How Your Self-Perception Can Make or Break Your Night

Early in my “career” I noticed a rather peculiar phenomenon – when I was out with guys (and gals) who saw me as a sort of master seducer (usually due to a combination of my image, behavior, and, occasionally, seeing my previous successes), I would find myself performing much better with women. Every single part of the seduction dance would become noticeably easier without any additional conscious effort on my part.

Would you like to guess why this happens?

Sure, being in a good mood because you’re hanging out or meeting people you like plays a significant role, and an occasional comment like “Oh yeah, he’s very experienced in bed” said jokingly in a group setting does its job to create a reputation of someone who knows what he’s doing.

But that’s not it; the change that makes the biggest impact turns out to be in our head.

You see, when I hang out with people who already see me as someone who’s successful with women and expect me to act like that, it puts a certain positive pressure and, in a way, makes it socially okay, even expected, to act sexually.

In turn, I would find myself assuming the role of a sexy guy who pulls women left and right, which, as we’ll learn later in the article, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – cool, right?

Note that this is happening almost exclusively in our head and, more often than not, without conscious interference – a change in self-perception based on the environment.

Your Self-Perception and Reality

Reality is a tricky subject. After all, it’s just a complex interpretation of enormous amounts of information that is being sent to our brain through our senses.

Back in my corporate days, I remember having a quick exchange with my boss. Afterwards, a friend sitting next to me messaged me with the following:

“Omg, what did you do? He was furious at you!!!”

Wait, was he?

In my mind it didn’t even register and I truly felt like we were just having a normal conversation, but in her mind those same signals were interpreted differently and, in turn, she thought that he was giving me a verbal beating.

This fascinating way of how we operate has tremendous implications in seduction even more than in business.

Tell me, how many hours have you spent obsessing over what that text message meant that only said “Ok”, or how little work you’ve done after that cute colleague smiled at you – “Wait, was she flirting or mocking me?!.. Why didn’t I smile back; I’m such an idiot.”

What we need to understand is that a lot of it has to do with how we’re seeing ourselves.

If in your mind’s eye, you are THAT guy, there won’t be a moment’s hesitation to figure out that when a classmate smiled at you, it was because of attraction. Actually, with practice you start to interpret every glance at you as a form of subtle flirting. And that “Ok” after you suggested a meet feels like a contract signed in blood, because who in their right mind would skip on an opportunity of a lifetime to meet a guy like you?!

Now, I’ll admit this sometimes leads to false-positive situations where you misread the signals and assume attraction where there is none. Also, this can make going out with groups that also include girlfriends of your close friends a little awkward, as you feel like you’re constantly being checked out and need to restrain your flirting muscle to avoid damaging any friendships over silly misunderstandings.

But nonetheless,

If you want to have great results with women, it is much easier to achieve by becoming that hot guy in your own mind first, as this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Your Self-Perception and Body Language

Have you noticed that if you find yourself in a bar, during a night out, thinking about your body language and whether your posture is good or bad, it’s often a sign that things are not going that great and instead of enjoying the sensations, your mind is in damage-control mode trying to figure out why things are not going that great? Which in turn makes things even worse.

That said, we do know how much of an impact body language makes on how we feel and how attractive we appear. It can even affect our testosterone levels in the short term!

Actually, combined with our style and grooming, it’s enough for women to make a rock-solid first impression about us and nearly instantly put us in a mental category – fuckable or not.

Then it’s not surprising why some guys look at improving their body language as a sort of Holy Grail of seduction – “If only I could develop attractive body language then I’d become super attractive.”

The tricky part with this logic is that, as mentioned earlier, when you find yourself consciously thinking about your body language when you’re out there meeting women, you’re already in a losing battle.

And that’s just the basics – posture, movement.

There’s another part of your body that sends even more signals to the world – your face. Imagine trying to control how your facial muscles contract and relax to send particular signals, while you’re supposedly having a conversation with a beautiful woman – playing chess while balancing a handstand would be easier.

This is where our self-perception comes into play once again – just as using our physical body can affect and impact what’s happening in our head, what’s happening in our head can affect and impact how our physical body operates.

In other words, when you feel like the hottest act in town, you will naturally start sending the signals that communicate this.

Developing Your Self-Perception

Alright, I think I’ve hyped it enough already – let’s get to the practical part.

Unfortunately, working with your self-perception can feel like the other not-so-useful advice: “just be confident!”, “just talk to them”, “be yourself”.

Seriously, is there someone out there who even knows what “be yourself” means?

And, if I do a bad job at explaining myself, what I’m about to say might sound as bad as all that other cliché advice, because here’s the deal:

The best way to develop the self-perception of being that sexy man is to start acting like one.

…I know, I know. Bear with me, please.

Assuming a Role vs Trying to Be

The problem with typical “just be… confident/yourself/charismatic/charming/friendly” advice is that, in a sense, you’re asking yourself to change major parts of who you think you are (regardless whether you consciously think of it as “good” or “bad”) and that’s very threatening to the ego. It’s also scary, because it implies change, and, in your mind, change is potentially dangerous.

Naturally, every fiber of your body then starts to resist such change.

What if, instead of trying to become someone, we assumed a role of someone who has those desirable qualities? Just for a while.

Like an actor, immersing himself in his role, we would start acting like that hot guy.

Even though the change in thinking about this is subtle, it makes all the difference in the world.

Suddenly, you don’t need to be someone else; instead, you just put on a role temporarily.

For example,

Often before going to out to meet women I have a guilty pleasure of listening to sexy novels (in audio format). They are usually pretty badly written with plot-holes the size of the moon, but they do have some sexy scenes (and we all enjoy those) and also include male characters that exude sexuality.

Often dark, always intense, those characters are archetypes of how women view male sexuality. So what I do is immerse myself in that character.

I try seeing what he sees, thinking how he thinks, and feeling what that character might be feeling.

When I meet my dear lady for the evening, I’m no longer Darius, who just spent the day in front of his laptop working, someone who worries about whether he has clean gym shorts for tomorrow’s workout, what he’ll be having for lunch, and how many macros he still needs to consume that evening.

No, in that moment I’m that mysterious man, who looks her deep in the eyes, beaming sexuality, someone whose touch makes her tremble with desire. More often than not, this role lasts until she leaves the next morning and I go back to work, chores, and other mundane day-to-day realities.

And even if it doesn’t go that great that particular evening with that particular girl, I feel irresistible.

Now, you might be thinking:

So, I just need to listen to sexy novels before going out?

And the short answer is, no. The long answer, however…

How to Start Your “Acting Career”

First things first, you need to decide who you will be playing. Generally, anything you imagine is fair game, but I would advise checking a tremendous piece Chase wrote, “The 9 Male Identities and How They Affect You with Women” (this article also covers a lot of what we’re talking about here from a scientific research perspective).

Pick one, and let’s start the show.

We have three stages:

1. Prepare yourself mentally.

2. Prepare yourself physically.

3. Prepare your costume.

Stage 1: Preparing Yourself Mentally

Getting into your role mentally can be a bit complicated, but, just like professional actors, we have a couple of tools under our belt to get us started:

• Draw inspiration from your previous experiences and successes. Personally, most often I use memories of some of my most epic sexual conquests and immerse myself in them.

• If you don’t have a lot of positive experiences to draw inspiration from, you can try to reproduce your character’s emotional state by imagining its motivations, goals, emotional background.

Feel, don’t think. The biggest pitfall you can encounter here is finding yourself thinking “I’m sexy, I’m sexy, I’m sexy” (or something similar).

Stage 2: Preparing Yourself Physically

Now, how does your character walk, stand, gesticulate, talk?

Get into motion and start replicating it.

But once again, you don’t want to think whether your shoulders are in the right position or if your head is being held at a 90 degree angle, etc. Thinking can potentially kill this process.

Also, it’s probably not something you want to do when you’re already meeting women. Instead, start practicing being that sexy man when you’re still at home getting ready.

Note: the first two stages should take you only a couple of minutes. If you start dwelling on it, you might notice counterproductive results.

Stage 3: Preparing Your Costume

Now that you walk and talk like that person, time to prepare your superhero’s costume (Don’t get too excited, we’re not going to a cosplay convention).

There’s something extremely powerful about the physical ritual of transforming your appearance – within minutes you can go from a cave-dweller in stained sweatpants to the hot guy who’ll be checked out by beautiful women in bars and clubs.

Unsurprisingly, when you are making this transition and you know the end results (your going out look) will be epic; you very naturally start seeing yourself as a very attractive man.

Now, some time ago I prepared a piece called “6 Outfits That Will Help You Look Sexy.” Check it out, as it contains different outfits in different styles that, if implemented right, will definitely make you look attractive.

Your skin care and hair styling routines can further emphasize this change in self-perception.

An Experiment

I know that this method of getting into a role is not exact science and might sound a little goofy, so here’s my challenge to you – cam record yourself talking before and after (all three steps).

Just for a few minutes, talk about nothing in particular and then compare both recordings. I did this when preparing this article and observed the following changes (without consciously trying to do anything):

• Talking much, much slower.

• Despite fewer words, they were said with more conviction, passion.

• More intense, sexual eye contact

• More deliberate, decisive gesticulation.

• Definitely feeling more sexual overall.

Your turn: and you can share in the comments what changes you observed

Surround Yourself with the Right People

In the intro of this article I mentioned how being around people who (in my mind) see me as a badass player makes me act and feel like one, and how simply having the right people around can make any night so much easier.

But what happens when you’re with company in whose eyes you’re not someone who sleeps around with beautiful women?

Well, I’m fortunate to have a few friends like that in my life too. Those couple of friends knew me for years and we met back in my “learning days” (you can read more about those days in my last article).

It’s absolutely fascinating to observe myself while in their company, as I unconsciously revert to some of my old patterns – being goofy, a bit insecure, and nerdy. This can be perfectly fine in small doses, but nonetheless,

If you’re still struggling more than succeeding with women, it’s very important to be aware of with whom you spend your social time.

Now, here’s a catch-22 when it comes to surrounding yourself with people who (in your mind) see you as a sexy man:

• You generally need to have at least some success with women so that people see you as a successful lover (or get really good at playing your sexy role).

• If you count on people to push you to be successful with women, your self-perception will not be of someone who’s good with women and people in your life will in turn see you as someone who struggles with women.

What this means is that this shouldn’t be your primary strategy at getting good, so if you’re thinking “Oh, cool, I don’t need to put myself out there, meet women, and occasionally crash and burn, I just need people to see me as a player and everything will fall into places naturally”, tough luck and it’s time to get back into the field.

There’s another potential pitfall in this regard: it’s very tempting to surround yourself with people who are way worse than you to the point where your couple of one-nights stands look like tremendous successes to them – becoming “king of the nerds”.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t work that great either. Your social circle (how sexy your social circle is) should move up as you improve with women if you want to keep the positive momentum that surrounding yourself with the right people can give.

From my experience, this is not something you need to worry about a lot consciously (other than avoiding the temptation of lowering your standards for people who you will hang out with); the way it happened in my life is that as I became better with women, I started meeting other cool guys who get laid plenty themselves and, as the saying goes, “game recognizes game” – ‘women’ is one of those topics that is easy to connect with other sexy men on.

So… That’s Just Faking, Putting on a Show?

I’m sure there are some of you who after reading this article thought to themselves “But… but… I don’t want to be someone else; I want her to like me for me.”

I don’t want to get all philosophical (and, please, let’s refrain from doing that in the comments too, I know it’s tempting) but the way I see it, at the end of the day, what we refer to as “myself” is just a combination of various self-perceptions in different settings and in the face of different influences.

Yes, when you start doing this and when you think about yourself your first thought is “I’m a lvl80 Space Pirate with an epic velociraptor mount”, or “Whatever, getting into a role of a hot guy will feel alien.”

But as you do it and start getting success it will start molding into your identity. You will notice that over time you do start thinking about yourself as that sexy guy and “Well, duh, of course she digs me”. Not in a cocky, overcompensating sense, but like stating the most obvious thing in the world – “Yes, the sun rises in the morning and it’s wet when it rains”.

This, in turn, becomes something that you are. Your self-perception evolves.

Now tell me, when you exchange glances with a beautiful women in any setting, be it a bar, a street, a date – do you find yourself thinking “Oh my god, does she like me? Does she think I’m being creepy? Unconfident? Wait, I’ve been looking at her for the whole 30 seconds – now she definitely thinks I’m a weirdo”... or, “Sweet, it’s on!”?

Cheers,

Darius