Without confidence we are nothing. You need at least a small amount of confidence to achieve even the most easily achievable goal. To walk up to a checkout girl, hand her your purchase, pay for it, say thanks and leave, it takes some confidence—not much, but you still need it. What is confidence?



There's point getting into a page-long thesis of what human confidence is scientifically—let's just concentrate on what it means in a social sense, particularly when a man is talking to a woman with the intention of attracting her.

Confidence means having a true belief that you can achieve something, either because of previous experience or the feeling that something is easy and therefore nothing to worry about. For example, you've probably never jumped up and down on the spot while blinking rapidly and saying your name over and over, but if you were asked to do it, you'd no doubt be confident of your success. If you were asked to do it in room full of beautiful women, however, it might be a different story. That's the other kind of confidence, the kind not based on the knowledge that something is technically easy, like the jumping thing. The most vital kind of confidence needed when talking to a woman in the hope of attracting her is the kind built by experience and previous successes. In essence, the more you do something and the most successful you become at doing that thing, the more confident you generally become at doing it. Success produces confidence and confidence produces more success. It's a very neat and productive loop if you can get it started.

What you need to do to become truly confident (self-assured, unstressed, anxiety-free, capable of being the best version of yourself and able to be as sociable and charming as possible) is use the concept of habituation. Habituation means doing something lots of times and, as a result, becoming desensitised to the stimuli that used to make you unconfident or nervous. For example, for an instant grand in your bank account, you'd probably do the jumping thing in front of women. (If the jumping thing wouldn't scare you, then pick an example of something to do with women that would make you feel unconfident.) The first time you did it, you'd do it badly. You'd look and feel self-conscious, the volume of your voice would be low, as would be your jumps. The money keeps pouring in and you keep jumping. By the third day, your legs would be tired but your confidence would be UP. That's because of habituation. You'd become acclimatized to the stimuli (the presence of the women and the thoughts they had about you as you looked like a madman) that used to worry you.

To become confident when approaching women, starting conversations with them and attracting them through that conversation, you need to use habituation.

• First approach and talk to old women you are not attracted to. It's pretty easy because you don't much care what they think of you.

• Next talk to random guys, starting with old guys then moving to young guys who are the same age as you. It'll feel a bit strange and possibly a tad gay, but just do it.

• Now talk to women who are closer to your ‘target market'. This will feel like a significant jump from the last task, but go for it. You'll feel like crap if your first approaches go badly, but you should take comfort in knowing that you are fast becoming used to the process of conversing with attractive women you don't know.

Make it happen—use habituation to build your confidence when talking to women. It's only with confidence that you can become relaxed enough to do the things you know are necessary to create the spark of sexual attraction, like making women laugh, teasing them and generally being charismatic.