Ep. #17 Overcoming Your Fear of Approaching Women with Sixty (Chris Andersen)

So some of the questions we typically get from you guys around this subject are things like, “I’ve read a lot about what to say and do but I can’t make the first step. I can’t take that step to walk up and talk to the girl. I get nervous and I kind of just give up. I wimp out.” Another is like, “I’ve been learning and getting better for a long time but I still get bad days and nights where I can’t get past the first hurdle, which is approaching and actually talking to a woman.”

Now, the good news is that this is something that affects everyone. I just wanted to give you a quick story from my past. As you all know, like the listeners of Dating Skills Podcast, I’ve been around for quite a while like since 2001, and in 2003 I had a reputation as one of the best pickup artists in London, okay? Now, you’d think that I wouldn’t have an issue with approach anxiety at that time, but unfortunately there was. I was fine when it came to bars and meeting girls in bars. That's kind of what I did. But what I decided was that I wanted to meet girls when I saw them during the day because I was in London and there are some actually very nice ones walking around during the day. So I told my best buddy, my wing, that this is something I was going to do and like I was going to approach a really hot girl in the day, that I was going to approach a beautiful girl that I saw, and I would text him when I did it.

Now, the first day that I put that challenge to myself I have to say was the hardest day that I had on my path to learning to get good with women and improve my dating skills. I was nearly physically sick trying to approach women in the street that day, and I did it and thank God that I did, but just to say that everyone goes out… You know, everyone I’ve ever spoken to has to get over this issue. And today we’re going to talk about a bit where it comes from and how to get over it, and I’ve got pretty much like the guy who has the best advice I’ve actually seen on the topic to talk with today.

His name is Chris Anderson. He also goes by the name of 60 from a company called 60 Years of Challenge, and he has a great course named Complete Game Seduction system that we reviewed last year. Hey 60, how are you doing, man?

[Chris Anderson]: Hey, I’m doing good, buddy. How are you?

[Angel Donovan]: All good, all good.

[Chris Anderson]: Nice.

[Angel Donovan]: So like we reviewed your product like last year, and it was really great because it was an original approach and it was something that I know that most guys have had to go through, and I really liked what you did with approach anxiety. It was very effective. So you appeared on the scene pretty late compared to other guys. It was in 2010.

[Chris Anderson]: True.

[Angel Donovan]: But you know, you kind of blasted onto the scene though, the pickup artist community scene. But you’re posting on one of the big forums which the pickup artist community uses, which is called puaseduction.com, and you first appeared there in 2005, and he really worked hard to learn basically, and he was the number one person. He posted more than anyone else. So you know, it’s really good to have you here, man.

[Chris Anderson]: Cool. Glad to be here.

[Angel Donovan]: What is approach anxiety? When we’re trying to overcome some issue, it really helps us to understand what it is to do it quicker, so if you could define what is approach anxiety for us, that’d be great.

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah, I mean approach anxiety, and just to back up a second, I really like your story there in the beginning because I think that's something everyone can relate to and I think it’s important for listeners to understand, and this is something I talk a lot about in the Complete Game System, is this stuff does not go away. Hey, for some lucky people, maybe, but for the majority of us this feeling, this approach anxiety, this fear, is something that's just not going to go away overnight. You don’t take a weekend bootcamp for two days and then have no more approach anxiety forever. This is something you’re going to be dealing with, and you want to make peace with that.

How long you’ll deal with it in a given night, it might last a few minutes, it might be an hour, it might be two hours, that's all variable, but the thing is you will now have the tools to get over it for that specific night. It might come back next weekend, it might come back in a week, two weeks, whatever – don’t let that get you down. Don’t make that thread in your head “I suck with women because I have approach anxiety.” Know the tools that are available to you to get over it, and then you’ll never fear having that feeling come back, which at least for me really was helpful.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, I like the way you put this down as a skill because I think what happens with many guys who get into dating skills, pickup skills and whathaveyou is, like when they first get into it, maybe they meet up some other guys and they kind of get over their approach anxiety with kind of like support from their social wings and friends that kind of help them get over that, maybe like a girl friend, and later they come back and they’re looking to approach girls again and they can’t. They’re in a different environment and they can’t. And one of the problems is that they never look to that as a skillset or having to get over that approach anxiety.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So I think it’s great that you talk about it as being a tool that you can take out years later and you can use it to get over that approach anxiety that comes back later in life. Have you got examples from clients that have kind of felt that they got over this and then it came back to them later on?

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah, I mean absolutely, and that's the thing. But the stuff I teach, it comforts them in the fact that they’ll have the skills to get over it. But, I mean, I could just look at myself or even just like, going back to your story before and even people that I talk to who are doing this for a while, they still have it, and I think there's some embarrassment in saying it like, “Oh, that means I’m not good with women. I’m not as good as I thought I was.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: But that is just not true, and that can stop you from approaching because in your mind you think, “Wow, I’m good with women. I’ve done good with women in the past, but I’m still scared. And what if I go over there and I fail? Does that take away all the success I had in the past?” And that's just not true because it has no bearing on your skill with women.

In a way, I mean, I have a saying in the book, I like to say, you know, seducing women in a way is a numbers game and a skill. There is the numbers game part of it. You don’t know everything about this woman that you’re about to approach. You’re trying your best. You might get a little eye contact before… You might kind of observe what she’s doing, but that's why they call it a cold approach. You can put yourself in some weird and crazy situations where it doesn’t always go well, but that should not stop you from approaching, and if it doesn’t go well that doesn’t mean you’re not good with women.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. So that's one of the key concepts you have in your book, that it’s okay to get rejected by women, right? Which is obviously something that's tied very tightly with this approach anxiety. It’s this fear of getting rejected. So let's get into it here. So you were saying, okay, you have to have this mindset where it’s okay to approach lots of women and get rejected by some of them. So how does that actually work in your head and what are you suggesting that guys do in terms of that mindset?

[Chris Anderson]: Well, one mindset—if you want to talk about mindsets—you can do is think of it more as you are going out not trying to meet and attract women but more of a screening mindset, and this has been very helpful for a lot of people. If you think, “I’m just going to approach anybody and do everything I can in my power to make them like me, I’ll do anything to just make this girl like me,” you’re really getting off on the wrong foot. It’s the wrong mindset to have.

In my mind, there are people… I’m out in a social place, there are people I want to meet, there are women I want to talk to. I want to see if I’m compatible at least at a base level to be able to talk with these women. I am going over to see if that is a possibility, okay? So I’m not there to dance around and do tricks and make you like me. I’m coming over to see if you’re a woman that I can have some kind of connection with, at least in the beginning have some kind of conversation with. So it’s almost like I have this screening mindset in my mind right from the beginning, and if it doesn’t work out, that's okay because I’m looking for something specific.

Now, this isn’t an excuse to bomb on every approach and then you just say, “Oh, well, I’m just screening women.” If you know you have your basic skills down and you can approach women, then you are looking for a certain of woman maybe you’ve met in the past, maybe you have a certain criteria in your mind, and you’re not going to have to worry as much if she doesn’t meet that criteria.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, very good advice. So what it sounds like you’re saying, like if I’d spin it a different way, is that you should be more social. You should focus being on social before you focus on like attracting a girl, picking her up or whatever. Is that part of your message?

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah, well, I try to get it right down the middle. Like a lot of methods or a lot of styles are about being social the whole time.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: My method is about being more seductive, but at the beginning, yes, you want to be social. You just don’t want to be the seductive guy sitting in the corner, using your eye contact, not talking to anybody. It’s great to get out there and be social and meet people. That's obviously the first step. But once you kind of get into an interaction, this kind of moves more into attraction. Once you start interacting, you kind of want to tone it down and get a little more seductive, get a little closer, look at her a certain way, all the things that kind of bring a certain tension to the interaction, but that kind of comes later.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like I know one of the things you talk about is what you call the big zero night…

[Chris Anderson]: [Laughs] Right.

[Angel Donovan]: … So like the guys who are going out and they are actually like going to bars and are looking to meet women and maybe they’re going with a bunch of friends or a bunch of pickup artists, sometimes they have these nights where they just don’t make a single approach, and this is what you call the big zero, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right, absolutely, the big zero. And we’ve all dealt with nights when we had the big zero. It probably hurts more than anything because, you know, to give you an example, maybe you read a lot of stuff during the week, maybe you worked hard at your job, now you’re out there, you’re like, “Oh, we are ready to go, let's meet some women,” and then it just starts going bad right from the beginning, and what’s going on that leads you to two, three hours later you’ve got your head in your beer and you can’t even muster the courage to maybe even like look at a girl at this point because you’ve just gone so downhill. Those are the nights you want to avoid, and there are certain techniques we’ll talk about how to avoid nights like this.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: I just think those are the worst because they really get to you because you’re like, “I can’t even get started. I can’t even get any momentum at all to try and talk to women.” And you almost don’t know how to get out of it. It’s like you’re in this fog, you’re out, you’re looking around at everybody, and you’re like, “Am I even here? I don’t even feel like I’m a part of what’s going on.” I’m sure you all can relate.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: I know I can.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, so everyone’s had this, I mean like when you go out to a bar and you just have a bad social night or you have a bad night with the women. And I think everyone before they get this as a skill set, they have this variability, this randomness in when they’re going out, you know, what’s going to happen, am I going to have a good night or am I going to have a bad night, and some guys will maybe put it down to how much they drink or whatever, you know, when I drink more I have a better time and it goes better…

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: …or whatever. We talk about like I guess all of these… We think about all of these variables which could influence the night, but at the end of the day what you want to be able to do is to control that and avoid this nasty big zero night which all of us can relate to.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So how do we get into that big zero night and how do we avoid it?

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah, let's jump right into it, because this is very important. Avoiding the big zero is going to make your night so much better, because you’re going to know when you go out there is no way that you’re not at least talking to a few women, and then if you go out consistently, that's all going to add up.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: So the first mindset to have is this, and this is my contention at least: It’s that a person’s social skills aren’t good or bad. And what I mean by that, it’s not you suck with women or you’re good with women. Rather, these skills, these skills of approaching women, trying to meet women, these skills are fluid, meaning they can be good and they can be bad, and they’re based solely on momentum, okay? So you want to build momentum. I’m not good with women, you’re not good with women. We build up a certain amount of momentum to be able to do what we can do when we go out, and that’s what you want to achieve, okay?

So how can we do this? How can we build momentum? Well, it’s pretty simple. You start building momentum by doing versus avoiding all the social opportunities that you get during the night that when you take all these little small things that when you put them together they get you into a talkative state, they get you over your fear of rejection and embarrassment, and they get you rolling where you’re not scared to women.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Okay, so like give us an example like right at the beginning of the night, okay?

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah. Okay.

[Angel Donovan]: So we want to get into a good momentum, a positive momentum where we’re becoming more social and things are going better for us, positive momentum. So what could happen at the beginning of a night and it’s a social opportunity that we have to take advantage of to start this momentum, as an example?

[Chris Anderson]: Right, I’m going to give you a perfect example. I’m going to take it straight from my book and hopefully this will give you guys a step-by-step kind of how somebody goes from being a little bit shy, not talkative, into being a kind of a superstar with talking to women. Okay. So the first thing is—I’m going to take an example from my own life—I’m getting ready to go out. My friend or wing who’s going to come with me, I call him up and he says, “I can’t come out for another hour,” okay? I’m itching to go out. I’m ready. I’m psyched to go. He says, “You know what, I’m not going to be ready for an hour.”

So in my mind, my inner voice says, “Should I go out alone or should I wait for my friend to be ready?” So, you know, that negative voice we all have in our head, my negative voice is saying, “You can’t go out alone. Only losers go out alone. People will look at you, people will stare you. You’re not cool if you go out alone.” That's the negative voice. We all have it.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: What do I do? I ignore that negative voice and I said, “I’m going out by myself. I roll out solo.” What does that do for me? That gives me, if you want to think of it as points, it gives me a plus-one momentum. I’ve ignored the negative voice and I’ve made my decision to go out by myself. That's just a small thing.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay.

[Chris Anderson]: But if you avoided it, you already started to go down a path of negative momentum because you’re giving in to it. Okay.

[Angel Donovan]: So to just kind of clarify this, so is building up momentum like countering a negative thought?

[Chris Anderson]: Right. Basically, it doesn’t have to be any negative thought. It’s something that you want to do. I’m going to give you an example, because some instructors take students out and they’ll be like, “Hey, go approach that girl,” or “Go talk to them,” and the student will think, “I don’t want to talk to those two girls. They’re not my type.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: So if they avoid not talking to the two girls that you told them to go talk to, it’s not going to hurt their self-esteem as much, it’s not going to hurt their confidence, because I didn’t want to talk to her anyway. But let's say I see a cute girl that I like out of the corner of my eye, she’s standing next to me at the bar, and I get the thought in my mind, I say, “I want to talk to this girl,” and then I chicken out and I don’t do it and I make up an excuse. What’s going to happen to my self-esteem? What’s going to happen to my confidence? That's going to hit. That's where it’s going to hurt.

So that's what these teachers need to understand. You have to get to the heart of what the person wants to do, and if that student is avoiding what they really want to do, that's when it starts to hurt their confidence and it all snowballs in a negative way.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. Would you say that whenever you’re becoming more social, doing more social things no matter what it is, it’s building momentum in some way?

[Chris Anderson]: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. As long as you’re doing what you want to do and as long as you’re not avoiding it, because I have to just throw this in there – it’s not neutral, okay? So if you avoid stuff, it’s not like… See, a lot of people think, “Oh, if I don’t approach any women, I won’t be rejected and everything will be fine.” Well, that's not really the case. Because you’re avoiding it, you’re actually going backwards. That's actually negative momentum.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Chris Anderson]: Your self-esteem is taking a hit. So you cannot avoid the pain, is what I’m saying. Because a lot of us want to avoid that pain and we want to go out, not talk to anyone. You want to avoid that hurt, right? That's what we’re all trying to do.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Like there's no way to do that. You, your self-esteem, is still going to hurt by not doing it. So basically, you know what they say, there's nowhere to hide. You have to do this.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, yeah. So I think we’re getting into a lot of concepts here, and to talk about this pain that you’re talking about, the self-esteem and pain if I haven’t done, so for example, if we have this big zero night where we go out and maybe we hang out with our friends, we’re chatting with our friends okay, but we felt like approaching some girls and we never did it, okay? Now, we don’t get that rejection, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So we don’t get the pain of rejection, walked up to the girl and she shot us down in front of our friends or whatever happened, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: But at the end of the night, you know, how do we actually feel? I guess we feel kind of hollow, right, and we feel disappointed in ourselves.

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah.

[Angel Donovan]: Because we know even if we’ve kind of tried to put it out of our minds, you know, we’ve been hanging out with our guys, friends, and maybe we’re saying like, “Oh, but tonight, you know, I just kind of wanted to hang out with my guy friends, right, and I didn’t really need to approach that girl just because she’s cute,” right, and we miss the social opportunity.

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah. I think we’ll sum it up like this. You can’t fool yourself. You can’t fool yourself. You’re thinking, like you just said, “Hey, if I don’t approach anyone I don’t get rejected. Hey, cool for me!” But the damage is being done. The damage to your self-esteem is being done. It’s almost better to go—and here’s the great part about positive social momentum, which I read about in a book, and the theory of it is that you get the positive momentum no matter if it goes good or bad.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Yes, of course, you approach a woman and it goes bad, hey, alright, it stinks a little bit, I got rejected, but guess what you get? You get… Your self-esteem knows inside, your mind knows, guess what, this guy took a risk and he actually did it? Dude, your confidence goes up. You may not notice it right away. It’s very subtle. But your body and mind is telling you, “Hey, nice job, man. You did it. You didn’t avoid it.” So at least in my mind it would seem a lot better to at least try to at least do it, than to have the pain of not doing it or avoiding it altogether.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. Right. And this is the thing I picked out from your book which I certainly saw was true from all the time I’ve been into this and which hasn’t really been pointed out before, is that you actually get positive even when you get a rejection, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: And it’s something that people kind of miss out because I think they’re too wrapped up in that rejection sometimes to realize that they’re actually feeling a bit better inside in terms of energy level, which is a reflection of that self-esteem. So like one of the things you talk about, and I think we’re already kind of diving in there a little bit, is micro-avoidance. What’s that about?

[Chris Anderson]: Oh, yeah, I really like this a lot. I really think this theory can help people. Micro-avoidance, I really came up with this because, you know, like we talked about, a lot of people have problems with approach anxiety and obviously that all relates back to fear and fear of being hurt, but is it just fear or avoidance of approaching women that is affecting our lives or is it many things we’re avoiding?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Is there this pattern of avoidance that we have during the day that spills over to when we go out at night that is affecting us? So micro-avoidance is basically the little things that we avoid, whether it’s during the day or when we get to the bar or the lounge to meet women that are contributing to this lifestyle of avoiding things. Now, I’ll give some quick examples from the book.

You go to a club, there's a long line, you’re in the back, it’s not moving. You don’t know what the hell’s going on. You just got out. In your mind—again, this is all the stuff, the thoughts, the things you want to do. In your mind you get the thought, “Hey, I’d like to know what the hell’s going on here. What’s the holdup? Am I going to waste my time here? Am I going in this club tonight?” But then you decide, “You know what, I don’t want to go talk to the bouncer, I don’t want to bother him, I don’t want to look like a fool in front of other people, so I’m just going to shut up and stand here,” okay?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: So that's one. So then you get in, you go to the bar, your first thought is, “Hey, I’d like to know what the specials are. I’d like to get a good drink, maybe save a buck or two, get something good.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: But that's the thought in your mind, but then your second thought is, “Hey, don’t hold up the line. Don’t be an idiot. People are going to laugh at you. The bartender doesn’t want to hear your spiel. Just order your stupid drink and shut up.”

[Angel Donovan]: Right. Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Now, I just gave you a couple of examples. You multiply that by a hundred. These are things, all night long, the thoughts that are going in your head.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: You’re not living the type of life that you really want to live. You’re not being true to your wants and desires. You’re avoiding all these little things. So then, of course, when a hot girl comes by, you know, you’re going to avoid talking to her too, because you’re already avoiding all these other things. You’re not on a roll.

If you’re doing everything you want to do, you go up to the bathroom and say, “Hey dude, what the hell’s going on with the holdup here?” if you order the drink you want, if you put on the music you want, if you do what you always want to do, you’re going to have to set up this lifestyle of not avoiding things, and then talking to women just becomes a part of that. It becomes so easy.

[Angel Donovan]: Now, this is really great and it really connects straight with the whole world of self-help and all of the good information out there on our own personal development. And certainly what I’ve seen, like I know a lot of people in the community and what’s been interesting is that as they’ve overcome the challenge of women in their life and they’ve got better at it, that's really spilled out into like business success, sports success, competitions, goals, entrepreneurship, just like taking on all sorts of different things in their life and really leading a better life.

And I think what you’re saying here is like those things, when you don’t avoid all of those goals and all of those things you’re doing in the rest of your life and you’re actually just going on and you’re doing things in life, that also spills, comes the other way into your dating life, into approaching and attracting women, and it’s just such a great concept because not only when you’re getting this thing solved for women, you’re also actually working on the rest of your life. And so you can actually pull these things together and you know that you’re working on good things for yourself.

[Chris Anderson]: Oh absolutely, I think it’s great because like I was saying, you can’t have just a category of, “Hey, get better with women and avoid everything else in your life.” We’re all different. I mean, we have to understand that we’re all different people with different backgrounds and different fears. We have to get over some of those things, and it spills over, like you said, into other areas of your life.

And another great thing about micro-avoidance is you can always be out meeting women, okay?

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: So let's say I’m not going out till the weekend, alright, but I want to work on this. So it’s Wednesday afternoon and I said, “I want to do things that are going to help me when I go out to meet women this weekend, so what can I do?” So the great thing about micro-avoidance is it happens all day long. I mean, we have like 10,000-plus thoughts a day, a lot of those are negative and they’re telling you things that you can’t do, and anytime you can say, “You know what, I hear the negative thought, it’s telling me I can’t do this, let me build some positive momentum not avoid it, and do something and something good can happen.”

I’ll just give a quick example, like during the day I had some lawyer I was talking to about something. I got a bill from him. It was 600 dollars, and I only talked to this guy for like 30 minutes. I’m like, “What the hell is this?” My first thought was, “Let me call this guy. This is bullshit. This is too much money.” But then my second thought was, “Oh, that's going to be embarrassing. I have to talk to this guy on the phone. It’s an awkward call. He's going to tell me, ‘Hey, buddy, it’s 600 dollars. You have to pay it.’”

So that's the negative thought. If I would have avoided calling, I would have felt like a chump. I’m scared to call this lawyer and tell him this is bullshit. So I suck it up, I make the call, I tell the guy my situation. He goes, “You know what, we’ll make the bill 300.” I just saved 300 dollars. What do you think that does? Even though it’s such a small thing, what do you think it does to your self-esteem? What do you think it does to your confidence when you don’t avoid these things? And of course, like you said, it spills over to when you go out and you’re meeting women. It’s just a lifestyle.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, exactly, and it’s really something that you see amazing transformations in a guy in their whole lives when you start seeing these changes in mindsets taking place. So I want to go back to something you said a little bit earlier about it being a numbers game.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: Because I know some guys like have issues with, they don’t want to approach like, say, I don’t know, like 20 women a night. They find it sleazy or they just, you know…

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: That's not part of their… That's not who they are. So what would you say to those guys?

[Chris Anderson]: Well, that is the hardest part because there's going to be more nos than yeses. And guys, don’t take the nos personally. No just doesn’t mean no to you, it might be not the right situation. She might not be in the right place. It’s not just all these women out there waiting for you to approach them and then you’re going to hook up with them. There are women with boyfriends, there are women that are married, there are women that are angry, there are women that are not right for you. So it does become this screening process. It does become this numbers game.

I say it’s a skill as well because once you have a woman on the line and you’re talking to her, that's where your seduction skills come into place, because you could take a girl that is slightly interested in you and make her very interested in you. That's where your skill set comes into play.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: But while you’re just randomly meeting women, you know, it could be part of a numbers game, and guess what? It hurts because the rejections are face-to-face. Like you said, 20 a night – “No, not interested. Fuck you. Why are you talking to us? We just want to be alone.” All these things, if you get 20 rejections and not any success, that hurts when you go home. It’s kind of funny though, one success… I have like a saying – one success can overcome a hundred rejections, you know what I mean?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: It’s like if you get that one success, you don’t go home and even think about the hundred rejections. It’s like the slate is wiped clean. But for some people when they’re starting out, they’re going to get 20 rejections and there's going to be no success, and that really hurts.

So what you have to do—there are a few things you can do. One thing which is very important, I call it leaving on a low note, and basically what that means is you don’t always have to get the last word in, okay? I know it’s like such a human thing that like everyone wants to get the last word, be the last one, you know, “I got you last,” and it causes a lot of problems.

So what’ll happen is you’ll approach women or a group of women, you’ll start talking to them, you’ll know it’s not going good. Have you ever had this happen? You know in your mind, you’re like, “This isn’t working.” They’re not playing along and they’re being mean. Maybe they’re not telling you to leave, but you’re just like I probably shouldn’t be in this situation. It’s not going good.

But instead you stay, you take the abuse, you let them kind of tool you a little bit instead of being like, “This isn’t a good situation. It’s not going good. Let me just leave. Let me walk away. It’s over. It’s done. I don’t care anymore.” I think if you stay in bad situations for a long time, if you don’t give yourself permission to leave whenever you want like it should be, then you feel scared to approach because it’s like, “Oh, here I go to approach, and once I get myself in the situation it’s like I’m locked into this beating that I’m taking from these women.”

But if you think of it, if your mind is, “I approach when I want, I get out when I want. I do what I want. If I go in, in three seconds I don’t like it, I’m done. That's it. I don’t need to get the last word. I don’t need to get them back…”

[Angel Donovan]: So you’re saying you kind of like don’t have to finish what you started out to do, and I think a lot of guys—and I say that because I was just reading The 4-Hour Workweek again this morning. You’ve probably read it too. And that's something he really hammers down in a business context, is like you don’t have to finish everything. We’re taught that we have to like kind of follow through with everything. We’re very goal-driven as a society these days. However, what you’re saying here is that that's actually a bad idea when it’s not going well, and you can just drop it anytime you want and it’s going to be a good thing for your self-esteem and therefore reduce approach anxiety in the future, which is what we’re aiming for. So I like what you’re saying because it does have a long-term vision to it.

[Chris Anderson]: Absolutely, because it’s going to give you more time with the women that are treating you better, plus it’s you know what you’re looking for. You know this in business, you know this with girlfriends, whatever. Once you see what a good lead looks like—okay, at first people have to see what a good lead looks like—you know what it is and you know what it’s not. Once you can start recognizing that, I can go, “I know what this is. This isn’t good,” then you can get yourself out of the situation faster. Because, like we gave the example of 20 women a night, if you get 20 long, drawn-out, bad situations where you feel like you can’t get out of it, that is you’re just not going to be psyched to go do that. That's going to be something you just don’t do regularly. So if you give yourself permission to leave on a low note, that's one technique that’ll help you talk to more women in a night.

[Angel Donovan]: Right. So, I mean, I guess part of the problem here is that when the guys are talking with the women, they have this idea that maybe we’ll turn around, maybe things will get better…

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: And in your experience, is it something that doesn’t happen? As you’re saying, it’s a lot better just to quit when it’s going bad. I guess the issue for guys is going to be like when to know. Are there any signs that they can pick up on and they say, “Okay, it’s time to quit and move on to the next one before I kind of damage my self-esteem and make everything harder in the longer term?”

[Chris Anderson]: Absolutely, and one of the main reasons that I tailored my approach a certain way to be more genuine and humble is it’s such a screening tool when you have this genuine humble approach. Okay, so I’ll give you an example.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay.

[Chris Anderson]: You walk over and you say, “Hey, you guys look interesting.” Very low-key, very relaxed. You say, “Hey, you know what, you guys look interesting, thought I’d come over say hello, I’m Chris.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: That is a screening technique. That is an opener but it’s also screens out the crazy women, the women that came out to not meet anybody tonight, and the women that you don’t want to talk to, because most people will respond favorably to a genuine humble opener like that, okay?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Because it’s very… I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed this. If you approach women, and there might be a woman in the group that's a little less attractive, and human beings in general, some have low self-esteem, so if they feel, sometimes they feel, and if you do a lot of cold approaching you’ll see, women sometimes feel like, “Is this guy joking? Is he messing with us? Is this guy fucking with us? Like what’s he doing?” And you avoid all that by being genuine and humble in your approach. You tone it down a little bit. You know you’re good with women.

I mean, you get to a point and you’re like, you know you have the skills. Sometimes you could be so over-the-top that people are like taken aback and they’re like, “What’s this guy? What is this, some weird reality show? Like somebody’s coming to talk to me? I don’t know, what is this?” So you tone it down a little bit and you relax and you just be humble, you’re going to get a positive response. And if you don’t, there's usually something wrong, but I’ll always give it two chances.

So let's say you do this humble approach. “You guys look fun, thought I’d come over introduce myself.” Maybe they’re in your area, hanging out. And they say something like, “What is that, your excuse to come talk to us?” you know, something snarky like that, you stay with that genuine humble vibe instead of getting mean or trying to tease them back. You could just keep it humble and say, “Hey, you know, trying to meet some people tonight. You guys look fun. Hello.”

Usually on the second time they come around. If they’re normal women, they’ll come around and talk to you. But if they keep on with the drama, they’re just trying to stir something up, I usually know that's probably not going to be a good situation. And I’ve tried this with all types of women. I mean, I’ve approached strippers with this kind of approach and had them like make fun of me at the beginning, and then when I kept it genuine, kept it humble, had them come around in a minute or two. So usually that's a good way to do it.

[Angel Donovan]: Yup, yup, I totally agree with you. You can approach women like this, and as long as they’re normal they’re going to respond to you pretty well. So that's a great test there. Guys, just use that, and if it’s not going well you can just say, “Okay, like time to move on to the next one.”

Alright, so like Chris, just want to get to know you a bit better as a person. So what kind of dating lifestyle do you have today? Where are you at? Like you’ve said you’ve kind of been in this for like five or six years now. So what has that taken you to and how have things changed over that time?

[Chris Anderson]: Well, the journey was this. The journey was basically—I don’t have the traditional story where I can say, “Oh, I sucked with women. I didn’t know anything. I was a loser.” I had girlfriends growing up. I always had this sneaking suspicion though that women kind of had a step up on men. I didn’t know exactly how or why but it seemed like they were kind of in control of the situation, you know. It was kind of in the back of my mind, and I think a lot of guys had that.

So I really started doing some research. I wanted to explore that thought a little bit. You know, and kind of one thing, it just happened to be the right time in history, like the Internet with a lot of people writing stuff, there was some information out there. I hadn’t discovered the “community” yet, but there were some books, there were some things that kind of talked about that stuff. So I was very interested in that. I wanted to know more about it from a relationship point of view so you can keep the women that you were dating attracted to you and keep them liking you, not from a manipulative or control standpoint but just so they would keep your relationship good.

Then I noticed as I got out of college and moved to the city, one thing that stood out to me was all sorts of guys would go out all the time Most of them were not getting laid. I mean, I talked to my good-looking friends, guys with great jobs – there was such a small percentage of guys who’ll be like, “Yeah, I’m hooking up.” So in my mind I said, “What the hell’s going on here? We’re going out, we’re spending all this money, we’re trying all these things and nothing’s working.”

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: So then again it was like, “Let's dive into this. Let's find out why,” and that kind of led me to find out about the community. Like you said, I wasn’t there when it first started, but kind of on my own was kind of thinking these same things, like a lot of guys were… And I think that's why I became so popular. Guys in general were all having these thoughts, and then we all got together and people shared ideas and one thing led to another.

And the basic goal was really, you don’t have to be a rock star, you don’t have to hook up with another woman every night. It was just to give yourself a better chance that if you went out that you’d have a chance to hook up with a woman and get a cool girlfriend if you wanted to. Just to improve your odds. That was basically what the goal was.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just to cover this quickly because I think it’s a good illustration, it sounds like you studied hard. You said you posted a lot. Would you say you studied this and you studied it quite hard?

[Chris Anderson]: Ah, I think in the beginning I gave a lot of credit to the people before me who had written stuff and I took at face value that they were right. And I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I think maybe all of us just said, “Oh, this guy an expert on the subject. I’m going to do what he says.” And it wasn’t until I really went out a lot and then started seeing what worked for me—and that's kind of what I did with my book.

[Angel Donovan]: Yup. Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: It’s my experience, not what anybody else said. It’s what I noticed when I went out. It’s what worked for me. I’m not saying it’ll definitely work for you, but this is like my notes, my system, what’s been good for me. So that's when I started to say, “I’m going to follow this path, which is kind of different than some of the traditional stuff that's out there.”

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, so you put some time in basically kind of practicing, so actually getting out there and socializing and going to bars and so on.

[Chris Anderson]: Oh, absolutely.

[Angel Donovan]: That's what helped you to learn this stuff and get over the hump.

[Chris Anderson]: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I’ve always liked going out. Like that was never a problem.

[Angel Donovan]: Right.

[Chris Anderson]: I was always out. But I never really… You know, we’d go out, like a group of guys, but no one was talking to women. No one was doing anything. I mean, it was just like almost unheard of.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: So you could go out, you know, like they say, you could get lucky, who knows? You’re going to drink a hundred beers and you’ll bump into somebody. You don’t know what happens.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: Not that there was more of a system.

[Angel Donovan]: Well, I know. We laugh at it, but that's what I used to think when I was like 18, 21. I had some random stuff going on and it was like the more whiskey I drink the better the night, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right, that's the theory.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah, that was the theory. [Laughs] Crazy theory that we had.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, so what’s your life today like? Do you have girlfriends? Are you happy with it? What do you like about it?

[Chris Anderson]: So right now… So sex was like something you’re obsessed with, and that never goes away. You’re always going to crave that sexual variety.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay.

[Chris Anderson]: You want to say it’s wired into guys, whatever it is, I’ve come to peace with the fact that that wanting variety of sex, that's not going to go away.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: Now, people say get it out of your system or whatever – no. I say that is the system.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: But the thing is that affection, and I write about this in my book, in the relationship book, that's part of the system, affection is a very important thing for a man, especially female affection, and we don’t really need a variety of female affection for some reason. It’s like we… I see this all the time. Guys, rock stars, guys who can have sex with any woman, they settle down with one because they like to get that affection from one woman.

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: So I am with a girl right now and I’ve been with her for the past few years, and I’m very happy with the situation because affection is important to me. The thing I will probably always struggle with is, what do you do to fulfill your need for that sexual variety?

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: And I think that's something I can’t give you the answer to because guys do so many different things. Guys get married and try to hook up with girls on the side. Some guys go to prostitutes. Some guys become players for life.

[Angel Donovan]: Okay, so what’s your approach? So you said like you have one girlfriend. Well, how do you deal with this?

[Chris Anderson]: Well, before that, we’ve gone through the phase too where you would date multiple women and try to get affection, because I call it long-term relationship, is really more about affection than sex. I mean, you can’t say dating multiple girls, you’ll be seeing them for a week or two.

[Angel Donovan]: Yup.

[Chris Anderson]: That doesn’t really count. We’re talking about relationships here. But what happens is as you get older, and I read about this in my book as well, is that it’s always not about you. I mean, women at a certain point, they have an agenda they’re trying to fulfill. No matter how cool you are, they’re not going to stay with you if you’re not kind of getting on that path, whatever it is. I’m not saying you have to get married or have kids, but if you’re not getting a little more serious, if you’re not open to the idea of exploring the relationship, then they’re not going to give you their affection.

So for guys it comes down to a choice of, is this woman worth curtailing, whether temporarily or long-term, my need for sexual variety to enjoy that affection? And everybody’s different, but I’m more of an affection guy. That's important to me. It always has been. I’ve always been more of a girlfriend guy.

[Angel Donovan]: Mm-hmm.

[Chris Anderson]: But I’m not going to lie. I mean, we have to be honest. That desire is always going to be there.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, right. And as you were saying, like rather than going with the model which, you know, I think is actually like generalizing, and it’s pretty predominant from everyone I kind of know, is that they tend to have affairs on the side.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: And if you look into the research in genetics and so on, it proves basically there's a lot more cheating and affairs going on than we actually think of most of the time.

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: So rather than that, you’re saying basically that you can go for affection and use affection as a substitute, but like your need for sexual variety is never going to go away. It’s always something that you’re going to have to kind of control. A girl goes past and you think, “Hmm, nice,” right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: You’re always going to kind of want it, but you have to keep in mind that affection is more important for you and kind of see that in your partner.

[Chris Anderson]: Absolutely. The first thing is just being honest with yourself. Like if you talk to your guy friends sometimes about, “Ah, I thought I was going to get over this, you know? I’m still like trying to…”

[Angel Donovan]: Yeah.

[Chris Anderson]: And you have to be honest, you know you’re not going to get over it. So that's kind of the first step. [Laughs]

[Angel Donovan]: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, one funny story like before we end this up.

[Chris Anderson]: Sure.

[Angel Donovan]: So like my dad was with my granddad one day, and this was a few years ago, and they were on the beach. And my granddad was like, I think he was 85 at the time…

[Chris Anderson]: [Laughs]

[Angel Donovan]: And like my dad takes a side glance at the two girls walking down and he says, “The one on the left’s not bad,” right? And my granddad says, “No way, the one on the right.” And my dad figures that like 50 years ago he’d stop thinking about that kind of stuff, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Right.

[Angel Donovan]: But when you’re 85 it really doesn’t change much either. So Chris, like I just want to say thank you for doing this call. It’s been great. We covered a lot of ground today, and I’m sure it’s been very helpful for the guys.

[Chris Anderson]: Yeah, I hope you guys got a lot out of it. You could always learn more. Check it out, the Complete system definitely has a lot of the stuff we talked about today, especially for opening, starting conversations with women, which it’s a small part but it ends up being a big part to really get you started and get out there and get going.

[Angel Donovan]: Sure. If you don’t get started, none of the other good stuff comes, right?

[Chris Anderson]: Exactly, buddy.

[Angel Donovan]: It’s the first step.