A lot of guys like me get into the pickup community and want to become more social and live a happier life. Meeting new people, especially of the opposite sex, seems to be an essential part of this endeavor. Once you set your mind to going out more and working on your communication skills, you probably encountered the first challenge up front: How do you find people to accompany you? At first you’ll try to convince your friends from school or work to go out with you. Pretty quickly though you found out that they show more interest in binge drinking and puking on the street corner than engaging in conversations with females.

Luckily, through the Internet it is not that hard to connect with someone who is decently enthusiastic about “that pickup stuff” as well (commonly just called “wingmen”, hint: Facebook groups like RSD Inner Circle <your city>. Reddit is sadly not built for that). I cannot stress enough how motivating and inspiring it has been going out with guys who have the same goals as you and actually take action. On top of having more fun while letting loose in bars and clubs, you can always, always learn something from stuff they do. Even if they suck balls with girls, try to find out what sucks about their behavior. Or smell. And just remember to not do that yourself in the future. Now you got a few contacts of guys who you can go out with. But there’s still going to be a couple of nights where everyone indulges in old, lethargic habits and chills at home with chips and beer. Should you just act alike now and give those naughty pictures on your phone a try again? Hell naw. You should put on your shoes and your best hat and still go conquer your city on your own.

Here’s why

Generally, you’ll find out that improving your social skills (that is, changing your behavior of interacting with people) can be really hard and a long, slow process (unless you’re incredibly talented, which I definitely was not). Waiting for this Friday or Saturday when your new wingmen find enough courage to go out means that you take decades to get good at this. If you want to improve quickly, there’s no way around going out alone as well. Every night you spend on your couch is your time being wasted, while you could be out there adding another tiny, tiny improvement to your social skills. Even go out on dead nights once in a while, you might be surprised how many people are there with you (at least in semi-major cities).

At first, going out alone was horrifying to me. I was so afraid of being perceived as a weirdo that I sometimes walked past the club a bunch of times trying to convince myself to enter. In the end I would take a sad walk home and question my lonely existence. What I now realized is that in the end, it just comes down to doing your own thing and not giving a shit about what is “normal” to do. This mindset comes in pretty handy in every area of your life, and good news is: if you don’t have it yet, going out alone is one really quick way to build it. When I finally got my ass into the club back then, my biggest nightmare became real: Girls that I approached asked me where my friends were at. Looking back, it just seems so weird to me that I told them my friends would arrive later — nowadays I just tell the truth and nobody really gives a shit.

Surprisingly, what later went well for me was just straight-out admitting how weird I felt going out by myself. People can easily relate to that and you feel a great relief once you pointed out the elephant in the room. The secret is: In reality, nobody gives a shit as long as you don’t give a shit. You might be the loneliest person in the universe, who never counted one friend as his. If don’t make a big deal out of that, it does not matter at all. People value how much fun you bring to the table, and not so much how your social situation looks right now.

Now that I am going out alone from time to time for over a year now, I realize how much confidence I gained from it. Once you mastered a couple of nights on your own, you’ll notice that you don’t rely on others to have fun anymore. Now that you’ve been through the fire, you’re more at ease with yourself in all kinds of everyday situations. Whenever I am observing others when out, my mind is blown away by how dependent they are on the company of their friends. Once they are left alone for 15 seconds, hell breaks loose. Going out alone will teach you to just take a chill pill when you’re not surrounded by known faces. At some point you’ll learn that there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll survive the night in any case and maybe make some new friends as well. But it goes even deeper than that.

Groups of people that go out regularly tend to form group identities with their own inside jokes. At some point, Mike starts to hit on fat girls while Thomas dances like the Village People on crack, and everyone has a blast. Put alcohol in the equation and the whole thing becomes an interwoven mess of habits and group pressures. Which is hell of fun, until one of these guys decides to go out alone. The framework that he became used to and that helped him with being fun and outgoing is now completely missing.

When you go out alone, you solely rely on yourself to have a good time. You have no excuse to not meet new people anymore if you don’t want to be bored all night. Nobody will be there to tell you what girl to approach or what thing to say, and when you get rejected there’s no-one to comfort you. It will be hard at first, but in the end you will learn to take authority over your actions and basically just do whatever you want (because now you know what you want). No more asking anyone for permission, you are the one who grants permissions to yourself now. All in all, I found going out alone to strengthen my willpower and my emotional stability — basically it made me “man up”. This made me a lot more fun once I am out with friends. And you can have all this too: all it needs is some steps out. Alone.

I originally posted this on medium. Follow me there if you like this: https://medium.com/@nerdwithgirls/going-out-alone-c2506c6576a1#.s2jo8khj3