This is a guest post by Dr. Asian Rake, who is a dating consultant and an ex-professor at a top research university. Currently based in Singapore, he guides select clients to improve their lifestyles.

(Model credit: Luvian from XiuRen)

The last article I wrote for this site detailed the kind and amount of physical touch you apply when flirting with an “Asian” woman. It quickly became apparent, however, that this assumed a lot of familiarity and experience with physical touch in general and was already a higher-level teaching.

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So in this article, I’m going to return to the fundamentals. In this case, we’re going to look at the proper mindset and attitude you ought to have while socializing.

My examples will be drawn from night-time interactions. But the principles and attitudes apply just the same to day-time settings, such as coffee shops, shopping malls, and city streets.

The first step to socializing is actually getting yourself out of the complacent comfort of your own home and into a place where there are people. Seems quite simple. But it can be hard to do and requires dedication and discipline. Until you’ve developed the habit of going out on weekends on a regular basis, you will probably need that initial push to leave the comfort of your home and go to a place that is conducive to flirting with women.

But this push will only be necessary until you’ve developed the habit, which for me, was about 3-4 months of consistently going out for at least two nights a week. For day game, decide how much you want and can devote to this and work this into your weekly schedule.

I still clearly remember having my mentor remind me over the phone when I was first starting out, “Dude, it’s Friday night. Get out there!” Not too long thereafter, this changed to, “Dude, it’s Thursday night. Get out there!” I no longer needed the push to go out on Fridays and Saturdays. I had already scheduled it into my weekly routine.

In my first couple of months, I even had to do community service for running a red light (I pleaded for community service rather than paying a fine, the cheap grad student that I was, lol) for 4 hours every Friday and Saturday until midnight. I was pretty exhausted on those nights. But guess what? I stuck with my routine and still put in at least an hour, and sometimes two, every one of those nights. I even wrote pages of analysis after having spent just one hour in a club socializing. It would have been easy just to use the community service as an excuse for not going out, but I didn’t. And that took determination. But once it became a habit, I actually really missed going out.

It’s a lot like going out to the gym and doing regular workouts. When you first start out, it takes discipline to hit the weights. You have to push yourself to go. But once you work it into your schedule and start seeing progress, you begin to look forward to your workout. I hit the gym three times a week and have a pretty rigorous workout with a trainer. I often travel for weeks at a time, so it interrupts my progress, but whenever I miss a workout, even on vacation, I feel it in my muscles. I can feel myself getting flabby and slow. I can feel my muscles atrophying. And I can’t wait to get back to the gym. Actually, a major factor in my hotel choices these days, right after price and location, is the quality of the fitness center.

Here’s a crucial but often overlooked distinction: This “clocking in” mentality is fine for getting yourself TO the venue. But once you’re there, drop that right away. You should not be thinking of this as “work” while you’re IN the venue.

When you’re IN the venue, you should be having fun.

If you are thinking, “Oh damn, I’ve been standing around talking to my friends for an hour now and haven’t done a single approach yet. I better get out there and get to work. I better clock in and make a dent on my thousand approaches. Okay, let’s see… (scanning the room) where are the targets?…,” then you have already tainted your approach. You’re already fighting an uphill battle. If you carry this mentality into an interaction, you WILL be sucking value rather than giving it.

The fatal mistake here was that you weren’t having fun in the first place.

What to do instead?

Keep reading to find the cure for your woes.