Confidence With Women

Crippling Fear Of Rejection

// Approach Anxiety

I came across this question on a forum I like to visit and thought it would be useful if I answered it here so you all could read it. It concerns how body issues can affect your confidence interacting with others.

Hi, I have a ridiculous fear of being rejected which has hurt me a lot through my life.

Apart from my friends, I’m afraid of being outgoing and friendly to people because I think they’ll see me as creepy and annoying. Although I’ve been following the game for about 6 months now I haven’t had the balls to approach a woman for fear that ill be humiliated.

I’m pretty hairy and got teased alot for it during my high school years and although i knew they were only joking, it still got to me. I think that’s one of the reasons for my insecurity.

Sorry if I’m whining to much but I was wondering what I could do to get rid of this.

Hi there,

The first thing I want to say is you’re probably not as hairy as you imagine yourself to be, children will find any excuse to tease you about something to make you feel bad because that’s the way they are. But if you feel it really is a problem I’d suggest getting a body groomer such as this one and using that on yourself once a week to every two weeks depending on how fast your hair grows. It will take about 10 – 15 minutes to do your chest, legs and arms, possibly even less once you get the hand of using the groomer.

As far as you struggling to be outgoing there’s a common misconception about confidence and how you come to attain it. Most people who lack confidence and are naturally introverted (myself included 3 or 4 years ago) assume that you either are confident or you aren’t like its a light switch that is on or off.

Confidence is actually more like the volume knob on a television, there isn’t just one level you can keep going up and up. You already have confidence in social settings already, you just don’t have a lot of it. This is probably due to you avoiding social interactions where you will be forced to interact with people you don’t already know.

Unfortunately there’s no way to overcome this without you being proactive and pushing yourself into situations that you aren’t used to (AKA interacting with people you don’t know). But the good news is you can do it in such a way that you only feel a tiny bit awkward (due to the newness of the situation).

Think of it this way if I asked you to go and try and talk to a girl and try to get her phone number right now I’ll bet you’d be a bundle of nerves. But what if I’d already got you to talk to 5 other girls previously and had small 30 second conversations with each of them, I’d bet you wouldn’t be as scared of going over to her would you?

Confidence is the act of doing something over and over again until you feel comfortable doing it. So if you want to be confident talking to girls you are going to have to get used to talking to them.

The best way to get started is to go out this week and ask 5 girls for direction to somewhere. Just walk up to them and say “Excuse me. Could you tell me where Starbucks / Barnes and Noble / HMV / Nandos / Chiquitos is, because I’m lost?” let her answer, then thank her and walk away. The good thing about this approach is she’ll really think you’re lost and want to help you and you can stretch your comfort zone as well as getting more confidence interacting with girls by doing this.

The first one will feel really weird but that is just your ego trying to keep you from getting better. Try it and let me know how it goes. You’ll be surprised how much confidence you can gain by just being able to do this.

Cheers!

Posted on July 1st, 2010

Social tagging: Confidence • Fear • girls • Grooming • Introverted • Rejection • Shyness • Women