It's an ugly word. One that everybody hates. One of the things I had to overcome when I first started was the fear of being rejected. One of the things I did to try to overcome this fear, was to go out and get rejected on purpose, to dull myself to the response. This, however, is NOT the thing to do, because deep down inside, you KNOW you weren't rejected, because you weren't putting anything on the line.

I quickly discovered this, and stopped trying for a while, because I hated the thought of rejection. I decided I would overcome my fear by actually trying to game girls and getting rejected. It took me two weeks to do the newbie mission. TWO WEEKS. The first time I went out, I said "hi" to a girl, she just looked at me, then kept walking. This hurt. This destroyed me.

The next day, I picked myself up, and forced myself to get two "hi"s out there. I did it, and both girls broke eye contact before I even spoke to them. Both kept walking, and again, it hurt. This kind of pattern kept going for two weeks, with the same results, until one day, a girl said hello back. I was lost, so all I said was "how's it going" and we exchanged plesantries. I was excited to get a responce, so that propelled me to do the newbie mission and go to the mall and open as many women as I could. Very tepid responce, but the AA was vanishing by the third approach.

The thing that finally pushed me over the top in getting over my fear of rejection was sitting in a crowded coffeehouse when there was a very attractive woman that all the guys were eying, but nobody was trying to talk to. I knew all eyes would be on me if I approached. I did it anyway. I stood up, sqaured my shoulders, walked over with a natural smile on my face and said "Hey, I would be kicking myself all day if I didn't come over and meet you". All eyes and ears in the place were on the two of us and she says "That's sweet, thank you" put her headphones back in, and went back to reading. That's the first time I realised that it didn't matter. I took the shot and that IS what matters.

Even though I didn't really care what everybody else thought, when I was smoking outside later another girl came up to me and said "it took a lot of balls to do that infront of everybody" and we chatted it up for a while. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CRASH AND BURN. Sometimes hidden opportunities show themselves.