The Game Sucks
By Mark E Berry

The Game is a book by Neil Strauss.

Its premise is to help men pick up girls.

The Game sucks.

This autobiography teaches flimsy techniques for manipulative men. Do you want a real relationship? Are you looking for true love? Rise above The Game (and the world of Pickup Artists) by ending this parade of obnoxious and fake behavior. Learn how to find true love by discovering the Artist in you (not the Pickup Artist, the real Artist). Stop learning fake techniques. And start learning how to be true to yourself. Find someone who cherishes you – just as you are.

Stop, Copy Cat, Stop

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Game is the powerful opener. These openers are clever questions and catch phrases that get a girl’s attention when you walk up to her. The power of these openers is not in mesmerizing women with faux-hypnotic-suggestion! What a bunch of hooey!

Stop copying these guru’s openers. It won’t work. Even it does, you’ll both eventually learn that the first thing you ever said to your wife-to-be was someone else’s words. That’s never a good way to start a lasting relationship.

The real power in a good opener is that it demonstrates your personality in a single quip or phrase. Your openers should be questions and statements that you’ve created yourself. In the The Game, all the best gurus use their own openers, not their mentors. That’s because the idea of an opener is good. Using a canned script is really, really bad.

Stop the Negativity

And the hottest topic: negs. Negs are meant to negate a girl’s feelings so she thinks you are socially superior. Negating a girl’s feeling is great if you lack confidence and just want to sleep with her. The problem is that you are probably looking for love, not sex. Refocus on learning confidence, not faking confidence.

Practice letting go of concern that she’s the one. Let go of any concentration on getting laid tonight. Instead, focus on enjoying yourself with everyone there! The truth that lies underneath Negs is that confident men are more attractive. The Negs might work to get you laid. But negs don’t build a lasting relationship of trust and honesty. They build a fear and tension, and you don’t want that!

Build a long-lasting relationship by shifting from checking out a girl’s friends because you want to “neg” her to checking out her friends because you want to know them. Speak from the heart. That will show your superiority more than any cocky insult ever could.

Learn to Love the Single Life

Learn independence for yourself. Learn to love going to dinner by yourself with a good book. Learn to love going to movies alone. Don’t love it? Find some way to cherish your time alone. When you get into a relationship, the skill of loving alone time will still be useful. You have to be single before you can be with someone else. You’re always single first.

Fake Feathered Peacocks

The peacock theory says that if you wear something ostentatious, you’ll get more attention from girls. The problem with the peacock theory is that making yourself ostentatious might not be the real you. So instead of looking more attractive, you look uncomfortable in your own clothes.

Fall in love with yourself first. You should be able to look in the mirror and see a really hot guy. If you don’t, then you have some work to do on yourself. You need to start by looking for something positive and sexy every time you look in the mirror. Do it every day. As you do, you’ll become sexier to others.

Instead – Dress so that you think you are hot! Dress so you believe you look really sexy to yourself. When you think you’re sexy, women will find you much more attractive. In the book, Mystery’s own true self-expression included wild hats and jewelry. But ask yourself, ‘what is my own full self-expression?’ If that includes a full Renaissance outfit, then wear that. If that includes a Bible, or a Wall Street suit, or walking around shirtless, then that’s how you should dress. Dress to be 1,000%  “All You” and the women will notice you every time.

Find your Hottie Zone

What The Game provided Neil Strauss is an opportunity to connect to something fun and interesting that shapes him into the man he truly wants to be. If you find a similar path, you can unlock those characteristics. Following the PUAs is not your only option! Discover your own zone. Discover what gets you excited and you’ll unlock the secrets to talking to girls and finding true love.

–
Mark Berry is a sought-after speaker, author and coach. He can be reached at http://LittleLoveCoach.com

10 Talking Points with Mark E Berry,

LittleLoveCoach.com

1. NEW! A Vancouver Dating Site is Most Visited in North America! As of July 28th, 2008, Vancouver’s PlentyofFish.com is now The #1 Top Dating Site by Total Visits in both North America and in the UK!

2. What is a Love Coach? A love life coach is a personal trainer for your personal life. We do weekly calls to get you moving towards a specific result! It’s one part cheerleader, one part expert and one part boss.

3. Fewer People are looking Online. As of February 2005, 33% fewer consumers are browsing online personals today than one year ago, causing the industry growth to slow considerably. (Source: Jupiter Research)

4. What are Five Places to Find True Love? I recommend places you already love visiting. Since you are there to have fun, you’re more open. You will also find someone with similar interests! Amusement parks, Sports games, Book stores, Happy hours and weddings.

5. How Single Moms Scare Off Men. Don’t stress yourself or it will show. Relax. Don’t write him off so quick. Enjoy yourself. Be upfront about your kids, but don’t force out an answer. Don’t ask him how he feels about kids. That’s a 3rd, 4th or 5th date-level question.

6. The number of arguments do not predict likelihood of divorce. According to researcher John Gottman and his 20 year longitudinal study, the frequency of arguments does that deter health or longevity of a relationship. What does?

7. What are the Terrible Twos? The Terrible Twos is a concept I invented after working with client couples in their first three years together. For some couples, the 2nd and 3rd year were just full of arguments! Just like a real two-year-old, you figure out who you are… together.

8. The Seven Year Itch is REAL! The current Census Bureau Statistics show this: As a married couple approaches 7 years together, the likelihood of divorce rises dramatically! After being married 7 years, the likelihood drops significantly.

9. New Government Funding. Last Year, the US Government moved over $5 Million Dollars toward supporting Marriage Education. Education is the only preventive method they’ve found that actually decreases divorce rates!

10. How does Love Coaching work? We do everything over the phone, so you can take me to the bars, clubs, grocery store while you are learning to date!

5 People You Meet
when you Hire the Little Love Coach

1. The Expert who did the research
2. The Coach that achieved your goal
3. The Wing Man on your cell phone
4. The Motivator who gives you Hope
5. The Boss who makes you Succeed!

The 6 Ways to Fight Fair in a 21^st Century Marriage

By Mark E Berry

Marriage is evolving. It is always changing in nature, and change is coming again. Women’s rights and anti-abuse laws gained key momentum in the last half of 20^th century. This new “permission-based” marriage gave individuals the right to leave a marriage – a great tool to protect one’s health.

But the commitment to marriage is the same as before: creating a lasting partnership. So what’s next for marriage? A “skills-based” marriage. What if you could leave, but you’re not done playing yet? How do you overcome hurdles when you don’t want to leave? Try the ABCs of Fighting Fair in a 21^st Century Marriage.

A – Approach with Skill

Diane Sollee at SmartMarriages.org coined the phrase ‘skills-based marriage.’ It means that you approach every problem with a question, “What can I learn here?” It means that marriage is improved dramatically by educating yourself. This revolutionary new approach will make you re-think marriage. It’s not about getting your way right now - It’s about learning something valuable from the situation you are in.

You will learn thousands of new skills from every relationship. The key is to shift your focus from your needs to your life lessons. What are you learning right now? What can you experiment with? What can you try out this time? Experiment and Practice till you master every skill you can.

B – Set Boundaries and Minimum Standards

A boundary is a line in the sand. No drugs. No smelling like smoke. No shouting in front of the kids. These are steadfast rules that establish your walk-away point in the relationship. If you don’t have the ability to leave, then you don’t have the ability to stay either. Boundaries establish a point at which leaving is acceptable.

A minimum standard is used when you have a spectrum or variable issue. Use a minimum standard with issues like the frequency of sex or how much money we make. You could say, “You have to make at least $1,000 a year, or I need to leave.” It’s not pretty, but it’s a bare minimum – a bottom line walk-away point for your relationship.

C – Use Similar Levels of Conveyance

Dr. John Gottman shows in his studies that some relationships have a high level of communication, and others have a more peace-keeping attitude. In my own marriage, I have a “tell all” policy. And that works great. I know of other powerful marriages with a “tell nothing” policy. According to Gottman, both approaches can work equally well.

I suggest that there is no ideal level of communication. But you must compromise and agree to keep the standard of communication level across the board. If one believes in full disclosure and the other in keeping the peace, you might find difficulties. Agree (verbally or non-verbally) on the same level of conveyance in your relationship.

D – Don’t Hit Below the Belt

What phrases are unacceptable under any circumstances? Have you said, “This phrase is unacceptable.” If not, then say it! Communicate clearly what’s below the belt, and stick by your guns. If you are a bit impish, and you like to push limits, then don’t push the limits of what’s below the belt. You will destroy your marriage.

E – End on a positive note

I always love the “sandwich principle” which I learned at Toastmasters International. The “sandwich principle” says that you should sandwich a criticism between two compliments. Now its true that you can mess this up. But the point of the principle is that the other person always walks away feeling positive. Be it from a compliment or just saying, I love you.

F – Forgive and Forget

This is easy to say, and hard to do. Check in with the frequency of the mistake. Does the mistake happen too often for you? What is the most you can tolerate of this happening? Once a week? Once a month? Once a decade?

If you continually embrace the moment, you will see your partner differently every day. You will learn how to fight fair and finally, learn to have fun being married!

–

Mark E Berry is a lively, sought-after speaker, author and love coach. He is available at LittleLoveCoach.com

The Top 5 Day-to-Day Places to Find True Love

(and How to Make a Date While You’re There)

by Mark E Berry

Online dating is all the rage. And everyone knows you can search for love at a bar. But what are the top 5 places in your backyard? What if love was literally right around the corner?

#5 The Grocery Store

If you are looking for love, you should live where singles live. If you live in suburbia surrounded by families, you are making the search for love harder on yourself. Whereas if you live in an area that is highly concentrated with singles, you’ll end up eating and shopping with them every day. Once you’re at the grocery store, give it a one-two-three punch: 1) Smile. 2) Say Hi. 3) Help them shop better. Offer a piece of fruit, saying “This one looks good.” Offer your thoughts on the food you’re looking at. Remember: Speak up! People get lost in their own world, and you must break their concentration in order to ever get noticed.

#2 The Coffee Shop

The best time to meet singles at a coffee shop is the middle of the day. And only if it has free wifi. The reason is because at night, everyone is with their friends and socializing. You could say hi, but you’d be the odd duck. During the workday, people at coffeeshops are working. And if you’re working, you need breaks! If they are on a break, say hi! Some singles will be open. Some won’t. Just focus on the socialites and talkers. Find the ones you like, and see where they are going for lunch.

#3 The Corporate Cafeteria

Alright, alright, don’t date just anyone in the company pool. But if you work in a large corporation where you rarely connect with everyone there, you have a great chance of meeting someone at the local diner or company cafeteria. Sit next to new people. Open up quickly and find out if they are single. The key to any encounter is a focus on enjoying yourself. Pick someone that looks fun and interesting - someone you want to learn more about. And if it works out, you just found a carpool buddy.

#2 Meetup.com

One of this company’s slogans is: “Less face-to-screen, and More face-to-face.” Meetup and similar sites are a great place to find neighborhood groups with similar interests. Love scuba diving? There’s a group down the street from you. Have an interest in a unique kind of person, or a hobby no one else does? Find them on Meetup. You will be amazed at how many singles with similar interests are just a few blocks away.

#1 Walking the Dog

Everybody loves puppies and kittens. You’ll have a 100 new friends if you bring puppies to the park. Animal shelters always need volunteers, and your friends have dogs that need walking. The best part is that walking the dog is a local activity, so you’ll meet people around your area. The quickest and easiest way to turn a walk in the park into a budding relationship is what I call an ‘Instant Date.’ You’re walking and talking, and you say ‘I’m starved. What are you doing after this?’ If they are interested, you just got a date!

You never know when you’ll find someone in your day-to-day activities. Walking the dog, bringing the kids to school. Love hits you in funny places. Be prepared by being open to love, but not attached to love. If you are thinking about it too much, you’ll stress out (and thus, you’ll be less attractive.) Focus on doing what you’re doing, and say hi to anyone new that you meet. You never know. They just might be the one!

–

Mark Berry is a lively, sought-after speaker, author and love coach. For more tips, visit LittleLoveCoach.com

Being Sexy Hot and The Law of Attraction

By Mark E Berry

We usually think of being attractive the same way we think of any other physical traits: either you’re hot or you’re not. But I like to approach attractiveness differently. I say attractiveness can be learned, harnessed and used for anything you want. And learning attractiveness follows a specific “curriculum” of life lessons – a curriculum that anyone can follow in order to succeed.

Attractiveness is more than just your looks. Attractiveness is more complicated and intriguing than just the pictures in a magazine. If you’ve heard of The Secret, you know attractiveness is also your ability to bring the right mate, or fortune or opportunity straight to your doorstep. Is it any wonder that Napoleon Hill calls his principles “The Law of Attraction?” Attraction equals Attractiveness.

I define your Hotness as your own personal level of attractiveness. Your Hotness is a level of proficiency in attraction. How good are you at being hot?

As you become more attractive, you move along through natural stages of development. These stages of development have key characteristics and milestones that separate them from other stages. And each stage requires a certain set of attitudes in order to move through it.

The 7 Stages of Hotness are only useful if you want to grow up to be hot and famous. If you don’t want that, then you can use the first three stages to become attractive to other singles or business partners. Celebrities like Oprah, Bono, Madonna, and David Letterman have all traversed these 7 Stages in a personal pursuit of fame and success.

The 7 Stages of Hotness are:

1. The Desperate Soul (Your Starting Point)

2. The Brave Soul (Gaining Courage)

3. The Uphill Chase (Learning to be Hot)

4. The Downhill Chase (Being Hot is Easy)

5. The Nouvelle Haute (You have officially Hot)

6. The Entourage (Protection from Fame)

7. The Big Celebrity (Using Fame to Help Others)

Each of the 7 Stages of Hotness have certain governing principles that change your approach to problem solving when you’re at that stage. Apply the skills you had in a previous stage to your current stage, and you won’t see the same results. In fact you’ll be frustrated and disappointed because you probably won’t see any progress at all. You have to follow the unique rules that govern the Stage of Hotness that you’re in if you want to move to the next level.

For more information about The 7 Stages of Hotness, check out LittleLoveCoach.com

The 7 Stages of Hotness: How a Normal Guy Becomes Hot and Sexy,

by Mark E Berry, Love Coach

We usually think of being hot like any other physical traits: either you’re hot or you’re not. But I like to approach attractiveness differently. I say attractiveness can be learned, harnessed and used for anything you want. And learning attractiveness follows a specific “curriculum” of life lessons – a series of stages that anyone can work through in order to succeed.

The 1^st Stage: The Desperate Soul

This is the stage where almost everyone starts. You were 13 years old, and no one wanted to ask you to dance. You were scared. And as you got older, that fear turned into desperation. A desperation that made you shy, awkward and mostly, just lonely. Some people spend their whole lives desperate for attention. Until one day, you become…

The 2^nd Stage: The Brave Soul

My own search for true love, attractiveness, “hotness,” began on a dance floor on a Wednesday night, around 10pm. I’ve always loved to dance. My best friend, Andrew, would hit the dance floor at 9:30pm, and he would dance – good, bad, with no one else on the floor but him. He didn’t care. But I cared, and I wouldn’t get out on the dance floor till I had a few drinks. I had to have ‘liquid courage’ to move forward in my own attractiveness.

However, as my nights of dancing continued, I realized that I didn’t need alcohol. My friend Andrew certainly didn’t. So I began bravely venturing to the dance floor sober. And as I did, I got better and better at dancing. Each night, my courage grew. And that courage bumped me into…

The 3^rd Stage: The Uphill Chase

I began weekly visits to the dance club. I wanted to be hot on the dance floor. Being more attractive became my life’s mission, a pursuit to which I would dedicate years of effort.

It’s work. You might be frustrated and miserable, and feel like you’re working really hard to be hotter without any return on your investment.

Persistence is the name of this game. Stay the course and keep trying. Every time you go out, you have to dress better, dance better and flirt better. You will get hotter and hotter. Even if you don’t see it, others will. And eventually, you will start seeing a return. The chase for attraction becomes…

The 4^th Stage: The Downhill Chase

At this point, you will feel like getting hot is easy and fun. You will start seeing more return than you’re investing. It starts with ugly people hitting on you. Then the sexier and sexier folks start introducing themselves. Profile pictures that never got interest before suddenly become a hit.

As you continue working on your attractiveness, you notice a new plateau. You will reach a stage that most people never get to. You are really becoming hot.

The 5^th Stage: The Nouvelle Haute

In French, this means “The New High.” Like the nouveaux riche, you now have a new power, a new currency. But you don’t know what to do with all the attention. At this stage, you have to get used to the new level of celebrity that you’ve attained. If you fight the attention, you’ll be miserable. Instead, you have to accept the attention with a smile. You have arrived.

The 6^th Stage: The Entourage

Once the fame is pouring in, you will have to manage all that attention. You have to find and finesse your new entourage. They will protect you from the masses.

The 7^th Stage: The Big Celebrity

This is no longer just fame. This is the Business of Fame. Stars in this stage are using their fame for something bigger than just personal achievement. Now you must use your celebrity status to make a difference in the world.

You can make attractiveness fun and interesting by approaching attraction as a game. With an approach like that, you too will become a Big Celebrity in no time!

–

Mark Berry is a lively, sought-after speaker, author and love coach. For more tips, visit LittleLoveCoach.com

I read this article about changes in the Journalism industry. More importantly, I read the comments on the website too. Very interesting.

This is my response to: http://www.dmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=7155F7796F354F21B1183937D847D6DF&tier=4&id=E938CC987BAB489F85306624EC3AED35

Life changes (like these journalists are making) are rife with a sense of leaving something behind, moving on, and pushing it all away. So the things they said were fair. Ask someone about their ex-wife, shorten the quote to make it interesting, and you’ve got the same kind of story.

Plus, for those journalists who want to become PR firms, they need to establish their own sense of business identity. And people usually do that by saying “I don’t want to be like that.” And that’s probably how Ed pulled those comments out of them.

I’m sorry that Margulies was called out. But it wasn’t just one reporter. It was three. It was at least three. Maybe they need a PR firm? …j/k.

I would credit the author, Ed Bark, for some of the negativity in the article and comments.

Ed Bark says:
“…just how little she misses the pursuit”
“Wasn’t [he] just doing damage control?”
“it’s an epidemic”

These comments show me how much influence the broadcaster has on all of their readers. Here is a story of re-birth and renewed spirit - not just of these individuals, but of the entire industry of Journalism. With it, a chance to evaluate ways to improve journalism, and the author turned it into a veritable Roman orgy of slander, back-stabbing and turf wars.

In turn, who chooses the columnists? The editors. Supply and demand. If they didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t sell it. So maybe we need new editors and new producers.

That’s what some of these journalists want to do: re-invent PR and Journalism. That’s the real story in this article. Journalism is changing. New production houses are opening up that focus on growth, positive change, and how to influence bad situations with great solutions! That’s the story trying to get through here. Not just of “leaving” but of growing.

The industry is evolving.

Well the import of my Blogger blog will have to wait another day.

I was not able to get an import working. I’m so happy to have an integrated LoveKungFu.com blog that I don’t really care if I start over. New beginnings are nice!!! Yay!

Mark

I upgrade my website, my social club AND my new blog!!!

Woohooo!!!!!!

All that’s left is importing my old Blogger blog, and I am a fully functioning website!

Yours truly,

LoveKungFu.com

!!! Hahahahh -And Mark!