Graham Stoney

I struggled for years with low self-esteem, anxiety and a lack of self-confidence before finding a solution that really worked. I created The Confident Man Program to help other men live the life of their dreams. I also offer 1-on-1 coaching via Skype so if you related to this article contact me about coaching.

Learning How to Meet Women In Bars and Nightclubs

Ever wondered what it’s really like to do one of those dating workshop bootcamps where a pick-up artist takes you into nightclubs and teaches you how to approach women? One of my new year’s resolutions for 2010 was to finally overcome my fear of approaching and interacting with attractive women. I already had an interesting life, but how are women supposed to get to know me if I’m too afraid to approach them because I’ve never learned how to do it?

So I went along to a seminar run by street pick-up expert Alex Coulson, and decided it was time to get serious by signing up to one of Alex and Moxie’s dating workshop bootcamps. I already knew Alex as I had interviewed him on one of the Confident Man bonus products, and Moxie was an ex-Love Systems instructor so I figured these guys were the real deal.

On a weekend 2 months later, they would take a small group of guys out into nightclubs on Friday and Saturday night and teach us how to approach and interact with women. In the weeks leading up to the bootcamp, Moxie would give us coaching over the phone to prepare us for the big weekend.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recover From a Controlling Mother

Growing up with a controlling and/or domineering mother can suppress your masculinity and leave you stuck feeling and acting like a boy in a man’s body. My mother was the dominant figure in my family of origin and with a relatively passive father it was a disastrous recipe for my developing masculinity.

A controlling mother creates a relationship dynamic that will undermine your confidence in yourself as a man unless you take steps to counter its effects. So here are some steps to take to help you recover from growing up with a controlling, dominant mother:

Recognize that Your Mother is Controlling

Did you have a controlling Mother?

Did you have a controlling Mother?

The first step to dealing with a problem is to recognize that it exists. It took me a long time to even see that my mother was controlling. It wasn’t until I did The Landmark Forum in my mid-30s and they started talking about how controlling most of us are that I had this insight.

When I was a child, my mother used a physical leash to control me; partly for my own safety, and partly for her convenience. As I got older, verbal stoushes with my father made it very clear that the masculine point of view wasn’t welcome in our household.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Can you Relate to Into The Wild too?

Spoiler Warning: This review gives away the ending. If you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading now!

I was profoundly moved by this film directed by Sean Penn. Starring Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless, it tells the true story Christopher’s journey of self-discovery leading into the Alaskan wilderness. This film hit me hard, and I found it hugely cathartic. Despite a packed cinema, it was as though there was just me and this film connected to each other. I cried almost the whole way through.

Part of the reason I connected with it so strongly was that I first saw it while on a journey into the wild of my own; in my case a solo motorcycle road-trip of self-discovery from my home town of Sydney to Byron Bay where I saw the film, and beyond. There are also many parallels between Christopher’s emotionally disconnected family, and my own. The scenes depicting the ongoing conflict between his parents transported me straight back to my own childhood and the sense of emotional disconnection between Christopher and his father mirrored that between me and mine.

Every character in the film is flawed in some way, and I found myself relating deeply to the pain in each and every one.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Men’s Group

The discomfort and apprehension is so palpable you can feel it just watching Men’s Group, as six men meet for the first time in the leader’s home to begin the painful cathartic process of talking about their lives. Half of them are ambivalent about even being there; some are there under duress, and all are struggling in some key area of their life. They’re in pain, and their learning how to heal and sort things out by sharing it with other men. It’s a practical lesson in learning to trust and how to do intimacy with other human beings, with no printed agenda or how-to-style self-help book to guide them. It’s as simple and as difficult as talking about what’s going on, and listening to each other… really listening.

What really goes on in a Men’s Group?

I could relate immediately to this movie. I’d even visited the particular men’s group in Sydney that it’s modeled on a couple of times before recently finding a group more to my liking. The guys in this movie aren’t just acting; they’re being very real. At times the comments seem inappropriate but they’re learning to stop self-censoring and talk about what’s real. It’s not always what they want to hear, but it does always end up bringing them closer together.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Communicate Sexually With a Woman

I’ve been watching David DeAngelo’s Sexual Communication program recently, and here’s a summary of what I’ve learned:

There as a deeper level of communication between humans that most men are unaware of. It’s the same level that animals communicate on instinctively. It reminds me of what Eckhardt Tolle talks about in The Power Of Now about being totally present, and the Meisner acting technique of intuitive interactions and emotional connections uninhibited by our normal tendency to overanalyse and overthink. David D is onto something.

His four steps of sexual communication are:

#1: Sparking the Attraction

Attraction is unconscious. Women are naturally attracted to the Leader. Develop your masculine traits. Not needing approval. Confidence and lack of insecurity. Dominance and power are the ultimate aphrodisiac. Being unapologetic for who you are and what you want. Make decisions quickly. Not accepting second class behavior or treatment from others. Live in your own reality. Strong eye contact. Be territorial without whining or insecurity.

Women test men unconsciously. Start recognizing these tests and learn to pass the tests without taking them seriously. Forget “be yourself”: your normal persona is an accommodating, manipulative wuss and isn’t actually your real self anyway. When a woman tests you with criticism, smile and respond playfully with “I’m glad you like it”.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Soothe Anxiety by Identifying and Releasing Attachments

I was just listening to The New Man Podcast interview with Robert Glover talking about Nice Guy Syndrome, where Dr Glover points out that the underlying cause of the nice guy’s dysfunctional behaviour is anxiety. Anyone familiar with Buddhist philosophy will be aware that attachment causes suffering, but Robert points out that attachment also causes anxiety.

We can’t avoid anxiety altogether, so we need to learn how to soothe it within ourselves. The solution is to identify what particular attachment is causing anxiety when we feel it, and consciously let the attachment go each time in occurs. Whenever we feel anxious ask the question:

What am I attached to right now?

Then take a deep breath, and think “I’m letting go of being attached to X”.

For me, examples are:

  • I’m attached to being well, when I’m feeling ill.
  • I’m attached to her liking me, when I’m talking to a pretty woman.
  • I’m attached to being successful, when I’m working on my business.
  • I’m attached to getting good comments, when I’m writing a new blog post.
  • I’m attached to this being a best-seller, when I’m working on writing a book.
  • I’m attached to getting it right/perfect first time, when I’m trying something new.
… Continue reading…
By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Meet Women

If you’re lacking in confidence, meeting women can seems like a major challenge. You can’t date women you can’t meet, and this affects everything from your social life to your sex life. Approaching women in bars and clubs can be a hit and miss affair, and office romances can be problematic. But finding female company is easy once you know the secret to meeting women:

Get involved in activities that women also enjoy, over a period of time that gives them the chance to get to know you.

You want to meet real ones, right?
Image courtesy Pixabay

The best activities involve learning any new skill that women value which boosts your confidence, while meeting women in the process. This slips you in under the radar and makes you much more approachable than when you’re obviously just “out to meet chicks”. Here are the best ways to go about this:

Take Dance Lessons

This is by far the most effective way of meeting women. All women love men who can dance, but many men are afraid of looking foolish and won’t put up with the initial discomfort while they learn. Women respect men who are prepared to be vulnerable, and you become a hot commodity once you’ve mastered it.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Stop Worrying

I like that Frank Tallis has written a relatively small book on How to Stop Worrying. Although I’m much better than I used to be, I still worry too much sometimes myself, and it’s nice to think that there could be a simple solution to a seemingly complex problem. And it turns out there is.

Worry fills the gap between when we realise that we have a problem, and when we have a solution in place to address it. It’s our brain’s way of making sure we pay attention to our problems; the psychological analogy to physical pain. If we don’t do anything about the problem, the worry gets worse until we’re forced to take action. Worry, like pain, is our friend. But it’s also a kind of mental suffering we’d rather escape given the chance.

The solution to worry is quite simple: take effective action to solve the problem. So the bulk of this book is actually about problem-solving techniques. Taking action to address the problem immediately starts to put our mind at ease, and if the action is effective in solving the problem, the worry ceases altogether.

Problem-solving is a skill that develops and improves each time we use it.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Healing The Shame That Binds You

When a fellow recovering-computer-engineer friend of mine SMS’d me saying: “I’ve worked out what the problem is… it’s shame.”, I knew immediately what he referring to. The perpetual self-consciousness and lack of confidence that kept plaguing me, the low self-esteem, the anxiety and awkwardness around other people, the fear of embarrassment, the worry about what other people thought when I asserted myself, the vague feeling of inadequacy and the sense that I somehow wasn’t good enough all came down to one underlying emotion: Shame.

I knew instantly that my friend was right, yet it took me over a year to get around to John Bradshaw’s best-selling book on the topic. That’s the insidious thing about shame: we avoid it like the plague, even though it’s at the root of many of our emotional, psychological and behavioural problems. We hear an increasing amount these days about stress and depression, but very few people are talking directly about the underlying problem of shame that man men face in their. As Bradshaw points out in his book, we’re even ashamed of our shame.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Attract a Superior Woman

If you want to attract a superior woman, you need to become a superior man. As much as we’d like to think that us guys choose our partners, the reality is that women do the choosing. A superior woman has many, many options to choose from, so if we want her to choose us we need to stand out from all the regular guys she meets who want her attention every single day.

David Deida’s book The Way of the Superior Man is a great textbook on becoming the superior man that women are naturally attracted to. Whether you’re in a relationship now or not, it’s an amazingly insightful book with heaps of wisdom about what works in being a man, and on what it is about the superior man that naturally attracts women.

One of the key principles Deida teaches is about masculine and feminine energy. We all have a mixture of both energies, and the polarity between them is what sparks attraction between the sexes. Masculine energy is all about direction, purpose and mission in life. If you have no mission in life, you’re lacking masculine energy. Feminine energy is all about loving and being loved. If you don’t have the love that you want in your life, feminine energy is what you want to start attracting.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago