Some Learning and Fun at the Retreat

The amount of stories that can be told from this past weekend TSB Mansformation Retreat is staggering. Instead of writing one giant summary of the trip, we decided to break it up into several posts over the course of the next week. We’ve already talked a bit about our team building exercise rafting trip… today I wanted to discuss an exercise I did with two of the attendees.

By the way, for those of you looking for the sick stories from the weekend, Lance wrote up a great overview of Day one’s juicy details and field reports.

The Get Rejected Exercise

This having been our first “official” live teaching and training seminar, Mike and I quickly realized that the biggest obstacle in giving the most amount of value to the attendees is to be able to quickly access their individual strengths and weaknesses.

As Lance wrote in his review, we structured the retreat in a way that each individual student got to work on their specific sticking points. Two particular students, Fling and Baby Style, seemed to have a bit more approach anxiety then the other students on the trip.

The thing with approach anxiety is; until you can overcome it… nothing else you’re taught means a thing. You can be provided the greatest openers, routines, DHV stacks, kino escalation tips, and so on… but if you can’t get over that initial fear and go in for the approach… success will always elude you.

Watching Baby Style sit in the corner milking his beer, afraid to approach any of the girls in the club, brought back some serious painful memories of my days of paralyzing approach anxiety. Also, noticing that Fling was a little hesitant to approach sets, I pulled both of them out of the bar and onto the long strip of beach that all the bars and clubs ran along.

I asked them both: “What is stopping you from approaching any of these girls”

Their answers were a mixture of fear of rejection, and not knowing what to say.

When I told them to just approach and say absolutely anything that came to mind… they both looked at me like I was crazy. I explained to them that until you truly comprehend the fact that there is no such thing as rejection… it doesn’t matter what you say.

Before you can learn to walk… you must crawl. Babies crawl… because they can. And they eventually learn to walk… because their curiosity drives them toward taking those steps. Babies never worry about how well they are walking… or how many steps they take before falling… they just follow that inner curiosity and keep making the attempts.

Baby Style’s response to me: “That’s easy for you to say… you’re Bobby Rio… you already know what to say… you won’t go down in flames!”

And here I introduced both him and Fling to the Get Rejected Exercise.

Where we were partying there were about 10 beach bars lined up along shore. You can walk in and out of each club quite quickly and move on… giving you an opportunity to meet many different people in a matter of minutes. I took Fling and Baby Style along with me and said “Watch me go down in flames…over and over and over. And then watch me live to tell about it.”

And that is exactly what I did.

The two students and I walked along the beach, and I opened every set that I saw. I opened them in the most AFC fashion possible. If they were a seated set, I would sit down at the table and start talking about the first thing that came to my mind. I would order a drink on their tab. I would talk incessantly and passionately about the boring topics in the world. And when it was clear that the sets were trying to give me the signal to leave… I stayed. And kept talking.

I could tell that at times Fling and Baby Style were quite embarrassed to with me, interrupting these other people’s conversations…

But soon a funny thing started happening…. During one of my oblivious and obnoxious rants to a group of tourists from Europe I hit on a subject one of the girls was interested in. Soon the set was asking us all kinds of questions. Just when the set started to show some indicators of interest… I ejected.

When we walked away… they both exclaimed “why did we leave?”

My answer: “Because there are more women out there to reject us!”

After being rejected (some even cruelly) I asked the guys how they felt. Both Fling and Baby Style said they were having a blast. Baby Style said he had never had so much fun being rejected.

Baby Style: “It’s funny because once we walk away from them… it’s like it never happened.”

I asked them both: “Do you feel any differently… or any less of a human being having been rejected by a dozen or so girls”

Baby Style: “That’s the most I’ve been rejected in my whole life… because that’s the most amount of girls I’ve ever approached. And you’re right. I feel no different. In fact I feel even better.”

I then explained to both Fling and Baby Style that the key to overcoming rejection is get curious. When you’re just learning how to talk to girls… there is no point in trying to “be the man” because you won’t “be the man.” You’re much better off just looking at every group of girls from the curious standpoint of a baby learning to crawl. Begin talking to them… and see if there is anything you can grab onto to keep you from falling. If you fall, get back up, and keep talking with an even more renewed sense of curiosity.

The Rejection Challenge

If you are suffering from severe approach anxiety… I challenge you to do the rejection exercise with one of your friends. Take all the pressure off the night out by eliminating any hope of meeting a woman. Instead, challenge your friend to see who can get rejected the most. Go down in flames. Have fun with it. Soon you’ll find yourself numb to rejection. Soon you’ll have the same realization that Baby Style had after facing rejection from a dozen girls in less than an hour…. YOU FEEL NO DIFFERENT.

If you didn’t have the girl before you went up to talk to her… and you don’t have her now… then you lost nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

But you gained experience!

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