You Don’t Need to Overcome Approach Anxiety

Many people use the label approach anxiety to describe the fear of starting a conversation with someone new. This is a common fear, and many people identify it as a stumbling block that supposedly prevents them from enjoying a rich and abundant social life. The truth is that working on overcoming “approach anxiety” is largely a distraction. It’s not actually a problem that needs to be solved to enjoy a socially abundantly life. It’s an imaginary obstacle that makes people feel inadequate, and then that inadequacy is used as a puzzle/distraction/diversion to avoid intimacy and to suppress other aspects of one’s personality. The people I know who are really good at street approaches have all told me that they “virtually never” find a good connection that way. Results-wise this path is usually a dead end. In my experience the people who become good at approaching and starting conversations with random strangers on the street, turn around and become “approach coaches.” In order to sell people on this skill set, they drum up feelings of inadequacy in people, making them think that this is an important and critical skill to develop in order to enjoy a socially abundant life. But the reality is that it’s more likely to lead to an endless treadmill of shallow connections with low compatibility. Yes, you can get a high from facing your fears and doing random approaches. Yes, overcoming this hurdle can yield other benefits. If...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Life Coaches Authors: Tags: Courage & Fear People Skills Relationships Source Type: blogs