Whether you’re working on women and dating, your career, or anything else, not taking enough risks and plain old not failing enough is all too common in people who aren’t growing and progressing towards their goals as fast as they could be.
You’ve probably heard some of the old sports analogies: In baseball, you’re considered to be a very good batter if you fail less than 70% of the time.
In basketball, well, the great Michael Jordan put it best himself:
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Teams playing a game too carefully or hesitantly are said to be “playing not to lose” instead of “playing to win” …and those teams often do lose unless the players and coaches change their attitude. Because like I try to remind clients, what you focus on expands. So focusing on the fear of losing (instead of the intention to win) often brings them the loss.
I’m not breaking any new ground here. Most of us have head some, if not all of this before. But how many of us are living it in our own daily lives and decision-making?
Are you avoiding – or hesitating a lot on – moving your side-business forward (or even choosing a business to start) because some of the time and effort you put in and decisions you make may fail? You’ve got to test things and get data to move forward. Sitting in indecision and avoiding failures is costing you the one thing you can’t get any more of in life. Time.
Are you carefully analyzing and being picky about if/when you actually approach the beautiful women you come across, because you’re trying to minimize rejections? Again, the more you practice and take shots, the more you learn, and the more opportunities for success you actually give yourself.
Once you get in interactions, are you being hesitant and careful and thinking a lot about what to do and say – playing not to lose? Or are you playing to win (and just to be fully yourself-which is playing to win with the right girls for you) saying what’s really on your mind without filtering yourself, being direct, being free with her, having fun, really enjoying her and getting turned on – for her and just the adventure of talking to her? Are you taking risks: Asking her that thing you want to ask but are a little afraid of going into, telling her she’s sexy, asking for her number or a date?
My clients who grow the most, the fastest embrace failure, just like Michael Jordan and successful entrepreneurs. They fully commit to interactions vs coming off like they have one foot out the door, ready to run at the first slightly possible sign of rejection. They speak more and more freely with women, even to the point of (respectfully, in a fun way) seeking out rejections for the sake of their sense of freedom, fun, authenticity, and indifference from outcome.
So let all that ruminate as you go through the following videos. Then get out there and FAIL!
Taking Risks and Making Mistakes in Your Social Interactions
Like we just talked about, if you rarely truly take risks when you’re working on your social confidence, your growth will be slow. In this video straight from our Bucharest Weeklong Intensive, I talk about how powerful it is for your growth to take more and bigger risks in your social interactions.
Are You Failing Enough? Big Success Requires Failure & Consistency
In another “Inside FEARLESS” video from Bucharest, we’ll talk about doubling your rate of failure and another crucial element of success in anything: consistency. When you start a workout or training program, you may be awkward, suck or “fail” at a lot of the exercises, and “fail” to see any big results for a while. But without that consistency and willingness to suck and not get anywhere for a while, you’ll never get any kind of results. The same goes for getting good with women and building a business or career skills. “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson can be a life-changer, and we’ll get into that in this video.
Are You Reactive When It Comes to meeting Women?
Another piece of this risk-taking and failure thing is how you handle the failures and disappointments…and how you handle even initially getting anything less than a fully positive reaction from women you’re meeting. Moments of awkwardness or other uncomfortable tension. Are you proactive or reactive with tension when interacting with women? Being super reactive can really slow your growth down and make all this failing and risk-taking I’ve been writing about in this email hard to swallow and not burn yourself out on. So in this video, I’ll teach you about proactivity and reactivity around learning, failing, and meeting women, and how you can become more proactive.
