Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Proud patron of yours here and I’m happy to be writing in after years of reading your enormously helpful columns and watching videos. Thanks for all you do — I’m in a very satisfying relationship that’s about to cross the one year mark due in no small part to heeding your advice. You’ve written and spoken a lot about how to become a confident person — where confidence comes from, how to develop and reinforce it, how to fake it ’til you make it, and so on. All of it, practically every word, has been essential to pushing me in a more confident direction for sure.

I’ve begun to notice, though, that a lot of self help advice, and even therapy in my experience, seems to focus on the more practical, actionable aspects of confidence building and self-acceptance. One thing that I don’t see a lot of is how someone should start to *feel* as they’re building self-confidence, so I was hoping you could provide some insight there. It’s one thing to notice that others are perceiving you differently in social situations, but what are some internal indications that the steps being taken are actually shifting someone’s perception of themselves?

For my part, the reason this question was prompted for me is that I realized how much more open I am about expressing my personal interests and hobbies in my current relationship. I don’t have the same “oh god what if this is too esoteric or uninteresting or nerdy” internal dialogue that I used to. I began to notice what it feels like to think that the things I’m interested in really matter, and that whatever my partner’s reaction is to them, they still have value to me. It’s hard to describe, but the feeling is similar to the sort of contagious enthusiasm I get when someone is, say, giving a speech about their area of research.

I’m assuming that confidence in other areas of life might feel a little different than what I described above, and that of course the internal state will vary from person to person, so any examples or thoughts you have would be great.

Thanks again for all you do!

Sincerely,

Possibly Moving In the General Direction of Confidence

DEAR POSSIBLY MOVING IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF CONFIDENCE: First and foremost, congratulations on how far you’ve come, PMIGDC! It sounds like you’re feeling much more sure of yourself and more secure and it’s great that you’re doing so well.

Confidence is one of the topics I keep coming back to, because it’s one of those topics that people tend to misunderstand. We have a lot of inaccurate and often contradictory ideas about what confidence is, what it feels like, how it works and how you get it in the first place. One of the examples that comes up the most regularly is the idea that being confidence requires success; otherwise, how could you be confident if you had nothing to be confident about?

Now, if your idea of confidence is “I have X accomplishments that say I’m great” or the knowledge that you can’t fail at Y, this would seem to make sense. How could you be confident around women if you’ve never had a relationship or even asked a woman out? How could you believe in yourself and your ability to succeed if you haven’t succeeded already? You need a reason to be confident about something, and proof that justifies it.

This quickly becomes ironic when you realize that some of the most accomplished people out there are often at their least confident when working in their field. In fact, higher levels of education and experience tend to correlate with higher levels of imposter syndrome. The people who, under this logic, have the most to be confident about are the ones who are much more inclined to believe that they don’t actually deserve their success, that their frauds and eventually people will figure it out. Meanwhile, you have folks who believe, without a doubt in their souls, that they could beat Serena Williams at tennis… despite not being pro (or even amateur) tennis players themselves.

There’s also the idea that confidence is another word for bravery; that if you’re confident about something, you don’t experience doubt or worry or anxiety about it. But that’s not it at all. Experienced singers, actors and other performers all experience stage fright or opening night nerves, even when they’re veterans of their craft. Athletes get so uptight before games that they puke or deal with other forms of gastric distress, even when they’re literal professionals. Confidence isn’t the absence of fear or worry; only the truly delusional never feel fear or nerves or get anxious. Again: knowing more and having experienced more often makes you that much more aware of what could go wrong or how things could fail.

But there’re those words again: educated. Experienced. Knowing more. Those are all part of confidence. Not in and of themselves, but as some of the building blocks that make up the holistic whole. Confidence is about belief – specifically the belief of “I’ve got this.” It’s about knowing – specifically, knowing what you’re capable of, knowing that you can succeed while also knowing that failing isn’t fatal. And it’s about experience, sure… how your experience contributes to belief, education and knowledge, in particular.

And that’s part of why you – and everyone reading this – already know what confidence feels like. You just weren’t consciously aware that it was confidence.

There are things in your life – things you do literally every day – that you are confident in. You don’t think about that feeling as confidence, because you never realized that this was what confidence is like. Confidence, you think, is something you should actively feel – a sensation in your chest or your gut that you experience in certain circumstances. But the things you feel most confident in are things that you do without thinking or feeling. You just do them, mostly without thinking, and the fact that you don’t think about it – what the implications of that action might be, what the odds of failure are, what other people might think – is part of why you don’t think of it as being confident in your abilities.

Similarly, the things that we are most confident in are things that are so mundane and universal that we don’t see the point in trying to equate those with confidence. Yay, you’re pretty good at algebra or trigonometry, that’s not confidence, that’s just 12 years of education that everyone goes through… right?

Except, no, that’s absolutely confidence. You don’t know all the answers, you can still make mistakes while you’re trying to solve the equations, but you know how to solve them and what you need to do.

Now, compare that with your being able to talk with people about your interests without worrying that you’re coming off as too weird, too esoteric or just too deep in your own head about it. To many folks that doesn’t seem like much… it’s just a conversation. But to you, that growing level of experience and knowledge – hey, you’ve done this before, it didn’t always go great but now you’re not afraid because you know you can handle it – is what you, and other people looking to be more confident have been striving for.

Just doing the thing without having to consciously think about it or worrying about your ability to do it? That’s confidence. That’s ultimately what confidence feels like: it’s something you know you’re capable of. Success isn’t assured, but failure isn’t guaranteed either, and failure doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It may suck, sure… but it’s still something you can, and have experienced and have recovered from.

In many ways, confidence is ultimately freedom from worry at an existential level – you’re free to not worry, to not feel like you need to weigh every possibility, to not need to prepare for every contingency or to need to devote all of your concentration to the task. But as you gain confidence? Eventually, it isn’t a feeling. It just is.

It’s just getting to that place that gets tricky. Especially if one is still working from mistaken ideas about confidence.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a recent graduate in my late ’20s who started working as trainee at a company a few months back. Given my temp status, I’ve been assigned to under the supervision of one of the full-time who is in his mid-30s.

The company has a lot of women who are my age and my role often requires that I liaise with external parties like hotels and restaurants, a lot of whose points of contact are women.

Over these months, I’ve observed my supervisor interact with both my female colleagues and female staff from external parties, & I’ve found it unbelievable how easily he seems to charm and captivate so many of them.

I can understand why; he’s a genuinely sweet guy who’s athletic, has a good sense of humour, is a good listener, and most notably to me, is able to stay calm under pressure & find solutions to problems that we face at work.

I can’t help but feel that all his good qualities highlight the areas where I fall short: I’m self-centred, struggle to stay in shape, have difficulty making casual conversation, especially with girls, have a short attention span, and again most notably, often buckle under pressure and struggle to fix the personal or professional problems that I face.

I guess whenever I see him chat up a cute girl at the office or at a company we’re contracting with, it’s just a frustrating reminder of how, at 27, I’ve made so little progress in improving my dating and sex life since I first started trying at 19.

In the end, I deeply respect him as a supervisor, want to learn professional skills from him, help him successfully complete his projects, and eventually excel in my industry.

This whole thing where I compare his success with women to my lack of it gets of that, cause it only makes me resent him and feel like some beta loser who’d just fall flat on my face I tried to interact with my female colleagues the half-professional, half-flirty way he does, and that there’s no point in trying anyway cause they’re inevitably going to find him more attractive than I am.

Honestly, I think my first priority is for it to stop bothering me, just accept that I am where I am in terms of my skills with women and focus on my professional development. So what should I do to make that happen?

Thanks in advance for reading and giving me the advice Doc!

Mr. Fixer-Upper

DEAR MR. FIXER-UPPER: This is the sort of thing I see a lot, MFU, especially from folks who’ve struggled with their social skills or a lack of social experience. Seeing someone else who seems to be effortless with women – a skill-set you’ve tried so damn hard to develop – makes you feel more than a little envious, even a bit resentful. After all, they’re standing there at the top of the mountain, looking all the world like they got up there without any real challenge, while you can barely get more than a couple feet off the ground. It’s enough to make you feel like there’s no real hope for you if dudes like this exist.

Hell, that’s half the reason why incels get so toxic; they let that envy and resentment build until it curdles and becomes poison. Then they alternate between directing it inward at themselves and outward at both the “Chads” who seem to have been blessed by the universe and the “Stacy’s” that reject them. They get caught in a deterministic loop, where their futures were set before they were even born and where there’s no hope of improvement or a better tomorrow, and so are caught at the intersection of despair and rage.

So I want to give you credit, MFU: you clearly recognize that this isn’t a good place to be and you want to stop feeling this way. That’s a mark in your favor. However, you still have some issues with your mindset that, while not as bad as it could be, are ultimately working against you. And I want to be clear: I absolutely understand where you’re coming from and how you feel. I have been there, done that and built a career out of trying to change that. I’ve talked many times about growing up with my friend Miles, who was a natural-born lady killer. He’s distressingly good looking, confident and seemingly effortlessly charming and delightful. Not to mention – like your supervisor – he’s one of the most genuinely sweet, friendly and generous people I know. And, again, like you, when he was around, I may as well have been invisible.

But, having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I want to let you in on a few things that eluded me at the time.

The first is, very simple: dating and attraction isn’t a competition, nor is it a zero-sum game. Nobody is universally attractive or compatible with everyone, and every woman out there – like every man – has their own individual preferences and interests. While Miles had traits that got him a lot of initial interest at the time, there were a lot of women who could appreciate that he was an attractive and charming guy… but a man who did nothing for them. The ones who were most into him weren’t going to be into me, because I wasn’t the particular flavor that they were looking for. Think of it like being hungry – you have food that you prefer, and food that you’ll take if need be. If you’re someone who prefers meat and you’re given the choice between, say, a roast beef sandwich and an apple and brie sandwich, which are you most likely to chose? That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the other sandwich – in fact, apple and brie is incredibly tasty! – but it’s just not your personal preference.

So it is with women. The fact that someone is more compatible or in tune with a guy doesn’t mean that this person is inherently better than everybody else; it just means that this individual man was their particular flavor. It can feel like a judgement on your personal worth, sure… but it really isn’t. It’s just that you weren’t their preferred flavor and that’s ok. I’m sure you’ve had just as many times when you were attracted to one woman but not another in close proximity; that doesn’t mean that the other person was worth less, just that they didn’t have the x-factor that really revved your motor the way the woman you were into did.

The second thing I realized is that resenting Miles was a waste of my time and energy – literally. Being resentful of him did nothing for me, it just hurt me. It was the emotional equivalent of drinking poison in the expectation that the other guy would die. The time that I spent being bitter about his success only served to make it that much harder for me to improve myself. You only have so much mental and emotional bandwidth; whenever you expend it on someone or something, you leave less to use on anything else. Because I was resentful about Miles and spending so much of my bandwidth being envious of his success, I had less to actually use to see that there was a lot that I could do to make things better for me. Which actually lead to the third thing I learned, later on.

I could either be envious of Miles… or I could be inspired by him. He could be an example of what held me back, or he could be someone I could model myself after. Being resentful about all his seemingly natural gifts was easy. It reinforced a belief I’d long held – that dating success and attraction was a binary. Either you were good with women or you weren’t, and there was nothing you could do to change that. Believing this held me back for so long that I wasted years of my life, thinking that any relationship I had was going to be a matter of luck and that I had to take whatever I could get. This mindset is part of why my first serious relationship was so toxic; I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to accept things that ultimately hurt me and made me miserable.

But this also ties into the fourth realization I had – one that was admittedly a mixed blessing, since it came as part of my getting caught up in the PUA scene: that being good with women is a skill, not an inherent trait. It’s something you learn how to do through use and practice. Yes, there’re things that give some folks an advantage, just as being tall gives you an advantage in basketball or Michael Phelps’ anatomy and genetic predisposition to make less lactic acid gives him an advantage at swimming. But you can learn to play basketball – and be good at it – without being six feet tall or more. You can be a competitive swimmer without having unusually long arms or increased flexibility in your joints. And you can learn how to be more charismatic and socially skilled without having to be Perfect Tommy first.

What I didn’t realize at the time, is that Miles – or any of the other so-called naturals out there – weren’t born charisma factories. They just developed those skills at a different time than I did. Since I didn’t have a 24/7 feed of everything inside Miles’ head, the way I did my own, it only seemed like everything was perfectly effortless for him. I had no clue about what his challenges were, how he learned his skills or anything else. And in fairness: he wasn’t going to be any better at telling me how he did it any more than you or I could tell someone how to learn how to walk. It’s just something we learned so long ago that it’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t know how.

So with those realizations in mind, let’s look back at your situation and your feelings about you supervisor.

In fact, let’s work backwards, shall we? If we start with that fourth realization – that social skills are skills – then we have to acknowledge certain truths. There’s the fact that your supervisor’s older than you, which means he’s had a different upbringing and also more time to cultivate skills and experience than you have. So he has a different background than you, which has a direct effect on how he developed emotionally and skill-wise, which makes a direct comparison difficult. But just as importantly: he’s in a job that requires social fluency, an ability to connect with others and – as he’s in a managerial and supervisory position – necessitates being able to handle stressful or complicated situations on the regular.

Since he’s been on the job longer than you have and has more years of experience under his belt in general, it’s not surprising that he’s developed these skills to the degree he has. He’s been in a position where he’s had to learn them, had to practice them constantly and where the success of your company is reliant upon them. If you’re in a position where you have to learn and utilize a particular skill five days a week – even if it’s just walking a coin across your knuckles – you’re going to start getting more proficient at it.

So right off the bat: you can learn to do what he did. He had a head start on you and a lot of motivation to get good at it, sure… but that’s not a mark against you. Being upset about this would be like being upset that you weren’t made the CFO on your first day of work. But because you’re in a similar position with a similar role and responsibilities, you’re in a place where you can cultivate those skills too, if you put the time and effort in.

By that same token, look at those qualities that you said he has: he’s genuinely sweet, a good listener and has a solid sense of humor. Those are some really attractive, positive qualities for a man to have… and there’s no real reason why you can’t cultivate them in yourself. Now, you list your faults, sure, but this is where the mindset problem kicks in. You’re treating these as though they’re permanent and unchangeable, rather than things that can be improved upon. Well here’s the thing about that: you’re 100% correct. They are unfixable… as long as you believe they are. This is a classic “both the optimist and pessimist are right” situation; the way you choose to look at yourself is what ultimately defines what is or isn’t possible.

If you choose to see those qualities in yourself as being permanent, then any effort to change them is cut off at the knees. You won’t put as much effort behind trying to change them, because what’s the point? When you fail or hit road blocks in your development, you’ll take longer to recover from them, and have greater likelihood of just not bothering to continue on because clearly nothing could be done. But if you look at it as a “well, it’ll take work but I know I can do better” sort of scenario, then you’ll have a much more productive, less frustrating time. Believing that improvement is possible means that you’ll be inspired to put more of your energy into it. The times when you run into challenges, not only will you bounce back faster and more thoroughly, but you’ll be more motivated to find alternatives if one method didn’t work and to get to the bottom of why you’re facing these challenges in the first place.

You mention that you have a hard time dealing with stress and you have difficulties paying attention. Well, there’re a few possibilities here. One could well be that you’re some form of neurodivergent. God knows “low attention span” and “struggles to complete tasks” defined me for, let’s see… forty years of my life before I got my ADHD diagnosis. Getting treated changed a lot for me, since it turns out that much of my life was built around compensating for all the difficulties having ADHD caused – including how I managed stress and panic in my personal and professional life.

Or, maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s just a matter of training and experience. You can find a number of ways of improving your focus and ability to pay attention through practice – martial arts, meditation, even learning how to dance. These all require being able to narrow your focus into one area and to pay attention to many different things at once – the rhythm of the music, your partner’s movements, your own balance and situational awareness, etc. None of it is a quick fix, sure… but that’s not how skills are developed. They’re developed over time, through deliberate practice.

The same thing applies to being less self-centered or making small talk. Those are things you can work on and improve upon. One thing that could help there would be taking improv classes. Not only does improvisation require that you be much less self-centered – it’s very emphatically a collaboration with your partner, not an opportunity to show off – but it teaches you that you want to be in the moment, instead of constantly thinking about next steps or the next thing you need to do. You learn to pay attention to what your scene partner gives you, much like with a conversation, and to build on it with them instead of trying to dominate or take over or make it about you.

Keeping your head about you and managing difficult and stressful situations is, likewise, a skill that you have to learn and practice. Nobody – not the SAS, not the Navy SEALs, not surgeons or EMTs – show up able to handle intense levels of stress or manage crisis with no training or experience. They have the benefit of rigorous training, things that turn the skills they need in that moment into muscle memory, so that when adrenaline blanks out their mind, their bodies are able to go on autopilot. They, similarly, have experienced those situations before, starting with their training, so they know what to expect, what to look for and how to best manage things. And that experience – simulated and actual – means that when they run into a scenario they haven’t encountered, they have a breadth and depth of knowledge to help inform them how to handle things.

Now in this case, you’re in luck. You actually have someone who can help teach you this, in the ways you need for your profession: your supervisor. Going to him and saying “hey, I admire how good you are at problem solving and crisis management, and I’d like to learn how you do it” will not only help you in your professional development, but it’ll actually lean into that second revelation: that you can resent someone or you can admire them and be inspired by them. See, having your supervisor around means that you have a role model. You can look at what he does and learn from him instead of grinding your teeth. What does he do when he’s interacting with your female coworkers or the women he meets on the job? How does he balance professionalism with charm? How much does he joke around vs. being serious, how much does he compliment them vs. being very “just the facts”? How does he respond to what they say, and how much does he calibrate his behavior to the person he’s talking to? How much of his genuine interest in other people can you learn by watching him and how much are you willing to emulate until it becomes natural for you, too? Yeah the whole WWMSD can seem cheesy, but having a baseline to work from while you find the way to make it congruent with your personality can be invaluable… as long as you are willing to look at it as “this is someone who makes me want to work harder and achieve”, rather than “some guys have all the luck”. And that brings us back to the first revelation I had about Miles. Yeah, he had success I would’ve liked to have had at the time… but comparing myself to him in that way was counterproductive. In many ways, it’d be like someone who plays an occasional pick-up game of soccer comparing himself to David Beckham; yeah, it’s the same game, but played in very different ways and for different reasons and very, very different timelines. Leaving aside the fact that someone doesn’t need to play soccer at the pro level to enjoy it or get a lot out of it, it’s a matter of having entirely different lives.

Your supervisor’s success and yours aren’t comparable for many reasons – age, lifestyle, experience, personal challenges, upbringing, etc. – but also because his success has no impact on yours. His being socially gifted doesn’t take away from you in any way, shape or form. Comparison, especially in this case, is the thief of joy, and by looking at it the way that you do, you’re only harming yourself. His skill doesn’t diminish yours. His flirting doesn’t make it less likely for you to find love or relationships. Hell, the women he’s most likely to have relationships with aren’t likely to be the same women you would want to date – certainly not beyond a purely superficial level.

Rather than just “accepting” your skill level and trying to force any resentment away, change your mindset and outlook, starting with your ability to grow and improve. Yeah, you’ve struggled up until now. That doesn’t mean you’ll struggle forever. Sometimes it just means that you’ve been going about things the wrong way, trying to sail into a headwind instead of with the wind. Or you may have had something handicapping you, the way I did with my ADHD. But if you start from a place where improvement is possible and your supervisor is a figure of inspiration and motivation? Then you’ll be in a much better position to learn, to improve and to work towards being your best, most polished self. And that’s far better than just trying to force yourself to not feel things. Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My question concerns whether to compete, and if so, how to compete, for a woman’s attention with another guy. As background, I’m 28 and have been without a relationship/or any meaningful dating activity for about two years. Besides a great relationship that lasted a couple years, I have never had much success in the dating department. That means I am nearly 29 years old, but with the dating skills of your average high school student (and this question practically shouts that from the rooftops). I know that I can make a relationship work once I get in such a position, but getting there for someone like me is tough. 

I started taking German classes after work last week as part of my attempt to meet more people and hopefully find a date. It’s a small class.  There are 6 students, and we all sit along a table, four guys and two girls. There is an amazing girl (classic beautiful, and a huge brain and warm personality to boot) in the class, and two other guys are obviously interested in her along with me. Unfortunately, I am developing a severe case of “Oneitis.” It is especially unfortunate, because from the way the seating is arranged, I don’t have the opportunity to work with her during partner exercises. The guy who gets to work with her is, admittedly, a much better catch than me. He is handsome, athletic, and has that reserved, detached cool of an ER surgeon. I, on the other hand, am more like a self-conscious golden retriever. I am friendly, but not at all cool, and sit squarely in the middle of the bell curve on most measures in life.  I can barely focus on grammar and the like because I am too busy dying a little bit inside while she smiles her awesome smile and he tries to make her laugh with jokes about Paris Hilton. Doc, it kills me! I want to be in his shoes! I want a shot! If that dude wasn’t in class, I would already have introduced myself and asked for a drink.  But now its tough, because making a move during class would be seriously weird, and after class, there will always be at least one guy vying for her attention while we walk to the parking lot. 

At this point, I regret signing up for the class, because now I have 10 more weeks of watching another guy have a perfect opening with this amazing woman for whom I would happily poke out my eye with a sharp stick. I am not confident enough in the force of my personality or the awesomeness of my life to compete for her attention with this other guy, but I don’t think I could bear to watch if things kept moving forward between them without doing something, anything. 

What should I do here? 

2nd Place

DEAR 2ND PLACE: First of all: good for you on getting out there and taking some classes. It’s a good way of making yourself a more interesting person while you’re trying to meet someone new.

Now having said that: slow your goddamn roll son. You’re locking yourself into a “what-if” death spiral. I’ve always said that nerds have the worst superpower in the world: they can perfectly map out all the horrible way that everything will go wrong and it freaks them out.

This is exactly what you’re doing. You’re imagining every possible worst-case scenario and reason why you can’t possibly do anything and you’re letting it intimidate you into not doing a damned thing. You need to quit war-gaming every scenario or thinking “if only I had X” or “if only there was a chance to do Y”; these are nothing more than self-limiting beliefs that slow you down and hold you back. The more time you’re wishing for something to happen is time you’re not spending making something happen. And if you’re not going to make your move, somebody else will.

Let’s run it down a little here.

Limiting Belief #1: Oneitis

By focusing like a laser on your in-class crush, you’re investing her with far too much importance and setting yourself up for failure. It’s one thing to think “hey, cute girl, probably awesome, I’d love to date her.” It’s quite another when your attitude is “She’s God’s special angel and she’s made of light.”

Look, I’m sure she’s cute and has all sorts of amazing qualities, but she is just a woman, singular. There hasn’t been some sort of weird apocalypse and now she’s the last woman on Earth. She’s not your one chance at true love and if you miss out you’re doomed to be single for the rest of time. She’s a person. Same as you are. She puts her pants on one leg at a time.

She’s just the only one you’re spending your time on.  There are hundreds, thousands even at the school where you’re taking classes. Tens of thousands or more in the town where you live. Millions in your state. If you ask her out and get shot down… well, that sucks and I’m sorry for you, but it won’t be the end of the world.

Limiting Belief #2: You’re Competing With Someone

The instant you start having a dick-measuring contest with someone over “who’s got a better chance”, you’ve lost. You’re spending precious time and mental energy trying to weigh your pros and cons versus his pros and cons… and you have no idea what his pros and cons really are.

You, my friend, are comparing your unedited raw footage to his highlight reel and you’re letting it screw you over.

When you’re finding yourself in “competition” with other people, what you’re really doing is psyching yourself out. You’re too busy looking for weaknesses in yourself to think about how awesome YOU are and how much you have to offer. You’re spending too much time trying to measure up against other people using a bulls

t metric and not enough time building yourself up into an even more interesting and charming person.

You can’t look at other people as your competition. You can be inspired by them. You can envy them. But the only person you should be competing with is yourself, otherwise you’re going to be seeing every other person out there as a potential adversary instead of, say, a friend. Or even an ally.

There will always be people who are handsomer than you (general “you”, not you specifically, 2nd Place), funnier than you, richer than you, whatever-er than you… if you get together with this girl, are you going to spend your life looking over your shoulder for fear that someone better than you is going to come around and snatch her out from under you? Or are you going to live the best life you can and show her just how much value you have?

Limiting Belief #3: He Has A Better Chance Than You Do

You know next to nothing about this woman. You don’t know what she wants. You don’t know that this guy is her type. For all you know, she likes guys just like you – a little sheepish, maybe not the handsomest or cleverest but with a great heart. But it doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not because you’ve apparently decided it for her.

Right now: yes, he does have a better chance… because you’ve already surrendered. You’ve effectively conceded the game to him and you haven’t even gotten on the field yet.

The only way you can know for sure whether he has a better chance than you is if you get in there and make your play. She may still end up dating him… but she definitely won’t be dating you if you don’t actually make your move.

Limiting Belief #4: Wrong Time, Wrong Place

You say if it weren’t for this guy, you’d ask her out for a drink.

Well, why haven’t you already?

OK, so maybe it’d be weird in class. But after class… oh noes, more people want to talk to the pretty girl!

Guess what my dude. There’s always going to be a reason why it’s not the “right time”… and the more you wait for the “right time” or the “right place”, the more chances you’re giving other people to ask her out before you do. If you don’t make your move, somebody else will.

OK, look I get that the guy’s intimidating. But unless he’s actively c

kblocking you, the only thing really getting in your way is… well, you. You’re psyching yourself out again because you’re afraid of being rejected. And I understand. I really do. Rejection sucks. It hurts, literally. But that’s the price of entry when it comes to dating. You need to reach down into your core and say “You know what? F

k this. I’m tired of being intimidated. I’m tired of being cowed. I am going to go ask her out and let the chips fall where they may.” Pull her aside with “Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?” and ask her out for that drink. Ask her after class, even with the looming “threat” of other guys vying for her attention. Ask her before class.

But you have to ask her.

There will never be a “right” moment, just the moment you make.

Limiting Belief #5: Your Life Isn’t Awesome Enough

Too many guys seem to think that they need to be perfect in order to get a girl. They need the Ryan Reynold’s washboard abs, Ryan Gosling’s dreamy eyes, George Clooney’s smoulder, Kanye’s swagger and Oscar Wilde’s wit in order to win a woman’s heart.

And if this were true, the human race would’ve gone extinct.

Look, just because you’re not in the top 1% of whatever doesn’t mean you aren’t “worthy” of a girl. Your life may not be where you want it to be – and if you’re living life right, there will always be more room to grow, more ambitions to achieve – but waiting until you’ve hit some arbitrary point is just another way of psyching yourself out and giving yourself excuses to avoid being rejected.

You’re taking this class because you want to improve yourself, right? Well, asking her out for a drink is part of the process of improving yourself. You can’t improve your skills without putting them to work.

You may not have a perfect life, but you should be able to look around and say “hey, good enough to give it a try right here, right now”. While you’re busy wishing you were at place Y, you may be missing the possibility that your crush would be very happy with you at place X in the meantime.

You may get rejected. Fine. It’ll suck and you’ll feel bad for a while. But that will fade – faster than you think – and you’ll realize that all it means you’re one person closer to finding the woman that’s right for you and one step further down the path at getting better at dating.

And that means that when you meet the next incredible woman – and there will be another woman, just as incredible – you’ll be even better prepared.

Good luck.

Dr. NerdLove is on vacation, so we’ve chosen some readers’ favorite letters from previous columns. New columns will resume on October 24th. Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)