My number one tip for beginners

I've been reading the comments and nobody has mentioned it for awhile so I thought I'd give everyone a reminder : talk to everybody.

I feel simplepickup very clearly demonstrates that it really doesn't matter what you say when you approach a girl. I've even found that girls will tend to relax and open up more when I fumble my words. I don't know the exact science but it seems to work.

The number one most important is how confident you are. You can try to "fake it till you make it" but I think its much easier (and logical) to just acquire some real confidence in approaching strangers.

With real confidence, one stops caring about "failure". I'd even go as far as to say that the concept of "failure" seems to disappear altogether as one acquires real confidence.

Real confidence is when one has complete faith in themselves. One with real confidence doesn't doubt himself. If something doesn't got the way he wants, he never blames himself. He knows that he did his best given the circumstances, pats himself on the back for a job well done, and learns as much as he can from the experience.

It seems a lot of beginners are asking the wrong question : how do you do it?

I feel the more appropriate question is : how did you learn to do it?

I don't know how the other guys here learned to approach girls and (hopefully) get their numbers but I can tell you how I learned and this is my number one tip for beginners.

Talk to everybody

There's no doubt about it in my mind. I improved my social skills because I forced myself to be social. I didn't literally talk to everybody but I started seeking out conversations with strangers more and more. Sometimes they went great and I made a new friend, sometimes I didn't get along with the person at all and just went on my way as soon as socially acceptable.

Regardless of the outcome, I always learned something from the experience so I never regretted. In fact, I'm incredibly grateful for this community for pushing me to talk to strangers. It's enriched my life in so many ways.

As I got better and better at starting and keeping good conversations with strangers of all sorts, a lot of the inner game stuff that's discussed in the community started to come naturally.

I gained confidence in my ability to brighten a stranger's day and the more confident I became the more easily I could brighten a stranger's day. This is because people respond positively to confidence (<- dry as hell but a must read).

Eventually, I felt I reached a point of confidence saturation even "bad" interactions with strangers stopped hurting my confidence. I had so much faith in myself and my abilities to talk to strangers (and hopefully brighten both of our days) that when interactions went "badly", I knew it was because of no fault of mine. The only thing I felt bad about was that the stranger has missed an opportunity for a pleasant conversation.

The great news is that being comfortable approaching and talking to strangers makes it that much easier to approach and talk to cute girls. Sometimes it'll go great and you'll meet an awesome chick, sometimes you'll discover that friendly-looking girl is actually an ice cold bitch with serious psychological issues. Either way, I promise you won't regret it.

Even the "worst" interactions (protective boyfriend/father shows up, you scare the bajeezus out of her with your high energy approach, your friend just hit on the same girl with the same line, she notices your friend is filming the interaction) are blessings in disguise because they make for great laughs and an effective reminder that it's just a ride.

tl;dr : We are social animals, go act like one.

edit : apparently still learning how to format

edit2 : and spell

edit3 : Please don't downvotes posts like coolaznkenny's and rmbarnes'. They are trying to contribute to the discussion and doing a good job of it. Don't dismiss their opinions simply because they don't line up with yours or the community's in general. That is not what the downvote button is for. I've always been and still consider myself an introvert. I've just evolved over the last year to be a social introvert. Socializing for extended periods of times still wears me out but it's a small price to pay for the experiences gained. Talking to a 70+ year old about his great grandchildren at the coffee shop definitely won't directly help get you laid (unless he's trying to pawn off his granddaughter) but it sure does teach you about people in general and does build confidence in talking to strangers. That's what this post is about and I just want to remind the beginners that this simple thing is a great "hack" to build confidence in approaching.