A couple of weeks ago, I attended a yoga festival conveniently located right down the street from me in Santa Monica. On the first day of this Tadasana Festival, the co-founder (and yoga instructor) Tommy Rosen was conducting a provocatively titled class – Getting High: Yoga and the Infinite Pharmacy Within.

Well then. Lord knows this happiness engineer isn’t one to pass up a non-pharmacological psychedelic experience, so I was in, baby. What transpired was novel, literally electrifying, completely unexpected, and potentially transformative.

In my 12 years of yoga practice, I had never experienced (more…)

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A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to speak at a friend’s monthly event. It’s a casual, friendly series of informal talks modeled after the TED Conferences, so he calls them FRED Talks (y’know — like a friendly TED). Oh, and you only get 5min to speak.

Now, by now you may have gathered that, unless I’m underwater, I have a lot more to say than just 5min. So what could I possibly convey to this attentive crowd in 5min that’s potentially life-changing?

Ah yes — happiness engineering. In those 5min, I taught 3 exercises to the audience, each taking less than a minute to do, which measurably boosted their mood. And in the extra minute, I managed to squeeze in another exercise.

Increasing happiness and engineering it in our daily lives is a topic I’ve been studying for several years now. In fact, you could say it’s the main focus of the Tao of Dating books for men and women. So expect a lot more on this topic coming from me in the near future.

And now, the video. If you find it useful, make sure you ‘Like’ it on YouTube, leave a comment so I know you’re alive, and share it with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, smoke signal and carrier pigeon. Thanks!

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Let it be known: I am not a big fan of online dating.  Yes, at least one of my best friends found her fabulous fiancé online.  And if you live in a small town, or fit a specific demographic (e.g. woman over 45, ultra-busy businessperson, sugar daddy, sneaking around your spouse), online dating may expand opportunities for you.  But for the rest of us, we’re much better off meeting real live humans eye-to-eye the way nature intended. Here are six reasons why:

1. It’s easy to be fooled by inaccurate signals online.

Do you think you’re beautiful?

What most people call ‘beauty’ is actually evolution’s very thorough system of broadcasting our suitability as mates.  Clear skin, good posture, broad shoulders, sonorous voice, bright eyes, shiny hair, graceful movements, pleasant aroma, facial symmetry, articulate speech: evolution has engineered features such as these into us to signal (more…)

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Gifts rule.  They elevate the gift giver, strengthen the bond of friendship, stimulate the local economy – and hey, they can make the recipient happy, too!

But what distinguishes the great gift from the merely commonplace?

While contemplating a departure gift for a friend who hosted me for a week, I looked back on the best gifts I ever received to come up with this mini-manifesto of kickass gift giving.  Three principles emerged:

• Positive evocation: The gift must evoke positive feeling through its mere presence – it has to smell, taste, look, sound or feel nice.
• Mnemogenicity: The gift must remind you of the gift giver – regularly if possible.
• Longevity: The gift must be the kind of thing that you keep for a long time.

With these criteria in hand, why settle for a great gift when you can go for amazing?  Here are some of the best ones I’ve ever gotten.

1. The extremely useful item of clothing

Actual gift: Red flannel Polo pajama pants.

These are the most comfortable pajama pants known to man.  Seduced by its soft, warm fuzziness, many a college student has relinquished his membership in civilized society by wearing them all day long – even to class.

Why are these pajama pants an amazing gift?  Because they last, evoke positive feelings, and every time I wear them to bed (often!) they remind me of my amazing ex-girlfriend Francesca, and how decadent, warm, soft and fuzzy she was.  Wait, that was (more…)

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This insightful article popped up on Slate last week.  Worth a read:

Sex Is Cheap

Why young men have the upper hand in bed, even when they’re failing in life.

By Mark Regnerus, Posted Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, at 12:23 PM ET

We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women’s: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships. Continue here

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Found this gem on the web, supposedly by a Bain & Co consultant with time on his hands.  Insightful, hilarious, and a brilliant summary of every article I’ve ever written.  Particularly funny is the location of the null set:

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Aw man, I can feel a rant coming on.  Here’s one comment/letter from a reader:

Speaking of long distance! We met on FB after many years apart, and live in different states. What about if there is loving romantic communication, and you respond in kind, in addition to calls… However, when it comes to positive communication, we do not talk often enough (for me) so the postive gaps get filled in some times w/email and text and (dare I say) messages on FB (but not on the wall). We also have had a lot of fun s/exting…as our physical relationship is also long distance, and there can be an emotional component to turning each other on via text also. Bottom line, I wish it was more intimate, more calls, more often…I just told him this, and he has been more attentive since the conversation. — Deb from a Distance

And here’s another comment from my college blog Enter to Grow in Wisdom on a post about long distance relationships being a bad idea:

First of all, not everybody who’s in a long-distance relationship through college breaks up. Just because you haven’t personally seen anybody make it doesn’t mean nobody does. That’s a pretty irrational attitude to take: “I haven’t seen this happen; therefore it CANNOT happen.” I’ve met and heard of plenty of people who’ve gotten married after long-distance relationships… — Miriam from Chicago

Sometimes I feel like the climate scientist who’s trying to tell the world about the ravages of global warming and someone gets up and says, “But it was cold in Milwaukee today, so there can’t possibly be global warming.”

So let me put this as clearly as possible, once and for all:

A long-distance relationship is no relationship at all.

I can hear the howls of protest already.  How can you say that, (more…)

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I was fortunate enough to come across this article by Arjuna Ardagh on the goddess on Huffington Post as I was checking up on my own article there.  This is now required reading for all my boys and girls.

Men: this is the highest expression of the unarticulated longing inside your heart for the divine feminine.  It’s also the solution to all of your dating woes.  If this is how you see women and convey it to them, you will have throngs of goddesses adoring you wherever you go.

Women: this is about you.  Realize that you are the goddess right here, right now.  Ease into it, live it, breathe it, and radiate it outward.  It’s also the solution to all of your dating woes.  If you show up as the goddess and gradually lead him into the inner sanctum of your divine feminine, he cannot resist. This is what the whole Tao of Dating program is about.

That said, here’s the beginning of the article.  Blog protocol requires that I put up an excerpt and direct you to the original source, so go to it:

“A few days ago, after a particularly exquisite evening with my wife Chameli, I put this post up on Facebook before going to bed:

“I have had many, many great teachers in my life. A super abundance. No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom. My marriage has become the guru, the salvation, the muse, the crack through which the divine shines through.”

When I woke up the next morning, (more…)

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Here’s a great letter from a reader about a budding romance at work — a very common situation:

I’m a huge fan of the Tao of Dating, (which I’ve read 2x now), and we’ve spoken a couple of times online. I’m writing to you because I’m in a situation that’s mostly great, though a little tricky to navigate; and I’d love to get your take on the matter.

I started at a new full-time job about 6 weeks ago. I’ve met a woman with whom I really get along. We chat online almost all day while at work. I get along with her two female office friends. We all often go to lunch together. She and I make plans during the day to take coffee breaks together. Today we had an office beach party, and she and I ended up spending a lot of the day together. We get along great and gravitate towards one another.

If we didn’t work together, it would almost be a no-brainer. Thing is, we do, and it’s a new job. We made tentative plans to see a movie together next week. I just don’t want to rush anything or force anything. I’m trying not to invest too much into just her, but I find myself thinking about her often. I’m not afraid of being bold…I just feel like timing might be everything in this situation…(?) Any words of wisdom? It would be most appreciated.

I continue to love your work, and I sincerely hope all is well with you.

All the best,
Gabe

My good man Gabe.  Nice to hear from you.  Appreciate the praise.  No need to stop, really — keep it coming :)

Awright, so this romance at work thing may seem like a sticky situation.  You meet someone you like, and you seem to get along.  But then, (more…)

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On a sunny day here in Santa Monica, I was driving down the street when I noticed a police car on the other side of the road.

Of course, this means that I came to a complete stop at the stop sign, well behind the limit line, let all pedestrians have right of way, and smiled in the general direction of The Law — just like every other time I’ve come across a cop car.

All of this made me wonder: what would the world look like if you were that policeman driving the squad car?

It would look like the world is populated almost exclusively by law-abiding citizens who are very meticulous about their driving.  Think about it: as soon as people become aware of your presence, they alter their behavior.  You, the cop, are a reality distortion field.  It’s as if you send out these waves of causation, and the world conforms to it around you.

Well, guess what, boys and girls: we’re all reality distortion fields all the time.  Any time you interact with someone, that someone is also interacting with you — that’s what interact means.  So you only see people in relationship to you.

Just as there are different versions of you — employee, boss, child, parent, sibling, relative, lover, pedestrian, driver, friend — there are different versions of the people around you.  And you only get to see that version of that person.

This may even be one of the central operating principles of the universe.  Quantum mechanics says that by observing something, you change it.  At the level of an electron that needs to hit a detector or be bumped by a photon before it’s “seen”, we can grasp that.

But what if that were also true of the macroscopic world of human relations?

Well, I already told you that it is.  It’s also one of the most empowering principles of the Tao of Dating: by controlling your attention and expectation, you can change the behavior of those close to you.

Energy flows where attention goes.  So if you give attention to your partner’s positive qualities, your partner will grow in those areas (heard of an erection? Same idea).  Similarly, if you give attention to the negative qualities — and remember that criticism and nagging are still forms of attention — then those areas will grow.  Take your pick.

Also, people will rise and fall to your level of expectation of them.  If you expect generosity of spirit and openness of heart, that’s what you’re going to get from your partner.  So expect the best, and ascribe positive intent to their actions whenever possible.

This reminds me of the story of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.  Right after his release from prison, Valjean is taken in by the kindly Bishop Myriel, since no inn will offer shelter to an ex-convict.  In the middle of the night, Valjean leaves Myriel’s home, stealing the bishop’s silverware.  He is soon caught and brought back to Myriel, who says that he actually gave Valjean the silverware, and how dare he leave in such a hurry so as to forget the silver candleholders that he also meant for him!  Myriel then reminds Valjean of the promise to use the silver to make an honest man of himself.

Valjean had made no such promise.  But Myriel held him to a higher ideal than the one Valjean had for himself.  Subsequently, Valjean goes on to become a wealthy industrialist and then a mayor.

This may just be a story out of a novel, but it does describe reality.  You have enough silver in your possession to hold people to the highest vision of themselves at any time.  The silver is your attention, the expectations you have of people, and the example you set with your own behavior.  Use them wisely.

In conclusion, I was thinking about the meaning of the expression to turn the other cheek last week.  From the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew: “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”

Is this about wimpiness, militant pacifism, or some very literal thing having to do with the time and place Jesus lived in?  Many different interpretations exist.

Here’s mine: to turn the other cheek means to take the one action that can result in the salvation of the person who slapped you.

If you slap back harder, you’ve got a slapfest on your hands, and neither you nor the slapper* will be ennobled by it.  Just sitting there like a potted plant won’t accomplish much either.  The only thing that’s likely to make the slapper pause and perhaps reconsider is to turn the other cheek: “What the hell was that all about?”, he’ll think.  And therein lies the shadow of a chance for evolution. It may not work every time, but it’s the only thing that can work.

That’s what Bishop Myriel did.  It’s what a Taoist master would do — flow with force and offer no resistance.  It’s what Musashi, the legendary Japanese sword master and author of The Book of Five Rings did when challenged to a duel by some street thug who would certainly get killed at the master’s hand.

Not only is turning the other cheek the furthest thing from wimpiness and passivity, it is also the highest expression of the human spirit: the ability to act deliberately in accordance with principle instead of reacting reflexively.  And it leaves both parties in a better spot than where they started.

* Slapper is a bit of technical term in England, so all you snickering Brits can settle down now.  Works in this context in any case.

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