One of my new year’s resolutions was to finally overcome my fear of approaching and interacting with women that I’m really attracted to. I’d already created myself an attractive and interesting life, but how are women supposed to get to know about all  that if I’m too afraid to approach them, because I’ve never learned how to do it?

I recently went along to an attraction seminar run by street pick-up expert Alex Coulson, and decided it was time to get a dating coach by signing up to one of Alex’s dating workshop bootcamps. On these bootcamps an experienced pick-up coach takes a small group out into nightclubs and teaches you how to approach and interact with women.

I’ve never been a nightclub kinda guy. That whole scene was frowned upon in my conservative upbringing, and since I never really got into going “clubbing”, I never became comfortable in that environment. Add loud noise which makes conversation difficult, and my awkwardness about approaching and meeting people, and the whole nightclub experience was just unpleasant for me. But clearly for other people comfortable in that environment, it looks like a lot of fun. So I’m keen to learn the approach skills I need so that I can enjoy it too.

Although the bootcamp isn’t for a few weeks yet, my coach has already given me plenty of “homework” to do in order to prepare for it. Every couple of weeks we have  a coaching call where he gives me my next assignment. My first assignment was to go out into some clubs, have a look at the sort of people who went there and decide which clubs had the women who I thought seemed most interesting and attractive. Even just going to the clubs to get myself familiar with an unfamiliar environment was part of the idea. I felt pretty awkward at first, but slowly got comfortable wandering around different clubs, sussing them out.

The next assignment was to start making approaches to women, using a simple conversation opener to start a conversation with the aim of talking for at least 90 seconds. First time I went out to do this I was so nervous, I nearly chickened out at the door of the nightclub thinking “I just want to go home!”. But I also really wanted to get this fear handled. So in I went. I was pretty rough at first, and about 50% of the women I went to speak to were prepared to talk to me. Going alone was also really hard work; I quickly learned the value of having a wing-man. There’s something psychological about having some support nearby, so I don’t feel like a loner when an approach goes badly. Another important thing is to have low expectations of myself: simply to make and approach and start a conversation as my measure of “success”.

The next night I went out, I hooked up with one of the other guys from the workshop so I had a wing-man. Funnily enough, he was more nervous about making approaches than I was, so I ended up making all the ones that he declined.

I went out again last night with one of the guys from my men’s group. We checked out a few nightclubs, but he’s a bit older than me and we don’t seem to be aiming for the same demographic. Rather than making approaches, we wandered from club to club, which made me a bit restless. About 1am we decided to head home, and ended up having a conversation with a really lovely (and very attractive!) woman at the ticket machine in the parking station. After driving back home we had a conversation about the importance of remembering our successes, and spending less time beating ourselves up about our failures. We could choose to focus on the positive interaction with the women at the car park, or on the missed opportunities in the nightclubs. Focusing on the positives will always make you feel better, and good vibes lead to more good vibes. We just have to undo the societal and childhood conditioning that leads us to focus on fear, doubt, uncertainty and failure too much of the time.

Tonight I’m going out again with another guy who has also joined up for the bootcamp. I’m looking forward to it; he seems like a decent guy, and I know he’s as committed as I am to getting this approach thing handled, because he’s forked out his cash. A lot of other guys I’ve been “winging” with haven’t had that level of commitment, and it shows. If you want to be successful at anything, you need to have commitment. I’ll let you know how things go. I’m also going to start celebrating more of my successes on this blog; I think it’s key to developing the positive mindset you need to become successful.

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