 Welcome to the 21 Convention Podcast. I'm Steve Maeda. I'm your host of today's episode and today we have Dr. David Tien. Now, not only is he an alumni speaker of the 21 Convention 2012 in Melbourne, Australia, check out his speech. I remember actually sitting in the audience and watching it and just going, man, I am loving this stuff. And just his way of coaching, his way of teaching, his philosophy behind everything about becoming an evolved male. The best expression of yourself is truly amazing and worth getting into. You can find out more about David at auradating.com and of course, if you are a fan of this podcast, leave a comment, like the video, interact with us, subscribe to the channel. You know, we look at every comment and get back to you and all that sort of good stuff. But man, get involved in this dialogue, this dialogue that we're doing here at the 21 Convention about you evolving to your ideal self. All right, let's get into this episode and enjoy all the good content. Dr. David Tien. What is happening party people here with Dr. David Tien? Man, let me just tell you, you're one of my favorite people. Well, people that I wanted to interview. And yet I know you very little, but I've known of you for a long time. We've even talked on the phone way back when and then I went in Melbourne at the 21 Convention when I got to introduce you. I was like, fuck, yeah, there's just such a cool thing, man. So what's going on? How would you introduce yourself? Well, I am a previously a pickup artist. I guess that's how we all got into this. And I did my PhD in philosophy psychology. I became a professor of philosophical psychology and Asian religions and all that. And that has heavily influenced and impacted the way I approach women of all things. And has made it much more about integrating very complex research in neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive sciences, and obviously all the different kinds of psychology and anthropology. And distilling all of that research, like I literally will read obscure journals. And then I would actually still publish in journals and collaborate with top labs around Asia and some in the US and publish that research. But I distill it so that it's actually applicable. So I'm the guy that the psychologists who are studying dating and romance and emotional intelligence and all that, when they need a crop of subjects who will go out and apply and try out some of the implications of their research, I'm the guy they call, and I'm the guy who actually goes out and applies it for a living. So they love me. They love flying me in. I'm going actually on Thursday to a multi-million dollar conference. That's a multi-year conference. And I'm keynoting two of the years. And I just wonder, I'm like, why am I, why are they inviting me to this thing? Because I'm not an active academic. But I think they just get a kick out of me meeting me. Because it's sort of like, here's a guy who actually is using all this research that we're doing and spending our entire lives on. And he's actually using it to improve all these people's lives. So yeah, that's what I've been doing lately. So man, this is crazy because we have some mutual friends who are professors. Well, you're a professor. But you're doing this instead, which is even more nuts because you're, it's just all that education and all that knowledge. And I mean, to get a PhD, to move into a professorship that academia is your career. Man, that's a big dedication. And then moving to the business side, which you're extremely successful at, which is just freaking awesome. Man, that's just, that does not happen too much. There's usually business people and then there's academics and they don't mix on that level. Or like 20 years down the road, they kind of, the academics will get it and write a book and move more in that angle. But yeah, you're freaking young. Wow, man, thanks. Well, on the business front, I'm still learning. Just to update, since we last met in person, I was, this is not even really in person, but it's pretty close, which was like end of 2012 and two and a half years ago. Yeah, crazy how fast time flies. And in that time I've gotten, like I invest almost six figures a year in my own education now, in many in business, like $1,000 an hour, coaching calls with my business mentors. And so I invest heavily in my own training and development and growth. And for a while it just sort of stagnated, because basically I was never a guy who sought to get rich. That wasn't something my parents ever gave us as kids. We were good moral Christians and all that. So I was more into life purpose and all that. So money wasn't ever an issue, but I discovered that after I had a lot of my needs met. So I literally, for the past couple of years, was living on beach resorts and I'd fly into cities, like two weekends a month to do trainings or something. And I had my fitness was going great. There were a couple months when I was investing over $1,000 a month in fitness, like trainers, the food, the different memberships in different countries, and flying around to meet, to get high quality training. And so I had it kind of all optimized. So there was a period in my life when I had, like the health was down, women was down. That was like a while ago. And as far as material resources, I couldn't really think of anything else. Obviously I could pile up more money in a bank, but I wouldn't be able to use it. You know what I mean? So then it really came home to me like, what the fuck else is there in life? So I really had to, there was sort of an identity crisis. And that was a couple of years ago. And it was great because what it did was it forced me to confront how I had been living my life for about 10 years. So that's a good segue actually into this. So I'm a pretty, I'm a deeper thinker than most of the people I know because I think that's what led me into philosophy and into academics. And I like to sit around on a beach and just think. That's how I naturally operate. And one of the things that led me to, I was led to this discovery was that pickup artist. And that's how I'd led my life for about seven years ago for about three or four years. Hardcore, you know, like, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like five nights a week or like seven nights a week if you conclude all the dates and you stack in dates and you're grabbing numbers. And it's, you know, you do arbitrage and then you do the social circle thing. Then you get the social proof, you get in there and all the owners know you. And you think it's like a really big deal, right? And then you started getting off on the validation of guys on the internet. You know, you got traffic, you're looking at your traffic, you're looking at the comments, you're looking, you posted reports on ASF and you're like, wow, people are responding. They love me, they think I'm awesome. And then you start to buy into all that. And then what gets crazy is when you invest too much of your identity into being a pickup artist, then you're actually who you are at the core is dependent on how women treat you. Totally, well, who you are at the core is dependent upon how people see you in like, in pickup. It's so fucked up because that's an online presence of people that you don't know that are judging you. Man, I don't know, can I bring up your career? Like even your professional academic career and have the transition out of that. Can we talk about that? Yeah, yeah, of course. Dude, that's because that's awesome. That makes me respect you in such a fucking way and nobody talks about this in the seduction world. Nobody talks about the realities that may happen. You know, sex, women is great. I think you spread that message and you demonstrate it well. But there were times where that that hit you hard, you know? Yeah. Because when you were going around is, you know, as a PUA, like people publicly found out, right? And it was like kind of a big deal or some BS like that. It was fun because, yeah, okay, let's talk about it because I've never really talked about this. So this was about, what, 2008? This is 2008. I moved to Singapore to become a professor there. And Singapore, especially in 2008 before the F1 started moving there was very conservative outside the nightclubs. So, you know, in the very traditional conservative societies, there's always this huge polarity. So if you make, if you even step foot in a nightclub, if you're in a Muslim country, you basically have already sinned. You know what I mean? So like they are in there, they're already sinners, so they might as well go all the way and it's just insane. Right, right, right. So there's no middle of the road for them. You either go full in or you don't go at all. And Singapore at that point was sort of like that, not as extreme, but sort of like that. So my perception of what Singapore society was was completely warped because I got in there and I got immediately plugged into the club scene, the high-end club scene, and everybody was just like, you know, back in the New York or whatever, back in the States. And I didn't realize just how conservative the rest of the society was, you know, the other 97% of the people there. And the first month I had moved to Singapore, I had met this girl. I just, I think my line was, she was looking down in the balcony, you know, at the event and I was like, tell me what you see. You remember the line? I remember the line, then I told the line. Yeah, I have a pretty good memory for these things. And then she said something that I told her, you know, she was the cutest girl in the whole club doing here alone. And anyway, she turned out to be a reporter for the national paper there. And after like the third time we met, she went on to break this story. And she actually won a story of the year for that feature on me, you know, the following year she won that. So it was a great story. And it was a three-page spread in the life section. It was on the front page, the cover at the top, you know, right above the masthead. And it was my photo on it. And she had no control over the headline, because you know, headline copy is somebody, some other department. And they wrote 30 girls in two months. This guy snagged 30 girls in two months. That was just something I mentioned to her over the phone, and she just put it in the article. So that sort of blew up on me, and I didn't realize how big of a deal it would be. And then for like, so I was treading water in terms of the administration, because I just got there. And you were a college professor at the time, correct? Yeah, at the major national research university of the whole country. Yeah. And it was a very well-funded position. They paid 50% more than any offer in the U.S. Asians really respect education. So it was a no-brainer for me to take that job. Plus I just love Asian food and culture. So anyway, that make a long story short. After a few years of that tension, where it was always like any kind of PR I was getting on the dating coach side, it would cause some kind of ripple effect into the administration. I get called in. The deans were mostly men, and they totally thought it was cool. Well, they thought people should know professors can be cool too. We're not all nerds and geeks and stuff. But there was underlying tension there. And it came to a point where I had to go all in in one of these areas. I couldn't continue to lead this sort of Batman, Bruce Wayne life or whatever. Schizophrenic life. And so I went. I decided, I thought to ask myself, who can I influence the most? I mean, how can I have the most influence? How many more people can I help? And so on. And it was a pretty easy decision to look at it that way. So that was the transition. No, it's crazy because I'd heard about that and we just have mutual friends and whatever. Man, I've known you and of you for a long time. And it was just like, holy shit, man. This is bad press. Like you got, you know. Oh, yeah. I'm so I think because being this here's one good thing about going through a pickup artist's face. You start to develop a really strong frame around your own reality. Right? So like people don't bother you anymore. A girl can say all kinds of shit to you. It doesn't even affect you anymore. So I knew what I believed. I knew what my values are. I knew what the truth was and what goodness is. And if they want to impose their own view of like, if it was if I was in some fascist country, I wouldn't be affected because these fascists thought X, Y, and Z, right? That we should kill all these different types of people. I'd be like, no. So it didn't really affect me. It was just a practical issue. And one other thing I would say about academics is to become good at academia to you need to, especially in the humanities, you have to you learn to assimilate information very quickly because in a typical graduate seminar, like a PhD level course, you get assigned a 300 page book a week per course. So imagine you have three or four of these, right? You have to not only do you have to read the whole damn things, you have to be able to talk about them for two to three hours with a week's notice. Plus you need to know all the secondary research on it, plus all the book reviews on that book. And you got to do this every week. And then at the end of this period of coursework, you do that for two or three years, you have an oral exam where you're given 50 to 100 books to be, you could be examined on. And you have a major field and two minor fields. That's standard. So one of the things that I discovered I was really good at was learning how to learn fast. And what that helped me with was when I went to like pick up or and then eventually figuring out relationships in psychology, it was so much faster and easier for me to figure it out for then the other guys I knew, because I had already gone through 10 years of a PhD where I was forced to read a book very quickly, know what's in it, be able to answer questions about it, and then critique it on a regular basis. So I was tearing through these resources. And then same with fitness. I had learned how to hack fitness. So it was a lot of it says, if you're a PhD in the humanities, you've learned to hack knowledge. You have to, they force you to do it. And one of the outcomes of that is being able to hack lots of other fields of knowledge. And I think if the academics around the world, and especially in the humanities, would like understood that what they had is the power that they've been trained in, they could accomplish a lot more. So, dude, let me like props all that. And when you mentioned all that stuff, it was like, whoa, shit, man. You know, like it's just so that's crazy. That's impossible in my mind to be able to to learn in that way. I mean, different people learn in different ways and all sort of stuff. And I think everybody. Let me throw out a resource for the guys out there. It's one that every guy in my ori dating academy, we have we first of all, one of the things that I've discovered was hacking coaching. And one of the worst kinds of coaching is just a guy comes in for a three day boot camp. But everybody at that time was doing that, right? And partly it was a logistical reason. But the guy comes in and he gets overloaded with information. And then he just thrown back out, you know, and he gets this high. And then it's just this temporary high. Yeah. So, yeah. Now, you know, yeah, I know you understand. So from the very get go, when we opened the academy in Singapore, it was a year long program. Yeah. I said, you either commit to the year or fuck off. Or no, you can do the boot camp, but you're going to pay the same amount of money. Right. Just like a three day boot camp. Awesome. For a full year. Right. Dude. And how long have you had this? Because it's been like five years. It's 20. Yeah. Five years now. Coming up to six years soon. No, keep going. Keep going. I just wanted to. Yeah. I just want to clarify that because I've known about your program and we have crossover clients. And it's just very cool because I agree with you on all this stuff. But keep talking. I just wanted to point out that it's been established for a long time. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So I know that clients. I know I've worked very closely with hundreds of real life clients, not just online and stuff. So it's been crazy. And one of the things I discovered is early on when they enter the program, if I can teach them how to learn, they'll pick everything up five to 10 times faster. So we have an entire day almost, like at least two hours, sometimes four of how to learn, how to pick things up quickly, how to assimilate information quickly, how to analyze it quickly. And that's always one of our core courses, core recordings is how to learn. And a resource that's really great. There are two I can recommend to guys right now. There's a book called What Smart Students Know. What Smart Students Know. It's by Adam Robinson, one of the co-founders of Princeton Review. He was a champion boxer and a champion chess master. So you can see the domain specialties there. As well, there's another guy who writes quite well. It's Cal Ripken. Is that a baseball player? No, it's Cal. Cal Newport. Sorry, Cal Newport. That's a baseball player. Cal Newport who has published a lot more. So it's hard to recommend a single book, but he's got a great blog. And sometimes they pick fights with each other, but everything they write is pretty good. Just try out both. Adam Robinson's one book just changed my life. It took me from a B minus student to an A plus graduating GPA. So it was a tribute a lot to that. Yeah, hacking, learning. Dude, let's actually talk about this because there's so many things that go into it. Taking an approach to teaching in this way, of not teaching within the boot camp system and all that sort of stuff, in working for real student development. And actually, you gave up academia, which took you 10 years to get your PhD, to have something which gave the most impact to people. So coaching obviously is clearly important to you. Man, what made you create the Aura Academy? What made you create this different style of learning that was minimum one year? You know, what really brought you to that five years ago? Because five years ago in 2009 actually is when I started my program. And it's like same times for yourself. What made you do that? Like because it was so out of the ordinary. It was bizarre for me to create this new thing and see that it worked better than infield type training. What inspired you to do that? And then what developments? Well, we'll get to that. I mean, we'll talk through it. I guess we'll talk about it as we continue on. But yeah, what started this out for you? Yeah, well, it was partly just reflecting on how I got good, how I figured things out. And I didn't figure things out through a three-day boot camp. It was ongoing mentorship from a lot of guys who, a minority of which I paid just the first consultation with and they became friends. But a lot of them I just got really lucky that we got along and they were willing to look at my reports. None of the naturals were willing to read any of that stuff though. But I learned someone's just hanging out with them. And I discovered that there's this thing called the training effect. And it's something I teach my clients what to expect down the road. So a lot of people think learning happens linearly. Like it's just a straight line up. It's just there. That's how learning happens. This is time. This is improvement. That's never how it happens. It's a lot more like, let me see if I can draw something on here. It's more like this, it'd be like this. So you're going up, but it's a zigzag line. So what's going to happen is you're going to, especially at the beginning, because you know nothing, you develop some knowledge and you see a lot of results. But then you hit a plateau. You're going to hit a plateau or you're going to hit a dip. And then a lot of guys, they just give up. You know, these are dabblers. They don't do anything. Right. So the dabblers are like the people who go to the gym for a month and then quit. That's why January is so packed. So that's like the dabbler. A lot of guys are dabblers. They think it's just a hobby. You know, I'm going to download this e-book and then everything's fixed. Right. They don't realize the gravity of their situation. They don't realize that relationships are one is the most important, if not one of the top three most important areas of their lives. And that nothing in society and nothing in their education has prepared them for this. So, you know, you can go to university and pay $50,000 a year to learn civil engineering or something, right? Or you can learn like how to code a computer, how to code a program. But you can't go there to learn how to develop people skills. I don't know a major research university that has a major in people skills. Or even emotional intelligence. Maybe they'll have one of those elective courses that everyone thinks is an easy A. It's going to be all like emotional intelligence or something. But no one, they don't respect it. And the rate of which society has changed has really forced us to be good at these things. Whereas back in like just even in the 1800s people were in trades. You know, you had an apprenticeship, you were a blacksmith or whatever, right? You didn't need people skills so much because you were just apprenticing for somebody. And now everybody's like realizing that if you don't have people skills, you're not going to get anywhere in life except you hit a ceiling at the middle of the road, whatever, right? Middle in your company or something. You will hit a ceiling and you will be solidly stuck there. And the training effect is all about like the next guy up is the achiever. He hits that plateau, goes in that dip and he just works at it, works at it, works at it, works at struggle, struggle, struggles. And then he'll pop out of that dip or plateau and he'll get to the next level. And then he'll keep doing that. And his life kind of sucks. His life is a life of struggle. And I know tons of guys like that. Most of my friends growing up, the Asian American minority, you know, they work really hard and they get results, but they're fucking miserable and want to kill themselves. What's interesting about this is like you bring that up with the Asian American and that's totally true. But dude, this is anybody that pushes themselves in any form. Like, man, anything that I've done, I learned to work hard and be the best at. And then guess what happens, you know, in a competitive, like, let's say some sort of athletic event, you get injured, you know, in the people who don't get injured or their bodies, you know, for whatever genetic reasons or yada, yada, yada, you'll learn that's the right way. And you end up being, you know, 20, 22 years old, and you're setting yourself up for damaging your body in seduction. You know, in seduction actually is really where I shined. But that, like, God, man, high level sexual activity. And I'd actually like to talk to you about this, especially with all the behavioral stuff. Dude, it damages you in very consistent ways that I see over and over again with pickup coaches. And it's kind of sad and disgusting that nobody talks about it because people don't realize, like, you know, the pickup industry might screw some people up because of misinformation and overselling and all this stuff. And that does suck and it's a real deal. But the people that are successful in it, you don't know what you're walking into, man. You don't know what you're walking into in terms of relationships, in terms of different levels of addiction or whatever takes place. But that struggle and that fight and that need to be the best and kick ass, you do not see is the nature of man. It's not what we were meant to do. It's not what our emotions were meant to do. It wasn't what our sex was meant to do. It wasn't what anything was meant to do. It's a societal, you know, it's a cultural thing that's taught and it's not even seen in all cultures. Anyway, keep going with your archetypes. But I just, it's like it isn't just with the Asian American dudes. Man, we see that over and work harder. Be the best, fight for it. Yeah, definitely. And it can't be sustained. Yeah, I take pride in my clientele. A lot of them are achievers. They'll reach out to me because they resonate with my background of this achieving background. So I know this problem really well. So I can tell them here. So basically the third level, the one that I try to give in the long-term program is that I need you to commit to this long-term growth because this will dissuade the dabblers and the guys who just want to tip their feet in but don't want to get serious about it. But then what it will give me is it'll give me a time to show them what's coming next. So if I can tell them, expect this plateau at time X or at phase Y. Then when they hit the plateau, they're not going to get frustrated. Those who say, oh, I'm at the plateau. It's like a waypoint. Like they can rest, right? And they say, okay, now David says, just implement this. So here's a great fitness program that I got a lot of value out of, P90X. It's kind of crazy. But I mean, that was one of the first things I just cut my teeth on. It was great. And what it does is it works really hard. They work you really hard for three weeks. Then in the fourth week, there's a recovery week where you do yoga. You do some stretching stuff. You do calisthenics. And basically what it does is it builds into the program, the plateau. Dude, let me just tell you. So if the guys understand what I'm saying to them, it will. Yeah, go ahead. But I was just going to say the yoga period in P90X is not fucking easy. It's just different. It's just different. Yeah, it's a different kind of pain. It's a different kind of pain. But what it does is it changes up your workout so that if you just persisted with the same workout, you were getting great results for three weeks, four or five weeks later, you're going to plateau. And the guys who don't know that are going to feel frustrated. They're going to waste a lot of time and they might just give up. They may never make it out of that dip. So the long-term program is there for me to tell them that here are four phases that you're going to go through. Here's what to expect. When you master this, here's the next problem that comes up. Expect to have this problem. And then I try not to tell them too far ahead because then they'll think, oh, I'm better than I am. And they're not confronting their actual real issues. And it's great because the guys in the program see the beginners coming in and they can mentor them. And that helps them grow because if you really want to learn something, you should teach it. And it's great because it just creates this great community that's very supportive. And everybody is knowing what's coming up next. There might be some frustration, but they can understand how it fits in to the whole progress map. And they feel like they're in control of the process. No, man, it's really amazing. When it comes down to human behavior and change and improving yourself, man, so many people, I think, get the wrong idea. And this is actually the first time we're talking about it, but I agree with you on so many points of it. Is that one of the worst things that you can do is sell an idea that, man, number one, that sex is like or your sex life, your relationships, your communication with people, the things which give you fulfillment and enrich your emotions, sense of being and sense of self is this quick, easy fix. It's like breathing. It's like eating. It's like how you become healthy is a daily exercise. And it's a, man, it's really a journey to do that. Whereas, man, I, it's one of the poor things about the marketing in the fitness industry, in the dating industry, in the self help industry is that we can get it fast. And then we never have to do it again. Whereas if we can learn a way of life and a certain behavior, that's key. Man, what do you do when you come to people, especially in the dating and seduction world, the men's improvement, you know, sex is always going to be in there, you know, sex, fitness, money, those types of things. Sure. How do you start with a guy that has built in so many habits or belief systems or mindsets that are flawed, but he does want to commit to a year? Like where do you start with a guy like that? Well, actually, the long term program is ideally suited to a guy who has a lot of limiting beliefs or internal demons that are holding him back that he's probably not even aware of. So we're rolling out a new format that we've been testing for several months already, but we're going to be launching that quite soon. And the very first course in this series of events during that year, actually, now we're expanding it to 24 months. So if he wants to take 24 months to do it because he's really busy, that's also within the same price he can do for 24. And the first program is called Unbreakable Social Confidence. And it's a full-on immersion experience where we lead him through, I lead him through a series of exercises over the course of those days that makes him confront what's actually in his mind that's holding him back. So I send the techniques over video for most of them so that we don't have to learn lines, we don't have to drill what to say. That's already taken care of in most cases as far as head knowledge goes. But what's holding them back isn't the cognitive ability to do it. They can all say those words. Okay, it's not like it's complicated intellectually. It's all emotional and a lot of it's unconscious. So it's a period as a process of getting them to unearth the unconscious beliefs that are holding them back and various proprietary methods to do that. And then of getting them to work through those issues and beliefs so that they can actually become they're fully confident, they figure out their own hacks, so to speak, hacking their own minds. So one of mine is if I can open my eyes real wide. So that was one of those things that I discovered in Seduction. If I just had regular eye contact with a girl, it'd be okay, you know, but it wouldn't be like when I'm on, you know what I mean? I don't even know if you can see it, but I'm sort of dilating my eyes a bit. You're Asian, so it's tight. Totally, I can totally see. Yeah, I'm half Asian, so it's... But so that's one of those things that is not even perceptible by the other person, usually, unless they're like right up there. But it changes my mind. So one of the biggest lessons I've had over the past couple of years is the impact of the body on the mind. Not just the things you eat in the workouts. That definitely makes a huge difference. But the way you stand, the way you talk, the way you use your face. And you can actually force yourself to do these things. So if you're not in a good mood, if you just smile and pretend you are for a few seconds, your brain will slowly, well, within a few seconds, we'll start to think I'm in a good mood. So I better start acting accordingly, better start shooting these chemicals into the brain, because my body is telling me I'm in a good mood. And if you just hold it for two minutes or whatever, your body will... You'll actually see real changes that are empirically verifiable. Dude, I like that you brought that up, and you said that you just got into it for about a year. One of the things that I've always disliked about the kind of self-help, like hacker lifestyle thing, is they talk about this sort of like bio-energetics, philosophy or idea, but they never go into it. And so I always steered away from it, and especially working with so many people who had real, real addiction problems and big... Man, I mean, I've worked with that longer than I've worked in seduction, but the consequences can be really high. But anyway, so the thing is, is we always went emotional, cognitive. Where is that? Don't worry so much about how you hold your chest. But what's so interesting about that is that in my own journey with all that sort of stuff, the whole bio-energetic side has been very real, that if you do not release it in your body, there's only so much that you can discover and know and find out. And man, it's amazing. Like actually it came out of one of my courses. There's a martial artist, he teaches something called Wuchifa, and he's an American. It's actually an American martial art, but he studied in China and all sort of stuff. But it so has to do with the body and the alignment and how you work at it. And dude, man, it's changed crazy, crazy things in my life. I mean, it's nuts. I almost don't credit it to it because it's so subtle, but you cannot deny the different changes that have happened. And then in the work that I do with people in terms of recovery and all the sort of addiction stuff, is that, man, it's getting more and more that guys who get involved in yoga, guys who get involved in massage, guys who get involved in just using their body in a way that can slowly, consistently, working out is great. Jiu-Jitsu is awesome. I love it. I'd recommend it to people lifting weights or whatever it is. But if you can subtly and consistently do something to see how your body holds on to stuff, man, it's amazing what it does. It's fucking crazy. So that's kind of a new revelation to me myself, that it's like, holy shit, this stuff is very, very powerful. Yeah. And even if the guy doesn't, I mean, he can see changes right in five minutes. Like definitely working out in any kind of martial art is good. But I've seen results that I've gotten, like in the past, especially the past year, where within, literally within a half an hour, the guy will go from completely defeated, mumbling, unsure of himself, into this totally different character who speaks differently, is moving differently, and is coming up on the fly with new things to say. And here's the research that I discovered was explaining this. So I had already kind of figured this out before I found this research. But an easy way to access this research is ted.com. Ted Talks are awesome. Ted.com, the second, last time I checked, the second most viewed Ted video of all time. It's by a woman named Amy Cuddy at Harvard. And it's basically a kind of neuro psychology. And she had people standing in various poses. And the power pose, what they call the power pose, had within two minutes, empirically verifiable results up to on average around, I think it was around 20% increase in testosterone, just from holding the power pose for two minutes, a 15% decrease in cortisol, or something like that. It's crazy. I mean, it was a 25% decrease in cortisol. I'd have to check. But go check. For the guys who are watching this, if you don't understand just how powerful the physiology is, go check out that Cuddy video and the research surrounding that. So that was just like the one mainstream video on this research. But this research has been going on for decades already. The influence of the physical body on the brain and how you feel. Well, the research has been going on beyond that. Because even if you look back at like Wilhelm Reich stuff, and that guy was nuts. He was totally crazy. I almost appreciate him more for that. But the things that he was talking about in terms of sex and how we thought and how your body held onto different stuff. It was so theoretical. Like, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's crazy. It's like, there's some insane shit about it. You were starting off with behaviorism. There's a whole subfields just dedicated to this. But we didn't have the tools back then to do the chemical testing. So we didn't know what the effects were on testosterone or cortisol or on adrenaline. So there weren't so many controlled tests. So that's why you were hesitant to go into bioanergetics. Because it is sort of woohoo airy-fairy in a way compared to the hard sciences. But now this research has been verified in, I mean, this has been ongoing in the hard sciences. And yeah, I just, yes, the guy's watching. You can check it out, get on it. We incorporate that as a major part of the very first event, the Unbreakable Social Confidence, getting in touch with your own physiology and your own, the way your body can tap into your confidence and create that confidence. So I think of it in every one of our programs is inside out, outside in. So inside out is the cognitive, like cognitive behavioral therapy is both sides, right? So cognitive is, and that's partly what the 21 convention talk I put up earlier, or that you guys put up that we recorded earlier was on, like cognitively working through your limiting beliefs. That's one side of it. So that's the inside out. So you can get these changes from the inside out. But you can also get the outside in, as you were talking about, right? So if you can get cold of the way that your body has been triggering confidence or lack of confidence for the past 30 years or however long you've lived, you can get it's sort of like a guidebook to hacking your own body and brain. And it's amazing how quickly those changes can occur. And to make it fully assimilated into who you are into your identity, you have to bring those two things together. So the inside out, outside in to make your full, a whole. So anyway, that's how we do a lot of our programs both ways. No, man. I mean, that's phenomenal. I love hearing about it because first off, so few times when we look at self-improvement, do we look within? I'll tell you this, man, I mean, how I start mine is we go through a massive inventory. And I mean massive, we go through everything, how you see yourself, how other people see you, your views on attraction through other people, physically, mentally, emotionally, your views on yourself, your attractiveness, physically, mentally, emotionally, views on sex, family, all that sort of stuff. Because expression is you, you put that out there. Expression is you and connection is what changes things in all things. You know, when we get into chemicals, when we get into nature and biology, connection is what transforms and moves us into so many different areas. But the weird thing, which was that I was always resistant, especially when we got into like self-help and pickup about the outside and just do this. It's good. You got to act, man. But our world is always teaching us that. And when I saw how it worked with people that truly like traumatic lives, you know, whatever they had gone through or, you know, coming over some like massive behavioral change, whether it was like drug addiction or some sort of sex addiction thing. When we did the outside in, it didn't work. It just collapsed. And it was just such an obvious thing. When you went inside out and you allowed time and community, and that's what I also, that's a big thing that I think is so important about teaching community. When you have those things, then it could build like a point of functionality or growth or whatever. But as soon as I could start seeing guys get there, the outside in stuff, you're right, man. It did have to merge. It did move into it. And I just think in our world, in our society, we look so much as everything outside of us. Everything outside of us. But actually think about this. We look at everything outside of us that's man-made or cultural or being sold. But we don't look at everything outside of us of how the actual world works and the nature of things. And seeing that is more of our guide. So I mean, dude, I did think it was like airy-fairy. I did think it was like whatever botch science or something being put out there. But it's so interesting how it is connecting. And it's really a beautiful thing, man. Because I myself, no academic dude, you ask me to study stuff. It's like, I'd rather talk to you. I'd rather talk to somebody or listen to some sort of podcast or whatever. But man, from real life experience, from working with just tons of people on so many different things, that is what happens. And being a teacher in it, dude, that is how things change. It's just a fucking cool thing to hear you talk about it. And especially coming from such a studied and referenced point of view, man. I just see it as that. Yeah, well, thanks, man. Yeah, that was a big revelation seeing how much research was already being done on this. And that gave me more confidence to go further into that area. And it's been amazing how many, the kind of results I've been seeing in myself as well as the clients. And one thing I wanted to talk about before we finish off here, because I rarely get to do this. So one of the things I discovered in my business coaching is that I might have a great message. I might have an amazing product. But if I can't get the attention of the guys who need it the most or the people who need it the most, it won't do any good. Right, so one of the things that I've discovered is so we have to figure out what is in the minds of the guys we're trying to reach first, reach them where they are at, and then give them a kind of benevolent bait and switch. So one of those words that have not been converting well for us at all is the word masculine. Okay, so if we'll put an ad for masculine confidence or masculine something, nobody clicks on it and it's killing our ad revenue. So we cut that. So we've tested it for a bunch of times to cut that. And so we'll use other concepts to bring them in and then we'll teach them about masculinity on the other end. But 21 Convention is all about masculinity, which is awesome. So I want to take advantage of this time to actually talk about masculinity because I rarely get to do that in the front end. Like, I don't get to do it until they're all in the program or something. So it was pretty exciting to do that. Something I just love about the branding you guys have put out there, you've attracted the kind of guys that I resonate a lot with the way they're thinking, especially with the holistic lifestyle, with the fitness and just lifestyle overall. So one of the things that has really come to the fore and has actually really made a huge difference in my life in the past few years is understanding the societal drift around masculinity and femininity. And especially in Asia, you can see this. So if anybody Googles the declining birth rate in Japan or the lack of sex going on among the average Japanese, you know, the Japanese people, this has also felt pretty strongly in Singapore. In fact, it was so strong in the 80s and still now that the government put millions of dollars into campaigns to get people to have more babies. Wow. Sort of like the opposite of the China problem. And one of the reasons is because of what's happening in society very quickly and it's happened very quickly is the rise of power, or like the reach of women, which is amazing. I think it's definitely a good thing. But what it's created is women are dominating all over the world. Like they're killing it in the universities. They're dominating even entrance rates in engineering and the sciences. Obviously, they're hitting a glass ceiling in at the very highest levels of major corporations. But it's happening very quickly. This shift has happened in the past 30 years, 30, 40 years where it's really taken hold. And if you think about Asian countries where the development was forced, they were forced to join the world economy. So they didn't have a natural trajectory. They literally had people come in with guns and boats, ships, defeat them, and then depose the emperor. You know, like they literally forced the emperor as king to step down. That's how it happened. So you can imagine like there is an evolution in Western history of the Industrial Revolution. You had the French Revolution. You know, so politically things changed. Economically things changed. Societally things changed socially. And then you had the Kinsey report in the 50s opening up the sexual revolution. Then you had the drug exploration period. Then you had AIDS in the 80s and then Reagan clamped down and everything. So all of this was going on in the US. None of that was happening in Asia. So what basically you get is people were basically pre-Kinsey report, pre-Industrial Revolution, until World War I and II, especially the Pacific War. Basically Japan was the only country that got passed that period on its own, or made it pass that period before World War II. And then they basically were forced to join the world economy. One of the problems is the women had to become like men because they ended up having... So now the roads of corporate promotion and doing well in school, even access to education is available to women. They dress more like men. They might have skirts, but they'll have a jacket on. They'll be expected to be assertive and speak up. They'll expect it at the board room to be able to hold their own. And then at places like Harvard, and this has already been studied extensively, the MBA program there, where half the grade is dependent on your participation. Women who enter the MBA program are on par with all of the other, with the men and the minorities. But then after the first year, their grades dip, and partly it's because they haven't... It's hard for them to compete with the really, the stereotypical alpha dude who's just shoving his way into the discussion and all that. And just to make their way in freaking Harvard MBA program, they have to learn to communicate like a stereotypical alpha male or be able to dominate these guys in discussions or to hold their own. And basically, this is what has happened. I've seen this every day in all of the Asian countries I go to. The women who are the most successful and they're becoming more, they're more and more of them, power to them. It's awesome. Are getting turned off by the men locally because the men have not caught up. Okay. And then we have expats coming in who... I'm not sure if you're aware of the type of expat who usually comes to Southeast Asia or even to East Asia, but they're usually upper management, upper middle management, young, single and entitled. And they go on there, especially in like bar and club settings, just grab and everything. You know, they just go... It's not true for everyone, obviously. I have a lot of expat clients, but they already have this sort of... Because they're a foreigner, because there are fewer social risks, because they're coming from a society that got to this point gradually. They're able to navigate the waters a little better. And what I've discovered as well, just getting plugged in to pop media in America, is that there's a serious confusion over what's the feminine role and the masculine role. And most women... So there was a period also, and I think it's still common, where men are in this sort of new age phase too. They don't know whether they should be... They're kind of confused. Should I be more like Justin Bieber? Or should I be more like the Orlando Bloom? Or should I be more like Hugh Jackman? Like they don't know. They don't know what masculinity is. They don't even want to talk about it or think about it, except your guys are watching. This is awesome. But we've tested ads with masculinity. It's totally foreign concept to them, because they do not think about it, generally speaking. And this is mainly with Asian culture? Or this is everybody? No, it's definitely Asia, but I would say everybody. Every time I come back to America, I hear the same confusion. No, you see it in the States. Big time, big time. Yeah, but keep... Yeah, they don't know, should I hold the door open? Is that even a question I should be asking? You know, they don't know what masculine feminine is anymore because there's this gender neutrality that's caused everybody to meet in the middle. Everybody's the same. They're, you know, so there's no polarity. And I see women becoming, like, shaking my hand really hard when I get to America, slapping me on the back real hard, like, oh, shit, man, I got a man up here. You know, or just walking up to me and asking me stuff at the train station. And I'm already on guard because that never happens in Asia, you know? So I'm like, is she trying to rob me? Is this a homeless person? I'm getting it. I'm all confused, right? So I'm like, I better be a little more alpha here. Right. But then I noticed, you know, the American, a lot of the American guys that I meet and just watch are confused, too. They, there's less of an independence, direction, purpose. And they're just sort of, you know, just sitting on the cow jeep and potato chips and just letting life go by kind of thing and not really sure how I should treat the feminine. And this is a huge gap. There's a huge gap in the way what women are looking for, that's not generally there anymore and society is not helping the men. Women are empowered in the men are not, right? So there's this gap, but then because of that, there's this huge opportunity for the guys, the few guys who do understand what masculine is. They can give it to the feminine, especially the feminine that's been acting in a masculine manner for so long and almost like having to step in the gap because the men are backing away from it. Man, you know, so that's something I want to say about masculinity. Man, it's interesting though, because I just got back from Mexico and we had a family emergency to go over there and we were there for quite a while actually. And you see a country that doesn't have a propaganda of what femininity is supposed to be, but at the same time, there are problems, right? And there are problems and you get stuff that like, fuck man, the feminists and the MRAs talk about a bunch of shit and it's not connection. It's not what happens when men and women come together and experience their attributes of masculinity and femininity of what that is. And I can't tell you what that is for you and that's not society's job, right? You know, it's not my job as a coach working with men or whatever to say what a man is. That's what you got to find out and you got to find out through connection. Like you want to know what sex is, I can't fucking describe it to you. You want to know how to use your dick, use your masculine presence, use your testosterone, use that. You have to go out and apply that to the world and get a feedback of that. Now, in Mexico and their society, you know, they have what they have and surely they have problems and whatever like everything else. But what you don't see is a confusion of what a woman is supposed to be. You don't see a confusion. Should I not wear pink? Should I wear pink? Should I rebel? Gender roles and all this stuff. You don't see the same stuff with men. You know, because men are doing it just as idiotic in the same way like you don't have to be tough and yada, yada, yada. You see people going about their business and for better or for worse, they have a sense of identity in self. Now, that may work out to some sort of oppression for the male, for the female, for the poor, the rich and that stuff can be sorted out in its own ways. But the regulation of masculinity and femininity, what has it brought us? You know, human beings are not machines. Human beings as society is not necessarily humanity's definition. And so I think it's very important for men and for women to experience who they are. And I'll tell you this, dude, man, I'm very, very like passionate about this. If somebody fucking, man, I know people who it's so sad who've been like sex workers from an early age. I know God, man, my buddy who had passed away. He was he was tortured as a kid and was in all this crazy fucking shit. You know how any of those people got to a benefit of life to where they were empowered to where they were like they knew who they were and felt good and could live in a functioning life. Man or woman is they stopped blaming and fitting themselves in some sort of fucking template of what you were supposed to be and being angry at the man and changing society. But they worked on themselves. They focused on the stuff within them first and worked very hard at it and might have to really force themselves at first because they don't fucking have a point of reference of life. And it wasn't about blame. It wasn't about resentment. It wasn't about writing a wrong. It wasn't about a protest. It wasn't about, you know, all this other shit. And it was about them and taking responsibility for everything that was theirs, their resentments, their anger, whether it was put on them, their love, their joy, and learning how to own that. And when they could do that, then you can start worrying about society and worrying about the message and all that sort of stuff. Man, if you dip your feet in the water that's anything outside of yourself, you're setting yourself up to be confused. And man, that's a horrible way to look at yourself. Anyway, man, I dug what you were saying. Dude, in Asia, we hear a lot about Asian pickup artists and stuff like that. And it's kind of like a niche in a market. And you're a professor of Asian study. Or wait, is that correct? I did my PhD partly in Asian studies. Yes. Man, so how can you... Now, what do you have to say about that? I mean, you're so much more aware of the culture than I am. I mean, I'm an American. My dad is Japanese, but he grew up in Hawaii. So, you know, it's like, I don't really have that sort of like Asian influence. What do you say to those guys who are looking at, you know, shit, man, I don't have success with women. I'm looking at the different Asian mentalities or the different cultures that I'm coming from and the white man and all that sort of stuff. Like what's the white woman get the blonde girl? Right. What do you have to say about men changing in that sort of realm? Yeah, you know, what I was saying, we started off earlier about pickup artists being validated by the approval of women. One of the... And I was, you know, there's a running joke in our academy. If you meet a pickup artist, you want to fuck with them? You can just hire these models to go in or you can bribe some girls and just blow them up. Blow like, just not blow him, but, you know, shut them down like 10 times in a row and they go up to him like, dude, want a drink? See how he feels. Because his ego, his whole who he is is dependent on how they treat him. And here's the thing about Asian pickup artists in America. Who they are is largely dependent on how white women treat them. So one of the things about like, I need this white woman is this white woman fetish thing. You know, if you're attracted to her physically, I totally get it, right? But you're just like, her skin color is a big deal for you. That's kind of scary. Because basically, I mean, you're sitting yourself up for unhappiness in a major way. And you're giving up a lot of power to a whole race of women. And here's the other thing about just focusing on that issue itself. One of the things that happens when we try to deal with limiting beliefs is that you replace them with empowering beliefs and then you try to not think about the problem too much, right? So because the more you focus on the problem, the bigger the problem becomes. So as an Asian guy, the more you focus on being like, I'm Asian so I can't get women and you let that thought dominate your mind, the more it becomes a real issue. So the more like, you think about the fact that you're Asian as a negative factor, the worse that negative factor becomes or the stronger in its negative, like the more of an impediment if he comes. Whereas, let's just say objectively speaking, for the sake of argument, it is a little bit harder, let's say. I'll grant that to them, right? So the research is shown, especially on online dating, when women are purely operating through the prefrontal cortex, they prefer a non-Asian man. All right, let's assume that. That's just one factor out of many, right? So you can be better in these other factors that are also important to them, even at the prefrontal, like just purely rational level, by focusing so much on one factor, it's blowing that factor way out of proportion and giving it like 10X what it should be. And it's basically, they're causing their own problem. It's not a problem in Asia. In fact, one of the reasons why I very rarely produce material addressing the Asian problem is because guys in Asia don't see it as a problem. There, I know many men in Asia, simply because of the fact that they're not as exposed visually to white women, that they're not as attracted to that type of woman. Also a lot of the Western women who come to Asia are more masculine than they're used to. They shake hands real hard, you know, shit like that. You know, they're more sporty and stuff. And then they don't feed you food. It's like an Asian thing. So the Asian guys are like, you know, I prefer physically and, you know, personality-wise prefer an Asian woman. So they don't think, they don't fetishize the white woman. So it's not even an issue for half of the world. And thinking about how many Asian American guys there are in the whole world, it's like a small number, you know, like compared to how many Asian guys there are. And it's, but it's crazy how so dominating this thought is about their limiting belief about being Asian. And every time I come back, to American, I get, or I get asked this question by, by somebody who lives in America, it's, it's just sort of like a wake-up call to like David. There are people who are suffering this debilitating limiting belief. Don't forget that. And it's, I don't, I generally don't see the world in these racial terms. I see them in terms of your, your personal history, your personal interests, your personal preferences. I mean, it's just as important as the fact like I got a tattoo now. Like there are some girls who are really into tattoos or some who aren't. Same thing. Some girls who are really into Asian guys, some who are not. You know, some who are neutral haven't decided. Most of them are neutral. Haven't even thought about it. And if you can display or express your other attractive traits or who you really are actually, which is what you want to do, you want to be putting yourself out there as authentically as possible. And if then let her decide, like let her then deal with the fact that you're presenting yourself that way. And it shouldn't be a handicap that you're like putting out there as a problem. You know, because the more you focus on it, the worse it gets. Man, I, you know, it's so funny because in a very simplistic way, which a lot of the truths can be found in, but when we're far away from somebody, what can we communicate on? Superficialities and like, and then we make up all these stories like, well, that person, you know, you know, drives a certain type of car, has like hands like this. I mean, dude, this is like shit that I actually thought, you know, got in my early twenties or something. It's actually interesting because we did a little presentation on this kind of recently about the myth of what we make ourselves and we don't know anything. I mean, myth comes from not knowing or not being able to explain. It's just weird shit. You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, I grew up with a dad without a dad. I have small hands, I have big hands. I have, I'm too fat or whatever. This person is tall and skinny, so they must be good with women or must. Yes, right. And all this shit happens in, but you know what's crazy is that when we get closer to somebody, so far away superficialities, when we get closer, all that stuff changes. You know, when I started doing pickup and I had these beliefs that, you know, my hands are smaller and it's so funny, I have a client who has long skinny hands and he told me that he's like, man, you and Eric, Eric Everhard, the porn star, we're all kind of friends and we knew this guy, you and Eric and this guy, Mike, you guys have smaller hands and you have fatter fingers and I have long fingers and everybody I know that's good with women. I'm just like, dude, that's true. What you're saying, but it's insane. That's so stupid. Like what the fuck is wrong with you? But I used to think stuff like that, but the opposite, like if you have bigger hands. But anyway, the funny thing is, is that when I didn't realize why I had those beliefs and those beliefs can only be sustained by something inside of you that is saying you're not good enough. When I didn't clear that up, check this out. 2008, 2009, 2010, when I'm 30, 31 that time and I did get what I wanted, anything I wanted, man, anything. Like I love it when people do all this like pickup stuff like, well, you don't know because polyamory is that, it's like, man, fuck. I've lived with plenty of women together. Like I've had sex with a lot of stuff and here's what I got from it is that that wasn't what necessarily made me happy like sex is good and great but express yourself and learn what your sexuality is. But when I didn't clear up that like you're not good enough that created all these myths and not knowing guess what those myths turned into? Those myths didn't turn into my fucking hands, didn't turn into my dick size, didn't turn into how tall I was or whatever. I realized none of that stuff mattered. Like height, being fat, like shit, dude, I had plenty of sex when I was 20, 30 pounds heavier than I am now. And you know what it turned into was that I truly am not good enough. I'm excellent with women. I'm a horrible person. I am a one trick pony. I'm deeply flawed as a person inside. And this is like, then my whole life was a feedback loop for either arguing against that and then perpetuating that. Man, I see guys go through that over and over again. It's really sad that we don't speak about it as a fucking industry or community. It's fucking sad. Yeah, well, it's an industry and most businesses are predicated on telling the consumer you're not good enough. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, like the whole luxury. I mean, yeah, it's just you got to buy this thing because you're not good enough. Buy this and you'll feel better about yourself or you'll be good enough. And yeah, it's one of those messages I want to keep putting out there. And you know, it took it. It takes a long time to confront that actually because that is such a global belief that's always nagging at you, especially the achievers, right? I get one of the things that makes an achiever an achiever is that belief that I'm not good enough. I got to earn my parents' love or affection. I have to earn my own right to feel good about myself. And here's a quick example is if you think about a newborn baby and I was just back in Canada last month and I held my little sister's own, of course, you know, but this holding a little baby is just newborn, like a week old. It can hardly see, you know, but it's just this precious thing. And it doesn't matter what it does. It could poo. It could throw up on you. It could do all. You will love it. Like it is just, there's nothing it can do wrong. Like you will clean up after it's shit and everything. Now that baby grows bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And then as that thing shits, no one's going to clean it up. The thing starts throwing up. You're like, oh, this is gross, right? And you're thinking, get on your two feet and go do something. I'm not going to talk to you. And at some point in our everybody's development, we had to transition from being an infant that everybody loved no matter what we did, unconditional acceptance and approval and love into if you continue to act this way, you're not going to get your food today or you're not going to, you know, you're going to be grounded or you're going to stop acting like a baby. And no one coached us through that transition. We were just forced to deal with it. And one of the things that achievers have found is, well, there are a couple of different ways to react to it. And one is to actually step up in a chief to earn the affection of your parents or approval of yourself or society is that you, in yourself, just as a freaking little baby, there was a time when you didn't have to do anything to be worthy of love, to at least be worthy of your own love of yourself. And that realization was such a paradigm shift for me. And for the coaching that I do, that it's actually necessitated a whole overhaul of our front-end curriculum. Because it used to be a message of, you got to transform yourself. You got to go to the gym. You got to earn it. You got to learn these things. You got to earn it. You know, earn the right to be proud of yourself. Where actually, that begins by being accepted by accepting and loving yourself with all of your weaknesses and all of your history and all the fucked up shit that's happened and that you've done and still saying, I love you to your baby self, to you. Right. And then working from there because without that, you won't make it. Like without that, if you do make it, just through hard, the dint of hard work, you're going to actually be pretty miserable and burnt out at the end of that process and bitter if you make it at all. And just getting them from a good place and moving forward is so much easier and more powerful. Man, it's a trip because being a champion or being the best is actually a battle that is so unnatural for human beings. It happens when we have bigger population densities and so on. But it's not what our emotions were made to have. And one of the interesting things is that I think self-love is natural and love is natural. And there's so many different societies or whatever. But as they get more complex, self-love in a complex society like ours, whether it's Western or Eastern or whatever, but with a lot of people and a lot of stimuli is only possible through self-acceptance. And it's a trip because we have made self-acceptance a very hard thing. I mean, I honestly say that one of the weird kind of like mental diseases or disorders that comes out of especially modern societies and inability to admit weakness or fault or flaw. And when it comes to the looking at myself, I mean, there's plenty of things like that I've had consequences in my life that are huge deals and all that sort of stuff. But I need to stop seeing myself as that. Massive, massive. Like I remember there was a point where I was going through something with sex. And it's a trip now because I've been in a relationship for a long time and I'm like, nobody really taught me how to do this. Like fuck, I know how to have like a relationship with four women at once. I know how to have a relationship that's purely sex-based, but that integrates everything. It's like shit, dude. I'm lost a lot of times. Like I need to talk to somebody's shit. But funny enough, it's rarely a person who's a pickup instructor because they've never been there themselves. It's not funny. But dude, the thing is, is that when I was going through a lot of sexual stuff and even stuff when it comes to like sex addiction and hitting that point where I just wasn't enjoying it, you know, where I was very sexually active and having all this stuff, I remember I was talking to a buddy of mine and working through this inventory of mine and I was like, man, I am incapable of love and relationships and I can get love. I could get love like that. Man, if I have one week of interacting with any girl in any city, like I can get love. If I break up and let's say she says, I've ruined her life and have these horrible, like go through all this hurt, I can get love again. I can get two women to love. I can get four women to love me at one time. And I've proven over and over again. And these are the beliefs, you know, that I fuck it up. So I am toxic to that. And he just said to me, he's like, look, it's like, dude, I've never had your sexual experiences on your level and that's just not me, you know, at the time who I was talking to the guy, he was married and, you know, and had a long relationship with his wife. He just said, you know, all the changes that happened in my life that kind of what you're talking about were dependent upon me accepting that. So why don't you just accept that you're a piece of shit male that fucks up at everything? Like, why don't you try and live is that? And I really, and I thought about this because I was like in a lot of pain and confusion, especially when I had said this to him. And I really thought about like, what if I am a, you know, just a sleazebag dude or whatever, or just like I am toxic to love, I can create, I can have it, but then I fuck it up and then it's not really it and yada, yada. You know, whatever, how we think. And what I really realized was how much my running from that and like, wait, I'm not that. So I'm going to prove that I'm this other thing and that I'm going to hold up this image and hold up this front and I'm going to be good and I'm going to be when and yada, yada, yada. Actually maintain and sustain that. Yes. It's like what you're talking about with the Asian pickup guy chasing the blonde. Exactly. My fetish without even knowing it was to create and control and have a relationship with love when I couldn't accept that I might have a counter to that within myself. And dude, just like he said, and I don't want to guarantee this towards him, but this is how it worked for me is he's like, man, you might transform if you accept that. I accepted that. And it, you know, it took years. You know, it took relationships and it took breaking up and it took hurting. Man, a wise man, two years later, this was when he told me that that was in probably 2010 or 11. Fast forward to 2012. No, man, it was fast forward to 2011. So he must have told me that in 2010 or nine or whatever. And I had gone through this breakup and I had went through my ideals and my ideal self of them. And like it wasn't just some stupid little inventory. Like we really talked about it. And I was really upset because like basically I had broken up with this girl that I'd been with for five years and like a lot of my pickup career. So we had experimented in every type of relationship and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, what's weird about that is like we had an emotional home base and there was love that was always there. But then I could experiment with all these things and just like any guy did that and any guy with kind of like a good enough ability to do that, you know, experiment with all sorts of shit. And basically like I didn't realize the disorder I was creating of this emotional home base that was, you know, kind of tethering me to yeah, it was just whatever all different ways of how we kind of mess around. Man, nobody talks about this. It's really sad because people do this over and over again. In any case, so we had broken up and I was, you know, meeting all sorts of people. I wasn't looking for a relationship. Ended up in one. And it wasn't working. Dude, man, I'll tell you this. Like without any ego aside, if I have sex with somebody, I'm good at it. I'm good at connecting. And it just it works. Like if I want emotional charge through some sort of sexual behavior, like I speak the language of sex very well and every human being can do that too. But this girl was the first girl in my entire pickup career. That's a lot of women and relationships that still rejected me. I was talking to my buddy Dave and he goes, he goes, dude, what the fuck are you saying? You just talked about all your ideals and you're ready to throw it out the window of the stuff that you just said you believed in. So you really don't believe in it. You're ready to throw it out the window because you get embarrassed because you fucked up because you made a because you're looking bad because something's not working and you're in pain. That's all your ideals are worth. So what you believe in is actually suppressed by the reactions you get. Like, man, I don't I don't know what's going to work. But dude, if you want to believe in your ideals, you know, you got to learn to live by them at the expense of not knowing what to do about being afraid about fucking up about failing about looking like an idiot in even an industry where you're an expert. And man, that's how you earn what to live by. And dude, you know what's funny? The best part about this is that I was like, man, this made so much sense and it blew my mind. And then I went out and fucking got on like some online dating sites, fucking blew through a bunch of chicks, realized how just numb and retarded of an action that I just did. And then I kind of settled down. And it was a trip because around all that time, I was like, man, yeah, I guess I need to get that out of my system. But that didn't do anything for me. And then that's how I met Maria, actually. She opened to me at a coffee shop. And then, you know, stuff went its course. But it's just interesting that self-acceptance, man. If you want to get to self-love and how our society works, and you have not accepted yourself and been willing to see yourself in total, in our society, it's impossible to get to that self-love. I think we're born with it, but just with the complexity in so many things moving at us. We're taught not to felt weak. You know, we're taught not to be real. God, what a beautiful gift. What the greatest thing that I've learned from coaching, the greatest honor from working with other men, being able to see it in other men, allowed me to have faith to do it myself. And man, it's just such a, it's a cool life working with others. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah. Well, that was really deep what you just shared. I want to thank you for that. That was deep. Ah, yeah. Yeah. Like, the way out, if you dial it back to a guy's more selfish needs, so if he's not as evolved as you've, no, not nearly as evolved as you've gotten, you'd be like, I would love to just blow through a ton of girls online or whatever they're thinking, you know, when they're searching for things online. So one of the things I've discovered in business coaching is I have to speak at that level. And one of the things that I've discovered is if you can, so one of the things that every guy wants are actually good feelings. So this is how I usually will get into the self acceptance issue is appeal to them to the good feelings. So they think if they get a lot of girls, they get a white girl, if he's Asian in America. Okay. He's going to feel good about himself. He's like, and he's going to, it's going to feel good when he's doing it, right? So he's going to feel, he just wants to feel good. People want to get into a relationship because they think that it will make them feel better than they are feeling now. Otherwise they wouldn't do it, right? So at the base of everything, at the bottom, everybody's just trying to feel better. You know, they're just, they're going for good feelings. They think that these things will give them good feelings. And you, that guy, he won't get to the good feelings. Like you are just talking about, man. You can, I can give you these techniques to do all this stuff. At the end of the trip, you're still going to feel miserable. In fact, you probably feel worse because you just spent all this time and effort to get you something that just makes you feel emptier. And if you want to actually get the good feelings that you think, hooking up with this white woman, to Asian American guys, or you think that this, at the end of this process, being able to date or walk up to a girl you see and just make something happen, and that's like this pickup dream or whatever it is that you have. So in order to actually feel that, to get that what you're actually looking for, it all starts with self-acceptance. Right? So appealing to the guys who think this is too very, very woohoo, you won't get that thing you're looking for unless you figure out how to come to grips with dealing with those thoughts if I'm worthless, I'm not good enough. And confronting those, working through those, and coming to the self-love, self-acceptance, because that's the road to self-empowerment and to getting all of those good feelings because you are actually the source of those good feelings. You can feel good about yourself. You can feel good right now. You can feel happy right now and it's a decision that you can make. And from that point, all these people will be attracted to you, not just women. You're going to do better at work and your social life because you are coming from a good place and people will sense that. The good people will sense that and be attracted to you naturally. But all of that happens only when you have already created in yourself the good feelings that you're looking for. Yeah, man. What you're looking for is what you're looking with, man. I mean, it's such a trip like, God, to remove pain and to see with beauty or whatever, to see with clarity, well, bring you clarity. I mean, it's just such a fucking awesome thing. I don't know. The beginning of the whole interview, I was, we were talking a little bit, I wasn't expecting to, but about the change in career and how you're a professor and like you got some bad press. The thing is, is you looked at it in a good way and it became an amazingly positive thing of influencing people but that came from yourself and that had to come from a good place and that's just such a cool message. Like I said, that's what made me always go like, man, fucking David Tien, what a fucking cool, like, I fucking love that shit. A lot of times when men get bad news or go through some sort of breakup or whatever, get the shit which fucks with us. When you live life in passion, you live life with you being you, you get hurt. When I live life as being somebody else, something else gets hurt and I can kind of step away from it and detach myself and make my life an objectification actually and all that sort of stuff but have that superficial distance relationship with myself rather than a connection. But when you live life as you, you actually are the one that gets hurt. You feel the pain, you feel the joy, you know, all that sort of stuff but there's really no other option, you know, to be honest with anybody out there. But goddamn, when that happens, if you have hate within you or anger or resentment or a fear of self, like you start living with a reaction and you start living with trying to make yourself feel better and do something or some trick rather than experience you better. The experience of you is much different than the image of you or what other people say about you. The experience of you is always happening. The world around you is always validating that. All life expresses itself, all plants and animals, but human beings with this reason, with this decision making, with this huge amount of choice and options and thought, we've made it about God, society and judgment and all these other things. It's very important for every man out there, every woman who's found themselves in a career, found themselves in something that they've earned, found themselves with a reputation. You can have all those things and they're great and you have to live by them and you have to be responsible for them and you have to own them, but if you do not look at how that affects you and how you can accept that, man, it becomes more of somebody else and less about you and it's real easy to dig yourself in a hole, man. No matter what you get, there will not be fulfillment and satisfaction. Human emotions, human identity, human passion, human purpose, human sexuality is dependent upon your true expression of self and you've got to be you to have that. Anyway, I'm kind of rambling about some philosophical stuff. Yeah. Oh man, that's what I live for. Dude, look, I really appreciated this because number one, you're the only guy, actually I know that has a long-term coaching program that's tried and true. You know, I know people have online programs or like different programs that they do, but it's not to the level of what you've really created and I appreciate that. I coach because of a passion of working with people, changing myself, changing other people and the community that's built with that and dude, I see that with you. We've talked on the phone a couple of times. We've met in person. You're on the other side of the world it's just so cool to see your success because it's just, it hits the morals and values that I believe in and to see how you've changed it and shaped it and created it into your own thing just makes me believe that much more in the human experience and expression. So I appreciated this, man. Oh, fuck yeah. That is inspiring. Yeah, that means a lot, actually. That's inspiring. We got to fly you and the family out, man, to Asia. We'll rock it out here. Yeah, anytime you want to figure out how to make that plane ticket work and the expenses of that, I'm all for it. Yeah, let's figure it out, man. We'll figure it out. No, man. Yeah, we got to get out there and do something and I really, it's a cool thing. Dude, so how do people get ahold of you? You know, what can they expect? What should they be looking for? I know you've touched on it, but yeah, what's the best way to get into the stream of Dr. David Tien? Yes, the best thing to do is just to go to oradating.com. So www.auradating.com and just type in your email to any of the web forums there and you'll get plugged in. You can also email me directly at David at oradating.com. For the past couple of years, we've been putting a lot of work into creating online programs that walk you through week by week what you would get in a year-long live program. So we've done a lot of testing on this, a lot of testing, and it's been pretty amazing the results. So I'm really believing, by the way, I think that's the way that the future of the universities are going to have to go, optimizing online experiences for learning. So check that out. Just type in the email and you'll learn more about online programs that we have. For any guy in Asia who wants to fly out, we have a whole new set of programs for the live events. So those are really cool. You can find more info on those at oradating.com. Man, let me actually ask you this because I know a lot of people are thinking about it because I have online programs and I have workshops too. I teach all the time. But what do you get when a guy says, man, I don't want to learn online. I want to do workshops. I need to do boot camp and get professional in-field training. What do you say to a guy like that? Well, we do offer that on a regular basis. So for guys in Singapore or anybody who can get out there, about once a year, I offer them in America, but by the time I get around to actually putting out an announcement, we're already full. So that's probably why guys never see any announcements. So this coming year, I do usually a once a year trip out there for that. However, the online experience, it's really not infield is great, obviously. But the amount that a guy can learn by watching me in the field is very little because it's dark. It's loud. You can't hear what I'm saying. You can't just stand there the whole time. You can't go all the way. I don't like that. I don't allow you in the room. What, dude? You haven't done work? Dude, man, I've done those. A one-way mirror. She's like, why is it? What's with that mirror? Don't worry about it. What's that sound? Don't worry about it. No, no. So those years of research and we're still field testing are figuring out ways of guys being able to consume the knowledge through videos and books and things like that that I can give them easily. And then the give and take of a community. So we have the community. We have live coaching calls like what we're doing right now. And journaling. So a lot of it is the guy's thought process. That's what I need to know. And I also need to see him physically if there's things with body language and so on that are happening. But that can all be done online now with all this great technology, as you can see. Actually, I'm pretty bullish on that. I'm actually going to speak on behalf of it a little bit because I know some crossover guys who've done some things with you. But you know, I know with my online programs and do we've done them nonstop? I mean, I've done 20 some odd groups for five years and we actually did it four times with infield and online. And so that's actually 80 guys, 40 guys online, 40 guys in field, you know, 10 guys four times, whatever. Oh, cool. Yeah. Dude, online always outperformed and it did not make sense to me at first. And actually, Leroy was on the first group who you know. Oh, yeah. From Singapore. And dude, let me just tell you, like because he knows you very well too and just was like, dude, you've got to talk to David, you know, you've got to and VJ as well. But it was basically like what I noticed from that and especially even with Leroy because he was in the first group that I ever did was that he learned these social dynamics things. And we had videos and we had access and everybody's like body language but seeing me in field and learning this thing. You just think in infield, if you do an infield workshop that's two days to 10 days to even longer than that but of the best coaches in the world working with you, you're going to learn like three things, maybe five things. Yeah. And because that's all you can learn. And then you're going to be working on those for six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, whatever your learning curve is. And that's it. So all these guys that trained in field with me every Saturday, one night in field, watching them, giving feedback, even doing like I would do demonstrations with women and stuff like that. And I mean, with some pretty crazy shit. But they actually maybe learned to approach and get some confidence or whatever. But they didn't develop any sense of identity. The guys that learned online, you had to be a little bit tenacious and push themselves. But that's why you're doing a fucking program. They changed their beliefs. They changed how they thought. They changed their image of themselves. They changed their beliefs of the potential of communicating with somebody randomly about whatever. And when you can work with that, which, you know, three months, four months, six months. And like you said, you have a 24 month program. That's what it takes to get there. Then the actions fall into place. And then all the stuff was just a fulfillment there. So we always it was like seven guys out of a group of 10 you know, did really well, you know, change their lives. I mean, fuck with Leroy. Dude, what was his change? He got good with women or whatever. But then he's like, he's living in like in 2009. This dude, I'm like the pickup teacher and he's like parting with the dude who started Facebook and like, yeah, parting with you in Singapore and like, like making real connections with people. And like, it's just crazy. And like, he's like his career changes. He's making all this money. He goes through this breakup and he's like, hey, Steve, where are you at? I'm like, I'm in Europe. He's like, I'm going to quit my job and hang out with you. I just went through this breakup and this is just that I'm going to travel the world. And I'm like, are you worried about money? Like, I hate you, man. I don't like, you know, whatever. And yeah. So I saw almost instantly that like guys would have a much bigger experience. And I know that through your program that it has the same better different, you know, whatever, but on that same level of effect infield is awesome. It's great. There's nothing like working with somebody face to face. But the idea that you can accomplish it in three days, you're going to pay that kind of man. I get where you're coming. Yeah. So for our new programs that we're rolling out very soon, the infield component is an add on. So it's not a requirement. We don't want to make people focus on that at all because you're right. I found exactly the same thing. This infield stuff. Yeah, it's got like marginal utility compared to what we should really be focusing on and it distracts him. Two things I wanted to say about what you just brought up. That's pretty amazing, man. If you had a professor there to chart the fact that you had two conditions. You basically ran a psychological experiment. You had two conditions. One was this condition. Those are the other. And you just write a paper on it. Dude, that was amazing. So I was involved with a Tier 1 journal article publication on something that was like this, but not such a big subject group. So your subject group was awesome. If you could do that again, we could throw some people in there and get you maybe a credit on the author byline. Man, David Buss lives in Austin. I've actually spoken there. Oh, yeah. Given talks with him at the end. Oh, there's a guy. There's a guy. Yeah. He came out to speak in Singapore, too. Wow. I met him there. So what was the point? Oh, yeah. We ran a study where we had three conditions. One was the condition with no coaching at all. Another condition was live in a classroom condition. And then the other one was guys were watching me coach live on a video. So we did before and after blind date studies. So each of these guys talked to 23 women and forget exact number, 23 undergrad girls. And then they just rated them before and after. Different group of girls. And it was blind and so on. For each condition. And what we found was the guys who were watching me on video did the best out of the three. And here's my theory on this, right? We just have the data. We don't know why. Here's my theory on this. The guys who are being coached, especially for guys who are raised in Asia, who aren't used to dealing with authority figures. They have an overfear of authority are two in their heads. So they're kind of there's a lot of pressure. They're kind of freaked out. I'm teaching them in the moment. You know, all the stuff's going on and they're trying to process it all. Whereas a guy sitting there watching on his video, he can laugh at the guy. You know, like, haha, this losing. You should have known. You could have done that. And that just makes for a more relaxed learning situation where he's able to absorb more and he can pause it, rewind. You know, you can go take a piss or whatever. His water. So it's actually proven that that will generally be better. Now, obviously, if we have more time live, I can give also with live, more individualized feedback and all that. So that doesn't detract from the live experience. But the fact that that just proves how effective online coaching can be, just even through recordings, right? Where it can be optimized in that way, where he's in a low pressure environment, which is most conducive to learning. Right? And you can see something that's being coached. You know, we got to wrap it up. I'm sorry, we're going like way over time. But let me just state what I think has to do with that because the pressure is huge. When you're talking to somebody, people that are wanting to learn in that way and are most receptive and actually have a lot of the coaching does happen. It's too authoritative. And so there's so much of a suppression of self and not an expression. And where you're going to, so true changes and beliefs where I see them happen. And this doesn't come from like research. It's just from a lot of experience. They come through empathy, like experience in empathy, a connection in exchange. But it's an experience. Right? And or through seduction, so through another exchange, which are two different things, empathy and seduction. But when somebody experiences those, they start to change their beliefs about self and relationships. And you know, and I'm dealing with men in sex and all sorts of stuff. But if you're talking to somebody and they've accepted that role, it adds too much pressure and stress and subjugation of self. Whereas if you can observe, you can stay a little bit detached and see yourself as an equal and take and borrow things. The problem is, is that in online communities now, when we're just sitting around watching TED talks or these amazing 21 convention podcasts and 21 convention speeches, is that we don't take enough initiative. And so that's why it's like when I had online groups and people were taking initiative and they accepted to do that. Even though they were making like baby steps of like saying hello to somebody at a market or whatever, and they weren't doing this crazy opener because it was based off of themselves, that was so much more important than imitating the instructor of what you're supposed to do. So just before I wrap up, one point, I wrote down two things. So one was the watching of it, the low pressure environment. The other is the abdication of responsibility. It's been huge. So if you take a guy in field, he's waiting for something to happen to him. He's like, okay, do your work, let the magic begin and do something on me. That's how it works. Whereas if you tell him here's what you need to do and go and do it and come back and let me know how it goes and how it went in a report or just tell me your thought process, then he can't abdicate the responsibility. Hence the journaling in your program. Yeah, hence the journaling. Yeah, that's huge. Fuck, that's just such a big thing. Anyway, man, awesome stuff. I appreciate it. We got to talk again. I'm so glad I did this interview just because hopefully it'll set up a second one that we could do pretty soon. Thank you for the honor, man. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and you're doing so much good in the world, especially to the community. It's awesome. Thanks, man. An honor.