Approach Anxiety– everyone gets it. Even the most seasoned pickup veterans. From my personal experience, I can say that it never completely disappears, rather, with lots of experience you can significantly improve how you deal with it. Here I will detail some ways I deal with my often crippling amounts of AA.
Your mind is your GREATEST enemy.
Human reproductive psychology has not adjusted to the population explosion nor modernization over the past 200,000 years. Back in the “caveman days” of early humans, hitting on women was extremely high risk. If you accidentally hit on a female who was already taken by a man, especially by yourself, you’d risk getting killed by brutal bludgeoning or worse. Hell, even if you hit on a single girl from a different tribe, the tribe could object and have you killed. See what I’m getting at? When you’re eyeing that hot girl and your heart starts beating out of your chest and everything in your body is telling you not to do the approach, it’s the caveman brain speaking to you!! After the modernization of humans and the rise of society and laws, this threat of dying a terrible death for hitting on a girl no longer exists– our primitive brains just think it does. I also mentioned the population explosion because instead of having just a few tribes in your area with very few hot chicks, with the 7.5 billion people on the planet there is literally a SURPLUS of hot, dick-deprived women. The tricky part is that our caveman brains do not know this. So the next time you get AA, you must be absolutely certain that the only risk comes from failure to approach.
One AA-eliminating phrase
- Ignore the caveman brain
- It’s a numbers game
- PLAY TO WIN
- YOLO / HTFU (Harden The Fuck Up)
- You are smaller than a speck of sand in the universe
- Success is random
- No Apologies
Here are some of the many you could use. When you get AA, you will probably have a very clouded mind. You’ll probably be over-analyzing the situation, thinking too hard about what to say and potentially confounding variables. Remember that this is just your mind playing tricks on you. Having one key phrase in your mind such as the ones above will help you calm these thoughts and pass the confidence threshold to be able to open the set. When your mind is panicking, simplicity is key.
Walk towards her immediately
While this goes against pretty much everything you have learned in life, doing before you think is important if you are one to get crippling AA that results in consistently low approach volume. Get into the habit of immediately walking towards the girl when you see her, as I assure you this will increase the probability that you will open.
But I’m not in state!!
A topic of debate in the pickup community is whether or not “state” exists. Being “in state” is essentially being “in the zone,” or feeling confident. Personally, I do believe it exists, but I think that it is a bad habit to rely on being in state to be able to approach. Being in state is a good thing, however, as I can attest that my highest volume days (30+ approaches) were not possible without being in state. In random sets you see in your daily life, you likely won’t be in state, and in this case you must not use your lack of state as an excuse to skip the set.
Be hard on yourself
In pickup, you have to hold yourself accountable for your performance. Unless you have a coach, nobody is gonna be there to criticize you for being a pussy but yourself, and for that reason you have to hold yourself to an extremely high standard. Have aggressive goals. Pussying out is NOT an option.
You should now have the basics necessary to deal with AA. Hope this was helpful.
-Cypher
Cypher Daygame 