Are You Willing To Be A Loser?
March 15th, 2007 by 
Eric Disco
Every day on the streets of New York City I see attractive women.
I hardly have to turn my head to look at one because another cute one will walk by.
Why don’t I approach more of them?
Why am I afraid to approach a harmless girl?
If things don’t go well with her, I’ll probably never see her again in my life. It doesn’t matter.
Four million women in this city and I’m afraid to approach one.
What am I so afraid of?
When a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder avoids touching doorknobs, he isn’t really avoiding being contaminated. He probably logically knows that he won’t get sick from touching the doorknob.
The obsessive-compulsive is avoiding the negative affect–the thoughts and emotions–associated with touching the doorknob.
Just the same, I am avoiding my own psychological and emotional experiences when I decide to not approach a woman I am attracted to.
It is the avoidance of experience that is at the root of my fear. I am in fear of fear. Or more precisely, in fear of the negative affect.
How do you cure approach anxiety? How do you defeat approach anxiety? How do you overcome approach anxiety?
These are perhaps the worst questions to be asking. They all carry the premise that you want to avoid feeling anxiety.
I read a lot about approach anxiety and have talked to many guys.
There are a lot of things out there to help reduce your anxiety. Breathing techniques. Warmup Sets. The 3-Second Rule. All these things are helpful.
But reducing your anxiety is secondary. By focusing on reducing the anxiety, it’s possible you are still avoiding the experience of feeling the anxiety and rather than accepting it as part of yourself.
It may seem that I put approaching women into too much of a negative light; i.e. fail over and over and over again. But to me these negative experiences are part of the whole experience.
Alongside the joy, pleasure, love and understanding I feel in my interactions with women, I feel fear, pain, hurt, loss, rejection, loneliness and frustration.
I am a winner because I’m willing to be a loser.
Are you willing to be a loser?
If so, what is the best strategy for getting there?
If you try to manage your fear by yourself all in one step, you will fail.
Anxiety becomes palatable only in small increments. If you expose yourself to your own fear a little bit at a time, you learn not to be so fearful of your own emotions and reactions.
If you are able to do it, the best way to go about changing your behavior is to approach one woman every day. You learn how to deal with your fear a little at a time.
Day by day.
Learning how to be a winner because you are willing experience every aspect of your interactions with women, win or lose.
Posted in Acceptance, Initiative and Inhibition | 
5 Comments »
March 15th, 2007 at 9:22 am
“Every day on the streets of New York City I see attractive women.
Why am I afraid to approach a harmless girl?
What am I so afraid of?
The obsessive-compulsive is avoiding the negative affect–the thoughts and emotions–associated with touching the doorknob.”
Approaching random women on the street is the same as a bum approaching random people for money. It reinforces the fact that you are IMPOVERISHED: you don’t have your OWN cool social circle or tribe from which to select a wealth of women.
If you’re already the alpha of a great social circle reaping the benefits of hot women, approaching random women is fine. You don’t need to do it to get laid, you do it because it’s a fun SPORT.
Otherwise, most guys are in the “community” because they are DESPERATE social outcasts who don’t have the skills to acquire and lead a social circle with hot women. How else do you explain the hordes of college boys who can’t even tap into the coeds that they are surrounded by 24/7 and have to approach random women in the street like beggars?
March 15th, 2007 at 9:46 am
That actually used to be a fear of mine. I FELT like I was BOTHERING people by approaching them.
But once you learn how to do it correctly, that fear becomes less of an issue.
Once you begin to put smiles on these girls faces, you realize they WANT to be approached. It’s refreshing for them that a guy has the cajones to come up to them and say hi.
Yes, it’s socially acceptable to approach women in bars. However, I meet 80% of my girlfriends by approaching people during the day.
It’s because it’s a better way to have a GENUINE and SINCERE conversation with her.
Most girls RARELY get approached during the day. So if you do it right, she loves it and enjoys it. Even if you don’t get a date or a phone number, she often walks away glowing, with a smile on her face.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
amen.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
What I think is sad are the guys out there that are really naturals and diss the afc’s as to add insult to injury. I applaud your abilities in meeting and picking up women, really I do. It is a skill I wish I had, but like the multitude of other skills out there, I might not not be any good at it no matter how much I practice. This is where I am. I read The Game, applied the rules to meeting women and nada. It has helped me in no way at all. I just got rejected like a million times over and over again. I got a few dates that led nowhere and now I am back to my afc status. Still I realized one thing. If all you have is picking up women then I feel more sad for you than I. See I have real creative talents and I spend a grip of time on all of that. Art and specifically music have always saved me when nothing else could. It means a lot to me that those skills and what you create with them will stand the test of time and seemingly move beyond our surface and materialistic world. I don’t think the pua studs around here can say that about their skill set …
September 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Please can someone help. I have read your blog and your incites make good sense. But what if you are an obsessive compulsive who has a problem not so much speaking to women but more how tolook at them before I even speak I feel anxoius because I feel I have already done something wrong before I even speak. How do I get passed this first stage of just appreciating there beauty without me thinking they think I am staring at them this has been the bain of my life for the last 15 years. It stops me been able to speak and if I do try a conversationI feel so uncomfortable all im thinking is im staring im looking to much I noticed her breasts or legs I feel terrible then beat myself up the rest of the day. What do most people do when they are talking to a beautifull girl in a low cut top how do you control the anxiety that she might have noticed you look or you may be doing something wrong. Or that she even cares.