We’ve all been there. You’re walking down the street just minding your own business, and then, all of a sudden, there she is… Shiny long hair, big and beautiful eyes, a sweet smile, and she’s radiating femininity, openness and aliveness.
Your heart beats a little faster as she approaches, you lock eye contact, and as she walks past you your heads turn towards each other as you exchange smiles. The whole world is screaming out to you…
“Go talk to her!”
But you don’t. Something is holding you back. Fear of rejection takes its hold on you. And before you know it, she’s gone. Never to be seen again.
Sound familiar?
I know it’s happened to me on more than a few occasions, and it’s agonising. The following list comprises five things to recognise that make barrelling through that fear and acting upon your desires a little easier:
Inaction hurts more than rejection
If you see a woman you really want to talk to and you don’t muster up the courage to go and speak to her it always frustrates you later because you weren’t true to yourself. On top of that, you are left in limbo, wondering what might have been.
Conversely, when you have the courage to initiate a conversation, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work out, you always feel a little better.
Why?
Because you can be contented in the knowledge that you acted upon your desires, and in the future you’ll have the courage to do the same again. You can be contented that you had the willingness to see if there was an opportunity to connect rather than being shut down by fear, and you acquire closure on the event.
If you can adopt this mindset, you will learn to take heart in your actions rather than the outcomes of your actions. Funnily enough, this lack of attachment to your desired outcome actually makes you more likely to achieve it.
And remember, every single time you don’t take action, you have failed.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” -Wayne Gretzky
There’s never a perfect moment
Sometimes she’s walking fast or she’s with a friend. Sometimes she looks like she’s waiting for someone or she’s unhappy in some way. Sometimes it’s raining and sometimes you forgot to brush your hair in the morning.
The fact is that there is rarely, if ever, a ‘perfect moment.’ If it’s not the perfect moment when you see her, it probably won’t be thirty seconds in the future. Hesitation only allows the fear to grow, and more often than not, circumstances become more complicated and not less so.
Recognise these simple facts, swallow your list of excuses and take the action that you know is right.
The truth is that no external circumstances can be relied on to provide the perfect moment. Only YOU can be relied upon. You are the only constant in your life.
You can only ever rely on yourself to create a moment, and you do that by being spontaneous and decisive and acting upon your desires.
There is no ‘right’ moment to wait for, you simply make the moment your own, and act.
You don’t have to be especially confident or charming
Another thing that often holds you back is the feeling that you’re not good enough, that you need to be super-confident and incredibly charming. This is an understandable pattern of thinking but it’s simply not true!
Don’t get me wrong, confidence and charm IS attractive. But the very fact that you have the balls to go and say ‘hello’ in the first place is a display of courage, spontaneity and decisiveness.
Sometimes she’s just wishing for it to happen anyway!
It doesn’t matter whether she looks like a catwalk model or a Hollywood movie star. Is being courageous, spontaneous and decisive enough for a woman to be, at the very least, curious about you? Absolutely!
You might even be a little nervous, and contrary to popular belief, that’s okay too! It shows sincerity, and the willingness to face your fear, rather than be impeded by it. This is powerful! Much more powerful than inaction or pretending to be confident.
The outcome has no bearing on your value as a man
That’s right, if a woman ‘rejects’ you it means absolutely nothing in terms of your self-worth! First, recognise that you have no idea what is going on in her life, so she could be blowing you off for any number of reasons that are unrelated to you.
She could have a boyfriend, she could be late for work, she could be depressed or she could be a lesbian… None of these factors are even remotely related to you!
Second, realise that even if she does ‘reject’ you based on the way you look or because of the way that you approached her, she still isn’t really rejecting YOU. The truth is, she doesn’t even know you. She’s simply rejecting your first impression, and your first impression is always subject to change
When this is the case you you should learn from it but you certainly shouldn’t take it to heart. Ultimately, no one knows your intrinsic value as intimately as you do, so basing your sense of self on the way a woman responds to you is fundamentally misguided.
“Be not identified with being the actor, and be not attached to the fruits of the action.” -Bhagavad Gita
You’ll be dead soon
Yep, it’s true! Sooner, rather than later, all your hair will fall out, along with your teeth, and you’ll be lying on your death bed taking your last gasps of breath.
And when you look back upon your existence on this planet, you can be sure that you’ll be savouring all those moments of bravery and rueing all those moments when you were captured by fear.
Perhaps you’ll be looking back with great fondness and gratitude and remembering the time that you met the woman who inspired you, loved you and cared for you long into your old age. Perhaps she’ll even be by your side and holding your hand in this moment.
Or, maybe you’ll be looking back in time with great sadness and a bitter memory of times-gone-by, and wishing you hadn’t grown old alone. Maybe you’ll wish you’d lived more fully and been more true to your desires.
The choice is yours! But you make that choice day in and day out, when you are presented with life’s little opportunities to be true to yourself. As the Romans used to say:
Carpe Diem!
Write these five points down in a notebook or in your phone, and next time an opportunity arises, take it! Live true to your desires, and take every chance you get!
Want to get your dating life handled?
Sebastian Callow is a personal dating coach for men in London. Unlike other dating services he provides a practical, real-life coaching experience that actually involves meeting and interacting with women in everyday situations. Sebastian helps men develop the comfort and ease to express themselves with raw honesty. If you're unhappy with your dating life and you're hungry for change, the Personal Coaching Course could be exactly what you need.