Your approach anxiety isn’t going anywhere

Here’s the bad news, the fear you feel on an approach will never vanish entirely. That’s an opinion voiced by all the best PUAs in the world. It can be diminished and you can learn to overcome the fear, but it will always be there to an extent.

Approaching women is a fundamental aspect of being a pick up artist. If you are not approaching women, you have effectively taken yourself out of the game. No matter how good a PUA you are, you will always need to approach women, and therefore risk rejection. Whether you’re a famous PUA like Mystery, Style or Tyler Durden, or just a guy who’s grinding out five approaches a day, everyone in the game can and should be making approaches.

There are certain ways a PUA can make his approaches easier, social game and social proof being the best, as a guy who walks into a bar with attractive women on both arms, and is seen to be interacting with fun attractive groups of people immediately has social proof which will make it less likely that he gets blown out. Increasing your social circle will mean that you are more likely to be introduced to girls through friends which is a situation from which you’re very unlikely to get blown out.

The way that you approach, in terms of your body language is very important. For example, think about a guy who walks up to a girl face on and stands close to her in an effort to try and make conversation. If his opener works, that’s fine, but if his opener doesn’t work then he’s going to get blown out in an obvious way which damage his social proof and probably his ego. Now imagine a guy who’s walking across the bar on his way somewhere, and as an afterthought turns his head around to face the target whilst his body remains facing away. If she blows him out then as far as everyone else is concerned he’s just exchanged a couple of words with someone whilst on his way to wherever he was going. His social proof isn’t damaged, and his body language is less invasive to the set, giving him a greater chance of success overall. AFC Adam talks about metagame in his latest post, where he reminds us of the importance of working the room to increase your social proof, before approaching really attractive girls.

I find it hard to respect a PUA who doesn’t approach. In a few cases they might be famous and more interested in establishing a career, for example Mystery or Style who have both proved themselves in the field, and are now busy enjoying success on a global scale. However, in my experience I’ve met a number of instructors who don’t approach sets, and simply expect their students to do it without having to prove themselves. Encouraging someone to approach sets is something that literally anyone can do. Being able to do it yourself and see where someone is going wrong is the important aspect. And this comes from doing it yourself over and over again and learning from your mistakes so you can advise others.

As a teacher of pick up, I make sure I’m always approaching, regardless of whether I’m with a student. Subsequently I have social circle full of attractive women, and I’m in a situation where I can exercise a great deal of choice with my love life. It doesn’t mean I don’t get blown out occasionally, and I don’t enjoy it when I do, but when you’re living the life of a PUA with a lot of attractive women to choose from, all of whom you’ve met from your approaches, being scared of opening sets doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

Brad