Let me say a little bit about inflation. Man, I just had the biggest dose of inflation today!

I was at an appointment talking to the woman conducting the appointment, and she was telling me how she pays her kids an allowance of $35.00 per week. I used to get $1.00 a week, and I was able to go out and buy as many Red Hots as I could consume and still have change left over. I remember as a kid being up in the Hamptons and finding $10.00 in the sand. I was rich! I could buy enough candy to rot my teeth forever.

This woman I was talking to today also informed me that babysitters get paid $10.00 per hour. I used to get a buck an hour to hang out, eat the parents’ food and drink beer. It’s funny. When we used to drink the vodka, we would refill the bottle with water . . . or we’d take one sip out of every liquor bottle in the cabinet so they wouldn’t notice.

Babysitting taught me life’s greatest lesson: the hangover. Speaking of hangovers, have any of you taken my recommendation and saw the movie “The Hangover” yet?

So next time a high school kid emails me and tells me he can’t afford my products, I’m going to come right back at him and say, “Dude, go babysit. Make yourself a small fortune.”

So onto today’s blog all about a different kind of payoff . .

In looking for love, like in so many other areas of life, too many people are always focused on finding “the big payoff.” Let me tell you a story to give you an idea what I mean.

A ways back I was in the market to buy a new home. There was a home I saw up in the Hollywood Hills that needed a lot of work. I could have gotten it for a price which would have left me with a couple hundred thousand dollars in equity AFTER I put all the money into it necessary to really fix it up the way I wanted. So I could have the big payoff, right? I could sell it or live in it, and it’s a win for me either way.

Here, though, was the bottom line: I didn’t want that house! I didn’t like the street on which it was located. I didn’t even 100% love the house. So even though I could have made money on it, i.e., even though there would have been a big payoff attached to it, I didn’t want it.

Why is it that everything we do in life has to have a big payoff at the end? So the majority of people who go out to buy a piece of property never buy the land that they love. They buy the property with the best resale value. You want to live in a place that you love, but we’re trained to choose the option that is going to give us the biggest payoff.

Here is how all this real estate talk is related to your dating life and to your life overall. Let me first say that I understand that we want to make wise financial choices. For instance, if we buy a stock there had better be a “big payoff” on that investment.

What has gotten lost in people’s lives and in their search for love, though, is looking for what they DO want instead of what they SHOULD want. What happened, for instance, to the time when home ownership was just for the purpose of finding a place that has an environment that increases your quality of life? What happened to picking a place just because it will mean coming home to a neighborhood that you love every day?

Why does everything now have to have such a huge payoff at the end? When you approach someone to whom you’re attracted, so many people are not present in the moment. They are just thinking about whether or not that other person likes them or whether they can get the other person’s number. Rather than approaching someone and just having a great conversation, people are worried the entire time about the payoff.

By worrying about if the other person likes them or whether they should ask for a phone number, they are never present in the conversation! On top of that, while they are so focused on the payoff, they never even take the time to think about whether they are even genuinely interested in that other person.

The whole point of approaching someone has become the payoff, whereas the focus when you meet someone should always and only be on whether you connect and have chemistry with that person. In other words, the focus should always be on whether you are interested in getting to know that person further.

You need to learn that many times in life, the quality of your day-to-day experiences are much more rewarding than that “big payoff” for which you always strive. It’s not that the payoff isn’t going to also happen. It will – the outcome you want is going to happen naturally.

If you’re 100% present in a conversation with someone and enjoying the experience, then guess what is going to happen? You’ll get the payoff that you were worried about in the first place!

You’ll get the phone number or you will go out on a date with them or you will find out whether or not they like you. Most importantly, you will get the real “big payoff” you need, i.e., finding out if you’re genuinely interested in them.

If you are so obsessed with the end result during a conversation, though, you will produce the opposite result than you wanted. Because you will be nervous and/or unfocused on that other person during the conversation, you will never intrigue the person or be able to get to know them. You will convey your nervous energy to them.

So in dating and in all aspects of life, stop worrying about what the future holds Stop worrying about “the big payoff” all the time and begin always being present in the moment. The more present you are, the better decisions you’ll make and the richer every part of of your life will be.