The Fear You Must Overcome

Fear and anxiety holds more men back from having the kinds of relationships with women than anything else.  Just recently, I was reading an article from Kevin Hogan, where he used a metaphor for making progress towards goals that struck me as particularly useful when looking at pickup and approach anxiety.

Consider this: you're standing before the closed door of a very large room. Let's suppose that you happen to know there's a cash reward waiting for you if you open this door, walk across the room, and claim your reward. Simple, right? But there's a problem: the room is pitch black, so dark that you can't even see your hand in front of your face. Since you've never been in this room before, you have no idea what the interior of the room looks like.

Okay, let's switch out cash reward and switch in the woman of your dreams.

Maybe it's a completely empty room that you could simply walk across and collect your reward. But on the other hand, your imagination creates other interesting scenarios like....could there could be broken glass on the floor, objects in the way that you'll trip over, and things hanging from the ceiling that you'll bump your head into...or WORSE! For all you know there could be ANYTHING! You just don't KNOW. It's unfamiliar and uncomfortable and even though there is no reason to believe so, it's scary.

In pickup this is stuff like: "She'll probably slap me"; "I bet she has a big burly boyfriend who's going to punch me out"; "she's probably a bitch"; "She's out of my league"; "She only likes tall guys, rich guys, etc..."

Take a moment and write your own down...at least 10 excuses your mind conjures up to keep you from stepping into that "dark room"(you'll need that list later).

KEYPOINT: Fear is not a conscious decision.

KEYPOINT: Only a conscious decision can cause you to overcome fear.

This is why discipline, will power and a good support network come in handy. Because even after you've made a decision, you still have to DO SOMETHING!

So you start to think and wonder...

And that's the problem - you simply don't know. You have no idea if navigating the room is a walk in the park and the easiest money you'll ever make...or if it's something that will threaten your life, injure you, or frighten you.

Of course, if you have a lot of experience going into "dark rooms" you do have some idea of what kinds of problems could lurk there--but more on that later.

So what happens? You think about the size of the reward, and then you play that against the dangers that possibly await you. Is it a big enough reward for you to take a risk? Or since the unknown is frightening, do you waive your right to the reward by playing it safe?

Yup, you have to weigh risk vs. rewards. For some guys this means that when they start out, they can approach the top shelf girls because they see the potential reward as far outpacing the risk.

For other guys this means sticking with 6s and 7s because they see the risk as being low enough that they can handle it. Which one of these guys are you?

Sometimes you and I resist change and a possible reward because we don't know what it will take to reach that reward. The familiar (staying in the well-lit room) is safe. We may not get the reward...but neither do we have to take any risks. No risks usually means no disasters based on experience (even though there could be a disaster waiting to enter the well lit room that your mind doesn't consider!!)

This is super key. What are the risks of inaction. Believe me, staying where you are is not as safe as it looks. So take a long hard think about where you'll be a year, or 2 or 5 years from now if you sit still?

The more frightening it is for you to imagine being alone next Valentines day or that you'll want to hide the Valentine's day pictures from your friends!--the more frightening the prospect of showing up at the next family gathering as the only one with no love life to speak of; the more frightening the realization that maybe you won't EVER find a woman and have kids of your own and that if you do "settle" for what is likely to fall into your lap you'll end up as miserable as your friends, the more likely you are to take action--to decide to overcome that fear.

But here's the tough part. You've decided to overcome your fear, but now what? How do you get up the nads to actually start taking that positive action?

Take out that list of 10+ excuses your mind conjures up for not approaching that girl, or not following up on that phone number to try and set up a date. Dig down as deep as you can inside yourself to find those reasons that make your stomach clench up.

Humans are clever creatures and you have your ego saving rationalizations that really do make sense. What we need to get at is those emotional reasons are what really keeps you from moving forward. Now think about the real possibility of those things happening.

Do you honestly know anyone PERSONALLY who's had that experience?

(This is why veterans have a much easier time overcoming approach anxiety than newbies. They have a much better sense of how low the risks are.)

Secondly, what are you going to do if that boogie man shows up? This is essential because when you have a contingency plan, you can truly be "set". And we all know that after "set" comes, "GO!"