Love Systems Insider

Date: April 2008

Fader on Limiting Beliefs

Fader is a lead instructor with Love Systems. Like all Love Systems instructors, he has not
always been successful with women. And like all Love Systems instructors, he came to us first
as a student. He hung around, volunteered to help on The Attraction Forums (a great way to
get exposure and understanding of dating science), used his training, and is now teaching others
– with phenomenal success. A quick glance at recent bootcamp reviews shows Fader’s name
everywhere.

Today he is kind enough to contribute his thoughts on limiting beliefs– and some of the key
insights that he learned on the way from being unsuccessful with women to where he is today.
Now over to Fader:

As we go about our lives we are bombarded with all kinds of stimuli. We make sense of these
stimuli and the situations that brought them by judging them as bad or good or negative or
positive. How we classify different experiences and situations depends on our underlying
beliefs, many of which come from external sources, like long-standing cultural norms, our
friends and families, the media, and so on.

Limiting beliefs are beliefs that set limits on our reality and usually on what we are capable of in
it. There are some classic examples in dating science, for example:

I’m too short to attract most women (I am 5’7 personally).

I am too old for younger women (I did individualized training a while back with a 50-year old
who had this belief – until he had a beautiful 20-something on his arm at the end of the night.).

I am too ugly or bald (One of my former students – now one of my best friends – is bald and
white as a cue ball. His new girlfriend is stunning and not only a model but a minor celebrity as
well. He met her on a day game approach.).

Of course, limiting beliefs affect people well beyond dating science. Scanning Wikipedia, I
came up with more general examples:

That one has specific capabilities, roles, or traits which cannot be escaped or changed.

That one cannot succeed so there is no point committing to trying.

That a particular opinion is right; therefore, there is no point considering other viewpoints.

That a particular action or result is the only way to resolve a problem.

The problem with limiting beliefs is that they allow us to give up and rationalize our failures.
For example, let's say I have a belief that I am too short to get a really beautiful woman. As you
know, beautiful women tend to do a lot of framing and re-framing at men who approach them
(Savoy and Sinn s interview on Frame Control was an amazing help with this). If I had that
limiting belief and a woman started testing me and testing my frame, I might rationalize away
the difficulties by thinking “she's hot but she just tested me; it's probably because I am too short.
I knew I was too short to get a girl like her.”

You see how a limiting belief like this is so seductive? Now it’s no longer my fault that I
couldn’t get the girl. I can’t help that I’m short (I can make myself LOOK taller by following
the tips in the fashion chapter of Magic Bullets, but that’s not the same thing). And I don’t have
to put in the effort to push through difficult situations like frame control tests because this is an
unwinnable situation through no fault of my own.

Rising above these limiting beliefs is hard. It makes you more vulnerable. It doesn’t protect
you from your insecurities. But it’s absolutely necessary if you want to succeed with women.

This is why when I teach 1 on 1s or bootcamps I exhaustingly go over inner game because I
want to replace any poor beliefs with more powerful ones.

To succeed where we haven’t before, we must first transcend our limiting beliefs. For example,
we are constantly bombarded by stories and images of how women want men who are incredibly
rich or handsome. While this is true to some extent (limiting beliefs wouldn’t be nearly so
powerful if there wasn’t a grain of truth somewhere), it should not be your belief that you have
to be a celebrity to intrigue even the most exceptionally desirable woman. [Chapter 7 of Magic
Bullets does a great job of explaining the eight things that women are commonly attracted to and
how to demonstrate them, so I won’t go into more detail on this here.]

When you put aside limiting beliefs, you don't say the situation is good or bad; you simply see
an opportunity to work through limitations or challenges. Today, as I write this I have a fever,
which was strong enough that I called in sick for work to my day job. If I were judging this
situation, I would probably qualify it as bad and look at all of the things it limits me from doing.
Being non-judgmental, I can look at this as an opportunity to rest my body, to spend time at
home, and to catch up on some emails from former students and write articles like this one.

Here’s another real-life example. In the Miami airport yesterday (I think the travel and the
temperature change have something to do with my fever) I saw an attractive girl standing behind
me in the check-in line. I said “are you following me?” She gave me a dirty look and said no. I
said “well that's your first mistake.” She kind of smirked but I could tell that I wasn’t really
getting through. It happens sometimes.

As luck would have it, on the plane she was sitting right across from me; we both had aisle seats.
I re-started the conversation with “Look, if you don't stop stalking me I am going to get a
restraining order. I am sorry we had such a bad breakup” and then continued on with a marriage-
divorce role play. [Braddock has some amazing marriage-divorce role plays in the Love
Systems Routines Manual Volume 1; there’s also an interview Cajun and Tenmagnet did on role
plays that you can check out here in the interview series. If you haven’t subscribed to the
Interview Series yet, I’d do that now. I’m not sure I would have ever made it to being an
instructor without it.] I don’t want this to turn into a long field report, so I’ll just say that I
ended up getting her phone number and making out with her in the taxi we shared from the
airport.

There are many limiting beliefs that I could have had – or have had in the past – that would have
destroyed my chances. For example:

She doesn’t like me (true, at the beginning, but irrelevant).

She doesn’t like me because I’m too short / not great looking / etc.

I’ve ruined my chances with her (this is almost never true in your first meeting with someone;
check out the interview on Damage Control for how to turn any situation around).

I’m not “on” today.

Women like her don’t hook up with guys they just met on an airplane.

Etc.

It’s amazingly simple in a way. A lot of dating science is hard. You learn one thing, you
practice it, then you learn something that builds on that, and you practice that, and so on.
Getting rid of limiting beliefs is easier. It’s addition by subtraction. Shut down or ignore the
voice in your head that tells you something isn’t possible or rationalizes things so that they’re
not your fault (which also means there’s nothing you can or should do to change the situation).
Think less about why something isn’t perfect and charge forward instead. And never over-think
things when you’re in a live situation with a beautiful woman. Don’t think; do.
Fader teaches bootcamps on a regular basis, and is also available for individualized training,
especially in the New York area. Check out the Love Systems Training Schedule for more
details.

Fader