I was incredibly shy.
During high school, all I ever did was program video games.
I was really into C++ and assembly line coding. I liked to program adventure games like the old Sega games. I liked to play 3D games and program 3D games. I was pretty much just all about computer games, and there was no way I could ever talk to a girl.
Even when I found myself in conversations with a girl, I would be incredibly nervous, even if it was just about schoolwork, and I really didn’t have too many male friends because I didn’t guy speak. I didn’t even know how to talk to guys at all. I had a couple of friends, but it was mostly centered around programing and computers.
This made me incredibly scared of girls, incredibly shy, and my shyness even followed me through college where I could barely hold a conversation with a girl at all. I was starting to get better, but not too much, and I really couldn’t even talk to many guys either.
By the time I got to college, however, I decided I was going to make some changes, so that I just wouldn’t be so shy.
We’re going to talk about some of the things you can do to overcome your shyness. The first thing you have to understand about overcoming shyness, you’re not so shy talking to girls or approaching girls is that it’s not something that happens overnight. It’s not like a quick fix or this magic bullet or it’s just one thing and now you are the super sociable, highly confident person that you’ve overcome your shyness.
Shy Guy Step #1. Push Your Comfort Zone Daily
What you need is to be pushing your comfort zone a little bit every day.
You’ve got a very small comfort zone where you’re not used to socializing. You’re very shy. It’s kind of like this bubble or balloon, and you need to push against the walls a little bit everyday to make that balloon bigger, bigger, and bigger, whereas if you were to push too fast, it’s going to freak you out.
But you need to push fast enough that you feel like you’re making progress.
It’s kind of like a very good video game—coming back to video games. If the game is too hard, you get frustrated and you give up and you don’t want to play the game anymore. If the game is too easy, the game is just boring. It doesn’t feel like you’re making any progress and you want to give up. You want to play some other game.
A very good video game kind of hits that sweet spot where it’s enough of a challenge that you feel interested in continuing and you’re just playing the game and you get into this flow state.
You want to be giving yourself a little bit of a challenge every single day, not so much of an extreme challenge like you’re an extremely shy guy, go talk to the most beautiful girl you can find all day and have a half hour conversation with her. That will freak you out, that will get you scared.
So you need to start with baby steps and be in this mindset, this mentality you always want to be pushing your comfort zone, always want to feel a little bit uncomfortable, always feel a little bit awkward just a little bit, and just push, push, and push and put yourself in those situations where you’re always pushing to overcome your shyness.
Shy Guy Step #2. Replace Your Current Habits
Replace your old habits that isolate you and keep you alone, and keep you inside your head with activities that are social, activities where you are talking to other people and being around other people.
Now like I mentioned before, in high school I was always playing and coding video games. When I got to college, I stopped that completely. I stopped playing games. I stopped coding games. I just wasn’t on my computer at all, and instead, I joined a bunch of groups on the campus like I started taking salsa dance classes.
I joined the Bible discussion group even though I wasn’t religious at all. It was just purely to meet people because there were some cool, friendly people in there, and Bible people, they are pretty nice and sweet. That’s about all I could handle, right?
I joined the Asian association because I was into anime and there was an anime group, but I didn’t go to the anime group because again that would put me inside my head. It would isolate me. I kind of expanded my comfort zone. I pushed, pushed, pushed, and I joined the Asian association just to meet Asians in general.
I think there was like a Hispanic group. I joined the Hispanic group for a little while. I worked on a newspaper just to meet people, just to constantly give myself exposure to meeting different people, being around other human beings.
Maybe you’re not on a college campus. You don’t have that ease of access to these groups like I did on my school, but the point is you want to give up these old habits that keep you isolated, antisocial, and alone. Video games were a big thing for me. Maybe stop surfing the Internet on pointless websites, spend less time on Facebook.
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Also stop buying junk food. Keep the junk food out of the kitchen because eating that crappy food just makes you feel lethargic and slow. It makes you feel like crap and you just want to stay home. Eat better food and go out and join some groups like you could go on MeetUp.com, find a group that interests you, take dance classes, take cooking classes, join some local sports team. You can take Improv or acting classes.
Whatever it is, there’s a lot of groups that you can join that are not that expensive.
Speaking of joining groups, I also recommend that you take a public speaking class like Toastmasters, which is an organization I joined to practice, to learn how to do public speaking, and they meet like once a week, or every two weeks, and I prepare a little speech, and then I get in front of the group, and just give that talk, and that really helped me overcome my shyness in a lot of ways, overcome my fear of public speaking. There’s Toastmasters groups in most cities and college campuses. I highly recommend that group. You can also take acting classes, or Improv classes.
It’s just to get used to being in front of other people and expressing yourself, and moving your mouth and not fear being judged and kind of letting go of the outcome, and speaking and talking, and getting outside of your body, getting outside of your head, letting go.
All these are really important skills for a shy guy because as a shy guy, you’re normally like, “Ahhh!” like you’re just really tight. Your body is tight. Your mouth is tight. You’re mentally tight. You’re protecting yourself. You’ve got this shell around yourself. You’ve got to break out of that shell.
This is just a structured way, a class, or a Toastmasters group. It’s a structured way to break that barrier and you want to be moving not too fast, not too slow. Sometimes, if it’s just on your own, you’re going too slow because you’re just so shy.
A structured class, a structured group is just a way to make something happen, get that going, get that moving where you will break out of your shyness.
Shy Guy Step #3. Gradually Start Talking To Girls
Start cold approaching girls.
When I started cold approaching back in the 1990s, there were no cellphones, barely the Internet, no videos, not many articles on how to pick up girls, so you’re pretty lucky that you have everything at your fingertips.
But even back in the 1990s, I still would cold approach girls. Pretty girls I saw on campus, I’d go up to them, I’d introduce myself. The girls kind of liked it. I didn’t really go anywhere because I didn’t know how to carry a conversation, but at least it got me used to talking to pretty girls I would not have meet otherwise.
If you want to overcome your shyness, talking to pretty girls is pretty important. Now you can start off with baby steps like you can start off by asking girls for directions. “Hey, I had to come up to you, say hello, and by the way, I am kind of lost, and I am looking for the Starbucks.” Something simple like that, all right?
Just get your mouth moving, to realize you’re not going to die, just small little steps. It’s like that video game where you don’t want to push yourself too hard, but you want to make it a little bit of a challenge, so it stays interesting.
Then when you get good at approaching girls, asking for directions, you can get a little bit more advanced. You can start asking the girl for her opinion. You’re at a department store, and you’re like, “Hey, I need a female opinion. You look like a cool person. I’ve got this shirt, and I got this shirt. Which one will look better on me?”
Or if you’re in a park, maybe just carry two pairs of sunglasses around with you, go up to her, and say, “Hey, I need a female opinion. I’m trying to get more stylish. You look like you know something about style. What do you think? Does this pair of sunglasses look good on me or would you prefer this pair of sunglasses?”
Should give you an answer, and you’re like, “Okay, thank you. thank you very much. That was very really useful,” and then you can go on about your day, right?
Then you can maybe open with a very soft compliment. Again, it’s just pushing your comfort zone, pushing that boundary, expanding the balloon slowly, but fast enough in an interesting way that you stay interested in it.
Shy Guy Step #4. Do Verbal Exercises
You want to have your morning ritual, some verbal exercises that you do.
For example, before I shot a video, I’ll do some verbal exercises. If I’m going out at night, before I go out, I might do a couple of verbal exercises. Even during the day, I’ll do a couple of verbal exercises just to get my mouth moving because I’m naturally a shy guy. When I wake up in the morning, I kind of revert back to my old self, my default state, which is to be pretty quiet and shy and not say anything.
Doing some verbal exercises just gets my mouth moving. It’s kind of like going to the gym, and you do lift weights, not even necessarily to get big but just to stay in basic shape so that you’re not this fat fuck, so you have a baseline level of fitness.
You want to have a baseline level of fitness with your mouth and with your speaking ability, so I’ve got a bunch of verbal exercises included in this course. You can go check them out like the I like exercise, the free association exercise, the talking to the wall exercise. You can any do of these exercises, and it will just get your mouth moving.
It’s going to make you feel so much better, so much more sociable, so that when you do talk to a person at least you’re warmed up, and it doesn’t feel like this strange bizarre experience from Mars.
Shy Guy Step #5. It Takes Time
Shyness takes a while to overcome.
It’s going to take weeks, or months, or a year. It’s something that you have to continually push on, continually expand your comfort zone, and you continually expand your comfort zone by putting yourself in uncomfortable positions, regularly being uncomfortable, regularly feeling awkward, regularly feeling scared at times.
One of the things that you have to understand is that getting what you want in life like having the good life, achieving big things that most people don’t achieve, it’s not always about feeling these pleasant feelings. It’s kind of a thing in our society where one someone feels uncomfortable, they just give up, they just don’t do it.
They meet a little bit of barrier. They meet some uncomfortable feelings, and they’re like, “This is it for me. I feel uncomfortable. I’m giving up. I’m going to go back to playing comfortable video games. I’m going to go back to watching comfortable television. I’m going to go back to eating comfortable, salty, fatty, sugary food.” People just give up too easily.
If you continually push, however, on your comfort zone, over the weeks, over the months, you make it a yearlong process, and you enjoy that process. That’s how you’re going to overcome your shyness and achieve great things with women, achieve sexual abundance, and be able to design and create the lifestyle that you want.