A Systematic Plan To Get Yourself More Comfortable Talking To Strange Girls

Below is the plan I used to get over my own fear of approaching strange women. It's a mishmash of concepts from Behavioral Psychology and Behavior Modification. After learning about these ideas I realized I could apply the principles to getting over my nervousness towards talking to girls I didn't know.

You don't technically have to be able to approach strange women. You can always meet girls through your day to day life, or through online dating. Personally though, I find it a useful skill to have because it opens up your options. You gain the ability to potentially meet girls anywhere.

The underlying philosophy of the plan below is that the only truly effective way to get over your fears is to face them in real life, experience firsthand that they aren't so bad, and slowly build up a tolerance to them. I believe things like realizations, motivational sayings, and logical explanations for why you shouldn't be scared only help so much. You basically just have to force yourself to get out there. That's what this plan does.

The plan has a few potential uses:

The Plan

The most simple form of the plan is:

1) For the next month talk to one to three girls every day.

2) Pick an activity that you really want to do every day. Until you approach the required number of women that day, you can't do that activity.

3) Start with the situations which you can handle, and as the days pass, work your way up to the scenarios that make you more nervous.

More explanation about each of the steps:

Step one

The idea behind talking to several girls each day, besides from the obvious aspect of actually approaching the women and getting used to the act, is that you're building up momentum. By going out every day you quickly get used to starting conversations with people. On top of that, the confidence and motivation you accumulate each day is quickly parlayed into bigger gains, continuing the cycle. It isn't allowed to wear off. If you only went out once a week you'd get 'out of shape' during your off days and have to start again from scratch every time.

Step two

This is a reward/motivational system that pushes you out the door. It gets you out there when you otherwise wouldn't. Like I said, what you have to do is pick some sort of activity that you like doing every day. If you don't talk to any girls that day you don't get to do the activity. Some examples would be:

If you pick the right thing, it will exert a surprising amount of control over your behavior. You'll be glad to get the talking with girls thing over with each day so you can get your 'reward'. You'll find yourself sitting around thinking, "Man, I want to play video games. I better go out there and do my approaches for the day."

Step Three

This step is about gradually working towards your goals, rather than expecting yourself to do something overly difficult right away. For many inexperienced guys straight-up approaching a strange girl is too difficult to do right off the bat, but if they build up to it over a week or two it's possible. The exercise analogy comes back again. It's like asking someone to bench press 200 pounds on their first day at the gym vs. giving them time to build up their strength first. Set yourself some realistic goals each day, then gradually increase their difficulty as you get more comfortable.


Work out the personalized details of the plan yourself and continue it for a month or so. The schedule becomes more trying to sustain over the long haul, plus beyond that time you'll pretty much be over your fear. Going forward you'll technically have the capacity to approach girls, though there's a certain amount of nervousness the act will cause that will never go away. At this stage your goal becomes more about handling this more mild, manageable nervousness when it pops up. It's comparable to being someone who's never performed on stage, to a seasoned performer who still gets stage fright but can push past it.

Example Progression

Here's a possible list of Least Scary to Most Scary scenarios. You should figure one out that works for you. The earlier items on this list don't even involve women you're interested in. Often the problem isn't just that you're uncomfortable with approaching strange women, but strangers in general.

You'll notice that the earlier scenarios involve having a pretext or talking to people who have to talk with you. You may be able to do these these fairly easily. Things get noticeably harder when you have to straight-up go up a strange girl and try to talk to her. Even with the factors in place to make this easier, it will take some willpower.

Some more points about the plan, or sometimes just approaching women in general

This is not about picking up women

Expect to wimp out at times

Do whatever you can to make things easier for yourself

Talking to strange women isn't as inappropriate as it can feel at first

If you've never interacted with someone in a certain way before, you may have a strong feeling that to do so would be completely inappropriate and offensive. Ignore these thoughts. People approach women in bars all the time. People strike up conversations with people they don't know all the time as well. Some things are more rare than others (trying to meet women at a bookstore is less common than doing so at a bar), but they're still within the realm of possibility.

Be at least mildly socially adjusted

I wouldn't recommend someone try out this plan if they're so socially awkward they wouldn't be able to talk to a stranger without coming off as really weird or off putting. If that's the case with you, work on polishing your basic people skills a little first.


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