Social Skills Coaching

• Exploring kinks, however, is never a bad thing. To do so, it’s important to understand how a kink you come across, including yours, may have arisen. There are typically five theories on the matter: adjacent brain theory, Pavlovian conditioning, pain, gross-out theory, and subjective normal theory. • Yet, knowing your kinks and how they formed is of no use if you don’t feel comfortable enough in...

Body language has a much broader range of possible interpretations. Generally, a relaxed body takes up space, while an anxious body contracts and wants to conceal and comfort itself. There are too many specifics to list in a bullet point, but just keep in mind that the only true way to analyze body language is to first know exactly what someone is like when they are normal. Hear it Here - https://...

Finally, it’s important to understand logical arguments—especially illogical arguments. This is how you determine the truth and validity of what is being said. We hear these every day but may not pick out their logical flaws. You can think of these as a combination of math and argumentation. There is the conditional statement (X -> Y, true), the converse statement (Y -> X, usually a flaw), t...

Make a woman feel safe, understood, and respected, and sex will never be an issue. Make her feel valued for the unique person she is. Play with mystery and discovery. Be genuinely interested in what makes her happy and what her needs are, rather than approaching the relationship primarily with your own needs at the forefront. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to tell her often that she’s hot stuff. Hear it...

Obstacle 2 is a VERB mindset—playing victim, acting entitled, awaiting rescue, or blaming others. A healthier mindset is based on taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. We can do this by first noticing feelings, asking what unmet needs create that feeling, and then exploring ways to meet this need ourselves. Hear it Here - https://bit.ly/IntentionalCommunicationKing...

Next, we come to critical thinking. Critical thinking is concerned with questioning answers rather than asking questions. It seeks to take nothing at face value and provide a three-dimensional and nuanced view of a topic or stance. Without that, you are by definition jumping to conclusions or relying on someone else’s word—an opinion without inquiry is a weak one. We can practice critical thinking...

Many sex tips focus on either specific techniques or exploring kinks to improve your sex life, but that’s not what really matters. Studies have shown eight specific elements of great sex: presence, connection, intimacy, communication, authenticity, bliss, exploration, and vulnerability. This is empowering because it means literally everyone has the ability to be a great lover; it just takes time,...

Finally, we get right into the thick of it. How can we read and analyze people just through sight and observation? We cover two primary aspects: facial expressions and body language. It’s important to note that though many aspects have been scientifically proven (with physiological origins), we can’t say that simple observations are foolproof. It can never be definitive because there are too many...

One methodical way to seek truth and simulate curiosity is by embracing skepticism. No, it’s not about being cynical or simply refusing to believe what people tell you. Rather, it’s refusing to blindly believe what people tell you and requiring evidence and facts. In this way, a skeptic is quite similar to a scientist utilizing the scientific method. No answer is required here, and only understand...

• The purpose of all communication, whether we know it or not, is to meet our needs. We can become better communicators (and improve our relationships) if we learn to properly understand, take responsibility for, and meet our own needs before we approach others. We can also improve communication by learning to proactively meet our own needs. • We can take steps to minimize or remove the obstacles...

Loss, rejection, uncertainty, discomfort, humiliation, loneliness, failure, panic . . . all of these can be defended against using certain mental tricks. These mechanisms are there to protect us from experiencing negative emotions. They work in the moment, but in the long run, they are ineffective since they rob us of the opportunity to face, accept, and digest inevitably negative emotions as they...

The first and most natural way to probe below the surface is through cultivating curiosity. There are five types of curiosity, each of which can be a motivation for asking questions: joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill-seeking. However, curiosity will rarely come easily or naturally, especially about things we don’t have an innate interest in...

Finally, we come to defense of the ego. This is one of our most powerful motivators, but it is mostly unconscious. Simply put, we act to guard our ego from anything that would make us feel psychologically less. In doing so, it is so powerful that it allows us to bend reality and lie to ourselves and others—all outside of our conscious awareness. Defense mechanisms are the ways that we avoid respon...

• At this point in the book, you may have a better understanding of how to reach your goal of mating. However, in reality, your goal is sustained mating within a relationship. How can you make sure the sex is good enough to do that? • Many sex tips focus on either specific techniques or exploring kinks to improve your sex life, but that’s not what really matters. Studies have shown eight specific...

The last way we must struggle to keep an open mind and clarity of thought is concerning our social influences. The people around us can determine what we think and do, no matter how hard we try. This was proved in the Asch Conformity Test and the Milgram Shock Experiment. It doesn’t matter how open-minded you are; your environment can push you strongly in one way despite your best intentions. Hear...

Next, we move to the pyramid of needs, otherwise known as Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It states that we are all seeking various types of needs in various points in our lives; when you can observe which level other people are in, you can understand what they are seeking out and motivated by. The levels of the hierarchy are as follows: physiological fulfillment, safety, love and belonging,...

Despite our own internal confusions, there are certain scientifically proven traits we do seek in mates that are more related to biological imperatives. We are subconsciously drawn to excitement and arousal, fulfilling gender-specific arousal triggers, a sense of humor, and masculine and feminine voices. Research shows that while smiling and expressing happiness can make people like and trust you,...

The four principles of Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication are: observations, feelings, needs, and requests, in that order. First make neutral observations instead of judgmental evaluations. Next, seek to explore feelings and not opinions. Be careful about using “you” statements or attributing blame, and instead take responsibility for your own experience. Next, connect your feelings wi...

Any discussion on motivation must begin with the pleasure principle, which generally states that we move toward pleasure and move away from pain. If you think about it, this is omnipresent in our daily lives in both minuscule and huge ways. As such, this actually makes people more predictable to understand. What is the pleasure people are seeking, and what is the pain they are avoiding? It’s alway...

Despite our own internal confusions, there are certain scientifically proven traits we do seek in mates that are more related to biological imperatives. We are subconsciously drawn to excitement and arousal, fulfilling gender-specific arousal triggers, a sense of humor, and masculine and feminine voices. Hear it Here - https://bit.ly/ScienceOfAttraction Show notes and/or episode transcripts are av...

Immersing yourself in someone else’s equally valid reality is harder than it looks, and so we need to routinely test our own assumptions. We need to ask people questions and challenge our own assumptions about what they think or feel or how we attribute their actions. Psychologizing people is a way we can believe we’re listening compassionately, but actually we’re forcing our interpretation or wor...

Confirmation bias is also the most prominent way that we fail to simply follow the evidence. If we perform research and keep an open mind, our task is simple: just follow the arrows where they point. But all too often, we are seduced into following the wrong arrows. These include the cognitive distortions of focusing on “must” and “should”, black-and-white thinking, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and...

We’ve talked about analyzing and predicting behavior based on people’s emotions and values, but what about motivation? It turns out there are a few prominent and fairly universal models of motivation that can give you a helpful framework to understand people with. When you can pinpoint what people are motivated by, you can see how everything leads back to it either directly or indirectly. Hear it...

Finally, we become great people-readers when we understand ourselves. We need to know what biases, expectations, values, and unconscious drives we bring to the table so we are able to see things as neutrally and objectively as possible. We must refrain from letting pessimism cloud our judgments because its often easier to arrive at the more negative conclusion when an alternate, more positive one...

The most glaring example of this is confirmation bias, wherein we are deaf and blind to evidence that doesn’t support what we think. In other words, we see what we want to see, and we can make a belief appear out of thin air. This is dangerous because it brings the ability to ignore reality. You eventually become entrenched in an echo chamber of reinforcing information that will lead you astray. H...