Reply To: Inhibited after "big" rejections — lost my hard work & effort?

[The_Hurricane]

The only thing you can do to overcome the impact of these very rare negative events is to put them in perspective, and the only way to do that is to approach more. You will eventually internalize the belief that these things happen very rarely and, even when they do, have no permanent consequences whatsoever. Yes, every once in a while you will get an overzealous guard, manager, or employee, but their actions have no legal standing and you should just laugh it off, which is what you will learn to do.

I do have one piece of advice for you regarding your approach. You can reduce the incidence of these negative events a lot by doing one thing: stop doing direct approaches in relatively quiet, crowded places. I am not a fan of direct to begin with, but if you’re going to do it, do it on the street or in places where you don’t have a big audience.

An audience can work for you, but it can also work against you. If a woman feels cornered and embarrassed, she will react more negatively than she will if she can simply walk away or ignore you. The flip side is that you are demonstrating some big balls by doing a direct approach in front of a crowd, but I find that the trade-off works better for more experienced men.

–Lee