Overcoming Paralyzing Fear

How you can overcome paralyzing fear, so you can take action to reach your full potential in your personal and professional life.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for about a year. He is very successful in business and in life. But when it comes to talking to a cute girl, he is overcome with paralyzing fear and never says anything. He gets angry with himself for being weak and shrinking from talking to women he finds attractive and then feels depressed about it later.

He has tried therapy and everything else he could think of, but he is just too scared to talk to women. He asks what he can do to overcome his fear and finally start taking action. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

So, I’ve got a email here from a guy, he’s very successful in life, business and has a black belt in karate. But when it comes to talking to a cute girl, he just freezes and just can’t talk or do anything. He says he’s tried therapy, counseling, all kinds of different things. He’s been following my work for about a year, but he says he just can’t get past his paralyzing fear to take any action at all.

Viewer’s Email:

Hi Corey,

I just want to say I am a great fan of your work and I have been following you for about a year now. 

Well, dude, the reality is I think it’s great that you’re a great fan of my work, but if you don’t take what’s in “How To Be A 3% Man” and apply it, you might as well give the book to somebody else, because it’s not going to help you unless you take action. That’s the harsh reality.

I bought your hardcover of 3% Man and later purchased the audiobook to make re-reading easier. Combined, I am at about 6 times read through.

So, a few things, come on, man. If you’re a really serious student, you wouldn’t have been following me for a year and only gotten through the book six times. So right off the bat, I know you’re not following the instructions that are in the book, because you’re looking for shortcuts and you’re looking for the easy way out. That’s just reality. I’m not here to blow sunshine up your ass. I’m just here to tell you what the real story is and why you’re not getting the results you want. You have to take action. You can’t get around that.

My question is how do I conqueror the paralyzing fear that is preventing me from applying all of the things I have learned?

Well, if you had really been a diligent student, you would have gotten through the book 10 to 15 times, and you would have also watched the videos that are referenced throughout the book as well and done what the video said. And one of the videos that’s in the book is “Improving Your Social Skills.” I purposely broke down the process of improving your social skills. I guess it’s about 12 minutes long.

And so, obviously, I’m not going to go through the whole video, but the basics are that you break down each step. Because if you’re afraid of women — which obviously, I haven’t gotten to that part yet here, but it’s obvious you’re intimidated and you’re afraid of women for whatever the reason is — you’ve got a story that you’re telling yourself that you’re not good enough. You’re going to look stupid, things aren’t going to go well, you don’t know what to say, and that just causes you to do nothing. That becomes your story and your justification for doing nothing at all.

And so, if you’re really afraid and fearful, obviously you have to get over this fear, because if you’re going to talk to women, you’re going to have to be able to maintain a conversation. Even if you get the phone number and then you go to dinner and you freeze up and you don’t ask questions, because again, you don’t know the book. And if you did know the book and you were on a date, you would know that the woman should be doing 70, 80, 90% of the talking, and all you’ve got to do is ask questions — the kind of questions that she would enjoy answering, the kind of questions that elicit good feelings and good responses, things that you want to know about her.

If you really like this girl and you’re fascinated by her, what do you want to know about her? Because if you’re going to say you’re one of those guys who wants to be with somebody their whole life, settle down, get married, the white picket fence, the whole nine yards, looks are going to fade. You’re going to get old. and stuff is going to sag, and so is your girl. And that’s reality. And so, the looks are going to fade eventually, and then what are you going to have? You’re going to have your relationship. Do you enjoy being around this person? Do you enjoy listening to what she has to say? Do you enjoy her on her good days and bad days and her average days? That’s really important. And so, most importantly, you’ve got to know, can you carry on a conversation, and do you actually want to hear what she’s got to say? That’s the important thing.

But as I talk about in the video, “Improving Your Social Skills,” start out with walking around the mall, or a beer festival, or walking around in public, an art fair or someplace where people congregate. I know most of the world and a lot of places are shut down in the West, but I live in Florida and things are mostly open. And what kind of makes it easy to know which women to talk to and which ones not to is people that are wearing a mask tend to lean left. They tend to be a Biden supporter, and politically in our hyper-politically charged environment, I’m not going to want to talk to that person anyway, and they’re not going to like my political views, so that kind of eliminates, which is actually kind of nice, because it eliminates all the people that just want to be told what to do by the government.

And so, women that are attractive, that are self-reliant and know that the masks don’t really do anything, they’re going to be walking around without a mask, because they want to live their life. I mean, this crap’s been going on for a year and cases are plummeting. What’s interesting is about six, seven weeks ago, the PCR test, they changed the sensitivity, because they’re like, “Well, we’re getting too many false positives, so let’s reduce the sensitivity” — in other words, the criteria for what determines people are positive or not — and the cases are plummeting. It’s a miracle. Well, the orange man is now out of office, so it makes sense.

But the point being is that, like for me personally, I’m center right, more conservative, libertarian, maybe socially conservative or socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. I’m a constitutionalist, and so I’m all about the freedom and the liberty of the individual. Because the individual needs to toil in freedom to accomplish their grandest goals and dreams with as little interference from the state and busybodies as possible. And so, women that have that same kind of attitude, they’re going to be walking around without a mask as well, because they’re in shape and they’re taking care of themselves. They’re going to the gym, and they’re not worried about this little virus, just like I was.

I’ve got a good friend of mine who is just terrified. The media completely freaked this guy out, an avid Trump supporter, but he’s hiding like a hermit in his house for a year now. And he won’t even come out other than to go get food. He’s at least coming out and hanging out with his girlfriend a little bit, but he won’t see friends or family or anybody else, because he’s literally terrified of getting the virus. And so he’s waiting, because he’s obviously not in the age group where he’s getting vaccinated. So he’s waiting for that, because the media freaked him out so bad, he didn’t know what to believe. But it happens.

But the point being is that you’ve got to start interacting with other human beings, and so like walking down the street or at a mall or anywhere, you have to be where women are. You’ve got to get outside of your house. You can’t sit at home and do nothing. And just sitting there swiping through on a dating app is lazy, because quite frankly, the amount of work that you’ve got to put into the dating apps to find somebody that’s really good quality that you want to date, I’m too fucking lazy. That’s just me. I don’t want to spend that much work. I want to be able to look into somebody’s eyes and feel something right away, be able to see what she looks like, check out her body, and if it clicks in person, it’ll click on a date. I mean, it boils down to that.

And so, if you’re paralyzed with fear, just like I talk about in “Improving Your Social Skills,” you start out with just walking around and making eye contact, and then smiling and then notice who smiles back and who doesn’t. And then, when you’re bored with that and that’s easy, then you work up to saying hello. And then, eventually, you work up to pausing and asking them a question. Again, I’m not going to go through what’s in that whole particular video, because you need to do the work. And quite frankly, what you’ve shared so far in your email tells me you’ve been a lousy student, and that’s part of the reason why you’re not getting the results you want. Just because you read the book, if you don’t apply it, like I said, it’s useless, it’s not going to help you.

I am successful in other areas of my life with my finances and my professional career. I have a black belt in karate, perform well with public speaking and teaching, among many other great things I could say about myself and accomplishments. I get along well with others, and I think people genuinely like me and enjoy spending time with me. But despite all of these things, none of it matters when I see that cute girl I want to talk to.

The problem with that is you haven’t practiced enough talking to strangers. And like I talk about in “Improving Your Social Skills,” you’re going to talk to everybody. You’re not going to just go talk to pretty girls. You’re going to talk, whether it’s at the gas station putting gas in your car, or at a restaurant, chatting up the hostess or the waitress that’s waiting on you. Or if you’re in the mall getting some clothes, chatting up the girl that’s helping you at checkout, just getting in the habit of striking up conversations.

And that’s why it’s also very important to put yourself into social situations. Like for me, when I was younger and I was in real estate, I had a big company, we had 40 employees. We had a bunch of young, high achieving guys and a bunch of beautiful, attractive, high achieving girls. We all became good friends. We hired people that we liked and that we wanted to hang out with, so we did a lot of things socially. And though, for the most part, I didn’t dip the pen in company ink very often, I tried to abstain and exercise self-control. I mean, some women, you know, they come on to you, and what are you going to do?

But the point being is when you have a good social circle, when you have a good job or a good business, even if you’re not dating people that you work with, when you work with a lot of high achieving, attractive people, they’re going to have attractive single friends. And when you do fun things socially, it’s going to be great for your social life.

And now what I do for a living, everybody works remotely, basically, and I don’t have an office where everybody comes and hangs out. Yeah, we do get together with some of the people that do work for me, but for the most part, everybody does their own thing, because they can all work remotely. And so, one of the things that I’ve done to help myself in my social life is live in a nice area where there is a lot of apartment buildings, there’s lots of restaurants, there’s bars, there’s things to do socially.

It’s a nice place, there’s a lot of beautiful, attractive women around here, so it makes it easy to bump into a cute girl at a restaurant, or when I when I’m having lunch or dinner, or maybe just walking down the street or going to the gym, walking around in my building, whatever it happens to be. Or going down by the beach, which is only a mile or two from where I live. So I created a social life or a social structure to where I just go out and live my life and enjoy myself, and I’m going to meet women as a side effect of that. So, you’ve got to also think about that from that perspective.

Maybe if you’re in a career or a business where you don’t have much, maybe you work remotely, you’ve got to figure that out. Maybe you move into the city, or maybe you move where lots of people that tend to congregate and hang out, because you’ve got to get in the habit of interacting with other people, interacting with other strangers. And if you follow the process that’s in the video, “Improving Your Social Skills,” and you also go through Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends & Influence People,” and you practice these things, you’ll get better at it.

And so, when you get good at just striking up a conversation with a total stranger, whether it’s an old lady or a couple that are sitting next to you at the bar or the restaurant where you happen to be eating lunch or dinner, talking to strangers, it’s the same process. Just because it’s a hot girl, it doesn’t mean the process is any different. And that’s what you’ve got to get in the habit of.

You’ve got to get in the habit of striking up conversations with people when you don’t really feel like it, when you’re really not in the mood. And that way, when you’re checking out your groceries and you turn around and there’s a hot girl next to you, you can chat her up. “Hey, what are you doing? Oh hey, I see you’ve got a lot of greens. Do you juice vegetables? Do you make green smoothies? Oh, I see you’ve got frozen pizzas. I love that pizza. Have you tried this one?” or whatever. It’s like, you just come up with casual, regular, everyday things.

Talking to a cute girl is not like a big event. A lot of you guys treat talking to a woman like it’s going to the zoo, “Oh wow, it’s a zoo! A woman in the wild, wow!” It’s not a big fucking deal. It’s just another human being. And so, you have to practice these things if you want to get better.

Everything freezes and I’m only left with anger at myself and depression as the moment passes me by.

Because again, you haven’t practiced ahead of time. You haven’t practiced improving your social skills and talking to strangers on a level to the point where you don’t have to think about it anymore. And so, what’s happening is you’re waiting to strike up conversations with strangers only when you see a cute girl that you like. Talk to the average girls, talk to the regular girls, talk to the ugly girls. It doesn’t matter. Just take a sincere, authentic interest in other people, and get out there and practice. It’s the only way you’re going to get better.

Therapy, that’s great. You can go to all of the talk therapy that you want, but you need to improve your social skills, and that means striking up conversation with strangers. That’s not going to happen when you’re laying on the couch at your therapist’s office. That’s only going to happen when you get out and you participate and you explore humanity.

I’ve tried therapy, books and even hypnotism, but we are still here. It makes me sad and angry, and I don’t want live the rest of my life with this fear, but I’m at a loss. I would be very grateful if you could address this topic in one of your videos. 

Thank you,

Bob

Like I said, “Improving Your Social Skills.” You’ve got to watch the video and go out and do it and practice it every weekend. Every weekend, any kind of social event, and maybe your city’s locked down, your state is locked down, hop on a plane and come to Florida. Come to a big, populous area. There’s lots of places in South Florida, you can go to Tampa, you can go to Miami, you can go to Palm Beach, you can go to Fort Lauderdale, (“Fort Liquordale” as we affectionately call it). You can go to Orlando.

There’s lots of places that you can go in Florida. What I’ve heard about Fort Myers, they don’t even have masks over there. But Fort Myers, there’s not as many people in that area, but nobody wears masks in the stores, because it was all over the news a few weeks ago. People were outraged, “How could these people be in a grocery store not wearing a mask? There’s a pandemic!” I won’t go back into the pandemic stuff, but to me, it’s all ridiculous and hopefully in the next few months it’ll mostly be over.

But, you know, it’s definitely taken a toll on most people’s social life. All I’ve got to do is look at the numbers on new people watching my videos, and new subscribers and book sales. When everybody in the West is stuck at home and everything’s locked down, it’s like global human interaction has pretty much come to a standstill in the West. So, people aren’t meeting, they’re not going out on dates, they’re not hooking up, they’re not having sex. The birth birth rates are dropping. People aren’t having as many babies. I mean, it’s amazing the changes that this has made on our society.

But you’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to participate in the world. And it’s like, every day you should break it down into a small goal, “I’m going to talk to two to three strangers today.” Say hello to them, chat, ask them a couple of questions. Maybe you should memorize two or three good questions that you come up with, the kind of question that would feel natural to you to ask and that you’d like to hear the answer to.

And also in my book, I reference another article and video where I give you a bunch of different pickup lines and conversation topics that you can use. Again, the resources are there. And when you write me an email like this going, “Oh, I’ve been following you for a year, and I don’t know what to do,” it’s like, come on, man. You’re just bitching out and you’re making excuses, and you’re not doing what the book teaches you to do. Because if you had been, you’d be writing me a great success story instead of sending me a whiny email going, “Oh, I don’t know what to do. I’ve got paralyzing fear.” It’s like, sorry. I know it’s harsh, but like I said, it doesn’t serve you or anybody else that’s got the same problem to blow sunshine up your ass.

You’ve got to get out there and explore humanity, and you’ve got to participate with other human beings and go where other human beings are, where other strangers are, so you can chat them up and improve your social skills. And then, when you get to the point where striking up a conversation with a total stranger is like ordering a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, then you’re ready.

Then, you jump into an elevator and there’s a cute girl in there, and it’s easy to start up a conversation with her. And maybe she’s going the same direction you are, and you can walk down the street together for a couple of minutes and talk. And if the conversation’s flowing well there, you should probably get her number and make a date with her. Because if the conversation doesn’t flow when you first meet her, it’s not going to flow any better on a date.

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“FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. The story that we tell ourselves determines what we are willing to do and not do to take action to move our lives forward towards our grandest goals and dreams. Big goals are overwhelming when you think about all of the work and time involved to achieve them. However, big goals are accomplished by breaking them down into little daily easy to achieve tasks. By focusing on what must be done before you go to sleep each night, you force yourself to live in the present moment and lose yourself in the process of taking action. When you are busy taking action, you don’t have time to worry or be fearful about what may or may not happen in the future. Success is a process, not a one-time event. It’s a daily discipline to do what must be done each and every day of the week.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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