The Secret to Confidence
If you have been reading this site, you will have come across this mysterious concept "confidence" over and over again.
You will probably have tried to turn your 'inner state' into something that makes you feel 'confident'. You may have tried various postures and gimmicks, routines and tricks, trying to appear 'confident'. You might have repeated affirmations to yourself...and a million other things, to no effect.
You may have despaired and thought "...this is BS, confidence is something you have when you KNOW you are wealthy, good looking, successful, attractive....you can't fake that..." and given up.
But you are wrong. That isn't where confidence comes from. Nor does it come from "self esteem" or "self belief" or "self acceptance" or "self" anything.
So where does it come from?
It comes from doing the right thing.
It comes from knowing that you are acting morally, rightly, ethically, and in accord with your most deeply held values.
If what you are doing in your life, including in your social life, and romantic life, at some level deep down clashes with what you think is right, then you will be in a state of "cognitive dissonance". And that leads to worry. And worry leads to anxiety.
When you do something for appearances sake, for your ego, to get ahead of others, or for your own selfish gratification AT THE EXPENSE OF DOING THE RIGHT THING then you have had a lapse of moral self control. At some level deep inside, you will know this. And you won't feel good about it, about yourself. You won't feel "confident".
You will feel like your actions are out of control with respect to your values and your beliefs, and this means that your life in the most important sense (that is, the sense of doing what really matters to you ethically and spiritually speaking) you are not in control.
And not only that, because you have had a lapse of control over the way you handle the important matters in your life and the lives of those around you, you lose some respect for yourself.
So, now you feel a loss of control AND a loss of self respect. So, you go looking for it from others. You look for others for respect, you look for others to take charge of things. And when you feel slighted, it hurts too much to bear, and when things don't go your way, you lose it completely.
But.....if you make the hard choices. If you turn down selfish short term gain for the sake of your ego or your immediate pleasures in order to do the right thing, you feel a sense of control and you like what you've done. You have self respect. You feel peace of mind, comfortable with your decisions and your actions. You don't go looking for outside validation so much. You don't need people to validate that you are behaving right. You don't need others to worship you are your successes. You don't need to. You know you are a good person. You feel like an adult, mature, a man, a REAL man, a man that has the courage and control to do the hard but right thing.
And THIS is confidence.
You have to take a hard look at yourself. Are you really comfortable with tricking women with acts and gimmicks? Do you really believe in sex without commitment? Do you really believe that casual sex is such a great thing, or whether it might actually dilute the meaning of a real love affair you may have one day? Are you really happy with how you are behaving toward your friends? At work? At school?
So, my challenge to you is this. Become a morally serious human being. Become a moral man. Forget the quest for confidence for a while. Instead seek to do what is right. The rest will follow, and your maturity WILL impress those you have wished to impress.
