Do we really have Approach Anxiety? An interesting insight!

[AspiringStoic]

Hi guys. So here is something that happened to me.

I thought I always struggled with Approach Anxiety. I tried all kinds of challenges 1approach per day, 4/day, 5/day and even 10/day. I used to last for a few days or couple of weeks tops and then I always fell off.

The reason I attributed to it was that I could not beat my AA which was so strong.

But a few months ago I got injured playing football(soccer). I had to rest at home for a few weeks. Then at my last visit to the doctor, he told me I should start walking for at least 30-60 minutes a day at a slow pace.

So I started taking these walks. I started going to the city centre and the beautiful touristy parts of town. Everyday I saw tons of beautiful girls. An interesting thing started to happen, I started feeling the urge to talk to them.

First I just asked for directions etc, then sometimes started giving a compliment and even started getting into conversations. But I had no GOAL to do X or Y number of approaches. So I felt zero pressure. I was out to do the my walk and if I felt like it, then I would talk to a girl.

But funnily almost everyday I have spoken to girls in the last 45 days. I never lasted this long on any conscious approach challenge. This got me thinking. Did I really have Approach Anxiety?

When I look back everytime I failed one of my approach challenges was because I at some point, STOPPED GOING OUT. Now I could say I had AA if I went out everyday put myself in the midst of women and just could not get myself to open.

But that was the not the reason I failed. The requirement to do the approach put so much pressure on me that I stopped going out altogether. I developed GOING OUT ANXIETY. That is what prevented me from reaching my goals.

This past 45 days what I have realized is that if I actually JUST GO OUT regularly, I end up doing approaches on almost all the days. The motivation or desire to approach arises in me naturally if everyday I put myself in an environment where I am around hot girls.

Also that got me thinking, have you ever heard of a guy who went out to bars everyday without fail and still had AA after a year? Or a guy who goes out everyday for daygame for a year but has never done an approach? That hardly ever happens because we eventually break through it. Most people who fail, fail because they STOP GOING OUT. So I think we need to focus on just going out regularly and the approaching will follow.

Its been 45 days so far for me, and I am going to continue talking a walk everyday and see how it goes. Yesterday I went super late, the city was dead and I still ended up talking to 1 girl.

Let me know what you guys think about this. Eager to hear if this resonates with your experience.

 

[Chase]

@AspiringStoic,

Nice find. Nice change of pace you had!

I appreciate you posting this. It gives another perspective to a prescription I (for one) like to recommend to guys often.

Approach goals are definitely powerful for a lot of guys. For some guys it's just about the only thing that'll get them approaching.

I can tell you personally in college I was outside daily swimming through a sea of co-eds (with a very favorable female:male ratio) and never made a single approach for years until I resolved to start approaching.

What you're doing sounds similar to the 'gregarious guy approach' I talked about here:

How Naturals Meet Girls and Get Laid

One of the big mysteries for a lot of guys who are new to pickup is just how, exactly, men who are ‘naturals’ with women meet enough women to have the partner volume they do. If you’ve ever had a talented natural friend, you’ll notice it seems like he never does a cold approach, and spends most...

www.girlschase.com

That said, on approach goals, there are distinctions to make:

• I can tell you for me, I started out with just a vague goal: "Approach 3 random women." No time limit, no nothing. Just get the ball rolling. Took me a while to get going, but it was lower pressure for sure.
  
  
• I didn't actually set any dedicated approach # goals until I'd been in the game a while and already had a few hundred approaches under my belt. Only then did I try stuff like "Reach 10 approaches tonight, unless you pull before 10." More often I used stuff like "First approach needs to be within 10 minutes of reaching downtown."
  
  
• Past a certain point you don't need conscious approach goals unless you're shaking rust off. You just have a process of going out and chatting up girls within a certain amount of time and you're off and running.

(actually, now that I think about it, I've never much talked about "first approach within N minutes" goals, which I personally have relied on a lot more heavily than approach # targets. Once you get the ball rolling, it's a lot easier to keep it rolling. I think I might have that in 1 or 2 articles, but never as a featured thing)

Anyway, if you're doing well with the gregarious approach, keep going with it!

Eventually you'll probably want to gradually start upping your gregariousness so you find yourself in more conversations with more girls. That's assuming you want to get a certain regularity to how often you're getting numbers/dates/lays/GFs.

But 1/day purely by 'happenstance' is a wonderful start.

Again, thanks for sharing!

I'm curious to know how you progress.

Share a field report or two one of these days about some of the approaches you get made!

Chase

 

[AspiringStoic]

@AspiringStoic,

Nice find. Nice change of pace you had!

I appreciate you posting this. It gives another perspective to a prescription I (for one) like to recommend to guys often.

Approach goals are definitely powerful for a lot of guys. For some guys it's just about the only thing that'll get them approaching.

I can tell you personally in college I was outside daily swimming through a sea of co-eds (with a very favorable female:male ratio) and never made a single approach for years until I resolved to start approaching.

What you're doing sounds similar to the 'gregarious guy approach' I talked about here:

How Naturals Meet Girls and Get Laid

One of the big mysteries for a lot of guys who are new to pickup is just how, exactly, men who are ‘naturals’ with women meet enough women to have the partner volume they do. If you’ve ever had a talented natural friend, you’ll notice it seems like he never does a cold approach, and spends most...

www.girlschase.com

That said, on approach goals, there are distinctions to make:

• I can tell you for me, I started out with just a vague goal: "Approach 3 random women." No time limit, no nothing. Just get the ball rolling. Took me a while to get going, but it was lower pressure for sure.
  
  
• I didn't actually set any dedicated approach # goals until I'd been in the game a while and already had a few hundred approaches under my belt. Only then did I try stuff like "Reach 10 approaches tonight, unless you pull before 10." More often I used stuff like "First approach needs to be within 10 minutes of reaching downtown."
  
  
• Past a certain point you don't need conscious approach goals unless you're shaking rust off. You just have a process of going out and chatting up girls within a certain amount of time and you're off and running.

(actually, now that I think about it, I've never much talked about "first approach within N minutes" goals, which I personally have relied on a lot more heavily than approach # targets. Once you get the ball rolling, it's a lot easier to keep it rolling. I think I might have that in 1 or 2 articles, but never as a featured thing)

Anyway, if you're doing well with the gregarious approach, keep going with it!

Eventually you'll probably want to gradually start upping your gregariousness so you find yourself in more conversations with more girls. That's assuming you want to get a certain regularity to how often you're getting numbers/dates/lays/GFs.

But 1/day purely by 'happenstance' is a wonderful start.

Again, thanks for sharing!

I'm curious to know how you progress.

Share a field report or two one of these days about some of the approaches you get made!

Chase

Thanks a lot for the reply.

I just went through the article you linked. I realize maybe my explanation was not very accurate.

I am very very far away from being a NATURAL OR A VERY SOCIABLE GUY.

With what I described it only works if these conditions are met:

I go out by myself.
I go out only to walk around.
I am not running any errands or doing anything else in that time.

So the naturally approaching people during the day or just being sociable does not work for me either.

The only difference I was talking about was:

When I told myself I would do 1 or 4 or 10 approaches, it made me very anxious and I made excuses like its rainy, I won't find that many women at this time etc and never went out.

Now instead of an appraoch number I say "I am going to go out for 1 hour with the idea of approaching. In that 1 hour if I really am petrified and don't end up approaching anyone or just approach 1-2 its fine. I will just try again the next day as I am doing it daily"

This kind of tricks my brain and I do not feel the same pressure and hence have gone out regularly.

On my best day so far I have managed 5 in an hour and then wanted to continue and ended up doing 7 in 90 minutes. On my worst days I have done just 1.

So its still the same thing as having an approach goal. But the small tweak is that I have a "a dedicated time duration in which I try to approach goal" It just seems to reduce the pressure for me.

Just wanted to clarify that as I did not want anyone to think its the "talk to girls spontaneously approach" that I was referring to. Hope this makes it more clear.

 

[Chase]

Oh... gotcha, man.

Well, cool. That is actually how I started out.

First it was "make an approach... at some point."

Later on it was "Okay, I am going out to approach."

Goals I had, if any, were for testing techniques, rather than approach #s.

You know, when I wrote this article, it was inspired by a guy who was already a very seasoned approacher, and it was targeted at guys who had no problem approaching, but needed to up their volume:

Can You Approach 4 Girls Per Day for 30 Days?

If you can do 4 approaches per day for 30 days straight, you can build some incredible momentum – and get some fantastic new women into your life. A few nights ago, a friend of mine had a woman he describes as quite beautiful, with whom he's built a great connection over the past few weeks and...

www.girlschase.com

I never actually intended it for "guys still trying to get themselves to start approaching."

The guys we've had who've used the challenge to good effect have been already fairly seasoned approachers themselves, like @James D. was already in his 1-year of day game post.

Regardless -- definitely glad you made this post.

I have been strongly considering adding a few free starter training courses to the forum on a dedicated page for beginners, and maybe a few paid training courses for a "Premium" option. A big one I have been thinking about is a "starting to approach" course.

Getting a distinction in there about various objectives to have when you are starting to approach is very useful.

In case it's helpful, here are a few other strategies you may want to experiment with:

• Going out with a goal that is NOT about approaching, but about what you will do AFTER an approach. e.g., "tease 3 women today." You can approach 5 women and tease 3 of them... you can tease 3 hired guns you talk to incidentally in restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores... you can chat up girls in line or next to you and tease. It doesn't matter who they are or how you meet them, you just need to do the technique. Gives you a goal while reducing approach pressure since there are multiple ways to solve it.
  
  
• Having a weekly goal, like "get 1 girl's phone number this week." It doesn't matter which day you get it or how many girls you talk to, you just need to figure out a way to get a girl to give you her phone number before the end of the week.
  
  
• Having a goal of "explore new venues and see what it's like talking to women there." If you visit a new venue but don't talk to more than a few women than you don't actually know and can't count that venue as "explored." Thus the exercise is exploration, but you'll need to end up in conversations with girls somehow or other to complete it.

Like the "go out and aim to make approaches" goal, these give you some goals that get you away from set approach numbers, or even necessarily having to make cold approaches (some of them you can do with hired guns or chicks you know from school or work; or if you can get girls to open you, that works too).

The name of the game there is "get some traction & initial positive experiences without putting so much pressure on yourself you psyche yourself out"!

Chase

 

[AspiringStoic]

Oh... gotcha, man.

Well, cool. That is actually how I started out.

First it was "make an approach... at some point."

Later on it was "Okay, I am going out to approach."

Goals I had, if any, were for testing techniques, rather than approach #s.

You know, when I wrote this article, it was inspired by a guy who was already a very seasoned approacher, and it was targeted at guys who had no problem approaching, but needed to up their volume:

Can You Approach 4 Girls Per Day for 30 Days?

If you can do 4 approaches per day for 30 days straight, you can build some incredible momentum – and get some fantastic new women into your life. A few nights ago, a friend of mine had a woman he describes as quite beautiful, with whom he's built a great connection over the past few weeks and...

www.girlschase.com

I never actually intended it for "guys still trying to get themselves to start approaching."

The guys we've had who've used the challenge to good effect have been already fairly seasoned approachers themselves, like @James D. was already in his 1-year of day game post.

Regardless -- definitely glad you made this post.

I have been strongly considering adding a few free starter training courses to the forum on a dedicated page for beginners, and maybe a few paid training courses for a "Premium" option. A big one I have been thinking about is a "starting to approach" course.

Getting a distinction in there about various objectives to have when you are starting to approach is very useful.

In case it's helpful, here are a few other strategies you may want to experiment with:

• Going out with a goal that is NOT about approaching, but about what you will do AFTER an approach. e.g., "tease 3 women today." You can approach 5 women and tease 3 of them... you can tease 3 hired guns you talk to incidentally in restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores... you can chat up girls in line or next to you and tease. It doesn't matter who they are or how you meet them, you just need to do the technique. Gives you a goal while reducing approach pressure since there are multiple ways to solve it.
  
  
• Having a weekly goal, like "get 1 girl's phone number this week." It doesn't matter which day you get it or how many girls you talk to, you just need to figure out a way to get a girl to give you her phone number before the end of the week.
  
  
• Having a goal of "explore new venues and see what it's like talking to women there." If you visit a new venue but don't talk to more than a few women than you don't actually know and can't count that venue as "explored." Thus the exercise is exploration, but you'll need to end up in conversations with girls somehow or other to complete it.

Like the "go out and aim to make approaches" goal, these give you some goals that get you away from set approach numbers, or even necessarily having to make cold approaches (some of them you can do with hired guns or chicks you know from school or work; or if you can get girls to open you, that works too).

The name of the game there is "get some traction & initial positive experiences without putting so much pressure on yourself you psyche yourself out"!

Chase

Thank you. I am happy that it provided a slightly different point of view. Hopefully it helps some people.

Oh nice! I love the list of newbie goals you suggested. I am definitely going to try the get 1 number per week goal. I think that is a good next step for me.

I am a beginner and when I was looking to start, I met up with some local guys from the community. Most of them were stuck or just liked pickup in theory and hardly approached.

I met only 2 guys who were good and the biggest difference I saw in them was both of them were able to manage their AA and talk to 20-30 girls per week. That itself was getting them a lot of results. So I realized that the biggest hurdle I need to first cross is to be able to approach consistently. So I am working on that.

The hardest part for me is the open and first 3-10 seconds then I am quite comfortable. So looking to just focus on opening for now and will focus on teasing and other aspects after I am able to consistently open.

But I guess @Chase you are the best person to chime in on this. Don't most people who give up or fail at cold approach, do so because they could not get to a point where they could open consistently?

 

[Chase]

Thank you. I am happy that it provided a slightly different point of view. Hopefully it helps some people.

Oh nice! I love the list of newbie goals you suggested. I am definitely going to try the get 1 number per week goal. I think that is a good next step for me.

Great man! I'll keep my eye out for that.

I am a beginner and when I was looking to start, I met up with some local guys from the community. Most of them were stuck or just liked pickup in theory and hardly approached.

It's cool you're taking steps like that. I did that too as soon as I could when new (i.e., once I was actually in a city that had guys I could meet).

What'd you use to connect with local guys? The lairs are pretty much all gone AFAIK. What'd you find a local seduction chat group or social media group?

I met only 2 guys who were good and the biggest difference I saw in them was both of them were able to manage their AA and talk to 20-30 girls per week. That itself was getting them a lot of results. So I realized that the biggest hurdle I need to first cross is to be able to approach consistently. So I am working on that.

Good realization.

The hardest part for me is the open and first 3-10 seconds then I am quite comfortable. So looking to just focus on opening for now and will focus on teasing and other aspects after I am able to consistently open.

But I guess @Chase you are the best person to chime in on this. Don't most people who give up or fail at cold approach, do so because they could not get to a point where they could open consistently?

Yes.

Actually, I really like this topic... I'm going to write an article on it.

Thanks for the inspiration!

-C

 

[AspiringStoic]

Great man! I'll keep my eye out for that.



It's cool you're taking steps like that. I did that too as soon as I could when new (i.e., once I was actually in a city that had guys I could meet).

What'd you use to connect with local guys? The lairs are pretty much all gone AFAIK. What'd you find a local seduction chat group or social media group?



Good realization.



Yes.

Actually, I really like this topic... I'm going to write an article on it.

Thanks for the inspiration!

-C

Thanks a lot will be looking forward to the article.

As for the guys I met. It was coincidence. I was at a meetup event when I heard a guy drop some PUA lingo. I spoke to him later and I was right he was into daygame. He connected me with a group of people he knew. I think some had taken a bootcamp together or something. But yeah hardly anyone was actively approaching except 2. So I just started doing it on my own.

 

[Licker]

Great post @AspiringStoic

I field tested this today by accident while I was out shopping and I found I had absolutely NO approach anxiety just chatting up random people or opening girls just for fun/testing waters for her interest levels.

I even did a full 180 turn to talk to a chick because asking for directions ain't weird. Which I would never do if I planned to game her or went out on a mission to hunt for women.

What causes approach anxiety in my case is when I have to run game on her. Especially since I am learning some smma stuff recently. And more so if it's not a crowded area so I can be easily seen.

Is my opener perfect? Is the delivery exactly right? How am I supposed to follow up?
These are the things that cause anxiety.

 

[AspiringStoic]

Great post @AspiringStoic

I field tested this today by accident while I was out shopping and I found I had absolutely NO approach anxiety just chatting up random people or opening girls just for fun/testing waters for her interest levels.

I even did a full 180 turn to talk to a chick because asking for directions ain't weird. Which I would never do if I planned to game her or went out on a mission to hunt for women.

What causes approach anxiety in my case is when I have to run game on her. Especially since I am learning some smma stuff recently. And more so if it's not a crowded area so I can be easily seen.

Is my opener perfect? Is the delivery exactly right? How am I supposed to follow up?
These are the things that cause anxiety.

Oh yeah I have heard this from many other guys and felt it myself too. My approach anxiety shoots up if I think about techniques that I need to use after I open the girl. And due to the increased anxiety, I end up not even opening.

An interesting parallel happened to me. Few years ago I needed to learn public speaking for my work, so I joined a public speaking club.

Before giving my first speech I was asking this experienced guy about some techniques and stuff I could use. And he literally said forget about everything. First learn to speak in front of people without shitting yourself. Once you calm down and are able to think clearly while in front of people, then you can think about introducing techniques.

He was damn right. It was only after I did 6-7 speeches that I calmed down enough to then move on to consciously learning any techniques.

I am trying to apply the same to my journey with approaching. Have dedicated this entire year to overcoming and managing AA. Once I have that under control will move on to applying other stuff.