2024 Year In Review!
This year has been a great year for me in terms of approaching. Went from being terrified and just doing directions and indirect opens to full fledged direct game. I just want to document some of my successes and where I am at right now.
Solo Approaching
I had done direct game before but always with a wing. What is most pleasing about this year is that I have been able to do all the approaching SOLO!
I love the freedom that going out alone and being able to meet girls gives me. This is the ultimate freedom from every rule, norm and limitation that society as a whole imposes on dating. No need to rely on bars, clubs, online dating, social circle etc. You just walk out of your house with just the clothes on your back and go meet girls that you find attractive. There is something so primally empowering about this, I think it has improved my self esteem, my self love, my life satisfaction and really made me more able to be myself and more authentic as I have become less dependent on the approval of society as a whole.
Funnily, the more comfortable you are with doing your own thing and not caring about fitting in, the more I seem to fit in and the more people want to be around me.
Phone numbers
This year I got plenty of numbers, for the first 15 or so numbers, I did not even follow up with them. There was a reason for this. I had finally built up momentum and was feeling great about being able to approach consistently. I knew that if I started texting the numbers and got ghosted or flaked on, it would destroy my confidence and make me stop approaching altogether.
So for the first 15 numbers, I just came home and deleted the numbers. This also helped a lot with my sense of abundance. To most average guys, a girl giving her number to them is a momentous event that is rare. But being able to just dispense with the numbers I got without worrying gave me a great sense of abundance and helped me focus on 1 thing at a time which at that time was just approaching consistently.
Texting, Ghosting and Dates
Finally, I was ready to move on to the next stage and started texting my numbers. As expected a lot of them did not reply, replied for a while and then went dead and some just did not work out as they were travelling etc.
But I did get a couple of instant dates as well as a regular date that I ended up going on 2 dates with. On that second date I had ample chances to make a move but I did not really feel primally attracted to her and I felt I was just trying to kiss her as a cold approach milestone and not because I felt attracted to her. So I ended up not kissing her and although she seemed keen and texted me even after the second date, I stopped pursuing that lead which brings me to my next point.
Being friends with girls and having choice.
I was very surprised by my own actions, when I stopped pursuing that girl who seemed keen. Previously, I would have out of neediness pursued any girl who seemed interested in me. But this time I felt I deserved more, I deserved a girl that I was genuinely attracted to and I was able to NOT pursue a sub optimal lead because I KNEW I could just go out and meet more girls and that there would definitely be other girls around.
Also, due to my new found ability to meet new girls, I felt I could be genuine friends with other girls in my life. Previously a lot of my friendships with girls always carried a hidden romantic/sexual agenda. But now due to the sense of non-neediness and abundance that cold approach gives me, I actually can have attractive girls who are just friends and whom I have no agenda with as I have other girls that I am pursuing sexually. I notice that this quality has also made me way more carefree and fun in my social circles and a lot more girls want to spend time around me.
30 Day Challenge
I attempted Chase's 30 day challenge of approaching 4 girls per day. I could not complete it and had to stop by Day 13. But those 13 days or so taught me a lot. In those roughly two weeks of doing the challenge, I got more phone numbers than I had ever gotten in a two week period.
It taught me about the randomness invloved in cold approach, it taught me how you need to have internal mental discipline to take right action despite what your emotions are saying on any particular day and it also taught me the monumental role that MOMENTUM plays in cold appraoch.
At no other time did I have such calmness, comfort and ease with approaching as I did from around Days 5 onwards of that challenge. I realized your brain seeks familiarity. If you approach everyday, your brain becomes familiar with the activity and then it does not act up as much. And when you really are comfortable approaching, magic happens, interactions go smoothly, you are non needy, you are in flow, you are in that sweet spot.
Now this brings me to my biggest sticking point that I need to work on to get me to the next level.
My Current Biggest Sticking Point
If there is one thing, I want to work and conquer in 2025 that would get me great success, its this:
"The ability to approach regularly (ideally daily)"
Yup! That is it. Nothing fancy or technical. Its just about doing proper full fledged approaches where I am playing to win on a regular basis. If I can do 20+ approaches on a weekly basis, week in and week out without breaks and gaps, that would take me to the next level which for me is to be able to get dates regularly from cold approach.
Volume is absolutely essential in what I do, which is pure cold apprach in malls, bus stops, metro stops, on the street etc.
No IOIs, no pre screening, no looking for AIs, nothing....
Just see a girl you find attractive and go open. This just logically involves a lot of randomness. Girls who are taken, married, busy, not in the mood, just had a break up etc....
So volume and doing at least 20+ opens a week and close to 100 a month is essential to get dates regularly. Now having said that, I think from what I have seen for most average guys (myself included) the biggest barrier separating them from dating success is this inability to approach enough girls regularly.
Solutions!?
Trying a 30 day challenge is an obvious soultion. I did try it and while it worked short term, I was not able to continue it.
The weight and burden of knowing I needed to do 4 direct cold approaches every day put a huge willpower cost on me and made me anxious right from the morning.
Many days, after finishing work late, I felt huge resistance as the thought of doing 4 approaches seemed daunting. I was not in the mood many days and I had to push through!
While I did do that for a while, it had a sort of a rubber band effect. Then for a few weeks I developed an aversion to approaching, my AA shot up, it felt like I had regressed. All that pushing through the resistance with sheer willpower seemed to have formed many negative associations in my brain about approaching.
I had a slump because of this in the beginning of December. I had to go back to basics and start with doing simple indirect openers again. But now over the last few days, I have slowly got back into it.
I feel good about approaching again. And the reason I think is that I have been using a new counter intuitive strategy. But I don't want to write about it yet. Will see how it goes for a few more weeks and then make a post about it.
Till then happy new year to all you guys who might read this. Lets make sure to crush all our dating goals in 2025!
www.girlschase.com
