Can someone define confidence for me?

[C.J.]

Confidence? You guys must mean MASCULINITY.

You can go to a foreign, non-western country, be masculine or feminine, and get dates. It's about what the other person thinks of you and what you offer to them.

In a western country, people will tell you to be "confident" and persuade you to try and be someone you're not. A waste of energy! One must know that the dating game in the western world is purposefully rigged against successful people, unless you're useful to the elite. Obey them, and you're more likely to get female company, favors etc, but go against them and you get NOTHING. Women automatically qualify, as they don't usually rebel against society.

[DarrenFW]

I'm getting really tired of my peers, various internet sources, and often times this forum explaining how women want a "confident man".

Be confident bro!

What IS confidence? When I think confident I think of a trendy (hipster/thug/sports freak) douche bag at a club with a cocky smile plastered on his face. I think this "confidence" thing is bullshit and I'm awfully tired of hearing it. Even "acting" confident is silly.

I have suffered from severe anxiety since sophomore year in high school. I tried everything in and out of school to remedy this since I knew women wanted this "confident alpha" and that was not me at the time. I tried breathing exercises, medication, meditation, dieting, hypnosis etc to help make me appear more "confident" to no avail. Today, at 26, the anxiety is still there, although now is only a fraction of what it once was. The remedy? I stopped trying to act confident. I stopped fighting against my body's natural reaction to fear. Your body is built to respond a certain way to situations you fear. If you are afraid, you are afraid. Showing it does not make you "beta" or "weak", it makes you a damn human. Also, crying is a natural way for women AND men to dispel physical and emotional stress. Once I stopped fighting the real, vulnerable person I am on the inside, the anxiety subsided. I believe and take pride in masculinity but our modern definitions of it are ridiculous.

(I can't wait to see if The Arab comes on here and starts calling me "cupcake" for saying any of this).

I think TRUE confidence (although I admit I seriously hate using the word because it implies you actually have to work to achieve it rather than just letting go) is a self actualized male. I notice more women checking out the nerd I that I am today simply because I am not trying to be someone I'm not.

I am not going to read a million ways to improve my "style" or speech to learn how to get a woman. Now, granted, looking presentable and put together is part of attraction, but I think that looking good is a natural bi product of feeling good about yourself on the inside. No, I'm not talking about "inner-game", I'm talking about completely accepting yourself for who you are; learning to like yourself.

Lose your pride and start living.

Well, I can tell you that confidence itself is a nebulous thing. There are lots of nebulous terms out there... "love", "respect", "faith". These mean different things to different people.
The problem with self improvement is that you can't see yourself from the outside. And the other thing is that all the stuff that people worry about means little to everyone else because the other people are probably just as self conscious.

And the problem with "inner game", hypnosis and nlp is that it gets you focused on your self so much that you become a neurotic walking basket case. Trust me, I know a few people who were into the PUA thing and at least one is in therapy because of it.

This is not to say that depression, anxiety, chemical imbalances do not exist. They do. I suffer from depression and I take anti-depressants.
So get that handled if you are prone to depression or anxiety. A good med can change your life.

Right now there is so much focus on technique and performance that people often don't enjoy reality. The thing people are trying to get to is just rapport and being genuine with people.
Skip the performance and just be genuine.

Focus on the other people and try to see what is attractive about them as a whole.

[Renata]

For the record, I wrote this months ago when I was back in the states. I'm in a happy relationship now so anything I was feeling then I'm not really feeling now

aaaahhh yes india, ... very jealous, have fun

As the old saying goes; 'to find yourself, you must loose yourself'

[fightforlove]

Confidence is simply positive thoughts of successful past experiences being re-played in a man's head. If you ask a girl out and she says yes, you can re-play that happy memory in your mind the next time you encounter a woman that you want to ask out. If you have no positive experiences to look back on, then you have no confidence. This is why lacking confidence per se is not a bad thing. Women/society blast men all the time for "lacking confidence" as if they are bad people. But really, you're just simply a guy without positive experiences with women. You just have to break the ice, get a successful experience to rely upon and build yourself up from there. Open up your tolerances, ask out and date a few fat girls, MILFs, or something.

[OutsideoftheBox]

The only way to get confidence is by being validated externally.

Confidence comes from looks, money, social status or being good at what you do.

An ugly guy with confidence is still ugly and will get rejected by women and called a creep/pervert/loser.

The exact same approach by a good looking, but unconfident shy guy will be labled as cute, modest and mysterious by women and it´ll get their p***y wet.

Obviously this has been your life story.

[Winston]

Have any of you noticed that New Agers will claim that if women reject you, then you must have low self-esteem, low confidence, or a negative attitude? Female New Agers are especially prone to do this.

But this is ridiculous and doesn't make sense. In reality, women reject men who are not THEIR TYPE. But if you are her type and she is attracted to you, then you can be an asshole, dickhead, and be as negative as you want, yet she will still cling to you and come to you. If you are not her type, you can have many wonderful qualities, and she will still reject you, or she will "friend zone" you. That's how it works.

Confidence or self-esteem has very little to do with it. Confidence alone does not create attractiveness to women. It only enhances attractiveness if she already perceives you as desirable. If you are "her type" then your confidence will validate her attraction to you. This is basic psychology. Only if she likes you, will your confidence be seen as an attractive attribute to her. Otherwise, if you're not her type, then it won't matter. An ugly guy who tries to act confident will still be perceived as a creep. That's how it works.

Looks are everything in America. The dating culture is very shallow. People are not judged by their inner qualities in the dating scene. We all know that.

Thus, for a woman to reject a man claiming that "he lacks confidence" is a mere shaming tactic, to hide the fact that she isn't attracted to him physically, because she does not want to appear shallow. I've seen American women do this countless times. It's very dishonest and cruel.

The truth is, confidence is a by-product of success. It has to be validated by some kind of actual worth or value for it to matter. Being confident for no reason does not create real value. For example, if I don't know anything about fixing cars and I tell you that "I'm confident that I can fix your car", it will not help or make it true. Such confidence would be baseless. But if I know a lot about fixing computers (which I do) then my confidence in being able to fix your computer will have a real basis. In other words, if I'm really good at something, then I have a right to be confident about it. But if I suck at something, I have no right to act confident about it. Fake confidence does not help and has no value, even in a fake culture like America.

I don't understand why New Agers can't accept that. It's like they have a need to believe that everything is controllable, including looks, attraction and other people. They can't seem to accept that some things are not controllable. But we all know that you can't control what others think and feel. So why don't they accept that? It's very weird. They are obviously out of touch with reality and logic.

[Introvert]

Have any of you noticed that New Agers will claim that if women reject you, then you must have low self-esteem, low confidence, or a negative attitude? Female New Agers are especially prone to do this.

But this is ridiculous and doesn't make sense. In reality, women reject men who are not THEIR TYPE. But if you are her type and she is attracted to you, then you can be an asshole, dickhead, and be as negative as you want, yet she will still cling to you and come to you. If you are not her type, you can have many wonderful qualities, and she will still reject you, or she will "friend zone" you. That's how it works.

Confidence or self-esteem has very little to do with it. Confidence alone does not create attractiveness to women. It only enhances attractiveness if she already perceives you as desirable. If you are "her type" then your confidence will validate her attraction to you. This is basic psychology. Only if she likes you, will your confidence be seen as an attractive attribute to her. Otherwise, if you're not her type, then it won't matter. An ugly guy who tries to act confident will still be perceived as a creep. That's how it works.

nothing alone creates attractiveness to women

Looks are everything in America.

for men, maybe

The dating culture is very shallow. People are not judged by their inner qualities in the dating scene. We all know that.

Thus, for a woman to reject a man claiming that "he lacks confidence" is a mere shaming tactic, to hide the fact that she isn't attracted to him physically, because she does not want to appear shallow. I've seen American women do this countless times. It's very dishonest and cruel.

agreed

The truth is, confidence is a by-product of success. It has to be validated by some kind of actual worth or value for it to matter. Being confident for no reason does not create real value. For example, if I don't know anything about fixing cars and I tell you that "I'm confident that I can fix your car", it will not help or make it true. Such confidence would be baseless. But if I know a lot about fixing computers (which I do) then my confidence in being able to fix your computer will have a real basis. In other words, if I'm really good at something, then I have a right to be confident about it. But if I suck at something, I have no right to act confident about it. Fake confidence does not help and has no value, even in a fake culture like America.

you've described competence in this paragraph. competence is the by-product of success, not confidence. confidence comes before the attempt is even made. confidence is not logical

is it better to have baseless confidence or baseless self-doubt