It bothers me when it feels like I’ve missed out on an opportunity. A girl gave me this look, I did nothing, and then I start feeling guilty. Should I feel down for not approaching every cute girl that I see?
Let’s take a look at a couple of hypothetical examples to help us answer this question…
1. Say some girl is walking in the opposite direction of you on the sidewalk and locks eye contact, and maybe even smiles. Should you approach her?
2. How about if you’re sitting next to a girl on the subway and she looks around at other passengers instead of staying focused on her book. How about if she glances at the newspaper you are reading. Should you approach?
3. How about if the girl next to you at the coffee shop sighs deeply several times and stares off in space. Should you approach?
There is no clear line about when you should approach and when you shouldn’t, but there are opportunities which you should get mad at yourself for not taking action. For example, if a girl looks at you for more than one second, you should approach her no matter where you are, because it’s never an accident that someone makes eye contact with another person.
You should also approach girls who are looking around or seem bored, even if they don’t look at you. They want to be distracted with a conversation instead of doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
Therefore I say YES to the three cases above. You should approach. But how about the girls who don’t look at you and seem completely focused in their work?
Well, I know what happens when I approach these girls, but do you? While these are not high-success approaches, I think you owe it to yourself to try them out a few times and see what you can learn. The experience I got from approaching so many girls has helped me be able to tell when a girl is open to being talked to or not.
But keep in mind that her approachability is only one factor in deciding if you should approach. If there is a girl that is especially attractive and close to my ideal type, I’m going to talk to her whether she knows I exist or not.
Still, we’re not perfect, and there will be times when there is a girl you should have approached but didn’t. Maybe you were in a bad mood, or maybe you still worry about spectators listening in on your game. The result is that girl is gone, probably forever, and you learned nothing about how to get with her. You may feel guilty in the process. The next best thing you can do is replay the event in your head and imagine what you could have done differently.
How would you have opened her? How would the first minute of the conversation have been like?
Then if you are presented with a similar opportunity again, you simply have to repeat your mental performance for real life. Just do what you’ve already rehearsed. One reason I’m good at approaching because my mind has done it thousands of times, even when I wasn’t actually doing it.
Different approach situations can be very similar, especially if you have a general routine of places you frequent and hang out at. Mentally rehearsing approaches better prepares you for an episode that will happen again.
Feeling regret or inadequate is good because it will spur you to action. That’s how I got into the game, when I had a lot of bottled-up shame for not being able to get laid regularly. After starting from zero I became a man obsessed. I read the psychology books, did the approaches, and learned from alpha males in the field who already had a piece of skill that I wanted. I kept going for six years until I could cross out girls from my list of problems in life.
But it won’t take you six years.
