Knowing how to live in the moment is often touted as a key to happiness. Buddhists promote meditation as a psychological tool to develop the skill of living in the moment. Being present without attachment to the past or future does wonders for our mental health.
As a men’s dating coach, I encourage all of my clients to take up meditation. It ultimately helps you express your most authentic self with confidence, and we all know how much the ladies love confidence.
Men seem to have an advantage in this realm. It’s as if emptying our heads and thinking about nothing comes more naturally to us compared to women. It’s like women are always thinking about something.
Ask any woman what she’s thinking about right now. It’s likely that she’ll be able to tell you many things.
Ask any man what he’s thinking about right now. It’s likely that he’ll be like, “What?”
Comedian Gina Brillon brilliantly gives an explanation for this phenomenon:
We have such faith in your ability to tell when we are upset. We truly believe you’re going to get all of our little subtle hints because that’s what we do. Every woman in here can tell you when her partner is upset. We always know. I know. I can tell by the way he breathes. So we always think he’s going to know. Nope.
And here’s the thing. There’s a reason why this happens. And it’s not based on intelligence; it’s about how we think and navigate through the world. The fact is, as a woman, I have to think ten steps ahead for my own safety. I can’t just walk out the door; I have to figure out: “Where am I going? What time is it? How am I getting back? Who am I going with? Is it even safe for me to go there in the first place?”
These are the things we have to think about when we’re navigating the world. Men don’t have to think that far ahead. You don’t have to think in the future. You can think in the now. What’s happening now? What’s in front of me now? — Gina Brillon
The women in the audience are dying with laughter because they understand exactly what she’s talking about. It’s funny because it’s true.
In order for us to live in the moment, we must first feel safe to do so. We men oftentimes take this sense of safety for granted because this feeling of safety is our default mode. It’s hard for us to define it like it’d be hard for a fish to define water.
Those of us who grew up in a rough neighborhood might know the feeling. When you’re out and about, you need to keep your head on a swivel. You need to make sure you’re not wearing a certain color that could get you beat up. Pretty hard to stay in the moment then. That is most women’s reality all the time.
What does any of this have to do with dating?
Lots of things.
The better you understand these kinds of differences between women and men, the more compassionately you can approach problems in your relationships.
The better you understand the world in which women live, the more empathy you can communicate, and the safer women will feel with you.
And the safer women feel with you, the more space for intimacy there will be.
“You go first.”
The early days of the pickup artist community relied on an old neurolinguistic programming principle summarized as “you go first.”
If you want to make a woman feel something, you need to make yourself feel that thing first.
Women need to feel relaxed in order to start feeling turned on. You need to make yourself feel relaxed first.
Everyone wants to be happy and live in the moment. You want others around you to feel good and happy, right? You need to go first by being in the moment yourself.
It’s easier for you to be in the moment than it is for most women so, when you’re chatting up that cutie at the bar, make sure you’re using that advantage…to your advantage.
Stop worrying about the perfect line to say. Just say whatever comes to mind in the moment without worrying about if you’re going to look stupid. Express yourself as you are right now.
Continue the conversation without any attachment to the past or the future and you’ll both be having more fun.
I teach a lot of “techniques.”
“How am I supposed to stay in the moment when you say I’m supposed to implement 3 different active listening skills while calibrating my emotional state transference?” you might ask if you were my client.
It’s not different from practicing any other skill.
Driving is a very complicated skill if you think about it. You need to coordinate a lot of moving parts simultaneously. Literally.
However, you don’t have to think about a thing whenever you’re driving to and from work, right? You’ve done it so many times that it’s actually meditative sometimes. It’s like that.
When you first started learning how to drive, it was very scary. Your life and other people’s lives were at stake. If you made one wrong move, a life could end.
Approaching and talking to women can feel just as scary, but it’s not like your life is at stake here. In fact, she might feel like her life is at stake. No reason to make her feel any more alarmed with your own lack of presence.
Allow yourself to feel the fear and do it anyway, as the old adage goes.
Go first with a feeling of meditative calm.
When do you feel most in the moment? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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