Just a few minutes ago, I was walking down the street, my internal radar urgently scanning for a place to sit down and get a coffee, when I saw her:
A pretty girl, sitting by herself, at a shady cafe, and pulling out a laptop.
Now in the megalopolis of Zagreb, Croatia, where I am for the next few days, the laptop in a cafe is a good tell that the girl is not a local, but is a foreigner.
And in my experience, foreign girls, sitting by themselves at a cafe in a foreign land, are sometimes ready to talk and laugh.
So I asked myself, why don’t I marry the necessary (coffee) and the pleasant (talking to this girl)?
And I sat down at the cafe, at a table right next to the girl, but at a nonconfrontationally diagonal angle.
On closer inspection, everything about the girl confirmed she was not a local. A nose ring. A tattoo of a feather on the outside of her wrist. A poofy floral-print shirt and jean shorts.
I started running through a few possible ways to open up a conversation.
The waitress came to take my order. I ordered, nonchalantly looked at the girl again, and got back to my scheming.
Another waiter came, and brought out the girl’s order, a croissant and a coffee. “Oh thank you,” the girl said in English, a big smile on her face.
My scheming intensified. I looked at her laptop, which had an interesting marble-print case.
“Maybe I could ask her about that,” I said to myself. “But first let me go to the bathroom.” I got up, went, came back.
In spite of my secret hopes, the girl was still there. She shifted in her seat and looked at me inquiringly.
I sat back down. A feeling of dread started to settle over me.
My mind ran over familiar gambits for starting a conversation with a girl. Direct compliment? Grandfatherly inquiry about her laptop case? An assumption about where she’s from? “Are you from Boston? You sound like you’re from Boston.”
But hold on. Let me switch gears for a second.
A few days ago, I got a question/comment from a reader. She was encouraging me to write about mindset, specifically the mindset it takes to take action, when action is really the only thing missing for almost certain success.
I don’t know too much about mindset. But I find it a mysterious thing.
Why is it that among two people, equally capable and filled with desire, one will take action and the other won’t?
Equally mysteriously, why will a person take action in one situation in life, but be blocked by some unseen force in another situation?
For example, I have started conversations with literally thousands of strange, unfamiliar, but attractive girls in my life.
And not only started conversations.
I’ve had fun interactions with many of these girls, and found many of them ready to talk and laugh. In other words, I have plenty of reference experiences telling me this can be an enjoyable affair for all parties involved.
Any yet, as I’m sure you can guess, I didn’t ask the girl today if she is from Boston. I didn’t make any connoisseur-like comment about her laptop case. And I didn’t tell her she looks very nice.
Instead, I sat there for a few minutes more, my dead, shark-like eyes staring off into empty space… I finished my coffee… I paid, I got up and I left.
So I don’t know too much about mindset. But I do know something about process. And I can tell you one procedural thing I’ve figured out, which helps me take action and get closer to success:
And that’s to never chew myself out.
This might sound counterintuitive. It goes against all the sports hero movies we’ve seen for decades, where a bitter defeat leads to a lot of agonized soul searching, and a new, desperate determination to come back and win, no matter what it takes.
And maybe that really is what it takes for you. But as for me:
I’ve noticed that chewing myself out never does me any good. Either before the big moment. Or after.
So after I got up from that cafe, after a brief moment of irritation with myself, I shrugged my shoulders.
Because I have a process of getting myself back in the groove of talking to girls. It’s a bunch of personal strategies I’ve worked out over years of similar experience, by channeling the energy I would have spent on chewing myself out… into thinking about what I could do differently the next time.
I’ll put that process into action soon. Maybe as soon as I finish writing up this email.
I’m not sure if this is relevant to you in any way.
But if you find yourself blocked by mysterious forces from taking action, in areas of your business or your personal life… and what’s more, if you find yourself agonizing over that fact… then it might be worth remembering to shrug your shoulders, and to transfer your energy from chewing yourself out to something more productive.
Anyways, that’s my free tip for today.
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