fighting, our own neat swaps and our own boundaries, basically we are communicating that this is whatever. This is this relationship not what I want.

Dan: 20:08

I am thinking it's a serious world yeah, I'll take whatever you have, whatever you offer, I'll take right, and so it's like when I say it out loud, like logically now of course I'll be like no, that's ridiculous, of course she's not the only person on planet, but that's not the way when we were in it. It feels emotionally high and this is the best person that ever gonna have a chance with I'm to take the friendship and hopefully at one point I'll talk her into being a girlfriend. And when we were younger, naive, but that's what we would do and yeah, and hopefully listen.

Charles: 20:36

There's going to be guys listening to this that are older and still in that mindset, and there's going to be guys listening to this that are younger and might be able to avoid a few of those years that you and I spent thinking that, yeah, the way to get that girl that we're crushing on is to just be her buddy and help her out and spend as much time with her where we can in any circumstance, and then maybe she'll eventually decide she likes us. No, that's not the way it works. And listen, I've been friends with girls and moved on from being their friend to being their boyfriend, but not when secretly becoming their boyfriend was the agenda and not when I was hiding the fact that I found them attractive or interesting or whatever it's. Yeah, we're friends and we're not dating each other right now. You're an exciting, attractive girl to be around and I. Part of the reason I enjoy hanging out with you is because I find you attractive. But we're just friends and that's fine. If you can honestly behave that way with a girl, then yeah, there's a chance that you might go from friends to something more. But if you're, if you're thinking the whole time of. Maybe at some point she'll break down and decide she might want to be my girlfriend and I'll be able to get what I want from her. That, listen, it's their job to be able to detect that kind of thinking and avoid it, because it's that's dangerous for them.

Charles: 21:49

Spending time with guys who are not open and direct about what they want or what they're feeling is a danger to women, and so they are conditioned to look out for that. Spot it and they might keep you around in their orbit, but they're not looking at you as a viable romantic option. If they, even on subconscious level, can detect that's what your agenda is. So it's best to say, hey, here's what I'm looking for, here's what I'm interested in. Let them say yes or no, and if the answer is no, then okay, I wish you the best. I'm going to go find what I'm looking for with somebody else and you have to overcome anxiety to be willing to say that, and you have to overcome scarcity thinking to be willing to say that, okay, you're not interested in me, that's okay. Somebody else will be and actually believe it and act as if you do believe it. Okay, he talks about changing your thinking. Again, this is more about SLBs going from. I can't make, I can't take those big risks with anybody, or even those small risks.

Dan: 22:43

Limiting beliefs. Let's just yeah, oh yeah.

Charles: 22:49

SLB limiting beliefs. Let's just yeah, that's oh. Yeah, slb stands for self-limiting belief. Yes, thank you, that's good. Instead have this mindset of no matter what happens, no matter what girl says no to me, no matter what girl says, oh, I'm not interested in you. In that way, you can handle it and you can recover from it. And that really is. I've said for years that some of the biggest problems we have in our world is men who are not resilient to rejection, men who are not willing to put themselves out there and say this is what I want, this is what I'm trying to get, and then they're told, no, you can't have that thing you want. And then they just spiral out of control and act out or shut down or whatever it is. The greatest skill you can develop is being able to be honest about what you want, be willing to work hard for what you want, and then, when you don't get it, say, okay, I tried, it didn't work out this time, I'm going to come back and try again.

Dan: 23:37

And I can handle it.

Charles: 23:39

Yeah, yeah, by Susan Jeffries. I think it is Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Dan: 23:51

Yeah, and it's a simple mantra is I can handle it, and I've used that myself when I've been feeling overwhelmed with whatever. It is not even related to women, whether it's like a business day for work or my schedule is ridiculous or something goes wrong, like literally. I broke another freaking salt shaker. I had these blast writers of a salt out on my kitchen table. I probably bought five of them already and then it's yeah, I was not paying attention, I knocked it off and I've. They'll have losses on the floor and shatters everywhere. You always last shadows a pile. I just threw a hole over the place.

Charles: 24:17

Yeah.

Dan: 24:17

I was like interwash kind of do something else, and I was. I was as I said I can handle it, they'll have it off, I back handle it, they'll have it off, I back it up. And then I literally found pizza Last smooch.

Charles: 24:29

How long did it break?

Dan: 24:30

I believe it was like four days ago. Okay, you do it. Yeah, then I really have to probably got it, and it was now when things would really derail me and cooking a little bit of fun. It's not the end of the world, but at the same time it was just like just saying the mantra I'd handle it, do a little early breathing to try to counter that nerves right then and there, and then having a laugh about it. Uh, it does wonders in terms of preserving the rest of your day, and then it'd go Goodbye.

Dan: 24:59

Yeah, and you can also buy plexiglass, the salt shakers you know it's just called a lot of, and I was just like, yeah, I can't I got one glass for love Cause that now that we're using the glass, the salt, but yeah. That has come in next, it's like a peck of glass Excellent, he does.

Charles: 25:13

He does point out that the cure for anxiety, the best cure for anxiety, is just taking action. And when you feel like, hey, I think I might want to do this, don't even give yourself a chance to get to the oh no, but what if? Just take action before that? Oh no, but what if? Starts up and he says three? Second rule If you're having an interaction with a girl and you first think, hey, I think I'd like to, and not even he will frequently say in this first half of the book, ask her out, ask for her number.

Charles: 25:45

But later on in the book we'll learn more about testing for interest. And that's the thing. It's don't think I want to ask her out, I want to ask for her phone number. It's, I want to put something out there that gives her the opportunity to tell me if she's interested or not. And when you think of it as testing for interest, it feels a lot less cold approaching or trying to pick up. It's no, I just want to. I want to do something right now that will tell me if she's interested with going one level closer in this interaction.

Dan: 26:13

Very simple. The difference between that and the approach is you are basically the result that getting evaluated. With the approach where you're attempting for insurance, you basically set, you reminded your intention that the test is whether she's interested or not, or interested in the, the, the modal, whatever Right, which is the answer Right, and then distributing wants that takes the credit off of you being evaluated to something external for you and that's. That's a wonderful thing.

Charles: 26:45

Right, exactly it's. Is she interested in the next level of interaction? Not, is she interested in me? And yeah, just being able to, and that's exactly it's not. Yeah, we're not trying to. We're not trying to trick you into believing something that's not true this isn't a hack no, this is actually this.

Charles: 27:01

Just looking reality exactly, just looking at this as what it really is, which is not. Is she interested in me? Is she going, which is not. Is she interested in me? Is she going to reject me? It's like, is she interested in another level of interaction, yes or no? And if the answer is yes, then enjoy that additional level of interaction until you're ready to see if she's interested in the next level of interaction. And then, when you get to a level that she's not interested in, just stay at the level that she is interested in and then at some point say, okay, we've been here for a minute now, are you interested in the next level? And then she'll either be yes or no. And then, yeah, but it's not about you. It's about you're a factor in a big, complicated interpersonal interaction here.

Dan: 27:43

It's a target room where all the crazy things and all the things that are going on around you and your world, as it's also happening for her, and you give a set of what those savings are for her and then nevermind other external factors you're not even aware of.

Charles: 27:58

Yeah, so treat the situation like there's no reason to be anxious about. When you test your pool and you get the little sample thing out, you have the red drops and the yellow drops that just check the chlorine and the pH. Yeah, it's. Oh no, this red is going to be a little too pink. Oh no, I'm so anxious about seeing what's going to happen. It's no, you're just doing that little experiment to see where your pool's currently at and then that will determine what you do next, based on keeping your pool nice and clean and healthy. That's it. It's not a big deal, it's nothing to be freaked out about, and that's the way you should appreciate or should approach your react, your interactions with men, women, potential employers, whoever it is, yeah, whatever it is. Just I'm going to boil this down to the actual components that are making this interaction up and not this daydream that I have about how amazing my life could be if she says yes to going out with me Upbrained with the thinking right.

Dan: 28:51

That's where we get in trouble is we start ruminating and thinking about these things and making things up that don't exist.

Charles: 28:57

Right.

Dan: 28:58

So stop thinking, take action.

Charles: 28:59

Yeah, exactly. So here are the other ways he's gotten this chapter to blast that day in anxiety, which is develop these good social habits. Expand your route every day. Go places you don't regularly go and get around people, Ask people you don't know how their day is going so far. Men, women, children, et cetera. Skip the children. I don't care how a kid's day is going.

Dan: 29:21

It's none of my business. Get in your office, miss.

Charles: 29:22

Yeah, exactly, if you're hanging out with your friends and their kids are around, fine, ask your kid how, ask their kid how their day is going. But even that it's like I don't know. I feel like Dr Glover occasionally will grant a little bit of a view into his own little. He's a little bit of a weird guy and by by saying men, women, children, et cetera, it's oh yeah, you're a little bit of an egghead, you're a little bit of a guy who puts this down and doesn't realize no, that's a little weird. And then if you listen to his interviews, especially when he gets into some of the stuff about his relationship with his wife, how they met, how their sex life is, it's okay. He's got a lot of really interesting good stuff to learn and he's also a little bit of a, a little bit of a weirdo, which we all are. But I'm sure I say stuff during this podcast where people are like, okay, that's a little weird. I'm. I'm not sure why Charles said that, but I don't get paid to write books.

Dan: 30:18

Yes.

Charles: 30:19

Make eye contact with and smile at people Men, women, children, et cetera. Again, skip the eye contact with children, women, children, et cetera. Again, skip the eye contact with children. Go ahead and do. Go ahead and just pretend that's not even in the book and I didn't even say it.

Charles: 30:34

Every day, start a conversation with someone you don't know man or woman, doesn't say children in this one, that's interesting. Get to rejection quickly. That's a good one, which is when you are interested in someone or not interested in them. But get them, ask them for something that they're willing to say no, thank you, I'm not interested in that. The tough part with that is asking someone to do something that you actually want to do, cause what if they say? What if they say yes? Again, like I said in a couple episodes ago, ask, uh, ask some old person if they want to grab a coffee. You've got to actually be interested in having coffee with them and understand that. Okay, I might get something out of this. But yeah, don't, don't reject, don't get somebody to reject you for something you don't want to do anyway, because then you're what if they say yes and you're stuck doing something you don't?

Dan: 31:19

want to do.

Charles: 31:23

Yeah, they wouldn't get enough. No's, yeah, you ask people to do something and they'll say yes, yeah, you have to figure out a way to do this in a somewhat authentic and but I mean, look, they say yes and that really that's great, because it shows you real world evidence. People are looking to say yes, and that really that's great because it shows you real world evidence that people are looking to say yes to you.

Charles: 31:46

Feed your fear. Do it anyway. Feel your fear. Do it anyway. Lean into anxiety. Don't give up. Don't let one bad experience inhibit you. Don't take one woman's rejection as proof that the whole world wants to reject you. Keep at it until it feels second nature. Most important have fun, okay. Are we trying? Are we trying, to engage in personal growth, dan? Are we trying to have fun? Because for most of us it's not fun. It's not going to be fun until unless we get we stick with it long enough to get really good at it, it's not going to feel like fun. You and I took dance lessons for a year together I mean, you were doing on your own before that and it never got fun for me. I found it valuable and meaningful in many ways, but it was never fun. It wasn't miserable and it was something I felt was giving me benefits. But whether or not something's fun is not a good barometer of whether you should keep doing it.

Dan: 32:37

In a lot of cases, Really, it depends on you know the payoff, what, what, what you think it is.

Charles: 32:42

Yes.

Dan: 32:43

You might need to try to be open to it. Be enjoyable and fun so you can relax.

Charles: 32:50

But there's a lot. There's a lot of things I have to do for work that certain parts of my job will never feel like fun, but I'm going to do them anyway and trying to turn into a person that is more social and less less enslaved to their anxiety. It's not going to be fun. You may look at it down the road and think, man, I'm so glad that I did that, because now I've got a different kind of life, because I put in the time, did the reps to make this feel okay. But yeah, in a lot of ways, stretching your interpersonal skills, looking at it as fun, just yeah.

Dan: 33:26

I think people would do. Actually they do enjoy.

Charles: 33:31

They don't need this book though.

Dan: 33:32

You're going to be good. I, yeah, Open to positive. I mean this will be fun.

Charles: 33:39

Fun things could happen in the didn't get it Right you just need to understand.

Dan: 33:43

I really think it's, for other law is you're never, never, never to be. It is that you're a trainee. You said that the WB bringing any skill sets so that it comes to harder.

Charles: 33:53

Yeah, I just come not afraid of people and very fun things can happen along the way. And very fun things can happen along the way. But the idea of whenever I hear somebody trying to coach me through anything that is difficult and their response just have fun with it. It's going to just have it, stick with it and get good at it or have or just have fun with it.

Dan: 34:17

Those two are mutually exclusive for me when I'm trying to learn something new. I didn't have fun doing the dancing, honestly, until I got good enough, to the point of where I wasn't thinking about it nearly as much anymore. And you can actually use this.

Charles: 34:29

I never got to that point.

Dan: 34:30

That thing is where, yeah, when you're thinking about the next step, what do you do? That's when you're able to relax a little bit and go okay, now what's going on. Yeah, that's when it's fun. Yeah, I agree. Little bit he go. Okay, now what's going on. Yeah, that's when it's fun. I, yeah, I agree. I think you should say that at the very beginning of something where it's taking so much time and effort and energy to even take the baby steps.

Charles: 34:50

Yeah, I, and so I just I don't the the part I don't. Uh, exactly I don't like, because if I mean he literally, he literally says at the end of chapter five the last thing before, here's what chapter six is most important. Have fun.

Dan: 35:08

It should not be most important.

Charles: 35:10

No, it's not. Yeah, because then it's. Oh, I did what he said for a week. I didn't have any fun. Therefore I should stop. He's giving me a pass to stop doing it.

Dan: 35:17

I know he got a mistake because he's coming from the perspective of he's already gone through it and he's the expert and he does it naturally now. So he has thought for him the thing that's a tribe and he didn't do those things is probably was thought right. We are at his level. So they thought it was a mistake for him forgetting who he was talking to.

Charles: 35:37

Yeah, most important have fun is a platitude for sure and a cliche, and it's something that you say when you haven't really thought out what you mean to say. And so shame on dr glover for putting most important have fun at the end of this list, because, yeah, we have to and should do plenty of things in our lives where having fun at doing it is not the most important thing. It's more like check in with yourself and realize that this is a meaningful pursuit and you're going to get something out of this that is extremely valuable, and then keep doing it. But yeah, there, there will be moments of anxiety and moments of fun along the way, and it's worth it to keep going.

Dan: 36:20

It'd be better for him to say you know, look back at what, even if you are perfect doing this, look at, look could measure backwards and look at what you have done that you didn't do in the past and be very difficult about that. To pass on the back of those accomplishments, even if they don't feel like it are huge, you know something that feels impossible today can feel fun down the road, but it's not going to be.

Charles: 36:47

Yeah, you're not there yet and yeah, it will be a nice stretch down the road before it feels that way. So just keep that in mind and keep that in mind with anything new that you're trying to learn, whether that is riding a unicycle, going to the gym, talking to girls, whatever it is. It's like when you're really bad at it, just getting started and you're failing all the time. Then at some point you'll see a little bit of success and you should take stock of that and feel good about it. But you won't be able to describe your practice as fun until you start getting good and part of the.

Dan: 37:25

I think there's a lot of value in the take action so you don't feel that anxiety anymore, because I, most of the time, I've been in situations where, about something saying about it actually doing it, although it wasn't as bad as it should be you all said it, sure, and it is because we are actually doing the thing and anxiety, and that is always less troublesome than what we think it's going to be, because our brain goes to extremes and head, eyes and every time you do actually take the action, it's doing it, it's big Truth. And then let that be your article. Okay, this is clearly an advert. My fault.

Charles: 38:14

Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking back to when he said a couple of chapters ago when he talked about the salsa class where he signed up for either three times or five times before he actually showed up. Imagine if he was told the first time that he bailed on the class why'd you, why didn't you go? Just have fun. Just go and have fun. Apparently, it felt impossible for him to walk through the door and actually take the class. So just have fun. Would not have been advice that was useful. It's a fun thing to do. No, exactly Like I. I already know what's fun and what's not fun and I'm choosing not to do the thing that I know is not gonna be fun. So, yeah, I I'm bummed out that he's willing to toss that in there in in a self-improvement book and I don't want anybody listening to have the expectation that we know this isn't fun. Like, the reason I don't do many of the things in this book is because they're not fun.

Dan: 39:05

I think that's the whole reason. We told you what we wanted. What do you think that you wanted?

Charles: 39:09

Exactly yeah.

Dan: 39:10

Yeah.

Charles: 39:12

I could benefit from walking 25,000 steps a day and I'm not doing it. I'll just have fun with it. Oh God, that didn't occur to me, thanks, fun with it. Oh god, that didn't occur to me, thanks. Why didn't I think of that ridiculous? All right, we should call this the charles shits on books podcast, because sometimes I can really get, I can really focus in on stuff like this and it doesn't take away from all the other good stuff no, it's good advice and yeah, it's the.

Charles: 39:36

It feels like the only thing I'm complaining about is he's got all this good advice to for ways to learn how to go out and do hard things that are worth doing, and then it's ooh, I realize I'm telling these people to do some really hard things that are not going to be fun when they first try it, so I better tell them to just have fun with it. No, that's.

Dan: 39:55

I wouldn't want to be an artist.

Charles: 39:58

Maybe, yeah, or didn't take it out. There's maybe yeah, or didn't take it out. Either way, it's in there and it should have fun with the book. Yeah, feel the fear, do it anyway and don't expect it to be fun. So that could be the title of her book. All right, we're good for now, dan, thanks very much. We are right at our end time and we will stop now and come back next week with chapter six. Take it easy, all right. Thanks again for listening to a complete episode from start to finish. We certainly appreciate it. Check out our website mindfullymasculinecom for our full audio and video episodes, as well as any news worth sharing, and we'll talk to you next time.