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BY Brad- | August 15th, 2011 at 2:05 PM
My New Sticking Point… Approach Anxiety
Yuck!

I’ve got a serious cold after 25 nights in a row of partying, culminating last night with literally 15 hours of running around Berlin.

Starting at 2PM, pool parties, random open air day time rave in the middle of a field, multiple clubs in the rain, ending in full glory at 5AM, and now I feel like DEATH.

And yet, even with the success of the evening, I’ve learned a big lesson.

I don’t approach enough!

I remember when I was back in Copenhagen, I was talking with one of my newest assistants, Neal, about sticking points, and how they come full circle, and hit on new levels.

His response was, “Ehh, actually I think it’s just the same bad habits, and sometimes you get lazy and they come back.”

WHAT?!

At the time I fought it, but it’s true. When you have a lot of success, and get better and better, it is easy to get lazy at times and forget about the basics.



Create Opportunity

For me it’s been an eternal sticking point that I don’t approach enough.

There are a multitude of reasons why it’s come up at different times in your development.

Early on, before my bootcamp as a client, I relied heavily on booze to approach, mostly because I hadn’t had a lot of experience approaching, and therefore was “afraid” of rejection on some illogical emotional level.

Then I took the bootcamp, and COMPLETELY eradicated the approach anxiety issue.

Then a few months later, it came back.

This time it was because I had started getting some SERIOUS results, but as typically happens, I started developing an ego of being successful with girls.

The problem is then, when I would go out, on some emotional level, not logical, I would be afraid to approach because if the girl rejected me, it would affect my identity of being “good with girls.”

How did I get over that one?

I went out and TRIED to get rejected, doing crazy stuff, basically self amusing, and lo-and-behold, all the interactions went GREAT and I went on another amazing run.

Why did it come back this time around?


Too Much Success

I’ve said before that the problem in developing a skill usually isn’t fixing the sticking point, it is finding out what the sticking point is.

And up until this Euro tour, I had been literally working through the same sticking point for TWO YEARS, but I’ve FINALLY got it to a point where it is completely internalized.

Leading.

It’s the biggest shift I’ve had in my game in years, and completely changed how smoothly the interaction goes down.

I can’t believe it took 2 years, but the main thing that held me back from leading more, taking the risk in escalating quicker, was that the whole time I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, how to “level up”, I was still getting better results than ever.

Hotter girls, more girls, crazy adventures, like no one else I knew in the game.

So it was reinforcing bad habits.

I’d gotten so good at the high value, attraction stuff that I would just amp that up so much, that the girl would give ME signals to escalate, or go into man to woman mode, or go for the pull.

I wasn’t doing it on the front end, spinning plates style, I was waiting for her to give me permission, and therefore not take a risk.

Fixing that has totally revolutionized my game and results, and once I’m in the interaction now with the girl, the end goal is INEVITABLE.

Feels good man.

Since I was focused on that sticking point for so long, other foibles in my game were not registering. I was solely focused on the leading.

But, now that that’s taken care of, I’ve recognized a new problem, and this one is BIG!

Approaching more, taking risks, and not relying on approach invitations.

Like I said before, there are LOTS of reasons why I’m not approaching as much as I would like.

What I want to do with this article is pick one reason that seems the most obvious at the moment, and elucidate how to use mental gymnastics to reframe the problem in a way that fits into your reality/identity.

It’s a way to push through sticking points on my own, when I have no mentor, or bootcamp instructor to help me out.

I can think of literally 8-10 other reasons as well, and the goal would be to apply the following process to all of the reasons why you think you have a mental block/sticking point until you reframe it in a way that get’s you what you want.

Alright, here we go…


The Problem

The biggest reason why I don’t take risks on the approach, or wait for an approach invitation, is probably some artifact of teaching "success with women" as a career.

Bootcamp is one aspect, where I HAVE to perform. So every interaction is important in that money is literally on the line for whether I do well or not with a girl.

Yet, 9 times out of 10, the interaction does go well, yet illogically it’s that 10% that holds you back.

Even more of a problem is when I am not on bootcamp, but meet someone that has heard what I do for work.

Then it’s like, “Oh, I hear you’re good at this shit. Show me!”

Even if they don’t outright verbalize this, I know on some level it pops into their head, so I feel like I have to perform for them or something.

It’s never just a fun night out of chatting up girls, I’m always on display, always have to perform.

Yet I like this. It’s what motivates me to be the best. When people are around I perform better anyway.

But that tiny 10%, that fear of failure creeps in, and holds me back at times unless I can tell it's going to be an easy approach.


Look to Your Mentors as an Example

Tyler used an interesting approach to this dilemma, that resulted in one of the biggest most revolutionary new concepts we teach at RSD these days.

I remember back when I started teaching, and Tyler had just gotten back from Hawaii after like 2-3 years in the sticks. He had been heavily involved in content creation and the business infrastructure, and wasn’t going out regularly.

After working 12 hour days 5-6 days a week, it’s pretty hard to turn on the social flow the moment you get into the club.

So I remember he started saying, “Alright, I’m not in a social mode yet, and need to warm up and build momentum, it might literally take me 2 hours! To get into social momentum.”

This was the start of us teaching momentum, and now it’s something that Tyler demos with regularly in the hotseat and on some bootcamps.

At the beginning of the night he says, “Alright, I just got into the club, let me tell you where my reticular activation system is keying into. I’m looking at that girl, and thinking she probably has a boyfriend, or this isn’t going to go well. But oh well, let’s go creep her out!”

When you do not have social momentum, your RAS literally keys into all the negatives, all the bad things that could happen.

Then Tyler would go in, and creep out the girl.

Do it again, and again, and the momentum starts to build, and your RAS changes.

Slowly you only start to recognize the best possible outcome of the interaction and completely forget about the downside.

All you have to do is look at Tyler’s results, the hot girls he gets, to see that it works.

But I guess I’m weird.

I think it’s because, even though I know momentum works, I don’t want to RELY on momentum.

It’s a crutch like anything else. Alcohol, situational confidence, etc.

You see that hot girl during the day and think, “Oh damn… If only I saw that girl at night, after a few drinks, I would totally mack on her.”

Change it to momentum, “Oh damn… If only I saw that girl after talking to 5 other girls, I would totally mack on her.”

It’s relying on something external to get in the flow.

Am I being a bit idealistic? Of course. But I think there is a way through it.

Change the frame, and fit it into my current view of the world.


Michael Jordan

I woke up today, and the recent mental gymnastics going on in my head were focused on, “What would Michael Jordan do?”

Why Michael Jordan? Cuz he’s the best.

Yes, he still has to warm up before the game, he’s on the court shooting layups and stretching like everyone else.

But I don’t view warm up approaches at the beginning of the night as lay ups before the game, it’s like you are already in the game.

But then I framed it another way. Move the line the other direction.

I’ve used the distinction before of separating the beginning half of your night, and the later half of the night into two separate gameplans.

The beginning of the night is social time, whereas the end is “game time.”

I Have Horrible Social Skills.

What I realized is that my game is completely tailored to “game time”, and I am neglecting the beginning social aspect of being out.

Mostly I think this is an old artifact of me living in a small city, Milwaukee, and not having the luxury of a large number of girls in a venue, I couldn’t build momentum.

I would be lucky in a given night to meet 3-4 girls that were attractive and that I hadn’t met before.

Therefore, I built my game in a way that it was “one shot kill.” I’d find my girl, and make it happen, because there wasn’t likely to BE another girl.

But then as I’ve moved on to bigger cities the last few years, I kind of adapted the same style.

I’d just chill around with my buddies for the first couple of hours, wait until an hour before closing, use my intuition from throwing hundreds of students into set and knowing what would go well, find a girl, and make it happen.

I’ve done this MANY times.

But it keeps reinforcing bad habits of not approaching earlier in the night and missing out on opportunities.

So back to the Michael Jordan example.

On the court he motherfucking performs.

But, as stated in his book Driven From Within, what about before the game?

There is a chapter where a journalist explains an experience he had with MJ prior to one of the biggest games in Michael’s career.

It was game six of the finals, and a few hours before the game, Jordan decides to take a detour on the way to the stadium to hit up the ghetto of Chicago to sign some autographs.

He’s completely joking around, having fun, not a care, no stress.

He enters the arena, and while getting his ankle taped up, someone comes over and asks where all of his guests want to sit for the game. He personally picks out the seats, joking around, with full knowledge that he has been training for this night for YEARS, why worry?

Then, once the game starts, it’s on!

The distinction is when the game starts, and when to be social and have fun.

I was completely neglecting the social aspect of pick up, because on some level it is superfluous, but it is also FUN!

I looked at guys running around the club, hitting up set after set, and thought it was try hard, but that is because those guys WERE trying to get laid.

But if your frame is to be running around the club, signing autographs, shaking hands, (not literally, figuratively here) then it all comes into alignment.

You are just out, making the rounds, getting social, having fun, using stupid openers, and joking around, for no other reason other than because you can.

Then if one of those interactions ends up having more potential, you can turn on the game face.

Otherwise, as the night heats up, you're ready to rock KNOWING that the years of experience and hard work will get it done.

The training takes over.


Let’s Tie it Up!

So this is only one of the many reasons that are slowing me down.

Everything from state preservation, time management, relying on amazing assistants and wings, and being lazy all factor in as well.

It’s trying to find a way for it to CLICK into your head so that you automatically do what you want.

Then as you get more positive reference points, it internalizes, and gets reinforced, where (hopefully) you get to the point where you have so many positive reference points, you only see the upside.

-Off to Lisbon in a few days, and then ending up in Dublin for my last 2 cities of the Euro Tour.

Then...

VEGAS!!!

Brad Branson
Lessons in Lifestyle Development