So for a while I have read posts by PUAs and a lot of other people in the industry just telling guys to "approach". Forget it all and just approach. Approach the random 7/10 on the street right now to get over your anxiety, etc. Even though I can see the good in this piece of advice I want to say that the advice alone is a terrible piece of advice and PUAs need to restructure it. In fact, all PUAs should re-structure that advice so they get more credibility with people out there because it is straight up comedy to see a poorly dressed guy who is overweight approaching a girl that is obviously out of his league. I think it is about time PUA started to softly ground itself in reality to an extent, and maybe it has already done that without me knowing.

A couple years back I posted my picture on this forum to have others rate me, I put that same picture up on Beautifulpeople.com and lo and behold I received a huge line of absolutely nots flying in my direction. Didn't have much success with women back then either, dressed like a clown and pretty much got treated like one. Approaches that I made ended in me being the laughing stock of the crowd.

So I subscribed to GQ magazine, took my health seriously, worked out, and cut down a lot of fat. After that, I found clothes that fit. It was a slow process that lasted months and finally I noticed something. I was approaching girls less but girls approached me more. When I did approach I had a higher success rate and it all happened so naturally.

There were days when my game was not on point, I would say some dumb shit, and still end up getting laid regardless.

So I decided to give Beautifulpeople.com another go and I made it in (great confidence boost!).

See I hate it when people say looks are all genetics because so many guys out there do not take the effort to work out, eat right, learn proper hygiene, experience with difference styles, and work on overall style.

Now PUA should be about improving yourself from what I see but a guy needs to take the effort to improve his appearance before he approaches. Make it easier on yourself! I know I did.

Edit by: Mod

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I just come on here these days to give advice and read interesting threads. Gone are the days when I came to seek advice and validation.

I agree on this. I used to dress bad, have bad hygiene, neglect my hair etc. The only difference between me and you was that I have never worked out to change as I am rather slim myself but I have just started visiting the gym and I am definitely doing power workouts to gain some muscle. Anyhow, I considered myself rather ugly (Or well, not attractive) and I never got any female attention, but during the past two years I have spent so much more attention on my appearance. I got inspried by other people I considered good-looking, asked some people for their opinions and generally just bought a bunch of new clothes, got me a nice haircut that really fits me and I take a shower at least twice a day, have a lot of colognes since I want to smell fresh all the time and generally spend more time on my outfit and I have definitely noticed a huge change in my confidence and the amount of female attention I get without approaching them.

If you want to real talk this, I'll break it down. They say to just approach because nothing happens unless you approach. Regardless of all the other stuff, you have to approach in order to get your feet wet and start making things happen. Having said that, it admittidly won't do you much good if every other aspect of your life is a mess. Women are still going to be attracted to looks, money, and men with solid game, and if you are lacking in those areas then you can approach until you turn blue in the face, and it won't do you much good aside from decreasing your approach anxiety.

If you are a guy and you start out as a 5 on the looks scale, then you realistically won't be able to get anything higher than an hb7. But if you clean yourself up and make yourself a 7, then you might be able to get a higher quality girl, like an 8 or 9. Part of being your best self is looking your best and improving your lifestyle and game. That is what allows you to attract more/better women. Simply approaching ad infinitum will only get you so far.

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“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!” ~Audrey Hepburn

I'd say that over 95% of guys could make themselves look good enough to pick up roughly 95% of the general female population within a week as far as strictly the appearance part goes. Hygiene, 2 average or better looking outfits, an hour or so reading up on body language and a couple hours practicing it. That will generally have your looks to not be a huge obstacle if your not a very good looking guy, or a plus point if you are.

The big reason why it's a good idea to start approaching now is that confidence is the biggest element of all in success with women. If you are confident enough it can overcome a lot of short comings and is the biggest difference between guys with game who get some results and those who get great results.

Confidence is like a snowball rolling down a hill. It's a self perpetuating upward spiral when framed correctly. You have some success no matter how large or small it boost your confidence, now with a slightly higher level of confidence you are slightly more likely to succeed and in turn boost your confidence and results further and further.

The key is to set yourself up with goals or tasks that both stretch your current comfort zone but are not unreasonable to attain. To take someone who is brand new to all of this, has had little or no success with women and is generally scared and tell him to go approach with the expectation that he will build it into a conversation, escalate, take her back home, get it on and then transition her into a FB is way off. That is the problem in my opinion, when newbies are told to just approach the goal of the approach isn't specific enough and because it's not broken down it quickly becomes overwhelming and discouraging.

So what do you do? Break it down and take small steps. Do just go approach, but if your brand new and scared to death, go approach with the goal being to simply give her a compliment and leave, don't make any more of a conversation out of it. Even someone who is brand new and scared to death will be able to succeed at that over 90% of the time they do it.

Confidence is like a snowball rolling down a hill. Start by saying "Hi" and pretty soon you'll be confident enough for conversations, not to long it'll be flirting, then closing.

I'm not saying the way you did it is wrong, it will work, your doing the same thing. You just chose a different path to build your confidence. Personally I'd recommend people do both, the faster you gain confidence the faster the results. But definitely start approaching, you can get the confidence and skill level to go from zero to getting girls fairly consistently in a couple months or less if you just start saying "Hi" and build up from there.

I agree with this, although it's probably not 95% of guys. More like about 75%. Obese guys and really weird looking dudes will never stand a chance with girls of quality unless they have money.

But small chunking it and learning confidence in incremental measures is a good game plan. Going out and trying to close 10s before you know what you are doing will only serve to destroy your confidence, as failure and rejection are not good for anyone.

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“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!” ~Audrey Hepburn

The only quick advice I can give is:

- Do not be outcome dependant. Do whatever you are possible to do (e.g. what's in your control) to reach the goals you desire. Don't say: "I'm gonna have a same-night lay tonight or else I won't have success", but rather: "Ill do whatever is possible, to get a same-night lay, and if it doesn't work out then at least I tried".

- Rejection isn't failure, but rather feedback. Look back at with you did wrong, fix it, and do it different next time. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Good luck!

Wallie

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I'm not sure this is given as general advice is it? I think it is given for advice on how to overcome what has been termed 'approach anxiety' and general social issues such as shyness and lack of communication skills. In that respect, "just approaching" is the best advice. Stop thinking about it and get on with it and yeah you might crash and burn a few times, but you'll get there in the end.

But if a complete newb came on to the forum and said "how do I get girls?" I don't think people would only say 'just approach', for the reasons you have put here. And looking at the wide multitude of sub-forums on here, I would say it is fairly well established that you need to have your life in order, be dressing well, look after your hygiene and improve your body language etc. etc. as well as "just approaching".

you probably hear go out and approach alot because your posts really show a great deal of insecurity and dependency on outcome, this is something that goes down hill after you approach en mass a great deal

normally it's not the guys who have done a few thousand approaches asking if race matters, or if they are good looking enough, or if gaming in a different location will get them success, because they know it's subjective, and you can get success anywhere with enough approaching and a good game, out of a 1000 girls, plenty are going to not like you, and plenty are going to like you, no matter what your style, race, religion, looks, financial situation, social situation

even as a male model you'll find plenty of girls who will reject you for other reasons or not like you look, if you are too busy worrying about these things instead of meeting women, you won't get laid often, unless you seriously, seriously excel at something

it also solves for approach anxiety, and social anxiety because you get more used to meeting randoms and starting conversations, and being good at that will get you laid more often then being 1-2 points out of 10 better looking, obviously if you're obese or deformed or something you should try to improve that and it will be tough, but as long as your average, plenty of girls will be fine with the way you look and that's not the biggest thing holding you back

the average guy who is so used to cold approach that he can meet 500 girls in a week, is going to have a lot better options then a very good looking guy who does 5 a week, and both will certainly do better then the guy who sits in his basement and does 0 approaches a week

My take on "just approach" really has nothing to do with the end-result of what you're trying to get out of a girl. When I tell people to "just approach" it really is all about building confidence, and regardless of the outcome of the situation, to who ever I told to "go approach" I reward them in the fact that they took the courage to talked to some HB7-10 they may have otherwise not have spoken to.

Women are really good at picking up on someone's self-esteem and their confidence within seconds of meeting a guy, so it's always the first thing I tell people just walking on the scene. I doesn't matter what happens at the end, you did it, you did something you would have otherwise done, good job! The higher your confidence, the more attractive women start walking into your life.

For someone who's seasoned though, I never really recommend "just approaching". But someone who's seasoned has also learned how to be observant of what she's doing (without being the labeled "the creep" or "the lurker") and has a few techniques in his arsenal on how to approach a girl. So, "just approach" is ineffective.

Interesting interesting interesting. I read a lot of the replies and I want to comment on one thing.

In my experience, yes, race may not matter alone but it matters with location.

Take an Indian guy, put him in London, and he will not have nearly as much success as an equally better looking Indian guy in say New York City, Madison, or Gainesville (college towns and USA cities). Issue is, in the UK and in London, a lot of people will primarily have a bad view of Indian people and associate them with "Pakis" as they call it. Yet this whole thing isn't meant to be about race.

Location matters a great deal. You can say all you want but there is no way you are going to have a lot of success in towns where most people are elderly or retired people and young people are not that easy to come by. Also some towns are more conservative socially than others so cold approaches would get blown out of the water and invite unwanted trouble. I would say my success rate has quadrupled from being in a small town in the deep south to going to NYC. Location is a pretty big factor, the more younger women you run into the more options you have and the more approaches you can do which lead to more success. Not to mention, if you screw up in a big city, WHO CARES, people have short memories and you will never see the person again. If you screw up in small town Oklahoma, you better watch out!

Which is why I am saying these PUAs need to put their students in better situations.

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I just come on here these days to give advice and read interesting threads. Gone are the days when I came to seek advice and validation.

A big help for everyone studying the pick-up arts is hanging out with social guys, who are (VERY) good at the game, and actually are fine that you hang out with them. Even though they don't give you advice, you unconciously adopt to their behaviour when they pick-up girls, and conciously if you look at say their body language, kino'ing, escalation. Perhaps find a guy in your city who's really good at pick-up, even when it's just a stranger in a club. Try to befriend him, hang out with him, and you might even learn more then just practising all by yourself (trust me, i'm practising alone now, but whenever I hang out with socially strong guys, my confidence gets a boost!)

Just my 2 cents.

Wallie

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