Self Confidence Enigma and How to Get It

[Parthon]

Hey Rogerrrrrrr, I'm hoping I can offer you some advice that perhaps you haven't thought of, STOP THINKING.

In all of your posts you've mentioned that when you are in interactions you feel that you an inferior, but after/before you think and know that you shouldn't feel this way because you know you are strong, capable and intelligent, of which I have no doubt. I highlight because the incongruency isn't with what's going on, but the way you are approaching the solution. You are trying to thing your way out of a feeling problem, and it's much like trying to drive across a lake, it's just not going to work.

Now to change how you feel about yourself in those critical moments, you have to investigate those moments and those feelings. This is aside from how you think of yourself, this is how you feel. It will be some deep down insecurity, or a deep down feeling of not being worthy, or not being the kind of person people will like. The best way to do this is with visualising meditation. You turn off your thoughts, and immerse yourself in an image of the kind of environment that brings these feelings up. Then you feel the feelings as they rise, identify them, and try and pick the source of them. Don't try and figure them out, or label them because they will skitter away from you or change into something else, and that's not useful. There will be a unique and very personal reason why you are feeling this in the moment, and once you root it out you can deal with it.

The way to deal with it is to shine the light of awareness on it. You can test the feeling to see if it's valid, or even real. Find out if the reasonbehind the feeling is really true of if it's just a conditioned response that's been created. You might even discover the very first time you felt like that, giving you the sourced of the conditioned response. See how far back you can remember having the feeling in that kind of situation and try and identify the first event that gave rise to it. You don't need the event, but it helps, drastically. Once you have the reason, you can test it against reality. Is the feeling true? Do I really honestly believe that deep down, and if not then why do I feel it still? If it's not true then what is actually true about the situation? Can I discard such an obvious untruth? What truth can I put in it's place to give me a positive feeling in the same situation? What is real in that moment that honestly reflects me?

From here you have a newly created trigger and response to install. This just means that whenever the situation occurs and the feeling arises, you can remember and recreate the new truth to replace the old one, in the moment. Over time the old feeling will fade and the new positive one will replace it, permanently.

If you need a guarantee that it works, then I would like you to know that I was the same as you 5 years ago. I couldn't give anyone except my closest friends eye contact. I couldn't talk to anyone unless I had met them at least twice before. I wouldn't stand up for myself and often I would back down to avoid any kind of confrontation. The only time I actually felt at ease was when I was at a computer. When I followed the steps I realised it was because I really didn't think I had anything interesting to say, I thought I didn't have anything of value to add to the converstion. However when I looked at my interactions with other people, they always listened intently because I was a very interesting person with a lot of insight. I decided to discard the old "I don't have anything interesting to say." and replace it with "I'm an interesting and insightful person." Over the next 3 years I became really confident in my ability to communicate. I would go to parties and introduce myself to entire new groups of people, making friends at the same time. I would strike conversations up on the train to people I've never seen before. I could engage with light banter with receptionists, checkout operators and pretty much anyone else, and I started to enjoy it. I never felt inferior or intimidated in conversation again, and all it took was some deep introspection and some quick remembering.

[PJE]

Originally Posted by rogerrr

No this is not the case. I assume self acceptance would mean that the person is happy with who she is. Well how can i be happy with who i am in certain areas of my life when in these areas i am something i don't want to be? I get those who say that i should just accept myself for who i am well i am NOT going to do this! If i have a poor performance in an area of my life (social) because i behave in a certain way then i am NOT going to like that part of me because it doesn't bring me the outcomes that i want!

Not quite. Self-acceptance is accepting that your flaws don't *make you unacceptable*.

Here's the thing. Anything you define as unacceptable about yourself will be treated as a priority crisis override by your brain. And if that unacceptable thing is social in nature, then you will do anything to cover it up in front of other people. Hence, the "compensating" behaviors you describe.

The paradox, however, is that this priority override thing is actually what prevents you from just relaxing with people! Socialization isn't really a "skill" -- humans really do socialize naturally, even though I had the same belief as you about it for oh, at least 30 years of my life. But the truth is that once I forgave myself for my flaws, I became MUCH more comfortable with people, and virtually all of my nervous/compensating behaviors went away naturally.

Certainly, even if there are skills you need to learn, you're not going to learn them while your brain is creating agitation over your "unacceptable" qualities.

[SaberToothDream]

Confidence has always seemed to elude me, but I am getting better. For me I started to build self confidence when studying abroad in France where in order to do simple every day tasks (grocery shopping, seeing a film, ask for directions, succeed in school) I had to do something that was way out of my comfort zone: speak French. Some level of confidence became necessary in order to make it day to day. But since coming back self confidence is still a struggle for me and I'm constantly looking for advice on how to build it up. Here's an article I recently found with some helpful tips on building self confidence.

Self Confidence

Hope it helps!