Approach Anxiety: the greatest obstacle of Cold Approach technique.
What it is and How to over come it.
"Alpha Male Secret"
Ever since I could remember, I've always been afraid of walking up and talking to women.
I can't explain where the heck it came from, because I have never had a woman throw her drink in my face or slap me - but this crazy fear was always there, and because of it, I felt like I missed out on so many opportunities to meet some amazing women.
My experience usually went something like this:
I would walk into a bar, or a restaurant - or anywhere there was an attractive woman I wanted to meet - and I would see HER.
You know, that one woman that just grabs your eye, and all you get obsessed - just thinking about what it would be like to talk to her, and maybe hold her in your arms on a date...
And the second I saw this woman and I figured out that I really wanted to meet her, I would experience this total "lock-up" in my brain. I was frozen to the spot, and I didn't know what to say or do.
I knew I had to go over and talk to her in order to get anything started, but I couldn't seem to find a way to DO IT. I almost felt like someone was holding me back physically, like being pinned to a wall.
Every time I tried to take a step in her direction, my mind would lock up again and I couldn't move or say anything. Even if she was standing right next to me!
(And that was usually the WORST situation because she was right there... SO CLOSE.... within reach.)
Here is another situation I think a lot of guys go through:
Have you ever been talking to a woman for a few minutes, and as the energy of the conversation starts to dip a little (right about where you are running out of things to say) she just looks back to her friends and turns her back to you?
We call this the "back turn," and it's one of those experiences guys hate more than anything. You get that sick feeling of not just being ignored, but de-valued as well.
Even though she didn't actually do it or say it out loud, you feel like she just laughed and called you a loser.
And it makes you feel like dirt.
Have you ever had this happen to you? Maybe once or twice?
Maybe more...?
And the worst part is that you don't feel like it's something you could even describe to anyone else, because you feel like it's your problem alone.
"This is Where Everything Changes Inside Your Head..."
In every one of these situations where I wanted to approach a woman, I noticed that there was this point in time - just a few seconds after I saw her - where if I didn't do something right away, I knew I would not be approaching that woman or talking to her. It just wasn't going to happen if I waited beyond any time at all past that point.
What I discovered later on - and I'll talk more about this in a second - is that if I could just get myself to take ACTION - just say something - that I wouldn't have any problems after that.
And even if I did have a challenge, it wouldn't be anywhere NEAR as difficult as this was.
You see, I'm going to tell you something that a lot of my friends don't even know ...
I'm shy.
I've always held myself back when it came to meeting people and being more outgoing. I just had this unexplainable emotion in my head that would stop me from just walking up and saying "Hi" to a woman I wanted to meet.
I knew on the surface it was SO simple to do, but it felt like it was INFINITELY complicated below the surface. I even thought at one point that I was making this stuff up in my head.
One day I sat down and wondered what it would be like to master that emotion in me - the one that kept me from meeting and interacting socially.
Take a second right now and imagine how different your life would be if you could just manage to overcome this blockade - this barrier - in your thinking that stops you from talking to the women you want.
- Can you imagine just how much more opportunity you'd have if you could control that feeling of shyness that comes up and robs you?
- Can you imagine how different would you act with other people? How much more confidence you would have?
Just imagine what other people in your life would think about you if you could erase that invisible barrier between you and the moment where you take ACTION...
This is what I started thinking about all the time, because I knew I could radically improve my life if I could just figure out how to seize this moment and just DO IT.
Well, I came up with some things that you will want to know about this feeling, and the art of approaching women.
Here are some other situations that I've gone through that may have happened to you:
You're sitting somewhere having an ice cold beer, and you're talking to some friends. Out of nowhere, a woman passes by that catches your eye, and you can't take your eyes off her.
More than anything, you wish you knew how to approach her, but somewhere inside your gut you get this feeling of fear pressing down on you. Your mouth goes dry...
And before you can pry your butt off your chair, that little voice in your head starts talking to you:
- "She's out of your league..."
- "She's probably got a boyfriend..."
- "You're probably not her type..."
- "You have no idea what to say to her..."
The strange thing is that these thoughts don't come up in words... they seem to come up in emotions, like an invisible force field between you and the woman you want to go meet.
And, as you stand there trying to figure out how you're going to walk up to her, another guy comes up to her and introduces himself and starts talking to her. Before you know it, they're all laughing and having fun.
You missed your shot...
"It wasn't just approaching women that would paralyze me, either..."
Have you ever had something like this happen to you:
- You finally walk up to a woman and say hello, and the conversation gets going, but a minute or two later, you find yourself struggling to come up with something to talk about, and you want to just get her phone number and go, but now there's this uncomfortable silence ... and before you know it she says she has to "get back to her friends..."
How do you bridge the conversation into asking for her number?
- You get into a conversation with a woman that you think is hot, but as you're talking to her she's barely making eye contact, and she's talking to you over her shoulder. You feel more like you're interrupting her than keeping up a conversation, and eventually you just drift away without getting a number - OR a date... How do you get a woman interested quickly?
- You've been talking with a woman for a little while, and things are going great. She's beautiful, smart, funny, and single. You want to close the deal on this, but when you ask her out for dinner, she tells you she's busy that week. She says she'll see you around sometime, and you feel disappointment hit you like a sucker-punch. What went wrong?
"Here's a story you might relate to..."
A few years back, I had a BIG problem: I was single and had just relocated to Kansas City. I was supposed to get married, but that had fallen through, and now I was alone and on my own.
I managed to get a job fairly quickly, but I had NO social network. I had to start again from scratch. I thought it would be easy, just like it was in high-school.
I was in for a rude awakening...
I got along okay for a few weeks, but then I started noticing how many nights I was staying home, drinking beer, and watching the same movies over and over. (I think I must have gone through "Big Trouble in Little China" about ten times...)
Between working at an office with only 4 people and sitting at home playing computer games, I wasn't meeting ANYONE. In fact, it felt like I had fewer and fewer friends because when I did go out, it was usually - you guessed it - alone.
I figured out real quick that loneliness doesn't go away by itself.
I knew that I had to do something different. And FAST.
So I went out to a bar in the area called "Houston's." It was a popular happy-hour spot, and there were always some really good-looking girls there. I was determined to meet these women, because I hadn't had a date in over 2 months (probably longer than that, now that I think about it), and I was starting to go stir-crazy.
I ordered a Budweiser and parked myself at the bar. I looked around to see who there was to meet. (This was a big mistake, and I'll explain why in a minute).
I kept seeing groups of girls come in, and leave, and come in... and leave. And I wasn't approaching any of them. I wanted to, but my mind wasn't giving me anything to say to them.
"The longer I stayed there, the worse it got, because I had NO IDEA where to begin."
How do you just go up and talk to a person you've never met before? I watched lots of other guys walk in, and they seemed to have no problem walking over and talking to women.
Me? I couldn't imagine how to do it, or what the hell to say...
Until later, of course. When you're in your car and on the way home, you suddenly figure out the perfect thing to open up with, even if it was only, "Hey, are you girls having fun?" It could have been that simple, but for some reason you just couldn't do it at the time.
The more times this happens to you, the more emotionally worked-up you get. And each time - when nothing changes - you feel worse and worse about yourself because it feels like you're completely stuck in this infinite loop, like Groundhog Day, only you can't seem to break the cycle...
Okay, let me finish my story about what happened at that bar...
So here I am, and finally, 2 hours and 3 beers later, I decided that I had to do something.
I decided to leave.
BUT, I wasn't going to leave without connecting with at least one woman there.
So I reached into my wallet and pulled out a business card, and I wrote on the back: "I think you're attractive... if you're interested, give me a call sometime."
"I walked over to the first cute girl I saw, and..."
I tapped her on the shoulder, and handed her the card. I said, "Here, I think you dropped this..."
Now, I thought that was pretty darn clever.
But she looked back at me - after first glancing at the front of the card and giggling - and she said, "I don't think so." And then she threw the card over her shoulder on the floor.
Wow.
That was cold.
I just walked out of there with my tail between my legs and drove home. I remember beating on the steering wheel with my fists, wondering:
"What in the world do I have to do to meet women without going through the pain of rejection like this...???"
I mean, I'd finally overcome my fear for just two seconds to walk up to her, and I still got blown out.
It really does take guts to go up to a woman and talk to her. You have to work your courage up to a fever-pitch before you can do something.
Even if you can get your courage up, there's no guarantee you're going to be successful, either.
I had no idea WHAT to say to women to get them to respond, so I felt like I was in a double-bind. Even if I could get the nerve up, I still didn't know what to say.
"I felt like I was getting in the boxing ring with an opponent that I'd never beat."
My morale had hit an all-time low.
What I ended up doing was going to the local bookstore the next day and looking for books that showed guys how to approach women and meet women.
I found NOTHING on the topic.
Then I started looking at all the dating advice books out there, most of which are written by women to help other women. I found some good ideas in there, but nothing that even came close to helping me overcome this anxiety over approaching women.
These books just talked about "flirting" and stuff like that. I didn't want to flirt - I wanted to MEET women, ATTRACT women. Get myself a hot girlfriend.
So then I went out just about every night I could, watching guys who were good with women and seeing what it was they were doing. I started figuring out how they used lines to open up groups of women and get them interested.
(These weren't those corny "pickup lines" you read about, either. I'm going to talk about those in a minute, too.)
I even joined a dating service, and put an ad in the personals, and created an online dating service profile.
I used every opportunity I could to put together a REAL and EFFECTIVE strategy to get over my fear and start talking to women.
Because there was one thing I had figured out, and it's the one thing you should be aware of right now as you read this:
"If you can't approach women, you can't meet any women."
"And if you can't meet women, you can't possibly get them to go out on a date with you..."
The two work hand in hand.
It's very simple, and logical ... and it took me a LONG TIME to learn that lesson. You see, everything you want to learn to be more successful with women requires you to learn how to approach women - and in the right way.
It goes back to that turning point I talked about before - the point in your head where you will either take action or fade into the background.
Since you're still with me here, I know that you're definitely NOT the kind who wants to disappear into the background.
Now, over those 4 years of intensive research and field work I did to find out how to approach women the right way, I kept notes in a journal. I have pages and pages of notes on what I tried, what worked, what didn't work, and how I overcame the challenges of learning this new skill.
(I still have that notebook to this day. It's all dog-eared and ragged, and I have to use a rubber band to keep the pages in there, but it's packed full of every insight and technique I found.)
But I also found something out that was much more valuable along the way. In fact, I think I'd even call it "priceless."
I noticed that even when I knew WHAT I was supposed to say when I approached a woman, I still had to get past that point in my head where I actually would DO it. Lines don't help with that.
Here's a little test you can use:
On any of your single guy friends, the next time you see an attractive woman in a bar, nudge him and tell him to go talk to her.
I will bet that 19 out of 20 guys will say something like this:
"Nah, she's not my type, dude..."
OR
"I'm not on my game tonight. Maybe later..."
Or any number of lame excuses.
Hey, I used to do the EXACT same thing. And the worst part is that when your friend talks himself out of approaching a woman, you feel relieved because it usually gives you the excuse you need to not go talk to her, either. So you don't push it, and you go back to drinking your beer.
But deep inside, you still really want to meet that woman.
Look, I'm not telling you this stuff to make you feel bad; I just want you to understand just how much of the same experiences I've gone through.
And what I discovered was ...
"There are guys EVERYWHERE with this issue - trying to find the courage to approach a woman and just say 'Hi' to her..."
I wasn't alone.
But even MORE important was that I discovered that there were guys who had figured out how to overcome the problem. They had managed to conquer their fear - and their shy personality - and break through that invisible barrier.
I once heard a phrase that I'd like you to remember: "If he did that, I can do that."
Because I used to think that there was something actually different about these guys, that they had some kind of magical gift. The reality is that they had the exact same brain I have, and they had the same abilities I had.
And I learned that I could actually do better than them when I discovered how it all worked, because these "naturals" were clueless as to what they were doing.
And that meant that it's a Skill That ANY Man Can Learn...
I want to let you know that approaching women really is a skill.
I'm sure you've learned to do something pretty good in your life, like play the guitar, or fix cars, or even play a video game better than anyone else.
Well, learning how to talk to women is just like learning one of those skills. At first, you're not too good. But if you just stick with it, you learn faster and faster, and before you know it you're better than most people.
The more you learn, the faster you get better. And it gets easier and easier.
(And the best part is that I've taken all the work and effort out of learning this skill for you.)
And then I also discovered that I became a lot better in social situations, too. I wasn't always the "quiet one" that never talked. I found out how to be a part of conversations instead of just an observer, and I got rid of a lot of the shyness I had. I even figured out how to use my sense of humor with women and not come across as a dork.
by Carlos Xuma
Learn more:
The Secrets of the Alpha Male
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