Long time lurker, first time poster. I just wanted to say thank you to this community and all the tips posted on here.

To start off, a little background on me. I'm a good looking person who is tall and muscular. I'm also a total geek. I've had beautiful girlfriends in the past, and I've never had to work to get any of them. In fact my ex-girlfriends approached me. I get a lot of IOIs from girls, but I'm crippled by general anxiety. I am anxious about everything in life and my introversion makes it even worse. I'm the kind of guy who wouldn't approach that perfect 9 even after all the IOIs have been established. I thought something was wrong with me, maybe I'll never be the guy that's good with girls.

All of that changed when I found this subreddit. I finally took the advice to heart and started practicing on girls that I didn't find attractive. I initiated contact with random strangers, held conversation for minutes. I went to the Thanksgiving sale at my local Macy's and there was this absurdly cute girl at the billing counter. I thought I had no chance with her. We greeted each other and I initiated conversation while she was trying to sign me up for a membership. I could definitely feel that she was into this. She touched my arm while laughing at one my really shitty jokes. I started sweating bullets at this point. When everything was done, I put on my confident voice, told her that she is really cute, got a piece of paper from her, wrote down my number and asked her to hit me up. I don't know if she's going to hit me up, but I feel proud of myself for taking the initiative to deal with my anxiety.

Again, thanks for this wonderful community. Keep doing what you do best. We're all going to make it.