Dealing With Approach Anxiety

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August 3, 2009 by JDOG  
Filed under Blog, Featured, Opening, Routines

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When I teach workshops I talk about many ways to deal with approach anxiety. Here are 10 quick tips on how to stop approach anxiety.

1. Act Like It’s A Game – When an interaction is over, just hit the reset button, and try again. You learn and get further in the game each time you hit that reset button. A game should be fun, not emotionally weighed down. Your out there to have fun, and other people’s reactions are unimportant.
2. Remove The Outcome – For some it helps to remove the outcome. By this I mean that they initially (while learning) should have only one goal, and that is to enjoyably learn from the interaction. Others may want to keep their eye on the ball by challenging themselves to get further, such as by setting a desired outcome in their mind before opening. That might be to bounce the girl to another venue, or to simply initiate some sort of touch during the conversation.
3. Warm Up Sets – are a great way to get into a talkative state. Generally, open three groups of people, and talk about anything and you will find you are warmed up and ready to go. Their responses are insignificant as this is just an exercise for you that they are oblivious to. Talk about random things, your grocery list, or run material on them. It really doesn’t matter. Of course any chance to refine material is a good one. You can also use the 3 second rule, where you have to open within three seconds of seeing a girl you are interested in. You can also open the first set on the left when entering any location.
4. Adopt The Right Beliefs – Having a good set of beliefs about yourself, about how the interaction will go, about women in general, amongst other things, will color every interaction. First we review your current beliefs to see if they are helping or hindering your dating life. Then we spend some time considering new beliefs, and reframing old ones. An example of a hindering belief might be, “I don’t deserve a girl like that.” You would be better suited to consider writing some empowering beliefs down, and visualizing what it would be like to truly feel this way about yourself, such as “I know that girl will enjoy getting to know me.”
5. Positive Mental Rehearsal – Visualizations, meditations, and exercises to boost your mood, and trigger an optimum state of mind for meeting women. Similar to how a musician will pump themselves up before going on stage. This may include state amping exercises.
6. Newbie Drills & Baby Steps – For those who suffer from higher levels of anxiety using newbie drills and very small chunk steps seem to work well getting them comfortable with opening. This may include light hearted social experiments to see people’s reactions. Small chunk steps examples would be such things as; giving people high fives in the street, just asking people directions, or asking how their day is going.
7. Desensitize To New Environments – Feeling some level of anxiety in new situations or environments is part of normal emotional circuitry, and the best way to get a handle on it is to spend more time getting comfortable in those situations.
8. Dealing With Social Pressure – Sometimes it can feel like everyone in the room is staring, and guess what, sometimes when you are talking to the hottest girl in the room that may actually be the case. Doing things to get used to social pressure can be a great exercise.
9. Know What To Say – Knowing what to talk about, thereby removing some level of uncertainty, can significantly help with your approaching. This is one of the main reasons why we have canned openers, and routines. It allows us to start conversations with something that is tried and tested. Without having to think about what to say you can swiftly start a conversation about something that has a higher chances of getting her interest.
10. A Heathy Review Process – It would be difficult to learn ANYTHING in life if we emotionally beat ourselves up about it every step of the way. With most things people learn in a healthy way, not so with dating and relationships. We tend to reflect on ourselves with every mistake. Putting this into perspective, and reviewing what went right, and what could have gone better after an interaction can be a useful learning tool. We need to be able to do that while still feeling good about ourselves.