From Frozen to Fearless! True Stories of Shy Guys Who Beat Approach Anxiety and Found Love IRL

you imagine the looks that Ash

and

Ken would get as they're making out with grabbing phone numbers from these stunning women and these cooler, taller jocks are just like standing there doing nothing?

Oh man, I love it.

I love revenge of the nerds.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

I am your host, dating coach, Connell Barrett, here to help you flirt with confidence, get more dates, and get a great girlfriend, all by being what I call radically authentic, because women like you for you.

And I'm going to do a quick part two

to my last episode.

I am celebrating 20 years

focusing on being in the trenches of dating.

20 years ago, I

became single after ending a relationship that neither she nor I wanted to truly be in.

And I said to myself, it's time to figure out what women want.

And in these 20 years, I have learned a lot.

And I want to share something with you right now.

So this is the second in an ongoing series I'll be doing throughout the rest of 2025 about my 20-year dating transformation, how I went from lonely and dateless and really struggling to having a lot of great success with women and eventually becoming a dating coach.

Today's episode is going to be a bit of a departure.

I want to help you, I want to give you hope.

I want to help you fix something that I'll bet you struggle with, which is wanting to approach a really attractive woman and not doing it.

rarely doing it, maybe never doing it.

And I want to help you fix that approach anxiety.

I want to help you know what to say.

I want to help you be able to walk up to that gorgeous, intriguing, stylish woman who you might see at the lounge or the bars on Friday night, or the super cute girl you see walking out of the yoga class at your gym.

And you want to talk to her, but you hear that little voice saying, don't be creepy, don't be weird, don't be that guy.

Today I want to talk to you about approaching, but I'm going to talk about it in a different way.

So much of my podcast is about me sharing my own success stories, and I'm happy and proud to do that with you.

What I'm going to do in this episode is I want to share stories about some of my all-star clients and some of the approaching wins and breakthroughs and successes that my guys have had over the years.

I've been a dating coach now for almost 14 years

and I've seen some amazing wins.

So today is not about me.

Today's episode is about the men I've coached, the men who have broken through.

And I want to start by telling you about Ken.

Ken is an amazing man.

He is, he was not my first client, but he was the client who got me absolutely addicted to coaching.

When I became his dating coach, Ken.

was about 30 years old and he'd never even kissed a woman.

He had never kissed a girl.

But he had a lot going for him.

He, at the time, was a assistant professor at a college on the East Coast.

He has a very silly sense of humor.

He likes knock-knock jokes.

He likes dad jokes, much like me.

And he had a really, has a really deep knowledge of ancient Greek literature.

There's even a line in my book where I'm talking about Ken, and I say, most guys can quote Homer Simpson.

Ken can quote Homer's Odyssey.

But when Ken came to me,

you know, he's an introverted guy.

He's shy.

He's a little bit stocky.

It's on the shorter side, about 5'7, maybe 5'8 at most, a little chunky.

He reminded me a lot of like a young, younger Jonah Hill

before Jonah Hill got skinny.

And I remember during our first meeting, Ken said something that really hit me and it reminds me of something a lot of men have said to me.

We're sitting in a coffee shop, just getting to know each other, and he said, You know what?

I'm just not attracted to women, I'm just not what women want.

And

so many men have said that to me in different words, but Ken just came out and said, Connell, I'm not enough.

And

at the time, this was back in, oh man, this was in the mid

early to mid-teens, 2013, 2014, somewhere around there.

And at the time, a lot of people were still using a lot of the pickup artist moves that were popular in the book, The Game.

You know, Neil Strauss came out with a hugely successful book in 2005 called The Game, and Ken had just read that book.

And so Ken came into my working with me and he just figured, okay, we're going to do a bunch of game.

He said, hey, tell me what, you know, what should I wear?

What pickup lines should I rehearse before we go out

and because basically

my my coaching model back then was i just met up with a guy very first day we talk we chat we get coffee and then we go out and i help him approach women for a whole weekend that's what i was doing at the time anyway so ken says hey conno what pickup lines should i learn and i said don't don't worry about it uh there's a better way I remember writing him, girls like you for you.

So don't sweat it.

And let's show women the real you.

And he seemed skeptical about that, but he seemed

enticed by the idea.

So Ken and I hit the town circa 2014.

And

we go to bars, we go to lounges here in New York City.

And Ken's talking to women.

And,

you know, starts chatting with some women.

And he starts approaching using the strategies I share with him.

You know, I'm giving him tips.

Say this, try that, go talk to that woman.

And I see Ken start to

perk up a little bit.

He was really nervous, really anxious, but you know, his shoulders got straight.

His voice grew a little bit louder as

we went on over the course of this weekend, this first night out.

And

the thing is, I was having him walk up to women, not with these smooth pickup lines, but I was just having him use what he's authentically

used to expressing to people.

That was when he said, hey, I like knock-knock jokes.

So I had him walk up to women and do knock-knock jokes.

I had him walk up to women and

talk about Plato and Aristotle.

And not your usual bar banter.

And at one point, I remember Ken, we were at a bar called The Brass Monkey, and Ken walked up to a really cute, curvy NYU grad student.

She had these cat-eyeglasses.

And I remember we looked at her, or sorry, we were standing in this bar, and I said, Look around the room.

Who are you most attracted to?

And he said, Oh, her over there, pointed to this woman with the cat-eye glasses.

And I said, You like karaoke, right?

He said, Yeah.

And I said, Okay, what's your favorite karaoke song?

He told me, Purple Rain.

So I said, Okay, walk over to her, and I want you to sing the first two lines of purple rain.

But you have to sing it like you absolutely are on American Idol.

I want you to commit to it, sing it like your life depends on it.

And he walks over to this woman and he starts singing,

never meant to cause you any sorrow.

I never meant to cause you any pain.

And he really commits to it.

Because he commits to it, she joins right in.

And within seconds, they are holding hands and they're doing an acapella duet of purple rain.

And they talk for a little while longer.

Eventually, they exchange numbers.

Oh, I remember this.

I remember this.

She puts her number in his phone, hands

Ken's phone back to him, and says, You better text me.

I like nerds nerds like you.

Now that was a big moment for Ken.

All of a sudden, he's getting really cool, cute girls liking him for him.

And

he said something to me after

we left the bar.

He said, wow, girls never looked at me like that or basically told me to ask her out.

He was like, wow, this is really simple when I get in the zone.

I'm like, yeah, bingo, boy.

And later that night, so we leave the bar, we go back to the brass monkey, and we're on the rooftop bar.

Now it's on Saturday night, it's our second night out.

And

that was when I had

still to this day, maybe

the best night of my life as a dating coach, or at least it certainly was at that moment.

Ken walks up to a beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow lookalike, tall, very pretty, blonde in a yellow dress.

And he approaches her, And I'm about 10 feet away watching him.

And I see him approach.

I see her smile.

And they begin talking.

And they seem to be hitting it off.

It's going pretty well.

They get a drink.

They walk over to the bar.

I'm watching.

I'm just his chill friend standing over in the corner in case he needs me.

And then he makes his move.

He

leans in and up,

steps up, and he kisses this Gwyneth Paltrow, lookalike full make out

and he's on his tiptoes because she's like 5'10 he's 5'7

so he's on his tiptoes and again Ken

had never kissed a woman before and I almost looked away because it was such a personal moment but I'm watching Ken and I have never knowingly witnessed somebody having their first ever kiss in their life.

But I could not take my eyes off of Ken, who just seemed like a different guy than he did two nights earlier when we first met up.

And

he had really just awoken what I call the higher self, his most charismatic, confident, what I call radically authentic self.

And he wasn't being somebody he's not.

He wasn't using scripted pickup lines.

He was walking up to women and quoting Plato and doing knock-knock jokes and just being a dorky nerd, but leaning into it.

And that's the true Ken.

He's like equal parts, good-hearted, dork, and ball, you know, bold, badass.

And that's the real guy who was in there all along.

And about six months later, he ended up having a girlfriend.

It wasn't the Gwyneth lookalike.

That was just a drunken makeout.

I don't even think they saw each other again.

But man, the right makeout, the right approach with the right woman can absolutely change your life, change your mindset.

And Ken changed that night.

He really changed, at least in terms of how he saw himself in relation to women.

That night, he basically realized that he was not Mr.

Not Enough.

He changed into, I forget what his higher self-name was.

I have all my clients give themselves a higher self-name.

Mine is Connell.

Fucking Barrett.

And,

but yeah, maybe it was authentically awesome Ken.

It was something like that.

Because when you awaken that true self, man, you awaken a whole new dating life.

And so that's the first story I wanted to share with you.

What's the lesson of this story with Ken?

I think the lesson is when you really surrender to who you are and you lean into who you are and you stop trying to say the perfect thing and be somebody you're not.

Instead, you walk up to a really attractive woman or a woman you find attractive and you bring authentic core value to her moment, to her life in that moment, man, you can be a five foot seven, chunky Jonah Hill lookalike and be making out with Gwyneth Paltrow's twin.

That's not supposed to happen, right?

Guys like Ken are not supposed to be making out with stunning women like that.

But that's the beautiful thing about approaching is I love approaching.

I love teaching it.

One of my favorite things about teaching is going out on these weekends in New York City, what I call my wingman weekends, where I coach one or two clients.

We go out and I am their wingman.

And that was the moment I just became addicted to being a dating coach because I got to help somebody like Ken have a breakthrough and realize his worth, his value.

Not only his worth and value to women, but

having the freedom to break three of the chains that keep your legs from walking over to that woman,

to pull the duct tape off your mouth, to pull the proverbial duct tape off your mouth so you can walk over and talk to a woman and say hi and try to flirt, shoot your shot.

And when it goes well, oh man, those are some of the greatest nights of your life as a single man.

So, Ken, if you're out there listening, then I love you, buddy.

You're an inspiration to me.

And that's why I wanted to lead off this episode with that story about Ken.

I think that approaching women is the single most powerful thing a single man can do if he's looking to improve his love life and find love.

There's something about it.

It's just so innate and elemental.

A man sees a woman, he's intrigued, walk over and say hello and talk.

When I first started working on my dating life in 2005, this was much more

normal.

It still wasn't happening very often, but it was more socially acceptable than it is now 20 years later.

Because in 2005, this was before Tinder became popular.

This was before the dating apps exploded because of Tinder largely.

And so in 2005,

I wouldn't say most men were approaching women, but a lot more were doing it then

than are doing it now.

And I think now is the best time to go out and meet women in the real world because it is so rare.

It's even more rare because we now live in a very dating app forward world, very digital world, a very social media world.

So

all these stories are about men who, in the last five, six, seven years working with me have had amazing approaching breakthroughs.

Because man, I feel like approaching women, it's you want to approach women the the way you approach life.

We want to approach women with authenticity and kindness and courage

and

bringing our best selves.

And that's also the way you want to approach life.

And that's why I love approaching.

To me, it's a metaphor for how a man should approach life.

We approach women the way we approach life.

Courage, confidence, authenticity.

Put yourself out there and let the chips fall.

And

let's get to it.

Okay, next story.

Ash.

Ash is a wonderful young man.

Ash came to me

and he at the time was 22, 23-year-old college student, graduate student, software engineer, Indian guy, a quote, brown-skinned Indian guy, he called himself to me.

At the time, he meant it in a very self-deprecating way.

He basically said, ugh, Connell, women don't want some brown guy.

Women in the U.S.,

especially white waspy women, they want cool, tall, handsome white guys.

They don't want some brown, nerdy, software guy.

And I'll throw another detail at you about Ash.

Now, Ash is a handsome man, I would say.

Got a cute face, but he's a little bit chunky.

I'd say probably 30 pounds overweight.

It's my best guess.

So he had kind of a cute face, a really great smile, but again, 5'6 ⁇ , 5'7, not some tall, strapping guy.

And so he's a little bit heavy and he's Indian heritage.

Actually, he was from India.

He had just come to the U.S.

from India to study here in New York.

And so my weekend out with Ash, here's the moment.

Ash was struggling with approach anxiety.

And

sometimes when a guy won't approach, I take a couple different tactics.

Sometimes I will threaten him with a headlock and I'll say, go approach that girl or I will put you in a headlock and I will do it with you under my sweaty arm.

That sometimes gets them to do it.

Other times I try a different approach and I tried a different approach this night.

So we're standing in a bar called Gem.

I don't know if you know New York City or not, New York City or not, but there's a bar called Gem.

And we're at this place called Gem, very popular with like college-age girls.

So that's why we were there.

And because Ash, college-age dude, and you know, bushy-haired Indian guy, just a sweetheart, adorable, intelligent.

I love the kid.

And he's struggling to approach.

A lot of guys would, if you're like a lot of men, you will approach a woman if you get a big green light from her.

But unless you get some big green light, you're just not going to do it.

That's the thing about approach anxiety.

It pushes back against you.

It's almost like there's a frozen or like an invisible wall

between you and that girl and Ash was feeling that invisible wall he was feeling frozen so I said okay I'll be your

I'll be your mouthpiece I'll I was a Syrah no de Bergerac I said I will talk to whatever woman and I'll tell her however you feel about her so we're standing at the bar at gym and I have him look around and I say who here is really your type who do you want to talk to and he points over to this woman, a young woman, probably 23, 24, tight blue jeans, really pretty,

brunette.

And

I said, okay, what would you love to say to her?

One of my favorite exercises I do with my guys is I say, okay, if you could walk up to that woman and you knew you couldn't fail, what would you say to her?

And I asked Ash that question.

And he said, I would say to her, you are a total 10.

And I just had to come tell you that.

Now, normally I would make my client go up and say that, but I could see the nerves.

And so I said, okay,

let me help you out.

So I tap her on the shoulder.

She turns around, she looks at me.

And Ash is two feet next to him, two feet away from me.

She turns around, she looks at me, and I say, Hey, excuse me, I just want you to know this is my friend Ash.

He wanted me to tell you that you are a total total 10 and you are absolutely his type.

She looked at me.

She looked at him and realized, oh, this is legit.

This is not some shtick or game.

This is real.

And she looked at him and her face lit up.

I kid you not, dear listener.

Hand on my mom's urn, she looked at Ash like he was Prince charming she actually she actually kind of clutched her chest like like you know like what oh so she she kind of touches her her chest and said what really

i'm a 10

she was absolutely blown away and she says this to him not me And a little part of me was like, come on, you should be into me.

I'm the one who approached you.

But because I was doing it on Ash's behalf, she put all of his affection, all of her attraction and interest toward him.

And so she's like, really?

Me?

And then Ash got that green light that he really needed to feel confident.

And then he walks up to her.

Finally, he walks up and says, yeah, you're a total 10.

And they start chatting and talking.

And five minutes later, they walk away from me and they go upstairs.

There's a, there's a,

second floor seating area.

And they went upstairs and had a little instant date, just the two of them.

And I just, I love that story.

I love how she melted.

To me, the lesson here for you is when in doubt,

say something.

When in doubt, tell the truth.

When in doubt, say the authentic thing.

I did not

tell her some cheesy, funky, weird line.

I didn't use some pickup move.

I just said to Ash, what is the deepest, truest thing you would say to her?

If you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?

And he said, you're a total 10.

And it was the power of that truthful statement.

It was so powerful that he was filtering it through me, but she still felt the truth.

She felt, here's this young man, here's this guy taking a chance, being vulnerable, being authentic, giving her a genuine, real compliment.

And I just love that lesson.

And also think about her reaction, right?

A lot of guys guys say to me, what's the right move to approach a 10?

Well, why don't you just tell the truth?

Why don't you just say the real thing?

Because just because you see that woman as a quote unquote 10, does that mean she's walking through the world feeling like she's some perfect vision of loveliness?

She's probably just as insecure and just as in her head about various things.

And the way she reacted, clutching her chest, oh my God, like she was blown away.

She does not hear that kind of genuine

truth from a man.

What she hears is cat calls.

What she gets is weird pickup lines.

Just having this vulnerable, sweet, cute Indian dude.

By the way, for what it's worth, not that I give a shit about ethnicity and race and stuff, but for what it's worth, white girl, waspy white girl, super into the chunky, nerdy,

quote-unquote, just a brown guy, as Ash told me.

And oh man, what an amazing moment to see that happen for him.

And

yeah, he was just absolutely lit up from that moment on.

So that's one of, that's my next favorite story.

I feel like Ash and Ken,

they never met, but man, they'd be a good dynamic duo.

Couple of round, nerdy, smart young men just walking up to gorgeous, stunning women.

Can you imagine the looks that Ash

and

Ken would get as they're making out with grabbing phone numbers from these stunning women and these cooler, taller jocks are just like standing there doing nothing?

Oh man, I love it.

I love revenge of the nerds.

I love it.

I love my job.

You struggle with dating, right?

Sure, you have a good job and cool friends, but you just aren't sure how to flirt, the apps don't work for you, and sometimes women put you in the friend zone.

It's frustrating.

Hey, I struggled with dating too.

As an introvert and a total nerd, I didn't just live in the friend zone.

I owned real estate there.

But I escaped using the dating philosophy of radical authenticity, which I've used to help thousands of men in 17 countries find love.

It's what I wrote about in my best-selling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't.

And radical authenticity is why Psychology Today called me the best dating coach in America.

And now I want to personally help you attract your dream girlfriend.

So go to datingtransformation.com and book a free call with me.

On our call, I'll tell you how my one-on-one coaching will help you find your dream girlfriend.

And you'll be doing it by flirting with confidence and authenticity.

No creepy pickup tricks needed.

So go to datingtransformation.com, book a free call today, and let my personalized coaching help you get a great girlfriend next story i want to tell you about titan titan um

his real name is edward titan is his higher self name i'll go with titan so titan is

uh came to me and he was really struggling with social anxiety

he just felt very uncomfortable in social settings and

So I did a special exercise with him and a couple other clients.

I do a special

in-person exercise called Awkward Palooza,

where a few clients and myself, we go out to a spot here in New York City, a very public spot.

And this is for guys who struggle with social anxiety.

We go to a public spot and I have them do two or three

very out there exercises.

where they have to do something that's very socially strange.

And I'm doing it for a very specific reason.

I want

guys like Edward, aka Titan, to realize that nobody gives a flying fuck about you out in public.

No one's judging you.

No one gives a damn.

Everybody's in their own head doing their own thing.

And

Titan was petrified of approaching girls because he's like, oh no, people are going to see me.

They're going to see me get rejected.

They're going to see me doing something.

What if I'm a, what if I creep women out?

What if I I end up on TikTok as the weird guy bothering women and all this

BS in his head pushing back?

And I said, let's go do Awkward Palooza.

Here's what Awkward Palooza is.

I probably shouldn't tell you this.

I'll never get any clients from my podcast, but I'll tell you the truth.

So Awkward Palooza is I have them do two or three socially weird things.

So they can realize that nobody gives a damn.

And then they become free and they can approach any woman.

So we go to Madison Square Park here in New York City.

Titan, myself, two or three other clients join us, and I have them do some exercises.

One exercise is we start small, we stand about 10 feet apart, and we have to tell truthful, awkward stories from our past.

Something that if anybody heard it, they might judge us.

And Titan told a story about getting dumped the night before his high school prom.

He told a couple other stories.

I forget what they were, but he was yelling 10 feet across a crowded intersection,

a pedestrian intersection,

and people were literally walking back and forth between us and nobody paid attention to him.

And then I made him take it one step further.

There's a traffic light, like a traffic pole.

for pedestrian traffic.

I had him walk over to the pole and he had to put his hand around the pole

and he had to do the,

he had to do, he had to try to look like I'm a little teapot.

You know, the I'm a little teapot, short and stout, and he had to do like, do an impersonation of a teapot.

And he had to, he had to talk for two minutes telling his vulnerable stories, truthful stories about getting dumped the night before prom while

looking like a teapot.

And he had to say it really loud.

And what was happening while while we were doing this is he was noticing people watching him and realizing that nobody was giving him more than 0.0001 second of thought.

And he starts laughing and he realizes, oh my God, I know what you're doing, Connell.

And he starts laughing.

He's realizing what's happening.

He's realizing that I'm giving, I'm putting him in these unusual social situations.

And he's realizing that nothing bad is happening.

It's basically it's exposure therapy.

I'm not a psychiatrist.

I'm just a dating coach, but I believe the term is exposure therapy, where you expose yourself to the things, the thing that your mind, your psychology is afraid of, then you realize that thing can't hurt you and you're no longer afraid of the thing.

So I just exposed Titan to his greatest fears or social fears anyway.

And we did one other one.

I'm trying to remember the other exercise I had him do.

I love it.

Awkward palooza is so fun.

Oh, I had him walk backwards.

He had to walk backwards for two minutes in a crowded

Washington Square Park,

and he couldn't look behind him.

He had to walk back slowly and, but concertedly, and he's making these social mistakes because you're not supposed to walk backwards.

By the way, don't try this at home without a dating coach.

But he walked backwards and

he realized, and a couple people were like hey watch where you're going come on man a couple people said something but almost nobody said anything

and he basically realized oh my god connell this is incredible like i i feel fearless right now and then once we were done with awkward palooza oh one last thing he had to do he had to stand up on um on a bench in the middle of the park and do a two-minute monologue about what he would do if he was elected president.

Just making random stuff up.

It's an improv exercise.

Just if I was elected president, everyone would have to wear reindeer antlers.

And

I was clout, yay, great, Titan for president.

And my other clients are rooting him on.

And he's doing all these weird, socially weird things and realizing nothing bad is happening.

Nobody's arresting me.

Nobody's calling the cops.

In fact, nobody's even barely paying me any attention.

If anything, some women were paying attention and smiling and liking it.

So we do awkward palooza for about 15, about 30 minutes, and then it's time to approach girls.

And then Titan, literally the first woman he walks up to, she's sitting in a little coffee shop.

Well, not a coffee shop, a restaurant, but like a patio seating in a restaurant.

So it's basically outside.

And he's walking by her and he just breaks the ice with her, starts chatting about whatever her coffee food order is.

I couldn't even hear what he said because he was too far away from me.

But all he did was just chat with her.

And they talked for 15, 20 minutes.

He got her number and they went out that night on a date and they hooked up.

They spent the night.

Love in the night.

And all he had to do was pretend like he was a teacup

and stand on a bench and do really weird stuff.

But I think you can see where I'm going with this, right?

Basically,

once you expose yourself to the thing you're afraid of, and these are extreme things I had him do.

You don't need to.

stand on a bench or be a teacup if you don't want to.

But that's what Edward, aka Titan, needed.

He needed to realize there's nothing to be afraid of.

And if you can pretend like you're a teacup, and if you can stand on a bench making up silly nonsense about what you would do as president while people walked around and some listened, mostly people ignored you, going up and chatting up a cute girl sitting in a coffee shop, that's easy.

Yeah, it's all you had to do.

So,

anyway, if you ever, if you ever want to come to New York and work with me, just say, hey, Connel, can I do awkward palooza?

That sounds fun.

And awkward palooza is not for everybody, but it is a really powerful way to get over your fear of social judgment.

Because one of the biggest, oh, and so I guess this is why awkward palooza was powerful for Titan.

One of the strongest forces of approach anxiety is just fearing like you're going to lose your social status.

You're going to be socially judged in some negative way and kicked out of society.

This goes back to evolution.

You know, we all go back to the savannas of Africa 200,000 years ago.

Basically, that's where Homo sapiens originated.

And, you know, back in the day, 200,000 years ago, day, you get kicked out of the tribe, that meant death.

So on some level, evolution has probably selected us all to be afraid of social judgment.

Because if we get socially judged, our brains are still thinking, I'll get kicked out and die.

But of course, that's not how the world works anymore.

So

I wanted Titan to be exposed to the things he's afraid of so he could realize there was nothing to be afraid of.

And his approach anxiety was essentially

gone

after that.

Butterfly, sure, nothing wrong with social butterflies, but that paralyzing fear of being somehow seen as a social outcast, that was gone.

And he went one for one that day, approached one girl, instant phone number, Saturday night date, and they hooked up.

So I'm told.

Anyway,

okay, here's another great story.

I love this one.

This is

my client Raj.

Raj

may well be the single,

he might have had the worst case of approach anxiety I've ever seen.

Raj, we were at Barnes and Noble one day.

And

I'm doing what I like to do.

I take my clients out in New York City.

I help them approach.

I give them them tips.

And sometimes I just say,

I got to just pressure them into approaching.

Otherwise, they'll never do it.

And

Raj was the most scared I've ever seen of any client.

His forehead would just burst into sweat.

His hands would shake.

He got so nervous.

And so we're at Barnes and Noble one Saturday afternoon.

And I say to him, and we're on the third floor, Barnes and Noble, Union Square, where the magazine rack is.

And there's a really pretty blonde sitting on this little bench that they, that there's a bench for seating between the magazine aisles.

And I go to Raj, I go, see her, the woman with the blonde hair sitting in the magazine rack, go approach her.

And he's like, no.

He's like, no.

I said, go approach her, or it's headlock time.

Now, a little bit about Raj.

He's an IT guy, very shy, very smart.

Higher self-name is the king.

And he had that really bad approach anxiety.

And he was supposed to be approaching, but he was refusing.

And I have a little deal I make with my clients.

Either they approach immediately and without question, or again, I'll put them in a headlock.

And then I approach the girl with him under my arm and I say, hey, excuse me, lady, this is my friend Raj.

He wanted to come talk to you, but he's too big of a wuss.

So basically, I said, Dude, either you do it or it's headlock time.

So he finally does it.

He walks over, he takes a deep breath.

He walks over and he says, Hi, excuse me, I'm Raj.

And I just had to come over and say,

You're adorable.

What are you reading?

And her face broke into a huge smile.

And as soon as she smiled, he relaxed.

He realized, okay, everything's okay.

And he actually got down on one knee, which was good because that put him down eye to eye level with her.

So he wasn't towering over her.

It was a good little side tip.

Try to get eyeball to eyeball with a girl when you approach.

They talked for a bit.

As I recall, her name's Emily.

It was a really good conversation.

And

he asked her for her number, but she said, Oh, I don't know.

I'm kind of dating somebody.

And

to his credit, Raj didn't care.

He was just happy that the approach went well because she was really receptive to talking to him.

She was smiling a big smile.

And

so he said, Oh my God, you have a boyfriend.

She's like, Well, it's not a boyfriend.

He's like, No, I get it.

You've been cheating on me this whole time.

A little line I gave him.

So anyway, he walks away, says, Nice meeting you.

We go down one floor,

go down the escalator, one floor, get off at the next floor.

And I'm about to give Raj a little, um, a little debrief of what I, what he did well, which was a lot.

Before I could do that, there's a tap on his shoulder.

It was Emily.

It was cute blonde Emily from the magazine rack.

And she said to him, hi.

And her face was like flush.

She was kind of blushing, but smiling.

She said, hi to him.

Hi, I had to come find you.

She said, Look, that was the coolest thing that's happened to me in like months.

So, yeah, I just wanted to come tell you that.

And you should take my number if you want to, if you still want to.

And of course, he did.

And they had a date.

They had a date the very next weekend.

And he got her number.

They parted ways.

And then he just like

came over to me and said, Oh my God, that was amazing.

And I i said okay do you know why she came back looking for you

and i said look most guys don't approach women most guys just stare or hover that's creepy or they cat call that's creepy but you rod you walked up you're all nervous genuine but nervous like in a hugh grant movie And I said, you made her rom-com movie fantasy come true.

So, I feel like the lesson that the reason I'm sharing this story, what I want you to take away, is that

if you're like most single men, you just so often you see a woman you'd love to meet, yet something stops you, right?

Some kind of fear.

And

a lot of guys say, Well, I would do it if I had the confidence.

You don't need confidence.

Raj had no confidence as he approached Emily.

He had zero.

He had me

threatening him with a headlock.

But here's what he had.

He had courage.

He said, I'm going to use courage.

I'm going to walk over to her and then we'll just see what happens.

And

that's all you need to approach.

So don't listen to some bullshit story.

Your brain tells you that, no, you can't approach unless you're confident.

You can approach any woman you want, anywhere you want, as long as you you summon courage.

Courage is simply the decision to take an action even though it's uncomfortable.

And nobody can stop you from approaching a woman.

So don't believe the myth that you need confidence first and then you can approach.

Courage is the currency that buys you confidence.

Courage is the currency that buys you confidence.

I wish I had known this 20 years ago when I first started working on my dating life.

Technically 16 years ago was when I first approached.

I never approached a woman until 2009.

But man, once I did,

a whole new world opened up to me.

And what

Raj realized that day is, hey, I can use courage.

And then if it goes reasonably well, boom, the confidence will come.

He became instantly confident.

I cannot tell you how freaking nervous he looked.

He was like, looked like borderline panic attack before he approached her.

As soon as she smiled,

he relaxed, chill, confident.

She loved it.

And think about this.

Again, she

went and sought him out.

She was so impressed that he approached her the right way.

So don't listen to some nonsense story that women don't want you to approach.

Women don't want you to do creepy shit.

Women don't want you to cat call.

Women don't want you to put on some weird fake agenda, but women want you to be vulnerable and walk up and say, hey, I had to meet you.

You're really cute.

I'm nervous, but here I am.

Oh, man, that's the dream.

That's the rom-com movie dream.

And fast forward two months later, I'm at a bar.

I drank at the time.

I'm at a bar having a drink with a couple other clients.

And then I look over and I see Raj with a different woman.

Just ran into him with a different woman at a bar.

He was just absolutely crushing it.

Completely free, completely free of all that approach anxiety.

Let me, let's finish with one more story.

Oh, I love this.

I want to tell you about Jared.

Jared is a U.S.

Navy captain.

At the time I worked with him, 37, I believe, very handsome man, but a little bit short.

like 5'6, 5'7 on the shorter side.

Handsome, good looking, dark hair, but

um

i'm a bit on the shorter side and we were going out one afternoon to approach women and it was his first time doing it or at least his first time in a long time i think it was his first time doing daytime approaches and as the two of us were walking toward the park madison square park on this really nice warm spring day i could see the the sweat kind of

beating on his forehead.

And

because he just, he had never approached women in the daytime, I don't think, and I could kind of, I just, I could see the lump in his throat,

and

but to his great credit, I think the fact that he was in the military, he was accustomed to following orders, right?

And you know, all my clients and I, we make a deal, basically do what I say, or else, or else, and he's good at taking orders, so

we go to so we're at Madison Square Park,

and

there's a really pretty woman

sitting on a blanket, and she's got a dog with her, and

didn't know exactly who she was, what her deal was, but he walks over and he walks over and he crouches down, which is good, eyeball to eyeball, getting on her, getting on her visual wavelength.

And he just walked over really casually.

And, and just, I don't know what he said because I couldn't hear him.

It was just something very genuine, very authentic.

Again, I don't teach super scripted, canned lines.

It's like whatever's happening in the moment.

He probably commented on her dog.

Turns out she's a Brazilian exchange student.

You can imagine how pretty a Brazilian exchange student is.

And they talk for 15 or 20 minutes and

get her phone number.

Boom.

Then we go over to Barnes and Noble, clearly a place I like to go.

Walked up to another woman, a brunette, a med student, as I recall.

Boom, phone number, two for two.

Then now at this point, Captain Jared has some serious momentum going.

And

we then leave the bookstore.

We go to a different park.

It's a really nice spring day.

We go to a different park.

And then I see a woman sitting on a park bench, and her nose is in a book.

And I go, boom, there's your next, there's your next victim.

Go over.

He walks over.

Again, it's too far away from me to hear anything.

He walks over, chats for a couple minutes, and he comes back later with this giant grin on his face.

Okay.

Now, I'm assuming he's three for three.

He grabbed a number.

I'm assuming that because he's got this big grin on his face.

And he comes over and I was wrong.

He actually

was rejected.

But I never, but he was happier after he was rejected than he was with either of the other two girls, at least on his face anyway.

He had this big smile on his face.

I said, what happened?

He said, oh, she rejected me.

And he's like smiling ear to ear.

I said, tell me more.

He's like, it was fantastic.

He said,

he he walked over to her and

she was reading this book.

And

he said, oh, what are you doing today?

She said, oh, I'm just here reading the book.

And he said, oh, I'm out looking at cool architecture because we were right next to the Flatiron Building,

a famous building here in New York City, the Flatiron Building.

And he's like, yeah, I'm just out looking at cool.

architecture like the flat iron building and she's looking at her book she's not making eye contact with him

and she said well why don't you go do that then

basically go away and he said oh okay it was nice meeting you take care he was very he was very polite very gentlemanly and he walked away so he walks back to me and i said why are you so happy about that he said

i can't believe i that's what i was afraid of

That didn't hurt at all, he said.

He basically said, there's nothing to fear.

And that's a great lesson to end on for this episode.

I want you to go out and know that you are enough, that you can walk up to women and make conversation and approach and get phone numbers and dates.

You really can, just like all of these men did, just like I've done a million times.

At the same time, I also

kind of want you to get rejected.

Not because I don't want you to succeed, of course I do, but I want you to break through the thing you're afraid of and realize that just some random woman sitting on a park bench, she can't hurt you.

There's nothing to be afraid of.

She's just a girl reading a book.

Nothing bad happened to Jared.

He realized, you know what, these other two women were super into me.

It's totally fine that this woman didn't want to talk to me.

Maybe I'm not her type.

Maybe she just wanted to read her book.

You know what?

He could have easily approached the girl on the park bench a different time, different place, and she might have loved talking to him.

At the same time, she could have, he could have approached the other two women and maybe caught them in the wrong mood and they might have rejected him.

Bottom line is: rejection is nothing to fear, it's something to embrace.

It's a necessary, important part of being able to approach women because you're not going to truly become free and fearless and confident until you face the thing that scares you.

In this case, rejection, and realize it's not a big scary lion.

It's just a little kitty cat.

It's not going to hurt you.

And I think that's a great lesson to end on.

Jared enjoyed his rejection, I think, even more than the two phone numbers he got.

And

anyway, so yeah, that has been this second episode.

in an ongoing series that I'll be doing the rest of the year on my 20 years, my 20-year dating transformation, my 20 years working on my dating life.

And I have a lot more great client success stories, but that's enough for today.

By the way, if you would like my help approaching women, if you would like to walk up to women and cute Brazilian women and sexy, gorgeous, cool chicks at your gym or the bar, if you want to have those rom-com moments where you walk up, you're nervous, you're genuine, but you're courageous, you're authentic, and

truly find out how attractive and worthy and amazing you are, then let me know.

You and I can talk.

Just go to datingtransformation.com

and you can book a free call to talk with me or somebody on my team and eventually talk with me.

And I will help you approach women and do it with authenticity because life is too short.

to not talk to women who are interested or are interesting to you and make make some great results happen.

So, thank you for listening to the stories of Edward and Jared and Ken and Ash.

And

I'm forgetting a couple other ones, but I think that's most of them.

Don't forget your dream girlfriend.

She is out there and she is going to love you, but she's going to have to meet the real authentic you.

All right, until next time.