Often when walking around and seeing cute girls I find myself rationalizing them away. "she's busy, she's with friends, she's too old, she's..."

But the thing is, I want to practice. I want to get experience. All of these hiccups I'm thinking about should be a positive because they're increasing the level of challenge. I know this for a fact and tell myself this constantly, and yet often it's not enough and I still pussy out.

The other thing is, the few times I do approach, it's always a positive. Not even from the bullshit perspective of trying to convince myself everything is a positive despite feeling like shit about being rejected, I genuinely feel great afterwards, because most of the time:

  • the girl is flattered / caught-off guard a little and it strengthens my resolve and confidence

  • replaying the conversation in my head I am fucking astonished at how little control I have over what's coming out of my mouth because of the anxiety, and it's motivating and entertaining (literally I look forward to the next time I talk to a girl so that I can laugh at the crap that I somehow managed to spew). This is especially true when reading a little on seddit at the same time because I feel I know exactly why what I said was bad and what I could've done better. Instead of thinking "wow what happened why couldn't I get her :(" I'm thinking "Son, you need to get to work and fix that!"

  • many girls are worse than I am! they can barely talk, they can't hold eye contact, they're shifty, etc. of course, this is a sign that I'm not doing it right because part of my goal is to put them at ease, but it's a much more relaxing way to think about girls than "she probably thinks i'm a loser" or the other bullshit your brain will tell you when you're feeling anxious. No matter how many times people tell you that girls are just as shy and self-conscious as we are nothing makes you realize it quite like approaching a stranger and telling her she's cute!

  • even if none of the above positives occur I feel genuinely content that I managed to carry out the approach despite the voices in my head trying to rationalize it away. it's a step in the right direction!

The irony is, knowing all of this is only half the battle, because the anxiety is so irrational. Yesterday I walked around for quite a bit passing up opportunity after opportunity and feeling more and more resentful to myself for it because I was so aware of how ridiculous it was. But I'm still happy, because it's a step up: instead of just being stuck in my head battling between "she's cute go for it" and "it'll never work don't even try", there's a third, objective watcher there thinking "look at you, stuck in your head" (this is something Eckhart Tolle mentions in the power of now as a way of getting out of your head, just noticing it and not dwelling upon it).

Hope this helps someone!