How to Defeat Approach Anxiety

By Dan Tolumbro

Indisputably, the biggest problem that faces the new pick-up artist is anxiety that comes from approaching a woman he desires. There have been quite a few explanations for this, ranging from tribal history that has been implanted in our genes, to societal programming on what is right and wrong for us to do.

Put simply, we just happen to desire social acceptance more than anything else that does not physically keep us alive. We want our family to be proud of us, our friends and acquaintances to respect and include us, and the rest of the world to desire us.

What’s the opposite of acceptance? Rejection. And that’s what we’re afraid of.

I’m going to give you some powerful techniques to eradicate this fear’s hold on your life, but before that, I want to discuss the root of this in depth for you.

We’re going to call a girl or group not being interested as something other than “rejection” or “getting rejected.” After all, you didn’t get rejected. Your approach did. If you went in differently, the reaction would have been different. We’re going to call it “getting blown out” or a “blow-out.” This is because while the set didn’t know enough about you to reject you personally, they did express that they wanted to end the interaction.


Your use of words is very important. A good friend of mine is fond of saying, “The first set of the night is always murder.” Now if you’re equating talking to a girl with someone ending your life, of course you will be more than a little hesitant to make that first approach! Anthony Robbins has set up a whole system on how to use your word choice to better your life. I won’t get into it here, but in short, minimize your negative word usage, especially if you’re describing something that’s necessary for you. If you say “Going to the gym is a royal pain in the ass,“ you probably won’t make it there very often. However, if you say “Getting to the gym consistently is a challenge,” it’s a lot more likely you’ll rise to the occasion. So to sum up, I NEVER want to hear you say “I got rejected.”

While word choice is important, a bigger issue that holds
the outcome of the set. In other words, you are giving two girls thirty seconds to give a full evaluation of your value as a person and judge you accordingly. That’s a lot of power to give someone you’ve never met before.

There’s only three reasons an approach might not go well for me:

1) My game wasn’t good enough at this point to handle this particular situation

2) My game was good enough, but I made a mistake in this particular situation

3) There were extenuating circumstances that prevented success, despite that I ran a good set.

That’s it. There are no possibilities for why it can go wrong.

In my years in the game, I’ve met plenty of people that make their living teaching men how to pick-up women. These men pick-up beautiful women right in front of their students, sometimes on video-tape. Some of these guys, if you saw them, would blow your mind because they are not attractive by any standards. They have huge guts, often are balding, sometimes pasty white, and sometimes pretty short and frail. This is a hard thing to accept until you’re actually seen this, but you definitely do not need to be good looking to attract women. The point I’m trying to make is:

YOUR LOOKS ARE NOT WHAT GETS YOU BLOWN OUT.

Your game is the problem; not your looks, not your value. It’s completely dependent on your social skill-set.

When Tyler Durden makes an approach that doesn’t go well (which does happen even for the masters), he says it affects him as emotionally as if he was shooting hoops and had his hand crooked on the basketball and missed.

So you have basically three options to consider. You may have been socially miscalibrated and messed up a set you could have done well. So you learn from your mistake. It also might have been a too difficult set for you to win at this point in your learning curve. You still get mad props for going for it and you are no doubt better because you did go for it. The people that get great at pick-up constantly approach sets out of their comfort zones, where instant success is unlikely. It might be a go-go dancer swinging around a pole. It may be a beautiful girl surrounded by 7 guys. It may be a celebrity. When you’re higher in your learning curve, you’ll be able to own that set.

Until then, it’s only practice.

A great PUA named Hoobie once said that “Every failure is a brick in my palace.” I would change that to “Every approach is a brick in my palace.” The latter is more accurate, because every attempt you make at a pickup, it adds to your cumulative experience.

And of course there are situations where the set-up is precarious at best and it is near impossible to actually win the set. If a group of girls are having a girl’s night out for a friend who’s husband just cheated on her, they’re going to be giving her 100% of their attention and putting guys to the side for the night. There’s no way you would ever know that, so just be open to the possibility. This is not to say you should excuse yourself every time a set doesn’t go well. You can’t always say “She must have been married.” You still have personal accountability. Just let the possibility that it was an impossible set be open in the back of your mind.

Now here are some specific techniques for consistently getting approaches done each night:

· Make it a MUST that you approach a minimum of 6 sets for the night. That you literally can't leave til you do it. Make it your goal to get blown out 6 times. Yes, no numbers, no lays, just get blown out. That way when you get blown out you're closer to your goal.

· If you have a wing, give him 100 dollars. Have him give you 10 dollars back for each approach you do. At the end of the night, he keeps the leftover cash.

· Make it a point to say some outrageous stuff in approaches, stuff you KNOW won't work. Every third approach or so, I will sometimes use a “fun” approach that I don't’ expect to work like going up to a group of girls and saying “Are you ready for the big time?”

· A good exercise from Ross Jeffries is to go to a place like a shopping mall or busy street downtown and stop a girl and say "Excuse me, forgive the interruption. I'm Manny Martian. What is your favorite flavored bowling ball?" Now that's not a pickup attempt, because you were not trying to seduce her. Go do that about 20 times and it should be easier. It may be better to do that one in a major city an hour or so away from where you live for that one.

You have to go BEYOND what a typical approach is before you feel comfortable with a normal approach. Once you say something ridiculous and realize you're still alive and breathing afterwards, you can laugh it off and it’s a heck of a lot easier to ask a couple women what their opinion is on something.

· FOR NEWBIES ONLY: When you approach, touch the girls before you start talking. Like tap a shoulder. That instigates the "point of no return" signal that let’s you know you're already in the interaction. When you see a set, go 3-2-1, TAP, and then they're looking at you and you have to speak. After doing this for a few weeks though, quickly phase it out since it is NOT solid game for a proper pickup.

· Practice seeing women for as they are and not as the demi-gods we make them out to be in the field. If you see a woman in sexy bitch boots, sparkling eye shadow, and shimmering lipstick, of course all you can think of how absolutely wonderful it would be to kiss her. Now look at her and in your head take the lipstick off, as well as the rest of the make-up, and think of how she looks on laundry day. You don’t have to imagine her ugly, but just a bit plainer. That should take it down a notch.

· Lastly, be social in general with women of all shapes and sizes. The more often you talk to women outside of a pick-up session, the more natural it will be to start a conversation with any girl at a bar. Talk to fat, older and unattractive women as well.

You may always feel some jitters your first set of the night, and I know pros who feel that way after 10 years of picking up the most beautiful women. They just plow through despite the initial unpleasant feeling. And thats what a real man does: act in spite of fear, and act in spite of discomfort.


—Dan