My roommate and our friends were at this club since 9 pm yesterday. I got off work around 10:30 and asked if I could slide, but the club wasn’t allowing anyone else in due to full capacity. So I said screw it and went out to one of the biggest bars in the city by myself.

Now I took like an HOUR for preparation. If I go out anywhere where I know there will be plenty of girls and my anxiety is starting out high like a situation like this, I always do 4 things:

  1. Make sure I am wearing a simple black t shirt and jeans with 2 inch heel inserts in my boots (puts me at about 6’1”)

  2. Down 3 shots of whiskey

  3. Drink 2 cups of coffee or energy drink

  4. Run through my screener lines, my feeling out lines, and my exit lines. Sometimes I do a card trick during the screening phase, so I warm up by practicing it a few times.

Now I’ve never gone out solo before to a bar. I’d always go out in groups or duos. However whenever I have gone out in duos, I feel like I always end up doing most of the pickups anyways, so I felt like I had some experience.

So I walked in the bar, my anxiety levels were fairly low and I immediately looked around the bar to see who was with what group, who was separated, what girls were available. Walk to the bar and see this cute black haired girl. Walk up to her and said one of my screeners:

“Hey! I saw you across the bar and thought you were pretty cute, what’s your name?”

We get to talking and she mentions that she came here with her boyfriend. Okay, odd you didn’t mention that immediately but cool. Her friend walks over and appears interested in what’s going on between her and I. So I direct my body language towards her and introduce myself. Comment how I almost got into some trouble talking to her friend with the boyfriend, she laughs.

Now I’m reading her body language. She appears interested, so I do one last screener to make sure. I ask if she likes card magic and I show her a trick. Now this particular trick involves me holding her hands and bringing her close. She was down for all of it and I finish the trick with a hidden card reveal and she’s shocked. I’m golden to move into the feeling out phase.

So we grab a drink and head back to her table with her friends. The table is full so we grab our own.

Now I already established physical touch so I make SURE I am still keeping that in play. We grab a booth and I put my arm around her and start asking my fun feeling out lines (e.g “Tell me more about yourself, what do you like to do for fun?”). We’re talking and talking, she’s laughing, so after like 10-15 minutes of this, I enter my exit phase of my approach.

Remembering back, we were talking something to do about hook ups which activated my secret trap card. If this topic comes up and I’m nearing my exit phase, I like to say: “Well you seem like a good girl, you don’t go home with random strangers at bars do you?”. If she’s down, she’ll understand what I am doing.

She’s ends up saying that she is worried how she’ll get home because she’s far away, but immediately gives me her phone and tells me to put my number in it. Told her I could drive her home, she thought about it for a moment, but then said she probably get back to her friend’s house but I should text her sometime. Said that was good and wished her good night. Bar then closes.

Now I don’t even really care about the result. The goal of this was to validate to myself that I could go out alone, get some pickup in, and see if I could manage my anxiety. And I succeed much better than I thought I would. Doing solo runs is really an expert thing to do, but if you can get yourself to do it as a beginner/intermediate, you’ll grow TREMENDOUSLY. I met up with the boys later and told them that I was flying solo beforehand. Definitely got some respect from them haha.

EDIT: These stimulants/items that I used (the insole heels, deck of cards, alcohol) should not be RELIED upon but used as TOOLS if you are facing a situation where you do not think you’ll be able to manage your anxiety well. By doing this, you are breaking through an anxiety management plateau, which will increase your anxiety tolerance and SKILL for pickup. Doing a solo run is challenging even for experts at this, so use the tools and whatever else you may find that will have direct impact.