THAT MAKES GIRLS

SWOON

CONFIDENCEIRONHEARTED

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Ironhearted Confidence that Makes Girls Swoon LESSON6OFTHEGIRLSCHASE7-DAYMINICOURSE

CHASE AMANTE 2016

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irls love confidence. They talk about it incessantly. If you ask 10 women what they most desire in men, you’ll hear this one word repeated again and again: confidence. Yet

it’s a poorly defined quality men know they’re supposed to possess but don’t know how to obtain.

Is confidence really the cure all? If you can get confident enough, dating should be easy... Or so goes the theory.

In this lesson, we put confidence in the spotlight. I’ll show you what it is, how it functions, and why it’s so attractive to women. I’ll show you how to develop your own confidence (there are several ways to do this). And I’ll even show you its limitations.

My goal for you is to walk away from this book with confidence no longer a fuzzy concept. I also want you to walk away knowing exactly how to raise your confidence to the right level – not too high, but not low, either.

I’ve referenced 29 scientific studies in this short book. But more than just science, I’ve drawn from a decade of training men to be confident with the opposite sex.

I hope you enjoy the tome. For now, let’s start with a definition: what is this thing confidence, anyway?

What Exactly is Confidence? Confidence is faith in one’s ability to achieve desired

outcomes. If you’re confident in dating, you believe you’ll achieve

your romantic (or sexual) objectives. If you’re confident in a job interview, you expect they’ll want to hire you. If you’re confident as someone picks a fight with you, you suspect you’ll likely to win.

When we say a man is “confident”, what we are really saying is, “That man believes himself to be capable.” Capability is what we are really looking for (and respect) in confident individuals. Yet capability is difficult to assess, and often takes

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time. Confidence we can see right away – thus, it’s a signal we put a lot of weight on.

Our confidence in ourselves is a key aspect of our self-image. And self-image in turn plays a key role in our motivation, how we feel, and our social and romantic interactions (Moore & Healy, 2008). As we grow more confident, our self-image transitions into that of a capable man, and we feel good and motivated. We see more social, romantic, and sexual success. Yet, when you examine a less confident man, all these measures trend in reverse. The unconfident man feels less capable, not as good, and not as motivated.

An important point to grasp with confidence is confidence is not about accuracy. Human beings are not fact-perfect, emotion-free robots. Bénabou and Tirole found (2005), for example, that on difficult tasks people tend to be confident they’ve done better than they did, but also think others have done even better than them. Meanwhile, on easy tasks, people assume they’ve done worse than they have, yet that they’ve still done better than other people have. Confidence is not an accuracy gauge.

What we actually use confidence for – and how we can tweak and adjust our own confidence for our own devices – is a big part of what we’ll talk about next.

Why Confidence is Irresist ible to Women

Women rate confident, high self-esteem men more attractive (Ziegler-Hill & Myers, 2011). Yet this is only applies to men. Men rate confident, high self-esteem women as less attractive than women with moderate self-esteem. This, by the way, is one of the big differences between male and female perspectives. Some men assume women care a lot about looks and not a lot about confidence, because this is what men care about. Some women assume men care a lot about confidence and not a lot about looks, because this is what women care about. But men are not women,

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and women not men. As much as beautiful women captivate you, confident men captivate her.

The fairer sex just doesn’t like its men to be modest. Women view modesty in a man as a signal of low status (Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, 2010). Modesty hints at weakness and uncertainty, which are turn offs for women. It also suggests a lack of confidence and ambition, two things women most want men to have. Women consistently describe modest men as ‘too weak’. When character strength is key to attractiveness (and for men, it is), ‘weakness’ is attraction death. No girl wants her man to be weak.

Are unconfident men actually weaker men? It’s not an easy question to answer. On the one hand, confidence does go hand-in-hand with efficacy and success (as we’ll see later in this book). On the other, how confident someone else judges you depends as much on the lens she views you through as anything else. Pick the most confident public figure you can think of, and you can no doubt find critiques who think his confidence is “fake.” There are people who believe he is nothing more than a scared little boy playing pretend. Sometimes a girl may think a man with quiet confidence is modest, and a man with loud confidence is macho. Meanwhile, another girl may think the man with loud confidence is insecure, and the man with quiet confidence is the capable one.

Unconfident men have some other key traits in common too. It’s not just lower effectiveness, less capability, and lower attractiveness that plagues them. The less confident you are, the more anxious, jealous, and romantic you tend to be as well (De Mojà, 1986). The first two of these are clear undesirable qualities. Romanticism is a bit harder to pin down. What you will notice is after time spent dating, women come to associate romanticism with low confidence. They become suspicious of romantic men. He’s romantic – does that also mean he’s weak? (Yet if you’re romantic yet confident, your romanticism won’t hurt and might help)

Confidence itself is both tool and social signaling device. Moderate amounts of overconfidence is an advantage in most endeavors (Weinberg, 2009). And overconfidence itself works as a

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social signal for attractive traits (Burks, Carpenter, Goette, & Rustichini, 2010). Thus, not only does a little overconfidence make you look good, it actually helps you get what you want, too.

There are a host of other links between confidence and attractive traits we’ll discuss. These include the link between winning, dominance, and confidence. These reinforce each other: as you dominate and win more, you grow more confident, and as you grow more confident, you dominate and win more. They also include the link between confidence and masculine ideology.

Yet, whether we talk dominance, victory, or masculine ideology... or lack of jealousy/romanticness (and thus more detachment), lower anxiety, and better outcomes... we’re always talking about aspects of the same thing. The more confident man is the more capable man. He’s capable at winning, dominating, being a man around women. He’s capable at replacing women (and doesn’t worry as much about romance or mate-guarding). He’s capable at being able to handle any situation (and thus is not as anxious). And he’s capable at achieving his objectives.

Confidence is a reflection of capability. Thus, when we talk higher confidence, we will also talk

higher effectiveness. Because raise your effectiveness, and your confidence follows.

However, before we get to that, we have a few more things to discuss. Chief among them is a chicken-and-egg problem: namely, what comes first, confidence or success?

Is Confidence Born or Acquired?

So which is it – nature or nurture? Are you just born confident, or can you become it, with time and technique?

In this short chapter, I’m going to make a case for both being true. You have a confidence “baseline” that determines your default, resting-rate confidence levels. Yet, you can improve upon this baseline – often dramatically. You do that by using what we’re going to talk about in this book (especially in Chapter Five).

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One of the most important ties is confidence and testosterone. Due to a phenomenon known as the “winner effect”, men who experience success become likely to experience more success. It does not matter if this success is rigged or staged. Even “fake” success in the past makes you more likely to get real success in the future. This phenomenon exists in everything from tennis (Booth, Shelley, Mazur, Tharp, & Kittok, 1989) to trading stocks (Coates & Herbert, 2008) to winning a $5 game of chance (McCaul, Gladue, & Joppa, 1992). The studies on the winner effect show that when a man wins at something, he receives a boost in testosterone. And once he gets that boost, he becomes more assertive, more sure he will succeed in future endeavors, and he takes more risks. The winner effect means that when a man is victorious, he becomes more confident and primed to win more.

There is an opposite effect to the winner effect, too – call it the “loser effect”, perhaps. Not only does a win raise testosterone, and thus confidence, but losing damages testosterone, and humbles you (Zilioli & Watson, 2014). This is a good adaptation; losers who fail to learn their place become targets for winners. Yet it risks derailing us with girls.

Evidence for a confidence “baseline” also comes from testosterone studies. In 2009, researchers measured the 2D:4D ratios of stock traders. 2D:4D ratio compares your second digit (forefinger) to your fourth digit (ring finger). The shorter your second digit is than your fourth, the more prenatal testosterone you encountered in the womb. That is to say, if your 2D:4D ratio is low, that means your mother’s body pumped a lot of testosterone into the womb. Testosterone in the womb masculinizes not just the body (e.g., finger length), but also the mind. What the researchers discovered was that the stock traders with the lowest 2D:4D ratios had the highest long-term profitability and the longest tenures in the trading business (Coates, Gurnell, & Rustichini, 2009). They made the most money and stayed in the business longest. Men with more masculine, aggressive, assertive minds fare better at stock trading... An industry where risk-taking, confidence, and aggressiveness reign supreme.

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So what if you were born with a high 2D:4D ratio (and thus, lower than normal masculinization in the womb)? Well, you can still tap the winner effect to up your confidence, risk-taking, and pluck.

Yet testosterone isn’t the only thing impacting confidence levels. There are other forces at play – and, just like winning (or losing), they affect your confidence too.

One of these is attachment style. Your attachment style describes the kind of close relationships you form. For example, an anxious style means you need to be close to others, and worry they might leave or abandon you. An avoidant style means you like uninvolved relationships that don’t need you to share feelings or spend much time together. Secure attachment style is the gold standard attachment style. The secure style means healthy attachments, normal anxiety, and no avoidance. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, the secure attachment style is just right.

You might think attachment style doesn’t change. After all, your attachment style forms in early childhood. Your style as an adult depends on how your parents treated you as an infant and toddler (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). If you had a loving, healthy relationship, you’ll be secure as an adult. If your parents had little time for you, or were needy or abusive, you may end up avoidant or anxious instead.

Yet research into the attachment styles of university freshmen discovered these can indeed change... and when they do, the results are profound (Lopez & Gormley, 2002). Students who transitioned to a secure attachment style from one of the other styles experienced an increase in confidence. They also realized a better ability to cope with problems, and lower distress and less depression. The confidence boost is what we’re most interested in here.

So, back to the question of, “Is confidence born or bred?” The answer is clear: “It’s a bit of both.” If Mom has a lot of testosterone, or if your folks gave you a

stellar childhood, you’ll have a higher confidence baseline.

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Yet, put the winner effect to use, and take steps to change attachment styles, and you can raise your confidence on your own, too.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Once we get to Chapter Five, I’m going to show you even more ways to increase confidence – and many of them are easy to do.

Before we talk raising confidence though, I want to make sure we raise the right confidence. And to do that, first we must ask: what’s the difference between “real” and “fake” confidence, anyway?

Real Confidence vs. Fake Confidence

Guys sometimes try to “fake” confidence. They do this with loud talk, back slaps, and aggressive-seeming, assertive-seeming behavior. They take bold actions, not unlike men with true confidence, and speak in self-assured ways. But is this real confidence – and does this type of confidence actually work?

Self-confidence is tied to a few key traits of confident individuals. These include self-control, kindness, and the desire to make use of oneself (Owens, 1993). Most people have a natural awareness of the link between confidence and these qualities. Think of a man with a kind heart, yet powerful self-control. He seems completely confident, doesn’t he?

Now contrast that to a boorish, mean-spirited man who behaves in impulsive ways. Does he also seem confident? “Confident” is not the word you’d use to describe him. “Jerk”, maybe, or “asshole.” “Aggressive”, “bold”, or “irreverent” might all fit too. But “confident” doesn’t seem so good a fit.

Self-control is one of the big qualities. Because it’s tied to confidence, people guess your confidence levels by assessing your self-control. And, as research shows (Righetti & Finkenauer, 2011), people can indeed assess others’ self-control. As someone ’s read of your self-control goes up, her trust in you increases too. Self-control gives you the dating double boost of seeming more

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confident (thus, more attractive)... Yet also more trustworthy (thus, someone she can readily go along with).

There’s another big difference between real and fake confidence, however. And that’s that real confidence comes with that winner effect boost. Without the extra testosterone of real confidence, the fake variety, no matter how loud, usually just amounts to bluster.

Take just the general winner effect. After a few victories, males see a big increase in blood plasma testosterone, and their odds of winning in the future go up a lot (Oyegbile & Marler, 2005). You can’t “fake” elevated testosterone – either it’s there or it isn’t. You can’t fake the effects of an absent hormone on your behavior patterns.

One of the greatest changes in male behavior after the winner effect boost? More interest in women, more flirting, and better game. If you’ve ever just finished a great workout or just won a sports match, then run into a pretty girl, you’ve seen it yourself. After the win, your game just switches on.

Researchers in 2012 (van der Meij, Almela, Buunk, Fawcett, & Salvador) discovered after the testosterone boost from winning, men show more interest in women. They also do more to present themselves, smile more, and make more eye contact. There is no difference in how winner effect men treat other men – they are only friendlier with women. The testosterone boost makes a man change his behavior with the opposite sex. It makes him a more aggressive, confident suitor. And that, like the other qualities we talked about in this chapter, is something else you cannot fake.

How to Get Real Confidence

We already laid out a few contributors to confidence. Some of them you cannot change, like how much testosterone you encountered in the womb, or how your parents treated you early on. Yet others you indeed can change as an adult. Your attachment

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style, your self-control, and the winner effect are within your grasp.

First off, attachment style. This is one you’ll have the least ability to change in the immediate term. That’s because attachment style is somewhat dependent on your current situation in life. If you find yourself in a situation that makes it harder to cope with problems, you move toward a less secure attachment style (Zhang & Labouvie-Vief, 2004). So, if you want greater confidence, align your life in a way that lets you cope with the challenges you face. Remove negative people, build good habits, and have backup plans so you never feel cornered. If all else fails, though, be aware people become more secure as they age. So, even if you struggle to get away from an insecure attachment style now, that may not be the case a few years out.

Your situation affects more than just attachment style, however. Your situation also affects what you lust for and desire. It affects what you want, how much of it you want, and how great the temptation for it is. Your situation even affects how able you feel you are to get what you want (Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, & Vohs, 2012). This affects not just your attachment styles, but your self-control, too. The more temptation your environment provides, the lower your self-control will tend to go. And as self-control goes, so goes your confidence.

Some of history’s greatest men have led rough, temptation-free lives. Read Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans and you’ll doubtless notice how many great ancient generals, kings, and warriors avoided luxury. Part of this was to train up their discipline. But another aspect of it was that by removing temptation, they increased their self-control.

Self-control isn’t just good for confidence. High degrees of self-control lead to higher satisfaction in your relationships. They lead to a more secure attachment style (you see how these all feed back into one another?). They lead to healthier friendships and relationships. They lead to lower conflict in your relationships. And they eliminate your fears or feelings of rejection (Vohs, Finkenauer, & Baumeister, 2011). Research has even found that

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high self-control partners “outsource” self-control... relying on the other partner when one’s own self-control is not as high.

So how do you increase self-control? You start by looking for ways to remove temptations (that you don’t want to give into) from your environment. If you’d like to reduce your sugar intake, for instance, don’t keep candies and cookies at home. Throw them all out so they aren’t there to tempt anymore. If you’d like to approach more girls, don’t give yourself the chance to back out or make excuses. Plan a schedule to go out and talk with girls, set a certain goal to hit (e.g., “Say ‘hi’ to three new girls”), then do it.

There’s another way to increase confidence we’ll talk about, too. That’s something called “self-talk.” All self-talk is is, well, talking to yourself. Telling yourself things like, “Okay, we can do this,” or, on the other hand, “Geez, I’m never going to be able to do this.”

Negative self-talk is obviously self-defeating, and you shouldn’t engage in it. If you do engage in it, I suggest you spend the next 30 days paying special attention to what you’re telling yourself. Every time you catch yourself veer into the negative, force yourself to say something positive instead.

But what about positive self-talk? Does it have an effect? The research says “yes.” 2009 research on self-talk (Hatzigeorgiadis, Zourbanos, Mpoumpaki, & Theodorakis) finds positive self-talk leads to better performance on tasks, lower anxiety, and higher confidence. If you just talk to yourself and give yourself encouragement, you become more confident – and do better on whatever it is you’ve set out to do.

Finally, what of the winner effect? Isn’t that random – you’re either going to win, and get the boost, or lose, and take the hit, right? Well, we can think a little more strategically than this. If you recall the ways we listed out earlier that research has shown boost testosterone levels, one of them was as simple as winning $5 in a game of chance. What the researchers found was that the most important step to get that testosterone boost was simply that you win. It doesn’t even matter what you win (or what you win at).

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So how can we use this? Through goal-setting. If you’ve done the homework throughout this course, you’ve likely noticed it isn’t too hard... yet it nonetheless gives you new things to try or pay attention to with people. The aim of this is partly to get you plugged in and using this (and not just reading and watching). However, it’s also partly to help you build a little momentum.

As you go out and complete these easier tasks, the bigger ones don’t seem so intimidating. And if you grab One Date and The Dating Artisan after this Mini Course, you’ll discover an even more graduated homework process... designed to let you build up from small wins to big wins, by taking advantage of that winner effect. Things that might’ve seemed too intimidating early on become achievable later. Experience mounts, testosterone rises, and the impossible becomes doable.

This is the single best way to raise your confidence, in my opinion. It’s mightier than self-talk... more useful than raising testosterone by working out or thrill-seeking... and more active than structuring a life that allows for greater self-control. You should do all of these other things too, of course. Especially structuring a life that allows for high self-control. Getting that passive high self-control and confidence boost, just by killing luxuries and temptations, gives you much more confidence wiggle room.

However, climbing up small steps and knocking out small goals to build the testosterone-fueled momentum you need to reach the stars is the biggest key to burgeoning confidence. Or, if you do not build this momentum, it’s the key to a flat, disappointing confidence. I do hope you will make full use of the winner effect, though. It’s a complete game changer for confidence.

In the final three chapters of this book, we’re going to have a look at whether it’s possible to “fake” confidence and have it work to any realistic degree... how confident men approach life different from unconfident men... and whether confident men see more success they’re more attractive, or because they take more chances.

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Is It Possible to Fake Confidence?

So, all this talk on confidence baselines plus the effects of confidence tweaks might make you think there’s little you can do to simulate confidence.

All that long-term stuff is well and good for a few months down the road, once you’ve had time to upgrade your confidence. But what do you do if you need to be more confident now?

Well, to a certain degree, you can fake a little of your confidence. While it won’t produce the same confidence you get with what we discussed last chapter, there are a few things you can do boost your chances now.

The key to remember is that real confidence is visible to others, but even more than that it helps you and your performance most. If you simulate confidence, you won’t get the same performance boost. But you can still get some of the appearance boost. Which is still helpful, for this reason: what we’re talking about is not your performance on a non-social task like skiing down the diamond slope, where fake confidence won’t do you a lick of good. Instead, what we’re talking about is charming, persuading, and seducing other people. For that, a little ersatz confidence actually can do some good.

If you walk into a store to buy a new phone, for instance, who makes you feel more comfortable? The salesman who oozes assurance that (after he asks you a few questions) he knows just which phone you need? Or the salesman who hems and haws and shows you different phones, scanning your face to watch how you react? The confident one, of course.

Research shows customers’ interest in buying something goes up as a salesman’s confidence goes up, regardless of the salesman’s accuracy or expertise (Sah, Moore, & MacCoun, 2013). This same effect is at play with women, whereby your apparent confidence makes her more likely to comply with your requests. If you want her to give you her phone number, show up for a date with you, or accompany you home, you’re a lot more likely to get

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her to say “yes” if you behave in a confident manner... even if you aren’t that experienced with women yet or don’t believe she’ll say “yes.” Another aspect of this is assuming attraction – crucial to confident men’s self-fulfilling prophecy. When you assume attraction, you simulate confidence, even if you don’t quite feel it.

This is vital to remember when you’re a beginning dater, or whenever you try out something new. You’re not always going to have past experience to lean on to make you feel confident. Sometimes you are going to need to simulate confidence, and “fake it till you make it.”

This does not apply the same for experts, however. There is an exception to this “faking it can help” rule. That exception is that the level of certainty you show should be the inverse of your actual expertise. Non-experts are more persuasive when they show certainty. Meanwhile, experts are more persuasive when they show uncertainty (Karmarkar & Tormala, 2010). If that seems counterintuitive to you, think about it like this: when a pro tells you, “Well, let me think about it,” you see him as more relatable, human, attainable. When someone you unknowledgeable says that, you just view him as even less reliable. But if instead the unknowledgeable man says, “We need to do X,” with confidence and certainty, you’re more likely to figure he’s got a great idea.

Show confidence if you’re a non-expert to inspire more faith in your leadership and decision-making. Show thoughtfulness if you’re an expert, for the same reasons. How do you apply this to dating? If there’s a big power gap between you and her – if for example you’re 10 years older than her and she respects you and behaves submissive around you – show more deliberation to increase your vulnerability to her. Yet, if you and her are on more equal footing, use certainty to make her more inclined to follow your lead.

How Confident Men Live Life Different

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Confident men and unconfident men approach their lives in very different ways. For the unconfident man, life is confusing, fuzzy, frustrating, and uncertain. He feels torn, unsure which direction to move in, or worries that all paths are shut to him. He can slip into thinking other people have it much better than he does, and begin to feel like a victim.

For the confident man, life is clear, energizing, and certain. He feels sure of his direction, and as though all paths are open to him. He may feel like he has special abilities beyond the grasp of ordinary men; that paths closed to most are open to him. He may believe this is because he is better, or because he is destined. Or he may just notice most others are unconfident... and realize the greatest difference is what is in his mind versus what is in theirs.

The differences extend beyond feelings. Confident men have more dates with women they are more satisfied with than what unconfident men get. They are more motivated in their careers and achieve better outcomes (Hall & Chandler, 2005). Life just generally is better and easier for them.

The confident man’s life typically offers a lot of feedback loops for positive reinforcement. He surrounds himself with positive people who believe in him and support his goals. And he engages in a variety of activities that allow him to accrue wins and offset losses. If you pay attention to confident people you’ll notice they get small wins in many ways to build their winner effect momentum.

Due to this careful construction of a life based on winning, confident men have very different perspectives on life. They live different from unconfident men, and thus see the world different.

The greatest hazard of unconfidence is lack of faith. I hope that in this book, I’ve managed to excite you about the potential you can unlock in your own life by increasing your confidence. Yet I have no doubt there are some unconfident readers browsing these pages right now saying, “There is no way I could do this. I am just too far away from having a confident mindset. Confident men are too different from me.”

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There’s no easy way around that. After all, it is the lack of confidence that makes a reader like this unconfident about his ability to learn confidence. How do you shatter this Catch-22 and get the unconfident man to believe he can become confident?

Yet I suspect any man reading this book has at least confidence that there is something he can learn to do and use that will get results. These tools are still within his grasp.

Once he begins to use them, and the confidence begins to build, he begins the long, slow (or sometimes not so slow) climb... from confused, dispirited, unconfident man to clear, buoyed, confident one instead.

Is Success Down to Odds or Appeal?

Before we wrap this book up, I want to talk about one more point. That is whether confident men’s success comes down to the attractiveness boost confidence provides... or the more work and harder work confident individuals put in to succeed.

The truth is, more confidence serves as a double win. It delivers more results because it makes you more attractive, more persuasive, and it makes others like you more. However, it also enables you to go out and get more results yourself. That’s because it encourages you to chase success and builds up momentum that motivates you to take shots and give yourself chances.

To understand that second point, think of it like this. You have an unconfident man who believes women will reject him. So, over the course of the next 30 days, he doesn’t flirt with girls, and doesn’t ask any girl for a phone number or date. On the other side, you have a confident man who believes women will like him. So, over the same 30 days, he flirts with every attractive girl he meets (plus some unattractive ones), and asks a half dozen women out on dates. Even if everything else between them is the same, how much more likely is the confident man to get dates, girlfriends, and sex than the unconfident one? He’s a lot more likely, isn’t he?

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The confidence helps from an appeal standpoint. It makes him more attractive. Yet, the sheer raw fact that he is out there and he takes more shots also means he has a much larger net to sweep success up in. The man who takes little action has a much smaller net and will see far fewer returns.

This “how many shots do you take” effect isn’t only true in dating. In careers, there’s a link between confidence and networking, and a link between networking and career outcomes (Forret & Dougherty, 2004). Confidence drives individuals to network more, which leads to more job offers, promotions, and pay raises.

In dating, the confidence effect extends beyond just taking more shots, too. It even extends to how “lucky” a man is likely to be with any single girl. If there is this one girl you like a lot, how likely are you to get her? The more confident you are, the more likely you are... Due to what researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park dub a “wishful thinking self-fulfilling prophecy” (Lemay & Wolf, 2016). These researchers found some men are able to “flip” girls they like from “uninterested” to “interested.” The key quality of the successful men? Confidence – they believed they’d be able to change these girls’ minds. The girls found this confidence attractive, and, at least some of the time, changed their minds and agreed to dates.

Confidence makes you more attractive, and that helps you succeed more. Yet it also encourages you to take more shots, and that helps you succeed more too.

Confidence functions on a variety of levels to get you more success. It is probably the single greatest predictor of a man’s success in his dating, career, and just about everywhere else. That’s because with confidence, a man will do what he needs to do to achieve success. Without it, he often won’t take the steps needed to build up steam and acquire those initial results that later results build and expand on.

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Ironhearted Confidence

So that’s it. We’ve defined what confidence is (faith in one’s ability to achieve desired outcomes)... Why it’s so attractive to women (it serves as a coal mine canary about whether a number of other qualities that are harder to possess are in good order or not)... And whether it’s inborn or not (verdict: some of it is, but much of it isn’t).

We discussed the difference between real and fake confidence (people are good at sniffing out fakes, and real confidence buoys you yourself in ways faking it just can’t)... How to build real confidence (altering your environment to make self-control easier, building up momentum to take advantage of the winner effect, and making use of positive self-talk key among these)... And even gave you a few small tools to help you “fake it till you make it” while you work on the longer-term goal of real, honest-to-goodness confidence.

Finally, we talked about how confident men approach life differently from unconfident men (confident men take more shots and shake off setbacks more easily because they build lives that funnel them wins). And we looked at whether the success of confident men is due to the increased attractiveness confidence affords, the increased shot-taking confidence leads to, or both (verdict: both).

We’re going to go much, much deeper into practical training to help you succeed with women and dating in One Date and The Dating Artisan, so I hope you will join us for this course. The #1 key to ironhearted confidence is faith in your own capability and effectiveness, and that means knowing you have the mindsets and tools to get the job done. I want to make sure you have those, and getting them to you is why I built these programs. I’ll send you more details on them in the coming days, so do keeps your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, we still have one more lesson left in this 7-day mini course: on how use psychology’s “Reward Theory” to

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date and sleep with girls. This is our final lesson – and the final video interview with me – before we conclude these seven days. Be sure to tune in tomorrow, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this book.

References

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