Hey, this is Mat Boggs and in today’s video I’m going to share with you how to get more
positive attention from men and really in general more positive attention in your life.
See, attention is an interesting topic because every one of us as human beings has a desire
to have attention because we all have a desire to seek connection in our lives.
From the point when we’re little toddlers, little kids, we want attention and affection
and connection.
When I was two years old, my parents told me (I’m the youngest of four) my main strategy
for getting attention – because we all have strategies for how to go about and get attention.
You have a strategy; I have a strategy.
My strategy at two years old was to bite people.
I would go around and I would bite people because I figured out that if I bit them,
I would get a lot of attention.
Now, at that age, I didn’t really know if it was positive or negative, but it was definitely
a lot of attention and so that was my strategy.
My parents came to me as just a little guy and said, “Hey, Mat.
If you want attention, you don’t have to bite people.
All you have to do is simply say, ‘I want some attention.’”
Just by giving me a different strategy completely altered my behavior and results as a two-year-old.
So my parents would say I would come into the kitchen, my mom would be cooking and I
would look up at her and say, “Mom, I want some ‘ttention.
I want some ‘ttention.”
And so she would bend down and say, “Oh, little Mathew,” pick me up and put me in
her arms and continue cooking and give me some attention.
And what’s interesting is every single one of us, you and me, we all have strategies
for how we get attention and it will either be a positive strategy or it’s going to
be a negative strategy.
Here are a few of the negative strategies that people tend to use.
One is crisis.
Like if someone – and you may notice this in some of your friends or maybe even in your
own life.
If there’s a consistent pattern of crisis always happening like, “Oh my gosh, you’ll
never believe how bad traffic was,” or, “Oh my gosh, my work is going – like I’m
slammed.”
And if you’re the one who always has crisis, that can be used as a pattern to get attention.
Or if you’re constantly late.
Like the person who’s constantly late is the one who likes to have the focus on themselves
because they’re the one who shows up late, “Oh my gosh, you’ll never believe what
happened.
I’m so sorry,” and this and that.
Everybody else is there, they drop in late, now all the focus is on them.
Or someone who gets sick often.
Being sick isn’t always the result of wanting attention but it can be because if someone
is consistently getting sick over and over again, then they get phone calls from loved
ones, they get soup made for them, they get a lot of attention, if they’re not careful,
from being sick.
And one other strategy is the person who retreats and they pull back hoping that the person
that they want attention from will seek them out.
Oftentimes friendships and even relationships will fall into this pattern.
One person will retreat hoping the other person will chase them down.
I was having a conversation with my wife about six months ago and she was like, “My friends
don’t text me, they don’t call me, they don’t invite me to do things, like these
girlfriends and blah, blah, blah.”
And I said, “Okay, well, when was the last time you texted your girlfriends?”
She was like, “Well, you know, it’s been a while.”
And I said, “When was the last time you asked them to go do something?”
and then she was like, “Well, it’s been a while.”
I was like, “Why don’t you ask them to go to do something and then see what the result
is?”
And so she sent out a text saying, “Hey, let’s all get together this Sunday for brunch!”
and they all responded and said, “Great!
That sounds awesome.”
They had an amazing brunch together.
So you want to be careful about negative attention patterns and you want to become aware of those.
And if you have negative attention patterns, shift it to a positive attention pattern.
What does a positive attention pattern look like?
It looks like this: being a person of increase and giving your attention to someone else.
Now, that might seem counterintuitive if you want attention and you want connection with
others to be the person who gives it first, but that’s actually how we’re built because
when you give attention to someone else, when you give praise to someone else, appreciation
to someone else, when you think about someone else, their natural instinct is to think about
you and to share the same kind of praise and appreciation back with you.
It’s called the law of reciprocity.
Just like when you give someone a birthday gift, their natural instinct is to, next year,
give you a birthday gift.
So the more you can dial up your positive attention that you’re giving to other people
– your appreciation, your celebration, your praise of them, your acknowledgement of them
– the more you’re going to see a wave of positive attention and connection come
back in your life.
So I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you found value in this, please share it with someone that you care about, and there’s
a link that I placed in this video for you that links you to a resource that will help
you understand the hearts and minds of men and attract the relationship you want.
And as always, if you’re not subscribed to this channel, make sure that you get subscribed
so that you’ll get the latest and greatest videos each and every week.
It was great to connect with you.
I’ll see you soon.