I meant to update this a while back.

I'm also going to split this into 3 different posts so its easier to read.

Its difficult to remember it all, but some weird stuff started happening toward the tail end of last week, I'd been thinking a lot about what was written in this thread at the time. I read a post on another forum where a guy was going on about how he is terrible with women, loads of folk were giving him advice and he was knocking it all back and me reading it I thought "Wow, this guy isn't going to get anywhere......people are trying to help him & he's not taking anything onboard." - I realised that I AM THAT GUY. It gets weirder though - I was thinking in my head "Maybe I do need to start looking at things differently"...I just happened to go onto facebook and the 1st few posts on my newsfeed were all posters/pics peiople had put up "You'll never know what you can achieve if you don't try"....."I'd rather fail trying then fail doing nothing at all" etc etc.....

Later that day I went into Tesco for some shopping at lunch, and some hottie randomly started talking to me. Apparently she's friends with someone who is friends with me & seen me in some fb photos and she recognised me, we made some small talk & I went back to the car. I was thinking about this thread and everything in general (and how cool it was to talk to that girl) & beginning to think you guys on here are right when I got a text message from O2 which read "Look around. The worlds amazing. Dont let life pass you by. Jump in and embrace it. Thats what our new advert is all about" Kinda freaky.....as I looked up from the text there was a BMW parked in front of me with the registration "SV60 PUA". I don't know if its my sub-conscious homing in on whats bothering me......maybe the force of the universe (lol) is trying to tell me something....but i honestly couodnt make any of that up if i tried.

After these signs... where do you go from here?

That is freaky cool..

If I got those signs id some how feel compelled to act on it

Please keep us updated on what you do next from this..!!!

So last Saturday I went out shopping......and decided I'd give talking to people a try. I can't remember all of this, I took a note of them in my phone:

1. When I went to the bank machine there were 3 girls there, one of them was freaking out because the bank wouldnt give her any money. I joked "Its probably because you've spent it all on handbags and shoes - typical female". Her friends burst out laughing and the girl was mortified/laughing like "No, not at all - the machine is broken!" We spoke more briefly and they went on their way.

2. Some guy walked past me in the street with a pretty crazy scarf on (it was about 20 degrees that day) & I said "Dude - its way too hot to be wearing that thing!" & He laughed "I know - but it looks cool huh?"

3. Some girl walked past me with a fancy handbag on, I shouted on her and told her it I liked it, asked where she got it, lying that my sister wants one. She seemed quite flattered and we made some small talk briefly, I asked her name, it was Sarah, I told her thanks and went on my way.

4. Some dude was going down the street on a penny farthing (??) and i shouted at him not to fall off. He pretended to lose control and fall then recovered and gave me a high 5.

5. When I was in boots, (I'm genuinly useless at shopping) I asked one of the female assistants to help me find the flossing tape, she was pretty cute. She spent ages lookign for it and eventually had to ask one of her other female colleagues to help - who pointed out it was right in front of us. I laughed and told girl 1 jokingly "Wow! If I'd known you were this bad at your job i would have asked girl 2 instead" and they both laughed. about a minute later i was struggling to find the mens deodrant so i asked another girl for help...we got into a debate about what the difference between body spray/anti perspirant and normal deodrant was and I told her shes female she should know all of this stuff, she laughed and we spoke briefly. Finally......I couldnt find the mens "fish" haircare range so i saw the 2 girls I'd initially spoken to and told them I needed help again. Jokingly I pretended to ignore girl 1 and went straight to girl 2 saying "She's not going to be much use, I'll go with you" girl 1 burst out laughing and said "No no no - I'll help you" and she lightly touched my shoulder (is that an IOI haha?). I was actually disapointed as i was leaving when girl 1 didnt serve me.

6. I went to Next looking for shoes and the assistant was hot, she went to get my size. To answer what Kowalski said earlier about "Don't tell me you don't pass women you'd like to fuck" - well, when she bent over to check the shoes thats the exact thought that was going through my head. They didnt have them in my size so i tried on some others, in the meantime the girl went to see if other stores had them in stock. As she came back I tried to banter with her but she wasn't realy having any of it.we spoke about the weather, i discovered she works too jobs but the convo was pretty tight. I told her she should just go out and get drunk with me since its a nice night and phone in sick to her other job tomorrow and I did get a laugh out of her.

7. Cant really remember much about this but I had "Office Girls" in my phone - i went to look for more shoes in Office and there were about 6 women working and I had some banter with all of them. It was closing time and they were all dancing and fooling around to the music and I told them they should seriously consider going on Britains got talent and they all laughed. We spoke some more and had some more laughs. On the way out one of them was messing about with the vacumn making farting noises and I joked "You really need to lay back on the vindaloo the night before work luv" and they all burst into hysterics.

I nipped in past a friends house on the way home, he had guests so I speant most of the time talking to his girlfriend......obviously no attraction there but she seemed genuinly interested in speaking to me. A similar thing happened the ngiht before when i was at my friends for a Chinese.he fell asleep and io spent a good half hour talkiong to his wife about their kids, her gym routine, her giving up work etc - I made the convo all about her and she coudnt stop talkiong.

One thng I've realised fromall of this is: Its not really that difficult to talk to people. I think that would be around 14 on the Saturday, although maybe techincally it all doesn't count as quite a few of them were shop assistants, something I've never fouind difficult doing.

However another thing I never realised: I'm nervous when i talk to people. Not crazy nervous, but i do have this glitch in my head. I'm actually so stuck in my own head with my own thoughts half the time..I'm a pretty analytical person. I realised this more so toward the end of last week at work - i was so busy i just wanted to get my head down and get on with it, whenever i go out for a smoke I just want to be alone - have a break. On these days when i didnt want to talk to anyone and wanted to smoke.....loads of folk were trying to talk to me! I was like WTF!

I realise the replies I gave on her were so negative & I'm sorry for dissing PUA so much. But I dont want to be a Mystery robot and have tricks, routines and canned lines. I am self sabotaging myself and protecting my ego.

Kowalski's post hit a chord with me. I think he's being a bit over the top though - I have had some bad crap happen. My Dad died pretty traumatically, my Mum suffers from anxiety & depression, we were involved in a 3 year legal battle with other relatives over his estate - its not easy to get over that.

The therapist I'm seeing has told me I suffer from lack of confidence, low self esteem, I have a poor self image of myself & a negative frame of reference when it comes to women. I'm also a perfectionist - I'm never happy. He reckons I need to start having more confidence and believing in myself more, and that a positive frame of historic reference would help. We went through some of my "success" in history with women - girls ive made out with, conversations ive had etc and he's told me I need to outweigh these over my negative thinking. I was bullied pretty badly by girls at School until the age of 15, they always told me I was ugly and it wasn't great.

Overall i need to do something about this but I'm scared. And I'm apprehensive. Kowlaski is right, I'm not a man, I'm a boy. I've never been bothered about it myself, but my lack of height can't help. I'm also scared women think I'm ugly - I actually dont think im that bad and i do look in the mirror sometimes and think I look pretty good, in fairness i dont recall anyone ever calling me ugly since School. I'm scared if I try to kiss a girl or whatever she'll be grossed out by it.

I'm also scared about, and my biggest fear is being a virgin at 31. By this time, women my age will have had sex hundreds of times - I'm miles.....YEARS behind having missed out on all the experience and confidence you get from that in your teens and your twenties. Guys my age will have done it so many times and I havent - how many times would I need to do it before I'm semi good at it? 50? 60? I also have no experience being in a relationship at all.

So what am i going to do about it? Well, the therapist I'm seeing has suggested some confidence building exercises. I need to look at myself as a good looking, confident guy apparently. This can be achieved by affirmations (as long as theirs evidence to back them up) and having positive frames of reference to remember. The girls in Boots for example......there was also one time about 3 years ago, this girl I knwo who is an out and out 10 started making out with me on a nght out, we spent the whole night kissing, at one point she had me on the sofas with my jeans uindone and her hand down my pants. Granted she was completely wasted.she coulsd hardly stand, but maybe I'm not that bad if she was doing that - although she was totally hammered. There was also 1 girl i spoke to who was total hot on Gamblers boot camp I remember...she was kind of in to me, licking her teeth with her tongue, we were kino-ing, I took her away to get a drink but then it fizzled out.

My big problem is I'm worried I'm ugly, and when I look at women i think to myself "She would neevr go for me", "I coudl never get her".

But I know theres no substitute for practical action. For now I'll maybe concentrate on just having some random conversations with random strangers (the thought of stopping a girl on the street for the whole purpose of picking her up does make me feel awkward). Not sure if I could spend a whole day going out for the whole purpose of gaming like Nova does...thats a bit weird, but talking to people/women whilsy my actual purpiose is shopping or whatever seems ok. Theres also a speed dating thing here once a month - I know it might be laughable but at least im forced to sit ona chair to speak to a woman for 3 minutes. I could also look to get better interactions with work colleagues & friends.

With regards to my lacking confidence/poor image of myself, anyone have any suggestions on any inner game/exercies etc i could do to try and improve it more positively? I hav e loads of PUA books & about 60GB of material on my PC I've never read....I couold run though it and you guiys could maybe pick out ones are good. I've got Mark Mansons models book i saw mentioned on here, another one called Physcho Cybernetics which is all abouyt changing your way of thinking also.

Well done for making a start dude
we all start with baby steps.
forget about your looks they don't matter trust me!! just don't dress like a hobo.
How about doing what me and Phil suggested!! don't you think getting laid would boost your confidence!? more than therapy. You only gain confidence through experience, mantras and that wont do much tbh.
see all those ebooks and other shit only use em ( I actually rarely bother with pua material now I prefer to spend an hour listening to motivational speakers) when your not going out which should be at least three times a week id say.

I am thinking about this suggestion.....but its pretty degrading.

I know, I know - theres no sustitute to practicality. But I've realised I probably stink of low self esteem and lack of confidence. I try to hide it but I probably come across as quite anxious. I can be farely stiff and uptight when talking to people.

If I cant change my looks...I've always read women love confidence. Maybe if I was a lot more conmfortable with myself and confident that could compensate for my lack of looks (assuming I'm ugly, I dont even know if I really am).

Why is it degrading?? its not degrading its sex!!
Do you want to have sex or do you want to talk about sex on a forum??
Stop being so hard on yourself ok. If you want to improve its gona suck ,your going to feel awkward ,you will cry and suffer and whatever else.But when you stick your neck out, make the effort. take it on the chin and keep going, when you wake up next to a super hot chick that 3 years ago you thought was only a ever going to be a wet dream its WORTH it!!
Again looks don't matter!!
Stop making excuses man either you want it or you don't!! if you do do what you've been told to do on this thread if not continue as you were your choice man

I meant degrading in that I'm going to have to pay money to a hooker to lose my virginity.

If self confidence really is one of the big things and I can get that, maybe there is hope for me.

Fine do what you want then. fuck a fat bird instead.