Today I directly approached a girl for the first time at a mall. While I got "rejected", it didn't feel sad or painful or anything. It actually felt amazing, like I had broken through a wall and gotten to the next level. Actually if we're going to use a video game analogy, I should say that it felt like I actually started playing "the game" and not just reading manuals and watching walk-through videos about it.

So how did I do it?

First, to help me with confidence, I wore a new jacket and some new shoes that I had bought the day before. I know this is a superficial crutch but my normal sweater/jacket was 2 sizes too big since I've been on a diet and my only pair shoes were over a year old, so it made sense to get some new ones anyway. The new look I had looked way more intense and bad ass than the normal polo shirt and sneakers that I usually wear, and people treated me with high social status because of it, which also helped. I don't want to become dependent on it though so next time I go out to approach girls I'll try to do so using a more normal/casual look, which will actually probably work better since I'll feel more congruent in my regular clothes. I'm also practicing not giving a fuck whenever possible and doing things outside of social norms to help build my core confidence.

Second, I didn't go alone. I went with a friend who was a girl who agreed to come with me to help me hit on girls. I was able to banter with her as we walked around the mall and in and out of stores looking for girls to approach. I had fun making her laugh and I was getting occasional IOIs from other girls that looked nice, but I still felt too shy to approach for some reason. While she wasn't involved with the actual approach, just talking to her helped kept me out of my head and in a social mindset.

Finally, to feel more motivated to approach I decided I wouldn't eat lunch until I had made my one direct approach.

After about an hour and a half I was starting to get really hungry and tired of walking around so I decided to just stand outside one of the women's clothing stores and talk to my female friend about whatever came to mind and just wait for a girl to walk out of the store and approach her. After about 5 minutes a cute girl walked by and I thought to myself "THAT'S THE ONE! RUN FUCKER RUN!" So I ran past her, turned around, and said "Hi, this is going to sound really random but I just saw you walking by and thought you looked really nice." She smiled and said "thanks" and kept on walking.

And just like that, it was over. My first "rejection", if you can even call it that. It actually felt good since I had proved to myself that I actually had the confidence to do a direct approach.

Now I just need to get used to doing it dozens of times a day by myself at any venue wearing anything. One step at a time!