I’ve historically been either completely avoidant during normal interaction or stare down. It’s not so much as fear, as I just don’t care to interact with most people, and want to be left uninterrupted. Of course when ‘dating’ this isn’t appropriate, and ironically people that are attractive I tended to be shy about so don’t make eye contact and drop voice projection.

A strategy I developed to help, was inspired from Mystery (www.mysterymethod.com) suggested a desensitizing session. Say initially fearful of clubs, what he recommends going to a place with no expectations..scouting it out so it’s not novel, growing familiar, so that making the additional steps is less difficult. It’s sillly to think how just knowing where the bartender and the bathroom is can make things easier.

Similar thing applies to eyegazing. So I practiced 1) getting photos from sites (google, various dating sites) of people I found attractive and didn’t find attractive and focused on maintaining eye contact with them completely virtually. It seems silly, but it helped greatly in letting me maintain a connection with people, and spilled into other areas of my real life, like bosses. The goal of course is not to stare down, but rather form connections as desired and not be artificially limited by ingrained social convention.

This is a great exercise right up there kinda like laying down on the sidewalk or the middle of a busy mall.

Troy

I make it a habit to gaze into people’s eyes as much as possible, both professinally and personally. Eyes and how a person uses them (or doesn’t use them) as they speak to you, is always telling of the person, as well as, how they respond and receive you.

I will not partner (romantically or professionally) with anyone who cannot substain eye contact with me. Maybe it’s the alpha female in me. Who knows?

Also, I don’t understand how a guy who does ballroom dancing can have any trouble whatsoever meeting women. Have you tried dancepartner.com? It’s not really a dating site, it’s just for people looking for dance partners (but there’s a place on the questionnaire you can specify if you’re open to dating or not).

On the same note, but I don’t know how popular it is out west, contra dancing has a reputation for pairing up couples (lots of contra dancers wind up marrying people they meet at the dances). Just a suggestion. Plus, it falls under the category of “living” rather than outsourcing. I think if you can get the job done as part of the “living” end of the plan, rather than the automating-and-outsourcing part of the plan, isn’t that more in line with the plan??? Color me confused.

On completely different note: I was driving to lunch today and brainstormed an idea for a business I could launch and automate, using drop shipping or even commissionjunction-style affilate sales, but I don’t know how to go about getting it up on a web site (plus, it might have some legal implications as far as tax laws and employee benefits laws, etc…) How do I find someone to talk to about it, who I can be fairly confident won’t steal my idea??

- Lez