A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu
The Expectations
The time had finally come: after much reading and preparation, I had finally decided to do the 100 approach challenge as I talk about here. I decided the best place to approach in my area was the mall, and at the time I had decided to follow Roosh’s advice of only opening girls who are by themselves. I was a bit nervous before I got to the mall, but I reminded myself that I am in great shape, I had just gotten promoted at work, and I had a pretty high n-count for my age for a guy who hasn’t done cold approach seriously. All of that led me to believe that I could easily walk in the mall, do 10-15-20 approaches, get a few numbers, and head home happy. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.
The Reality
I walked into the mall, and immediately felt overwhelmed. There were a lot of people there, and I could suddenly hear noises I had never heard inside any mall before. My approach anxiety made it so that I was aware of everything that was going on both inside my head and around the mall, which as you can probably tell wasn’t fun at all. After a bit, I saw a girl walking towards me – she was cute. “There is your first approach!” – my brain told me. However, my brain also overwhelmed me with many other feelings, and I just looked at the girl nervously as she passed me by, not really aware of what had just happened. As she walked by, I realized that I had missed my chance, and that made me even more nervous. Then the fun continued – I started to ask myself why despite previous successes with women, I was feeling so scared of just talking to them. I continued walking – I saw a cute brunette sitting at a table. Perfect opportunity to open – weaseled out of it the same way I did before. Fuck!
I continued to walk around nervously, being way too much inside my head. I saw a girl who was working right outside a store, she looked Latina. She was handing people flyers as they walked by, and she made eye contact with me. I held it and then continued walking around. She was cute. “Approach” was the message from my brain. I didn’t do it right away. I stepped inside a store and the girl was telling me she likes my shoes. She offered some politeness my way, told me about the sale they had, and told me to let her know if I have any questions. I was starting to calm down a little and my nerves weren’t as bad as they were when I had started walking around, but I still needed to catch my breath and thoughts. I went to the restroom and hyped myself up a bit, then went straight out by the Latina handing out flyers, stopped and opened my mouth.
I wanted to start approaching directly, but I didn’t do that with her. I said something about what she was doing. She made small talk and we chatted for a second, she told me she had just gotten to America two weeks ago. She did check out my body as we were talking, which gave me a sudden boost of confidence! My eye contact was definitely not strong, and I stumbled my words. After a bit, she told me she can’t talk much because her boss is right there, and sure enough I saw a guy to the right of me. Being so nervous, I just said OK and walked away without asking for a number. After that first approach, I felt better for a bit, but then as I walking around, I kept letting girls walk by me while making excuses – “looks busy”, “walking too quick”, “wouldn’t be interested”. My mind was literally making any excuse to not talk to cute women.
After a while, I checked the time and realized I had been at the mall for two hours. Two hours – one approach… I felt so disappointed in myself. Then I decided I would man up and approach next girl I see directly, no matter what. And sure enough, a few minutes later I saw a dark skinned girl in yoga pants walk towards me. I took a deep breath and said “Excuse me!” She turned and looked towards me, and I delivered my very first direct opener! I told her I was looking to meet new people shortly after the opener, and she said “I am not too friendly, you should find someone else”. Great! I was able to talk to her for a bit more after that surprisingly – she was from India and was going to school. My body language and eye contact got weaker the more we talked, and after a couple of minutes she said she has to go meet her friend. Did I ask for her number? Definitely not, my brain took a while to process her leaving and by the time I thought of it, she had walked away. I felt a bit proud that I had done my first direct stop, but I knew I had a long way to go. Cold approaching felt like the hardest thing I had to do in ages! Later, as I was walking by a store, I saw the same Indian girl checking out inside. By herself. Nice! At that point, I decided to leave. I had been there for a few hours, but approach anxiety made me feel so many emotions at once I felt like I had been there for days. I was mentally exhausted.
Summary
So there you have it. My first day trying daygame cold approaches – I went out hyped up to do 15-20 approaches, and I did… 2. No matter all the challenges, I felt glad I had started approaching once I got home. I felt alive during my time at the mall, I felt emotions jumbled up inside me that I hadn’t felt in a while. Despite my weak start, I was determined to try again the next day and do more approaches. So if you are in the same position I was during my first day and are overwhelmed with approach anxiety, remember: just keep approaching and it will get better. In closing, I would like to mention that I wanted to detail my first day approaching with as much detail as possible so readers can get the feel of it, despite only doing two approaches. Future field reports I post will be more focused on the approaches themselves, and I won’t go over every approach I did, only the ones that are noteworthy.
Midwest Daygame 