A really great piece of advice I got from some NLP stuff by Kent Sayer (Sorry if its long, but good stuff). He talks about amplifying the pain of not talking to women and amplifying the pleasure of talking to them.

I found this context extremely useful for the past few weeks. I myself would amplify those nights at the bar/club/party where I just froze and watched opportunity after opportunity pass by me and not saying a damn word. I would amplify the horrific feeling I had walking home alone at 2am and really let it sink in.

Conversely, those nights that I just approached a set, said ANYTHING, I would amplify that adrenaline high, estatic feelilng of hell yeah I actually opened a set. Becuase to me, at this point in my game, being able to just approach someone is a success for me and it feels great whether I blew it or not. So I would amplify the pleasure of just doing something.

Soon enough the pain of freezing up and going home alone gave me enough subtle pressure to JUST DO IT. Because doing it is just the first step in improving, and ultimately we all want to be successful PUA's.

In a HEALTHY way where you don't obsess over it, really get into how bad it felt to be shy, and how good it can feel to just open your mouth and say something, sooner or later it gets easier.

Did you only get better at confronting people, or did you also get better at conversations in general?

LOL good question....yes this was a just an example of another tool to just go for it. As far as conversation skills just reading up on posts,routines,openers, etc til you feel comfortable is very helpful until you dont need to rehearse what you will say and can do so naturally.

The real application to this is just going for it, consider it another way to put pressure on yourself to open, kinda like the 3 second rule.

Yesterday, I cut myself by accident. It was a nasty cut. I tried associating negative or self deprecating thoughts about socializing with the pain I was feeling.

Don't know if it helped yet, we'll see.