The biggest game killer

[Guest]

OK, let's talk about the #1 biggest game killer out there...nerves. Approach anxiety, and in-set freeze-ups. Sometimes you see a hot girl, want to go do your thing, but some invisible force just stops you and you do nothing. Other times, you do something, but some invisible force keeps you from being loose and your normal cool self. You start acting weird, goofy, or thinking way too much about what you're saying. And then you kick yourself later. Or grab that first beer of the night.

Anyway, as a rule, you are inevitably going to fuck yourself up WAY more than any girl is ever going to fuck you up.

It's pretty simple. In any set, one of three things is always going to happen. You are going to bore a girl, offend a girl, or impress a girl. That's pretty much the range of reactions your game is going to get you.

So it's simple. But you fuck yourself up anyway.

Anxiety is a bitch. So how do you kick it? Well, I still get my fair share of AA, but I've been reading a bit about something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and been improving, and here's what I've learned. Anybody else has anything, please do share.


1. Expectations

We go in to every situation in our lives with an expected outcome. "I need to achieve 'x' in order to be happy." It's not always at the front of our minds, but it's always there.

If what we expect of ourselves exceeds our actual capability, or what we believe deep down our ability to be, we'll be anxious when in a situation that tests that expectation.

Now, you would think that after a while, our expectations would come in to line with reality as we have more and more experiences. But this isn't as true as we'd like it to be. We have things called "safety behaviors" which I'll explain later, that reinforce a screwed up self-image that doesn't reflect reality at all.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to look yourself in the mirror, look right in your eyes and say "self.... FUCK YOU. Really, fuck you. What makes me so special that I have to be so perfect in every situation? Am I so cool that I have to say the right thing all the time? Am I such a pimp that every girl I talk to should automatically fall in love with me? No way. I'm not going to hold myself to that standard. I'm a regular guy."

Seriously, the best thing to do is to figure out what your expectations are, and then really consider if they're rational or not.




2. Automatic Negative Thoughts

Time for a jacked up anatomy lesson. We basically have two parts of the brain that are making rational sense of the world around us. The cortical, and sub-cortical brain lobes. Your cortical brain is your conscious mind. That's the part of you that's saying "I should go talk to that girl over there." "I really don't want to eat that slice of pizza" And whatever other logical things that you're consciously thinking about.

Your sub-cortical brain, on the other hand, works about twice as fast, and is about half as rational. It's those quiet thoughts that are "underneath" your rational thoughts...nagging doubts, intuitions, etc. For our purposes, these thoughts are directly related to your expectations.

So say you're at a book store, and you notice a hot little brunette girl in the art section. You consciously think to yourself "I should go talk to her. I know I have skills, and I can handle this." Ahh, but then your sub-cortical brain kicks in. You expect perfection of yourself. Failure would be unacceptable. So you see flashes of failure in your mind, you have quiet thoughts like "she's too young for me" or "I didn't comb my hair today".... and suddenly your once calm mind is now a racing mess.

The best thing to do about these automatic negative thoughts is to catch them. A lot of times, we're not aware we're having them. So the thing to do is to catch them, remember what they are, and then challenge them on a rational level. Bring the sub-cortical thought to the cortical level, and dismantle them. That way, the next time you have that thought, it won't have any power over you.



3. Self Consciousness

So what happens after all of that?

What inevitably happens right before you start fucking yourself up is that you start noticing yourself. You start thinking about how you're walking, how you're talking, what you're saying, how you're coming across, etc. And this is the beginning of the end of your set, I guarantee it.

The thing to do, when you start to feel self-conscious, is to push them in to your cortical brain. Realize what you think about when you feel self conscious, and put them to the rational test later. Does it really matter that my hair is screwed up? What does that affect? What are the best and worst case scenarios? Etc.



4. Safety Behavior

Finally, we have safety behaviors. This is what we do when we have gone through the first three steps of anxiety, to make that discomfort go away. So, for example, with the girl in the book store, one safety behavior might be to ignore her. Another might be to deny to yourself that you're attracted to her. Another might be to only use canned lines. There are many safety behaviors.

The biggest problem with safety behaviors is twofold. First, these are what fuck us up in set. If your safety behavior is to not approach, then you have no set. If your safety behavior is to go quiet so as not to say the wrong thing, then you've got a bored set on your hands. If your safety behavior is to be an asshole, you may have an offended girl on your hands.

The second problem with these behaviors is that they reinforce your bad expectations from point #1. You'll rationalize to yourself later. "I'm the coolest guy in the world, every girl I talk to should like me. I just didn't get that girl in the book shop because I didn't talk to her. Next time I'll comb my hair."

The thing to do with safety behaviors is to identify them. Push them in to the cortical brain. Know what they are, then challenge them rationally. Put them to the test, in field. What happens if I don't do this? Is it what I expected?



5. Forecasting and Replaying Events in your head

Last, one word about this. A lot of times, you will build something up in your mind beforehand. Now, Mystery has the 5 second rule, and I really like this. Waiting and anticipating are really bad habits. Get in to the habit of never thinking about something nerve-racking before you do it. If it's going to be nerve-racking, let it be so but only in the moment it's going on, never before or after.

So obviously, that refers to afterward as well. NEVER judge yourself after an event. When something is done, it's done. NEVER EVER say in you head "I was stupid, I shouldn't have said that" or anything of the sort. When something's done, it's done.

It's not wrong to learn from something, "this is what happened. next time, I'll do xyz differently." However, it's ALWAYS wrong to judge yourself after the fact.


So that's it. That's about all I know about that subject. Like I said, if anyone else has input, I'd love to learn something as well.