Dr. Asian Rake is a dating consultant and a full-time professor at a top research university. Currently based in Singapore, he guides select clients to improve their lifestyles. To learn more about him and his services and products, visit www.asianrake.com.

I train men to be good with women and to realize their dating dreams. My job is a little like what you see in the movie, Hitch, starring Will Smith.

Why do I do it? Day after day, I see really great guys, who would make awesome boyfriends and husbands, going dateless and losing hope. And I’m fed up. I know from my experience that I can make a dramatic difference in people’s relationships and dating lives. And I cannot stand by anymore as so many men are forced to wallow in lonely lives of quiet desperation because they’re ignorant about how to get better with the other gender.

Here’s the first and biggest step; it’s required for mastering the social arts. And it’s got nothing to do with women per se. It’s all about YOU.

Become happy with who you are and how you are living your life. This is the best way to build confidence.

Most of us aren’t content with ourselves. The lucky few who are should know they are way ahead of the game.

This joyful positivity about life is infectious and extremely attractive.

This doesn’t mean being complacent. It means being proud of how far you’ve come and with where you’re going in life.

Many men come to me asking, “Tell me what to say to a girl to get her to like me.” They want “the five magical pick-up lines that will get you any woman.”

I can give them the exact words that have worked for me and for others, but it won’t matter.

Unless they are in the right place emotionally, their body language, tonality, and sub-communications will sabotage them. High quality women can feel when a man’s words are just a façade, masking debilitating insecurities and neediness.

All women say they like a man with “confidence.”

There are many ways to build confidence. The most common is to accumulate lots of external reference experiences. The drawback is that this takes a lot of time if it happens at all.

A far better way is to draw your confidence internally.

When you are so comfortable with the person you have become, including all your foibles, that no one can faze you or cause you to doubt otherwise, then you will draw people into your reality naturally and effortlessly. This is true, internally-based confidence.

Written by Editorial Staff

So how do you get to this point, you ask?

To start, think of all the things you’ve been putting off doing until your finances are more secure, or until the children are grown and moved out, or until you have fulfilled your obligations and feel free to do what you really want with your life.

Don’t wait any longer. Forget the myth of “someday things will be different.” They won’t. It never ends.

Be honest with yourself. Hold yourself accountable for living the life you really want.

As of now, spend at least an hour a day doing what you love to do, what you are waiting to do, what you feel you need to do.

You have all these dreams you keep talking about. Start living them now. You’ve been meaning for years to get into shape, to learn to play the guitar, to learn how to scuba-dive, surf, or play golf, to learn that new language, or to travel the world.

Now get off the couch and go to the gym, buy a guitar and learn how to play it, take that class in scuba-diving, rock-climbing, surfing, or golfing, enroll in that language course, travel to that exotic place you’ve dreamt of visiting all these years.

Do it. Now.

Live in such a way that you can be proud of yourself.

This is the single most important and most overlooked factor in mastering the social arts.

David will be writing a weekly column on Amped Asia. Stay tuned for more dating advice from the Asian Rake. Remember to visit his site, Power of Being Asian.

Written by Editorial Staff