What Mexican Beach Vendors Can Teach You About Business, Dating, and Time Management

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I was at the beach in beautiful Sayulita a couple weeks ago, and two vendors kept approaching me. One was selling hammocks and the other was renting umbrellas. Which do you think was doing more business?

The hammock seems like a much better value, right? Wouldn’t it be stupid to rent the umbrella when you can have the hammock for life?

Wrong. A hammock is useless without two trees to hang it between. So hammock-man isn’t selling me rest and relaxation. He’s selling me a project. But I’m not at the hobby store. I’m at the beach. I want to relax, and hammock-man is selling an incomplete experience.

Umbrella-man, on the other hand, not only puts up the umbrella for you, making sure to dig a deep enough hole so the umbrella doesn’t blow away, but he also adjusts it as the sun changes position and takes it down for you at the end of the day. That’s one less thing you have to deal with when you’re ready to go home. That is a complete experience!

So, what can we learn from this?

It’s often better to rent a complete experience than to buy a incomplete experience. I haven’t owned a car in years because I don’t particularly like driving and I don’t need the hassle of looking for parking and dealing with insurance and other maintenance costs. But keep in mind when comparing the difference in costs between two options, that you have to consider not just the monetary costs but also the impact on your time and your sanity. There’s a laundromat in my neighborhood that charges me double what all the others charge, but they pick up and drop off my laundry, and they do it in about 5 hours, while the others take at least a day. That is a complete experience, and I’m happy to pay for it because it saves me time and energy and the stress of worrying about whether or not I’m going to have clean sheets on my bed tonight.

If you’re a business, are you providing your customers with the complete experience? You’re not selling a product, you’re selling the experience that that product provides. It’s not that hard to segment your market, providing some customers with the complete experience (assembly, delivery, etc) and giving others the minimum. The laundromat I mentioned above has some customers who do their own laundry, and then other customers (like me) who are willing to pay for the complete experience.

Are you giving the people you date the complete experience? And I don’t just mean satisfying them sexually, though of course you should be doing that. Are you stimulating them intellectually and emotionally as well? Are you just assuming “I’m hot and good in bed, therefore women are going to love me” but you’re not really that interesting or fun outside of bed? Well then you’re providing an incomplete experience. Maybe some women will be okay with that. But most of them want the complete experience.

Stay sexy, my friends.

Five so-called “Health foods” that are making you fat

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  1. Granola. I love granola, but I don’t delude myself into thinking it’s good for me. It’s just oats (carbohydrates) coated in sugar (more carbs) and fat. As Xzibit would say:
    Sprinkle a tiny bit of it on your full-fat Greek yogurt once in a while, which brings me to my next point.
  2. Low-fat yogurt. Real, natural yogurt, is incredibly good for you, in moderation. But most of the yogurt we eat has had sugar added, and what’s worse, the fat has been removed, so your body absorbs the sugar even more quickly. This should make you very angry. Instead, it just makes you fat.
  3. Fruit Juice. Fruit is good for you because it’s fresh and it has fiber. But fruit juice is just the sugar water with everything else discarded. Yes, it’s natural sugar water. But it’s still sugar water. Why do you think hypoglycemics reach for orange juice when their blood sugar is low? And how many vitamins do you think it has after it’s been pasteurized (boiled) and left sitting on a shelf for weeks?
  4. Whole-wheat bread. The term “whole wheat” is very loosely regulated by the FDA, so a lot of the time your “whole wheat” bread might not have that much whole wheat in it. But even if it does, the extra fiber and protein doesn’t really slow down the absorption of the carbs that much. Treat bread like the high-carb treat it is, and eat it very sparingly, preferably right after working out. And put lots of butter on it to slow down the absorption of the carbs!
  5. Honey. Just ‘cause it comes from bees, doesn’t mean your body won’t treat like it treats every other form of sugar – by sending it straight to your fat cells. Use in extreme moderation.

Stay sexy, my friends.

How To Recognize and Eliminate Your Limiting Beliefs

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Last week, I talked about how powerful limiting beliefs are, and how they can warp your perception of reality.

But how do you recognize your own limiting beliefs? And more importantly, how do you eliminate them?

The problem with limiting beliefs is that they’re so deep inside your head, it’s hard to recognize that they’re erroneous. It’s like asking a buggy program to debug itself – it doesn’t know what the bugs are.

Because it’s so difficult to tell what’s a limiting belief and what isn’t, we’re better off looking for the ones that are holding us back. These ones present themselves as the excuses that you’re using to keep yourself from doing the things you want to do.

Also, look for any negative pre-conceptions you have about yourself. “I” statements that seem charmingly self-deprecating, like:

  • I’m disorganized.
  • I’m not good at talking to girls
  • I’m not the kind of guy who’s sociable.
  • I’m just naturally fat and overweight.

It’s important to realize that some of these might be partially true – maybe you actually do have a slow metabolism, or you’re a bit introverted, or whatever. We still want to discard the limiting belief because it’s not useful. Conversely, you could have a false belief that turns out to be very useful. Imagine you believed you were great at talking to girls. You’d constantly be doing it, and pretty soon you’d get good at it because of all the practice. But even before that point, your confident body language would open plenty of doors.

So, for each belief/excuse/self-perception, apply the following process as described here:

1. Write it down.

2. Think about all the things that this belief is holding you back from (whether it’s true or not).

3. Think of an example that contradicts this belief. Has there ever been a time where you behaved as if this belief were false?

4. Adopt the opposite belief. Meditate on it daily. Repeat it to yourself over and over. Replace all the negative self-talk with positive self-talk. It will take a long time for you to fully internalize this positive self-talk, so in the meantime,

5. Change your behavior. It’s easier to act your way into a different attitude than to think your way into a new behavior.

Repeat this process on a regular basis. Just like the most complex software is never fully bug-free, your brain will never be fully free of erroneous assumptions and bogus limiting beliefs.

Stay sexy, my friends.

Are you being blinded by your own mind?

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Today, I want to talk about limiting beliefs and how they can screw up your perception of reality.
 
Recently, I had a stupid limiting belief that this really hot girl that I met was a “nice” girl who wasn’t going to get down with me right away. I assumed she was going to make me at least play part of the boyfriend role, if not actually become her boyfriend.
 
The night we finally went out I scrolled up on my phone and saw a message saying “I’m very attracted to you. Not as a boyfriend, but maybe something more casual.”
 
The weird thing is I had read this message but I was so stuck in my limiting belief that I hadn’t really understood it. I had just assumed she was saying the opposite – that I was the one who was interested in something casual. Here she was literally telling me what she wanted and I was ignoring it and persisting in my limiting belief.
 
And this was a very stupid limiting belief, because obviously a woman can be hot, smart, and classy and still enjoy casual sex. Her self-esteem isn’t dependent on how much sex she has or doesn’t have, or on how long she makes you wait. (And if you need me to tell you that, you’re an idiot whose backward attitude is causing you to miss out on a lot of great sex). And it showed a lack of self-confidence on my part for assuming that I wasn’t attractive enough for her to only want me for one thing.
 
But sometimes limiting beliefs don’t just make you misinterpret things. They can actually make you blind to reality.
 
One time, when I was in a low state of confidence, I was walking through the mall with a female friend and she says “Wow, EVERY girl here is checking you out!”. Somehow, I was so wrapped up in my own self-loathing, that I hadn’t even noticed. How bizarre is that?
 
As a wise man once said “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” I was so stuck in a negative self-perception that my mind was blocking out anything that contradicted it.
 
On the other hand, a positive belief can work wonders for you. One time this girl came over to my house, we had a great time, and the next day I see that she had sent me a message saying “I’ll come over, but this time we’re not going to have sex”. Because I hadn’t seen the message (I don’t have internet at home or a smart phone), my mental frame of “Of course we’re going to have sex” was stronger than her mental frame of “I want to but I don’t think I should”. (And just to be clear: she consented, verbally and non-verbally).
 
So, how can you identify your limiting beliefs and recognize them for what they are? That’s a topic for next week.
 
Stay sexy, my friends.

Should you be afraid of crazy pussy?

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A lot of men have an irrational fear that the women they date or sleep with are going to fall in love with them and get all needy and clingy. When I was younger, this was a major concern of mine, to the point where I couldn’t even ask girls out because I was afraid of creating the illusion of a relationship that I wasn’t ready to commit to.

If you think about it, this fear is simultaneously self-absorbed and self-hating. Self-absorbed because you assume that women can’t help but fall in love with you (are you really THAT amazing in bed?), and self-hating because of the implication that there’s something wrong with these women for loving you.

This fear ranges from a mild concern to a slightly sexist paranoia, as demonstrated by Matthew McConaughey’s otherwise not-sexist character on True Detective:

Hilarious, but seriously guys, it’s not nice to refer to all female behavior that we don’t understand or that inconveniences us as “crazy”.

But even though not all women who get attached are crazy, the reality is that some women are little bit more desperate and needy than others. This is because they have low self-esteem and they’re looking for a man to prop them up.

Right now I can hear you thinking, “Brilliant, so I’ll just avoid the women with low self-esteem”. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. You see, you inevitably attract (and are attracted to) people who are at the same level of self-esteem as you. This is why you see weak women with insecure abusers, and weak men with insecure ball-busters. This isn’t some woo-woo Law of Attraction spiritual nonsense. It works on a very basic biological level via your body language. Women can read your body language instantly and it communicates directly to their sub-conscious.

And this is why when I was younger, I kept attracting these needy women. Younger me would ask “Why do women NEED to have a boyfriend?” and older, slightly wiser me replies “The same reason you NEED to have sex with a different woman every weekend – insecurity and low self-esteem.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to casual sex and variety. It’s the neediness that you should be concerned about because it means your self-esteem is coming from an external source, instead of from inside you.

And it’s also a problem because this neediness will drive you to do things that you know you shouldn’t do.

When I got divorced 3 years ago, I don’t have to tell you that after 7 years of monogamy, I was eager for some variety. To put it mildly, I was a total slut. I would have sex with pretty much anyone who was willing. And I kept attracting these immature women who were playing mind games with me, and the reason was that I was immature and I was playing mind games. I was trying to convince them to sleep with me to pump up my fragile ego. I never lied or said that I was interested in a relationship, but I wasn’t up front about my intentions and I got involved with women who I knew were going to get attached. A lot of people got their feelings hurt, including me.

About a year ago, when I stopped drinking, I took a step back from my sex life and decided to be a lot more cautious about who I was fooling around with. I didn’t go completely celibate per se, but I made a conscious decision not to pursue sex and to just let it come to me. I began working on myself and developing my own sense of self-worth and realized that I didn’t need to get it from sexual conquests.

Suddenly, I started attracting all these great women who were confident and open-minded and up-front about what they wanted, just like me.

And for a while now, I haven’t been afraid of women falling in love with me. In fact, just the other day, a woman told me she loved me and I was super happy about it because I knew she wasn’t declaring ownership of me. She was just expressing the affection we both feel for each other even though we’re not in a committed relationship.

This is the beauty of dating women with high self-esteem: you don’t have to worry about them falling in love with you, either because you’re going to be feeling the same thing, or because you know their feelings are not going to be the crazy needy type. And you don’t need to worry about your ability to “spot crazy pussy” as Matthew McConaughey says, because you just don’t have women like that in your life.

When you have high self-esteem, this is the only crazy pussy you need to worry about.

(Another huge benefit is that they don’t give sex or withhold it to boost their self-esteem. They have sex simply because it feels good. Unsurprisingly, they tend to be a lot better at it.)

The catch is that first you have to have high self-esteem yourself. I’m not going to pretend that I know all the secrets to getting there. It’s a long, hard journey that you have to take yourself. But I can give you a couple of tips.

  • Love yourself – Realize that you’re an attractive, desirable man, and you don’t need to fuck lots of women to prove this to yourself or anyone else.
  • Find your purpose – yes, I know that according to biology your purpose is to reproduce, i.e. to get laid. Find your higher purpose, dude. Usually, if you focus on that, the getting laid part takes care of itself.
  • Be patient – You don’t have to get laid every weekend to feel like a real man. Just relax and say “The universe is sending some very good sex my way and I don’t want to spoil my appetite”
  • Get in shape – It won’t get you all the way there – there are plenty of body-builders who lack confidence with women – but the boost in testosterone will certainly help
  • Be picky – I don’t mean being one of those douchebags who sits at the bar finding any tiny flaw in a woman to justify not going over and talking to her. I mean being picky about the whole package. When you meet someone, are you attracted to her personality and her confidence as much as to her looks? Is she on your level, not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually? Or is she a hot mess? When someone who’s not on your level flirts with you, you can take it as a compliment and move on. You don’t have to have sex with her just to prove to yourself that you can.

Being picky is a very powerful mindset to have. The average man can’t afford to be picky. He’ll take whatever he can get. Every time you say to yourself “I deserve better”, you’re reaffirming your status as an exceptional male, a man who has his pick and can choose to only be with the best – the ones who are beautiful inside and out. As my favorite sex-guru, Nicole Daedone says:

You deserve it. And when you truly know that in the core of your being, they will flock to you.

The tricky part is knowing it, deep down. Not just acting cocky and confident, but really believing 100% that you’re a desirable man. True confidence expresses itself in your body language, and because all people, but especially women, are experts at reading each other’s body language, they’ll know right away whether you’re faking it or not. Sooner or later, a micro-expression, which can last for a fraction of a second, will give you away.

Stay sexy, my friends.

If you’re not a feminist, you’re an idiot

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Some men don’t realize what an incredibly awesome world we live in. They think it’s bad that women are free to have sex with whoever they want, and free to work for themselves and earn their own money.
 
News-flash, idiots! Every woman who’s free to have sex is one more potential sex partner for you. And every woman who’s earning her own money is a woman you don’t have to support.
 
Think back to 100 years ago, before women’s liberation. If you wanted to get laid, your choices were: go to a prostitute, or get married. In both cases, your sexual purchasing power was connected to your economic power.
 
Thanks to feminism, we don’t have to be married in order to get sex from just one woman. We can all be free agents and have sex with other free agents. I cannot understand why some men have a problem with this. More sex, plus economic freedom. What exactly is the downside?
 
In short, feminism is literally the best thing to happen to men since women. So, if you’re a man, and you’re not a feminist, you’re either gay, or you’re an idiot.
 
But as good as things are, we’ve got a lot further to go. By holding women back from career advancement, we’re not fully utilizing 50% of the population’s creativity. And every woman who’s having her sexuality repressed by stupid, slut-shaming, immature boys is a woman who’s less likely to have sex with intelligent sexy geeks like us.
 
So, as a mature, intelligent man, what can you do to help? You don’t need to start burning bras. Feminists don’t even do that anymore, and the ones who did probably never wanted you at the rally anyway. Instead, focus on the little things you can do in your day-to-day life.
  • Don’t tolerate slut-shaming. Every time you hear someone doing it, say “Dude, are you gay? Because what you just said contributes to a culture that makes it harder for all straight men to get laid. Cut that out.” (Not that gays can’t be feminists, but you get the idea)
  • Don’t accidentally slut-shame. If a woman has sex with you right away, call her the next day so she knows you still respect her. Because of course, you do still respect her, right? After all, YOU had sex on the first date and you still respect yourself, I assume.
  • Be aware of the ways women are being held back and/or objectified and stand up for them. A lot of times all it takes is someone to say “Hey, that’s not cool”. Be that guy.

Stay sexy, my friends.

Why Setting Goals Doesn’t Work

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It’s the received wisdom that we should set goals and work toward them. But amidst all this positive thinking, no one ever talks about why it fails. Laziness and lack of motivation are obvious reasons, but I think another important reason is that people get focused on the milestone instead of the behavior that leads to it. They focus on the product instead of the process. Some examples:

“I just want to lose ten pounds”. This is a classic example of stupid goal setting that leads to stupid counter-productive behavior like juice fasts and other crash diets that destroy the muscle that was keeping your metabolism high, screw up your hunger-regulating hormones, ensuring that you’ll get fat faster in the future. Weight is a meaningless number, after all. If you told me you gained or lost 10 lbs in a month, the first thing I would ask you is how much of it was muscle.

“I wish I could get her phone number/get her to go out with me”. Ok, and then what? Getting a girl to go out with you is just a milestone in the whole process of attraction. A lot of guys focus on getting girls’ phone numbers, not realizing that that’s actually the easiest part. Believe me, I’ve learned this the hard way. I have a lot of numbers in my phone of extremely hot women, most of whom don’t text back. That’s ’cause I didn’t take the time to develop a real connection with them BEFORE I asked for their phone numbers, because I was stupidly focused on getting the phone number as though that was the magic key.

“I wish I had a million dollars”. Most people who win the lottery end up bankrupt and in debt within a year, because they haven’t learned how to be rich, successful people.

Instead, for each of your goals, you need to dig a little deeper and figure out what you REALLY want, and not just look at the outer signifiers or the milestones.

“I just want to lose ten pounds”. No, you don’t. You want to be a fit, healthy person. But that’s not a two-week project. It’s a lifestyle change. But trust me, it’s worth it. And the two-week crash diet will just make you miserable in the short-term and fatter in the long-term. It’s scientifically proven.

“I wish I could get her to go out with me”. No, what you really want is to be so attractive that women like her actually WANT to go out with you. That requires you to work on yourself and improve your social skills. But it’s worth it.

“I wish I had a million dollars”. No, you don’t. What you really want is to be successful. The million dollars is just a trophy that proves you were successful.

Try this with all the goals you set for 2015 and see if you’re focusing on dumb external measurements instead of the things you really want.

On Loving Women

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I was at a wedding a couple weeks ago and a girl said to me “You’re way too comfortable around women”.

Now, I don’t think that’s actually true. I still get very nervous around girls and I’m not nearly as suave and confident as everyone thinks I am.

But I think she was onto something. I do prefer the company of women. Always have.

I think a lot of straight guys see women as kind of a necessary evil. They want them in their lives for obvious reasons, but they don’t really understand them or like them all that much.

Not me. I love women. I love everything about them.

I love the fact that they smell better than my male friends, and they don’t call me “bro” or try to yak my ear off about sports or other stupid shit.

I love the way women intuitively understand that all human relationships are high drama. It’s no wonder the world’s first novel, Tale of the Genji, was written by a woman.

I love how mysterious and complicated women are. I love how some women will have sex with you and then treat you like an acquaintance a week later, while some women you’ve never even kissed will look at you like they’ve loved you for 1000 years.

I love how honest women are about their insecurities, how they don’t try to cover them up with macho bravado the way insecure straight men do.


I love how hard women work at being beautiful, because they know how much we care about superficial stuff like that and they want to make us happy. I love all the colors they wear that most men are too afraid to. I love the freedom they have to wear things that have absolutely no functional purpose other than to look good.

I love the way they smile constantly. I even love the excessive smiley faces they decorate their texts and instant messages with because it reminds me of their real-life smiles and it makes me smile to know that they’re happy to talk to me.

I love their immense capacity to love. I know that they know better than to get involved with me or any other man, for that matter. Let’s face it, we’re pathetic and useless and we’re almost guaranteed to hurt and disappoint them. But they never give up hope. When a woman loves you she sees you in a way you haven’t seen yourself since you were two years old and you thought you were a superhero. A great woman will bring out the best in you, make you want to be that superhero just so you can live up to her expectations and justify that look in her eye.

And that might be the best thing about women – that in addition to making the world a better place, they also make us better people.

Top 5 Reasons to Keep Your Damn Mouth Shut About Your Sex Life

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The urge to brag about a successful sexual exploit is very understandable. We’re guys, so a lot of what we do is for the purpose of proving our status to other guys. But in reality, bragging about your private life can quickly backfire. Here are the Top 5 reasons why a Sexy Geek doesn’t kiss and tell:

5. You could hurt her reputation. This is the most obvious one. It’s unfortunate, but we still live in a world where women are seen as sullied by sex, where their worth is inversely proportional to the number of sexual partners they’ve had. Do her a favor and let her decide whether or not she wants your affair made public.

4. You could hurt your reputation. Wait, isn’t there a double standard, where men are praised for how many women they have sex with? Not so fast. Do you really want to be known as a womanizer? Or worse, a womanizer who can’t keep his mouth shut? On the other hand, if everyone knows you as someone who’s tight-lipped about his sex life, women will feel comfortable getting intimate with you, because they know you’re not going to brag about it. If you think about it, the phrase “A gentlemen doesn’t kiss and tell” isn’t just a bromide, it’s an implicit confidentiality agreement – “I’m a gentleman, so you can trust me not to blab about whatever we do tonight”.

Would James Bond brag to the guys at the office about this? Of course not. He’s a gentleman. And he doesn’t need their approval.

3. You could hurt someone’s feelings. Say you brag to one of your friends about how you had sex with a girl you both know. You do it because you want to impress him. But what if he really liked her? Now you’ve hurt his feelings and caused him to think of you as a threat. You may have just lost a friend. At a minimum, he’s going to think twice before he introduces you to any of his other female friends. But what if word gets around that you had sex with that girl, and another girl who really likes you finds out? Now she sees you as a player, and if she agrees to date you at all, she’s going to be extra guarded, because she doesn’t want to be just another one of your “conquests”.

2. Your friends don’t want to hear about it. Your attached friends don’t want to be reminded of all the variety they’re missing out on, and your single friends don’t want to hear about how you’re getting lucky more often than they are. No one likes a braggart.

But the number one reason not to talk about your sexual exploits is very simple:

1. It’s just not that big of a deal.  So you got laid. Big deal. It’s not like you cured cancer. For a lesser man, getting lucky might be a major accomplishment, but not for you. You’re a sexy geek. You’re good-looking, stylish, confident, charming, the whole package. Of course women want to have sex with you. It’s not something to brag about. It’s just a part of your life. You’re a grown man who’s good with women, not an immature little boy who needs to brag to his friends about how he got lucky last night. Keep your damn mouth shut and just be secure in the knowledge that you’re living the life you want to live.

There is, however, one person you can brag to the day after sex: the person you had sex with. Call her up and say “I had an amazing time last night”. Make her feel as special about it as you do, and you’re much more likely to get a second chance.

Stay sexy, my friends.

P.S. Fellow geek-blogger Wesley Zhao points out that guys often hypocritically use the phrase “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell” to imply that they actually did kiss the girl. Don’t be that guy. Just keep your mouth shut. You don’t have to lie, but you can omit the details that are nobody else’s business, e.g. “We went out a couple of times but we’re just friends now”.

And you can have fun with it too. The other night, my friends were telling me “Joe, that girl likes you.” Now, I knew very well that that girl liked me. I’m not going to tell you how I knew, but trust me, I knew. But with my friends I just played it off and said “Really? I think she’s just being friendly.” And then she and I laughed about it later.

The Real Reason You’re In The Friend Zone

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A lot of guys like to complain about something called The Friend Zone, which is basically when a girl they like in a romantic/sexual way only sees them as a friend. The phrase implies that this is some sort of temporary purgatory that you can end up in by accident, and that it’s difficult to get out of.

The reality is that maybe you never had a chance with that girl at all. Maybe she’s out of your league. Maybe you’re not in her Friend Zone, but in her “Guys I wouldn’t Fuck in a Million Years” Zone. Maybe it hurts to realize this, but surely it’s less painful in the long run than holding out false hope that if you keep being her friend and being nice to her, she’ll change her mind.

The other reality is that while you may not be able to change her mind about you, you don’t have to remain in the painful friend zone. You can cut her out of your life and start spending your time on someone you actually have a chance with. Trust me, it’s the best thing for everyone involved.

Have you ever been on the other side of this? Have you ever had a female or worse, a male friend, with a serious crush on you? I have. After a while, you go from feeling nothing for that person to actively disliking them as they continually creep you out with their stares, their questions, their unasked-for favors, and the way they laugh at all your jokes and constantly try to touch you.

So, do yourself and everyone else a favor and resolve to never be in the Friend Zone. If attraction’s going to happen, it’s going to happen right away. If it hasn’t happened, and you can’t neutralize your feelings for that hot friend of yours, get the hell out of her life. Give her a chance to miss you while you improve yourself. And spend your energy on someone who actually wants to date you. Trust me, she’s out there.

Stay sexy, my friends.