How to Be and Become Attractive

[Dimitri]

How to Be and Become Attractive
Dimitri of Rapid Social Impact
http://www.rapidsocialimpact.com



An attractive person does a lot of things: Some consciously, many unconsciously. Attractiveness is influenced by a great deal of things, and that can cause a lot of confusion for some people on "how to be attractive". In fact, some people believe that they could never be attractive: Which might be the craziest thing I've ever heard. And then you hear things like, "Realize you're already attractive and you'll be attractive" - Which can be downright confusing if you don't know what that means.


Here's what I want to do in this article:

-Define what attractiveness is,
-Identify how people initially evaluate another's attractiveness on a snap judgement,
-Explain how beliefs and thought processes affect the snap evaluation,
-And give some practical examples and advice on how to become more attractive.



What is attractive? Merriam-Webster gives two definitions:
1) Having or relating to the power to attract.
2) Arousing interest or pleasure.

That doesn't quite do it. Let's look at one of those definitions of attract:
"To draw by appeal to natural or excited interest, emotion, or aesthetic sense."


Now we're getting somewhere. My general definition of attractive is "something that is desirable on some level". For purposes of this article, I'm going to deal
with the kind of attraction that's most relevant to dating and socializing: When I refer to something or someone as being "attractive" from this point on, I'm referring to things that are attractive in a way that leads to sex and relationships. That is, a lot of things can be attractive on a lot of different levels, but I'm
going to focus on what can cause sexual/romantic attraction.


Now, the first interesting thing I'll note from this: There are things that are *not* sexually/romantically attractive at all to women, that won't help in building a good, healthy relationship (or having enjoyable casual encounters, if that's what you're after)... yet these characteristics ARE attractive to women with a very specific perogative (such as getting married, settling down, raising a family).

By that, I mean, if a woman is ready to settle down, she might look for a man who is very gentle and nurturing, a man that is less willing to take large
risks for potentially large rewards, a man who will stick around and be a father figure for her children. These qualities of stability aren't universally
attractive, but can be very attractive on a level to a woman with an agenda of getting married and settling it down. One of my girlfriends said it best: "If I
was going to get married right now, I'd marry my last ex-boyfriend. He still wants to marry me." Now, by all accounts and measures, her boyfriend isn't a very attractive guy. They've been broken up quite a while, and he's yet to move on. My girlfriend lives on the East Coast, her ex-boyfriend on California, and he recently offered to fly into Boston and get a hotel just to meet up with her: And that's after she'd told him she wouldn't have sex with him ever again!


He's not particularly attractive, objectively, but his loyalty (bordering on obsession with her) and his low-risk lifestyle would make him a pretty good husband, and my gal's nothing if not pragmatic. She could marry many more attractive men than him, but few men that she'd feel so secure in his job and faithfulness.



That little aside there explains something major: There are many qualities that are not universally attractive, but can be attractive in certain situations. Another great example would be a female "gold-digger": Something very attractive to her would be mass amounts of wealth. While wealth is rarely unattractive, a lot of behavior that'd turn off many girls would make a gold digger downright giddy. That DOES NOT mean that throwing money around and spending it on these girls is building a solid relationship, or even the best way to get her in bed. Money is attractive by itself to most people; it does not necessarily make the holder of the wealth more attractive except to people with certain agendas.



The working definition of "attractive" for the rest of the post is "something that is desirable on some level". Unless otherwise noted, anything I write about as being an attractive characteristic will be "a trait that is desirable on an interpersonal level, that'd be useful for establishing solid relationships and/or getting quality sex." An attractive person is just a
person with a lot of those traits.

 

[Dimitri]

So, how do people perceive if something is attractive?


Of course, it all starts with the senses. For physical beauty, the person needs to be seen or touched. Hearing also matters, as do scent and taste.


When a woman sees a man, she almost always make a quick snap judgement about him. If no other information about the guy is available, it's usually on what she sees with her eyes, and sometimes on what she hears (if she hears him before or simultaneous with seeing him).

At that point, very little if any conscious thought has been made, and yet she's made an immediate impression.

This is daunting to a lot of guys. Many, many men do not want to hear this. The fact is, yes, you can change a person's initial perceptions of you with time, in fact, within a few more seconds. But the matter stands: People quickly size you up, and it's a lot easier to go from (at least) a neutral initial impression to a positive one than it is to go from a negative initial impression to a positive one.


What's that mean? Something we've all known for quite a while: Improve your physical appearance, within reason, as much as you can.

Seriously, check this out: You don't need to completely overhaul yourself in one day. Any small, positive adjustments are good. Any one of: Doing your hair, cutting your fingernails, washing your face, taking a shower, styling your hair (even really quickly with your hands), shaving or trimming/styling a beard or mustache, putting on clean clothes, putting on clothes that fit your figure well, applying something like Chapstick or lip balm, adjusting your clothing and playing around to find a cool style (including tucking or untucking shirt tails, buttoning or unbuttoning cuffs, figuring out how many buttons on the top and bottom of a button-down shirt to unbutton, turning your collar up or down as appropriate, etc), washing/cleaning your hands, cleaning your shoes (even if they're sneakers or sandals), and... well, lots of other things. You don't need to do 30 things at once: One little change makes a little difference, and if you're spending a lot of time reading articles on dating, try taking a 10 minute break to do even one small thing to up your appearance - it could give you a significant edge. And a quick note on dress: Just coordinating the clothes you already own can make you look 10,000 times more well-dressed.


Whatever you do, don't play into a victim mentality: If you find yourself thinking, "I'm too unattractive to...", then get off the self-pity kick and make one small change. There's probably at least a dozen little things you could do easily in the next week to become more physically attractive.


Physical appearance largely dominates the initial first impression, but within moments, you're in conversation with her. Before any of your words even
register, the tone of your voice has huge impact on what you're saying. This is why socially learned people advocate having a strong tonality: Either naturally, by being and feeling comfortable, or by consciously focusing on it and adjusting it to its best level. Either method can work, and applied perfectly, either method will work perfectly.


I'll address what a good tonality is momentarily, when I talk about how the information you're giving off is processed (that's when we'll talk about body language, too, if you've been waiting).


Smell is something that's easy to cover, not because it isn't huge, but because there's not too much conscious effort that we should or could put into it. As long as you don't smell bad, you're fine. It can be a plus to smell "good", with either a good cologne or aftershave, or pleasant smelling soap and shampoo. In this department, don't smell bad, maybe make a little effort to smell good, and then forget about it.


Taste: Eventually, you'll be kissing the girl of your dreams, I hope. You don't want to taste poorly, but again, it's nothing you should sweat. Between the kind of ethnic foods that I like and regular salads, I eat a lot of onions, so I'm constantly battling that. Not a problem: A little fruit at the end of a meal goes a long way towards fixing your breath, and breathmints are a good quick fix. And of course, brush your teeth and take care in that department, and don't sweat this. I'm not going to talk about taste and smell for the rest of this article: Make sure you're not bad in those departments, make a little effort to be good, then get it off your mind.



Of the five senses, I've laid out the base idea behind four of them, and I've notably not mentioned touch much so far. Be assured that touch is a huge part
of equation, but the modern, western world has done a strange thing with touching: They've made it often more of a big deal than it really is. Thus, many touches, regardless of how nonchalant, can provoke conscious thought on her part. Whether you want to provoke conscious thought with your touch or not in a given situation is something worth a little thought, and we'll get to it momentarily.


What we've established so far:

-"Attractive" is something that's desirable on some level to someone.

-Things can be attractive in different ways, but in a scene like this one, we're largely dealing with being attractive in a way that's going to help our
romantic and sex lifes.

-The very first, knee-jerk reactions about whether a person is attractive or not come from our senses.

 

[Dimitri]

After that, the information from our senses is filtered. This is where things get complicated.

If I got together a bunch of guys and asked them, "What makes a woman attracted to a man?" I'd get lots of different answers. I might hear, "Making her feel good is attractive." I might hear: "People want what they can't have, and that's attractive." I might hear: "An attractive guy doesn't need her." I might hear: "Acting like a man is attractive." And so on.

None of those are wrong, or right, by and of themselves. Those are catchphrases that have some truth to them, but aren't the whole picture.


And this is where the confusion comes in: If a cool guy spends a lot of time socializing with women, and has some relationships, he'll have a lot of insights. They'll be pretty complicated, and based on his unique experiences. So if he wants to share them, he needs to break them down in a way that they can be understood. The guys he's sharing with weren't there for every girl he's interacted with, and don't have his frame of reference, so he needs to "sum it up" for them.


So he says something like: "Be alpha. Be a man." Not bad advice. Not bad at all.

But he's saying that from the perspective he's got, from the places he's been, from acting like he's acted like with women all his life. If the man giving advice is a 35-year-old businessman in Italy, his conception of "being alpha" and "being a man" is very, very different from a 17-year-old Canadian high
school kid's idea if "being alpha" and "being a man". Some things are going to be the same, but the guys that the 17 year old Canadian is going to look up to is going to be very different from the Italian guy.



So let's get to the heart of it: In every place I've been to, almost everyone raised in that area had some deep, underlying core beliefs that were similar.
Like, as crazy as it sounds in a diverse nation, it's largely true. In the 1950's in America, in many areas it was completely assumed as a fundamental
truth that women stayed home and raised children, and men worked. That's just how it was. Telling a woman that being a "working mother" was an option for her would be as alien as telling a Manhattan woman today that she needs to get married and start having children by 20.

Everything you perceive is filtered through your beliefs. It goes like this:


A sense is
--->
Filtered through your beliefs
--->
And becomes a thought

You see something, or hear it, or smell it, you filter it through your beliefs, THEN you can consciously think about it. Can you see how it'd be difficult to change your beliefs? To get to an idea, you wind up filtering what you're sensing through your beliefs.


So unless you come into something with an open mind, or your beliefs are wired in a very good way as to allow you to make constant adjustments to them, it can be very hard to change them...

...until you're aware of the pattern, which you now are.


To illustrate the example, let's look beyond dating and sex: I, myself, deeply hold the belief that I should be free to share my opinions and logically debate them with whomever would like to hear and debate with me, and that that is never wrong.

I'm repulsed when I hear about governments censoring their citizens. If someone were to tell me that that's the way the whole world should be run, it's very, very, very unlikely I could ever come to that belief: Because to even think about that idea, for it to even become conscious thought, it has to go through my beliefs: And I, literally, feel physically repulsed at that idea.

Another example would be telling a devout religious person that God does not exist. It's quite possible that they could never come to that belief, because the idea couldn't even make it past their beliefs to be thought about.


What does this mean? You need to recognize any negative beliefs you may have about yourself, and at least isolate yourself from them long enough to consider the ideas. Many times I'll tell a student of mine that he's attractive, but the idea can't make it through his beliefs without me making him recognize that his beliefs need changing, far before I logically convince him of the (relatively) simple fact the he's attractive.


Don't let your beliefs stand in your own way. They're ingrained in you, largely by your upbringing and experiences, but they're a lot more flexible than you might imagine, which is a good thing.


The belief in what's attractive is interesting. If a woman (or man, too) has a belief about what's attractive, they'll often parse over little details if they see that piece of the equation.


Here's an example: Guys that have large biceps and triceps move their arms, when they walk, a bit differently than guys with smaller upper arms. I've observed the pattern and even felt it myself when I was lifting weights. The difference is very small, but a well-muscled guy's arms seem "pushed out" more than normal - not just in terms of muscle mass, but just the way guys with larger arms move.

I have no idea why this is. I'm not a biologist, nor an exercise scientist, and aside from basic knowledge, I can't really tell you how anatomy works. But one thing I CAN tell you is that if you adjust your walk ever-so-slightly, then you're walking like a guy who has ripped muscles.


After you consciously adjust your walk for a short while, it'll become natural and you'll need no more conscious thought in that department. The arms thing is just a very, very small piece of an overall attractive presence. If you walk, stand, sit, wait, smile, and move like an attractive guy, on a casual glance, you'll look more attractive.

If you only "turn your walk on" when you're out looking to meet women, it might not "stick" over a long course. Even still, it gives you plenty of time to screen the girl if she's compatible, and if she is, you'll have had plenty of time to attract her via more conscious processes that it won't matter any more.


It's interesting, really, that so much of "the game" is based around getting five minutes of a woman's attention so that you can show her who you really are. But the fact stands: If you emulate a good behavior and that gets you in with one woman, that's great. If you synthesize a good behavior and make it who you are, you'll be in with lots of women.

 

[Dimitri]

The emphasis on being cool, calm, and comfortable:

Being relaxed and knowing you're attractive will make you have the body language of someone who is relaxed and attractive. This is a good thing.

Consciously manipulating your body language and movements slightly, for a while, can be a good thing while you get the hang of it. I, myself, have written a couple articles you might check out on having a good walk. But more than anything, the belief that you're attractive will smooth things down and make you more cool.


People's filters react based on what they've seen already. If every attractive guy a woman's ever known has walked and talked a certain way, an okay-looking guy walking and talking that way will appear attractive to her.


This is true for tonality, body language, and style. While there isn't ONE correct way to do any of these, there are ways that are attractive. If you watch attractive guys, they'll have similarities between them. People who feel they're of high value carry themselves with their shoulders broad and their
head up, almost universally.


Something I've noticed: If an average-looking girl wears an attractive girl's clothes, and carries herself like an attractive girl, she'll be attractive. And it's cyclical, too: She'll start getting more attention, and the attention will be more positive, so she'll feel more attractive. And since she'll feel more attractive, she'll carry herself well. The same is true of men.


It's a cool thing I get to see when I teach: Often prior to taking a program, a guy will have gone through a lot of frustration. Then something just "clicks" on program and they start to really feel it. They worked hard, and they get that first positive spark, and then they REALLY believe it, finally, and start truly acting attractive. Then their success REALLY takes OFF!

The beliefs a guy carries with him translates into how he acts. Any woman he meets will assess him based on her beliefs.


So, what should they guy do? Should he try to act the way she'd find attractive? Or should he just BE attractive and KNOW he's attractive? I find the second way much easier. Emulation is okay. Learning to be attractive, if you will. Faking can't really work, though: If you believe you're faking, if you don't believe you are attractive, you won't be. This is true regardless of what the first thing you like to say to a girl is.


Regardless of what you want to say, you should know, deep down, that you're attractive.


That knowledge alone will make you act like an attractive person, regardless of what the societal definition of attractive is.


Filters:

We all have instincts as to what's attractive and not. Health is universally attractive on an instinctual level.

But someone's filters can override that: Let's say a woman from an upper-class family sees a man of a race other than her own: This could be any race of man and woman. Even if the guy is physically fit with shows all other signs of health and strength, she might let her societal filters override it. Racist
beliefs can be used as filters to filter guys out. (Thankfully, in the Western world, this is largely being done away with: Though racism is still around plenty, most women at least exercise their freedom to try dating outside their race a few times in their lives.)


That's a simple example of a negative filter, but thankfully, most filters aren't as hard-line as the race one. Instead, most filters can be used to your
advantage.

I remember, I once had a friend who rowed. You know, like, a boat with oars and such? I'm not sure exactly how the sport works, but it was interesting to look at him: He was very toned and in shape, but didn't have large muscles the way a bodybuilder would. He looked very toned, say, at the beach, but he'd look rather skinny in a baggy sweatshirt.

He shared an interesting observation with me. He was wearing a white T-shirt one day, and he pointed something out to me: He showed me the sleeve on his
T-shirt, and said, "Always try to get T-shirts that the sleeves are tight around your biceps, Dima. I've got large T-shirts with small sleeves and I look ripped in them, and I've got small shirts with big sleeves that make my arms look tiny."


It was funny... because he was right. The sleeves on your white cotton t-shirt can make the difference between you looking like you have biceps or not.


That little thing an appeal to a mostly unconscious filter.

Arms bulging on sleeves of shirt = Muscles = Healthy = Attractive

It's why even though you look similar on most days, and even though styles of clothing can look very similar, a very small cut of cloth can make you look
more attractive. If you need to prove this, have a girl you know try on a few different cuts of the "classic little black skirt" at a department store. One cut of it is going to make her look elegant, another is going to make her look hot, and many, many, many cuts are going to make her look not so good. I have no idea why women enjoy shopping so much, with as difficult as it must be for them.


Anyway, dress is a really simple thing to help you stand out and be represented as physically fit, and thus attractive. A little effort into your clothes can make you much more attractive.

But more important than clothes are attitudes, and the beliefs they come from.


Confidence is attractive. Now, I'm going to make a differentiation here:

There's confidence as a belief,
and,
There's confidence in actions.

Confidence as a belief is confidence in yourself and yourself and your abilities. It's knowing your value is high and you're awesome.

It manifests itself in actions. Have you ever been cliff-diving? It's where you jump off a cliff of some height into very deep water. It's very fun and a little dangerous.

The first time I did it, I had no confidence in the action. I muttered a quick prayer and just jumped off. A few more dives jumps later and I was totally confident, and I wasn't sweating it at all.


Confidence in yourself, the belief, will translate into confidence in your actions. Had I been completely sure that I was invincible, I'd have been completely confident jumping off that cliff (literally). But I wasn't quite at that point in my life.

Right now, I'm so confident about where I'm going and where I've been in my life that I don't even really fear death (at least in the abstract form, it might change depending on the situation). I'm so confident in myself (belief) that I rarely get afraid of anything. This makes me appear confident in my actions.


I stand strong, speak clearly, and command attention. Confidence in yourself, on a belief level, can't be seen by itself: But it translates into your
actions.

This ties into the bodylanguage piece: By moving like someone with confident bodylanguage, even if you're just emulating it, you'll appear to have internal
confidence (the belief). The action itself is a slightly exaggerated walk, that's fluid and cool. This is a confident action, and it reflects your internal confidence. Even if you don't have internal confidence, a woman sees a man walking like he's confident, and she thinks he IS confident.

Thus, he becomes attractive to her. Simply by walking attractive, you can start to create a cycle where you get more respect, so you feel more attractive.


It's the same for any attractive action: You can pinpoint what the action is and do it, that's good. But to really become good at the game, you need to take it to the next level and find the BELIEF that that action comes from, and make it one of YOUR beliefs.


As for what your beliefs should be... that's up for you to decide. The first step is figuring out two things:

Who you want to be,
and,
What you want to do.

Me, I want to be someone who is knowledgeable about many things, always be getting better in everything I do, and be a good person by my standards.

What I want to do is help people, and in helping people, help myself. I want to live a life that's omfortable without being excessive, and I want to form relationships with people where we can enrich each other's lives. I want my relationships with women to be with women who are everything a man can ask for, and I want a woman for me to be loyal to me.


Just reading my list, can you see what beliefs I should start to develop? I want to develop open-mindedness for my knowledge, perseverance for getting better, and I need to cultivate a strong, intelligent set of morals I can live by.

I need to believe I'm attractive, worth knowing, able to speak with anyone, able to bring other people up, and so on.


These little things will be seen when a person meets me. They'll see the way I smile, walk, talk, shrug, eat, drink, and so on.


The best thing you can do to help yourself reach a goal is find a suitable belief.

BUT, reworking your beliefs can take a while, and it's good to take action right away. In the meantime, as you grasp and REALLY REALLY believe your beliefs, you can work on emulating the behaviors someone with that belief would do.

 

[Dimitri]

This article is about becoming more attractive. But as an example, let's say you want to be more sincere:

What's a quick thing many sincere people do? Listen.

So you could focus on your listening, and that'd make you a bit more sincere. Likewise, many sincere people make eye contact, so you could try making eye contact more. As such, you'd feel more sincere, and then a cycle has begun.


Modelling your behavior after the behaviors of people you want to be like can be helpful. That doesn't mean try to pretend like you're them: Instead, start
with one behavior they do, and watch as it sparks a cycle.

If you walk like an attractive guy, you'll get more respect from men and more attention from women. As such, you'll feel more attractive... and what'll you do?

I'm going to bet you'll smile like you own whatever place you're in. And in doing so, guess what? You just did another behavior that attractive people do,
naturally, because you felt attractive. And suddenly, you're walking like a cool guy and you're smiling like the guy that owns the place. Then you get more
respect and more attention, and the cycle continues. You're well on your way to becoming attractive.


All the best to you on that journey.


Dimitri
--
http://www.rapidsocialimpact.com
The World's Finest

 

[h2o]

hey, great article.

you should post here more often, thanks for the tip.

 

[romangod]

Interesting and informative. Good job.

 

[Golfboy]

dude that is a great post about what your mindset should be about your style. the most important part is your mindset, you can have some personal flavor, but this guide is a great way to make sure you're on the right path.

Go shopping with a couple of well dressing friends, you'll be able to form your own style, and still get a lot of outfits to wear on ur own. Best done after blazing a few.

 

[GrandMaster]

Hey!
Great article!

Would you be so kind to give us some links to your articles about walking?

 

[fonderboy]

Bump, awesome article!

 

[Mojo604]

Great article. bump

:cheer:

 

[Mr. Cardio]

I hear what you re saying, but my question is this, I am a black guy, most women in my culture like thugs, so does that mean copy them? See, this whole women thing is really getting outta control. I mean, what I am getting, is that to don juan, is to kind of be free and human, away from the bars of trying to prove yourselves to women or whatever, but arent we just getting trapped back in? I swear, women know they have something between their legs that we just cant live without, and I m sorry to say this, but how the hell can we conquer this shyt....women dont wanna submit anymore fellows....just my opinion