How to approach when people are close by (stationary), potentially watching and listening?

[gameboy]

I think I've identified a sticking point of mine: I find it very hard to approach a girl when it's a stationary environment, with other people close by who would potentitally overhear everything we say. Like on the beach.

Today I had a situation with a girl on the beach, throwing me obvious IOIs. I hovered around for a while, and whenever I looked over to her, she'd look back at me. She was sitting by herself, apparently listening to music on headphones. But in the end I didn't approach.

I have approached girls on the beach before, but it was much easier for me in the winter, when there were less people around. In the summer everything is packed, and that makes it harder.

I thnk it's some sort of irrational fear of being judged. Has anyone else experienced this, and do you have any ideas how to overcome it? Guess I have to just do it... but maybe there's a trick?

 

[ChrisXKiss]

I think I just started doing it at some point, going to talk to girls no matter who was around.

One way to think about it is what are they gonna judge really? Unless you are in some kind of very religious community, most people that do pay attention will either be curious or in some disbelief of what’s happening.

I think there is a case to be made about the fear being rational, if you approach in a very uncalibrated way. Like you go in extra loud at the beach, or you keep talking to her as she is visibly annoyed, people might get in this mode of having to protect the woman from the weird guy.

But this is not worth thinking if the approach is normal and you are a bit calibrated. Most people will stop paying attention after a bit. It’s just not worth their time to follow a full interaction of some stranger with a girl, if she is responding and there is a natural flow.

 

[Will_V]

I think I've identified a sticking point of mine: I find it very hard to approach a girl when it's a stationary environment, with other people close by who would potentitally overhear everything we say. Like on the beach.

Today I had a situation with a girl on the beach, throwing me obvious IOIs. I hovered around for a while, and whenever I looked over to her, she'd look back at me. She was sitting by herself, apparently listening to music on headphones. But in the end I didn't approach.

I have approached girls on the beach before, but it was much easier for me in the winter, when there were less people around. In the summer everything is packed, and that makes it harder.

I thnk it's some sort of irrational fear of being judged. Has anyone else experienced this, and do you have any ideas how to overcome it? Guess I have to just do it... but maybe there's a trick?

One way to think about it is: if you were standing there and saw a dude walk up to a girl and talk to her, how comfortable would you feel interfering, when you have no idea what their relationship is, especially if that guy was well dressed and socially calibrated?

I've never had a stranger come up and interfere with me in a daygame situation. A bunch of times I've seen people nearby smiling - sometimes guys will beam at me from behind the girls back, as if they have to let me know that they know lol, or girls will hover around with burning curiosity. Mostly I don't pay attention to these things as I'm focused on the girl in front of me.

Another way to reframe it in your mind is as a social power move, like you're just going to wade in and take the pick of the litter by the hand, from right under the herd's watchful gaze, and what are they going to do about it? Remember all these things factor into a girl's impression of you, her perception of your self esteem and your confidence, and how much of a spark your approach ignites in her.

As always with cold approach, if something makes you feel too uncomfortable, just tune things to be slightly more indirect, slightly more friendly and warm and less intentional, go in and think of it as a new experience to gather new data points from, and then you can adjust back to where it needs to be to create the right level of tension and excitement.

 

[James D]

+1 on what @Will_V and @ChrisXKiss said.

I've faced that too and still do to some extent.

If you watch videos of Juan approaching girls on his ThatWasEpic YouTube channel, you'll see that no one in the surrounding pays him or the girl he approached much attention.

And that's despite approaching almost exclusively in crowded areas in the day.

There's really a case to be made for being smooth and calibrated to her signals (which Juan is a master at) as the surefire way to keep those fears from materialising.

People are gonna notice. They will look.

But they'll almost never actually interfere in any way.

 

[WierdDough]

I think if you work on this one thing, many good things will come from it. A sticking point like this directly reflects your mindset about approaching, how you feel about it, and how you react to the environment around you.

Around 15 years ago, I had an experience that flipped my mindset completely when facing situations like these. I was already going out a lot, daytime and nighttime, trying to meet girls, trying to rid myself of that inner resistance to go for the things I wanted. In my mind, just pushing through would eventually alleviate that resistance, but somehow, that resistance persisted. One night after clubbing I was riding the subway home with a friend of mine, we noticed some cute girls sitting a few seats away from us, and they noticed us. We were given a couple of IOIs, but the fact that the subway was crowded and dead silent put my ideas of approaching to a stop. In walks a legend of a man, half drunk, but jolly as fuck. He sits down next to these girls and asks them if they think he looks like Rambo. The whole room cringed, but somehow, he didn´t notice. He kept on talking to these girls, but everything was about Rambo. Every observation he made, referenced Rambo. Every question he made, referenced Rambo. Every frickin statement about anything, referenced Rambo. He had Rambo on his mind. The room turned from a cringe, to a giggle. From giggling, to laughing. And by the end, we were all crying laughing. Every single person in that cart. He asked for one of the girls number, and the whole cart cheered him on. He walked on that subway a jolly drunk guy, and he left a legend.

From that point I started paying very little mind to environments like that. Let the people watch, be like Rambo.

Best regards, WD

 

[Chase]

@gameboy,

Depends what motivates you.

If you have any strain of showoff in you, you can tap that as motivation fuel:

So You’re a Showoff… How Do You Use It?

In “Locating Good Low Competition Sexual Markets", a reader writes in asking about the desire to show off: “Hey, Chase, I would like to see your article on desire to show off. I have such problem in me that usually I want to be seen as awesome and seek for approval, but it is something that...

www.girlschase.com

You just switch your thinking to, "I'm going to let these people watch what a brass-balled beast I am as I approach this hottie RIGHT in front of them."

If there are other dudes around you can think to yourself about how these guys will all be kicking themselves for not approaching once they see YOU approach.

If you like overcoming challenges, then, "Approaching in front of people is scary as FUCK... but I'm such a monster I'm going to go do it anyway."

Etc.

Whenever you have "fear/hesitancy is crippling me" situations, if you can figure out a way to set your motivations toward overcoming that, you can just jump in and do it.

Alternately, you can just set it as one of your approach goals: "This week, I need to approach 3 girls right in front other people who'll be able to see/overhear us." Once you've done it a few times and the earth didn't open up and swallow you when you did it, the fear becomes a lot more subdued.

Chase

 

[DarkKnight]

Basically I first screen if those people are familiar to her, then it is important to calibrate but if they are just random strangers I just talk to her and behavle like it is natural. I even do this in entire silent rooms where people are focussed on their work but listening in, friends of mine told me multiple times (because they are also listening in) that I am very ballsy for doing it but it is experience and congruence.

But I got to say there is always some social pressure and some other people KNOW you are gaming they pre-anticipate with me so they are giving you pressure with bodylanguage , but fuck it not gonna get demotivated because of someone else

 

[DarkKnight]

Coincidentially, I had to do this yesterday... and it was a really hard approach because lots of social pressure. Let me not get into the details, but it was very very succesful and the girl is extremely high quality. I do have a creeping suspicion that despite that she barely looked at me she extended her stay in the venue because she hoped that I talk with her. So she indirectly helped out, but I needed to get rid of a couple of wildcards. What happened after is quite beautiful and worthwhile

Today I had a situation with a girl on the beach, throwing me obvious IOIs. I hovered around for a while, and whenever I looked over to her, she'd look back at me. She was sitting by herself, apparently listening to music on headphones. But in the end I didn't approach.

But this is not a hard approach.. she is already giving you IOIs. The girl I just wrote about above BARELY looked at me, was very closed up in a small room with a lot of people being silent and nobody engaging eachother, talk about awkward. You are on a beach, just walk near her or as if you are about to pass her, motion for her to take off the headphones and you can use cheesy openers after so many IOIS, it really doesnt matter

 

[Francis]

More of a back end mental model perspective: out emotions evolved in much smaller tribal environments where negative preselection and danger from other men would unapologetically weed our genes out of existence.

From Mystery's Venusian Arts Handbook, it simply takes exposure to these situations to realize nothing bad will happen in our modern environment:

Rejection and Approach Anxiety

Logically, rejection causes us no harm. But emotionally, rejection can be a punishing experience. To understand this, we must look at the ancient environment for which we were designed.

In a tribal group, there will be some small number of available w o m e n of breeding age. W h e n a man approaches one, he risks rejection, and if that happens, all the other women will know, which will diminish his value in their eyes — maybe to the point where n o n e of the women will mate with him. This is called preselection — women look for social validation of their choices. A
suitor w h o is preselected will be more attractive, whereas a m a n w h o has been rejected will be less so.
Another factor regarding approach anxiety is the possibility that she may
already be taken, in which case there is a component of real, physical danger to any male w h o approaches her.

For all these reasons and more, m e n are naturally selected to experience approach anxiety. Logically, of course, modern society fixes these problems.

If I am rejected, I can simply go to another part of the bar, or leave the bar entirely. I will probably never see any of those people again. But my emotions don't know that. My emotions are trying to do what's best for me.

So h o w can you avoid rejection?
The answer is: you can't. It isn't the solution to avoid being vulnerable.
Rather, the solution is to embrace your vulnerability, to embrace rejection, and let the Field show you what is g o o d and what is bad. Most approach anxiety is a result of imagined rejections, n o t real ones.

Eventually, time in the
Field will desensitize you to the emotion of rejection. In a game where you might play five or ten sets every night, losing a few of t h e m here and there never really seems like a big deal.

And remember, if you don't make it happen, Nature
will unapologetically weed your genes out of existence.

 

[Bismarck]

I still get this so I can empathise to where the OP is coming from.

 

[ChrisXKiss]

“If I am rejected, I can simply go to another part of the bar, or leave the bar entirely. I will probably never see any of those people again.”

This is quite interesting in fact. Because it does show that there are considerations to be made regarding people around. Unless you want to be burning venues down and jumping from one to the other.

Still a calibrated approach where you handle the rejection smoothly will take care of a lot of that. That said it is valuable to have an idea about the relationship of the girl to those that see you approaching and what effect it could have.

 

[Francis]

Yeah I've barely even started to rid myself of that type of AA. But I think it's good to recognize that the origin of it is a deeply ingrained self-protection mechanism in your brain, which is an "outdated model" as Mystery calls it.

So you may still get embarrassed, but it won't be as bad as you may feel it could be beforehand.

There's an old kids book based on the sentiment "can't go over it, can't go under it... Gotta go through it"