100 Cold Approaches

So today the sun is shining there is a cool breeze and I say, what the hell? It's the weekend. Time to go into the city and do at least one approach.

I start walking and see a real stunner walking towards me. She is wearing sports clothes exposing her well toned body and holding her phone. So you know what I do? As she is walking past I say, 'excuse me, is that a good phone?' and...

she does not acknowledge my existence. Perhaps she does not hear me or is just repulsed by me. Either way, this does not fill me with a rush of good vibes. Quite the opposite. This is a street with heavy foot traffic and I of course imagine everyone can see and hear this and begin mocking me to anyone in earshot.

I walk away and regroup. During my regrouping, countless opportunities present themselves and fade away like tears in the rain. I wonder ...perhaps I'm just not up for this? Yesterday, with the directions and now a complete blanking. Shouldn't I have a bit more dignity and self-respect?

I grab a coffee from Starbucks and then go to a river side area and try to catch up with a target but soon give up on her.

I am walking back towards the city now. It's done. It's over. The day has been wasted.

I see another target sitting alone on a bench. She is drinking a Starbucks coffee as well. Kowe, could you try your 'is that a good drink?' opener on her? I mean, she's alone. Sure, some people are sitting nearby but facing in a different direction. I turn around to walk towards her and dive in.

'Excuse me, is that a good drink?' I say. She does not hear me (second time in one day for this) but this lady removes her headphones.

I repeat myself and well, some things logistics wise are off. I'm standing and she's sitting.
She smiles (I guess finding this funny) and says it's just a cappuccinno.

I start rambling about how I keep drinking the same drink and maybe I should vary it and how I always go to Starbucks and maybe I should try Nero or Costa. I just ramble and ramble.
She talks about how she's just moved here. I throw in a question about that and then she asks ME a question about how long I've been here.

Woah...this is the first time in all approaches where I have been asked a question. From my studies, I have taken to understand this means she has some sort of interest.

I talk about how I have just moved here too after living abroad, Japan, Canada. Yadda Yadda. She loves Japan. She asks if I speak Japanese. This total stranger is throwing ME questions! I can't quite believe it but I try my best not to panic and end the interaction too early.

She tells me about her background a bit. I ramble a lot about the area how I grew up here, good nightlife spots. I don't know. It's a bit of a blur guys and I feel I almost blacked out during it.

Then I start systematically running through things like her age, name, where she usually goes etc... while rambling on other topics. The thing I took as a good sign in all this is that every time I asked her a question, she asked me one back.

This probably goes on for between 5-10 minutes. Hard to tell.

At the end, I close with the number and get out of there.

I have to admit, I am terrified I typed the number wrong into my phone and I am already acting like a loser about it like 'woohoo !!' as if this is some major achievement when it should just be seen as practice. But well, I never would have imagined I'd have a positive interaction. This woman was friendly, I think she appreciated the chat and was somewhat interested in me throughout.

I don't know how long I should wait before texting her. Any ideas?

So there you go...the emotional rollercoaster that is cold approach continues!

4/100

Of course I was buzzing afterwards and felt like doing more but at the same time, I wanted to keep the afterglow of having a positive experience for the rest of the afternoon.

 

Cheers for the tips man.

I'll be staying in to work on some inner game today (got some Dostoevsky locked and loaded on the Kindle).

Despite this minor breakthrough, I am working on engineering my thoughts so I actually DON'T want it to work out with this first number, since if it does I'll probably refrain from making more approaches. A rejection would actually be better for me now, that's what I'm telling myself.

 

Going out with my buddy later to go sarging.

 

Try to go all the way and connect with every woman you meet. It's easy to say, "I don't care, it's a long-term job, there will be more."
But it's important to keep a human side. Don't have regrets for being too afraid to try.

On the other hand, not expecting anything is a good mindset. Because you don't know if you're going to see her again.
Not having expectations and not needing women but at the same time approaching them is very positive.

It doesn't matter if there is a rejection or a relationship, you will learn in both cases.

 

Wanting rejection makes you dive deeper into why you avoid it so much.
Accepting it brings a lot, but you can go much further than just accepting it.

Understanding where it comes from and freeing yourself from it little by little involves not avoiding it anymore. And in order not to avoid it anymore, you have to love rejection. So I agree with Kowe

 

So today I went for a hike for some actual stoic contemplation.

The sun was shining and it was great to get away from my house and the internet.

But I couldn't help but be scanning for potential approaches.

So I see two girls, one blonde pretty looking one and on bigger girl.

I walk behind them and they stop for a break. I stop for a break in a nearby spot and then begins that agonising self-torture that comes with contemplating whether or not you will approach.

I finally decide I will and use this line to the blonde one, 'excuse me, do you know of any good trails around here?'

She says 'ask her' gesturing to her friend.

The friend tells me to download some app. Then I say.

'Great. I live near here but I've never been out here. I don't know why. I should come out here more.'

They just stare at me.

Then the bigger one gives me more detailed advice about trails like, 'you could try this one...maybe you could try that one...etc...'

The one thing I will say is that when up close, the girl who was talking appeared more attractive. Sure, she wasn't thin. But she wasn't bad looking.

Then I say, 'I've just moved back to the UK. It's great to get out and see the countryside.'

They say nothing to this. I see the blonde girl turn her body as if to walk away and then it just naturally feels like time to leave, so I say thank you and bye.

Could I have done more here? Dropped more interesting bait? Thrown out 'it's great to be hiking. I used to do it all the time when I lived in Japan.' Maybe I should have. I should have just kept talking, maybe.

After this, I walked back towards where I live. As I got down to the car park - I was cold approached!

This guy with 3 women came up to me and asked if I knew a coffee shop near here. I said 'it's funny you should mention that, because I'm also looking for a coffee shop!' For whatever reason, this remark gets a big laugh from all 3 women. I started thinking, 'should I try the ramble now?' But I refrained. I imagine one was this guy's wife and maybe the other was a daughter. They were all pretty though. But perhaps I shouldn't be attempting game on women in front of their own father.

Which brings me to another related point: there was a large number of daughters on walks with their mothers. I have so far refrained from approaches with this dynamic, but I might try it sometime.

There were also several groups of three, which I am also intimidated by.

I know I said previously that I wouldn't be asking for directions. But this was a bit different: I asked these women for a piece of information I genuinely wanted or at least was somewhat curious about. To me, this is different to faking not knowing where a place is and more genuine.

So yeah, that was that. Nothing big to write about. Surely nothing like the thrill of my last encounter. But I had to get back to the grind at some point and it might as well be sooner rather than later.


5/100

 

Hi StoicContemplation,

Congrats for the bold steps u have taken..i did try bit of cold approaching a few years back...with very little success (unsurprising as I live in a conservative country....not saying this as an excuse, my lack of skill is one of the reason too). Looking back, inspite of the failures I am still content with myself because I faced my fear of rejection. You have taken the task to a completely new level...keep going

Good Luck...May god bless you.

 

I would say they were open to helping me, but not really to having a personal chat. They held eye contact to a point. Hard for me to remember that detail actually. I tend to be bad with holding eye contact so it's something to take note of.

So with this girl and intimacy, how far have things gone ? (avoiding triggers of course)

I'm a bit confused because you posted there was no sex 'as such' and am not totally sure what that means.

I sent a text to the girl I got the number from but she didn't reply yesterday. Not looking good folks. Texts are like missing children: every day without hearing back increases the likelihood that your worst fears are true.

 

What is difficult at the beginning is that we need validation from women. Approaching women on the street is super high in terms of value. We should tell ourselves that we have the right to take ourselves into consideration instead of always being in the position of waiting for the girl to accept us.
It's a real long term job.

 

Hey man, just want to say I like your work. You help influence myself to overcome my fears!

 

Noted, apologies if that came across was prying. Was just intrigued by the particular choice of words you used.

Anyways, that's pretty damn impressive within your first 100 approaches.

 

Good luck dude
It's very difficult. Writing all this is very brave.
And excuse me, I realized that my mind was also too restless. By dint of being always at 200%. The previous posts it was more mental masturbation than anything else lol

 

Yet Stoic, even with all of those negative thoughts - you still managed a few approach attempts. Good on you! Those thoughts, they're Gollum trying to tempt you from the path to Mordor.

I guess you're not counting the 'Do you speak English?' and fair enough. But it's something. Even if you HAD thrown in a ramble, it wouldn't have changed things too much.

I had a bad day in the field myself. Talking myself out of approaches due to the number of people in earshot. Clearly I am going to have to face this dragon head on. I'm not going to like it because of course, we want to approach women on tables by themselves surrounded by no one so at the very worst, if we bomb at least it's between the two of us. But life isn't easy. We can't always get what we want and the more difficult approaches we experience, the stronger we become. It's like Pokemon. You can walk around fighting lv.3 or lv. 2 Pokemon gaining experience points, that's fine. Or you can go and face a wild lv. 50 Dragonyte that almost wipes out your entire team. The latter battle is far more difficult, but your Pokemon will grow far more quickly. Just like your game experience points will increase with the more challenging approaches you do.

Today, after giving up all hope of receiving a response from the girl I cold approached on Friday, I received a text. It tells you a lot about me that when I first saw the text message symbol, I first thought it was one of the escorts I occasionally contact. The fact it was not and it was her after over 24 hours was a real shock.

I am going to need to hunker down in my room with a notebook and a pot of coffee to figure out how to reply to this one. But it's a reminder that this has not all been for nothing.

 

Yes. It's easy to sit at home and say 'I can deal with that humiliation.' But when you're actually out there? It's visceral.

Probably it's a primal feeling. I imagine our ancient ancestors could be killed if they approached a woman if it turns out she was from another tribe/was taken.

We can override this to act but to lie to yourself and pretend that it's possible without colossal fear is just wishful thinking.

It's easy to sit around imagining yourself doing this or saying 'I could probably do it, but I don't feel like it.' All too easy to talk the talk. I am doing it right now to a point since I failed at my goals today. All that matters is the action.

Any approach, even just one, even just blurting out a sentence, is to be commended. I even think you should add it to your approach count @StoicContemplation yet I do understand the feeling that it needs to go beyond one utterance to be considered.