You see an attractive girl walk by.

Part of you wants to ask her out, but you know that women are only interested in good looking guys, and you know that you are physically unattractive.

If you were to ask her out, you’d just get rejected. There’s no point in trying.

If you were to ask this girl out, there’s a risk you would get rejected.

But by not asking her out in the first place, you guaranteed rejection: negative beliefs become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

How Your Beliefs Become Your Reality

 

When I was 16, my high school crush invited me to a New Year’s party. At one point, she said, “There’s been something I’ve wanted to do,” and she leaned in to kiss me.

Instead of kissing her like a normal person, I literally dodged the kiss and proceeded to run away from the party. I thought this girl was pranking me: the possibility that she really wanted to kiss me didn’t even enter my mind.

The ways you’ve rejected yourself probably aren’t quite that humiliating, but we’ve all hesitated to make a move when we liked a girl because we assumed she would reject us.

A lot of men do this with every woman they’re attracted to: they reject themselves hundreds of times because they can’t imagine a girl might reciprocate their interest.

Fortunately, not only are negative beliefs a self-fulfilling prophecy, but so are positive beliefs.

If you think women find you attractive, you will you feel more inclined to take risks like asking a girl on a date or leaning in for the kiss: you assume she probably likes you, so why wouldn’t you go for it?

And of course, when you actually make a move, your chances of getting a date are going to be greater than if you didn’t even try.

Even if you currently believe that women find you unattractive and that your situation is hopeless, you can transform your mindset over time.

As your beliefs start to shift, your results will change, too.

To truly change your beliefs about yourself, you must find evidence that:

a. The negative beliefs you currently have are untrue.

b. The positive beliefs you want to cultivate are true.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter whether the evidence you find is objectively accurate, all that matters is your interpretation.

For instance, let’s say you’re walking around town and a girl makes eye contact with you - but she immediately looks away.

On the one hand, you could tell yourself she averted your gaze because she thought you looked creepy.

On the other hand, you could tell yourself she looked away because she was attracted to you and she felt shy.

You have no way to know for certain which of these is true. But your interpretation of what that girl’s glance meant can reinforce either negative beliefs or positive beliefs.

If you tell yourself the girl thought you looked creepy, that will fuel a limiting mindset and give you an excuse to avoid approaching her (and other women in the future).

But if you assume that the girl looked away because she thought you were hot, you’re giving yourself a reason to take more risks - women do find you attractive, so you might as well start putting yourself out there.

You can apply this line of thinking to anything a woman does:

• If a girl touches her hair as she walks by, you could think she was just doing it out of habit, or you could think she did it because she saw you and felt attracted to you.

• When a girl asks if you have a lighter, you could assume she just wanted a lighter, or you could assume she’s using that as an excuse to approach you because she finds you attractive.

• If you see a cute girl standing near you in a club, you could assume that she’s there because of her friends, or you could assume she’s there because she wanted to stand close to the hot guy she saw (you).

You may be thinking, that’s cool, but, “What about when a woman actually rejects you? Don’t you just have to face facts and accept that when you get rejected it means you’re not attractive?”

If you tell yourself that you got rejected because you weren’t good looking enough, because you’re poor, or because of your race, then that rejection is going to have a negative influence on your beliefs: rejection will become emotional fuel for self-pity and self-victimization.

You can focus on all the things that are out of your control that got you rejected, or you can focus on the things that are within your control that got you rejected.

So, instead of thinking, “She rejected me because I’m Asian.” You might think, “She probably has a boyfriend” Or even, “She was just overwhelmed because she was so attracted to me it made her nervous.”

You will never know with 100% certainty why any particular girl rejected you.

Truthfully, it could have been because of your height or your race. But it also could have been for any number of other reasons - her mood, her sexual orientation, or maybe she really was intimidated by you.

Now, I’m not advocating you become fully delusional. It is important to learn from your mistakes.

But while you’re out meeting women, positive assumptions will create positive emotions, which will make you more attractive to women; regardless of how true those assumptions are.

Start cultivating beliefs that will help you achieve your goals, even if those beliefs seem ridiculous to you right now.

When you see an attractive woman walk by, tell yourself something like, “She wants a guy like me to approach her and sweep her off her feet, that would make her day.”

Proactively give fuel to beliefs that will inspire you to project positive energy and to take more action.

It might be irrational to think that every woman you meet finds you irresistibly attractive, but if you adopt that belief, you’re going to be much more likely to ask girls on dates, to lean in for the kiss, and to invite women home with you.

And although some of those women will reject you, some will like you enough to say yes.

Your belief that women are attracted to you will lead you to create opportunities, whereas the belief that women find you unattractive will take opportunities away from you.

 

Growth Mindset

 

Let’s be frank, I have never met someone who’s charisma is a 10/10, who’s sense of humor is a 10/10, and whose personality is as attractive as is humanly possible.

Every single person I’ve met has had plenty of leeway to make their personality more appealing.

In fact, even though I’ve had a lot of success with women in my life, there’s numerous ways in which I could improve my personality to become more attractive - and the same is true of everyone else.

Even though your physical appearance, your race, and other things outside of your control do play a role in dating, you shouldn’t waste your mental energy on those factors because I can guarantee you are not maximizing the factors that are under your control.

By focusing on things you can actively improve, you are empowering yourself to make positive changes.

But if you fixate on the factors outside of your control, like your race, height, and wealth(*) ,you are disempowering yourself and creating an excuse to feel bitter, both towards yourself and towards others.

Until you can legitimately say you’re a 10/10 in every aspect of success with women that’s within your control (your personality, the amount of action you’re taking, etc.), you have nothing to gain by thinking about how the factors outside your control are limiting you.

You can’t really know how much your height or physical appearance is getting in your way until you’ve mastered those elements that are within your control.

 

The Upward Spiral

 

Changing your beliefs is a long-term process, and although the effects of your efforts will be subtle at first, they will become profound over the course of weeks and months.

Understand: if you don’t take control of your beliefs, they will take control of you.

Take weight loss as an example. When you believe that you can’t lose weight because of your genetics, you won’t see any reason to count your calories or go to the gym.

Conversely, simply being open to the possibility that you can lose weight will inspire you to take action - maybe you should try that diet you heard about, maybe you should build a running habit.

Then, once your physique starts to change because of the work you put in, your internal beliefs will change in tandem and inspire to to take even more action. This becomes an upward spiral of personal growth.

The same is true in dating. Our mindset can take us on an upward spiral or a downward spiral.

The harsh reality is this: without conscious effort the default momentum is downward.

Fortunately, you can shift that momentum upwards by adopting the strategies and mindsets you just learned.

Footnotes:

To be fair, you can change your wealth, but only in the long-term. Similarly, you can improve your physical attractiveness, but it’s not a factor you can control within your interactions with women - it’s external to them. Improve those external factors over time, but when it comes to your interactions with women, you should focus on the things you could have done differently within the context of that interaction.