Hi Guys,

I am 'very' new to this having only been introduced to the site in the past two days and I have not yet read any books on the subject - something that will be fixed in the next week or two!. However, this site is a wealth of knowledge and after reading and beginning to understand the basic concepts of negs, DHV and openers, I decided to go on a newbie mission to help reduce my AA.

I spent today at some boring trade show with work where there are quite literally thousands of people crammed into a series of large rooms. As most people are there to sell stuff they tend to be warm to you anyway so I thought this made for a good place to start my newbie mission. I started off by walking the floor and keeping eye contact with just about everyone close to me (males, females, young, old.. literally everyone!) and started by simply smiling at them, I was very surprised how many people responded (probably just being friendly) so I then started to say hi to the women... almost all of them responded with either a smile or hi. This built my confidence so I then started to fire up an opener on the girls who responded to my hi - this was not something that I was planning on my newbie mission but I figured why not? The opener I used was 'are your feet dead yet?' because just about everyone at these shows are on their feet for 8 hours straight and everyone moans about their feet hurting, so the answer tended to come back with a yes at which point I come back with something along the lines of 'yeah, those shoes / boots look great but you picked a bad shoe / boot considering you knew you were going to be on your feet all day' - I threw this in as an attempt at a neg which seemed fitting. The conversation went from there with about 5 girls but I moved on without taking it any further as this was already way beyond the scope of my newbie mission.

I went home and couldn't believe that I had spoken to far more hot women today than in the past 6 months and some seemed to be interested. I put this down to it being a work trade show and it is their job to act interested, therefore this evening I went into a fairly busy nightlife area (bars, restaurants, clubs, etc) and decided to continue my newbie mission. I retained the same basic idea of saying hi to everyone, although this time I only said it to girls (hot and not so hot) and almost all of them responded warmly. I then used an opener on them which was similar to the shoe thing from before, only this time I went with 'that dress / top / whatever looks great, you must be freezing'. It was cold outside but the cold come on quite quickly so most of the girls were dressed for summer even though it was freezing outside, thus it was about the best neg I could think of to say they look nice but they are dumb as they are cold. Again, just as before, more often than not this opened them and I left it at that point as opening was already beyond the scope of my newbie mission.

So, there you have it - I am very proud of myself. How do you think I got on and how can I improve my newbie technique? Anything which you can add or any pointers would be great!

That was great, Donkey!
The point of this newbie mission is to slowly desensitize yourself to social anxiety. Once you feel more comfortable with talking to strangers, work on different kinds of openers and see what you like. Just don't forget: "the comfort zone is enemy territory." There is a difference between what you like and what you are comfortable with.

Thats awesome mate i know how much you can be like me and really listen to that AA when it kicks in - glad to see you went out and did something about it - lets hope to see more of that in birmingham in a couple weeks

Nice one!

I continued my newbie mission today as I had to go to the supermarket to do some shopping anyway so I figured why not continue the mission?

Again, I walked confidently and went about my shopping and said hi to three women as I went around the store, all of them responded with either a smile or a hi back. At this point I think I got a little over confident and tried a 'really' bad opener with a HB8. There I was standing in the bit of the store with all of the pasta sauces (which all look the same to me) and debating what to go for and I notice the HB8 also trying to figure out what to buy, so I got ideas above my station and decided to try an opener and went with 'there are far to many to chose from, what would you recomend?' - I gave this line no real thought and I was pretty much blanked, ouch. However, the best bit is that before I would have never have said anything and getting blanked if I did pluck up the courage would have ruined my day, but now I walked off laughing to myself in my head - I know it was a really bad line and it was always going to fail, but having the ability to laugh it off and not care is a fantastic feeling. I think this newbie training might be working.

So, after this I finally get to the check out and there happens to be a HB7 working at the till who asked how I was doing (standard question that she probably asks to everyone coming through the store) so I said 'probably better than you, I used to work here and I know how long the days are' and this line totally opened her up. I am sure it is a pretty bad line and you guys could have come up with far better, but in this situation it worked so well that I was talking to her for about 10 mins - and this was after I paid for my shopping. She was telling me where she lived, where she goes to collage, why she works at that particular store, that she just fell out with her best friend... and all the while im basicly doing nothing other than throwing in the occasional neg about where she lives etc. Sure, this could be becasue she was simply bored at work and it was someone to talk to, but before starting my newbie training I would have walked away as soon as I finished paying for the goods but now I was quite comfertable to stand there and have a conversation for a while. I left it by saying I was late for a meeting with friends (tring to show DHV, social, etc) and made light of the fact that she had another 2 hours to work whilst I would be enjoying myself (attempt at a neg).

I am really enjoying this newbie training, I am not sure how I would feel about doing it in a pub / club especially if I knew I was trying to take it to the next level, but right now when I know that I am only doing it for AA I am finding it very good fun - I am actually enjoying it.

Any pointers / tips would be appreciated.

Nice job, Donkey! It's nice to see that you're enjoying the newbie drill. I gotta give you props for not being the least bit fazed after opening the HB8. Not 'giving a fuck' has got to be the greatest feeling in the world - it kills all fear.

awesome work!
When i got over my AA, i walked around my campus and stopped any girl with ipod speakers in, asked her to take them out, and then tell her,
"I'm so sick of my music, I need some new perspective. What are you listening too?"

It worked great, and they had to give me there full attention when they talked because they had o go through the trouble of taking there headphones out lol

_________________
--Brad

well done, really!
actually, being an AA mission doesn't really matter how do they responde, but the fact that u didn't cowarded, at all,, and if u add their reaction and u evolving as ur experience did, yours was an extinguished job out there.. hope i do as well as u did man.

Good effort dude