Hey guys,

Please do not delete your post after it gets answered. Some of the questions that I answer here gets deleted soon after. This is very bad. I spent 20 minutes of my time to give a very detailed answer to a question. Only to see the post get deleted after he got the answer... This is happening in this sub A LOT... Please don't do it.

I typed following in an answer about approach anxiety and getting confident. I literally spent 20+ minutes digging my Hdd or amazon shopping history to get the books names right. Only to see the OP delete his post 30 minutes after my reply... Now, if someone asks the same question, me or someone else will need to spend the same effort.

Here is my answer if you are interested:

First of all read "Man's Guide to Psychology". It is a book written by a psychologist who also knows about game. It touches lots of topics about fear, anxiety, anger, subconscious day to day decisions and how to improve them.

Before you read rest of this post pay close attention to what I said in next paragraph

"Man's Guide to Psychology" is a very good book that explains your fears and how they control you. It also does a good job of giving few ideas that show how to start making changes that would last a life time. After you read "Man's Guide to Psychology", you should start taking action. If you read it and you still don't take actions, then you might want to start seeing a therapist. There is no shame in this as I and many other PUAs that I know did it in the past. We all benefited from it.

After that, read the book called "Six pillars of self esteem". This book will help you understand where does confidence come from and how to keep/improve yours.

After that, read the book called "Extreme ownership". This book is not about anxiety or self esteem. But, it very strongly agrees with the fact that things like accepting fault, discipline, taking action, planning, etc are a lot more important than feelings/motivation/state/etc. This book thought me that showing up and doing it no matter what is the best thing I can do to improve my self. Sometimes, it feels like shit to be out there... But, you gotta do what you gotta do if you want to reach your goals.

If you want to understand more about the source of your fears then read some books about evolutionary psychology. I can't recommend a single book but getting information about evolutionary psychology was an eye opener for me. For example, it is believed that "approach anxiety" is a remnant from times when humans lived in tribes. Back then, if you openly flirted with chief's daughter or the hottest girl in the tribe, then you might end up getting cast out of the tribe. This would mean that you would die without passing your genes to next generation. So most guys who seeked approval of their tribe before they started flirting with a girl survived more often. So they passed their genes to next generation most often. Hence the reason why most guys these days have approach anxiety. Approach anxiety was a good survival strategy back then. But, these days we live in cities with millions of people and noone would kick us out of the tribe if we flirted with a girl. So, AA has no use in our lives these days and it is killing your chances for reproduction. It is the same thing as storing fat. Back in the day, it was for survival. These days obesity kills more people than most diseases.