Confidence vs. Being Oblivious

Liberaler · 2021-03-20T17:48:08+00:00

You can not break the rules until you know how to follow them. Confident people know social rules, therefore they have the knowledge how/when to bend/break them to reach their goals. They also know how to act socially calibrated. It's all about the fine details. Doing the same thing with vs without social calibration is like day vs night. People who are just oblivious sooner or later bite on granite.

AlwaysLearningWork · 2021-03-20T17:42:34+00:00

The difference between confidence and oblivious to me seems to be awareness.

An oblivious person doesn't give a fuck about what people think, because they cannot comprehend it / don't register it. If they one day did, would they still start caring? Probably.

A confident person understands that other people will think bad/good about them, and chooses to not let that sway them in any way.

I'd say the problem with your friend is that he's not just oblivious to other people's judgment, he's also oblivious to the fact that he's an asshole.

You can be confident, and an asshole, and you can be oblivious, and an asshole. I'd wager it's harder to change if you're the latter. If you're oblivious, and still a good guy, it can be a great blessing. But for those of us that aren't, getting confidence seems to be a much better alternative anyways.

Really good question though, I had never thought about it.

McLovintheSucculent · 2021-03-20T18:03:32+00:00

Speaking as someone who is trying to go from that oblivious stage to being confident, I think the difference is intent. I think why being “emotionally underdeveloped” makes you oblivious is because you don’t really understand how to manage your own emotions and behaviors so you probably won’t be able to recognize some cues about how the person you are speaking to is feeling. If you are mindful about how people are affecting your feelings and how you are affecting theirs, you can choose to not be affected and have empathetic conversations. I think that being confident involves choosing what to care about as opposed to not caring about anything.

This person still might be considered confident but I think it’s more an issue of not being considerate or mindful.

KarismaCameleon · 2021-03-21T04:09:21+00:00

Great answers in this thread. I would like to add that there is a distinction between general confidence and intellectual confidence. This is a distinction that I learned from a great book on critical thinking. https://www.amazon.ca/Critical-Thinking-Taking-Professional-Personal/dp/0133115283

Confidence simply means that you follow your internal compass with little regard for those who oppose you. So by my definition your friend has high confidence. His problem is that he lacks the intellectual humility to admit his mistakes and change his behavior.

I would say that the trick to cultivating confidence and intellectual humility is to know your core values - to know what you stand for in life. Try to be a good person and live up to your values. This gives you the confidence to act, and makes it easier to examine yourself and admit your flaws. It's a lot easier to say that you've made a mistake when you know that your intentions were good and in alignment with your values.

The inability to admit our flaws is often rooted in the confusion between intellectual and moral wrongs - we think that making a mistake will make us a bad person. If you know your values and always try to follow them, then you know that you are not a bad person, you just make human mistakes. If you have strong values, they will compel you to adjust when you see that you've been wrong.

It's a worthwhile exercise to take 15 minutes and think about what your 3-5 core values are. These are ideals that you value, either for ethical reasons (they are good) or aesthetic reasons (they are beautiful or enjoyable).

Title	Confidence vs. Being Oblivious
Author	kingsgambit89
Upvotes	7
Comments	4
Date	March 20, 2021 5:21 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/seduction
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/m9bkzf/confidence_vs_being_oblivious/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/seduction/confidence-vs-being-oblivious.1511374 https://theredarchive.com/post/1511374

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