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The Psychology of Attraction

Lesson 18 from: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

The Psychology of Attraction

Lesson 18 from: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

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Lesson Info

18. The Psychology of Attraction

Lesson Info

The Psychology of Attraction

(applause) We've reached the love days. So yes, we're in day 18, my Psychology of Attraction, So my three goals for us today are to teach you the three secrets of attraction. What makes someone attractive? To talk about the science of men versus women, so what are some of the differences between the sexes. And the seven common obstacles that limit your attractiveness. What limits and diminishes attractiveness? I call them the attraction murderers. They're horrible for attraction. But first, we have a warm-up. I always love to start our days to get our juices flowing with a little warm-up. And here's what I want to say. Attraction is not only about romance. We are attracted to people we like, admire, and want to have in our lives. When I talk about attraction, I'm not only talking about physical or sexual attraction. I'm talking about the people we admire and just want to be around. We wanna to be around them, we wanna have them around. That's what attraction is all about. Which means...

that we have all kinds of crushes. I call them business crushes. These are people who I just admire professionally. I respect them, I want to be around their business. I have friend crushes, people who I just love to hang out with. And of course there are romantic crushes. So I wanna know for our warm-up what attracts you to someone? And I don't mean physically, although if you'd like to share that, you're welcome to. I wanna know what it is about someone that attracts them or not. And at home I want you to write in your workbook what are the three things that attracts you to someone. Allie, I saw that you raised your hand right away. I love that something hit for you. I love passion. Anyone that's passionate about what they're doing, even if it's like some totally arcane thing that I have no interest in, the fact that they love it attracts me. Yes, that spark, that passion, I love it. We talked a lot about that in segment five, about finding their fire, finding their spark. And also value language ties into that, as well. What else attracts you to someone? Yeah, Maggie? Positivity. Like I'm always attracted to the people that can find the good in the situation. Optimism and positivity. And our brains love it. There's a reason why we like that. It's our brains, it's very dopamine-producing for us. It makes us more creative thinkers. It increases our cognitive abilities. I saw a couple of other hands up. Ann, yeah? Highly opinionated people, actually, because I like stimulating conversation. Yeah, and that directness, it feeds you. I love it. Yeah, Erica? People that are self-assured and embrace their quirks. Yeah, love it, 'cause that is contagious, right? If people are like yeah, I'm gonna own my weirdness, we're like, well maybe I can own my weirdness too. Right, it's a kind of authenticity. So, I want to talk a little bit about attraction science. Researcher Monica Moore looked at attraction. Here's what she found, are you ready? It's not about looks. Attraction does not have to do with looks. Of course there's an element of physical attraction, but really attraction is about a lot of other things. And so today I wanna teach you the three secrets to attraction that have nothing to do with looks. The first one is called the growth mentality. Before I explain it, I want us to take a quiz to see where we fall on the growth spectrum. Are you ready? So in your workbook, you have these as well. You can answer these questions and follow along so that you know exactly what you are. So first, you have a certain amount, I want you to tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement on a scale of one to five. So, one being strongly disagree and five being strongly agree. You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can't really do much to change it. In the audience, I want you to hold up the number that you are. So five is that you strongly agree, and one is that you strongly disagree. I want you to hold up your number. Okay, oh good, we're across the board. A lot of loners, but still, we have a variety, I like it. Next one, your IQ is genetic. Do you strongly agree, or strongly disagree, I want you to hold up your numbers. One, three, two, three, okay, pretty low, could be because of this course, okay. You can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic skill set. On a scale of one to five, how do we agree or disagree? Oh good, across the board, I see fives, fours, ones, threes, okay. Your talent is an area, in an area, is something about you that you can't change very much. Specific area, talent-specific area. One to five, do we agree or strongly disagree? Alright, a lot of low numbers. Okay, oh, got a couple highs. Okay, this quiz is the mini version of the growth or fixed mentality quiz. That speaks to how we think about growth or change. The growth mentality, people who have the growth mentality, they believe that our intelligence, our talents, and our skills can be improved. This is research that's done by Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford. She's done amazing research on growth mentality. People who are fixed mentality, of a fixed mentality, they believe we are born with an innate intelligence, a set of talents and skills that can not be changed. Now, there's not a better or worse, but it does affect our attraction, it does affect our attractiveness. And our mentally affects our outlook on life, and here's how. The growth mentality, people who rank higher in the growth mentality, so they believe that intelligence and talents can be changed and they are not innate, they have lower levels of depression overall. They earn 57% more in salary negotiations. 57% more, just the belief that you can change and grow, and that your intelligence does not define you, that you can change it. 57% in salary negotiations, that's incredible. I mean, you don't see numbers like that in salary negotiations. And lastly, they report a much higher satisfaction with their relationships. So let's explore this a little bit more. The Columbia Brain Wave Lab, yes, there is a Columbia Brain Wave Lab, and they have the coolest research ever, did a study where they made participants take a quiz. A whole bunch of like, logic questions. And they put them in an MRI, and they told them the right and wrong answers. They put people in an MRI, and they said, okay, you got number one wrong, number four wrong, number three right, they gave them all their answers, and they watched their brain patterns as they were listening to those right and wrong answers. And here's what they found. During the wrong answer explanations, when they said you got number three wrong and here's why, people who had a fixed growth mentality, who picked a lot of the unchanging numbers, so they don't think that you can change, they had less activity in their brain. It was as if their brain was saying, I don't wanna hear why I got it wrong. Whereas growth mentality people had more activity in their brain during the wrong answers, they were crunching to try and figure out what did I do wrong, presumably so they could change it next time to do better. So the way that we hear, the way that we see our failures, changes depending on our growth or fixed mentality. Dr. Carol Dweck, she said it's her life work, her life's work to convince people that when you enter a new mindset, you enter a new world. That having a growth mentality allows you to forgive yourself, it allows you to know that you can change, it increases your happiness levels, and it shows you that your failures do not define you. So here's what it feels like in the fixed mentality area. I'm a failure. They wait for the perfect mate. I can't do it. They blame. They surround themselves and hire yes people. They never try anything they can't do well. Here's what it's like in the growth mentality. Not I'm a failure, I failed at this. Yeah, I didn't do so well at this. They grow with their mate, so they don't wait for the perfect person to come. They say okay, we're gonna change together. Instead of saying I can't do it, they say I can learn to do it. Instead of blaming, they change. They say okay, I did something wrong, I gotta change it. They hire the best people, not yes people. And they excel in many more areas, because they know what they've been given, what they've been born with is not all they've been given. They can change things, yeah? Is there a correlation with confidence? Absolutely, yes. So this is our skill number 21. Is that what makes you attractive, and actually it's what you guys talked about, right, like passion, spark, wanting to learn new things, wanting to try new things, being direct. I want us, for number 21, we have 33 people skills, that your intelligence, talents and skills can be improved, elevated, and changed if you desire it. If you want, you can change and improve absolutely anything. So how do we harness a growth mentality? Growth mentality makes us super attractive. We talked about optimism. Growth mentality people have higher levels of optimism. We talked about passion. Growth mentality makes us passionate about more things. We wanna excel in many areas. So how do we harness this? Three ways: goals, self-awareness, and learning this course. You just being here hints to me that you're probably already in a growth mentality. Most people who are watching this course at home, just the fact that you bought this course shows that you are already in a growth mentality. So we're already starting really high. The second way that you do that is with discomfort. You harness the growth mentality by owning our discomfort. I like to put myself in situations that put me out of my comfort zone, like the vow of silence, because I know that if I revel in it, the best change, the best ideas, the most creativity, the passion that I have comes from those moments of severe discomfort and understanding it's okay. I'm super uncomfortable right now, but I know it's for a purpose. I know that something's gonna change when I do it. So, I think that you should only do discomfort when you have science-based change. We only wanna be in discomfort if we know it's actually gonna work, which is one of the reasons why I want all of our skills and all of our action steps to be science-based. This is also the reason why I have so many workbook activities. The way that we harness growth mentality is we keep working even after the course. And that's why I have what's the most important thing you learned today? Every single day in this course that you have answered that question, you have harnessed your growth mentality. You have built neural pathways together. So we've already been working on this. You're already in that discomfort zone. That's why I'm like, tell me what you learned! Tell me your ah-ha moment! It's 'cause I'm forcing you to say I can learn something. I can change something. In your matrix, there is a secret, one more level that we haven't learned yet, which is in the middle ring, if you have a growth mentality, I want you to put a plus there. If you have a minus mentality, a fixed mentality, that's totally okay, I want you to put a minus in that row. That make sense? So in your matrix, that middle row, plus or minus, and you can do this also with people that you meet. This is a way to understand okay, this person has a fixed mentality. They think that intelligence and talents is everything they've been given, they were given at birth. That's a very important thing to know about someone. Right, if you wanna work with someone, you know that they're a fixed mentality, you trying to convince them that they can get better is a waste of your time. That is not the way that they wanna communicate, that's not how they believe they work. So you would be much better off tapping into emotions, or inspiration, which we're gonna talk about in the inspiration section. Does that make sense? Okay. Let's watch a video of someone answering one of our top 10 killer conversation starters, and see how we can notice right away her growth or fixed mentality. You will notice, with my killer conversation starters, that those questions are soliciting answers that tell us if someone has a fixed or a growth mentality. So let's watch this video and see what she is. What personal passion projects am I working on right now? I don't have one particular project I'm working on, but I had a goal that I started a few months ago where I wanted to take a class every month. So we live in the Bay area, which has so many amazing resources. So every month I've been trying to take a different class, which usually is just a one-day class. So I took a cocktail class, I took a macrame class, letterpress class, and there's one more. So it's a goal that I'm just trying to learn more. So, easy question, right? But right away we know that she makes learning a priority. She's like I wanted to learn this skill, this skill, this skill, I can do it. I can excel at many things, I can try many different things. We're gonna keep talking about the growth mentality throughout the course, because there's entire courses about growth and changing our innate skills, whether you have high interpersonal intelligence or low interpersonal intelligence. The second thing that's a secret of attraction is availability. So we talked about skill number nine, being nonverbally attuned. And research found that women showing availability nonverbally were approached more than women who were rated as more attractive. Okay, so this was repeated in many, many, many bar situations. Researcher Monica Moore, what they did, is she actually her research interns, this is a massive project. She had her research interns sit in bars all over the city night after night after night, and poll people in the bars on attractiveness, who they were going up to, what made them nervous. I mean, you guys are all getting my dating course after this and I explore that research in depth about what those researchers found. And this, I thought, was the most shocking finding of all, is that it wasn't the women in the bar who were the prettiest, who people thought were the most attractive. They were not the ones that got approached the most. It was the ones who showed availability nonverbal. So available nonverbal, luckily we've already learned the first one, which is fronting. Aiming your torso, and your toes, and your top towards someone that you would like to be either be approached by or someone that you would like to approach. Just having that open body language shows I'm in the game. I would like to be talked to. I would like to be approached. And that is the most attractive thing. More than physical looks, or physical attractiveness. The second aspect of nonverbal attraction is the three different types of gazing. Which I saw you smile, we learned this in our body language course. So, the reason why this is so important for attraction, because it's a nonverbal cue to someone else as to how you feel about them. So there are actually three different kinds of gazing. This is the patterns that our eyes make on someone else's face. So when you look at someone's face, our eyes make different patterns as we assess them. Here's the patterns. In business situations, power gazing happens, which means that we make patterns between their eyes and their forehead. We tend to stay quite high on their face in business situations. Leaders, alphas, stay very high on someone's face. They see your eyes and they go up to your forehead. In social situations, our gaze flips. So it drops down, it goes eye, eye, mouth. It's very interesting, 'cause I was in a business negotiation with someone and afterwards the negotiator was like, let's go get drinks, like that was rough, oof, it was hard, 'cause we were doing interrogations. He said, let's go get drinks. And all day he'd been power gazing with me, but once we got drinks, his gaze dropped. And I went ah, okay, we can have like a social relationship. I went from the business environment to the social environment. The last one is intimate gazing, so this is when our gaze drops much lower, okay. It's not chest, it's chest, okay? (laughter) It's a little bit higher in the chest. This is for both men and women. The reason why intimate gazing, our gaze drops, is because we are trying to assess their hormone levels, their attractiveness, their health as a potential mate. We do this if we're single or not. It doesn't matter, it's a subconscious view that we do. Our chin, men's facial hair, the softness of a woman's neck, the length and health of her hair, that's how we assess if someone's a good mate. So our brains are calculating that when our gaze drops. When our gaze, when someone's gaze drops on you, you know they're assessing you as a potential mate. They might not even realize that they're doing it, but that's what their eyes are doing. The reason why this is important for attraction, obviously, is because first it tells you who is attracted to you, right, who is potentially assessing you as a potential mate. And in a business relationship, you might not like that, but in a romantic situation it might be like, hey, this is a good green light. On the flip side, this is also a great way to cue, to cue someone about how you feel about them. So when I'm in business relationships, I will work very hard to keep my gaze incredibly high so I don't send any of the wrong signals to people. Right, if you've ever been told, oh, like, she's really flirty, or like, I think he's coming on to me, it could be that you're intimate gazing without realizing it. So using the appropriate gaze for each situation that is very attractive, because people understand your intention. And you understand theirs. Yes, Michael. Um, about the intimate gazing. Is it that they are assessing you as a mate, that doesn't mean that they are making up their mind yet. True, and they might not even realize they're assessing you as a mate, but it does cue you to think that subconsciously they're taking in more of you. They're at least in the assessment stage, yes. Very good note. Yes, Allie. So if you are in a business situation, and you look across and someone's intimate gazing, and you're, can you cue them back with power gazing? Like, hey, knock that off, that's-- Absolutely. So if you are intimate gazed on and you don't like it, all you wanna do is power gaze back, so even if you were social gazing, you might wanna bring it up a notch to be like no, no, no, not right. And also you wanna gauge other nonverbal behavior. So verbally you can distance, right, so my husband, my boyfriend, oh, yeah, right? So verbally you can distance. But you can also make sure that you are not engaging any haptics, any self and any touch, no self touch, self touch is a very flirty gesture. We're not gonna talk about that in this course, but self-touch is a way that women preen for man. So lessening your other nonverbals to say nope, I'm actually not available to you. Not in that way. So the third way is something called the similarity attraction effect. The similarity attraction effect says that we, when we find mutually shared interests, values and attitudes, we find higher likeability. I also really wanted to use this picture somewhere in the course. So the important part is that they're not the same. And that is a special note here. Similarity attraction effect is not that you have to be the same. It is simply that you're on the lookout for similarities. It's that you're gonna highlight similarities, and it's that you celebrate similarities. It's called the Like Radar. This is something that I always have on like a radar, beep, beep, beep. It's always just searching for things that we mutually share. 'Cause the similarity attraction effect finds that when we have something in common with something, someone, it could be a value, it could be a hair color, we automatically like, our likeability goes up. 'Cause we like ourselves, even if we have low self esteem, we like ourselves, we like people who are like us. This doesn't mean that opposites can't attract, but likeability helps us build that rapport incredibly fast. So here's how I use my like radar. I use like radar questions, and these are already in your killer conversation starters. We've already been talking about a lot of these. What they're doing is they're searching for what are the similarities here? And any time I'm with someone and I hear a similarity, I will highlight it and celebrate it. Sort of an addition, I almost had this section in the Be the Highlighter Day, because it's very, very close. I highlight that similarity that we have. So here are like radar questions. How do you know the host? Do you have mutual people in common? That's a like radar question. What are your favorite restaurants around here? Do you like the same kind of foods, do you live around here? It's better than do you live around here? Right, that's another way that you can say oh yeah, I live in northwest too, that's awesome. What are you up to this weekend? Keeping up with the blank sport recently? And story toolbox topics. So all of the story toolbox topics are actually like radar questions in disguise. You're looking for ways that people will go oh, you grew up there, I grew up there too! You love that sports team, I do too. And so it's celebrating those likes. Don't let them pass. A lot of times we hear a similarity and we're just like, mm, let it pass. That's actually an opportunity for you to be the highlighter, for you to use the similarity attraction effect. The best dates are when you're like you too, me too! You too, me too! Me too, you too! Right, those are the best dates, and that's because it's the similarity attraction effect in action. I also wanted to point out that you can use this in your business as well. We talked about attraction for business. You see these online all the time, when people are like, do you want more visitors to your blog? That's actually a like radar question. That's saying your pain point is my pain point. Your mission is my mission. Do you wanna be the most memorable person in the room? That is the question that I ask when you come to my website. That is a like radar question. I'm saying your goal is my goal. Right, I wanna help you, your mission is my mission. Wanna lose 10 pounds? Right, that's another way that we see that. Ever felt like this picture? We see that in ads all the time, right? The reason they're doing that is 'cause they're trying to get you to do the similarity attraction effect. They're trying to get like with like. All right, let's talk about the seven attraction murderers. We went from positive to negative. I'm excited about it. Okay, in your workbook-- Actually, first, can we just check in with the audience and remind them which segment we're on in the workbook? Yes, we are in the Day 18 Attraction, the Psychology of Attraction, we're on Day Two, page two of the workbook. Perfect, thank you. Yes, so attraction murders, also I have this in your bonus materials for you as well. I have a little chart on the things that destroy attraction and what we can do to solve them. So, let's go through them together. I'm gonna talk about the seven attraction murderers, and I don't necessarily to call on you and be like you do this, do you do this? So in your workbook, what I want you to do is I want you to self-rate. On a scale of one to five, one being I think I'm okay, this isn't a problem that I have, five being, I think I kind of need to work on this. And if you're brave enough, I might have you just raise your hands in numbers on mm, I can maybe use a little bit of help on this. The first attraction murderer, when these things happen on dates, or in networking events, or in speed dating situations, it kills it. That's when you feel the energy just drop to the floor. This also happens in business as well. Gossip, we talked about the spontaneous trait transference, and when you talk about someone else, that immediately rubs off on you. So if you say oh yeah, that guy's so dumb, you look dumb. Even though consciously they don't think that, that dumb rubs off on you. Second, do we know gossip, are we working on it? I'm working on my gossip, look, I'm working on it. Yeah, I know, it's hard. Why is it so easy to be roped into it? Mmhmm, we have a special area of our brain, this is crazy, a special area of our brain that is dedicated to exploring other people. And that part of the brain only gets triggered, usually, when we're talking about good or bad things about people. And so it's actually, and also it can be a way that people do like attracts like. I know a lot of women who will start gossiping just to try to find commonalities, right? So it also can make, it's a self-esteem thing, right, if we're like maybe if they're not as good, then I'm not as bad kind of thing? Yeah? Is it like common enemies also? Yeah, yeah. So I found that I bond with people at work over that and-- Common enemies, yeah, and that's like attracts likes. That's the like radar, right? Enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something, is that the phrase? Right, that's actually like radar, yeah. Second, negativity. So remember how we talked about in day five, how emotions are contagious? Someone mentioned optimism at the very beginning of this section, I think it was you, Maggie. That is because the flip side of that, negativity, is an attraction killer. So many times on our website we get a lot of dating requests and dating, people like asking for dating help, and dating questions, and they will say, when I'm on a date with someone, we hear this all the time. As soon as my date starts complaining or being negative, it's like I just wanna end the date. There's something about it in our brain, it has the opposite effect of optimism. It shuts down our cognitive abilities, and it makes us more closed-minded. We speak in shorter sentences. So negativity, our emotions are contagious. That's, who has negativity, does anyone have a problem with this one? Yeah, I see some of you, you don't have to put your hand up if you don't want to, but yes, I see some, so hopefully you're self-rating on these. Three, interrogating and interrupting, right? Like, I need to work on this one. So this often comes from a fear of silence, a fear of awkwardness, or fear cross-dressing as something else. Right, just like, I just need to fill it. I'm so anxious, I'm afraid, there's a scarcity mentality here, that I have to make sure that I have enough. What about being too curious about people, wanting to continually ask questions? Yes, that actually is right here. The curiosity is there, but there's a fear behind it as well. Fear can cross dress as curiosity too, 'cause sometimes it takes the focus off of you, it puts you more in control, right, it tells you more about the other person. So yeah, it's right, right there. Number four, sarcasm. Sarcasm is a trait that is rated on the low end of the charisma scale. It just destroys charisma. I believe that sarcasm is thinly-veiled meanness. Right, yes, it can be funny, but I think that a lot of the time it just destroys kindness. It's the flip side of the negativity coin. Does anyone feel like they might be a little bit too sarcastic? I'm about a three on that one, like I need to work on my sarcasm. I tend to be sarcastic when either I don't know what to say or I'm afraid to be direct and honest with my actual opinion, so I flip into sarcasm. It's my fear of being honest. Five, impatience. Impatience is an attraction killer. The reason for this, people who have the value language for control or perfection, they tend to have a lot of impatience issues. And the reason for this is because they want everything to be perfect, and so things not happening makes them fear that they're out of control. So it's fear dressing up as something else. So I see people shaking their head, I know, we have some impatience problems, yes, absolutely. Six, being dismissive or apathetic. So we're gonna learn in the Human Vampires section that one of the four types of difficult people is passives. And this falls right in here. And here you have a fear of rejection. People often who are dismissive, or I don't care, mm, whatever, they have no passion, they're passionless. It actually isn't because they're passionless. It's because they're afraid that if they do engage, they'll be judged. So they would rather pull back and act like they don't care because that's safer for them. Now, the flip side to all of these attraction murderers, yes, I'm talking about ourselves, but I also hope this harnesses your empathy a little bit. That when you see someone on a date, or who you're flirting with, who engages in gossip, negativity, interrogating, sarcasm, impatience, dismissive, apathetic, or seven, being a one-upper or condescending, that actually there's an underlying fear happening there. Right, harnessing our compassion and saying, whew, this is killing my attraction, but what's the reason underneath that? What's the fear there? Is it worth it to you to get to the underlying fear so that they can be their true self? Or is that a deal breaker for you? Only you can know the answer to that question. So the last one is being a one-upper, or being condescending, having a superior attitude. I'm too good for this, mm. I'm better than, right? That's another way that fear dresses up. It's also the scarcity mentality. People who enter in the I'm too good for this, I don't need this, are often afraid there's not enough to go around. And so what they do is they say, I don't need it anyway. I don't need this, I'm too good for that. Anyone have a problem with scarcity mentality, or one-upper, condescending, a little bit? At home, hopefully these are helping you self-explore a little bit if you're wondering how your attraction ranks. Hopefully helps you look at okay, how attractive am I to clients? Do I engage in any of these while I'm visiting? How attractive am I on dates or flirting behavior? Are any of these happening? That could kill the attraction or the connection that you're just starting to build. Yeah, Allie. Uh, the dismissive, apathetic fear, is that what's going on with a lot of teenage behavior you see is they're really having an intense fear of rejection? Yeah, because they don't know themselves. I actually love talking about teenager behavior. I do too. Yeah, because teenagers are mini adults, so they're often the extreme version of what we've learned to hide and brush under the rug, as adults. I love that. Right, so in teenagers we see a lot of patterns that are just highlighted, and so absolutely, teenagers are in this process of trying to find themselves. Now, we are all trying to find themselves, but in the teen years it's like hyped. So for them, they're afraid that if I care I'm gonna be judged for caring. If I care, people are gonna think I'm uncool for that. That's why I think, Erica, you mentioned owning your quirks. It took me a really long time to own my quirks, 'cause when I was a teenager, I was afraid that people were gonna hate me, judge me, or reject me for my quirks. As adults, we start to embrace them, but teenagers are so afraid, they think everything they do is a quirk, and they think nothing is normal, and so they're afraid of showing anything. And so they just totally pull back, and they're like, whatever, whatever Mom, I don't care. Yeah, great question. The last thing I wanna talk about is men versus women. Some interesting differences between the sexes that help build our attraction. First, I have a little quiz for ya. So, what's a woman's favorite male body part, according to the research? Of course you're welcome to your own opinions. What's a woman's favorite male body part? Is it A, legs, men have to guess too, by the way, A legs, B arms, C eyes, D butt, what do we think, is it A? Anyone think A? Anyone think B? Anyone think C? Anyone think D? The answer is D, universally, it's that one by a lot in the study, it was amazing. A woman's favorite male body part is butt. The question is is it the same for men? A man's favorite female body part Is it A legs, B chest, C eyes, or D butt, is it the same? How many of you think A? How many of you think B? C, D? It is A, legs. Men typically, statistically speaking, like a woman's legs the best. So the reason I start with this is we are different creatures, right? We are totally different creatures in the way that we think. The first one is with emotions. And by the way, this is wonderful information for you if you work with someone of the opposite sex, forget being dating them or marry them, you work with someone of the opposite sex, hopefully this science will help you understand a lot about them. Helped me understand a lot about my dad, my brother, and how they process emotions differently. Men have 6.5 times more gray matter than women. Gray matter is what we use for cognition. 6.5 times more than women, that's a lot. Women have 10 times more white matter. White matter's what we use to make connections between things. This is why men tend to be very good at compartmentalizing their feelings, they have a terrible day, and they're like oh yeah, there's the box, just gonna put it over there in my brain and just not think about it. Whereas women, they cannot do it, because their brain works in connections. Women's brains are constantly trying to connect this emotion with that emotion, this person with that person, why did this happen, what's the pattern in my life? We're built to do that. And so as men and women a lot of our miscommunications happen because women are trying to get men to make connections, and men are trying to get women to just compartmentalize, just forget about it, it's no big deal. Right, so just knowing this, knowing that it's not them, you don't need to get angry at them, it's just the way that we're built. So men can help women localize their anxiety, so men can actually use this. You have a tremendous power, you have 6.5 times more gray matter, so a skill that you can share with women that you're friends with, who you work with, that you date, is that you can help them localize their anxiety. So when their anxiety, you can use the NUT job. Right, Name, Understand, and Tame. You are actually helping them localize the feeling. This is not a global anxiety, right, women will often say, or at least I do, I'm like I had a horrible day, everything else is horrible. Oh gosh, this is bad, this is bad, this is stress, I globalize my anxiety. So my husband helps me localize it. He uses the NUT job on me. I know it and it's okay and I love it, because it helps me localize, localize, ah, it's just this one thing that's wrong. (exhales) And now here's what we have to do about it, right, what's the solution mode at the very end. Women can help men connect their emotion and experiences. So, when you're with a man, professional or romantic, or social, you can help him build connections between the things that are stressing him out, so he's just like, I'm just stressed. Why are you stressed, tell me about that stress? You are built to help him make connections between the emotions and the experiences, whereas they are not built that way. So we can help each other by leveraging how we are naturally built. Stress. Men feel stress in a different area of their brain than women. This is why they handle stress differently. Men feel stress in the prefrontal cortex, which activates the fight or flight response. This is often why men jump into solution mode, right, and the rough technique, I think Jason and I talked about how the validating and understanding is much harder than the check-in, the action step. That's because when you feel stress you instantly go into should I fight it and fix it, or should I just leave it in flight? You're always into solution mode first. That's where you feel fear. I'm sorry, not fear, stress. Women feel stress in the limbic area of the brain, which produces an emotional response. The limbic area of our brain is much more emotional. So a woman, instead of going okay what do I gotta do, how do I fix this? We go, how should we feel about this? How should I feel about this stress? This email kind of makes me feel upset, where a guy's like how should I respond, how can I put out this fire? Right, it's just a different way that our brains are built. So, for women stress increases the capacity for empathy, whereas for men, stress reduces it. This is very important in all of our relationships, that a man, when he feels stressed, he has an even harder time connecting with people, because he is in full fight or flight mode. He's in prefrontal cortex, get it done. Whereas women, they feel stressed and they're like, I wanna reach out to people. I wanna feel heard, I wanna feel felt, as their empathy increases. And so knowing this about our relationships helps us communicate with people on a very different level. It helps understand that it's not them, right, it's not bad or wrong, it's just the way that we're built. That's the theme of today, by the way, it's just the way that we're built. So men tend to fight or avoid emotional issues and women try to process, analyze, and talk out emotional issues. It's 'cause we're using a different part of our brain to manage that stress. So in action, I want you to use these tips across the board. Online dating, talking to people? Are you criticizing, complaining, interrogating, in IMs, on your profile? We're gonna talk about profiles in segment 28. Offline dating, courting clients. We flirt with clients just like we flirt with the people that we're trying to date, right, there is a long courtship process. And I want you to use every single one of these attraction points for both business and social situations. And then of course, building friendships. That slow build of wanting to spend time with each other. At ScienceofPeople.com/PQ I have much more specific free resources for you on dating-specific things you can do. I have my 13 favorite first date questions and why they work. I have the secret science of flirting, which is is science of what happens in romantic flirting, and I have female and male body language videos for you on what people do when they feel attracted to you, and what you can do to be attractive specifically with our bodies. That's all for free at ScienceofPeople.com/PQ. What's coming up next? We're finishing up, we have two more days on love. Number 19, building connection. We're gonna talk about the common connection obstacles, attachment theory, and three relationship builders. We're also gonna talk about finding love in segment 20, the three elements of love, how we can be the best possible partner, and one of my favorites, the five love languages. I'm kind of excited to hear what you're guys' love languages are. Here's our challenge for today. I want you to identify your attraction murderers. I want you to go through this workbook, and I want you to self-rate. Notice that in this chart, I have a Rate Yourself column and then I have an Underlying Fear column. So I want you to think about what it is for you that makes that attraction murderer come out, business or romantically. I also want you to think about who in your life has a growth mindset? Remember, this whole course is us developing our growth mindset. I want you to look at your intimates and your risers, and I want you to add either pluses or minuses to their matrix. If you think that they have a growth mentality, where do they fall on that scale? That's gonna help you understand how you need to communicate with them, especially when we get to segment on successful communication and branding. So your intimates and your risers? What was the most important thing you learned today? Come join me, JKO. So I wanna know what was your little ah-hah moment about attraction, what's the most important thing? Lisa, yeah. Using the like radar online. You just asked a question and it was plain and simple, and I spent forever trying to figure out like what do I put in that email opt-in box? Like to get people, oh, just ask them the question! Right, just like radar! It seems so, yeah, yeah. And use it online. Yeah, yeah, it's a great way to capture people online instantly. They're like, oh, me, me, like, like. Yes, mutual. Yeah. That growth and fixed mindset, it describes my ideal client. I wanna be around people who are always curious, always wanting to get better, always growing. And, you know, that's a great sort of definition of who makes it in and who doesn't. So we are gonna talk about our ideal client, and I want you to remember that, that growth mentality's extremely important for you for your growth, for your client, for your ideal person. Yeah. Yeah The notion that the attraction murderers may and will come out because of an underlying fear that I have. It's like totally counterproductive, the fear is because I want them to like me, and then the sarcasm comes out, and it's getting them to not like me. So just really having that, you know, we know you shouldn't gossip and all of that, but really knowing why, this is the real reason that it's hurting you. Yeah, knowing the why, that's what got me to change, is knowing the why. Yeah, I hope that I can hear yours at home. Tweet me, we're using the hashtag PeopleSkills, and at me, Vvanedwards. I wanna hear the most important thing you learned today was. Yes, we definitely do, and don't forget to make sure you have the workbook at hand as well, this comes as a purchase bonus. There's so much information in here as well, there's also a lot of stuff that Vanessa's not necessarily covering while we're live in the segment. So these are great homework exercises here. Well, that's it for now, we hope you'll join us for our next segment. We'll see you then. (applause)

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Attraction Murderers
Awesome Club One Sheet
High PQ Skills Answer Key
High PQ Skills Template
Love Language Worksheet
Monthly Action Plan
The Matrix
Your Ideal Worksheet
Skills Worksheet
Personality Matrix Cheat Sheets
Questions Every Couple Should Answer
Citation List
Personality Matrix One Pager
The 10 Questions
Superhero Activity List
Your Next Big Thing Worksheet
Killer Conversation Starters
Bonus Video: How to be a Master Conversationalist
Workbook - Master Your People Skills

Ratings and Reviews

Adam
 

This is the best course I have ever taken on anything, anywhere, ever. As an adult with Asperger’s, I have been studying social skills and nonverbal communication for a long time. All the books I’ve read and other courses like these I’ve watched prior to this one, didn’t even teach me half of what Vanessa has taught me in this course. Master Your People Skills has provided me with literally everything I have ever wanted to learn from inner confidence, charisma, making conversation, making a great first impression, being memorable, etc. Vanessa is such a charismatic, passionate, and knowledgable mentor, who has a real gift of taking her many years of research and hard work, and teaching it in a way that is easy and fun to learn. This course is the real deal, you will be a master after you are finished with it, and I would recommend it to anyone.

user-15eb6d
 

I have just finished day 13 and so far the course has been amazing every single day. Vanessa is a great teacher and I love how her work is down-to-earth, practical, very applicable and rooted in scientific research. It's not the usual "ra ra ra, I can turn you into a master people schmoozer-type courses" found elsewhere. Anyone that wants to improve themselves and have better relationships in all aspects of their lives, both professional and personal, should get this course. There is so much quality material in this course, I look forward to going over the videos and the workbook more than once in order to improve my own people skills. The course is worth every penny and much more! Thank you Vanessa!

Student Work

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