Your palms are sweaty as your heart beats heavily in your chest. Your mind races with possible outcomes as you struggle to bring your thoughts to words. What will she say? How will she react? Will she laugh at me? Will she think I'm a creep? She's going to say 'no,' I know it...
There are only two emotions that stem all others: love and fear. If you're afraid of rejection, it's because you aren't loving yourself enough. Everyone is going to tell you that confidence is key, and they're right. But how are you supposed to get that confidence in yourself?
It sounds so easy doesn't it? Just be confident. Sounds simple enough. We should all just be able to shout, "I'm confident!" and all of our insecurities are banished! Try it. Did it work? I'm going to assume that it didn't.
The first thing we need to do is REALLY get to know ourselves. We need understand why it is that we don't believe in ourselves. These insecurities that are causing this intense fear of rejection need to be flushed out. Why do I feel this way about myself? Why am I automatically assuming that she's going to reject me? Why does it matter whether or not I have her approval?
THE FIRST STEP:
Get out a piece of paper and write down everything you like about yourself. Write down all of the qualities about yourself that you LIKE. What is good about you? What do your friends say about you? Are you smart? Are you funny? Can you draw or paint? Do you like kittens and children? Seriously, anything and everything that you like about YOU.
You need to start with the things you like about yourself, because being afraid of rejection means that you're constantly bombarding yourself with self-defeating beliefs. These negative thoughts are like poison in your brain, and it's spilling over into everything you do. You have to stop this at the source by training your brain to think positive thoughts about yourself, which is what you're supposed to be doing right now. Are you still writing down those good things about you? Good. Keep it going.
You really need to be realistic with yourself here. If you're not, it's not going to do you any good. It is way to easy to think negative thoughts, and predict that things will work out badly. Stop and take the time to MAKE yourself think positively about who you are. You're a great person, so stop trying to tell yourself otherwise.
THE SECOND STEP:
Okay, now it's time to write down all of those negative thoughts that you have about yourself. You need to be extremely honest with yourself. Write down your flaws and the things that you don't like about yourself.
The one thing that you're most likely forgetting in all of this is that everyone has things they don't like about themselves. It's true.
Do you know the difference between you and someone who is confident around the opposite sex? They know all of their own flaws, they're honest with themselves about them, and they love themselves anyway. It's okay to love yourself and who you are even if you're not perfect. You really can, trust me.
Now that you've written down all of the things that you don't like about yourself, I want you to draw a "checkbox" next to each item on this list. I want you to go back through your list and check the ones that you think are ACTUALLY legitimate. What do you think on that list is REALLY keeping you from talking to women (or men)?
The reality is that there isn't anything there that's keeping you from meeting or talking to anyone. If there was anything on that list that legitimately needs fixing, then take this as a learning opportunity and fix it. Aside from that, there's really no reason that you can't talk to and/or ask women out. First thing's first, you need to love yourself.
If you don't love yourself first, how can you expect anyone else to?
THE THIRD STEP
Once you've found the ability to love yourself, take some time to ease yourself in slowly. Try a little experiment. Just approach some random women that you would normally be afraid to talk to and say this:
"Hi, my name is ______. I'm just trying to get over my shyness by talking to attractive women. It's nice to meet you."
Then you just walk away and move on to the next woman. Don't ask for her number or email, let alone a date. End the conversation there and move on.
You're going to notice a few things happen when you do this. For one, you're going to be surprised at how receptive most women are to someone confidently walking up to them, introducing themselves, telling them they're beautiful, and walking away with no intention of getting anything else. Most of them will greatly appreciate the gesture. Secondly, you'll notice that a lot of them will stop you when you're walking away. Most guys don't talk to women unless they have some sort of agenda, so they will probably want to talk to you more.
Keep doing this until you reach a point where you aren't nervous when you approach a woman. Once you do this enough times, you'll see that women really aren't that intimidating after all.