Cara’s Blog

I haven’t written a blog for quite some time. I get to feeling I’m wasting my time. Then I get a lovely little comment like Arthur’s, and a few others who actually give me the feedback I ask for at the end of my ‘Secrets’, and I feel energised to write again.

Relationships are not easy. I don’t care if their romantic or sibling or workmate relationships. They are all mine fields. I think this is because we all put so much importance on every little thing that is said or done. We often read more into it than is actually there.

Well women do anyway. Supposedly you guys don’t. For us, a silence of any length means that there’s something wrong. And usually that ‘the something wrong’ is us. We go back through the most recent interactions and look for clues as to what we said or did wrong.

We ask you, ‘What’s wrong?’ And you say ‘Nothing’, but we know there is and we big it up until it’s a mountain.

I never understood this phenomenon until I read ‘Men are from Mars…etc’ and Gray says that what ‘Nothing’ actually means is…’Nothing I feel like talking about right now…’

If that’s the case, if that’s actually what you mean, then we women will go into even deeper levels of paranoia. ‘Why don’t you want to talk about it now? What have we done that’s so bad that you don’t want to talk about it now?’ We exhaust ourselves trying to work it out.

The down side for you guys in all this is that when you finally feel like talking about it, or have gotten over whatever has upset you…and it maynot have been us… we may very well have gone.

You see, we can’t live with that sort of silence. ‘Nothing’ is a BIG deal to us. And if we get too many ‘Nothings’ then our anxiety reaches a peak where we burn out … and stop feeling and/or we go elsewhere. And that’s when you guys usually go ‘What happened? What did I say?’

We women are pretty good at body language, which makes it seem like we’re mind readers. But we aren’t. And we’re egocentric enough to think that if you’ve got a problem, then it has to be with us. You’re the centre of our world, so we assume we are the centre of yours.

So if you care for her, and want her to hang around, tell her when something is eating at you. You don’t have to get into details if you don’t want. But just let her off the hook.

When she says ‘What’s wrong?’ use it as a cue to work out what you are feeling in that moment… and tell her, even if it’s just ‘ Nothing much, just tired.’ Or ‘Bad day at work…don’t want to talk about it. Just want to forget it.’

You have to add the last little bit because she’ll try to get you to talk about it, because she knows she feels better after talking about a problem. She therefore thinks you will too. And maybe she’s right. But that’s your choice. So tell her what you want to do about it, and once she ‘gets’ that, she’ll feel OK.

If she’s done something- and there are times she has annoyed or angered you- tell her so, if it’s something that is really important. If you’re just in a bad mood and tetchy then tell her that too. ‘Could you stop talking for a while, I’m in a really lousey mood and can’t handle the talking thing right now…’

You may think she’ll get upset if you tell her, and she will, a bit. But she’d rather know that not know what’s bugging you. She will try to fix it if she knows. She can’t if she doesn’t.

I’m not sure why this has come up as a topic for this blog. I guess its just one of the biggies I see that get in the way of perfectly good relationships. Relationships of any kind. And if you want them to continue… even the kind of relationship you have with me here on this site…then silence or ‘Nothing’ may mean you lose something you really value…

Think about it…

x Cara

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqantZJ6WwM

There’s a very powerful message in the Easter Story, whether you’re a Christian or not. And I don’t mean the most obvious one- ‘Don’t stand out from the crowd or you get nailed to a cross!’

I mean the idea of sacrificing the old to make room for the new. Easter is not just about nailing someone to a cross. It’s about rebirth. About something amazing, world changing, coming out of a death, out of an ending, out of a horrifying experience.

I talk about not needing to have a personality transplant to become good with women. Essentially that’s accurate. But there are parts of your existing personality- behaviors, habitual thinking, that have to go, if you’re going to get really good with women.

All of us have ‘stuff’ from the past cluttering up our lives in the present. This often painful, emotional ‘stuff’ sits there like a stone in our gut, weighing us down.

Why don’t you just get rid of it, if it’s having such a bad effect on you? Because it’s become part of you. It’s a memory or series of memories that defines who you are. If you let it go, then it’s like losing a little bit of who you are.

But to move on in your life, to be confident and in control in your romantic life, as well as you daily life, you have to let go of those old memories. You have to reduce your baggage. You have to put to rest those little ‘bits’ you see as part of you.

The scientists tell us that when a traumatic event happens we haven’t got time to process it properly. Like an overstretched secretary, we just throw files in anywhere, just so we can cope with the moment. It’s these files that have been thrown in anywhere that cause us grief. Massive grief. They create stress and anxiety, they lower our immune system, they affect the way we relate to the world.

For computer types, you might understand the importance of spending time sorting through these past events, getting them filed away properly, in this way: When you defragment your files, a slow and tedious process, you have more useable space on your hard drive, so your system runs more effectively. Your computer isn’t wasting valuable time trying to find misplaced files.

Another interesting thing happens when you start defragging your human computer. By looking at painful experiences, you get to see them from a distance, get perspective. When you file them where they belong, you subtly change the memories. You subtly change the events.

This phenomenon first came to light when the police were interviewing witnesses of crimes. They found that if they slid in what they expected to hear, the witness picked up the cues and adjusted their memory of the event accordingly.

So, if the policeman was sure it was a male perp and said ‘What was he wearing?’, the perp’s memory shifted slight. If they weren’t sure if it was a man or woman, they start to ‘remember’ it was a man. They weren’t faking it, or lying to please the police. They really started to superimpose these new bits of information onto the old. Until the whole witnessed event could become something completely different.

You can use this memory shuffle to your advantage. Instead of turning away from painful past events- trying to forget they ever happened, try pulling them out, brushing them off and seeing just how accurate your thinking was back then.

We don’t think straight when crisis hits. So getting your thoughts straight about the trauma after the event is crucial.

And when you do this, you let go of the rock in your gut. It dissolves. And you feel lighter and newer, ‘reborn’ in a small but crucial way. Ready to start life afresh! See the world with new eyes. A really important message, courtesy of Easter.

As you may have gathered from my products and my writing, I’m rather BIG on anything to do with self-development. It’s what has got me where I am today, and it is what will move me forward in my life tomorrow.

The big difference between me and a lot of the other people who are helping guys get dates is that I use a little help from Presence. It’s crazy to try to do anything in your life the hard way. It is so much easier to do it by tapping into your very own Inner Turbo-Charged energy source.

Once you learn Presence you can take any of the other strategies and processes out there and make them work! Until you tap into Presence your chances of success, especially as a shy guy, are greatly reduced. Why?

Because of your primitive brains programing. It’s entrenched and tricky. Trying to untangle the programming and correct the glitches is a painstaking and tedious process. It’s a bit like a newbie trying to find a virus on a computer. But with Presence it’s like hiring the best computer mind in the country and letting them loose to track the virus and destroy it.

And finding Presence is a heck of a lot easier than finding a top gun computer expert who doesn’t charge the earth

All my products are designed to help you access Presence and then use it to get what you want in life. For most of you it’s the woman of your dreams.

I’ve also found this great website that describes itself as ” the most complete guide to information about Self -Improvement, Personal Growth and Self Help on the Internet. It is designed to be an organized directory, with articles and references to thousands of other Web Sites on the World Wide Web.”

If you want to know more about what I’m talking about you’ll find it on this site Self Improvement from SelfGrowth.com 

My stuff is tailored to one aspect of your life. But you have so many other parts of yourself and your life. Why not explore Self-Growth once you’ve got your feet wet using my stuff.

See me and my products as your starting point to a whole new you! And follow the yellow brick road that SelfGrowth offers!

x Cara

I was watching a TV show today where a guy approached a pretty woman at the bar and tried to chat her up. He wasn’t much to look at but he had plenty of confidence.

The girl treated him like he was something she’d stepped in. And it reminded me of times I’d seen something similar happen in pubs and clubs.

One time it was a new friend of mine who did it. She was gorgeous, and the guys were buzzing like flies. One rather cocky young guy was persistant, and she seemed to be interested. Then she turned on him and made some scaithing comment that sent him away, dazed, with his tail between his legs.

I was horrified and asked her what she’d done that for. She said, ‘You can’t let guys stake their territory or you’ll be stuck with them all night.’

‘OK, so you didn’t like him. Why did you have to be so nasty about it?’ I asked, as confused as the guy who had just left.

‘Because it’s quick and they get the message.’

Needless to say, I stopped the friendship. I don’t have time for people who are thoughtlessly cruel. Not only do they hurt people, but women who do this give the rest of us a bad name and make it even harder for guys to come up and talk to us.

So please, don’t give up on women just because you may have experienced one or more of these nasty knock-backs. There are jerks on both sides of the sexual divide.

Maybe you should take a leaf from our book. We make guys prove to us they aren’t jerks before we take them seriously. And so, reserve judgement until the woman shows you she’s a nice person. If she shows you she’s a jerk by using a nasty knock-back, to you or someone else, see her for what she is and walk away. Don’t take it personally.

And if you are getting a lot of these kind of knock-backs maybe you need to reconsider the type of woman you are attracted to, or the way you approach them. Maybe you’re trying to hard, or you’re role modelling jerks. Girls consider themselves well within their rights to act like a jerk if I guy is behaving like a jerk.

If I asked you to pick out the shy guy or girl in the room, you’d probably point to the quiet one in the corner looking uncomfortable. And the odds are you’d be right. But there’s probably an even shyer person at the centre of that lively bunch at the bar. And that person may be telling the jokes or stories, to entertain his friends.

Shy people who have an extrovert personality often have to develop ways to get what they want. Ways to cope with their vulnerability and fear so they can be with people.

For those who think that an extrovert is an out-going person and an introvert is a quiet person, let me give you a more accurate definition. An extrovert is a person who gets energy from being with people. An introvert gets his energy from being alone. That often means the extrovert IS out-going. He has to be out there with people, interacting with them, to charge his batteries.

The introvert, on the other hand, is quite happy to sit on the side-lines, saying little, because he’ll get his batteries charged later, when he’s at home watching TV or playing Xbox, on his own. If he’s shy, then he doesn’t have to stress himself out by getting out there and risking rejection. He may not feel good about himself for being shy, but he does OK.

On the other hand, the extrovert has to be out there with people or he feels drained and unhappy. Too much time on his own and this guy becomes stressed to the eyeballs. It’s not that he feels better about himself when he’s centre of the crowd, it’s that that’s the only place he can lift his spirits.

But there’s a Catch 22 in this for the extrovert. To be centre of attention means you risk drawing negative reactions from people. And the shy person has a very thin skin. It hurts the shy guy a lot more to suffer any sort of rejection than it does a non-shy person. Even a minor slight like someone turning away to talk to someone else, is more painful than the situation warrants.

Scientists have found that shy people have a very over-active part of the brain: the part that controls our adrenalin. So when a shy person is in a new situation they over-react to that situation. It feels more dangerous than it probably is. Shy people are also more sensitive in other areas of their life too. And they are usually more intelligent and focused than their counterparts. (There are some very big pluses in being naturally shy.)

I met a guy who was a professional comedian not so long ago. He was an absolute crack-up. People loved him. He found it easy to get women into bed. He seemed to have the perfect life. To everyone else.

In private, he confided to me that he wanted to get into a committed relationship. He was tired of the ‘one night stand’ life-style. He was lonely.
But women didn’t want more than sex from him, he said. None of them took him seriously. He ‘used to be’ shy he told me, but then he’d taken up comedy, and had learned to be a showman. He’d overcome his shyness.

But the sad fact was that he hadn’t. He was a shy extrovert who had created a great mask behind which he could hide very successfully. But his natural shyness meant that he couldn’t come out from behind the mask, especially in vulnerable situations like romance, where rejection is even more dangerous.

So he stayed behind his clown’s mask, lonely but safe. Just like his introvert brother sitting in the corner. Coping with life but not fully living it.

There are ways to come to terms with shyness. There are ways to find love and happiness. It isn’t a lost cause. Understanding what you are doing, on an unconscious level is the first step. Awareness is always the first step to a better life. Are you willing to take that first step?

Most of the time I encourage shy men to see their shyness as an advantage rather than something that needs ‘curing’. But there are levels of shyness. When shyness becomes debilitating, that is it’s having a major negative impact on your life, then you need to work on it.

Shyness at that intense level is often called social phobia. And it is as excruciating as any other phobia.

My “Getting THE Girl Visualization” is an excellent place to start to offset some of the effects of this kind of shyness. I get you to relax and imagine yourself doing and saying things to a beautiful woman while you are totally relaxed and feeling calm and wonderful.

If, after using this Visualization for a few weeks, you haven’t started to feel an improvement in your ability to handle contacts with women/girls then you may need to look to other methods that can assist you.

One of my favourite techniques for overcoming any kind of emotional issue is EFT. This is kind of a pressure point process that works like acupuncture- but without the needles. I did a course in it a few years ago when I was having trouble standing up in front of people and talking about a rather painful experience I’d been through. I needed to be able to talk about this event as part of my work at the time, but every time I’d get up to talk, I’d be overwhelmed with tears. Very embarrassing for me and my audience.

I did this $500 weekend workshop. (No, I’m not suggesting you do the same! There are far cheaper ways of getting the same results, bare with me). It was fascinating learning how the process worked, and I’ll explain a little about it in a minute. But the end result is what you want to hear about first. So at the end of the course the presenter asked anyone who had an issue with speaking in public to come up. I put my hand up and went up on the stage.

Now I have no issue with public speaking at any other time. Hey, I was a teacher for years, you have to be able to talk in front of an audience when you do that for a living.

But this wasn’t the same thing. This was just about one subject. So the guy asked me to explain my situation and I got all teary and choked up just trying to tell him about my problem. He zipped into the ‘process’, running me through the different crazy little routines you have to do. Tapping your face and your chest and your hands, making your eyes look left and right, silly stuff really. Then he measured my level of anxiety about my subject. It had come down already but wasn’t gone.

He ran through a few more sets (we are talking about a few minutes at the most for these processes- it’s so simple you really can’t see how it COULD work), then asked me how I was feeling. My anxiety had gone.

He asked me to prove it, turning to the audience with a flourish. Now the audience had be watching my process all the way through (the whole 3 or 4 minutes) but I hadn’t really talked about my issue. I’d only got upset when I mentioned I had this issue.

So actually talking to the audience about my ’stuff’ was a true test of the effectiveness of this EFT process. I glanced at the audience and started to work out what to say. There were no welling tears. I started to talk about my tragedy, and although I spoke with feeling, there was no overwhelming emotions to embarrass me. I was in control. It really worked.

I went on to regularly talk about my past as part of my work and never had a moment’s unease about it. I was totally emotionally in control whenever the subject came up.

I was so impressed that I tried the process on my son who was afraid of the dark. ( Yes, another one of my deep dark secrets is out. I have a son) We ran through the process a few times, and he thought it was stupid but did it to please his crazy mum.

He never slept with the light on from that night on.

So, I think I can safely recommend this process to you if you have shyness that is stopping you from really enjoying your life.

I’m going to put a little link in here to a site that produces some excellent videos of the EFT process. They’re very cheap and are as good as doing it face to face with someone.

EFT Video Coaching at www.myGenie.tv

Try the social phobia video. It’s an instant dowload and it costs about $10. You will pay a little less if you don’t take the Pay Pal option. And it’s not so much messing about.

There are some excellent people out there doing this stuff, but I find the myGenie people really no-nonsense. And being able to watch a how-to vid in the privacy of you own home, is a lot less embarrassing than doing all this crazy tapping with someone watching!

So, give it a try. It’s gotta be better than what you’re living with at the moment. But don’t get rid of your shyness completely- remember, a lot of us women find shy guys very appealing!

x Cara

PS Go on do it- what have you got to lose except your fears? EFT Video Coaching at www.myGenie.tv

I’ve been reading some great Comments on Disqus (.com for those who don’t know it) It started years ago from a personal blog where I guy was damning ‘nice guys’, more precisely bitter ‘nice guys’. The original on a site called Shakesville really went to town on these guys (he saw himself as an ex one),calling them wingers only angry because they put in a lot of time and effort on a woman only to have her not come across because she saw him as a nice guy.

There were so many threads for this story that I realised this guy had really touched on a nerve, on both sides of the sexual divide. And the comments have continued to rage on, right up till the present. I would love to have been able to put my 2 bits worth in, but although I joined up, I couldn’t work out how to comment. (Newbie strikes again)

So I decided to write my own comment on my blog just so I got my say.

In my Secrets I talk about Women loving men who love women. I think that this thread of comments really shows this very well. The frustration of women who find out what they thought was genuine affection, wasn’t anything more than another ‘ploy’ to get into her pants. And the resentment experienced by men when they perceive they’ve missed out on the doggie treats after jumping through all the women’s hoops. They put their failure down to being Nice Guys, as opposed to Bad Boys.

I explained why some women go for these Bad Boys in my Secrets. So I won’t repeat myself here. And this isn’t what’s really going on here anyway.

I’ve known a few guys who’ve made a habit of becoming ‘best friends’ with hot girls. They play at friendship with the hope that one night when they’re drunk and vulnerable they’ll drop their guard and have sex with their ‘friend’ (even if they have a boyfriend or husband already).

I don’t think they know what they’re doing. I don’t think it’s a conscious thought to offer friendship with the expectation of sex, somewhere down the line. But I think it’s there.

I noticed it when I was married. (Yes, guys I was married for quite a few years way back when- to a ‘nice guy’ who was also a ’shy guy’. I wasn’t giving you hype when I said I like shy men. I’ve always liked shy men!) I had what I considered really good male friends. People I shared with, cried with, hung out when I was bored with. You know, ‘friends’. And although they were friends with my husband as well,he was an ‘add on’ because of his relationship with me.

Now that’s how girl-friendships usually work. I never thought it was any different with guys. Until one of my friends found himself a lady. I was so happy for him. Really happy. And I accepted that I didn’t see him much after that, because that’s also what happens with friends when they’re in the throws of first love.

But here’s the deal. This ‘friend’ started treating me like an aquaintance. When we were out anywhere he’d be all buddy buddy with my husband and treat ME like the ‘add on’.

I didn’t get it. I wondered if I’d said or done something to upset him. But no, it wasn’t that. In the end I just had to give up and let it go. Wrote it off to the inexplicable vagueries of friendship.

Until it happened again. And again. Then, when I was once more single, I got a new male friend who was being the ‘friend’ to an unattainable girl (his best mate’s girlfriend). And I listened to what was going on for him. What he really wanted!

So now I understand that falling for the unattainable is just a way to keep from getting involved. By pining after a girl who did nothing but treat them as a ‘mate’ (and I don’t mean that in sexual terms), then their day-dreams could remain untarnished.

A few days ago I wrote about following your dreams. I think this is a warped version of that. While ever they were following me or some other unattainable girl, these guys had a direction. That it wasn’t going to happen, really didn’t matter, because they were  enjoying the journey. When they were ready to get a new dream they’d pick a girl that was attainable and move on. But they usually had to justify moving on, in their own minds, by resenting the unattainable girl.

It’s not really a question of being ‘nice’ or not. It’s about the different kinds of relationships you can have with a person. Sometimes people see it as ’settling’ for friendship when you want more. But it’s not that at all. It’s like saying you settle for a sister when you want more, or a son, or a father. They’re all categories of love. One is not necessarily better or more than another. They are just different.

And if I woman or girl sees you as her friend, then you are damned lucky. You’ll probably last far longer than any of her boyfriends. But don’t think that you’ll change categories the more indispensible to her you become. She might love you more because of what you do for her, but the type of love won’t change. And mostly, you don’t want it to change anyway. Really, deep down.

Think about the girls you are ‘friends’ or ‘mates’ with who you suspect ‘like’ you, but you don’t like them back- that way … because … well … just because.  I rest my case!

To many people, being in front of an adoring crowd would be the most wonderful experience in the world. To have thousands of people clapping and whistling and chanting their name would give them a high that would be hard to beat.

But to others, the very thought of being Centre Stage, under the Spotlight, is torturous. They’d rather have teeth pulled, without anaesthetic!

Shy guys often fall into this last category. It’s part of that ‘don’t stand out’ mechanism that you know works to keep you safe. And being centre stage is very unsafe. Perfect spot to cop a rotten tomato in the face!

But at the same time as you’re taking three steps away from that spotlight, there’s another part of you that is trying to push you into it. The part that wants you to be loved and surrounded by adoring fans. The part of you that wants you to get THE Girl.

So here’s the dilemma: you want to come out of the shy guy shadows so that the girls notice you, but you don’t want to attract attention because it might be negative attention.

And even if it’s not, sometimes getting nice things happen can push you way out of your comfort zone and that creates a lot of anxiety. And angst is not good.

So what do you do about it? That’s where I step in. My 60 minute visualization ‘Getting THE Girl’ actually gets you to imagine yourself on centre stage under a spotlight. And only good stuff happens. Really good stuff.

The first time you try the visualization you might have a negative reaction to this scene. It might be anything but relaxing and pleasant. But that’s what getting your body really relaxed first is all about. Scientists have found that you can’t think anxious and have a relaxed body. They go together. The mind/body connection.

So by getting really relaxed physically, and then imagining yourself in a situation like centre stage, with lots of positive stimulus, you start to get used to the situation. You can’t help but be relaxed about it. You start feeling comfortable in that place, getting all that wonderful attention.

And once you get comfortable with it in your mind, then when you put yourself in far less dramatic situations where you attract attention (let’s face it, not many of us will ever have the chance to really be centre stage getting that sort of audience response!) it will feel like a piece of cake. You can handle being Centre Stage. In fact you may come to like it.

But you don’t have to go that far. You just have to have your negative predictions replaced with positive ones, so your brain can’t set your body into ‘lock down’ or ‘fight or flight’ to deal with a perceived danger.

And if you aren’t on high-alert you can think and react normally. And attract the attention of that pretty girl on the other side of the room. Because, when you notice she’s looking at you, you won’t react in your usual way. Instead of immediately thinking she’s only looking at you because you’re odd, you’ll be so used to getting admiring glances you’ll smile back. Without thinking about it. Yes, it’ll be totally automatic. No thought involved. You’ll just smile back.

And it’ll feel easy. And it’ll feel good. And you’ll want more. So you’ll go talk to her. And that’ll be easy too, because you’re brain is used to this too. And if by some fluke of chance she actually was looking at you because your fly was undone or your shirt was not in this season’s colours, you won’t care.

Why not? Because you’re used to people admiring you, and when one doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. Or you actually start wondering what’s wrong with her? 

No, this is not living in a fool’s paradise. This is how confident people think. They expect a good reaction from the people they approach because that’s what they usually get. And when it doesn’t happen that way they come up with a reason for it that doesn’t make it their fault.

That’s the difference between you and them at the moment. While nothing is ever their fault, everything is always your fault. And I mean everything. And if being a little more like the confident guy is what’s needed, then that’s what you have to do. Or it really will be your fault!

So, if you get my visualization audio and play it once and have a panic attack being under the spotlight, you will need to do some heavy duty self-talk to get yourself listening to it again, and again, and again, until you can stand there and take all that admiration.

Just remember. The confident guy who usually goes home with the girl would have no trouble standing in the limelight.

And doing it my way is a heck of a lot more fun and safe than doing it for real over and over again. That’s the only other way you’d get comfortable attracting attention. At least with me guiding your journey there is absolutely no chance you’ll get pelted with tomatoes, unless you’re doing the pelting yourself! Think about it.

Watch this one it’s seriously fun!

Body Language to Attract Girls