The Myth of Confidence

[PrisonerOfLife]

Competence and inner development begets confidence. It is NOT the other way around, like popular culture would have you believe.

[sushiman]

Competence and inner development begets confidence.

Finally someone with common sense. The confidence and the *source* of the confidence is what women are attracted to. They can sense if.

Money and looking like a ken doll ain't it.

[pete98146]

Here Steve Hoca debunks the myth of confidence and the "thoughts create reality" New Age belief with solid realistic examples that make sense. He basically makes the same argument as the OP, that confidence will not be effective unless it is based on something real, and has something real to back it up. You can't simply delude yourself to success with thoughts alone.

I pardon myself in advance for being one of the resident a-holes on this forum but my god Winston....you continue to pimp Hoca and it's almost comical. I can watch about 2 minutes of the guy before I feel like jumping off a bridge. Difficult to take him seriously when he discusses the nuances of being confident when he himself can't even look into the camera for more than 5 seconds at a time.

I don't care if he ran a marathon or not. Hoca's a wet blanket and I have no interest in his point of view. He's depressing and he doesn't inspire me. Guess I'm tired of dateless guys who are seeking validation and sympathy for being alone. Atleast PUA dudes are trying to do something about it (whether they are successful or not is another topic).

Nevertheless, I don't agree with Hoca. Confidence doesn't have to based upon reality at all. Confidence is the way in which you carry yourself. It can be improved upon if you lack it. If you take any good actor and ask him him/her to portrait a confident character, most can pull it off. Is it artificial? Sure but who cares? Did you know that many actors are introverted and shy in real life? Look at Clint Eastwood. Does Clint come across as confident in his roles? Hell yes he does.

How do you portrait confidence? Be fearless. Walk up and ask that hot girl for her phone number. All she can say is no.

If you are out on a date, have the date planned out. Look good, smell good and sit up straight. Make sure and engage her in the conversation. Be confident to ask her questions about herself. Also, smile and look her in the eyes. It's not rocket science. Anybody can pull this off.

But this trait is VERY VERY important if you want to impress the ladies. Good to remember worms don't get first or second dates....just ask Hoca.

[Winston]

Some articles from authoritative sources that also say that self-esteem is a myth.

Psychology Today also says that self-esteem is a myth.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... elf-esteem

Some doctors do too.

5 Reasons Self-Esteem is a Myth

https://www.drchristinahibbert.com/5-re ... is-a-myth/

Even the prestigious Scientific American magazine says self-esteem is a myth and ego trap, one that can lead to narcissism, and how narcissism and self-esteem are often mixed up in America.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... m-2005-12/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... overrated/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... rcissists/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -ego-trap/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... lf-esteem/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/be ... lf-esteem/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/st ... teem-trap/

[Das verlorene Reich]

@Winston I wouldn't trust anything from Psychologytoday or any other marxist-run website, though after reading the different posts on this topic I can definitely relate to some of the opinions on confidence that have been explained by others here.

First of all, in my opinion, yes, without doubt, there is a link between the confidence bullshit theories of the US and narcissism. By the way I can tell you that in France and Germany the "self-improvement" industry is gaining more and more audience, which funnily enough shows people lack more and more the very thing they call confidence. I will tell you, to my mind, all this come down to one thing : people hate to acknowledge that their words and actions impact others and that as they are not children, they cannot just get away with all their bullshit. But say when you are an arrogant person (which narcissists definitely are) who likes to put others down (because in the end, this is the sole way you can put yourself up), what better than believing that confidence is purely internal, and that, therefore, there is no way you could ever decrease another's confidence by insulting/humiliating that person? That's no coincidence that most arrogant "self-made" American-style men on the one hand, and bitchy American-style women on the other love to blame others for not being "confident enough". That gives them the confortable illusion that 1/ they are at the top and 2/ they have no negative impact on others so if others "lack confidence" that's their own problem.

Now to my second point on confidence, I agree here too that confidence is above all external. It is something that you grow during chilhood if you have a correct environment (this includes family, school, neighbours...), ie it is something others give you by allowing you to grow in a supportive manner, which is bringing a balance between negative and positive feedback and making sure the second one overrides the first. If you constantly put down a child, as a child is passive, he will never grow confidence and be ill-equipped to face life. Then you have only two ways. Either you stay in psychological misery for the rest of your life, or you find the courage and awareness to break the system. Because we humans are all interdependent. If your system (family, friends, work) puts you down, then you will never be able to grow confident. You have to put yourself in an environment that allows you to put yourself up (which doesn't mean above others). Hardcore competition itself is an other poisonous element of the US imported culture. Americans confuse healthy competition with "winner takes all" dynamics. Take a platoon of soldiers. They need to compete in a way to encourage each member to bring the best of themselves, but if they are constantly competing against each other, then they lose cohesion and the first enemy unit that would be more united than them can easily take them one by one and destroy them. As an old saying states, what is good for the hive is good for the bees. All this to say so many people believe that being confident is being superior to others, while if everyone strives to be superior to others then noone will win in the end.

Then, there is an old latin saying that I would use which is res, non verba! ("deeds, not words!"). Let me explain. As some have stated here, I see confidence (which, by the way, I would define as "trusting one's abilities, which leads others to trust you") as being a consequence of experience. I've talked about the personal environment, but confidence also grows from competence. I saw there is one poster here who stated that he can play the guitar confidently though he is a beginner. First, I bet that if he was put in a competitive environment where all others around are experienced players, he wouldn't be that much "confident". Second, I think he isn't aware of his own background. He trusts himself because there are other skills he knows he masters, so being bad at guitar doesn't bother him. But you have to be efficient in some areas to be confident and not care about being bad in others. If all you see is that you fail in every given area, then I can assure you you won't be "confident".

I would add that there is a simple way to know if you are confident. I learned that first with driving. Namely that you can know you are confident when you don't think anymore twice about what you are doing. It's as if you feel things rather than doing them. When I started driving I was a horrible driver, always thinking about which gear was in and what to do when turning (checking mirrors in a given order etc) and now after thousands and thousands of kilometers I don't give a f**k anymore, I can drive at ear without looking at my speed and I "feel" my car more than I think about how I am driving. The same applies to women. You know you are confident with women once you can go to the girl you like, engage her in conversation without worrying about second thoughts ("what will I say", or all the "what if this or that"), and be able to express your sexual interest in her with no fear of consequences. Obviously the Western environment has been hand-made so that you live in paranoia of consequences (the Police State being the key element) and therefore it robbs you of your confidence. But you can see that with driving (and women, and anything basically) you grow more confident the more you have positive experience.

So in the end, I could summ up my opinion on the topic in those following sentences.
1/ People who dismiss others for not being "confident enough" tell you more about their own delusion than anything, narcissists hate to face responsibility.
2/ Confidence is above all external and depends on your personal environment : family, friends, work, childhood history. If people always put you down, you won't grow confident. If people give you healthy positive feedback, you naturally grow confident.
3/ Confidence also grows through competence. The more actions you take successfully, the more confident you will be. By the way, early failure is a necessity and part of the process, you have to fail first to succeed later on.
4/ You can see you are confident (take dating women or playing a sport for example) when you stop thinking about what you do but rather feel that what you are doing comes naturally without need of technical overthinking.
5/ People are interdependent, if confidence is a magnet to women (and to everyone) it is mainly because when you show that you trust yourself, people will trust you in return. People feel safe when they are on the boat of a captain who knows what he is doing.