Swizz Beatz just dropped 2 minutes of amazing knowledge on how to have a great relationship -- especially one as attractive and successful as Alicia Keys. Pay 1000% attention to his points as these will not only help you have a strong, long-lasting relationship, but also get you into one. Remember, communication starts at first glance.
How to Not Be Needy
One request I’ve been getting recently is to share more of my personal life in posts like I used to back in the day.
The truth is even though my life has progressed beyond my wildest dreams, I’m always looking to understand and improve myself as a man, friend, and future husband.
Being in the relationship I’m in feels amazing. However, every day is a new day for me. The experiences I go through each day are unlike anything I’ve ever gone through. My responsibilities, expectations, social skills, and so much more are constantly evolving.
So how do I handle it all without screwing things up?
Tough Love #2: Communication
These posts are based on the reality TV series Tough Love. I don’t actually talk about what takes place on the show but I will talk about what women can learn from each episode’s theme. See the other themes that I talk about.
credit: blog.vh1.com
Communication is the cornerstone of any successful relationship. Without it, you really don’t have any type of relationship. And like any form of communication, it’s a two-way street.
No message would be interpreted if there were no one on the other side. Think of it this way.
When you call someone, you expect him or her to answer.
There are different types of communication that I talk about all the time, one being physical communication (also known as body language). This is the communication most people can’t understand or portray properly.
If you can’t physically express how you feel, you’re not saying about 70% of what needs to be said and chances are, the person across from you doesn’t understand you. Really be conscious about the messages you are sending with your body and make sure you are saying what you want.
If you are having problems with body language, get a wingman or wingwoman to go out with you and see what you are doing. It’s a good first step in finding out if you are sending the right signals.
One thing that I have noticed with most of my female clients is that her insecurity constantly shows every time a man gives her a compliment.
Once, maybe twice, a man will find that she’s modest and cute. Three, four, maybe seven times, he’ll be turned off by it and may start to hesitate to give her more compliments and wonder why she doesn’t receive them well.
Instead of brushing the compliment off, acknowledge it by doing this. SMILE and say thank you.
Lastly, I cannot stress this enough. Most guys will agree with me here, as well. It is quintessential that as a woman, you are confident about your natural look. Having tons of makeup on is FAR from sexy.
It tells men that you are insecure about your look or are overcompensating your beauty for something else that you don’t want men to know. These days, anything extremely artificial can lose you points. Natural beauty is in.
The true sexiness is being able to embrace your natural beauty, taking care of yourself and maintaining it.
How to Be Attractive as a Single Man
There are some interesting points that I’d like to make about being single and learning how to become more attractive. I took these notes over 3 years ago and I am finally resurfacing them now. When I was pursuing a career in design, these ideas were really important to selling myself and delivering a message to my target audience. Now, I see some serious value in these same ideas when it comes to dating.
Use your ear. Listen and you will see. It sounds obvious but I still have to tell my clients how important it is to listen. As a guy, it’s imperative that you listen to what women are saying. Most of what she says WILL resurface in one way or another and how you step up will have an effect on your relationships and your ability to be that much more attractive.
We are in a digital age. Online dating is acceptable and more people are getting together and growing very strong relationships. I am getting more friends who have found their match online and are damn happy they did. We check email more than anything else these days. We’d rather text because it allows us to multitask. People even use the clocks on their phones as their modern day pocket watch! I’m not saying that this is right but it’s the way things are happening right now. Be more understanding and use these resources to your advantage.
Be fresh and groundbreaking. One of the keys to being the guy she’s never met is to live your life the way you want to and do things differently. For me, it was about living the following quote (before E & O became my mantra),
“Live for the line, not the dot.”
Live life for its journey, not the end. If you’re so focused on the outcome, not only will you lose focus putting significant pressure on yourself but you’ll also do the one thing life is meant for. Enjoying yourself.
Blur the lines and interrupt regularity. Piggy-backing the previous point, being someone that stands out gives you significant value. You are an individual. There is only ONE of you. Believe it or not, you are a walking rarity. Only one woman can potentially have the opportunity to be married to you. ACT like it. Anything that is unique about you is another opportunity to show people why you’re awesome. Which leads to the next point.
Be engaging or be DVR’d. If you’re not engaging, women will look elsewhere for entertainment. It’s that simple. Learn how to engage women more and women will want to stick around – even more, want to come back.
Expose yourself and create belief. Transparency and authenticity is wildly important in anything that you do. In dating, in order to REALLY get the type of woman that you want, you MUST be open and true to who you are. You almost want to be so passionate about being embracing your DNA, that it creates this element of positive belief. In other words, a woman can relate to you so much that they inherently believe in who you are and what you represent and that has infinite sex appeal.
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Giving and Taking: The Win/Win or No Deal Philosophy of Relationships
This is the last part of a series that I have been doing about the different paradigms of human interaction and relationships.
These paradigms are based on Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Here are the other parts of the series.
Win/Win
Win/Lose
Lose/Win
Lose/Lose
Win
Win/Win or No Deal
We are going to end with the Win/Win or No Deal philosophy.
“I only want to go for Win/Win. I want to win, and I want you to win. I wouldn’t want to get my way and have you not feel good about it, because downstream it would eventually surface and create a withdrawal. On the other hand, I don’t think you would feel good if you got your way and I gave in. So let’s work for a Win/Win. Let’s really hammer it out. And if we can’t find it, then let’s agree that we won’t make a deal at all. It would be better not to deal than to live with a decision that wasn’t right for us both. Then maybe another time we might be able to get together.”
The whole concept of Win/Win or No Deal is usually best applied to business relationships but in the kind of reality you’d like to create, anything less than Win/Win is not going to be beneficial to long-term relationships. What is hard in relationships is being able to accept the No Deal, because we confuse that as Lose/Lose. Being able to have this mentality requires a very high level of maturity, understanding and a great deal of listening and communication skills.
If you get a grasp on this, you will achieve such a level of emotional freedom and avoid so many conflicts down the road. This mentality also can be applied to the beginning stages of any relationship to give you the same emotional freedom and make you no longer needy.
Using the elements of Win/Win, if you can’t come to a good resolution, you should be able to accept No Deal and find an alternative. While great at the beginning of a relationship, it becomes harder and harder to accept a No Deal, especially when more feelings and emotional investment are involved. This is where compromise comes in. While compromise – which can be considered a secondary level of Win/Win – may appear to be Win/Win, it tends to end up being Win/Lose or Lose/Win in reality.
Of course, there will be times in a relationship when No Deal cannot work. For example, if she REALLY needs you for something and it could be very inconvenient for you but you know what? You have to do it, because you care for her and want her to be happy. Instead of thinking about how inconvenient it is and how that negative thinking makes you unhappy, reframe it and think about how happy she’ll be, how much fun you MAY have and how she’ll reward you down the road. Keeping that frame of mind will not make situations seem terrible, because in hindsight, it’s not.
Plus, you care about her, right? Part of that is being able to do selfless acts for the greater good.
If you haven’t realized by now, obviously all of these philosophies are not set in stone and there is some leeway, as many other things in life – but it requires maturity, integrity and self-control to acknowledge the give some things have.
In the end, this whole Giving & Taking series is all about knowing how the pieces fit in a relationship. You have to know what and how much you are willing to give to your significant other and what you are ready to accept from her. It’s about sacrifice. It’s about understanding. It’s about making time. It’s about giving yourself. It’s about learning. It’s about growing together. It’s about disagreements. It’s about resolution. It’s about…everything.
I write those things and I think of my girlfriend. She embodies everything that I want in a woman and the best part is that I feel more like myself at this time more than any time in the past few years. She is growing to become more than just something to me. She’s becoming everything to me. And as I wrote this series, she was always in the back of my mind, wondering about how well we do together. She’s amazing and although it’s still early, I hope you guys (and girls) can read this, possibly learn something (I’ve learned a lot writing this) and you can find something even remotely close to what I have now because let me tell you something.
It’s incredible.
This caps the Giving & Taking series here at Project Infinity. I would love to hear feedback, questions and comments you may have. If you’d like to contact me, feel free to send me an email.
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Elements of Communication: Element #5: Actually Communicating
This is the last installment of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are all of the elements so you can always reference them:
Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening
Element #4 – Telling the Truth
Element #5 – Actually Communicating
Very typical of me to produce such profound observations, huh?
This actually was inspired by a sequence of events that happened the other day. At my second job, there was a miscommunication between two co-workers of mine in determining the schedule – specifically my schedule – for this week. The miscommunication? Well, the base of it all is that no one communicated. I was told one story, that they were going to follow-up with me and confirm.
Nothing happened.
When I showed up for what was supposed to be my first workday of the week, I was greeted with blank stare and question clouds over people’s heads. So, being screwed over, in terms of hours, they try to remedy the situation, only to find out the next day that I have been scheduled to work in more than one location.
A couple of days later, I may have received well over 10 calls from 4 different people about the situation when I had nothing to do with the screw up. Everyone was talking to wrong people and it almost seemed like they were looking for someone to blame – namely me. Of course, I don’t tolerate that nonsense but to wrap up story, the hammer was dropped, those who messed up were given a talking to and I ended up working at the right location.
I’ll also briefly get into how planning the rest of the week went with these guys with the following line.
It was a disaster.
But anyway, the point here is not talk about my other job. I like working there and my co-workers are awesome. I just feel like they lack a very important quality when it comes to teamwork and, in this case, building and maintaining relationships.
The ability to actually communicate.
None of this would have happened if someone picked up the phone and talked to someone. Sounds vague but honestly, if one person called me or someone else who was involved or another person called the other person, everything would have been resolved.
When it comes to relationships, we have it SO easy these days.
We can call someone. Seems like most people don’t do that much anymore.
We can send a quick text. 10 seconds of your time and can save hours of worry. I am victim of forgetting this myself when it comes to letting certain people know of my whereabouts.
We can email. Another quick thing we can do to keep the communication lines open. Takes minimal time and just a few clicks. Probably one of the laziest but acceptable forms of communication.
We can tweet. Yup, I said it. It was reached the point now that public tweeting can be an acceptable method to let people know what’s up with you.
The important thing in the end is that we make an attempt to actually communicate. If we just stand around with our fingers in our ear and not try to say what we really mean, then how do you expect people to understand you? This is very important especially in disagreements or agruments. You have to be able to communicate how you feel in order for the other person to even get a sense of where you are coming from - whether your thinking is irrational or not. If you care enough, I urge you to give them the decency of saying something.
Maintain a flow of communication with people and watch how your relationships will progress. Sometimes, all it takes is a little reaching out.
I had a lot of fun developing this series and if you’d like me to talk about certain things, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or shoot me an email at the top of the page.
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Elements of Communication: Element #4: Telling the Truth
This is continuation of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are the elements so far:
Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening
Element #4 – Telling the Truth
This should really go without saying but let this be a refresher for you. You have no idea how telling the truth will get yourself out of SO much danger in the future.
I can understand if you are nervous about revealing something. Maybe you did something wrong, you’re embarrassed or you don’t want to hurt his or her feelings. In the long run, it is SO much better to just get the truth out of the way and suffer the immediate consequences – whatever they may be. There may not even be negative consequences – you are making that assumption based on judgment and pessimism and we all know how that usually ends.
If you know you did something bad that will hurt the other person, you are better off just telling them now. Who are you protecting, really? I’m not saying to rat people out – let them figure it out themselves. You know, it’s one thing to tell a lie and another to live one. If you are holding something back and you have to constantly protect that lie, you are really putting more things in jeopardy than you think.
Take it from someone who has been on the lying side before. It’s not worth it. When you can establish a relationship based on trust and honesty, at that point, you’ll REALLY be able to say to yourself and other people, “I can just talk to [him or her] about anything.” When you find that person, why would you ever want to lie?
And there is no more, “one lie and you’re out.” Lies will always compound. They will be continuous. And if you’re not careful, they will be harder to backtrack.
Yes, this is a tough thing. Wait a second. No, it’s not. Just tell the truth. Stop making excuses why telling the truth would be a bad idea. Accept your own consequences and put yourself out there.
If you do lie and you’re caught, your integrity will ALWAYS be in question and you may never get the “benefit of the doubt” ever again.
I realize that I am repeating myself in different ways here, but with something like this, it’s worth repeating. Most relationships lie on the foundation of trust and honesty. If you don’t have that, it’ll be tough to maintain a long-lasting relationship with anyone.
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Elements of Communication: Element #3: Listening
This is continuation of my Elements of Communication series, where I talk about the importance of communication in a relationship – or any interaction, for that matter. Here are the elements so far:
Element #1 – Having an Opinion
Element #2 – Being Willing to Give Space & Trust
Element #3 – Listening
Now this may not make sense to some because when we think about the basic form of communication, we think about expressing ourselves either by talking or some type of visual articulation. But none of what you say will mean anything if no one is listening. Some of the best times you communicate are when you shut your mouth, listen and pay attention to what’s being said.
If you don’t realize it by now, this post will be rather short and to the point.
When you can hear passion in someone’s voice or if you can tell someone wants to tell you something important, the best thing you can do is shut up, let them express themselves and listen.
If someone just needs to get some stuff off of their chest and are NOT looking for advice – maybe not even an opinion – shut up and listen. This one is especially important because if you can’t handle being someone’s soundboard, then don’t bother. You’ll be wasting their time and you might even heighten their frustration or complicate things.
Part of listening is actually being able to understand what someone says. If it requires you to repeat what they say or ask questions to better understand, then do so. The person speaking will appreciate that, knowing that you are listening.
It’s tough to keep your mouth shut when you have all of these opinions forming in your head as he or she is speaking but it takes a bigger person to keep them to themselves and only speak their mind when asked to.
If you are able to listen to what is being said – and the conversation calls for it – you can be able to say some very profound things. For example, if someone is talking to you and you can almost tell that they are “thinking out loud” or not sure of some things, if you are truly paying attention, you can help guide them to their understanding and have really good dialogue. You have no idea how much I have learned by being able to listen to people and share thoughts back and forth.
I think in the end to enhance things, you have to be able to just listen and pay attention to what’s being said. Many of what I just said, you already know, but how often do you really practice this? You’ll learn so much more and there are so many benefits that can come from just this simple but elusive ability.
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Elements of Communication: Element #2: Giving Space & Trust
I wrote this article in early January and it a response post. I loved this article and I wanted to add it to the Elements of Communication series. Here is the first one:
And here is the article explaining Element #2: Giving Space & Trust
This is a follow-up post to lisaq’s post on 20-forty answering the question, “is it okay to go out with the girls or should couples always go out together?” You should read her post.
When I read this post, it brought me back to so many moments when that issue came up in my previous relationships. Whenever my girl would want to go out without me, there were so many different things that went on in my mind.
“Why does she want to go out somewhere without me? “
“What’s wrong with me that makes her not want me there?”
“I wonder what’s she is going to be doing since I’m not around. Actually, I wonder what her friends will make/let her do with me not there.”
Then the usual sequence of ideas goes from that to wondering what drunk idiots will do when they see my girl with her friends, without her man. And then what she would do. Needless to say, it would cause a lot of problems in my relationships. What I would confuse for showing how much I care and don’t want anything bad to happen to her was actually showing a lack of trust in her, her friends and most importantly, insecurities about myself.
Never again.
I think it’s important that we talk more about relationships, as it is very important not only to gain one but also to maintain a very healthy one. This is one issue that proves to be a deal-breaker. If you haven’t read my post about fulfilling a woman’s emotional needs, I highly suggest you give it a good read. By far, one of my best.
In any relationship, it is important to establish two important things – trust and space. Yeah, trust is a given but it’s so easy to give off the feeling that you don’t trust her inadvertently. That whole “not trusting the drunk guys out there” thing is a lame excuse (just like Lisa said). If you really trust her, you’ll also trust the fact that she’ll know how to handle those drunk men. And what if she gets drunk herself? If you have to worry about her actions being different when she’s drunk, then that is something that you will have to confront her with, but ONLY if you have seen or heard that she does things while drunk that can be questionable.
On the same note, I feel as though trust can be related to space. Most people have different test levels of trust. Sure, we can trust someone we like with some personal secrets, or with some of our personal belongings, and of course, our love, but then when it comes to being separated – even if for just a few hours – it becomes a different test of trust. If you feel good about your relationship and actually trust her, I think it’s good for both of you to have other things to do in each other’s lives that don’t involve the other person. A typical example is a girls’ night or a guys’ night. But other examples may have to do with hobbies that only you enjoy.
Remember in high school when you had your girl but you played a sport and had to dedicate a crapload of time practicing and playing your sport (for me, it was football)? Your girl wasn’t around that much – unless she went to see you play at a game, but still, she couldn’t talk to you until after the game was over. With practice everyday, you she rarely had a chance to see you. But, whenever she did have that chance to be with you, you could tell she really appreciated the time with you – and vice-versa. I strongly believe that you need to find something like that and continue to hold on to a good chunk of your world as you two slowly merge them together.
When I talk about building your life, making yourself interesting and doing things that YOU love to do, once you get into a relationship, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up any of those things. Logically speaking, if you did give up those things, you wouldn’t be interesting and you certainly wouldn’t be the attractive person that your girl fell head over heels with – which is not what you want to do, right? Plus, you won't feel obligated to have to do everything with your girl if you have other activities going on in your life (I don't see anything wrong with that, just as long as it doesn't interfere with your relationship.).
So if there is anything you take from this it should be a few things.
1. Read lisaq’s blog, 20-forty.
2. Allow your girl to have nights out with her friends and without you. If she doesn’t invite you, chances are it’s a girls’ thing and be ok with it. Give her the benefit that she has nothing up her sleeve. Don’t give yourself reason to doubt if she hasn’t done that for you, already.
3. In the meantime, go and have your poker nights or your beer and wings nights with your boys.
4. Make sure that you are still having a life and doing things that you love. Remember, your whole point of wanting to be with a woman may be to actually share those things about yourself with her. Not doing those things and changing your life would be counter-productive.
I’m sure we could get deeper into this but I’ll save this for another post.
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Elements of Communication: Element #1: Having an Opinion
Over the next several posts to make sure I generate some quality content here at Project Infinity, I am going to start a few new series. What each series will be about will generally be based on where my mind is at the time.
This first series will be about Elements of Communication.
Element #1: Having an Opinion
For the past several days I have seen tweets and been in discussion with family about how men tend not to speak up about certain things such as how they feel about something or where they would like to go on a date. You have NO idea how bad this makes you look, gentlemen. As nice as it may seem to you that you are considering her feelings about certain things, it actually does not benefit you – it hurts you. In fact, let it be considered a test.
Allow me to explain with this one question.
If you can’t be confident enough to be able to make a clear decision or opinion on something, how can she trust that you’ll be able to do the same for much more important things down the road?
Yes, it may be a first date, but most women are going on a first date in hopes for another one and this is one sure fire way to see if she’ll want to.
Think about it as men. How does it make you look that you can’t even decide where to take someone on a simple date? About as silly as someone having to build IKEA furniture…blindfolded. You know what I’m talking about.
It really doesn’t matter what your opinion is, as long as you are able to express it logically and stand by it. I personally love having discussions with people about things and we may not always agree but we can always leave a discussion respecting the other person’s opinion if presented well enough.
Beyond that, having an opinion and being firm about it is pretty attractive, considering many men out there have a hard time standing by their judgment calls for fear of criticism or rejection. The same goes with making a decision. Honestly, if you asked a woman out on a date, presented to her when and where the date will take place, what you’ll be doing and how she should dress, she’ll be relatively impressed, just by the sheer rarity of which that can occur. Plus, you seem so sure that she’ll have a good time, how can any woman truly resist wanting to go on that date?
A real man knows what he wants, is willing to express and not apologize for having feelings or an opinion. So don’t be afraid to speak up, gents. Women are looking for that.
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