This post is going to be the culmination of what I learned my first month in the game. It's going detail the two important methods which entirely changed my social life.

I've been a relatively attractive guy for most of my life (6'1", been working out for years, good style, decent looking) however I would also consider myself an extreme introvert. It was because of this introversion that I never even came close to my potential with girls. About a month ago I became so frustrated with my introversion that I laid out a program for myself to become more extroverted. There are two very important principles I used to do this: Gradual Exposure Therapy and The "Talk to Everyone" Principle.

The first principle, Gradual Exposure Therapy, has many different names: gradual desensitization, cognitive restructuring, etc. Ultimately the theory is that in order to conquer fears, in this case approaching attractive girls, you have to gradually expose yourself to your fear. For example if someone has a fear of spiders you can take a gradual exposure therapy approach to this: think about a spider, look at a photo of a spider, look at a real spider in a closed box, hold the box with the spider, let the spider crawl on your desk, let the spider crawl on your shoe, let the spider crawl on your pants, let the spider crawl on your sleeve, let the spider crawl on your bare arm. In this approach you're never taking too big of a leap which will cause you to withdraw entirely. You gradually face your fears in a way that won't overwhelm you. I structured a similar program for myself for talking to girls. I'll detail it below. Go to a busier part of your city in order to do this.

  1. Walk down the street and say "hi" to 5 people.
  2. Ask 5 people that you're not attracted to (old ladies, dudes, fat chicks) for the time.
  3. Ask 5 girls that you find attractive for the time.
  4. Ask 5 people that you're not attracted to for the location of a coffee shop (this will be a longer conversation than asking for the time).
  5. Ask 5 attractive girls for the location of a coffee shop.
  6. Compliment 5 attractive girls (this will get you used to being congruent with your thoughts with girls). You can simply say "Excuse me, I just had to say you looked very nice today" and walk away. Easy.
  7. Compliment 5 attractive girls and stay in the conversation. An easy way to do this is just to ask them what they're up to today.

Congratulations, you used gradual exposure therapy to alleviate your fear of approaching and talking to girls. Once you have done this program you will no longer fear approaching attractive girls because once you've done several approaches you're no longer afraid of it. It's like parachuting. You'll never be more scared than when you do it the first time. After you've parachuted once it will be difficult for you to reach that same level of nerves because, fuck, you've already done it before. This essentially restructures your brain into learning that speaking to attractive girls is not dangerous. It's a permanent change. I thought that at first I would have to be approaching girls constantly in order to stave off the fear however I approached a girl a week after not approaching any girls for a week (I was at my family's cottage where there were no girls) and the fear still didn't return.

The second principle that was very important is The "Talk to Everyone" Principle. This principle is fairly self-explanatory. You essentially make an effort to talk to everyone that you come across. This morning I went to the gym and talked to the two guys who were also there working out there (I asked them how their workouts were going, what they were training), the gym owner and his assistant (asked them how the first day of reopening was going). I then went to get some Freshii and talked to the dude in front of me in line, and the cute girl who came in later and was behind me. She brought notes with her for her and her friend's order so I made a joke "I see you brought your notes". What this principle does is it encapsulates elements of Gradual Exposure Therapy in that you're constantly putting yourself in social situations. You grow a little bit every time you have a conversation with someone. It also gives you social proof from your environment. It's a powerful thing when you can enter a gym, restaurant, or bar and everyone knows you. This is very attractive to girls and also works to build a social circle. People will grow fond of you because you're that friendly guy that asks them about themselves and also gives them social proof by talking to them.