Inner Dialog - The Craziness in Us All

When you pass someone on the street who is muttering unintelligibly to himself, you most likely take a moment to consider, how crazy that person must be. If you're thinking about it though, you're having your own conversation about it, just internally. This internal conversation that we all have is what is known as "Internal Dialog."

Our internal dialog plays a huge role in how we will feel, act and react in social situations. If your internal dialog is positive and reassuring, you will be much more comfortable than if it is negative. This is why, as social anxiety sufferers, it is important that we pay attention to our internal dialog. Even a small change in our internal dialog can contribute very quickly to putting our anxiety in check.

The biggest difficulty I have had in noticing my internal dialog is that when I am in an anxious situation, my mind empties, and I forget to pay attention to my thoughts. At one point, I was nearly convinced that I would never be able to to remember what I was thinking while I was anxious. Fortunately I didn't give up and eventually discovered that if remembering your thoughts is just like most other things in life. You have to practice it.

I came to this conclusion by considering the things I am good at. Why does my anxiety drive me when I am on stage playing drums? Why does it do the same when I am at the center of attention in meetings? The answer had been in front of me all along, yet it was never directly stated. Just like playing drums, or being able to make highly detailed technical presentations, I had to practice paying attention to my thoughts to get good at it.

Now I, and you can begin to get to the heart of the craziness that we feed ourselves in our own minds. We can start to do away with those crazy limiting beliefs, self-criticisms and illogical fears. The one thing we're still missing is how to get from point A to point B. How do you practice paying attention to your thoughts?

Start here - What are you thinking about right now? Good, find a way to remind yourself to think about it again in 5 minutes. You might want to set an alarm or find another way of cuing yourself to think about it. I haven't tried it, but perhaps one could use NLP to install a trigger. Personally I started by using the time I spend driving to and from work to monitor my thoughts.

Once you become proficient at paying attention to your thinking at your set times, expand it and try to remember to pay attention in more and more stressful situations. Perhaps someone just said something that upset you - What are you thinking now?

So far I have focused completely on paying attention to what you are thinking, not trying to change what your internal dialog is. The truth is, that even just consciously realizing what you are thinking may cause a drastic change in the way you feel. This is probably because one you've consciously taken control of your thought process, you realize that your fears are irrational. Should that not be the case, there is still plenty of hope left.

Now that you know what you think to yourself while you are anxious, you can start to attempt to change your internal dialog. As crazy as it sounds, you can talk to yourself internally. Ask your internal dialog, "Why, when I am in this situation, do you tell me this?" It may surprise you to find that you will get an answer. Don't tell your inner dialog that it is wrong to have this opinion, but instead ask it how it believes this is beneficial to you. At this point, the answer may or may not make sense to you, but just as if you were talking to another person, keep asking questions until you understand why your internal dialog "feels" this way. At this point, you can begin to reason with it.

This was initially difficult for me, but it helped me to imagine that I was actually talking to a different person. Now you need to consider the reasoning your internal dialog had for presenting you with the dialog it did, and come up with suggestions in how it can better help you in the future. "I think it would be better in this situation if you were to tell me this and this because of this and this, don't you think?" Continue to reason with your inner dialog until you can come to an agreement on something that would be more helpful to you.

During this process you may notice that your inner dialog may have justify what it tells you using actual things that have happened to you. In this case you will want to remember these, and write them down when you are done, so that you can reflect on these. I would recommend bringing these up to your therapist if you are seeing one as these may be key to helping you in the future.

If you follow this technique, and take the time to do it correctly, you will probably notice at least some improvement in a fairly short time. Some people may notice a huge change immediately, but as with all good things, these changes can also take time.

Persuasion | Persuasion Artist

Persuasion Persuasion Artist

I didn't even finish reading this great article over at Persuasion artiist before I decided that I had to post about it. If you're at all interested in pickup, you won't want to miss the topics discussed in this article. If you're not interested in pickup, you still will probably want to check it out. The article mentions and explains many topics which can be very usefull not only with pickup, but also with your own work on your inner game.

This is definitely a must read.

The Curse of Self-Limiting Beliefs

In many ways, the beliefs we have define the people we are. Whether positive or negative they define how we interpret and react to each and every situation we experience. Usually it is easy to tell the difference between our positive and negative though, but one type of beliefs, self-limiting beliefs, can often fall into a grey area where they are difficult to realize.



One subset of self-limiting beliefs is very dangerous because they masquerade as positive beliefs that have some potential benefits even though they still limit our over all potential. These beliefs often come in the form of "I can still do this even though I can't do that" or "Even though blah blah blah holds me back there are other ways I can accomplish this." Both of these forms of though may affirm that we can do something, but they limit the range of possible approaches we have to accomplish it.



There are also much more obious self-limiting beliefs. For instance one might think to himself "She would never go out with a guy like me." or "I will never make that much money in my life. Both of these may very well be true, but just as easily as they could be true, they could also be false. If you limit yourself to not trying, how will you ever know?


The negativity associated with these beliefs may not be immedietly noticible because it is implied from the segment of possibilities that we believe we "can't" do even if the belief expresses itself in a positive way. In other words if were to have a problem with walking forwards for some reason, the belief that I could walk to my car backward instead would be a self-limiting belief. This implies that I "can't" walk to my car forwards, and thus I am intentionally excluding the possibility of walking forward because I am afraid to do so. In this way, the limiting belief gives me an excuse to only walk backwards because I can, allowing me the to more easily put off learning to cope with walking forward comfortably. Now I know that is a stupid example, but it explains the general idea very well.

You may be wondering how you can know if a belief is a limiting belief. You can start by thinking of a situation you are uncomfortable in. What beliefs do you have about your ability to deal with that situation? How would normally act and what would you say. Next think about what your internal dialogue would be telling you. From this you should be able to infer how your beliefs limit you to the resources you normally have available to you and exclude the other possibilities.

Once you have identified your limiting believes, you'll need to find a way to expand your possibilities. Sometimes just understanding what was holding you back, and that there are other possibilities will be enough. In other cases you may need to boost your self-esteem, or learn new things to open up new possibilities. No matter the case, identifying, and coping with your limiting beliefs will definitely open new possibilities for you.

Social anxiety, dating, and the bar scene | Social anxiety disorder and everyday life

While I was checking my subscriptions this afternoon, I found this slightly disturbing post. It really struck a chord with me because it contains alot of the thoughts that I used to have about myself. The author was stating that he was looking to go outside of ordinary dating methods because he had been unable to successfully control his anxiety. The first thing I noticed was that nearly every paragraph contains at least 1 self-limiting belief, so I wanted to point out a few of them to give people a better idea of what self-limiting beliefs are. Later this week, I will write another post to explain how you can discover, and deal with your own self limiting beliefs.

Here is the article:
Social anxiety, dating, and the bar scene Social anxiety disorder and everyday life

And here are the things I wanted to point out:

"Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s effective if you have the right personality and approach it in a positive way." - Here he is implying that he doesnt' have the right personality to approach dating in the way that most people do, mentally limiting himself to a smaller subset of methods that could work for him.

"Unfortunately, unless you have something going for you (looks, confidence, winning personality), there’s not much chance that you’ll meet anyone." - In this case he's going further, completely eliminating himself from being considered at all . Seriously, everyone has something going for them, you just need to learn what it is, and how to make it apparent. As for confidence, that is something you will build over time.

"It’s hardly the kind of place where a very average looking guy can have women approach him." - Ok, I may an average guy as well, but I have some very attractive friends who have never had a woman approach them. Most women don't approach men.

"But what really helps is that now I know it’s nothing to do with me personally. The problem lies in the way I project myself in public, how I view myself, and how I misinterpret people and situations." - Here he is resigning to the fact that this is just the way he is, and not accepting the fact that this is just the way he allows himself to continue to be. The big self-limiting belief here is "how I view myself" because this has a direct effect on how you project yourself in public, as well has how you interpret other people and situations.

10 Things You Should Do Before Going Out This Weekend

With Memorial Day weekend just a few days away, I thought it would be a great time to put together a list some of the things you can do before going out to help reduce some of your social anxiety.

1. Take a shower or bath - You may already take showers before you go out to make sure that you are clean, but take one even if you don't need it. The warm water will relax you, causing you to be more comfortable.
2. Shave - You don't have to shave off whatever style of facial hair you have. Just touch it up so that you are comfortable that it looks good.
3. Listen to Music - More specifically, listen to music that will help put you in the state you would like to be in. It helps to put some consideration into how different types of music affect you specifically. My favorite song to listen to right before I leave or right before I get out of my car is Clawfinger's "The Biggest and the Best" because it puts me in a very resourceful, confident and determined state.
4. Watch Something Funny - What better is there to put you into a state to have fun? Comedy will lighten your mood and make everything a little bit easier.
5. Exercise After Your Shower - Getting excercize will put you in a more powerfull mood, but perhaps what is more important is what breaking a light sweat might do. We release pheremones in our sweat, so this may help make you more attractive to women. Just remember you don't want to smell bad, so don't over do it.
6. Dress Nice - I'm sure you've heard the expression "Dress for Success." The better you dress, the better you'll feel about how your dressed. In other words dressing better will give you one less thing to not feel confident about.
7. Eat a Healthy Dinner - I'm sure you know its good to eat healthy, but do you know why? If you're going to be drinking, having food in your stomach is always a plus, but also, eating healthy can give you a sense of accomplishment before you leave your house.
8. Have Some Material You Can Use - Do you ever have those awkward moments where you don't seem to have anything to say? Before you go memorize some jokes and information that you think might be appropriate for the social situations you will be in. You'll be much more confident when you know that you have something to say.
9. Clean Up Your House - Is your house a little messy? Would you be embarassed to have people come in? If so, clean it up. You'll feel much better if you do, plus you never know what might happen.
10. Have Fun - This is by far the most important thing on my list. What is the point in going out if you arn't going to have fun yourself? The simple fact is that if you're having fun, others will be drawn to you because they want to have fun as well. If someone makes fun of you, they're probably just jealous becuase you're having fun and they're not so help them have fun to.

I wish the best to all of my readers this wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I'll be out and about as well, so wish me luck as well. Just be safe.

But I'm Shy

How many times have you heard someone say "I can't because I'm shy." or something similar? Personally, I have heard it a million times and there have been many times that that same phrase has come out of my own mouth. In reality this phrase is just a well accepted excuse that we use when we are scared of a social situation. Is there a difference between being shy and having a social anxiety? I don't think so.

In reality, being shy is our excuse to ourself to avoid entering into an uncomfortable social situation. It allows us to deny that our fears are unfounded, and comfortably hide behind a socially accepted term.

If being "Shy" is socially accepted, then isn't it ok?
This depends on how being shy affects you.

1. Does it hold you back?
2. Does it frustrate you?
3. Does it prevent you from doing things that you should be able to do?
4. Do you miss out on things because you are shy?
5. Do you avoid finding a job because you're too "shy" to go to an interview?

If you answered yes to any of those, then I would have to say that it isn't ok. Your shyness is composed of social anxieties which you can learn to cope with should you choose. Too many times I have seen people, including myself, sit back and miss out on wonderful opportunities while hiding behind the shield of being "Shy." If you fit into that category, and you would like to change, you can. I have posted alot of information and tips on my blog pertaining different methods I have used to overcome some of my social anxieties. In addition to what I have here there are a number of sites, books, and other information available that can be invaluable in your search to conquer your shyness. In the Related Sites section of my site, I have posted links to a number of sites that you may find helpfull. In addition, you will find that I reccomend various books that I have read in some of my post.

Approach Anxiety » Blog Archive » What Kind of Guy Just Walks Up to a Woman and Says Hi?

Approach Anxiety » Blog Archive » What Kind of Guy Just Walks Up to a Woman and Says Hi?

As you may remember, I wrote a post a few days ago, "10 Tips for Approaching that Hot Girl" where I said "Just do it." Well , Eric over at ApproachAnxiety.com has written an article that expands upon that nicely. In it he does a very good job of listing the excuses you might have, and provides a method you an use to deal with them. Check it out.

10 Tips for Approaching That Hot Girl

1. Just do it - It doesn't matter what the outcome is in the end, you will never know if you don't try.
2. Approach quickly - Don't give yourself the opportunity to talk yourself out of doing it
3. Be yourself - Don't act differently than you normally would. If you do try to be something that you're not your body language will give you away.
4. Trying and failing is better than standing around - Who would you have more respect for - The guy who just stands around looking dumb or the guy with the balls to approach her?
5. Don't offer to buy her a drink - While doing so might get her to listen to you for a few minutes, it will immediately throw you into the same category as all of the other chumps that offer to buy her drinks. There are better ways to get women to talk to you.
6. Be fun - Don't interview or interrogate her. She's there to have fun, and if you show her that you can have a good time with or without you, guess what she's going to want?
7. Don't be hard on yourself - No matter what you do managed to do, dont be hard on yourself if you fail to do what you wante to do. Look at what you did accomplish, and next time try to do better. If you thrive on your failure instead of concentrating on your successes, it will be harder next time. If you look at your success for what it is, you'll be more successfull next time.
8. Dress well - You don't have to wear a suit and a tie, but you definitely don't want to be dressed in the cloths you wore to work on your car that afternoon. While looking nice may not be the key to unlocking the door into a relationship, it will help get you get those first few words in.
9. She's not the only girl in the world - There are alot of available women out there and if she chooses not to talk to you, that's her loss because someone else will get the opportunity. Plus going into the situation realizing that its ot the end of the world if she shoots you down will make you less nervous and more likely to succeed.
10. Be Confident - You have nothing to lose, only something to gain. If you are 100% confident approaching and talking to her she will respect it, especially if she is really hot. Hot women are used to men being intimidated by them so she'll be interested in you when you're not.

Learning to be more Social : My Goal

Right now I am at what will most likely be the longest part of my process of becoming more socially experienced. I am learning to communicate with people who's interests are different from mine. For me this has always been a huge sticking point because, while I find the topics that most other people talk about interesting, I never have much to contribute to the conversation becuase I am more interested in scientific and technical things.

To put my problem in perspective, I'll use movies as an example. I love to watch all type of movies, and do so with great regularity. As a result of talking with friends and coworkers, however I have discovered that my movie watching habits differ in a subtle way from theirs. When they watch a movie, even once, they pay attention to details. They can repeat specific lines, and remember the story in great detail. I, on the other hand, can normally remember only wether I liked it or not, and sometimes a few specific details as to why. Many times I'll be asked if I remember a specific part of the movie, and I don't until hearing the plot repeated, after which it all comes back.

The point I am attempting to make is that because I don't reguard these details important to myself, I don't remember them. Because I don't remember them, I am not able to utilize them in conversation. This leads me to my current goal which is to start paying more attention to seemingly unimportant details that I may be able to work into social conversation.

Since movies are one thing that most people have in common, I am starting there. My favorite genre is comedy, so I intend to watch at least 1 comedy a day for the next week. While watching I will pay particular attention to the jokes and attempt to commit them to memory. If I have to I might even start writing things down in order to express upon my mind that this stuff is important to commit to memory. Not only have I chosen comedy because I suspect that doing so may reap other benefits.

I am hoping that committing details about comedies to memory will allow me to do more than just recite the jokes that I learn from the movies. I am not inept when it comes to making jokes, but this process is easiest for me when I have a wealth of information to draw on. Thus the information I learn from the movies should improve my creational skills to some extent. In addition, my delivery skills may also be enhanced.

In about a week, I will write another post detailing my experiences with this. I will describe the techniques I have used, the observations I have made, and the perceived effects that I have noticed in myself.

Motivating Yourself for Change

When my wife of 3 years left me 2 years ago I was in for a real shock and a number of lessons in motivation. I had been pretty lucky most of my life, and I never really had to motivate myself to do anything. Everything I wasn't motivated to do had been done for me. I never had to look for a job, work to meet new people, or do little things like clean my house.

Within a month, my house was a wreck, my bills were unpaid, I was lying on the couch whenever I was home more depressed than I had been with my life leaving me, and worst of all, I was living on a diet of beer, fast food, and tv dinners. I say that is worst of all because food has always been important to me, and cooking was one thing that I had always been motivated to do.

For weeks I laid there feeding myself the excuse that it was my wife's fault because she had left me and made me feel so horrible. Finally one day, I woke up, looked around and had a revelation. She was gone, and wasn't coming back. More importantly, it wasn't her fault that the house was a mess, it was mine. I realized that I had to find a way to force myself to do these things that I didn't want to do. Over time I was able to put together a couple of things that worked for me.

Right now you're probably wondering what my housework has to do with social anxieties. Actually it had quite a bit to do with it. First of all, not only was the mess depressing on its own, but the feeling that I couldn't manage to avoid or fix the mess was also depressing. Because I was depressed, it was very difficult for me to get out, be social, and improve my anxiety. On top of that, the same motivational ideas that led to me being able to clean up for my self applied to motivating myself to do things I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise while working on my anxiety.

Here is a list of tips that I have come up with:

1. Don't Threaten or Force Yourself - Have you ever noticed that if someone threatens you, you feel more resistence to doing what they say? Well the same applies to when you threaten yourself. Instead of forcing yourself, you need to find other, more positive methods that will motivate you to do whatever it is you are doing.
2. Consider the Advantages - Take time to think about all of the good things that will come from whatever it is you need to do. If you need to clean, consider how nice it will look, how good you will feel when it is done, and whatever other advantages exist. If you're working on a particular social skill consider the many doors it will open for you, how good accomplishing it will make you feel, and any other advantages you can think of. Don't however consider the negatives such as how long it will take, how much work it will be, and how much you hate doing it.
3. Modify Your Perception of the Task - If you still arn't motivated to do whatever it is after considering the many advantages, you probably have strong negative feelings associated with the task. I use NLP in these situations. If you can think of a particular events that led to you experiencing these feelings, dissociating from them can help to minimize those feelings. If not, or in addition to that you can use triggers to associate positive feelings into your perception of the task. I am not an NLP guru, so I won't even attempt to explain how to do this, but I will reccomend finding an NLP therapist, or reading a book. If you choose to read a book, I would reccomend starting with "NLP: The New Technology of Achievement." Of the NLP books I have read, this one is written the best for beginners.
4. Break Tasks into Smaller Tasks - Whenever you can find ways to break up your tasks into smaller tasks that are more easily accomplished. This way you can concentrate more easily on the smaller, less overwhelming tasks rather than the ultimate task as a whole. When you complete each small task you will feel a sense of accomplishment which you can use to motivate yourself to complete the another small task. As an example, when I clean, I don't clean my whole house, nor do I clean my livingroom. I clean one couch, then another couch, one end table, the other, different sections of the floor, my bookshelves, and finally the TV. Each thing is a seperate task after which I congratulate myself, and take a well deserved short break before moving on to the next task.
5. Rituals are Your Friends - By rituals I'm not referring to ritual sacrifice. Instead I refer to ritualistic patterns that you can employ that will help you to form good habits. If you look back to the previous example, I clean my living room in that same order every time. With anything that you will need to do over and over again, creating a ritual for yourself can be amazingly helpfull, but don't start or stop at the end of your tasks. As part of your ritual, include something at the beginning to get yourself in the right state to do the task, and at the end to congratulate yourself on a job well done.
6. Rituals can also be Your Enemies - Not every ritual is beneficial. In most situations that we deal with on a day to day basis we develop some form of ritual. These rituals can actually be triggers for the negative feelings we have toward doing something. So it makes sense then to try to find these non-beneficial triggers and do something to change them. The trick is to identify these rituals in your life and do something to change them. For instance if you have trouble approaching people in bars, identify your rituals. For instance, if you walk into the bar, find a seat at the bar, buy a drink, and then look around for someone to talk to try something different. Walk into the bar, talk to someone, then sit down and order a drink and see if that makes a difference.

Coping with Limiting Beliefs

About a month ago, a co-worker said something to me that just about made me fall off of my chair laughing. I have always had alot of respect for him, and believed that he was one of the most confident people I knew. On this day, he ed me this girls picture on myspace and said "I almost think she's interested in me, but I must just be dreaming. I could never get a girl like that." As soon as I was able to stop laughing I said "Man, you really need to do something about your limiting beliefs."

To put things in perspective, this guy has just about everything he needed -Good looks, a good sense of humor, a sweet car, and (or so he had had me convinced) confidence. The part that I found funny was that I looked up to him, yet the girl he showed me was slightly below what I know I am capable of attracting.

This was a classic example of a limiting belief and I had to find a way to explain to him what a limiting belief was, and get him to talk to her. It hadn't been very long since I had dealt with my limiting beliefs, and I still didn't completely understand how I had managed to change them. I don't know if he ever did talk to that girl again, but a couple weeks later he was showing us pictures of his new girlfriend who I have to say was much more on his level.

At some point in time, we all experience limiting beliefs wether they are about women, our career, our family or anything else. These are the things we believe that tell us "I can't because..." I many cases we say we "can't" when in fact we can. Perhaps whatever we're speaking or thinking of might be difficult or possibly its something we really shouldn't do, but in fact we really are capable of doing it or at least trying to do it.

Step 1
With that in mind, The first step to ridding yourself of your limiting beliefs is to remove the word "can't" from your vocabulary. For instance if you were asked to do something you had neither the tools nor the knowledge to do, change the way you think. Instead of saying "I can't because I don't have the tools and I don't know how" to "I could learn how to do it and find tools that would work, or possibly find someone else who is more suited to do it." In this case I have used a situation where you probably shouldn't do whatever it is, but you continue to recognize the fact that you are capable of doing with the right resources. Another case would be if someone asked you to kill someone. Hopefully your limiting belief response would be "I can't do that.", but now that you have removed "can't" from your vocabulary, you might say "I am capable of doing that, but doing so would require me to go completely against my beliefs so I won't."

Obvoiously there may be reasons why you should do something despite knowing that you can in fact do it. You probably shouldn't pick up that girl in the bar if either of you is married. Perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to take on a project that you don't have the resources to complete on time. I'm sure you can think of many other situations where this applies.

Step 2
Learn to change your thoughts. Eliminating the word "can't" from your vocabulary may help remove it from your thoughts, but it probably won't work completely. Fortunately, the part of your brain that feeds you these thoughts learns very quickly. In order to do this you just have to reason with that little voice.

First, think of a situation where you know you have limiting beliefs. Ask that voice, in your head, "In this situation, what would you tell me." Pay close attention to the thoughts that come to mind, and pick out the limiting beliefs. At that point, ask the voice again why those specific limiting beliefs are important to it. Next you will want tell that voice that you understand why what it is saying and explain how you recognize that it is looking out for you in feeding these thoughts to you. Finally you need to negotiate with the voice and come to an agreement on how it can replace the limiting language with more empowering language.

I know this sounds like the mutterings of a psychotic person, but what I am speaking of is actually very natural. The "voice" I speak of is that inner thought dialog that we all experience. Once you have come to an agreement with that "voice" simply ask it if it could try to handle similar situation in a similar matter.

After you have completed these two steps you should notice that many of your limiting beliefs are pretty much gone. You may experience some self-doubt at times, but in these cases you can reason with your mind once again.

Why read "The Power of Now"?

Up until recently, I spent every day suffering every day, as I struggled working toward getting everything I "needed" to be happy as many people do. Based on the way I was looking at things, I needed to have certain things before I'd really be happy, but I could never afford them. Then I found "The Power of Now" and after reading it twice, my life began to change.

Years ago, a friend of mine who struggled with cancer for years told me "You're lucky. Your smart, you have a good family, and hopefully you live a long life. Just do yourself a favor, and live each day like its your last because you never know when it might end." At the time I thought I understood what he mean and at times I did exactly as he meant. Until I read and began to understand "The Power of Now," I really never understood what he was really saying.

I interpreted his words to mean that I should basically get everything I wanted, and do whatever I wanted to make myself happy. That didn't work because I couldn't afford the things I thought I wanted, nor could I afford to do some of things I wanted to do.

After I read "The Power of Now" I truely understood what he had told me. There is more to life than the things we have and do. Most of us let it pass us by without ever noticing what we're missing. We waste our time putting our energy into thinking about the things that have happened in the past or could happen in the future rather than focusing on now, and seeing the beauty in what we have.

That one book has had an incredible influence on my life. I no longer spend every day of my life looking forward to tomorrow. Any anxiety I used to have about what would happen I missed before trying to find the things I thought I wanted. Most importantly I'm happier now than I have ever been in my life, and nothing that happened yesterday or will happen tomorrow can change that.

"The Power of Now" completely changed my life.

Is Pickup Good or Bad?

For years, pickup artists have been portrayed in movies as sleazy men who seduce women just to get them into bed. I think that we can all agree that there are are pickup artists out there who fit this persona, but is he art of pickup really evil?

It has been nearly six months since I was first introduced to the art of pickup. At the time I discovered it, I was about to end a year long relationshp that was going nowhere, and was once again completely freaked out by the concept of having to meet women once again. Having the weak social skills that I had, I wanted to find a way to get myself talking with women, and every pickup method I found sounded like it would do that for me although at the time, the concept of being a "pickup artist" didn't sound at all attractive to me. I just wanted to be able to talk to women.

At that point, I bought Mehow's "Get the Girl" (http://www.mehow.tv/) manual, and read it. Everything in it made sense, but still it didn't help my approach anxiety, so I was a little frustrated. I started posting on the forums, and before long I started learning what pickup is REALLY about. Its all about men like me.

I can hear it now, the women reading this are probably mumbling "great, another a******" under thair breaths. Let me say not that I don't believe in sleeping with women if I dont want to be in a relationship with them. I'm one guy that would be overjoyed to settle down into a comitted relationship with someone I really cared about. So why would I want to be a pickup artist.

The art of pickup is like so many other things in the world, it can be used for good or bad. True pickup isn't about seducing women. Instead, it is about bettering ourselves and becoming the men that women want to be with. Sure the the different methodologies provide scripts and techniques that help, but those are mainly there to give us some confidence and a point to start from. In other words the scripts they teach give men like me material to use to get comfortable and have fun talking to women in a way that they will also have fun. I don't see anything wrong with that.

To me, the essence of the art of pickup is teach men the things that their parents and friends were never able to teach them. I truely believe that if every man were to learn this stuff, everyone would be better off. No one was born with the gift of being able to easily carry on conversation with the opposite sex. They just had the opportunity to learn from the people who surrounded them. Why shouldn't everybody have this opportunity? Also, if you are a women, wouldn't you rather see more guys with the ability to carry on interesting conversation with you instead of just giving you meaningless compliments and buying you drinks in hopes of getting in bed with you?

Before Now

For most of my life I have struggled with my social anxieties. I first remember experiencing this when I was around 10 years old. Separated from my best friends in school, I was mortified and pretty much unable to make new friends.

I was paralyzed by my fear until my junior year in high school when I started playing in a band, and became essentially an overnight celebrity with my 15 minutes of localized fame. Unfortunately this did absolutely nothing to help my anxiety.

During my 15 minutes of fame, I met my ex-wife. We were together for 9 years during which we had a daughter, were married, and finally divorced. Throughout that time I was happy not being very social other than at work and with my close friends. For that reason I didn't really battle much with my social anxiety at that time.

After my divorce, I spent 6 months try to find a girlfriend. It was so hard for me to approach women and talk to them that when I finally did meet someone I was too anxious to jump into a serious relationship. She moved in with me very quickly, and within a few weeks, I knew that it wasn't going to work out, but I was afraid to end it because I was afraid to have to face people again.

Near the end of that relationship, I started to learn about social anxieties, and was finally able to put a name to the problems I had dealing with people. For once in my life, I finally had the opportunity to help myself with this problem that had always plagued me.

About 5 months ago, I finally broke up with her, and I have been consistently studying, and alleviating my social anxieties ever since. I learn something new every day, and am constantly noticing changes in myself. For instance, just last weekend, I noticed some huge changes.

Ordinarily when I go out with my brother and/or friends, I'm quiet, an pretty much only talk with them. If their friends come over I don't say much other than hi. Last weekend ended up being very different. My brother saw a friend of his that he hadn't seen since he graduated high school. He introduced us all, and we talked for a few minutes. Before long I was leading the conversation and joking with everyone.

Unfortunately I'm not "cured". Other attempts since then havn't been nearly as successfull, but I think I know why. When my brother and his friend came to pick me up, I kidded around with them the whole way there and once we got to the bar. I was having fun, and I was in a joking frame of mind. Since everyone we were talking to was in a similar state, I kind of bridged them into our my frame.

I have been in that frame before, and anytime I do manage to get into it, it is by far easier for me to be social than normal. As an experiment, I'm going to try to use NLP to set a trigger and see if I can't move into that state whenever I want to.

Systematic Desensitization for Social Anxiety

As a person who experiences social anxiety myself, I know that the amount of anxiety can be different in different situations. With me, for instance, I have little or no anxiety when it comes to meetings at work, or speaking and performing in front of large groups of people. If you saw me in one of those situations, and then saw me out at a bar, you probably wouldn't recognize me because I freeze up so bad. There are other situations where the amount of anxiety I feel is somewhat in between those two, such as cashing out at a store, or talking to someone on the street.

What does the amount of anxiety have to do with Systematic Desensitization? First we have to know what it is. Systematic desensitization is a method that therapists use to incrementally lessen the amount of fear we have in a specific situation by slowly exposing us to situations in which we feel more anxiety. The good news is, you don't necessarily need a therapist to use systematic desensitization to your advantage. If you are motivated it can help you overcome your anxiety as long as you take the time to do it right.

The first thing you need to do is pay attention to how you feel about various situations. In a given situation, how badly do you experience anxiety. Figure out, on a scale from 0 (no anxiety)to 10 (the worst anxiety), how bad your anxiety is in each situation. Now write out the situations in order from least anxiety to most, along with the number you gave it, in a list on a piece of paper or a document on your computer.

Here are some ideas for situations that you might want to put on your list:

• Calling a friend
• Calling a business (utility company, travel agent, bank, doctors office, etc...)
• Saying "Hi" to someone passing by
• Asking someone passing by a question
• Asking for help in a store
• Talking to the cashier while cashing out at a store
• Carrying on a conversation with a waiter/waitress
• Going for an interview
• Talking to random people in a bar
• Approaching random people at a store to get an opinion
• Giving a presentation in front of a small group of people
• Giving a presentation in front of a large group of people
• Starting a conversation with a beautiful woman or handsome man

Now you are ready to begin to desensitize yourself, but you need to be carefull. If you attempt to move too fast, you could easily make your anxiety worse by getting into a situations where you reinforce your fears. This is why you ranked the situations, you should start with the 1's and slowly move up to the situations where you experience more anxiety. Now you need to get yourself into these low anxiety situations 5 or more times a day. Each time you are in the situation pay attention to your breathing, making sure to take deep, relaxed breaths. Pay attention to your feelings and anxiety levels. Each night, sit down with your list and note how your anxiety has changed.

Once you are comfortable in a situation on your list, move on to something a little bit less comfortable. Just don't over do it, and move to a situation that you arn't ready for. You may notice that as you move through the list your anxiety in the higher anxiety situations on the list may be lessened.

It is possible that at some point on the list the anxiety in all of the situations will suddenly drop quite a bit or be completely gone. This is because of the way our brains work. Our brains use fear to protect us from dangerous situations. This is a function that ensures our survival by keeping us from getting hurt or killed. Unfortunately, our brains interpret emotional pain in the same way that they interpret physical pain, so when we get emotionally hurt our brains cause us to feel fear when we get into the same or similar situations. These associations are known as triggers. In any given situation there can be more than one trigger, which can cause the fear to be greater overall. A situation that you originally ranked as a 7 on your list may have only one trigger where a 9 might have 4 incuding that 7. If you eliminate the association that causes the anxiety in the 7, it will no longer exist in the 9 and your nine will drop down on your list.

With patience and perseverance, doing this should help you minimize your social anxieties. You may also wish to consider using other methods in conjunction with systematic desensitization in order to possibly speed your progress such as:

• Seeing a Therapist
• Seeing a Hypnotist
• Using NLP Techniques
• Using Self-Hypnosis techniques

Good luck and please remember that if you are not careful using this technique, you can reinforce the fears that cause your anxiety. Please remember to progress slowly and carefully so that this does not happen.

5 Tips for Improving Approach Anxiety

Many people suffer from approach anxiety and don't even know what it is. In fact, I struggled with mine for a long time before I had any clue what I was dealing with. Essentially, approach anxiety is a fear of approaching people you do or do not know to start or join a conversation. I read dozens of books trying to understand how I could lessen this fear, but nothing seemed to address and explain the exact fears I had.

Amazingly, it wasn't until I happened upon a group of pick-up artists that I discovered that what I was suffering from was called "approach anxiety" and started to learn what it was and how to deal with it. The techniques I'll present here employ a number of methodologies such as NLP which you will probably want to learn more about before attempting. Also, keep in mind that anything you do to alter the way you think or act can potentially be dangerous so you should always consult a professional counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist before attempting any of the tips I provide. The tips I provide are provided for entertainment purposes only and I will not be held responsible for any damages that may occur should you attempt them with or without the advice of a professional.

The Tips:

1. Learn to pay attention to your thoughts. In situations where we are uncomfortable, it often difficult to pay attention to or remember what we are thinking. As with most things, practicing this will make it easier. Start by practicing paying attention to your thoughts when you arn't uncomfortable. What is your mind telling you? What do you feel? How are you breathing? Getting in the habit of doing this when you are comfortable will make it more likely that you will think to do so when you arn't comfortable.
2. Break the pattern immediately before your anxiety begins. Once you are to a point where you are more generally aware of what you are thinking all of the time, you should be able to pay attention to the things you do (your state) right before you begin to experience your approach anxiety. Knowing when you begin to experience your approach anxiety and what you normally do at that time can allow you to break the pattern you normally follow and possibly reduce your anxiety. No matter what you normally do right before you feel the anxiety, force yourself to do something different. For instance, if you normally put your hands in your pocket, clap them together instead. This can work better sometimes if you do something empowering like clapping your hands, thrusting your fists towards the floor, or jump up.
3. Use NLP Techniques. I won't discuss specific techniques here because I havn't developed any of my own and I believe the authors of the books I learned the techniques from deserve their royalties. I will reccomend a few books at the end of this post which do a very good job of explaining the necessary techniques. It is important to note that none of the NLP techniques that I have found specifically target approach anxiety. Fortunately approach anxiety is essentially a phobia, and there are many approaches to helping phobias. Depending on what your Approach Anxiety (AA) stems from, one technique may work for you better than another. I must say that I definitely wouldn't reccomend passing over NLP. Of all of the tips that I reccomend, NLP offers the opportunity for the fastest change.
4. Talk to a Therapist. Therapists have of experience dealing with people with phobias and social issues. They can help you to understand the roots of your fears much more quickly than you could on your own.
5. Talk To People. After all you're trying to get rid of a fear of approaching people. Just say "Hi" to everyone you pass in the store or at work. Do this enough and saying "Hi" will just become natural. After that it may not be that hard to keep saying more.

Reccomended Reading

The Guide to Goals

Setting goals for yourself is very important to making any change. When making a change, goals provide us our only insite into whether we are successfull or not. Without them we would have nothing to motivate us to move forward.

Often times, when people fail to make a change, it isn't because they couldn't accomplish the change. Instead they fail because they fail to see the progress they are making toward their goal and get frustrated. Because of this we need to break our big goals into smaller pieces that we can accomplish fairly easily.

For example, if I were building a house, I couldn't build the whole thing at once. First I have to build a foundation, but I can't just drop in a foundation all at once, I can only lay the foundation one block at a time. Once the foundation is done, I could build the frame of the house one board at a time.

In the same way, I can't instantly become comfortable in every social situation I might encounter. I have to break it down into smaller pieces that can be accomplished more easily and break those into smaller pieces that I can accomplish.

I would break the overall goal into smaller ones like saying "Hi" to everyone, approaching people to ask questions, opening more complicated conversations. If I didn't think I could approach someone and say "Hi" the first time, I would break that goal into smaller goals that lead up to it like nodding at the person, beginning to walk in their direction, and finally saying "Hi" as I passed them.

The whole point is to have goals that you can accomplish because accomplishing something is being successfull. If you're contantly failing to accomplish your goals, you will lose motivation, but if you are normally successfull at the smaller goals you will feel more motivated toward and able to accomplish your larger goals.

Where am I With My Anxiety?

I have struggled with social anxiety for the past 20 years of my life. Events that began to unfold when I was 6 led to me first feeling uncomfortable when I was 8. When I was 6, my first grade teacher didn't know how to teach exceptionally smart kids like me and assumed that because I couldn't learn well from her that I must be stupid. They put me into a class for slower kids where that teacher quickly realized that I learned quite a bit faster than the most kids and got bored rather easily.

In 3rd grade I was put back into normal classes, and the teachers couldn't understand why I'd daydream all of the time, yet was still able to do very well on my work. So, they once again figured there was something wrong with me and sent me to the school psychologist for testing. She then sent me to doctors who eventually determined that in reallity, there was nothing wrong with me, other than that I learn faster than most people, and get bored easily.

All of this took its toll on me. Just the fact that everyone assumed that something was wrong with me didn't help my self esteem at all. When you added in name calling, and bullying that all of this caused it was even worse. At least at that point I still had my friends in class with me. In 5th grade, that all changed. My 4th grade teacher, probably one of the best I ever had, knew how to teach me. This led to me doing very well, and I was put classes with the smartest kids in 5th grade. None of my friends were in any of my classes, and because of everything that happened, I was afraid to make new friends. Because I was quiet and submissive, I would get picked on more, and the process continued to propetuate itself until I was a junior in high school.

While I was a junior, I broke out of my shell a little bit but not enough. I became comfortable with people coming to me for help with things I knew about. I was comfortable talking about music. I still wasn't comfortable approaching anyone but my best friends.

As I went through college and began to work I became very comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people about things I knew very well. I could walk into a room of 10 to 100 people without breaking a sweat or stammering for one work. Even still, one on one, I was a wreck. My anxiety has pretty much stayed this way up until a few months ago.

I was nearing the end of a bad relationship, and needed to find a way to bring myself to dump her. I started reading everything I could trying to find a way to get over the fears I had of doing it. While I was doing that, I came acrossed many techniques and methodologies of dealing with fear and anxiety. In the end they did little to help me dump her, but they did start making changes in my life overall.

One thing that I discovered is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a way of making changes to the way you mentally perceive and act on things. I would definitely encourage anyone looking to make changes in their life to study up on it. This is by far one of the quickest methods of making change.

I also read a book called "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. This is definitely a must read for anyone who hasn't already read it. Once you read it, you will notice change in your life even if you don't totally agree with Mr. Tolle about everything.

The most important thing that I have done is just talk to people. I felt a little wierd doing it at first, but I walked around saying at least "Hi" to everyone I passed in stores or at work. Now I do it without thinking about it, and every once in a while I somehow manage to get into an interesting conversation that way.

That gives you an bit of an overview of what I have done already. I will go deeper into the details and keep everyone up to date on my progress in future posts.