December 31, 2012

“Why Do People Stare At Me?” A Qualified Answer

I got an interesting question a few days ago from a reader of the social confidence newsletter. He noticed that very frequently, in buses, on the street, in the supermarket, while waiting in line, people look intently at him. So he asked me: “Why do people stare at me?”

It’s not that “Dang! You’re hot!” kind of stare that a very attractive woman may get, it’s more like that “Wow! You’re weird!” kind of stare.

This isn’t by any means the first time someone asks me: “Why do people stare at me?” As a social confidence coach, I get this question a lot. In this article, I’d like to provide a thorough, qualified answer to it, and show you how to amend this situation to boot.

In my experience, there are 3 major reasons why people may gape at you. In more than 95% of cases, one or more of these reasons offer the complete explanation.

1. There Is Something Quite Odd about Your Appearance

First and foremost, your appearance may be markedly bizarre, and this is what gets people’s attention and makes them gawk.

I’m not talking about the way you look physically per se. Being fat, skinny, short, bold, Asian, Indian or whatever rarely gets stares in this multifaceted society. I’m talking about the way you dress and take care of yourself.

It’s common for people who get lots of stares to be utterly careless or clueless regarding clothing, grooming and personal style.

It’s like they never look in the mirror. They go out with unkempt hair and baggy clothes, they choose horrible clothing combinations, and their overall appearance is extremely sloppy. This is what gets noticed and it often makes others gawk.

staringNext time before you go out, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Note your clothes, their fit, your hair, your posture and your overall look. Try to observe yourself as if you’re observing another person that you’re seeing for the first time.

And notice: is something off about your appearance? Do you look eerie or unappealing in some way? If so, it’s time to start taking better care of the way you dress and present yourself visually.

You may be a very cool person on the inside, but if you dress sloppy, the first impression you create will be the very opposite of that.

2. Anxiety Is Messing Up the Message Your Project

It’s no coincidence that almost every person who perceives that others often stare at them feels nervous in social settings. Some of them have actually being diagnosed with social phobia or even AvPD.

You see, when you’re in a social setting and you feel anxiety, this will screw up your non-verbals, especially your facial expression. You’ll have this frozen, terrified look on your face, your eyes will be very wide open and your face color will likely be very pale.

This gets people’s attention and shocks them. So they’ll have the tendency to stare at you, perhaps even say to others: “Look at this guy/girl! He/she looks like they saw a ghost or something!”

Then you’ll realize others are gawking at you, which will make you self-conscious, which generates even more anxiety, so you look even more terrified, and the whole thing spirals.

In my experience, this is the most common reason why people stare at you. It is fundamentally an anxiety-related issue. And the only real solution is to deal with this root cause: to overcome your anxiety related to social settings.

Fortunately, effective, well-researched methods for overcoming anxiety exist today. Your job is to learn them and apply them.

I don’t want to go into this extensive topic here, but I do encourage you to check out this free presentation I designed, in which I cover this exact topic and I’ll show you the steps to take in order to build rock-solid social confidence. Please make sure you watch it.

3. It’s Largely Just In Your Head

It is also very possible that people in general don’t stare at you that much. No more than they stare at anybody else (yes everybody gets occasional stares), or at least not much more

However, your mind makes it seem that people stare at you all the time, when this actually occurs infrequently. What happens is that, since staring makes you feel uncomfortable, you notice it a lot and you remember it vividly.

You’re very aware of the situations when others gawp at you, but completely unaware of the many situations when they don’t. This makes your mind overgeneralize and create the erroneous impression that people stare at you all the time.

Nevertheless, the reality is far from that.

This is something you can overcome by paying more attention to the situations where others do not gawk at you or they don’t even notice you, bearing them in mind, and then trying to objectively asses how frequently do others truly gawk at you.

You’ll likely find out it’s only in a small number of cases.

That’s it: my answer to the puzzling question: “why do people stare at me?” Take this info, put it into practice and see what happens. I think you’re gonna love the results you’ll achieve. And above all, work on building your social confidence. I will make the biggest difference.

Image courtesy of Chibcha

Filed Under: Communication Skills, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , , , , 42 Comments
November 4, 2012

What Do Women Want In a Man?

Any straight man, at one point or another in his life, will ask himself: “what do women want in a man?” And when he realizes he doesn’t truly have the answer, he’ll go searching for it.

One of the most common ways for guys to find out what do women want in a man is by asking his lady friends what they want in a man. Supposing they have a big enough sample of female friends to ask this, it may provide some value for them in understanding women’s desires.

However, this method is highly flawed because of two reasons:

1. Many women will simply not be completely honest. They’ll tell the guy what he wants to hear or what will make them look good rather than the naked truth; many times without even realizing.

For instance, a woman may not disclose to a guy that she wants a man who can dominate her physically in bed, because she is afraid that she’ll seem like a slut, but deep down she does have this craving.

2. Women often don’t know themselves what they want in a man. So they’ll talk about what they think they want in a guy, but it’s frequently not what they truly want and what generates emotional attraction towards a guy. And this phenomenon often applies for men as well.

Considering this, what is the best way to know: what do women want in a man?

I believe the best way is to study women’s behavior towards men.  And, if the sample of women is big enough, you’ll reach the most reliable conclusions.

If a women says she wants s guy who is sensitive, but she constantly dates ice-cold guys despite a generous availability of sensitive guys around her, then she obviously wants ice-cold guys rather than sensitive ones.

If she says she wants a guy who is tall and dark, but then falls madly in love with and desperately pursues a guy who is short and blonde, it’s likely that her desire for tall, blonde guys is only at a superficial level.

Working as a communication and confidence coach, having built for myself a pretty rich and active social life, and being a keen observer of human nature, I have noticed a few highly consistent patterns in numerous women’s behavior towards men, which indicate convincingly what women want in a man.

Of course, every woman is different, but there is definitely on overarching theme in women’s desires regarding men.

So, if you’re asking yourself “what do women want in a man?” I’d like to share with you my conclusions. I believe that above all, women truly want and react emotionally strongly to these traits:

1. Confidence

Yes, it’s true. Confidence is, by far, one of the most attractive traits you can have. The men that I know who are very successful with women are very different, but the one quality they noticeably have in common is a high dose of confidence.

They are comfortable in their own skin and they like themselves as they are. Consequently, they are sociable, they are genuine in social interactions, they are persistent and they don’t take crap from anybody. And women quickly pick up on this and it involuntarily generates attraction.

Fortunately, confidence is a psychological trait that you can develop through deliberate action. Trust me; I help people develop it for a living.

If you want to learn the steps you need to take in order to build confidence effectively and quickly, then make sure to watch this unique presentation I have created, in which I’ll reveal them to you.

2. Masculine Energy

Ultimately, a woman desires a man, not a girlfriend with a penis. There are certain traits that come off as (primarily) masculine, just as there are certain traits that come off as (primarily) feminine.

A masculine energy is what you convey when you manifest such masculine traits.

There is a wide range of characteristics that are generally masculine: decisiveness, dominance (not the same as aggressiveness), firm voice tone, strong eye contact, seeking challenge, having clear goals and ambitions in life, perseverance, practical thinking, being protective, achieving status, and so on.

The lesson here is two-folded:

1) Don’t be afraid to convey the masculine traits you have (yes, you have lots of them, even if you may have lost touch with some). Put them out there and be proud to be a man.

2) Develop your masculine traits. Pick just one or two of them at a time, and work on improving them.

3. Good Social Skills

If you look during social interactions at the guys women react very well to (they flirt with them, they seek their attention, they ‘eye-fuck’ them) these guys will demonstrate some class of sharp social skills.

Maybe they are funny or they are very fluent verbally. Maybe they are charismatic or they know how to make a girl feel special. Maybe they are good listeners or mesmerizing story tellers. Or maybe they have a mix of these qualities.

Any way you cut it, they have a range of good social skills. The bigger the range and the higher each skill in it, the more attractive they are.

We live in a social world; we always have. And this is why social skills make all the difference in the world, and they are worth enhancing. Again, this presentation will prove very useful here.

4. An Interesting Lifestyle

The key is to not be just another guy who goes to a boring 9 to 5 job, then watches TV and plays computer games all day long. Too many guys are like that, and they all lack an edge.

You don’t need to have a James Bond lifestyle either, but it does prove tremendously helpful if there are just a few elements in your life that make it unordinary, above average and exciting. They make it interesting and then women feel the natural urge to be a part of it, and to be with you.

This is why I always encourage men to take on interesting hobbies, to try new things, to constantly challenge themselves and to do things they are passionate about. A man with an interesting life is very sexy.

Okay; at this point you may be asking yourself: but what about money, looks and fame?

My answer is that these things do help, but now having theme is definitely not a deal breaker, at least not with the vast majority of women.

At the end of the day, confidence, masculine energy, good social skills and an interesting lifestyle outweigh everything else. What do women want in a man most of all? It’s these 4 traits.

This is great because, while there are limits to how much you can improve your looks and few people will ever become millionaires, becoming more confident, masculine, and skilled socially, and gaining a more interesting lifestyle are within your reach, no matter who you are.

So, all that’s left for me to say is: get out there, better yourself as a man, live the best life possible and have fun. Your attractiveness will soar as a result.

Image courtesy of sebastien.b

Filed Under: Personal Development, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , 2 Comments
April 5, 2010

Men, Women and Personal Development

I recently had my first open training where all the participants were women. This made me realize that in general, my clients who are not sent and paid for by the companies they work for are at least 2/3 women.

My experience here doesn’t seem to be an exception. Other coaches and trainers tell me they have similar experiences. As a general rule, it seems that women invest visibly more in their personal development than men do: training, coaching, books and practice.

Now, I can’t help and wonder: why is this? Do women need more personal development than men? Do men have better people skills, career skills, attitudes which justify them not seeking as much self-growth?

As you probably guessed it, the answer is definitely ‘not’. Men need as much personal development as women do. They just don’t invest in it as much. Talking with people about their views on skills and success, I believe there are a couple causes:

  • Men are less willing to see their flaws and their potential for improvement;
  • Men are less willing to accept that someone else could be competent enough to help them grow;
  • Men are less willing to actually act for their personal development;
  • Men are more confident in their ability to learn on their own.

By the way: I was guilty of all of these at one point or another. The last one might be good or bad, depending on the context and the person. But the first three are definitely trouble. Simply said, they make men in general sabotage their personal development and improve their soft skills at a lower rate than women.

On top of this add the fact that trough our nature, we men are probably one step behind women in our fitness for this modern world we life in. Women are naturally more empathic, intuitive, good at reading body language, and have a wide range of better people skills; men are naturally more aggressive and good at lifting heavy stuff. Great!

Project this phenomena 25 years into the future, and if things evolve in the same way, we’re gonna be living in a world where the average woman is running circles around the average man. She is smarter, more confident, more effective, more successful and has far better people skills than her male counterpart.

The average man will be spinning his head and not understanding what the hell is going on with his life and his career, while a woman will be overtly or subtly running the show. Now that I think about it, a lot of this I already see happening around me. Maybe I just need to meet better men and worse women. Hmm…

Anyway, the good news is that in this hypothetical future, the few men who will be able to match women will be a very interesting and appreciated thing to have around. So, as long as you’re one of them, the future’s very bright.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Personal Development, Success Tagged With: , , , 10 Comments