Self-Esteem And The Myth Of Confidence

[SinJester]

Self-Esteem And The Myth Of Confidence

Personally I think this is one of the best things I have ever wrote. When I wrote this I felt like I finally had a good understanding of confidence. I went through a LOT of stuff to come up with this, so don’t be surprised if you see something you have seen before. Generally I am pretty happy and confident, I lost touch with that for awhile, but it was only because I didn’t live up to what I write here. Enjoy. I hope it helps someone, I know it works for me. (Please at least do the short visualization exercise even if you are happy with yourself)

Confidence.

That word is thrown around here all the time. It is supposedly like some magical feeling that makes everything work, but it is ever-fleeting and oh so hard to grasp. ‘You just need to be confident’ I hear men yelling. ‘Girls are attracted to confidence’ is always on repeat. So then guys think that all they need in confidence and every girl they ever wanted will come their way. To further confuse matters people take it upon themselves to enlighten other by telling how to obtain this fantastic ‘confidence’. “Fake it until you make it”, “Tell yourself you are the man and one day you will be”, “Don’t use affirmations or fake it, just love yourself”. What? Which one do I do? These thought flow through the mind of the apprentice DJ. Eventually he finally believes he has found confidence, at last! But does it stay with him forever? Do all his dreams come true?
Confidence doesn’t exist. At least not how we usually see it. Guys tell you that you need to achieve something to gain confidence. That is one of the single most destructive beliefs found on self improvement. Sure it seems logical and fine in the begging, but if we look deeper we see how limiting it really is. For example, if we are just starting out on our journey and we take this belief, what happens if we have not achieved anything yet? We perceive ourselves as worthless. ‘If I haven’t achieved anything, why do I have the right to feel confident?”. It’s worse than that too. Many of us see confidence as a prerequisite to action. If we don’t feel confident at something we aren’t likely to go and do it because we feel that we will fail, and because of the belief that achieving something gives us confidence, if we fail we feel like failures. This limiting belief contributes to people who never take action, or the people who might take action but fall short and quickly give up. Have you ever felt this way about anything? If so, keep reading, we’ll sort that bit out
“There is no such thing as “confidence” as a general term. Confidence is context-specific. Let me explain:

Let’s say that you’re a highly-skilled heart surgeon. After years of schooling and training, and experience in the operating room, you’re as confident as it gets on the job. You’re tops in your field and you know it. Now, just as you leave the operating room, you go into the waiting room and see that a terrorist has left a nuclear suitcase bomb in the waiting room! There’s 2 minutes until it blows, meaning there’s no time to call the bomb squad. You open the bomb and see a bunch of wires and parts, and your confidence drops to ZERO as you realize that you’re clueless and powerless in this situation.

Suddenly a man in the waiting room sees what you’re doing and comes to help you. He calmly reaches into the device, turns a dial and pulls a wire, and the timer on the device stops. He doesn’t even look scared! In fact, he looks extremely confident. You ask him how he knew how to stop the bomb and he proudly says “I designed this weapon. I worked for 25 years at Los Alamos building nukes. Turning it off is child’s play.” Now your heart is still racing at this point and the stress hasn’t gone away yet, and all of a sudden you have a heart attack and stop breathing. The nuclear bomb technician has no medical training whatsoever, not even a first aid course. Suddenly HIS confidence drops to ZERO as he realizes that he’s clueless and powerless in this situation, and he calls for help.

The above story illustrates my point: There’s no such thing as a “confident” person, only a person confident in areas he’s very familiar with. If you have no skills and experience dealing with something, you won’t have any confidence in dealing with it either!”

Now that is only half the story. I haven’t explained self-esteem yet. Confidence and self esteem are very different. For the purposes of this, let’s think of self-esteem as the perception of our self worth, and confidence as the assurance that if we do something we will get a desired result.

Now you can see from the story that any man will feel confident in certain circumstances but there will always be a lot of things he won’t feel ‘confident’ about. That is not a bad thing. We can’t have people performing heart surgery or defusing bombs if they have had no experience with it can we? However if we take the belief held by most of society that ‘we must achieve something before we will be rewarded with confidence’, can you see the problem?

Consider this, if someone is a heart surgeon does that let him feel confident about his life? What if he was also terrible with women? What if he was short, skinny or fat and ugly? Does that give him any less right to feel confident?

The thing is no one can ever be confident at everything they do. Every time you try something new, you won’t feel confident about it. Is that bad? NO! It’s normal. Does it say anything about you as a person? NO! The kind of confidence you are looking for in life doesn’t come from chasing after achievements, it comes from what I will call self-esteem. If your confidence relies on your achievements, you will always be lacking because you will always be chasing more. If your confidence depends on your body then that is not only shallow but it will one day be gone. The same applies to your car, money, house and looks. It especially applies to the way people react and treat you. All of this is EXTERNAL VALIDATION.

All ‘confidence’ comes from external validation. How good you are at something, your test results, how you compare with other people. All this is unstable, it is never certain; it could disappear at any time. Even if you get your confidence from a skill, what if you have a bad day and make a mistake? What if a few people come to you who are better than you? What if people criticise this skill and put you down? Where is your precious confidence now?

What you need to aim for is self esteem. True, lasting ‘confidence’. This comes from inside. It is internal validation not external validation. It comes from when your self-image is not determined by what people say to you. It is where you realize that your self-worth is not determined by what you do. This may be hard to understand and take in. All our lives we are conditioned by society to do the opposite. At primary school we are graded and then we are broken off into different groups. The ‘smart kids’, the ‘middle group’ and the ‘slow learners’. Right from the start we are comparing ourselves to others. Our worth depends on how we compare to others, if we are up the top we are good, if we are down the bottom we are bad. But we are ALL human. It doesn’t matter what you do there will always be someone better than you, and there will always be someone worse than you. It’s a silly thing to base your self-esteem on.

If someone is worse at a particular thing than someone else does it make him a bad person? No. Although, sometimes it can feel that way can’t it. Think of the times when you seen guys getting awesome super-hot girls, and you weren’t. It doesn’t feel great does it? Still, he is no better than you are. There will be SOMETHING in life you do better than him.

Ok so now I’ve made what I think is a clear distinction between confidence and self-esteem. You are probably thinking, how the hell do I get self-esteem? Relax I’m getting there. Just keep in mind confidence isn’t bad. It is good to be confident at a few things in life, but your self-esteem, self-worth and self-image should never be dependent on those things. Research has shown that people who have a narrow self-image, (i.e. I am a lawyer/businessman/sportsman) are much more likely to fall into depression and suicide because their whole self-image is based on one thing. When this isn’t going as well there is nothing to fall back on, it feels to the person like HE isn’t good enough. If that person has varied hobbies, even if he isn’t going good at one he has others to buffer that. He doesn’t collapse. Although we will be going deeper than a varied self-image.

Think about a top athlete. Does he go out the KNOWING he will win? Maybe he does think like that. When he is having a shot is he thinking “go in go in go in” or “I know this will go in”? Most likely not. What usually happens is he just focuses on the actual act of having the shot, the past and the future don’t matter, just the single activity. You need to take your eyes off the scoreboard to play the game.

I believe that there is a set of steps to self-esteem. It looks like this:

Self-acceptance -> self-respect -> self-love -> self-esteem

You can’t respect yourself if you don’t accept how you are. You can’t have self-esteem if you dislike yourself. True confidence can be thought of as what comes after, or it can be thought of as being something completely different altogether. Think about a time you felt confident at something. Feel the actual feeling. Is that confidence? Is the feeling confidence? Or is it just the feeling of being pumped in the context of you doing something where you think you might get the desired outcome? Is it confidence, or excitement? Is it confidence, or happiness, or pleasure, or contentment? You see, I don’t think confidence is a feeling, it’s just the context for the feeling.

 

[SinJester]

Self-Acceptance

First here is an exercise to help form self acceptance. Get a pen and paper or open a fresh word document. No seriously, don’t just read this, do it or it will be completely worthless and a waste of your time. Done? Good. Now I want you to write down everything you don’t like about yourself. I’m serious. Everything you can think of, it might hurt and it might feel bad but it will help. Don’t be afraid to go deep, your might go crazy now it’s given an opportunity.

Once you have done that come back.

Done?

Ok now each of these things you don’t like you have to accept. Maybe some of them you can’t change like you height and your race. Well you can’t change those so you will want to accept them or you will be living a miserable life. Unless you accept them they will always hold you back. I don’t care if you think they are legitimate reasons for holding you back, it doesn’t matter, accept them anyway. If you are small and you honestly think girls won’t find that attractive, that is fine, accept that. If you don’t have beliefs that are limiting that’s good as well.

Maybe some things on your list you can change. Perhaps you are overweight or too skinny. You can change these things, if they are on your list you may want to. You probably know how, work out, eat healthy etc for whatever it is you wrote. Then, why haven’t you? Whatever the reason is, that’s ok. Accept that you haven’t managed to achieve these things yet, that’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up over it, it isn’t because you are lazy or unmotivated, just accept it. Now even though you can change these things you might think “Why should I accept it? Why should I settle for what I have now?”. That’s a good point, I am sure many self-help orientated people will agree with you. The thing is that even though you may be able to change in the future, right now you are living with these things. If you are thinking about being better in the future you are missing out on the now. The now is the only time you ever have, so if you think you can’t get a girl until you lose weight you are missing out on the many opportunities you have right now. Even if you want to change something accept that it is ok to be how you are right now, and it is going to be ok until (and if) you eventually change it.

Maybe something you wrote has to do with your personality, perhaps about how people react to you. Accept that even though you want to change one of your behaviours or the way you feel, for now it is ok and you accept it. You allow yourself to make mistakes. If you don’t like the way a person or some people react to you, try to accept it.

Now

Read down your list like this:

Even though I _________, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Say it out loud if you can. If people are around it is ok just to think it. Do it with feeling. Say it louder, with more emotion. Mean it! Even though I ____ I DEEPLY and COMPLETELY accept myself! Do this for every single thing you have wrote down. Do it now, not later, now. When you have finished, come back.

How did that feel? Maybe it’s a little confronting at first. Maybe you feel worse off than you did before. Maybe you feel a little bit more free. If you want true lasting self-esteem and self confidence you have to accept every part of yourself and your past. Maybe you still wish you could change something, but you know you can’t, or at least you can’t instantly, and that’s ok with you.

If you really want to get this down then do keep the list and do that exercise for 21 days. If after doing it for awhile you actually feel worse, then stop. If you are doing it and it’s working keep going. If you are doing it and you manage to accept yourself, you don’t need to do it anymore.

 

[SinJester]

Self-love

I think that self-love is our natural state. Somewhere we really do love ourselves, it’s just all our bull**** insecurities get in the way. You really do like yourself. Even when you are in a bad mood, or someone says something nasty, it’s there hidden away. In fact we don’t seek the love of others, we want the approval of others so we give ourselves permission to love ourselves. Don’t believe me? Do this next exercise. It had an amazing effect on me, and it’s worked for others. Actually do it, do each step in order. Take your time, image it in detail, as real as possible. Make your best effort to feel as if it’s real, and to feel strongly.


Imagine your approaching a girl somewhere. What does she look like? Where is it? What are you wearing? How do you feel about approaching her? Now go approach her. What’s your body language like as you walk up? What do you say to her? How do you feel when you say this? Imagine it in as much detail as you can. Now imagine her rejecting you. Maybe she subtly rolls her eyes? Maybe she turns her back on you and goes back to talking to her friends? Maybe she tells you to get lost? Maybe she full on slaps you or throws her drink in your face. How do you feel now? Bad?

Now move away from that for a minute, think of 3 things that you love about yourself. More if you can be at least 3. It can be something big or small, weird, crazy, normal, whatever it is. No one else has to know about it. Just anything you feel you love about yourself. Maybe you love your sense of humour? Maybe you love your intelligence? Maybe you love how you are kind? Feel it, feel the feelings in your body as you think of this. How do you feel when you think of these things that you love about yourself? Now think of 3 things that you love doing, or things that inspire you, motivate you, move you, touch you. Maybe your scored a goal in a sport? High fived a mate? Had a belly laugh? Thought of a role model? A nice moment with your mother? Something you love doing, something that makes you feel alive. Maybe something you love about your life. How does all that feel?

Now go back into the scenario, thinking of all those things, how does that scenario feel now? Different? Better? Are the good feelings still there? Do you even care about the girl now? How would you respond feeling like this? How would you respond if you knew it had nothing to do with you, and you still loved yourself?

Done?

Don’t move on from the exercise to you manage to feel good. You need to get in touch with a bit of self love.

You see, that feeling you came up with, is actually inside you ALL THE TIME, regardless of what is happening outside, although sometimes you can’t see it because it’s masked by other feelings. You love yourself. Everyone has things they love about themself. You love yourself as a whole. If you want to get in touch with this feeling then do this exercise more often. Make a habit of doing it every day. When someone says something bad, get in touch with this feeling.

Remember that exercise you did with your flaws? Now you can change it from I accept myself to ‘I love that I am ____’ ‘even though I am ____ I LOVE myself’. As well as this make a list of all the things you love and like about yourself and read it every day. Make time to sit down and thing about all the gratitude for other people, what you love about them, what’s good about your life, what you enjoy doing. It doesn’t have to be long. Seriously do it if you want. You won’t get the results by thinking about maybe doing the exercises. If you have been looking for confidence, this is it. When you access this state you will be magnetic. Other people will feel this from you and will begin to feel god themselves. In danger of sounding like a hippie, you are spreading the love.

Remember this affirmation, it is the single most important and effective affirmation you will ever find: “I love myself”. Say it as often as you can. When you look in the mirror, it doesn’t matter what you are thinking say “I love myself!”. Say it or think it all the time. When you wake up. When you brush your teeth. When you are walking somewhere. When you go to bed. All the time. It’s not “I’m the ****ing man” (although thats ok, I do that sometimes too ), its “I love myself”.

You might think it’s vain, just try it. It’s not an egoic form of love. Spiritually you are perfect as you are, and it’s getting in touch with that and loving your inner self. From this place of self love begin to love and appreciate other people, it’s a lot easier when you love yourself, and you’ll see this. If you do this, when you walk around people will think ‘wow he’s so confident’. Or maybe they wont think that at all, they will just want to be around you.

 

[SinJester]

Self Respect

This one is a little more tricky. It is important for lasting self esteem as well as actually working to achieve something. I’m sure you have heard ‘respect yourself first or no one will respect you’ or something similar.

What is self respect? Self respect is living up to your own values and beliefs. It might be considered ‘external’, like the things I said were wrong. However unlike the other it still comes from you, it doesn’t rely on other people or things. It is a way of being.

For example if you think that stealing is wrong and you steal something, even if it is small, you are compromising your values, therefore lowering your self-respect. You might get the temporary gratification of the item you steal, however you know it is wrong and eventually it will take its toll.

I talk of not getting self esteem from achievements, but you might that that will take away your motivation for wanting to achieve something. This is where self respect comes in.

It is not the achieving something that makes you confident, it is the act of going after the achievement that makes you confident. It is not the improvement in yourself that makes your more attractive; it is the act of striving to improve yourself that makes you attractive.

If you work out it isn’t the results you get from that that make you so attractive, it is the fact that you have the ‘disciple’, self-respect and self-worth to take the time to look after yourself. Dressing well doesn’t attract people because you look better, they see that you actually care about yourself enough to take care of your appearance. Perhaps some people are doing these things because they are insecure; they still aren’t attractive people or someone you really want to be. Although sometimes people actually find that they are worth it through doing these activities.

You see you don’t eat healthy and work out because don’t feel good about your weight, you do these things because you feel you are worth looking after. In this way increasing your self-worth, self-acceptance and self-love from the inside actually motivates you MORE than trying to change things about yourself. It provides you with much longer motivation then hating yourself so you act differently in the short term.

If you feel bad about your weight and you don’t do anything about it you are actually sabotaging yourself because you don’t feel you deserve to be fit and healthy. Perhaps you are sabotaging your success with women in this way too.

 

[SinJester]

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is where you accept yourself, love yourself, and live in a way the expresses this and proves that you feel you are worth it. You achieve things because you feel you deserve them. Yet you are not dependant on any outcome. You don’t see anything as a mistake, it is just experience. You go after what you want, if what you are doing isn’t working you change what you are doing. You don’t care what people think about you because all of your validation comes from within. They can’t pick on your insecurities because you accept them. They can’t make you feel bad because you know whatever happens you can get in touch with your-self love. You don’t mind if you fall short of a goal, because you know that you will reach it eventually. Even if you don’t it says nothing about you as a person. You with live integrity, not compromising your values for any short term benefit. You lifestyle is an expression of self, you take care of yourself because you are worth it. Is this what you wanted after all that time of chasing ‘confidence’?

Here’s a little artcicle by Ozzie from RSD that really clicked with me. He is talking about pickup but apply it to anything.

Since we are little in school we are being measured, big part of it is grades. The grading system accounts for most of the disappointments growing up.

At home, we are measured by our parents whether you are “doing good” or “you are a disappointment”. We get a job and it is the same. Boss evaluates us or worst the market place. Religion, etc, in our culture we are being measured and made to feel bad if we don’t “live up to somebody´s expectations”.

Our lives are constant struggle “not to disappoint”. We are set up to being measured which in turn sets us up for perpetual disappointment.

Most of our social conditioning comes from this very fact. It is the elusive obvious.

We don’t question this system. We just are born into it and grow into it and probably die in it without questioning it or its validity.

Most of this measuring is done by people who in turn are being measured...... and it goes all the way up or down to infinite.

Then we come to the "game". We get into it. And what do we do? Same old measuring.

This is the reason many guys struggle with “outcome orientation”. They cannot let go of the “measuring.

Bad set/good set, bad night/good night, good opener/bad opener, good/bad performance, good pick up school vs bad pick up school, good advice vs bad advice and the list goes on and on to infinite.

The courage to be imperfect. My best performances on this have been imperfect ones. I came back from gross mistakes or salvaged hopeless situations. Then results came tumbling down in cascades.

I would say that being courageous is defined by how imperfect you can be. How much a risk you are willing to take. how much "measuring" you are willing to **** up.

On bootcamp it is a constant battle to rescue guys from this measuring mechanisms embedded in the depth of their brains.

It is hard to wrap your head around the fact that trial and error is at the heart of pickup. That´s how it is learned.

Most guys are terrified to make mistakes. Why?

You guessed it right. The measuring system. It haunts them in the back of their head. Makes them feel they need to “improve” constantly to “live up to”.

Not good because it destroys the guys natural ability and coolness. It goes against its core of naturalness. The guy is not relaxed so he can not perform properly. His own outcome oriented mind paralyzes him.

The “need for constant feedback” is at the heart of the measuring system. The need to be “reassured” that he is doing right even when he is doing right. Self confidence is coming from “outside” not from inside where it should.

We have a philosophy of PPT. Practice, patience and time.

Practice comes first. Nothing will happen in your game if you don’t practice in the field. No book, DVD, seminar will give you what practicing in the field will give you.

Patience. Without patience practice is bull****. You will abandon at the first mistake or the second. No patience, practice is useless. You will open a couple of sets and hang by the bar because nothing is happening in your game. No patience leads to inconsistent results. Trial and error is at the heart of building any skill.

Time. You need to allot time to practice. You have to schedule your practice time or you will not practice. Example, I will go out Fridays and Saturdays either rains or shine. You arrange your life accordingly to make this schedule happen.

Then don’t judge results on the basis of good or bad. Don’t go black and white on your practice and your progress.

Let go of the idea or the need “to measure” you because it is compulsive. Society induced. You are ok as you are. Progress will happen anyway if you apply PPT philosophy.

If you use this ‘PPT’ while maintaining a healthy level of self esteem you will achieve anything you want. Don’t worry about the outcome, just give 100% to the activity that results in progressing and the outcome will happen on it’s own.

Most people love someone or something unconditionally. Maybe it was one of their parents, siblings friends, or maybe it was their dog. I’ll use the dog example, but find something in your own life you can relate to. You love your dog unconditionally. You love how it’s always glad to see you. Sometimes it ****s on the carpet, and you might be angry at it for awhile but you still love it and you quickly forgive it. Yet most people walk through life not feeling that way about themselves! You should love yourself unconditionally. Sometimes you may make a mistake, **** on the proverbial carpet, but you still love yourself regardless. You quickly forgive yourself and move on.

Don’t believe me? I used to a small, skinny guy. I really didn’t like myself. I thought I couldn’t get any girls or get any respect from guys until I got bigger. I was kind of miserable at times. I kept telling myself that I would be bigger one day and THEN and only then, could I live, and live in the way I wanted. I missed out on so many opportunities that were right in front of me. That day when I was big never seemed to get any closer, I would start working out because I didn’t like my body and I wanted to get girls. Fair enough but those aren’t exactly good reasons for working out. Sometimes I would start working out and then lose motivation. When I told people what I was doing the laughed and I lost motivation. I would get sick a lot and I couldn’t get any closer to my goal, and it ‘wasn’t my fault’. I would often make excuses as to why I couldn’t work out, I was scared to go to the gym, I didn’t have the money, I was busy with other things, I couldn’t during football season because I would wear myself out. Does any of this sound familiar for anything in your life? You see I was missing out because I was waiting for something to happen in the future.

How am I now? I’m still a small, skinny guy. I really like myself. I’m pretty comfortable around girls and I get a lot more respect from guys, even though I’m not bigger. I’m pretty much happy with myself most the time. I know that I will be bigger one day because I want to be for myself and I enjoy the process. Until then I am completely happy with who I am, and I’m not missing out on as many opportunities right now.

Do you see the difference? Nothing changed outside. I’m still short, I’m still skinny, but my life and how I feel is a lot different. Now many you would have liked the story better if it went along the lines of “I worked out rigorously for a year (during which time I was still unhappy, but I would leave that part out in order to inspire people to take action) until I eventually had a ripped body, at that point I got all the girls I wanted and all the guys wanted to be me. The end.” Doesn’t that seem so much more, normal? Doesn’t that seem like what we should do? In actual fact all that would have happened is that I would have got confidence from my body (still an external trait), this would make me feel better about myself because I am not living up to societies standards, and I would end up with a greater sense of self-worth. This would seem like self-esteem but it is not authentic because if I got really sick and couldn’t work out for a long time, I might lose my fantastic body and be back at square one with no ‘confidence’. But for the time being the confidence I get from my ripped body might spill into other areas of my life because I believed that it will. If I think that girls only value looks then I will be more confident there and I will have more success in that area. If I think people want to be friends with ripped guys I will have more friends. Hell if I think it makes me smarter I will probably read more books and get better grades.

(The problem that if this is my sole sense of self-worth, what happens when I get older and I start to inevitably lose all of that?)

It isn’t the external change that makes the difference but the internal shift that results from the external change. The whole world goes chasing these external changes just for the way it will make them feel and see things inside. If you managed to create this internal shift without the external change you will still get the same results. It changed your focus and the way you see things. If you managed to gain confidence from your body about your looks, if someone called you ugly you might ignore it and think that they are jealous, conserving the way you actually feel. It is never the fact that something is ‘this’ because of ‘this’, reality is just what you make it. “The map is not the territory”.

 

[SinJester]

On Rejection

When you have self-esteem you can go after a goal but you know whether or not you get it doesn’t really matter, you are still happy with yourself as a person. Failure may hurt a bit, and success will still feel good, you just aren’t completely attached with the outcome. When you were a kid playing a game did you feel like a complete failure when you lost? Probably not, it was fun, and there are other things to do. So WHY on earth do you feel so bad if you get rejected by a girl?

You see no one can EVER see the true you. All they have is a perception of you that is created by seeing you then filtering it through every experience and belief they have. Add their mood at the time on top of that and things can get seriously distorted. The end result is a picture has more to do with them then it ever did of you.

Think of one person you dislike. No unless you are inhuman there has to be someone. Why don’t you like them? Maybe they did something to you that you didn’t like? Does that make them a bad person? Think for a second, do you know the actual reason why they did it? Do you know how they were feeling at the time? Do you know what their core beliefs and values are? Do you know how they were brought up? Do you know their dreams, fears and desires that shape them? Do you know what they really think of themselves? Do you know what they think all day long? You don’t really know them at all do you. You just judged them through your own experience without any consideration to theirs. Don’t worry, it’s ok, we all do this at times. Think about this next time you feel negative feelings about another.

Considering the above questions, when someone judges you do they know any of that about you? Do they know you fears, desires, values, beliefs, motivation, thoughts, feelings or reasons? No they don’t. They are just doing the best they can to create an image of you from their own experience. No one can ever see the true you. So why do you get upset if someone doesn’t like you, or insults you, or doesn’t respect you? They don’t know you, they can’t. You are ok with people making mistakes. Sometimes people make mistakes when judging you. It doesn’t matter how confident/famous/successful/lucky/happy/kind you are, there are some people who won’t like you. That’s ok. You allow people to make mistakes. And think about this, if someone really did see the true you and didn’t like you, is that really someone you would want in your life?

Seeing that you can see that rejection doesn’t exist. No one ever rejects you, they just reject the idea they have of you in their head, that they created. In a way they aren’t rejecting you, they are rejecting a part of themselves. Like people may have told you, if someone rejects you don’t know if they just has a bad day. Maybe their cat just died. Perhaps you asked a girl out and she said no, maybe she has her eye on someone else. You will never ever know, so don’t try and accept it.

Just reading this isn’t enough. USE it consciously in your life. When someone says something mean and it hurts, that’s ok. Take a moment and instead of reacting think ‘I made myself feel this way, not them, even if it was subconsciously, I have no idea what they really meant or why they said that’. From there you can even move to reframing it, put it in a positive light. Since you will never know what’s really going through their head, why not assume something positive? It is no less realistic than anything else you may think. Something like over 80% of whatever we worry about never happens. What’s more realistic, positivity or negativity? When you then reach out with compassion, understanding and positivity you will suddenly stop getting as many negative responses. When you no longer care about the negative responses, they will happen a lot less often.


What do you guys think?

 

[Voice]

This is gold man. Seeking validation from the outside will never leave you fulfilled. The love has to come from within. This is the key to happiness. This is the key toward eliminating fear. Everyone should read this.

 

[Duffdog]

Sinjester,

In an ideal world, the thoughts and strategies you have spoken of will work for people. Unfortunately we do not, as humans, our existence is defined by our misery and that sad fact invalidates concepts such as "self-esteem." The self-esteem movement of the 1980's didn't work out so well in public schools as test results dropped and crime increased tenfold, yet the people had wonderful self esteem while committing violent crimes against each other and smoking crack.

Both self esteem and confidence are irrelevant without external validation-- no human has or will ever live in a vacuum, therefore all internal validations originate from an external source. What you are proposing is sometimes termed "misplaced confidence" by professionals. It occurs when people are confident about something, but they suck anyways and mess it up for others because they are in complete denial of their true position in life. In short, they refuse to accept their inferiority even though everyone around them knows that they are inferior. It is similar to crazy people thinking that they are normal and everyone else is crazy.

In my mind, the key to getting what you want is acknowledging that you are terrible and changing by actually changing. Not deciding arbitrarily that you are solid gold one day even though you fix shopping carts for a living.

 

[EastWind]

What if some of the things on my list are things I truly believe I shouldn't accept because it will make me lazy and try not to change them? For example... I wrote "It's hard for me to be alone." or "I'm scared to simply move to another city or do a semester abroad because I don't like leaving places I know for places I don't." and I feel that these are personality traits I should get rid of, and if I accept them I won't work on them.

 

[Duffdog]

Eastwind, I think you were responding to me?

IN that case, things on your list should be as follows:

I AM lazy.
I AM scared of new things.

Then, you must decide that you do not want to be lazy anymore because being lazy is NOT how you want to live. Same with being scared. Maybe you should be scared-- its scary to move somewhere new! But what is scarier: dying single, alone and with a dead end job in the same town having never seen the world---or---moving somewhere new and taking a risk of being scared? If you replace one fear with another you can get lots of stuff done. Try it out on something and let me know how it works.

 

[Vypros]

Confidence doesn’t exist. At least not how we usually see it. Guys tell you that you need to achieve something to gain confidence. That is one of the single most destructive beliefs found on self improvement. Sure it seems logical and fine in the begging, but if we look deeper we see how limiting it really is. For example, if we are just starting out on our journey and we take this belief, what happens if we have not achieved anything yet? We perceive ourselves as worthless. ‘If I haven’t achieved anything, why do I have the right to feel confident?”. It’s worse than that too. Many of us see confidence as a prerequisite to action. If we don’t feel confident at something we aren’t likely to go and do it because we feel that we will fail, and because of the belief that achieving something gives us confidence, if we fail we feel like failures. This limiting belief contributes to people who never take action, or the people who might take action but fall short and quickly give up. Have you ever felt this way about anything? If so, keep reading, we’ll sort that bit out

This is a faulty premise, really, because you see confidence, as defined by others, as acheivment. Anybody who defines confidence through acheivment simply doesn't understand what it means to be confident.

Confidence, quite clearly, is the ability to get back up after being rocked by failure. It's being scared to death, but saddling up anyway (as John Wayne once said). Confidence has nothing to do with success or experience. Confidence is the ability to stare fear in the face and say "I may succeed, I may fail, but dammit I'm still going to do it."

THAT is true confidence, and it's important that you understand it because all that other BS you just wrote, while they are decent exercises, will do nothing to help your self esteem nor your confident. They are a foundation of sand, because you are trying to "self-hynotize" yourself to believe something that isn't true. That's why things like the "Secret" and all that other crap is so popular, but so wildly unhelpful. Nobody made results by telling themselves things that they didn't believe. People make results by getting up, taking action, DESPITE the crap they believe about themselves. And that action, and the results, reinforces a new belief system based on the most previous set of actions across the span of your actions in your life.

It's a cycle, actually. Much like addiction is a viscious cycle, self-esteem and confidence are a cycle (a snowball effect if you will) of themselves. You don't have to lie to yourself to acheive real confidence. You can be honest with yourself and say "Man, I hate this about myself. I'm not sure I can accept it, so I am going to change it. If I can't change it, I'll learn to deal with it. Despite all that, however, I am stilll going to pick myself up, dust myself off and take another step."

And then you follow through and take that step. And that step, and it's effects, ripple through you.

So, no, I do not agree with what you wrote and I don't see any lasting change coming from it because you are missing a very important portion of how confidence and self-esteem are built (through action, repitition, and discipline).

Ask yourself THIS question: why do you have NEGATIVE self esteem about yourself? Why DON'T you have confidence? Is it because you arbitrarily told yourself one day all these things that you didn't like? No. It was because you started a negative cycle. One day, something terrible happened to you, and you fell of the track. And instead of putting yourself back ON the track, you allowed yourself to derail, through repitition and actions, to create the way you feel about yourself now.

The way you get positive self esteem, is the exact same way. You derail yourself from negative track, and then through repitition and action you recreate (or create) a new, more positive sense of self. And you keep at it until you internalize new beliefs about yourself.

That requires action. That requires more than imagining scenarios in your head or telling yourself that you accept yourself. That kind of thinking won't create LASTING self esteem (believe me, I know, I've tried it several times at the advice of several self help books). I created self esteem in myself through ACTION and repitition. I kept reinforcing and recreating my beliefs by one thing:

Staring my fear in the face and refusing to let it define me or hold me back. Then, and only then, did I grow in leaps and bounds.

This is gold man. Seeking validation from the outside will never leave you fulfilled. The love has to come from within. This is the key to happiness. This is the key toward eliminating fear. Everyone should read this.

Building confidence through action has nothing to do with validation, btw. You don't validate yourself through the success or the failure of what you did. You validate yourself on your ability to face your fears and to try it anyway. You create confidence through your inability to give up, your drive to try new things, and the actions that you take to make yourself into something you want to be.

 

[slaog]

THAT is true confidence, and it's important that you understand it because all that other BS you just wrote, while they are decent exercises, will do nothing to help your self esteem nor your confident. They are a foundation of sand, because you are trying to "self-hynotize" yourself to believe something that isn't true. That's why things like the "Secret" and all that other crap is so popular, but so wildly unhelpful. Nobody made results by telling themselves things that they didn't believe. People make results by getting up, taking action, DESPITE the crap they believe about themselves. And that action, and the results, reinforces a new belief system based on the most previous set of actions across the span of your actions in your life.

The law of attraction has been helpful to me. To make it work you need to believe in it otherwise it will be unhelpful.

That requires action. That requires more than imagining scenarios in your head or telling yourself that you accept yourself. That kind of thinking won't create LASTING self esteem (believe me, I know, I've tried it several times at the advice of several self help books). I created self esteem in myself through ACTION and repitition. I kept reinforcing and recreating my beliefs by one thing:

Staring my fear in the face and refusing to let it define me or hold me back. Then, and only then, did I grow in leaps and bounds.

What makes somebody act? Before any action you must intend to do something. Your intention to improve yourself was strong and you made that intention your reality.

 

[SinJester]

I think a lot of this gets caught up in semantics.

Both self esteem and confidence are irrelevant without external validation-- no human has or will ever live in a vacuum, therefore all internal validations originate from an external source. What you are proposing is sometimes termed "misplaced confidence" by professionals. It occurs when people are confident about something, but they suck anyways and mess it up for others because they are in complete denial of their true position in life. In short, they refuse to accept their inferiority even though everyone around them knows that they are inferior. It is similar to crazy people thinking that they are normal and everyone else is crazy.

In my mind, the key to getting what you want is acknowledging that you are terrible and changing by actually changing. Not deciding arbitrarily that you are solid gold one day even though you fix shopping carts for a living.

It's about being confident in yourself as a person. It's not about being delusional about your abilities. I think I said the only way to be confident at something is to have success at that particular thing. However just because you aren't good at a particular thing doesn't mean you should feel bad about yourself as a person. Although I think from your last paragraph we wont agree. Someone could fix shopping carts for a living and be a loved friend, husband and father. Is he less successful than the rich man who has no real friends? That's just a small example but you can't hold reality so black and white in the real world. 'Success' is subjective.

What if some of the things on my list are things I truly believe I shouldn't accept because it will make me lazy and try not to change them? For example... I wrote "It's hard for me to be alone." or "I'm scared to simply move to another city or do a semester abroad because I don't like leaving places I know for places I don't." and I feel that these are personality traits I should get rid of, and if I accept them I won't work on them.

I think people are misunderstanding and fearing acceptance. You are accepting that AT THE MOMENT you are these things, not that you have to stay these things for life It is also saying even though you are these things you are still no less of a person.

Vypros you say you disagree with me but I agree with a lot of what you said.

Confidence, quite clearly, is the ability to get back up after being rocked by failure. It's being scared to death, but saddling up anyway (as John Wayne once said). Confidence has nothing to do with success or experience. Confidence is the ability to stare fear in the face and say "I may succeed, I may fail, but dammit I'm still going to do it."

That's basically what I'm trying to get across.

It's a cycle, actually. Much like addiction is a viscious cycle, self-esteem and confidence are a cycle (a snowball effect if you will) of themselves. You don't have to lie to yourself to acheive real confidence. You can be honest with yourself and say "Man, I hate this about myself. I'm not sure I can accept it, so I am going to change it. If I can't change it, I'll learn to deal with it. Despite all that, however, I am stilll going to pick myself up, dust myself off and take another step."

You don't have to 'lie' to yourself? Whether you choose to hate yourself for something or not is a decision you make. If you choose to stop hating yourself you are 'lying to yourself', you are making a choice. That choice changed your reality. The truth changes. It's all in your head, it's all subjective.

Maybe you missed the section on self-respect? I try and say how if you aren't living a life of action it's hard to keep your self-esteem. It's not about whether you achieve success or not but whether you went for it.

I just don't see why you have to hate yourself to change. If you accept yourself as you are in the moment you still want and desire things in the future. You don't think "hey I accept myself, no need to do anything". It's "hey I'm like this now, I'm going to go after what I want but not beat myself up for not being there now"

If you want to know more about what I'm talking about check out this post on Tyler Durden's blog:http://realsocialdynamics.blogspot.com/2008/06/do-human-beings-inherently-hate.html

The law of attraction has been helpful to me. To make it work you need to believe in it otherwise it will be unhelpful.

Which kind of proves it. I believe in it just not in the pseudo nanoscience explanation.


What I'm trying to get people to realize is that there will ALWAYS be something you want that you don't have. There will ALWAYS be something about yourself that you wish you could change. Perhaps you may change some things about yourself, and achieve society's standard of success, but you will never be happy as long as you are always craving something else other than what you have at the present moment. You never wake up and go 'this is it, I have everything I ever wanted, I can be happy now'.

 

[Vypros]

What makes somebody act?

Quite simply, one of two things:

Inspiration (desire to gain pleasure)
Pain (desire to remove pain)

The sad part is, that most people won't make changes unless they are being affected pretty severely by the latter (pain).

Acceptance of yourself doesn't lead to action. Not knocking that, though, because you need to learn to accept yourself. What I am saying, though, and this is where I disagree with the threadstarter, is that acceptance of yourself is not a part of building confidence or self-esteem. Acceptance of yourself is the RESULT of self-esteem and confidence.

Remember the five stages of grief?

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Acceptance is last for a reason, because it is fueled by actions (the actions of cycling through the first four stages).

I do understand what the threadstarter is saying, and I think some of what he said was really good, I just didn't agree with the exercises that he posted as ways of "accepting" yourself, because making a list of your attributes, and then going down telling yourself that you accept yourself in spite of your attributes, isn't leading to self-esteem. It's an exercise in getting to KNOW yourself, but it's not leading to self-esteem.

If you want to derail the viscious cycle that that I talked about in my last post, then the most effective way is to find ways to motivate and inspire you into action. For example, for me, reading the Book of Pook did that for me a couple of years ago. I hated myself then, and when I read that book he inspired me to do something about myself.

And that inspiration was a derailment off the track of these negative self-defeating attitudes I had. But in order to retain it, I had to continue with repitition and action towards self-improvement, because the tendency has been, since then, to get back up on that track of self-defeat. It's gotten way easier to avoid that, now that I have reinforced my NEW attitudes and behaviors.

 

[Duffdog]

It's about being confident in yourself as a person. It's not about being delusional about your abilities. I think I said the only way to be confident at something is to have success at that particular thing.

Do you see the problem with the first sentence and the third sentence? They totally contradict each other. Let just say that you wanted to have confidence when talking to girls. Via your logic, you can't have any confidence unless you are already good at it.

That is wildly unhelpful. If the human race thought that the only way to do anything was to have already done it, we wouldn't have such things as flight, space travel, writing or logic. You must have confidence in yourself even though you aren't good yet-- you might become good, but you aren't there yet because you haven't tried. That is different from trying something and continuing to suck, yet thinking you are awesome.

For instance, I wanted to learn how to snowboard one day and I was confident I could do it because I was a ski racer for 10 yrs. So, having the confidence that I could learn something new without ever having done it before, I learned rapidly--yes I fell, yes I sucked at first. But after 1 day, I was able to do a 180 off a jump no problem. Big deal, right? Well, there are several people who cannot learn something like this after many weeks of training. Are they to continue to be confident even though they are terrible? I would say no. Those same people should stop, think about why they can't do something and change what they are doing. Again, without real change, confidence is misplaced.

 

[Interceptor]

This is why I believe there is a diference between Confidence and Self Assuredness.


In the above scenario , where a man won't 'feel confident' about talking to 'girls' because he hasnt done it before, it is correct.
Why?
Because confidence fluctuates.
And it is often based on the positive experience of a particular circumstance. Thus, if we feel confident in performing some action, it is often probably because we have a positive experience of the action previously.



However, Self Assuredness is the WAY in which we OBSERVE and PERCEIVE just WHAT IS the experience. Meaning, we are feeling secure in OURSELVES despite NOT BEING CONFIDENT when 'talking to girls'.
I believe Self Assuredness is really not worrying or being concerned with how we are perceived by others. And that we are good enough and deserving enough to experience Life circumstances.



So the manner in which we perceive OURSELVES in ALL situations and circumstances has a factor in HOW CONFIDENT we would be when say, talking to 'girls'.

We can be secure with ourselves even if we dont feel particularly confident in THAT particular environment.

This is why I often say that Confidence WILL fluctuate, and it's ok. Make peace with it. Be prepared for it. It is normal.
You are NOT inadequate if you are not confident in a particular environment.
And you should not entertain the thought that somehow you must get the approval and acceptance of others in performing some particular action.
(Of course, consider the circumstances. Im not talking about if you were in the Military or assigned a specific task to complete at your job.In those instances, yes, you are expected to complete a task satisfactorily. And thats an ok expectation from your boss or manager, or officer, etc..)



But Self Assuredness is your ability to withstand PRESSURE, because of your BELIEF in yourSELF.
So no matter WHAT environment you are in, and what circumstance you are experiencing, you will still be confident in WHO You are, yet, not confident in WHAT you are doing in that particular moment.
Bottom line, you feel ok in making mistakes in front of people are not micro managing your 'self image' anymore.


In the case in getting better at talking with 'girls', if one feels a need to improve that area of one's life, then informing oneself and taking part in the experience will lead to more experience.
More experience, combined with insight, and healthy perspectives will lead to Expertise.

Furthermore, Confidence is also based on how you VIEW the particular circumstance.
For example, one can view speaking and interactign with women as scary, and consider it dangerous in some way.
Thus , affecting their performance in such a circumstance.

Yet, someone with little experience with talking and interacting with women, can have a more down to earth and healthy perspective on women ("They are just women. They wont bite my head off. Im not concerned with getting anything. I understand I dont need their approval'....etc) may actually have more confidence inherently because of the LACK of any disempowering Beliefs.

One has to look into one's past to see what kind of programming would lead a man to feel uncomfortable interacting with women.
And try to see the rationality of it.
Is it rational to see women as something dangerous? Something we should fear and avoid?
If so, why?

By removing these limiting beliefs one can have a more freer and healthier perspective on the particular scenario that is affecting them negatively.

 

[Irs88]

Im commenting on this so that I can track back to this thread every now and then and remind myself of the ideas you presented. They are gold man. I really appreciate it.

 

[Voice]

Building confidence through action has nothing to do with validation, btw. You don't validate yourself through the success or the failure of what you did. You validate yourself on your ability to face your fears and to try it anyway. You create confidence through your inability to give up, your drive to try new things, and the actions that you take to make yourself into something you want to be.

I think you're confusing confidence with courage. That John Wayne quote was about 'courage'. I think SinJester is right though, you create confidence through experience. Self-esteem comes from accepting yourself no matter what the outcome. Things such as social rejection is tough on those with low self-esteem because they look for acceptance/validation from others simply because they don't accept themselves. On the other hand, rejection to a person with high self esteem won't hurt them at all because it doesn't matter, they already accept/love themselves nonetheless.

For example, a game of basketball. Someone who doesn't think he's good plays in a pickup game. Say he takes the first shot and swishes it. His confidence goes up "maybe I am good". Bricks the next shot or gets stuffed, his confidence goes down, "I knew I sucked". Confidence always fluctuates with those with low self esteem because in their heads they don't think they are good enough. They instead look at outcomes of situations to validate their feelings about themselves. I bet that dude is now scared to even take a shot again. Now put out there Kobe Bryant. He knows he's the best player on the court, his self esteem is rock solid. He makes the first shot. No change in confidence already knows he's the best. He then throws up an airball, no change in confidence, he knows he's the best, gets his own rebound and dunks it. This is the same thing with life. And you don't have to be Kobe Bryant to be confident in basketball or life. All you need is to be ok with yourself no matter what the outcome. If the same dude playing the pickup game accepted himself, then the missed shot wouldn't affect him at all, he won't hesitate to take another shot. He then practices over and over eventually gets better and then the confidence comes.

 

[jcap]

You are confusing the word "EXPERIENCE" with "CONFIDENCE"

the stories you told about the surgeon, nuke expert, they are experienced, Its not about confidence.

confidence comes from experience, A guy trying to hit on a girl does not need nuke experience, or plumbing experience, He needs overall confidence (belief in himself) and women experience(practiced talent).

 

[Coolblitz]

I would say confidence (or confidently) is an adverb that can be applied to any activity one does when they are:
1. Knowledgable of the activity
2. Experienced in the activity

Both can help, but abundance in either is sufficient for one to act confidently.

-blitz