Another thing that's great about the abundance mentality is simply that it's a different mindset from what most of the rest of the planet has. When you're in the abundance zone, you're out of the groupthink and in the rarefied air of success thinking.

That alone gives you much latitude not available to others. One of the principles of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is 'if what you're doing isn't working, try something else.' *Anything* else.

This reminds me of an incident that happened recently. I had just started to play a game of pick-up soccer at a big picnic when I had the opportunity for a breakaway.

I was on my way to the opponent's goal with no one in front of me, when some random guy happened to block my way on his way out of the picnic.

Apparently he was in a playful mood, because he decided to take the ball which I was dribbling in front of me, stop it, and then kick it the opposite direction I was going. Then he kept on going along his merry way.

Now you can imagine how thrilled I was about that. Here was my opportunity to be the early hero of the game, but the chance was snatched away by a total deus ex machina, a completely random occurrence. And there was pretty much nothing I could do about it.

The fact is that I was caught up in a set of rules that I had accepted to play by while the random guy was not.

He was outside of the system entirely, which allowed him to do seemingly crazy things and get away with them.

Do you see the structure of what happened here? What he was doing was completely orthogonal to the rules, and so there was nothing to stop him.

Now am I saying you should go around and ruin people's soccer matches? Of course not. But what I want you to do is to observe the unwritten scripts of social situations, and notice how often you've unconsciously accepted to be stuck in them, thereby restricting your own behavior and freedom.

Let's think of some examples here: You can't talk to her if she's talking on her cell phone. Really? Can't? Or don't want to? Or just don't feel like it? Will you go to etiquetteprison if you do and be forced to watch Martha Stewart shows all day?

You can't ask her out if she's at work. You can't approach her if she's having dinner with her friends. You can't talk to her if she's in the car next to you.

You can't call her the day after you met her (women are particularly annoyed about this one -- you should call her when you feel like calling her. She'll like you better if she was already into you, and nothing changes if she wasn't into you in the first place.)

You can't ask her sister or friend out whom you find more interesting. You can't stop her as she's walking down the street. You can't speak to her as she's shopping for groceries, or picking up her dry-cleaning.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? I'm not saying that all of the scripts up there are necessarily bad ones all the time, but can you see how you're restricting yourself by unquestioningly following them?

Soon you might find that you can only meet a woman if she's standing in a two-square foot spot in your neighborhood pub at 8.47pm with no other men or women around her for a 10 meter radius AND she's offering to buy you a scotch, preferably 18-yr old.

This kind of mindset can be pervasive in our professional lives, too. Sure, groupthink can work, as it has for decades for many corporations -- corporations not necessarily known for their breakthrough thinking.

But ordinary measures get you ordinary results at best. For extraordinary results, you need to take extraordinary measures. To be exceptional, you need to be the exception.

So I urge you to do one crazy, completely out-of-character thing in your dating life for the rest of this week.

Do it as an exercise, just to see what happens.

You'll find that doing it even once will be tremendously invigorating, as you stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone.
You can pick from any of the 'scripts' above, or come up with one of your own.

Do it, and report back on your findings.

The power is within you,

Dr Alex has been helping men achieve success with women and is the creator of The Tao of Dating