The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at Dr kenner.com, and@amazon.com

Jeff, you're having some difficulty in dating.

Yes, Dr Kenner, my problem is I have a very tough time approaching women that I'm attracted to. Say if I'm out at a bookstore, a strange woman that I'm attracted to for interest. To me, I just have a very hard time approaching and that's not really the unusual thing, because a lot of us are like that. But I I'm very familiar with your work. I'm familiar with other Objectivists, a psychologist. I've gone over this issue time and time again, and even though I know, I believe I know the the basic principles to go about approaching women under these conditions, I still have this problem, and I still have this problem where I shut down, I get very nervous. I can't seem to get over it.

Okay. Do you have you ever

do you know how to take a nervous emotion and tease it apart and actually get to the bottom of it and then to find some data that doesn't support that feeling and end up with a much less nervous emotion?

Yeah, I should say that I have made strides in this area, and I, I do approach women at times, but usually it's usually, I have to be very reassured that a woman likes me as well, or has, or has an interest in me as well, and what I go through this process, and usually takes a lot of time. Okay, that's one of my problems. What

do you say to yourself when you let's say that you that I'm a strange woman or a stranger, obviously, and I'm in Barnes and Nobles, a Borders Bookstore, and you see me, you want to approach me. What would your first thought be that you're aware of

my first thought is, is, what is she going to think of me, what I what I should interject here is, I know the principle is, again, that I should be thinking primarily what I think of her part, what I what when I speak with her, I want to know who she is and if she's right For me, but I still have that premise that she's charging me I'm not going to measure up. So I have some insecurities in this regard and the principal, but I still can seem to put it into action. Okay,

so if, if that's what you're feeling, that you're not going to measure up, and you know what you want to be feeling you like if you go in to buy a car, or what is something that you've bought recently?

I actually bought a car less than a year ago. You don't

think, will I measure up to the car? You think what

I think? I think, will this car be right for me. Will it give me enough gas mileage to go back and forth to work each day? So, you know, I kick the tires and slam the door. Love

it. Love it. You need to kick the tires and slam the door of women and obviously, not literally. That's the fact that you can capture that attitude in buying an inanimate object, a car. You can see that you have that mental policy already in your mind of what would make me, what would please me, what would I enjoy? And I'm not saying that in a relationship, it's obviously she's going to be judging you equally. If, if you're always thinking there's I'm defective, and if I get too close, she's going to criticize me again. My guess is, you've had a lot of history practicing that from your childhood, right? That, you know, I can remember in my own family, you know, bringing home the report card was a moment that, you know, I kind of stood on I was being evaluated by my parents and by my teachers. And the little comments, you know, Ellen needs to read more that they would write on it. It's like, Oh no, I'm inadequate, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, or it could be I'm unlovable. If you have a parent that you feel rejects you, whether or not they do, is a separate issue. But if you have a parent that makes you feel unlovable because you don't follow their values, right, then you're Go ahead. That was my

father. Hey, I

got to interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be

back. Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw here it is the selfish path to romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfish romance.com and buy it at. Amazon.com, hmm, the selfish path to romance that is interesting. But if you have a parent

that makes you feel unlovable because you don't follow their values,

right? Then you go ahead. That was my father. Tell me about that.

Well, I never for instance, I was very skinny kid, and when I was going through high school, I was lifting weights in order to be more attractive to women, primarily girls back then, of course. And I would set goals for myself. I want to be 160 pounds by this time, and my father would say, you'll never do it. I talked to someone who knows about weightlifting, it's impossible. You can't do that. My father would undercut me a lie.

Okay, so that is a parenting error. That's actually a logical fallacy when it's called the fortune telling error. I could walk into my son's room and say, you know, it's a mess, and you'll never become anything in life. What did I just do? I made a huge sleep from one little, messy room that everyone has, I have it right to you'll be a failure in life coming from an important person, right? It primes you to feel like people are always evaluating you, and you notice we don't think that they're evaluating us positively. They're always flaw finding, looking for problems with us.

Another thing that I noticed, if I can bring it up briefly, is I noticed sometimes when, when I know that a woman likes me. For instance, I like a woman right now, before I go to work, I stop by a Starbucks each day, yeah, the woman there smiles at me, or had been smiling at Meg me, and showed some interest in me, and I would, I would ignore her, and I would ask myself, why am I doing this? And I thought very hard about this, and introspect it a lot, and I found out that I felt, I felt a sort of anger towards women. This is my way of getting back at women from my past who rejected me. Okay, a way of treating women as a collective and not treating her

wonderful that you're able to see each person as an individual, notice your self talk is all important, all that stuff you say to yourself when you're in borders about to meet that woman you know, to introduce yourself, and everything you say to the other woman, or you don't say to the Starbucks woman, and then you start to generalize about women. All of that self talk is important, and that's what needs to be challenged. And sometimes you have to go back and actually put an invisible father in an empty chair and talk back to him in private. In therapy, we call that the empty chair technique, where it's like, Dad, I'm sick of this. I can lift weights. I'm going to do what I want, and then that somewhat liberates you to say I'm in the driver's seat. So sometimes you take those significant events and can replay them. I would recommend the book mind over mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine podecks on my website. Dr kenner.com, thank you so much. I'm Dr Ellen Kenner,

and here's a little more from Dr Kenner.

I don't know when I've enjoyed an exhibit more the artist's choice to make that still life a monochrome was a stroke of genius. Conveyed such despair. Yes, it was so refreshing to see a sad peach.

And have you ever gone to a museum or looked in an art gallery, and you say, Oh, my God, that is junk. That is crap. I can do so much better than at that. And not only that, I would never, never consider painting a sad peach. I would not want to isolate despair in a painting. I would want a painting to give me hope, and when I look through my own mind, I'll speak as myself now, when I look through my own mind, that is what I want from artwork, whether it's a movie or a book or whether it's a statue or a painting, what I want to do is to make me feel excited about my life, excited about the possibilities, excited about my world. So when I leave a movie theater after I paid a lot of money to go in there, I don't buy the popcorn, but paid a lot of money, I want to feel like, wow, that was a great movie. I feel better about the world. I feel better about my life. And that is the wonderful role of art. If you want to learn more about the role of art in your life, there's a little book, The romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand, a y n, r, a n d. If you want to experience something wonderful in art, you could read her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Those

books changed my life. I

went back to school and got my PhD in Psychology instead of knitting socks on circular needles for more Dr

Kenner podcast, go to Dr kenner.com and please listen to this.

NAD Here's an excerpt from the selfish path to romance by clinical psychologist Dr Ellen Kenner, sometimes

chronic conflicts over small issues, cleaning up the den, spending too much. Time on the computer with friends is camouflaging a much deeper conflict that both partners are afraid to address. For example, lack of a satisfying emotional or sexual connection, and our emotional baggage is a significant factor in the way we respond to that conflict. Each of us grew up having different life experiences, different ground rules in our family's homes, different ways of managing friendships, different relationship histories, different ways of approaching work and romance. We each have an encyclopedic store of experiences, and we have drawn conclusions about the world and ourselves and how we think things ought to be. You can

download chapter one for free by going to Dr kenner.com and you can buy the book@amazon.com.