Heya playa, have you ever thought to yourself, man if I ever run into my
old crush I think I'm way more confident and ready to handle that interaction.
Well, that's exactly what happened to me and I just completely fell apart.
So, let me walk you through that story, it's a pretty funny one.
When I first started high school I was a pretty nervous kid.
I had to ride the public bus every morning to get to school and at that bus stop was this
girl that also went to my school that I thought was just totally gorgeous.
Every single day that I went to school I would see her waiting there in the morning
too so I would take these quick little glances at her just hoping that one day
I could talk to her or interact with her or just be around her without feeling awkward.
Eventually, I did talk to her and we became acquaintances in school but that's a totally
different story, in fact, I'll link up that video at the end of this one.
But once I graduated high school I was still that nervous kid and
moving into college I was working on being more confident in myself.
As the years passed by and I went into college I would see her post every so often on Facebook
and whenever she did and I'd see a picture of her, I'd get that slight glimmer of joy inside.
You know what I'm talking about?
If you have an old crush that just pops up on your feet every so often.
Just makes you feel good.
But I had zero contact with her over those college years.
Now, my college years were pretty interesting,
I'd say they started off pretty slow like my high school ones,
I was still a nervous and shy kid but by the end of college, I felt a lot more confident in myself.
I felt like I was more comfortable talking to girls and interacting with them,
I didn't really worry too much about that.
And the one thing I always thought to myself was if I had the confidence that
I do now back then when I was in high school I would have been a totally different person.
I wouldn't have been scared to interact with that girl or even make eye contact with her.
I would have talked to her, flirt with her, and asked her out.
I was 100 sure of it.
Well, I got put to the test on that because years later when I went out to a local bar
with one of my friends in our neighborhood she was there, my first high school crush
was there with one of her friends sitting at a table just drinking and hanging out.
I was super nervous, again, I thought I had gotten over it but I guess I didn't.
Just seeing her there seeing how beautiful she was and all
she was really doing was hanging out with a friend talking and I thought to myself...
Man, do we need to go to a different bar?
Do I talk to her?
Do I just ignore her?
I was just, I was, I was overwhelmed. I didn't know how to handle it.
So we walk into this semi-full bar and at first, I think,
oh my god she's going to notice us and if I don't talk to her it's going to be awkward but
she was kind of just taken back doing her own thing with her friends when suddenly
both of them came over to the bar where me and my friends were to order drinks.
Now she's just a few feet away from me and I gotta figure out what to do.
I'm literally just sitting there completely frozen just thinking,
"Oh my God, what do I do? What do I do?".
I turn to one of my friends and ask them and they're like "Dude,
just go talk to her. What's the problem?".
I guess he didn't really understand the problem was that I had like this girl for so many years.
Here I was thinking that I was a super-confident guy with other
random girls I'd be able to talk to them and joke around with them no problem.
But something about her just made me feel like it was so much more valuable.
Like, if I messed up with her it would hurt so much more.
It would totally bring me down worse than any other random girl I'd talk to.
I don't know what it was about her but I just felt like she had this aura,
this glow about her, and to my friends they just saw her as this normal pretty girl,
nothing super spectacular, anyone to really be nervous about.
But that's when it happened
I turned to look at her and she looks directly at me.
The two of us are making eye contact and I knew I had to do something.
Josh, you're this confident guy now. How can you not approach her and do something?
So I decided to do something.
I turn in my chair and pretend like they're people I don't really know
and I say to them "Hey I gotta ask you two a question, wait a second I know who you are!"
She responds all casually like "Hey how's it going? I haven't seen you in so long!".
And this is where my friends jump in and her friend jumped in.
Now, having our friends there made it so much easier because if it was
just me approaching her one-on-one I'd feel super super nervous about
it but because the conversation was kind of filled in with other people,
it made it easier for me to kind of not have to constantly think of things to say.
Granted the conversation seemed like it was going
smooth but deep down inside I was super super nervous.
I just couldn't really shake the fact that here I was talking to her, after all these years of
practicing and talking to other girls now I had the ability to implement it, and yet for
some reason, I felt shaky, I felt like I just couldn't do it like I would with anyone else.
We all kept talking in a very friendly way but I realized if I wanted to make
something happen here I had to step it up.
I had to be romantic and show that in my actions so I started to flirt
with her similarly to how I do with other girls.
I used different techniques that I learned from the PUA community like the "Ring Finger
Routine" and "The Cube" but I just didn't really feel like she was biting into it.
I felt like yeah, she was impressed or interested in what I was sharing but I wasn't
really building deeper romantic chemistry with her because probably I was nervous.
Eventually, they told us they were heading to another bar, that this
was their pregame bar where they went first to get a few drinks for cheap
before they went to their normal place to hang out.
Now, I had to make a call.
Do I ask her for her number?
Do I ask her out on a date?
Do I ask her if we can go with them?
I just wasn't sure how to handle it so all I did was say "Alright cool,
well it was good running into you guys. See you later!"
"See you later?"
"See you later..."
Yeah, I totally messed that one up and you might be thinking,
well Josh, because you ran into her in person and talked to her,
couldn't you just message her now online and continue the conversation there?
And you would think, you would think that's what I did but I was just too nervous.
For some reason, this confidence that I had inside just fell apart.
I didn't know how to handle this situation with someone I used to
like and I think this is a common problem a lot of people run into.
I think what happens is that you develop a crush on someone at a
certain point in your life when you have a certain level of confidence,
so whenever you think back to those memories you also think back to the feelings that you had.
Both the good and the bad when it came to that person.
For me, seeing her that night made me feel like that 14-year-old Josh that was super
nervous around her, that was afraid to make eye contact or even say hi.
And you would think, okay that's a learning experience,
you made this mistake, you won't make it again.
Wrong.
Double wrong.
Totally totally wrong.
Years later when I had already graduated college and was already working at a normal
adult job doing normal adult things I ran into her again and I froze.
I was sitting on the train one day heading to work and just
playing on my phone as people started to filter into the train stop after stop.
Well, when the train got to the stop that's right near her house I saw her get on and I just froze.
I thought to myself "Oh my god, let me just bury my face in my phone" and guess what happened?
She started to walk over to where I was and guess where she stood, right next to me.
Here I am him sitting on the train and she's standing right above me.
I froze, yet again not knowing what to do or how to talk to her so I just kind of buried my
face deeper into my phone and pretended like I was working on some very very important email.
At some point, I casually look up to see if she notices that it's me and we make eye contact.
Here she is standing there holding the pole looking down at me as I'm looking up at her.
And how did I handle that situation? How do you think?
I didn't even look up at her and say hi, I just quickly looked back down at my phone
and didn't look up for the rest of the trip.
I know that she noticed me and I know that she knows that I noticed her
but I just pretended like it didn't happen, so it was awkward probably for the both of us.
Eventually, I watched as she got off the train and the sigh of relief came over me
followed by this deeper question:
Why? Josh after all these years you've been working on your confidence,
why are you still so nervous around this girl?
And that's kind of what I wanted to share with you here because sometimes you're just
going to be nervous around other people no matter how confident you believe you are.
It may be someone from your past that you just never got over the emotions that you
had for them then or it may be someone new that you encounter in the future.
Maybe you feel like they're more popular,
successful, or attractive and you just don't know how to talk to them.
These feelings are normal, look no one is 100% confident all the time.
Sometimes you're just gonna get overwhelmed with those feelings and that's okay.
The very best thing you can do in those situations is to not
beat yourself up about it and to take the time to process those feelings.
To really dive into why you felt that way rather than
feeling like you should have acted differently.
I can't even tell you today that if I ran into that girl I'd feel so
comfortable talking to her, I'd probably freeze up just like I did in the past.
So give yourself a break, not every single crush
that you want to pursue is going to pan out exactly how you want it to.
Sometimes it's just going to be a fun story to tell your friends and
then other times it's gonna be a life lesson for you to reflect on.
Confidence is definitely something you can build so believe in yourself.
Know that you have what it takes to be somebody great.
On that note, I'll catch you next time.
As always, love and peace.