Mr.Rob said:
My worst nights come usually based on the mood I'm in, which is highly subjective and never permanent.
Resilience has a lot to do with this. The more you cold approach, the tougher a skin you build up and the better able you are to view things in terms of looking for that asymmetric return while out.
Here's an example:
Guy A has only done a handful of cold approaches before. He goes out on a Friday, approaches a girl, it goes nowhere and she's rather cold to him. His confidence takes a big hit, but he pushes himself to do another approach. This one goes even worse. He soldiers through two more before throwing the towel in and writing it off as an "off night".
Guy B has been cold approaching several years. He goes out and his first four approaches go exactly as Guy A's did, only these only serve to embolden him, because he considers them as warming up; "Gearing up to play hard tonight!" he tells himself. In the end, he sticks with the night and keeps a good mindset about him, which makes him a lot more likely to come off with a new girl on his arm, regardless of whether he's doing lots of approaches or just a few targeted ones - either way, he stays out, stays positive, and that ups his odds of pulling something off infinitely over the guy who just leaves and goes home.
Another consideration here is that Guy B is experienced enough by this point too that he can do a quick analysis of WHY those first four interactions were brush offs and pretty quickly come up with a list of things he's a little off on that he can adjust on his next approach. "Okay - first approach, my opener was lame and I was standing way too far away from her. Need to get closer and be a lot more sincere about my interest." "Okay, second approach it kicked off well, and then I got into boring interview-style questions without challenging her one bit. Need to bust girls' stones a little at the outset and/or get a little early compliance soon into opening."
He makes these adjustments, and the rest of his approaches the remainder of the night go a lot more smoothly.
Guy A can't do this yet because he doesn't have the experience, so all he can do is look around and say, "It isn't working and I DON'T know WHY." He can stick in there and take some punishment just to get more experience, or he can fold and head home, but either way he probably doesn't stand much of a chance of troubleshooting his game then and there.
Mood still plays a part of it, and that's where resilience really kicks in. A guy who's skilled with women but is feeling out-of-sorts might go out and do some approaches and trust in his own proficiency to kick in and save him despite not being on his game, but if he isn't analyzing and adjusting properly or his mood is really messed up, maybe nothing's clicking 12 or 15 approaches in and now he's really starting to question himself, the same way the less experienced guy is after 1 or 2.
One final consideration is how much success the guy's had pulling. If you are the sort who will push yourself to keep going even after you mentally write a night off as a bust, you'll stack up reference points over time of all sorts of nights where you'd said to yourself, "I've exhausted all my energy, nothing is working, this night is going nowhere," then you do one more approach and that's the girl it clicks with like crazy and you take her home and shag. Or, you walk out of the venue, thinking, "Gah, the night's over," but push yourself to do a few street approaches and end up sleeping with a girl that way. By the time you've had enough of these, even if it's closing time and you didn't get anything you'll still be saying, "That was silly of me - I hardly approached!" or "There were two girls I easily could've pulled who were eyeing me all night, and I just never got over to them."
That more or less eliminates bad nights. Even the nights where things just go completely awry end up looking amusing to you, because, well, heck, who could've predicted THAT would happen? And then you can always just go out again the next night and things will be back to normal once more.
Doesn't necessarily mean every night will be GOOD; some nights end up being a waste of time if you go out and end up not doing anything, or get stuck with some group of people you went out or met up with who are lame, or whatnot.
But your outings don't have the kind of painful, torturous impact they do when you're new and have a lot of hopes and expectations riding on how you think things ought to go, only for them to not go that way. Once you're more skilled, you both take a lot more action, while also expecting a lot less (and of course, your game and fundamentals will be stronger too) - this means you're a lot more likely to have something "good" happen, while being outcome independent enough that it won't make your night "bad" if it doesn't.
Chase