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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger, and I m here with producer Jason DeFilippo.
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Here at the Art of Charm, we don t have all the answers, but we definitely have all the right questions.
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Today on Fan Mail Friday, those questions come from you.
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If you re new to the Art of Charm podcast, Fan Mail Friday isn t the best place to start.
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Most of our content is more in-depth and longer format, so check out the best of at theartofcharm.com slash best, or the Fundamentals Toolbox at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox.
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That s where we ve got fundamentals of body language and nonverbal communication, attraction, negotiation, networking, influence, persuasion, and everything else we teach here at The Art of Charm.
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We ll send all of this to your inbox if you text charmed, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444 in the USA, or if you re not, go to theartofcharm.com.
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All right, let s cut to it.
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Hey, Jordan, I was listening to your podcast on why we believe weird things, and I wanted to share this because it was hilarious.
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Several years ago, I went to a psychic with a girlfriend of mine.
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P.S.
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Never do this.
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I kind of knew in the back of my mind it wouldn t work out when the psychic looked dead in her eyes and said, you will live happily with two kids.
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And then when it was my turn, said that I would live happily with three kids.
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We were the only two people there and it was obvious that we were a couple.
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Needless to say, I m happily married to someone else now.
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Thanks for all you do.
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Signed, I believe weird things.
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I love this story.
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I wanted to share it because I m just imagining this guy sitting there on a date with somebody or somebody that he was dating and the psychic is like,
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You will live happily with two kids and she s like on then just grabs arm and they re all happy and cozy and cuddly and then she s like in you with three kids and then it s just like dead hand dead arm awkward ending to the night like platonic handshake after the fact that s just it seems so funny and I think it s so funny that a psychic would do this because usually they re playing to the crowd I mean it is after all
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a fictional fantasy thing.
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It just seems like they were maybe bored and wanted to mess with them, which is even better somehow.
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Alright, next question.
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Jordan, I have a situation with an ex-girlfriend that I wanted to get your opinion on.
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I ve listened to enough episodes where I think I have a good idea of how you might answer, but I m thinking I may just need the affirmation.
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I was in a relationship with a girl for about a year and we fell in love.
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Things were going great and we both talked about how our relationship had the potential of being a long one.
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As our relationship went on, I discovered that she had some trust issues with me despite there being no reason for her not to trust me.
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For context, she came from a situation where her parents got divorced and her father chose to see a new woman rather than giving his daughter, my ex, attention so it s not hard to understand where some of these issues stem from.
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After a particular meltdown of hers and continually feeling like I was wrongly being mistrusted, I started to pull away from the relationship and checked out mentally.
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From that point on, our relationship began crumbling.
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After a few months of resentment, we ended things on a bitter note after a heated argument.
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After about four or five months of no contact and each of us moving on, I felt like I needed to apologize for how bad things ended and I reached out to her.
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We met up, caught up, and each took blame for how things went wrong.
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I d mentioned that I started a co-ed softball team, advice from the Moving to a New Town episode, and we both thought we could be mature enough not to make it a big deal if she joined the team, so she did.
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Oh my God.
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Keep going.
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Now we are at the end of the season, and it hasn t been a big deal that she s been around.
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But seeing her once a week has gradually reintroduced those feelings I had for her when we fell in love.
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Of course.
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For me, it s been a back and forth of wondering if it s possible to reignite the relationship and reminding myself of why we broke up and how miserable we both were towards the end.
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I d moved on, but now I feel like I m in limbo.
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Now that I have a complete picture and deeper understanding of her situation, I feel like I have a choice to make.
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Do I tell her where I m at or do I let the season end and let any contact fizzle out so I can get over her again?
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Thanks for your input.
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Sincerely, possibly stupid to let her play softball.
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Oh man, so there s a couple things going on here.
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One, when you made up and you caught up and everything, you started pining a little bit.
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You probably were doing that a little bit beforehand.
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you know, thinking like, oh, I miss her, she s so great, because when you had that civil conversation to straighten everything out, it was a huge relief.
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And that relief translated to pleasure in your brain, which was anchored to her during that meeting.
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And there s other stuff going on here, too, but that s a major thing that I see.
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Also, you re idealizing your relationship, and you know you re doing this because you even mention that you re trying to remind yourself of why you broke up with her in the first place.
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Now, you wouldn t have this problem if you were dating somebody else.
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So that makes it especially dangerous, because since you re not dating anyone else, you have that sort of, but she was so great, why did we break up?
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You have that scarcity mindset, and you re on the market, and so is she.
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So there s a little bit of pedestal behavior going on here, where the relationship slash her are up on a pedestal, and the idealizing thing is starting to take over in your brain, you re starting to rationalize this behavior, which is why you invited her on the team.
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Now look, it could also be a good thing,
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but I would say you should move on.
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It doesn t sound like the relationship was deep enough to pursue long, long term in the first place.
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You had your reasons for ending it then.
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Look, date others and then see if you re still interested in rekindling things with her.
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Date other people starting now, starting ASAP, whatever.
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Then, if you keep dating people and you can t find anyone, and the problem is you re still gonna be idealizing the good parts about this relationship and forgetting about the bad, it s human nature, but once you start dating others, you re probably going to see that any attraction that you had for this or anything that made this sound like an even remotely good idea are gonna be gone.
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All right, next up.
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Hi Jordan, I couldn t help but relate to the 16-year-old student from a previous Fan Mail Friday.
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When I was a freshman, I was the same way.
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But I have a solution.
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You and Jason gave very good advice.
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However, there is another option that is much better suited for this individual.
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It s called dual enrollment.
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Dual enrollment is when you remain a high school student, however, you take all or some of your classes in college.
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This can be done at any school.
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It s just a matter of awareness.
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Once enrolled, your high school schedule is filled with studies while your college schedule reflects classes that are requirements for high school and college.
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This is not a GED program, nor is this dropping out.
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This is for driven students who don t fit the mold for high school.
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High school is, in fact, a waste of time.
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Amen, brother, on that one.
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I know, gosh.
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It s an old and broken system.
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Dual enrollment allows you to get a jump on college and life.
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It gives you more hours in the day and saves you years in school.
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It also teaches you valuable life lessons.
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This is how it works.
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First, you meet with a counselor at the college, then you meet with the counselor at your high school.
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They communicate what classes need to be fulfilled, then they find corresponding classes that meet the criteria.
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That s it.
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Hope that helps.
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Sammy.
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Dude, okay, wow, I wish I d known about this in high school.
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Are you kidding me?
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There were kids in my class that took college classes, but they were like the geniuses, so they were taking non-Euclidean geometry or whatever, right?
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And I thought, oh, that s ridiculous.
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It s only offered in college and I remember asking about college classes, but of course they don t want to make this easy for you So they say well you can only take a college class if it s not offered here at school Which is complete crap because by definition college classes are not offered at school But they kind of think that computer engineering 101 is the same as typing or whatever it offered in your high school class and that General sciences which are like here s a volcano out of baking soda.
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They think that s the same thing as
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AP chem or organic chemistry or whatever.
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So look, yeah, I would have loved to have done that.
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Anything that would have made high school and college both shorter would have been freaking amazing.
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So I m telling you, if you are in this situation, if you re thinking high school, what a waste of time, I don t want to be here, why am I still doing this?
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Dual enrollment.
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My goodness, let me know how it goes.
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I d love to hear from somebody who s doing this, because that is just magical.
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Everybody who s sick of high school needs to look into this.
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And I think it s normal to be sick of high school because it s a two-year program that they somehow stretch out to four years.
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And that s how I felt about it.
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All right, what s next?
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Hey Art of Charm, I started listening on a recommendation from my sister.
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She started me off with your episodes with Dwayna Welch, which are awesome and helped me to come to terms with some important relationship issues and ultimately helped me decide to make some tough choices and do what I knew I needed to do.
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I broke off a nearly four-year relationship and now find myself relearning what it s like to be single.
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In a recent encounter at a restaurant, I found myself talking to a nice girl.
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The conversation inevitably led to, what do you do for work?
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I gave a very self-deprecating answer, because what I do isn t really glamorous or super interesting for conversation.
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My answer?
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I move dirt.
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You see, I m an excavator operator for my father s construction company, and honestly, most of what I do is in fact moving dirt.
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Not that my answer stopped the conversation, but as I replayed it in my mind, there was a slight note of her somewhat losing interest after that statement.
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Another reason I use a self-deprecating answer to this question is I have a friend who does the same exact thing.
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He works for his father running an excavator, and in the past when he was asked the same question, his response was, I m vice president of a construction company.
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While this may be technically true, like me, there are only two people in the company, him and his father.
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It always seemed less than honest, and even more disturbingly to me, it always seemed to generate more interest from the opposite sex.
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I like my job, I m pretty good at it, and I enjoy being a son helping his father keep a business running and profitable, so I m hoping you can shed some
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on finding a middle ground between self-deprecation and overselling.
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Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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I ll be listening as always while I m moving dirt.
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Signed, Vice President of Aggregate Distribution, aka Dirt Mover.
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This is an interesting scenario because I don t think you should make what you do sound overtly grandiose unless you re delivering it in a funny way.
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And I also don t think you need to be ashamed of your occupation, but I do see why people might go, oh, okay, and then
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maybe it s not something for conversation.
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I think it s all in the delivery.
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I know it s all in the delivery because we go over this exact same scenario, how to tell people what you do for work.
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At Boot Camp, we practice it, we go into detail.
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We use deflect, defer, disclose.
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So one, you re gonna wanna work on your delivery, make it something interesting enough or funny, or if you re doing something that s always the subject of conversation, like I m a talk show host, I typically deflect, defer, and disclose.
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So the first thing is deflect.
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Deflect is somebody asks me what I do, I either change the subject or I pretend like I didn t hear, that can be an option.
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I try to do it in a way where we re talking about something more interesting because usually people don t really care what you do, they re just making conversation.
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So if you take that burden away from them and you start talking about something else, often it won t even be an issue, especially if you re just in a short meeting or something like that.
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Defer is when you bounce it back to them.
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So they might say, what do you do for work?
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And I might say, yeah, what do you do?
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and then I get them talking, I get them talking about their job, we start going down that road as much as possible, and then inevitably, both of those things, I d say half the time, the person says, oh, I wanna know more about you, and then they ll ask you again, and at that point, you can disclose what you do.
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That way, it doesn t derail the conversation, it doesn t become awkward, you don t have to figure out how to present yourself, because you ve already done that.
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You ve already worked on your delivery, you already know how to formulate your elevator pitch, which we ve gone over,
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Here on the show, we re going to do Minnesota Mondays and things like that about this specific thing as well.
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And of course, we have articles about it on the website.
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So remember, it s all about delivery.
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You do need that elevator pitch lined up and ready.
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But before you do that, deflect, defer, and disclose.
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Hey, Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
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Winning is an everyday mindset, and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
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On Ways to Win podcast, Craig and Coach Cal use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems.
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Whether it s trouble at home or a workplace dilemma, the coaches will help you find a winning formula for success.
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You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them into the leaders they are today.
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And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
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Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
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Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
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They say if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
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But if you re an entrepreneur, you know the hard work that comes with it.
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That s why you need Kajabi.
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Kajabi makes it easy to run your entire online business from one platform so you can focus on what you love, creating.
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Kajabi is the ultimate all-in-one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs build successful online businesses by unlocking predictable recurring revenue.
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No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, and experiences into enriching online courses, exclusive membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and more.
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The best part, Kajabi doesn t cut into your revenue because everything is owned and controlled by you.
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So keep 100% of what you earn.
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And with Kajabi, you also get robust analytics, easy payment options, email marketing tools, and customizable website templates, all built in.
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You don t even need a huge audience to make sustainable income.
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There are thousands of creators on Kajabi making six and seven figures with less than 50,000 followers.
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Right now, Kajabi is offering a free 30-day trial to start your business.
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If you go to kajabi.com slash charm, that s K-A-J-A-B-I.com slash charm.
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Go to kajabi.com slash charm and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $7 billion.
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All right, back to Fan Mail Friday.
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All right, last one.
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Hi Jordan and the team of AOC.
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I recently started listening to your podcast, Great Work.
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I found your podcast on iTunes and I went through the show and listened to your Toolbox episodes and I learned a lot.
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I m a 27-year-old engineer living near New York City.
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I came to the USA for studies and started working at a research lab as an engineer.
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Not knowing anyone here was difficult, and as you can imagine, my dating life sucks.
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Working in a lab, there s not much interaction with people, and it s all work-related.
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I do work out at the gym regularly, and I love watching sports and outdoor activities.
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So I m using online dating as my tool to meet women, but I hardly get any replies.
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I go to bars sometimes on the weekend, and tried meet-up groups a few times, but no success.
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So after trying for a few years, I feel like American women don t like Indian men.
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Maybe I m wrong, and there can be some cultural differences, but after this much trying, this is what I m feeling.
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When I go out, I wear nice clothes, I have good hygiene, etc., but when I try to start conversations, I m completely being avoided.
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A couple of times, I even heard racist comments, and it gets me very demotivated.
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I only have a few Indian friends, but I want to have a good social circle outside of the Indian community and improve my dating life.
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As a childhood dream, I always wanted to join the military.
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So I enlisted in the U.S.
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Army as a reserve, and I m waiting to be shipped out for training.
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I can continue my work and serve as a U.S.
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Army soldier.
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I know you must be a very busy person, but I really appreciate your thoughts on this.
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Here to learn and improve as men.
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Keep up the good work.
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Thanks, Frustrated Indian.
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Wow, first, thanks for serving and coming to the United States.
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It s really good to see high quality people moving here, because if you listen to some people in the news, it s only the awful people that are sliding across the border, but it s great to see new talent moving here and living the dream, although most people might not consider the Army part of the dream.
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You know what?
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Everybody s got their own dream.
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But here s the deal.
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I don t know you, so I can t really say, but it might be that you re
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Looking a little wet behind the ears.
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I don t, you know, fresh off the boat, as my Asian friends like to say.
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And what that means is maybe you just need a little bit more time to assimilate.
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It can be hard for guys from overseas to meet women and platonic friends, for that matter, of both sexes.
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It can be tough to do right away because of language, because of culture barriers, because of stereotypes.
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You ll learn so much in the military.
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I think you ll see probably the best and maybe the worst sides of people in the United States after that, but it won t be a problem for you at all in a few years, I would imagine, especially if you make an effort to assimilate really well and create a social circle.
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So focus on social circles, platonic social circles first, and then focus less on the dating.
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because I think that s the trick.
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We always talk about how you need to have that social circle, you need to have your life set up here first before you can worry about dating and relationships.
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The same goes for you as an immigrant, probably for the same reasons, although maybe a few extra reasons tossed in there as well, that you need to worry about.
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So I would say just set it aside for now.
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Don t worry about the magic cheat code for American women.
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worry about making friends in a social circle, and you will start to learn all of the things you need to learn in order to get better at dating American women as well.
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And we see tons of guys here at AOC just for this reason, just throwing that out there.
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All right, hope y all enjoyed that.
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Don t forget, you can email us at fridayattheartofcharm.com to get your questions answered on the air.
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A link to this blog post can be found at theartofcharm.com slash fmf75.
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Also, don t forget about the AOC Challenge, text CHARMED, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D-2-3-3-4-4-4 here in the USA, or if you re not, go to theartofcharm.com.
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We ll take you step-by-step on becoming better at making personal and professional connections, becoming a better networker, increasing your personal social capital and your charisma,
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and it s for both guys and gals, so check that out.
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Text CHARMED, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444 here in the USA, or if you re not, go to theartofcharm.com.
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Quick shout-outs to Christian from Santiago de Chile, and Romy the Baconator, the man, not the burger, making the world a better place one day at a time.
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Are you in a strange land listening to my familiar voice?
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If so, hit me up and I ll shout you out.
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More from AOC at theartofcharm.com.
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Now stay charming, get out there and connect, and leave everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.