You are on the subway, walking down the platform, when you see a cute girl overloaded with shopping bags. She is wrapped up in a scarf and a long coat, but you can discern that underneath these is a shapely, pulchritudinous young woman that you would like to get to know better.
As you walk past, you look at her and she looks back and smiles. You smile, too, feeling a fuzzy, warm (and irrational) sense of validation. For a split second, you consider speaking, saying “hi,” anything. Then in that split second you decide not to. After all, it’s busy here, a lot of people are around, and it might be embarrassing. Your ego has already been boosted by the fact that she’s smiled anyway. Perhaps that’s sufficient. Also, you live near here, so perhaps you’ll see her again another time when it’s less crowded or you’re not in a hurry or you’re wearing better clothes or you’ve had a shave, and you can talk to her then.
The truth of the matter, though, is that if you live in a large city the chances of ever seeing a random stranger again are negligible. If you walk by now without taking a shot, the likelihood is that you will never, ever see that same girl again.
Rollo Tomassi of The Rational Male has written frequently about what he calls “buffers,” i.e., those barriers, mental or otherwise, that men erect to protect themselves from female rejection. An example might be remaining in the friend zone for a prolonged period of time with a girl who is clearly not interested in you. While you probably have an inkling that this situation is not good for you, a perverse benefit is that you are not compelled to seek out and approach other women as you are already tied (in your mind at least) to this special snowflake.
Another buffer is the concept of “leagues.” By believing that a woman is out of one’s league, a man is effectively insulating himself from the imperative to approach.
Both are rationalizations, ways to let oneself off the hook from the scary task of actually manning up and speaking to a girl, and how pathetic does that sound when written down?
The irrational idea that you might see this random girl another time is another such buffer. So, too, is that small sense of accomplishment you feel when you get an IOI (indicator of interest) from a cute girl. “She smiled at me,” you think. “My attractiveness has been validated. That’s enough for today.”
Except it’s not enough—not if you have any ambition to be a player.
Instead, you must follow up on each IOI and push through to failure . The reason most men won’t approach the girl who smiles at them and ask for her number is that they want to protect themselves from rejection and retain the good feelings they are already experiencing. But those good feelings in themselves mean nothing if your goal is to get laid.
When a girl smiled at me on the subway the other night, I very nearly let the opportunity go. The usual excuses came up. I was tired, needed to get home, I was carrying grocery bags, but I steeled myself and approached her anyway. We had a nice little flirtatious conversation, and she gave me her number. By following through on an IOI, there’s a good chance you’ll get a result, but even if you don’t, you haven’t really lost anything—only the illusion that something could have happened, which in reality is worthless.
That is why you need to act now and see each opportunity that presents itself through to its logical conclusion. The next time a girl shows she’s interested in you walk up and start chatting to her.
You really have nothing to lose.