Posts Tagged ‘flirt coaching’

What is Flirting?

The dictionary on my bookshelf defines flirting as “Behaving or acting amorously without emotional commitment.” Well, that’s one definition but, like me, you probably realise that there are also many other definitions of flirting. I have chosen a very generic definition of flirting on which to base my creation of the Flirting Weekend. This is because I feel it is important for people to realise that flirting can be a natural way of communicating with anyone as well as a way of communicating either amorous or sexual interest or both!

I recently discovered that the word ‘flirting’ has its roots in the old French word ‘fleurter’ meaning ‘to flower’ I like that. Here’s my definition.

Flirting is shining your inner light via your words and deeds in such a way that people are irresistibly drawn to you.

Flirting is a natural gift that we have had from birth. Babies flirt wildly with everyone that comes their way. Unfortunately many adults seem to have lost this wonderful ability. Somewhere along the line we were [wrongly in my opinion] told that it was bad to draw attention to ourselves that little children should be seen and not heard. Some people have grown into adults that are neither seen nor heard. But there is hope you can learn to flirt again.

Flirting is a signaling mechanism that was bestowed upon us by nature. It is a communication tool. Sigmund Freud said that we leak the truth from every pore. We all have patterns of physical reaction that we exhibit. The secret is knowing the patterns of others and being aware of our patterns. For example it is useful to be know what reaction certain behaviours you do create in others. The reaction might be very different to the reaction you are intending to create. We are all gifted with the ability to signal. Many of us need to learn to read how our signals affect others and what signals we can send out to convey certain messages. This goes hand in hand with the ability to decipher other people’s signals.

Flirting is our natural way of expressing interest in people. A smile bestowed here, a shared giggle or a word exchanged in the supermarket line can be a powerful thing. Flirting can be a prelude to friendship or a prelude to mating. Once you know how to do it you can choose how to use it. Great flirts do it with everyone, babies, men, women dogs and cats. People who flirt well get what they want in life because they know how to create good feelings in other people.

I am a natural flirt – I love communicating and I find myself initiating conversation with strangers wherever I go.

When I go outside in the world I get an overwhelming sense of possibility and anticipation. I know that I have the opportunity to connect with someone new each day. When I encounter someone who looks good I often turn round and say ‘great dress’ or ‘neat tie’ as I pass by.. Sometimes I place my hand on someone’s shoulder or tap them on the arm and say ‘I just wanted to say – you have lovely hair’. I have NEVER had a rebuff. Quite the contrary. The warm smile that comes over the faces of people I encounter gives me a real buzz. And it costs absolutely nothing.

One word of warning. It’s no use telling a grossly overweight person what a lovely trim figure they have! People can spot insincerity a mile off. I always make sure to compliment only those attributes or adornments that I really do like. MORE after this message

I go running sometimes on the seafront. I just enjoy smiling and saying ‘hi’ or ‘good morning’ to EVERYONE I meet. I know that someone will take that smile and pass it on to someone else…who knows what positive knock-on consequences it might have.

Life goes at a fast pace and many of us are rushing around with our heads full of what we have to do, what we haven’t done, what’s bothering us, what we want to happen. It’s too easy to get caught up in our own inner world. Every so often it’s important to come outside, pay attention to what’s going on in the world and acknowledge that we all share the same planet and a kind word or a genuine smile goes a long way to maintaining our membership of the human race as opposed to becoming merely a human racing!

There are many different types of flirting. For example, you can flirt sexually or non-sexually. The key is to know what you want to achieve and what are the right signals for your purpose. When I was in a relationship, my partner once asked me why, as an attractive and very flirty woman, I don’t have men beating down the door to ask me out. I believe it is because I sent out the signals that say, I like you, I want to enjoy your company, but I’m not available. When you are flirting for fun and not to attract a partner, it is very important to differentiate.

The way someone might flirt with their partner or lover will be very different from the way they will flirt with the supermarket checkout person and different still from flirting with a business associate. Yes, you can flirt at work and steer clear of sexual harassment. The key is to know which signals to send out to whom and for what reason!

When I was fourteen, I was an indiscriminate, unsophisticated and wanton flirt. I also looked a lot more sophisticated and worldly wise than I was. If a boy looked at me, I looked back at him and played it for all it was worth hitching up my already micro skirt, pouting, smiling and generally beckoning. The less diplomatic amongst us might define my behaviour as ‘prick teasing’.

One day on holiday in Italy, after accepting, behind my parents’ back, a date with one of the handsome young waiters I had been wildly flirting with, I found myself up against the wall as he eagerly tried to remove my clothes. Fortunately, I extracted myself from the situation.

Looking back I realised that I had been ‘flirting for England’. I was too young to realise what effect my flirting was having on a hot-blooded young man. The fact is that he stopped when I asked him but he might not have been such a gentleman. We all know that rape is wrong and that no woman asks to be raped. At the same time we need to be able to know what signals we are sending out especially when in the company of people whose judgment might be clouded by alcohol or other substances.

My wild and highly sexual flirting could have increased my chances of being ‘date-raped’. They were obviously misread by the young waiter. As a woman it is important to know why we are flirting and which kind of flirting we should be using. There are times when we see someone, we want them and we flirt as a sexual come-on andthat’s great, when you know what you want and go for it. But when we do not have that intention in mind we need to flirt accordingly.

This will help to maximise your safety and keep your signals clean. If you don’t differentiate you could find yourself in a sticky situation. Of course, wild sexual flirting can be a marvellous bonus in a relationship.

The ability to decipher and transmit signals effectively can be learned – I teach it in my playshops. If you want to find out more about signals read my article.

The ability to flirt well comes from an inner belief in one’s own self worth. Some of the best flirts are not your ‘chocolate-box’ beauties or your ‘Chippendale’ hunks. . They are people who feel confident that they have something to offer the world and enjoy creating good feelings in other people. They are the clever ones because they know that when you make other people feel good, it bounces right back onto you!

Richard Bandler, the originator of NLP, says that wallflowers are very selfish because they, of all people, know how painful it is to sit alone on the sidelines yet they continue to deprive all those other poor wallflowers of a gentle word, a warm sound or a bright touch.

Do you want to be a selfish, lonely wallflower or do you want to send out your light into the world and be one of those people that everyone wants to be with.

When you learn to flirt successfully and accurately, you can change the world you live in and reap for yourself an endless supply of smiles, happiness, laughter, fun and love.

30 Minute Relationship/Attraction Coaching Call with The Flirt Coach

Flirting Signals Exposed

We all know what a v-sign means – or do we? Depending on which way the hand is facing you could interpret it as a sign of victory or a very rude gesture! In England raising the two fingers with the inside of the hand facing towards yourself means ‘f**k off. BUT, if you come from the jungles of Peru it might mean absolutely nothing to you at all!

Language, be it communicated by the mouth or by the body, is a very complex business indeed. In times gone by women used a complex signalling system involving fans and eyes to flirt. Gay men adopted a great system of sexual signalling that involves keys, pockets and handkerchiefs! Unfortunately no manufactured system, sexual or otherwise really exists in the heterosexual world. In the absence of an overt dictionary of signals it’s easy to either get it wrong or miss the signals altogether because our signalling system is mainly unconscious.

Human beings are naturally endowed with an inbuilt mechanism for sending out signals. It is part of our primitive need to reproduce our DNA and subsequently ourselves. We do it all the time. What we need is to polish up our ability to notice and then interpret the signals. When you develop this skill the world becomes a richer place. Opportunities that were previously unnoticed seem to leap out at you from all directions. [I often wonder what an opportunity leaping looks like !].

Richard Bandler, the founder of NLP [Neuro Linguistic Programming, a field of psychology that specialises in reprogramming our perceptions of the word and recognising how we and others operate] , told me that when he ran a flirting class one of the biggest challenges was getting the participants to notice the signals from the opposite sex. He lined up the men and the women, told the women to give out interested signals and 3/4 of the men failed to notice the signals!

We need not only to be able to recognise but also calibrate signals. This means observing someone and being able to know what their special signals are. We also need to understand what effect our emotional body language signals have on others so that we can modify our transmissions to be clearer and more effective. As my friend and co-trainer on the Las Vegas Flirtopia event in September 2000, Jonathan Altfeld [see NLP Links page] says “we have to teach them to become super bio-feedback machines for each other”.

Blind Date - a treasure trove

Blind Date is a programme that was popular all over the world. Each week couples are sent on a blind date and are filmed during the time they are together. They are then interviewed individually afterwards. I watch this programme every week because it’s full of superb examples of signal ‘botching’. The couple I watched recently were being filmed on the plane. She was looking at him with the flirtiest eyes I’ve seen for ages. Her smile, her body movements all said ‘I am interested’. Later when they were interviewed she said ‘He didn’t seem interested’. He replied ‘but she didn’t give me any signs’.

What transpired was that because he was a ‘touchy-feely’ person [his own words] a touch expressed interest for him. He didn’t notice her eyes. What would have happened if he had been more aware of the variety of signals that women give out and what would have happened if she had tried using a different sensory system to transmit her signals? I don’t know but it’s something to think about.

Touch, sight and sound

We communicate via our five senses. Most of us do not utilise our senses equally all the time. When expressing and perceiving data, we often use one system more heavily than another. For example, some of us use ‘visual words’ like ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ as opposed to ‘kinaesthetic’ words like ‘it was a weight off my mind’. The guy on Blind Date described himself as a ‘touchy feely’ person.

People who operate out of the ‘feeling’ sense look for ‘feeling’ signals. The girl on the other hand kept saying ” I looked at you all the time”. She expected him to pick up on her very visual signals..

Interestingly enough another Blind Date series showed a girl telling the camera how she was sure the guy fancied her, even though she didn’t feel the same way about him. I noticed while they were sitting together on the settee and chatting he touched her several times. His comment to her remark was ‘You are mistaking friendliness for fancying you’.

So, you see, it’s not just the girlies that send out the wrong signals. While this was a clear cut example of mixed signals from him, the first example was clearly a case, not of mixed, but of missed signals!

Sharpen up the senses

Flirting isn’t just about sending out signals it’s about becoming more aware of what other people are doing.

We can learn to fine-tune our senses. When you develop the ability to perceive things like skin colour changes, voice tone, breathing rate changes and eye movement, you are developing your database of signals. When you have enough data you can begin to pattern the information and make sense of signaling. .As this happens you will become more aware of the signals you send out AND the reactions they provoke.

Man/woman roles

In the Blind Date scenario the man was waiting for the girl to give him signals before he acted. They stuck to the traditional man/woman roles and they both missed out. What would have happened if, instead of waiting for a touch, he sent out his own strong signals? Would she have noticed them? What would she have read them as? This opens up a whole area for debate. When you attend a Flirting Weekend you will have opportunities to explore all these dilemmas and how we can unconsciously precipitate them with careless signaling. Someone once said to me “Simple awareness is sometimes curative”. I like that concept.

Richer signals

Once we are more aware of our signaling mechanisms, we can also learn to vary the signals we give out so that we have more chance of getting our message across. When I touch someone on the shoulder to say a kind word, I make sure my eyes are saying the same thing as my hand and my voice tone. Successful flirts know how to send out the signals without saying a word and when your ‘quarry’ is seated across a crowded restaurant, that can be a mighty useful skill!

We all have our idiosyncratic emotional body language signals. Some women twirl their hair or lick their lips, a man might twiddle his tie or rub his chin. There are some commonly used signals and there are some very individual ones.   In my flirting weekend, we did exercises that are geared to fine tuning our ability to a) notice signals and b) respond with clear signals. We delve into the whole world of signals and start to create our own dictionaries which we can add to with each new experience. You will begin to recognise patterns. We can then use those patterns to interpret other people’s signals and transmit clearer and richer ones. You can say it with your noses, your lips, your eyes, your posture and even your clothes.

Once you begin to learn this stuff, your interpretation of the world changes and instead of jumping to conclusions you begin to see things in a new light, as you get to grips with the signals of flirting.

30 Minute relationship assessment call with the Flirt Coach
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