The Easy Path Project Live Stream #24
How Small Mindset Shifts Fuel Exponential Growth in Dating and Connection
Okay, we are live. I am Michael from the Easy Path Project. We’ve taken a pretty deep dive recently, so I wanted to lighten things up tonight. We’re getting back to the basics and we’re going to talk about how small mindset shifts can fuel exponential growth in dating and connection.
Like I said, a lot of the ideas with the Easy Path Project center around the concept that by working on one part of your inner game – I call it the nine pillars of inner game, which I’ve discussed on other live streams, so definitely go back and check that out – but basically, if you work on one or two or three of these different pillars of your inner game, each one of those will actually increase the others. It’s almost like magic, right?
Tonight we’re covering the basis of the very simple things that you need to think about – you know, what is your “why” to do this work. We’re going to talk about some of the reasons why you would want to work on these areas and some of the things that you can expect.
Core Principles
So tonight’s focus: How can small mindset shifts fuel exponential growth in dating and connection?
Here are the key principles:
- Inner game work eliminates the neediness and insecurity that sabotage relationships before they start.
- Mindful communication helps you listen deeply and respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.
- Growth mindset transforms relationship challenges into opportunities for deeper connection and understanding.
Like I said, a lot of these things work together. If you work on one part – if you eliminate your neediness, for instance – say, you’re doing things to gain the approval of people. One of the things that leads to the friend zone a lot is when you’re doing something for somebody, trying to get their approval or their affection or whatever. They don’t understand – you’re not being honest and forthright. They just think you’re doing something cool for them. But you’re trying to make up for your insecurity and neediness, and it ends up working against you because the other person – the woman in this example – is confused.
The Inner Game Revolution
The Inner Game Revolution: How to transform every relationship in your life. That’s another thing – this isn’t just about your dating relationship. This is also about your friends, your family, your work, your church, whatever kind of group that you need to interact in. By improving how you feel about yourself, you’ll definitely improve the way that you interact with others and the way that they react to you. It really works out nicely.
Building Self-Worth and Confidence
So the first question is: How can improving your inner game comfortably and easily enhance your relationships? Like I said, this is the Easy Path Project, right? We’re here to do this the comfortable and easy way.
By building a strong inner game, you become more self-assured, handle challenges calmly, and connect more authentically with others, which leads to stronger and healthier relationships in all areas of your life.
If you build yourself up – and like we’ve discussed many times now – a lot of that is just working on cleaning out the crap that you’ve accumulated through your life. The stuff that’s holding you back, the stuff that’s making you feel that you have to be needy or that you have to earn somebody’s approval. Root out those issues and solve them.
I know that’s easier to say than do, but it can be done. There is the possibility that you can get back to just a baseline, and just that by itself will improve your interactions with others. You will become more self-assured. You won’t be held down by stuff from the past or ways that you were treated or ways that you picked things up that might not have been correct, or that might have been correct but only for that time. By getting rid of all that stuff, you’ll be more self-assured. You’ll be able to handle challenges because you’ll be dealing with stuff directly. You won’t have to be dealing with monsters from the past.
The Impact of Self-Worth
How does developing self-worth improve interactions with partners and family? When your self-worth rises, you set healthier boundaries and communicate your needs confidently, fostering mutual respect and closeness in intimate, family, and work relationships.
Your self-worth is massively important. Whenever you think about alphas and chads and tyrones or whatever, they’re not really wallflower, weepy poet types, right? They’re people that are confident – men who are confident in themselves, or at least they give off the impression. So a big part of that is your confidence, your self-worth, your self-esteem, whether you’re being authentic, whether you’re standing up for what you believe in.
All of these things – once you start expressing that part of who you are, that’s when you’ll be able to communicate what you need from people. You won’t have to be needy anymore. You’ll just have to explain clearly and confidently: this is what I need. Once people know where you stand, they’re going to treat you differently. You’ve established who you are. It’s a lot easier to get stronger relationships where each person knows where they stand.
Confidence and Meaningful Relationships
In what ways does increased confidence make it easier to build meaningful relationships? Confidence allows you to express yourself openly, try new things without fear, and approach people with ease, which leads to deeper and more genuine connections across all social circles.
I have all the confidence in the world right now, so I have to think about why somebody would not feel confident. It’s got to be – I mean, you and I, we came from the same place, right? We’re both humans, we both have human characteristics. So what is it that’s different about you than about me? At this point of the conversation, I would say it is definitely nurture versus nature.
Well, now it’s an issue that you’ve got to take control of, you’ve got to conquer. It’s something that is like – it’s not of you, it’s not real, it’s something on you. If you think of it like a barnacle or something, you need to scrape it off. And then at that point, the true you is just going to emerge.
I did a whole live stream one night about how you can think about removing these things or how you can move forward without allowing the past and your interpretations of the past to hold you down, to hold you back.
So confidence allows you to express yourself openly, try new things without fear, right? Because you’re going to feel more confident, more positive, more optimistic. You’ll approach people with ease. You won’t have to be afraid: “Oh, what are they going to think about me? Oh, what if I don’t say this right?” You’re not going to care because you’re being authentic, you’re being yourself, you’re being real.
Real people make mistakes, little stumbles in conversations, or they make lame jokes, or they do all these other things. They don’t hold on to it longer than the moment or long enough to evaluate and then move on to the next step. Once you start feeling more comfortable in your own skin, you’ll find that people interact with you differently – in a better way, I would suggest.
Growth-Oriented Mindset
Why is a growth-oriented mindset important for relationship success? A positive mindset helps you see challenges as opportunities, encourages learning from experiences, and creates a supportive environment, all of which make relationships more resilient and enjoyable.
This is a three-parter. Like I said, a lot of people, especially the kind of people that would be looking for self-help or personal growth, they pretty much internalized that life is difficult or that things are not going to go well. I know that I’ve gotten in that phase before sometimes. The sales coach guy Zig Ziglar used to call it “stinking thinking” – when you get a negative mindset.
Whenever I would run into somebody that would be like, “Oh well, I’ve never had any luck with women,” or “Things have gotten off, and then they just fizzled out,” and all these things – they’re bringing into the current situation this mindset of, “Okay, well everything that I’ve tried in the past has not worked, so therefore it’s unlikely that anything’s going to work.”
No, no, no, no, no. If anything, just take it back to zero – just to neutral. It could go well or it could go badly, right? The chances of you going badly after making these improvements in your inner game, in your confidence and your self-esteem, in your self-worth and your authenticity – as you make improvements in those things, you’re actually making it more likely that things are going to work out great. So just be open to the possibility that things can go well.
Three Key Points
We talked about this the other night in the subjective reality discussion. When I talk about subjective reality and seeing the world through the lens of subjective reality or seeing the world as a simulation, one of the ways that you would see challenges as opportunities is like feedback from the universe. If I’m telling the universe that I want to have a pretty girl come into my life, and then suddenly in the periphery you start seeing these pretty girls come along – that’s a challenge, right? But it’s also an opportunity.
There are other applications for that too – things like where you have to actually grow as a person by going through difficulty, by overcoming challenges. But the idea is, once again, if you’re thinking positively, if you have nothing else but a neutral approach to things – “Well, they could go well or they could go badly” – that’s still better than being pessimistic.
Also, talking about subjective reality and feedback – it’s learning from experiences. The universe is telling you, “Okay, hey, this worked out well, therefore continue doing this thing,” or “This other thing didn’t work out so well, so don’t be doing that thing.” None of it is personal. All it is is feedback. It’s just a signal from the universe or from reality whether you’re on the right track or not.
The last thing – a lot of people don’t realize, maybe you feel alone, you need people around you or you need support systems. Well, think about yourself being part of that support system for the people around you. If you’re a positive person and you’re always kind of offering that support in the sense like, “Okay, well, this is going to turn out for the best. Even if it’s a bad situation, well, we’re going to work through this and we’re going to try to make it out as best as possible.”
If you do that, you make people around you feel better because you’re not a negative kind of guy, you’re a positive kind of guy. You’re part of the solution, you’re not part of the problem. When people start seeing you like that kind of guy, that’s when you start seeing that people start enjoying having you around more and they start feeling more comfortable with you.
Relationships – first of all, you won’t have the same problems that maybe you did. People will cut you more slack in relationships, so it’ll be easier to get back on track if something goes wrong in any way. The growth-oriented mindset is just allowing for the possibility that things can go great. If you just make that simple shift from “Wow, things have gone poorly in the past, therefore they’re going to go poorly in the future” – just swap that out for “I am a growth-oriented person now and I believe that if nothing else, there is the possibility that things are going to be fantastic.”
Personal Growth and Relationships
How does focusing on personal growth affect your ability to form healthier relationships? As you grow personally, you bring more self-awareness, understanding, and adaptability to your relationships, making it easier to cooperate, resolve conflict, and form lasting bonds.
I touched on this a moment ago, but as you are kind of shedding the stuff that held you back from being the real person you really are and letting that shine through – once you start to internalize it, actually I can feel it in my body when I start thinking about this, like the tightness – I’m loosening up just talking about this, so this is kind of fun.
As you become more about who you are and who you want to be – and that’s also a big part of it – once you start laying out who you are and kind of having a better idea of where you are right now, that also helps you move into the future that you want for that person and it shows you kind of the route to take to get there.
As you grow personally, you also are more self-aware. You understand yourself, you understand how you’re dealing with other people, you understand them. You’re more empathetic. That’s part of emotional intelligence – we’ll talk about that a couple more times here tonight. It’ll allow you to hear more deeply. Somebody will say something and because you’re actually thinking about it on multiple levels, you’re hearing what they’re saying but you’re also empathetic – you’re on that same wavelength. So that really helps you understand the situation more deeply.
That makes your relationships better. Like I said, it’s not necessarily just your love relationships, but it could be your friends or family. If you listen to them and really understand where they’re coming from, it’s easier for you to get along with them, it’s easier to cooperate, it’s easier to resolve conflict and to form lasting bonds.
A lot of times we get wrapped up in our own thoughts. It’s very easy to do because by nature, humans are selfish and it is our imperative to take care of ourselves first. So it’s sometimes difficult to think about the other person. But if you do – if you’re able to just add that back in – in the olden days they used to have this seven-second delay on radio in case somebody said something off-color. There was a seven-second delay so that if they made a crude comment, you would be able to mute it or bleep it out.
Well, it’s kind of the same way if you think about yourself and the way that you interact with other people. The idea is that you add just like a half a second or a millisecond delay before a response just for you to evaluate where you are and run the situation that you’re dealing with through a filter of empathy, of emotional intelligence and all the things that it entails, and then bring that to the forefront. Answer through that lens and it’s going to make it a lot easier to get along with people.
Does this sound wacky or nutty? Back in my younger days, I was just bullheaded. I was trying to force my way through everything and that did not work out well. I mean, in the sense that I got a lot of stuff accomplished because I was just so determined, but I was not a cool fellow. I did not have real friends or any of that stuff.
So once I started re-evaluating my interactions with other humans through this lens that I keep telling you guys about, things got better. All of my relationships – all of my relationships are better now than they were then, and it’s because I applied this stuff.
What do you think? Can you do this? Leave a comment, and also if you know someone who will find this information helpful, please share the video.
Authenticity in Relationships
What impact does being authentic have on intimate and community relationships? Authenticity fosters trust and openness, allowing others to feel comfortable around you, which strengthens all types of relationships.
I talked about authenticity earlier, but it’s basically a two-parter – authenticity and then also moral courage. Authenticity is being honest about who you are, owning who you are and being okay with that. Like I said, everybody is an individual, everybody’s got their own stuff they’ve got to deal with, everybody’s not perfect. So just own that, just be your authentic self. Tell a stupid joke or whatever, but own it. Don’t feel like you have to suffer because it didn’t go over well.
No, it’s much easier than that. You just enjoy it, maybe make it even fun. You can figure out the ways to do this – there’s not just one way to think about things. Open your mind.
Moral courage is also standing up for the things you believe in, even if it’s a situation where you wouldn’t necessarily always expect it to turn out well for you. So that’s another factor of being honest or being authentic about who you are.
Once you’re authentic about it, like I said, people will know who you are and where you stand. It allows other people to feel comfortable – they know who and what you are, therefore they don’t have to walk around on eggshells or guess. A lot of people have problems with communication. If you’re laying it out there, your presence just says who you are, then there won’t be any questions about the communication. You’ll be telling everybody and people will feel more comfortable. Like I said, it’s not just your dating relationships, it’s also friends, family, etc.
Mastering Social Dynamics
How does mastering social dynamics help you relate more comfortably with others? Understanding social cues and group energy allows you to navigate conversations with ease, reduce conflict, and create supportive environments in any setting.
I talk about this on occasion – the difference between a natural, a guy who’s just naturally good at picking up girls, versus a guy who has to learn it from reading a book or watching a video. You would find that for the guy who’s got that natural skill to pick up a girl, he’s also going to be able to get along with other people just in general. He just feels more comfortable, more loose, more – a lot of it has to do with the way that you carry your body, your body language, non-verbal communication like eyes and such.
Today at the gym, I gave a look at a girl across the way from me and she gave me kind of this little – I don’t even know how to explain it – kind of squinty smile look back and it was really sweet. Yeah, and that’s the kind of stuff that happens. So once you become comfortable with who you are, you’ll feel more comfortable going out and talking to people and maybe you’ll find out that you have this kind of natural ability in yourself. You’ll understand how to interact with people on a social level.
One of the things I like to do is read about autism and how to help autistic people deal with social interaction. In a lot of cases – I mean, not necessarily that you’re autistic – but a lot of people just do not understand social cues or they don’t understand body language. If it’s not natural to you, then it’s not natural. But it is natural to humans, so you can watch a video on YouTube, you can learn about it and understand it and how to see it.
That’s one of the things when I would take my guys out – the first night or two, we’d actually go to a nightclub or a bar or something and we just post up and we’d watch. We’d sit there and look at people and how they interacted with other people, and I’d point out: “You see that guy right there? He’s looking at that girl. You see that girl? She’s making sure that she’s standing in this one exact place so this dude right here will see her.” There’s all these little things going on – people sending messages without necessarily announcing them verbally.
The idea is that if you understand these social cues, you understand these things, this non-verbal communication that’s going around you, it allows you to interact with people better.
One of the things I also have talked about is conversations – listen to the other person, get out of your own head, listen to what they’re saying, find something that they sound like they’re really interested about talking about, and then maybe ask a follow-up question about that. That’s how you get to have a conversation easily.
You’ll also – since you’re smoother in these situations where you are being social – it’s not going to be a situation where you step out of line because you’re just comfortable, you’re just being part of the crowd, you’re not causing problems, so therefore you’re not going to cause conflict.
In fact, if you learn how to speak socially and how to interact with people and stuff, you’re actually going to make it easier for other people to interact in that same thing. So if you’re like the lubricant of the conversation – you’re the guy who’s making everybody else comfortable – it makes it a lot easier for the rest of the crowd and you’re suddenly looked at as a totally different person. You’re looked at like the life of the crowd.
Inner Game and Dating Results
In what ways can inner game work improve your dating results? When you have solid inner game, you’re less affected by rejection, you’re more present on dates, and better at showcasing your true self, making romantic connections easier and more genuine.
Like I said, I’ve got these nine pillars, and I’m actually going to take the opportunity to read them to you right now so I don’t forget one or the other:
- Belief in self-worth
- Positive self-image
- True self-expression
- Lifelong learning
- Coping skills and resiliency
- EQ (your emotional intelligence)
- Your flexibility
- Your moral courage
- Your optimism
When you’ve got all of these things working for you – if you believe in yourself, if you have a positive self-image, if you have coping skills – then you won’t be bothered by rejection. Once again, all it is is feedback. It’s not necessarily something against you personally. It’s not like you have to take it personally. Take it as feedback: “Okay, well, you rejected me, that means I need to find the next person who might be more inclined to like a guy like me.” It’s that simple. You don’t have to take it personally.
When you’ve got these things going for you, you’re also more present. You’re not sitting there having to run through all these things in your head like, “I’ve got to impress her, I’ve got to say this or do that.” No, all those things don’t matter because if you’re just listening, if you’re just paying attention to what she’s saying, then it’s going to be easy for you to ask her questions based on what she just told you.
If you do that – it’s the weirdest thing – we’re all individually selfish, right? We want stuff to come to us. So if you are actually interested in a girl enough to listen to what she says and then ask her questions to follow up what she just said, she’s like, “Oh, this dude is listening.” And so that improves things.
Like I said, the last two nights I’ve been talking about the female brain and the dopamine release. If you start helping a girl release her dopamine and other love hormones, you’re in like Flynn.
Like I said, it all adds up, it’s exponential. And once you start doing that, you’re going to start feeling more comfortable about yourself. Once you are more comfortable, you will be able to move into these romantic connections easier and they’ll be more real. If you’re being authentic, if you’re showcasing who you are, then the girl has something to think: “Okay, well, is this guy the kind of guy that I would like?” And if you’re making moves in that direction and she’s biting like a fish, it’s going to make it easier and it’s going to be real because she actually likes you for you because you’re being honest about who you are.
Personal Development and Community
How can easy personal development routines benefit your community involvement? Personal development practices help you build emotional resilience and adaptability, which makes it easier to participate, lead, and contribute meaningfully to your community.
This one’s pretty simple. If you just keep building yourself up, you’re going to be a stronger part of your community. When you work on the things like resiliency and coping skills, people are going to know that you’re going to be able to stand up if there’s setbacks or whatever, that you’re going to be a guy who’s going to be able to deal with it and move forward. It’s going to make you a respected member of your community, whatever community that might be.
Like I said, this isn’t only for dating. This is in your entire social life or family life or whatever. As you learn more about who you are – once you’re getting rid of these things that are holding you back and once you become more confident and comfortable in who you are – it makes it also easier for you to lead people because you’re not holding back. You’re being honest about how you think things should be and you move differently because you’re being confident about it.
It allows you to make a change in your community that you want because you’re the leader, or one of the leaders. You don’t have to jump out in front – you can lead from behind too by being a strong member.
Family and Work Relationships
How does inner self-improvement translate into better family and work relationships? Improved inner game builds empathy, patience, and communication skills, which enhance your ability to understand, support, and connect with family members and colleagues.
Like I said, basically you are just building yourself up from the inside. When you sit there and you think about your emotional intelligence – your empathy, your understanding, your caring, your forgiveness, your patience – all of these things you’re improving in yourself, the ability to share that with someone else.
Also, once you become more aware of who you are, you’re actually able to express that to people. Like I said, whether it’s through your non-verbal communication or actually talking to someone, when you know where you’re coming from and you’re able to share that with somebody, you’re able to communicate that more clearly.
Like I said, it also gives you the ability to understand where somebody else is coming from, so it allows you to support them, it allows you to be there as a support team – one person but the ability to care for them. And that really builds connection. Somebody can sit there and think of you as, “This is the person that I can count on. This is the person who understands where I’m coming from.” Your ability to have the empathy to understand where the other person’s coming from – the way that they look at you will change because you’re kind of giving beforehand.
Like I said, this is a lot – I try to keep it as practical as possible, but it’s also kind of magical. It’s like if you give something and then it comes back in a totally different form, and it really can be quite pleasant when it all starts to work out.
Conclusion
Did you find anything useful in what I was saying? Like I said, Friday nights for me are pretty loose. I just wanted to, after the last four nights of really getting into this stuff deep, I wanted to lighten it up and give you a little ray of sunshine going into the weekend.
Like I said, things can be a lot better for you, and once you just open up yourself to that option – yes, there is the option of things going great for you.
If you did enjoy this video, please leave a like. Also, please leave a comment – I like hearing from you and I definitely look forward to when we start a conversation and it’s not just me sitting here talking, although it’s fun sitting here talking.
And with that, I’m going to wrap it up. Thanks for hanging out, thanks for watching the live stream. Take it easy.