Thank you for being brave. Thank you for volunteering something about yourself that takes courage.

I'm now going to reward that by doing the same from my side.

Welcome to the Love Life podcast with me, Matthew Hussie. I have picked out this idea as something I think could really help you in your love life today. And I'm excited for you to listen.

Let me know what you think at the end of the episode by going to iTunes and leaving a review. And now let's get into the episode.

How to be unforgettable on a first date, the advice I'm about to give can work for any date really. But on a first date, we get particularly nervous, don't we?

We worry about how we're going to come across. I want to say firstly that despite what I'm about to tell you in terms of how you can enhance your impact on a date, it's your date.

It's a date that's 50% you. It's your thumbprint and your thumbprint is yours. You can't get it wrong. It's yours. It's you we're talking about.

So while I'm going to give you some ideas, some tips, some techniques, some thoughts, I don't want you to overthink going on a date because you've watched this video. I sometimes think that's one of the negative impacts of what I do is that it can lead to an overthinking.

I don't want you to do that. I want you to think that even if you didn't do anything by the book on a date, someone can still fall madly in love with you and decide to want to be with you forever and marry you and have a family with you.

It doesn't, this isn't an exam. It's you. With that in mind, there are things that over the years of doing this, I've learned that aren't great enhances for what we want to bring out on a date, for what leads to great conversation, for what leads to amazing connection, what leads to someone thinking about you after a date.

I want to give you today three specific techniques for enhancing the impact you can make on a date. Number one, start on the ground. One of the things we do on a date, which could be characterised as the really difficult small talk section of the date, is we see someone and we say, hey, how are you?

It's a really difficult thing to answer because where do you even start from that place? It's not that it's a bad question. It's just a difficult question to answer.

It's hard to answer honestly because our answer to that is always extremely complex and it's also hard to answer specifically because it's such a big and vague question.

Starting from 50,000 feet in the air, I propose that you reverse that. You start on the ground and work your way up to the 50,000 foot view. On the ground would be talking about something that happened this morning or a movie that we've both seen that we really like or something we're excited about in the next month.

Go on a date and ask yourself on the way to the date. What's in the news of my life right now? What's in the news of my week? What's in the news of my last hour? What's been going on? What unexpected thing happened to me just this morning?

By the way, I sometimes think that we get very caught up in life thinking that in order to have great stories, something fascinating needs to have happened to us. But that's not actually true. The basis of great story is we need to have feelings about something that's happened to us.

However mundane, whatever happened to you this morning, however non-eventful, if we have feelings about it, then we have story to tell. We have conversation talking about something that's happened this week or today or this morning or how you feel about a movie you saw last night, you're immediately starting on the ground, which feels like an organic conversation and then you can work your way up to the bigger questions about each other.

To connect, don't coach. I always think that it's really aggravating when we share something with someone that might be a little bit vulnerable and instead of connecting with that vulnerability that we've just shared and maybe even offering a little bit of their own vulnerability, someone takes the opportunity to start giving us advice.

Which by the way, on a date especially is a really unsexy move, because you're immediately creating a sort of mentor, mentee relationship, a coach, student relationship, a therapist, client relationship. None of these are sexy relationships in the context of a date.

You don't allow for real connection. All they do is elevate one person above the other in a bit of an icky way. It's like if you said to someone on a date, I really enjoy writing, but I, one of the things I'm working on right now is I get two in my head and then I struggle to get down to it because I'm prejudging what I've written before I've even started.

And then takes that moment and says, oh, you know, that's like you got to do it every day. You just can't, you can't overthink it. You know, you just have to set a time in the diary and every day just go for it.

I feel I feel myself getting aggravated as I'm hearing this interaction because it's so annoying.

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