4. Competence vs. Challenge

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “flow”. coined the termIt describes his scientific investigation of “being in state” or “being in the zone”.

He did a study that ran for over 30 years, and he discovered what it takes to get into “the zone”.

Flow is achieved when you have a balance between challenge and skill.

The perceived level of challenge in an activity has to be equal to the perceived level of skill. It has to be at a challenging but achievable level.

When you get this balance right, you experience a state of flow.

When your perceived level of skill is higher than the perceived level of the challenge, you get bored.

When your perceived level of skill is lower than the perceived level of challenge, you get anxiety.

If you want to end anxiety and get into flow, you either need to lower the challenge or increase your skill level.

The fastest way to end anxiety is to lower the perceived challenge level.

The way you do that is by formulating a goal that is achievable.

For example: If you approach women because you want to get their number, a date, or their validation, you are setting yourself up for failure. That’s because this goal is behind your control.

I don’t care how good you become at dating skills, you can’t control how a woman will react. You will never get a 100% success rate, and you know that.

So by setting up a goal that is behind your control, you increase your perception of the challenge. This, in turn, creates anxiety.

It’s exactly the same with approach anxiety.

goal. The best way to end approach anxiety INSTANTLY is to change your

For example, you could make it your goal to find out if she’s the kind of woman that you want to date. See, that’s a different goal. It’s within your control.

Or you could make your goal just to approach her for the sake of approaching her and practicing your skills. That’s within your control. You see, it doesn’t matter if she gives you her number because that wasn’t your goal. Your goal was just to approach her and practice. Nothing else.

The second way is to increase your perceived skill level.

Now that’s where the whole pick-up community has it wrong.

They tell you that you need to have 15 to 30 minutes of conversation to get a solid number (that won’t flake).

You need to open, build attraction, and then get some rapport going. The rapport thing alone takes between 15 and 30 minutes to build.

Here’s the problem with that. When you are learning dating skills, a 15- to 30-minute conversation is a hell of a challenge! You already have to be skilled to be able to do that without messing it up.

Of course you’re going to have approach anxiety if you need that kind of a skill level to be successful.

Next, they teach you some canned openers and they tell you it will help with your approach anxiety. The reasoning is usually given as: Hey, it’s been tested thousands of times and it works, so you don’t need to be afraid to approach. You’ll get a great response!

But it doesn’t work like that. Why?

Well, let me ask you a question. What happens after the opener? You still need to have approximately 20 minutes of conversation without blowing it.

Giving someone a canned opener and telling them to relax is like teaching a pilot how to take off without teaching him how to fly and land. Of course the pilot is going to feel anxiety.

My god. No wonder it takes guys about five years on average to get good with women.

No wonder most give up before they get there. No wonder approach anxiety is hard to beat with that kind of approach.

The trick is to choose a method that needs less skill to develop.

Here at Team Introverted Badass, we teach men how to get solid phone numbers in two, max three, minutes.

Before you say anything, consider this:

We test everything and measure everything.

I’ve been coaching introverted men for more 20 years, and I’ve found that the most solid phone numbers come from the shortest interactions. Even when the person is advanced at dating! That’s right.

There’s no need to build rapport for 20 minutes to get a solid number. In fact, doing this will get you more flaky numbers than if you would have had a shorter interaction of just two minutes.

We’ve tested this countless times ourselves, and through our students.

Two to three minutes of interaction is the sweet spot to get the most solid numbers possible.

So why does the PUA and seduction community teach this if it doesn’t work?

Is it because the longer and the more complex their methods, the more products they can make out of it to sell?

I don’t know. But I DO KNOW FOR SURE THAT IT DOESN'T WORK, and it takes too much time to learn.

click here to get on the waiting list for our NEW webinar. If you would like to learn a simple method to get numbers that convert into dates in less than three minutes of interaction, then

It teaches you a minimalistic method that doesn’t need a high skill level. This means you'll get results EXTREMELY fast.

Because you won't need a high skill level, it will diminish the challenge.

It allows you to cut approach anxiety, get into flow mode, and get dates with beautiful women EASILY.

This BRAND-NEW webinar is FREE, and we will launch it soon. Be sure to