How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - 4 Ways to Stop Fearing Rejection and Start Feeling Confident

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

When you see an attractive woman you’d love to meet, fear of rejection likely holds you back. “What if she doesn’t like me?,” you think. Or if you want to go for a first-date kiss, the R-word paralyzes you, and you worry, “What if she turns away?” Hello, Friend Zone. In dating, fear of rejection is the Big Bad Wolf. It costs you confidence and romantic success. In today’s episode of the Dating Transformation podcast, dating coach Connell Barrett helps you cure your fear of rejection, so you can confidently approach women, make the right moves on dates, and attract your dream girlfriend, as your best, most authentic self. Listen now, so you can stop fearing rejection and start confidently dating wonderful women.Quotes"Every approach is a success; it's either a date or another brick in the cathedral of my character."- Connell Barrett"Learn to get rejected elegantly, laugh it off, and know you're still enough."- Connell Barrett"There's nothing wrong with wanting to avoid rejection or not wanting to bother women. It's coming from a good place." - Connell BarrettFeatured in the episodeConnell BarrettFounder and Executive Coach of Dating TransformationWebsite: https://datingtransformation.comInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/datingtransformationChapters00:29 Introduction03:42 Embracing Self-Worth and Confidence8:48 Navigating Conflicting Thoughts in Approaching Women11:53 Transforming Approach Anxiety into Growth Opportunities15:33 Unveiling the Barriers: Identifying What Stops You21:24 Rewiring Your Approach Mindset23:29 Joyful Connections: Redefining Approaching Rewards30:21 Taking the Leap Despite the Fear of Rejection33:59 Embracing Your Worth Beyond Acceptance36:11 Outro

I don't love you. You have a small penis and I'm hooking up with Fabio. Okay, that's rejection. Welcome to the Dating Transformation Podcast. Here's your host, dating coach, Conal Barrett. Welcome back to the Dating Transformation Podcast. I am your host, Conal Barrett. I'm a dating coach who helps guys like you learn to flirt, gain self-confidence, and get dates and get a great girlfriend. And doing it all as the real authentic you. No pickup artist tricks. No seduction. Genuine real connection. And today I'm going to read your mind. Ready? Here I go. I am guessing that you would love to approach a really attractive, intriguing woman every so often. Maybe you see her at the gym, or maybe you see her at a coffee shop or out at the bars. I'll bet you'd love to do that, to confidently, comfortably walk up and flirt, have it go

well, and even get some phone numbers and dates. But something stops you. Some force creates fear, resistance, shoved in your head, not sure what to say, worried about seeming creepy, something stops you from doing it. Well, this episode today is about removing the biggest speed bump that keeps you from approaching attractive women and striking up some chemistry. In fact, we're going to get some really important stuff done in less than a half hour. So stick around. I'm going to give you basically the keys to become rejection proof, to get really confident and rejection proof perfection proof with approaching women. So let me throw two seemingly contradictory ways

to look at approaching. Here's one model to look at it. Model number one is approaching is simple. Casually walk up, you chat, and if there's chemistry, you ask a woman out on a date. And if there's not chemistry or if she's not available, nothing personal, still a win because, hey, at least you took action. It's model number one. Model number two is, oh my God, approaching is so hard. You're nervous. You nervously walk up, assuming you even get that ability to walk up. You struggle for the right words. And if she's not interested, you'll feel wounded.

It'll feel personal. And hey, maybe women just aren't into you. That's model number two. Now, either of these two models can be true. It all depends on your mindset. That is, it all depends on how you approach approaching. Because the truth is, the majority of men make a very costly mistake in this area of meeting women by approaching socializing. They adopt a win-lose paradigm. Basically, it's, if she's attracted to me, success. If she doesn't like me,

if I approach and she doesn't like me, it's a failure. And this binary model turns an approach into a high-stakes coin toss. Basically, it's heads you win, tails you suck. It's validation versus rejection. And what this binary mindset does is it amps up the fear factor and basically you feel like your self-worth is on the line and i speak from experience because i used to see approaching the same way which is why i never did it i never approached a single woman in my whole life until my late 30s i I was 38 years old, the first time I ever did it. But there were many times I tried to do it, but something stopped me. And the moment I knew I had to change things and get a coach or just sort this out was, it was a day way back in the double zeros

back in 2008. And I was at a Starbucks here in New York City, where I live on Park Avenue, 29th and Park. And I saw this gorgeous brunette sitting by herself at Starbucks. It was a Sunday afternoon. And I wanted so badly to talk to her. I remember she looked like Katie Holmes, who at the time was my celebrity crush. That was before Tom Cruise got his hooks in her. Anyway, so I saw this really adorable brunette and I wanted so badly to talk to her, but I was in conflict. And it's sort of like I had an angel on one shoulder rooting me on and I had a devil on the other side who was talking me out of it. So it's like the angel is saying, oh, what a babe. She's your type. Go talk to her. And the devil said, no,

she might think you're creepy. Don't be a creep. And then the angel said, creepy? Connell, you're a catch. Wouldn't you love to date her? She might be into your kind of guy. And then the devil said, oh, but ah but dude she rejects you it's gonna hurt girl like that she only dates outgoing guys not some nerdy introvert like you and and then that little devil said hey besides all the people here they might see you get shot down how would that feel and the angel says, don't listen to him. Just walk over there. And then basically what happened in that moment was the devil stuck a pitchfork right in the

angel's torso. I'm going to read your mind. Ready? I'll bet that you would love to confidently approach women, get great matches on the dating apps, flirt with charm, and attract your dream girlfriend. Right? But fear keeps you from approaching. You're not sure how to flirt. You struggle on the apps. And desirable women just don't seem into you. Well, I have great news. Dating coach Conal Barrett can help. He's guided thousands of men like you to more confidence

and helped them attract their dream girlfriends. So book a free strategy call today to see if Conal's coaching is right for you. On your call, Conal or a team member will give you personalized advice to help you have more confidence, more dates, and more fun. Oh, and you'll be dating women as your best self, a charming gentleman. That's because Connell does not teach creepy pickup artist tricks. He unlocks your most

confident self so you can make authentic romantic connections. Your next steps? Book your free call today at datingtransformation.com forward slash contact and grab a time that works for you. Then you'll be on your way to more confidence, better results, and attracting bright, beautiful women. Oh, so you know, soon Connell will stop taking on new clients, so book a call today while you still can. Go to datingtransformation.com forward slash contact and transform your love life. Bye.

So I had this win-lose mentality, which basically made it impossible for me to talk to that woman. And so what happened was I walked over to her and I basically circled her. She was seated at a table by herself and I kind of circled her like kind of like a frightened shark for a little bit. And then finally I, she got up and left and walked out. I'm just, you know, went on with her, went on with her day. And I just remember thinking, oh, why do you suck so bad? Why can't you approach a woman? What is going on? And basically, the reason I couldn't do it is because I had this inner conflict. I looked at approaching women as a win-lose paradigm. Basically, heads I win, tails I'm not good enough. I'm not enough

for women. And I guess the main point I want to make today, before I give you some specific strategies here, is I want to turn you on to this idea of embracing rejection. Maybe I should write a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Getting Rejected because the bottom line is a lot of guys come to me and say, hey, I want to learn how to approach women. The bottom line is approaching women, there's not nearly as much technique as you might think. You walk up, you chat, express yourself authentically, and flirt a little bit, and then see if there's a vibe, a spark. You don't really need to learn how to approach women as much as you need to learn how to be okay with getting rejected. See, good technique is important, but it's overrated.

What you really need is to learn how to get rejected, but elegantly. Get rejected and laugh it off. Get rejected and feel good for trying. Get rejected and know that you're still enough. So you don't take it personally, or else you'll end up with more pain and fear than you started with. And look, the bottom line is there's no quick fixes in this area. The only magic bullets out there in the world exist in werewolf movies.

But destroying your fear of rejection, I would say that's the closest thing there is to an approaching magic bullet. Because once the fear of rejection disappears or is minimized, then you become free. That emergency break comes off. And then you can be confident or at least approach confidently. Even if your technique is just okay, if you approach with confidence and a sense of freedom, good things are going to happen because women love confident guys. Women aren't attracted to your game. They're attracted to a man who believes in himself. So the way to destroy that fear of rejection with approaching is counterintuitive. You let yourself get rejected, quote unquote, and you learn that it can't really hurt you. In fact, you actually learn that it's not really

rejection. But let's stick with the R word for now, just for the sake of this pod. Yeah, you want to think of, you want to expose yourself to the thing you're afraid of, so you can realize that it's not going to hurt you. So I kind of think of, it's almost like a vaccine. Like taking action and exposing yourself to that rejection is like a vaccine that essentially inoculates you from eventually from the fear. Now, by the way, I, I don't mean go out and purposefully intentionally get rejected. You don't want to, I'm not saying do it on purpose, but really what this is about is it's about using courage to take an action. And instead of playing to not lose, which is what I was doing that day at Starbucks, you want to start playing to win.

That means taking action, cut through that cycle of avoidance, which is probably where you are if you're listening to this, and then essentially getting into an action mode. Make sense? Okay. So here's why rejection feels so scary. So there's a term you might know. It's a phenomenon. It's a very real phenomenon, and it's called approaching anxiety. What is that? Approaching anxiety is the feeling of resistance or stress that you have that keeps you from talking to and flirting with an intriguing woman out in the world, at a bar, at a party, at your gym, what have you. And approach anxiety is primarily triggered by the pain that you think you're going to feel

if you get rejected. You're anticipating something like hurt, humiliation, anger, insignificance, frustration, or various other big bads. Another common cause of approach anxiety is basically social judgment, being seen socially to be doing something wrong. And so the reason I could not approach that beautiful brunette in the denim miniskirt, who I would have loved to go talk to, was because I was afraid that she would reject me, which would make me feel insignificant, not enough. I was also afraid, and I remember this vividly, I remember thinking, oh, hey, there's like three or four people sitting in her general vicinity. If they see me get shot down,

they're going to see me as some low status person who makes social mistakes. And that created the resistance as well. Now, these were not explicit thoughts I had in the moment. This is what I learned later was happening inside of me, but that's basically what created that resistance, that fear. So here's a question for you, dear listener. Do you have approach anxiety? Here's how you find out. It's pretty simple. Let's do some simple math. Here's what we'll do. Think of it. Think of this. I'm going to bet that you, in your daily life, you see a certain number of women who catch your eye every week and make you say, oh, wow, look at her. I call these wow girls. Now, a wow girl, that's just a woman who turns your head and makes you think, wow, she is my type. She's cute. Or there's something about the way she moves, walks. Obviously, physical appearance is a big part of it.

And I call these wow girls. So here's my question. In a typical month, how many wow girls do you notice on average? You know, at the gym, at the bars, on the street, et cetera. Now, whatever that figure is, take that figure, multiply it by 12, and that's how many wow girls you've seen in the last year. So whatever that number is, that's how many wow girls you've seen. Depending on where you live and how populated your area is and also how much you're out and about, it's probably anywhere between 300 and a couple thousand wow girls. Okay? Okay.

So now look at that number, whatever the number is, and ask yourself, how many of these wow girls did you approach and at least try to flirt with? And if that number is somewhere between zero and 10, let's call it less than 10, then sir, you very likely have approach anxiety or resistance to approaching. If you've been single for the last year and you see beautiful women all the time and have talked to zero or just a small handful, you got yourself some approach anxiety. And that might be the bad news. The good news is, is that fear of rejection is the main cause of this. And it's just a story. It's a story that plays in your head like a horror movie. It's fictional, yet it feels real. Here's the plot of that story. That plot is, oh man, maybe I'm just not enough for that really cute girl. And if you were to approach her and learn that you are, quote, not enough because she

rejects you, then what would happen in the moment is your brain would very likely say to you, oh, you know what? You're less of a man, which means that you'll have to settle or you might even end up alone. And those are both very scary outcomes, right? You don't want to settle. You don't want to end up in a relationship you're not that into, and you don't want to be alone. Nobody wants to be lonely. And so what this does is this story turns a simple approach, which is just a man talking to a woman in a social situation, and it turns it into judgment day on your worth to women and whether or not you're going to be loved. So think about how heavy this is. These stories we tell ourselves turn a simple approach into judgment day on your worth as a man. It's like, no wonder it feels so scary. No wonder approach anxiety feels so intense.

And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh man, this dude's way overdoing it, I could say hi to cute girls anytime I want. Well, bro, you tell me, what's your number? What's your number of wow girls approached and flirted with in the last year? If it's a nice high number, then I'll listen to your podcast and hear how you do it. But if it's a really low number, then you want to be honest with yourself and say, whoa, something is stopping me from doing this. Rejection, ghosting, loneliness, lack of dates and lack of confidence. For many men, dating just sucks. But it doesn't have to. There's a simple yet powerful way to gain instant confidence and attract a great girlfriend. Be radically authentic. It's all laid out in the number one Amazon best-selling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't.

Your step-by-step guide to attracting wonderful women and doing it with total authenticity. Author and dating coach Conal Barrett has had and fixed all the dating problems that you struggle with. He's also helped thousands of men gain confidence and find love. He's put his best tips and strategies into Dating Sucks But You Don't so that you can confidently approach women and get dates. Become magnetic and attractive even if you're not tall or great looking. Always know what to say to make sparks fly. Get lots of great matches and dates on the dating apps and attract your dream woman. You can find Dating Sucks But You Don't on Amazon

or wherever books are sold, in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook. Get Dating Sucks But You Don't today to transform your confidence and find your dream girl. So social scientists call this psychological process of basically overthinking these stories, catastrophizing. It's a phenomenon in which the mind basically takes small disappointments or perceived disappointments, like a woman rebuffing you or saying, oh, I'm not interested. Thanks,

but no thanks. And then it makes these disappointments seem larger than life. And then what happens is you approach a girl, she quote unquote rejects you. And instead of just saying, oh, that's one woman who might not be my type, our brains can say, she rejected me. That means I'm not enough. That means I'll never find love. It means I'll have to marry an inflatable woman. Nobody wants to marry an inflatable woman. Although, hey, no judgments. You do you. Oh, by the way, just an important sidebar here. There's nothing wrong or unhealthy with wanting to avoid rejection. If you don't want to get rejected, if you don't want to quote, bother women, that's actually a good place. That's coming from a good place. That's an

inclination that's coming from wanting to be socially approved of, right? It's a sign of good mental health. That just means you value your social standing. You empathize with women. You see creepy guys who are genuinely creepy, right? You see actually cat callers and real creepy dudes who make women feel uncomfortable. And you feel like, I don't want to be like those guys. So yeah, that's actually a good sign. It means you're healthy. It's just that in this specific context, you're letting these fears catastrophize into approach anxiety. And we just want to eliminate those fears that are especially debilitating because that can hurt your love life, right? Every woman you don't approach who you want to, you're potentially watching your future girlfriend walk away.

You're potentially missing out on love, sex, a date, or hell, even just a good story and a moment to be proud of taking action, right? So what I want to do in the last 10 minutes or so of today's pod is I want you to redefine what rejection is. Do something really powerful and empowering with me. I want you to give it a new meaning. I want you to transform, quote unquote, rejection into something to embrace, or at least to not dread. Okay? So here's your new paradigm. It's a simple universal rule. I give every client this, and it can transform your confidence and your emotions and make that approach anxiety disappear

almost instantly if you back it up with action. Here it is. Here's a simple universal rule. Quote, every approach is a success because I either get a date or I put another brick in the cathedral of my character. Powerful, right? Think about that. This paradigm turns approaching into a win-win proposition. It sets you up to feel pleasure rather than pain, and it makes it pretty much impossible to fail because you've redefined success. Everything we do in life is governed by our desire to feel pleasure and to avoid pain. Everything. So if you want to approach women but you never do, it's because you don't link enough pleasure to the experience, and you link a lot of pain to it. So here's a fun thought experiment. Here's a visual. Imagine an old timey scale. Like remember those old timey scales, like with two plates

or blind justice holding the scales of justice. Imagine an old timey, a two plated scale on one plate represents the pleasure you associate with approaching, okay? And the other plate represents the pain. And so weighing down the pleasure side is going to be, hopefully, things like confidence, connection, love, sex, finding a girlfriend, taking action, flirting. But on the pain side, you have as much or probably more weight, rejection, humiliation, feeling creepy, making social mistakes, running out of things to say, feeling unattractive, bothering her, getting stuck in your head, people watching

you, judging you. And so with so much potential pain weighing you down on that side of the scale, you either don't approach or if you miraculously do, despite all that fear and resistance, you're not going to have fun and you're probably not going to do it well because you're so scared. You're so nervous, just like I was that day at Starbucks. All I could anticipate was the potential pain, even though I really wanted to go flirt with this cute girl. So what's the fix here? The fix is change your associations. You start linking tons and tons and tons of pleasure to approaching and very little, if any, pain. And this is actually fun. So here's a fun brainstorming activity I want to do with you right now.

Let's brainstorm some feel-good benefits to approaching, okay? Because what we want to do is we want to change your association. So you start thinking of approaching as something that feels good and it's good for you. And then if you start doing it with this new mindset, you're going to start having fun. You're actually going to take action. And guess what? A guy who's as cool and authentic and awesome as you, girls are going to be into you. With reasonably good technique, but less and less fear, good things are going to happen. Okay. So let's do a fun little brainstorm here. We're going to brainstorm the upsides of approaching, and then let's brainstorm the downsides. Here we go. Here's the upside of approaching.

Finding love, making connections, getting a great girlfriend, falling in love, growing, being a masculine man, taking action, feeling more confidence, getting more dates, bragging to your friends about how you met her, being able to say, oh yeah, I just chatted her up at the bar. I just walked right up to her. That feels great. Great sex, cuddling, spooning, really fun, sexy dates, giving women a rom-com movie moment, this was powerful for me because think about it. Women love a cool, high-value guy who just comes up and chats, and she feels like she's in a rom-com. That never happens to women. Other things to associate, positive things to associate with approaching would be expressing yourself, sharing your personality, cracking jokes, sharing your sense of humor, telling stories, growing, basically becoming the hero of your

own story, becoming the protagonist of your story. You're a man who's out there doing something incredible. You're looking for love. You're looking to give your heart, your soul, your sex, your kindness. You're looking to give that to a woman you approach. You want to feel great about that. Just the joy of taking action, expressing your authentic self. Okay? So what do we just name? We just must have named 25 benefits. I should say positive associations to approaching. Okay. Downsides to approaching? Insert cricket noise here. There's very few downsides to approaching. I'm not saying there's zero, but most of the downsides are all between your ears. They're all between your ears. I know this because I was petrified to approach for 38 years of my

life. I finally started doing it and it changed my dating life. And I realized, ah, all the things I was afraid of were in my head or they were preventable. Downsides to approaching rejection. Well, we're going to get to that in a second. Yeah, you might stumble over your words sometimes. You might approach a girl who's got a boyfriend. In fact, you will. But that's cool.

I mean, these are all fixable issues, and they're all far, far outweighed by all the positives, right? So think of the downsides to approaching as being very, you know, very few, just a few ounces worth compared to 500 pounds of positive benefits of approaching. Hope that makes sense. Yeah. And in fact, you know, a big breakthrough that a client of mine had, there's this client I worked with named Doug. And one of Doug's biggest breakthroughs was it wasn't the first beautiful woman who he approached and got her number, although he did that many times. It was actually a really attractive woman he met in a grocery store. And she was one of those wow girls, his quote unquote 10. And I remember he

got all excited. He shot me a text message once and said, oh my God, Connell, I saw this smoking hot blonde in yoga pants at the grocery store. And I walked right up to her. I looked her right in the eye and I just, you know, said I wanted to meet her and put myself out there. And she actually was polite, but she wasn't into him. And she said, hey, thanks for your interest. You know, I'm not really feeling it, but have a good day.

And he walked home feeling amazing that day because he realized, hey, I've become the guy who can approach beautiful women. And only by making yourself vulnerable to that quote-unquote rejection of beautiful women, that's also when you're going to start dating beautiful women. And that's a big epiphany that Doug had. Okay, let's finish with, I'm going to give you four new ways to look at rejection, okay? Here's how to take your old mindset and replace it with a really powerful new one. And you can use any of these or you can use all of them. I'll leave it up to you. You want to find out what works for you. So here are four new ways to look at rejection. Number one, looking at rejection as rejection is a win. Every approach is a success, even if a girl isn't into you, because you either get that date or you grow as a man. In other words, you put that another brick in the cathedral of your

character, and you're one approach closer to connecting with a wonderful woman. That's a powerful reframe. The second new way to look at rejection is rejection is part of the process. It's necessary. I mean, think about it. Stat Mickey Mantle, legendary Mickey Mantle, the great baseball player for the Yankees, he struck out 1,710 times. But Mickey also hit 536 home runs. So you gotta swing and miss in order to knock it out of the park. Anyway, the third new way to look at rejection is rejection isn't that bad.

Because I remember the first woman I ever approached, a really cute blonde in a cowboy hat on a rooftop bar. I was 38 years old in July 2008. I'm sorry, 2009. And I was so nervous beforehand. 38 years in the making, I finally approached an attractive woman at a bar. And I walked up to her. I was nervous. We talked for two or three minutes. She was clearly not into me. And then she just said, oh, well, anyway, I'm going to go back to my friends. Have a good night. And I faced what I was afraid of, rejection. And all of a sudden I realized, oh my God, that wasn't so bad. I'm still here. That's what I've been afraid of all these years? That wasn't so bad. That wasn't so bad at all, actually. And later that night, I met a gorgeous woman and we connected and clicked that night and dated for a while. We left the rooftop bar together. I never would have met that woman

who I clicked with and connected with had I not gotten vulnerable and made myself vulnerable to quote rejection and realizing that, hey, rejection isn't that bad. And here's the fourth and final new way to look at rejection. And I think this is the most powerful one of all. Here's the fourth new way to look at it. Rejection isn't really rejection. It's not actually rejection. A woman who you just met cannot truly reject you. She can't do it. She can say, hey, no thanks.

I'm not into it. I'm in a relationship. I'm a lesbian. I don't like guys named Doug, whatever her reason is. But that's not really rejection. I mean, think about it. If your girlfriend sits you down and says, hey, I don't love you. You have a small penis and I'm hooking up with Fabio. Okay, that's rejection.

Now that's rejection. But a random woman you chat with for a minute or two, that's not rejection. That's just a woman who might not match your vibe. You might not be her type, or she might just not be in the mood to be flirted with right now. So we want to remember that rejection isn't really rejection. Tony Robbins has a really good line. He talks about this idea of using courage to face the things that scare you, become a lion tamer, he says. And so first we want to become a lion tamer and face those fears. But then what you're going to want to do is create a model of the world where there aren't really any lions. The lions don't even exist.

And I really like that analogy. There is no such thing as rejection. It's just a girl and she's either into you or she's not. And you still have worth and value no matter what. And I'll end with this. So on this pod and also in my book and with my clients, I tell a lot of success stories because, hey, people want to know that you can absolutely go out there and approach with authenticity. You can be your real best self. This works. This can get you a great girlfriend confidence. So I share a lot of success stories because I want to give you and every guy hope. But to be honest, I've had way, way, way more women not into me than to be into me.

That's how I got the wins. I mean, I've been rejected a lot. I've been turned down more than a holiday in bed on three continents and in a dozen countries. And I don't see those rejections as failures. Thanks to this mindset, right? Thanks to this mindset. And yeah, so keep that in mind. I've been, quote, rejected way more than I've hooked up, dated women. I've had an amazing number of successes.

So have my clients. Because we've had an amazing number of rejections. But guess what? It's not really rejection. There are no lions. First, you become the lion tamer. Then you realize there are no lions. They're just kitty cats. All right. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, women out there, they're already into you. They already like you. They want to date you. They just have to meet the real authentic you. All right, I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to the Dating Transformation Podcast. For lots of free tips, videos, and other goodies, go to datingtransformation.com. See you next time. Produced by Heartcast Media. heartkingtransformation.com. See you next time.