I went to a local mall with a couple of friends, and decided to actually push myself to talk to random girls and try to at least get a phone number, I've tried this previously, but chickened out or made excuses so I didn't have to go up to them. In order to motivate me I would tell my friend "Point one out and I will go up to her" and used the social pressure to force me to do it. At first it was extremely hard, the stomach turning anxiety was really difficult to deal with; I started out asking girls for directions then jetting off before I could say anything else. Eventually I asked a girl if she was single but she gave me a cold "No." It kind of hurt but it wasn't too bad to my surprise. This let me approach other girls much easier, so I started again. After a couple of tries that all ended with "Sorry I have a boyfriend!" I didn't really feel too affected because I tried to take the adrenaline from running up to girls and flirting right off the bat and made it fun instead of being afraid of it, like a roller coaster. He eventually found a girl outside an apple store and as soon as he pointed her out I just walked over without thinking about what I was doing.

I walked up, surprisingly only a little nervous, looked her right in the eye and went

"Excuse me, do you know how to get to......"(I couldn't think of a store to ask)

she interrupted me with "Probably not, I don't really know this mall"

"Oh, then I'm guessing you're not from around here huh?"

"Nope, I'm from (town about 30 minutes away)"

I just asked her about the town and the area and why she chose to come all the way out here to go shopping.

She then asked "So where did you need to go again?"

"Oh... I kinda just made that up, I thought you were pretty and wanted to talk to you" And did that half smirk thing

She looked away quickly and blushed and went "Oh! Thank you!, So where are you from"

I figured that since she wanted to continue the conversation after that, she's probably interested and single. We then exchanged names and talked about where I was from. Her friend then came up and complained about some random guy hitting on her with some sexual remark, which in retrospect probably made me look a lot better. Then I shook her hand and introduced myself, I'm guessing she realized I was hitting on her friend and she went back inside to let us talk.

After she went back inside the girl said

"So..."

I didn't know what conversation topic to bring up I just defaulted and asked blatant questions.

"I have a question, Are you single?"

she smiled and said "Hah.. yes I am" while nodding her head

"So..... that means if I asked you on a date, you'd say yes right?" While doing the smirk thing again.

"Sure!" with another blushing smile

We exchanged numbers and I texted her later that night with "oh shit, here's my #" and she surprisingly remembered my name. We are going on a date sometime soon and i'll probably go ice skating or something. I learned that getting rejected in the day time 99.99% of the time just comprises of "I'm taken". Not once has a girl laughed, glared, or made fun of me to my face for telling her that I think she's pretty and want to talk to her. Knowing this took away basically all of my fear of approaching 1-2 girls. However, I'm still trying to work over the anxiety of approaching groups of 3-5 or girls with their parents.