A great way to make someone interested in you is to excite their own sense of worth. Every game is made to be won, and every achievement set to be broken. When your attention must be earned, it becomes valuable. Think about your own childhood. Who were you most eager to impress?

If you give your attention freely, and are always willing to listen to someone, laugh at their jokes, touch them and be with them, they don’t need to do anything to impress you. By being permanently impressed, you will become boring to them, because you are stealing from them the opportunity to earn your attention. This is why being too keen will turn lovers off, and turn potential lovers into ‘friends’.

If you laugh loudly with someone when they are funny, and sit in rapture when they are being interesting, you will make them want to prove to you how funny and interesting they are. You can establish that you are someone who has standards, and that will make you infinitely more important to impress.

When they try, and succeed, and capture your attention, they will begin to feel attractive.

So, by selectively giving of your attention and approval, you are rewarding them for behaviour that pleases you; you are incentivising them to become someone you like (smart, funny, zany, sexy, interesting). If they like being that person, they will appreciate the influence you are having on them and they will be drawn to you.

Here are three steps for kick starting an approval-seeking pattern:

Notice them:

Observe them, even if only for a moment, and get an idea of what they are like. Look from big picture ‘gist’ down to the details. Notice their body language and how they are interacting with their environment. What about it pleases you, and what does that say about both of you? Generate a composite idea about their personality, tastes and past, based upon stereotypes you’ve met in the past.Seek out the contradictions (An ‘Om’ ring and a crucifix necklace?) – they always make for interesting conversation.

Challenge them:

Based upon what you’ve noticed about them, set a challenge for them. This challenge should be a behaviour that they can exhibit right in that moment, perhaps to be funny, or interesting, maybe to be sexual direct; it’s you want from them. A challenge can be anything that calls someone to action. A good challenge will make them eager to engage with you, and their response will tell you more about their personality than a million boring “So what do you do” style questions.

Reward them:

When they meet your challenge, and please you, reward them with your attention. Turn to face them more fully, escalate physical contact, laugh. Match your level of reward against how much effort they made. If they make a lot of effort, you can even quite openly say “Damn you’re hot” or “That was really interesting”.

or…

Rebuke them:

If they fail to impress you, or aren’t even trying, disengage with them by reducing your level of attention. Create more distance between yourself and them, face slightly away from them. You can turn further and further away from them until you’ve totally turned your back on them, so they have to tap you on the shoulder or somehow make an effort to catch your attention re-engage with you. If you’re playful and friendly, the rebuke can even be explicit: “That doesn’t make any sense!”

When you do disengage (and you always should, slightly, at some stage), it is really important to interact with other people, to laugh and chat and generally have a good time, to demonstrate your social worth. If you’re just turning away from them and standing there like a muppet it will come across as sulking (demonstrating a keen lack of social worth). Having fun and laughing and telling stories with other people will make your target naturally want in on what you’ve got.

When they do come back, welcome them into the group (introducing them or acknowledging them, demonstrating that ‘these are my people’) and re-engage with them incrementally, keeping your own social group entertained. This will increase your value, and again, increase the stakes for them.

So…

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The idea is to keep running this pattern, again and again. Continually noticing things about them, challenging them, and rewarding or rebuking them.

Initially set challenges low, and easily achievable, and be always increasing the stakes. Your level of engagement will naturally increase and in doing so they will become more willing to do more things to impress you.

For that reason, don’t lead with “You’re really interesting” or they’ll have no-where to go. Start small, and remember: You are not going around hunting for a lover. You are a flirty, friendly person, and as such, you just do this all the time (which helps develop a mentality of abundance, which is really powerful, and it gives you a lot of practice).

This is who you are – you’re a bag of flesh and a bunch of behaviours, and adapting and evolving those behaviours is what you do. Learning how to attract people is no different to learning how to play sport.

Now there are canned ‘lines’ and ‘gambits’ that will serve as challenges; but by far the most effective are the honest ones that come from something real and immediate that is happening right now in your environment. Look around, seek them out. Real challenges will also serve to demonstrate how observant, intelligent and confident you are. For exactly that reason (for those suffering from confidence and not knowing what to say), some packaged and formulaic challenges will be covered in a later post.