Anxiety
Anxiety is a defense mechanism. It exists to protect you from abnormal behaviour. Consider a high steel worker. These guys stand on two foot wide beams hundreds of feet off the ground. They’re strapped in, but their body doesn’t understand that. The first few weeks are hell.
After that, it’s no big deal. Heights don’t bother them. Their body has accepted heights as a feature of the environment. It’s normal to that person. Buddy of mine worked high steel a decade ago. Said the heights were nothing to him at the time.
But he’s afraid of heights now. Because his environment changed. He doesn’t work high steel. He’s not surrounded by his anxiety any more. To him, heights are abnormal now, when they were normal a decade ago.
Approach anxiety is a collection of anxieties. Fear of talking to strangers. Fear of interrupting people. Fear of running out of things to say. Fear of looking dumb (social pressure). And fear of success (a personal favorite).
Talking to Strangers
Talking to strangers is the most common. In our hunter/gatherer days, this kind of behaviour could get you killed. We don’t live in a tribal society any more, but our bodies doesn’t understand that. Our biological programming is from the olden days.
If you do not talk to new people every day, how do you expect to sarge at the bar? You’re body will fight you. It will protect you. Unless you acclimate it.
I picked up a pamphlet on breaking habits on the trip to Vegas. It takes 21 days to form or break a habit. If that’s true (and it sounds about right), it takes three weeks to overcome approach anxiety. By talking to strangers everywhere.
That means on the bus, at the gas station, line at the coffee shop, airplanes, work, restaurants, etc. Talk to a new person every day. Use a stock opener on them. Like ‘dental floss’.
Understand that if you stop being a social creature for any length of time, approach anxiety will return.
If lunch-time street approaches are an option, take a walk on your lunch break and open 3 sets. Open and eject if you’re not up to stacking material. This will make bar sarges way easier. It’ll slowly remove the anxiety of talking to strangers.
Fear of interrupting people
Personal skeleton. We are raised from birth to be polite. To be considerate of other’s feelings, opinion and past-times. We are a sensitive society. We’re also a wussy society. The alpha man does take others into consideration. But he doesn’t hesitate to give people the gift of his or her reality.
Why are you worried about interrupting people? Switch places with your target. If you were talking to friends and a supermodel in lingerie interrupted you, would you be pissed? Fuck no. I don’t care if I was about to solve world peace.
Women are always receptive to their knight in shining armour. Walk in, be the cool guy, and don’t care about their conversation. Hell, tease them about it. After you reach the hook point apologize for interrupting and offer to leave. They’ll drag you back.
These people lead boring lives. They wake up in their boring bed, they drive to a boring job in their boring car and they hang with their boring friends and talk about how bored they are.
You’re not interrupting anything important. Not at a bar, not on the bus and not in the casino. It’s your reality. Everyone else is along for the ride.
Fear of running out of things to say
I hear a lot of people saying ‘I hate routines, I just want to talk normal.’ Here’s the thing. You’re not getting laid. Why would you talk normal? Use the damn routines until ‘normal’ to you is ‘attractive’ to women.
Routines are normal conversation from someone else. Someone good with women. You’re wearing the skin of successful PUAs until you develop your own.
This is why MM focuses on routines. Memorize stock routines from the MM forum. After your newbie mission, rotate in personal DHV stories and field test them. You’ll have dozens of things to say.
And don’t worry about forgetting what to say. It continues to amaze me how, out of nowhere, a routine I haven’t used in six months drops into my head in set. Listen to your instincts on this one. If you’re in set and a routine comes to mind, use it.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
This is a good start for people who want to get rid of approach anxiety. It just takes time, but if you’re good and consistent then everything is easy. If you can beat the night game…then day game is as easy as pie.
Don’t be afraid to say something to someone. Hell, walk around and give everyone high fives. It’ll make the world around you just a little happier, if nothing else.