Hey Kpreston, here's my journal on the mall experience.
Today I decided to go to the mall and say "hi" to 200 women. The exercise I thought at first would be hard but I decided that this is what I need to do to get through my insecurities. I am proud of myself for tackling through the uneasiness it felt at first. Although it did help that I consider myself to be a social person in general.
What did I notice? Inside, I was a little nervous at first. But I noticed that once I started and got a couple “hi’s” under my belt I felt better. I tried to push myself a little bit by saying hi to women I found attractive rather than just say hi to the older women, which was much easier. I think part of my anxiety is that I assume that younger, beautiful women assume that I am just trying to pick them up.
What I observed was that the majority of the interactions were either neutral or positive. Some were surprised and taken aback for a moment. Some of them thought I worked at the store. Some seemed generally surprised in a good way. There were a few women who either ignored me or seemed annoyed by my approach. I figure that these women either had something else more important on their mind, they were having a bad day, or they were just terminally unhappy people.
When I did get a bad reaction, I noticed that it made me feel down a little and played into my next interaction. And rather than just go up to anyone, I would play it safe and say hi to people I thought would be more open to a hi. Although I didn’t do this all the time and would just say hi to anyone.
So as I got more comfortable I started to just walk into stores (even women stores) and said hi to the sales clerk and wished them a happy holiday. One women was shocked and thanked me for doing so. Another women mentioned how nice that was for me to say.
Overall the interactions were either good or neutral with a few bad seeds. What I did realize was that it wasn’t a life or death situation. I wasn’t going to die. And I actually found the activity sort of fun. I felt good that I actually did something that I thought would be much harder. It feels good to be alive!
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