Stopping the fear - before it starts.

In my last post, I talked about how most people's fears prevent them from writing effective profiles. I'm now going to spend a few articles describing how to combat those fears, and allow you to really express your individuality through the profile.

One key to writing an effective profile is being in a good mood. Most people rush in to fill in their profiles after answering the personality profile questions.

After answering over 100 multiple-choice questions, I don't think anyone is in the proper mental space to write themselves a good profile. So, take a break.

Turn off your matches. Get a good night's sleep. Attack it in the morning, when you're in a good mood.

If you already have a profile, and you wrote it 5 minutes after finishing your personality survey, consider starting over.

Now, you can approach these questions fresh, with an open mind.

Now, look at the open-ended questions.

If your friend asked you those questions, what would your answer be?

Don't censor yourself. Write the answer that you'd give your friend. And don't you dare try to wimp out of answering them!

It's important that you answer these questions without wondering how a potential woman would interpret them.

If you start to feel that pressure... try to ignore it.

If you start to type, and you feel the urge to censor yourself, ask yourself these questions:

Am I censoring myself because this answer doesn't describe me well? If so, you have my permission to change it. You're changing it for the right reasons.

Am I censoring myself because I'm typing something bad? Well, if the answer doesn't say something positive about yourself, you probably should change it. Go ahead, and say something good about yourself.

Am I censoring myself because some women might not like it? Sorry, that's not a good reason. As I've said, women are sick of boring, inoffensive profiles of "men" who are afraid to describe themselves. You're doing the right thing. Keep your answer. It's probably just fine! (There are some topics to avoid, but we'll cover those in another post.)

There. Now that we've taken away that internal censor, you've probably got the basis for a good profile. In future segments, we'll talk about other refinements we can make to make your profile more effective.