How To Break Social Barriers
Friday, April 25th, 2008You know what, on average, people are most afraid of? It’s not death. It’s public speaking. As Seinfeld once said, most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.
That doesn’t make much sense, does it?
By now you should be getting used to humans not making much sense.
This all comes from social pressure. No one wants to look stupid. Everyone wants to be the coolest, most confident guy in the room. And when you stand up in front of people, you give yourself the chance to FAIL.
Winston Churchill once said something like “I’d rather keep my mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.â€
He also said “Madam, I may be drunk, but I’ll be sober tomorrow, and you’ll still be ugly.†Feel free to use that one.
Anyway, most people feel like Winston. When it comes to the fool quote, I mean. Almost everyone is so scared of doing something dumb that they end up doing nothing. When opportunity arises they flash back to a bad experience from junior high, all these negative emotions come flooding, and they freeze.
It’s understandable. I mean, the emotional pain of embarrassment and – worse – rejection is very real. Most guys prefer physical discomfort to social awkwardness. So eventually you just avoid situations where things can get awkward or embarrassing or – worse – rejecting.
STOP THAT!
Time for some tough love. When you’re on your death bed – should you be so lucky to have a bed – it isn’t going to be the things you tried and failed that you regret.
It’s the things you HAVEN’T TRIED. Always. Because you never know what might have been.
I remember once when I was a young kid – maybe 14 – on the beach and some girls walked by me and said “Hi†with these salacious smiles.
I froze.
And I REMEMBER THIS! I rue that moment. I’ve approached hundreds of women since, and especially in the early going, I wasn’t always successful. I got shot down my fair share of times.
And I don’t remember them much at all. Certainly not in a painful way. At the time it might have hurt, but with practice you can learn to deal with that pretty easily.
It’s like breaking through the burn in a serious exercise regimen. It sucks while it happens, but once you’ve made it through it doesn’t seem so bad – in fact, you get to kind of enjoy it. Why? Because instead of avoiding the burn with fear, you push yourself towards it, and you get great results. You wind up feeling good, and pride comes that you pushed yourself through to the reward.
Guess what? Approaching women much like that. It is EXACTLY like that.
When you see a beautiful woman and those nerves come, that’s normal. Everyone gets that. Even the best of the best still get that occasionally, and those are guys with AMAZING success rates.
EVERYONE is scared of looking like a fool, and a beautiful woman can do that to you better than most. Hence, approach anxiety.
DEAL with it.
Most men don’t fail with women because of some fatal flaw in their being. It’s because they never put themselves into a position where they can succeed. And when by luck they find themselves in that position they don’t know what to do because they’ve rarely been there!
Thus, they screw it up, receive more negative feedback, and avoid such situations even MORE in the future. This is what psychologists call a negative feedback loop, and it’s an ugly thing. Tough to deal with too.
So what’s a guy to do?
BREAK THE LOOP.
I’m not going to lie to you. When you approach women – especially to start – you’ll have some negative interactions. You’ll be nervous, and although most women will be much nicer than your dark fantasies, they probably won’t respond the way you want them to.
Even a nice brush-off is a brush-off, and it still stings.
Plus, there will be some women who WON’T be nice, WON’T humor your awkward attempts, and will blow you out of the water.
Ouch.
Of course, after your first good workouts, you shouldn’t be able to lift your arms above your shoulders.
Ouch.
The point is that you are BUILDING to something. The more practice you get, the less nervous you’ll be, or at least the less nervous you’ll act (which is just as important). As you gain confidence, you won’t have that fear ruining everything.
The butterflies will remain, but YOU will have control of them. One day you’ll get a cold response, and you’ll stay so inside yourself and confident through it that you’ll actually TURN the tables and have women respect and LIKE you for it.
You’ll have passed a test, and you’ll get great reactions. This is when you start to – wait for it – ENJOY these socially charged moments. There will come a point where you SEEK THEM OUT because you end up having POSITIVE responses. Either from the get-go or, more powerfully, when you deftly deal with a situation most men RUN from.
Break the negative loop, and you find yourself in a win-win place. That’s not to say ALL women you approach will fall all over you – they have their own lives and issues to deal with – but you won’t ever feel that it was YOUR fault.
If you’re friendly, open, and confident, either she will open up to you or she will have a personal reason why she doesn’t.
You don’t have to have that naked-in-the-locker-room junior high feel.
How do you get there? Start with these exercises.
Tomorrow, go out and talk to 10 people. Any 10 – men, women, children, grandmas – just get used to TALKING with strangers. Get comfortable doing it. Talk about books in the bookstore, music in the CD shop, Columbia in Starbucks – anything, so long as you try to do it NATURALLY.
More than likely some of the people you talk to will be women, and more than likely some will be hot. Great. Treat them the SAME as everyone else. Remember, you’re just practicing the natural connection with humanity, something most people can’t do around strangers.
Got it? Good. Now do the same thing for 10 days. That’s right, 100 people.
Just do it. Don’t tell Phil Knight I said that.
At the end of those 10 days you should feel a lot more relaxed approaching strangers and conversing with them. So the NEXT 10 days you are going to talk to beautiful women.
This doesn’t mean to ignore everyone else, but if you see a woman that you’re attracted to, MAKE yourself talk to her. Ok, if she’s at a restaurant spoon-feeding her grandparents, you’re excused, but if the situation is REMOTELY acceptable, you’ve gotta talk to her. Period.
If you want, you can simply say “I usually get nervous talking to beautiful women, so I’m practicing talking to them in a relaxed way, staying in myself. Thanks for the help.†Most of the time the response will be better than you think – she’ll be flattered, and you might provoke a little nurturing instinct.
Don’t stop there, of course. Try to talk for around 5 minutes without getting flustered. After 10 days, odds are you’ll be pretty good. Some women might even volunteer their numbers.
But we’re not finished. The NEXT 10 days you are going to go out and ask 10 women a day for their numbers, emails, even instant dates (like moving on to a coffee shop). Remember to stay relaxed and talk to them as you talked to everyone else. DO NOT change your approach – she’ll know if you do. Keep cool and confident – the rest will come.
At the end of this month, you’ll be a new man. A more confident man. And, likely, a man with enough numbers to keep you busy for the next month.
You’ll be starting to ENJOY those social pressure moments, because you know that good connections come out of them. You’ll have a positive feedback loop. You’ll be ready for the next step.
Getting numbers is, after all, only the first step. There’s plenty more to know if you are going to have full success and find yourself satiated at the end of the night. Stay tuned.
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