The Customer Is Always Frightened
I'm a 36-year-old single woman. I've noticed that the more I like a guy the more nervous I get and the louder, more irreverent, and more inappropriate I become. I'm actually a really sweet girl. How can I stop doing this?
--Unintentionally Brash
Your cocktail party conversation shouldn't translate to "I mean, come on...do I really seem like a danger to myself and society?!"
To calm down so you can talk like a person instead of a scary person, it helps to understand -- as I explain in my new "science-help" book, "Unf*ckology" -- that "emotions aren't just thinky things." They have a basis in the body. For example, in the case of fear, your heart pounds, you breathe faster, and adrenaline surges -- whether what you're afraid of is physical death or just, say, dying onstage while giving a talk -- as you watch 43 people simultaneously yawn and pull out their phone.
The human brain is a marvel, but we can take advantage of how it's also about as easily tricked as my dog. Take that bodily reaction of fear -- pounding heart and all -- which also happens to be the bodily reaction of being excited. Research by Harvard Business School's Alison Wood Brooks finds that you can "reappraise" your fear as excitement -- by repeatedly saying aloud to yourself, "I am excited" (to talk with some guy, for example) -- and actually shift yourself from a "'threat' mind-set" to an "'opportunity' mind-set."
Also, assuming the current weather isn't "nuclear holocaust with a chance of rain," some dude you're flirting with probably isn't the last man on the continent. Keeping that in mind, reframe your interaction as a mere opportunity for something to happen with him -- and an opportunity to figure out whether it's a good idea.
You do that not by selling yourself like it's 4:56 p.m. on Sunday at a yard sale but by asking him about himself. Counterintuitively, you'll probably be at your most attractive by leaving a man guessing about you -- as opposed to leaping to conclusions, like that you were the little girl who beheaded all the other little girls' Barbies.
How inappropriate? Half assed crotch grabs or offering to let him film you in the bathroom like right now?
lujlp at May 11, 2018 12:06 PM
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