There she is: the most beautiful girl in the club. Or bar. Or in your class, or office, or the corner coffee shop, or the computer lab.
You know that place you always go to, and keep thinking to yourself that this time, when you see some gorgeous young thing, you're going to go and say hi.
But you never do. Instead, you just stare and sigh to yourself.
If only you could just meet her.
But you can't. It's like there's an invisible wall between you and her and you just can't get to the other side of it.
Except, there isn't an invisible wall between you and her it's all in your head.
And I want to talk to you about how to get out of your head and up into action.
WHAT'S THIS CHASE AMANTE GUY KNOW ABOUT APPROACH ANXIETY?
When I was new to pickup, back in 2006 and 2007, I took training with some talented guys who had a few years on me in this. And some of the best guys in the industry told me I was good, and they told me that I had zero approach anxiety.
I laughed when I heard it it was the most ridiculous thing anyone in this industry had told me. I had TONS of approach anxiety I just approached anyway, and did my best to never let anyone know I felt it.
Not my mentors. Not my peers. Not my wingmen. And certainly not the girls.
And I pulled off some wild pickups in those early years, even though I was still getting my wings in game, so to speak. Despite my hesitation.
There's nothing special about me. I'm a bit smarter than average, but if you're reading this and working on your game I bet you probably are too. I'm okay looking somewhat attractive, but I had to give myself a complete makeover before I ever started hearing I was "hot" or "sexy" and those early years I'm telling you about I had NOT done that yet.
I still had my college beer belly, for the love of Pete.
I like to think that the successes I got then were not because I had any natural skill or advantages, but simply but sheer brute force - I simply approached enough women I found attractive and forced myself to talk to them and analyzed my interactions and broke them down and refined it all that sooner or later I HAD to do something right and get a girl to come home with me SOMETIME.
And therein lies one of the lessons in this article about how to get out of your head - you've got to have some agenda other than this particular girl.
HOW TO GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD: THE 3 PARTS
To me, there are precisely three (3) key aspects to getting out of your head and shaking your anxiety long enough to get meeting new girls:
* A big picture objective
* An initial process / routine
* Focusing on what's happening in the moment
Let's have a look at each of those three parts.
#1: BIG PICTURE OBJECTIVE
What's your objective when you go out?
If you're like most men, you don't have a conscious objective. But it's impossible to not have an objective at all if you didn't have an objective, you wouldn't have gone out in the first place.
So what is it? If it isn't one you've consciously chosen and drilled into yourself, it's probably the same one as nearly every other guy out there:
Get her to like me.
But there's a problem with that objective. Do you know what it is?
It can never be completed!
How do you complete "get her to like me?" You don't. You can't. Because it's a never-ending battle.
There's something else it does to you too, though something terrible. Know what that is?
I'll help you figure it out. Here are a few hints to do so
* If you approach her, is there a chance she might not like you?
* If you challenge her too much, is there a chance she might not like you?
* If you ask her to invest or follow your lead, is there a chance she might not like it?
* If you tell her to come sit with you, is there a chance she might not like that?
* If you ask her to come home with you, is there a chance she might not like it?
* If you make a move on her or go to kiss her, is there a chance she might not like it?
All those questions have the same exact answer: "YES!"
And that leads every man with the unconscious objective of "get her to like me" to the same, and extremely LOGICAL, conclusion:
If your objective is for her to like you, the best thing to do is nothing at all.
You can see how that might throw a bit of a monkey wrench into this whole meeting girls and getting somewhere with them thing.
Most likely, you've really got two objectives going on - this "get her to like me" thing, deeply embedded in your subconscious, and a more amorphous "get a girl" or "get good with women" objective somewhere higher up. Thing is, that second one doesn't carry nearly the emotional weight with you as that first one which is why you're here reading about approach anxiety in the first place.
How do you change that? Through being aware every time your subconscious kicks in telling you it's afraid some girl won't like you.
You've got to start saying to yourself, "Good! I don't WANT her to like me if she doesn't find me sexy and attractive and doesn't want to do what I want her to do!"
You've got to start saying to yourself, "If she doesn't like me, I don't CARE what she thinks, but I won't find the girl who DOES like me until I go through a bunch of girls who DON'T, FIRST."
Once you've reinforced these enough time by reminding yourself of them in the moment where you actually feel that fear, they'll become automated beliefs - and you'll think them automatically.
And then you'll actually start to relish the fear. You'll feel it and think, "Ha! Now it's time for me to go find out if this is a girl I care about (who likes me) or one I don't (who doesn't)."
#2: AN INITIAL PROCESS / ROUTINE
By "routine," I, needless to say, do not mean routine stack let's leave that back in the early '00s where it belongs.
I'm talking about a different kind of routine the kind where you're following a mental program (as opposed to a verbal script).
The initial process or routine I have in mind is a very specific one, though you'll want to modify it to however best you're able to get out of your head and get meeting girls.
Mine back in 2006 and 2007 looked like this:
* Have a specific venue I was going to on a specific day at a specific time
* Have a certain number of "warm up approaches" I was going to do
* Be determined to start doing these warm ups as soon as I could - even in transit on my way to the venue, when possible
(I don't have much of a routine anymore because I don't need one as much, but if I had to boil down my going out routine these days, it's just "start meeting new people quickly, with a particular emphasis on the most beautiful women around, and keep meeting them until you've found the girl you like who likes you too.)
I usually suggest most newer guys adopt a process like what I had in '06 and '07 for each of these reasons:
* Specificity. You want to plan out in advance the day, date, and place you're going to, because then you're accountable, and it stops excuses. I caught myself too many times saying, "Well, it's Friday night, but maybe I'll go out later," or, "Well, it's Saturday night, and I didn't go out last night, but I don't know where to go so maybe I'll just wait until next weekend." Having it pre-planned and knowing you need to be out the door by 9 o'clock makes it a lot more likely to happen.
* Pressure = off. Knowing that your first few approaches are warm-ups takes a lot of the pressure off especially when you're still beholden to the desire to have women like you. She's a warm-up - that means it doesn't matter how she responds. She's practice. Dehumanizing? Slightly. But it helps you to get approaching, and it's effective. You can stop seeing girls as warm-ups once you've vanquished approach anxiety once and for all.
* Getting the ball rolling. Why's it good to start right away? So you can capitalize on your enthusiasm. If you've ever gone out to meet girls and realized 2 hours in that you haven't spoken to a single new person, you know what I mean - you were a lot more jazzed for it when you left the house than you were 2 hours in when you realized you hadn't even started yet. Kind of sucks the wind right out of your sails. Instead of having to start from a stalled position later on, start right away. Eventually I realized that most nights I had were good were nights I started almost immediately - make this a habit like I did, and you'll have a lot more productive days and nights out.
There's another reason that having a process like this down is an important component of how to get out of your head: you automate a lot of decision-making here, and free yourself up to focus on other things - like what to say to that cute girl in the purple t-shirt.
And a free mind is a lot more imaginative - and a lot more confident - than one that's bogged down dealing with details.
#3: GETTING FOCUSED ON THE MOMENT
If there's one thing that bugs the heck out of me, it's hippie speak:
Live for the here and now, man!
But at least in this instance, give a point to the hippies, because they're onto something.
I first noticed this one night when I was walking to the metro in Washington, D.C., probably about 40 minutes away from arriving at the nightclub where I'd be meeting women that night.
"Man, why am I even going?" I remember thinking. "I'm probably not even going to get anything out of this. I'm just wasting my time."
Then, I made myself focus on my immediate environment: the cracks in the sidewalk I was walking over the park bench to my left the apartment building ahead the parking lot on the right. To this day, I can still remember the exact surroundings, even though much of the rest of that walk has been lost from memory.
That's because the instant I made myself focus on what was around me right then in the moment, all those doubts and apprehensions vanished. It was just me and the crickets and the streetlights, and that was it.
What I realized then affected me profoundly: fear comes from focusing on the FUTURE, not the NOW.
Think about the last time a girl rejected you. Like, she was rude and mean to you. How long did it sting for? A couple of minutes?
Probably not even that.
Now think of the last time you had approach anxiety. How long did THAT go on for?
Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour?
All over something that hadn't even happened, and probably never would.
Seems kinda ridiculous, don't it?
What if instead of worrying about what's going to happen, you just said to yourself, "Look brain: let's just do it, and we can worry about it all we want after it's done."
I'll tell you a little secret: you trick your brain this way. Because after it's done, your brain doesn't care. So all you do by telling your brain you'll worry about it afterward, instead of beforehand, is you rob your brain of its fear and never give it the chance to have it back.
Poor brain never stops falling for that one.
PUTTING THIS ALL TOGETHER
So what happens when you string that all together? When you:
* Have a firm, solid, big picture in your mind
* Have a well-planned routine for yourself to follow
* Stop thinking about "what might happen" and just go do
Well, at that point, I dare say you've cracked how to get out of your head, and have cut your approach anxiety down to manageable levels.
It'll still be there, to some degree. Unless you've got the thought control of a Buddhist monk (in which case, you'd have taken a vow of celibacy and probably wouldn't be reading this website), some of it will still filter through.
But you can go a long way toward shrinking that monster in your head down to a pocket-sized version of itself with these techniques.
And at that point, your biggest problem won't be overcoming approach anxiety.
It'll be figuring out how to schedule all the dates you've got and all the lovers you have.
Yours,
Chase Amante
Chase Amante runs Girls Chase, a men's dating advice company providing programs that help men get better results with women. He's the author of the ebook How to Make Girls Chase, and recently published a lengthy, authoritative blog post titled "How to Get a Phone Number from a Girl Every Time You Ask" that he suggests you check out.
The post How to Get Out of Your Head (and Start Meeting New Women) appeared first on Approach Anxiety.
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