I have a great number of things to thank my mother for teaching me as I grew up. You see she was a Psychologist, and a public speaking teacher, and for a number of years as a young boy I was home-schooled by her. These days were tough for me, as while other children were at primary school passing notes to each other, mucking about, playing at recess with each other, my mum was making sure that I was getting the best education she could provide with much more focus on the work side of things than the play.

Unlike many home schooled kids however, my mum was very intelligent and knew how teach and we covered a range of subjects that most primary school children never came near. First to mind is Public Speaking. My mum has won numerous awards for public speaking, I can still envisage the trophies and certificates she used to have. She believed that if she could give her son the ability to me an amazing speaker, that he would later use that skill set to achieve great things. I don’t think she had ‘picking up women’ in mind as a potential career path, but I am successful as a result and for that I have her to thank.

So why all this personal history?

Well, there is one hugely powerful technique I learned to utilize to improve my public speaking skills, and that I have gone on to use with public speaking students of my own as well as School of Attraction clients who wanted to be more successful with women.

One curious part about talking to women is the degree of ignorance that comes over us the second we’re talking to a cute girl.

Imagine you are out with a friend at a bar and he sees a cute girl and walks over to talk to her. It is instantly easy for you to start working out if she likes him or not, you can see her smiling excessively, or playing with her hair, or perhaps you see her slightly rolling her eyes every time looks away, or you notice her body language begin to close up at a certain moment. Without any training other than your life as a man, you can instantly ascertain with a relative degree of accuracy how things are going.

But the second you are the guy talking to that cute girl, all ability to read the situation goes out the window. Just when you thought things were going really well, she tells you she wants to go back to her friends and leaves you standing there wondering what just happened.

Such is the frustration for many men. Without a paid coach to observe you and provide feedback on your progress, it can be awfully difficult to work out what you are doing wrongly.

Public speaking is much the same thing

You overcome the nerves of standing in front of a crowd and you start speaking. Once you start speaking in front of all those people, your brain can focus on only one thing “Don’t mess up in front of these people”, and you can no longer focus on reading the situation at hand. What you thought was a great talk, was in fact truly yawn-worthy.

However there is one way to get amazing feedback on your progress without spending money on a coach. Simply wire yourself up with a microphone plugged into your iPhone, android phone, or windows phone (if you don’t own one of these brands yet, it’s time to upgrade). Set the phone to record prior to every approach you make, then listen to your interactions afterwards.

Now I must warn you. This is likely to be a very unpleasant experience for most. We all hate the way we sound on audio, and worse than that, the ultra-suave opener you thought you had will usually sound pretty lame and lackluster when you hear it playing back to you at the end of the day. You will be appalled at how many times you stutter or say the word ‘um’. You will cringe at the compliment you give her and how awkwardly it came out. At first, you will want to throw away that evil lying voice recorder as it is a harsh critic. AT FIRST!

Then you will realize how much room for improvement you can suddenly see. All of a sudden you will hear how you sound from a woman’s perspective, you will suddenly notice the inflictions in her voice which demonstrate she did or didn’t like that joke you made, and a whole range of information that you failed to pick up on when you were actually in the interaction.

Armed with a bunch of voice recordings of your interactions, you are now well equipped to be your own dating coach for a while. To get you started, here is a list of questions you must ask yourself when listening to these recordings.

QUESTIONS

1) How well did my first 5 seconds with her go? Did she sound happy to see me? Or did she seem scared? Did she seem frustrated? Did I sound confident? Did I sound like a guy who knew what he wanted? Is what I said as cool an opener as I thought it was on the day? The first 5 seconds of an interaction count a massive amount, so you want to pay particular attention to this.

2) Can I hear any particular moments when her interest piqued? Any moments when she suddenly became more talkative or her voice sounded happier? What did I say right before that happened? Can I say that more often?

3) Can I hear any particular moments when her interest waned? Any moments where I could hear her get quieter, or sound slightly agitated? What did I do to spark that reaction? How can I eliminate that in future?

4) What did I do really well here, that I liked the sound of?

5) What did I do really badly here, that I wish I didn’t do any more?

The sheer act of hearing yourself is bound to cause you to make some changes in the future. It’s truly an eye opening experience, but if you can take the time after every day or night out approaching, to listen to yourself in detail, and slowly make improvements to your game as though you are a coach listening to somebody else, then you will be amazed at how much new insight you can gain into the quality of your interactions.

I urge all the readers to try this one time. One day out with your recorder is all it takes to realize how much can be learned from a few simple recordings.

WARNING: If you are recording people without their knowledge or consent, you must not show that content to anybody else or you could be infringing on the law. Especially important is to never put these recordings online for others to hear. These recordings are for your own benefit, and I haven’t written this article to condone breaking of any privacy laws.