The Game of Rejection - Fear of Failure When Asking People Out
Fri Apr 2 13:40:59 2010
The fun and painless way to get rid of fear of rejection and build solid confidence when asking people out on a date.
First, I would like to say that this article is primarily targeted towards heterosexual men. In many countries around the world, it is customary for men to ask women out. Many women expect men to ask them out. It's not a completely strange thing to have a man come up to a woman and ask her on a date. I believe that the psychological exercise I will describe in this article would rid fear of rejection equally well irrelevant of your sex or sexual preference. However, the usefulness of this game for heterosexual men has been proven by many, and being one of them myself, it is hard for me to determine the outcomes for homosexuals or for women asking men out. Though, I'd love to hear input from that range of people - just post a comment!
A lot of men, at one point of their lives or the other, have to confront a learned fear: fear of rejection. It's synonymous with fear of failure, which in my book I proclaim as the major factor in attaining confidence and goal achievement. Now, when asking a woman out, you need to project solid confidence. If the reason is not obvious, try to imagine a car salesman offering you a car and not sounding confident about car's reliability and quality. Sounding unconfident while asking a woman out shows that you're not really sure if you're “good enough” for her; not perfect enough. Get the picture?
The goal of asking a woman out is to get her contact information and meet later to have some fun. I am sure many men can remember this scenario: you plan every single thing she could potentially say; in your mind you're the coolest guy who's talking like he's done it for years. However, once faced to the girl of your dreams in reality, you swallow your tongue! Even if you manage to follow along with a few phrases from your mental “script”, once her response varies from what you've planned, you lose it and are no longer confident.
The easy way to get of rid this fear of failure with asking women out is to go out and actually do it! Sounds easy, doesn't it? An unconfident brain will gather up and say: “Alright, what kind of a woman am I looking for? I need to find those and try to ask them out”. The problem with this method is that you're likely to become busy trying to see if the woman is “right” for you – simply by looking at her – instead of actually doing anything; this creates a problem of creating fake excuses. I believe the easiest way to overcome fear of rejection and learn how to ask women out while projecting solid confidence is the following game.
At the very least, you'll need a buddy. Even though, having a friend playing the game with you is not mandatory, having a partner in crime would be very beneficial if you're scared shitless of asking women out. Later on, you could easily repeat the game by yourself, just to make sure you “still got it”. So, you got a buddy or a couple and a desire to rid of fear of rejection, what's next?
Find a place with a lot of people; a mall works great. As far as equipment goes, having a video camera or at least a sound recorder is awesome for this. A simple camera phone hung on the belt works great. I sure hope your buddy would be trustworthy to be honest with his rejection results... the camera's purpose is to have a lot of laughs later about this whole experience. Finally, here are the rules and ideas of the game:
- In a set period of time – half an hour works great – you and your buddy must ask out as many women as possible.
- The more rejections you get the better! Rejections help you score.
- The more dates you get the better – this factor ensures no one plays psycho just to get rejected.
Once your time limit passes, meet up with your friend and see who scored better in both categories: who got rejected the most and who got the most dates. And if you made the videos, don't forget to upload them to YouTube and post a comment on this page with a link to it!
It's common for a certain unreasonable fear to dissipate once a person has been exposed to the feared circumstances. The brain sees that feared outcomes do not actually occur, and it rejects the fear. With the use of the Game of Rejection I've described above, not only the world doesn't end when you get rejected by a woman you asked out, but it's also fun to ask a woman out no matter what the outcome would be!
I wish you luck and success in your dating circles, and don't forget to post links to your videos in the comments!
P.S.: as much as it is a game, if a woman agrees to your date, make sure you go! It's OK to go out with several women on dates in one week, but it's rather harsh to get a date just for the sake of this game and never follow up on it.
Comments
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Mon Jan 23 09:16:21 2012
Thank you very much for this straightforward and priceless advice. I suffer from this fear so I will practise what you teach.
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Mon Jan 23 09:05:25 2012
Thank you very much for this straightforward and priceless advice. I suffer from this fear so I will practise what you teach.
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Mon Oct 31 01:32:06 2011
Your cranium must be protecting some very valulabe brains.
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Fri Aug 26 12:32:34 2011
Making fake excuses is a common problem when people are scared of things, it gives them a justfication for not taking action. With your method you'll certainly be getting lots of practice, and doing something regularly does eventually remove the fear of it.