Changing the way we engage in cold approach

This is something that I have thought about in regards to cold approaches, and I think it brings insight as to why people aren't willing to do it.

You hear it a lot. It's a very high numbers games with a high rejection rate. For example, every 10 approaches you do, you'll get at least 10-11% of the numbers and a fewer percentage of that converts to dates. In theory and what this sub sometimes preaches, is that if you do enough approaches and be resilient in the face of rejection, you'll find someone who is willing to go home with you.

Here's where this setup discourages people from trying this. What I've described above sounds like a lot of work to the point you need to invest a good portion of your time towards picking up people. I'm someone that likes doing cold approaches. I think there's something amazing about striking up a conversation with an attractive stranger and turning that into an opportunity for a romantic, intimate moment. But how many rejections does one need to endure in order to get some successes in, even if the returns are minimal if we're going to follow this theory?

No matter how much resiliency you build through it, humans have a natural reward system that sends them feedback. If you experience mostly rejections whenever you do cold approach, you could try again and it'll turn out differently next time, but your body remembers what it got in return. A whole lot of approach anxiety with very few gotten from that high volume, which meant majority of your attempts end in rejection. Your body associates this journey with someone that has no reward. So this sends the message "I'm gonna go out and it's gonna end in repeated rejections, why should I bother with it?". No doubt the metoo movement and social media has made this worse by getting guys to fear being perceived as creeps. If repeated rejections aren't hard enough, now you gotta watch out for people who see someone cold approaching and paint you as a creep on social media. That means the conditions are set up in a way that if your goal is to meet people and get numbers, your reward system will receive negative feedback, or it gets minimally fulfilled given the high level of effort you put in. Either way, its conditions make it very difficult to engage in and is easy to get discouraged when attempting it. Most people have a tendency to gravitate towards social circles because it feeds the reward system in multiple ways. You meet new friends, build new connections, and possibly turn them into romantic opportunities. Even if you don't have opportunities for romantic connections, it still gets fulfilled through other means. Either way, through this means, the reward system gets what it wants on a consistent basis, thus it gets fulfilled.

Does this mean we should stop cold approaching? I don't think so. I'm someone that likes it. Not to the point foregoing social circles and hobby groups mind you, but the fact that you can meet anyone, anytime, and anywhere is powerful. The problem to solve is that cold approaching has a high rejection rate, and I don't believe the reward system can thrive off of this. If you're starting off with cold approaches, the reward systems gets activated consistently in terms of building skill, experience points, resiliency, and developing an eye for opportunity anywhere you go. But beyond this point, you're not getting much out of it apart from a few numbers, so the reward system is definitely gonna receive negative messages and stuff.

The reward system thrives off of things we want that we can get consistently, so obviously trying to find numbers and getting dates is not going to go well in this environment, so perhaps finding places where we can get value from that happens to open for cold approach opportunities is where it's at. So perhaps, our goal would be to shift our focus to living our best lifestyle.

If there's things that bring us joy in the moment such as going to a particular hobby, taking walks in nature, getting your shopping done, having that dessert, solo travelling, etc, then regardless of weather your cold approach gets rejected or not, now you have a lifestyle where you're getting value from living it, adequately feeding your internal reward system. That means for the rejections you do get from cold approaching, you make up for it with leaning into your lifestyle and letting that fulfill you, making the journey more enjoyable. If you fulfill your reward system with things that you personally enjoy, you can make any journey easy for you.