Modern Wisdom - #196 - Amanda Kuda - Navigating The Dating Market In 2020

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Amanda Kuda is a life & mindset coach. Finding a partner that you're happy with is challenging. Add on layers of Tinder, Instagram, drunken dates & rebound sex and it's amazing that anyone manages to get into a relationship. Expect to learn Amanda's best exercises to truly identify your "type", how to find a partner who is genuinely good for you, the cheat codes for a great first date, why you keep falling for the same type of bad partners, tips for Tinder-effectiveness and much more... Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 85% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Check out Amanda's Mindful Dating Course - https://authenticallyamanda.com/mindfuldating Follow Amanda on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/authenticallyamanda/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is Amanda Kudah and we are talking about the dating market in 2020. Finding a partner that you're happy with is challenging. Add on layers of Tinder, Instagram, Drunken Dates and Rebound Sex and it's pretty amazing that anyone manages to get into a relationship. So today, I expect to learn Amanda's best exercises to truly identify your type, how to find a partner who is genuinely good for you, the cheat codes for a great first day, while you keep falling for the same type of bad partners, tips for Tinder effectiveness and much more. Also, if you are new here or even if you're a long time listener, don't forget to check

if you have hit the subscribe button that is the only way that you'll be notified when new episodes drop every Monday, Thursday and Saturday. At the moment, the schedule doesn't stop. It is unrelenting right now. Hit the subscribe button. Go and do it. It would make me very, very happy indeed.

Obviously, if you've got friends that are awful, daters and completely hopeless singletons, probably a good idea to send this to them as well. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Amanda Kudah. What we're saying about the combination of blue blocking glasses and moustache at the moment. Um, they're great, it's good. I like the look. Definitely, it's good. That's how you, that's how I want to start a podcast. I want to start a podcast with barefaced lies that are also compliments at the same time. It's a compliment, but I'm like, how would I respond if I saw you in the real world and didn't know you? You're a some guy out on the street, and I'm passing you, and you have the whole this look going on.

I think I look great. Someone said that it was a little bit of a Freddie Mercury sort of thing going on with the mistrash in the glasses. I thought a bit cooler than that. I thought like a wasis maybe, but it doesn't matter. There are objects. So Matt Marouca, the guy from Rare Optics, will be on soon CEO and creator of the light diet. So in podcast land. Yeah, in podcast land that may have come out before this or after this. So you know, it's like pick a mix. Listen

Listen, it's done. What are we going to get? So what are we going to talk about today? We are going to talk about, you know, you've had a couple of episodes about dating in the modern world, but they were they didn't have a lot of tips like how do you actually become a modern Dator? How do you actually do the thing? And I just want to jam on what are some practical slash maybe a little out there things that you could be doing that are going to give you like leg up in the market. A leg up being both metaphorical and physical. Yes, exactly. No, I love it.

I put a post up a little while ago, I think before we knew each other at the start this year that said true love in 2020 is finding someone that you could date sober. Yes. Yeah. Do you think that's true? Oh my goodness. 100%. I mean, you know that I don't drink and that for me is a lifestyle. I don't see any situation where I'll go back to it. I know that you you say that you might do it every now and then, right? Talk about them forth. But I don't see anywhere where it adds to my life, and especially in dating, I have seen as a data where it completely detracts from the situation. And even though it's a scary thing to go out into the dating world saying, I'm doing this stone cold silver, it's actually 100% of value add.

What bad situations have you been in when someone's, when are the year or the other person's got drunk or been drinking, or have you heard from your friends? Oh, man. I mean, every dating situation for my 20s on was lubricated with alcohol. So up until the time I was 32, I guess, every single flirty and dating first kiss, first time, all of that was all drinking or drunk, right? And I just look back and I think that's completely unproductive. How did I even know if I was attracted to the person let alone

if we had chemistry or anything? And dating as a sober person is, well, I don't usually say sober. I say alcohol for you just because it's like a little bit of a different of a brand, but dating in that market has been so interesting. But also still so bad experiences there. I mean, you have to negotiate, are you going to look for a partner that also doesn't drink? Are you going to tell the person you don't drink, which yes you should? I can tell you a story about how that's turned out very badly. And how do you how do you go into this knowing that you're going to be fully vulnerable and you're just you, that's it. You don't have any sort of, any sort of social lubricant to break, you know, break the, break the ice.

Yes. I mean, straight off, everyone that's listening, think about the last time that you went on a date, sober, or if you've ever been on a date sober and it doesn't count like if you needed to invite a friend to like a child's birthday party or something like that doesn't count because you can't get when it's like a three a toddler's Barbecue or something you're not allowed to drink or it's a wacky warehouse or something that doesn't count And you you totally right like people use use alcohol as a buttress for their confidence. It's this scaffolding that they wrap around their lives. And I'm totally sweet. Like if you want to go out, you want to use alcohol and stuff to bolster your confidence, that's fine. My argument has always been, and I think will remain to be no matter what

I'm doing with regards to drinking, that unless you take a period, focus period away from alcohol to actually work out what are my capacities without this augmentation that is drinking, you never actually know where your skills lie. It's like being a power lifter or a body builder or something and always being on a performance enhancing drug throughout your whole career, right? You've got this performance enhancing drug.

It's making you be better at the things you're trying to do and giving you skills which technically you don't have. And you're like, right, okay, so do you have those skills? Well, I do, but they're not intrinsic. They're kind of this weird combination of what I'm capable of doing with the assistance of this thing. And then you think, okay, so, you know, with taking alcohol away, giving yourself the opportunity to actually have to develop genuine confidence, to get over what's referred to in Pick a Partistry as approach anxiety, you know, to actually develop that is a real eye-opener. Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I think I've even dug a little deeper into that more recently. And I work with women who also are either wanting to quit drinking or they have already quit drinking. And so we have this conversation a lot. And one of the big things is, well, how do I go into a date and be confident? What isn't not going to limit the dating pool

and all of those things? And yes, but it's going to limit your dating pool to a smaller, more attractive group of people in the end. And one of the things that I really dug into is, OK, what is the subliminal message you're sending to your subconscious when you go out on a date and you have to drink? And OK, so if you're going to have if you're going on a date, what are some

reasons you might want to drink? Chris, what do you think is adding to the experience? Being honest, it's been so long since I drank regularly and even longer since I dated like I can't remember. If you held a gun to my head right now and said one was the last time you went on a date, I couldn't tell you. Yeah. But thinking right, right,

back, it would have been a combination of, I don't know if this girl or date is going to be sufficiently interesting for me to keep energy high. I don't know if I have sufficient confidence, I don't know if I can get over my approach anxiety. Sometimes I might have used a date as pre-drinks to a night out when I might have been going out with my buddies as like a pull the rip cords like, you're warm up. This date's going badly. Sorry, I see you later on, that was great. And then I'll sneak off to a club or whatever. So yeah, most of those, but I think a good amount of it would be improved confidence, getting over approach anxiety, stuff like that. For sure.

And the most common answers are exactly that. You want to be able to speak more freely. You want to have more confidence. You want to feel looser. You want to feel sexier. Whatever those things are. For men and women, they're probably a little bit different. But if you look at the reverse, the antithesis of that, that is saying, I don't feel myself

work is good enough that I could possibly reach that feeling of feeling confident, sexy, engaging, interesting on my own. I do not feel confident enough in that. So therefore, I need something to help me get there. And if I look at it in that perspective, I don't want to date someone who has that like hit in mind said that they do not feel confident enough that they can have a conversation with me without and be interesting and be interested without a substance that just doesn't vote well for our relationship in my mind.

I agree completely this this is a red pill that I'm actually having to do a little bit of work to get myself back to the realization. It's like learning that you sleep quality is better when you phone's outside of your room and then remembering what it used to be like when you had your phone still in your bedroom and you're like, oh my god, I actually used to do that. And it's like I used to think that drinking was just half of the course with dating, whereas now that red pill is so far down me that I can't get it back out.

Yeah, no, well, and to go this up further, you know, one of the things that one of the, like really harsh red pills we have to all swallow is that most of our parents didn't do, didn't have the ability to give us the tools to learn how to emotionally regulate properly. This might not seem totally related, but just go with me here.

Your parents don't have this skill to say, okay, Chris, oh, you're feeling sad. How does that feel? Not to, you know, dis your mom and dad, but I'm imagining 90% of our parents didn't do this. They didn't say, Chris, you're feeling sad. I'm so sorry. How does that feel? Where do you feel it in your body?

Like, tell me about sadness, Chris. And, or tell me about anger. Tell me about anxiety. Where do you feel that in your body? How does it feel to process it? Most parents are like, oh, let me take that from you. Let me take that pain or anger and anxiety and take it on as a parent.

Or let me try and distract you and brush it away. Or let me tell you that big boys or big girls don't cry and you should just stop doing that. So we grow up with this and then when you reach out of lessons, we have to go out and learn to regulate on our own. And if we haven't been given the skills to do so, guess what? No worries. Society has a secret substance, like a little liquid gold for that.

And so you can just drink your anxiety, your fear, your sadness, whatever. You can just take this magical liquor and it's gone. So then you're coming into the world, the adult world with really, really highly stunted emotional growth. You don't have any clue how to properly regulate yourself and your emotions. And I say again, do I really want to be

in a relationship, either me coming to the table as that person or me dating the person on the other side of the table that doesn't know how to regulate themselves except for with alcohol. Not really. I need to kind of wave a little bit of a flag here that it might sound to some of the people who haven't swallowed this red pill yet or haven't gone alcohol free for a little while.

Like we're saying that all of you are somehow flawed and using alcohol as this coping mechanism. What we're saying is that alcohol isn't being used in a conscious way. It's not being used deliberately, but it's not something, and there will be some people out there that just like, you know what it is?

I just love a glass of wine and it's like, yeah, we're not talking to you. Well, like obviously, obviously, we're not talking to you. But the vast majority of people, it's just not conscious use, right? It's not deliberate. Alcohol use on the whole,

forget the dating side of stuff. Alcohol use on the whole is just habituated. It's done because it's what you've always done. And it was done then because it's what everybody else did. So you've got this weird, like, mimetic thing going on where it's passed down. My daddy did it and his daddy before him and you know like that's how my mommy and daddy met so I know you're in Texas and I love to say that. Yes, no, for sure. I, I, it's not anyone who drinks isn't fundamentally flabby. Anyone who drinks

at a like a decent level guaranteed you have to believe that that substance is either helping you achieve a desired outcome or avoid an undesirable outcome. And from that perspective, it's not a neutral in your life, right? You're always trying to drink it or use it to get somewhere that's more desirable than where you are right now. And that's kind of a dangerous place to be.

And definitely when it comes to dating. Yeah, I agree. So tell us some of the tips. What are some of the things that we can do? Because we're meaning you both in our 30s and both single. I'm not sure whether you're quite as hopeless as I am, but both very, both very single. Actually, hype in lockdown, you're like as single as is possible to be. Oh yeah, yeah, there's nothing out there. There's nobody. No one in my apartment complex, nothing under here. I'm just a lady with two dogs talking to a camera. Will Smith, I am legend in the shit out of it right now. Yeah. That's what's going on. Okay, so give us some tips. Okay, so the first tip that I want to give everyone, especially if you find that you continue

to date kind of the same type of person throughout your history, I want everyone to do a really solid inventory of everyone they've ever dated. And that sounds a little time consuming, but it's so important and it's a step that many people don't do. So let me detail what that is and maybe you've done it or maybe some people listening have done it, but I guarantee that the that many people don't do. So let me detail what that is, and maybe you've done it, or maybe some people listening have done it, but I guarantee that the bulk of people haven't. So when you do an inventory, I want you to go through,

and just make like a simple sheet of paper, fold it in half and put on one side, like yes and one side no. And I really literally need you to go through every single person you've had a significant relationship with. And I want you to write down the qualities they have that are a yes for you, and the qualities they have that aren't no for you. And what you can do from this landscape is

you can get a picture of number one, what are their red flags, the nose that keep coming up? And I would guarantee if you're thinking about it right now, I guarantee you could spot between like two or three people what some of the same kind of nose are or what some of the same, oh, like those aren't so great. Qualities are. And when you see that pattern, then you have to do the really hard work of looking at yourself and saying, okay, what was the crazy in me that attracted that crazy five times? Like, what is the world trying to tell me?

What do I need to look at that I keep getting that same scenario because it's not the guy or the girl It's me. I'm the comment denominator, right? so I'm trying to think about the yeses and the good things what's interesting for me is I'm trying to do it in my head is many of the things which I have that common Attractors amongst the girls that I've dated also come with some malignant side effects which are probably linked to the nose as well. Yeah. So for instance, I tend to go for girls who are more type a quite driven, great.

Like, that's good. It means that we're growth-minded. It means that they're always going to be prepared to do things together. On the no side of that, it makes them incredibly disagreeable. And because I'm quite high in disagreeableness, that means that we end up clashing. So you need, I think a lot of these are going to kind of come as pairs, right, with some of them. It's going to be, okay, kind of try and find someone who has part of the yes, but maybe doesn't have all of the no.

Sure, sure. I know that's a really important distinguishing factor, but you also, you can get someone who is high in argument like, argumentability and also just knows how to optimize an argument to where it's you and them against the fight against this other thing versus you against them. And that's a big difference between someone who maybe is just at the next level

of the type that type of person you've been dating, right? And you can only see that and see the pattern once you really get clear on, okay, here are all the lovely things about Janet, here are all the things about Janet that annoyed the shit out of me

and that I don't really wanna attract in another partner and how can I work through those things that are annoying a shit about all of my partners and ask myself, why am I so argumentative? Is there something that is in me that has to be right or I'm trying to prove myself or I have this little shadow in my past that someone embarrass me that has to be right or I'm to prove myself or you know I have like this little shadow in my past that someone it embarrass me for being wrong and that

I can work through that and be a better partner myself and then I can just stop attracting you know this type of specific person and it's been really enlightening for me like my specific pattern on the note well it's you need to do this exercise in a couple of ways. It's yeses and noes, and then it's also additional qualities. So some people, when they make a list of what their partner looks like, it's like, tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, whatever. They're going for physical things. And of course, I'm going to encourage you to go more for, I'm attracted to this person,

right? Not like, this person has to look like this for me to be attracted to them. Can't you just write down, I'm attracted to this person, right? Not like this person has to look like this for me to be attracted to them. Can't you just write down I'm attracted to this person and are they're physically attractive to me and that be enough and that can evolve in whatever way it is and how that person comes to you. But what this does is it gives you this really clear list of who you're looking for and allow us to go back

and look at are there any stuck points here? Because let's say you're talking about, I don't know who, sorry for all the Janet's out there, because I'm just gonna like go down the rabbit hole and jog on you. We've already said this before that if your name is Janet, Karen or Sharon, right now the internet is a terrible place to be.

Thank you. It's awesome. I watched a video the other day that was called the Karen Pocolips, which was about all of these mid-50s women, mostly American, who have been re-released into the wild, and they're just going crazy screaming at people. It's always in a supermarket car park against the security. And then Ben Shapiro, last week, tweeted, facts don't Karen about your feelings. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha these people. So maybe you look at Janet and you still feel a little lustrous, a little

bit of like, Oh, what if that could work out again? Or you look at Janet, you're like, Janet's a cold hard bitch. Like I can't, I don't ever want to think about her again. And those are both kind of like personal red flags to me because it says that I'm still either romanticizing something about this person or I haven't let something go because anyone who I feel like I have to talk crap about basically in my life, there's another thing there that I need to look at. If I can't look at a person with pure appreciation and say, you know, Steve was in my life to teach me this lesson and yeah, he did also some crummy things, but I can look past those. Then I still have something to

look at there. There's still something that's agitating me about that relationship. And just getting all of these things down on the list, reminiscing and deciding, okay, do I have, you know, am I romanticizing this person? Am I making them too perfect? Am I, am I making them, you know, kind of more of a double character in my life? And how can I come to a neutral? And how can I take all of the things I liked about that person and say,

hey, perhaps all of these people were brought to me to show me that these characteristics exist in individual people and that could I just imagine for just one moment that they could all be found in one single individual and that that's a possibility for me. And when I go out on a date that I say, you know what, this is what I said that I want. I'm not going to stay on this track. I'm not going to keep going out with this person unless they meet this list that I have. And really just holding confidence that that could actually exist because so often we're told no, it doesn't. Yeah, I've got something that I really have been thinking about a lot recently that I want to get on to to do with that. Before that, one of the things I've realized that I've

done in the past is had a relationship or whatever with a girl for a while. And then it ended either my side, her side, mutual, whatever it might be. But if I've had unresolved attraction towards her, I've then tried the next few girls that I've ended up dating or the ones that I've been putting groundwork in with.

I'm like, they look, they kind of seem an awful lot, a little bit like the one from before, a little bit, like, you look at them, you're like, am I, am I, am I just trying to recreate this? Am I trying to find the thing, especially if it's unrequited, right? Especially if it's the sort of thing where it was finished by the other person? You're like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find her, but better. It's like, yeah. So that's one thing. Second thing that I'm thinking about is

when you talk about putting stuff down on paper, first off, it's the most effective way to actually become conscious of your thought processes, right? So the reason why morning pages is such a big thing from Julia Cameron, it's the reason why morning gratitude and evening cooldown routine are important as well. Hashtag six minute diary, everyone knows what I'm on about. But it brings up some pretty ugly stuff

because if you've never done it before, you realize just how big the size of the septic tank is that all of your feelings have been swimming around in, fester in, there's this weird like oily film on the top of it and you gotta even get through the oily film before you can even get to like, and there's lumps in it, yeah, there's lumps at the bottom and then at the bottom, there's sludge,

and you've gotta get a shovel out. And it's very uncomfortable, is my point. Like self-interrespective work is one of the most uncomfortable things in the world, and the saddest part about it is that it never finishes. Like you never stop doing self-inquiry. It's not like, oh yay, like actualized off, off I go to go and sit in the sunshine, like that's not the way that's not the way it works

Isn't that the exciting part about it though that you get to keep you don't just like get to this level and you're like, okay I think that's exciting. It's it's a bit exciting But to me it's also a little bit like a an infinity game of past the parcel So you pass the parcel and you unwrap it. And you're like, oh yay, like did a little bit more self-increase there, like one level through. But you never actually get to the parcel. There's no parcel, there's just wrapping.

And you're like, oh, for fuck's sake. You're like, it's 77 years old, having meditated for 50 years. And you don't know the self-increase in the world. And you're just looking at it. And you're like, I've just got more wrapping paper here. Someone said there's a parcel inside. That's that final thing, my final little trainer thought that I can close, is from the Daniel Sloss podcast I did, Daniel's a Scotch comedian, very famous, he's been on Netflix and HBO and

stuff like that. He says something similar to what you've just said, which is I have standards that I want my partner to meet. Now the problem, and this is something I'm gonna put to you, the challenge that you have is most people's dating that I see, or a lot of people's dating that I see is done unconsciously. More people than don't, as far as I'm concerned, choose to be in a relationship out of a fear of being alone rather than a desire to be with the person that they're with.

They choose something which is the closest proxy to a person that will make them happy rather than the person that they actually want. They're like, ah, yeah, yeah, you look, you look about right? Like if we, Mr. Good enough. If we like just tap that down a little bit

on the top and get enough, if I ignore this part of your personality, and if I forget the fact that I've got this level of either attraction or run attraction to you, and this not any other, um, but the implication of that is that if you decide to set these standards out, if you take the red pill, and if you decide to become fully conscious of all of these different things, the likelihood of you finding somebody who meets all of these fully aware criteria that you have starts to go down quite sharply. For sure, yeah. Okay, so many things to cover here.

Let me wrap back to the start of your comments. Oh yeah, slam that down. The first part is, you know, re-attracting the same type of person because you're trying to find a quality that you lost that you felt was like, just, I'm required in another person. And I have a couple of things there. So one of my mentors, Gabby Bernstein, she says, show up for what's up or it'll keep coming up. And it's just a reminder that you've got to clean up your side of the street to stop, you know, stop attracting those things that are undesirable or that are repetitive patterns. But also, sometimes you just have to, I'm going to get a little like woo-woo here. I don't, I'm a

meditator, I know you are as well, but like a really specific thing you can do in that in that situation is do some sort of a chord cutting meditation where you just sit and you envision the two of you going your separate ways peacefully. You could like, you know, partner that with some sort of affirmation, like, I'm willing to release this person and the whole that they have over me in my heart and just help me to release this like burden or this like tie I have to this person. Because it's not productive for you or for them to have this like emotional bond left,

and you don't have to call them and say, hey, I'm over you, you can do that work within yourself to release it, right? You don't have to have any contact with that person, and it feels so frame when you're no longer chasing that quality or that person in someone else. Like it's just this weight off of your shoulders. So there's that, I would just definitely recommend for anyone who's going through that similar situation where you're

kind of stuck or hung up on someone or some characteristic that someone had that you can't seem to replicate anywhere to do some sort of like core cutting meditation. You can just Google it and find one that you'll be guided through and it'll be great. Okay, the next thing, you also mentioned having, like just two highest standards, I guess, and I get it. Like, I do. You start to make this list of, of who is your fantasy, like Prince or Princess Charming, you know, whatever that looks like in your world.

And it starts to become a little unrealistic and yes, you do, you may have to make some compromises of, you know, okay, so the person doesn't have to look exactly like this or maybe you start to get more broad because here's the thing. Are little like creative minds are not as creative as the possibility in the world? So what I think right now that I want, I could be completely, that could just be part of some like weird elaborate hallmark fantasy that I that I've created right in there could be. Yeah, there could be something way better out there, but I've put myself in this little box of this is exactly the person who I want to have. So you also have to like give the universe and like the powers that be some creative license here as well.

Yeah, the number of times that friends that I know have quite prescriptive ideas about the sort of person that they want, I always want a girl who goes to the, who's like, in fitness, or I want a guy who's real tall and dark and handsome or whatever it is. And it's the female artist or the dude that's actually like a low-key guitar player that's only five foot 10, like, that comes in. And they're the ones that absolutely annihilate them

because they completely break down all of the preconceptions that they had. I think almost one of the reasons that we like to keep going for people that are similar and almost, it's a failing of what's your type, question mentality, is that you know what you're in for? You would much sooner be unhappy in a familiar way than risk being incredibly happy with something that's new because the coping mechanisms that you need to deal with the breakup of the new thing

require an awful lot more learning. You're like, I don't know how I deal with the breakup with the artist girl, like I was great at dealing with the breakup with the fitness girl, like because I did it five times. Like she was easy, but this one's got charcoal on her hands and she wears a beret and we used to go in our galleries together and you're like oh okay so I think again a lot of that like this is again

what we're saying like self-inquiry it's just this never fucking ending vortex like playing past the parcel when you think yeah yeah yeah I it. There's my biases gone. And you're like, no, wait, you're so wrong. No, for sure. It's always, it's always another, you're, I've always learned something every person I date. I'm like, wow, I didn't know that I wanted that or I didn't, I didn't know that that bothered me

and it's just this ever evolution. But that's another thing. Like, always, anytime you date someone, add back to that list of qualifications because you always get something new that you're like, whoa, I really dig that about you know This person and how they did that are how they got on in the world and like keep adding on to that list my friends because it just Unless you have this like long list of things that you know you like and you know that you're not bad into You're gonna go into the next situation and then you'll start to like, oh well, but are you'll forget, you know,

there was this one little thing that is kind of a deal breaker and it's just so good to have that, to have that sanding. But in context of dating today, you know, I think that looking at that from the dating at perspective is really interesting because then you're just given like this visual portfolio of someone and you start to really rely on what is my type? Who is that person?

And I think that it's really convoluted the dating game in a really shit way. But- Have you been an online data? I mean, it's so weird when people ask that question, but I felt compelled to, I don't know why you've even asked it. Who that single hasn't used Tinder? Like for I don't know why you've even asked it. Like who did single, hasn't used Tinder?

Like for sure. You know, you've seen. Also, is Tinder all you use there in the UK? Do you guys not have anything like higher caliber, like Bumble or something? Are people just not use that? So I was seen a girl about two and a half years ago, and someone made a fake profile of me on Bumble.

Okay. She was adamant, absolutely adamant, that it was actually me. And my response... I played a stem. What, yeah, and I was like, look, I'm telling you, I'm telling you that it's not. Center it, like swipe down from the top of my applications.

I was like, look, if I type in BUM, nothing comes up, which was fortunate, because it could have been like, Amanda, great bum 2019 or something like that. I was like, look, because it could have been like Amanda Greatbomb 2019 or something like that. I was like, look, I don't have the app and she was still adamant. And I was like, right, okay, you've decided

to push the button far too far. So I was just like, look, you're gonna make yourself look really stupid here and then just became scathing. That one situation, it was maybe a, like a five minute spearhead and then the subsequent like two or three days of it burbling down in her realizing It was maybe a five minute spearhead, and then the subsequent two or three days of it burbling down in her realizing that she was wrong.

That was a traction over for me. I was like, there you go, five minutes. You killed it. I'm off, see you later on. Yeah, thanks for saving me some time, sister. No, man. So like, hinge and bubble and stuff like that. They are on over here.

What's the premier, what's the gold standard dating app over in America? You know, I would say it's probably Bumble right now. Just they're they're the hot one, but you know, the the brand of Tinder is definitely more hook-up culture. So that's not what I even play with. But I think that no matter where you're using dating apps, I used to, I went into it with a really bad attitude for the longest time. And you know what, when you go into something with a bad attitude, damn straight, you're going to get bad results. So I would love to share some tricks that I use to kind of like game the system and use all of these things more intentionally, because I guarantee if you are disciplined enough to put some of these things into practice,

that you will get much better results off of whatever app you're using. I want tender discipline or bumble discipline. That's what we're here for. Okay. Got it. All right. So in terms of, I want to talk about a few things. I want to talk about your profile.

I want to talk about some rules for engaging with people. And I want to talk about actually your rules, like some rules for using the app itself. So the first thing is, you know, if you look at a bumble, a tender, whatever, it's like a social media game, right? It's an endorphin hit, the entire time. And if you let yourself treat it as that, it's, that's all you're going to get in results. It's always going to be just another Instagram, another Facebook, another whatever, you know, game, your plane. And how many times have you sat down before you get to get on Bumble or you get to get on Tinder?

How many times have you sat down? You just closed your eyes and meditated and said, you know, let me think about the partner who I want to like call in on this app or who I want to meet. Let me think about who that person is. Have you ever done that? I've, no, I haven't. No, usually it's for me, it's when I'm bored, you know?

Yes, it's a torrent time. Yeah, or when I'm somewhere new, because obviously I'm far too much of a cheap skate to pay for Tinder Pro. For sure. Like, I'll go somewhere on holiday and use up 100 swipes a day of like trying to, I'm like, oh, this is interesting, maybe she'll go, and to be fair, in my defense, it's worked out really phenomenally for meeting cool people. So I made a fantastic friend that I'm still mates with two and a half years later

from Iceland when I was in Iceland. I managed to get backstage in front of a quarter of a million people on the 4th of July in Nashville with Brett Eldridge this year because of Tinder. So it's not like, I feel like, and now that you've given the hierarchy to it, I feel like I'm all seeded down here in the mud. It's a little bit. Well, I said, look, I didn't know. Okay, anyway.

So. Well, here's the thing though, like if you're going on Tinder, or if you're going on any of these to like make friends real quick or find a hook up or whatever, you know, that's a different intentionality. But if you actually want to meet someone who's dateable who you want to spend some time with,

like wouldn't it then, you know, make more sense to sit down and say, okay, this is my five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day, I'm going to devote to looking for someone who I want to date, rather than I'm watching, you know, whatever on Netflix and let me pop this up so I can like roll through or. We've been doing screening through, yeah, well,

I mean, in my defense, on those examples, in my defense, I was just looking for backstage tickets to Brat Eldridge. So that worked out fine. That was one for one's successes. But yeah, and again, like, I think part of the transactional nature and the easy come easy go way that these apps are done and also with kind of like young

hookup culture and stuff like that as well. The intention isn't there for most people to use it properly, but if they actually ask themselves, like why am I on Tinder? Like if you want to hook up, it's in terms of a time investment perspective, it's significantly quicker for you to just go on a night out in a club after midnight. Like you'll pull far more easily that way. If that's what you're after. So if you're going to put your time in on these sorts of apps, you're right. It makes sense

to be like, right, okay, so why am I here? Why am I, why am I bothering to even spend my time on this? I have everything else in the universe that isn't a dating app to be doing with my time right now. spend my time on this. I have everything else in the universe that isn't a dating app to be doing with my time right now. Why am I here? Yes, absolutely. So if you, if you instead set a time, especially if you're into productivity, right?

You know, if you set a time, like this is my, this is my time to look for a partner. Like, I'm gonna put it on my Google calendar. I'm gonna give you a set of that while you're full focus plan or my friend set aside your time. And instead of like doing it in the grocery line, that's just passive, you know, time pass, it just doesn't help. So I'm not saying like, this is the end all be all, but I'm just saying, when I do this,

I get much better results because I have said, this is what I'm showing up for. And this is what I expect to get. And it's just kind of like manifestation magic. Like you get what you are game for. So be a little more intentional about the time you use, and also when you're getting on to respond to things, and when you're not, when you're checking your messages, it's just like with anything, Instagram or Facebook

can become complete waste of time, and just like mindless activities that you do, and so can a dating app. So get on at five o'clock and this is when you're responding to messages for a while until you switch to texting with someone and then that's a different relationship. So that's my like number one rule is just be intentional about when you're using the app and what you're doing because mindless activity gets you mindless results. And you know if you're there for that, that's cool, but if you actually want a high caliber partner, you're not gonna get it with just like,

randomly swiping. Cool, what's next? Okay, so, oh man, I just feel so, I need to teach people how to set up a proper profile. I don't, I, maybe I'm just looking at the men's side, of course, I only get to see men's profiles, they suck, they're really bad guys. What are the key mistakes that guys make on to?

All right, so guys and girls make these as well, but I've looked at plenty of my girlfriend's profiles who are doing this as well. So girls like listening up, this is something you can improve on as well. But first of all, you get six pictures, right? You have six opportunities to show someone else what you look like. And I have some pretty strong rules

for myself of what I will put there, and I think the other person should have that too. So, let me tell you, I'm gonna sound a little crazy but it works, let me tell ya. First of all, no more than one picture where you can't see your full face. So that means sunglasses hat or you're far away. So you can have, you have a picture of you with your sunglasses, but that's it. You cannot have any other picture sunglasses hat or you're far away.

So you can have, you have a picture of you with your sunglasses, but that's it. You cannot have any other picture where you're hidden because I know, I need to know if I want to meet you in public, then I can pick you out in a crowded room. I don't want to be like, oh, is that Chris? I can't tell because he has sunglasses on. Is that the equivalent for like dog filled, it's not child dog filled. No filter. No filter.

No filter. Okay. Don't. Yes, you cannot use any filters like Jesus, please. The girls you are the worst at this. Like no flower crown. Just be like a picture of yourself. For God's sake. It's not doing the flower crown or doing like the dog photo is making a profile for your girlfriends to see. It's like, no,'ve selected, like I'm interested in women, like, what do you, yeah, I got it. I feel like, and I feel like for guys, like stop reporting that behavior, make that a hard left, like don't even acknowledge it.

Just feel frustrating, do cares, like get your snapshot filters out of here. So basically, five of the six pictures need to be where I can see you full body. That means I don't want to five pictures of you and all your bros because then I'm trying to figure out who you are. How do I know which one of you are in there? I'm doing it and I'm like, which one is he?

They only need to be within the last year. You need to have at least one that's full body and not like, you don't have to be showing off your body, but to at least I can see the rest of you. And then also only one action shot. So great, you're an adventurer, you go on tons of vacations, but you're like a little blip out here in the snow in a snow suit, that cool. Like I'm so glad you're an expert skier,

but I can't see who you are as a person. You could tell me I like to ski and I could make that picture of any person in a snow suit a million feet away in the snow, right? I don't need your visualization help. I love it. I love it. Okay, so that's how we set up our profiles. We've got our little rules for photos. You listened to the episode I did with Rob Henderson, didn't you? About the difference in conversions. So anyone who's listening who didn't listen to this go back and check out episode with Rob Henderson on the evolution in the date in modern date market was like so good.

And in that he said that essentially girls swipe right about one in eight to one in ten times. And sometimes can go through entire periods like entire batches of work on Tinder or whatever, without even swiping right ones. Whereas guys tend to swipe in the opposite direction, they tend to not swipe like one in eight to one in 10 times. The difference in conversion for guys is if you have a bachelor's degree in your bio, you'll tend to convert around about 20% better. And if you have a master's degree in your bio, you'll tend to convert around about 20% better.

And if you have a master's degree in your bio, you'll then convert it another 20% better as well. Which, and that's like, this isn't me, right? Saying that girls only go for guys who are educated or wealthy. This, it facts, don't Karen, about your feelings. Okay. This it facts don't Karen about your feelings, okay? Do not Karen about your feelings also I would Posit that women put more effort into their profiles, right? They are putting up that much more and so I

Shit I'd much rather go through a woman's like profile then men's because I get something like visible to see where I can Yeah, yeah, and so put in the work I guarantee that statistic would change if the men were putting in More work into getting pictures and I get it like it's uncomfortable to take Take photos you maybe you don't have a ton of yourself But you have a friggin high caliber camera in your phone. Everyone has it. Like, I know I'd use an a flip phone anymore that has a shit camera. Like, everyone has an HD camera in their hand, set up a self timer, figure it out, you can take a selfie, you can take a picture of yourself. Like, those pictures can be created if you do not have

this. I think so, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a, a couple of caveats in as well from some stuff that I've picked up over the years. If you are a guy, it's a fairly good idea to have at least one photo where you're in a group that has other girls in and make the girls at least moderately attractive. The reason being that you want to look like a well-rounded guy, one, you're signaling, I am someone that other girls want to spend time with, not some total weird freak. I think you probably need to have a top line barrier of maybe 50% selfies. Like, ideally, you don't want to look

like a mouth-breathing basement dweller who has to tickle their own photos. For sure. So you know, like get, just if you've got the full frame thing, to take all their own photos. For sure. So you know, like get, just if you've got the full frame thing, even if you, like you say, if you've kind of mess around with the, with the self-timer and like just properly phone up with some books, at least you can, you can fake having friends. Yeah.

So that's all that's important. That's all that matters. I'm friends with these books. Okay, so we got, we got the intentionality and the pre-bumble meditation. We've got the guidance on setting up your profile. What's next? You know, the other thing that's frustrating is just the communication factor and how unintentional some people are.

And I'm sure you've had plenty of outreach on either Timner or Instagram or someone just says, hi, right? of outreach on either Tinder or Instagram or someone just says hi. Or they, or even worse, a passive like where they just thumbs up a photo and expect that to be enough to be a conversation starter. And I know girls are just as bad as that. Just a gift from girls is the one. If I get another one, because I don't watch friends, I don't know who any of the characters are,

but there's some guy from friends or some girl from friends or something, this like famous friend's gif, like how are you doing or something that's written below? Oh, yeah, yeah. And like, there is an entire internet of gifts out there. The fact that I've received that gift so many times that I can recall it means like that gift

is now outlawed for the rest of time, yeah. Yep, hear that ladies? That's not the way of time. Yeah. Yeah, hear that, ladies? That's not the way to Chris' heart. Yeah, it's so passive. And if you wanted to meet someone organically at the grocery store, you would not exude that kind of behavior, right? You wouldn't just go up to them and, like,

smile rhythmically thumbs up. And that would be super creepy. You would say, hello, how are you? Or you say, hello, have you tried this quinoa before? You know, you'd ask them a question. That's like relevant to the situation. You wouldn't, you wouldn't just stare at them and like, yeah, hello, do you know where the feminine hygiene or the erectile dysfunction aisle is? Maybe not that one, but yes, something something in that vein. Yes, ask a good ask a question. So same thing with a dating app, like ask a seen con question, ask a question, and not

like not something, you know, I have, I'm not going to give away my best one because I sell that to other people, but there are some really good questions you can ask that are open-ended that get to like, I care about you, I either read your profile, I'm ready to engage with you, but it's just so frustrating when you get a high hello, I'm not even gonna try, I'm gonna put the ball back in your court because I don't have enough confidence or time to actually start a conversation with you.

So always start a conversation, ladies and gentlemen, both of you. Yeah, I guess even if you don't ask a question, the implication of you just alerting the other person to your existence is this is now a job for you to do. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's just putting, it's making the other person

work super hard. So give us a, I'm gonna use the leg up. Throw us a fucking bone here. Throw us a bone, yes, you got it, you got it. Okay, what else? So those are the main rules for just navigating the dating apps. The other things that I like to put into place, this sounds like I'm a badass and have all these rules,

you're never gonna get past the stone wall here, but that's not true, I'm just very, very intentional. And the other thing is when you actually are going out on dates, and I've seen so many people really screw this up and do this a very casual way. So I'm gonna tell you, I have a three-rule date and that is nothing to do with sex.

It is, there are three dates, you have to go on three dates that are actually like meaningful dates where you get to know a person. And I actually like to look at them more as like a meet-up because if I'm just meeting you for the first time, I don't know if I like wanna date, you are going to date with you if I met you on a dating app or even in a grocery store.

So can we not just look at it as we're going to have a casual, you know, hang out where we decide can we be friends. And for me, that looks like you have to be able to hear the person. So you have to be at like a coffee shop on a patio or on a walk, a walk date is my like top one favorite date all time. Like can we just go on a walk, like move together and also have that way like silence isn't uncomfortable. It's just so much better. Like walk dates are my jam and so many people especially like to go back to the alcohol conversation, it's let's meet for drinks. Okay. So let's go to a bar, a happy hour, whatever and it just completely

convolutes the situation, not only the fact that you're drinking, but more of the factor that you're in a loud environment where you can't hear the other person, you are overstimulated by everything that's going on around you. And if I want to know, if I want to have a long-term relationship with you, I actually want to sit down and get to know you a little bit. And so my first three dates can never be bar, concert, movies, comedy, show, anything that's like raucous around me. Like I need to have like concentration and be able to have a conversation with a person. I love it. I can just see the, or hear the discomfort coming from a lot of people who think, well yeah, like that's,

that's all well and good, but like just sounds a bit sort of lame or boring. And it's like, okay, so what you're saying is the people you choose to date are so uninteresting that you can't bear to be around them without something else to entertain you. Well, no, no, no, it's just, no, that's, that's, if you have a visceral response at the moment to the suggestions that Amanda's making that you shouldn't have this kind of hyper stimulated, hyper normalized environment where there's loads of stuff going on. And if you've got, it's kind of just below your breastbone, kind of just above your stomach. If there's like a bit of a hot feeling there and you're finding yourself swallowing a lot,

that is because it's triggering you. And that means that there's a little bit of something for you to work on there. Absolutely, yeah, it's just, you know, you have to look at, and of course, I've had my days where, you know, those were the fun days and that was my 20s, that's great. And if you're still in your 20s, like just don't, you know,

write this down, listen to this in a couple of years and you're gonna thank me so much more. Come back to this episode, pin it, flag it, do whatever. But so if you're in your 20s, just go have fun, screw around, do whatever. You deserve that time. That's like your right of passage to do all of that. But if you're in a point where you actually value your own time and you want to have a meaningful connection with another person, you can't do all of these

other things that just signal transaction, right? And that's exactly what any of these dates signal is. Okay, I don't, I don't find you interesting or I don't have enough faith in myself to be interesting that we could go do one of these other things where we're a little less like stimulated around us. And frankly, a walking day, there's plenty to stimulate. You're going to pass other people. I mean, obviously you have to live in an environment where that's, it's warm enough and whatnot. But that is the ultimate simulation.

You have things all around you to talk about. People you're passing that you can comment on. It just gets your brain moving. I think that I wish I could like trademark the walking day. The walking day, it is a good idea. Yeah, I like his role. There's in, I feel, I sound like someone who's just lived

in Breedon Neal's trousers the game, but the only references I have from the guys side, there isn't an equivalent for guys of a holistic approach for dating as there is for girls. There's just pick a partistry, at least if you're my age, now there is some slightly more good stuff. And I'm going to give you my number one book, guys, for a dating advice at the end of this podcast and stick around for that. But there is a common held piece of advice in dating that you shouldn't sit opposite each other. If you can, you

should try and sit at a right angle. So you should try and sit adjacent because it is less confrontational. It means that you're both moving in the same direction together, but the walking date is actually even a step up from that, right? That you're kind of with the person turning to them and then kind of going back to the front and then turning to them and go back to the front. Yeah, or like that. Yeah. A little bit CBT going on for you that. Okay. So what are we going to walk in date? What else? My dog is about to howl in the background. I'm sorry for maybe shaking it up just woke it up. Yeah. It's him. Okay. So walking date, you know, I think, oh, and then really, really being clear at the end and going back

and and reviewing kind of the date that you were on and what you liked about that person and what you didn't. But even before it, like let me wrap back around to before the date, I know that you kind of alluded to the fact that some of your listeners and I agree are probably thinking, oh, well that's really, you know, what if I'm not, you know, able to talk to the person or what if I'm not interesting or they're boring and all of these things I You have to hold in your heart that the person that you're meeting across the table if you're going to take a chance to meet with them That that could be your potential partner and you have to treat everyone as such like that is another thing that's really helped me

Level up especially on dating apps where it's really easy to say like oh, they could have just been really good at marketing themselves But now like I have to go on this date with a stranger and on dating apps where it's really easy to say, like, oh, they could have just been really good at marketing themselves, but now, like, ugh, I have to go on this date with a stranger. And when you go into a date with that mindset, you automatically projected to the person you're automatically held back. If you can just go in there and imagine for a second, like, yes, this could be my person,

but not in like the crazy way. Yeah, yeah, not the buddy by the way. A little crazy, but that you're treating them as if they could be your person. You're not holding a grudge on them that you had to meet them on a dating app or holding a grudge that this is awkward or whatever it is that you're like really giving it your all and you want them to feel loved and appreciated on in the conversation. So that's to infrastructure based piece of advice that kind of link him with what you

just said there that I've got for Guys and Girls, which is if you open the funnel in Instagram or on a dating app, your first goal should be to get them off of that and into WhatsApp as quickly as possible. Like if you get past the obviously presuming that you think there's efficiently attractive, there's efficiently interesting, like get them off that because the platform that you think there's efficiently attractive, there's efficiently interesting, like get them off that because the platform that you are on is coloring all of the interactions. For as long as you're the Tinder girl, it can be, you can be like the fittest,

most interesting Elon Musk incarnate in female form level of intellect girl on the planet, but for as long as you are on Tinder, you're in the gutter. So get yourself out of that as quickly as possible. For sure. And with that, like this sounds so bad, but you need, in my opinion, you need a scalable option to be able to get yourself off that sort of a platform. So come up with, come up with a script, come up with a funny little joke,

I've got mine. I can't say it because then when I say it to, or like, you know, I mean, see this is the thing, there's only, there's a level of transparency that you have in this podcast, ladies and gentlemen, always said I was going to be truthful with you, but I didn't always say that I was going to be completely transparent. But you need to just have a thing and it's like just use that. Like, if something comes up naturally and you're like, oh, I really think that I should tell you about the best coffee shop in this.

Let me pin you the location on WhatsApp or whatever. Like, kind of, but it's just, it seems so contrived, right? Like, just come up with a script and use that. And like, when it's like, okay, it's time to pull the pin. And if they say, oh, I don't really have what type I would do, whatever. Everyone's got it. Shut up. And then, so move them on.

Okay, so we got the walking date. We've got the, what else do you have? We've got the Intentionals with using app when you're using it. It have a good conversation starter. Don't just be a passive conversation. We have set up your profile, put some intention to it, don't just like jack around and put

the first five pictures on your phone or find, that's just a big one. Like be intentional with your profile. Everyone, if you are trying, you're on a visual service, you have to have a visual profile that's pleasing. It doesn't mean you have to look like a supermodel, but we just have to see what you look like and who you are.

And then just how a little bit of hope for who you're meeting and what's happening there. If you look at at dating apps, just like I have at some point of like, this is just shit, everyone's on here, it's just the same old thing over and over. Then you'll get the same old thing over and over. And that's not the result you're wanting. If you want a better result, like put your mind to the possibility that it could be in there. Or just, you know, this sounds... Well, no, it sounds masculine. I mean, it sounds harsh coming from a woman. But one of the things that I tell my clients is if you don't like dating apps, at least use them for practice. Like you have an endless pool here of dates you can go on and completely fuck up.

And then just want to be the person. Right, like at least get yourself some confidence and go out on these random dates. And then when you meet them in the grocery store on the quinoa aisle, you'll have, you know, the confidence because you've already had all these conversations. I'm in high-gain and erectile dysfunction aisle, yeah, exactly.

So I got a couple of things that I've come up with recently, actually, that have popped in my head. So one of them is another concept from Pick a Partistry, which is called a Schumertraction. And a Schumertraction is exactly as it says on the tin that you are the prize. So that's the subheading. A Schumertraction is the concept,

and you are the prize is the subheading. What it means is that you need to go into a situation with it doesn't matter how hot the other person is, or how interesting, or how intimidating the other person is, you know all of your uniqueness, your quirks, all of the different life experiences that you have. That makes you incredibly unique. And this person is just Jonathan or Leanne,

or whatever it might be. Like they're just a person, you are you, you have all of these real different colorful interesting things, even if you think that you're boring as hell, you're not because you've got 20, 30, 40, however many years of experiences behind you. You are the prize. And if you go into the situation with that in your mind, it will come across in the way that you project yourself. It will also make you a lot less worried about failure or about being rejected, treating it as my life comes first. And then you will attach on to the side of that.

You are the prize. And it's the equivalent. I've got a friend, Alex O'Connor, being on this podcast. He is a big atheist podcaster, and he sat down with Richard Dawkins, the guy that created new atheism. And I was like, dude, he's only 20 years old this kid. He's a freak savage, crazy clever, Oxford Uni doing philosophy. And I was like, well, you're not worried. Oh, you're not nervous or whatever.

And he was like, no, no, no, I was nervous for Richard. Like, he's fortunate to get to sit down with me. Yeah. Like, my podcast is the thing that he's here to be on. I'm not here to be on his show, he's here to be on my show. And as soon as he taught me that, and I was like, holy shit. And now every guy like Ben Greenfield came on here

and I was like, oh, fortunate for Ben to be on my show. Ryan Holidays just confirmed to be on this podcast. I'm like, oh, that's gonna be fun for Ryan to be on the show. You know, like, and that going into it, even if you know that you're kind of gaming it a little bit, there's, your thoughts become the intentions quite quickly. And you're like, yeah, actually, I am, I am like a bit of a badass.

Like there's no reason that I shouldn't be like owning this girl who drives a 9-11 is in penthouse and all this stuff, you know what I mean? Right, right, exactly. You know, that's, that's a great perspective to take because if you don't then you you're coming to it from the perspective of I don't have enough so I have to find that extra something that I don't have within you and that's never it's never going to work. You're always picking based on an emptiness that you have that you think the other person can fulfill. 100%. Okay, so that's my first thing. Yeah.

Assume attraction and you are the prize. I've already said, get yourself out of the app and this goes for guys and girls. I also think that this is why Instagram is a underused or is a better to use dating app than Tinder is. Now obviously you can't refine your search criteria as efficiently, but you get to see a lot more of the other person, you can work out mutual connections

more effectively, and also you're never going to be like the Tinder girl or the Tinder guy. You'll just be the Instagram girl or the Instagram guy, which again, actually just raises that level of conversation up just a little bit more, it makes you think, ah, well, this is kind of a little bit more normal. I said that I was going to give my favorite book, and this would be really cool for you to actually get most common dating errors that you see from guys and girls and then any resources and stuff like that and obviously like your own stuff for sure.

Sure, sure. But for me, for girls, I'm sorry, I think, on the whole, I think girls are pretty good data. I think that you're always going to say this, right? But like, I think that guys, guys just suck at dating. Like, I'm friends with too many young lads to know, to even believe that guys are competent at dating. They're just suck. Right.

Yeah. And then, like, there's some guys of pigs, including me at times in my past, not now, obviously, Angel, but my favorite book, Models by Mark Manson. So it was the first book that he ever wrote. And it was How to Attract Women Through Honesty, which has, depending on where you're coming from it, looking at it, it could be like a real mincey kind of like fluffy title or a really transactional like that's kind of mean title, but it's just how do you as a guy maximize who you are to a girl, it lays out a really robust framework of need us, which he thinks is the prime driver of attraction

in relationships, how needy one person is and how the other is. And it maps pretty accurately to reality. So models by Mark Manson, if you listen to the audiobook, there's an updated version, which is about six hours long and audible. And it is, it's awesome. I'll link it. It'll be, I'll put it in the show notes below, in fact, Mark Manson. I'll put it in the show notes below if you want to go and pick it up

Bonus round David Dada the way of the superior man now that is a little bit more woo-woo-ee It talks a lot about masculine and feminine energies and stuff probably an interesting read more of an interesting read for girls than Models is but way the superior man it very much talks about how as a man you should be, the principles that you should be leading your life by basically, there's some intergender dynamics and some relationship stuff in there, but there's other stuff to do with how you deal with relationship and career challenges, how you deal with moving into

a new epoch of your life and all this sorts of stuff. So that's my, I don't have a big, a big repository of dating advice, which potentially I should do, given the fact, as I've said, that I'm my dating life sort of fairly terrible. But I'm gonna give the floor to you. So what, first up, what are the main errors you see girls making when they try and date. I think it is being either too agreeable. Like I just have to give everything to this person. I'll do whatever this person wants. I'm going to completely change who I am or act a different way. And just not standing in your confidence and your worth and feeling like you have to change or show up in a certain way

to be what that person wants or desires or needs. That, it's just part of the way that we women are brought up and but you can reprogram it. If you notice it, you can reprogram it. And, oh geez, what are some other ones? I think leaning too far towards your masculine or your feminine side, right? I think that that can be in relationships for women, that can be something that's a little bit

detrimental because either you're trying to like stand your ground and say, no, I'm this person, you have to do whatever I want and then you're just a bitch, or you are the other way, and you're too agreeable to someone or you're always like, that's more of, in the psychology side, it's more of you're the, you're the, of Jesus, I'm losing my words now. You're the anxious attached person, right? You're like, you'll do whatever that other person wants because you need to love from them so bad. Neither of those polarities are actually that enjoyable to be around as a guy. I can't speak about what guys are like

in that relation for girls, but as a guy, it feels like whoever it is is playing a role. Now that could be your true personality. You could be the 99th out of 100 agreeable person or you could be the 99 out of 100 disagreeable person. That could be you, but the fact that there's so little nuance to the way that you operate, the fact that like everything that I say

is rebutted with, well, I don't agree with that. I don't think that that's right, or like a scathing comment or you know, like whatever it is, if it's just, if I can ask you a question, this is the fucking heuristic. I've worked it out. This is the heuristics you use. If I can ask you a question and I can predict your answer before you answer it, that's it. And think about some of the people that you've spoken to recently, if you're single, obviously if you're not single,

get off this podcast, like your partner will find it. But yeah, think about the last few people you've been speaking to, can you predict their answers? Can you ask them a question or say something, make a statement to them, and can you kind of ballpark guess where their answer's going to be?

And if they can't, if you can, like, what are you doing? Like, that's the same. That is the same as dating event rollerquests, dummy. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Man, and it just goes to show that that's that person saying they're marrying what they think is going to be satisfying for you, right? And sorry, you've heard it before like guess what? It we we both been in that in that situation and it's so bullshit where we're just performing for the other person and When you find the person that is your person I just have to believe that it's like two fingers like folding hands if you can't if you're not watching video It's like you're folding your hands in prayer. They just like fit together and you don't have to do this like performative bullshit

that you've been doing your entire life. And you know, I'll just wrap back to what I said in the first part that I really want to drive home that if you find that you are keep continuing to attract the same type of person, you have to ask yourself, what is it that person is mirroring to me that I'm supposed to be seen that the universe is like, hello sister or hello brother, like we've shown you this five times we're reflecting right to you what you need to friggin fix in yourself and you are ignoring it time after time like if you keep attracting that same frustrating undesirable you know deal-breaker characteristic ask yourself how that is and you or how you're

asking for that because it's safe. It's, you hit the nail on the head before that you are the common denominator. Absolutely, you are. So reading Mark Manson's models, there's two red pills that are, they're so large that I almost couldn't swallow them. So the first one was essentially that, that you are the common denominator

in all of your relationship failings. Mm-hmm. Like, people that say, guys that say, and I've been, I've been like, it's subjective of this as well, I do it, I did it. Where you say, all of the girls in my town are bitches. All of the girl, or every, the entire female population in your town that all of them are bitches. Yes. No, no. All the girls you meet are bitches or all of the girls respond to you in a way

which makes them seem like bitches. That is the trick and that's the same for girls as well. If you say, oh, do you know what it is? All the guys in my city, they're just all fuck boy. I need to move to that, it's Italy. Like if I was in Rome, none of this, and that's the myth. The myth is I've got to move out of my small town, big city, whatever country it is to find myself, X guy that has this a girl that does that They're just not open-minded enough. They're not free-flowing enough. They're to this. They're to they don't have any dreams

They don't have any girls you like You are the common denominator here. Yeah fuck that hurts the swallow like the fact that you are the architect of your own misery It is well that reminds me of I'm gonna give you two examples because I know we probably need to wrap up, but for that, I will say, as someone who has moved across state, you know, two states away to kind of like reinvent my life, the thing that you have to remember is wherever you go, there you'll be.

It's one of my favorite folks because you cannot get away from yourself and your own self-free. I'm sorry with me. I thought I'd left it. I thought it was gone. No. And was me. I thought it was gone. No. And you know, something that's a little bit nuanced about doing this inventory of who you dated before, I will tell you the thing that I found that was a common denominator

that was weird and it really made me have to do a lot of self-reflection. So some of them can be quite obvious, but some of them you might have to dig a little deeper. And one for me was every man who I've had a significant relationship with, he has been just recently coming out of another significant relationship unwittingly done by me. Like I wasn't sitting there like, oh, you just got out of a relationship,

great, you're free to up, let's go on a date. That wasn't my MO. Some of it I didn't even know until we were involved. But there was something in me that as like a fixer or something was attracting someone who needed to feel safe or needed to you know Whatever it was that they were looking for haven't quite deconstructed that yet So listeners if you if you want to help me out here do that But there's that's mind blowing like every person coming out of a significant relationship

And so that just says there's something in me that I need to work out that is stops attracting that and So I have a book for that. So let me tell you my book records So one is it's not a dating book at all guys and girls could use this Men and women you might even say for the older crowd listening It's called dark side of the light chasers and it is all about shadow work And I think that your listeners are probably self-actualized enough to do this type of work. And it's really just rolling down to what are those things in my psyche and my own self-identification

that I am hiding from and avoiding that if I could face it, I could really change what I'm attracting in my life. And for me, I think that if I can solve that one, I'll know why I attracted all of these guys that are just out of a relationship. But it goes into so many other areas. Then two other books I'll recommend just on just really getting yourself in the right place. Women, one that I really love is a book called By Marianne Williamson called A Woman's Worth. Super good book for girls. It's a really short read, too. It's like a teeny tiny book. And then just for everyone in terms of personal development and

impossibility, my favorite book ever is Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer. And that's what started my personal development journey. And I can't recommend that enough as just like an eye-opening look into self-actualization. I haven't read any of those. I hadn't heard of any of those. Well, maybe don't read a woman's worth You probably could skip that one, but the other two you need to read. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's that's awesome It's so cool. You find like when you hear from someone this is the book that changed my life and you're like I didn't even know Oh, so he's my he was the second red pill actually will finish on that and then I want you to tell everyone why they can check out your stuff because you're awesome.

The second red pill that I had to swallow was to do with state changes and the sense you have and the excuses that you make before meeting someone going to spend time with someone, perhaps going home with someone, and it's a defense mechanism. It's an evolutionarily program defense mechanism. And the reason it hurt me so bad was because I've been reading tons of Eve's psych recently, evolutionary biology. And I thought I had this stuff down. And I was like, I understand why pride's there. Holy shit, I understand why I feel good when I'm working. And oh my God, I understand what loneliness is. That's what that is.

And blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, oh no, this is so much more pervasive than you thought. It is everything. So basically if you are a guy or a girl and you can think back to a time where perhaps You have been having either a serious or a casual Encounter with someone who's either existing or new probably actually not only someone who's new

I realistically only someone that's new and You felt some sort of resistance come up in why you shouldn't go over to their house, let them over to your house, go on the day, do the thing. And the front of your brain has given you this really logic, well, maybe I'm just not that attracted. Oh, I'm so tired. I got this knee ache. I got this like it's, it's man, it's the outside of me, you know, like, kind of the back, you just come up with

these things, you rationalize these reasons, but it's not. It's like you are attracted to this person, you were attracted to this person previously, you've been attracted to them for ages, maybe you've even thought about getting physical with them in the past. Why now are you somehow talking yourself out of it and it is this fear of state change? We like being in the cave that we know. Yes, we know this cave is safe. The one next door, that might be a saber-tooth tiger in there, fuck that, I don't wanna go in there.

It's like, there's not saber-tooth tiger in there, there is just a guy or a girl in a bed. And you need to be aware of that. You need to know, right, okay, am I saying I'm not attracted to them. My knee hurts too much. I'm tired. Work's going to start in the morning. Or is it, is that because you have a fear of going to see them? Or is it more genuine than that? Is this, okay, rubberber meets the road time now, like I really need to work out, whether or not I'm sufficiently physically attracted to them.

But like looking back, the number of times, what, and you think like, oh guys should just be hot to trot all the time. The number of times where I've been like, oh, some excuse on what's that by. Like because, don't know, didn't have a reason. Just did it, just did it. And I'm like,

and I was in Tesco Car Park, a Tesco Car Park in Kent, and it was only a couple of weeks ago and I listened to this bit of models from Mark Manson. And I was like walking around in this days, reflecting on all of the different times where I've done that to myself. I'm like, oh, you dick.

You absolute dick. Like just talking to my, my own amygdala, like just trying to speak to the bass of my own brain. Like you, and it just had me. I was like, that's it. I've said, I've come up with so many excuses, so many times. I don't, I can't see, you don't wanna see, you won't do this thing.

Or like, I'll just say one happened in the time, whatever it is, and it's just fear of change. That's eight. Right. Yeah, the misery that you're in is more, you know it. You know that that feels like so it's much better than like the misery that you could be in somewhere else that's unknown.

One more book recommendation. And for that with relationships, this is an old school book, but it's still super relevant. It's called Conscious Loving by Gay and Katie Hendrix and they discuss kind of like pleasure limits and upper limits that you have in your relationship where you won't like, oh, if I let myself achieve happiness, then it's only that easier to get like drag back down and be heard again. It's a really good book. It kind of focuses on people in relationships, but you can still read it as a single person and get a lot out of it. That's awesome. Amanda, this has been really fun. We've been talking about doing it for ages. I want to get you back on. I know. So girls think that you're cool. They want to work with you. I know that you, oh, do you still only work with girls at the moment? I only work with women. Yeah, it's just easier for me, honestly. And I work with women who specifically are alcohol-free or sober curious. If you want to hear more about the dating stuff that

I'm into, I have a whole course on dating. Honestly, guys could purchase it too. I just wouldn't work with you one-on-one. The dating course you can find on my site, Authentically Amanda, Forward Slash, Mindful Dating. And it goes through everything we went through here, but in so much more detail of how I want you to be intentional, how I want you to grow and improve yourself for it. So you can be the partner that you want to call in and then how you interact on dating apps and in the real world, how to set up your profile, like all that stuff, it's all like laid out in there with plenty of exercises and explanation.

You go all the cheat codes in there as well. All the best open. Yeah. Yeah. My best opener, it is in there. Never failed, never failed. That's so good. Look, Amanda, everything that we've spoken about, I'm just fantastic socials will be linked below. I can't sing your praises enough. You've been awesome.

You've been doing some cool stuff recently in the sober community. And it's so nice as well, like I think we've both spoken about this privately, but to see someone who is from that side of the community, but also is really pushing the envelope in other areas, like, okay, so how can I use the insights that I've gained from my personal development and my growth to make girls better at dating or to be better wives or better mothers or whatever it might be? It's so sick. If you've enjoyed this episode, tell me and I'll get Amanda back

on. We've got, as you can tell, we're just like, we're just chatting away so, you know, we can do this all day. Amanda, thank you so much for your time. Oh, thank you. It's been such a pleasure. you