Sunday, January 20, 2013

Why is Confidence Hot? A Discussion on the Need for External Validation

Ever notice confidence makes people appear much more attractive?

Why?

Most of it comes down to our hatred of neediness. We don't like needy people because they require constant attention. They have little or no ability to provide their own validations. It's exhausting to constantly answer "Am I pretty" or "Do you really love me" questions.

There may be a subset of people that DO like neediness, but they're simply meeting their own need to be needed. In that case, it may be a workable symbiotic relationship. For the rest of us, we despise neediness.

Quite possibly the best thing we can do to make ourselves more attraction is to boost our self-confidence by eliminating the need for external validation. Get to a point where we can give ourselves all the validation you need.

The idea of being more confident will help you whether we're single or in a relationship. Confident single people get action. Confident "taken" people have better relationships. In either case, it will improve our lives.

Here's a few tactics to teach yourself to be more confident:
  • Don't complain. Nobody likes a whiny bitch.
  • Self-analyze. Spend a few minutes every day asking why we do what we do. If we're brutally honest, we'll admit when we did something to impress others or elicit validation. Consciously stop those behaviors.
  • Crush your fears by embracing the uncomfortable. Put ourselves in a position to do things that make us uncomfortable on a regular basis. This is the idea of BRUcrew.
  • Assume rapport with strangers. When we meet someone new, a simple trick to avoiding the awkwardness is to assume they're an old friend.
  • Don't be a perfectionist. Perfection is a way self-handicap. We beat ourselves up when we can't reach an imaginary level of proficiency, and it affects our self-confidence. Learn to be okay with "good enough."
  • Believe you can do anything. Having 100% confidence our abilities is a powerful method to project confidence. This takes considerable practice, but will allow us to achieve far more than we think is possible.
  • Use confident body language. Stand up straight. Look people in the eye. Use hand gestures. Talk with authority. Don't mope.
  • Always learn. Lifelong learning keeps you mentally sharp. Smart is confident.
  • Celebrate your strengths; ignore your weaknesses. We all have things about our bodies or personalities we don't like. Fuck 'em. People notice what you put on display. Accentuate your strengths.
  • Don't be offended. Ever. People that are easily offended are reflecting their own insecurity. They need to feel like they're right. When confronted with contradictory information, they either evaluate their own belief or disregard the source of the information. Being offended is one such method. The solution- be okay with people having different values, beliefs, and behaviors. In other words, don't judge. Practice unconditional love.
  • Focus on the successes, learn form failures. Then forget them. This is sort of like accentuating our strengths. If we focus on our failures, we'll feel a lot less confident. We should definitely learn from our failures, but also learn to forget them.
  • Learn to take a compliment. Nothing says "I'm not confident' like responding to a genuine confident with a depreciating statement. If someone says "Damn, you're hot!" respond with a polite "Thank you, I appreciate the compliment."
  • Learn to fake it. If any of these previous suggestions are too difficult, just fake it until you can actually do it. I learned this tip from my friend Christian- if you're not awesome, fake it until you are. 
 All of us have the power to be more confident. Like any skill, it takes practice. The more we eliminate the need for external validation, the more confident we become. The more confident we become, the more attractive we appear. Give it a shot. The benefits are well worth the effort. ;-)

###





No comments:

Post a Comment