abcdavid01 wrote:drealm wrote:Confidence isn't a mindset you can manipulate yourself into. Confidence is a positive expectation based on historical success. If you have no historical success then your mindset is misplaced. In a video Roosh just made he was discussing weight lifting. He said based on what he lifted before he knew he could lift more. That is confidence. But if he just went into a gym and had never lifted before this mindset could get him killed. Real confidence is something that applies to all parts of life. The problem is women cannot tell the difference between confidence and acting. So they validate some guy acting and he reiterates to others that it's confidence. I don't care what someone uses in dating, but outside of dating this doesn't work. In business or war it is crystal clear when confidence is bullshit.
This is only true up to a point. Obviously historical success underpins confidence. But everyone has to start somewhere. Five years ago my life was pretty worthless. I had no historical successes to rely on. For a long time this made me suicidal and overwhelmingly depressed. But five years later I've become much more successful and confident and I cured my depression. How did I do it? Well I had confidence in myself. With no historical successes under my belt, I had confidence in my own ability. There was no reason for anyone to believe I would succeed. I had never proven that I could. But I had confidence in my ability and started achieving success. Now I have historical successes to draw upon for confidence. But I didn't start out that way. Sometimes people have to try new things, take gambles in life.
Yes, Roosh can predict he'll lift more the next time based on historical averages. But long ago I'm sure he was a teenager stepping into the gym for the first time and lifting an empty bar. Having never stepped into a gym before, did he have any reason to assume he could lift even that much? Not based on any history at least. It's just a blind self confidence. People have to start from somewhere, so it's not like history is the only thing that determines confidence.
It's called faking it until you make it. Eventually the line blurs between acting and reality. I bullshit on job interviews and won. Made my resume look a lot better that way. It's not an uncommon thing at all. But now I actually have job experience and don't have to bullshit as much.
People need blind confidence when they start trying anything new. It's not like someone can just say, "I have no history of this, so I have no confidence and I'm not going to even try." Eventually that blind confidence leads to results. Probably most of the time it's failure. But sometimes it's success. Blind confidence at the beginning leads to historical successes. You can't even have a history of success if you don't start in the first place. That applies to trying anything new, from dating women to business and war. Did Israel have any reason to be confident when they declared independence? It was a brand new country in 1948 with no history at all. All the neighboring arab countries launched an invasion, but Israel beat them all back. With no history, Israel had no reason to be confident. Yet they won and kept winning wars against the neighboring arab states. This became their historical success, but they had no history when they started out as a nation.
Abcdavid,
What's going on? You sound like you've been listening to too much New Age claptrap or New Age guru BS. I think you used the wrong word here when you talk about "confidence" in trying a new sport. The word should be "bravery" in trying something new. Not confidence. Without some basis, confidence is useless and false. If you didn't know how to fix a car, can you say with confidence that you can? If you did, you'd be lying. If I am skilled and experienced at fixing computers, then I would have the RIGHT to say that I'm confident I can fix your computer. See the difference?
Confidence isn't going to do anything if it doesn't have skill, talent or experience to back it up. Didn't you read our thread about "The Myth of Confidence"?
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Success has more to do with whether you do something you are GOOD at. You gotta have a knack or aptitude for it too. Every successful person got to where they are at, because they did what they were GOOD at, not because of their confidence. And they persevered too of course. For example, do you think Gary Kasparov won all those chess championships because he had confidence? No way. He was very talented in chess and very good at it. Do you think Bill Gates became rich because of his confidence? No, he had a talent and aptitude for computer programming. Likewise, Steve Jobs had a talent for design. Even Thomas Edison, who said that perseverance is everything, was extremely good at inventing things, it was his TALENT. He was good at something.
Do you think a novice in chess is going to beat an expert just by using his confidence alone? No way. If you are way outmatched, your confidence isn't going to help. If you are evenly matched though, it may help somewhat, but you also gotta focus and concentrate too. It's a combination of factors. But skill and talent definitely precede confidence. Confidence doesn't make or break everything. It's not the end all and be all that delusional American New Agers make it out to be. Confidence is not only way overrated in America, it's used as a shaming tactic too.
So why you buy into all this New Age BS and nonsense?
Go to a gymnastics coach. Tell him to train you because you have all the confidence in the world and that you believe in yourself. Well, not only will he tell you that you are too old to start, but even if you were a kid, having confidence isn't enough. He will tell you that you have to demonstrate a TALENT and APTITUDE for gymnastics too. Otherwise, you are wasting his time and yours. Without a strong aptitude in gymnastics, you won't make it, no matter how "confident" you are. This is reality. New Age bullshit about "confidence" being able to do anything without limits is WRONG and is a LIE and is NOT TRUE! Geez. I hate bullshit. So why is bullshit so popular in America, when it can be debunked by simple logic? Sheesh!
Using Israel is a bad example. The elite Jewish bankers financed and arranged for Israel to be born. These bankers own all the money in the West and plotted long ago to get a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They even got America into World War One as long as Britain promised to allow a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. That was an agreement made by bankers with the British government. Google "Balfour Declaration". The Rothschilds, Schiffs, and others were behind it all. Didn't you know?
So Israel was protected by the most powerful elite. It didn't stand on its own against hostile enemies. That's why there was a Holocaust during World War Two, because the Jewish population in Europe wanted to stay in Europe and were comfortable there, they didn't want to move to hot desert land to fight Arabs forever. So they had to engineer persecution of Jews in order to get them to migrate to Israel. Didn't you know all this?