I walked up to a stunning girl and said, “Are you from Tennessee?”

She smiled wryly and said, “Why, because I’m the only ten you see?”

I shook my head, “No, because you look like a child of incest.”

She cracked up. I mean totally lost it. And five minutes later, she asked for my number.

“No, because you look like a child of incest. . .”

As fun as goofy pickup lines like that can be, the secret to approaching women isn’t about what you say, it’s about how you make her feel.

If you’re in a fun, confident mood, you can walk up to a girl, say just about anything, and walk away with her number five minutes later.

But, if you’re feeling anxious, insecure, or uncomfortable, the women you approach will want nothing to do with you.

This creates a dilemma. If you’re naturally an anxious or insecure guy, how are you supposed to get in a fun mood when approaching women?

As someone who was diagnosed with social anxiety and panic disorder, I understand how difficult it can be to approach women. My nerves used to be so bad I would literally tremble at the thought of walking up to a stranger and introducing myself.

Despite my anxiety, I was able to learn how to approach women with confidence and positive energy. And if I could do it, you can learn to do the same.

Step 1. Change Your Mindset

When learning how to approach women you must create a process that will take your mood from shy/anxious/insecure/etc. – to feeling socially confident.

If you’re anything like me, your first approach on any given day is going to be fairly awkward. After approaching thousands of women (and having lots of cool experiences), I still get nervous sometimes when I go out to meet women.

My first approach is rarely smooth, and it usually only lasts about 30 seconds before I tell her, “It was nice meeting you, have a good day.” But I don’t dread that first awkward approach, I look forward to it.

In psychology, there’s a concept known as flow. Flow is peak experience, it’s the feeling you get when you’re completely immersed in whatever you’re doing. The first step to getting into a flow state is to do something outside of your comfort zone.

Basically, doing something that makes you uncomfortable causes your neurochemistry to change. Normally, we think about all the things that could go wrong if we take a risk (thinking about how that girl might reject you, for example), but once you actually take a risk in the real world, your brain stops focusing on what might go wrong, and it starts focusing on the task at hand.

Now, this isn’t something that happens instantly, it’s a gradual process. But I know that once I approach that first girl, I’ve gotten through the hardest part: I’ve taken that crucial first step towards changing my mood from anxious to extremely confident.

When you’re out meeting women, you can expect each consecutive approach to be a bit easier, smoother, and more successful than the last.

Don’t expect your first approach to be smooth or to lead to anything. Expect it to be a bit choppy, expect to feel uncomfortable, but expect this while also knowing that each approach is going to be better than the last.

One of the biggest reasons guys fail when learning how to approach women is that they have unrealistic expectations of themselves. They think they’ll be able to go out for ten minutes, approach a cute girl, grab her number, and then be done with it.

Most guys can’t go from 0-100 like that. Worse, when we expect too much of ourselves we’re liable to get paralyzed by the pressure that puts on us.

Instead, have low expectations and understand that you can’t just expect to approach women confidently unless you follow a process that gets you into a confident state over-time.

You might be thinking, “Okay, that’s neat, but how do I actually approach women in the first place. How do I gather the courage to do it? What do I say?”

Fair enough. Now that we’ve gone over the mindset, let’s get into the practical steps you can take to learn how to approach women.

How To Gather The Courage To Approach Women

When learning how to approach women, the biggest obstacle for most men is what’s known as approach anxiety. The first step to overcoming approach anxiety is to lower your expectations of yourself. The second step to overcoming approach anxiety is to take baby-steps when you go out to meet women.

If you decided you wanted to run a marathon – but you’ve never ran a mile in your life – you wouldn’t set a goal to run 26 miles today. Instead, you’d start by setting a goal realistic to your current level of fitness.

Similarly, if you’ve never approached women before, you should start by setting a realistic goal based on your current level of confidence.

Let’s say you’ve decided to go to your university campus to meet women. If you’re new to approaching women, it’s a big leap to just walk up to a girl and start a conversation with her. To make it easier on yourself, you can take small steps towards your goal and let the momentum of those steps carry you forward.

For example, instead of walking up to a girl and approaching her directly, you might make a casual remark to a girl who you walk past, (I.E. “I really like your shoes.”)

It’s much easier to compliment a girl as she walks by then it is to start a real conversation with her. But by making that compliment, you’re still getting out of your comfort zone and taking a small risk.

Taking that first small risk will make it much easier to take the next step. After you’ve gotten comfortable with giving girls compliments as you walk by them, you can take the next step by actually walking up to a girl who’s sitting down and giving her a compliment (alternatively, you can walk next to a girl in the same direction as her and give her a compliment).

My personal favorite is the classic line, “Hey, I liked your style and I had to say hi.” This is a good introduction because it’s complimentary without being overtly sexual (which can make a girl uncomfortable), while also clarifying that you’re talking to her because you wanted to meet her (as opposed to tell her about Jesus or whatever).

Your goal at this point is just to spew out your “opener” and then to walk away and do the same thing again. Telling yourself that you don’t have to commit to a long conversation takes some of the pressure off of yourself.

Turning Your Opener into A Real Conversation

Now, if you can continue the conversation past the opener, do it, but you don’t need to force it – if you just want to say, “Have a good day,” and walk away, that’s fine, too.

After you’ve approached a few girls with a compliment, you can take it a step further by starting a real conversation. The easiest way to do this is to ask a couple basic questions, like:

  • “Are you from here?”
  • “What do you do for a living?”
  • “What do you do for fun?

No, those aren’t the most interesting questions in the world, but they’re easy conversation starters. Ideally, when she says where she’s from, you’ll be able to turn that into a more interesting conversation:

You: Where are you from?

Her: San Diego.

You: Really? I used to visit there all the time, until I almost got eaten by a lion at the zoo.

You can turn basic interview questions into interesting conversation by associating off of her answers. If she says she’s from a city that you’ve visited, you can tell a story or talk about what you think of the city. If she says she’s studying to be a doctor, you can talk about how a doctor once made you think you had skin cancer, but it was actually just a scab (this really happened to me).

Sometimes, your questions might not lead to anything interesting. But that’s okay, your goal is just to keep the conversation going as long as you can. Once you run out of things to say, you can exit, “Hey, it was nice meeting you, but I gotta go.”

Wrapping Up How to Approach Women with Confidence

Look, if you’re a naturally confident extroverted guy, you might not need to follow the above process when learning how to approach women.

But, if you’re among the majority of guys who aren’t able to approach attractive women with ease, then using a step-by-step system to approach women can make what would be an otherwise impossible task, manageable.

If you want a better dating life, you need to learn how to approach women.

Imagine you approached five women a day for a week, that would amount to 35 approaches. If you were to ask each of those women for their number, at least half would agree (even if your game is mediocre). By approaching just 5 women a day, you could easily get 17 numbers in a single week(1).

The percentage of those numbers that will lead to dates depends on a number of factors, including:

– How attractive your “vibe” was when you met her (https://redpilltheory.com/2018/03/31/how\-to\-be\-an\-attractive\-man/).

– Whether you had an interesting conversation with her.

– Whether she invested in the interaction.

-How good looking you are (http://www.returnofkings.com/75863/8\-things\-women\-can\-do\-to\-increase\-their\-smv)

-How good your style is.

-Whether you created a sense of rapport with her.

-How long the interaction was.

-Etc.

Even if you are below average at conveying all the above traits, some of your numbers will still lead to dates. I know a guy who’s probably about a 3/10 on the looks scale who went on dates with new girls every week just by approaching a lot of women and asking for their numbers (and yes, he took some of those girls home).

His personality wasn’t appealing, his looks weren’t appealing, but sometimes just the fact that you took a risk and put yourself out there is enough.

In upcoming articles we’ll talk about how to get a higher percentage of the girls you approach to want to hang out with you later. But for now, understand that just going through the process and putting yourself out there is enough to get pretty good results.

Most guys won’t get 17 girls’ numbers in an entire year, but you could do that in just one week if you took persistent action.

I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not.

At times you’ll be uncomfortable or frustrated with yourself, but if you persist and follow the process I’ve outlined in this article, you will have not only learned how to approach women, but you’ll be able to turn some of those approaches into dates.