Priyanka Gupta 
All of us — men and women — think that we need seductive powers to approach people. No. Approaching people — some of whom might be our romantic interests — need confidence and social skills. It is not a mission — it is a day to day activity. You need to make people comfortable around you. No magic tricks, no email courses, no guides, no love gurus can teach you this.
To understand how to approach women, let us look at what are women exactly looking for.
I was unsure about this topic but then I thought of all friends, their friends, colleagues, men and women on internet and dating applications or marriage websites (this is specific to India) — looking for a date, a relationship, a life partner. Someone to share spaghetti and a glass of red wine at the end of the day or a samosa and a chai in the evening. To watch a movie on a Saturday night tucked in bed with grilled chicken on plate and whiskey on the rocks in glasses. To go for an impromptu drive in rain on a Friday evening with classical music on the radio. A post-Sunday-lunch nap with soft music in the background.
We all have friends, family, roommates, work, paychecks, hobbies, goals but we all need someone to look at us with a burning warmth in their eyes. To say that we mean the world to them. To say that they won’t be able to live without us. They crave that one hug of ours in the morning. They want us to bear their children, sleep the rest of the nights in one bed, and celebrate Diwali and Christmas together. When they see a slight cut on our finger, they overreact. They hold our hands and tell us that everything would be all right.
I thought this day would never come, but I am six days away from turning 30. I would have to change both the digits of my age in all the pre-filled internet forms.
A twenty-something me was working for software and finance giants, partying with friends, upset with family, trying to hold onto people that I should have let go, roaming around the world on my own, falling in love knowing that the relationship wouldn’t go anywhere and feeling shattered when the obvious happened, cooking in restaurants, almost leaving for Italy to attend a culinary course, stranded at South American borders, and saying things that should have been kept private; I was unsure of what I wanted.
Also Read: Why should you let your life flow – Lessons inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Once when I was in the sixth grade, I asked my sister to make sandwiches for my school picnic. A string of events occurred, and she declared I was selfish.
I realized I was more interested in getting my work done, rather than the feelings and responses of other people (understanding emotions is a must read). The acknowledgment that I was a bad person and people knew about it was suffocating. I understood that I would be left alone if I did not change.
I consciously tried to become a better person by caring for other people and by showing that I cared.
Whose shoes shall I wear to mull over James Damore’s memo?
By now you would know who James Damore is? An ex-Google employee who got fired as he tried to explain why there are so few women in Computer Science.
Should I be — a class topper who outperformed all boy students in mathematics and physics throughout school, the only female software engineer in a batch of sixty-nine boys, a writer who wants to bring balance into the world, a data-driven individual, a laid-off former employee of a well-known finance giant, a feminist in denial face, a woman who wants to be called intelligent rather than beautiful, an observer who has seen passionate women outperform men specifically in computer science and engineering or someone who acknowledges and accepts the differences between men and women?
None of the above.
Neuroscientist Anil Seth says, each fraction of a second, millions of neurons work in your brain to generate your conscious self-experience — your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. Without consciousness, there is no self, nothing.
Our brain receives signals from outside and also, inside. The signals that the brain gets from inside are not only of our experience but of millions of years of experience that has been passed through our DNA. Consciousness is an interception of two different signals: coming from outside (the sound and smell and noises and information) and coming from inside (of yourself and based on your beliefs and information).