There are endless challenges in the world of pickup that prevent you from excelling, but the majority of them boil down to one single primal emotion: fear. This principle extends beyond just pick up - any new and challenging situation will expose you to the most crippling emotion of fear. It's the body's natural prevention mechanism. And can you really blame it?
But sometimes the fear response (the fight-or-flight response, as it is sometimes called, or the stress response) activates when it shouldn't. This is because the fear response is not selective, and is heavily susceptible to outside influence. If you train yourself to fear something, or are conditioned by external social values such as, say, the media, your parents, peers, etcetera, then you will fear it.
Maybe I am overcomplicating things. Take these two situations:
1. You are in a plane with a parachute on your back, about to skydive for the first time. The plane is climbing to 10 000 feet, at which point you will jump out of the open door and fall for minutes at 120 miles per hour. What emotion do you feel? Of course, fear.
2. You are walking on the street with some friends. You and your friends spot a group of attractive women, you all get excited. Your friends urge you to approach. You feel like you should approach, you obviously want to meet those girls. But something is holding you back; fear.
These two situations seem completely unrelated except for the one key factor, and that is the fear that is holding you back. One of the situations is legitimately life-threatening, and is a situation where it is perfectly acceptable and natural for the fight-or-flight response to kick in. The other situation is not at all life-threatening - approaching a good looking woman is no more dangerous than talking to your friends, or petting a kitten.
Okay, so if approaching a woman isn't life threatening or dangerous, why do people suffer a fear-response when faced with the situation of approaching a good looking woman?
The fear of approaching an attractive woman or group of attractive women is particularly referred to as Approach Anxiety, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, and I would assume 100% of you have experienced at one point or another. Approach Anxiety is simply your fight-or-flight response being activated in a situation where it is unnecessary. Remember, the worst that can happen when you approach a woman is you get rejected (which is where most of the fear comes from); she says no, you move on.
Approach Anxiety is a universal phenomenon; I have experienced it, you have experienced it, Style experienced it - even hot women experience it. It's true, I've asked many good looking women if they fear approaching a guy they are interested in and all have said they do feel nervous and experience approach anxiety. Remember that fact.
Experts have suggested that in order to break a bad habit, you need to slowly replace it with a good or productive habit over time. Let's take an addiction to smoking as an example. If someone wants to quit smoking using this method, then they would replace the urge to smoke with something more productive, let's say exercise. So if they feel like smoking, instead of lighting up, they simply put on some gym clothes and do some push ups. Eventually the new habit will kick in and replace the old habit (studies have shown it takes approximately 24 days for a new habit to kick in).
This concept also applies to Approach Anxiety. You need to replace the fear you are feeling before approaching with a more positive and productive emotion; ideally, self-confidence. This may seem completely idealistic at first glance, but it is possible to do, with the right methods and a little commitment.
- 1. Experience is necessary.
You need to understand that what you are fearing is completely irrational. Approaching a woman is not life threatening, but just because I have told you that does not make it true in your own mind. You need to prove it to yourself. This is the basis to the AFC Challenge and some of the challenges in the Stylelife Challenge. The only way to prove to yourself that approaching a woman is not life threatening and nothing to be afraid of is to do it. So, go out and approach women. Regardless of whether or not you get rejected, simply walking up and saying "Hi" is good enough to show that nothing bad happens when you put yourself out there.
2. Rejection isn't that bad!
The main motivator for Approach Anxiety is the fear of rejection. People consciously understand that they won't die if they approach a woman, but to them, getting rejected is just as bad. I stick by my argument of experience in response to this. You need to get rejected in order to train yourself not to fear rejection. Every successful pick up artist must have hundreds of rejections under their belt. What counts is they also have tons of successes - probably more than rejections - which isn't possible if you don't approach in the first place. You need to understand that rejection is part of the process. No one is going to be successful with women if they don't get rejected along the way.
* Once you have trained yourself to realize that rejection and approaching aren't that bad, you should already be feeling more comfortable with the whole concept of approaching women. Approach Anxiety will probably still be present, though. In fact, I would say that it is impossible to cure Approach Anxiety 100%. What you can do is numb yourself to irrational fear and push yourself beyond your own boundaries. If you understand that the fight-or-flight response is a faulty primal instinct, you can learn to ignore it when approaching women. You have to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and force yourself to approach. Once your there, the feeling of fear eases into comfort and comfort eases into that feeling of confidence.
3. Replace Fear with Self-Confidence
This step appears vague, because it is. How exactly do you replace the emotion of fear when approaching to that awesome feeling of confidence and being Alpha? Well, I don't know exactly. Experience is the one trusty way to realize that there is no reason to fear, and that fear only leads to regret. Here's a little fact to remember:
Girls want you to talk to them.
And that is true. It's not just some fake message I'm giving you to boost your confidence based on some made up fact. It's true. Girls want you to talk to them. Have you ever been walking around a place where you know everyone and you don't talk to them cause you want them to talk to you first? Most girls succumb to this rule. They want you to talk to them, so why not do it? What have you got to lose? Go up to them and ask their opinion on something. Go ask them how their night is going, and how you can make it better. Whatever you use, canned opener or not, they want you to use it because they want to be noticed and want you to talk to them.
With this in mind, remember that confidence is completely subjective. Confidence is a state of mind, as is fear, as is any other emotion. And states of mind are constructed by the only person that has access to your brain - YOU. You build your state of mind based on your surroundings and your beliefs. Why not build a positive state of mind? Tell yourself to be confident, that your alpha, and you will feel that way. You know the saying: fake it till you make it.
Just remember that you are a prize.
I hope this helps you out. I'll leave you with a quote:
"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."
-Edmund Burke
CHAT
