Back in September during a retreat with my Love Mastery program, we had a private Man Panel come in to answer all kinds of questions that the women had. It was brilliant – I hand picked what guys I wanted to be a part of this Man Panel to show the women that the kind of men they are looking for are REAL. The men were brilliant, they were open, honest, and held nothing back.

However, an interesting thing happened when the men entered the room. For 2 days it was just us girls talking about love and men and experiencing all kinds of breakthroughs. But when the men entered the room, you could see the dynamic and energy of the entire room shift. Even I felt different.

There was a feeling of having to be at our best that started to consume the room. I was watching the body language and some women started to sit up straighter, some couldn’t look at the men, others were smiling a lot. The same women that moments before were sharing and being themselves, shifted into a different state. I mean honestly even my heart started racing more.

This happened to me again not too long ago, where I was interacting with a man and reacted in an interesting way. I want to share the story with you.  I was at the conference I told you about in the Dominican Republic several weeks back. One night we were all at this outdoor bar where there was lots of fun happening. Amazing music with the best instruments from musiccritic.com, dancing, and yes, there was some drinking.

I went to get a glass of wine, and as soon as I ordered and received my drink I ran into a friend of mine who wanted something from the bar. So I caught the attention of the bartender and asked for another glass of wine. Right after I ordered this guy next to me said “You are asking for another glass of wine?” with a smirk. I immediately got annoyed. I was like who is this guy trying to “push” me around. So, I made a clever comment and said “Yes, ladies first!”

Once we received my friends’ glass of wine, the guy said “Thanks for the spot at the bar.” and I totally ignored him and walked away totally annoyed. I was having such a good time but something in that interaction really ticked me off.

I immediately went over to my group of girlfriends to tell them about the interaction. I vented about it and I thought they were going to be like, “What a jerk!” and instead they said “Kavita the guy said that because he was into you.” I was like, “really?” and they said YES!

So of course of my line of work and constant mental note taking about how men and women interact, I decided to take in what they were saying and be open to that being true. I then wanted to see if they were right, so as an experiment I told them I was going to go ask him if that was the case. I love testing things like this out!

I went up to the guy and said,  “Hey I was kind of offended by what you said to me at the bar.” He immediately apologized and said he didn’t mean it in that way at all. I was like “Okay I totally believe you. I’m just curious though, were you interacting with me in that way because you might be into me?” He kind of paused and said cleverly “I guess you won’t ever know,” and as he was walking away with his friends he whispered into my ear that he was into me.

I wasn’t surprised that I was wrong, and I was so glad that I asked. I know that as women we have so many guards up and think that men are players, or that they can be jerks and we commensurate with our friends and talk about how men suck all the time. The truth is because we have our guards up and have this kind of dialogue running through our heads, that is all we are seeing everywhere we go. And we’re missing out on opportunities to connect with really good men.

So your Lovework this week is when you are around men watch how you change. How does your body language change, what thoughts start to run through your head, how do you close up and guard yourself, how do you stop being yourself?  Here is your 3 step process to understand how you are currently showing up with men:

Step 1: Mindset shift: the truth is that most guys just want to connect with you, and get to know YOU.

Step 2: How can you start to change your thoughts by using this mantra “Men want to get to know me for who I am, and there are eligible, high quality men, everywhere I go.”

Step 3: Ask yourself if you’ve been commiserating with friends around how men are like boys, don’t want to commit, or are after one thing helping you. Because if you’re talking about it, it’s becoming a reality.

Tell me down below right now: What are some of your assumptions about how men are and show up? This is also an opportunity for you to purge these thoughts, and replace it with the mantra I just gave you.

In Love,