Your Words are a Vehicle for Confidence

This weekend I met up with a guy who has been working on the steps in She’s Six Steps Away.

He was practicing being direct with women.

He was able to walk up to a woman and open conversation by being direct.

“Hi. I saw you here and I had to come talk with you,” he would say.

She would stop and, although she was a bit skeptical, she would stay to hear what he had to say.

That’s where things dropped for him. He didn’t know what to say next.

He would freeze up. And when he froze up, the woman would walk away.

How does one get past this inhibition?

For a lot of guys, their solution is to keep doing this over and over again.

Eventually, the thought is, you’ll lose you’re inhibition and start to feel comfortable.

I did this for years.

I tried to be as `natural’ as possible. I felt a huge amount of anxiety when opening women. I sometimes did manage to use that energy.

But I was never truly relaxed in conversation with women.

The second way is this: have something memorized to say.

For my client, he was getting stuck at Step 5, transitioning into personal conversation. He could have said:

“I get the feeling you’re not from around here”

Or

“You look like you do something creative. I’m gonna say you’re a painter.”

Or

“What do you do? Don’t tell me, let me guess.”

Any of these would work.

But not ALL of these will work.

If you simply leave it up to chance what will happen next, or have a drop-down menu of things to choose from, you’ll fuck it up.

You’ll freeze up in front of that gorgeous woman and nothing confident will come out.

Instead, you should choose one of these and memorize it.

Let’s say you choose the first one: “I get the feeling you’re not from around here.”

At least for a short time–a few weeks–use only this. Get very comfortable with it.

See where it goes.

See what she says in response to it.

See if it builds conversation.

Is this the very, very, very best possible thing you could say at that moment?

Probably not.

I’m sure someone reading this could come up with something brilliant, clever, fun, and maybe even mind-blowing.

But guess what?

Your goal here–right now–is not to blow her mind.

It’s to blow your mind.

It’s for you to get comfortable with this step so that you can get better at this step…

And the move on to the next step.

As if you haven’t heard this a thousand times before:

THE WORDS YOU SAY DON’T MATTER.

Your words are simply a vehicle to practice everything else.

But having NOTHING to say is a problem.

Instead of searching for the best possible words to say, or simply hoping that those amazing words will come to you, choose something serviceable and run with it.

Stick to ONE THING for a while before trying something else out or simply going in with nothing to say.

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posted in Initiative and Inhibition