Don’t Want to Seem “Creepy”? Own Your Anxiety.

Is your fear of coming across as “creepy” holding you back in dating—or worse, making you act less confident, less direct, and less attractive?

In this episode, Charles and Dan dive into the art of managing anxiety in social and romantic situations. Drawing from Chapter 6 of Dating Essentials for Men, they share powerful mindset shifts and practical techniques to help you regulate your nervous system, stop overthinking, and show up with grounded confidence.

Whether you're approaching someone new or navigating rejection, learning how to own your anxiety instead of hiding it is one of the most attractive things you can do.

🔑 What You'll Learn:

• Why diaphragmatic breathing instantly lowers anxiety and improves decision-making
• How visualization can rewire your mind for confident, positive outcomes
• The neuroscience behind your brain's obsession with worst-case scenarios
• Why trying to “figure her out” is a waste of energy—and what to focus on instead
• The surprising connection between anxiety, authenticity, and attraction
• What actually makes someone come across as creepy (and how to avoid it)
• How “testing for interest” increases both clarity and confidence
• The role of self-improvement in becoming rejection-proof
• Why therapy, coaching, or group support accelerates your dating growth

🧠 Key Quote:

“Anxiety is not your enemy. It’s telling you you’re doing something new—and that’s a good thing. That’s attractive.”

📌 Mentioned in the Episode:

• Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover
• How to Be a 3% Man by Corey Wayne
• The Man’s Guide to Women by Drs. John & Julie Gottman
• Habit tracking apps: Productive, Apple Reminders
• Importance of resting heart rate for focus and decision-making

Chapters

• 0:00 Anxiety Isn't The Enemy
• 2:14 Tools to Sooth Your Nervous System
• 6:30 Train Your Brain with Visualization
• 10:15 Why We Always Assume the Worst
• 13:11 Stop Trying to Decode Women's Behavior
• 16:55 Insecurity + Overanalysis = Dating Disaster
• 18:32 Self-Improvement Is The Only Real Dating Advice
• 21:38 The Power of Rejection and Testing for Interest
• 25:11 What Actually Makes You Seem Creepy
• 30:37 Practice, Progress, and the Long Game

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Keep in mind in all of these scenarios, anxiety is not your enemy. It's telling you something, and in this case, what it's telling you is you're willing to try something new that you're not good at, and that's a good thing, and that's an attractive thing. So anxiety is, it's in the passenger seat for a lot of these things that we're talking about, and you're not going to be able to kick it out of the car, but you are going to be able to keep it fed, keep it hydrated, stop for bathroom breaks when you need to so that your anxiety is manageable. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles.

Charles: 0:31

In this episode, dan and I will continue our discussion of dating essentials for men by Dr Robert Glover with Chapter 6, all about anxiety and how to soothe or manage it. Soothe or manage it. Topics covered including managing anxiety through diaphragmatic breathing. Using visualization for positive outcomes. Understanding and overcoming the negativity bias. The power and importance of habit tracking. Avoiding over-analysis and accepting uncertainty. Healthy mindset for dealing with rejection. Testing for interest in relationships. The relationship between confidence, authenticity and attraction. Common misconceptions about creepiness in dating. The importance of external support for personal growth. Understanding and leveraging anxiety as an indicator. Effective strategies for reducing anxiety in social and romantic situations and other topics. Check out our website mindfullymasculinecom for full audio and video episodes, as well as any news or developments we find worth sharing. Thanks and enjoy.

Dan: 1:34

Good morning Charles. How are?

Charles: 1:36

you doing, dan? Thank you, let me turn my sound all the way off. Okay, I'm doing well, thanks. We are still working through some of our sound challenges and we've gotten a lot closer to fixing it. We need one more piece of equipment and then I think we'll be in great shape. You blame Amazon. I bought two audio interfaces from Amazon and they sent me two boxes with pictures of audio interfaces on them, and one contained a projector, which is not. I don't want to confuse any of the non-techies out there, but a projector and an audio interface are not the same thing. Whoa, whoa, slow down. The box looks the same. The box looks exactly the same, but they are not the same.

Charles: 2:14

Yeah, okay, so we are re-recording chapter six from Dating Essentials for Men. This chapter is all about how to calm and soothe yourself. We're asking our listeners and ourselves to do some new things that we may not be all that comfortable with, and so with new things comes anxiety. So let's go through some of the little tools and tricks here that Dr Glover gives us, for when we are feeling our nervous system activated, our anxiety is coming up and we want to put it back down so that we can do the thing that we're trying to do. The first one he recommends is diaphragmatic breathing, meaning breathing from your diaphragm instead of breathing from your chest. Singers and people who talk for a living probably already know about this, but the idea is, when you breathe in, instead of your chest going up, your tummy goes out and that tells you that you're breathing with your diaphragm, which I believe allows you to intake more CO2 or even just a greater quantity of air for breath.

Dan: 3:16

Yeah, and I also think it activates, maybe, the vagus nerve that I was here, yeah yeah, with your parasympathetic system, which actually is calms you, your whole nervous system. So you've got the sympathetic and the parasympathetic and I always confuse it too. But I think parasympathetic I think of a parachute kind of coming down a little bit. I think that's the one that means to relax you and by activating that part of your body you're actually stimulating that nerve and it helps calm you down, also from a physiological standpoint as well.

Charles: 3:47

Yeah, so when you're breathing from your chest, those breaths are typically shorter, shallower and faster.

Dan: 3:54

And if you think about it, I think when you're upset or excited about something, how does your body feel?

Charles: 3:59

And you're doing that short breath from up here, yeah, and so I think it goes hand in hand with the same type of yeah, if you're familiar with the term or the practice of ugly crying, but you're like struggling for your breath and you're hyperventilating and you're like that's all coming up here, I have to. It's been a while, but yeah, I do remember that and, yeah, that that would be a check, the way he says to check in it basically put a hand on your tummy and a hand, wait, a hand on your chest and a hand on your tummy and then see which one you're getting the most, which hand is moving the most, and that'll tell you what kind of breathing you're doing. Again, if the goal is to, if you're trying to get ramped up before a boxing match or something like that, maybe there's a reason to get yourself breathing, doing your chest breathing. But if you're trying to calm down, you want to feel that breathing pushing out your belly and so that's the way that you do you actually do one or the other?

Dan: 4:52

because I naturally do the diaphragmatic, I need to force myself mentally to do the. I naturally do the, not the diaphragm. The chest breathe I think I do the probably chest, but daily too, yeah, and I have to force my belly out and have to really concentrate in order to breathe that way.

Charles: 5:07

Yeah, and I think naturally, yeah, I would.

Dan: 5:10

I think they also equivalent to like babies. If you look at the way babies breathe, it's their tummies going in and out. That's true. At some point, I guess, we get taught or we just get the habit of doing the upper chest breathing more often.

Charles: 5:22

So that's yeah, that makes sense. So I would say, yeah, you do see babies breathing with their tummy. I think I, yeah, I think I would naturally be more of a chest breather, which is something to yeah. If you're in a high stress situation, either you're having an argument with your partner or you're trying to go talk to new people. Whatever that is, try to realize what you're doing and try to get the habit of, because another thing it does is it'll lower your pulse rate and discussed previously the.

Charles: 5:51

The pulse over 100 is not where you want to be if you're trying to do anything that involves your brain making a difficult decision. And yeah, that, yeah, I told you that's what I use my metric when I'm in the gym before. The way I know if I've rested long enough is not how much time has gone on the clock, it's when my Apple Watch tells me my pulse rate's gone down under 100, then I know, okay, it's time to lift again. Oh, that's true, because, yeah, your brain is more the front part of your brain, as opposed to your amygdala is more in the driver's seat when your pulse is under 100. And it's good to get your pulse there by doing things like diaphragmatic breathing, the other process that he recommends here is visualizing positive results.

Charles: 6:30

Keep in mind that your mind is a problem-solving machine and because of that, the risk mitigation process is going to often have you focus on the worst-case scenarios more than the best case scenarios or even the most likely scenario. Which inefficient problem solving machine is going to spend the most time focusing on what's most likely to happen in this situation? But because we're walking around with a brain that was designed to keep us alive under very dangerous circumstances, we do tend to focus on the what's the worst case scenario, what's the most bad thing that could happen to us. And again, I think a well-designed AI or computer program would spend its time focusing on what is the most likely thing to occur and how do I mitigate that, or mitigate that risk, where the human emotional brain is not wired that way.

Dan: 7:21

No, it's whatever. I think it's just so many factors come into play when we're thinking about what risk is coming to mind first, our past experience, what we've literally watched on television and movies, those things, those are ideas that are circulating around in our head. If we remember any of that part of that, those movies, I think we've got to be real careful with what we're programming ourselves with, because when you don't want it to surface, when you want to keep calm and relaxed about something, we've got all those other things circulating in our brain of possibilities. If we never saw, that, we didn't even know something crazy that we saw in a movie could actually exist or happen, even though we were visualizing it only. But then he talks about the power of visualization right here it only.

Charles: 8:05

But then he talks about the power visualization right here. Yeah, and the fact that your body's physiology doesn't care if a scenario is real or imagined. If it's getting enough cycles in your CPU, your physiology is going to react as if it's real, even if it's just something that you're imagining.

Dan: 8:19

Yeah, he talked about the basketball players analogy, where they had one team of people playing basketball practicing out on the court in real life and another one another group of basketball players just visualizing shooting baskets, and when they went to play, the ones who visualized actually got more of the baskets in a higher percentage than the ones who are actually out on the court. And I think what he said was it's because when you visualize, you don't visualize yourself missing every time you manage. You visualize yourself making it in the basket every time. The crazy thing to me is that your body is required to make those baskets after the fact and you were not literally, you were not practicing that, you were just sitting there, whereas the people out on the court, their muscles are going through those motions Also.

Dan: 9:05

Maybe there, whereas the people out on the court, their muscles are going through those motions also, maybe you're wearing those muscles down and things like that too. So that could affect how much you're you're able to make it in. But I guess if you're already well trained, you already know how to make baskets. If you're like a professional, you really don't need to train your body to make those movements anymore. Your body just knows how to do that. So probably it's more powerful visualization. I'm wondering if you took amateurs, kids who'd never shot baskets before, and they did the same thing. I'm curious to see how that would work.

Charles: 9:32

That's true. I mean it's got to be a base level of proficiency before before this comes in. But yeah, the lesson with the basketball shots is that the result that you visualize is more likely to happen. And so if you're visualizing the negative result over and over again, then you make that more likely to happen. And if that comes to going out to a new social experience or interacting with people or women or whatever it is, if you are focusing on the negative outcome that could happen, that makes that negative outcome more likely to happen. And the other side again from the basketball example if you focus on the positive result that you're looking for, then that makes that positive result more likely to happen.

Dan: 10:15

And I think the also lesson with the section before that is that our brains will gravitate towards the negative results more often than the positive ones. So just expect that this is not going to be an easy thing to do to think of the positive things all the time. Yet the more you practice it, the easier it gets, obviously like everything else in life, but that's what our brains are designed and wired to do, so don't beat yourself up thinking there's something wrong with me that I'm always thinking of these horrible results or whatever, but that's just. Our brains are trained to lean in that direction.

Charles: 10:46

So feeling really wrong and so to lean against that direction, be prepared for some work. You got to have a system, you got to have a checklist, you got to have reminders, you got to have something in place that tells your conscious brain okay, yes, we understand what we're going to do if we're just on autopilot. But we don't want to be on autopilot, we want to do this other thing instead.

Dan: 11:04

And remind yourself why you're doing it, got excited about that. A lot of times I fail because I don't remember why I wanted to do it, where I wasn't as excited about doing it as I was previously, and so then things go to the wayside and it's just yeah, it's not worth it For me that's anyway you get to really remind, like, why I want to do this thing in order to get over that hump.

Charles: 11:28

And look, I think the most, one of the most effective tools we have that's free for all of us not free for all of us. Assuming you already have a cell phone with a monthly plan, which most of us do yeah, just get some kind of a habit tracking app that will remind you during the day hey, do these. You've decided these things are important. You've decided you want to do these things. Now here's a reminder three or four times a day to practice a visualizing exercise or a diaphragmatic breathing exercise or whatever, and just have it pop up on your phone and tell you hey, look, you're the one that told me these things matter, you want to do these. So here I'm going to tell you four times a day to do these things. You have an iPhone app.

Dan: 12:09

I've been loving the new reminders function.

Charles: 12:10

They've integrated it really well. I haven't done new. I haven't done this with theirs.

Dan: 12:11

I I left apple's reminders a while ago for another app and I haven't really looked at it again I love it because they integrate into your calendar as well, and when you're making a new calendar appointment, there's a little tab at the top. You can create a calendar appointment or a reminder, so it doesn't actually go on your calendar. Okay, you can have it repeat every so long.

Charles: 12:25

Are you using Apple's built-in calendar or Google calendar? Apple's built-in calendar Okay, yeah, I don't use. Okay, but Apple's reminders or their calendar.

Dan: 12:31

But the reminders are great. You can really flexible with stuff and it integrates. You can have it also integrate right into your calendar. So if you're on a different machine, if you're on pop, whatever, you can see all the reminders potholes. Okay, I want them to. Okay, you don't have to yeah, I use smart.

Charles: 12:47

My habit tracking app that I've been using for a couple years is called productive, and I like it a lot. It will. It'll pop up those reminders for you as well, and also the thing I like is it'll let you see streaks for how many days in a row you have that's motivating completed whatever task. And yeah, but yeah, go ahead and leverage those tools. They're free. Most of us have access to them, so let them rip. Okay, the?

Charles: 13:11

The third step in soothing your anxiety that dr glover recommends is stop trying to figure out why women do what they do and so many things in this book. This doesn't just apply to women. Really anything in your life that you want or need the participation of another person to get your goal met, when they are unwilling or unable to partner with you to meet that goal, don't spend a bunch of extra time trying to figure out but why aren't they willing to do this? Why didn't they do this? For me, it doesn't matter. Yeah, we all need to live interconnected lives where we rely on other people to do the things that we we want to do for ourselves and we want to do with others. But the part where you get stuck in your head about this analysis of but why didn't they do it? Why did they choose not to do it? In so many cases, the answer is it doesn't matter, they just didn't. Yeah, and he does a good job of laying out that case here.

Dan: 14:08

Another reason why you don't want to go down that road is a lot of times, even if you were to, in a magic land, get that information as to why they didn't want to do it, you don't have the power most of the time to control them, to have them do something different anyway.

Charles: 14:24

Really any of the time. If you're a dad and you've got a daughter, you can make her do her chores, but you can't make her want to do her chores, and when it comes to healthy romantic relationships, you don't want anybody doing anything they don't want to do or doing on a sense of guilt or obligation. You want to be in relationships with people that are excited to have their needs met by you and meet your needs.

Dan: 14:44

Now it might be a good prompt, an impetus to start a conversation about why things aren't. You guys are on different pages, but don't ruminate and just try to come up with ideas of why something did or didn't happen.

Charles: 15:00

Yeah, because most human behavior, as he says, is controlled by unconscious factors that we ourselves don't even understand about ourselves. So going to another person and trying to say, yeah, they may not even know, yeah, but why didn't you? Why didn't you want to go out with me? Why didn't you want to meet up for the state that we arranged? It's like they probably can't even give you a straight answer if they wanted to. They probably can't even give you a straight answer if they wanted to, and the fact that you've put them in that corner where you're demanding that answer for them makes them even less likely.

Charles: 15:31

So let go of that over analysis. Keep in mind that it probably has very little to do with you and more to deal with her life, her situation, her circumstances, her mindset, and she's just not willing or able to meet that need or that request of yours in that moment and then just be chill about it. That's the only thing you can do to increase your chances for that particular girl to be open to meeting up with you or going out with you in the future is the way that you react to disappointment, because that is a thing that so many guys get wrong so much of the time.

Dan: 16:04

Here's another way to think about it. We were just talking about this the other day companies who make it very difficult to cancel subscriptions with them. If they make it easy and pleasant for you to be able to cancel because, for whatever reason, you're just either not into their product, you don't need it anymore, whatever it is if they make it easy, you're a lot more likely to consider them in the future and come back and go oh hey, you know what? They had great service. I've got a favorable impression. If somebody asks me about them, I'm going to give a oh, it was easy to cancel or it was very flexible and I had a good experience walking away from that. Whereas if you sign up online but you have to call somebody or get a fax somebody If you remember, like gym memberships back in the day, they're like year long contracts, like the vice president of gold gym in order to quit.

Dan: 16:49

I remember having to do that, basically, and then they still took two months to respond back and charge me. During those two months, I will never join gold again.

Charles: 16:55

Bring it back to the material of the chapter. It really is a mix of insecurity and over analysis. That is really what's at the core. It's the I don't feel, I'm not sure that I'm good enough, I'm not sure I can pull this off Plus. But why? Why is she acting this way? Why does she think this? Why does she feel this? Why does she treat me this Like? You put those two together and it's very hard to have a healthy, fun, romantic relationship that people are attracted to and people are looking for. It's hard to pull that off with all, like you said, that baggage and again, insecurity and over analysis. You put those two together. It's hard for people to be happy man, it's hard. Even if one person's experienced those things, it's going to ruin the relationship for both people I think that's the whole.

Dan: 17:40

The whole theory around rebound relationships and why they don't work is because you haven't had enough time to basically heal the wounds and deal with all your baggage from your previous relationship.

Charles: 17:51

Yeah, so you're pulling that along into the new relationship? And yeah, absolutely yeah. So, like everything the I think Mark Nansen said it the only dating advice that works every time is self-improvement. So if you've got that underlying insecurity that you're dealing with whether it goes back to your childhood or goes back to your most recent relationship, whatever it is hitting that stuff head on and dealing with it is really the only way that's going to make you better at either walking up to a pretty girl and asking for her number or trying to be a good husband or a good father. That stuff has to be dealt with, otherwise you're just going to keep kicking the same can down the road and deal with the same problems over and over again.

Dan: 18:32

Yeah, you're literally by doing self-improvement, creating and figuring out what tools you need to handle those different situations and your practice, you're practicing using them as well on yourself and then at that point, once you've vetted the tools and how to use them and you're good at it, then you might be ready to use them with another person involved in the mix, whatever capacity that looks like. But you're right, if you don't spend that time working on yourself, you're just winging it again and you're going to be likely to repeat yourself and in terms of the success or failure of our last relationship.

Charles: 19:08

Yes, agreed. Look at yourself and try to figure out, okay, what are the areas where I am fixating on other people's actions and other people's behavior and overanalyzing them to the point where it's getting in my way of just being able to accept a yes or a no and then moving on to the next step, whatever that happens to be for you? Yeah, and.

Dan: 19:29

I'm going to pull a line that you repeat constantly is get a therapist or a group or somebody outside of yourself to point that stuff out.

Dan: 19:36

It's really difficult to figure out what you're doing Like part of your brain, even if, like you're an expert in certain areas, like the therapists have therapists and coaches have coaches, and because they realize there's so much that you don't see and you don't see nearly as quickly as somebody outside of you and I know with what you went through recently in terms of some of your new training you ask people to give you some feedback on on you and ways to describe you, and that's because a lot of times we don't see a lot of that stuff and good or bad, and so it's really difficult if you're going to try to wing this on your own and do all this self-improvement by yourself and bite the bullet. Yes, books are good, podcasts are good, but personalized, one-on-one attention from a therapist, a coach or a group therapy is going to get you there so much faster and so much more efficient path to getting to where you want to be.

Charles: 20:27

Yeah, and it's. There's some quote that I saw online a long time ago. I don't remember exactly, but it basically said something about the the path to who you want to be is through the work you don't want to do, and it is. It is. It is intimidating to think about hiring a therapist, hiring a coach, go into a group introducing yourself and be like and here's the problem that brought me here. That is a hard thing to sit down and do with a stranger.

Dan: 20:54

So it was easy. You would already be doing it. It was easy and enjoyable.

Charles: 20:58

Again, listening to podcasts is easy. Reading books listen to an audio book in your car is easy. I'm an expert at that. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I.

Charles: 21:06

Recently I had gone um, I'd gone on the maintenance plan with audible because I had so many credits built up. That was like man, if I keep 15 a month, I keep adding credits. I'm like seven, eight, nine credits I haven't used. So they have a plan where, basically, you can keep access to all your stuff without adding multiple credit, without any new credits every month. But I just went through a listening. I've been spent a lot of time in my car, spent a lot of time on planes, and so I recently went through quite a rack listening to new books. And so now I'm back on the premium plus plan or whatever, where I'm getting the credits again because I love audible so much.

Charles: 21:38

But yeah, it's easy to listen, to buy a new self-help book on audible and listen to it. And even even if you do work through the exercises which are not easy some of them, but it's not as hard as sitting down next to a stranger saying here's the problem that prompted me to hire you or join you or sit with you and, as a result that's doing stuff like that is the most helpful because it's the hardest. Yeah, the next part he talks about is getting to rejection quickly, which I think there's a better way to say this instead of getting to rejection quickly, which I get the point that he's making. What I like to think of it, as is more, do what you have to do to find out what a person's interest level is in you, and it's almost like I want to draw a map with some very dark lines that say here's exactly the kind of relationship or interaction somebody wants to have with me and here's what they don't. And the more clear your relationship is with someone about what role they want you to have in their life, what fun activity they're willing to engage in with you, whatever that is, the more clearly you understand that objectively, the less reason there is to feel anxiety. So that's where, when we get into part two, we're going to talk about testing for interest, like when you see a stranger.

Charles: 23:00

Okay, particularly imagine a stranger who's a pretty girl that you might be interested in going on a date with. Is she interested in having some small talk about the weather? Is she interested in telling me her name? Is she interested in agreeing to go on a date with me? Is she interested in going on multiple dates with me? Is she interested in kissing me? Is she interested in going to bed with me? Is she interested in being my girlfriend? Change this order as you need to for your own values. Is she interested in marrying me? Does she want to have kids with me? It's like the more you know exactly where this person stands on what they're interested in and what they're not interested in, the less reason for anxiety you have.

Dan: 23:40

I think in this segment here I thought he mentioned it here where people have a tendency to not want to rock the boat, so things might be going well in terms of a casual conversation, and I think where he was talking about get to rejection quickly, it's if you went in for one purpose in terms of trying to connect with that person you want to get to know them and you have some, maybe sexual interest in them, but then you just get to the point of some friendly, nice conversation.

Dan: 24:09

You might just go, oh, that's enough, I don't want to ever be rejected, so I'm just going to settle now for being friendly with that person and then all of a sudden, before you know it, you're in the friend zone because you are acting like you're too afraid to then take the next step and actually get to that rejection where you are actually asking them for what you want, or you are getting to that point. You stop making progress in terms of where you're talking about the testing for interest. You stop testing for interest because you don't ever want to be turned down and your own brain is going, oh, there's a possibility here, and so you never actually take that next step, and so I think part of what he's talking about here to get your rejection quickly is turn your brain off and just keep testing for interest.

Charles: 24:55

Right, keep moving things forward until somebody says okay, but and the thing?

Dan: 25:02

Oh, this feels good. I'm getting good feelings here because I've met this new person and we have these things in common, but then you never just take that next step and you just hang out.

Charles: 25:11

And that might be one of the most valuable things I've learned from this book and other good dating books be a three percent man by cory wayne, and the book we just did most recently by the gotmans, the the Man's Guide to Women. Testing for interest inspires interest and it's like you about. Just come to that. Naturally, that's not a conclusion that your brain would just get to, but, man, it is so true Because you're showing confidence. You're showing confidence, you're showing honesty, you're being direct and saying, hey, here's who I am, here's what I'm about, and here's the thing is you're being direct and saying hey, here's who I am, here's what I'm about, here's the thing is you're giving them a compliment.

Dan: 25:44

That's true. Yes, I think there's a lot of wiring that we've had, a programming that we've had in society. Where it is creepy. Where it's creepy because there's been a lot of the stuff that's. The stuff that is interesting to watch is, unfortunately, are the scenes and TV and movies where the guy is being like extra creepy or the other extreme, like super, extra romantic, the fun stuff to watch, not like a just a natural progression in terms of interest. You don't see it that much and so I think we're programmed to like worry about again. Our brains are like, oh, we could go wrong here. I don't want to come across as creepy, but meantime, most of the time, you're not. It's I didn't put people. A lot of guys don't realize that now I didn't, when I'm I was. I'm talking to my younger from a younger.

Dan: 26:27

Yeah, same, absolutely yeah, I yeah the I'd never want to be the creepy guy or whatever that you hear the girls complaining and a lot of the time you don't hear them complain when it just nothing crazy happened and that's thing that may have happened a lot more to from a woman's perspective than we even realized.

Charles: 26:58

If especially if you've done that for so long that you've taken yourself off the game board as being someone who has any kind of romantic or sexual interest, if you have conditioned a woman to think you're her friend or you're just a colleague or you're just a buddy, and then at some point when you can't stand it anymore, you make some sort of a romantic or sexual gesture to her, that's when you come across as creepy.

Dan: 27:25

Correct, because you present yourself in a false light the whole time, and part of your brain knows that and I think it gives it away in terms of your body language and everything else, as you are getting out of that comfort zone and out of that normal relationship status with somebody, it's I think it's difficult then for them to for you to be behave in a non-creepy way or a not or a way that is relaxed and natural, right, because you're basically admitting think about that. It's just like I've been, in a way, I've been lying to you for years correct potentially for years.

Charles: 28:03

yeah, and your angle the whole time has been maybe someday, yeah, that is not attractive and that is creepy. The least creepy thing you can do is really learn how to express your attraction and your interest to a woman in a way that makes her feel both safe and flattered, without, without feeling tricked or without feeling pressured or anything like that, because you put her in the driver's seat and say, hey, I'm interested in getting to know you better. You want to meet me for a coffee tomorrow? She could say yes, she could say no, but the only, really the only way that comes across as creepy is if, part of your strategy for the way you make it through life and through social, if you don't invest anything in your own appearance, your own communication skills, anything like that, you don't care.

Charles: 28:50

If you don't care about that at all and you're direct with a woman, then yeah, you might seem creepy, but you got to give a crap about the way you look, the way you smell, the way you dress and Not to say you have to be a beautiful, attractive matinee idol. You don't have to be a 10 out of 10, but you do have to. It has to be clear yes, I care about my appearance and I'm willing to put some work into the way I present myself to other people. So even if you're just a four out of five out of 10, but you're willing to be direct and be honest, you can still come across in that interaction as a very attractive person and you will.

Dan: 29:26

You're also conveying how you go about life, and if you show that you care about yourself at least. If you don't show that you care about yourself, why would anybody believe that you're going to put any effort into them, into their relationship or into anything else that you do?

Charles: 29:39

Yeah, or into providing for them, or whatever it is you're ultimately looking for in your relationship with a woman.

Dan: 29:44

That means everybody has their own standards of what beauty is and of how well you need to dress and everything else. Like that you don't need, like you said, you don't need to be perfect at all of this stuff, but just make a little bit of an effort, show that you care, Correct and, if nothing else, that actually helps level up your self-esteem. When you do things for yourself, you're caring for yourself. That subconsciously absolutely will carry that. You will carry that with you and you will express that in the way you communicate with people and the way you present yourself, the way you walk, the way you talk, your body language, things that you're not even thinking about, knowing that. Hey, I cared about myself today, did these things got a haircut, took a shower, took a couple minutes to choose my outfit, what I was going to wear for the day. All those little things, yeah, they seem innocuous, but, believe it or not, they make a difference. Love each of your state of mind.

Charles: 30:37

Keep in mind, in all of these scenarios, anxiety is not your enemy. It's telling you something, and in this case, what it's telling you is you're willing to try something new that you're not good at, and that's a good thing, and that's an attractive thing. So anxiety is, it's in the passenger seat for a lot of these things we're talking about, and you're not going to be able to kick it out of the car, but you are going to be able to keep it fed, keep it hydrated, stop for bathroom breaks when you need to so that your anxiety is manageable, or soothing Trichology you want to use, but yeah, the only. When you're way down the road of this process or any process of trying something new, can you say, okay, the anxiety is gone.

Charles: 31:15

I spent a fair amount of my time doing public speaking. I still get a little bit nervous, whether that's comedy or giving a work presentation. It's oh, I'm doing something that I don't do all the time. This is going to feel, yeah, uncomfortable, but not nearly. I'm not so uncomfortable that I'm going to feel like I can't do this, and the more you do it on a daily basis, I would imagine that lebron james experiences very little anxiety now coming out from the locker room to start a basketball game because he does it so much and he's so used to it and he knows how good he is at it.

Charles: 31:47

And I would say even the 12th man on some NBA team who you might not even know his name, but he does this all the time. He's probably not feeling that anxiety either. So you don't have to be the best in the world to not feel anxiety. You just have to be somebody who's stuck with it and gotten used to it and you'll be able to do the same thing. And so, yeah, practice these techniques the breathing, the visualization, the letting go of over analysis and trying to figure out why everybody does what they do and then also just be willing to test people and just get a beat on where they feel in regards to you. And to do that, you have to ask questions and do things that will put you in a position for rejection. Let go of the assumptions and be open.

Dan: 32:24

Yeah, exactly, and use that to prompt you to want to ask questions because you don't have the information and that you don't soothe yourself into thinking you have the answers for things that you haven't really explored.

Charles: 32:36

You've got to give people the opportunity to say yes or say no to you, and that does cause anxiety, but it's also where all the valuable information with how your relationship could progress with this person is going to be. It's going to be in you handing them the power to say tell me whether you're interested in me or not, and then knowing that you're going to be okay regardless of what they say. All right, that's chapter six. Thanks very much, dan. I'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for sticking in there and listening to the whole thing. We appreciate it again. Please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom for all of our episodes, as well as any news or updates that we want to share. Thanks,