Overcoming AA by Style - From Rules of the Game

There are millions of words of wisdom offered by experts on creating and de-veloping a successful intimate relationship, but seven words stand above themall: You cant wiry if you don't play

That is the bottom line of bottom lines, courtesy of the California StateLottery. If you stay in your solipsistic cave, you will never form a new relation-ship. You toast get out of the house and interact with new people.

Approach anxiety is a name from the internal demon that keeps men fromtalking to attractive strangers when there are no external barriers. Before work-ing on ways to convert approach anxiety into approach excitement, let's discuss two key concepts: the limiting mind and the freedom mind.



When we are born, nature installs two major instinctual fears to keep us safe: afear of heights and a fear of loud noises.
Fear in moderation is a good thing. It protects us from harm. For example, afear of heights protects us from falling off cliffs. A fear of loud noises enablesus to react quickly to warnings of danger. However, most fears and limits wehave are the result not of nature but of nurture. We place limits on ourselves asthe result of negative experiences From our childhood and the influence of au-thority figures.



The biological freedom mind gives us signals of hunger to eat, thirst to drink,and desire to procreate. In modem times, we also have cultural drives forpower through career, enjoyment through play, and purpose through spiritualpractice.

When our limiting mind and freedom mind are in homeostatic balance, allis good. We live in harmony with the world, effectively solving problems asthey arise. But when our freedom mind and limiting mind fall out of balance,all kinds of afflictions arise.



Most of your limiting mind's beliefs were spoon-fed to you by your parents,guardians, teachers, clergy, peers. or whomever you admired while growing up.While there is some value in tracing the sources of your own personal limitingmind, it's more important to understand its structure. The limiting mind tendsto feed on itself in a downward spiral. Placing blame on others or on yourselffor the material in your limiting mind only serves to strengthen it. It's best toforgive, forget, and move on.

The first step on most roads to recovery is acceptance—admitting thatthere's a problem. The second step in overcoming the source of our anxiety isto bring it out of unconscious darkness and into the light of our consciousawareness. Only then can we begin to dismantle it, see how it works, and cre-ate procedures to nullify it.

C)

The limiting mind may present hindering voices. images. or physical feel-ings when its time to approach strangers and make their acquaintance. Let'sidentify the types of internal media it can use to intimidate you into aborting asocial mission.
Voices of the limiting mind include:

■Self-doubt: "You won't know what to say" or "Remember last timeyou messed up?"
■Other-oriented doubt: She probably has a boyfriend," "Shewouldn't be interested in me," or "She's busy and I'd be interrupt-ing her."
■Environmental doubt: "Everyone around will make fun of me" orIts too loud for her to hear me."
■Existential rationalization: "Why bother? It won't work outanyway," "I don't feel like it right now," or "I'm having too much funwith my friends."
■False judgments: "She isn't attractive enough" or She seems waytoo shallow for me."
Images of the limiting mind include getting ignored: being mocked or bul-lied; being sad and alone; being observed and judged; getting beaten up; beingrejected; and seeing more qualified or successful men in the room.

The limiting mind also expresses itself through physical sensations. Whena potential threat registers on your radar. the acute stress response (also knownas the fight-or-flight response) releases adrenaline into your system. This hor-mone increases your breathing and heart rate; constricts blood vessels; tensesmuscles; dilates pupils; elevates your blood sugar level; and weakens your im-mune system.



To abolish approach anxiety, convince yourself logically that the dialogue ofyour limiting mind is incorrect and in fact self-sabotaging. In your Day I read-ing assignment, several limiting beliefs were dispmven. These are the kinds ofrational responses your freedom mind can use when the limiting mind rears itsugly head.

For example. if your limiting mind tells you, She won't hear you." yourfreedom mind should answer back, ''If she doesn't hear me the first time. I'llsmile and politely repeat myself more loudly, slowly, and clearly."

If your limiting mind tells you that you're going to get nervous, your free-dom mind can say, "I may have a naturai stress reaction to this situation be-cause. after all, it is somewhat stressful. But that doesn't mean I won't be ableto push through it. In the past. nervousness has given me the energy I neededto perform at my best and feel good about myself. So let's do this!"

Take a moment to write down your own limiting mind's reservations aboutapproaching. Then write down corresponding freedom mind responses thatempower you. Use the word you for the scripts of your limiting mind, and thewords I and me in your freedom mind responses. This will help you disassoci-ate from your limiting mind and associate more closely with your freedommind.

It's up to you to feed positive scripts into your freedom mind on a regularbasis, to give it the power to overcome, persevere, and succeed. To do this, pickthree freedom mind scripts or affirmations that you feel would best replaceyour specific fears, whether they're the ones you just wrote down or ones in-cluded in this book. Write them on a single sheet of paper. Then read them outloud with conviction during your morning or evening freedom mind ritual, andrun them through your mind over the course of the day. Once you start to feelthe beneficial changes, switch to another set of affirmations according to your new needs.



Submodalities are the media through which your senses receive, remember,and process information. For example. auditory submodalities include volume,pitch, tempo. and timbre.

To help eliminate negative internal dialogue, try adjusting the submodali-ties of your limiting mind's voice. Make it quieter and further away: stammer-ing and squeaky: or use the voice of a person you don't like.

At the same time. give your freedom mind a strong, low-pitched, calm,nearby voice. Consider making it the voice of someone you respect; a mentor,an actor, or your future best sell.

If these exercises seem at first glance like New Age tripe, that's your limiting mind at work again. This process is exactly what trainers instruct top ath-letes to do to master their game. It's also one way that therapists eliminatephobias.

Visually, put your mental pictures and movies through the same filters.First, overpower the images of failure in your limiting mind with the successfulimages of your freedom mind. Change a picture of getting ignored to one ofbeing adored; change a picture of being rejected into a bright, vivid visualiza-tion of a beautiful woman pressing her phone number into your palm.
Now change the submodalities. Niake the images in your limiting mindsmall, distant, black-and-white, slow-moving. blurry, and dark. Disassociatewith these negative images by seeing them not through your own eyes but as ifyou're watching yourself as a character on a movie screen.

Whenever your limiting mind images pop up, instantly replace them withlarge, bright, sharp. colorful pictures of successful situations. Associate withthese images by seeing them through your own eyes.

These mental exercises are best done just after waking up or before going tosleep, because that's when your subconscious is most open to changework. Byrepeating this exercise as often as possible. you'll get to the point where youautomatically reject the negative images your limiting mind tries to throw at you before each approach.



One of the biggest problems men have with appmaching women is magnifyingthe meaning of the interaction and focusing too intently on achieving one spe-cific outcome—whether it be exchanging phone numbers, making out. havingsex, or beginning a romantic relationship.

Emotionally detaching from the outcome—while rationally working towardyour goal—will significantly alleviate your anxierv. This is why the StylelifeChallenge offers small, easy-to-accomplish goals rather than large, unlikely ones.

People can be random. unpredictable, chaotic creatures. And sometimesyou may truly he surprised. That's why approaching is so much fun. So whyconstrain the possibilities of a new encounter by being dependent on a particu-lar outcomeT:



The word failure has different meanings for different people. To most people.failure means approaching and being rejected. My definition of failure is quit-ting, giving up, or never approaching at all.

Rejection is another word that's been misused and misrepresented. Thedictionary definition of reject is "to refuse to accept." So if you offer someone astick of gum, and she says "No thanks," you've been rejected. Do you feel an emotional sting?
Probably not.

If you invite someone to a social event, and she says "No thanks." itshouldn't be any different. But For most people it is different, and here's why:When the gum is rejected. we think the person doesn't want the gum. But when we extend an invitation and get rejected. we think she doesn't want us.

But how could she possibly have decided she doesn't want us? She's knownus only for a short while. She's practically a complete stranger. She doesn'tknow how great we are, the way our friends and family do. Why do we value her opinion over theirs? Why do we attach so much emotional baggage to avirtual stranger's ill-formed opinion? You guessed it: the limiting mind.

Practice the Crash and Burn Strategy

If, after reading this. you still have a crippling fear of social rejection, then goout and try to get rejected. Every accomplished social artist I know has a ton ofrejections under his belt. That's simply the price you have to pay for excel-lence.

To quote Michael Jordan, "I've missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I've lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times. I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

After a few rejections, you'll see that it's not so bad, that rejection really hasnothing to do with who you arc. It's more like somebody flicking you in theshoulder with a finger. You know it happened. but it doesn't hurt you or reallyeven bother you. It's actually just immature and embarrassing on their part.

I took a student out once and tried to get us rejected to help him past hisfears. But a funny thing happened: My plan backfired, and I wasn't rejected atall. The conversation went something like this:

ME- Hey! 1-low are you doing? Could you blow us out? We need to get blown out.
THEM: Huh? What's that?
ME: Oh, that's when a couple of guys roll up and you're in some mood, so you're totally rude and don't wanna talk, and you tell the guys!

THEM IINTERRUPT1NGI. Oh, were not rude, Not at all?

We ended up having a pleasant conversation for forty-five minutes, afterwhich we exchanged contact information. The exercise was supposed to dem-onstrate that blow-ours are pain free, but it ended up teaching a different les-son: that you can open by saying almost anything when you're confident.congruent, and upbeat.

Feel Free to prove it to yourself. Next time you see someone you want to talkto. open your mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind. As long as yourcomment or question isn't rude or hostile, you may be surprised by how diffi-cult it is to get solidly rejected.

After trying this a few times, you'll also notice that everyone's responsesvary. Then you can adjust your attitude to expect nothing and prepare foreverything. Or, as the poet Samuel Hazo puts it:
Expect everything, and anything seems nothing. Expect nothing. and anything scents everything.

Very helpful... I think I will go out and purchase the entire book today!

LaRockStar wrote:

Very helpful... I think I will go out and purchase the entire book today!

There is some really good stuff in there that I think even guys who are more advanced can benefit from. Let us know how the 30 day challenge is coming along.

The book set is an excellent resource. Just as J said, it also contains great info even for more advanced guys.