This is the second part of an interview I did with Nick Sparks where he discusses his new program Fearless. (For the first part, go here.) In this interview you’ll learn the big mistakes guys are making and how you can quickly improve them.
4. What’s the most common mistake you see clients make?
This one’s easy – especially since this is one of my biggest sticking points.
When a man first enters a social situation there’s typically a critical period, usually lasting the first 15-45 minutes of his experience, during which his fate for the evening is up in the air and his night can go either way.
Sometimes, and this usually happens by some combination of events that get attributed to the alcohol or a lucky shirt, we take the right actions during this period and we have an amazing night connecting with people and flirting with women.
The reason why this doesn’t happen more often is because we usually fall into a rut – a usual protocol you subconsciously follow when put in these situations that sabotage your efforts to recapture that ‘zone’ you found on your good nights.
- You’re not making different mistakes every time – you’re making the same mistake over and over – and if you focus on locating and annihilating that mistake, you’ll find yourself getting over that hump more often than not and really enjoying your social and dating life.
The most common mistake guys make in this period, and the most common mistake I make when I’m not ‘on’, is to do what we’ve been raised to do in these situations … say the ‘right’ thing to get a girl to like us.
It’s the most consistent message we’ve heard our entire lives – from our parents, to our peers, to every facet of the media, to most of the advice in the men’s dating industry today: The way to get a girl to like you is to be funny, charming, and interesting and to say things that demonstrate you to be that way. Men imagine a guy who’s good with women to be surrounded by a crowd who’s hanging on his every word and laughing uproariously at his every joke – every woman staring at him…
Unfortunately, this is a male fantasy. Pick up a rom-com or a romance novel and 99% of the time that is not how the male object of lust behaves – and the reason for is is actually because of how similar she is to you.
She doesn’t fantasize about the guy who’s the star and the center of attention, she fantasizes about being the star – the center of attention. She doesn’t get aroused by the guy who’s trying to show her how funny, charming, and interesting he is as much as she’s getting turned on by the man who makes her feel funny, charming, and interesting.
The biggest mistake guys make is snapping into this “say something to make her like me” mode that he’s been programmed to go into. There’s a reason why you don’t have a problem trying to make conversation when you’re not trying to get the girl, because you’re not snapping into this different mode, which usually just takes the form of talking way too much – battering her with line after line, desperately hoping the next one is going to make her swoon and ignoring half of what she’s saying in the process.
Meanwhile, she’s feeling more self conscious because you’re barely reacting to what she’s saying. She’s trying to be funny, but can’t get a real laugh out of you because you’re too worried about having a followup comment that’s going to knock her socks off.
The guy will usually be leaning in slightly when he’s in this performance artist mode, and I can tell you from watching this thousands of times that even the slightest lean forward will subconsciously make her feel smothered.
If girls aren’t responding as much as you’d like them to, there’s a good chance it’s because you’re not giving them the room to do so, both physically and verbally. You’re worried that without that next line to ‘slay’ them, there’s no chance they’ll like you and want to win you over.
5. Can you give a quick example of a tip a guy can go out and use tonight to improve his game?
Here’s the simple, quick fix to the above issue that I use to get over the hump for myself when I need it and that I apply to every client suffering from performance artist tendencies … I call it keeping your eye on the ball:
Let’s say you’re an outfielder in baseball and you get a fly ball hit out to you. It’s right to you and you get underneath it, and since you’ve got a couple extra seconds you check on the base runners to see where your throw should go.
If you’ve ever played baseball you already see the problem coming and a likely outcome – if you take your eye off that ball there’s a good chance that you’re going to miss it, and make things 10 times worse than if you had simply caught the ball and not known where to throw.
You can apply this lesson whenever a woman is saying anything – the first and only thing you should be focused on, the ball to keep your eye on, is to make sure you do three things:
1. Overdo appropriate facial expression. If she says her dog just died, your face had better say, “my dog just died”. I say to overdo because as a general rule you’re not doing enough.
2. Use an appropriate buffer. A buffer is a concept explored in great detail in Fearless, but simply put, it’s a short burst of verbiage used to amplify the emotion of the appropriate facial expression. To use the above example: “I’m so sorry”.
3. Lean back. You were probably leaning in, even slightly. Give her some space to come to you.
After you do this, leave a nice pregnant pause and hold eye contact – lingering on what she just said. The cool this is that you do this naturally whenever you’re on, and also the natural point in which you think of what you’re going to respond with. When you put pressure on yourself to be clever, you throw this natural system out of whack and can never think of anything. When you take that pressure off, give yourself time, and leave those spaces after doing those three things, 75% of the time she’ll fill the silence, and the other 25%, you’ll have more than enough to say.
Whenever a guy tells me he’s running out of things to say I immediately know that he’s talking way too much.
If you focus on consistently catching this ball you’ll be blown away by how your interactions will be completely turned around. The second you start to think of what you’re going to say next and break eye contact before she’s completely finished is the second you really blow the play.
If you’ve ever felt like you were doing too much work and not getting enough back, this will change your life.
6. Tell us about “fearless” and what separates it from other programs.
This isn’t a bunch of things to say and do to memorize – that doesn’t work. This is the most simple “system” you’ll ever see.
This isn’t detailing to you what I do to get girls and saying you should do the same thing like I’m some end all be all of game – that doesn’t work either. I’ve probably spent more time over these past five years intensely watching clients talk to women in bars than I’ve spent talking to women in bars myself. This isn’t about me, this is about you.
Fearless is built specifically to allow a man to be at his personal best in any social and dating situation by focusing on the most simple things that actually do all of the ‘work’.
All of this doesn’t mean that breaking out of a comfortable rut in your life will be easy, it never it. What it does mean though is that you can stop wasting your time and energy on what doesn’t matter and finally start seeing the results you knew you should get when you promised yourself that you would get this area of your life handled in the first place.
