She was a yogi with dirty blonde hair and a sexy, flexible frame, cute as hell with tantalizing green eyes and a warm smile. I was hooked.
I barely got my breathing under control enough to sheepishly ask her out, and to my surprise, she said yes.
Before our date I took almost two hours to get ready and made sure every hair on my head was perfectly in place. I also wore the coolest outfit I had.
When I was ready I hopped in my car and drove to her place to pick her up.
While I waited for her to come out, I took deep breaths reminding myself to play it cool.
When I saw her walking towards my car a couple of minutes later I rushed out and opened the passenger door for her.
On the drive over to the coffee shop I anxiously tried to keep the conversation interesting, barely letting there be a moment of silence for fear awkwardness.
I had read somewhere online that a big part of attracting women is being high-value and getting them to laugh. So at the coffee shop, I paid for her drink, led the way to some secluded seats and began telling her stories of my travels to India as a way to impress her.
I also cracked a cheesy joke at every opportunity I got.
But half way through the date my gut was telling me she was bored.
“I need to crank up the heat,” I thought.
So I moved us to another spot in the shop to listen to the band that was playing.
I howled and hooted unnecessarily loud after each song to demonstrate that I was confident, extraverted, and indifferent to people’s opinions.
I struck up a conversation with an elderly man next to us to show her I was a social, kind, and compassionate guy.
I asked her deep, unusual, and unique questions to keep her on her toes and stimulate her emotions.
But no matter how hard I tried, I still felt her emotionally distant from me.
I didn’t know it at the time but this was because everything I was doing and saying was contrived for the sake of getting her to like me.
Sure, I might have been following all the right dating advice—asking the right questions, making the right jokes, and telling the right high-value stories—but I was fundamentally trying too hard to impress her.
I was stuck in my head thinking about what I needed to say and do next instead of just being present with her and letting the chips fall where they may.
Things would have gone so much better if I would have just relaxed, sat back in my chair, stopped being a dancing monkey, and simply enjoyed her company without expectations or agendas.
But I didn’t do that, instead, I overcompensated for my insecurity and put on a false persona that I thought would entrance her.
After the date, I dropped her off at her place and didn’t even go for the kiss as the vibe was off and I felt her reluctant to do so.
A few days later I asked her out for a second date and, again to my surprise, she said yes. (Which in retrospect was nice of her to give me another shot.) But I ended up ruining things before we even made it out.
Her schedule was busy and she was going out of town for a few days, so finding a time to meet that worked for both of us was difficult.
I started getting impatient, fearing that if I didn’t see her soon she would lose interest completely.
My fear led to desperation and I eventually got upset when she took a couple days to respond to me. I sent her a needy and nasty message venting my frustrations with her and explaining that I didn’t feel like she was prioritizing seeing me.
Needless to say, she didn’t respond and I never saw her again.
This happened almost 6 years ago: I just read over our text exchange and almost threw up at my neediness and desperation as well as at the recollection of my cheesy behavior on our first date.
But hey, you live and learn.
I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it wasn’t for those mistakes.
That experience and many others like it taught me a valuable lesson on attraction that took me quite a while to fully grasp. It’s called the Law of Least Effort.
It’s made all the difference in my dating life, and has not only simplified my approach and brought me peace of mind, but has also caused women to chase me rather than the other way around.
Let me explain how it works.
Outcome Independence
The Law of Least Effort starts first and foremost with outcome independence.
This means that you are fully present, fully at ease, and fully content with what is right in front of you. You do not need things to go a specific way for you to be at peace.
If she likes you and you guys end up having mind-blowing sex—great. If she doesn’t, and she ends up calling you a creep and walking out on you—equally great.
Sure, you may be a bit disappointed if things don’t go exactly as you would have liked, but it doesn’t phase or break you in any long-lasting way because you already possess the peace you seek within you.
Getting to this level of outcome independence takes time and is only possible if you are meeting all of your own needs.
But if you’re neglecting any one of them, then there will be a sense of lack in you and you will unconsciously give off a needy vibe that women will undoubtedly pick up on. And that will almost always repel them.
Check out my last article on How To Stop Being Needy if you want to go deeper and understand what it takes to meet your own needs and become truly outcome independent.
Self Respect
Another facet of the Law of Least Effort is self-respect.
In a nutshell, this means that at any given moment you are fully willing and ready to walk away from any woman who (no matter how hot she may be) is not investing in you at a similar level as you are investing in her.
The courting process takes two to tango; it requires a little investment from you and a little investment from her, back and forth, over and over again until you’ve built enough trust and sexual tension to take things to the next level.
As a carrier of the masculine energy, it is often necessary that you initiate by investing in her first.
But after making the initial investment, if she doesn’t reciprocate accordingly, then you must cut your losses and stop pursuing her.
If not, you will be settling for scraps of her time and energy, and she may string you along. This will undoubtedly lead you to put in WAY more effort into the exchange than she deserves and than is worth your time. And the results will be fruitless.
A woman (especially early on in the attraction phase) needs to feel that you respect yourself enough to walk away from her if she were to repeatedly cross your boundaries or take you for granted.
This let’s her know that you value yourself more than you need her approval, sex, or connection. And there are few things more attractive to a healed and whole woman than this.
Nothing To Prove
Along similar lines, the third facet of the Law is possessing an attitude of having nothing to prove.
Think about it: if you ever try to prove your worth to a woman, then by default you’re implying to her that you don’t feel worthy as you are to let your sheer presence be enough.
It subcommunicates that you need the bells and whistles to compensate for your lack of value.
A truly secure man doesn’t try to prove himself because he already knows he is good enough. And if a woman doesn’t recognize his value, he simply lets her misconceive him.
He knows that there are women out there who do see his worth, and he gravitates towards those women instead of trying to convince the ones who don’t.
When you drop the showmanship, the accolades, and the dating techniques, and just show up as yourself then you send a powerful message that says: “I am so confident in myself that I don’t even need you to know my talents and achievements.”
This doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about your accomplishments or display your talents for a woman, but don’t do so from a place of desperation and showboating. And don’t linger on them too long, simply sprinkle them into the conversation when they’re relevant and move on.
Minimum Viable Dose
The final facet of the Law of Least Effort is the minimum viable dose.
This means that in your interactions with women, you give only what is necessary to achieve the the desired effect.
For example, when a woman asks you a question, you error on the side of saying too little rather than saying too much. Saying less generates a bit of mystery and intrigue.
If she wants to know more she can always ask, and you can always elaborate. But if you say too much then it can feel overwhelming to a woman and can come off a bit self-absorbed or over invested.
You can apply this same concept to complimenting, texting, teasing, etc. There’s no need to shower her repeatedly with any of those things, just sprinkle them in lightly as necessary.
Less is often more.
Say less, do less, text less, and impress her less. Ask more, listen more, relax more, and be more present and patient with her.
Invite her to come to you and give her an opportunity to do so.
This is how you cultivate a vibe that gives women the space to want to get to know you more.
Pitfalls
Here’s a few things the Law of Least Effort does not mean.
It does not mean you are indifferent or emotionally detached.
It does not mean you avoid vulnerability and refuse to open up to someone who is genuinely curious to get to know you.
It does not mean you put on a posh air of mystery or use humor to deflect personal questions.
And it does not mean that you act lazily or passively; you can still initiate conversations with women you want to get to know and take the lead on steering the conversation or date.
The Law is also not an excuse for refusing to work on yourself and improve your life.
You should still be doing all the things that you know would make you more attractive to women. Just stop doing it for them and start doing it for yourself.
The Law of Least Effort means that there’s a relaxed demeanor to you: you sink back into your chair and into your natural personality, and let women come to you instead of projecting a false persona you think will hook them.
You can still dress nice, comb your hair, compliment them, make jokes, and put your best foot forward, but you will be doing so from a non-needy place of shameless self-expression instead of from a place of neediness.
A good litmus test for gauging whether you’re coming from self-expression or neediness is to notice how invested you are in people’s response to you.
In other words, do you feel weird when someone doesn’t laugh at your joke or find you impressive? Are you fishing for compliments?
How comfortable are you with people not liking you or not understanding you? Can you just let yourself be unliked and misunderstood without trying to explain yourself?
These questions will help reveal to you how much of your behavior is coming from unconditional authentic expression and how much of it is coming from conditional neediness.
Give the Law of Least Effort a test drive and see how it works for you.
At the very least, it’ll take off the pressure to perform, give you permission to sink into your natural attractiveness, and remind you that when it comes to connecting with women, it’s not a matter of forcing or manipulating but of ensuring she feels seen.
And you can only do that when you’ve slowed down enough to give her your full unconditional presence. And if there’s one secret to my success with women, it’s that—my unwavering presence.
That’s all for today.
If you want help with any of this, hit me up on IG and let’s chat.
‘Till next time.
Breathe deep, face fear, become whole,
Danny