2. Go to dances.

3. Ask women to dance. Lots of women. They'll love it. Even if you aren't so good, they'll appreciate your efforts.

Dance lessons themselves are good places to meet women, and most dance studios have regular parties for their students to practice what they have learned. Ladies: 1. Take dancing lessons yourself and learn how to follow. Here I was, 50 years old, thinking I loved to dance, and I had no idea how to do woman's part! Following takes skill! You have to figure out what your partner has in mind for you to do in a split second, and then actually do it, all while dancing backwards.

2. Buy yourself some real ballroom dancing shoes, maybe with high heels. Believe it or not, those shoes are comfortable. They have to be. Not only do they look very sexy, they stay on your feet!

3. Hang out at dances, too, if you like to dance. Single guys go to dances.

If you are connected to a dance studio, other single women will be at their parties as well as studio instructors and male students, so you will know people. Dance parties are safe and comfortable for single women. Guys -- nothing enhances as man's romantic marketability more than becoming a decent dancer. Learning to dance is cost efficient and relatively painless. No surgery or blood loss, no sweaty hours at gym, no personality makeovers needed. Just dance lessons. What's stopping you? Look up dance studio nearest you and make that call! You'll become a dancing babe magnet!

I can relate completely to this fear, but what I have to do is look realistically at myself from a third party objective viewpoint. I hear my own inner critic worrying that I'm going to make a fool of myself on stage because I'll forget what I'm going to say. The truth is, I have a gift of gab. I'm a talkaholic. I have no historical evidence of forgetting what I was going to say. Quite contrary, I typically add so much more than I had originally planned on saying. If I'm honest in my evaluation of myself then I'd realize that I have so much information, opinions, and stories that even if I do forget what I was going to say, I could 'wing it.' Everything I do comes back to trying to teach people how to be happy. I'll find my way back to that goal even if I ever did forget. So, in a logical analysis, I would have to say that it's an invalid fear. There's no reason at all to listen to my own inner critic when it's nagging at me not to get up on stage to speak. For me, there is no real danger involved. It would be a shame if I let an invalid fear stop me from doing what I love most, reaching out and helping people to make positive changes in themselves.

You may decide that your inner critic is telling truth, you really aren't capable of doing what you've set out to do. You want to own a restaurant but you're afraid of failing. Upon evaluation you come to realize that you don't know anything about running a business or even cooking for that matter. Okay great, so get lessons. Educate yourself, make solving fears your first steps. Just because you don't have all of tools today doesn't mean that you're never ever going to be able to succeed.

Your inner critic makes an evaluation about you based on mental programs and beliefs that has been fed into it over course of your life. If you have a history of support and success, then your inner critic is probably balanced and logical. If you have a history of being ridiculed and of failure, then your inner critic is probably doing its best to save you from any further pain. You are so much more than your inner critic's opinion of you. You are forever capable of growing, learning, training, expanding, and contributing your unique beautiful self. Don't let your inner critic keep you from giving your gift to world.

Adapted from Beyond Inner Critic, copyright 1999, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow's Edge