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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Great Post, sure helped a lot, I need to work more on warm up sets, I should I guess just relax, because if I pressure myself too much, I wont do it… the three second rule, isn't really counting, its more like “GOOO!!!” without thinking too much…
Cheers
Arsalan
Hey Arsalan.. Yes.. generally I see the best results from my students from warm up sets above everything else! Good point on the 3 second rule (btw I hate rules) it's about taking action and saying something. The idea originally is that if you hover near a girl longer than 3 seconds without saying something she knows you have an agenda and it can make it more difficult.
If a girl does catch me staring.. and I will admit this HAS happened.. then I can recover by saying something like, “Hey it's weird but I could have sworn you were my friend Jessica, but she lives in San Francisco..” then roll into something else. Usually I do what I call the Columbo (named after the detective in that old tv show) where I roll off, and then re-engage the conversation. Just watch a few episodes and you'll know what I mean. It's his classic way of confronting the villain. I found myself doing that years ago, and afterwards I noticed that Mystery was teaching bodyrocking in and out of set.. veeeerrryy similar. Just my way of doing it. It's like a non-verbal false time constraint.
One of my biggest sticking points was “knowing what to say”
canned openers and routines helped me out alot and still do.
Another great point that I often forget is visualization. visualizing successful interactions certainly help me combat anxiety.
Rocking article dude. would be great if you could expand more of the Newbie Drills.
I know for damn sure some of my friends need that
Cheers Blade.. I've also found that certain NLP anchoring exercises are excellent. Really this is very similar using your intent to have a focused meditation. Can help tremendously with boosting mood, reducing anxiety, being able to brush off negative responses, and triggering the right kind of state for meeting women when in field.
Great to see your interest in Newbie Drills.. as I just happen to be working on posting an article or two about this very subject! Thnx again.. J!
Great article and some good points made.
Acting is one of those activities that can eliminate the stress and anxiety.
I remember when John Wayne used to talk to his imaginary friend in one of his cowboy films.
In one had he was stressed out and on the other hand he had a whiskey bottle. Mind you whiskey is not a stress reliever.
What I find that puts stress out of my life is listening to soft music, almost the meditation types. It works for me and I've noticed many people relieve their stress by listening to this type of music.
jon
In a different post I heard you saying after practicing game for a while, something just 'clicks' and you get it. I've just had a mental breakthrough myself when suddenly the fear of 'doing something wrong' evaporated. Then I looked back and realised the thing that had been stifling my game for years was exactly that… the fear of doing something wrong and the difficulty I had handling it when I did. One day all that just vanished. Is that anything like the secret you mean?
befor i have axiety , and now im totaly fine , i think sould not give up who hav that
a great post, i like this one too!
Nice:P
Excellent article guys.
Even though I don't agree that NLP is “Voodoo” (because it's based on the neuro-science), this is a great article.
The amazing thing is that I help people with their life problems all the time, but this is one area I can't seem to move past myself, yet. If this were someone else, I could help them understand, accept and deal with the issues, but on myself it's a new kettle of fish.
Fear is natural. Fear is natural. Fear is natural. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.
😉
Thank you for the article.